August 13, 2012

Tom Tomorrow: 'You May Call Me... The Nominee!'

Daily Kos Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/13/1118553/-The-Nominee

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August 12, 2012

Joan Walsh: Paul Ryan - Randian Poseur

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/paul_ryan_randian_poseur

SUNDAY, AUG 12, 2012 07:20 AM EDT

Paul Ryan: Randian poseur

Mitt Romney couldn't have chosen a better example of the fakery at the heart of today's GOP

BY JOAN WALSH


Paul Ryan was born into a well-to-do Janesville, Wisc. family, part of the so-called “Irish mafia” that’s run the city’s construction industry since the 19th century. When his lawyer father died young, sadly, the high-school aged Ryan received Social Security survivor benefits. But they didn’t go directly to supporting his family; by his own account, he banked them for college. He went to Miami University of Ohio, paying twice as much tuition as an Ohio resident would have; the in-state University of Wisconsin system (which I attended) apparently wasn’t good enough for Ryan. After his government-subsidized out-of-state education, the pride of Janesville left college and went to work for government, where he’s spent his entire career, first serving Republican legislators and then in his own Congressional seat, with occasional stints at his family-owned construction business when he needed a job (reportedly he also drove an Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile for a while).

Ironically, Ryan came to national attention trying to dismantle the very program that helped him go to the college of his choice, pushing an even more radical version of President Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, which failed. He has since become the scourge of the welfare state, a man wholly supported by government who preaches against the evils of government support. He could be the poster boy for President Obama’s supposedly controversial oration about how we all owe our success to some combination of our own hard work, family backing and government support. Let’s say it together: You didn’t build that career by yourself, Congressman Ryan.

Thus Paul Ryan represents the fakery at the heart of the Republican project today. It starts with the contradiction that Mr. Free Enterprise has spent his life in the bosom of government, enjoying the added protection of wingnut welfare benefactors like the Koch brothers. If Herman Cain is Charles and David Koch’s “brother from another mother,” as he famously joked, Ryan is the fourth Koch, swaddled in support from Americans for Prosperity and other Koch fronts. The man who wants to make the world safe for swashbuckling, risk-taking capitalists hasn’t spent a day at economic risk in his entire life.

CONTINUE READING

August 11, 2012

Krugman: "Galt / Gekko 2012"

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/galt-gekko-2012/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

August 11, 2012, 3:45 PM

Galt / Gekko 2012

- snip -

There is, I gather, lots of horse-race speculation: It’s a disaster! No, it changes the conversation away from Bain and those missing tax returns! I have no idea who’s right.

What I do know is that anyone who believes in Ryan’s carefully cultivated image as a brave, honest policy wonk has been snookered. Mark Thoma reviews selected pieces I’ve written about Ryan; he is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn’t care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest. Of course, this means that he’ll fit in to the Romney campaign just fine.

As I said, I have no idea how this will play politically. But it does look like a move from weakness, rather than strength; Romney obviously felt he needed a VP who will get people to stop talking about him.

August 11, 2012

A Few Things About Paul Ryan...

http://wonkette.com/480764/meet-your-new-vice-presidential-candidate-the-one-and-only-historys-greatest-monster-paul-ryan

BY JIM NEWELL

- snip -

A few things about Paul Ryan: He wants to end Medicare and give people (those who are 55 and younger at the time of passage) coupons to buy private insurance plans on the market instead. Those coupons would be explicitly designed not to keep up with medical inflation, ensuring seniors pay higher out-of-pocket costs each year until the market collapses.

He wants to convert Medicaid and food stamps into block grants sent to the states and sharply reduced levels. He wants to bring non-defense discretionary spending down to 3% of the federal budget. He wants to slash taxes on the wealthy, giving them an average 12.5% in additional after-tax income. The only reason his budgets haven’t said a word about privatizing or dramatically cutting benefits in Social Security is because his fellow congressmen demanded he not take that on in addition to everything else, at this point. He voted for the Iraq War, Medicare Part D, and TARP.

The Ryan Budget is not just about saving money. He thinks broad social spending programs are immoral in how they foster “dependency.” There’s no other reason to cut every modest discretionary program like that.

Paul Ryan worships Ayn Rand, a sociopath who sneered at those who would give to charity.

So let’s see some campaign ads and shit, right?

MORE AT WONKETTE LINK[p]

August 10, 2012

Stratfor Emails Reveal Secret, Widespread TrapWire Surveillance System

Source: Russia Today

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system

Published: 10 August, 2012, 11:23
Edited: 10 August, 2012, 17:43

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

- snip -

Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.


Read more: http://rt.com/usa/news/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/

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August 10, 2012

Three U.S. Soldiers Killed by Uniformed Afghan in Helmand

Source: Reuters

Three U.S. soldiers killed by uniformed Afghan in Helmand

KABUL | Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:04am EDT

(Reuters) - An Afghan wearing a uniform killed three U.S. soldiers in the southern province of Helmand, a spokeswoman for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said on Friday.

"All we know is that they were killed by an Afghan in a uniform of some sort," the spokeswoman told Reuters, adding that it was too early to say if the shootings were by a rogue security force member or a Taliban infiltrator.

Afghan officials said the three men were all special forces members and were killed while attending a meeting in Sangin District late on Thursday.

- snip -

In a grim 24 hours for the NATO-led force, three U.S. soldiers and an American aid worker were killed earlier on Thursday in the eastern province of Kunar in an attack by a suicide bomber.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/10/us-afghanistan-shooting-idUSBRE87907Q20120810

August 9, 2012

Don Siegelman's Daughter Creates Petition for Presidential Pardon

Source: MyFoxAL

Don Siegelman's daughter creates petition for presidential pardon

Posted: Aug 09, 2012 3:02 PM EDT
Updated: Aug 09, 2012 3:02 PM EDT
By Nate Hall

MONTGOMERY, AL (WBRC) -
The daughter of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman has created a petition to try to get her father pardoned.

Dana Siegelman is seeking 1,500 signatures to urge the Obama Administration to pardon Don Siegelman of his bribery conviction. Siegelman was recently resentenced to 6 years after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to see his appeal.

The petition is being hosted on Change.org and is prominently featured on DonSiegelman.org.

Read more: http://www.myfoxal.com/story/19239206/don-siegelmans-daughter-creates-petition-for-presidential-pardon

August 7, 2012

Okay, But What Would Romney Actually Say To Guy Whose Wife Died Of Cancer After He Got Canned?

The Most Vicious Ad Of The 2012 Campaign Blames Mitt Romney For The Death Of A Steel Worker's Wife

Brett LoGiurato | Aug. 7, 2012, 9:09 AM | 9,646 | 104

The pro-Barack Obama super PAC Priorities USA unleashed what might be the most vicious ad of the 2012 campaign cycle this morning, an ad that personally points some blame toward presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney for the death of a steel worker's wife.

The ad, titled "Understands," is a much more pronounced and heavy attack than some of the others that the Obama campaign and Priorities USA have released targeting Bain Capital's closure of a GST Steel plant in Kansas City.

“Understands” features Joe Soptic, who was laid off from the plant and lost health benefits. The ad says that he later found part-time work, but his wife developed a stage-four cancer (not specified further) and "there was nothing they could do."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/priorities-usa-romney-ad-cancer-death-gst-steel-bain-capital-2012-8#ixzz22tjqHt00

Okay, But What Would Mitt Romney Actually Say To The Guy Whose Wife Died Of Cancer After He Got Canned?

Henry Blodget | Aug. 7, 2012, 10:48 AM | 8,483 | 169

An Obama support group has unleashed a brutal attack ad that effectively blames Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for the death of the wife of a steel-worker.

- snip -

The Romney campaign immediately blasted the ad, calling it "dishonest" and tried to change the subject back to Romney's talking points, which are that the U.S. economy is still weak.

And that's an understandable response. (What else can they say?)

- snip -

So, what is Mitt Romney's attitude toward that? What does he think this particular man (and others like him) should do?

Work harder to get a better job that comes with health insurance?
Be richer?

- snip -

And beyond healthcare and health insurance, what does Mitt Romney think the country's approach to all "downsized" workers should be? Should the government help them at all? Or should we just be the country of "rugged individualists" that we all want to imagine that we are and just say, effectively, "tough luck, buddy," to everyone in similar circumstances?

To be clear: Companies have to downsize sometimes. And employment should never be guaranteed.

But this seems like a case in which the government might be in a position to help some Americans--in a way in which, as a civilized society, we might want the government to help.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mitt-romney-healh-insurance-bain-2012-8#ixzz22tlNhP3J

August 7, 2012

Church of England Loses Faith in Shares of Murdoch’s News Corp

Source: Reuters

Church of England loses faith in shares of Murdoch’s News Corp

By Reuters Staff AUGUST 7, 2012

The Church of England has sold all shares in News Corporation held in its investment portfolios on ethical grounds, after a phone hacking scandal at the media empire’s UK operations.

The Church, which has three national investing bodies, sold the shares worth 1.9 million pounds ($2.97 million) after its Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) was not satisfied with the level of corporate governance reform at Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate following a year of dialogue.

“Last year’s phone hacking allegations raised some serious concerns amongst the Church’s investing bodies about our holding in News Corporation,” Andrew Brown, Secretary of the Church Commissioners said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The EIAG put forward a number of recommendations around how corporate governance structures at News Corporation could be improved. However the EIAG does not feel that the company has brought about sufficient change and we have accepted its advice to disinvest.”

Read more: http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/08/07/church-of-england-loses-faith-in-shares-of-murdochs-news-corp

August 7, 2012

New Tom Waits Video "Hell Broke Luce"

Background: Search "Iraq Veterans Memorial: Cpl. Jeff Lucey" at BraveNewFoundation channel on YouTube.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/mental/articles/2005/03/01/jeff_lucey_returned_from_iraq_a_changed_man_then_he_killed_himself/?page=full

'Something happened to Jeff'
Jeff Lucey returned from Iraq a changed man. Then he killed himself.

By Irene Sege, Globe Staff | March 1, 2005

BELCHERTOWN -- Less than three weeks before he committed suicide, Jeffrey Lucey, lance corporal in the Marine Reserves, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, totaled his parents' Nissan Altima.

He wasn't drunk when he ran the car off the road and landed between two trees, which was surprising given how much he used alcohol to dull the torment roiling inside his head. But he'd taken the Klonopin prescribed to ease his anxiety.

So when Kevin and Joyce Lucey visit their only son's grave, they drive his Hyundai, with the Marine Corps decal Jeff put on the back window and the Marine seal he affixed to the bumper and the ''Support Our Troops" magnet and Kerry-Edwards sticker they added after he died. They pass yellow ribbons still fluttering from trees in front of the house where they raised three children, and when they arrive at the Ludlow cemetery, an expanse of small, fluttering American flags tells them Jeff finds his final rest in the company of scores of other veterans.

Jeffrey Michael Lucey was 23 and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of his family's home last June 22. His family shares his story in hope of helping those, among the hundreds of thousands who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who will battle similar demons.

MORE AT LINK[p]