SOURCE: - Greg Palast - http://www.gregpalast.com -

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM, Posted By Greg Palast On June 4, 2009 @ 2:34 am

Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by  Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6  billion.

With roughly 85% of NH's votes being counted in secret by a private corporation with a criminal history, partisan ties, anonymous employees, and convicted felons, and with the central vote count concealed by the Secretary of State from public oversight, it's little wonder NH is mentioned in this piece about election fraud in Iran.

SOURCE: AfterDowningStreet.org

SOURCE: http://www.bradblog.com

By Brad Friedman on 6/13/2009 11:19AM  

Iran's 2009 Election Results Suggest Massive Fraud...Just Like Ohio's in 2004

Without citizen oversight and transparency, 'faith-based' elections threaten democracy no matter where they are held...

It sounds a lot like Ohio 2004. A less than popular old-line incumbent facing massive public demonstrations against him and in favor of his main progressive challenger promising reform; polls that suggest a swell of support for the challenger; unprecedented turnout on Election Day; long lines at polling places; paper ballot shortages and names missing from voter rolls; widespread rumors, concerns and evidence of voter intimidation and vote-rigging, all accompanied nonetheless by a general feeling among the populace that the incumbent has been turned out, only to learn from officials, late on Election Night, after secret vote counting, that the incumbent has been declared the winner of a second term.

SOURCE: ProPublica.org

ProPublica Images/Krista Kjellman

Yesterday, the Treasury Department released new rules on how much banks that received TARP money can pay their executives. Among the rules is one that prohibits golden parachutes – defined as any payment to a departing exec simply because the exec is leaving. But an examination of public filings shows that a number of executives at banks that received TARP funds have received large payments just for resigning. It’s unclear if the new rules will apply retroactively. CLICK FOR PROPUBLICA'S FULL LISTING OF EACH HIGH ROLLER THEFT FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

SOURCE: Washington Post
Court Ties Campaign Largess to Judicial Bias

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled for the first time that excessive campaign contributions to a judge create an unconstitutional threat to a fair trial, a decision that could have a nationwide impact on whether judges must recuse themselves in cases involving their political benefactors.

In a case that crystallized a growing national debate over how multimillion-dollar judicial campaigns are affecting the public's view of impartial justice, the court decided that in some "extreme" cases, the risk of bias violates the constitutional guarantee of due process.

A five-member majority of the court decided that West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin erred in participating in a case overturning a $50 million verdict against a company headed by a man who spent $3 million on the justice's election.

SOURCE: washington note

The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney
Wednesday, May 13 2009, 5:32PM

This is a guest post exclusive to The Washington Note by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who is former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lawrence Wilkerson is also Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary.

Last night I was on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC at the top of the hour. But before I came on, through the earpiece I listened to the five minutes that Rachel sketched as a lead-in. Most of it was videotape from the last few days of former Vice President Dick Cheney extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership. I had heard some of it earlier of course but not all of it and not in such a tightly-packed package.

Let's just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate.

So, when I got home last night, I thought long and hard about what I knew at this point in my investigations with respect to the former VP's office. Here it is.

I, like many others, believed that changing the Congressional majority in 2006 was going to bring about some of the needed changes; the pursuit of accountability being one. We were proven wrong. In 2008, many genuinely bought in to the promise of change, and thus far, they've been let down.

SOURCE: OpEdNews

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May 4, 2009

In Congress We Trust... Not

By Sibel Edmonds

I have been known to quote long-dead men in my past writings. Whether eloquently expressed thoughts by our founding fathers, or those artfully expressed by ancient Greek thinkers, these quotes have always done a better job starting or ending my thoughts - that tend to be expressed in long winding sentences. For this piece I am going to break with tradition and start with an appropriate quote from a living current senator, John Kerry:    "It's a sad day when you have members of Congress who are literally criminals go undisciplined by their colleagues. No wonder people look at Washington and know this city is broken."

 

SOURCE: Fox44.com

Former NH town treasurer due back in court

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - The former treasurer for Litchfield, N.H., who resigned after being accused of embezzling money from the town, is expected back in court for arraignment on two new theft counts.

The Telegraph reports 51-year-old Horace Seymour III was indicted on charges he stole about $7,800 from two town accounts over two periods.

" Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law."
-- former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

SOURCE: NYT April 26, 2009 OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Banality of Bush White House Evil

By FRANK RICH

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.

SOURCE: ACLU.org

RELEASED: The Bush Administration's Secret Legal Memos

On April 16, 2009, the Department of Justice released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture.
Read the release >>

A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. (PDF)

SOURCE: BradBlog.com

Shepard Smith: 'WE DON'T FUCKING TORTURE!!!'

Fox 'News' host goes ballistic. Thank you...

Shepard Smith's days at Fox "News" may have to be numbered at this point. Even the filthy Judith Miller, for Chrissakes, is joining him in being appalled by the torture memos.

"If there was torture, there was a crime. If there was a crime, there were criminals who ordered the torture," he says to the reprehensible apologist Clifford May before he and Miller both concur that these "horrendous techniques are illegal"...

But later, Smith completely blows his stack on Fox's online-only show The Strategy Room, pounding on the table and SHOUTING: "We are America! I don't give a rat's ass if it helps! We are America! We do not fucking torture!!!":

SOURCE:Newsweek

TERROR WATCH

Michael Isikoff

Sanctioned Degradation

A new Senate report says Bush officials quickly abandoned 'humane' interrogation techniques.

Apr 21, 2009 | Updated: 10:06 p.m. ET Apr 21, 2009

Why is it that when people are discovered doing wrong, they do the same thing over and over again? Is it because to stop is seen as an admission of guilt?

SOURCE: nytimes.com

March 21, 2009 OP-ED COLUMNIST, The Great Shame, By BOB HERBERT

I had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.

The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn’t been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.

“They were talking about charging me with assault,” she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. “I’m no longer in the Army,” she added dryly.

Tia Christopher, a 27-year-old woman who lives in California and works with victims of sexual assault in the military, told me about the time that she was raped when she was in the Navy. She was attacked by another sailor who had come into her room in the barracks.

SOURCE: WaPo

Senators Seek Ethics Findings
Investigation Focuses on Opinions Issued in Bush Administration on Torture

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 17, 2009; A03

Two Senate Democrats urged the Justice Department yesterday to quickly release its findings of an ethics investigation into legal opinions under President George W. Bush that paved the way for waterboarding prisoners and other harsh interrogation practices.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) are demanding an update on the probe by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which for more than a year has been examining whether the lawyers who prepared the memos followed professional standards.

At issue are opinions issued by John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee while they worked in Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, a once-obscure operation that advises the government's executive branch.

SOURCE: OpEd News

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February 13, 2009

Judd Gregg and his Abramoff problem

By Dengre

We were lucky.

A few weeks ago on a Friday, Todd Boulanger pled guilty for his role in the ongoing Abramoff corruption scandal. He was a key member of Team Abramoff and before that he worked for former NH Senator Bob Smith (one of Jack’s go-to Senators).  Boulanger’s plea identified a Legislative Director for a US Senator as "Staffer F" and laid out the many favors Team Abramoff did for this staffer and some of the deeds done in return.

Source: Collins Strips Stim Bill Of Whistleblower Protections

By Zachary Roth - February 11, 2009, 6:57PM

Another great coup for the centrists!

Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine GOP dealmaker who's been in the limelight this week for helping to pass a watered down stimulus, has been talking a good game about the need to avoid wasting taxpayer money. But it looks like Collins also worked today to strip from the final bill a measure that's crucial to exposing that waste.

Here's what happened:

The House stimulus bill contained a provision designed to protect federal whistleblowers. Currently, those protections are shockingly weak. According to the Project On Government Oversight, whistleblowers who are fired or demoted can file a complaint with a government board -- but over the last eight years, that board has ruled in favor of whistleblowers only twice in 55 cases.

It's been apparent for some time that "planned obsolescence," the strategy developed by industry to maintain stable profits in response to market saturation and the need to increase demand, has morphed into "failure by design" and infected all sectors of the economy--commerce, service and finance. After all, if stability is the object, failure is the natural route; success, being terminal, demands that we do something new.