January 7, 2012

Bain & Co: The 1994 Ad By Sen. Ted Kennedy Which Will Floor Mitt RomBOT in 2012

January 6, 2012

Banksters - William Black tells the real truth

January 6, 2012

GOP race ballot access clusterf***

Check this out, some student from Iowa is doing the reporting that the commercial media should do but isn't:

http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2012/01/grading-ballot-access-romney-and-paul-make-honor-roll-while-gingrich-failing-santorum-perry-and-huntsmann-in-need-of-extra-credit/


Among the other gems here, Gingrich is apparently too incompetent to fill out a form and send it in to get on the ballot in Arizona - that's it, no signatures, no cash, no nothing. Just send in the form.

The upshot of all this is that it messes their race up big time since Santorum and Gingrich in particular can't seem to get their act together to get on enough ballots to actually win the nomination. So only Romney and Paul are potential opponents, unless it goes to a brokered convention which would be the grand mega clusterf*** of nomination processes.

oh, and Rhode Island may have a primary with nobody on the ballot.

January 6, 2012

From the "that didn't take long" department (military drones over New York)

Chances of Central New York drone flights improve as new law allows six national test sites

Washington -- The Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing is a step closer to gaining federal permission to fly unmanned Reaper drones out of its base at Hancock Field, according to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

The National Defense Authorization Act signed into law last week by President Barack Obama allows for the establishment of six national test sites where drones could fly through civil air space.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday he pushed for the establishment of six spots, instead of the planned four, to improve the chances that Hancock Field would be included. The 174th Fighter Wing has been trying for almost five years to convince the Federal Aviation Administration to allow flights of the MQ-9 Reaper drones out of Hancock Field.

The FAA bans such unmanned flights because of concerns about the remotely piloted drones flying through civil airspace used by commercial aircraft at Syracuse’s Hancock International Airport.

...

read the rest @ http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/chances_of_central_new_york_dr.htmlhttp://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/chances_of_central_new_york_dr.html

January 5, 2012

I wouldn't use the word "ineffective"

Clearly there is a great deal of effect or it wouldn\'t still be prominent today.

I have very specific suggestions on how to improve the effectiveness, however.

Occupy Wall Street needs to actually occupy Wall Street itself. Zuccotti Park is on the other side of Broadway and most of the people who work on Wall Street who would actually see them are the low level staff who need to take the train to work - not the guys with limos and helicopters. OWS needs to heed the call of Mario Savio and physically prevent the evil business going on down there from going about its merry way. This includes blocking the entrance to the stock exchange and the nearby NY Federal Reserve building, as well as buildings in the same immediate vicinity such as Goldman Sachs HQ @ 85 Broad St.

Over in Zuccotti Park they can be corralled and ignored. Go two blocks south and one east and you can bet people will stand up and take notice.

It doesn\'t need to be a coordinated crowd action with signs or anything - do it original flash mob style, coordinate electronically and then just all show up at once. Don\'t be obviously connected to each other, but at the same time stuff so many bodies on Wall and Exchange streets that business can\'t be conducted in its usual fashion.

That was the original point of occupying, wasn\'t it? We need a refresh.


Now Occupy DC has the same problem, only worse. They are also out of the way, and they\'ve never gotten in the faces of the people who are responsible for our mess. They need to be in one of two places, or both: either right at the entrance to Congress, where those who work there cannot ignore them; or alternatively (my favorite) over on K Street which is lobbyist ground central.

Imagine the good that could be done by slowing down the lobbyists and reduce their efficiency at corrupting and stealing our representation! Imagine them needing each to take an extra ten minutes every time they arrive at and leave their offices, just to make their way through the crowd. Imagine the demoralizing effect of identifying them and telling them point blank we know what they are doing and intend to put and end to it.


All the while make sure any and all police action is caught on video by multiple sources so it cannot be hidden or confiscated. Keep a couple of backup observers at a distance in case the police decide to corral, detain and search everyone on site for media equipment to confiscate.


Edit - adding one more thing. Name names. Imagine the fear that will be induced when a corrupt bastard sees his own name on a protest sign! Especially if these are lobbyists who like to work behind the scenes. Think any of these stealth corrupters want to be publicly known as a public enemy? It\'ll scare the piss out of them, maybe enough to cause some to quit/retire.

January 5, 2012

US passes 100% debt to GDP

US Closes 2011 With Record $15.22 Trillion In Debt, Officially At 100.3% Debt/GDP, $14 Billion From Breaching Debt Ceiling

While not news to Zero Hedge readers who knew about the final debt settlement of US debt about 10 days ahead of schedule, it is now official: according to the US Treasury, America has closed the books on 2011 with debt at an all time record $15,222,940,045,451.09. And, as was observed here first in all of the press, US debt to GDP is now officially over 100%, or 100.3% to be specific, a fact which the US government decided to delay exposing until the very end of the calendar year. We wonder, rhetorically, just how prominent of a talking point this historic event will be in any upcoming GOP primary debates. And yes, technically this number is greater than the debt ceiling but it excludes various accounting gimmicks. When accounting for those, the US has a debt ceiling buffer of... $14 billion, or one third the size of a typical bond auction.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-closes-2011-record-1522-trillion-debt-officially-1003-debtgdp

January 4, 2012

NY police raid OWS office, nab several

The US police have attacked the Global Revolution Livestream office of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in New York, arresting several activists and journalists as the crackdown on media intensifies.


The Tuesday raid on the Brooklyn studio of Globalrevolution.tv, which covers OWS protests via live stream, followed a police order to the anti-corporatism protesters to vacate the studio.

Meanwhile, protesters have planned to rally in New York's Grand Central Terminal to protest against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

They say the legislation is an attempt to restrict their civil liberties.

(more at link, mostly background though)

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/219221.html



Note the source. Also check out Google News and notice that this story is not there unless you specifically look for "Livestream". It's completely absent from the Occupy X news.

How did we come to a point that where to get information about heavy-handed government intimidation and shutdown of the free press, we need to go to an Iranian news source? I know the story is true, I saw the video!

January 4, 2012

MF Global Sold Assets to Goldman Before Collapse

MF Global unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of securities to Goldman Sachs in the days leading up to its collapse, according to two former MF Global employees with direct knowledge of the transactions.

But it did not immediately receive payment from its clearing firm and lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co, one of the sources said.

The sale of securities to Goldman occurred on Oct.27, just days before MF Global filed for bankruptcy on Oct.31, the ex-employees said.

...

The lien puts JPMorgan's interests ahead of MF Global customers who have not yet received an estimated $900 million worth of money from their accounts, which remain frozen as regulators search for missing funds.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45866612



I was happy tonight watching the GOP self-destruct in Iowa. Then I read this.

Those accounts were supposed to have the same level of legal protection as your bank account, lacking only the FDIC insurance.

January 4, 2012

If you liked the inconclusive, muddled results in Iowa tonight you're going to love this

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/did-ron-paul-just-win-iowa/289986

Did Ron Paul just win Iowa?

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA -- "I think Ron Paul just won Iowa," declared Mark Hansen, Ron Paul's Pottawattamie County coordinator. Here at a bar serving as the unofficial county headquarters of the Paul campaign, Hansen had just conceded that Paul would not win the popular vote in Iowa, but he also pointed out that after the straw polls, the precincts appointed delegates to the county conventions in March -- and that in every precinct in Pottawattamie, at least, two or three Ron Paul supporters volunteered to be delegates, and few other candidates' supporters volunteered.

Delegates at the county conventions help select delegates to the state convention, which then select delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Technically, tonight's vote was a straw poll, determining no delegates, but setting the tone. The only actions that actually could make a difference in electing delegates to the National Convention heavily favored Paul. Nobody will be watching in June, unless this election gets much more exciting, but Ron Paul might send more Iowa delegates to Orlando than any other candidate.












please excuse me, between the santorum jokes tonight and this I have not been able to stop laughing for about four hours now... even the winners lost tonight... call me a doctor omg

December 21, 2011

US Refuses Karzai’s Latest Plea to End Deadly Night Raids

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Obama has more than tripled the incidence of night raids, which very often kill civilians, and which a study from back in September found fuel resentment and undermine the mission in Afghanistan.

“An estimated 12 to 20 night raids now occur per night,” according to the report, “resulting in thousands of detentions per year, many of whom are non-combatants.” And many of the associated tactics, like “mass detention operations, holding entire villages for questioning on site for prolonged periods of time,” may violate international law, the report found.

Civilians bear the brunt of these hardline tactics. As one man from Nangarhar, interviewed in the report said, “They claim to be against terrorists, but what they are doing is terrorism. It spreads terror. It creates more violence.”

According to senior commanders in the Joint Special Operations Command, these various nightly raids get the wrong person 50 percent of the time. For a war-torn population living through a decade of US military occupation, ninety-two percent of whom have never even heard of 9/11, these are counterproductive indeed.

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http://news.antiwar.com/2011/12/19/us-refuses-karzais-latest-plea-to-end-deadly-night-raids/