Cafe Talk Aggregator

The World Ocean and World Peace

2009-07-09T23:17:06Z

Most of the human race lives in misery. We are told--it may or may not be true--that the resources of the land will be insufficient to correct this, even if inequity of distribution should be radically reduced or disappear. But most of the earth--the World-Ocean--is unknown, its resources virtually untapped. The development of the oceans may well be the most urgent of all material needs; but the ocean cannot be civilized without world peace. Until the land is civilized, the sea will remain as it is.

On the sea we travel as on deserts, wishing only to cross to the destination. On the sea we fish and fight battles. On the sea, then, we are hunters and gatherers, sometimes warriors: the most primitive stage of social evolution. We carry our industrial-age artifacts there to do our stone-age work, tools too advanced for such primitive enterprise. Our fishing fleets take fish that are too small with nets that are too fine, for mature fish have become scarce. Much-hunted whales are endangered. Life forms are disappearing. The seas are ever more polluted with our leavings.

In a few places near the shore we farm kelp, farm shellfish, raise fish. In a few places we drill for oil and collect manganese nodules. Scientists have unraveled mysteries of the seabed and comprehend something of ocean layers, currents and ecologies. And politicians and entrepreneurs have begun to think of potential riches.

The World-Ocean covers seventy-one percent of the earth's surface; but ocean is not only surface; it is volume, layer upon layer. All this tremendous three-dimensional space awaits mankind's civilizing hand. What wonders, what agriculture, husbandry, minerals, sources of power, will be found or created there? In this frontier things yet undreamed of will be done. Whales, dolphins and myriad other creatures await domestication. We will discover or create food plants. Imagine a field, ready for harvest, whose volume is one thousand or ten thousand or one hundred thousand cubic kilometers. We will come to understand and use the minerals of the depths. Great volumes will be set aside as nature reserves. No doubt some people will make the sea their home.

At present, these vast areas and enormous volumes remain effectively outside our world. International law has it that, beyond territorial limits ("the Area" in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), the seas are the common heritage of all mankind; but mankind is hard put to it to claim such a heritage, for no sovereign body yet speaks for mankind with an authoritative voice. The International Seabed Authority, struggling to establish a practical jurisdiction, must seek the acquiescence of powerful states for the regulations it is able to promulgate. The U.N.'s sovereignty over the sea is weak, indeed does not exist, for the U.N. is not a government. Civilization has not come to the World-Ocean because the nations cannot agree on the way it is to arrive there. In these days, the sea is not developed, but despoiled. There is so far no coherent plan to make it an integral part of our world, no plan to civilize it. For that matter, so far as most of the world can see, there appears to be no plan to finish civilizing the land. There exists a hope or a wish, while the rulers use the marvels of science for the most evil and barbarous of practices.

The problem of the undeveloped World-Ocean is one with the problem of the land. The world is the world.

We need coherent world order. Mankind is trapped in a shifting, warring anarchy of independent states. There is one mankind; but this oneness has not yet crystallized in a sovereign institution that can effectively unite and govern mankind's diverse elements. That is why the oceans, and the land too, remain uncivilized. Without such sovereignty, "the common heritage of all mankind" is only a string of words, and the potential of the World-Ocean remains unknown and unrealizable. Without a peaceful, integrated world our race, on land and sea, will surely continue its present decline, its murderous wars.

Every war is fratricidal!

The existence of independent sovereign units gives rise to conflict. Several thousand years of tragic experience has proved that a single nation or group of nations cannot impose lasting peace, much less peace with justice; nor can persuasion, exhortation, or the simple need for it cause it to appear.

Nothing can occur unless the conditions for its occurrence exist. A pot of water will not boil without heat, however long one waits. A pile of bricks will not become a house without a builder and a plan. And a house built on sand will not withstand the storm, whatever the real estate agent may claim. The world will have peace only when the conditions for peace are established.

The minimum condition for world peace is this: that all the nations unite in ceding key elements of their sovereignty to a central sovereign Institution. This is what the most powerful nations have thus far refused to do, what the founding members of the United Nations Organization rejected. Peace has not come, not because the human race is incapable of it, but because the leaders of the nations have been unwilling to do what is required for it to exist.

There have been two relatively serious moves toward peace, each after a ruinous war. The League of Nations would probably have failed even without the fatal decision of the United States, whose legislature rejected what its President had promoted and in large measure created. The United Nations Organization, with all its imperfections, has sometimes prevailed; has created numerous functioning world institutions and ameliorated or solved a number of vexing problems. Much greater than the League, it is admirable as a move toward what is needed; but the U.N. is doomed to failure in its present form, a central institution without sovereignty. It has not established world peace because it cannot.

The United Nations Organization is like a one-armed pianist. It may perform brilliantly, but its repertoire is very limited.

The sense that the world is one, that all mankind is a single, complex, diverse and beautiful thing, has grown ever more prominent. Protests against "globalization" arise, not out of a rejection of the fundamental oneness of the human race, but rather out of a terrible disappointment, on realizing that the people who arrogate to themselves the control of the world belong to the same bands that made fortunes on the slave trade and stole whole countries and their resources, not caring about the injustice and the misery their actions created. The protests turn out to be protests against the violation of the oneness of mankind, against the ongoing attempts to divide mankind into ruling and subject nations, races, and classes, against the contemptuous and murderous arrogance of those who claim the right to rule.

If the horrors and disasters of two World Wars have brought us only to this place, we cannot realistically expect the world's present leaders to create the conditions for peace, although it is within their power to do it. It appears that more suffering is required.

Events will finally force the nations to accomplish it. Some at least of the people who are alive today--or if not they, then their children or grandchildren--will see the beginning of the longed-for universal peace, the inevitable next step in human evolution. When it comes, the resources and wealth of the earth will no longer be sucked up for war and the satisfaction of greed at the expense of most of humanity. When it comes, the undiscovered material and spiritual resources of the earth will gradually reveal themselves. The whole planet will be our home. The civilizing of the World-Ocean will take place.

It is a terrible pity that we do not have this already and that suffering will, for now, only increase.

Burris Out In 2010

2009-07-09T22:55:35Z

Well thank god. Roland Burris isn't going to run for reelection. It's not such big news since his polling indicated he had a steep climb to retain the senate seat. That leaves Mark Kirk as the probably Republican contender and who knows for the Democrats. Maybe Chris Kennedy? We'll see.

I actually had a crazy thought today: What about Illinois Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart? You may recall Dart as that Sheriff from around Chicago who got fed up with evicting people from their houses. Yup, that's the guy I'm talking about. In the process he also stood up to banks who had been critical of him for not enforcing the law. In short, Dart disagreed.

So basically, this sheriff stands up to banks, he's a Democrat, he's popular, and he's a law abiding citizen. That's a pretty rare combination in Chicago and Illinois and a pretty appealing resume these days.

Woman Jumps From State Office Building In Juneau

2009-07-09T22:44:23Z

Woman Jumps from State Office Building in Juneau

This was just tweeted from the Juneau Empire.

Not to make light, but it is extremely strange to have people suicid-ing in the middle of summer in Alaska.

Local tax policy

2009-07-09T22:38:03Z

I hope to start a discussion about tax policy on the local level--county and city/town/village. My first few posts concerned this topic, and I think it should get more play. After all, "all politics is local [attributed Thomas O'Neill, Sr., Tip O'Neill's father]."

I have been teaching a course on tax ethics (no giggling, please), to graduate students for a few years now. One unit deals with how a professional's public expounding of any particular tax policy impacts his or her ethical requirements to the client. While thinking about this topic, I distilled tax policy to this formula--not particularly insightful, but nevertheless ignored by many politicians:

Public Expenditures = revenue + deficit.

I review some elementary algebra, to the effect that one equation with three variables has an infinite number of solutions. Then I break down the variables as follows:

The deficit equals the amount politically expedient at the time. For state and local situations, the deficit is set by law to equal zero.
Revenue equals the sum of tax revenue plus fees (and federal or state aid).

I break down tax revenue in terms of public policy regarding the allocation of the tax burden over society.

Finally, public expenditures are a matter of political compromise and expediency.

Applying these rules, local expenditures must equal local revenues. That's so simple that it seems like a waste of time to type it all out, but it's ignored by politician after politician. I will resume from this point in the next day or so.

--Dean L. Surkin

Voting Rights Groups Sue States for Failing to Register Low-Income Residents

2009-07-09T21:54:22Z

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

By Erin Ferns

Enfranchising America's least represented citizens is as simple as following the law: that's the message Project Vote and a coalition of voting rights groups sent today as they filed lawsuits against Indiana and New Mexico for failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Under a key provision of the NVRA, most states are required to provide voter registration opportunities to the millions of low-income Americans who apply for or use public assistance programs such as Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or Medicaid. Project Vote estimates that full implementation of this law could improve lagging voter registration rates among low-income citizens by two to three million new voters per year nationwide.

Unfortunately, compliance with the NVRA since its inception in 1993 has been spotty at best, non-existent at worst, leaving third-party groups with the hefty responsibility of picking up the slack by conducting expensive registration drives in disenfranchised communities. The groups believe it is time for government to be doing its job of registering its citizens, and to start by properly implementing and enforcing the NVRA.

The latest offenders under this federal law include the states of New Mexico and Indiana, both of which are being sued for denying hundreds of thousands of residents the opportunity to register to vote. Representing the plaintiffs are Project Vote, Demos, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the ACLU of Indiana, and law firms, Barnhill & Galland and Schwartz, Lichten, & Bright, Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg & Ives, and DLA Piper U.S.

Last week, the Election Assistance Commission confirmed that poor implementation of public agency registration is a "widespread problem," according to today's press releases. Between 1995 and 1996 - the first two years the law was in effect - 2.6 million voter registration applications were collected from people who visited offices for Food Stamps, TANF, and Medicaid. That number dramatically declined in 2007-2008, when fewer than one million applications were collected nationwide, according to the EAC report.

The decline was even more severe in New Mexico, where public assistance agencies--despite steady participation rates--showed a 90 percent decrease in voter registration applications from since 1995.

"In 2007 the average number of adult participants in the Food Stamp program alone was over 103,000, but [the Human Services Department] averaged only 134 registration applications per month," according to the press release. "Project Vote investigations of six HSD offices in January 2009 revealed that none of the offices provided voter registration application forms to their clients as part of the benefits application." Additionally, the complaint alleges that New Mexico has also been neglecting the better known "motor voter" provisions of the NVRA, which require motor vehicle offices to offer voter registration services. Officials from the HSD are among the defendants named in the suit, which also includes New Mexico's Secretary of State, Mary Herrera, officials from the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division, and the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department.

"The NVRA was enacted to ensure that states affirmatively provide all citizens an equal opportunity to register to vote," says Nicole Kovite, director of the Public Agency Voter Registration Project at Project Vote. "By ignoring this vital law, New Mexico is denying this right to thousands of its residents every year."

In Indiana -- which has one of the country's worst records for voter registration, particularly among low-income people--evidence of violations of the NVRA were also cited in the coalition's lawsuit against officials from Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, the co-directors of the Indiana Election Division, and the members of the Indiana Election Commission. Although the state currently has more 300,000 adult participants every month in the Indiana Food Stamp program alone, voter registration applications have declined from 80,000 applications collected in the 1995-1996 election cycle to a dismal 2,519 in 2007-2008.

"Voter registration should primarily be the responsibility of the government," said Jeff Ordower, ACORN's Midwest regional director. "Indiana's noncompliance has not only resulted in thousands of low-income and minority Indiana citizens being denied the opportunity to register to vote, it has also forced ACORN, the NAACP, and other groups to expend considerable effort and resources to take up the slack."

As they did in Indiana and New Mexico, the coalition has sent pre-litigation letters "notifying California, Colorado, and New Jersey that lawsuits may be necessary if they do not bring their programs into compliance," the group said. However, the group emphasizes that states do not need to wait to be sued before finally complying with federal law.

"Recently several states that had been disregarding the NVRA have been forced to comply," according to the coalition. "Last week the State of Missouri settled a similar lawsuit brought by the voting rights groups; since a court order in that suit forced Missouri public assistance agencies into compliance in July, voter registration applications skyrocketed from fewer than 8,000 a year to more than 100,000 in just eight months. In 2008, Department of Justice investigations forced both Arizona and Illinois to take steps to improve compliance."

Need help

2009-07-09T21:31:24Z

Is anyone else having a problem viewing blogs and comments. A few blogs end above the advertisement and there is no way to rec or comment. The entire right side is white - no avatar, no profile no nothing. Today I found this problems on Rowan's blog and DD's Wabbit blog, but not DD's fish blog. These are the only ones so far. I sent a note to Al a while back but haven't heard anything back. Just wondering if anyone knows what is going on.

Thanks.

How to Restore Obama's Popularity and Beat Republicans at the Media Game

2009-07-09T21:27:34Z

The current political atmosphere is terrible for Democrats. It's slowly draining the excitement out of Obama's presidency and dragging down his popularity. We have crucially important legislation on the horizon, and yet Obama's favorability rating is declining steadily. Fox News ratings are at an all-time high, and pop-conservatism books dominate bestseller lists. All of this is means Republicans have managed to sow seeds of doubt in Obama's agenda. It jeopardizes lives and direly needed improvements to our government.

The problem is this: while there's plenty of talking and planning for upcoming reforms, Obama and Congressional Democrats have actually done very little reforming lately. They have done little to control the news agenda. There are committee meetings, recesses, and endless negotiations, but only one chamber has passed environmental legislation, and none have dealt with health care. Key proposals on the economy and a Supreme Court nomination lie in waiting. Iran faces a credible threat to its regime, and Congress is powerless to control it. To make the political atmosphere even more disconcerting, Obama continues to avoid reforms on civil liberties, transparency, and gay rights.

So, for the last few weeks, Democrats have been in limbo, promising major change, but taking a long time to actually carry it out. They have done little to steal the headlines and punch back at Republicans. Of course, Democrats are at an inherent disadvantage because they are proposing to change the status quo in a major way, and in this intermediary period Republicans have found success by relentlessly assailing their proposals and instilling as much fear and uncertainty in them as possible. Quite simply, it's just easier to whip up doubt and insecurity rather than confidence and positivity- especially when the future is uncertain and little progress is happening.

Part of this is that Republicans know almost all reporters are intellectually anemic. They have masterfully gamed the media and manipulated the news agenda. Ridiculous attacks, which also sometimes come from Democrats, are not counter-argued by journalists to such an extent as to give a fair picture of reality. This lets Republicans run wild, using deception and sophism, blurting out soundbites with the expectation that they will be splashed across headlines or repeated several times on Hannity. Even on neutral TV networks and newspapers, the way such attacks are reported is not journalistically impassioned, and as a result they get away with it. The Republican constant stream of attack strategy works in down times like these, when Democrats are on the defensive. An attack on one of Obama's plans for epic reform is worth twice as much as praise.

Obama and Democrats, here's what you need to do. Go on the offensive. Don't go so far as to sacrifice the dignity and prestige of the presidency, but keep in mind that hitting first is always more effective than returning fire, even if the reasoning is sound. Take some attention away from the painstaking negotiation process and talk about an issue that will give people a sense of optimism about his agenda. Take some shots at Republicans, portray them as callous and misanthropic for ignoring the suffering going on in this country. Create the illusion that Democrats are in control of the ball and they have big, bright plans for the future, and Republicans are helplessly flailing curmudgeons. Give more campaign-style speeches and town-hall meetings, and get people excited.

a stupid man

2009-07-09T21:20:21Z

well here I am again. My last blog got me in a lot of trouble. I said a couple things that were took the wrong way by my better half(who is a very special woman to me). I am writing this one in hopes that I can get out of the dog house ( no air conditioning in the dog house its hot).

Now it never accured to me that when your living with a woman that it was wrong to call a nother woman very special. I do now . In a way Im glad I was talking to a woman it would have been a little strange if I would have been talking to say dick day becouse I would have called him a special friend. I dont know if that would have had the same effect or not? I think all the people I talk to are special here and around my house.

next part that got me in trouble was asking for a fishing partner. Well I have one when our scedules work out . She goes fishing with me and we have a nice time she even baits her own hook. How lucky can I be(well I do have to take the fish of her line lol).

I really didnt think I did anything wrong but like the title of this blog I'm just a stupid man.

Hope everybody is having a nice day.

Taxes, Home Ownership & Government

2009-07-09T20:40:33Z

Standard wisdom says if you want less of something, tax it. There's another part of the tax equation that's standardly overlooked. Real estate is the one class of assets which we're taxed on merely for holding. Keep a closet full of gold bars, no tax (not unless and until you go to sell them at a profit) - not on the gold bars. But there's a yearly tax on the closet, if it's part of a building you own! Government has every incentive to encourage wealth to be put into real estate instead of other asset classes, because government collects a yearly tax just on the part of your total assets which is real estate.

The real estate bubble, thus, was in reality (whether or not planned as such) a way for governments to increase total tax revenue, even while making a big show of "cutting taxes."

This also suggests that what we want more of, we should encourage government to tax. If the tax potential is large enough, government will damn sure figure out a way to see that we get more of whatever the taxes are on. Those who want more religion, for example, should encourage government to tax it.

Stop

2009-07-09T18:55:32Z

Stop.

Take a breath. That's it ... there you go. It's all right, you'll be okay. Ahh, I know. But do you have an idea of what else I know? Relax for a moment and I'll tell you all about it. Now that you've stopped, you really do have the time to listen.

Can you hear me? I'm letting my thoughts flow into your mind, accepting yours in return. What a magical, mystical tour we're on. Yes, it makes me laugh, too. Even as I cry to understand your needs, even as I anguish over all of your wants. We're hand in hand and heart to heart. Wait. Please wait.

Where did you go? Did I frighten you? I'm sorry, perhaps it's too much all at once - maybe you're overwhelmed. The feeling is often mutual, as all things are. Let's both look at the sky while we contemplate the ground beneath our feet. Such an odd way to consider what we have never truly believed. The in-between is hugely infinitesimal while at the same time it waits for us to gather steam. Building ... growing.

Can you hear me? I really don't know anymore. I still feel you, I'm still listening. The volume is fading but the spirit is breathing. Perhaps that's what I hear ... the silent resurgence of your soul.

Apocalypse of the Peach

2009-07-09T18:55:13Z

Leaf at half-mast on the Gaffney Peach

After the second outbreak of serial killing in the little town of Gaffney, South Carolina, the leaf on the Gaffney Peach was once again lowered to half-mast, as a sign of "respect."

A lively debate among members of the Gaffney Town Council preceded this decision.

"It's bad enough that thing looks like a giant butt," said Roland Meriwether, proprietor of Meriwether Peach Farms LTD...

"...but can we really afford to bring in a 100-foot crane from Atlanta to "lower the leaf" every time some serial killer runs amok in our little town?"

"Besides," Mr. Meriwether continued, "it don't even look "half-mast" to me. It looks wilted! Is that the kind of message we want to send? "Serial killing wilts our peaches!" I won't even be able to sell my peaches on a pig farm!"

At the time, Mr. Meriwether was laughed down by most of the residents of Gaffney as just another tax-dodging redneck Republican son-of-a-bitch, but within a few months his homely wisdom was confirmed by an influx of serial killers from all over the world, and the leaf on the Gaffney Peach went up and down as fast as...

"Copulating jack-rabbits," said Mr. Meriwether, and this time nobody was laughing.

We were born an honorable nation

2009-07-09T18:49:27Z

When Tom Tancredo stood up in a coffee shop in Iowa and told the two dozen or so collected diners that he believed the U.S. should respond to an attack by Islamic extremists by bombing Mecca, it wasn't just the surrealistic ramblings of a politician with no concern of human life. It was also a perfect example of just how far America has fallen from the path laid out by the Founding Fathers.

It was but a few months more than 230 years ago that Gen. George Washington made a decision at Drakes Farm in New Jersey that would help shape the ideal to so many that the United States was the greatest nation on Earth.

During the American Revolution, there was a battle of American against British and Hessian soldiers. The Americans were forced to retreat, and left seven wounded soldiers on the field of battle. One of them, Lt. William Kelly offered to surrender to the British. His offer was refused.

When the British took over the field after the battle, they brutally murdered each of the wounded American soldiers.

When word of this reached Gen. Washington, he stood firm and made it clear to his men - we will not do this to them. "We are fighting for a cause. And our cause demands we behave with honor."

As the war continued and the tide turned, Americans took more and more German and British prisoners of war. And they were all treated respectfully and humanely. Gen. Washington's words were heeded, and Americans were honorable in their treatment of POWs.

The nation was in peril, the ink on the Declaration of Independence was not yet dry, and Americans fought for their very survival against the most fierce armies on the planet. And America won. And did so with honor.

In the end, nearly 25 percent of the Germans who fell in to American hands on the field of battle chose to stay in the new nation. This story is well retold at NPR's podcast "Krulwich on Science" with Robert Krulwich and historian David Hackett Fisher.

Click here to head over to NPR to download the podcast, and listen for yourself about the America that Washington and his fellow founders fought for more than two centuries ago. And compare it to the blood-thirsty, torturing, paranoid and fearful nation the U.S. is today.

"We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience," Washington has been quoted as saying.

It is time we look back and remember we were once an honorable nation.

(Author's Note: I wrote this almost two years ago, but with President Obama pondering indefinite detention for some at Gitmo, I felt it had pertinence today, as well. Thanks - WKW)

--WKW

Crossposted at Williamkwolfrum.com

Presented By:

2009-07-09T18:49:27Z

Who said what, where?

2009-07-09T18:38:37Z

The feud between Congress and the CIA is back in the news. Today the House will take up an intelligence authorization bill that would do away with the administration's right to dictate the terms of how Congress is briefed on intelligence matters. Predictably, President Obama has threatened to veto a bill in that form.

Panetta vs. Congressional Oversight of Intel Community -- On June 24, CIA Director Leon Panetta testified before the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX). According to CQ Politics (7/9/09), a couple of days later 7 Democrats on the Committee wrote a letter to Panetta asking him to " "correct" his statement from May 15 that "it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress." The article quoted a CIA spokesman who said "Panetta stood by his May remarks and believes Congress must be kept fully informed."

Dems vs Repubs -- Rep. Reyes wrote a letter on Wednesday to the Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), telling him, to quote Politico (7/8/09):

. . . that he had obtained information that there were serious problems with the CIA's briefing of lawmakers and that the CIA "affirmatively lied to" lawmakers.

"These notifications have led me to conclude this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to," Reyes wrote in his letter.

. . . Later, Reyes issued a more conciliatory statement that framed Panetta's alleged admission as an attempt to reform the agency, beginning:
"I appreciate Director Panetta's recent efforts to bring issues to the Committee's attention that, for some reason, had not been previously conveyed, and to make certain that the Committee is fully and currently briefed on all intelligence activities. I understand his direction to be that the Agency does not and will not lie to Congress, and he has set a high standard for truth in reporting to Congress."

The authorization bill that expands its oversight of the intelligence community, including the National Security Agency and the ODNI, was reported out of committee on June 18. Certain lesser officials would be subject to Senate confirmation, and would require videotaping of arrested detainees. According to the Washington Post (6/20/09), to quote:

The bill also would end the statutory authority of the executive branch to limit briefings on classified, covert action to the "Gang of Eight," the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the House and Senate senior leadership.

Together these measures, Democrats say, represent an attempt to make the intelligence agencies more accountable to Congress. In recent years, controversies including disclosures of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program and the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques have led to calls for greater oversight.

Bonus Backgrounders:

"2010 Intelligence Authorization Pending," is by Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News (6/18/09).

"Ending the Gang of Eight," is by emptywheel (6/15/09).

"Congressional Access to National Security Information," is by Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News (6/10/09).

"The Hill's Campfire Games on Intelligence Briefings," is by emptywheel (6/5/09).

"CIA: Congress shouldn't get records of our crimes," is by emptywheel (5/31/09).

"What Pelosi, Rockefeller & Harman Could have done," is by bmaz at emptywheel (5/27/09).

"CIA Briefers regularly mislead Hill intelligence panels, ex-spy charges," is by Jeff Stein at Spy Talk-CQ Politics (5/26/09).

"The terrorism intelligence and briefing schedule," is by emptywheel (5/16/09). Timeline period covered by documents/details: 9/21/01 -- 3/19/03.

Stay tuned, folks, because there will certainly be a lot more conversation about these separation of powers questions.

See also Behind the Links, for further info on this subject.

Blogs: My general purpose/southwest focus blog is at Southwest Progressive. And Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for all my websites.

Technorati tags: news news and politics politics congress cia national intelligence

KILL THE WABBIT

2009-07-09T18:26:46Z

Jeff Sessions

Elmer Fudd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKp3Nj7lXhM&feature=related

Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions
III (born December 24, 1946) is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. He is a
member of the Republican Party, and the new
ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee

Beauregard. I mean you cannot make this shit up. Really!!!!!

But let us examine this man's record and his words.

THE PROSECUTOR

Beauregard was a civil rights attorney. Did you know that? Well I did not.

Actually he was a civil rights prosecuting attorney.

The Hinterland Gazette:

Still, there's more throwback theater on Sessions. He had unsuccessfully prosecuted
three civil rights workers, known as the "Marion Three," including Albert Turner, who
was a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on a case of election
fraud for the 1984 election. http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com/2009/05/senator-jeff-sessions-who-has-shady.html

That's right, Beauregard did everything in his power to prosecute those seeking civil rights in this country; well in Alabama
anyway. Not really part of my
country. But I digress.

He investigated and investigated and investigated and out of 1.7 million votes, HE FOUND 14 THAT LOOK THUTHPITHIOUS.
Of course, they had all been cast by Black People in Alabama.

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a
conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU ) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired."
Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down
the throats of people."

Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white
civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting
rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to
him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was
sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a
phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings....

Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving
the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he
"used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of
them were "pot smokers."

And after carefully reviewing Sessions' record, Republicans in Washington took appropriate measures to limit his influence gave him an extremely
influential position in the Senate. It'll be...enlightening...to hear
conservatives defend the move, or, better yet, excuse it on the grounds that
the GOP's only giving these views special prominence for about a year and a
half. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/senator-who-praised-segregationist-judges-will-lead-opposition-to-obama-nominees.php

So basically, Elmer loved calling those who were for freedom and justice and the American Way, "Communists".

A site called Snitch found this tidbit right out of Beauregard's own mouth:

Well, I think what we tried to do is give the taxpayers the best return on their dollar. There are more drug cases
than you can prosecute, good cases, and so we just demanded a lot of our
prosecutors and ask[ed] them to move those cases and try them effectively, and
I think they did a good job of that.

The federal sentencing guidelines set some mandatory minimums and they also set ranges in every case within which a
judge must sentence. And all I ask[ed] our lawyers to do was to be honest, to
present the evidence they have, and ask the judge to sentence appropriately
within the guidelines, and they were narrow. It was likely to be 24 to 30
months. If a judge likes you, he'd give you 24 months. If he didn't, he gave
you 30. But the guidelines were pretty narrow. Sometimes, the sentences were
tough. You'd have a 25-year-old who's been selling for a long time getting 15
to 18 years in jail, pretty tough sentences. But as they say, if you can't do
the time, don't do the crime. ... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/procon/sessions.html

2.5 million of our citizens (x-citizens now of course) in prison, 5.5 million more on parole/probation. If
Beauregard had his way, we could turn that up a notch. I mean this guy desired more bang for his prison buck.

How about twenty-five million in prison? He could have cleaned up this country. Boy that would put the white majority in power, would it not?

THE BIRTHER

Besides being a Bircher, Beauregard is also a birther. Let us take a walk back to December of last year when he wrote a letter to the Electoral College:

Citizen Wells (12/30/08):

We are contacting you now. Congress meets on January 8, 2008
to count and validate the Electoral College Votes. We are asking you carry out your oath of office and request proof of eligibility from Obama, a candidate who is not a natural born citizen and probably is an illegal alien. I am certain this is within the realm of your "jurisdiction." http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/senator-jeff-sessions-alabama-us-constitution-hall-of-shame-obama-not-eligible-us-congress-electoral-college-votes-obama%E2%80%99s-eligibility-must-be-challenged-al-senator/

The Birth Certificate may be found in a number of places, but it may be found here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/obama-birth.html

They used to spend more time showing this document on Cable News, but it got tiring, I guess. Please book mark this
for future disputes. Or, even better,
PRINT THE FRICKING THING OUT and always carry a copy with you so that when some
poor uneducated fool brings up the subject, you can say:

Well that is all well and good, but.....

And then shove the fricking thing up the idiot's ..........

THE CONSTITUTIONALIST

Boston.com (9/23/06):

``I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/09/23/congress_in_dark_on_terror_program/

Twenty years ago, this racist prick tried to be appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Can we guess how he would
rule on unwarranted wire-taps?

Finally, if you care, who are Elmer's top 'contributors'? http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00003062

What a thurprithe!!. Big corporate pigs. But one funny note. He contributes ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN!!! HAHHAHAHA. I do not know why that strikes me as sooooooooo
funny.

Why TARP Tanked

2009-07-09T18:06:05Z

From Harvard Prof. Lucien Bebchuk:

"The plan for buying troubled assets -- which was earlier announced as the central element of the administration's financial stability plan -- has been recently curtailed drastically. The Treasury and the FDIC have attributed this development to banks' new ability to raise capital through stock sales without having to sell toxic assets. But the program's inability to take off is in large part due to decisions by banking regulators and accounting officials to allow banks to pretend that toxic assets haven't declined in value as long as they avoid selling them."

(http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/)

So basically, since the government relaxed its accounting standards, letting banks value their cruddy mortgage-based securities at whatever price they like, they had absolutely no incentive to sell them (at fair market value - er, a much lower price). So they can go about business as usual.

You know, sort of like taking out a home equity loan without telling the bank the house has burned down. Known as "fraud" in insurance circles.

Um, the emperor's still naked, Mr. Geithner...