October 14, 2010 archive

Oct 14 2010

“A series of lies” led to Iraq war – former Joint Chiefs of Staff

I know the current administration prefers to “look forward”, but the memoir of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton III has been published and he has a few words to say about how the U.S. went to war with Iraq. To coin a phrase: Bush lied. According to Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy, this is what Shelton wrote:

Shelton also writes that there was no reason to go war against Iraq. “The fact is that we had Iraq contained and they were not a threat.” (419) Also, “There was absolutely no link between him [Saddam] and 9/11.” (474)  …

His bottom line: “President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect American from Saddam’s evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security.” (474-475)

Just in case you weren’t paying attention, he elaborates on that charge later in the book. “Spinning the possible possession of WMDs as a threat to the United States in the way they did is, in my opinion, tantamount to intentionally deceiving the American people.” (488)

I just thought I’d share this, in case someone in our “forward looking” Department of Justice is still was ever examining the evidence. Oh and Gen. Shelton, it would have been really nice if you would have written this in 2003 or 2004. Ya know, spoken out before the bastards were in the clear.

Oct 14 2010

Open Calvin

Photobucket

Oct 14 2010

Drunk Driving on Wall Street

Real News Network’s Paul Jay talks with Sony Kapoor, Managing Director of Re-Define (Rethinking Development, Finance & Environment), an international Think Tank promoting financial system reform.

Kapoor metaphorically compares the actions of Wall Street and the US Finance Industry to the psychology of alcoholism and drunk driving, and the actions of the people charged with regulating the industry with the reactions of people in denial living with alcoholics, and concludes that another crash is likely inevitable.



Real News Network – October 14, 2010

Finance – Highway Robbers to Drunken Drivers

Sony Kapoor: Global finance system like a highway without police,

ready for another crash

(transcript below)

Oct 14 2010

Banner Year on Veterans Legislation

This type of reporting, especially on the popular blog sites of this new technology, should be what more of the posts are about, especially leading into an Election cycle. As to Congress, and especially the Veterans Administration but also all others, these types of advances, and much of what has been done since the 110th Congress, who have been finally holding hearings and over site into what wasn’t done during the 108th and 109th Congress, as War was waged, will come to a screeching halt if republicans are once again given the reigns to do more damage, or actually nothing at all!

Oct 14 2010

coming up for air

Open Thread for a whackily day.

Oct 14 2010

Docudharma Times Thursday October 14




Thursday’s Headlines:

Living Planet: The world is not enough

USA

FBI breaks up alleged plot to defraud Medicare of $100m

Bankers Ignored Signs of Trouble on Foreclosures

Europe

‘Cold turkey regime’ exposed in Russia

French unions to extend strikes over pension reforms

Middle East

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for 9/11 investigation

Mideast conflict blamed for Christian exodus

Asia

Communist veterans want radical free speech reform

Is Yoshito Sengoku Japan’s real prime minister?

Africa

South Sudan leader douses civil war fears

DRC women relive terror of mass rape

Latin America

Iron discipline that saw the 33 through

Foreclosures hit post-bust peak in third quarter

288K homes affected, but many could now be challenged in court

By ALEX VEIGA

Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006. But many of the foreclosures may be challenged in court later because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents.

A total of 288,345 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July-September quarter, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. That’s up from nearly 270,000 in the second quarter, the previous high point in the firm’s records dating back to 2005.

Oct 14 2010

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,

By reiteration chiefly.

–Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Natural 2

Oct 14 2010

Late Night Karaoke

Oct 14 2010

Foreclosure Robo-Signers Play Dress Up To Fool You

(I know this, because Tyler knows this)

NEW YORK (AP) — In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in “foreclosure expert” jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn’t define the word “affidavit.” Others didn’t know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers’ accusations about document fraud.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/…

Oh, it gets better, and you’ll get angrier…..

Oct 14 2010

The Chamber of Commerce — commerce for those “other guys”

The U.S. Chamber of Outsourcing

by Dustin Ensinger, EconomyInCrisis.org — Oct 12, 2010

Just last month, the Chamber lobbied vigorously to defeat the Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act, which would have given companies a two-year payroll tax holiday, reducing the amount of Social Security taxes they would have to pay, for new employees who replace workers doing similar jobs overseas. The bill would have also ended tax provisions that encourage the outsourcing of jobs.

“Replacing a job that is based in another country with a domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance the competitiveness of American worldwide companies,” Chamber executive vice president Bruce Josten claimed in a letter to senators.

When the $787 billion stimulus bill was passed, the Chamber fought tooth and nail to ensure that a provision requiring that all stimulus projects include only Americans-made products and services was NOT included.

Who’s Looking Out for YOU?

Oct 14 2010

Stop Killing the Inventors

A motor made with magnets.  

No more oil.  No more leaks of oil.  No more open sores from corexit.  No more wars because Mohammed lives on top of the oil.

Oct 14 2010

Sunday Train: Northeastern HSR Alignments & The Move to Tuesdays

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

For the Daily Kos edition of this essay, I wrote:

This is a fairly short Sunday Train, but I thought I better get something posted, so I had somewhere to put this scheduling announcement:

  • Due to a new prep on Monday Morning this coming Fall term, the Sunday Train is temporarily moving to Tuesday Evenings until the end of year Holidays, starting next week (19 October)

… but, hell, given the haphazard scheduling of the crossposts (eg, posting on Sunday and crossposting on Wednesday evening), y’all likely won’t notice the change.

The actual Sunday Train portion is about one element of the Amtrak proposal for a High Speed Rail corridor for the Northeast: the alignment. At the preliminary proposal stage, an alignment must be selected for study so that preliminary cost and patronage estimates can be performed. However, if the decision is made to go ahead, a range of alignments will be (and, indeed, must be) studied.

So tonight I take a brief look at the alignment options from the report.