side note: This is one of the most overlooked discussions when we talk about our current economic crisis. These industries have way too much control over our elected officials. I see this first hand when I call my Representative in Congress, Dan Lipinski. I have never been able to speak with him, schedule an appointment…..absolutely nothing! But I bet if I were to hand over 5 or 10 thousand dollars, I’d hear back from him……Most of these officials are a product of our corrupt, big business government, where you need a shitload of money to even be considered a viable candidate, it’s not where you stand on the issues, it’s how fat your wallet is. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2008, the average amount raised by someone running for a seat in the House: $710,499, Senate: $2,440,038 and for a run at the White House: $67,146,687. These are just averages…..in a hotly contested race, it was much, much more.

by Ryan Grim
HuffingtonPost.com

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He’s losing.

On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion: the banks own the Senate.

“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” he said on WJJG 1530 AM’s “Mornings with Ray Hanania.” Progress Illinois picked up the quote.

Earlier Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told the Huffington Post that the most important provision of bankruptcy reform — the authority for a bankruptcy judge to renegotiate mortgages, known as cramdown, which banks strongly oppose — could get ripped out of the bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back, saying that a bill without such a provision wouldn’t be reform at all.

While Durbin has been negotiating with individual banks over the last several weeks, bank lobbyists and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) have been whipping up opposition to it. A growing number of Democrats have announced opposition to cramdown, including Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Jon Tester (Mont.). (more…)

The U.S. House has passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Precent Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, today by a vote of 249-175.

This decision comes after an official statement from President Obama urging the House of Representatives to pass the legislation and shortly after Rep. Virgina Foxx referred to Matthew Shepard’s hate-motivated murder as “a hoax.”

Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy Shepard responded to the decision saying, “No one should face violence simply because of who they are. This bill is a critical step to erasing the hate that has devastated far too many families.”

“Everyone in this country deserves a chance to pursue the American dream free from intimidation and persecution,” said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who is Vice Chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus and cosponsor of the measure. “Every hate crime is an attack on the liberty and equality valued by every American. This legislation will provide state and local law enforcement agencies with resources they need to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, while also protecting the exercise of free speech and religious expression provided under our Constitution.”

Matt Kailey, editor of Out Front Colorado said, “The passage of the Matthew Shepard Act in the House today brings us one step closer to full equality for GLBT people by recognizing that our lives are just as valuable as anyone else’s. Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal hate crimes statute does not create a special class of people or give GLBT people special recognition or special rights. What it does is recognize that preying on a GLBT person because of his or her GLBT status victimizes an entire community rather than just one person.

It also brings us closer to eliminating the ridiculous “trans panic” and “gay panic” defenses that have been used for too long as excuses to commit crimes of violence against GLBT people.”

see original

side note: I wanted to give it 24 hours for this news to kick in before commenting on it. I think Chris Matthews summed it up perfectly yesterday during his introduction to Hard Ball: The GOP is starting to resemble the pre-Civil War Whig party! They are stuck in their old ways and have no intent on changing them….even if there are moderates left in that party, I don’t see them standing up to Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest of idiots who are currently taking this party on a roller coaster ride straight into a coffin. But lets give it to the GOP, they lasted longer then these other political parties: Free Soil Party (1848-1855), The Greenback Party (1874-1994) and of course everyone’s favorite party: The Anti-Nebraska Party that lasted all of 1854!

by Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Apr. 30, 2009 |

President Obama and his staff tried to minimize Wednesday’s landmark as just a Hallmark holiday. That’s typical of Obama’s sharp political operation, going back to the primaries. The first 100-day mark, meaningless? Ha: The Obama team lived for this day.

Reviewing Obama’s accomplishments since Jan. 20 makes even me tired: pledging to close Guantánamo; staff ethics reform; an equal pay bill; an ambitious if not big enough stimulus plan; strong initiatives on healthcare and climate change; trips abroad to repair relationships with Europe, Russia, China and Latin America. Yes, he made some bad moves on state secrets and the bank bailout, but anybody who criticizes Obama’s pace of change is being paid to be a crank.

But GOP Sen. Arlen Specter’s decision to join the Democratic Party overshadowed most of that galloping list of accomplishments. It was no accident the vulnerable incumbent left the Republican Party today. I’m not talking about the bad news he got about his primary challenge from Club for Growth zealot Pat Toomey; he’s been losing the primary to a theoretical Toomey challenge for a while. I’m talking about the increasing irrelevance and impotence of Republicans, which is resounding on this first big milestone of the new Democratic administration. (more…)

side note: Last night, while flipping between channels, I stopped on CSPAN and the House was in session. Up to podium came Ted Poe, Republican Congressman from Texas.

Here’s the transcript via DailyKos, click here to watch the video via CSPAN:
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE PRO TEM: To what purpose does the Gentleman from Texas rise?

TED POE (R-TX): Request permission to address the house for one minute.

SPEAKER: Without objection.

POE: Mister Speaker, what do six terrorist attacks, Gitmo, dead Americans, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also known as KSM have in common? Waterboarding. Last week several top secret security papers were released to the public. We learned from these documents that waterboarding is apparently saving American lives. After being waterboarded numerous times at Gitmo, KSM, the killer responsible for planning 9/11, started talking. He told the CIA about plans to hijack an airplane, and crash it into a skyscraper in Los Angeles and kill Americans. He disclosed the seventeen member terrorist cell charged with executing that plan. He also exposed plans of another terrorist cell in New York plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. The enhanced interrogation encouraged KSM to disclose information by naming the ringleaders of four other terrorist attacks. Americans are alive because this individual was doused in water. Terrorists are not victims. The only victims are the thousands of people who have died at the hands of these outlaws. The CIA interrogators have saved American lives by baptizing these criminals in water, and that’s just the way it is. I yield back.

side note: We need to make sure we don’t overreact to this kind of stuff. On the way into work, my brother made a good point…how lazy has our media become that they would push this bullshit on us? These lazy fucks know this is easy and after seeing how very few of them actually did real investigative journalism during the lead up to the Iraq War…..this I guess shouldn’t be a shock to any of us.

By Patrick Di Justo
Salon.com
“This virus will kill 1 million Americans,” declared the U.S. in 1976. The panic then has a lot to teach us today.

There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall. The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of the flu. In 1918 a half million Americans died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.

– F. David Matthews, secretary of health, education, and welfare (Feb., 1976)

In January 1976, 19-year old U.S. Army Private David Lewis, stationed at Fort Dix, joined his platoon on a 50-mile hike through the New Jersey snow. Lewis didn’t have to go; he was suffering from flu and had been confined to his quarters by his unit’s medical officer. Thirteen miles into the hike, Lewis collapsed and died a short time later of pneumonia caused by influenza. Because Lewis was young, generally healthy and should not have succumbed to the common flu, his death set off a cascade of uncertainty that confused the scientists, panicked the government and eventually embittered a public made distrustful of authority by Vietnam and Watergate.

This past Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano left open the possibility of a mass immunization program for the current outbreak of swine flu. If that happens, the Obama administration has a lot to learn from the debacle set in motion by Private Lewis’ ill-fated hike.

Lewis was a victim of swine flu, a form of influenza endemic to pig populations. Influenza is caused by a virus, a microorganism that is mostly dead and partially alive. The virus’ genetic code, held inside a protein sheath, consists of several helices of RNA. The virus injects its RNA into a healthy cell, which causes the cell to stop its usual work and make more copies of the virus. RNA genes mutate easily; for this reason, each new flu season brings a slightly different form of the disease into the population. Most year-to-year mutations bring little change to the virus, but for some still unknown reason, influenza seems to undergo a significant genetic change every ten years or so.

This major mutation results in a radically new strain of flu, one that races through a population because few people are immune to it. The dangerous influenza epidemics of 1938, 1947, 1957 (60,000 dead in the U.S.) and 1968 (the dreaded Hong Kong flu) fit this pattern. It was believed that swine flu, a particularly deadly form of the virus, had a 60-year mutation cycle that brought on worldwide pandemics, killing millions of people. Both the 10- and 60-year cycles were due to converge in the mid 1970s; Lewis’ death in 1976 was thought to be the first instance of a new, incredibly lethal type of flu. (more…)

side note: I wonder how deep this hole goes? Kinda scary as all this evidence is “released”. I feel ashamed that this was done in our country’s good name……..

By John Goetz and Britta Sandberg
Salon.com
It has long been clear that the CIA used the Szymany military airbase in Poland for extraordinary renditions. Now there is new evidence of a secret torture prison nearby.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Der Spiegel.

Apr. 28, 2009 |

Only a smattering of clouds dotted the sky over Szymany on March 7, 2003, and visibility was good. A light breeze blew from the southeast as a plane approached the small military airfield in northeastern Poland, and the temperature outside was 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit). At around 4 p.m., the Gulfstream N379P — known among investigators as the “torture taxi” — touched down on the landing strip.

On board was the most important prisoner the U.S. had been able to produce in the war on terror: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, also known as “the brains” behind al-Qaida. This was the man who had presented Osama bin Laden with plans to attack the U.S. with commercial jets. He personally selected the pilots and supervised preparations for the attacks. Eighteen months later, on March 1, 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by U.S. Special Forces and brought to Afghanistan two days later. Now the CIA was flying him to a remote area in Poland’s Masuria region. The prisoner slept during the flight from Kabul to Szymany, for the first time in days, as he later recounted:

“My eyes were covered with a cloth tied around my head. A cloth bag was then pulled over my head … I fell asleep … I therefore don’t know how long the journey lasted.”

Jerry M., age 56 at the time, probably sat at the controls of the plane chartered by the CIA. The trained airplane and helicopter pilot had been hired by Aero Contractors, a company that transferred prisoners around the world for U.S. intelligence agencies. According to documents from the European aviation safety agency Eurocontrol, Jerry M. had taken off from Kabul at 8:51 a.m. that morning. Only hours after landing in Poland, at 7:16 p.m., he took off again, headed for Washington.

A large number of Polish and American intelligence operatives have since gone on record that the CIA maintained a prison in northeastern Poland. Independent of these sources, Polish government officials from the Justice and Defense Ministry have also reported that the Americans had a secret base near Szymany airport. And so began on March 7, 2003, one of the darkest chapters of recent American — and European — history.

Obama under pressure

It was apparently here, just under an hour’s drive from Szymany airport, that Sheikh Mohammed was tortured exactly 183 times with waterboarding — an interrogation technique that simulates the sensation of drowning — in March 2003 alone. That averages out to eight times a day. And all of this happened right here in Europe. (more…)

side note: I don’t see this topic being fully addressed during the President’s first term. It’s too much of a political nightmare for him to deal with during re-election season…with that being said, I think President Obama is aware that there is a big waste of money fighting the War on Drugs when dealing with Marijuana……and I see him taking a stand during his 2nd term! At least I hope so!

By: Bruce Mirken
FireDogLake

Millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama for President did so hoping he would make substantial changes in America’s so-called war on drugs, with particular hopes for more sensible marijuana policies. While the president has set a clear direction in many policy areas, thus far reformers can only give him a grade of “incomplete” on marijuana policy.

On the plus side, Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed in February and March that candidate Obama’s campaign statements that the U.S. Department of Justice should not spend its resources raiding and arresting patients and providers following state medical marijuana laws are “now American policy.” Henceforth, raids would only be directed at those violating both state and federal laws, he said.

But not long after Holder made that statement, Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a city-licensed medical marijuana facility in San Francisco in what appeared to be a violation of the new policy. The DEA claimed that the action was justified because the facility was violating state law, but has provided no explanation of these supposed violations or why, if that claim is true, they didn’t notify the city of San Francisco, which had licensed the operation.

And while Holder did not say anything about revisiting medical marijuana prosecutions left over from the Bush administration, many of us hoped DOJ would have a change of heart and request lenient sentencing for Charles Lynch, a law-abiding medical marijuana provider licensed by the city of Morro Bay, whose case has become a cause celebre. Instead, prosecutors asked for five years in federal prison for Lynch, but the judge has delayed sentencing. (more…)

side note: This is something that we need to all take into consideration…..

By: egregious
FireDogLake

The new swine flu: sounds scary. But what is the reality?

A few dozen people have died in Mexico, and there are some documented cases in other countries. What are we NOT seeing: rapid contagion; an exponentially growing number of fatalities; contagion affecting medical care professionals. SARS was frightening in its lethal spread. So far we are not seeing this with the new swine flu outbreak.

We need to keep on top of the fear mongering potential of this issue. There are real public health threats, which we can discuss as professionals/people interested in public policy; however they overlap with those who would take medium size threats and turn them into opportunities to make money and consolidate power.

Cui bono in each case. I followed the avian flu thing closely and was inside enough to see how that became a money making opportunity.

Whatever this new thing is, is real. It will kill some people. It deserves appropriate attention and resources. (more…)

side note: I do have to give my brother credit for turning me on to Frank Rich in the Times…..what a great addition to a lazy Sunday morning. His writing style and the great research that goes into each of his editorials is hard to match…….

By FRANK RICH
The New York Times

WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.

On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.

We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.

Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.

The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin. (more…)

side note: This is one MAJOR issue I have with President Obama. I know he has a lot on his plate, but looking into possible War Crimes, in which people died after being tortured, should NOT be something that is glossed over and swept under the rug. This documentary, which was produced by PBS should be viewed by everyone…gives the viewer a solid understanding of how we got to this point, and the people directly involved. Trailer:

side note: This message needs to be repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again…..you get the point! If we don’t learn from our mistakes, we’re doomed to repeat them b/c future generations won’t be able to read about our mistakes.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

“Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we’re just too busy.

And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration’s abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true — even if truth and justice came at a high price — that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?

For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let’s be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about? (more…)

side note: The Chinese used water boarding at one time to get fake confessions out of it’s prisoners. they used it to brain wash people. After WWII, this country, our country, our government prosecuted those who used waterboarding on our soldiers and other prisoners of war. We went into a court and argued that this was torture and that nobody should be doing it. and now, not only was our government doing this, but they were actually writing legal arguments defending it’s use. we’ve got to air this out, we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror and come to grips with how far we’ve gone to “protect ourselves”. these people should be prosecuted and put in prison. they’ve committed treason, because this has done so much damage to this country, that we’ll feel the effects for generations to come.

Bob Cesca
Huffingtonpost.com

On average, the same number of Americans who were killed on September 11 will die from cancer over the next two days. 40,000 people this month. More than half a million throughout the course of the year.

Your chances of being killed at the hands of a terrorist, on the other hand, are comparatively remote. Some estimates show the odds at one in 9.3 million.

Why, then, are Republicans — from the very serious moderates to the buggy-eyed Glenn Beck spasmodics — embracing the broadly condemned and immoral act of government sponsored torture, while, often in the same talk radio segment, predicting the end of the world due to government plans guaranteeing that Americans will be able to afford healthcare? Somehow, irrational fear wins the day once again over a very rational desire to be treated for an illness without, you know, going broke.

Without explanation or logic, and following months of screeching about tea parties and tyranny and big government, the usual suspects on the right appear to be demanding that the government retain the power to do anything — anything! — in order to protect us from a terrorist attack. This, naturally, includes torture, but from what I’m hearing, there’s no limit to what they’d allow. Whatever it takes, right? As FOX & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade remarked on Monday: “It feels good” that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month. And here I thought only shiny jingly objects made Kilmeade feel good.

But it’s not just Bush administration officials they’re defending here. Extrapolating what the torture superfans are suggesting, they appear to believe that in light of the threat of terrorism, any administration should be able to torture, including the current president. In other words: they’re simultaneously accusing President Obama of being an oppressive and tyrannical “fascist,” while also insisting that he should exercise the power to do whatever he wants in order to prevent another terrorist attack. Put yet another way: unchecked government power is awful, unless Sean Hannity is scared. Then it’s excellent. Put a third way: WTF? (more…)

side note: I WISH more repubs knew some real facts…..they would either be Dems in a heartbeat, or at least be Independents!

by Senator Bernie Sanders
Huffington Post

Representative Spencer Bachus is one of the only people I know from Alabama. I bet I’m the only socialist he knows. I’m certainly the only one the congressman from Birmingham could name after darkly claiming that there are 17 socialists lurking in the House of Representatives.

I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism. I hope this is an opportunity to shed some light on a viewpoint that deserves more attention throughout America and in our capital.

At its best, Washington brings people like us together to fight for our principles and work things out for the good of the country. Spencer and I used to serve together on the House Financial Services Committee. I don’t mean to hurt him back home, but the truth is that he even cosponsored an amendment of mine once on credit card ripoffs.

At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy. A standard refrain in John McCain’s presidential stump speeches last fall was a claim that Barack Obama’s Senate voting record was more liberal than Senate’s only socialist, yours truly. That is nonsense on several levels. Even as political hyperbole, the attack didn’t work out all that well for my colleague from Arizona. (more…)

side not: This is beyond the pale.