Obama closes curtain on transparency
President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.
Obama transferred “ethics czar” Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen’s duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer.
Bauer is renowned as a “lawyer’s lawyer” and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more “partisan advocate” than “good-government crusader.” Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.
Congressman Rohrabacher: Almost All House Republicans Think Iraq War Illegal, Immoral
By Paul Joseph Watson
Judge Andrew Napolitano’s new Saturday show on the Fox Business Network is set to send shock waves through the political establishment this weekend when his guest – Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher – reveals that almost all House Republicans now believe that the invasion of Iraq was not only a mistake, but also illegal and immoral.
“This morning when we taped our show for this weekend, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a right down the middle conservative Republican from southern California, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, looked at me and said ‘almost all Republicans in the House of Representatives now believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake, that it was unlawful, that it was immoral, that it wasn’t worth the lives lost or the trillions that will be spent’,” Napolitano told The Alex Jones Show.
“That is newsworthy that he would say it, it is newsworthy that so many Republicans would change their mind,” added Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge.
As far back as three years ago, GOP support for the war in Iraq was beginning to waver, with a CNN poll finding that 38 percent of Republicans opposed the war. The recent primary success of anti-incumbent candidates like Rand Paul, a vocal critic of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, shows that the tide has rapidly turned.
Napolitano pointed out that when he attacked the Bush administration for abusing the constitution, Republicans were upset, but that they are now starting to realize how government is supposed to operate as it was intended by the founding fathers.
May You Live in Interesting Times: Ship of Fools
Paul Craig Roberts
Is there intelligent life in Washington, DC? Not a speck of it.
The US economy is imploding, and Obama is being led by his government of neoconservatives and Israeli agents into a quagmire in Afghanistan that will bring the US into confrontation with Russia, and possibly China, America’s largest creditor.
The January payroll job figures reveal that last month 20,000 Americans lost their jobs every day.
In addition, December’s job losses were revised up by 53,000 jobs from 524,000 to 577,000. The revision brings the two-month job loss to 1,175,000. If this keeps up, Obama’s promised three million new jobs will be wiped out by job losses.
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that this huge number is an understatement. Williams notes that built-in biases in seasonal adjustment factors caused a 118,000 understatement of January job losses, bringing the actual January job loss to 716,000 jobs.
The payroll survey counts the number of jobs, not the number of employed as some people have more than one job. The Household Survey counts the number of people who have jobs. The Household Survey shows that 832,000 people lost their jobs in January and 806,000 in December, for a two month reduction of Americans with jobs of 1,638,000.
The unemployment rate reported in the US media is a fabrication. Williams reports that, “during the Clinton Administration, ‘discouraged workers’ those who had given up looking for a job because there were no jobs to be had — were redefined so as to be counted only if they had been ‘discouraged’ for less than a year. This time qualification defined away the bulk of the discouraged workers. Adding them back into the total unemployed, actual unemployment, [according to the unemployment rate methodology used in 1980] rose to 18% in January, from 17.5% in December.”
In other words, without all the manipulations of the data from a government that lies to us every time it opens its mouth, the US unemployment rate is already at depression levels.
The Bush Years: by the numbers
Note from Editor: Harper’s magazine was my first magazine subscription. They have amazing stories, insights and political essays. Here is an outstanding example of a tradition called the Harper’s Index.
Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206
Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98
Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser: 1
Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6
Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9
Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed: 9/13/01
Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11: 1,182
Number of them ever charged with a terrorism-related crime: 0
Number charged with an immigration violation: 762
Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0
Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20
Number of box cutters taken from U.S. airline passengers since January 2002: 105,075
Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39
Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism: 2 in 5
Rank of Mom, Dad, and Rudolph Giuliani among those whom 2002 college graduates said they most wished to emulate: 1, 2, 3
Number of members of the rock band Anthrax who said they hoarded Cipro so as to avoid an “ironic death”: 1
Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations: 22,000
Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50
Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on information from a single defector: 100
Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0
Date on which Bush said of Osama bin Laden, “I truly am not that concerned about him”: 3/13/02
Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games: 1
Days later that the company gave up the trademark, citing “regrettable bad judgment”: 25
Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion: 2
Number by then–New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1
Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6
The Premeditated Murder of the United States of America
by martinweiss
www.opednews.com
In the personal and private writings of Harry S. Truman, he says, “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who really did damage because he wanted damage to be done. I don’t think any of them willfully and maliciously tried to get the country in trouble…”
Looking back over the last eight years we can see what Harry could not have believed. Starting with Enron, the theft by manipulation of billions from California’s utility payers, this administration has willfully and maliciously done just that and more.
After the utter fiasco of 9/11, when the finest air defense system in the world stood down just long enough for the Vice-President to have to confirm the order to stand down in an emergency of unprecedented proportions, the “Patriot Act”, a one-foot thick stack of legal documents that abolished most of the Bill of Rights appeared overnight. No one assembles a foot-high stack of documents without preparation and, dare I say it, premeditation.
Pat Tiberi is endorsed by the Columbus Dispatch Printing Company
Central Ohio residents have been treated to yet more of the Columbus Dispatch Printing Company’s (CDPC) ‘fair and balanced’ judgment. Pat Tiberi, a Republican currently holding the 12th Congressional seat at the People’s House, has gotten the local daily printing company’s endorsement for Congress.
Hopefully, CDPC readers will remember the past ‘judgment’ of the company’s endorsements–including George W. Bush for president in both 2000 and 2004, when shortly before the 2004 election, even the CDPC seemed to know better. In the midst of this latest fill-in-the-blank-shock-and-awe (economic) crisis, that presidential endorsement has shown where the loyalties of the Wolfe family media empire really LIE. Much like Washington serves its lobbyists, the CDPC likewise serves the corporations who pay for their ads.
The fact that a local printing company’s public informational monopoly would find it within their job description to endorse a candidate before even informing the population of where all candidates stand on the issues that affect them most, is discrediting to not only to the endorsement, but raises questions as to the credibility of the CDPC itself.
