Just say NO!vember

Audit the Fed Update: It’s Over… For Now

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which had previously attracted 320 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, failed by a vote of 229-198.

All Republicans voted in favor of the measure with 23 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans. 114 co-sponsors of HR 1207, all Democrats, jumped ship and voted against Audit the Fed.

How They Voted

Watch Ron Paul’s Video Update

Audit the Fed Update: The Fed has won the battle but they will lose the war

Ron Paul discusses the latest in the efforts to get a full and complete audit of the Fed as well as the future of Fed transparency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IixLg4AtNI

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which was previously co-sponsored by 320 members of the House (HR 1207), failed by a vote of 229-198. All Republicans voted in favor of the measure with 23 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans. 114 co-sponsors of HR 1207, all Democrats, jumped ship and voted against Audit the Fed.

The GOP had offered the Fed audit as the minority’s last chance to alter the financial regulation bill. The bill does have an watered-down audit provision in the conference report, but it is limited to loans made by the Fed during the height of the economic crisis. Ron Paul’s bill would have allowed a total examination of the Fed’s books.

How they voted

KEY: Democrats, Republicans, HR 1207 Co-Sponsors

YEA! = Audit the Federal Reserve System (a private rockefeller/rothschild bank that started in 1913 that bankrupted the USA by 1933 & stole OUR gold, and which is paid INTEREST on this debt in the form of UN-Constitutional unapportioned federal INCOME TAXES on your WAGES that were traded even-up for LABOR)

NAY! Traitors:

Not Voting (cowards, but not traitors)

Bishop (UT)
Taylor
Wamp
Woolsey
Young (AK)

LEARN ABOUT THE FEDERAL RESERVE!

Look at the schedule here:
http://peaceoftheaction.org/housing-trans/

If you can’t make it, please donate whatever you can to help us with expenses for the 13 day protest.
http://peaceoftheaction.org/give/

also NEW “End The Fed” protest on July 3rd

SIZZLIN’ SUMMER – JULY PROTEST SCHEDULE
(Washington, DC – July 4th through July 17th, 2010)

JUST ADDED: July 3th (Saturday): END THE FED! DC Federal Reserve Building
http://www.infowars.com/we-are-change-plans-end-the-fed-protest-on-independence-day/

INDEPENDENCE FROM OIL DAY!!!
DOWNLOAD EVENT FLYER

No more wars for oil and natural resources! No more polluting our sea, air and landfills! BOYCOTT BP!!!

July 4th (Sunday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 1pm
– group to flyer, bullhorn in Lafayette Park and in front of the White House until dark
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

NO ILLEGAL/IMMORAL DRONES!!!
DOWNLOAD EVENT FLYER

For this week, Peace of the Action will primarily be targeting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle display (educating the public about the horrific toll UAVs take) and drone manufacturers and lobbyists. (The Free Gaza/Free Palestine action has been inserted into this week because of the recent announcement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.)

July 5th (Monday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to protest at White House against coming pre-emptive American/Israeli attack on Iran
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 6th (Tuesday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to (TBA) location for FREE PALESTINE! protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet
DOWNLOAD EVENT FLYER

July 7th (Wednesday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to Congress and protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 8th (Thursday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to General Atomics and protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 9th (Friday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and protest until 3pm
– possible special action TBA
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

WEEKEND:

July 10th (Saturday):
– ONE DC Block Party “ONE RIGHT TO LAND” (optional)
CLICK FOR EVENT INFORMATION PAGE

July 11th (Sunday):
– Day off! Rest and relaxation.

COUNTER-RECRUITMENT:
DOWNLOAD EVENT FLYER

For this week, we will be targeting recruiting centers and defense contractors and lobbyists—and we will do some special “lobbying” of our own on Capitol Hill. (The POTA DC Trial has been inserted into this week because of the recent scheduling by the court.)

July 12th (Monday):
– Peace of the Action DC Trial
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 13th (Tuesday):
– Peace of the Action DC Trial
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

or (trial may be one day or two. so we have two options this day.)

– meet in Lafayette Park at 9am
– group to move together to Military Recruiting Station (TBA) and protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 14th (Wednesday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to Military Recruiting Station (TBA) and protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 15th (Thursday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to move together to War Profiteer (TBA) and protest until 3pm
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

July 16th (Friday):
– meet in Lafayette Park (North Side of White House) at 9am
– group to flyer, bullhorn in LaFayette Park and in front of the White House
– evening to post protest pics, videos and articles to Internet

WEEKEND:

July 17th (Saturday):
– POTA Retreat (location TBA 2pm to 5pm)

This will be an intense think tank session on the future of Peace of the Action and the future of anti-war protests in the U.S. With small numbers, where should our limited resources be focused? We have to dream up an entire movement based on very low numbers and very limited funds—bring your creative solutions and a positive attitude that a better world is possible!

– POTA Dinner/Rally (possible picnic Lafayette Park)

July 18th (Sunday):
– depart DC

(DAILY SCHEDULES OPEN TO CHANGE. STAY TUNED THROUGHOUT EVENT WEEKS FOR UPDATES.)

——————————————————————————————————————-

IMPORTANT INFO FOR SUMMER POTA

HOUSING (FLOOR SPACE & SHOWERS) WILL ONCE AGAIN BE PROVIDED AT ST. STEPHEN’S CHURCH (WIRELESS INTERNET IS AVAILABLE AT THE CHURCH)
1525 NEWTON ST, NW
(CORNER OF 16TH AND NEWTON)

BREAKFAST AND LUNCH ARE UP TO THE PARTICIPANT AND POTA WILL PROVIDE DINNER EACH NIGHT AT THE CHURCH (from FOOD NOT BOMBS!).

TRANSPORTATION TO THE PARK AND TO EVENTS IS UP TO EACH PARTICIPANT. BUSES AND/OR METRO (RAIL) STOPS ARE LOCATED CLOSE BY. WE WILL BE TRAVELING TO EVENTS AS A GROUP AND THE EVENTS SHOULD NOT BE TOO FAR FROM LAFAYETTE PARK.

POTA BELIEVES THAT CIVIL RESISTANCE IS THE CORE OF TRUE CHANGE, BUT ONLY IF THE NUMBERS ARE SUFFICIENT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. SO, SINCE OUR NUMBERS ARE SMALL, CIVIL RESISTANCE WILL MORE THAN LIKELY NOT BE A PART OF SUMMER POTA—EDUCATION AND MOVEMENT BUILDING WILL BE OUR MAIN FOCUS.

LAFAYETTE PARK WILL BE OUR MAIN CONVERGENCE SPACE FOR THE TWO WEEKS

EVENINGS WILL BE RESERVED FOR THE POTA CORE TEAM TO BLOG AND POST VIDEO AND DO OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS—IF YOU ARE A VIDEOGRAPHER OR BLOGGER, WE COULD USE YOUR HELP—USING ONLINE TOOLS WILL BE THE KEY TO MOVEMENT BUILDING

DRINK LOTS OF WATER—JULY IN DC IS HOT, HOT, HOT!

Tesla Motors sells 2 models of cars:

2010 Tesla Roadster $128,500

- Improved Power and Handling
- Power motor: Hand wound stator and increased winding density for lower resistance and higher peak torque
- 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds
- Custom tuned suspension: Adjustable dampers and anti-roll bars tuned to driver’s preference
- Dark finish forged alloy Tesla wheels
- Tires: Yokohama A048 Ultra High Performance
- Unique Sport badging

Tesla is now delivering the Roadster Sport, a shockingly high-performance sports car based on the world’s leading electric, zero emission vehicle. Price starts at $128,500 in the United States, €99,000 (excluding VAT) in Europe and £101,900 (including VAT) in United Kingdom.

2012 Tesla Model S $49,900

- 300 mile range
- 45 minute QuickCharge
- 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds
- Seats 7 people
- More cargo space than sedans
- 2X as efficient as hybrids
- 17 inch infotainment touchscreen

With a range up to 300 miles and 45-minute QuickCharge, the Model S can carry five adults and two children in quiet comfort – and you can charge it from any outlet, without ever stopping for gas. World’s first mass-produced electric vehicle offers performance, efficiency and unrivaled utility for a base price of $49,900*, making it the only car you’ll ever need.

Electric Power

Drive Quickly, Tread Lightly. Most electric vehicles operate under the assumption that driving is merely a necessary evil if you need to get someplace you can’t reach on foot or bike. The result has been cars that are designed, built, and marketed in ways that refuse to glorify driving.

We respectfully disagree. We believe driving is exhilarating. Just watch any child on a go-cart and the joy is plain to see. And when you can soar along at top speed, knowing the only oil in the car is in the transmission, the only emissions are the songs from the radio, the ride becomes more enjoyable still.

The Ultimate Multi-Fuel Vehicle

Electric cars equal freedom. Not simply from oil reliance, but from dependence on any specific power source. Electric power can be generated from natural gas, coal, solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear sources — or a combination of all of them — without changing the design of the car. No matter how or when the world changes, the car adapts, making it immune from obsolescence.

We foresee a day when all cars run on electric power and when people will struggle to remember a time when a love of driving came with a side order of guilt.

No More Tradeoffs

Up until now, if you wanted a car with amazing gas mileage, you’d pick something like the leading hybrid; but when you pressed down the gas pedal to zip up a freeway on-ramp, you’d likely be a little disappointed — it takes over 10 seconds to reach 60 miles per hour. On the other hand, if you demanded the 0 to 60 times of a $300,000 supercar, you’d wind up with an embarrassing 9 miles to the gallon in the city.

Acceleration & Torque = Instant Freedom

The first time you drive the Tesla Roadster, prepare to be surprised. You’re at freeway speed in seconds without even thinking about it. There is no clutch pedal to contend with and no race-car driving techniques to perform. Just the touch of your foot and you’re off, without any of the sluggishness of an automatic.

How powerful is the acceleration? A quick story to illustrate. A favorite trick here at Tesla Motors is to invite a passenger along and ask him to turn on the radio. At the precise moment we ask, we accelerate. Our passenger simply can’t sit forward enough to reach the dials. But who needs music when you’re experiencing such a symphony of motion.

Rest assured that this responsiveness works at all speeds, as noticeable when you’re inching your way through parking lots as when flying along freeways.

100% Torque, 100% of the Time
The Tesla Roadster delivers full availability of performance every moment you are in the car, even while at a stoplight. Its peak torque begins at 0 rpm and stays powerful at 14,000 rpm.

This is the precise opposite of what you experience with a gasoline engine, which has very little torque at a low rpm and only reaches peak torque in a narrow rpm range. This forces you to make frequent gear changes to maintain optimal torque. With the Tesla Roadster, you get great acceleration and the highest energy efficiency at the same time. All while requiring no special driving skills to enjoy it. This makes the Tesla Roadster six times as efficient as the best sports cars while producing one-tenth of the pollution.

Tesla Raises Hopes for Cleantech IPOs

Its stock’s 41% jump on Day One may herald a shift in sentiment

With all eyes in the cleantech world focused on Tesla Motors’ (TSLA) first day of trading on June 29, venture capitalists and industry executives released a collective cheer when the stock of the electric vehicle maker surged 41 percent. Even sweeter, the investor support came on a day when the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and Nasdaq both plunged more than 3 percent.

It’s been a grim time for cleantech investors. Prior to Tesla, there hadn’t been a U.S.-based initial public offering since A123 Systems (AONE), a maker of batteries for electric cars, went public in September. With stock markets worldwide reeling, solar-panel maker Solyndra pulled its IPO filing on June 18, choosing instead to raise $175 million in debt.

That was only part of the reason for skepticism leading up to Tesla’s first day of trading. The company has been losing money since opening for business in 2003, and Tesla says it won’t see profitability for at least two years as it moves from selling $109,000 sports cars to cheaper sedans.

The Palo Alto (Calif.)-based company’s shares rallied on Day One to a stock-market value in excess of $2 billion. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sold shares worth at least $24 million. The strong showing had investors seeing a window of opportunity for more “liquidity events,” to use a Silicon Valley term for IPO. “It really lubricates the way,” says Nat Goldhaber, managing director of Claremont Creek Ventures in Oakland, Calif., which invests in energy-conservation companies. “You’ll see a rush of bankers and companies trying to push through new green-based IPOs.”

THE NEXT CLEANTECH IPO?

No one knows which cleantech company might go public next, but the likeliest are those that, like Tesla, have raised tremendous amounts of money—and thus need to find a way to pay back investors. Fuel-cell manufacturer Bloom Energy, biofuel producer Sapphire Energy, and solar companies eSolar and BrightSource Energy each have raised at least $100-million in venture capital. Better Place, which is trying to build a network of battery-swapping facilities—sort of like filling stations for electric cars—raised $350 million in May.

For these and other cleantech companies, the Tesla IPO “is a real confidence builder,” says Gary Bloom, the CEO of eMeter, which makes software to help utilities manage data and bolster energy efficiency. EMeter has raised more than $70 million. While the decade-old company isn’t preparing for an IPO, Bloom says, Tesla’s success is “proving that things are moving in the cleantech sector and that there’s real deliverables.”

Bloom is quick to caution against reading too much into Tesla’s opening-day gains. After A123 raced out of the gates on Sept. 24, the stock proceeded to lose half its value over the next nine months and continues to sell below its offer price.

The bottom line Tesla’s initial public offering may be a “real confidence builder” that paves the way for more cleantech IPOs.

Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel’s Sunday night-Monday morning commando attack on an unarmed flotilla trying to bring relief supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza. Already, at least nine civilian passengers are reported killed, and dozens wounded.

Seldom has an act of aggression been so well advertised in advance. Israel had made clear that it would use force to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza and heard no stern protest from President Obama, who apparently could not overcome his fear of Israel’s legendary political clout.

Earlier this year, Obama did criticize Israel’s continued settlement of Palestinian areas and Netanyahu’s resistance to holding meaningful peace talks, but the president has failed to follow up his words with firm action or resolve. Netanyahu concluded that Israel could do what it wished, including dropping commandos from helicopters onto crowded ships and, after alleging a clash with civilians, ordering the use of lethal force.

Then, Netanyahu could expect that America’s Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) – with leading figures like Wolf Blitzer, who built his journalistic career by working for the Jerusalem Post – would finesse the murderous assault into something reasonable and possibly even tilted sympathetically toward the Israeli troops.

Early on, CNN began repeating the Israeli “explanation” for its attack on the high seas, parroting the Jerusalem Post, which reported that “militants were killed” after they set upon Israeli naval commandos who boarded one of the six ships Monday morning at two o’clock.

The commandos “were met with strong resistance from men armed with bladed weapons and the situation degenerated into a massacre when one of them grabbed the weapon of a soldier and opened fire,” said the Jerusalem Post, quoting Israeli military sources.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the relief convoy organizers had a “radical Islamic anti-Western orientation,” and that Israeli “naval forces were attacked with metal clubs and knives, as well as live fire,” though there were no reports of Israeli deaths. The IDF statement continued, “The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose,” adding that the Navy then used riot dispersal methods, which include live fire, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA).

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak blamed the organizers of the convoy for the violent outcome, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told a news conference why that was so: “The organizers’ intent was violent, their method was violent, and unfortunately, the results were violent.”

So, you see, the Israeli military resorted to violence only in self-defense. Right.

Quiet Conversation

On Monday, President Obama spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone about the incident. Afterward, the White House said Obama had expressed “deep regret” over the deaths, but declined further comment, citing “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” as quickly as possible.

Don’t hold your breath, though, waiting for the timid Obama or his Likud-leaning advisers – much less the FCM – to question the Israeli version.

We are likely to get an “explanation” worthy of the late Alexander Haig as to why the slaughter may well have been “justified.” Haig’s death in February brought to mind comments he made about a brutal incident on the night of Dec. 2, 1980, shortly after Ronald Reagan’s election victory.

In rightist-ruled El Salvador, government security forces stopped four American churchwomen in their mini-van and were ordered to kill them. The soldiers first raped the women and then executed them with high-powered rifles. Reagan’s foreign policy team decided to treat the rape-murder as a public relations problem, best handled by shifting blame onto the victims. And so, the women were deemed not nuns, but “political activists.” (Today, “militants”–whatever that means–is often the label of choice.)

After becoming Reagan’s first secretary of state, Haig told Congress that “the nuns may have run through a roadblock or may have accidentally been perceived to have been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire.”

In just a few weeks, the American women had gone from being innocent victims to “political activists” to armed insurgents – although knowledgeable U.S. government officials conceded there was no evidence to support Haig’s shootout speculation. As an intelligence analyst at the time, I knew of Haig’s inclination to make up stuff.

Watch for something similar to happen with respect to the “militants” or “activists” who were killed or wounded in the incident off Gaza. I avoid tuning in to the FCM anymore (it’s just too much for my Irish temper), but I’m told that Israel-friendly pundits are already spinning faster than the famous centrifuges in Iran.

Uncle Remus’ Wisdom

“He Don’t Say Nothin’,” as Uncle Remus put it, with improper grammar but with an accurate understanding that by not saying anything you can often convey a powerful or dangerous message.

As a presidential candidate, Obama was careful to say nothing about the brutal Israeli blockade against the 1.5 million people in Gaza, about to enter its fourth year. As president-elect, he stayed mum as the Israelis attacked densely populated Gaza, killing some 1,400 Gazans.

As president, he has backed down at every significant moment when Netanyahu thumbed his nose at Obama or at Vice President Joe Biden.

Obama knew about the “Freedom Flotilla” and its plan to bring supplies to Gaza. And he had to be aware of Israel’s threats to attack the relief ships. But, like Uncle Remus’ Br’er Fox, Obama “don’t say nothin.’”

Quite the contrary, Obama’s pro-Zionist White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who recently vacationed in Israel and met with Netanyahu last Wednesday, extended an invitation for a working visit at the White House. Netanyahu was to visit Obama on Tuesday after a four-day visit to Canada.

On Monday morning, Netanyahu canceled out of a gala dinner to be held in his honor in Ottawa and nixed the visit to Washington. He said he hoped that both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Obama “understand that Israel has a great security problem.”

Getting Away With Murder

The fatal incident off the Gaza coast was not the first time Israel had used lethal force against a nearly defenseless ship at sea. The attack on the “Freedom Flotilla” was reminiscent of the attack on the USS Liberty during Israel’s Six-Day War against three of its Arab neighbors.

The war started on June 5, 1967, when Israel carried out an unprovoked blitzkrieg attack. What is my source for “unprovoked?” Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who 15 years later admitted publicly:

“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Three days into the war, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats turned their firepower on the intelligence-collection ship USS Liberty in international waters after the Israelis had identified it as a U.S. Navy ship.

The Israelis later insisted that the strafing and torpedo attacks were accidents in the fog of war. However, U.S. intelligence intercepted Israeli conversations at the time showing the attacks were deliberate, and their nature and persistence showed clear intent to sink the Liberty and leave no survivors.

Israeli commandos clad in black were about to land from helicopters and finish off what remained of the Liberty crew when Seaman Terry Halbardier (later awarded the Silver Star) slid over the Liberty’s napalm-greased deck to jury-rig an antenna and get an SOS off to the Sixth Fleet.

Israeli forces intercepted the SOS and quickly broke off the attack. But 34 of theLiberty crew were killed and over 170 wounded.

To avoid exacerbating relations with Israel, the U.S. Navy was ordered to cover up the deliberate nature of the attack, and the surviving crew was threatened with imprisonment if they so much as told their wives. When some of the crew later called for an independent investigation, they were hit with charges of anti-Semitism.

One of the surviving crew of the USS Liberty, decorated Navy veteran Joe Meadors, was with the “Freedom Flotilla” when it was attacked on Sunday night. Meadors is past president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association. The State Department tells us that Joe Meadors survived this latest Israeli attack. At last word, he sits in an Israeli jail.

Rachel Corrie

Another American was murdered in cold blood on March 16, 2003. Twenty-three year-old Rachel Corrie, a volunteer serving in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer after a prolonged face-off in full view of several of her volunteer colleagues. Rachel had been trying to prevent the bulldozing of a Palestinian home where she had been staying.

The message the Israelis wanted to convey in killing Rachel Corrie was that international volunteers would no longer be exempt from the brutal treatment accorded young Israeli volunteers who tried to stand up, as Rachel did, for decent treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

The FCM’s excitement over President George W. Bush’s eagerly anticipated “shock-and-awe” bombing of Iraq three days later pushed what limited coverage there was about Rachel’s murder to the back pages. The Israelis claimed the killing was an inadvertent mistake, like the shoot-up of the Liberty. The courageous Rachel was very much with the Freedom Flotilla in spirit. And a certain poetic justice is to be found in that one of the ships in the convoy bore the name “Rachel Corrie.”

Israel cannot hide behind “inadvertence” this time, although its spin-masters are already doing their best to smear the civilians on the ships with buzzwords, calling them “militants” and “terrorists” who “ambushed” and tried to “lynch” the Israeli commandos.

These P.R. tactics may work with the American FCM and neocons in Washington – and by extension the TV-watchers in the United States – but patience with Israel in the international community is wearing paper-thin.

Some Care About the Scandal of Gaza

Much of the world’s impatience has to do with Gaza, including the Israeli attack from Dec. 17, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, as well as the three-year blockade that began when Hamas won Palestinian elections and became the governing party in Gaza.

Israel and the U.S. government deem Hamas to be a terrorist organization, though some other countries regard it more as a resistance movement fighting against Israeli occupation.

Regardless of how one feels about Hamas, Israel’s harsh blockade of Gaza and last year’s military assault have inflicted a humanitarian disaster on the Palestinian people.

Has Netanyahu Gone Too Far?

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has reacted strongly to the Israeli attack on the relief ships, the largest of which sailed from Turkey. According to one report, Turkey has served warning that Turkish navy ships will escort future relief convoys to Gaza.

Erdogan has had it with Israeli mistreatment of Muslims in his eastern Mediterranean neighborhood. On Jan. 29, 2009, at the economic summit in Davos, he leveled harsh criticism to Israeli President Shimon Peres’ face, labeling Gaza “an open-air prison.”

Erdogan angrily cited “the sixth commandment – thou shalt not kill,” adding, “We are talking about killing” in Gaza. Erdogan’s one-and-a-half-minute tirade was capturedon camera by the BBC.

Five days before Erdogan’s outburst, the Brazilian government also condemned Israel’s bombing of Gaza and its effect on the civilian population as a “disproportionate response.”

It seems to have been the atrocity in Gaza – plus a common determination to prevent war from spreading to Iran – that galvanized the successful joint effort by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to defy Israel. They persuaded Iran to agree to transfer half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey for further processing, rendering it unusable for a nuclear weapon.

“Defy Israel?” you ask. Confused? If the Israeli leaders truly believe that low-enriched uranium comprises an essential part of an “existential threat” to Israel from eventual nuclear weapons in Iran, would they not be delighted at Iran’s agreement to send half of that uranium out of the country? Good question.

Truth be told, Israel cares a lot less about Iran’s uranium that it does about forcing “regime change” in Tehran. Netanyahu does not want any agreement with Iran; he wants sanctions against Iran, and eventually a military conflict, with the U.S. jumping in to help finish Iran off.

And this twin wish is shared by American neocons who remain influential in the Obama administration and in the FCM.

The pro-Israeli hardliners are the ones running U.S. policy on the Middle East, not Obama, who seems only nominally in charge. Unusually clear proof of this came when the Brazilians released a letter revealing that Obama had personally encouraged the Brazilian and Turkish leaders to pursue the kind of deal they were able to work out with the Iranians.

Small wonder, then, that the leaders of Brazil and Turkey were taken aback when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration spokespeople trashed the tripartite Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal and pressed ahead with a new round of sanctions.

And the president? Did he step up and acknowledge that he had encouraged Brazil and Turkey to seek the uranium deal? Well, he don’t say nothin’.

Israeli Influence

While Americans continue to be starved of real information from the FCM, better informed people around the world have come to view with disdain the degree to which Washington dogs are wagged by Israeli tails.

When I suggested five years ago before a Capitol Hill hearing chaired by Rep. John Conyers that Israel was right up there, together with oil and military bases, as comprising the real rationale for war on Iraq, I, too, was called anti-Semitic. But the evidence has always been as clear as it is abundant.

An inadvertent remark by a major player on Iraq, former British Prime Minister Blair, has provided insight – straight from the horse’s ass, I mean, mouth.

In early February 2010, the British press revealed that Blair, testifying to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. (That’s when Bush said war was the only way to deal with Saddam Hussein, and Blair acquiesced.) But Blair’s remarks revealed that Israeli concerns were a major part of the equation and that Israeli officials were involved in the discussions. Thus, Blair:

“As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”

It is a safe bet that Hillary Clinton’s Likud-friendly lieutenants and their new junior partners in London are busy conferring with Tel Aviv right now about how to handle the P.R. challenge caused by the upstart leaders of Turkey and Brazil with the temerity to work out a deal with Tehran. (Never mind that Obama personally asked them to do it.)

How does one make into a bad thing Iran’s agreement to ship half its uranium out of the country, even if additional steps might still be needed to assure the world that Iran is telling the truth when it says it isn’t building a nuclear bomb?

More and more people around the globe are seeing Obama as subservient to the Likud Lobby, perhaps not as enthusiastically as Bush was, but still unwilling to put action behind his occasional words of dissatisfaction. Important players in the Middle East, as well as increasingly assertive countries like Turkey and Brazil, conclude that the policies and behavior of Tel Aviv and Washington are virtually identical.

And then there is the $3 billion or so that the United States gives Israel each year that enables the Israelis to arm themselves to the teeth. It is understandable, then, that many will blame Washington for what happened in the dark of night, on the eve of Memorial Day, on the high seas.

Hard Lessons

The likely results are three-fold:

1. On Memorial Day next year, there may well be hundreds more “fallen heroes” to honor, killed by Muslim and other “militants” who make no distinction between what the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan and what Israel does in Gaza and the occupied West Bank – and add Lebanon and Syria, for good measure.

As Gen. David Petraeus pointed out earlier this year, the unresolved Arab-Israeli “conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel” and thus puts U.S. troops at greater risk.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world,” Petraeus said. “Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

2. The linking of U.S. support with Israeli actions increases the incentive of terrorists to ply their dark arts in the United States.

While it is difficult to find a measure of objectivity in official U.S. government documents on this topic, every so often there is a slip between cup and lip. There was such a slip on Sept. 23, 2004, for example, when the Pentagon-sponsored U.S. Defense Science Board issued a formal report concluding:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights.”

You will not be surprised to find out that the board’s report was generally suppressed in the FCM, as were the following, more specific, examples:

“By his own account, KSM’s [9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's] animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” (9/11 Commission Report, July 22, 2004, page 147)

And what motivated Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician of Palestinian origin, who on Dec. 30, 2009, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA site in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven American CIA operatives? According to his brother, al-Balawi “changed” during the three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed some 1,400 Gazans.

When al-Balawi volunteered to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, he was arrested by Jordanian authorities, his brother said. It was after that arrest that al-Balawi allowed himself to be “recruited” to spy on al-Qaeda for the CIA. Quickly, it became payback time for Americans and Jordanians whom he associated with Israel.

Christmas underpants bomber Abdulmutallab, also is reported to have been particularly outraged by Israel’s slaughter of Gazans at the turn of 2008-09 and Washington’s defense of Israel’s action.

That Israeli actions in Gaza acted as catalysts to al-Balawi’s and Abdulmutallab’s determination to exact revenge on the U.S. is hardly surprising – the more so in view of Washington’s efforts to suppress the findings of the UN-commissioned Gaza investigation by Justice Richard Goldstone. His report concluded that:

“The blockade policies implemented by Israel against the Gaza Strip, in particular the closure of or restrictions imposed on border crossings in the immediate period before the military operations, subjected the local population to extreme hardship and deprivations that amounted to a violation of Israel’s obligations as an Occupying Power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. …

“Israel has essentially violated its obligation to allow free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital objects, food, and clothing that were needed to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of the civilian population. …

“The Mission concludes that the conditions resulting from deliberate actions of the Israeli forces and the declared policies of the Government with regard to the Gaza Strip before, during, and after the military operation cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip.

“The Mission, therefore, finds a violation of the provisions of Articles 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

3. Attacking Iran.

It is no secret that this goal enjoys high priority on Netanyahu’s agenda. It could be stopped in its tracks by a public warning from President Obama. But all signs point to his bending to neocon advice to shy away from a showdown and, rather, leave everything, including another war of aggression, “on the table.”

The fact that world leaders consider Netanyahu a clear and present danger to peace in the region is shown by the way the leaders of Turkey and Brazil moved at an accelerated pace to bend the Iranians to the kind of deal that Obama personally had advocated, before being overruled by Hillary Clinton and others in his misguided Team of Rivals.

The urgency of the Turkey-Brazil initiative came through in the words of Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who could hardly have been more explicit:

“We can’t allow to happen in Iran what happened in Iraq. Before any sanctions, we must undertake all possible efforts to try and build peace in the Middle East.”

Green Light?

Netanyahu listens only to Washington, when he listens at all. Following the bloody attack on the Freedom Flotilla, I imagine he will now get at most a mealy-mouthed “please-don’t-do-this-again” from the White House, together with acquiescence in an Al-Haig-type made-up excuse about an “exchange” of fire.

If that proves to be the case, Netanyahu is altogether likely to consider that Israel has a green light to provoke hostilities with Iran, with the full expectation that the United States will jump right in to help the non-ally ally finish the job.

Non-ally ally? Sorry, despite what you hear from Obama, Congress, and the whole Washington establishment, Israel is not an ally of the United States. Webster’s (and international law) define ally as “a state associated with another by treaty.”

There is no mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel. (Washington has broached the idea to Israel from time to time, but Israel has said no thanks. Treaties, you see, require internationally recognized borders, and – for obvious reasons – Israeli leaders avoid that subject like the plague.)

NATO member Turkey, on the other hand, is a U.S. ally. This could make things very awkward if Turkey sends its warships to accompany the next convoy trying to lift the siege of Gaza. It is possible that Washington may have to choose between a real ally and a synthetic one, if shots are fired.

Israel’s Attack Illegal; What Now?

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador and Foreign Office specialist on maritime law (and VIPS member), has just weighed in with a helpful description of two clear legal possibilities, which take into account both international law and the Law of the Sea:

“Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists in international waters. The applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred.

“In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory. So in this case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the attack by Israeli commandos falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.

“Possibility two is that, if the killings were not military actions authorized by Israel, they were then acts of murder and fall under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel would be obliged by law to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.”

Stay tuned.

Read more by Ray McGovern

• Memo to Congressman David Obey – May 27th, 2010
• Dirty Linen Gets Intel Chief Fired – May 21st, 2010
• US, Israel Challenged on Iran – May 19th, 2010
• Loose Lips on Iran Can Sink America – May 5th, 2010
• Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really? – April 26th, 2010

Rand Paul, son of Congressmen Ron Paul, has defeated the establishment candidate in the Kentucky Republican Senate Primary. This is great news for the Libertarian movement and the tea party activists all around the country. It is a single that politicians on both sides of the aisle are huge targets for their out of control spending and reliance on the establishment to get things done in D.C.

From the Politico:

Insurgent Senate candidate Rand Paul claimed the Republican nomination for the seat of retiring Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning Tuesday evening, easily besting establishment favorite Trey Grayson, the sitting secretary of State who won the endorsement of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

With nearly 50 percent of precincts reporting, Paul was drawing 59 percent of the vote to Grayson’s 35 percent – a yawning lead over a candidate once viewed as a sure bet for his party’s nomination.

On the Democratic side, state Attorney General Jack Conway had pulled into a double-digit lead over Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, holding 48 percent of the vote to Mongiardo’s 39 percent and likely giving national Democrats their preferred nominee for the fall campaign.

The final hours of the primary race brought accusations of “voter intimidation” from Grayson’s campaign, as the establishment Republican’s campaign manager charged Paul’s supporters with “bullying” and called on Paul to “rein in his goon squad and follow the law.

Read more:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37414.html#ixzz0oKXsx8zF

It is now time to go out and claim the ultimate victory for Rand Paul and deliver him the United States Senate seat and bring a fresh new face to Washington D.C.

source: Conservative for Change (hmm link is busted)

Bernie Sanders sold out to wall street. tell him we want OUR S.604 back, which we already have 32 cosponsors = 1/3 of the senate + 319 cosponsors for it’s sister bill HR1207 = 73% of the house backing us. Audit the Fed! and then End the Fed! that’s why JFK gave us Executive Order #11110

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuVBAMQ0j4A

Ron Paul: Audit the Fed! No More Bailouts!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVNvjQobulQ

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had long worked together on their campaign for a full audit of the Federal Reserve, which emerged last year as H.R. 1207 and S. 604. Dr. Paul’s House version of the Audit the Fed bill had 319 cosponsors; Sanders’ Senate version, 32 cosponsors. Despite these bills’ massive popularity with a public grown increasingly suspicious of central banking, efforts to audit our central bank, the Federal Reserve, have been effectively thwarted for the time being.

Last-minute Senate maneuvering on Thursday May 6 resulted in a compromise measure that would require the Fed to disclose more details about its lending practices during the financial crisis, but would permit just a one-time audit of its loans and a one-time review of Fed governance. The compromise would also shield the Fed’s interest rate decision-making procedures from Goverment Accounting Office (GAO) scrutiny.

Dr. Paul, who has long advocated opening the Fed’s books to scrutiny to reveal its dealings with foreign banks as well as its domestic lending practices, expressed disappointment with the compromise in a sternly worded statement released Thursday evening.

Sanders had originally argued, “At a time when our entire financial system almost collapsed, we cannot let the Fed operate in secrecy any longer.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke disagreed. The Wall Street Journal reported his remark that the original measure would “seriously threaten monetary policy independence, increase inflation fears and market interest rates, and damage economic stability and job creation.”

Members of the Obama administration, among their number former Fed officials, backed the changes to Sanders amendment. These include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former chair of the New York Federal Reserve, and Paul Volcker, who was Alan Greenspan’s predecessor as Fed chair. They gave credit to Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, for pushing through the compromise bill. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin stated that the compromise measure would allow for a comprehensive audit of the Fed’s operations “while preserving the existing protections of the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to monetary policy.” It is just this independence which the Fed’s critics wish to challenge, as it leaves the Fed essentially accountable to no one except other elite bankers — some of them foreign.

On Thursday night, Ron Paul made an urgent appeal in a two and a half minute video (see below) urging Senators to reject the Sanders Amendment when it comes up for a vote, possibly as soon as next Tuesday (May 11). Dr. Paul stated,

I’m not a bit surprised that the Federal Reserve got to the Senate. I had expected Bernie Sanders to offer 604, which was the same as 1207, which is Audit the Fed bill, and at the last minute he switched it and watered it down, and really it adds nothing, It’s a possibility that it even makes the current conditions worse….

But as we speak — this is Thursday night — they are working on this on the Senate floor. And we need to get as many messages as possible to as many Senators you can think of, especially to Bernie Sanders’ office, that we don’t want this version….

But the only thing that would be fair to the American people after all this work and energy that we put into this is to have an up and down vote on what was our 1207 in the House which is 604 in the Senate….

Dr. Paul’s website adds that the compromise “exempts monetary policy decisions, discount window operations, and agreements with foreign central banks from [GAO] audit. This is of particular concern when several countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain are seeking IMF help in the midst of their financial crises, because American taxpayers provide fully 17% of all IMF funding.”

“Taxpayers are weary of bailing out privileged banks and corporations in the U.S.,” Dr. Paul added, “and we certainly cannot afford to bail out entire countries. The possibility of this happening behind a veil of Federal Reserve secrecy is not acceptable.”

“This compromise language represents a huge missed opportunity by Congress to finally make the Fed accountable for trillions of taxpayer dollars it administers. Full transparency, via a full GAO audit, is the only acceptable option. However, I am grateful to Senator Vitter for offering the original full audit language in an alternative amendment to the bill.”

The John Birch Society has issued a press release urging opposition to the compromise measure and restoration of the original language. Readers are invited to go to “Ron Paul Appeals for Help to Rescue His ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill in the Senate” and spreading the word on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Or they may contact their Senators directly to urge support for an amendment that would restore the original ‘Audit the Fed’ language and intent:  “As Ron Paul says in the video,” reads the JBS statement, “it’s vital and urgent that we do as much as we can to bombard the Senate with information that we the people deserve to have an up-or-down vote on Audit the Fed bill.”

View Ron Paul’s complete statement below. The vote on the compromise measure is expected to take place next Tuesday, May 11.

Source: The New American

The Infowars team have poured 18 months of blood sweat and tears into a film that represents a call to action for Infowarriors around the globe to use this tool as a means of unlocking millions more minds from the matrix.

The impact the film will achieve is solely in the hands of you, the audience, in making the movie go viral in the same way as Loose Change, the Obama Deception and Endgame achieved viral success, and in turn waking up millions more people to the New World Order system and enabling them to take the first steps in resisting their tyranny.

Film maker Jason Bermas has collected a truly monumental amount of video archive and document material to render completely obsolete claims that the agenda of today’s ruling elite is not the open move towards a global totalitarian world government which will be run to the detriment of the people in the self-interests of the tiny ruling class that sit atop the power pyramid.

Invisible Empire is all conspiracy and no theory – proving beyond doubt how the elite have openly conspired to insidiously rule the globe via the engines of the CFR, the United Nations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group, which were born out of the historical Round Table groups first set up by Cecil Rhodes.

Invisible Empire will be more than just a film– it is the culmination of years of research by Jason Bermas into the inner-workings and most revealing public statements by the New World Order and the most trusted stewards of their dark vision. Invisible Empire promises to unveil the long-term agenda for world control, just as Fabled Enemies and Loose Change Final Cut forever stripped away the facade of the official story of 9/11 and exposed the dark truth that lies behind.

Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO24XmP1c5E

Ron Paul Announces HR4995 on Fox News, 04/12/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuFJu-vwutU

Ron Paul: “I want to get rid of one item to concentrate on, because I think it’s the worst part. And that is the mandate saying that you don’t have a choice anymore. They’re driving everybody into the system. [...] I want to key in on the one issue, tolegalize freedom of choice, legalize the private option without taking on the whole mess that’s been created. [...] In a free society you have to at least allow people the freedom to opt out of a compulsory system that is imposed on you by government.”

join the HR4995 Facebook group:
End The Mandate – HR 4995 – Stop the Health Insurance Mandate!

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The Federal Reserve will be required to identify the names of banks that could have collapsed if not for the central bank’s emergency lending, a federal appeals court said Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled on Friday that the Fed needs to disclose documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by Bloomberg L.P. and other news organizations. “We are reviewing the decision and considering our options for reconsideration or appeal,” said Fed spokeswoman Barbara Hagenbaugh.

source: AuditTheFed.com

http://embedr.com/playlist/dennis-kucinich-forces-congress-to-debate-afghanistan-war

On Thursday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced H. Com Res. 248, a privileged resolution with 16 original cosponsors that will require the House of Representatives to debate whether to continue the war in Afghanistan. Debate on the resolution is expected early next week.

Original cosponsors of the Kucinich resolution include John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan); Ron Paul (R-Texas); José Serrano (D-New York); Bob Filner (D-California); Lynn Woolsey (D-California); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-North Carolina); Danny Davis (D-Illinois); Barbara Lee (D-California); Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts); Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona); Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin); Timothy Johnson (R-Illinois); Yvette Clarke (D-New York); Eric Massa (D-New York), Alan Grayson (D-Florida) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine).

The Pentagon doesn’t want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.

Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American soldiers andAfghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the $33 billion was hanging fire.

So it’s a great thing that Kucinich and his 16 allies are forcing Congress to debate the issue, and it would be even better if more Members of Congress would be urged by their constituents to support Kucinich’s resolution. That would be a signal to the House leadership that continuation of the open-ended war and occupation is controversial in the House, and the House leadership should not try to ram through $33 billion more for the war on a fast-track without ample opportunity for debate and amendment.

Every day the Afghanistan war continues is another day on which the United States government plays Russian roulette with the lives ofAmerican soldiers and Afghan civilians.

The British government has more urgency than the US government about ending the war – and is more supportive than the US of a political solution to end the conflict – because in Britain there is greater public outcry.

If there were greater public and Congressional outcry in the US, we could be more like Britain, and get our government on board the train to a political solution, instead of prolonging the war indefinitely.

The first step towards bringing our troops home is for members of Congress to hear from their constituents.

source: truthout

Opponents Tim Graney, John Gay and Gerald Wall accused the doctor of becoming too entrenched into the ways and means of Washington D.C. and argued that Paul has abandoned the duties of his position in order to promote his book, among other things.

Paul, who ran for president for the second time in the 2008 presidential elections, was a hero among many believers in small government and the anti-war movement during the campaign. Paul believes in a substantially smaller government, fiscally sound policies and the destruction of our federal reserve system and fiat currency.

Ron Paul has served Texas’ 14th district for 14 years.

source: Small Gov Times

“Since my first year in Congress representing the 14th district I have managed my office in a frugal manner, instructing staff to provide the greatest possible service to the people of the 14th district at the least possible cost to taxpayers,” said Paul.

Source: Ron Paul

(February 25, 2010) – On Thursday, March 4, 2010 Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will introduce his privileged resolution that will require House debate on continuing the war in Afghanistan. It is expected that the resolution will be taken up for consideration on the following Wednesday, March 10, 2010 and that the debate will be subject to a rule providing for three hours of debate. Source: Dennis Kucinich

Representative Ron Paul spoke to conservative activists about U.S. foreign policy, the costs of overseas troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as federal spending priorities and monetary policy. He also spoke about limited government and individual rights, emphasizing personal responsibility over the regulatory power of government.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh-m75YqmrA

Ron Paul Wins Presidential Straw Poll at CPAC

Ron Paul has ended Mitt Romney’s three-year run as conservatives’ favorite for president, taking 31 percent of the vote in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll.

Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination.

Romney, former Massachusetts governor and a 2008 GOP candidate, has won the last three presidential straw polls at the annual conference.

The straw poll is not binding — and not necessarily a good forecaster, given that in 2008, John McCain went on to take the party’s nomination over Romney.

This is good news for the Liberty movement and everyone that has supported Ron Paul and his ideas for the conservative movement.

He represents what true conservatism stands for, and has shed is light across many in the movement to take back our country and return it to the ideas of the Constitution.

Source: Conservative for Change

CPAC 2010 Straw Poll RESULTS: Ron Paul Wins Big

Here are the official results:

Texas Rep. Ron Paul – 31 percent
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney – 22 percent
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – 7 percent
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty – 6 percent
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – 4 percent
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – 4 percent
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence – 5 percent
South Dakota Sen. John Thune – 2 percent
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels – 2 percent
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum – 2 percent
Mississippi Gov. Hailey Barbour – 1 percent
Other – 5 percent
Undecided – 6 percent

In a strong reflection of just how strong his standing remains within the die-hard conservative community, Texas Republican and 2008 presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll on Saturday, earning nearly one-third (31 percent) of the entire vote. The crowd, however, booed heavily when the results were announced.

Paul was far and away the most widely anticipated speaker at the three-day conference, with his base of “Paulites” streaming into the main auditorium to hear him rail against government overreach and neoconservativism on Friday afternoon. In many respects, his win in the CPAC poll seemed pre-ordained — his band of followers having a well-earned reputation for flooding polls and forums like these.

What it portends for a possible 2012 presidential run is anyone’s guess. Paul had a similar cult-like following during the 2008 election, only to garner a relatively small chunk of the actual vote.

The other potential candidates who scored well and are more “mainstream” picks for the Republican nomination include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who earned 22 percent of the vote, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin who came in third with seven percent. Romney had won the last three CPAC polls. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, another talked about 2012 aspirant, tied “undecided” for fourth place at six percent.

The results provide an interesting reflection as to where conservative hearts lie nearly three years before the next presidential elections take place. But with so much time before formal campaigning begins – and with no White House aspirant even officially announcing a bid- its best to resist the temptation to read too deeply into the numbers. For example, last year, disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford polled at four percent, while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — no longer even on the straw poll — came in second at 14 percent.

Nevertheless, the CPAC poll can provide a nice boost (or, at the very least, attention) to prospective candidates. In 2007, Romney etched out a win over former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani by a margin of 21 percent to 17 percent. Sen. John McCain, who wound up winning the nomination, came in fifth with 12 percent of the vote.

Several of the candidates polled attended CPAC in the days, and even hours, ahead of the results being released. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a keynote speaker on Saturday, preceded by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (Penn.). Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty spoke on Friday followed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Paul. Romney addressed the audience on Thursday. All others were not in attendance during the three-day affair.

Source: Huffington Post

Robert P. Murphy – Only the Austrians Can Explain Depressions
Christopher Westley – Why the Fed Got Birthed
Peter G. Klein – Did Keynesian Economics Win the Battle of Ideas?
Douglas E. French – Failure and Prosperity
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. – Parallel Lives: Liberty or Power?
Joseph T. Salerno – The Macroeconomics of the Fed: Mainstream and Austrian
Mark Thornton – What Were They Saying in July 2007?
George Selgin – The Fed’s Dismal Record
Gary North – Heckle and Jekyll: How Murray Rothbard Got the Fed’s Story Right
Thomas E. Woods, Jr. – The Source and Workings of the Latest Crisis
Ron Paul – My Battle Against the Fed

After checking into his room, Lewis, who normally does not travel alone, went out to grab a bite to eat and scout the location for his exclusive interview with Oklahoma Representative Charles Key. Upon his return, Lewis found the door to his room ajar. Pushing the door open, he found that the only thing the thieves did not get was his well-hidden camera.

Lewis said, “I barely had time to find the (interview) location and grab some pizza.” It took him only seconds to notice that the burglars made off with his duffel bag, lighting equipment, backpack, which included other small equipment and information, and his laptop. Also stolen was the script and early version of the new film, Don’t Tread On Me, and some extra footage.

Gary Franchi, producer and co-writer of the film, commented on the incident, “It is unknown whether or not this was a random or targeted act against the films production but, given the current political climate in America, one tends to wonder.”

The policeman on the scene, Officer Bartel, was very helpful as he went door to door looking for and asking if anyone had seen anything suspicious. The hotel manager was reluctant to allow Lewis to film the rest of the incident, threatening to call the police if Lewis did not hand over the film, but was cooperative in the end, even supportive. “Good thing I keep multiple copies of this stuff and backup everything every few days!” Lewis exclaimed.

Franchi concluded, “Don’t Tread On Me is still on schedule for a spring release and nothing is going to stop it.”

Don’t Tread On Me (DTOM 2010 Teaser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAVTTGkHEeU

WHERE IS YOUR LINE IN THE SAND?

More and more STATES are answering that question everyday as the Sovereignty Movement sweeps through dozens of state legislatures. Gun control, mandatory vaccinations and quarantines, health care opt out fines and imprisonment, bailout after bailout, the interstate commerce clause excuse… you get the idea. Hear what state reps and state senators are doing to protect individual and state sovereignty and how YOU can make it happen.

Wanna take back Washington, DC?… good luck with that. Wanna make the states more powerful than the federal government? Guess what? They already are, so let’s start acting like it.

DON’T TREAD ON ME

Coming Spring 2010. More teasers to follow.

http://www.DontTreadOnMeMovie.com

After Obama briefly addressed L’Affaire Abdulmutallab and wrote “must do better” on the report cards of the national security schoolboys responsible for the near catastrophe, the President turned the stage over to counter-terrorism guru John Brennan and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

It took 89-year old veteran correspondent Helen Thomas to break through the vapid remarks about rechanneling “intelligence streams,” fixing “no-fly” lists, deploying “behavior detection officers,” and buying more body-imaging scanners.

Thomas recognized the John & Janet filibuster for what it was, as her catatonic press colleagues took their customary dictation and asked their predictable questions. Instead, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and more intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1pURIukrjw

She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did.

Thomas: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.”

Brennan: “Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

Brennan: “I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

Brennan: “I think this is a — long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Neither did President Obama, nor anyone else in the U.S. political/media hierarchy. All the American public gets is the boilerplate about how al-Qaeda evildoers are perverting a religion and exploiting impressionable young men.

There is almost no discussion about why so many people in the Muslim world object to U.S. policies so strongly that they are inclined to resist violently and even resort to suicide attacks.

Obama’s Non-Answer

I had been hoping Obama would say something intelligent about what drove Abdulmutallab to do what he did, but the President uttered a few vacuous comments before sending in the clowns. This is what he said before he walked away from the podium:

“It is clear that al Qaeda increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations … to do their bidding. … And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress. … That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.”

But why it is so hard for Muslims to “get” that message? Why can’t they end their preoccupation with dodging U.S. missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Gaza long enough to reflect on how we are only trying to save them from terrorists while simultaneously demonstrating our commitment to “justice and progress”?

Does a smart fellow like Obama expect us to believe that all we need to do is “communicate clearly to Muslims” that it is al Qaeda, not the U.S. and its allies, that brings “misery and death”? Does any informed person not know that the unprovoked U.S.-led invasion of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced 4.5 million from their homes? How is that for “misery and death”?

Rather than a failure to communicate, U.S. officials are trying to rewrite recent history, which seems to be much easier to accomplish with the Washington press corps and large segments of the American population than with the Muslim world.

But why isn’t there a frank discussion by America’s leaders and media about the real motivation of Muslim anger toward the United States? Why was Helen Thomas the only journalist to raise the touchy but central question of motive?

Peeking Behind the Screen

We witnessed a similar phenomenon when the 9/11 Commission Report tiptoed into a cautious discussion of possible motives behind the 9/11 attacks. To their credit, the drafters of that report apparently went as far as their masters would allow, in gingerly introducing a major elephant into the room:

“America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” (p. 376)

When asked later about the flabby way that last sentence ended, former Congressman Lee Hamilton, Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission, explained that there had been a Donnybrook over whether that paragraph could be included at all.

The drafters also squeezed in the reason given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as to why he “masterminded” the attacks on 9/11:

“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed … from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

Would you believe that former Vice President Dick Cheney has also pointed to U.S. support for Israel as one of the “true sources of resentment”? This unique piece of honesty crept into his speech to the American Enterprise Institute on May 21, 2009.

Sure, he also trotted out the bromide that the terrorists hate “all the things that make us a force for good in the world.” But the Israel factor slipped into the speech, perhaps an inadvertent acknowledgement of the Israeli albatross adorning the neck of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Very few pundits and academicians are willing to allude to this reality, presumably out of fear for their future career prospects.

Former senior CIA officer Paul Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown University, is one of the few willing to refer, in his typically understated way, to “all the other things … including policies and practices that affect the likelihood that people … will be radicalized, and will try to act out the anger against us.” One has to fill in the blanks regarding what those “other things” are.

But no worries. Secretary Napolitano has a fix for this unmentionable conundrum. It’s called “counter-radicalization,” which she describes thusly:

“How do we identify someone before they become radicalized to the point where they’re ready to blow themselves up with others on a plane? And how do we communicate better American values and so forth … around the globe?”

Better communication. That’s the ticket.

Hypocrisy and Double Talk

But Napolitano doesn’t acknowledge the underlying problem, which is that many Muslims have watched Washington’s behavior closely for many years and view U.S. declarations about peace, justice, democracy and human rights as infuriating examples of hypocrisy and double talk.

So, Washington’s sanitized discussion about motives for terrorism seems more intended for the U.S. domestic audience than the Muslim world.

After all, people in the Middle East already know how Palestinians have been mistreated for decades; how Washington has propped up Arab dictatorships; how Muslims have been locked away at Guantanamo without charges; how the U.S. military has killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; how U.S. mercenaries have escaped punishment for slaughtering innocents.

The purpose of U.S. “public diplomacy” appears more designed to shield Americans from this unpleasant reality, offering instead feel-good palliatives about the beneficence of U.S. actions. Most American journalists and politicians go along with the charade out of fear that otherwise they would be accused of lacking patriotism or sympathizing with “the enemy.”

Commentators who are neither naïve nor afraid are simply shut out of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM). Salon.com’s Glen Greenwald, for example, has complained loudly about “how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.,” and how it is taboo to point this out.

Greenwald recently called attention to a little-noticed Associated Press report on the possible motives of the 23-year-old Nigerian Abdulmutallab. The report quoted his Yemeni friends to the effect that the he was “not overtly extremist.” But they noted that he was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel’s actions in Gaza. (emphasis added)

Former CIA specialist on al Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, has been still more outspoken on what he sees as Israel’s tying down the American Gulliver in the Middle East. Speaking Monday on C-SPAN, he complained bitterly that any debate on the issue of American support for Israel and its effects is normally squelched.

Scheuer added that the Israel Lobby had just succeeded in getting him removed from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for saying that Obama was “doing what I call the Tel Aviv Two Step.”

More to the point, Scheuer asserted:

“For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world … is to just defy reality.”

Beyond loss of work, those who speak out can expect ugly accusations. The Israeli media network Arutz Sheva, which is considered the voice of the settler movement, weighed in strongly, citing Scheuer’s C-SPAN remarks and branding them “blatantly anti-Semitic.”

Media Squelching

As for media squelching, I continue to be amazed at how otherwise informed folks express total surprise when I refer them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s statement about his motivation for attacking the United States, as cited on page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report:

“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

And one can understand how even those following such things closely can get confused. Five years after the 9/11 Commission Report, on Aug. 30, 2009, readers of the neoconservative Washington Post were given a diametrically different view, based on what the Post called “an intelligence summary:”

“KSM’s limited and negative experience in the United States — which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills — almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist … He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country.”

Apparently, the Post found this revisionist version politically more convenient, in that it obscured Mohammed’s other explanation implicating “U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” It’s much more comforting to view KSM as a disgruntled visitor who nursed his personal grievances into justification for mass murder.

An unusually candid view of the dangers accruing from the U.S. identification with Israel’s policies appeared five years ago in an unclassified study published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board on Sept. 23, 2004. Contradicting President George W. Bush, the board stated:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.

“Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

Abdulmutallab’s Attack

Getting back to Abdulmutallab and his motive in trying to blow up the airliner, how was this individual without prior terrorist affiliations suddenly transformed into an international terrorist ready to die while killing innocents?

If, as John Brennan seems to suggest, al Qaeda terrorists are hard-wired for terrorism at birth for the “wanton slaughter of innocents,” how are they able to jump-start a privileged 23-year old Nigerian, inculcate in him with the acquired characteristics of a terrorist, and persuade him to do the bidding of al Qaeda/Persian Gulf?

As indicated above, the young Nigerian seems to have had particular trouble with Israel’s wanton slaughter of more than a thousand civilians in Gaza a year ago, a brutal campaign that was defended in Washington as justifiable self-defense.

Moreover, it appears that Abdulmuttallab is not the only anti-American “terrorist” so motivated. When the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda announced that they were uniting into “al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula,” their combined rhetoric railed against the Israeli attack on Gaza.

And on Dec. 30, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a 32-year-old Jordanian physician from a family of Palestinian origin, killed seven American CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence officer near Khost, Afghanistan, when he detonated a suicide bomb.

Though most U.S. media stories treated al-Balawi as a fanatical double-agent driven by irrational hatreds, other motivations could be gleaned by carefully reading articles about his personal history.

Al-Balawi’s mother told Agence France-Presse that her son had never been an “extremist.” Al-Balawi’s widow, Defne Bayrak, made a similar statement to Newsweek. In a New York Times article, al-Balawi’s brother was quoted as describing him as a “very good brother” and a “brilliant doctor.”

So what led al-Balawi to take his own life in order to kill U.S. and Jordanian intelligence operatives?

Al-Balawi’s widow said her husband “started to change” after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His brother said al-Balawi “changed” during last year’s three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians.

When al-Balawi volunteered with a medical organization to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, he was arrested by Jordanian authorities, his brother said.

It was after that arrest that the Jordanian intelligence service apparently coerced or “recruited” al-Balawi to become a spy who would penetrate al Qaeda’s hierarchy and provide actionable intelligence to the CIA.

“If you catch a cat and put it in a corner, she will jump on you,” the brother said in explaining why al-Balawi would turn to a suicide attack.

“My husband was anti-American; so am I,” his widow said, adding that her two little girls would grow up fatherless but that she had no regrets.

Answering Helen

Are we starting to get the picture of what the United States is up against in the Muslim world?

Does Helen Thomas deserve an adult answer to her question about motive? Has President Obama been able to assimilate all this?

Or is the U.S. political/media establishment incapable of confronting this reality and/or taking meaningful action to alleviate the underlying causes of the violence?

Is the reported reaction of a CIA official to al-Balawi’s attack the appropriate one: “Last week’s attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day.”

Revenge has not always turned out very well in the past.

Does anyone remember the brutal killing of four Blackwater contractors on March 31, 2004, when they took a wrong turn and ended up in the Iraqi city of Fallujah — and how U.S. forces virtually leveled that large city in retribution after George W. Bush won his second term the following November?

If you read only the Fawning Corporate Media, you would blissfully think that the killing of the four Blackwater operatives was the work of fanatical animals who got – along with their neighbors – what they deserved. You wouldn’t know that the killings represented the second turn in that specific cycle of violence.

On March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated the then-spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sheikh Yassin — a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheelchair.

That murder, plus sloppy navigation by the Blackwater men, set the stage for the next set of brutalities. The Blackwater operatives were killed by a group that described itself as the “Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade.”

Pamphlets and posters were all over the scene of the attack; one of the trucks that pulled around body parts of the mercenaries had a poster of Yassin in its window, as did store fronts all over Fallujah.

We can wish Janet Napolitano luck with her “counter-radicalization” project and President Obama with his effort to “communicate clearly to Muslims,” but there will be no diminution in the endless cycles of violence unless legitimate grievances are addressed on all sides.

It might also help if the American people were finally let in on the root causes for what otherwise get dismissed as irrational actions by Muslims.

Source: Ray McGovern (my #1 best source on foreign policy & intel)
Original: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/010810b.html

Ray McGovern now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During a 27-year career at CIA, he served under nine CIA directors and in all four of CIA’s main directorates, including operations. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

I see two important factors influencing Senator Dodd’s decision.

#1. Dennis Kucinich just announced he will be investigating the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac bailouts. http://www.kucinich.us/

#2. Liberty candidate and economist Peter Schiff is crushing Dodd in polls with his recently announced bid to take Dodd’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

Peter Schiff for Senate 2010

http://schiffforsenate.com/ (Official Website)

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd won’t seek reelection, will retire at end of term

By Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Embattled Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday at which he is expected to announce he will not seek reelection, sources familiar with his plans said Tuesday night.

Fox News: Sen. Chris Dodd Will Not Seek Re-election

Poll: Peter Schiff, Republicans beating Chris Dodd in Connecticut

President of Euro Pacific Capital and Republican Senatorial candidate for Connecticut, Peter Schiff, is defeating incumbent Democratic Senator Chris Dodd in a latest Rasmussen poll.

Peter Schiff, author of “Crash Proof 2.0” and “The Little Book of Bull Moves in a Bear Market,” is vying for the Republican nomination for the state of Connecticut as a Senator and even though he is behind among his fellow Republican contenders such as Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon, he is defeating incumbent 30-year Senator Chris Dodd, according to Rasmussen.

Dodd is losing to every remaining Republican in the race. Simmons, the frontrunner among all the Republicans, is up 48% to Dodd’s 35%, while McMahon, who has been running ads on all mediums for more than a year, leads 44% to 38%. Schiff is is beating Dodd by one percentage point with 40% to 39%, reports the Hartford Courant.

However, the undecided voters could be a major factor for all candidates as between 9% and 14% are unsure of who they would support.

The Republican American notes that this will concern many Democrats in Washington but they still believe Dodd will win the race.

In an e-mail to Digital Journal, the Schiff for Senate campaign said they are excited about the latest poll numbers because they haven’t even started campaigning yet but will once their campaign headquarters officially opens up next week. They’re especially enthusiastic because Dodd is a five-term Senator and most Connecticut voters do not know what Schiff stands for nor of his private sector record.

They concluded in the e-mail, “One final note: there is a lot of talk out of Washington about the need for “a million-dollar advertising campaign” like the one we are seeing from one of Peter’s opponents. If these poll numbers prove one thing, it’s that: Throwing money at a problem won’t move your poll numbers any more than it will solve the financial crisis.”

Election 2010 – Connecticut Senate Race – Rasmussen Reports™

Pollster.com: 2010 Connecticut Senate General Election – Peter Schiff (R) vs Sen. Chris Dodd (D)

Video: Peter Schiff Vs. Chris Dodd – Fannie & Freddie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A18zTHSxGHY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnin4zjTMUU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsBoA_HRApU

Chris Dodd quits. Is Peter Schiff happy or not? – Liberty Maven

January 6th, 2010 1:10 am  |  by Marc Gallagher |  Published in Commentary, Election, Peter Schiff, Politics |  7 Comments

Politico is reporting that Senator Chris Dodd will announce today that he won’t seek re-election this year after all.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) plans to announce Wednesday that he will retire from the Senate at the end of the year, capping a 30-year career where he rose to be one of the most influential members and held some of the most powerful positions in the upper chamber, several Democratic sources told POLITICO Tuesday night.

Dodd’s decision to forgo a bid for a sixth term paves the way for a more popular Democrat to run, most likely the state’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has his eye on a Senate seat. And that is good news for Democrats who were hit with the stunning announcement Tuesday that Sen. Byron Dorgan would not run for reelection in North Dakota, likely giving the GOP an advantage for his seat.

So the political winds have forced Dodd to quit. Does this give Peter Schiff more or less of a chance to replace Dodd as Connecticut’s next Senator? I would guess Dodd quitting removes an entire line of attack for any would-be GOP challengers. Peter Schiff is probably unhappy about this move.

To me this just seems like Dodd is playing the part of a child who can’t take it anymore and picks up all his toys and runs home to mommy. Of course, the real reason is that he knows if he stays in the race he’s red meat for Schiff and the other attack dog Republicans.

AP sources: Conn. Sen. Chris Dodd to retire

WASHINGTON – Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a five-term Democrat whose political stock began falling after the financial meltdown and his failed 2008 presidential bid, has decided not to seek re-election in November, Democratic officials told The Associated Press early Wednesday.

Dodd was expected to make an announcement Wednesday. The officials who disclosed his plans would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement. The Washington Post first reported Dodd’s decision.

Word of his retirement comes hours after North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan announced he will not seek re-election.

Dodd, 66, is chairman of Senate Banking Committee, which was at the center of efforts to deal with the economic meltdown. And he has played a prominent role in the debate over overhauling health care, taking over for his friend Ted Kennedy during his illness and then after his death.

Given Dodd’s bad poll standing, other Democrats have gone out of their way to give him the spotlight in hopes he could recover before November.

*props to the trumpet-sounding Patriot who sent me the AP sourced news article from yahoo regarding this incredibly important 2010 campaign news.

Official Facebook Page: Peter Schiff for Senate 2010

More Information about the 2010 Liberty Candidates

Jesse Ventura and a team of expert investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They examine available evidence as well as talking to experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as global warming, possible 9/11 cover-ups, secret government weapons and apocalyptic prophecies. “This is my personal journey,” Ventura says, “to prove that there is more to these stories than you know about.”

Episode 5: Secret Societies

Premiere On: Wed, December 30 at 10P

They’re thought to be a group of the world’s elite who meet once a year at a luxury hotel and decide how they will run the world. It’s believed they plan to thin out the population through disease-and vaccines. Jesse Ventura infiltrates the Bilderberg Group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR24APqFimM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBqMMOJnxFA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPu7XW4zgnw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhWvQ7BzB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0cME6H32hE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A225zQUnME0

Jesse Ventura and a team of expert investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They examine available evidence as well as talking to experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as global warming, possible 9/11 cover-ups, secret government weapons and apocalyptic prophecies. “This is my personal journey,” Ventura says, “to prove that there is more to these stories than you know about.”

Episode 4: Big Brother

Premiere On: Wed, December 23 at 10P

Big Brother is watching and it’s not who you think. Jesse Ventura’s investigation of government surveillance on its citizens tears the lid off a nationwide program that is thought to turn local businessmen and office workers into spies, snooping on their neighbors and ratting on their friends in exchange for information and special privileges from the FBI- including, some charge, a “license to kill.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_2mXR_Yt94

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilGS_TT6xuY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pHX4L9A74A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb3DPYt6rQg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EfHZ4ev3-Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKjh6w16YxY

His Mother, Elaine, reported to me that Michael was in Madison, Wisconsin attending a hearing regarding a raw milk case.  After the hearing he got in a car to go to lunch with friends, He then slumped over. His friends attempted CPR and contacted the paramedics. They attempted to revive him 3 times with no success. Upon the 4th attempt his heart was revived yet with erratic behavior.

He was taken by helicopter to Gunderson Lutheran Hospital CCU in Lacrosse, WI. Please do no call or visit the hospital, only family is allowed.

He has been fitted with a temporary pacemaker and a balloon pump to ease stress on his heart.

I have no further details at this time.

Michael is a true asset and leader in our movement who works tirelessly and selflessly for freedom. Please pray for Michael at this time.

For more information about the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference see the numerous, recent, excellent articles on JBS.org and TheNewAmerican.com. For example, “Climategate, ‘Scientific Fascism,’ and Copenhagen” by James Heiser was posted on JBS.org today. And, “Lord Monckton, the Copenhagen Treaty, and the Constitution” by William F. Jasper was posted on TheNewAmerican.com yesterday.

Gordon Brown Speech At Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BOXO9itws

Hillary Clinton Speech At Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u42SVaaUs

President Obama Press Conference Before Leaving Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1VMrMHbW2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ndexqc0MOg

Jesse Ventura and a team of expert investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They examine available evidence as well as talking to experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as global warming, possible 9/11 cover-ups, secret government weapons and apocalyptic prophecies. “This is my personal journey,” Ventura says, “to prove that there is more to these stories than you know about.”

Global Warming – NEW!

Premiere On: Wed, December 16 at 10:PM
Whether global warming is real or not, it’s believed some people are using the issue to make billions of dollars, start a one-world government and control our lives, from the cars we drive to the foods we eat. Jesse Ventura starts with Al Gore and goes far beyond as he uncovers the evidence that leads to one man thought to be behind the global warming conspiracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51xjrvr4bM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGfyFw5LI30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5vdnc8Jhtc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gauMgwxjA5c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2RAP-v84yk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM11NhZRing

Learn the Truth about Climate Change

&nbsp:

Take Back Congress 2010

The Spirit of the Founders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nl95T_ND_Q

2010 Liberty Candidates:

C4L = Campaign for Liberty

U.S. Senate:
Rand Paul (R – Kentucky)
Peter Schiff (R – Connecticut)

U.S. House of Representatives:
Ron Paul (R – Texas)
Dennis Kucinich (D – Ohio)
Adam Kokesh (R – Arizona)
RJ Harris (R – Oklahoma)
John Dennis (R – California) running against Nancy Pelosi
Paul Lambert (R – Alabama)
Mike Vasovski (R – South Carolina)
Jaynee Germond (R – Oregon)
Jake Towne (R – Pennsylvania)

State Governors:
Debra Medina (R – Texas)
Randy Brogdon (R – Oklahoma)

more info on elections
more info on 3rd-parties

Constitutional Candidates for Congress

As recently as two years ago, Congressman Ron Paul introduced a bill to audit the Federal Reserve Bank that headed to oblivion. Year after year — beginning in 1983 — the bill never even won a committee hearing. Dr. Paul was ignored in Washington, and was a lonely voice for freedom back in his Texas congressional district.

Times have changed. Ron Paul is on a political roll. The bill Dr. Paul introduced in the current Congress to audit the Federal Reserve Bank (H.R. 1207) has more than 300 cosponsors — including every House Republican and more than 100 Democrats — and the backing of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. Frank has promised a committee vote, and it has a better-than-average chance of House passage this year. Dr. Paul’s new book End the Fedsailed into the top twenty of Amazon.com’s sales figures more than a month before it was available. It debuted on both Amazon.com and New York Times bestseller lists, and sales remain strong even today. His old presidential campaign has rolled over into a “Campaign for Liberty” that has raised more than $4 million since its founding in February of this year.

More importantly, his presidential campaign evidently inspired dozens of candidates for congressional office across the nation who seek to reform Congress from a constitutionalist perspective. And several of them are both well funded and being taken seriously by the political establishment.

Rand Paul
Prime among these constitutionalist “Ron Paul” candidates is the Congressman’s third child, Dr. Rand Paul. While the elder Dr. Paul was an obstetrician by trade before being elected to Congress, Dr. Rand Paul is an eye surgeon (ophthalmologist). The 46-year-old Dr. Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the open U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky in August. Days before Dr. Paul’s announcement, incumbent Republican Jim Bunning had bowed out of a reelection contest after Kentucky’s establishment Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (who is also the Senate Minority Leader) had made fundraising in Washington difficult for Bunning. “Over the past year,” Bunning said, “some of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Senate have done everything in their power to dry up my fundraising. The simple fact is that I have not raised the funds necessary to run an effective campaign for the U.S. Senate.” Time magazine on July 29 explained that the “some leaders” Bunning was talking about was his fellow Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell: “He quietly signaled to Republican moneymen that they ought to wait Bunning out. Party leaders in Washington met with a potential primary opponent…. McConnell’s strategy ultimately worked.”

Dr. Rand Paul is the founder of the conservative Kentucky Taxpayers United and has also campaigned for his father, so he isn’t a stranger to politics. But he hasn’t seen McConnell open the monetary floodgates from Washington on his behalf either. Politico.com has noted that “the GOP establishment has lined up behind Secretary of State Trey Grayson.” Perhaps Grayson is favored by the Washington Republican establishment because Grayson’s campaign website is bereft of mention of bringing the federal government back within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. By way of contrast, Rand Paul has made the Constitution a centerpiece of his campaign. “The Federal Government must return to its constitutionally enumerated powers and restore our inalienable rights,” the younger Dr. Paul says on his campaign website, in an echo of his father’s principles. “America can prosper, preserve personal liberty, and repel national security threats without intruding into the personal lives of its citizens.”

The fact that the establishment isn’t behind him hasn’t hurt Rand Paul in the crucial fundraising part of the race; he raised more than $1.1 million by the end of the third quarter of this year. Grayson’s Washington fundraising, which included a $500 per plate fundraiser hosted by McConnell on September 23, has been matched by Dr. Paul’s vibrant Internet strategy dollar-for-dollar thus far. “We actually outraised both Democrats and our primary opponents this past quarter,” Dr. Paul toldThe New American.

Rand Paul is quick to say that his first problem was “name recognition,” though he told The New American “we are now probably very close to being on a par with our primary opponent now.” Of the two, Grayson has been far better known in Kentucky; he’s been the Secretary of State for five years. Therefore, even though Grayson’s polling numbers were stronger back in August, 40 percent to Dr. Paul’s 25 percent according to an August poll, Rand Paul is being given a good chance of prevailing by professional political observers. Dr. Paul has numbers to back up his statement that he’s pulled up to a par with Grayson. An October Rasmussen poll put Paul’s and Grayson’s “favorability” percentages within the poll’s margin of error, and a November WHAS11/Survey USA poll put Paul ahead at 35 to 32 percent.

If the younger Dr. Paul survives the Republican primary, he has a better-than-even chance of winning the GOP-leaning Kentucky general election. Democrats who face a Republican candidacy of Rand Paul would not only face a united conservative base but also significant crossover from some traditionally Democratic voting groups, especially those opposing unnecessary wars and assaults on civil liberties under the guise of the “war on terror.” Dr. Paul told The New American that he maintains a bipartisan appeal that criticizes both parties when they are at fault, “On the stump I promise that I will vote against any budget that is not balanced, either Republican or Democrat.” The crossover phenomenon may even impact the primaries, as many have changed from independents or Democratic registration to vote for him in the primary. “We re-register people a lot of the time, and there is a lot of crossover.”

Peter Schiff
Another well-funded Ron Paul presidential campaign supporter is Connecticut-based Peter Schiff, who had been an economic adviser to the Ron Paul presidential campaign. Schiff has become an Internet sensation on his own as president of Euro-Pacific Capital, largely because he accurately predicted the current economic recession with astonishing precision on a variety of financial television talk shows. He not only predicted the current recession in 2006 and 2007, he also explained why it would happen to pundits who often laughed at him for predicting the housing boom would go bust. In 2008, some of his friends put together a montage of his television clips called “Peter Schiff Was Right” and posted it on YouTube. The clips received several million views and dramatically increased demand for Schiff’s guest appearances on national television shows.

Schiff is an acolyte of the free-market “Austrian School” of economics, is for ending America’s military interventions abroad, and is emphatic about returning the federal government to the limits of the U.S. Constitution’s delegated powers.

Schiff announced in September that he would run for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut against longtime incumbent Christopher Dodd. Dodd would ordinarily be considered a safe incumbent. On paper, Dodd is an entrenched Democrat in a Democratic-leaning state, but the 28-year incumbent is considered highly vulnerable this time around. As chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, he was the Senator who could have — and should have — raised the alarm about the housing bubble. But instead, Dodd built a cozy relationship with sub-prime lender Countrywide. Although technically cleared of ethics violations in a recent investigation concluded August 7, the Senate inquiry criticized Dodd’s efforts as less than cautious. “The committee does believe that you should have exercised more vigilance in your dealings with Countrywide in order to avoid the appearance that you were receiving preferential treatment based on your status as a senator,” the Senate Ethics Committee concluded. Dodd also has personal health issues to deal with this time around. Last summer he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, so he may not be able to wage as vigorous a campaign as in the past.

As a result of Dodd’s recent missteps, Schiff will have to get in line to have a crack at him. The Republican Party smells blood, and a number of other Republicans have declared their candidacies as well. Among the better known are World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon and former Congressman Rob Simmons, who appears to be the early front-runner. Schiff’s greatest challenge may be winning the Republican primary. With his financial background and his accurate economic predictions, he’s the perfect constitutionalist foil for the leftist Dodd in a general election. But despite already having raised more than $1.1 million in Internet donations for his campaign, he barely registers in polling data. That’s perhaps expected, since he’s a political novice in the Republican Party and outside his coterie of YouTube followers he’s virtually unknown in Connecticut.

Schiff will definitely need that impressive $1.1 million he’s already raised, and more, in order to introduce himself to more Connecticut primary voters if he wants to win. He’ll also have to mobilize a local army of volunteers in Connecticut. If he can do that, Schiff could become the next Senator from Connecticut.

Adam Kokesh
Adam Kokesh is best known as an Iraq War veteran who returned opposed to the war and was a keynote speaker at Ron Paul’s “Rally for the Republic” that competed with the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2008. He volunteered for service in Iraq, where he witnessed the bureaucracy, waste, and corruption in the U.S. reconstruction of that country. According to his campaign website, he emerged from the military a strict noninterventionist in foreign policy and defender of Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war:

Inherent with the right to self-defense is the right to collective self-defense, and in the world that we live in, this is the most important function of the federal government. To ensure that this power is used responsibly, Congress, as the best representation of the people, was given the exclusive power to declare war…. The executive branch has set a dangerous precedent by taking powers that are supposed to be vested in the Congress. By not abiding by the Constitution and using the collective wisdom of the Congress to ensure judicious use of force, we find ourselves spending hundreds of billions more than is necessary for legitimate defense.

Kokesh has echoed Rep. Paul’s position on the Federal Reserve Bank, called for a smaller government role in the management of healthcare, and pronounced a nuanced view about the immigration issue.

Kokesh has an uphill battle as a Republican in New Mexico’s heavily Democratic Third District against freshman Democrat Ben R. Luján. Luján hasn’t had much time to dig in as an incumbent, but his northern New Mexico district hasn’t been won by a Republican since 1996. Kokesh, in his favor, was able to tell The New American that he has raised over $100,000 in donations in the first few months of his candidacy. “What was shocking for me was that for the third quarter we actually beat Luján,” he told The New American. That goes a long way toward making up for the $100,000 Washington, D.C., fundraiser Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer hosted earlier this year for Luján. Neither candidate is even close to the $1 million or so they’ll have to raise to wage winning a House campaign, but Kokesh’s early fundraising numbers suggest that he won’t be at a financial disadvantage on this front.

Kokesh told The New American that the traditional political wisdom in New Mexico is that “if you want to play and you want to win, you’re going to run as a Democrat.” Yet, the state has elected conservative Republicans occasionally because “a lot of those people would be Republicans anywhere else.” Kokesh notes that the local Democratic Party still postures as pro-gun and as socially conservative, and he sees a “great potential for a crossover vote, just because of those Democratic voters that have been sucked into the machine.”

And Kokesh’s anti-war, noninterventionist foreign policy, and pro-civil liberties positions just may have the decisive bipartisan appeal he’ll need. “People [are] calling to say they are changing their party registration so they can vote in the primary” for him, he told The New American. But if people can see through to the principles of the Constitution, the liberal media is still seeing things in terms of the phony left-right spectrum. The local weekly news magazine Santa Fe Reporter published an article on congressional candidates called “The Early Birds” on July 29, labeling Kokesh a right-winger. “They gave me a 4.2 out of 5 for being true conservative,” Kokesh said, “then two or three months later, they wrote about how I had all of these liberal ideologies.” The Marine Corps veteran says, “To me … one of the biggest frustrations and also one of the most rewarding things about this race is taking on the left-right spectrum.”

Also in Kokesh’s favor is the expectation that most analysts believe 2010 will be a Republican year, just as 1994 and 1996 were. Count Kokesh as an underdog, but he may have a shot.

Other Candidates
These are only three of the better known among more than a dozen candidates nationwide who have been inspired by Ron Paul’s 2008 candidacy to run for the House or Senate. It has almost taken on the form of a slate in some quarters, as Internet fundraisers like ThisNovember5th.com are seeking to raise funds for more than a dozen candidates on the same day as Ron Paul’s 2007 “money bomb” when he raised a then-record $4 million in a single day. The idea of Internet “money bombs” has proliferated among the constitutionalist movement, often resulting in more frequent but smaller one-day fundraising numbers for candidates. This year’s money bomblets have netted from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand dollars on a single day for the better-known candidates. And while this article will be at press on November 5, tens of thousand dollars were pledged two weeks in advance of the day. But ThisNovember5th.com is only one of many independent efforts to raise funds for constitutionalist candidates and enable them to become independent of the Washington, D.C., fundraisers and not beholden to power-brokers in the same quarters.

Among the ThisNovember5th.com candidates is Marine Corps veteran David W. Hedrick, who is running against five-term liberal Democratic Congressman Brian Baird of Washington’s Third Congressional District. Before announcing his candidacy, Hedrick confronted Baird at an August 18 town hall, telling him: “I also heard you say that you were going to let us keep our health insurance. Well thank you! It’s not your right to decide whether I keep my current plan or not. That’s my decision.” But that’s not all. Directly confronting the claim made by some leading Democrats that attempts to “disrupt” town hall meetings display a fascist tendency, he also told Baird:

A little history lesson. The Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They took over finance. They took over the car industry. They took over the health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.

Meanwhile, R.J. Harris is opposing three-term incumbent Republican Tom Cole in Oklahoma’s Fourth Congressional District. A veteran commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom WatchInternet show on Fox News’ website, Harris encapsulates his decision to run against a fellow Republican in a video advertisement: “How can we Republicans demand to replace the Democrat bailout voters without doing anything about our own? If we don’t clean our own house, we can expect the Democrats to do it for us.” Cole voted for the Bush bailout bill, the TARP legislation. Harris calls himself a “constitutional conservative Republican” and says, “I will never vote for bailouts, required servitude, taxation without representation or give your money to foreign governments. However, Tom Cole has voted for all of these things.”

Jake Towne of Pennsylvania’s 15th District will also try to make Republicans honest by running against liberal Republican incumbent Charlie Dent (The New American’s Freedom Index rating: 40 percent).

Minuteman founder Chris Simcox, though not a newcomer to politics as a result of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential bid, has announced a challenge against John McCain’s Senate seat in Arizona and has been put on the ThisNovember5th.com fundraising list.

Dr. Mike Vasovski in South Carolina’s Third District will run in a crowded Republican primary for an open congression-al seat.

Other House of Representatives candidates ThisNovemer5th.com will be raising funds for include John Dennis (California), Jaynee Germond (Oregon), David Ratowitz (Illinois), Bob Parker (Missouri), and both Collins Baily and Robert Broadus of Maryland.

Source: JBS New American

It didn’t receive enough attention, but this author leaned into it upon learning about the new coalition atwww.EndUSwars.org. The coalition held its first rally outside the U.S. White House on Saturday, December 12, 2009.

The rally had music, a raft of speakers, and four former U.S. Presidential candidates: Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, and Nader. These are the Green / progressive / anti-war left in touch with “Main Street” America. Apparently, they are too far left to suit the taste of U.S. network TV, which is pro-war, pro-genocide, and pro-corrupt status quo.

Network TV is “the corrupt, flacking for the corrupt,” and indeed their only role in the face of authentic and genuine protest is to put out the fire, by starving such protest of its metaphorical oxygen — the attention that would bring the concerns to wider audiences.

So, it should not surprise us that network TV yammered about Tiger Woods all weekend — it was a convenient distraction and it filled up air time that might otherwise have gone to Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, and Nader, who addressed the high stakes questions of war and peace, and the waste of blood, treasure, lives, and livelihoods.

It should be a national issue — can we afford more war at a time when our economy is a crater?

But, the pro-war U.S. TV networks know how to sidestep serious issues, and what the public got instead is discussion of Tiger Woods, marital infidelity, and his sex life, endorsement deals, and PR strategy.

To be entertained with prurient titillation, go ahead and turn on CNN. To be informed, keep your mouse surfing at this web site.

In this article, I will simply insert pull quotes or highlights from the speeches of the ex-Presidential candidates. Then, I will insert the Cynthia McKinney speech. This will convey a sense of what was said, but of course it’s not everything, and to see more speeches go and visit www.EndUSwars.org.

The following points seemed to be striking (emphasis added):

“These wars are corrupting the heart of our nation. They raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the two party system….We have money for war, but not for jobs. Money for war, but not for health care. Money for war, but not for education. Money for war, but not for housing. Money for war, but not for peace. Billions for bailouts, bonuses, and bombs…. We are nation building in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and some would have us nation build even in Iran. But we cannot nation build here at home! –Where bridges, water systems, sewer systems, and roads are falling apart! We must rally across America to set aright our nation’s priorities.”

–Dennis Kucinich

“Instead of investigating war criminals in the Bush administration, President Obama has chosen to become one. Our President is now complicit in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace.”

–Cynthia McKinney

“It is not honorable to die in vain. And that’s what we did. We died in vain in Vietnam. We’ve been dying in vain in Iraq. And we’ll die in vain in Afghanistan. And we’re going to die more people in vain at the hands of the leadership of Barack Obama. This is sad…. [Gravel led the crowd to chant] ‘Hey, hey Obama say how many kids you killed today!’“

–Mike Gravel

“Now remember 1994, when a lot of Democrats and a lot of liberals stayed home. Gingrich toppled the Democrats in Congress and took control of Congress in January, 1995. That can happen again, if Obama continues his reckless path toward a criminal war of aggression that is undermining our national security, our national reputation, and destroying on both sides of the ocean — millions of innocent people’s lives, health, safety, and hopes for the future.”

–Ralph Nader

And now for Cynthia McKinney’s speech.

My fellow Americans,

Millions of us are drinking dirty and contaminated water. Four million of us will get foreclosure notices by the end of this year. 25 million of us are un- or under-employed. 47 million of us have no health insurance, and millions more are under-insured.

My aunt was killed by the health care system in this country. Not because she didn’t have insurance; she did. What she didn’t get was quality care. And amidst all the talk about health care, no one is talking about quality care.

My cousin, who is no more than 24 years old, is now $100,000 in debt because she wanted to get an undergraduate college education.

But the trials of my family are not our story alone. Millions of us are now in the same boat. And no matter how hard we wish for a better world and a kinder country, our policy makers are not delivering on our hopes and dreams. In fact, the dreams of our country stand deferred, and drowned in debt.

Sadly, in the face of growing income inequality, our President chose to transfer over $23 trillion of our hard earned money to the bankers and financial elite — who didn’t have to work hard at all for it — just tank our economy.

So, huddled in fear, we pray together that the flu, a hurricane, the Great Depression, or the next terrorist attack doesn’t hit us.

Now, given all these problems, what do our leaders do? Bomb, maim, and kill people on the other side of the planet, whose resources certain powerful people in this country want to steal, and whose territory occupies the land necessary for global conquest.

Now, instead of investigating war criminals in the Bush administration, President Obama has chosen to become one. Our President is now complicit in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace.

So, what are we to do? We will not give up, and we will not go away. We are not so demoralized that we can’t see the truth. We know that lies are not true; ignorance is not strength; and war is not peace.

We see the power of the ballot in Latin America, where voters in unrigged elections are choosing freedom. Our freedom is under seige as much right here as it is in Haiti or Honduras. If U.S. politics was truly democratic, then we would not have war. That’s why I support Senator Gravel’s national initiative project. Who has $100 million of their own money to spend to get elected, like New York’s mayor did?

We are ready to act on our dreams. To create the kind of change that graduates students from college — free of charge. That treats medical ailments — free of charge. That reflects our interests, not the special interests. That elects peace candidates to Congress and that elects a peace President too.

While our fellow Americans are afraid to get sick, struggle to keep a job, educate their children, stave off foreclosure, and make ends meet, we will not rest. As long as bombs drop, and civilians die, we will not rest. While the oligarchs and the war machine get our money, we will not rest.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lamented that both political parties failed to take a stand for what was right. He said that our scientific power has outstripped our spiritual power. –That we possessed guided missiles, and misguided men.

Well, President Obama, don’t be misguided. Stop shielding war criminals from justice in our courts. Stop supporting the PATRIOT Act and spying against us environmentalists and peace activists. Stop granting power to the Federal Reserve. Close Guantanamo. Stop torture and renditions, secret prisons, and building military bases all over the planet.

President Obama, stop the saber rattling at Iran. Stop the drones and depleted uranium. Stop bombing Somalia. Stop using war as an energy policy. And finally, stop bankrupting our nation.

We will not stop, we will not rest, and our peace candidates will win.

Source: Echoes of Practical Idealism

Demonstration follows President Obama’s Nobel speech

Hundreds of protesters have gathered near the White House to try and start a new anti-war movement. Saturday’s demonstration closely follows President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech, in which he said war is sometimes needed to establish lasting peace. Demonstrators in Washington opposed this view, as well as the president’s request for 30,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“Make it personal, make it personal, because killing is personal. It’s immoral. It’s personal,” chanted protesters.

Former Democratic Alaska Senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel led protesters in anti-war chants, while calling for a mass movement to help end U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The gathering, full of peace signs, anti-war posters, and one mock Guantanamo detainee, began under sunny,but cold skies with music from the hip-hop band Head-Roc.

The headline speaker at the event was current U.S. Democratic Representative from Ohio Dennis Kucinich.

“We must rally, protest, march to exercise our civic capacity to bring about real change. Congress must take responsibility. I will soon introduce two bills invoking the War Powers Act, which will force votes on withdrawal from Afghanistan. The decision to go to war is not the president’s alone to make” stated Kucinich.

But Kucinich acknowledged Congress has other plans in mind. He went on to say, “this coming week, Congress will fold unemployment compensation into a bill which will provide $ 130 billion dollars to keep the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq going. The message is clear: ‘we have money for war, but not for jobs; money for war, but not for peace.’”

Many at the rally said they had voted for President Obama in the 2008 election, including Bill Steyert who took a morning train from New York City.

Steyert said, “I would go after al-Qaida if and where we know they are and get them. But having thousands of troops shooting up villages, breaking in doors, looking for needles in haystacks, many times, it’s ridiculous. And I am just furious because I am a Vietnam veteran and I saw the terrible waste of lives there. You can go to the (Vietnam Veterans War Memorial) Wall here in D.C. and see what that got us, and for what: an independent, communist Vietnam who now we trade with.”

One unemployed woman, Wendy Fournier, said the protest was just a start.

“I think that there is such a thing as critical mass, the more protests, the more people out, the more people have to be aware of what is going on, the more people are conscious, that right there throws weight in our favor. Consciousness is the beginning of the whole thing,” she stated.

Speaker after speaker called for a safe return of all troops, the end of drone strikes and torture and secret detentions, while police looked on and singers like Jordan Page provided musical interludes.

Source: Voice of America News

Sat. December 12th: Anti-war rally in DC. Nader & McKinney will speak

Posted by Ian Wilder at onthewilderside.com

Green Party Prez candidates Nader & McKinney headline Anti-War Rally 12/12/09

This is an updated new advisory — Ralph Nader has just confirmed that he will speak at Saturday’s rally in front of the White House. At least six and as possibly as many as nine of the speakers are Greens. Those who show up for the rally: please bring your Green Party (including DC Statehood Green Party & other state & local GP) buttons, signs, etc.

Rally in DC on December 12 will tell President Obama “No You Can’t!” send more US troops to Afghanistan

• Obama’s escalation plans will turn many of his supporters against him, say rally organizers and speakers

Emergency Anti-War Rally at the White House against President Obama’s planned military escalation in Afghanistan

• When: Saturday, December 12, 11 am to 4 pm
• Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, across from the White House, near the Farragut West Metro Station
• Organized by End US Wars http://www.enduswars.org

Thousands of Americans will gather in Lafayette Park across from the White House on Saturday, December 12, to tell President Obama “No you can’t!” send over 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

Speakers for the rally will include Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former Rep. and 2008 GP Prez cand Cynthia McKinney, 2000 GP Prez cand Ralph Nader, former Sen. Mike Gravel, Kathy Kelly,Chris Hedges, David Swanson, Coy McKinney, Mathis Chiroux, Green candidate for Governor of Maine Lynne Williams , Marian Douglas-Ungaro and many others. Many of the speakers are available for interview: see the online speakers list (http://www.enduswars.org/guide). Statements from Colonel Ann Wright, Kevin Zeese , Jared Ball, John Judge and many more.

Ralliers will demand that President Obama announce an immediate ceasefire in Iraq and Afghanistan to end the wars and order our troops home, stop Predator drone attacks and covert operations in Pakistan, and begin immediate reconstruction and recovery in war torn regions.

If the President does not meet these demands, he will face intensified opposition, with anti-war candidates prepared to defeat his war policy politically.

Along with the rally on December 12, the film ‘Rethink Afghanistan’ will be shown Friday December 11, from 8 to 10 pm at Busboys & Poets, 14th and V Streets NW in Washington, DC.

Related: GP Prez cand Cynthia McKinney featured at 12/12/09 Anti-war Rally

Ron Paul’s HR1207 is one step closer to becoming law. The bill was attached to a horrible financial “reform” bill which calls for the creation of yet another government agency to regulate private industry. So of course Ron Paul voted against it on principle, despite the fact that it contains the “Audit the Fed” bill he’s worked so hard for.

Source: Liberty Maven

Ron Paul votes against his own amendment

Congressman Ron Paul (R Texas) is the last true statesman. Want proof, the Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate fought more than twenty years to finally create an amendment to fully audit the Federal Reserve, which is the main cause of the present financial crisis.

The Audit the Fed bill was accepted as an amendment to a larger bill, the Wall Street Regulatory Overhaul. Even though the congressman’s bill was attached he could not in good faith vote for the larger legislation. Imagine a country full of men like that. Imagine just having 100 representatives like that.

The legislation will now go to the Senate for a vote. Ron Paul said “I have no clout in Congress, it was the people (grass roots) who made this happen.” A good guess would be that the Senate will try to take this amendment out. Reportedly, Senator’s are a little closer to those at the Fed than Congressman. It will be up to the people once again to make sure this amendment sticks if the larger bill is passed.

Voters should take notes from Dr. Paul on this issue. When your representatives have back bones like him liberty will flourish. People must become more involved and not fall for the left/right nonsense. There obviously is still room for honesty and integrity in Washington but it will be up to you to make it happen.

As you can see auditing the Federal Reserve is not an easy task. Some say they are more powerful than the President since they control the money supply. It’s reported that John F. Kennedy tried to abolish this powerful organization before being assassinated. Auditing it has been hard enough.

Source: Examiner.com

House Passes Wall Street Reform Bill With Zero GOP Votes

In a close vote, the House of Representatives Friday afternoon passed a financial reform bill intended to re-regulate Wall Street and increase protections for Main Street.

The bill, passed in a 223-202 vote, calls for the creation of a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers that would police consumer credit products like mortgages and credit cards. It also establishes new rules for the trading of derivatives and increases the transparency of the credit-rating process — two previously under-regulated parts of the economy that played a large role in last year’s economic collapse.

Not a single Republican voted for the bill. Twenty-seven Democrats broke with the rest of their party to vote against it.

The measure includes language, introduced in committee by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), that would authorize an expansive audit of the Federal Reserve, a landmark achievement for critics of the central bank’s secretive operations.

The bill also requires systemically important banks to pay into a fund that would be used to break them up and sell them off if they go bankrupt. Republicans bitterly and inaccurately referred to it as a “bailout fund,” telegraphing a critique that will undoubtedly re-emerge during the 2010 midterm elections.

“Today is an important milestone in reversing the decades-long stranglehold Wall Street and big banks have had over our economy. But it is just the first step,” said Service Employees International Union Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger. “Despite the millions Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce spent fighting the demands of the American people and the dozens of visits by big bank CEOs to strong-arm members of Congress, our leaders found the political will and courage to pass the most historic financial reform legislation in nearly 80 years.”

The fight to fundamentally reform financial regulations began soon after President Barack Obama took office. Public zeal, though, was tempered on Capitol Hill by bankers and other Wall Street titans, who united to fight against the kind of reform advocated by consumers, union groups, and academics.

The bill disappointed some consumer groups, who pledged to work to make it stronger as it moves to the Senate.

“The bill does very little to address industry structure,” the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement. “The biggest banks are now bigger than they were before the crisis.”

Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, hailed the bill’s creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but worried it goes too far in allowing federal regulators to preempt their state compatriots.

“The bill would provide consumers with significant protections from the industry practices that dismantled our economy and those of countries around the world,” he said. “We commend the House for this vote to protect families and small business from unfair, unsafe financial practices. However, we remain concerned that the bill allows the same federal banking regulators whose inaction led to the current crisis to continue to ignore state law. That must be fixed as the legislation moves forward.”

Despite the advocacy by financial luminaries like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the bill does nothing to break up big banks or address the mixing of commercial and investment banking by giant firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, praised the part of the bill dealing with credit rating agencies — with a caveat, though.

“If you accept the whole business model as a given, the rest of it is strong,” she said, referring to the fact that the agencies are paid by bond issuers to rate their products, creating an inherent conflict of interest.

Specifically, the bill subjects the credit rating agencies to increased liability, allowing for aggrieved investors to sue. Also, thanks to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a provision was added mandating that the agencies owe a duty of care to investors, rather than just to the bond issuers that pay them, she said.

The bill takes a stab at regulating derivatives, but key reforms were either ignored or voted down. An amendment by Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) calling for increased transparency in trading, which was backed by a coalition of pro-reform advocates, was voted down 330-98.

Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank offered another amendment regarding derivatives that would have beefed up the powers of federal regulators, who have long lacked critical authority to initiate meaningful regulation. That, too, died.

A third amendment would have banned those derivatives that are, in essence, used by big financial firms to place bets upon bets upon bets, like the kind pioneered by AIG that helped crash the financial system last year. It also was voted down.

“Basically, the financial houses and the big banks are working [these amendments] real hard,” Stupak said. “Wall Street’s been working hard. We’ve been tripping over them all week. They’ve won this round.”

Public Citizen offered this explanation:

It’s no mystery why this legislation is not stronger. Wall Street spent $5 billion in political investments in the decade before the financial crisis to obtain deregulation and non-enforcement of existing rules.

Despite Wall Street having crashed the economy, nothing has changed on Capitol Hill. Wall Street continues to invest heavily in politics and wield enormous influence. More than 900 former federal employees, including 70 former members of Congress, are working as lobbyists for the financial services sector this year. Wall Street has spent more than $40 million on campaign contributions since November 2008.

“It was the single most important they needed to get right if they wanted to protect the system from future crises, and I don’t think they got it right,” Roper said.

The bill also addressed investor protection, increasing it in some areas but weakening it in others. Shareholders will now be able to hold non-binding votes on executive compensation — a big win for investor groups. But the bill also includes a provision that changes current law by exempting about half of all publicly-traded companies from having to get audits of their internal controls. Fraud will be harder to catch, investor groups argue.

The House also voted to kill what many experts, consumer advocates and economists believe to be the best — and perhaps the only — way to stem the rising tide of foreclosures: a provision that would have allowed judges to cut the principal for struggling homeowners in bankruptcy.

Belying their expressions of outrage towards banks and sympathy for struggling homeowners, enough Democrats joined Republicans to kill the amendment offered by Democrats John Conyers of Michigan and Jim Marshall of Georgia, by a 241-188 vote.

Bankruptcy courts may reduce several forms of debt for distressed borrowers, but not the mortgage on a primary residence. Judges can, however, alter loan terms on vacation homes and cars, for example.

In March, the House passed a bill that was “substantively identical” to today’s amendment, according to a summary of the amendment provided by the chamber’s Rules Committee. The Senate, however, voted it down, leading Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate for homeowners, to conclude that banks “frankly own the place.”

“The financial industry has so much invested in political influence, in lobbying, in campaign contributions, into having a local network through the local banks and the credit unions,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.). “It’s just very hard to go up against that based upon a strong public policy objective.”

Backers of the measure thought it had a reasonable chance of passage, since, after all, it had already passed, and the foreclosure crisis has only gotten worse. About one in seven homeowners with a mortgage are either delinquent or in foreclosure. The passage of time, however, gave banks a chance to work the halls.

“We got a vote for it earlier this year, but it took a huge effort. There was none of that effort this time. I think that leadership has been working other issues in the bill, but not that one. And there’s enormous opposition to it,” said Miller.

One in four homeowners with a mortgage are “underwater,” meaning they owe more on the home than it’s worth. The administration’s $75 billion foreclosure-prevention effort does virtually nothing to help those homeowners, consumer advocates and economists argue.

Furthermore, since the program’s launch in March, less than 32,000 troubled homeowners have received permanent relief through the government’s mortgage modification plan. It’s supposed to help three to four million homeowners avoid foreclosure.

“You would think that would be a strong argument for doing something about it,” Miller said. “And with the continued foreclosure rate and the effect that’s having on home values and the effect they’re having on each other, being such a downward force on our economy. But there’s just a united front of opposition by the financial industry. If some members are playing it by thinking, well, I’ll give them this vote but then I’ll vote for the CFPA, I guess I can see that calculation.”

Marshall pinned some of the blame on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who had been cool to the idea last spring.

“The leadership here in the House is a big friend to this bill. The White House, well, the Treasury Secretary made some comments earlier this year that I thought were unfortunate. Other than Geithner’s comments, I haven’t really heard anything else from the White House. Obviously it’s not on their priority list, among the many things they don’t have much of an opinion about. Though Geithner did say something, and I wish I could recall, he said something earlier this year that was chilling. Not that he said it was a bad idea, but it certainly wasn’t an endorsement,” said Marshall.

Candidate Obama supported the idea of allowing judges to modify mortgages in bankruptcy en route to the White House. He even expressed public support in February when outlining his plan to stem foreclosures. But it wasn’t in his detailed plan released the next month. Since then, the White House has largely been silent.

President Obama cheered the House action Friday. “This legislation brings us another important step closer to necessary, comprehensive financial reform that will create clear rules of the road, consistent and systematic enforcement of those rules, and a stronger, more stable financial system with better protections for consumers and investors,” he said in a statement.

But the loopholes in the bill and the reforms that were voted down revealed something else to Roper — an apparent deep-seated hostility to government regulation.

Time and time again, Roper noticed various reform proposals killed on the specious claim that they would kill jobs. Looking beyond today’s vote, there are deep, structural roadblocks to fundamental reform, she said.

“Even as they’re trying to cure the regulatory failures that led to the current crisis, they’re setting us up for future crises,” she said. “It’s a philosophy and attitude to regulation that suggests that as soon as the spotlight is off they will be back to attacking regulation as too costly.”

The vote, she said, reveals “that the attitude, the underlying problem, has not changed, and will come back to haunt us in the future.”

“It’s hard to be all that enthusiastic when you know that nothing has changed,” she said.

Source: Huffington Post

Dennis Kucinich “We Can’t Afford These Wars!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8iozAwHYYE

Over A Million Innocent People Perished In A War Based On A Lie! Congressman Dennis Kucinich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mafHPre-JgU

Dennis Kucinich “I Have Seen The Slow & Steady Erosion Of The Constitution Of The United States!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEFhVaLrdk

Kucinich measure to end Afghanistan war gains cosponsors

By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer

December 15, 2009, 2:40PM

Dennis Kucinich’s proposed congressional effort to end the Afghanistan war has gained a dozen bipartisan cosponsors during the week the Cleveland Democrat has circulated it.

Here’s the cosponsor list provided by Kucinich’s office: John Conyers, Jr.; (D-MI); Ron E. Paul (R-TX); Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD); Bob Filner (D-CA); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC); Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Edward Whitfield (R-KY); Michael Capuano (D-MA); Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL); Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ); Eric Massa (D-NY); and Alan Grayson (D-FL).

“At a time when 15 milllion people are unemployed we cannot continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on disastrous wars,” Kucinich said in a press release. “My resolution will force a debate and vote on the war in Afghanistan. Congress must reassert its constitutional authority to start and end wars.”

Kucinich’s office said a similar privileged resolution to end the war in Pakistan will be introduced at a later date. Privileged resolutions require a House of Representatives debate within 15 days of introduction.