Sarah Palin confirmed on Greta Van Susteren's show last night that she's very much planning to show up and speak at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, despite the distinct odor of Scam the whole affair is giving off.
Palin: Oh, you betcha I'm going to be there. I'm going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that Tea Party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I'm honored to get to be there.
This, even as some of her fellow wingnuts are catching the same whiff -- namely, Reps. Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, who have pulled out of the event:
In separate statements, released by their congressional offices, the lawmakers said that appearing at the convention might conflict with House ethics rules. But they also said they are concerned about how money raised from the event will be spent.
* Blair branded 'smug' and heckled as he insists 'I don't regret anything'
* 'Saddam had to go after 9/11 - I'd do it all again', defiant ex-PM declares
* 'Monster' could have killed millions in chemical attack if unchecked
* 'Dodgy dossier' was a mistake and I should have corrected 45-minute claim
* Warning military action might be needed to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions
* Protesters call him a coward for sneaking inside two hours early
Reporter Andrew Gilligan and another reporter resigned along with the director general, Greg Dyke over this whole affair. Needles to mention The BBC is no longer the honorable source of news that it once was.
James is definitely not identifiable in main stream art, if there is such a thing, but has found a niche that isn't part of a known ism. He is right out here on the "INNERTUBES" with some far out stuff that reflects the paradox of living in the here and now.
Here is a moving image of the Neoconservatives that inhabited the Bu$h administration, that are still around as permanent members of the shadow government. Among the horrible things that they are noted for, imho, is the ability to parrot the same message, over and over, in Orwellian fashion .
There's been so many robo-phone calls, here in Polk County, that I find myself shouting back, just on a remote chance that I'm being called by a human bean. Needless to mention, it's a good feeling to see the tax burden where it belongs.
Oregon voters pass tax increasing measures by big margin
By Harry Esteve, The Oregonian
January 26, 2010, 10:17PM
Oregon voters bucked decades of anti-tax and anti-Salem sentiment Tuesday, raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prevent further erosion of public schools and other state services.
The tax measures passed easily, with late returns showing a 54 percent to 46 percent ratio. Measure 66 raises taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000, and Measure 67 sets higher minimum taxes on corporations and increases the tax rate on upper-level profits.
The results triggered waves of relief from educators and legislative leaders, who were facing an estimated $727 million shortfall in the current two-year budget if the measures failed.
WASHINGTON -- A House panel investigating the bailout of American International Group Inc. is sharpening its questions for two Treasury secretaries and a federal investigator who believes the Federal Reserve withheld documents.
Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will appear at today's hearing, along with current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Neil Barofsky and officials from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Towns is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The committee is pressing for details about deals that sent billions from AIG's bailout to big banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Lawmakers want to know why the New York Fed pressed AIG to be more secretive about the "backdoor bailouts" and other aspects of AIG's management.
If you want to see who the real corporatists are then wait until they are put to the test over the Citizen's United ruling. Conservatives have been trying to destroy any type of campaign finance reforms and what this ruling means is that corporations will be allowed to blackmail any candidate just by threatening to spend gobs of money against them if they vote the wrong way.
Alan Grayson's petition says it all.
At any moment, the Supreme Court will announce whether it will allow corporations to spend unlimited funds on political campaigns.
Unlimited corporate spending on campaigns means the government is up for sale and that the law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable.
This issue transcends partisan political arguments. We cannot have a government that is bought and paid for by huge multinational corporations. You must stop this.
Just as dealings with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats soured last summer, six of the nation's biggest health insurers began quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.
That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions.
The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber. Each insurer kicked in at least $1 million and some gave multimillion-dollar donations.
"There's no question that AHIP has quietly solicited monies from their members which were funneled over to the chamber for their ads," said a source. The total donated by the health insurers, according to one estimate, was as much as one-quarter of the chamber's total health care advertising budget.
A spokesman for Kaiser said it contributed funds to AHIP last year for positive ads on health care reform, and that AHIP has told the insurer that none of its monies were sent to the chamber.
Last August was bruising for the health insurance industry: Obama and congressional leaders attacked its abuses and profits and AHIP President Karen Ignagni warned publicly that "the vilification strategy isn't going to get health reform passed."
In late October, Ignagni wrote in a letter to the Washington Post defending a health insurer-funded study critical of congressional cost estimates, "Let me be clear and direct, health plans continue to strongly support reform." However, by that time money was already flowing through AHIP to the chamber to fund its negative ads.
"Rudy has used the horrible events of September 11 to create a persona that is an elaborate fabrication," says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. "He is nothing more than a shameless self-promoter."
Maddow shreds Giuliani for 'forgetting about 9/11'
By Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 RawStory.com'
rudygiuliani20091119 Maddow shreds Giuliani for forgetting about 9/11Is Rudolph Giuliani's political career over?
The former mayor of New York City has been making his rounds in U.S. media this week, trying to explain away his false claim that there were no domestic terrorist attacks on the United States during the Bush administration.
For a man often mocked as "the mayor of 9/11," that's an awfully bold suggestion, and one that could spell the end of his relevance in U.S. politics, according to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
"The whole reason anybody ever thought of Rudy Giuliani as a potential national figure for the Republican party is because of his supposed expertise," Maddow said during a Friday broadcast. "The supposed expertise he had with terrorism and national security because he had been the mayor of New York City when it was attacked on September 11."
He later explained that he meant say no domestic terrorist attacks since 9/11.
However, in what Maddow called "a strange colique" with CNN host Larry King, Giuliani dug his hole deeper, suggesting that shoe bomber Richard Reid attempted his act of terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001.
It actually took place in Dec. of that year, well after the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
"Rudy Giuliani's whole brand as a politician is based on 9/11, something he appears to have exploited so much that he's lost the capacity to deal with it as a factual matter," Maddow opined.
"Could he have meant that there were no other attacks that were considered by the Bush administration to have been terrorist attacks?" she asked. "Well, he couldn't have mean that either because the 2001 anthrax attacks were later described by Bush attorney general John Ashcroft as a 'terrorist act'. Maybe he thought the victims of the anthrax attack were dispersed over too large an area to count as a terrorist attack or something. But then, you know, there was the D.C. sniper case: 10 people gunned down in the Washington, D.C. area in October, 2002 by a pair of snipers, one of whom was later convicted on terrorism charges."
"There is no possible way in which he is making sense, unless he was seeing if he could get away with a mix of political fantasy and political spin," she concluded.
Raising the odd spectacle of both former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino and GOP strategist Mary Matalin conveniently forgetting that 9/11 happened during the prior administration, Maddow theorized aloud about things that happen "in threes."
"I wonder if the next ambition in political spin is to convince us all that 9/11 didn't happen while George W. Bush was president and Dick Cheney was vice president," she said. "Is that the plan?"
Hmm, interesting experiment. These dudes are performing an experiment that just might relate to something we've been looking at for a long time. Pictures of toasted cars at the World Trade Center disaster, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gaza, and now in Pakistan. These are largely explained away as car bombs, and suicide attacks, but I've never seen an explanation for the ones at the 911 scene. There were cars, trucks, and buses, some of them with melted motors that were blocks away from the WTC buildings.
Maybe someone should ask the Department of Energy what they think about all this.
And maybe we should also ask about whats going on in Pakistan.
Well there is certainly no doubt that we are looking at a disgruntled republican, and in spite of being somewhat attractive, she is obviously involved with the corporate crooks that would like to unseat Grayson. She won't have the effect that she and Faux News is dreaming about because Grayson has a lot of support from the common folks. The kind of people, with dirt under their nails, that like real words,real healthcare, and real food.
Angie has been involved in several real estate related businesses. She was President of Langley Consulting, Vice President of Langley Land Company, and affiliated with Langley Mortgage Co. She was also chaired the South Lake County Republican Club untill she had to resign for non compliance to register as a special interest group.
We are rapidly approaching the era of Frankenfood and if the Agrocorp's have their way we won't even be able to grow our own. There is a movement to re-instate small farms and organic methods, but large corporations like Monsanto are buying influence in government, in our educational system, and even the corporate media.
In the farming department, Monsanto is so busy buying up the leading seed companies that the only way you can grow untainted food is to buy or borrow heirloom seed. So entrenched is this devious purveyor of poison and herbacides that, in some cases, it is actually illegal to grow organic food in your own garden.
All is not lost yet though, the folks in Chambersburg PA have formed their own legal coalition called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Here's an article from their web site...
Thomas Linzey, Esq. 675 Mower Road, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania 17257
Multinational agri-business corporations set out almost forty years ago to exterminate family farmers and take control of food production in the United States. That chilling proposition, which has been asserted by farming communities across the Country over the past decade, gained support last week with the release of a document authored by several agri-business corporations.
The 1962 strategy memorandum, entitled "An Adaptive Program for Agriculture", was drafted by a group of multinational corporations called the "Committee for Economic Development" and it lays out a detailed plan for the decidedly un-American corporate takeover of an American institution - the family farm.
Chapter 6 of the memorandum calls for a two pronged strategy, either "(a) leakproof control of farm production by agri-business corporations" or "(b) a program, such as we are recommending here, to induce excess resources - primarily people - to move rapidly out of agriculture."
One of those "excess resources" - an Illinois hog farmer named Keith Bolin - was one of the farmers who read the paper. In an interview done shortly after Farm Aid, Bolin spoke of the absolute control being exercised over hog prices by agri-business corporations. He explained that "Many factory farms are packer owned and packer controlled. And when the packers are short of hogs and they don't want to bid up for my hogs, they flood the market with their own and drive the price down. They force me to chase the market down. They use their own hogs to drive the price lower." Last year, Bolin lost thirteen months of net worth. Last month, he canceled his health insurance to cut his operating costs. Next year, he sees himself taking a job off the farm.
In blunt testimony before the Senate Ag Committee, he stated that "this is not about efficiency or inefficiency. It's about control of our food supply by a few multinationals who are not loyal to Main Street, or rural America, or the American flag."
