Author's posts
Aug 24 2009
1 Million Strong Against our SOCIALIST Fire Departments
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve got to check out this group:
http://www.facebook.com/group….
For too long now, fire departments across the United States have been socialist organizations, resulting in taxes on the American people.FACT: Most Americans never use the socialized services of the fire department. The Obama administration has been very clear about keeping the status quo when it comes to taxpayer-funded fire departments.
It is time to open the fire department up to private industry. We have the best fire departments in the world in the US, but that doesn’t mean that anyone (even non-US citizens) should be able to dial up and have fires put out, etc. There are private companies (Halliburtion, Etc.) who could step in tomorrow and take over every fire department in America and charge the consumer directly.
This is AMERICA. NO FREE FIRE SAFETY.
“Better DEAD than fire truck RED.”
-member D.J. HostettlerPlease tell everyone you know about this group!
Aug 17 2009
We are funding the Taliban — no joke
Turns out that the Taliban isn’t getting all that much of its money from drugs. Why get it from drugs when you can get it from Uncle Sam?
KABUL – It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
It’s classic East Coast politics. The Taliban are the mob, and they get their cut. A big cut.
Then they use the money, from us, to fight us.
And why shouldn’t they fight us? WE’RE ATTACKING THEM.
What’s lost in most of these discussions is the obvious elephant in the room — the only reason the Taliban is fighting us is because we’re there attacking them.
Why are we there, spending $133 million a day?
I repeat, we are spending throwing away $133 million A DAY, five and a half million bucks AN HOUR fighting the natives who are using our own money to defend themselves.
And the generals admit we are losing there.
Five and a half MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR fighting a “war” that we are losing.
Only to find out that a lot of our money is going to the same people we’re fighting.
Now, my absurdity meter has redlined quite a few times over the years, but I think this completely smashes it.
Of course what those figures don’t tell you is how much of that $5.5 million bucks an hour is going directly to American corporations. I mean, it’s not going to the soldiers. Right? It’s going to the corporations who supply the machinery, the gasoline and diesel fuel (ESPECIALLY them), the arms makers, the bootmakers, hell, there must be hundreds of big corporations for whom this is a BIG portion of their daily cash flow.
$5.5 million bucks an hour. To fight an opponent that we are also funding.
That’s what America has turned into.
The dog has caught its own tail and is devouring it.
Aug 10 2009
$133 million a day, and we’re losing
The war in Afghanistan, which we are losing, is costing us $133 million a DAY. That’s right, $133 million a day. That’s over 5.5 million dollars an HOUR, every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever and ever.
Why forever and ever? Because we’re losing, not winning.
Says who, you might ask? Some hand-wringing “liberal”? No, none other than General Stanley McChrystal, the warmongering, warcriminal in charge of the whole mess for the Americans.
US losing in Afghanistan, top general admit.
The top American commander in Afghanistan declared that the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan in a startling interview published Monday – a striking contrast to the “Mission Accomplished” rhetoric of the Bush Administration as regards Iraq.His remarks appear carefully tailored to lower expectations and shift public opinion in support of operations in the war-torn country where few foreign powers have ever seen victory. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were routed by a US invasion.
Currently, US operations in Afghanistan cost taxpayers about $4 billion a month. That comes to roughly $133 million per day, or $5.5 million per hour.
Yeah, but we can’t afford anything here. California is broke, prisons are melting down as prisoners riot for hours on end, schools are firing teachers, the entire social safety net is being set afire ….. why, so we spend money instead losing in Afghanistan?
Of course this begs the question: why would the top General there actually admit to losing the war? Well of course because we’re not spending enough money there yet. And we’re not killing enough American troops! So we need more American troops to sacrifice to the volcano gods of war:
McChrystal’s interview also appeared designed to augment support for increasing troop levels in parts of Afghanistan. Since President Barack Obama took office, the Pentagon has increased the number of US troops in the country. The strategy described suggests a “hearts and minds” approach which favors securing civilian areas rather than focusing on full-frontal engagement with militants.“It’s a very aggressive enemy right now,” the paper quoted Gen. McChrystal as saying. “We’ve got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It’s hard work.”
The interview also quotes unnamed US officials arguing for a further increase in US troops.
Now to win an unwinnable war? Spend more money. Kill more boys. Sure. That works every time. These people learn nothing from history. Their egos are so huge they think they cannot lose, and the only reason they are losing is because those jerks in Washington aren’t giving them what they need! Goddamn those jerks in Washington! They’re not there man, they don’t know what it’s like!
Well, here’s what it’s like for some of the Afghani people we’re spending $5 million bucks an hour killing:
Killing children doesn’t come cheap. Hell, you can’t do it here without getting in serious trouble! But in Afghanistan, you can use the highest tech weaponry in the history of mankind to kill children and it’s just A-OK and the government will keep giving you more!
Aug 10 2009
Banks make record $38 billion in overdraft fees
At BofA, a customer overdrawn by as little as $6 could trigger a $35 penalty. If the customer does not realise they have a negative balance and continue spending, they could incur that fee as many as 10 times in a single day, for a total of $350. Failing to repay the overdraft within a few days results in an additional $35 penalty.
How do ya like them apples?
Why anyone still keeps their money in these banks is beyond me. Oh wait. If you have a low credit score, you can’t open a new account anywhere else. So if you’ve had the dominos start to fall, thanks to these banksters like those who run BofA and others, you are stuck with them and their goddamn thievery.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43d1…
Data from Moebs Services, a research company, show that the crisis has prompted many banks to lift charges on overdrafts and credit cards in order to boost profits.The median bank overdraft fee has this year rose from $25 to $26, according to Moebs, the first time it has gone up in a recession for more than 40 years.
“Banks are returning to a fee-driven model and overdraft fees are the mother lode,” said Mike Moebs, the company’s founder.
Hit ’em when they’re down. That’s a great business plan. It’s the mother-lode, baby! Woo Hoo!
The highest overdraft fees were charged by the largest banks, said Mr Moebs. At banks with assets greater than $50bn – a group including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo – the median overdraft fee is set at $33.
So those “too big to fail” continue to do whatever the fuck they want, because, hell, these banks can’t even fail if they wanted to. They tried to fail! Congress wouldn’t let them! So why not do whatever the hell pops into your head to rip people off, who’s going to stop you?
In the meantime, three more little banks, I guess those who were “small enough to fail” did in fact fail on Friday.
That brings the total for the year to 72. Yup, 72 banks small enough to fail, while the Big Boys just do whatever the hell they want.
In other news, Obama has lost Dailykos, which is the equivalent of George Bush losing the Freepers. Now, we have “Everybody Hates Barry” playing out in Washington. The right hates him, and his most devoted followers are completely disillusioned and crestfallen with him, talking about being “in tears” over his actions. They like to cry. Crying and cats. I don’t get it.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…
What is he doing? He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, being an errand boy for the corporate elite that put him in power. That’s what he’s doing. He’s there to let Goldman bail out Goldman.
Oh, and let’s not forget that a British General has just come out and said that the “mission” in Afghanistan is going to take a good 40 years to “complete”. He’s probably being optimistic.
Aug 06 2009
Hush little baby, don’t you cry ……
Yup, things can’t be that bad in America if we continue to kill innocent foreign children in faraway countries.
That means the war machine is working well. Ratcheting up the demonic hatred, guranteeing that America will have more “enemies” to slaughter in the future, so we can keep the trillion dollar war machine moving right along. God knows that employs a lot of people!
The only problem I’m having with this is remembering when Afghanistan attacked us? When did the Afghan people attack the United States of America? I’m drawing a blank here. Somebody help me out.
‘What was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban,’ Rahim said. “Did they come here to build our country or kill our innocent children?’
Oh, Rahim, Rahim. You just don’t understand. We can’t withdraw from your country and we cannot quit killing your children because that would make our dear El Presidente look like a “failure!” Or worse, a wimp! So you and your children will continue to be sacrificed as part of the President’s PR machine. And it’s okay, really, because most Americans will never see these photos, or hear about your kids, or anything. Even the well-intentioned “liberal” of them will be more concerned with the rantings of an actor named Glenn Beck, or doing the bidding of their corporate leaders to keep themselves from having health care, than they will be with your dead children.
It’s all about the PR, baby. It’s all about “image”. We can’t have the President look like a failure, now, can we? And he can only be a “success” if “you people” quit being terrorists! Oh wait, you’re not terrorists? Well, somebody there must be, or we wouldn’t be bombing you, right? Right!
Aug 06 2009
Media neglects to mention gym shooter was right-winger and racist
Found this over at Rawstory.com:
How many people realize that the fitness club killer in Pittsburgh was a right-winger and a racist?
I’ll bet almost nobody.
That’s because the media isn’t telling you.
George Sodini, the man who took the lives of four women, and then his own, at a Pittsburgh-area fitness club Wednesday, leaves behind a long history of right-wing anti-government militancy.In political rants on the Internet, going back to the early days of the Web, Sodini showed a consistently anti-government attitude. As first reported by Greg Mitchell at his Huffington Post blog, in the mid-1990s Sodini posted to a newsgroup titled misc.activism.militia, where right-wing libertarians and survivalists compared notes on the state of politics, and made plans for upending the “socialist” policies of the Clinton White House. Sodini appeared to support a violent overthrow of the US government in order to return the country to its “Constitutional order.”
(snip)
The Associated Press and other news outlets have omitted references to President Barack Obama, the election of “The Black Man” and remarks that black men have “their choice of the best white” women when republishing excerpts of the diary by a Pittsburgh-area man who killed three women and himself at an LA Fitness gym Tuesday evening.
In fact, the Associated Press’ primary story contains no reference to Obama at all, even though the first entry of the killer’s diary came the day after Obama was elected and references Obama’s election directly.
The omission was noted by the blog of Editor and Publisher.
Aug 04 2009
Shhh, we’re not supposed to talk about this!
But wait. There’s more!
Peter Dale Scott on similaries between JFK and 911
Sibel Edmonds: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11
NIST finally admits “free fall” in WTC7 implosion
Let Bin Laden Stay Free, says CIA man
And of course:
Official story of 9/11 “almost entirely untrue”, so says Commission insider.
So while we’re all chortling over the useful idiots that the corporatocracy sends out to distract us (Orly Taitz, Glenn Beck, et al), the ongoing coup will not be interrupted.
We won’t even know that the coup occurred. We’ll be too busy laughing at the jesters and going “gosh, it’s a good thing the Dems are in power, because if they weren’t, these nutjobs would be! Whew!”
Mission accomplished.
Aug 02 2009
“No bailout can stop the sinking”
Chris Hedges is a war correspondent and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He is also one of the “truthiest” people out there, and is one of the few who actually has a handle on things. Sad thing is, the truth is damn scary.
Jul 29 2009
Citi wants to give this guy $100 million bucks
How much money is $100 million bucks? That’s like Powerball Lottery money, for most of us a nearly unthinkable sum of money, something of which we can only fantasize.
But for Citibank, it’s just a bonus to a guy who is already super-wealthy, a guy who owns this castle in Germany:
The guy’s name is Andrew Hall, and he makes “a boatload of money for Citigroup as head of Phibro, the bank’s energy-trading unit.“
Jul 26 2009
CIA pressued Britain to cover up its use of torture
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…
The CIA has been secretly pressuring the British Government to help it cover up its use of torture, documents filed in the High Court have revealed.The documents, to be discussed at a hearing this week, suggest that the UK authorities did everything they could to accede to the CIA’s wishes while at the same time trying to conceal the fact they were talking to the agency.
It is the latest twist in the saga of Binyam Mohamed, 30, the Ethiopian UK resident released from Guantanamo Bay in February after seven years in US captivity.
Binyan Mohammed was the guy who wasn’t waterboarded, but had his genitals mutilated instead. That’s right, the United States sliced up this guy’s penis. Here’s a little background on the guy:
Jul 25 2009
Stock market “rally” is bogus, volume in market “fictitious”
This guy needs to keep his mouth shut when discussing politics, but when he’s talking about the thing of which he is an expert, equities trading, you can tell he knows what he’s talking about.
He’s obviously not a liberal, but he’s not happy with the current situation in the stock market. He says a huge percentage of the volume in the stock market during this “rally” is due to computerized trading where the profits aren’t even made with the old fashioned “buy low and sell higher” thing, but because these computerized trading systems can generate money through liquidity rebates on a per-trade basis. So these computers just trade like crazy, and they don’t trade for any reason. They just trade. He says the right now the direction of the market is to buy, so all the transactions are “buy”. But he says when an event happens (and it’s not “if” but most certainly “when”) that will drive the market the other way, there will be nobody there to buy.
The man is basically predicting a huge market crash, due to the system being effectively broken.
He, in a classic sort of Republican way, is saying that he’s good enough that he’s okay, it doesn’t really concern him because he’s a pro and can work around it. Maybe he’s right, but if so, why is he on the television talking about it? Why doesn’t he just game it to his advantage? Obviously he’s concerned, knowing that when the market goes the other way, it’s gonna plummet through the floor.
Good times.
I’m so glad Obama is President and fixing everything!
Jul 24 2009
Spitzer: Banks and Fed conspired in massive Ponzi Scheme UPDATED
UPDATE: The link below should work now.
Here’s a video everyone in America should see. If you’ve felt like you’ve never quite understood the whole financial “crisis” that occurred last fall, the repercussions of which persist to this day (and will for, quite possibly, generations), this video explains it all in a clear and concise manner.
Elliot Spitzer than goes on to explain that what was perpetrated on the United States, by collusion between the Fed and the very banks that control it, was a massive conspiracy to defraud the United States — a Ponzi Scheme he calls it.
Now Elliot Spitzer’s dick may have gotten him in trouble, and he certainly displayed bad personal judgement by sleeping with hookers while in public office, but there’s nobody who knows the whole NYC-based financial universe better than he does. There’s a reason they were looking at his life with a microscope, trying to find anything they could to bring him down. Because he was one of the few threats to the corruption that has taken over Wall Street and the banks. Now he’s out of the picture as Governor of NY but he is free to speak his mind, which is a good thing. So when he says “Ponzi scheme” people listen.
Trillions of dollars, folks. Trillions, handed to the very banks who robbed us all in the first place. It’s like the gamblers at the casino suddenly ran out of money, so they held guns to the heads of everyone they could find and emptied their wallets to pay their own gambling debts. Watch it.
Hm, well the embedding doesn’t work for some reason. Here’s a link instead:
UPDATE: FIXED LINK (the other one worked before, but now does not):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22…
(if anyone has any tips for embedding MSNBC video, let me know and I’ll try it here. The embed code they provide doesn’t work)