No, this isn't a photograph of the North American Man Boy Love Association

Though the mentality is much the same. Especially since fascist Dixie Cup Ralph Reed is along for the ride.

Maybe the south will secede. Best thing really.

4 Republicans running for Alabama's Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars thought was settled in the 1800s: that state courts are not bound by
U.S. Supreme Court precedents.

BOBBY KENNEDY JR. TO QUESTION 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN MAJOR ROLLING STONE FEATURE ARTICLE!

A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

The article -- headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" -- has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio -- and thus the country -- in 2004!
[...]

Bush tax cuts stand Lee Raymond a break worth over $160 million.

[...]
Pointing to data indicating that 99 percent of the estate tax is paid by the highest-earning 5 percent of Americans, a report released by the Democrats indicates that CEO's of major oil companies stood to gain significantly from a repeal. Democrats' estimates put oil company gains at at least a "$200 million windfall." The family of one oil executive, Lee Raymond (the former ExxonMobil CEO, pictured above left), alone stood to receive a tax break worth over $160 million.
[...]

Consumer, environmental fury kicks off Exxon meeting

Stolen VA data goes beyond initial reports

Personal information on 26.5 million veterans that was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee this month not only included Social Security numbers and birthdates but in many cases phone numbers and addresses, internal documents show. The three pages of memos by the VA, written by privacy officer Mark Whitney and distributed to high-level officials shortly after the May 3 burglary, offer new details on the scope of one of the nation's largest security breaches. The memos were obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Mona Lisa 'speaks'

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Mona Lisa's smile may always remain a mystery, but it is now possible to hear what her voice would have sounded like, thanks to a Japanese acoustics expert.

Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height and create a model of her skull.

"Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned," Suzuki told Reuters in an interview at his Tokyo office last week. "We have recreated the voices of a lot of famous people that were very close to the real thing and have been used in film dubbing."
[...]

Bush administration plans to reduce budgets of several energy-efficiency research programs

Bolivia Leader Claims Assassination Attempt

2 Iraqi Women Killed by Coalition Troops, one possibly pregnant. Greetings from the Bush Culture of LIFE.

Batwoman hero returns as lesbian

Afghanistan's parliament has approved a motion calling for the government to prosecute the U.S. soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash

Who's Running Things? Must be Cheney.

Bush Learned of Haditha Deaths From Press

US, Vietnam sign trade deal to put Hanoi in WTO

Court Curbs the Speech of Public Employees

[...]
"When a citizen enters government service, the citizen by necessity must accept certain limitations on his or her freedom," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, rejecting a lawsuit brought by a Los Angeles County prosecutor.

Lawyers for government whistle-blowers denounced the ruling as a major setback. They said it could threaten public health and safety. Public sector hospital workers who know of dangers may be discouraged from revealing them, while police and public employees may be dissuaded from exposing corruption, they said.

"In an era of excessive government secrecy, the court has made it easier to engage in a government coverup by discouraging internal whistle-blowing," said Steven Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
[...]

The court's newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr., cast a crucial vote to form the pro-government majority. The justices first heard the case in October, but they apparently were split, 4 to 4, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down in February. The case was reargued in March. Also joining Kennedy were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Because Tuesday's decision interprets the 1st Amendment, it applies to all public institutions — including federal and state agencies, public hospitals and public schools and colleges.

Will Your Vote Count in 2006?

Gore: Bush is 'renegade rightwing extremist'

Israeli Troops Kill 4 in Gaza Strip

Like the Iraqis, the Palestinians are defending their country from occupation by a relentless aggressor with far superior military capability. That is if they were even armed.

Oil could top $105 in major supply outage

A Goldman Sachs projection that oil prices could top $100 a barrel in the event of a major supply disruption could be conservative in the current tight market, said a senior executive with the investment bank.

Americans Living Abroad Get a Nasty Tax Surprise

HONG KONG, May 29 — In an effort to raise revenues, tax writers in Congress added a last-minute provision that retroactively increased taxes for Americans living abroad. But the sudden imposition of new taxes has surprised overseas taxpayers, and it has employers concerned about the added cost.
[...]

Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'

GOP election Fraud Felon Out of prison and now working for GOP again

Alaska the 'poster state' for climate concerns

Inupiat Eskimo Johnny Weyiouanna walks on melting ice on top of the frozen Chukchi Sea in Shishmaref, Alaska. "We risk our lives every day" says his brother Tony. "This ice is getting thinner each year."

America talks about building democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it fosters mainly violence and failed states.

Bill Frist, a good indication of how far America has fallen

Wall Eyed Kitten Killer so doesn't get it.

Freedom to dissent and other rights in the constitution, such as freedom of speech, which flag burning is, is ostensibly why they die, you loathsome creep. (You too Hillary.)
Most of those who lay down their lives don't glean they are dying for the corporations to get richer and rights be damned.

And as for this gay marriage crap, it's so obviously pandering to religious loonies for election purposes I could scream.
Since when is marriage regulated by the federal government? Any real conservative can tell you how ridiculous that is.

Of course Frist is not a conservative at all. He's a jack booted fascist freak who will do absolutely anything to get and keep power, including destroying the US constitution.

Remembrance: What Happens when Fascist US interferes South of the Border

Sorry for the obvious right wing bias in the excepted material. It came from CNN, the news source the repiglikkkans call "liberal. (So, no thinking person would accuse repiglikkkans of understanding or intelligence.)

Anyway.
After an economic attack on the country to weaken Allende's government, he was murdered by Amerikkkan backed Pinochet, a ruthless, homicidal thug, just the kind the US likes, and Pinochet's reign of terror was imposed on Chile in the name of profit. Pinochet is presently being tried for his crimes. I hope Bush and company meet the same fate some day.

At home, Allende's regime began to nationalize various industries, several of which had significant U.S. business interests. This line of action quickly cost the president the support of Chile's business community.

By early 1972, with the United States continuing its support of the opposition and working systematically to weaken Chile's economy, the government began to lose control of a deteriorating situation. In order to control a strike by shopkeepers and truck owners, Allende temporarily brought senior military officers into his cabinet. With inflation out of control and his country becoming polarized between the extreme left and the extreme right, Allende slowly but steadily lost his grip.

In September 1973, the army, encouraged by the United States, joined the conservative opposition, attacked the presidential palace in Santiago and deposed Allende.

U.S. Interventions in Latin America

This is list well worth reading, though I am only excerpting the first and last few entries here. The Bush Backed Coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002 is not listed, and the list could use some detailed name naming, since some of our little cold warriors are back in Washington today working for the Chimp.

1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory.
[...]
1980 A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

"The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on." --Ronald Reagan

1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state.

1981 The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua.

1981 Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba.

1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign.

1983 Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities.

1983 U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism.

1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates.

1984 CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case.

1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president.

1989 U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs.

1996The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.

Chirac unconcerned by new Leftist leaders

SANTIAGO, Chile -- French President Jacques Chirac said Friday the new leftist presidents in Latin America should not be a reason for concern because they were elected in free democratic elections.

"One cannot want democratic elections and then when one sees the results not accept them for one reason or another," Chirac said at a joint news conference with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

"There is a strong movement in favor of democracy in Latin America, a movement that is growing," Chirac said.

Chirac praised leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has nationalized his country's gas industry.
[...]

Amnesty compares Bush to Pinochet

Amnesty International says President George Bush's tactics in his fight against terrorists have made the United States comparable to Augusto Pinochet's Chile and Hafez Assad's Syria in its acceptance of torture and disregard of legal restraints.
[...]
Among Amnesty's major condemnations of the US was the use of civilian contractors - Amnesty estimated 25,000 in Iraq alone.

"Outsourcing" unsavory jobs to largely untrained contractors, without contractual restrictions or legal restraints under military/civilian laws" has helped create virtually a rule-free zones sanctioned with the American flag and fire power", said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

In its annual report of human rights conditions around the world, Amnesty included the US alongside China, Russia, Columbia, Uzbekistan and others as states that claim anti-terrorism to justify gross violations.
[...]

Desmond Dekker RIP May 27, 2006

Desmond Adolphus Dacres Born in Kingston, Jamaica, on July 16, 1942 - Died May 25, 2006..

The children of Guantanamo Bay

Defiant Iran and AIPAC

[...]
# Iran: Iran's real goal is to establish itself as an internationally recognized actor in the region. It attempted to do this by negotiating with the US in 2003, and was summarily rebuffed by the neocon controlled administration. It is currently trying to use nuclear power as a wedge to achieve the same goal. While it would like to have nuclear weapons, it is a fairly stable, if oppressive, government and does not pose a regional threat, either directly or through terrorist organizations.
[...]

Israeli shellings Murder Palestinians

U.S. Braces for Marine Scandal

[...]
With a political storm brewing, the top U.S. Marine, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, is headed to Iraq to personally deliver the message that troops should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."

Haditha is not the only case pending: On Wednesday, the military announced an investigation into allegations that Marines killed a civilian April 26 near Fallujah. The statement gave no further details except that "several service members" had been sent back to the United States "pending the results of the criminal investigation."
[...]

The massacre and the US Marines

US Marines could face the death penalty after one of their number took horrific photographs of a massacre in Iraq on his mobile phone, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

The photographs, seized by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), show many victims shot at close range in the head and chest, execution-style, according to sources who have seen them. One image shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer. Both have been shot dead.

Similar photographs taken by a Marines intelligence team which arrived on the scene later show that soldiers "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results", according to a US official quoted by the Los Angeles Times yesterday.

The killing of more than 20 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November, first reported in the IoS two months ago, has become an international scandal after evidence from two official investigations was shown to Congressmen in the past 10 days. Democrat John Murtha, a former Marines colonel who has retained close links to the military despite his denunciation of the Iraq occupation, said Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood".
[...]

Gonzales pressures ISPs on data retention

Strike Paralyzes Honduran Capital

Not Enough Aid arrives in Indonesian quake zone

[...]
On Sunday, three U.N. trucks brought high-energy biscuits to survivors and two Singapore military cargo planes arrived at Yogyakarta airport with doctors and medical supplies.

But officials said relief supplies remained inadequate.

"We have received food and medicine from the government but it's not enough," said Suparno, a neighborhood official in Bantul who goes by one name, like many Indonesians. "How can I distribute 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of rice to 1,200 people?"

Hundreds of villagers lined main roads in the disaster zone, holding out donation boxes. They explained that any money collected would be used communally to buy rice, oil and candles.

"We need help. Anything at all," one sign read.
[...]
The government said the quake killed more than 4,300 and left an estimated 200,000 people homeless, most of whom are now living in shacks close to their former homes or in shelters erected in rice fields. Hospitals overflowed with bloodied survivors.

The area affected by the quake stretches across hundreds of square miles of mostly farming communities to the south of the ancient city of Yogyakarta.

The quake has intensified activity at the nearby Mount Merapi volcano, which spit out lava and hot clouds Monday, sending debris avalanching 2 1/2 miles down the mountain, said Subandriyo, chief of the Merapi volcanology and monitoring office.
[...]
The United States has allocated $2.5 million for assistance to victims.
[...]
We spend that in Iraq in a second, but we are far more willing to spend to take life than to save life.

We staged a coup here too, for sugar corporations

HONOLULU -- Hawaii politicians are scrambling to gather enough votes in Congress to pass a bill that would grant Native Hawaiians a degree of self-government and possibly a share of the land ruled by their ancestors.
[...]

Chavez says US working for coup in Bolivia

Funny that Bush is worried about erosion of democracy in Venezuela and Bolivia but not here at home.

Both Chavez and Morales are democratically elected - which is more than I can say for Bush, who lost one election and was appointed anyway, and who "won" the second election on fraud and dirty tricks.

It's very sad that legally elected governments of other countries are not allowed to do what they determine is best for their own people without interference from Amerikkka, at the behest of Amerikkkan business interests, interests which don't care at all about the quality of life for Venezuelans, Bolivians or Americans either. They care only about profit.
TIWANAKU, Bolivia (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday bluntly accused the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia of trying to stir up military rebellion against his leftist ally Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Chavez, at the forefront of a leftist shift that is challenging U.S. influence in Latin America, routinely trades insults with Washington, which he blames for a short-lived coup that briefly toppled his own government in 2002.

"The (U.S.) embassy in Bolivia is already whispering in the ears of the Bolivian military to turn them against the government of Evo Morales," said Chavez, wearing a traditional red poncho and bead necklace, at the sacred pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku high in Bolivia's Andean plateau.

"There's a plan against Bolivia, and the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia is the head of this plan," he said during his weekly Venezuelan television show, broadcast from Tiwanaku in front of an audience of Bolivian indigenous leaders.
[...]
Morales, who sat alongside Chavez in a matching poncho, has also made vague accusations of conspiracies against his government since taking office in January, though he has blamed foreign companies opposed to his nationalization drive.

Morales nationalized the impoverished country's energy industry on May 1. Chavez signed deals to invest about $1.5 billion in the natural gas-dominated sector on Friday, as well as a package of financing accords aimed at creating jobs.
[...]
Bush said last week he was concerned about "the erosion of democracy" in Venezuela and Bolivia. The White House has accused Chavez of being uncooperative in fighting terrorism and of promoting instability in the region.

"Gringo go home," Chavez, a former paratrooper, said during Sunday's broadcast, which he concluded by dancing to an Andean pan-pipe band.

He said the U.S. government was willing to pay soldiers to turn them against the Morales government.

"The gringos offer lots of money," he said. "There are soldiers who sell themselves to the
CIA ... and they're paid by Washington."

Chavez and Morales are close allies and, with Cuban President
Fidel Castro, have formed a leftist alliance that aims to counter what they call U.S. political and economic hegemony in Latin America.

Morales, elected on pledges to nationalize the country's energy industry, often makes anti-U.S. comments in his speeches. But his government has reiterated its commitment to work with the United States on issues such as fighting drugs.

Chavez, who is running for re-election in December and seeks greater regional integration, has used his country's oil riches to give neighbors cut-rate energy deals and buy their debt.

Marine Trainers Bound for Africa, S. America

[...]
Gilmore declined to comment on where in Western Africa and South America the units will deploy. He acknowledged the Africa deployment falls under U.S. European Command's Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, a program that involves Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and other countries. Marine units have previously trained troops in Chad and Niger.

At a special operations conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association in March, Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, commander of Special Operations Command South, cited the need to build the capacity of foreign militaries in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru (ITN , March 20, p1).
[...]

Ah, marine trainers in Bolivia?

American marine anything are not wanted in Bolivia by Bolivians.

But overthrowing legally elected governments is what Amerikkka does and Evo Morales has infuriated the ownership society by nationalizing Bolivian gas fields and other Bolivian concerns.

This kind of system of public ownership - what the Amerikkkan overlords call extremist leftist - keeps profit for Bolivian gas in Bolivia rather than send it out of the county to fatten the pocket of some half jackal moron like Dick Cheney or Lee Raymond or whatever corporate Frankenstein has his hand out..

The sense of entitlement of the rich, (usually) white men who run these companies being what it is, calling on Donny "Great strategist" Rumsfeld to supply a little American tax payer bought-n-paid military action for assassination, or overthrow and exile, makes perfect sense.

Brazil leading way in alternative fuels

GIANT mechanical claws grab tonnes of sugar cane from huge, open-topped trailer trucks and place them on conveyor belts where they are crushed into juice. Here at the Costa Pinto refining plant, an hour’s drive from Sao Paulo, begins the process which now powers half of Brazil’s cars.

It is big business. Cosan, which owns the plant, is Brazil’s biggest sugar refiner, publicly quoted and soon to list on Wall Street. It has 16 other facilities like Costa Pinto, producing a billion litres of ethanol and generating $200 million. It is planning to accelerate production.
[...]

Rogue Terrorist State of Israel fires rockets into Lebanon

Of course, all the dead and maimed and displaced from all Israeli attacks are "militants and terrorists", not just people living their lives, let alone people defending themselves from a brutal occupation and ethnic cleansing by a bunch of fanatic warrior lunatics who claim other people's land based on divine influence.

King Croesus' treasure stolen in Turkey

Bush Favored Uribe rebuts voting irregularities claims in Columbia

When the World Bank Forced Water Privatization On Cochabamba, Bolivia

Support for Bolivian president Morales reaches 81%

Venezuela lawmakers decry video game of U.S. invasion

Weekly Summary of Israeli War Crimes

Occupation is unilateral

[...]
While numerous historical injustices along with an understanding of power relations should have taught the international community otherwise, Israel continues to gain support for its policies and actions. But in Palestine there are few questions as to what lies ahead since reality on the ground demonstrates that the future is already here as wall-enclosed ghettos concretise and close in on Palestinian lives. Reality, far from shifting, is moving in one unambiguous direction: continued occupation aimed at the total demise of the Palestinian cause.

It is part of Israel's quest to drown out the link between Israeli political slogans and its crimes, and thus maintain the horrid reality forced upon the Palestinian people through targeted killings and assassinations, aerial attacks, incursions, arrests, confiscations, demolitions, destruction, closures, forced impoverishment and humiliation that persist on a daily basis. Hordes of Israeli tanks invading West Bank cities -- Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, Qalqiliya, Jericho, Tulkarem and Bethlehem -- arresting tens of Palestinians and reeking havoc are unending. The chokehold on the already sealed Gaza Strip is accompanied by an onslaught of Israeli missile and mortar attacks numbering in the hundreds each day, the occupation confirming repeatedly the way in which it plans to "deal with" Palestinians.
[...]

How to have an Ethnic Cleansing. The Bush Role Model for Torture and Genocide

Over 1,100 PA Illegals Apprehended Over the Weekend
09:57 May 28, '06 / 1 Sivan 5766

(IsraelNN.com) Border police over the weekend apprehended 1,164 Palestinian Authority (PA) residents found to be inside Green Line Israel illegally.

Also arrested were two Israelis who gave employment to the illegals along with 31 Israelis who provided them with transportation.
[...]

Bloodthirsty, US supported, Israeli War Criminals Murder more Palestinian Teens

Three Palestinian youths were killed Friday evening in the northern Gaza Strip when an unexploded Israeli Defense Forces shell detonated. The blast, which occured in the town of Beit Lahia, killed cousins Mustafa and Mohammed Qasem, 18 and 19 respectively, and Arafeh Zarandah, 15. Another seven youths were hurt, including three who were seriously wounded.
[...]

Myanmar junta extends Suu Kyi's house arrest

Myanmar's military rulers extended the house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi despite an international outcry demanding her freedom.

"It has been extended," an official said, declining to confirm for how long.

The Nobel peace laureate's detention was last extended by six months in November, but in the last week hopes swelled among her supporters that she might be released as her arrest came under review this weekend.

[...]

''Soaring Commodity Prices Point Toward Dollar Devaluation''

Sudan ready to join OPEC

New threat to Petrodollar

It seems that the U.S. dollar is not only threatened by the Iranian oil bourse but also by Russian plans expected to deal a similar blow to the American currency.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced recently that a Russian bourse would be trading oil and gas in Roubles which will threaten the stability of the U.S. Dollar and deal a worse blow than what the Iranian Oil bourse would do, according to Global Research.
[...]

Arab films at Cannes tackle taboos

Gibson Takes Idiocy to New Heights. Fox Viewers can't tell the difference.

Foreign Central Banks Switching out of US Dollars

[...]
The United States needs to draw in more than $3 billion every working day just to break even from external deficits, and prevent the US dollar from falling further and keep interest rates from rising too far. The US current account deficit is the broadest measure of trade, including financial transfers along with goods and services, and widened $136.9 billion from 2004 to $804.9 billion in 2005, representing 6.5% of US gross domestic product, up from 5.7% in 2004.

However, Treasury data showed that central banks only bought a net $1.6 billion of US stocks and bonds in March, the lowest since they were $14.4 billion net sellers in March of 2005. Japan, the largest foreign holder of US government debt, sold a net $18.2 billion in Treasuries in February, but still holds a total of $640.1 billion. China bought a net $1.6 billion in US debt in March and holds $321.4 billion. Middle East oil kingdoms recycled $16.8 billion petro-dollars through British banks, and UK holdings rose in March by $16.8 billion and total $251 billion.

Nowadays, the US dollar is heavily dependent upon its role as the world's reserve currency, used for transactions in internationally traded commodities such as copper, crude oil, and gold. Therefore, foreign central banks must stockpile US dollars, which account for more than two thirds of all central bank reserves worldwide. This special reserve status means that the US dollar is always in demand, whatever the underlying strength of the US economy, or the level of US interest rates.

But the US dollar’s counter trend rally from January 2005 to March 2006, that rode on the back of 16 quarter-point rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, started to unravel in April, following news that Sweden's Riksbank Sweden has cut its US dollar holdings, from 37% to 20%, with the Euro's share rising to 50 per cent. Kuwait, Qatar and United Arab Emirates also said they were buying Euros. Central banks in China and Japan hold less than 2% of their combined $1.75 trillion of foreign currency reserves in gold, and instead, hold depreciating US bonds.
[...]

Russia Cools to Dollar As it Invests in Stability

Brazil's Real Gains on Increased Inflows, Slowing U.S. Growth

DOLLARS ON SALE, 30 PERCENT OFF ( The 'Booming" Bush Economy news)

[...]
Currencies in every country need to adjust from time to time to close trade deficits. Trade deficits reflect more purchases (than sales) of goods and services abroad, and are financed by the flow of financial capital. Since Americans don’t save, capital, as well as goods, must flow into our country to pay for the trade deficit. (Indeed, the trade deficit creates a financial deficit.)

The fact that our federal government spends more than it taxes, adds to the problem. This basically means that our government is borrowing $400 billion at the same time it needs to find lenders willing to cover the $800 billion needed to finance the trade deficit. Congress has let spending run out of control, pushing up the Treasury’s need to borrow.
[...]

Greenback’s consolidation ‘might not last’

[...]
“The failure of the dollar to rebound more significantly is a sign that the market is not fully convinced of going long,” said analysts at BNP Paribas. They said saying that talk of petro-dollar bids at the $1.2700 level in euro/dollar was contributing to the weak sentiment on the dollar.

Russia, where foreign exchange reserves have risen to record levels this year as it benefited from soaring energy prices, provided further evidence of the growing threat to the dollar’s global dominance as it it said it would increase its euro holdings.

Analysts at BNP Paribas said that while the current volatile environment meant that they could see a continuation of the pause in the dollar’s downward trend in the near-term, the greenback would come under renewed pressure once it was established that US interest rates had peaked after next month’s Federal Reserve policy setting meeting.
[...]

Dollar Rallies on Holiday Squaring but the Outlook is Still Murky

OPEC gathers Thursday in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, in a meeting that will highlight the powerful role long played by the host country in the oil cartel -- and the limits to that power.

Venezuela conceived of creating the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries with Saudi Arabia in the late 1950s. Ever since, the midsize South American oil producer has punched above its weight by providing the cartel with policy ideas. Keeping oil prices within a price band by varying supply, for instance, was a Venezuelan idea adopted by OPEC.

Today, Venezuela is led by the in-your-face populist Hugo Chávez, who is waging a propaganda war with the U.S. and extracting tough terms from foreign oil companies operating in his country.

"The spotlight will be on Chávez," says Michael Wittner, head of energy research at London-based Calyon Bank. "He'll have his soapbox."

What Mr. Chávez does with his soapbox is anybody's guess. One possibility is that he could announce the long-awaited investment terms for international oil giants eager to develop heavy-oil deposits in Venezuela's Orinoco region -- one of the largest stores of crude left on the planet. Putting a high price on access to Orinoco could snuff out investment in the region, constricting a huge source of future oil supply and thus buttressing prices.
[...]

Venezuelan President Pledges $1.5 Billion to Bolivia

Only 15 No Votes on Criminal Military Spook who doesn't comprehend the constitution or give a damn about law

NAYs --- 15

Bayh (D-IN)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Obama (D-IL)
Specter (R-PA)
Wyden (D-OR)

Bang A Gong

Rupee recovers against US dollar

MUMBAI: The rupee recovered against the US dollar on fresh dollar selling, while a weak dollar in the global market also gave a boost to the Indian currency, dealers said.
[...]

German Inflation Slowed in May as Euro Softens Oil Price Effect

Italian Business Confidence Probably Fell on Gains in Euro, Oil

Fascist Criminal Confirmed by senate Full of Fascist Criminals

Iran's oil exchange to trade oil for euros, not dollars

[...]
As concerns the introduction of trading with the euro, this corresponds perfectly with the present direction of the world economy: the dollar falls and the euro gets stronger.

If we compare the presumed turnover of the Iranian Exchange and the full turnover of the economy of the USA we will see that the same mistakes are still being made. The dollar will continue to fall while the price continues to grow on oil. The growth will continue as long as American pursues its present political agenda. The USA of course has its dividends - to raise the competitiveness of its own goods.

Iran declares that with the opening of the Exchange it hopes to reduce the influence of America on its own economy and the economy of the region. But can it achieve this?
[...]

Reports: Russia oil fund changes currency

The last gasp of the dollar;

The last gasp of the dollar; Iran bourse set to open shortly
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 8, 2006, 00:17

"Everybody knows the real reason for American belligerence is not the Iranian nuclear program, but the decision to launch an oil bourse where oil will be traded in euros instead of US dollars. . . . The oil market will break the dominance of the dollar and lead to a decline of global American hegemony." Igor Panarin, Russian political scientist.

Overnight the story of Iran’s proposed oil bourse has slipped into the mainstream press exposing the real reason behind Washington’s hostility towards Tehran. Up to this point, analysts have brushed aside the importance of the upcoming oil-exchange as a "Leftist-Internet" conspiracy theory unworthy of further consideration. Now, the Associated Press has clarified the issue showing that an Iran oil bourse "could lead central bankers around the world to convert some of their dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar’s value". ("Iran wants Oil Market in Euros", Globe and Mail)

Currently, the world is drowning in dollars, even a small movement could trigger a massive recession in the United States. There’s nothing remotely "conspiratorial" about this. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. If the oil bourse creates less demand for the dollar, the value of the dollar will sink accordingly; pushing energy, housing, food and other prices higher.
[...]

Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike

Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike

Infowars | May 9, 2006
By Daniel L. Abrahamson

The impending opening of the Iranian International Oil Bourse (IOB), set to commence trading next week on the island nation of Kish, strongly increases the chances of an imminent nuclear American-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear and financial facilities. The electronic oil bourse, much discussed by terrorism expert Webster Tarpley, appears ready to launch in the coming weeks or even days. Because it will offer oil in euros, it may trigger the rapid collapse of the U.S. dollar.

Over the past four days, the Western media has finally ended their blackout and acknowledged the possibility of an imminent dollar collapse, as gold reaches nearly $700 an ounce.

On Friday, May 5, the Associated Press covered the oil bourse with their article “Iran wants oil market in Euros.” The article warns of a rapid decline in the dollar while feebly attempting to minimize the importance of the oil bourse.

Nevertheless, the AP quotes a top Wall Street analyst who gives a far more realistic assessment: “But if one day the world's largest oil producers allowed, or worse demanded, euros for their barrels, ‘it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike,’ said A.G. Edwards commodities analyst Bill O'Grady.

‘If OPEC decided they didn't want dollars anymore,’ he added, ‘it would signal an end of American hegemony by signaling an end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency status.’

Incredibly, some neocon warmongers are now openly calling for a strike on Iran because of the bourse
[...]

Venezuela May Swap Oil Currency

Check Out this article on the dollar and oil trade from 2004

republican bobbleheads

The Big Buy: Robert Greenwald on Delay and Colbert

Pick an Issue: Unable to Govern

Review finds aging NASA antennae

Over 70 Million American Adults Support New 9/11 Investigation

Olmert Demands Palestinain Lands. Bush Praises him.

Rogue Terrorist State of Israel Demands War with Iran

Excellent resource

Bush Environmental Adviser: Gore’s Film Gives The ‘Same Advice I’ve Been Giving For Years’

Exxon-Backed Pundit Compares Gore To Nazi Propagandist

Democratic Movements continue to spread in Latin America despite decades of Amerikkkan interference

[...]
Colombia's democratic left, long blemished by its association with the four-decade-old guerrilla insurgency, has been invigorated by the surprise performance of Sen. Carlos Gaviria, the candidate for the Alternative Democratic Pole party, or PDA.

Unknown to half of Colombians just a few months ago, the academic and former head of Colombia's highest court has leapfrogged past Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa to move into second place. Since March, polls show that support for Gaviria has tripled to 24 percent.

Meanwhile, Uribe, popular for his crackdown on leftist rebels and armed groups, has seen his still commanding lead dip 10 points to 55 percent.
[...]
"I want to show Colombians that being a leftist doesn't mean you have to be aggressive," Gaviria told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

But looks can be deceiving. Gaviria's opposition to a free-trade pact with the United States and harsh criticism of the free market firmly aligns him with the region's other leftists. So does the poster of Cuban president Fidel Castro and Che Guevara that hangs prominently in his campaign headquarters.

[...]

You can be sure Unca Dick, Incurious George and The Rummy are doing everything imaginable to fix this election problem, just like they and their racist friends in Florida, Choicepoint data mining and Diebold fixed the federal election problem here in Amerikkka in 2000 and 2004.

After all, if you can't win on ideas - and so called free trade is a horrible idea which benefits only a few people at the top of the economic pyramid while destroying environments and middle class jobs in colonizer countries and creating slaves and a class of right wing, slave holding, multimillionaire overseers in host countries - but I digress - if you can't win an election on ideas or plain old hard work or hundreds of millions of dollars of spent lobbyist cash, you can always win on touch screen voting, particularly Diebold, voter roll purges, and supreme court reversal of precedent presidential appointments.

Perhaps, since Katherine Harris is doing poorly in Florida, and notorious, Zionist big mouth and Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz has called her a crook in public, not to mention that Monkey Lips wouldn't kiss her, a slap to a republiKKKan girl since they define womanhood as submission to the alpha male, on his state visit a couple of weeks ago, she could be shipped off to Columbia to help the American backed right wing extremists fix their problem.

She could, with her 10 pounds of brightly colored face make-up, glassy eyes, faux seductiveness and random fondling of randomly encountered males, scare beleaguered, left leaning Colombians from coming out to vote.

Amerikkka is, after all, in the business of overthrow and election fix, of installing right wing extremist, Amerikkkan controlled puppets who do the bidding of amerikkkan transnationals, but the Spanish speaking countries seem determined to break free of Amerikkkan corporate control as never before.

Man Acquitted on all counts of phony trumped up charges by feds deported anyway

[...]
Hammoudeh was charged with raising money in Tampa for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel. But jurors acquitted him on all counts, saying there wasn't enough evidence.

The same jury acquitted Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, of eight counts but deadlocked on nine others. To avoid another trial, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of providing services to the terrorist group's members and will spend roughly another 18 months behind bars before he is deported.

Hammoudeh was acquitted Dec. 6. As part of a plea deal in a separate tax case, he and his wife had agreed to be deported; she was deported in February. A former teaching assistant and doctoral student at the university, Hammoudeh had been in jail since his arrest in February 2003.
[...]
If we were a nation of laws, pompadour sporting midget Alberto Gonzales, proponent of torture, lying to congress and warrentless wire taping, could not be attorney general, of course, so this kind of thing is no surprise, but it is still a sickening disgrace.

International Troops Arrive in East Timor

[...]
Hundreds of cheering East Timorese citizens, some crying and shouting "Thank God," welcomed the first planeload of 130 Australian commandos at Dili's international airport.
[...]

Chimp-in-Chief Scolds Bolivia and Venezuela

Bush asserted that Venezuela and Bolivia are running the hemispheric neighborhood by using their resources to take care of the their people instead of handing over their national wealth to oil companies and other conscienceless corporations.

The Short Answer, Alberto Gonzales, seeks to imprison journalists

Backyard approach finds extrasolar planet

Mice Get Trait Without Gene

[...]
DNA is the stuff of genes in mice and men. But the new study indicates DNA's chemical cousin, RNA, produced the odd-sounding result. In this case the result was mice with distinctive white tail tips.
[...]

Joan Baez, Great as usual, living in tree to save urban farm

Snooping Goes Beyond Phone Calls

Bleak forecast for world's snow pack

Global warming worries hunters, anglers

[...]
About half of America's hunters and anglers -- including many who said they voted for President Bush in 2004 -- told pollsters they are witnessing firsthand, in the outdoors, the effects of some form of climate change, according to the results of a nationwide survey of sportsmen released Tuesday by the National Wildlife Federation, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C.
[...]

The empire in accelerating decline

A campaign by gun rights advocates to make it easier to use deadly force in self-defense is rapidly winning support across the country, as state after state makes it legal for people who feel their lives are in danger to shoot down an attacker whether in a car-jacking or just on the street.

The law has spurred debate about whether it protects against lawlessness or spurs more crime. Supporters say it's an unambiguous answer to random violence, while critics including police chiefs and prosecutors warn that criminals are more likely to benefit than innocent victims.
[...]

The wild, wild west is back, nationally this time, ushered in by the Bush administration.

Of course the Hollywood gunslinger Cowboy Motif little George likes in his bed room is unadulterated nonsense. The real colonization of the west involved plenty of land grabbing and genocide, not to mention murder in general.

How richly ironic to witness the so called values voters and their so called values candidates vote to legalize murder. Bleech.

Hastert under investigation

Apparently Denny gulped down a few too many raw lobbyists pork chops.
No wonder he's been barking in public about the FBI searching congressional offices. Though both Hastert and Alberto "the short answer" Gonzales, the torture daddy, are loathsome, lawless republican thugs who are addicted to abuse of power.

White House's top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.

Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.
[...]

Chicago Great, Author Studs Terkel Leads Group Suing AT&T

Antiwar Protests Greet Condiliar Rice at Boston College

Stephen Colbert commencement speaker at Illinois Knox College

file detailing aspects of AT&T's alleged participation in the NSA's warrantless domestic wiretap is sitting in San Francisco Courthouse

Dump Carl (KKKarl) Levin, Democrat Turncoat

West Coast getting major biodiesel plant

Political Artist Denied Entry to the US

Citizenship by Birthright Up for Debate

Author and former republican strategist Kevin Phillips

...what the republican party has become: a vehicle of special interests that have become entrenched in crippling commitments and biases...

What's very clear is Bush has only bad judgement

[...]
"New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment," Bush said. "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the enviroment."
[...]

Markets ‘are like 1987 crash’

[...]
A report by Barclays Capital says the run-up to the 1987 crash was characterised by a widening US current-account deficit, weak dollar, fears of rising inflation, a fading boom in American house prices, and the appointment of a new chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
[...]

NYSE offers to buy Euronext for $10.2B

Study: Global warming underestimated

WAGENINGEN, Netherlands, May 22 (UPI) -- European scientists say climate change estimates for the next century may substantially underestimate the potential magnitude of global warming.

[...}

Fire Rummy and Make John Murtha Secretary of Defense

NSA Killed System That Sifted Phone Data Legally

Bush Heaps Taxpayer Cash on Big Military contractors, already rich from Iraq misadventure, in crass manipulation to get out 06 vote for GOP

The world's oil, gas and mining industries account for nearly two-thirds of all violations of human rights, environmental laws

[...]
The food and beverages industry is a distant second, followed by apparel, footwear, and the information and communications technology sector.

"The extractive industries -- oil, gas and mining -- also account for most allegations of the worst abuses, up to and including complicity in crimes against humanity," says the interim report titled "Promotion and Protection of Human Rights". A more detailed study is expected to be released later this year.

These are typically for acts committed by public and private security forces protecting company assets and property; large-scale corruption; violations of labor rights; and a broad array of abuses in relation to local communities, especially the indigenous peoples.

[...]

Mark Fiore

New Ads Funded by Big Oil Portray Global Warming Science as Smear Campaign Against Carbon Dioxide

MURDER at the Border

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- A busy U.S-Mexico border crossing was shut down Thursday after federal authorities shot and killed the driver of a car headed for Mexico, officials said.
[...]

This Rottweiler Needed to go in for his rabies shot. Now he's starting to foam at the mouth

House Passes $2.8 Trillion Budget Plan

WASHINGTON - The House passed a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint early Thursday after GOP moderates won a promise for modest increases in spending on education, health and other social programs.

The House passed the Republican plan by a 218-210 vote.

For GOP leaders, passage of the Republican plan avoided the embarrassment of not being able to pass a budget through the House for the first time since congressional budget rules were put in place in 1975.

It's improbable, however, that the House and Senate will be able to agree on a mutual budget plan. Differences between House conservatives determined to stick with President Bush's caps on agency budgets funded each year and Senate GOP moderates determined to breach them simply appear too great.
[...]

Our Environment so destroyed even ferility symbols won't breed

Protesters Arrested at Halliburton Meeting

Last chromosome in human genome sequenced

[...]
Chromosome 1 contains nearly twice as many genes as the average chromosome and makes up eight percent of the human genetic code.

It is packed with 3,141 genes and linked to 350 illnesses including cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

"This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the
Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory who headed the sequencing project at the Sanger Institute in England.
[...]

Water shortage in Colorado

[...]
A state engineer discovered this month that the snowpack in the South Platte River Basin had melted faster than expected, greatly reducing water supplies. Municipalities sued last week, worried they wouldn't have enough water for residents, and a judge said wells without plans to replace the water had to shut down.

A deal was struck to get the farmers some water by tapping into a reservoir, but that is tied up by the lawsuit, Ament said. The three cities suing are afraid that using reservoir water to complete the deal would end up with more water being drawn out of the South Platte River.
[...]

From the steno pool: Judy Miller says NSA leaker told her in advance of 9/11 attack

In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper.
[...

DNA Evolution Study, Not BUSH FAMILY TREE

[...]
Unusual, indeed. The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines.
[...]

Wis. Bill to Give Free Tuition to Veterans

How about free tuition for everyone? We can take the money out of the defense budget.

Wisconsin Repiglikkkan. F. James Sensenbrenner, DirtBag in Jack Boots

Sensenbrenner is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "conduct criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.

In addition, Sensenbrenner's legislation--expected to be announced as early as this week--also would create a federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and many other Web sites. It's aimed at any site that might have "reason to believe" it facilitates access to child pornography--through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance.

That's right you squealing pig, hide your police state legislation behind the false suggestion that you are trying to protect children.
The entire greed driven, lie soaked atmosphere of this night mare of a right wing country is relentlessly abusive to children and repiglikkkans are the leading reason why. Give me a break.

Mary Cheney Annoys Me Deeply

Mary Cheney was a cipher to outsiders while working on her father Dick's two national campaigns. Her new memoir, Now It's My Turn, tells how she and partner Heather Poe adapted to a spotlight they had long shied away from. Now a chief of staff at AOL, Cheney, 37, spoke with TIME's Mike Allen about coming out...

Chief of staff at AOL?
AOL is owned by Time Warner which owns, among many other media companies, the magazine that is running this "story" of questionable value.

My god, nepotism is art AND science with these people.

More Israeli Abuse

An expanded panel of 11 High Court justices voted six to five to reject eight petitions calling for the nullification of a provisional law barring Palestinian men younger than 35 and women under 25 from living with their Israeli spouses inside Israel.

The law also prevents children of mixed marriages older than 14 who were not born here and do not have citizenship from living with their Israeli parent inside Israel.
[...]

Seven Congress members arrested in Sudan protest

Wall as Tourist Site. The Barbarians are pouring right in these days

Wall Repiglikkkans claim Ronnie Raygun Zapped

Typical right wing analysis of reality which takes only one of many factors - let alone their complex intersection - into consideration, as it attempts to give credit where none is due.

Chinese do it better than everyone, and artfully

Don't Fence me In

Israeli Ethnic cleansing wall pictured here

Senate approves border fence, debates citizenship chance for illegal immigrants

Hey, I wonder if it look like the Berlin wall?
Maybe it will look like the wall the Israelis are using to steal land from Palestinians. Or they could go for a great wall of china look. Or a new Hadrians's wall. With so many options who knows?
But I do hope to graffiti it, since I don't have a bull dozer.

Judge denies AT&T request for closed hearing

SAN FRANCISCO--A federal judge rejected a request from AT&T on Wednesday to kick the public out of a hearing in a lawsuit alleging the telecommunications company illegally cooperated with the National Security Agency.

Wow. I can't wait to see this town sued out of existence

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcoms To Lie Without Violating Securities Law

Yeah, there you go. Their denial of wrong doing is nothing but a Bush Approved LIE.

Encouraging girls key for improving science education

Stuffing a urine soaked rag down the throats of the religious right is the real key to improving science education.

While we all know sexist Amerikkka invariably treats women less well than men at all stages of life, the Christian right's unholy marriage to repiglikkkan extremists is destroying not just science education but all America.

Without bible thumpers to back the Bush social agenda, which is a distraction for the masses from the economic agenda that is the real republican preoccupation and goal, the GOP couldn't get away with it.

Besides that, the religious right - and many republikkkan elites - are struggling to bring an end to the public school system. Already in many places where it is still allowed to exist, these ignorant fools are perfectly willing to teach lies, like telling little Johnny, "Adam walked with dinosaurs the day after god created you then rested 7000 long years ago". Bleech.

Such science helps advance the religious agenda of keeping treating women - and children - as property.

Afterall, what can you find in monotheism that does not, one way or another, deconstruct down to an effort to keep women in line? Treat them as property? And treat the non elite men as property of the kingly-priestly-presidential-monyed Bush class? That is monotheism for ya.

You might be able to live with the monotheists when they are kept out of government like our law demands they be, but once they're making the rules you have disaster a million times worse than Katrina; directly tied to the causes of events like Katrina in fact.
Bush is allowing religious loonies to make rules and raze the wall of seperation provided for in our constitution so he - or those who run him, as he is obviously clueless and has little grasp of what is happening - can advance their ownership society agenda and return feudalism to the world, but with a different name.

Republican Glamour

Don't forget to click the roses..

Bush is scheduled to sign into law tomorrow an extraordinary deal for high-income people with retirement savings accounts.

Ahmadinejad announced Friday that in July Iran will abandon dollar payments for its oil and natural gas exports in favor of euros.

Hey! Let's Finish the Small farms who can't compete in the rigged system anyway

I don't Trust this AT ALL

My best guess is this is an effort to keep the other illegal activities from being exposed during an investigation. And they will just continue to do what ever they damn well please anyway, since repiglikkkans are the party of lawlessness and Bush, his friends and his cabinet are a pack of rabid sociopaths who are obsessed with world domination.

Honda unveils big North American plans

Despite epidemic levels of diabetes, federal research and treatment funding has dropped

Anti Choice Casey Against Anti choice Santorum in PA

[...]
Sixty-one incumbents in the 253-member Pennsylvania legislature faced primary challenges Tuesday, the most since 1980, including legislative leaders from both parties.

As the results came in, at least a quarter of those candidates were locked in close races. Most of the challengers were recruited by PACleanSweep, a group organized at the height of the pay raise furor.

Swept from office were the Senate's No. 1 Republican _ President Pro Tempore Robert C. Jubelirer _ and Majority Leader David J. Brightbill, who lost to Mike Folmer, a tire salesman.

Political veteran Bob Casey, the heavy favorite, easily won the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania on Tuesday to challenge conservative Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in the fall.
[...]
The Mere sight of a religious right patriarch from either party make s me want to shove a coat hanger right into my cervix.
What good are the Dimocraps? Better than the repiglikkkans, but just barely.

A little Child Enslavement to go with Creationist Science

State based Religious Duscrimination

A Christian adoption agency that receives money from Choose Life license plate fees said it does not place children with Roman Catholic couples because their religion conflicts with the agency's "Statement of Faith."
[...]

Ethics and Laws be damned - Do Anything to Win: The GOP Philosophy

CONCORD, N.H. -- A former Republican National Committee official convicted in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 is facing up to seven years in prison when he goes before a judge for sentencing.

James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. He was found guilty in December on two telephone harassment charges also faces up to a $500,000 fine. His lawyers have asked for a new trial.
[...]

Polls Don't Mean a Thing

Neither Laura Bush or KKKarl Rove think polls which give Bush the lowest numbers of almost any president in history matter a bit. Both claim the chimp is quite popular.

Depending on which poll you read his overall approval is at 29 to 31 percent.
That's some popularity.

The polls that showed approximately half of the country wanted him impeached for lying a couple of weeks ago are conveniently forgotten in this discussion of Bush's wild popularity and the people's love for the great ape man in the Rove and Pickles effort to spin yet another lie into truth in the public's weak and benumbed, corporate media soaked minds.

Yes, the president is likeable they say.

Dumb PR blitz. The repiglikkkans are slipping when they send a person - I use the term loosely - as hated, as despicable, as vomit stimulating as Texas closet case - oh, they all are? - as KKKarl Rove to defend the chimp and tell the public what to think.

Rove must be deeply off his game from worry about his impending prison time which all of us sane, thinking real people are eagerly awaiting.

Largest cosmic map confirms how little we know

For centuries, humans have looked to the heavens for their gods and goddesses and clues for finding the nature of the universe.
Now, the largest ever-produced map of the universe gives those lost in the dark some direction, but is also confirms that the universe is full of dark energy, a strange force pushing galaxies apart at ever faster speeds.

This utterly inexplicable force is one of nature's great unsolved mysteries. Map or no map, scientists admit they're pretty clueless about what's going on.
[...]

World Nut Daily

What sort of publication would use the Nazis as an example to prove that we can deport twelve million people?

"Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society"

This is wrong on so many levels. Some people will say anything to justify their positions.

Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results

Great Stuff

Report: U.S. Unprepared For Disaster

What a surprise.

Unprepared for a terrorist attack too.All the department of Homeland security does is reroute tax dollars to Lockheed, CSSI, Blackwater, Boeing etc, and illegally track your phone calls, emails and purchases.

The government won't be ready for another major disaster such as Hurricane Katrina unless the Pentagon takes a more aggressive role in the federal response, congressional investigators said.

Problem is the Bush Reich seems to want to march us toward martial law in order to accomplish anything.

Of course since the Pentagon and its private owners in the Offence defense industry suck up most of our national resources, maybe no one else can do the job, not currently, not after the tax hijacking, Grover Norquistian, ass rape of the country with the corporate right dildo so loving brandished by the last 26 years of elected officials.

Did You Consent to Be Wiretapped?

Verizon stock dips

Jodie Foster on BushCo.

[...]
The U.S. "squandered" the goodwill and sympathy other nations offered after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Foster said. She also criticized officials for the "disastrous and shameful" handling of Hurricane Katrina.
[...]

Daryl Bujak

Minister charged with battery after he beats welts onto the body of sexually abused child he accused of lying

By Nathaniel Zimmer
staff writer

ELGIN — Police on Wednesday charged the pastor of a near west-side church with battery, alleging that he repeatedly spanked a 12-year-old McHenry County girl with a 3-foot-long, 2-inch-wide piece of "wood-type molding."

Daryl P. Bujak, 30, the pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church, spanked the girl weekly between March and May of last year, according to police, who said the girl's mother brought her to the pastor after she accused a man of sexually abusing her.

Bujak told the mother that the girl was lying and needed to be disciplined, according to police. He instructed the woman to bring her daughter to church for spankings before each Wednesday night service, which she did, the mother told The Courier News on Thursday.

But authorities and the mother now say they believe the girl was telling the truth.

On Monday, Richmond police arrested Matthew Resh, 33, of Ingleside. He was charged with five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. The alleged incidents occurred between September 2003 and November 2005, according to Nichole Owens, chief of the McHenry County State's Attorney's Office Criminal Division.

Resh posted $20,000 bond and was released Thursday. The mandatory minimum sentence if he is convicted of all five counts is 30 years, and the maximum is 60 years, Owens said.

Pastor turns himself in


Bujak turned himself in about 5:50 p.m. Wednesday. He declined to speak to police on the advice of his attorney, posted $500 bond and was released, according to Elgin police Lt. Mike Turner. Battery is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, Turner said.

On Thursday afternoon, after pulling up in the rain in front of First Missionary, 385 Silver St., in a white van with tinted windows, Bujak said he would not comment on the allegations against him. Police said the spankings left the girl with bruises and welts on her buttocks and legs.

"The truth is going to come out," said Bujak, a medium-height, heavyset man with a neatly trimmed beard, a deep voice and a firm handshake. "This isn't going to get tried in the press and it shouldn't be."

Bujak reportedly lives with his wife in a home attached to First Missionary, whose Web site features a photo of Bujak and describes the church as unaffiliated and fundamentalist in outlook.

"As Christians, we have an absolute standard for our beliefs, our duties and our whole conduct. It is the Bible," the Web site states. "The Bible is the written record of God's revelation to man. It is not man's concept of God but rather a record that God himself authored through inspiration. Therefore it is pure, perfect, inerrant and infallible."

The Courier is not identifying the mother of the alleged victim in order to protect her daughter's identity.

The church has a congregation of perhaps 30 or 40, according to the woman, who said Bujak's arrival about four years ago precipitated a split that sent some members to other churches, leaving behind a devoted group of believers.

Didn't believe victim

In the beginning, she said, she was enthusiastic about what she described as Bujak's conservative beliefs, which she said included a strong emphasis on traditional gender roles, a ban on "drinking, partying, dancing" and advice to avoid television and movies.

Bujak, she said, is something of a "good old boy" who could be "very charismatic, very funny, very witty."

"I was real into it at one point," she said.

The woman said she did not believe her daughter's sexual-abuse allegations at first because they were vague. So when the pastor suggested the spankings, she went along with the idea. Bujak determined the girl was lying after talking to her for two hours, at the end of which she recanted, according to the mother.

"I thought, if it helps, maybe it will help," she said.
[...]

Italian Pay-off From Niger Forgery?

What did the Italian government, under then-Prime Minister Berlusconi, get in return for providing Bush with a smoking gun to attack Iraq?

Ex-WMD Inspector: Politics Quashed Facts

IMF acts to avoid markets meltdown

The International Monetary Fund is in behind-the-scenes talks with the US, China and other major powers to arrange a series of top-level meetings about tackling imbalances in the global economy, as the dollar sell-off reverberates through financial markets.

Amid tumultuous trading, which sent the dollar to its lowest level in a year against the euro in late trading on Friday and gave the FTSE its worst day for three years, the IMF was working privately to exercise its new powers to bring decision-makers together.
[...]

Greg Palast on His New Book “Armed Madhouse : Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?,

[...]
While the NSA spy story continues to make headline news, BBC Investigative reporter Greg Palast says that the corporate media is missing the real story.

He writes "The snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
[...]

The Wall of Hate video 8 minutes

Bush Planning to Militarize the Border to stroke delusional, hate filled, ethnocentric GOP base

Gas Clouds Shoot Down Indonesia Volcano

New England Braces for More River Flooding

Our Business partner and nuclear bedfellow

[...]
The protests were sparked by the government's decision to increase the percentage of low-caste Indians at state-run medical colleges to 49.5 percent of the student body. Currently, 22.5 percent of admissions entries are set aside for low-caste Hindus and students from ethnic minority backgrounds.
[...]

Bush budget cuts could cripple nationwide system of Environmental Protection Agency libraries that government researchers depend on

[...]
The $2 million cut sought by the White House would reduce the 35-year-old EPA Library Network's budget by 80 percent and force many of its 10 regional libraries to close, according to the advocates and internal agency documents.

That, in turn, would dramatically reduce access to certain EPA reports, guidance and technical documents that are used by the agency's scientific and enforcement staff as well as private businesses and citizens, they say.

"They are moving ahead very quickly on very substantive cuts to their library program," said Patrice McDermott, deputy director of the American Library Association's Office of Government Relations. "They really don't have a good plan for continuing to provide access for the public, and even their own researchers and scientists, to the information."
[...]

One of the best strategic reasons I can think of to impeach Bush is to save the country from further damage.

The dimocraps seem reluctant to start an impeachment inquiry against monkey lips-cod piece, even though 70% of the country recognizes him for a liar, incompetent and moron about town, because they don't want to be seen as "trouble makers."

Ah, no wonder the dims lose elections. It's because they are bright as burnt out bulbs cluttering a land fill.

Bush is a war criminal and right wing extremist who is manipulating the country into policies it doesn't want by telling lies and using a vast propaganda network.

He has abused his authority relentlessly. And he has failed to make the country secure in any sense of the word. For that alone he OUGHT TO BE IMPEACHED. Maniacs like Bush are why impeachment is part of our legal apparatus.

It was the republicans who abused impeachment by going after Clinton over his private sexual conduct.

To protect the country from any further deterioration, such as this outright attack on environmental safety, the democrats have a moral obligation to impeach the chimp.

charity has warned that 184 million people in Africa alone could die as a result of climate change before the end of the century

[...]
Climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict could reverse recent gains in reducing poverty, it says.

Its report says rich nations must aid poorer ones to adopt non-fossil-fuel energy sources such as solar power.

The report comes as almost 190 states gather in Bonn, Germany, to discuss climate change.
[...]
The author of the report, John McGhie, said that for $50bn (£26bn) the whole of sub-Saharan Africa could be turned into a solar-generated economy.

"And $50bn is exactly the same amount as actually the continent would have to pay on extra fuel bills from oil," he said.
[...]
Of course Bush is spending far more than that to aide Iraq out of its oil.

Murdering Israelis in relentless land grab Kill 6 in West Bank Raids

[...]
At the start of the raid, Israeli troops killed 24-year-old Said Hanisheh -- an Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militant wanted by Israeli security forces, and his 25-year-old brother, Mujahed, who was not known to be a militant, Palestinian officials said.

Later, bulldozers were brought in to demolish a house where militants were still believed to be hiding, witnesses said. They said two bodies were removed from the house.

Among the dead was Elias Ashkar, Islamic Jihad and the army said. The Israeli army said he was behind several suicide bombings in which about 50 Israelis were killed, but Islamic Jihad said he was not among its leaders.

Also killed in Qabatiyeh was a 19-year-old who was throwing rocks at the troops, witnesses and doctors said. The army confirmed that troops fired on Palestinians who were throwing objects at them.
[...]

Israel calls everyone they murder a militant. Like Rachel Corrie. Now there's a militant, a young American woman pacifist run over by an Israeli driven bulldozer as she stood blocking the illegal, immoral demolition of yet another Palestinian home.

The Israelis want control of the land and will murder anyone who gets in their way, then scream hideous Zionist hate speech about how god gave then the land. Pretty sick shit. Supported by too many Jews, though opposed by most of them.

If the Israeli government really believes these people are criminals, why don't they try them in a court of law?
I'll tell you why. Because they are conducting an ethnic cleansing which they couldn't do it without Amerikkkan help. It is far more efficient to conduct an ethnic cleansing in the street than in the court.

AP reports this in language that makes it seem like the normal, moral, legal response to a suspected crime is shoot the suspect and bulldoze his house and his neighbors. The American media is deeply complicit in the ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.

The Israelis have no right to even step foot in the west bank.

This is nothing but murder.

Where but Texas would increase speed limit to 80 in nose thumbing at conservation?

Nina Hagen "New York, New York!"

Torture from Sea to Shining Sea

Burge is a legendary abuser in Chicago. I used to worry about that bastard when I went to demonstrations down town.

Attorneys for several police officers involved in the case oppose the release, while lawyers for people who have made torture claims said Biebel risks public outrage if he withholds the report.

Yes, he certainly risks my outrage if he withholds the report.

Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up? by Frank Rich

The New York Times

May 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up?
By FRANK RICH
WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.


This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret "black site" Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

President Bush, himself a sometime leaker of intelligence, called the leaking of the N.S.A. surveillance program a "shameful act" that is "helping the enemy." Porter Goss, who was then still C.I.A. director, piled on in February with a Times Op-Ed piece denouncing leakers for potentially risking American lives and compromising national security. When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.


We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin.

Well before Dana Priest of The Post uncovered the secret prisons last November, the C.I.A. had failed to keep its detention "secrets" secret. Having obtained flight logs, The Sunday Times of London first reported in November 2004 that the United States was flying detainees "to countries that routinely use torture." Six months later, The New York Times added many details, noting that "plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements." These articles, capped by Ms. Priest's, do not impede our ability to detain terrorists. But they do show how the administration, by condoning torture, has surrendered the moral high ground to anti-American jihadists and botched the war of ideas that we can't afford to lose.

The N.S.A. eavesdropping exposed in December by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The Times is another American debacle. Hoping to suggest otherwise and cast the paper as treasonous, Dick Cheney immediately claimed that the program had saved "thousands of lives." The White House's journalistic mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote that the Times exposé "may have ruined one of our most effective anti-Al Qaeda surveillance programs."

Surely they jest. If this is one of our "most effective" programs, we're in worse trouble than we thought. Our enemy is smart enough to figure out on its own that its phone calls are monitored 24/7, since even under existing law the government can eavesdrop for 72 hours before seeking a warrant (which is almost always granted). As The Times subsequently reported, the N.S.A. program was worse than ineffective; it was counterproductive. Its gusher of data wasted F.B.I. time and manpower on wild-goose chases and minor leads while uncovering no new active Qaeda plots in the United States. Like the N.S.A. database on 200 million American phone customers that was described last week by USA Today, this program may have more to do with monitoring "traitors" like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists.

Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent.

Even before he went to the C.I.A., he was a drag on national security. In "Breakdown," a book about intelligence failures before the 9/11 attacks, the conservative journalist Bill Gertz delineates how Mr. Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, played a major role in abdicating Congressional oversight of the C.I.A., trying to cover up its poor performance while terrorists plotted with impunity. After 9/11, his committee's "investigation" of what went wrong was notoriously toothless.

Once he ascended to the C.I.A. in 2004, Mr. Goss behaved like most other Bush appointees: he put politics ahead of the national interest, and stashed cronies and partisan hacks in crucial positions. On Friday, the F.B.I. searched the home and office of one of them, Dusty Foggo, the No. 3 agency official in the Goss regime. Mr. Foggo is being investigated by four federal agencies pursuing the bribery scandal that has already landed former Congressman Randy (Duke) Cunningham in jail. Though Washington is titillated by gossip about prostitutes and Watergate "poker parties" swirling around this Warren Harding-like tale, at least the grafters of Teapot Dome didn't play games with the nation's defense during wartime.


Besides driving out career employees, underperforming on Iran intelligence and scaling back a daily cross-agency meeting on terrorism, Mr. Goss's only other apparent accomplishment at the C.I.A. was his war on those traitorous leakers. Intriguingly, this was a new cause for him. "There's a leak every day in the paper," he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune when the identity of the officer Valerie Wilson was exposed in 2003. He argued then that there was no point in tracking leaks down because "that's all we'd do."

What prompted Mr. Goss's about-face was revealed in his early memo instructing C.I.A. employees to "support the administration and its policies in our work." His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate C.I.A. intelligence on Iraq before the war. On his watch, C.I.A. lawyers also tried to halt publication of "Jawbreaker," the former clandestine officer Gary Berntsen's account of how the American command let Osama bin Laden escape when Mr. Berntsen's team had him trapped in Tora Bora in December 2001. The one officer fired for alleged leaking during the Goss purge had no access to classified intelligence about secret prisons but was presumably a witness to her boss's management disasters.

Soon to come are the Senate's hearings on Mr. Goss's successor, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the N.S.A. As Jon Stewart reminded us last week, Mr. Bush endorsed his new C.I.A. choice with the same encomium he had bestowed on Mr. Goss: He's "the right man" to lead the C.I.A. "at this critical moment in our nation's history." That's not exactly reassuring.

This being an election year, Karl Rove hopes the hearings can portray Bush opponents as soft on terrorism when they question any national security move. It was this bullying that led so many Democrats to rubber-stamp the Iraq war resolution in the 2002 election season and Mr. Goss's appointment in the autumn of 2004.

Will they fall into the same trap in 2006? Will they be so busy soliloquizing about civil liberties that they'll fail to investigate the nominee's record? It was under General Hayden, a self-styled electronic surveillance whiz, that the N.S.A. intercepted actual Qaeda messages on Sept. 10, 2001 — "Tomorrow is zero hour" for one — and failed to translate them until Sept. 12. That same fateful summer, General Hayden's N.S.A. also failed to recognize that "some of the terrorists had set up shop literally under its nose," as the national-security authority James Bamford wrote in The Washington Post in 2002. The Qaeda cell that hijacked American Flight 77 and plowed into the Pentagon was based in the same town, Laurel, Md., as the N.S.A., and "for months, the terrorists and the N.S.A. employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores."

If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A., someone should charge those senators with treason,

US authorities can get access to EU citizens' data on phone calls, sms' and emails

Floods force hundreds from homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire

Ought oh. Wonder if this has anything to do with "climate change," a pretty broad category that likely includes the activities that lead to the immersion of the ancient, drowned cities that line the ocean floor around the world's coast lines?

CONCORD, N.H. Torrential rain forced hundreds of people from their homes in parts of New England on Sunday, as water flowed over dams and washed out roads.

The governors of New Hampshire and Massachusetts declared states of emergency, activating the National Guard to help communities respond to the storm. Maine's governor also declared a state of emergency for one county.
[...]

Rummy's Army and Antidepressants

[...]
Chemically active time bombs’

Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.”

“I can’t imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal,” said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. “You’re creating chemically activated time bombs.”

[...]

Da Vinci Code movie a target for US evangelicals

Once again the evangelical movement demonstrates its moral position by spending energy targeting freedom of speech and thought and rather than fighting poverty and injustice.

These videos are brought to you by the same people who insist science shouldn't be taught in school because the Phallus god, sovereign of the static, linear, Christian universe, created absolutely everything, including monotheistic stupidity, in 6 days 7 thousand years ago, then rested like George Bush does 322 days a year.

I'm so sick of these delusional, barking, narcissistic fools the mere site of them makes me want to fuck several women a day on their front lawns then have an abortion on their kitchen table.

And truly, all kidding aside, the men all seem to be closet homosexuals. Every one of them. Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, my creepy neighbors and others I personally encounter, and Fred Phelps too.

They are designed to show the perils of blurring fact and fiction in Dan Brown's bestseller and take advantage of the reawakening of interest in the Bible it and the upcoming movie have caused among faith seekers.

Well , if anyone knows about blurring fact and fiction it is the Amerikkkan evangelikkkal movement. And their leaders in the Bush Administration.

Wal-Mart Eyes Organic Foods

I have to look into getting rid of Verizon.

They're a terrible company anyway. They misrepresent their package deals, don't deliver on what they sell you and a customer service call to them can take 3 to 4 hours.

They've ripped me off repeatedly and I'm pretty sure their customer service set up is predicated on the idea the you'll stop complaining once they exhaust you with hours of holds and buck passing.

I hope Verizon (and the other telecom companies who want to shut down freedom of information on the internet) gets its ass kicked over violating American's privacy.

Gotta get a new phone company. Wonder if I can get Qwest here?

High gas prices have prompted 63 percent of U.S. residents to reduce driving and 56 percent to cut household spending, a New York Times/CBS News poll

[...]
Working-class people are being hit the hardest by high fuel prices on top of flat wages and climbing mortgage interest rates, the newspaper reported.

Many such people live far from their job in places where they find affordable housing.

"If you're poor, you're forced to make choices," Stephen Cecchetti of Brandeis University told the Times. "All of a sudden, when the price of something that you can't give up skyrockets, you still have to go from one place to another."
[...]

But Bush said the economy is booming and he's responsible for it.
His tax cuts are the instrument of Amerikkkan economic magnificence, which is why the republikkkans just delivered another 70 billion dollars worth of tax breaks to the nation's wealthiest folk.

Bush must think that loud popping sound in the background is the sound of the economic boom. Of course, Bush also thinks Rummy is doing a good job in Iraq and spying on Americans without a warrant is legal.

Bush thinks a healthy economy is one that pays a handful of people a fortune and forgets about every one else. He thinks an economy based on moving money around is fantastic. It's in his blood. His family made part of their vast wealth by moving money around for the Nazi party during WW2.

It's dandy with him if America doesn't really make anything but war anymore. After all, putting pickles on hamburgers is a manufacturing job according to the republican party. And privatizing defense is a sort of manufacturing industry too.

It's okay for America to have little to sell and much to buy from other countries, and buy with credit. Bush's friends in the financial services industry still prosper, and prosper like mad. Especially with fantastic bipartisan sponsored treaties like NAFTA that enable them to enslave populations in other countries and call it prosperity.

From all indications the real estate market, pumped up on purpose by astoundingly low interest rates engineered to create a boom, to offset the stock market bubble burst perhaps, is softening and will soften a lot more very quickly. That ought to be a pretty sound.

It's okay though, because the people who sold the Remax Franchises to the scurrying, balding little pricks who are wired to cell phones 24 hours a day, so they could use their insect like energy to market overpriced houses, and the money guys who financed the crummy cosmetic rehabs on the inner city apartment stock, so it could be sold it as condominiums and destroy the housing stock from every imaginable direction, and built the shoddy, over priced nonsense strip malls all over the country made their money already.

And that's who matters.

Watching the right wing economy work is like being a kid again. It's like sitting outside on sunny summer afternoon, blowing soap bubbles through a giant plastic wand, watching them float away and burst one after another.

Even people who should know better spew dumb-ass commentary about markets.
No, an increase in the Dow does not generate jobs in America.
No, large sums of money are not required to capitalize large projects, because such projects should not be undertaken in the first place, and the global economy occurring with the spread of global fascism is no coincidence.
This kind of economy leaves out large numbers of people, eventually leaves out most people. It is inherently unfair and certainly not compatible with any kind of democratic system.

But our politicians are crafty bastards, so they hand out easy credit and low interest to enable people to buy what they can not afford, to suck them in, then, as the economy passes the tipping point of losing value, change the bankruptcy laws to force even those in the most desperate situations, say uninsured with multiple sclerosis, to pay back, pay back, pay back.

It's a form of servitude and Barack Obama from my state of Illinois voted for it, which is one reason he can blather about Iraq until his lips fall off, but I know he's a right wing flying money who supports the right wing fascist mode of doing "business".

So if gas gets so expensive that people can't afford to drive to work, they can put it on a credit cared, or if they can't, it's no skin of repiglikkkan ass, because they're are feeding their base and nurturing the oil companies who are pushing the idea that gas is expensive because ENVIRONMENTAL controls are preventing them from building refineries.

It is an argument the America public is uneducated enough to buy, just like they bought Saddam the Jihadist.

However, I can think of many solutions. One grand idea is a massive anti trust action against the oil companies. Why should the people who locate, drill extract, refine and distribute all be part of the same handful of behemoth, monopolistic corporations when the economic security of the nation rests on this product?

And rests on this product because the last president to address the problem of oil was Jimmy Carter, even though the mindless, blood thirsty, Calvinist, narcissist American public voted him out of office because he wouldn't suit up, grab his shot gun, jump into his pick up and GO TAKE THE OIL.

If refineries were just refineries, rather than pieces of gigantic conglomerates, they'd have some incentive to build more refineries within the bounds of environmental law (and sanity), wouldn't they? But these companies are so enormous, like the media companies, so vertically integrated that they are impervious to real market forces and can do what they damn well want, including demanding and getting war in the middle east and forcing the tax payers to pay for it.

Makes me sick.

A close look at the oil companies is the best argument I have ever seen for a socialist economy.
Boom Boom. He shot me down.

Wow. Already the collective mind has changed

According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, 53 percent of Americans think the NSA's surveillance program goes too far in invading people's privacy, while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.

IAEA Director Says Nuke Terrorists a Worry

Scary that a majority of Amerikkkans think it's A-okay for the feds to spy on us

But I think 3 dollar a gallon gas upsets the average Amerikkkan even more than gay marriage, abortion and any threat to their right to maintain their own fleet of tanks, rocket launchers and religiously hand dipped infantry men.

Amerikkka may be as stupid as all get out - or brainwashed from corporate news obfuscation and disinformation spewed into minds that have received less than challenging education - but this is a debtor nation, half of which lives on less than 45 grand a year.

3 dollar a gallon gas should get the fucking bums thrown out, well, if we can stop the ongoing, outrageous privatization of elections utilizing such repiglikkkan connected companies as Diebold and ES&S. Vote fraud to be sure.

Perhaps this spy news can cause us to have a public discussion about why the NSA should not be spying outside the purview of the courts and why federal troops should not be deployed on our borders, or in our big cites for that matter, as they were and still are in New Orleans, along with the mercenaries we shouldn't have at all.

Maybe ongoing attention to this, plus some focus on the fact that the Bush administration has done exactly nothing to relieve the terrorist threat but, in contrast, has done everything imaginable to amp it up, will change the simple minded segment of the country's thinking on these matters.

Nothing happens in a minute, Nothing happens in a flash.
You may fall in love at first sight, but you won't stay there for more than 10 seconds if events don't occur which fill in the experience, grow it, so to speak.

Maybe these awful things, these monstrous, relentlessly criminal, stupid things being done by the Bush administration will trigger a change America desperately needs, an at the close of the process half of us won't think illegal government activity has no impact on our lives or protects us from "terrorists" - how about the home grown ones? The abortion clinic bombers and KKK and right wing militias etc? Who's protecting me from them?

Maybe, maybe we can change. Maybe we can grow out of our religious preoccupation and crappy schools. Maybe we can restore some integrity to our media.

I doubt it. I think the Empire is in rapidly accelerating decline. But maybe.