The top elections-heist investigators in the USA need your donation, here today, to complete our comic book, our elections guide book and our film exposing the attempt to Steal 2012 by a combination of billionaire’s hidden cash and vote heists.
In 1996, Greg Palast filmed the first investigation of The Koch Brothers.
In 2000, Palast uncovered how Katherine Harris purged 56,000 African-Americans from Florida voter rolls.
In 2008, Palast, with Bobby Kennedy, busted the Karl Rove attack on ballots – from ID games to firing US prosecutors.
And now, in 2012, there’s once again a full-scale attack on the right to vote.
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If we can get $15,000 right now, we can just make our May 3rd deadline to draw and print our BILLIONAIRES AND BANDITS comic book with genius pen man Ted Rall.
The funds will also allow us to edit and broadcast our film shot over the past four years from all over the USA on Karl Rove’s $200 million game to suppress the vote.
Jonah Lehrer has been described as a kind of “one man third culture” – after training in Neuroscience at Columbia with Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel, he studied literature and philosophy on a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Since then, he has written three books that examine and blur the boundaries between science and art, reason and imagination. His latest: IMAGINE: How Creativity Works, looks at the neuroscience and the real-world phenomenon of creativity in case studies ranging from the emotional and spiritual burnout that led to Bob Dylan's brilliant album Highway 61 Revisited to the invention of the Swiffer.
Amazon Page
Here, Lehrer talks with Big Think's Jason Gots about failure as an integral, essential part of the creative process, and why American schools are so good at killing creativity.
Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman for this find. Lehrer is an M4IS2 master — “the brain is a category buster.” Honorably priced to begin with, Amazon has taken another $10 off, this book is a major bargain in hardcover at $15.00.
Last edited Tue Apr 17, 2012, 02:30 PM USA/ET – Edit history (3)
Mitt Romney, guilty of voter fraud?
Posted on April 17, 2012
Mitt Romney faces up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine if he did not live in his son’s unfinished basement in 2010
In January 2010 the former Massachusetts governor proudly cast a ballot for Republican Scott Brown in the special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. He didn’t own property in the state at the time, and had registered to vote listing his son’s unfinished basement as his residence. Massachusetts law defines a residence for voter registration purposes as “where a person dwells and which is the center of his domestic, social, and civil life.” Anyone found guilty of committing voter fraud faces up to five years behind bars and a fine of $10,000. See Romney Voter Fraud Liability?
Is this exactly like that ‘voter fraud‘ thing that the Republicans are always trying to pretend the Democrats participate in? Except that the Democrats don’t?
If that’s true, Romney showed a true commitment to voting for Republican Senator Scott Brown in last year’s special election, since he owns a $12.5 million home in La Jolla, Calif. and a $10 million home in New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee – but no home in the state he was once governor.
Not that he was exactly roughing it. Romney’s son Tagg and his wife greatly improved the property in recent years adding an in-ground pool and a jacuzzi to the rebuilt property that spans three old lots, bumping its assessed value up to $3.8 million.
Still, as Belmont, Mass. property assessment records I dug up show, the basement is unfinished – hardly the standard the former investment banker would be used to. Here’s a portion of the property record (Belmont Property View). I have edited the image to highlight the basement description. Here is the full record: Belmont Property View Full. As a public record you can find the full report also through the town of Belmont here. The property was last inspected by the town on June 21, 2010, well after the state’s January special election that filled Ted Kennedy’s old seat.
Of course, as Karger argues to the Massachusetts Secretary of State, Romney likely didn’t live in the basement, so it appears like voter fraud, a crime punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Phi Beta Iota: Combined with the wife's statement that they lived in California, and a careful examination of Romney's actual travels during the year, it is easily determined if he committed voter fraud. If he did, he should be ineligible to be the Republican nominee for president. We certainly hope someone with integrity in Massachusetts runs this down fast — perhaps the Ron Paul contingent could help? Investigating, indicting, and convicting Romney for voter fraud in the next six months would be a study in the resurrection of democracy.
The difficulty that the military has in allocating the efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum for military operations is aggravated by the fact that some of those uses — involving intelligence platforms and sensors — are secret even from military planners themselves, a new Pentagon doctrinal publication notes.
“Coordination with intelligence units and agencies can be challenging for many reasons, to include classification issues, disparate data formats, and separate technical control or reporting channels,” the publication states.
“In many cases, the JSME [joint spectrum management element] does not have adequate visibility or knowledge of intelligence sensors, platforms, or systems in order to accomplish accurate deconfliction.”
“In order to capture all aspects of intelligence spectrum use, the JSME must understand that intelligence platforms such as UAS/unmanned ground system will have spectrum requirements for both a payload (e.g., imagery or data) and control frequencies to operate the platform.”
“Intelligence is a heavy user of sensors that employ both active and passive techniques. Active sensors are usually accounted for, but the passive sensors will also require spectrum consideration so they perform properly.”
Phi Beta Iota: The US has never been serious about spectrum–one of the dirty little secrets of Afghanistan is how often drones, artillery, and aviation as well as C4I messed each other up. Adding remote disengaged drone video games made it much worse (news flash for DoD “leaders”: pilots are cheaper than bandwidth and much, much better at situational awareness). The Soviet standards for emissions control have always been 10 to 100 times more serious than US standards. However, the bottom line is that Open Spectrum is here to stay, and the US military is the last to know or accept this.
I urge that you reject SECDEF's assertions; also urge that you contact your Congressional delegations and ask them to also reject what SECDEF is saying.
At a Pentagon press briefing on Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said congressional tinkering with the $613 billion 2013 Defense Department budget could have unintended consequences and result in a hollow force. Flanked by Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Panetta also defended the long-term Defense strategy unveiled in January, saying it will help the Pentagon to slash its budget by $487 billion over the next 10 years.
In March, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, told a National Journalforum that senior military commanders were dishonest in presenting Congress with a budget request he doesn't believe they fully support. After Dempsey charged Ryan with calling senior military leaders liars, Ryan backed off and said, “I really misspoke.”
Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech on April 13 on “Rethinking Finance.” It certainly needs to be rethought at the highest levels. Unfortunately, Dr. Bernanke has not yet begun the process. Thinking, yes. Not rethinking.
He ended his speech with this:
The financial crisis of 2007-09 was difficult to anticipate for two reasons: First, financial panics, being to a significant extent self-fulfilling crises of confidence, are inherently difficult to foresee.
This is wrong on two counts. First, in a free market, there are no self-fulfilling prophecies. That is because of the widespread distribution of knowledge. A self-fulfilling prophecy is said to take place because lots of people expect it to happen. But why would lots of people expect it to happen? Because (1) there is something fundamental taking place and (2) people share the same economic theory.
Then why is there ever a panic? The free market pits buyers against buyers and sellers against sellers. Why wouldn't those with the best information sell the assets over time, as accurate information spreads? Why is there a panic? Why don't prices come down in a more steady, orderly way? If someone issues a prophecy, it is not widely believed at first. It takes time for people to believe.
They believe it because it explains events in terms of a framework. They draw conclusions. They slowly come to the same conclusions. A panic takes place when the vast majority of investors put their money in the wrong investments. Overnight, the investments turn out to be ill-conceived. The economist should ask this: Why did almost everyone make the same bad investments? The normal process of competition precludes such widespread, simultaneous errors.
Bernanke asked this. His answer self-fulfilling prophesies. He did not ask the more fundamental question: How is it that these self-fulfilling negative prophesies work their black magic against the interests of the vast number of market participants?
