Sarah Palin 2012 Campaign Slogan!!!

I've been working on this all week. To put her over, she needs a slogan that's both recognizable and punchy. Both packed to the hilt with emotional dynamite and "ballzy" with just the right touch of brass! It needs to say she's strong, without actually saying "I'm strong", in so many words. It needs to say "capable", and "able bodied", but without saying "intellectual" It needs to say "staunch", without saying "stubborn". And last but not least it must be memorable and make her look big, because people like big leaders.

So here is that slogan that says all these things in one complete capsule!
It's a play on an already memorable phrase, ("The Thrilla In Manilla") so it will have wide, fast and ready acceptance! To wit:

"The Gorilla From Wasilla 2012!"

Best of all, she can have it for free!

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

(Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr)

Saturday 3 September 2011
by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)

Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

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SCAM-NET SCAM PREVENTION ALERTS

CURRENT SCAMS

NEW HOME REPAIR SCAM ALERTS - ROOFING SCAM AND DRIVEWAY SCAM

See also ASPHALT PAVING SCAM posted last year.

http://www.sanantonio.gov/sapd/SCAMS.asp#asphalt

FREE MEDICAL CARD SCAM ALERT

"WORK AT HOME" SCAM ALERT

Federal Trade Commission - Mystery Shopper Alert
Fake Checks.Org
SNOPES.com

http://www.sanantonio.gov/sapd/%5C%5Cwww.fakechecks.org

GIFT CARD SCAM ALERT
Be careful how you purchase Gift Cards for holiday gift-giving. It appears that it is safer to purchase cards directly from a clerk than select them from open display shelves.
Crooks can copy numbers from gift cards on store racks. Then, after the card is purchased and activated, buyers use them to shop online by entering the card numbers. So do the crooks. They phone an 800 number to check on the balances for card numbers they have copied. When they discover activated cards, they use the card numbers to buy merchandise on a store's web site.
The legitimate owner of the gift card may find the account empty before they even have an opportunity to make purchases.

http://www.sanantonio.gov/sapd/SCAMS.asp#morelotto?res=1024&ver=true

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Progressive Religious Believers' Big Hypocrisy: Cherry-Picking the Parts of Religion they Like and Ditching the Rest

If you're just going to use your own conscience and your own mind to decide what's right or wrong, true or false -- why do you need God?

Yeah. See, here's the problem.

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Revealed: Ayn Rand Worked on a Movie Script Glorifying the Atomic Bomb

In notes for an unfinished screenplay, the right-wing heroine called the nuclear bomb "an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise." READ MORE

Hacking’s Stunning Victim List

Sep 1, 2011 1:00 AM EDT
Scotland Yard has a list of 3,870 people whose phones were tapped. From the "schoolboy killer" to Prince William, Brian Cathcart reports on the scandal's huge scope.

The remarkable scale of the British phone-hacking scandal has been underlined by a new allegation that its victims may include one of the country’s most notorious murderers. Robert Thompson, now 29, was one of the schoolboy killers of 2-year-old James Bulger in 1993, a case that appalled the country. According to the Sunday Times newspaper, police have recently informed Thompson that News of the World acquired his telephone details—even though, to protect him from revenge attacks, he had been given a secret new identity by the authorities after serving his sentence.

Thompson joins a list of suspected and confirmed hacking victims that includes, notably, the future king, Prince William; half a dozen former cabinet ministers (including a former deputy prime minister); the mayor of London; senior police officers; and leading personalities in sports, cinema, television, business, and the news media. Most sensationally, as The Guardian revealed in July, the list also includes Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl who was missing at the time of the hacking and was found to have been murdered. There are also unconfirmed press reports that families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been told they were victims, along with bereaved families of those who died in the July 2007 bomb attacks in London.
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WikiLeaks: Iraqi Children in US Raid Shot in Head

The bodies of three of the five children reportedly killed by US troops during a raid in the rural Ishaqi area of Iraq, 03/15/06. (photo: AP)

go to original article

By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy News

01 September 11



US diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that US troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. US officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Read the Cable:
Cable: Massacre of Iraqi family by US troops in 2006.

Al Gore | The Dirtiest Fuel on the Planet

Al Gore | The Dirtiest Fuel on the Planet

Al Gore, Reader Supported News
Al Gore writes, "The tar sands are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet. As I wrote in Our Choice two years ago, gasoline made from the tar sands gives a Toyota Prius the same impact on climate as a Hummer using gasoline made from oil. This pipeline would be an enormous mistake."
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US To Sue Big Banks Over Mortgage Securities

Debra Dahlmer has been trying to get a loan modification through Bank of America for more than a year. (photo: Chris Arnold/NPR)

By Reuters

02 September 11

he agency that oversees U.S. mortgage markets is preparing to file suit against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages they packaged and sold during the housing bubble, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is expected to file suit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among other banks, the Times reported, citing three unidentified individuals briefed on the matter.

The suits stem from subpoenas the finance agency issued to banks last year. They could be filed as early as Friday, the Times said, but if not filed Friday it said the suits would come on Tuesday.

The government will argue the banks, which pooled the mortgages and sold them as securities to investors, failed to perform due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers' incomes were falsified or inflated, the Times reported.READ MORE

Buchanan, MSNBC's Resident White Supremacist Thinks Too Many White People Are Dying in Our Wars

What will it take to remove Pat Buchanan's permanent cot from the MSNBC green room? Nothing! Buchanan could walk out on set wearing his white sheets, and MSNBC President Phil Griffin would still coddle him.

It's not as if Racist Uncle Pat is being any less brazen these days. There's his latest column:

Obama, wrote Isaac Arnsdorf, is targeting "a problem that has been on the administration's radar. Whites still hold more than 81 percent of senior pay-level positions."

Now, as white folks are two-thirds of the U.S. population, and perhaps three-fourths of those in the 45 to 65 age group who would normally be at senior federal positions, why is this "a problem"? [...]

First of all, whites aren't 2/3rds of the population (66.66 percent). They are 63.7 percent. So the fact that 81 percent of all senior positions in government are held by whites is notable, and quite obviously problematic (for the non-white supremacist set).

Yet while Buchanan shrugs off this disparity at the top ranks of the federal government, there is something that sticks in his craw -- did you know that too many white people are dying in America's wars. No joke.
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WikiLeaks Prompts New Round of Diplomatic Uproar

Scott Shane, The New York Times
Scott Shane reports: "News organizations in dozens of countries are panning for nuggets in the latest and largest dump of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, which last week suddenly accelerated its posting of the confidential State Department documents. Over a few days, the group made public nearly 134,000 cables - more than six times the total number published by WikiLeaks and many news organizations over the past nine months."
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Inside the GOP's War on Voting The GOP is gearing up to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters. (photo: USA Today)

Ari Berman writes: "As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots."
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Robert Reich | Rick Perry Wants to Save the Blue States?

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

go to original article

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Excerpt: "The federal government is like a giant sump pump - pulling dollars out of liberal enclaves like California, New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon - and sending them to conservative places like Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Old South. As a practical matter, then, Rick Perry's fight to save America from Washington is really a secret plan to save blue states from red states."
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Criminal gardening

See? I cover it all, so ya'll come back now hea?

Quick Victory! Activists Quash JC Penney's "Too Pretty to Do Homework" T-Shirt for Girls

Early this morning, Twitter was abuzz with activist outrage against of this T-shirt as part of JC Penney's fall, back-to-school collection for girls:
Reading, "I'm Too Pretty to Do Homework, So My Brother Has to Do it for Me," the shirt immediately drew the ire of feminist activists and members of the YA publishing community, and anyone with common sense, basically. Jenna Sauers at jezebel noted that even the promo copy on the website was offensive, writing, "In case your little lady-brain can't quite fathom the point, the page itself is titled "Girls 7-16 Too Pretty to do Homework" and the product description asks, "Who has time for homework when there's a new Justin Bieber album out?"" Read more

Nevada Attorney General Joins Schneiderman in Fighting Bank of America's Foreclosure Fraud

It's a daily saga by now: the updates on whether or not Bank of America (and the rest of the banking industry that continues to profit off shady mortgage practices) will face any penalties for helping create the financial crisis.

We've followed Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, in his fight against settlements that would give B of A and other banks a sweetheart deal--and close the door on future charges.

Now Nevada's attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, has entered the fray in a big way. She's filed a lawsuit against B of A, accusing them of breaching a 2008 settlement in which they promised to modify up to 400,000 mortgages (that they now owned as a result of purchasing toxic lender Countrywide) at a cost of up to $8.4 billion. They were supposed to stop foreclosing, refinance and reduce principal. Read more

Obama NLRB Overturns Bush-era Decisions, Protects Union Rights, Allows Nursing Home Workers to Organize

The National Labor Relations Board under Obama continues to quietly make decisions that support workers over big business. READ MORE

10 Books About Prison That Will Make You Rethink the United States Penal System

We take for granted that more than 2 million US citizens are incarcerated. These books suggest it's time to rethink the whole operation.
August 31, 2011

While the fact of prisons simmers behind innumerable news stories – from the West Memphis 3 to the Lockerbie bomber to the Miami football scandal -- the enormity of the system remains weirdly invisible. Prison is framed as a sort of conclusion; it’s where the bad guys go before vanishing into the ether and allowing our attention to move onto the next story. But more than two million lives are lived in U.S. prisons these days. And not only is the day-to-day reality of that worthy of more attention, but so are the consequences of our economic and political dependence on a punitive system that incarcerates 25 percent of the entire world’s inmates. Five percent of the world population is locked up in U.S. prisons. Both inside and outside the walls, much is stake.

Here are ten of the best books – contemporary and classic, fiction and nonfiction – about prisons. They are listed in no particular order, as all of them deserve your attention. Because incarceration isn’t an end to our stories: it’s just another beginning.
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Atheism U? A New Elite University Focuses on Spreading Humanism

A.C. Grayling has written his own bible, The Good Book, and started what seems to be an elite, atheist college. READ MORE

The Definitive Guide to Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the 2012 Republican Primaries (So Far)

The Republican field for 2012 is pretty competitive--when it comes to regressive statements and bigotry, that is. READ MORE

7 Billion People By October: How Are We Going to Feed Ourselves?

As population rates skyrocket, millions of mouths to feed increase pressure on the world's farmers to squeeze more and more food from less and less arable land.

Come October, Atlas won't be shrugging, he'll be groaning as global population passes the 7 billion mark. Until very recently, demographers predicted that these numbers would peak in 2050 at just over 9 billion and then start to decline. The latest research, however, suggests that despite declining fertility across much of the world, population will continue to rise through this century to over 10 billion people.
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Exclusive Video Report: Nurses Speak Out In Favor of Wall Street Transaction Tax to Heal America

Thousands of nurses and their allies are converging today on Congressional offices--in this exclusive video report, they explain why. READ MORE

Runaway CEO Pay Helped Create the Economic Crisis; So Why Are Politicians Still Covering For Rich Execs?

A new study looks at the worst executive excesses--while Congress continues to help CEOs hide their outrageous pay rates from the public. READ MORE

5 Worst So-Called Job Creation Ideas From the GOP

Clementine Gallot / Flickr Creative Commons
Photo Credit: Clementine Gallot / Flickr Creative Commons


Republicans claim to have a job-creation plan, but what they've actually got looks more like a job-killing plan. READ MORE

Is Your State Stealthily Privatizing Medicaid and Putting Patients at Risk?

Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and other Republican governors are handing over taxpayer dollars to private companies to provide health care--and make profits.
August 31, 2011

There have long been moves to privatize the management of Medicaid, but with shock-doctrine austerity hawks making as much mileage from their budget crises as possible, this year has seen an especially strong push to privatize the heath care of low-income and disabled Medicaid users at a state level. All across the country in states like Texas, New York, Louisiana, Florida, Illinois, South Carolina and Kentucky, state governments are stealthily privatizing Medicaid by handing over the money they get from the federal government to private contractors -- sometimes with minimal savings to the states themselves. It’s all part of a broader trend called “managed care” or “co-ordinated care” -- deceptively bureaucratic terms for a turn with sometimes deadly consequences for Medicaid patients.
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THE STUPID IS PROBABLY UNSURVIVABLE!!!

So Wilkerson tells us that after a scant 2 going on 3 years in office, Colin Powell was asked to give the U.N. speech--->"Because he was the only one left in the administration with enough credibility to give it!" In a case like that the answer is an obvious: "I resign, give the speech yourself!" Or tell me that Colin Powell wasn't reading or watching the news, and therefore, had no clue as to why the Presidents poll numbers were down so low, as well as those of the rest of his administration? Then there's this:

part 1
part 2
The topic can be found here:

You'll have to read it for yourself, it's so stupid I cannot bring myself to repeat it.

Also there is one big fat lie being told, but you probably won't catch it unless you've read the 911 commission report and studied the matter so I'll arm you so you are aware of it. You can then look to confirm it for yourself. On 911 two fighters were dispatched from a base north of Boston. Those fighters had 9 minutes to intercept the WTC jets and only needed 4 minutes to do so! I'll leave the rest to your imaginations, because for way too many people today, facts do not mean much of anything.

Enjoy! Oh, btw, in the event that we're taken over by a foreign power, do not let them know that you have a degree from any American university! Survival will depend on how reliable your facts are, and the way things are now, you cannot be sure of much of anything. Given another 20 years and you may very well be arguing with someone who believes the world is 4,000 years old. So don't say you weren't warned.

Be well.

Ex-Bush Official Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: "I am Willing to Testify" If Dick Cheney is Put on Trial

As former Vice President Dick Cheney publishes his long-awaited memoir, we speak to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "This is a book written out of fear, fear that one day someone will 'Pinochet' Dick Cheney," says Wilkerson, alluding to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested for war crimes. Wilkerson also calls for George W. Bush and Cheney to be held accountable for their crimes in office. "I’d be willing to testify, and I’d be willing to take any punishment I’m due," Wilkerson said. We also speak to Salon.com political and legal blogger Glenn Greenwald about his recent article on Cheney, "The Fruits of Elite Immunity." "Dick Cheney goes around the country profiting off of this sleazy, sensationalistic, self-serving book, basically profiting from his crimes, and at the same time normalizing the idea that these kind of policies…are perfectly legitimate choices to make. And I think that’s the really damaging legacy from all of this," says Greenwald. Read more

Despite White Supremacist Ties, Nativist Minutemen Project Founder Gilchrist Stumped For GOP Candidates

Jim Gilchrist is sought by GOP candidates to burnish their tough-on-immigrant credentials, and treated by the media as a legitimate authority on immigration issues.
August 30, 2011

This article originally appeared on the Web site of Media Matters for America.

Last summer, Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist appeared on CNN's Larry King Live to defend Arizona's notorious immigration crackdown law, SB 1070.

The law requires that local and state police officers check the immigration status of any individual they encounter in the course of their law enforcement duties who the officer reasonably suspects to be an immigrant in the country illegally.

Pressed by CNN host Larry King to explain what sort of criteria officers might legitimately use, Gilchrist said, "Responding to an officer, 'No hablo English, Gringo go back to Europe.' Obviously there's an issue there that probably the person may be illegal and perhaps the officer should pursue that."

King identified Gilchrist as the founder and president of the Minuteman Project. That's half-true. Gilchrist is co-founder of the Minuteman Project, the nativist group that popularized the concept of placing armed but untrained civilian volunteers on the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage immigrants from entering the country illegally. But he's not been the group's president since February 2007 when the Minuteman Project board of directors fired Gilchrist for allegedly stealing donations.

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Colbert Defends Mitt Romney's 'Corporations Are People' Statement

Mitt Romney made headlines Thursday for saying that "Corporations are people" in response to a question about taxes at the Iowa state fair. While many people had a laugh at the gaffe, it was Stephen Colbert who came to Romney's defense on last night's "Report."

See, Colbert gets it. He's been saying for years that corporations are people, going so far as to suggest they remake "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" with an oil rig. Who wouldn't see that?

Watch the segment below to hear Colbert explain the gravity of Romney's comment and how history will paint him as a new age civil rights activist.

How Half of Terror Cases Investigated By the FBI ... Were Also Hatched by the FBI

What single organization is responsible for more terror plots in the USA than any other? If you happened to guess the FBI, you'd be right.
August 30, 2011

Here is an important question: What single organization is responsible for more terror plots in the USA than any other?

Possible answers: Al Qaida. That would no doubt be the popular answer but it would be wrong. The KKK. Way past their prime, so that is not it. The Jewish Defense League. Good guess, but still not it. So what is the correct answer?

It is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, AKA the FBI. Don’t believe me? Well, just read Trevor Aaronson’s expose entitled “The Informants”published in the September/October 2011 issue of Mother Jones.

Aaronson looked at over 500 terrorism-related cases taken up by the FBI and found that over half of them involved the Bureau’s stable of 15,000 informants. Many of these are ex-felons and con men who are often paid well if their efforts result in an arrest and conviction.

So what, you might say. Using informants to obtain information about criminal activity is an old and legitimate tactic. Yes, however, that approach to information gathering is not exactly how the FBI uses all of its informants.

Indeed, the Bureau has a program, misnamed “prevention” which encourages its agents to get creative in the use of informants. How creative? Well, if they can’t find any terrorist activity going on, they have their informants instigate some. Where are they doing this? Mainly in our country’s Muslim communities.
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5 Absurd Rick Perry Claims That Show His Tea-Party Infused Aversion to Reality

Perry prides himself on issues and Texas "successes" that actually expose his incompetence.
August 30, 2011

Texas Governor Rick Perry has ridden into the GOP presidential race on his high horse, threatening to ‘get ugly’ with Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, stopping just short of accusing him of treason, and catering, as expected, to the most radical of the radical right wing.

Mr. Perry, for some bizarre reason, has captured the twisted imaginations of those who combine a brand of Christianity that Jesus Christ wouldn’t recognize, with a heavy worship of capitalism, and an irrational fear of anyone not white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant thrown in for good measure.

As he goes about spreading hate and intolerance, both of which play so well to the Tea Party, Mr. Perry often chooses to relinquish facts; again, a trait welcome to the far right wing. This is displayed in a variety of ways that can be seen by looking at some of the governor’s ‘accomplishments’ and statements, as taken from the ‘Perry for President’ website:
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War on Women: Anti-Choice Movement Resorting to Shameless Tricks to Shutter Abortion Clinics

A pro-choice advocate demonstrates in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. At least 49 of the newcomers to the House are opposed to women having the right to choose to have an abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Despite lawsuits and activism, women's health clinics are shutting their doors, thanks to "regulations" coming, in one case, from secret origins.

August 30, 2011

In Arizona, three clinics have stopped providing abortions thanks to a new law that makes it illegal for nurse practitioners to perform medical abortions.

In Kansas, a family planning clinic is scheduled to close thanks to government pulling funding, while the courts continue to battle out a set of new restrictions that just happen to make it impossible for several abortion clinics in the state to operate at all.

And in Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell has taken a page from Kansas' book and is issuing some of the most drastic abortion restrictions seen since Roe, targeting clinics that provide first-trimester abortions with regulations that will effectively force them to shut their doors.
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The 10 States With the Worst Economies In America

The global economic crash hurt everyone, but not equally; here are the states that are feeling the greatest economic pain.
August 30, 2011

The global economic crash hurt almost everyone, but not equally so. Last week, we looked at 10 states that are doing better than most in this grueling economy. Today, we'll consider 10 that aren't faring so well.

What accounts for their relatively poor performance? Three of the four states that saw the biggest real estate bubbles arise in the 2000s are on the list, beaten down by Wall Street hucksters promising them never-ending growth in home prices. People in California, Nevada and Florida, fueled by irrational exuberance, got badly “over-leveraged,” and when the house of cards fell apart, millions were left underwater. These states saw extremely high rates of foreclosures, and steep job losses as people pulled back on spending while credit market tightened. States themselves invested pension funds and other reserves in mortgage-backed securities, thanks to AAA ratings bought from ratings agencies like Standard and Poors, and that, combined with a massive drop in tax revenues, led to budget crises and public sector cuts at the worst imaginable time.
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How I Escaped the "Biblical Family Values" Nightmare That Drives Perry, Bachmann, and Tea Party Politics

How one woman got out of the Quiverfull movement where she homebirthed, homeschooled, home-churched and faithfully submitted to her husband.
August 29, 2011

Do you remember when it first dawned on you that your relatives are all a bunch of crackpots and weirdos? Seems like I was around 8 or 9 — my mother worked all night in the casinos and slept most of the day, leaving me alone to protect my naïve older sister from the depraved advances of Mom's alcoholic boyfriends and worry about my big brother's drug addiction. I couldn't count on my grandparents to help — they were too preoccupied with their own divorce, dating, and remarriage dramas.

"Holy sugar," I thought to myself, "these people are seriously messed up!"
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Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney

WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 5, 2008 4:36am EST

(Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."

Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.

Roughly 12,000 people live in Brattleboro, located on the Connecticut River in the state's southeastern corner. Nearby Marlboro has a population of roughly 1,000.

(Writing by Andy Sullivan, editing by David Wiessler)
READ

Budget Talks Have Major Defense Contractors on Edge

Sunday 28 August 2011
by: Amanda Wilson, Inter Press Service | Report

Washington - When an expensive unmanned aircraft built by Lockheed Martin Corporation, a U.S. defence contractor, disappeared during a U.S. military test flight off the Pacific coast earlier this month, the debacle raised eyebrows.

The incident also raised criticism that the U.S. government is spending millions on hefty defence contracts to pay for technology that does not work.

The experimental craft was designed to travel at 20 times the speed of sound and be able to attack targets anywhere on earth within 60 minutes. Part of a defence department programme named "Prompt Global Strike" that has cost about 320 million dollars - this was only the aircraft’s second flight.

But Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence contractor, held a press briefing here Wednesday to defend its technology and responded to speculation that a congressional super-committee, appointed in August to identify areas for federal budget cuts, might take a red pen to defence spending.
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Understand the Right's Attack on Social Security

Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: "You hear over and over that Social Security is 'in trouble' or that we 'can't afford it.' This is as far from true as can be, and the idea behind this is to convince people to just give up on defending the program and let the haters have their way. The people who hate Social Security the most are the ones who say they want to make these changes to 'save' it. Well, Bernie Sanders loves the program and has introduced a bill that actually will save it."
Read the Article

Capitalism's New Era

(Photo: Kaba; Edited: JR / t r u t h o u t)

Sunday 28 August 2011

by: Shamus Cooke, Truthout | News Analysis

"Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself," said Mr. Roubini, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We thought markets worked. They're not working."

The world economy is in shambles and about to get worse, according to even mainstream economists. How bad is anybody's guess. Some things, however, are certain: the recovery that politicians have been promising for years existed only in their heads. The reality of the situation is now apparent to millions of people across the globe, who, before, clung to the empty promises of economic recovery. This newfound consciousness will inevitably find expression in the political realm and, more importantly, the streets.

A key aspect of this sudden mass awareness is in response to high unemployment and the deeply unpopular measures that politicians are forcing upon working people, both byproducts of the Great Recession. Politicians are blaming "the markets" for demanding austerity measures, but "markets" are simply places where wealthy people invest their money. To guarantee a profitable return on their money these investors demand that labor laws be squashed and social programs be eliminated, all over the world.

Spain, for example, is one of many countries having austerity measures forced down their throats. Reuters reports:

"Analysts see the shaking up of the country's inflexible labor laws [laws that protect workers] and the easing of hiring and firing [so older, activist, or slower workers can be fired] as vital to restoring the country's competitiveness. The labor reforms are crucial. They will help to restore growth [profits] in the long term. Growth is the only way out of these adverse fiscal trends,' said Luigi Speranza, analyst at BNP Paribas." [May 27, 2010]

To summarize, creating new laws that enable Spanish corporations to work their workers harder will be better for profits.
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Sen. Heller Pretends GOP Doesn't Want to End Medicare in Weekly Address - Asks Dems to Quit Using 'Scare Tactics'

August 28, 2011 08:00 AM
By Heather



Once again, the Republicans prove they're living in upside down land with the remarks in their Weekly Address. This week it was Sen. John Ensign's replacement in Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller giving their talking points for the week.

After rattling off a list of their supposed remedies for "job creation" in the United States - deregulation, a balanced budget amendment, lowering taxes on corporations, attacking unions and card check -- Heller asks that the Congressional Democrats quit using "scare tactics" on senior citizens by daring to point out that Republicans would like to get rid of Medicare and Social Security. A charge Heller denies naturally, who claims instead they really want to "save" them for future generations.

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FOCUS: Prosser Says Contact With Judge's Neck a "Total Reflex"

Eric Kleefeld, TPM Muckraker
Intro: "Friday saw the release of the official documents in the investigation of the alleged physical altercation at the Wisconsin Supreme Court - in which liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused conservative Justice David Prosser of grabbing her neck in a chokehold during an argument. A special prosecutor announced Thursday that no charges would be filed."
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How Rick Perry Created His State's $27 Billion Budget Crisis

Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry has created a budget crisis in Texas. (photo: Jim Young/Reuters)

go to original article

By Lou Dubose, The Washington Spectator

27 August 11

He Was Warned

"As of this moment, this legislation is a staggering $23 billion short of the funds needed to pay for the promised property tax cuts over the next five years.... These are conservative estimates."
- Texas Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, warning Gov. Rick Perry about his 2006 tax reform proposal

N HIS STATE OF THE STATE SPEECH in February, Rick Perry described the $27 billion budget shortfall confronting the Texas Legislature.

Now, the mainstream media and big government interest groups are doing their best to convince us that we're facing a budget Armageddon," Perry said. "Texans don't believe it and they shouldn't because it's not true."

The $27 billion equaled 15 percent of the $182 billion biennial budget the Legislature had passed two years earlier. If not Armageddon, an apocalyptic loss of revenue in a low-tax state that provides bare-bones public services.

Perry's statement was even more remarkable because most of the budget shortfall was a consequence of a business-tax bill he pushed through the Legislature in a special session five years earlier.

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GOP's Debt Solution: Soak the Poor

Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
Carl Gibson writes, "Despite billionaire Warren Buffett's pleas to reduce the deficit by shifting the tax burden to the super-rich, Republican members of Congress have officially come out in favor of raising taxes on the poor, while fiercely protecting trillions in tax handouts for billionaires, big oil and corporate jet owners. Right-wing politicians and corporate-media pundits have now set their sights on 'lucky duckies,' or the bottom half of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes."
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