Obama Meets Privately With the Dead
The surviving (and formerly feuding) members of the Grateful Dead had a secret impromptu meeting Monday evening with the man they credit with reuniting them: President Obama.
The president welcomed all the members of The Dead, who are performing tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington, to the Oval Office just before dinner last night. They didn't talk music as much as they did history - history about the Oval Office, and the president's desk.
Apparently the band was quite taken with how tidy the president keeps his desk. And how down-to-earth he seemed, according a source who was there.
"The president was so gracious. Really, really nice and so welcoming. It hit you: you're in the Oval Office, but it was so normal," the source told us.
The entourage included the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead - Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann - plus keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (from Weir's Ratdog) and Warren Haynes, who is joining the Dead on their 2009 spring tour as lead vocalist and guitarist. Some of them had their wives in tow.
As if chatting with the president in the Oval Office weren't cool enough, something remarkable happened on their way out. Just outside the Oval Office, Phil and his wife, Jill Lesh, spotted a vase full of Scarlet Begonias sitting on a table.
For the uninitiated, "Scarlet Begonias" is one of the late Grateful Dead band leader Jerry Garcia's most famous songs. (Check out a youthful looking Jerry Garcia singing "Scarlet Begonias" in this 1977 video, and be sure you have a tissue.)
What 420 Means: The True Story Behind Stoners' Favorite Number
Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, now touring as The Dead. He's just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C. and gets a pop quiz from the Huffington Post.
Where does 420 come from?....It starts with the Dead......
Phil Lesh: Barack Obama Resurrected The Dead
He's still got a little work to do on the economy, but already President Barack Obama has accomplished at least one task that had appeared all but impossible just a year ago: He's put The Dead back on the road.
As the core surviving members of the Grateful Dead, once the world's biggest concert draw, barrel across the country for the first time in five years, bass player Phil Lesh says they have Obama, and also Lesh's youngest son, Brian, to thank.
After Lesh, who had never publicly supported a presidential candidate, threw his lot in with Obama, he was anxious to do a benefit concert for him. But he was all but done with The Dead, so it was going to feature his other band, Phil and Friends.
"My son Brian said, 'No Daddy, you've got to get The Dead together because it will be so much more meaningful and important,'" the musician chuckled during a recent phone interview......
The Dead in D.C., a Stirring, Smoky Bipartisan Show
......Also there were Obama senior aides David Axelrod, Pete Rouse and Jim Messina, who met with all the surviving members of the Grateful Dead - plus Haynes and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti - at the White House on Monday evening after President Obama hosted the band for a private meeting in the Oval Office.....
Charles Barkley Tears Into "Unpatriotic" Limbaugh And "Idiot" Hannity (VIDEO)
NBA great Charles Barkley dipped into some political punditry during a Tonight Show appearance on Friday, tearing into conservative talking heads who have rooted for President Obama to fail.
"I mean, you look at this country now, we've got all these foreclosures, we've got all these people laid off. We should be behind him 110 percent, hoping he's successful," Barkley said. "And I just thought it was unpatriotic and basically B.S. for Rush Limbaugh and that idiot Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and all those idiots to not root for this guy."
Best Late Night Jokes Of The Week: The GOP's Grudge Against Bo Obama, Playstation Porn, And More! (VIDEO)
Jay Leno took on the legal profession this week, praising the economic downturn for putting lawyers out on the street. Jimmy Fallon, on the other hand, mocked the scientific community, saying:
"Scientists in Iran have successfully cloned a goat. Great job, scientists. Hey, by the way, AIDS still exists."
Jon Stewart: Fox has become ‘the hippie station' (VIDEO)
....Even Fox News, which has heavily promoted the protests, is “now the voice of the People’s Revolution,” according to Stewart. “They’re the hippie station!” he exclaimed. “They’re NPR! They’re Democracy Now!”
“So where does that leave CNN?” Stewart asked, showing one CNN reporter aggressively confronting a protester with questions about whether he understood he was already getting a tax cut. “Oh, my god!” Stewart exclaimed. “So CNN becomes an even more dickish Fox!”
“So,” Stewart concluded thoughtfullly, “in our New World Order, Fox are the hippies, CNN is The Man — what does that make MSNBC?” He answered his own question with a series of clips of MSNBC hosts having fun with double entendres about “tea bagging,” “Dick Armey,” and protesters giving President Obama “a strong tongue-lashing.”
“Hours of scrotum-based humor!” Stewart realized in horror. “Oh, my god! MSNBC is us! “They’re The Daily Show...
Thursday's Late Night Round-Up: Teabaggers, America's Farewell To Texas, And India's Sham Election (VIDEO)
Colbert, on the other hand, mocked Minnesota, saying: "Today voting began in India's Parliamentary elections, and I am sad to say these elections are a sham, folks. The voting lasts a month. That means Indians won't know the results of their election until May 16. By then we'll probably know who's the next senator from Minnesota."
Oversight over wiretapping program ‘doesn’t really exist,’ reporter reveals (Video)
Independent oversight over the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program “doesn’t really exist,” the New York Times reporter who exposed the program revealed in an interview Thursday night.
Speaking with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, Times reporter James Risen discussed revelations published Thursday that the agency had overstepped the legal boundaries set out by Congress last year. His statements appeared to go beyond the scope of his article, which documented that the NSA’s program to eavesdrop on overseas calls and emails without warrants had “inadvertently” included millions of Americans’ communications......
Republican Tedisco asks Court to be declared winner, in race before votes are counted even though he is behind Democrat Murphy, in Votes counted so far, Just a thought is Tedisco Related to Sleazy Norm Coleman?
20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race, despite the numbers currently being in favor of his opponent, Democrat Scott Murphy......According to The Associated Press, Murphy leads Tedisco by 178 votes district wide — 79,452 to 79,274.....
The Power Of The Federal Badge
A FBI officer stops at a ranch in Montana , and talks with an old rancher. He tells the rancher, 'I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown drugs.'
The old rancher says, 'Okay, but do not go in that field over there' as he points out the location.
The FBI officer verbally explodes saying, 'Mister, I have the authority of the Federal Government with me!'
Reaching into his rear pants pocket, he removes his badge and proudly displays it to the farmer. 'See this badge? This badge means I am allowed to go wherever I wish...on any land. No questions asked or answers given. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand?'
The old rancher nods politely, apologizes, and goes about his chores.
A short time later, the old rancher hears loud screams and sees the FBI officer running for his life chased close behind by the rancher's prize bull. With every step the bull is gaining ground on the officer, and it seems likely that he'll get "horned" before he reaches safety. The officer is clearly terrified.
The old rancher throws down his tools, runs to the fence and yells at the top of his lungs.....
'Your badge...show him your badge!'
Why this Crisis May be Worse than the Great Depression
About one percent of the nation owning more than about 90 percent of the rest of us combined not only foresaw the impending crash but planned to benefit from it. GOP types have traditionally gotten rich by playing 'last man out loses'! A race to be first to 'get out' has triggered many a panic creating bargains to be picked up, fortunes to be made on the inevitable upside. The big difference now is that --this time --there may not be an upside.
The sheer size of this crisis is worrisome. During the Great Depression, the US still had viable industries that had not yet been exported to China by way of the Bushes and Wal-Mart. The US manufactured automobiles, refrigerators, radios and, later, televisions sets. The steel industry created Pittsburgh. Autos made Detroit. America's work and labor were the sources of its wealth. The right wing exploitation and export of that wealth is the source of our current poverty, the financial collapse and our impending slide into third world status. An increasingly tiny elite is the cancer upon the body politic and economic....
Autoworkers Pensions at Risk
General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC retirees and employees could lose $23 billion in pension benefits if the companies terminate their retirement plans in bankruptcy, the government's pension insurance agency warned Tuesday.....
Minnesota Court Declares Senator Franken The Winner, Sleazy Norm Coleman Vows to Appeal To The United Federation of Planets
and has retained a Klingon Lawyer...
As you've probably heard, the Minnesota election court has just handed down their very much-awaited ruling: That Al Franken was the rightful winner of the most votes in the 2008 Senate election, and he is entitled to receive the certificate of election.
To make a long story short, the court -- who, by the way, are a rare tri-partisan selection of judges -- rejects pretty much every single argument that Team Coleman put forward, and either accepts all of Team Franken's arguments as is or in a somewhat modified form.
So where do we go from here?
Now remember, this is not the end. The Coleman campaign has already announced its intention to appeal...
Bailed Out Banks Raising Fees and Interest Rates
THE US committee overseeing federal banking-bailout programmes is investigating the lending practices of institutions that received public funds, following a rash of complaints about increases in interest rates and fees......
Put NSA in Charge of Cyber Security, Or the Power Grid Gets It
They're baaaack. Those impish Chinese government cyber-saboteurs we last saw posing as 20-foot high trees to trigger the 2003 northeast power outage have returned in an all new adventure, this time in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. In this episode, the clever hackers have teamed with the Russians to penetrate the U.S. electrical grid from coast-to-coast, planting diabolical malware designed to let them plunge portions of America into darkness with a few keystrokes, the paper reports......Sadly, this new installment doesn't contain the kind of juicy details that made the previous one so easy to debunk. In fact, it contains almost no details at all. The attacks are "pervasive," and yet not a single utility company is named as a victim. Even better, the blackout-triggering malware hasn't been spotted by the companies -- which explains perfectly why this is the first we've heard of it. Only America's intelligence community has seen the code. They could show us, but then they'd have to kill us......
Balancing Renewable Energy Projects & Public Lands Stewardship
By Robert Redford
America is on the verge of a renewable energy gold rush. Hundreds of applications for wind and solar projects have been filed on public lands. I think this is long overdue. We need sustainable energy to help us reduce global warming pollution, and we need it fast. But if we don't handle this boom carefully, unspoiled wildlands will get trammeled in its wake. Right now, we have an opportunity to start the clean energy era off right.
It begins with agreeing which sensitive areas should remain undeveloped. Wind and solar power are pollution free, but they are not impact free. They leave an industrial footprint on the land, and some pristine places would be forever altered by their presence.......
Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
by Joe Klein of Time Magazine
For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We'll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We'll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead.".....
The Quiet Coup
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.......
Help, My Degree Is Underwater
Education pays. That's the lesson of study after study on the income effects of going to college and graduate school. In general, you make more money if you get a higher degree. Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz have written that since 1980, "[t]he increase in the relative earnings of college graduates and those with advanced degrees has been particularly large."
The studies that show this finding typically crunch broad swaths of data. They look at the census, or other large population samples, and show a positive correlation between income and years of education. This means that college and graduate school are generally a good bet. But it doesn't tell you that every single degree pays off financially at every single point in time.....
ACLU Calls For Internal DHS Investigations On Fusion Centers
As a Homeland Security Subcommittee in the House held a hearing on fusion centers today, the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its vast concerns that these entities provide huge risks to Americans’ privacy rights.
After testifying last week before the same committee – the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment – the ACLU sent five letters to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties urging investigations into five troubling incidents, several of which have stemmed from DHS-funded fusion centers.
“Fusion centers have experienced a mission creep in the last several years, becoming more of a threat than a security device. With no overarching guidelines to restrict or direct them, these centers put Americans’ privacy at huge risk,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “We need our government to take a long, hard look at what’s going into these centers and, frankly, what’s coming out.”.....
In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments
Are Worse Than Bush's
We had hoped this would go differently.
Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments.
First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue "would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security." As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.
It's an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration "invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court." He was right then, and we're dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten.
Keith Olbermann's scathing criticism of Obama's secrecy/immunity claims (Video)
Several weeks ago, I noted that unlike the Right -- which turned itself into a virtual cult of uncritical reverence for George W. Bush especially during the first several years of his administration -- large numbers of Bush critics have been admirably willing to criticize Obama when he embraces the very policies that prompted so much anger and controversy during the Bush years. Last night, Keith Olbermann -- who has undoubtedly been one of the most swooning and often-uncritical admirers of Barack Obama of anyone in the country (behavior for which I rather harshly criticized him in the past) -- devoted the first two segments of his show to emphatically lambasting Obama and Eric Holder's DOJ for the story I wrote about on Monday: namely, the Obama administration's use of the radical Bush/Cheney state secrets doctrine and -- worse still -- a brand new claim of "sovereign immunity" to insist that courts lack the authority to decide whether the Bush administration broke the law in illegally spying on Americans.....
GM Pensions May Be ‘Garbage’ With $16 Billion at Risk
Den Black, a retired General Motors Corp. engineering executive, says he’s worried and angry. The government-supported automaker is going bankrupt, he says, and he’s sure some of his retirement pay will go down with it.
“This is going to wreck us,” said Black, 62, speaking of GM retirees. “These pledges from our companies are now garbage.”
As the biggest U.S. automaker teeters near bankruptcy, workers and retirees like Black are bracing for what may be $16 billion in pension losses if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has to take over the plans, according to the agency. As many as half of GM’s 670,000 pension-plan participants might see their benefits trimmed if that happened, an actuary familiar with the company’s retirement programs estimates......
Wikipedia for Spies: The CIA Discovers Web 2.0
There's a quiet revolution underway at the CIA and its sister agencies. A new generation of analysts, determined to drag their Cold War colleagues into the world of Web 2.0 information sharing, has created Intellipedia, a classified version of Wikipedia they say is transforming the way American spy agencies handle top secret information by fostering collaboration across Washington and around the world. Rolled out to skeptical veterans at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 2006, Intellipedia has grown to a 900,000-page magnum opus of espionage, handling some 100,000 user accounts and 5,000 page edits a day, according to the CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence......
Stewart: GOP pundits 'confusing tyranny with losing' (Video)
Stewart mocked Andrew Breitbart, a former editor of the Drudge Report, who now runs his own Web news portal, for saying that since Obama became president, his children’s public school no longer used the term ‘St. Patrick’s Day’ but rather, ‘Potato Day.’
“I’m not Irish but I’m not sure ‘Potato Day’ is more politically correct than St. Patrick’s Day. I think it might be worse,” laughed Stewart before going on to say:
“And while President Bush was the one who started the bailout, nationalizing an insurance company, added a $17 trillion drug prescription entitlement program, had a government-mandated public school initiative, literally titled ‘No Child Left Behind,’ wiretapped citizens without warrants, created secret internment camps in international waters behind the reach of our justice system and allowed his vice president to live in a netherworld between the executive and legislative branch…Only now with the advent of ‘Potato Day’ has tyranny come to our shores.”
Stewart advised angry Republicans that they were "confusing tyranny with losing." “Now you’re in the minority, it’s supposed to taste like a sh** taco.
Original Beatles Albums to Be Reissued on 9-9-9 #9, #9 ....
Finally. After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets — one stereo, the other mono — on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release......
With Votes Counted, Franken Now Leads By 312 Votes. Coleman vows appeal to The Supreme Court of Mars, and then to Pluto...
Obama's Sheriff
Under Bush, the Interior Department was as lawless as the Wild West. But can the new secretary bring the wrongdoers to justice?
As top officials in the Obama administration settle into their new offices, they are just now beginning to uncover some of the worst abuses committed by their predecessors. And of all the corruption that characterized the Bush years, none is more shocking — and more responsible for lasting damage — than the pervasive scandals and cronyism at the federal agency charged with managing one-fifth of America's land.
Under Bush, the Interior Department became a lawless bureaucracy that actively worked to enrich the nation's most powerful energy interests. Top-level officials secretly allowed oil companies to keep billions in royalties owed to taxpayers, opened up 26 million acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling, denied wilderness protection to another 220 million acres, rewrote scientific reports to eliminate safeguards for endangered species, and even snorted coke and had sex with the very oil interests they were supposed to be regulating. "It was Dodge City," says Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon....
Inside Apple's war chest: CIA-like patents for the next-gen iPhone
As the next iPhone looms just over the horizon, new Sci-Fi patents begin to emerge. They give us a plausible glimpse of iPhone's new features. While it's true that most of the patented ideas will never make it into the iPhone, with Apple all bets are off and every option is worth considering. A best-case scenario is described in the company's recent patent filings. It outlines a next-gen iPhone that could have a high-tech display doubling as a camera capable of recording video, hidden biometric sensors that would check our voice, retina, ear shape and fingerprints to ensure only authorized use -- meaning even if someone does steal the handset, your iPhone would automatically notify the police and report its coordinates....
Goldman Sachs and the Manipulation of Oil Prices
Anyone who “dismisses” the role of speculators in this shakedown is either stupid, or in on the scam…
Henry Paulson was formerly the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. Well, well, well. Hank might have us believe that the Tooth Fairy has more to do with the price of oil than speculators. I mean, what possible impact could a firm with more black boxes than DARPA and some of the deepest pockets on Wall Street have on leveraged commodity markets? Meh! Fuggetaboutit.... From Cryptogon
How Goldman Sachs was at the center of the oil trading fiasco that bankrupted pipeline giant Semgroup.
When oil prices spiked last summer to $147 a barrel, the biggest corporate casualty was oil pipeline giant Semgroup Holdings, a $14 billion (sales) private firm in Tulsa, Okla. It had racked up $2.4 billion in trading losses betting that oil prices would go down, including $290 million in accounts personally managed by then chief executive Thomas Kivisto. Its short positions amounted to the equivalent of 20% of the nation’s crude oil inventories. With the credit crunch eliminating any hope of meeting a $500 million margin call, Semgroup filed for bankruptcy on July 22.
But now some of the people involved in cleaning up the financial mess are suggesting that Semgroup’s collapse was more than just bad judgment and worse timing. There is evidence of a malevolent hand at work: oil price manipulation by traders orchestrating a short squeeze to push up the price of West Texas Intermediate crude to the point that it would generate fatal losses in Semgroup’s accounts.....
Senate Legislation Would Federalize Cybersecurity
Key lawmakers are pushing to dramatically escalate U.S. defenses against cyberattacks, crafting proposals that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time.
The proposals, in Senate legislation that could be introduced as early as today, would broaden the focus of the government's cybersecurity efforts to include not only military networks but also private systems that control essentials such as electricity and water distribution. At the same time, the bill would add regulatory teeth to ensure industry compliance with the rules, congressional officials familiar with the plan said yesterday.
Addressing what intelligence officials describe as a gaping vulnerability, the legislation also calls for the appointment of a White House cybersecurity "czar" with unprecedented authority to shut down computer networks, including private ones, if a cyberattack is underway, the officials said.
Should Obama Control the Internet?
Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?
Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians....
Big Money is Going to Take Your Internet Access Away!
Whenever you read the lead or off-lead story in a newspaper, whenever a TV anchor interrupts newscast to bring you breaking news, you can be pretty sure the real story is living its secret life unnoticed....What I`m talking about is control of the Internet. The subject has been dubbed net neutrality, but that`s an entirely too bland term for what is going on. What is at stake is whether you and I can have the same kind of high-speed, equal-service access to the Internet that Big Business has, or whether giant telecommunications companies like Time Warner, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon will get away with creating a tiered, or multilevel system of Internet speeds so that certain providers can buy a fast lane ahead of you and me. It would be like a rich guy having a lane all to himself on a six-lane highway because he paid for it. You would get the lane you could afford. Net neutrality, on the other hand, would mean no special privileges for Big Money. It would mean equal access and equal service. It would reflect the democratic principles expressed in our Bill of Rights. A tiered system would give the corporations exactly what Thomas Jefferson feared they would acquire, power to corrupt democracy. There would be the corporations` democracy, and then there would be yours. Yours would consists largely of the right to be hornswoggled. Controlling access to higher speeds and better service would be a form of censorship, just as our voting power is now being censored by Big Money. We don`t have the best candidates, we have the candidates who are best at selling themselves to monied interests. The best people in every community can`t afford to run for office, and so, rather than having the best government we can give ourselves, we have the worst government money can buy.....
Apple’s iPhone brings Skype to the mobile masses
IPhone users will be able to make free phone calls from today as Skype becomes available for the first time on the popular Apple gadget. Skype, the internet telephone unit of eBay, has more than 450 million registered users. It has been pushing to make its service available on “smart-phones” - such as the iPhone - rather than only desktop computers.
TSA Detains, Harasses Man for Carrying $4700 in Cash,
Ron Paul Bumper Stickers (Video)
Police 'fusion' centers criticized for tracking
Ron Paul, Barr, McKinney supporters
Formed in the wake of 9/11 as a way to search out domestic terrorist threats, fusion centers today are being bombarded with criticism on all sides for things like improper surveillance of the supporters of third-party presidential candidates and an ambiguous mission directive that has lead to power overreaching.
Fusion centers are intelligence databases spread out across the country that collect data on ordinary citizens and synchronize national intelligence collection with local police. There are currently more than 40 fusion centers in the country....
“National Network” of Fusion Centers Raises Specter of COINTELPRO
EPIC’s “Spotlight on Surveillance” project scrutinizes federal government programs that affect individual privacy. For more information, see previous Spotlights on Surveillance. This month, Spotlight shines on fusion centers, which have received $380 million in federal grants and millions more from state governments.[1] There are 43 current and planned fusion centers in the U.S., and some states have more than one.[2]
A “fusion center,” according to the Department of Justice, is a “mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by analyzing data from a variety of sources,” which includes private sector firms and anonymous tipsters.[3] When local and state fusion centers were first created, they were purely oriented toward counterterrorism, but, over time and with the escalating involvement of federal officials, fusion centers “have increasingly gravitated toward an all-crimes and even broader all-hazards approach.”[4]
The expansion of fusion center goals and increasing interaction with federal and private sector entities leads to a massive accumulation of data, raising questions of possible misuse or abuse. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to create a “national network” of local and state fusion centers, tied into DHS’s “day-to-day activities.” This national network combined with the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to condition grant funding based on fusion center “compliance” with the federal agency’s priorities inculcates DHS with enormous domestic surveillance powers and evokes comparisons the publicly condemned domestic surveillance program COINTELPRO.
Reps Paul, Frank introduce bill to legalize industrial hemp
Senator-Elect Al Franken wins court battle in Minnesota recount, Sleazy Norm Coleman plans to appeal To Courts run by Aliens from UFO's when he loses all Appeals on Earth...
On a conference call with reporters just now, held in the wake of the election court's ruling to review only 400 ballots for possible inclusion -- and explicitly rejecting Coleman's calls for leniency in the standards and the burden of poof -- legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg made it absolutely clear: "If these rulings stand in any final order of the court, if it will give us no choice but to appeal that order.....
In the highly competitive race for the title of "Stupidest Recent Financial Decision Made By A Government Official", this one's got to be a strong contender....
Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks. Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.
Who was responsible for the switch? Meet Charles Millard, a former Lehman exec (great pedigree there) who ran the agency from 2007 until the end of the Bush administration. Millard told the Globe: "The new investment policy is not riskier than the old one," and added that a riskier strategy was justified to give the agency a chance to raise enough money to eliminate its deficit.
It appears to have had the opposite effect though. The agency's stock-related investments were down 23 percent since the end of last September. But as the Globe notes, that was before the major downturn in the market triggered by the financial crisis. So the losses now are probably considerably higher. "This could be huge," Zvi Bodie, a finance professor who in 2002 advised the agency to rely on bonds, told the Globe. "This has the potential to be another several hundred billion dollars."
How insurers secretly blacklist millions with common ailments
Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You'll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.
What's more, you can discover that if you lie to an insurer about your medical history and drug use, you will be rejected because data-mining companies sell information to insurers about your health, including detailed usage of prescription drugs.
These issues are moving to the forefront as the Obama administration and Congress gear up for discussions about how to reform the healthcare system so that Americans won't be rejected for insurance.
EU to probe web user profiling by advertiser
European authorities are to investigate consumer profiling by online advertisers amid allegations by senior European Union officials that “basic rights in terms of transparency, control and risk” are being violated.Officials say they will collect evidence from consumers and industry on the information commercial websites are collecting and how it is being used. It could result in new controls on online advertisers, internet service providers and networking sites.
EU officials are particularly concerned by the growing use of “deep-packet inspection” technologies that allow broadband providers to track online activity even after consumers have tried to control the use of cookies – which allow websites to monitor browsing patterns. Although not widely used for advertising at the moment, many broadband providers see the technology as a source of future revenues....
VA'S INSPECTOR GENERAL TO CREATE MONSTER VETS' DATABASE -
BUT, FOR WHAT, EXACTLY?
While the entry in the Federal Register (FR) states that VAOIG would be using vets' information in the form of "extracts" that contain virtually everything there is to know about an individual:
These data extracts contain personal identifiers (e.g., social security numbers and military service numbers, etc.), residential and professional contact data (e.g., address and telephone numbers, etc.), population demographics (e.g., gender and zip codes, etc.), military service-related data (e.g., branch of service and service dates, etc.), financial-related data (e.g., amount of historic benefit payments, etc.), claims processing codes and information (e.g., disability compensation and pension award codes, etc.), and other VA and non-VA Federal information.......
VA may, on its own initiative, disclose information in this system, except the names and home addresses of veterans and their dependents, which is relevant to a suspected or reasonably imminent violation of law, whether civil, criminal or regulatory in nature and whether arising by general or program statute or by regulation, rule or order issued pursuant thereto, to a Federal, State, local, tribal or foreign agency charged with the responsibility of investigation or prosecuting such violation, or charged with enforcing or implementing the statute, regulation rule or order.
Also:
On its own initiative, VA may also disclose the names and addresses of veterans and their dependents to a Federal agency charged with the responsibility of investigating or prosecuting civil, criminal or regulatory violations of law, or charged with enforcing or implementing the statute, regulation, rule or order issued pursuant thereto.
And, if you read further, it doesn't get any better........
Monsanto's Many Attempts to Destroy All Seeds but Their Own
Some say that if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, they simply shouldn’t buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds. But it isn’t quite that simple. Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples, and then sues, saying they own the crop.
Meanwhile, Monsanto is taking many other steps to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of normal seeds:
1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.
2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork that having normal seed becomes almost impossible.
3. Monsanto is pushing laws that ensure farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.
Innovator Shane McConkey dies in ski accident
Among his peers in the skiing community, he was known as "Cliff Huckstable," the guy who would ski the big lines others would never dare and stick the landings of 400-foot jumps — with the aid of a parachute. Shane McConkey, one of the modern skiing world's most innovative, daring and talented, died Thursday after a midair mishap in the Dolomite mountains of Italy. He was 39.
"It will be a long, long time before our sport experiences another person like him," said friend and fellow professional skier Chris Anthony of Vail. "As far as skiing goes, he's got to be in the top 10 most important and influential people in our industry."....
Ralph Nader: Seven Steps the Obama Admin is NOT
Taking to Fix the Banking Crash, Why Not?
Indicators of avoidance are what come to mind while absorbing the various rescue, recovery, stimulus and guarantee programs coming out of the Obama Administration to slow and reverse a splintering and shattering economy. If the Obamites do not act now when the political time is ripest, to put into motion forces of deterrence and prevention, the casino capitalists of tomorrow will again be able to de-stabilize our economy......
1. Where are the resources for comprehensive law enforcement against the Wall Street crooks, swindlers and purveyors of costly deceptive practices? Isn't there a need to add two to three hundred million dollars for more FBI agents, prosecutors and corporate crime attorneys under the Justice Department to obtain the fines and disgorgements which will far exceed in dollars what is spent by the forces of law and order?....
2. Where are the anti-trusters to revive the moribund divisions in the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commision? Failed banks, brokerage firms, and now insurance companies are being taken over by shaky acquirers, often with the encouragement of the federal government. Other industries are experiencing similar mergers and acquisitions in an already over-concentrated economy......