Did You Know 3.0 - A Snapshot of Our Place in the World

Amazing video about culture, technology and the world community. If half of this stuff is true, its incredible.

A New Word to Describe US Tax Payers: Suckas

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

from Democracy Now!

Bailed-Out J.P. Morgan to Buy Luxury Jets

The bailed-out financial giant J.P. Morgan says it’s going ahead with with a $138 million plan on two luxury jets and a deluxe aircraft hanger. The firm has received $25 billion under the taxpayer-funded bailout.

From a separate, excellent Democracy Now report with Matt Taibbi, contributing editor for Rolling Stone Magazine:

AMY GOODMAN: Many view the massive losses at AIG as the result of corporate greed combined with lax government oversight and regulation. But in a new article in Rolling Stone Magazine that takes an in-depth look at the AIG story, journalist Matt Taibbi writes the financial crisis and the bailout that followed, quote, “cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.”

Taibbi goes on to write, “The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron—a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.”

Here is the Taibbi article in Rolling Stone

Understanding the American Thought Process

How Long Until Bush is Held Accountable?

Hundreds Protest Bush in Calgary

In Canada, hundreds of protesters gathered in Calgary Tuesday outside President Bush’s first foreign trip since leaving office. Bush was speaking before an invite-only crowd at a private event. At least four people were arrested. Activists constructed a giant shoe cannon in a symbolic tribute to the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush last year. Bush entered Canada without any apparent trouble after the Canadian government ignored a request from a group of Canadian lawyers for his arrest or deportation as a war criminal.

From Democracy Now!

What Motivates a Republican?

President Carter not only set a goal of obtaining 20 percent of our energy from solar power by the year 2000, but he installed solar panels on the grounds of the white house. Reagan tore them down.


This from the New York Times (J. David Goodman):

During the energy crisis of the 1970s, Jimmy Carter installed solar panels for a heating system on the roof of the West Wing. “No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us,” he said during the dedication. The panels were removed by Ronald Reagan when he moved in, though they worked fine (and did for more than a decade, supplying hot water to a dining hall at Unity College in Maine.)

I first read about this in an article by Robert Redford on the Huffington Post.

How can the Republicans be so against a clean source of energy that frees us from countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? This is not rhetorical, I want to know!

I have a (very) educated guess: money and personal gain. It is not in Reagan's, Bush's and other Republicans best personal interest to see American renewable energy take hold over oil, coal or nuclear energy. What else could be the reason?

We all know how in bed the Bush's are with Saudi Arabia. I'm not old enough to remember Reagan's reason for removing the panels put up by Carter after the energy crisis of the 70's, but I keep hearing about scientists that were paid by the Bush administration to refute global warming and the resistance by present Republicans toward renewable energy and ask why? Money and personal gain is the only answer that keeps coming up.

My Republican friends and readers, am I missing something? I heard a report this morning about how milting glaciers are much worse than even imagined and I can't reconcile that the selfish motivation of personal wealth would move a Republican leader is disregard the well being of our nation and its people, but I can't find any other reason. Maybe that is why I'm not a Republican...

More Evidence That The Bush Administration Tortured

Report claims CIA used 'torture'

By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The ICRC report implies the US violated international law

CIA interrogation techniques used on al-Qaeda suspects "constituted torture", according to a leaked report by the international Red Cross.

The findings were based on testimonies by 14 so-called "high-value" detainees who were held in secret CIA prisons.

They were interviewed after being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

President George W Bush denied torture had happened and President Barack Obama has banned US agents from carrying out such practices.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has an international role in monitoring standards for prisoners and trying to ensure compliance by governments with the Geneva Conventions.

It was denied access to the prisoners until their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

I was told that they would not allow me to die but that I would be brought to the 'verge of death and back again' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Among those interviewed by the ICRC was the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said he was told he would be "brought to the verge of death and back".

The ICRC report was obtained by Mark Danner, a US writer, whose account is in the New York Review of Books.

The report was not intended for publication but, as is the procedure in such cases, was given in confidence to the US government.

"For the first time the words are those of the detainees themselves," Mark Danner says in a podcast attached to his story.

From the BBC.com

Who is Winning and Who is Losing the War on Drugs?

This is from the Lindsay Mitchell blog in which she tries to "debunk the myths surrounding the welfare state." Thanks for sending this Alex.

'Decriminalisation' of drugs in Portugal

Portugal is predominantly Roman Catholic, has a population of 10 million and ranks 39th in international GDP per capita stakes.

In 2001 Portugal changed the law to allow people to have in their possession up to ten days supply of any drug, including cocaine and heroin, and escape a prison sentence. Under the decriminalisation model employed, regional authorities, made up of health professionals and social workers, focus on 'dissuasion' of drug use. If police discover people in possession of the prescribed amount or less they are referred to one of these boards to appear within 72 hours. According to their individual circumstances a number of things can happen. They can still be fined, although people found to be dependent are not. Professional licences can be revoked. But the main aim is to refer problem users to services and dissuade new users.

Trafficking, supply and cultivation are still crimes and police/court resources are freed up to concentrate more heavily on these.

The results by 2007 were an increase in cannabis use but drop in use of other drugs. Deaths from drugs dropped dramatically.

The perceived increase in cannabis use might not be an effect of decriminalisation because it is in line with European trends. Italy and Spain, without decriminalisation have also experienced an increase. Or it might be an effect of decriminalisation simply because people are being more honest when self-reporting about their use - not because of increased use.

The drop in deaths has a lot to do with heroin use and people now being able to get on substitution programmes (which NZ already has but are over-subscribed). Portugal had a big problem with HIV infection from shared needles.

Apparently the law change is still controversial but in place at this time.

For Jesus and/or Perpetual War

There's one ass on the front end [of the subway] who is molesting women, that's the Republican party now...

Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back .

Do you wonder why the Republicans tell such whopping lies about President Obama and his economic recovery plan ? Isn't one conservative value truth telling? Not when you are serving the "higher call" to save America for Jesus and/or perpetual war...

The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary all backward -- there-is-no-global-warming -- rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled.

Read more from former Republican Frank Schaeffer on the Huffington Post.

Capitalism Rules

I spend a good part of my time on this blog criticizing Capitalism. This morning I had to step back and applaud our financial system. In all the socioeconomic systems I have studied, none have come close to making the rich richer than ours. Russia couldn't do it as well, China couldn't, Japan couldn't, England couldn't (not sure about the leaders of the Roman Empire).
How long can this go on? Really?

Taxpayers have given FAILED banks about $2,000,000,000. This was suppose to stimulate our economy. What have we gotten in return for our HUGE investment? Loans are no easier to get and interest rates on credit cards are higher than ever. Where has the money gone?

Three days ago, the New York Post reported that Citigroup just gave their Smith Barney Brokerage unit brokers cash bonuses of $1,000 to $3,000. These bonus amounted to about $3.5 million of the taxpayers money to 'reward' businessmen in a failed company, IN THE FACE OF ONE OF OUR COUNTRY'S WORST FINANCIAL BREAKDOWN IN HISTORY! Pure brilliance.

Two days ago, Citigroup claimed an $8 billion dollar profit. Is this a turn around? I wouldn't put what little money I have left on it. So when they are failing, we give them money and see nothing, and when they are profiting we give them money and we see nothing.

Do you know what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plan is? Hoping private equity firms will buy toxic assets. "Hope" and "toxic assets" in the same sentence for a $2 trillion taxpayer investment doesn't sound like sound financial plan to me.

Transparency? Full Disclosure? Accountability? Demands? Don't hold your breath. Nothing has changed. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The middle class declines.

This from Democracy Now!

Fed: US Families Lost Record 18% of Wealth in 2008

A new government report says American families lost a record-high amount of wealth last year. According to the Federal Reserve, American families in 2008 cumulatively lost 18 percent of their wealth. The losses amount to $11 trillion, equal to the combined annual output of Germany, Japan and the UK. As losses add up, debt is also skyrocketing. Mortgages and credit card debt now amount to $13 trillion, or 123% of after-tax income. In 1995, debt amounted to 83 percent of income.

Criminal Teaching at UC Berkeley?

John Yoo is sorry for nothing

Sneering with contempt, the unrepentant Bush attorney has challenged "Obama's antiwar base" to read his infamous memos closely. So I did.

John Yoo testifies in Washington in June 2008 before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on legal rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

You have to give John Yoo credit for chutzpah. The disgraced author of the so-called torture memo was back in the news last week, when the Obama administration released seven more secret opinions, all but one written in whole or in part by Yoo and fellow Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) lawyer Jay Bybee, arguing that the Bush administration had the right to override the Constitution as long as it claimed to be fighting a "war on terror." Professor Yoo, who I am embarrassed to say holds a tenured position at the law school of my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, was already known as the official who provided a legal fig leaf behind which the Bush administration tortured inmates at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. His legal misdeeds are widely known, but now they have been exposed chapter and verse. Among the new memos is one written in 2001, in which Yoo and co-author Robert J. Delahunty advised the U.S. that the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the Army to be used for law enforcement, and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, do not apply to domestic military operations undertaken during a "war on terror."In other words, bye-bye, Bill of Rights.

read more here at Salon.com

written by Gary Kamiya

W. Spent Most Since... Nixon/Ford

graph from Independent Institute

I'm really tired of hearing Republicans complain about spending. Why were their pie holes shut when George W. Bush, who started his eight year reign with a federal surplus, was completely destroying our economy in less than ten years. He spent more than any Democrat in the last thirty years (Clinton x2 and Carter) and is only beat by Republicans Nixon and Ford in the early '70s. Enough already. Don't you Republicans have better things to do, like look for a direction and perhaps a leader more credible than 'air hunter' Palin, 'fib fabricator' Bobby Jindal and comedian Rush Limbaugh?