May 12, 2011 archive

I like Alex Jones but I don’t trust him. He’s sly but he’s also courageous and he’s unique as a commentator but, above all, he is a salesman. He is one of the only people who predicted 9/11 a few months before it happened–mind you he predicts a lot of things that don’t happen but his prediction of 9/11, nonetheless was uncanny–did he just hit a lucky number? Did he get some inside information–he claims to be privy to insider gossip and certainly the people that populate his shows are interesting. Mind you, I don’t like a lot of the crazy right-wingers he seems to agree with on his show (he tries to agree with everyone) but I think these ideas need airing and I don’t have to agree with people to consider what they are saying.

He has people I like on his show guys I would like hanging out with or who remind me of guys I liked hanging out with–Gerald Celente with his highly articulate ability to insult everyone in the best Italo-American tradition (I’ve hung out a lot with people like him), the Yale-educated intellectual and lover of Liebnitz (how endearing to listen to someone like that) Webster Tarpley, the grand southern gentleman Paul Craig Roberts and one of the most unique people in this country (who now lives in Mexico) Jesse Ventura. Because he keeps company with these highly interesting (btw, I don’t necessarily go along with everything these guys say but they base what they say on something real which is more than I can say about the MSM which is, in my view, consists entirely of edicts from the Central Committee. I have almost stopped listening to NPR unless it is a non- “news” show.

After the alleged assassination of OBL I got on the Alex Jones channel. I can’t listen to him for too long since he is, shall we say, somewhat erratic in his articulateness and “truthiness.” One of the figures who came out of the woodwork exclusively on the Alex Jones Show is Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a collaborator on several Tom Clancy books as well as long-time government operative and Assistant Secretary of State–the guy seems to be a real person but since he’s basically a spook and the model Clancy used to create the character of Jack Ryan there’s little real info on him. Having heard the guy on Alex’s show what he said not only about the OBL hoax (I think that is pretty obvious–the governments is so pathetic you have to be stupid not to think something is funny about it) but about the general situation. To me these interview are so explosive, particularly, when he explicitly warned Obama and his people that there would be a revolution if he attempted another false-flag operation which sounded a lot like a threat yet there’s virtually nothing on this interview in the MSM. You would think that they’d try to debunk Dr. Pieczenik or note his very real threat to Obama. If the guy is real they should note it if the guy is a fraud they should debunk it. All I’ve seen is that his Wikipedia entry which suddenly got a note that it is a candidate for deletion.

So what is going on? Is Jones really on to something? Has he become a focal point for dissenters? How much of what he says can be believed? He’s constantly drumming up fear that some terrible things are about to happen most of which, eventually, turn out to be false. Can we support someone who’s on the right as far as immigration policy, about “socialism” and about climate-change, yet is with us (those of us who are highly skeptical of the the official 9/11 story and the weird OBL execution and burial at sea) as well as being an anti-imperialist, anti-globalist and anti-police-state activist. The guy does stand up relentlessly for these things. So what do you think?  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

You cannot make this up:

Paul Ryan’s PAC slams AARP as ‘left-leaning pressure group’

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) political group went on the attack Monday against AARP, calling one of the most powerful lobbies a “left-leaning pressure group.”

   Ryan’s Prosperity PAC sought to push back on attacks by AARP against the House Budget Committee chairman’s 2012 budget, specifically its proposed changes to Medicare.

   “Last week, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), a left-leaning pressure group with significant business interests in the insurance industry, launched a national ad campaign that intentionally misleads seniors about the Medicare debate,” wrote Pat Shortridge, a senior adviser to Ryan’s PAC, in an email to supporters.

   Ryan’s Medicare proposal has been a particular point of criticism by Democrats and groups on the left, which say that the Medicare plan would significantly revamp the entitlement program to the detriment of seniors. Democrats have homed in their attacks against that part of the Ryan budget, which has sparked some degree of heartburn among Republicans.

   AARP launched ads last week warning against “harmful cuts” to Medicare and Social Security it said Republicans favored.

History repeating itself from 2005:

Now some people on the right want you to think of gay marriage and Sunni insurgency. The New York Times this morning reported that the lobbyists who brought you the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” have been contracted to promote the agenda of USA Next, a conservative lobbying group. To build support, USA Next is portraying AARP – which opposes the White House’s pseudo-plan for privatizing Social Security – as some kind of liberal extremist group.

How’d that 2006 election turn out, Mr. Ryan?

“Boner” tells Wall St. Medicare is still on the agenda to raise the debt ceiling:

In a speech to the Economic Club of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the Ohio Republican is set to reiterate to leading financial executives that he believes that reforming Medicare should be part of negotiations in raising the debt ceiling, saying that there needs to be “an honest conversation,” because the program is on an “unsustainable path if changes are not made,” according to sources familiar with the speech. Boehner also is expected to advocate for immediate cuts rather than deficit and debt targets preferred by some Democrats.

After his talk, Boehner will take questions from two prominent Wall Street players at the intersection of Washington power: Peter G. Peterson, the private-equity giant who worked for President Richard Nixon, and Observatory Group CEO Jane Hartley, who worked for President Jimmy Carter….

Boehner’s public insistence that reforming Medicare stay a part of debt ceiling negotiations could reaffirm a concern among Wall Street types that Republicans are driving a hard bargain on the limit and will take the negotiations up to the last minute. Boehner said last week Congress must now cut trillions, not billions….

Friday evening, in a sign of unity after a disjointed week, GOP leadership, along with Ryan and Camp, released a statement saying “everything must be on the table except increasing taxes.”

Freshmen, who voted en masse for the Ryan budget, largely want entitlement reform dealt with.

President Obama needs to stand up to these threats to the social safety nets and let the GOP send itself into political oblivion. I have my doubts that Obama can do this. I will be shocked, I tell you shocked, if he calls them in this. This is no longer 11 dimensional chess. It’s now a game of straight draw poker.  

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The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Bank of England cuts UK economic growth forecasts

• UK economic growth likely to be just 1.7% in 2011
• Inflation likely to hit 5% in the coming months
• Mervyn King admits outlook has darkened since last report

Graeme Wearden, guardian.co.uk

Wednesday 11 May 2011 13.43 BST

The Bank estimated that Britain will grow by around 1.7% during 2011, down from February’s forecast of 2% growth and in line with the latest forecasts from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.

In 2012, GDP is expected to be around 2.2%, down from an earlier estimate of close to 3%. This is weaker than the OBR forecast of 2.5% growth.

On inflation, King said that higher commodity and import prices, and the increase in the standard rate of VAT, was pushing up the cost of living more rapidly than expected in February. He said that higher utility bills were likely to drive the consumer prices index (CPI) up to 5% this year. CPI, which fell back to 4% last month, was likely to remain above the 2% target until the end of 2012, the Bank predicted. Three months ago it had forecast that CPI would drop back to 2% next year.

Hey, folks:   Here’s hoping that you can bear with me while I write yet another essay on a couple of movies that I’ve been thinking about lately, involving their differences (of which there are many) and their similarities.  

Please note:  This  thread is cross-posted in firefly-dreaming.com, and part of this post (about West Side Story) is posted on the new leonardbernstein.com blog, in the West Side Story section.  This, too, is my very own writing, and nobody else’s.

Here goes

Hey, all…can you stand more on West Side Story?

I’ve got that on my mind as well.  Here goes:

Pretty much everybody knows that West Side Story is my alltime favorite movie, hands down,  and that I’m a devout fan of this great classic film  who  always feels like I’m seeing West Side Story for the first time.  Inotherwords, it’s still fresh, imho.   Although West Side Story is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, this particular musical is still relevant, imho, because, although it’s fiction, it’s closer to reality in many respects;  people from “opposite sides of the track” falling in love amid conflict on both sides, dating and even marrying, racial, ethnic and religious tensions, urban gang warfare, all of which still frequently gets played out in real life.  People can and do even fall in love at first sight in real life, although in real life, even that takes time to grow and develop into something where mutual trust and love enable the love to mushroom into something really substantial, if one gets the drift.

Yet, I’m aware of the fact that in real life, gangs don’t go dancing through the streets, nor do they dance their way through street fights and all-out rumbles, which have now evolved into dangerous drive-by shootings and shootings on street corners in many neighborhoods, and gangs today are even more vicious than they were in times  gone past.  It used to be that gangs would stake out and protect their territory, in real life, but  racial/ ethnic tensions and hostilities lent that protection of turf an even more vicious edge.  

Since I’ve also seen several very good stage productions of West Side Story, I kind of have to say that West Side Story is my favorite stage musical, as well.  In addition to the two screenings of the film version of WSS that I will be going to see;  one at the Emerson College-owned Paramount Theatre in downtown Boston this coming Saturday night, and the other at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in Brookline, in mid-November (I’ve already got tickets for both of those screenings), I will be taking my youngest nephew and my niece to a matinee show of the latest Broadway stage revival of West Side Story here in Boston.  I’ve read a number of reviews on this latest WSS Broadway revival;  some good, some not so good.  I really wasn’t sure I wanted to see this particular production of the stage version of West Side Story, but some other people’s suggestion, I went down to the Colonial Theatre here on Boston’s Boylston Street, and purchased some rather expensive mezzanine tickets.  It’s well that I did, since they’re going fast, and there weren’t many mezzanine tickets left, and I didn’t want the balcony, because that would’ve been too far away.  

Bin Laden death ‘not an assassination’ – Eric Holder



The BBC  12 May 2011

US Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout, in which the al-Qaeda leader was killed, was “not an assassination”.

Mr Holder told the BBC the operation was a “kill or capture mission” and that Bin Laden’s surrender would have been accepted if offered.

The protection of the Navy Seals who carried out the raid was “uppermost in our minds”, he added.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

You may think this is about Economics, but it’s really about censorship.

Yesterday I published some notes about how transparently insolvent the mega-banks are.  Today there are follow up developments.

First of all I’d like to quash any thought I’m being unnecessarily hard on Italy by including them in the PIIGS–

Another recession in Europe as a whole is also a very likely prospect, Zulauf said.

“The EU is trying to dictate a very severe austerity program…and that will lead to a lengthy recession, I would call it a depression, and we will see later this year that Italy, Spain and virtually all the peripheral countries will be in negative growth again,” he said.

“I think there is a 90 percent likelihood of another recession in Europe (beginning) later this year,” Zulauf said.

(h/t Chris in Paris @ Americablog which you should be sure to click on)

Extend and Pretend

The big news today (h/t emptywheel @ Firedog Lake), the Wall Street Journal caught BLATANTLY scrubbing the words of Timo Soini after the fact and after they printed it unedited online yesterday.

Why did the Brussels-Frankfurt extortion racket force these countries to accept the money along with “recovery” plans that would inevitably fail? Because they needed to please the tax-guzzling banks, which might otherwise refuse to turn up at the next Spanish, Belgian, Italian, or even French bond-auction.

Unfortunately for this financial and political cartel, their plan isn’t working. Already under this scheme, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are ruined. They will never be able to save and grow fast enough to pay back the debts with which Brussels has saddled them in the name of saving them.

And so, unpurged, the gangrene spreads. The Spanish property sector is much bigger and more uncharted than that of Ireland. It is not just the cajas that are in trouble. There are major Spanish banks where what lies beneath the surface of the balance sheet may be a zombie, just as happened in Ireland for a while. The clock is ticking, and the problem is not going away.

…

If some banks are recapitalized with taxpayer money, taxpayers should get ownership stakes in return, and the entire board should be kicked out. But before any such taxpayer participation can be contemplated, it is essential to first apply big haircuts to bondholders.

For sovereign debt, the freedom to fail is again key. Significant restructuring is needed for genuine recovery. Yes, markets will punish defaulting states, but they are also quick to forgive. Current plans are destroying the real economies of Europe through elevated taxes and transfers of wealth from ordinary families to the coffers of insolvent states and banks. A restructuring that left a country’s debt burden at a manageable level and encouraged a return to growth-oriented policies could lead to a swift return to international debt markets.

This is not just about economics. People feel betrayed. In Ireland, the incoming parties to the new government promised to hold senior bondholders responsible, but under pressure, they succumbed, leaving their voters with a sense of democratic disenfranchisement. The elites in Brussels have said that Finland must honor its commitments to its European partners, but Brussels is silent on whether national politicians should honor their commitments to their own voters. In a democracy, where we govern under the consent of the people, power is on loan. We do what we promise, even if it costs a dinner in Brussels, a “negative” media profile, or a seat in the cabinet.

The bolded parts are the censored ones.  Timo Soini is the head of the populist True Finn party and the top vote getter in Finland’s recent elections.