John, a few yrs back you were posting doubts about the official explanations (both Norad and Nist have changed their stories) of 9/11, but not in a long time. I can imagine many reasons to abandon the discussion, like not upsetting some of your readers, but I just wanted to point out that back then the debate was dominated by speculation, but that in recent years the Truth movement has been professionalized by such orgs as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (some 1500 members risking their careers), Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, etc., as well as peer-reviewed scientific articles. I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject nowadays.
• The “entitlement programs” have an unfunded liability of greater than $104 trillion. Your share is $367,000. (Every man, woman and child owes the same.)
• At the end of 2009, $3.2 trillion of the $12.9 trillion National Debt was spent, but never on the government's general budget. Where did 3.2 Trillion dollars go?
• In 2010, the federal government is borrowing 52 cents of every dollar that it spends on general operations. Just to balance the budget, spending will have to be cut by 52%.
• Over the next four years, the federal government needs to borrow at least $3.9 trillion and the world is basically running out of money for us.
Washington, meanwhile, doesn't want to sound the economic alarm. The White House and most Democrats want Americans to believe the economy is on an upswing.
Republicans, for their part, worry that if they tell it like it is Americans will want government to do more rather than less. They'd rather not talk about jobs and wages, and put the focus instead on deficit reduction (or spread the lie that by reducing the deficit we'll get more jobs and higher wages).
I believe the Bowles Simpson recommendations represent, to too large an extent, a set of unprincipled political compromises that would lead to a weaker America — with slower growth and a more divided society.
We now have an economy in which five banks control over 50 percent of the entire banking industry, four or five corporations own most of the mainstream media, and the top one percent of families hold a greater share of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1930. This sort of concentration of wealth and power is a classic setup for the failure of a democratic republic and the stifling of organic economic growth.
The government has nearly convinced the public they have everything under control, when that’s far from the case. In fact, everything could go downhill fast. Here are ten all-too-likely scenarios I look at in my book, It Takes a Pillage:
1. The actual bailout has quietly ballooned to $16 trillion dollars (not including over $3 trillion set aside for money market funds), most of it given out with no strings attached. Wall Street firms could continue to tout the myth that ‘talent’ must be paid for – now with stupid sums of bonus money, funded by the American People.
2. The stock market, which has rallied substantially since the government started giving out free money to the banking industry, could tank on the realization that if that money needed to be paid back any time soon, the banks wouldn’t be good for it.
3. Because bigger is better still seems to be Fed policy, JPM Chase could acquire Bank of America – Merrill Lynch, creating one of the largest, federally subsidized banking firms in the world.
4. Because the bigger just can’t help getting badder, JPM Chase could also acquire Citigroup, and we’d be living with a monopoly economy.
5. We could sink into the delusion that the Obama administration has actually done something to restrain Wall Street, lulling us into a false sense of security. Then the remaining big banks will screw us again.
6. Congress could continue to ignore history and never reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. That act made banks smaller, more specialized, easier to regulate and less expensive to bail out. Repealing it lead to this mess, and there’s barely a whisper heard in Washington of bringing it back.
7. As a Fed approved bank holding company, Goldman Sachs could buy a lot of small banks just to get access to all the money in savings and checking accounts to gamble with. Plus they’d have that great $250,000 FDIC guarantee they get per account. This would make them the biggest bank in the country.
8. Every bank and government agency with access to some aspect of a federal bailout could max out their subsidies chips at once – pushing the full bailout cost to over $26 trillion.
9. Many mid-sized and smaller banks didn’t need a bailout and have been better at allowing consumers access to credit. The largest banks, flush with federal funding and a poor record of helping average Americans, could buy them all up.
10. The Fed could continue to operate in secrecy, despite multiple moves by Congress to push for a full audit of its largesse. Right now, only the Fed knows what the real worst case scenarios might actually be.
A bit more on that story we brought you earlier about the horrific killings in Afghanistan which followed lunatic Pastor Terry Jones' Qu'ran-burning stunt.
Those reactionaries within our own society who are pushing the Clash of Civilizations are mirror-images of the terrorists that inspire their hyperbolic fear; they're just as xenophobic, just as irrational and, ultimately, are just as great a threat to our security. Both have to be challenged aggressively before they give birth to another, even bloodier generation of culture warriors.
This latest spasm of bloodletting seems like a perfect example. Radical Cleric Terry Jones burns some Qu'rans in an intentional provocation, extremists in Afghanistan kill some people, which ultimately emboldens people like Terry Jones, and so on. A vicious cycle, with the vast majority of people in the middle.
But over at the must-read UN Dispatch, Una Moore, an international development professional based in Afghanistan, says that there's a lot more going on with this attack:
Many aspects of the Libyan situation remain unclear: the scope of the mandate given to UN member states by Security Council Resolution 1973, the broader aims of the intervention, how many civilians have been killed and by whom, and who the rebels represent. One thing, however, seems clear: the international intervention is considered to be legal. International lawyers have agreed with the UK government’s advice that Security Council Resolution 1973 ‘provides a clear and unequivocal legal basis for the deployment of UK forces and military assets to achieve the resolution’s objectives’. Legal experts have been quick to suggest that Resolution 1973 gives authority for any action thought necessary not only to protect civilians, but to protect areas inhabited by civilians.
If today’s Western leadership is really ready, in the words of William Hague, to support the people of the Middle East in their ‘aspirations for a better future’, it will need to do more than use international law to target its enemies while protecting its friends. In rejecting their authoritarian leaders, the current wave of Arab revolutionaries is also rejecting the international system that has profited from their existence. As the US declares yet again that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorists while bombs rain down on Libya, as protesters continue to be killed in Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and as the numbers of people detained continue to grow, the idea that Nato is working to support the freedom fighters of this Arab spring rings increasingly hollow. The bombing of Libya in the name of revolution may be legal, but the international law that authorises such action has surely lost its claim to be universal.
By Josh Rogin Friday, April 1, 2011 – Foreign Policy
Upon taking over as the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen.Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) brought on a new staff director with no direct experience working on intelligence matters.
Martha Scott Poindexter has served on Capitol Hill for over 10 years. She has worked as the Republican staff director on the Agriculture Committee since 2005, and before that as legislative director in Chambliss's personal office.
SSCI Staff Director on Facebook
Previously, according to her LinkedIn profile, Poindexter was the director of government affairs at Monsanto, the agribusiness giant. She studied nutrition at Salem College and holds a Bachelors degree from the Mississippi State University College of Agriculture.
On Capitol Hill, a senior staffer's effectiveness is measured several factors: by their subject matter expertise, by their ability to get things done, and by their close personal relationship with the boss.
Phi Beta Iota: Penguin, who has served in the senior political ranks of Republican administrations, is not an intelligence professional and therefore has no way of knowing that the appointment makes perfect sense at multiple levels.
1) The SSCI is a side show with zero relevance to oversight of anything–the US Intelligence Community receives ZERO effective oversight and ignores whatever bleats it might deign to acknowledge.
What's Not to Like?
2) The SSCI is a side show with respect to appropriations and authorizations as well–many years have seen no intelligence “authorization” at all because the SASC owns the intelligence budget–at best, the SSCI is a small bleat extra for pork for the Chairman, and insights helpful to investments by the Members.
3) There isn't actually any real expertise on the SSCI–clerks trying to oversee executive clerks, all of them focused on spending the taxpayer dollar in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with actually serving the public interest.
4) Finally, apart from the Chairman having every right to appoint whomever he pleases to oversee his fiefdom–even a sideshow can be a fiefdom–there is a certain elegance in having an Aggie as Staff Director–who better to ensure the pork of interest to the Members gets properly monitored (2-5% kickbacks on new initiatives is a lot of money). The lunacy continues.
This how the influencers are influenced to justify to the “prol's that rule of law properly means nothing. All in place before Obama sent in Special ops and claimed that there were no boots on the ground.
It is not just Libya that now risks long-term division. Telltale signs of fragmentation in the international community’s approach are opening up. Not for the first time Muammer Gaddafi may be on the verge of securing a public relations coup against his western opponents. Now we must declare humanitarian victory, and regroup.
Tuesday’s London conference was a confused affair. The Germans and the Italians touted a ceasefire and exile for Colonel Gaddafi. Others, notably Saudi Arabia and the African Union, stayed away. The US and the UK, meanwhile, insisted the military job was not done, with David Cameron, the UK prime minister, noting on Wednesday that UN Security Council resolution 1973 might give the allies a legal basis to arm the Libyan opposition.
Forget U.N. resolutions! After decades of Gaddafi's deadly attacks and his support for terrorist groups across the world, America has every right to seek revenge, says Andrew Roberts.
In all the discussion of where, if anywhere, American strategic interests lie in regard to Libya, one very obvious motivation for U.S. action seems to be being ignored: Vengeance. Yet the certain knowledge that the West will eventually take revenge for terrorist crimes committed even as long ago as the 1970s and 1980s is itself a vital strategic interest. Rogue states must always know that there is no such thing as a statute of limitations on murder, and that even after four decades, the slate has not been wiped clean.
Friday, April 1, 2011 – Foreign Policy
