Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up:
His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy
.....What Nixon apparently failed to tell Hess was that the major story from his meeting with reporters in Dallas was certain to fuel the anger of some Texans toward Kennedy. The headline in the Dallas Morning News on November 22 said: "Nixon Predicts JFK May Drop Johnson." Vice President Lyndon Johnson was, of course, a Texan.
On the morning after the assassination, Nixon convened a meeting of Republican leaders at his New York apartment. Those assembled were "already assessing how this event would affect or recreate the possibilities of Nixon running for president," according to Hess.
Boasting that he was the mastermind of a Mob/CIA plot to kill President Kennedy, Chicago godfather Sam Giancana told relatives he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 to supervise that plot. Giancana claimed that both "Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson knew about the whole damn thing"— adding that he had met with both future presidents in Dallas "immediately prior to the assassination."...
"The linked articles main focus is on the 'Mob Connections' to the JFK Coup. It was written in 2003 before E. Howard Hunts death, when more revelations about E. Howard Hunt and "others" role in the assassination were revealed. As for the "Mob Connections" in the story, while they're clearly was a mob component to the JFK Coup, the Coup was financed, and organized by Texas based disgruntled components of the "Military Industrial Complex" Community. Any Mafia involvement was as a sub contract, cut out operation of the Coup. When I get some time I will eventually put all the JFK and RFK assassination stories on a separate page, but they can currently be found by using the Google search function above." Willy Bova
Obama’s FCC chairman to outline ‘net neutrality’ rule
(This is a huge change from Bush' FCC and long over due)
The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to outline rules on Monday requiring Internet providers to respect “net neutrality,” the principle that all Web traffic should be treated equally. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is to make a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, on Monday during which he will “affirm his support for a free and open Internet,” the FCC said. The regulatory body did not provide any further details about Genachowski’s speech, his first major pronouncement on the hotly contested issue since taking office....
Did Bush Continue to Secretly Operate Total Information Awareness?
Back in 2001, the Defense Department was briefed about a massive data mining system that officials said was aimed at identifying alleged terrorists who lived and communicated with people in the United States. The new intelligence program granted traditional law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct what was then referred to as "suspicionless surveillance" of American citizens.
"Suspicionless Surveillance" was developed by the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Adm. John Poindexter, the former national security adviser, who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal...
‘Project Indect’: An A.I. to police all of Europe
The European Union is spending tens of millions of euros on an artificial intelligence system known as “Project Indect,” which would draw from multiple data sources, namely public surveillance cameras, in order to detect “threats” and recognize “abnormal behavior” across the whole continent.
According to the project’s Web site, once completed, Project Indect would even be able to track vehicles as a type of support network for EU police officers.
Perhaps more chilling, the project promises “continuous monitoring” of “web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p networks [and] individual computer systems”....
EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"
A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence"....
Battle Looms Over the Patriot Act
As Congress prepares to consider extending crucial provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and some Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.Both the House and the Senate are set to hold their first committee hearings this week on whether to reauthorize three sections of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. The provisions expanded the power of the F.B.I. to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls in the course of a counterterrorism investigation.
Senate's Health Reform's 'gang of 6' Reaps Huge Political Cash
The bipartisan "gang of six" senators who helped craft the health care reform bill going before a key Senate committee Tuesday represent less than 3 percent of the U.S. population - but they hold a lot of power at a crucial policy-shaping moment in Congress. That's why, analysts say, health care industry lobbyists have showered them with more campaign cash on average than other senators this year, in an attempt to influence the outcome. Three Republican and three Democratic senators in the group, all of them members of the Senate Finance Committee, received an average of $74,600 from health industry lobbyists, according to The Chronicle's analysis of records through June....
Study: 45,000 Americans die each year for lack of insurance
Harvard researchers published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health a study which reveals roughly 45,000 American adults die every year because they are not covered by health insurance. Researchers specifically noted that lack of health insurance now kills more adults than kidney disease....
"Keep F****ing That Chicken"
(Video, Beyond Funny)
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart reminded his audience on Thursday — in case they’d somehow forgotten — of the Iraq War, with its “lack of a coherent postwar plan [or] a reason to have the war.”
“But did you know that we also have this whole other war in Afghanistan?” Stewart asked. He then played a montage of television news clips calling the Afghan War “a mission politically and militarily in crisis” and reporting that “President Karzai is accused of rigging the election. … More than a million and a half ballots are suspicious.”
Stewart turned to John Oliver, saying, “Eight years into this war in Afghanistan and it appears we are now fighting an intractable war only to establish a corrupt, undemocratic state. How did this happen?”
“Really? America is having a hard time fighting in Afghanistan?” an incredulous Oliver replied. “How could that be? Especially considering Afghanistan is only the most unconquerable place on earth.”
After pointing out that both Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great failed to take Afghanistan, Oliver noted caustically, “America, you want to be different, right? The arrogance is unbelievable.”
“Even Britain was routed there,” Oliver went on. “Afghanistan is the gold standard for quagmires.”
Big Safari, the Kennedy Assassination, & the war for control of the Venice Airport
“I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason, or inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field, or coincidence piled on coincidence too many times, as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible.”—New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison...
....Operations at the Venice Airport have involved individuals whose names figure prominently in the Kennedy Assassination, for example Texas oilman General D. H. (Harry) Byrd, owner of a defense contractor which in the late 50's and early 60's built and launched Regulus II cruise missiles from the beach directly in front of the Venice Airport in a program run out of at Eglin AFB in Florida’s panhandle....
General Byrd, of course, was the owner of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, where the Warren Commission alleged Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots which killed President John F. Kennedy.
Byrd also ran the Texas and Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, at the same time cadets Barry Seal and Lee Harvey Oswald were meeting Kennedy assassination conspirator Capt. David Ferrie at a two-week summer camp of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale Air Force Base in July of 1955...According to this recently-unearthed police report, that man, a suspected CIA Agent, flew to Cuba in 1969 on a mission to assassinate one of “four or five” of the men then still alive who had been part of the Kennedy assassination “hit team.”...
While Byrd’s Texas Book Repository was being put to what Mr Byrd no doubt claimed was unauthorized use on Nov. 22 1963, Mr Byrd himself had been otherwise engaged.
With a big assist from Linda Minor, a lawyer and invaluable researcher into all things Texan, and resources freely available at the amazing Mary Ferrell Foundation, we make bold to offer a brief distillation of what happened next…
On the day of the assassination Byrd was conveniently “away from his desk.”
He was out of the country on a two-month safari in central Africa. When he returned in January, his good friend Lyndon Johnson was the new President of the United States, his School Book Depository building had become famous in his absence, and a huge juicy defense contract was waiting on his desk, awarded to his company to build fighter planes, and to be paid from the 1965 Congressional budget… even though it had not yet been approved by Congress....
Stewart: Congress is trapped on a ‘Jackass Carousel' (Video)
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took a caustic look on Wednesday at the endless Congressional merry-go-round of demands for apologies by members of the opposite party.
When the House of Representatives passed a resolution of disapproval against Rep. Joe Wilson for his outburst during President Obama’s address last week, some Republicans were quick to label it a time-wasting distraction from more important issues.
“At least Republicans weren’t wasting time demanding meaningless apologies,” Stewart noted with seeming approval.
Stewart then played a clip from last July of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) introducing a resolution “calling on President Obama to retract and apologize for his remarks regarding the conduct of Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant James M. Crowley, Jr.”
“These apologies keep going around and around,” Stewart explained. “It appears our Congress is trapped on a Jackass Carousel. One party demands an apology, the other party declares it a waste of time — time better spent demanding their own equally pointless apology, which in a beautiful pas de deux the first party then declares a waste of time.”
Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe
The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.....
Public Defender For Billionaire Ponzi Scum "Sir" Allen Stanford
Billionaire banker Allen Stanford will have to settle for a public defender to represent him on charges that he orchestrated a massive financial fraud.....
Another lawsuit targets founder of Blackwater
Yet another civil lawsuit accuses Blackwater guards of driving through the streets of Baghdad randomly shooting innocent Iraqis. The latest case accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personally directing murders from a 24-hour remote monitoring "war room" at the private military company's Moyock, N.C., headquarters.
Prince "personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army... to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians," alleges the suit, filed by four Iraqi citizens...
House Panel Explores Tragic Clashes With Private Insurance Bureaucracy
For Erinn Ackley, it was her father’s insurance company denying claim after claim for a bone marrow transplant to treat the leukemia that eventually killed him. For Mark Gendernalik, it was his insurer’s agent refusing referrals for diagnostic tests for his three-month-old daughter, who was suffering seizures. And for pediatrician Mel Stern, it’s been a decades-long scuffle with insurers over claims payments — a battle that’s forced him to stock his office with folks dedicated solely to the task of paperwork-shuffling and claims-haggling.
As conservatives continue to warn that the Democrats’ health reform plans would stick government bureaucrats between doctors and patients, a number of consumers, physicians and former insurance industry employees told lawmakers Wednesday that such bureaucrats are already in place: they’re called private insurance companies. And, bound to shareholders above patients, the witnesses said, these companies are playing a sometimes-deadly game of withholding payments for doctor-prescribed services simply to inflate profits....
Fussion Centers to share Classified Information with
The "Private Sector" and Local Police
In a move raising eyebrows among civil liberties advocates, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it would give so-called local and state “fusion centers” access to classified military intelligence in Pentagon databases.
Fusion centers are hubs for local law enforcement, the private sector and the intelligence community, and were created in an effort to fight terrorism. There are more than seventy known centers across the United States....
"While the idea of Fusion Centers looks good on a flow chart, the simple fact is that there is zero oversite of these centers, is a recipie for disaster. There currently is now way for private citizens to verify the accuracy of the information being stored in these Fusion Center Databases, yet the information is available to the "Private Sector" and comes from "Private Sector" Databases that are not available for review by the general public for accuracy either. A classic example of GIGO, Garbage in Garbage out. Eventually, this will lead to Americans being placed on watch lists for travel and basic monitoring based on legitimate dissent against corporations or the government. If you are going to have Fusion centers they need to be accountable to the Freedon of Information Act, as well as the Privacy Act of 1974, otherwise you are just creating a new intelligence agency withput any oversite. While this may make Richard Nixon smile from his grave, it is a recipe for "Mission Creep" beyond imagination, in theunlimited scope of these Fusion centers to create "Stasi Like" files that will grow and grow and grow till they eventually cover every single American. Congress needs to hold hearings on these Fusion centers and implement oversite as soon as possible." Willy Bova
Whistleblower: Baucus health bill an ‘absolute gift’ to insurers
Pharma group that made deal with Obama now backing Baucus health bill
The health care reform plan proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is an “absolute gift” to health care insurance companies, says an industry whistleblower.
Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna, said the Baucus plan “would not provide affordable coverage … gives the industry too much latitude to charge higher premiums based on age and geographic location, fails to mandate employer coverage, and pushes consumers into plans with limited benefits,” Politico reports....
"The Bill that emerges from the Senate Finace Committee, must be stopped, it is criminal in it's approach to Health care reform. While the bill may just be a distraction in the suaseage making process, if it is not, and it somehow becomes the bill of the 5 currently being proposed, that survives, then America is doomed. The bottom line is without a public option, it does not matter how you reform Health Care, the Insurance companies and the Big Pharma companies will find a way to screw the American public. The smartest thing that President Obama, could do right now is to propose lowering the age for medicare eligibility to 55 years old. By doing this many people 55 and up could retire, because they would now have health care, and this would open up jobs for younger workers. The only way to fix Americas helath care disaster is to slowly bring more people into Medicare, and allow a public option for coverage, to keep the Health Care Industrial Complex honest, anything else is just lipstick on a pig." Willy Bova
The Health Insurance Racket
( A Must See Video)
Forward this video to your friends and watch all the videos at www.sickforprofit.com
CIGNAs Edward Hanway spends his holidays in a $13 million beach house in New Jersey. Meanwhile, regular Americans are routinely denied coverage for the care they need when they need it most.
Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now theyre sending lobbyists to Washington, DC to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.
Learn more at www.sickforprofit.com about the glamorous lives of billionaire health insurance executives and tell us your story of being victimized by their greed.
New York preparing charges against Bank of America execs
A federal judge on Monday rejected a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America Corp., saying the SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must now go to trial.
Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is preparing to file charges within the next couple of weeks against several high-ranking executives at Bank of America, claiming they failed to disclose details about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to a person familiar with the investigation.....
It's Simple: Medicare for All
By George S. McGovern
For many years, a handful of American political leaders -- including the late senator Ted Kennedy and now President Obama -- have been trying to gain passage of comprehensive health care for all Americans. As far back as President Harry S. Truman, they have urged Congress to act on this national need. In a presentation before a joint session of Congress last week, Obama offered his view of the best way forward.
But what seems missing in the current battle is a single proposal that everyone can understand and that does not lend itself to demagoguery. If we want comprehensive health care for all our citizens, we can achieve it with a single sentence: Congress hereby extends Medicare to all Americans....
Bill Maher to Obama: 'Stand up for the 70% of Americans who aren't crazy.' (Video)
Friday night on 'Real Time' with Bill Maher, Maher had a lot on his mind to cover in his 'New Rules' segment. He had new rules to cover everything from babies in public swimming pools to Michelle Obama's arms, and a message for President Obama, asking him to "Stand up for the 70% of Americans who aren't crazy" in the drive for serious health care reform.
Maher focused most of his ire on the flap over Obama's speech to America's school children, the resignation of White House Council on Environmental Quality's Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Van Jones, and the continuing battle in Congress over health care reform.
Maher suggested that the next time the President decides to address America's school children that he should tell them "that they are obese, and the should get off drugs or else they'll grow up to be Rush Limbaugh....
Miami’s Ex-DEA Chief Charged with Shredding Documents for Ponzi Scum Allen Stanford
The former chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami office who led the agency's cases against infamous Panama strongman Manuel Noriega and Medellin cartel kingpin Fabio Ocho, was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for ordering the shredding of records once belonging to disgraced banker Allen Stanford.
Tom Raffanello, who emerged as Stanford's worldwide security chief after leaving the DEA five years ago, was charged with ordering workers to destroy thousands of documents just days after government agents shut down the banking empire in a massive fraud case.....
The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War
by Prof. Peter Dale Scott
....Blackwater has attracted the critical attention of the American Mainstream Media. But it was a mere knight on the grand chessboard, albeit one with the ability to influence the moves of the game. Far less noticed has been given to Diligence LLC. Diligence, a more powerful company, that unlike Blackwater interfaced heavily with Wall Street, "set up shop in Baghdad [in July 2003] to provide security for companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction. In December, it established a new subsidiary called Diligence Middle East, and expanded its services to include screening, vetting and training of local hires, and the provision of daily intelligence briefs for its corporate clients."[30]
Certainly the political clout of Diligence outshone and outlasted Blackwater’s. Two of its founding directors (Lanny Griffiths and Ed Rogers) were also founders of the influential Republican lobbying team Barbour Griffiths and Rogers (later renamed BGR). Haley Barbour, the senior founder of BGR, also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997.
Diligence LLC was licensed to do business in Iraq as a private military contractor (PMC). But it could be called a Private Intelligence Contractor (PIC), since it is virtually a CIA spin-off:
Diligence was founded by William Webster, the only man to head both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mike Baker, its chief executive officer, spent 14 years at the CIA as a covert field operations officer specializing in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Whitley Bruner, its chief operating officer in Baghdad, was once the CIA station chief in Iraq...
Vladimir Putin signals plan to reclaim old job as Russian president
Vladimir Putin dropped the heaviest hint so far that he aims to return to his former post as president in 2012, a move that could see him still in the Kremlin in 2024 – aged 72. Speaking to a group of international scholars and journalists at his country residence, the Russian prime minister refused to quash rumours that he would return as president when Dmitry Medvedev finished his first term.
He said the process of deciding who would be president would follow the same pattern as in the run-up to the last election, when Putin effectively called all the shots and picked Medvedev as his successor. An election took place, but the result was a foregone conclusion.
"Was there any competition in 2007? No. Then we won't have this in 2012," Putin said. Smiling broadly, he added: "We will agree because we are people of one stamp. We will take all these things into account and then decide."....
Republicans worried that they're becoming 'Party of Cranks'
Joe Wilson’s outburst Wednesday night earned more than a personal rebuke from the president and a dagger-eyed gasp from the speaker of the House; it drew winces from Republicans worried that their party is becoming known less for the power of its ideals and more for the pettiness of its vitriol.
“Neither party has an exclusive on wack jobs,” says Republican media consultant Mark McKinnon. “Unfortunately, right now the Democrats generally get defined by President Obama, and Republicans, who have no clear leadership, get defined by crackpots — and then they begin to define the Republican Party in the mind of the general public.”
Turn on the TV, and you see what he means.
Here’s Orly Taitz, insisting that the commander in chief was born in Kenya. There’s a flock of town hall protesters, waving photos of the president in a Hitler mustache. Former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin warns darkly that Obama is planning “death panels” for senior citizens. Georgia Rep. Paul Broun equates the president’s plans with “Nazi” policies. Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt — last heard calling John Murtha a “coward” — tells a birther: “I agree with you, but the courts don’t.”....
Is the Age of Terror Over?
By Gary Hart
The short answer to this question is yes and no. Yes, in the sense that terrorism was never a global phenomenon that could be defeated by a "war" as proposed by George W. Bush. No, in the sense that the United States will be attacked again someplace, sometime.
For those who say that the $40 to $50 billion we spend each year on homeland security has achieved its purpose, namely that we have not been attacked again, it is only necessary to remind ourselves that eight years passed between the first and second attacks on the World Trade Center and eight years have passed, today, since 9/11. So, for those of us who, like Richard Clarke, have always had "our hair on fire," another attack by some group, probably related in some way to al Qaeda, is to be expected.
On a scale of 1 to 10, we are not yet at 9, or probably even 7. The greatest danger in terms of potential damage to life and property is still the nuclear threat. But if, as I suspect, the most likely and easiest future attack involves biological agents, our borders are and will remain porous, defenses against viral agents borne by human "bombs" are and will remain inadequate, and post-attack response is insufficient. Response plans, involving quarantine, suppression, mass casualty victim treatment, and other measures can always use improvement....
Charlie Sheen's Message to President Obama
about 9/11\2001 (Video)
" Normally I do not, link stories about 9/11\2001 and the endless questions about the events of that day. There are plenty of other sites on the Internet to get those stories, but Charlie Sheen putting out a slick video about 9/11 is news. The Video is worth seeing, if only to understand why millions of American's question "What Really Happened on 9/11\2001". Willy Bova
Charlie Sheen addresses the President about 9/11 in a special video message, shortly after releasing his "20 Minutes with the President," specifically addressing 20 key points that need to be answered by a truly independent investigation.
Sheen's message is a call to action, not only for President Obama to address the pertinent issues, but for activists everywhere to pressure their representatives and leaders, wherever they may be, to 'be on the right side of history' and take back the country through peaceful revolution and true grassroots dissent.
Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog
Over the course of 10 months in eastern Afghanistan, an Army specialist nicknamed Mud Puppy maintained a blog irreverently chronicling life at the front, from the terror of roadside bombs to the tyrannies of master sergeants.
Often funny and always profane, the blog, Embrace the Suck (military slang for making the best of a bad situation), flies under the Army’s radar. Not officially approved, it is hidden behind a password-protected wall because the reservist does not want his superiors censoring it.
“Some officer would be reviewing all my writing,” the 31-year-old soldier, who insisted that his name not be used, said in an e-mail message. “And sooner or later he would find something to nail me with.”...
‘E-Bomb’ Doomsday Conference Starts Today (Video)
It’ll fry pace makers, destroy iPhones, and turn laptops into useless paperweights. It’s the scariest thing most people outside the Washington Beltway have never heard of: electromagnetic pulse weapons.
And you can learn all about it starting today at the EMPACT conference in Niagara Falls, New York.
Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is a burst of electromagnetic radiation that fries electronics, from satellites to toaster ovens. The effects of a nuclear EMP were first observed after the 1962 Starfish Prime nuclear test, which knocked out satellites and electronics. EMP weapons are specifically designed to maximize this electronics-killing effect, which can be done by detonating a high-altitude nuclear explosion. Though the effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear blast, the U.S. military, among others, has been looking at conventional weapons that harness the EMP effect. Those who worry about these weapons say that a single EMP attack could shut down the continental United States, creating mass havoc caused by the breakdown in infrastructure.....As an interesting aside, the conspiracy-plagued High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, the radar array in Alaska, has been proposed as a facility that could be used to research ways to “scrub” the upper atmosphere, mitigating the effects of EMP.
Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames
.....Bringing Haarp to fruition was, well, complicated. A group of scientists had to cozy up to a US senator, cut deals with an oil company, and convince the Pentagon that the project might revolutionize war. Oh, and along the way they sparked enough conspiracy theories to make the place sound like an arctic Area 51.....
Grizzlies starve as salmon disappear
First the salmon vanished, now the bears may be gone too.
Reports from conservationists, salmon-stream walkers and ecotourism guides all along British Columbia's wild central coast indicate a collapse of salmon runs has triggered widespread death from starvation of black and grizzly bears. Those guides are on the front lines of what they say is an unfolding ecological disaster that is so new that it has not been documented by biologists.
“I've never experienced anything like this. There has been a huge drop in the number of bears we see,” said Doug Neasloss, a bear-viewing guide with the Kitasoo-Xaixais tribes in Klemtu, about 180 kilometres south of Kitimat....
How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it
By Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone
Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.
The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses...
"This articleclearly states where the Health Care reform process is. It is basically about how "Sausage" is made in Congress. Many of the outrageous things in the piece will disappear in the final bill only to be replaced by some other outrageous thing. While how Congress makes laws is not pretty, it is great reporting on Matt Taibbi's part to give a clear picture of where we are at now with the Health Care "Sausage process". I will reserve judgemnent on President Obama, until I see the conference committee bill that emerges after the the House and Senate pass their respective bills. But I will say this, if the final bill does not produce a public option in some form, America eventually will collapse in a fashion very simalr to the old USSR. If President Obama, can not pass a health care bill with a public option, with 60 Senators, and a plus 50 majority in the House, he won't have to worry about getting re-elected, because, the only question left for America is "Who will buy the Marshmellows"....... That is what is at stake in this "Suasage Making Process". America has become a Cleptocracy, and the first place to build a foundation where America can begin to rebuild what remains of it's Democracy after the disgraceful Bush/Cheney crime families, rule from the last 8 years, is to bring America's Health Care Cleptocracy to an end." Willy Bova
The Snowe Job, and Why a "Trigger" for a Public Option is Nonsense
I was just on the phone talking with a reporter for a national media outlet who referred to Senator Olympia Snowe's idea for a public option "trigger" as the "centrist position." Whoa. When the mainstream media start naming something as "centrist" the game is almost over because just about everyone with any authority in our nation's capital wants to be at the "center."
Let me back up a step. The public insurance option has become a lightening rod for Republicans, hate radio jocks, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and lobbyists for the health-industrial complex who accuse the White House and Democrats of planning a "government takeover" of health care. Anything that has the word "public" in it is always an automatic target for their rants. But most Democrats understand that a public insurance option is essential to control healthcare costs and expand coverage -- both because private for-profit insurers now face so little competition in most markets that only the prod of a public option will force them to lower costs and extend coverage, and also because a nationwide public option would have the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and healthcare providers, thereby pushing private insurers to do the same....
China alarmed by US money printing
The US Federal Reserve's policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.....
UN Says New Currency Is Needed to Fix Broken ‘Confidence Game’
The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, the United Nations said.
UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said today in a report.
China, India, Brazil and Russia this year called for a replacement to the dollar as the main reserve currency after the financial crisis sparked by the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market led to the worst global recession since World War II. China, the world’s largest holder of dollar reserves, said a supranational currency such as the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights, or SDRs, may add stability....
The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb
What are derivatives? Some investors describe them as "dormant economic weapons of mass destruction". They essentially are large leveraged bets on top of stocks, bonds and commodities. Money can be made within months or seconds by betting if a stock will go up, down or even remain the same. With no credit rating you can place a bet worth double your account balance. Big time investors get greater leverage with these instantaneous loans.
The New York Times, Oct 8th 2008: “The derivatives market is $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002″. This market is setup with odds similar to a racetrack. Trillions are won and lost (transferred) every second. But unlike a racetrack the big players have ultimate control. Their trillions can make stocks move. A 4% up swing in a stock can cause a derivative bet to rise more than 100% in value or vice versa. A low performing stock that rises only 6% a year could actually have many 3, 6 or 9 percent swings weekly or monthly (some stocks daily). There are billions to be made over and over again by the people that control billions and trillions thus the markets. A grand game approved by the top.
The globe's GDP is at $60.1 trillion. The globe's total financial assets were reported as $167 trillion in 2006. A few trillion lower today no doubt. The highly volatile derivatives market is worth noting because it dwarfs the entire world’s GDP and total financial assets combined....