Baghdad Bob

Everyone likes to make fun of Baghdad Bob.

He is an example of the comic form of propaganda gone bad.

But propaganda gone bad is not limited to any one nation, so we have an abundance of it here in the USA too.

President Obama has made a surprise visit to Baghdad today.

Shortly before leaving for Iraq, he had said:

"Moving the ship of state takes time," he told a group of students in Istanbul. He noted his long-standing opposition to the war, yet said, "Now that we're there," the U.S. troop withdrawal has to be done "in a careful enough way that we don't see a collapse into violence."

(Obama Visits Baghdad). After we destroyed that nation's infrastructure, killed or maimed millions, and made millions of others homeless when they had to flee into other lands like Syria and Jordan, we have to be careful about violence?

We have to be careful about leaving because there might be violence?

Oh, Baghdad Bob, sometimes your propaganda is no match for our propaganda.

You piker you.

The Mother Of All Shame Memos

We have been doing a series on America's Shame Memos, pointing out that we are waiting for the more volatile ones.

Evidently the advertised release of the final memos has caused all hell to break loose.

I am not sure if the memos have already been leaked, but here is what is shaping up behind the scenes.

The great Michael Isikoff had some revelations about it a few days ago which could be described as the Holy Hell memo story.

Daily Kos has a post today indicating a real internecine war is breaking out over the holy hell memos. Some reasons are proposed:

One thing is clear. Astute politicians must have judged that the disclosure of these torture memos may significantly change the stakes of politics. They fear that these memos will have a powerful effect on public opinion.

That, however, is another reason not to give into this form of political blackmail against Koh and Johnsen and release the memos immediately. Once these documents are released, it will be harder to keep out of government people who have condemned torture and illegality for a very long time.

(Daily Kos). Let me get this straight. Some of the republicans think that crime is a political football they can use as a negotiation tool?

That seems to me to be criminal thinking itself. Only a criminal holding hostages would be overcome with that kind of delusional thinking. They think they are in a flea market or something like that?

Keep an eye on the terror / torture memo stories, because they will reveal whether or not Obama will have to cave to the killer class.

Too Big To Stop Killing - The War Class

The entire world together spends $1, 100, 000, 000, 000 per year on killing machines, and support for those killing machines.

The entire world excluding the United States, the "peace keeper", spends only $500,000,000,000 per year on killing machines and support for those killing machines.

Thus, the United States, the "peace keeper", alone spends $623,000,000,000 per year on killing machines and support for those killing machines.

We are the big spenders on killing machines and support for those killing machines.

We spend $123,000,000,000 more than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED on killing machines and support for those killing machines.

As we talk PEACE?

Is there any wonder General Dwight David Eisenhower, then President of the United States, WARNED the citizens, yes, warned the people of the United States?

Yes, he warned us about THE MILITARY being wedded to industry, being wedded to the middle class, and being wedded to the working class.

A wedding made in hell in order to forge the warring class, the killing class. Eisenhower was not alone in this warning:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

(James Madison, Political Observations, 1795, emphasis added). Our founding fathers and mothers taught us to suspect that War is the greatest enemy of the people. Has war been increasing and liberties waning lately?

Our propaganda engines have tried to educate you and I into believing the opposite. That is a sure fingerprint of white ops, or 'good' psychological operations as they are called in the industry.

But obviously the warnings went unheeded and the consequences have been suffered, are being suffered, and will continue to be suffered for who knows how long.

Let me finish by saying there is hope that this disastrous and catastrophic public policy is going to subside, because Gates is talking of cutting spending on the killing class.

We could save $123,000,000,000 every year by spending the same amount as all the rest of the world combined spends on the enemy of the people, killing machines.

Think how much we could save if we just matched the two or three largest nations in the world?!

So, do you feel thrifty or do you feel like killing somebody?

UPDATE: Another take on this subject matter.

The List Of You Shall Be The Greatest

Liam Neeson did a great job playing Schindler in the movie Schindler's List.

That list is said to have been found in Australia:

Schindler's list helped hundreds of Jewish workers escape death in the Holocaust during World War II.

It was found in research notes which belonged to the Australian author of Schindler's Ark - the basis for the Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List.

The document was found at the New South Wales Library in Sydney.

(Schindler's List Found). Let's hope it helps to quench the flames of hatred many in the blogosphere seem to want to fan.

Like Bachmann, Limbaugh, and other wingnuts, some of those who fancy themselves as being "progressive" make anti-semitic statements while trying to cover them up with argument that they are only anti-Israel.

Enough, Enough already.

Too Big To Flail

The one and only Bill Moyers interviewed William K. Black Friday night.

Mr. Black is not the comedian, but is currently an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri. That interview is a good one if you like shock treatment:

William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything.

(PBS Profile, emphasis added). See it if you have the capacity at the moment, and/or read what we had to say concerning another angle of this issue.

So, after watching Moyers, the MSM propaganda line "too big to fail" now has me wondering.

I wonder because the MSM also throws around the line "failed state".

Which often can mean a state that has oil we want or perhaps a nation that disagrees with us. However, it is supposed to mean a sovereign nation that has become too corrupt to "spill the beans".

But since empires are the largest states, does history teach us that empires are too big to fail?

After all, empires are orders of magnitude bigger than fraudy Wall Street banks you know.

Also don't forget that all those empires of history have failed eventually.

Somehow, then, I think the banksters are just blowing blue smoke up the microphones of the MSM, thereby causing them to flail and say that some banks are "too big to fail".

Do We Confuse Capacity With Morality?

One of us recently requested:

Can you come up with an insightful post on what happens when, in the face of unprecedented failure, no investigation taking place, and no one held responsible, conventional wisdom keeps praying day to day for confidence to return.

Can you find us one or two examples of republican retardation, bumbling economists spouting how this fits any existing models.

Feel free to draw from cinematographic tradition for approximate examples of precedents.

'Cause no one is saying anything in the MSN. I keep thinking China will wake up soon and wash America over with her own casino/cathouse money.

Tell us when you think the screws will be put on Cassano.

(Dredd Blogger Comment). I don't know if it will be insightful or not. That is, like art, something in the eye of the beholder. I replied to that post as follows:

I will try.

In the mean time remember that your analytical faculties are working quite well for you to have observed that reality.

The post will have to do with "capacity" rather than "what is wrong with the sheeple".

We are all human, I think, and we have only capacity (potential ability), not automatic ability.

Some do not have the capacity to investigate 911 again to clear up some of the missed evidence, wrongly decided issues, and perjury that took place.

This capacity weakens at times, and grows in strength at other times. It can be because of emotions, biases, fears, or a busy schedule.

Some of the public and widespread issues, therefore, fall on the ears of a mass of people who have constantly changing ability (capacity) to take it in.

I try to tailor and fashion my posts and articles with that in mind.

The full understanding of this subject matter requires a trip to the shrink, the psychologist, the psychoanalyst, story tellers, and others of that ilk.

At the same time don't forget "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" (Bob Dylan).

A child confronted with the statement "Your daddy has a girlfriend besides your mommy" tends to generate an immediate subconscious retaliation for the "attack" on the child's universe.

The flaming arrow "Not true" is fired back as the drawbridge to the castle of the child's soul is pulled up and the gates are quickly closed, and water flows into the moat until it is once again filled.

After all, who wants their universe "destroyed" with such a reality?

As adults there are also many things, truths, and realities that are "attacks" on our universe, to which we immediately respond "not true".

This is really not an issue of morality in the first instance, because when we do not have the capacity to "deal with it" we are not immoral we are simply ill equipped. It is later when we do have the capacity but still reject knowledge that it could become a moral issue.

Each of us at various and sundry times has a weakness somewhere within which prevents us from being able to handle the truth from somewhere, sometime in our lives. Later on in our lives maybe we can deal with it.

In ancient times some kings would kill a messenger when that messenger brought bad news.

So, like our own modern day journalists, ancient messengers "got lost" many times on the way to delivering bad news.

How many times have you heard the phrase "it isn't the end of the world" in an introduction to the delivery of some bad news? Yogi Berra's statement "it isn't over til its over" comes to mind as a good thing to say in some of those deliveries too.

To the astute observer who posted that request, I hope this has helped.

It is a deep and a wide ocean that protects us from the unknown, and many a brave hobbit has suffered the scorn of the Hobbits in Hobbiton when they return from an adventure into those waters.

Knowledge concerning issues outside the shire were sorely frowned upon in that realm, as J.R.R. Tolkien duly noted.

After all the adventure has been said and done, do be sure to find a way to return to The Shire.

Open Thread

"It's yo thang ... do whacha wanna do ..."

I Kissed A Girl And I liked It

It is ok to be straight.

But can you dig it that Iowa's Supreme Court maxed out on neutrality?!

I mean, the supreme courts of various states have been dancing around and around the gay marriage and gay civil relationship floor haven't they?

I see that dancing about as a scary indicator that politics is creeping into American jurisprudence from yet one more angle.

The scary part is that politics is the most dangerous poison known to jurisprudence.

We (me and my blogging buddies and a girl I kissed) take our hats off to that little old supreme court that could.

Stevens To Be Senator Before Franken?

We have been jabbing at Brad Blog for its wrong headed position on the Franken / Coleman election in Minnesota.

It was clearly wrong for Brad Blog, an "EI blogging center", to advocate that all states should use the Minnesota model for elections.

That would be a catastrophe like getting AIDS to wipe out AIDS.

We have been jabbing at Attorney General Holder for making a judicial decision he should have left to the courts.

Holder effectively pardoned Ted Stevens after that senator had been convicted by a jury for 7 felonies associated with political corruption. After all, Eric was once a judge you know.

Now the state of Alaska, where Stevens can see the Senate from his house, is all a twitter and is freaking out for a general election.

Stevens lost by less than 4,000 votes under the felony cloud, so it is more than likely he would win re-election.

That means if Senator Cornyn has his way, Alaska has its way, and Eric Holder has his way, the convicted Ted Stevens will be a senator before Al Franken is a senator.

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser over here in the empire Barak, so "get back Jo Jo, get back Loretta".

Everybody's Got A Holder Heart

"... lay down your money and you play your part" (Springsteen).

Eric Holder is this week's hero of Orin Hatch and the House republicans.

He did what all prosecutors do and gave a new trial to a criminal convicted by a duly constituted jury.

There was no special treatment rarely afforded to the rich, powerful, and famous.

Yes, in the final analysis that convicted criminal was treated exactly like middle class and poor convicted criminals are.

NOT !!!

What Holder actually did was give Senator Ted "Bridge To Nowhere" Stevens very special, very rare, and very quid pro quo treatment.

Eric will be rewarded.

Here is a quote from a Yale Law Journal article that describes what really happens to the middle class and poor who prosecutors mistreat with what are called "Brady violations" of their rights:

... when suppressed evidence does come to light, reviewing courts usually deem suppressions "harmless" and uphold the convictions ... Thus, not only are defendants' rights rarely vindicated, but also the government rarely suffers a serious penalty for its misconduct.

(Yale Law Journal, emphasis added). The rarity generally happens to the privileged few who can hire big gun lawyers, and who are not from the middle class or the poor.

Thus, Holder has worked this baby so that he gets the best of both propaganda worlds.

Holder is seen as a good guy by the republicans, and to the remainder of the populace who do not know the reality involved here, this will be seen as part of the new "bipartisan" world of American politics.

We have lamented the fact that what we rejected in the election is creeping into the Obama administration.

This "all's well that ends well" doublespeak does not bode well for future prosecutions of Bush II crimes, unless it is a quid pro quo of a different sort. I mean, was the Seigelman-Minor case a wonderful prosecution or just full of wonder?

If you get my drift.

We will know by the end of this year for sure.

UPDATE: Alaska is outraged. They want a special election right away. They want Stevens back in the US Senate. Stevens lost by only about 4,000 votes even with the 7 felony convictions. Perhaps Holder will reap what he has sown.

"Blame Game" - a.k.a. The AIG Truth

The doublespeak used lately, when someone wants the truth covered up, is to call the proceeding "the blame game".

Even though that is what the third part of our government, the Judicial Branch, commonly called "the Courts", do each and every day.

That is, if they are to obey our US Constitution.

Yes, when a crime against the people is committed we do the "blame game" as the republicans in the House now want to call it.

But the better term and the traditional term for it is "justice".

It is high time for the robber barons talk with a jury about the AIG "problems".

The republicans do not want Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, past CEO of AIG for 35 years up until about 2005, to testify.

That tells me immediately they do not want him to expose and share the truth.

Greenberg submitted a written statement or "prepared testimony" in 2008.

It reveals that his successors are the ones actually responsible for AIG’s recent demise.

He said, among other things, that:

“When I left AIG, the company operated in 130 countries and employed approximately 92,000 people,” Greenberg said.”Today, the company we built up over almost four decades has been virtually destroyed.”

Greenberg said that AIG “wrote as many credit default swaps … in the nine months following my departure as it had written in the entire previous seven years combined. Moreover, “unlike what had been true during my tenure, the majority of the credit default swaps that AIGFP wrote in the nine months after I retired were reportedly exposed to subprime mortgages.”

(House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, PDF 10/7/08). I find this to be entirely believable, and that a protege of Michael Milken, one Joseph Cassano, is the place to focus the "blame game".

Cassano's mentor, the fraudster who went to federal prison after "earning" the title "the junk bond king", taught him what he applied at AIG after Greenberg was forced out of office. Yes, forced out under questionable pretences so that the robber baron operatives could savage AIG.

We exposed and set this out here, here, and here, and we complimented ABC news for covering the same focal point.

Yes the most likely source of the financial catastrophe is obvious but so far no one has the courage to expose it completely.

The lackey House republican minions, clearly on the robber baron payroll, are whining that these robber barons need a tax cut not justice.

Knowing - The Movie

Yesterday I checked out the movie Knowing staring Nicolas Cage.

The powers that be, the critics, only give it a "C", but the people give it a "B".

I give it a very good.

At the ticket stand it is still #3 in box office income after two weeks. It was released March 20th.

I liked it because it deals with subjects we discussed here, here, and here recently.

As it ends up, the basic science in the articles and in the movie are extremely up to date. In fact, more up to date than the textbooks that are being thrown out and re-written as we speak.

The only part of the movie not yet a part of the textbooks is the subject matter of a SETI post, which I hope to get to later.

See the movie if the subject matter is to your liking.

UPDATE: NASA helped finance a report that shows our nation could be set back 100 years by solar activity expected to peak in 2012.

I don't subscribe to the 2012 date. They picked it because of mathematical projections, but the solar cycle related to the report is not consistent in the sense that it is not like clockwork. That cycle averages 11 years, but it varies to as high as 14 years and as low as 9 years.

Right now we are at about a 100 year low and quiet as to solar activity of the destructive potential type. For things to change in a short 3 year span of time (2009-2012) would be "out of the box", and not within normal solar activity variation parameters.

Therefore I think we have more time than 3 years to fix the power grid. As we are "greening the power grid" and otherwise improving the power grid we must take the opportunity to make it resistant to solar flare ups too.

Making it resistant to solar outbursts during the upcoming "smart grid" upgrade would save tons of money and perhaps our civilized condition.

UPDATE 2: Just to give an idea of the magnitude of the subject matter, here is an excerpt from one of the links above:

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

(New Scientist, emphasis added). An article at Space adds more insight into why we need to fix the grid.

Why is It The Busiest Tax Court?

We recently pointed out that the landscape of US tax law is a murky place. Now we want to point out that the Federal District Court offers a jury trial by one's peers. But it is a place where only the wealthy, along with their expensive lawyers, tend to venture.

For the rest of us, the US Tax Court does from 85% to 95% of the tax cases, depending on the year.

The number of cases filed in The Tax Court, after 1999, has grown consistently:

# filed .......... year

31,450 .......... 2008
30,442 .......... 2007
26,993 .......... 2006
24,801 .......... 2005
24,931 .......... 2004
22,451 .......... 2003
20,291 .......... 2002
14,649 .......... 2001
13,545 .......... 2000

One wonders why, when a taxpayer's chances of winning in that court are extremely slim. Some reports show a 7 - 3, or even an 8 - 2 ratio (IRS wins 8 out of 10 cases, taxpayers win 2 out of 10 cases) in that court:

... an examination of raw numbers shows ... the taxpayer doing better in the general jurisdiction district court than in the specialized tax court. Some studies show that the taxpayer wins only 5% of the time in tax court as compared to 20% to 30% of taxpayers winning in the district court, with other studies acknowledging at least a 20% percent differential (Geier 1991. p. 998). The data used for this study show a 12% differential, with taxpayers winning 20% of the time in tax court and 32% of the time in the district court. These differential rates have led some scholars to argue that the tax court is ... biased in favor of the [IRS] ... Kroll 1996 ...

(Fed. Dist. Ct. vs Tax Court, PDF version at page 7). My reading of the published cases over the past 10 years is not so promising, and I would say that it is more like 9 - 1. That is, IRS wins 9 out of 10 cases in the Tax Court.

But that ratio could be because the government needs money more at some times than it does at other times.

Which could mean that the pressure which deficits put on IRS and the Tax Court causes variation in decisions for taxpayers from time to time.

The US Tax Court is the court for the poor and middle class, and the US District Court is for the well to do:

Of course, litigating in the tax court is not the only option for the taxpayer. The major alternative to the tax court is the United States District Court, the court of general trial jurisdiction in the federal system. To sue in this court, the taxpayer must pay the disputed tax, and then sue for a refund in the United States Federal District Court ... The taxpayer files the claim, and the case is tried in the taxpayer’s local district. The taxpayer can, and usually does, request a jury trial. Decisions of these courts can be appealed to the circuit within which the court is located.

(ibid, at page 6). The poor and middle class who can't afford a lawyer and who can't afford to pay the tax out front, then ask for it back in a District Court, must go to the tax court.

Once there most often they try to win pro se (representing themselves without a lawyer).

The middle class and the poor who go to the Tax Court can't have a jury decision. Instead they must rely on the Tax Court judges. The very Tax Court judges whom the scholars have said are biased in favour of the IRS:

These differential rates have led some scholars to argue that the tax court is ... biased in favor of the agency (Kroll 1996; but see Maule 1999). One scholar notes it is this potential for bias that has led Congress often to resist creating other specialized courts (Baum 1990). While most scholarship has failed to develop a coherent theory for why such bias exists, posited reasons include such factors as ideology, institutional design and structure, prior IRS work experience, the type of litigant, attorney representation, and even social and personal characteristics of the judge.

(ibid, pages 7-8, emphasis added). Yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives one of the Carolina representatives said that there was a surge in the increase of Boston Tea Party gatherings in his area.

He went on to say that taxpayers do not like it when their money, earned from hard work done before their shower, is taken from them and given to the banksters who work after their shower.

Why is that not surprising?

The answer to "why all the filings in the Tax Court?" is desperation. Both the government and the people are desperate for money.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the tripling of tax cases in the tax court happened in the same years (2000-2008) that the Bush II regime ruled the roost (wink, wink).