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2/14/2012 Tony Bennett Is Right That Legalizing Drugs Would Save Lives
"First it was Michael Jackson, then it was Amy Winehouse and now the magnificent Whitney Houston. I'd like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs. So they have to get it through a doctor, not just some gangsters that sell it under the table." That's what Tony Bennett said at a pre-Grammy Awards party on Saturday night, shortly after learning of the tragic death of Whitney Houston, and he's exactly right. One of us (Neill) is a former police officer who fought -- and lost friends -- on the front lines of the failed "war on drugs." One of us (Katharine) learned about the commonality of human pain in another difficult way, spending two years in a residential facility ("rehab"). She wasn't there for drugs, but many of those struggling alongside her were. There has been some confusion and criticism over Bennett's remarks and, because of our experience dealing with the pain and heartbreak of drug abuse and harmful drug laws, we feel compelled to expand upon his heartfelt remarks in the hopes that we can help break through some of the misunderstanding underlying the reaction to what Bennett said. (Huffington Post)
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posted: 2/20/12                   0       5
#1 



1/19/2012 2012 GOP caucus count unresolved
THE RESULTS: Santorum finished ahead by 34 votes MISSING DATA: 8 precincts’ numbers will never be certified PARTY VERDICT: GOP official says, ‘It’s a split decision’ Rick Santorum – Final total: 29,839 Change: -168 Mitt Romney – Final total: 29,805 Change: -210 It’s a tie for the ages. There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage. Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday. GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally. (Desmoines Register)
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posted: 2/20/12                   0       5
#2 
keywords: Al Gore, Alternative Media, Associated Press, Barack Obama, Ben Lange, Bob Dole, Buddy Roemer, CBS, Chad Olsen, Condoleeza Rice, Dennis Goldford, Donald Trump, Drake University, Elections, Florida, Fred Karger, Gary Johnson, George H W Bush, George W Bush, Herman Cain, Hillary Clinton, Iowa, Irene Iben, Janet Wissler, Jared Blankenship, Jerry Crawford, Jimmy Carter, John Edwards, John Mccain, John Stineman, Jon Huntsman, Kyle Kondik, Massachusetts, Matt Strawn, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, News Election Service, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Paul Ryan, Pennsylvania, Ralph Nader, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Robert D Ray, Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan, Roy Moore, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Scott Walker, South Carolina, Terry Branstad, Tim Pawlenty, US Supreme Court, United States, Voter Fraud, Voter News Service, Walter Mondale Add New Keyword To Link



1/2/2012 ACLU report card finds fault with Obama, rivals
The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama. Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score

four "torches"

on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell." But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.

The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and

unlike Obama

supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories. The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion. (San Francisco Chronicle)
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posted: 1/11/12                   0       9
#3 



11/27/2011 Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion
Banks worldwide earned an estimated $13 billion by taking advantage of below-market rates on emergency U.S. Federal Reserve loans from August 2007 through April 2010. Roll over the bars below to explore details for each. To compare results with banks' net income or losses for the same timeframes, click the corresponding button. Worldwide total is the sum for 190 firms with available data; those banks lost a combined $21.6 billion. The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. (Bloomberg)
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posted: 11/29/11                   0       6
#4 
keywords: American Bankers Association, Ancel Martinez, Andrea Priest, Anil Kashyap, Anthony Coley, Bailouts, Bank Of America, Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Basel, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke, Berkeley, Bloomberg Lp, Brad Miller, Byron Dorgan, California, Center For Economic And Policy Research, Center For Responsive Politics, Charlotte, Citigroup, Clearing House Association, Countrywide Financial, Dallas, David Jones, Dean Baker, Dodd-frank Wall Street Reform Act, Dow Jones, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Financial Services Forum, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Gary Stern, George Mason University, George W Bush, Gerald Hanweck, Glass-steagall Act, Goldman Sachs, Government Transparency, Graham Fisher & CO, Henry Paulson, Howard Opinsky, Jamie Dimon, Jerry Dubrowski, John Dearie, Jon Diat, Joshua Rosner, Jpmorgan Chase, Judd Gregg, Kenneth Lewis, Lehman Brothers, Mark Lake, Merrill Lynch, Minneapolis, Morgan Stanley, Neil Barofsky, New York, New York City, New York University, Nobel Prize, North Carolina, Occupy Boston, Occupy California, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Seattle, Occupy Wall Street, Oliver Williamson, Phillip Swagel, Police, Realtytrac, Richard Fisher, Richard Shelby, Scott Alvarez, Sherrill Shaffer, Sherrod Brown, Switzerland, Tea Party, Ted Kaufman, Timothy Geithner, US Bureau Of Labor Statistics, US Congress, US Department Of The Treasury, US Freedom Of Information Act, US Supreme Court, United States, University Of California, University Of Chicago, University Of Maryland, University Of Wyoming, Vikram Pandit, Viral Acharya, Wachovia, Wall Street, Washington DC, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, William English Add New Keyword To Link



8/17/2011 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Matt Taibbi: A whistle blower says the agency has illegally destroyed thousands of documents, letting financial crooks off the hook.

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record. That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history. Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI." (Rolling Stone)
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posted: 9/14/11                   0       5
#5 
keywords: Adam Storch, American International Group, Andrew Tong, Bank Of America, Bankers Trust, Barry Walters, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bill Laufer, Charles Grassley, Christopher Cox, Citigroup, Daniel Indiviglio, Darcy Flynn, Davis Polk, Der Spiegel, Deutsche Bank, Financial Crisis, Gary Aguirre, Gary Lynch, George Orwell, George W Bush, Germany, Goldman Sachs, Harry Markopolos, JP Morgan Chase, Jacqueline Millan, Joel Sauer, John Mack, John Nester, Julie Preuitt, Ken Hall, Laurence Brewer, Lehman Brothers, Linda Chatman Thomsen, Lynn Turner, Mary Schapiro, Morgan Stanley, National Archives And Records Administration, Paul Wester, Pequot Capital, Ping Jiang, Police, R Allen Stanford, Richard Walker, Robert Khuzami, Rolf Breuer, Sac Capital, Seaboard, Securities And Exchange Commission, Stephen Cutler, Texas, The Atlantic, US Congress, University Of Pennsylvania, Untied States, Wall Street, Whistleblowers, William Mclucas, Wilmerhale Add New Keyword To Link



8/15/2011 Rick Perry Running for U.S. President of Chinese Cyber Espionage
Narcissistic bozo drag queen Rick Perry is officially running for President of Are You Fucking Serious? here in this great nation of ours that has been “out of ideas” about who to put in the White House since 1980, an exciting decision that gives the green light to media outlets everywhere to examine just how grotesquely incompetent this pandering idiot really is before declaring him the only “viable” candidate in the GOP presidential race. What have we learned about Rick Perry so far this morning? As governor of Texas, Rick Perry invited Chinese telecom giant Huawei to do business in his state after national security experts from both the Obama and W. administrations told everyone, “do not even open these guys’ emails because they are spies.” Perry not only opened, but he clicked 86 times, forwarded it to his entire contact list and then traveled to China with taxpayer money to personally tell Huawei, “come stay at my house if you need to send out a few more of these.” Hey guys, at least China writes back and offers some money once in a while, unlike God, said Rick Perry. (Wonkette)
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posted: 9/14/11                   0       5
#6 



5/9/2011 10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax
Every indication clearly points to last Sunday’s raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration

Merely a week after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is literally a deluge of evidence that clearly indicates the whole episode has been manufactured for political gain and to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration so that they can be easily manipulated in the run up to the 2012 election. Here are ten facts that prove the Bin Laden fable is a contrived hoax…. 1) Before last Sunday’s raid, every intelligence analyst, geopolitical commentator or head of state worth their salt was on record as stating that Osama Bin Laden was already dead, and that he probably died many years ago, from veteran CIA officer Robert Baer, to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to former FBI head of counterterrorism Dale Watson. In addition, back in 2002 Alex Jones was told directly by two separate high level sources that Bin Laden was already dead and that his death would be announced at the most politically opportune moment. Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under five different Presidents, serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Nixon, Ford and Carter, told the Alex Jones Show last week that Bin Laden died of marfan syndrome shortly after he was visited by CIA physicians at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001. 2) The official narrative of how the raid unfolded completely collapsed within days of its announcement. First there had been a 40 minute shootout, then there was no shootout and just one man was armed, first Bin Laden was armed then he was not, first Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield and then he did not. First the compound was described as a “$1 million dollar mansion” then it turned out to be a rubbish-strewn dilapidated compound that was worth less than a quarter of that. Almost every single aspect of the official narrative has changed since Obama first described the raid last Sunday as the White House struggles to keep its story straight. (Prison Planet)
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posted: 5/12/11                   0       5
#7 



4/25/2011 'Nuclear hellstorm' if bin Laden caught: 9/11 mastermind
The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks warned that Al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is captured, leaked files revealed Monday. The terror group also planned to make a 9/11 style attack on London's Heathrow airport by crashing a hijacked airliner into one of the terminals, the files showed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the Al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed, according to the classified files released by the WikiLeaks website. Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been held at Guantanamo since 2006 and is to be tried in a military court at the US naval base on Cuba over the attacks. (Agence France-Presse)
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posted: 5/9/11                   0       6
#8 



4/25/2011 WikiLeaks releasing documents on Guantanamo
Thousands of pages outline the U.S. prison operation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with details on the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind and others. The White House condemns the leak.

Most of those remaining at the Guantanamo Bay military prison are considered "high-risk" detainees who if released would pose grave threats to the U.S. and its allies, as did a third of those set free earlier, according to thousands of pages of classified documents being made public by WikiLeaks. Release of the more than 700 separate documents dealing with the prison, opened under the George W. Bush administration to house detainees in the war on terrorism, drew a sharp rebuke Sunday evening from the White House, which said the documents were obtained illegally. "We strongly condemn the leaking of this sensitive information," the White House said. The materials were obtained and released by WikiLeaks as part of its ongoing publication of classified documents dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as secret State Department cables and other material. (Los Angeles Times)
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posted: 5/12/11                   0       2
#9 



4/25/2011 WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed
Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose.

Al-Qaeda terrorists have threatened to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” on the West if Osama Bin Laden is caught or assassinated, according to documents to be released by the WikiLeaks website, which contain details of the interrogations of more than 700 Guantanamo detainees. However, the shocking human cost of obtaining this intelligence is also exposed with dozens of innocent people sent to Guantanamo – and hundreds of low-level foot-soldiers being held for years and probably tortured before being assessed as of little significance. The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website. The disclosures are set to spark intense debate around the world about the establishment of Guantanamo Bay in the months after 9/11 – which has enabled the US to collect vital intelligence from senior Al Qaeda commanders but sparked fury in the middle east and Europe over the treatment of detainees. (London Telegraph)
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posted: 5/12/11                   0       2
#10 



4/19/2011 Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time. The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd". (The Independent)
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posted: 4/19/11                   0       3
#11 
keywords: Big Oil, British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, British Gas, British Petroleum, Chilcot Inquiry, China National Petroleum Company, Downing Street, Edward Chaplin, Elizabeth Symons, France, George W Bush, Greg Muttitt, Iraq, John Browne, Libya, Libyan National Economic Development Board, Middle East, Military, Muammar Gaddafi, Royal Dutch Shell, Rumaila Field, Russia, Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, UK Freedom Of Information Act, United Kingdom, United States, Weapons Of Mass Destruction Add New Keyword To Link



4/18/2011 Boehner seeks to divert funds for gay marriage fight
House Speaker John Boehner said he intends to divert funding from the Justice Department to the U.S. House so Congress can defend the federal law that bars recognition of same-sex marriage. The Ohio Republican disclosed this in a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who is strongly opposed to Congress going to court to defend the 1996 law. An estimate on court costs was not given. Pelosi shot back, saying Boehner has not answered her central question about the costs to mounting a defense to the law. "The House of Representatives need not enter into this lengthy and costly litigation," she responded. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Obama administration would no longer defend the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a Clinton-era law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. The law also says that states cannot be forced to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. (USA Today)
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posted: 4/19/11                   0       3
#12 



4/18/2011 U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition: report
The State Department has secretly funded Syrian opposition groups, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, The Washington Post reported on Monday. The cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million since 2006 to a group of Syrian exiles to operate a London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, and finance activities inside Syria, the Post said. Barada TV began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria that began last month as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad the Post said. The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after political ties with Damascus were frozen in 2005, the newspaper said. The financial backing has continued under President Barack Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad, the Post said. In January, the White House posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years. (Reuters)
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posted: 5/9/11                   0       3
#13 



4/15/2011 CIA officer: US depended on tyrannies
The United State’s intervention in Libya has been called a humanitarian effort by officials, but the true intentions of the American government can be not-so-easily explained by examining the country’s actions overseas. “The best thing for the United States is to back away and let the cards fall where they may,” says Michael Scheuer. "If Israel disappears, if Palestine disappears…who cares?" A former intelligence officer with the CIA who, like many, insists that the US’ intervention in Libya isn’t doing any good for anyone. Despite America’s insistence that their involvement in the Middle East is for the better of the citizen’s of Libya, the United States is only accentuating its reputation as the bad guy, says Scheuer. “We’re just trying to fool the Muslim world…but the Muslim world is much smarter than that,” says Scheuer, who has written extensively on Islam and America’s relation with Muslim countries. Scheuer says that the United States is known for attacking countries that have oil and that their involvement in Libya is being enacted to serve America, not the Middle East. This, the author says, only confirms what Osama Bin Laden has always inferred about America. (Russia Today)
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posted: 4/19/11                   0       3
#14 



3/7/2011 Libya army transport deal frozen after US approval
In the months before Libyans revolted and President Barack Obama told leader Moammar Gadhafi to go, the U.S. government was moving to do business with his regime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal to deliver at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military. Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalled the deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale. Earlier last week, after all military exports to the Gadhafi regime were suspended, the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls informed Capitol Hill that the deal had been returned without action — effectively off the table, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the deal's sensitive details. State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the proposed license was suspended along with the rest of "what limited defense trade we had with Libya." The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a "personal interest" in modernizing the armored transports, according to a December 2009 diplomatic message disclosed by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website. (Associated Press)
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posted: 3/31/11                   0       6
#15 
keywords: Anthony Zinni, Bae Systems, Barack Obama, Charles Taylor, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, European Union, Gene Cretz, General Dynamics, George W Bush, Italy, Jeffrey Wieringa, Jordan, Khamis Gaddafi, Lee Hamilton, Libya, Libyan Army, Mark Toner, Michael Chertoff, Military, Muammar Gaddafi, National Foreign Trade Council, New America Foundation, Northrop Grumman, Robert Joseph, Rockville MD, Saif Gaddafi, Tripoli, US Army, US Congress, US Department Of Commerce, US Department Of Justice, US Department Of State, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam War, Wiki Leaks, William Hartung, William Lowell, William Reinsch, Zawiya Add New Keyword To Link



3/7/2011 Taking the fat out of the fat bin Laden confession video
For millions of people seeking the truth about September 11,2001, the videotape released by the Department of Defense on December 13, 2001 in which Osama bin Laden confesses to prior knowledge of 9/11 has been a powerful talking point when making the case that the government is covering up what actually happened on that notorious day. Many in the global movement to discover the truth about 9/ 11 have referred to this video as the fat bin Laden video, including yours truly. When we see frames from the video such as in Figure 1, any person with eyes can look and see that the bin Laden in the video appears much fatter than any other known image of Osama. However, when one or even a few frames are taken from a 35-minute segment of video, and those selected frames exploit t he least recognizable images of bin Laden while hundreds of other frames resemble him more closely, it is a misrepresentation of the truth. Clearly,the center frame above is one of those frames in the video that least resembles Osama bin Laden

yet has been picked and published as if the entire video reveals bin Laden in this distorted image, when it does not.

While reading some of the coverage and investigation done by Maher Osseiran on the bin Laden confession tape, and his assertion that the tape is likely actually a tape of bin Laden himself, it occurred to me that since the tape was recorded in the Pakistan region, it was likely recorded in PAL video format. In the United States, we use the NTSC format. The difference is primarily that the standard PAL format has the same spatial resolution horizontally, but vertically it has a higher spatial resolution (720 x 576 for PAL – 720 x 480 for NTSC) than doe NTSC. Many PAL and NTSC converters simply eliminate the extra horizontal lines from the PAL format in order to conform to the NTSC format. This results in an image that appears to be ‘squashed’ along the vertical axis...making people and objects look fatter after the conversion. (Muckraker Report)
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posted: 4/4/11                   0       1
#16 



2/16/2011 Sen. Leahy on anthrax case: 'It's not closed'
After the deadly shooting rampage in Tucson, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) was asked to reflect on his own experience as the would-be target of an assassin. That's when he let slip something that he rarely talks about publicly: He has never accepted the FBI's decision to close the case in the series of anthrax-laced letters mailed to public officials in fall 2001. "I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it," the Judiciary Committee chairman told a crowd gathered last month at the Newseum in Northwest Washington to hear his 2011 legislative agenda. More than a month later, Leahy was given fresh evidence this week that the science in the case was not airtight, reopening emotional wounds 91/2 years after letters sent to him and then-Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) helped cause the deaths of five people and sickened 17 others. On Tuesday, the National Research Council questioned the efficacy of the genetic testing used by the FBI to allege that a Fort Detrick scientist had acted alone in mailing the deadly letters to Capitol Hill and media outlets. (Washington Post)
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posted: 2/23/11                   0       4
#17 



2/16/2011 Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
By Matt Taibbi. Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that." I put down my notebook. "Just that?" "That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there." Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people. This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once." (Rolling Stone)
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posted: 3/12/11                   0       4
#18 
keywords: Al Dunlap, American International Group, Art Samberg, Arthur Tildesley Jr, Bailouts, Bank Of America, Barack Obama, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Boston, Charles Grassley, Charles Schumer, Citigroup, Columbia University, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Credit Default Swaps, Credit Suisse, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Debevoise & Plimpton, Derek Jeter, Derivatives, Deutsche Bank, Dick Fuld, Dick Walker, Eliot Spitzer, Enron, Eric Dinallo, Fabrice Tourre, Fannie Mae, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Freddie Mac, Gary Aguirre, Gary Crittenden, Gary Lynch, General Electric, George W Bush, Germany, Goldman Sachs, Government Transparency, Heller Financial, Henry Waxman, Hillary Clinton, Hilton Hotels, Immigration, JP Morgan Chase, Jed Rakoff, Joe Cassano, John Mack, Joseph St Denis, Lanny Breuer, Lehman Brothers, Linda Thomsen, Lloyd Blankfein, Lynn Turner, Mary Jo White, Merrill Lynch, Mexico, Morgan Stanley, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Office Of The Comptroller Of The Currency, Ohio, Oliver Budde, Paul Berger, Philadelphia, Police, Portfolio Magazine, Preet Bharara, Residential Mortgage-backed Securities, Restricted Stock Units, Rite Aid, Robert Khuzami, Robert Morgenthau, Roger Clemens, Rudy Giuliani, Securities And Exchange Commission, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Sunbeam, Switzerland, Terrorists, US Congress, US Department Of Justice, United States, Wall Street, War On Drugs, Worldcom Add New Keyword To Link



2/9/2011 Patriot Act Extension Fails, Splitting Tea Party Republicans
The Patriot Act took a temporary hit Tuesday night when the House failed to muster a two-thirds majority to extend three provisions of the law under special fast-track rules. It’s a temporary setback for the bill, which is expected to easily pass in a few days under regular rules. And it’s a kick in the teeth to the newly-minted GOP leadership, which missed what should have been a lay-up. Most Democrats voted against the extension (which the White House supports) and were joined by 26 Republicans. What I find interesting is the fault line this vote reveals among Tea Party GOPers. Slate’s Dave Weigel breaks out the list of GOP defectors, which includes eight freshmen elected under the Tea Party banner and three more veteran lawmakers who were inaugural members of the Tea Party caucus last year. But, he notes, high profile Tea Partyers like Michele Bachmann (who founded the Tea Party caucus after all), Kristi Noem, and Allen West all voted for the extension. “I break this out because there'll be a temptation to say ‘the Tea Party and its isolationist elements beat the reauthorization,’ and that's not quite it,” he writes. (US News & World Report)
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posted: 2/19/11                   0       4
#19 
keywords: Allen West, Barack Obama, George W Bush, Health Care, Jon Chait, Kristi Noem, Medicare, Michele Bachmann, Steve Benen, Tea Party, Terrorists, US Congress, United States, Usa Patriot Act, Washington Monthly, White House Add New Keyword To Link



2/8/2011 Patriot Act extension fails in the House by seven votes
House Republicans suffered an embarrassing setback Tuesday when they fell seven votes short of extending provisions of the Patriot Act, a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party's tea-party bloc. The bill to reauthorize key parts of the counter-terrorism surveillance law, which expire at the end of the month, required a super-majority to pass under special rules reserved for non-controversial measures. But it fell short of the required two-thirds after 26 Republicans bucked their leadership, eight of them freshman lawmakers elected in November's midterm elections. With most Democrats opposing the extension, the final tally was 277 members in favor of extension, and 148 opposed. (Washington Post)
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posted: 3/12/11                   0       3
#20 



1/15/2011 EXPOSED: Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Political Syndicate (w/ Wayne Madsen)
Who is Rahm Emanuel? How did he get into politics? The Emanuel family; just how powerful are they? What influence do they have on lobbying, and power politics? His workings with the Chicago Democratic Machine, how did he get started, is there a shady past he is trying to hide? Is Rahm being blackmailed because of his past with Obama on Chicago's North Side? The Blago trial; why was he and others never questioned about Obama, Valerie Jarret, and Jesse Jackson Jr. What role did he play in the attempt to bring the Olympics to Chicago? What is the connection to key players in Chicago and Washington DC winding up dead? Are there secret video tapes waiting to surface? If he is Mayor, what will the city of Chicago look like? Could he become another Rudy Giuliani? In this exclusive Special Investigation the Reality Report begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting goes deep and digs up the dirt that no Chicago media outlet would dare to report. This is a must see expose for anyone who has questions about Rahm Emanuel but just didn't know who to ask. (Reality Report)
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posted: 4/2/11      
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12/12/2010 Rep. Ron Paul, G.O.P. Loner, Comes In From Cold
As virtually all of Washington was declaring WikiLeaks’s disclosures of secret diplomatic cables an act of treason, Representative Ron Paul was applauding the organization for exposing the United States’ “delusional foreign policy.” For this, the conservative blog RedState dubbed him “Al Qaeda’s favorite member of Congress.” It was hardly the first time that Mr. Paul had marched to his own beat. During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, he was best remembered for declaring in a debate that the 9/11 attacks were the Muslim world’s response to American military intervention around the globe. A fellow candidate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, interrupted and demanded that he take back the words — a request that Mr. Paul refused. During his 20 years in Congress, Mr. Paul has staked out the lonely end of 434-to-1 votes against legislation that he considers unconstitutional, even on issues as ceremonial as granting Mother Teresa a Congressional Gold Medal. His colleagues have dubbed him “Dr. No,” but his wife will insist that they have the spelling wrong: he is really Dr. Know. Now it appears others are beginning to credit him with some wisdom — or at least acknowledging his passionate following. (New York Times)
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posted: 4/19/11                   0       1
#22 



11/4/2010 The Citizens United Effect: 40 percent of outside money made possible by Supreme Court ruling
In 2002 former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once flippantly described connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists by saying, "There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know." Little did Rumsfeld know that his remark would be the most accurate description for a murky midterm election eight years down the road. The 2010 midterm election is filled with both "known unknowns," outside groups raised and spent $126 million on elections without disclosing the source, and "unknown unknowns," we don't know what those undisclosed donors want. We do know one thing: the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowed this election to be the costliest and least transparent midterm in recent history. The impact of Citizens United can be judged by simply following the money. The $126 million in undisclosed money represents more than a quarter of the total $450 million spent by outside groups. Add the $60 million spent by groups that were allowed to raise unlimited money, but still had to disclose, to the undisclosed money and the total amount of outside money made possible by the Citizens United ruling reaches $186 million or 40 percent of the total spent by outside groups. (Sunlight Foundation)
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posted: 8/1/11                   0       1
#23 



10/25/2010 What the Feds Can Do About Prop 19: The attorney general will have a tough decision to make if California legalizes marijuana.
Assume for a moment that California voters approve Proposition 19 on Nov. 2. The state will have just enacted a process for legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana use that no one else in the world has ever attempted. But Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama’s top law-enforcement officer, has said the administration will “vigorously enforce” federal drug laws in the country’s most populous state regardless of the vote. For all the trails that approving Prop 19 would blaze, much of its impact would depend on the extent to which Holder follows through on that threat. The attorney general has shown some willingness to scale back on marijuana enforcement; his Justice Department ended Bush-era crackdowns on medical pot dispensaries in California. Of course, the post–Prop 19 world would be different. California cities could license businesses that grow and sell marijuana on a large scale. Drug dealers in other states would surely head to California’s “coffee shops” (as weed retailers are called in Amsterdam), buy some California-grown product, and illegally transport it back home. It’s arguable that pot smokers and presumably some dealers can do that today, but they at least need a doctor’s permission and a state-issued ID card, which provides cover for authorities, however easily those cards may be obtainable. With that cover removed, Holder, whose department includes the Drug Enforcement Administration, could hardly ignore such a blatant violation of federal drug law. (Newsweek)
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posted: 11/1/10                   0       19
#24 



10/13/2010 Campaign finance reform: R.I.P.?
For four decades, advocates for stricter campaign finance rules have been on a long, slow march to make big money in politics less important and more transparent. Now, in 2010, they are seeing the results: Never in modern political history has there been so much secret money gushing into an American election. By Election Day, independent groups will have aired more than $200 million worth of campaign ads using cash that can’t be traced back to its original source, predicts Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit group Democracy 21. "And this is just the beginning," Wertheimer said. "Unless we get some changes here to mitigate this problem, I would expect we will see $500 million or more in 2012." (Politico)
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posted: 1/5/11                   0       2
#25 
keywords: 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, American Crossroads, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Brad Smith, Brigham Young University, Campaign Finance Reform, Campaign Legal Center, Center For Competitive Politics, Chris Van Hollen, Citizens United, Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission, Craig Holman, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, David Magleby, Democracy 21, Enron, Federal Election Commission, Fred Wertheimer, George W Bush, George Will, Institute For Justice, Jack Abramoff, James Bopp, James Madison Center For Free Speech, John Mccain, John Roberts, Karl Rove, Lynde And Henry Bradley Foundation, Mike Grebe, Public Citizen, Richard Nixon, Russ Feingold, Samuel Alito, Trevor Potter, US Chamber Of Commerce, US Congress, US Supreme Court, United States, Watergate, White House Add New Keyword To Link



10/3/2010 CIA backed by military drones in Pakistan
The CIA is using an arsenal of armed drones and other equipment provided by the U.S. military to secretly escalate its operations in Pakistan by striking targets beyond the reach of American forces based in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The merging of covert CIA operations and military firepower is part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents who have regained control of swaths of territory in Afghanistan but stage most of their operations from sanctuaries across that country's eastern border. The move represents a signification evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program run by the CIA. The agency's drone program began as a sporadic effort to kill members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network but in the past month it has been delivering what amounts to a cross-border bombing campaign in coordination with conventional military operations a few miles away. The campaign continued Saturday amid reports that two new CIA drone strikes had killed 16 militants in northwest Pakistan, following 22 such attacks last month. (Washington Post)
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posted: 10/3/10                   0       23
#26 



9/30/2010 Fmr. Intelligence Director: New Cyberattack May Be Worse Than 9/11
Speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., former Director of National Intelligence and Director of the National Security Agency Mike McConnell said that the U.S. is unprepared for a cyberattack and must overhaul its defenses. "The warnings are over. It could happen tomorrow," he said of a large-scale cyberattack against the U.S., which could impact the global economy "an order of magnitude surpassing" the attacks of September 11. McConnell, in a panel with Bush administration Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend and Washingtonian reporter Shane Harris, called cybersecurity "the wolf at the door." (The Atlantic)
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posted: 10/4/10                   0       19
#27 



9/29/2010 Democrats, don't insult the voters
I have seen many campaigns in my four decades in politics, but this one is the strangest. With a little more than a month to go and many races still very close, the Democratic message to their faithful is mind-boggling. Voters want to know what's going on, and Democrats in particular are unhappy and unenthusiastic. So what does the national leadership of the party say about the voters? They have been called whiners by the vice president. President Obama, who led them to victory two short years ago with record turnouts, is calling them "irresponsible." They have even been called stupid by the party's former presidential nominee John Kerry. Just last week, Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, implied the voters were too stupid to know what they are doing. "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." (CNN)
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posted: 9/29/10                   0       16
#28 
keywords: Barack Obama, Dilenschneider Group, Ed Rollins, George W Bush, Hofstra University, John Kerry, Joseph Biden, Newsweek, Politico, Reince Priebus, Ronald Reagan, Russ Feingold, Sports, US Congress, United States, University Of Wisconsin, White House, Wisconsin Add New Keyword To Link



9/28/2010 Big Brother Obama: US to spy on Internet messaging -- Regulations to target Skype, Facebook, Blackberry
The Obama White House is backing new regulations that would compel popular Internet messaging services like Facebook, Skype and Blackberry to open up their systems to FBI surveillance, the New York Times reported Monday, citing federal law enforcement and national security officials. The threat to democratic rights goes far beyond anything envisioned by the Bush administration. The goal is to make all forms of electronic communication that use the Internet subject to wiretapping and interception by federal police agencies. In the past few years there has been a large-scale shift from conventional telephone communication to Internet-based messaging, which is both cheaper and more secure.

The Times article gave two examples of government efforts to intercept encrypted or peer-to-peer communications that ran into technical obstacles, one involving a drug cartel, the other related to the failed Times Square bombing earlier this year. These examples were chosen to support the claim by the Obama administration that the buildup of surveillance is part of a struggle against crime and “terrorism.” However, the Obama administration has defined “terrorism” so widely that the term now covers a vast array of constitutionally protected forms of political opposition to the policies of the US government, including speaking, writing, political demonstrations, even the filing of legal briefs. (World Socialist Web Site)
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posted: 10/4/10                   0       11
#29 



9/28/2010 Sooner or later, marijuana will be legal
It's as predictable as the sun rising and setting. Even though police made more than 850,000 marijuana arrests last year, a recent government report shows youth marijuana use increased by about 9 percent. Supporters of the failed war on drugs will no doubt argue this increase means policymakers should spend more taxpayer money next year arresting and incarcerating a greater number of Americans. In other words, their solution to failure is to do more of the same. Fortunately, the "reform nothing" club is getting mighty lonely these days -- 76 percent of Americans recognize the drug war has failed; millions are demanding change. (CNN)
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posted: 9/29/10                   0       12
#30 



9/27/2010 C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks on Taliban in Pakistan
The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan. As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan. The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan. Some Pakistani troops have also been diverted from counterinsurgency missions to help provide relief to victims of the country’s massive flooding. (New York Times)
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posted: 10/3/10                   0       9
#31 



9/26/2010 Chertoff Group: Israel Cyber-Attacks Iranian Nuke Plant With Stuxnet Computer Virus
Richard Falkenrath, a principal at Chertoff Group and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, discusses the Stuxnet computer virus. The worm targets Siemens AG software used to control industrial equipment and may be aimed at destroying Iran's controversial nuclear facility, according to Ralph Langner, a German industrial controls safety expert, the Financial Times reported. Falkenrath, speaking from Washington, talks with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Bloomberg)
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posted: 9/27/10      
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#32 



9/22/2010 Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday.

Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." (Washington Post)
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posted: 9/24/10                   0       9
#33 



9/22/2010 Building a Better America: One Wealth Quintile at a Time
by Michael I Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University

Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of “regular” Americans into these debates, by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to “build a better America” by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups – even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

Most scholars agree that wealth inequality in the United States is at historic highs, with some estimates suggesting that the top 1% of Americans hold nearly 50% of the wealth, topping even the levels seen just before the Great Depression in the 1920’s.

These results demonstrate two clear messages. First, respondents vastly underestimated the actual level of wealth inequality in the United States, believing that the wealthiest quintile held about 59% of the wealth when the actual number is closer to 84%. More interesting, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution, reporting a desire for the top quintile to own just 32% of the wealth. These desires for more equal distributions of wealth took the form of moving money from the top quintile to the bottom three quintiles, while leaving the second quintile unchanged, evidencing a greater concern for the less fortunate than the more fortunate.

Overall, these results demonstrate two primary messages. First, a large nationally representative sample of Americans seem to prefer to live in a country more like Sweden than like the United States. Americans also construct ideal distributions that are far more equal than they estimated the United States to be. – estimates which themselves were far more equal than the actual level of inequality. Second, across groups from different sides of the political spectrum, there was much more consensus than disagreement about this desire for a more equal distribution of wealth, suggesting that Americans may possess a commonly held “normative” standard for the distribution of wealth despite the many disagreements about policies that affect that distribution, such as taxation and welfare. We hasten to add, however, that our use of “normative” is in a descriptive sense -- reflecting the fact that Americans agree on the ideal distribution -- but not necessarily in a prescriptive sense. While some evidence suggests that economic inequality is associated with decreased well-being and health, creating a society with the precise level of inequality that our respondents report as ideal may not be optimal from an economic or public policy perspective. (Michael I Norton and Dan Ariely)
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posted: 9/27/10                   0       5
#34 



9/20/2010 Bill Would Give Justice Department Power to Shutter Piracy Sites Worldwide
Lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would let the Justice Department seek U.S. court orders against piracy websites anywhere in the world, and shut them down through the sites’ domain registration. The bipartisan legislation, dubbed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, (.pdf) amounts to the Holy Grail of intellectual-property enforcement. The recording industry and movie studios have been clamoring for such a capability since the George W. Bush administration. If passed, the Justice Department could ask a federal court for an injunction that would order a U.S. domain registrar or registry to stop resolving an infringing site’s domain name, so that visitors to PirateBay.org, for example, would get an error message. “In today’s global economy the internet has become the glue of international commerce –- connecting consumers with a wide array of products and services worldwide,” said Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) in a statement announcing the bill. “But it’s also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.” (Wired)
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posted: 10/5/10                   0       5
#35 



9/18/2010 How marijuana became legal: Medical marijuana is giving activists a chance to show how a legitimized pot business can work. Is the end of prohibition upon us?
When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport, his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says. That's probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his weed directly from the United States government. Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300 federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), acting with approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Rosenfeld smokes the marijuana to relieve chronic pain and muscle spasms caused by a rare bone disease. When he was 10, doctors discovered that his skeleton was riddled with more than 200 tumors, due to a condition known as multiple congenital cartilaginous exostosis. Despite seven operations, he still lives with scores of tumors in his bones. (CNN)
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posted: 10/3/10                   0       3
#36 



9/10/2010 Nine Years After 9/11, Few See Terrorism as Top U.S. Problem: One percent see it as the top problem today, down from 46% in 2001
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 1% of Americans mention terrorism as the most important problem facing the country, down from 46% just after the attacks.Just before the attacks, in a Gallup poll conducted Sept. 7-10, 2001, less than one-half of 1% of Americans mentioned terrorism as the nation's most important problem. One month later, in October 2001, 46% named terrorism, the highest in Gallup's history. From that point on, terrorism slowly faded as a response to this question. At the one-year anniversary of the attacks, in September 2002, 19% of Americans mentioned terrorism as the country's top problem, already eclipsed by the economy at the top of the list. By the five-year anniversary of the attacks in September 2006, 11% of Americans mentioned terrorism. Terrorism continued to drop from that point, albeit with an uptick to 8% mentions in January of this year, reflecting the widespread news coverage of the "Christmas Day bomber" who allegedly attempted to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines plane headed for Detroit.

Despite the drop in top-of-mind mentions of terrorism, Americans still say it is an important issue when they are reminded of it. Gallup recently asked Americans to rate the importance of a number of issues to their vote in this year's midterm elections, and 75% rated terrorism as an extremely or very important issue. Still, Americans rated economic issues such as the economy, jobs, and federal spending, as well as corruption in government and healthcare, even higher. They rated terrorism as more important than immigration, Afghanistan, and the environment. The Sept. 11 attacks took place during the Republican Bush administration, which soon thereafter launched a "war on terrorism." Republicans have consistently been given more credit than Democrats for handling terrorism over the years since; in an August USA Today/Gallup poll, 55% of Americans say the Republicans in Congress are better able to handle the issue of terrorism, while 31% choose the Democrats. (Gallup)
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posted: 10/5/10                   0       2
#37 



9/1/2010 Really Can't See Myself Voting Republican
I don't care how many Ken Mehlmans come out of the closet or how little gays and lesbians have to show for helping to elect Barack Obama: I can't see myself voting Republican. Because I'm not—despite what you may have read in Slog's comments threads—a single-issue voter.

But honestly... I am a lot less enthused about voting for, and giving money to, Democrats these days. Still going to vote for 'em, just not enthused. Feeling pretty tepid. And I suspect that I'm not alone.

If we get no progress under Democrats (just empty promises meant to excite their base), but no regress under Republicans (just empty threats meant to excite their base), why should we waste our time--and our money--worrying about who's in charge?

So here's where we're at: everyone who cares about gay issues is mad at the Democrats. The homophobes are angry because the Democrats suggested that they might do something about gay rights; gays and lesbians are furious with the Democrats for failing to do something—failing to do anything—about gay rights. Since doing nothing pisses off the gay haters just as much as doing something, perhaps the Dems should've have done something and won the enthusiastic support of someone. (The Stranger)
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posted: 9/27/10                   0       3
#38 



8/20/2010 COLUMN-In drug war, the beginning of the end? Bernd Debusmann
Between 1971, when Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, and 2008, the latest year for which official figures are available, American law enforcement officials made more than 40 million drug arrests. That number roughly equals the population of California, or of the 33 biggest U.S. cities. Forty million arrests speak volumes about America's longest war, which was meant to throttle drug production at home and abroad, cut supplies across the borders, and keep people from using drugs. The marathon effort has boosted the prison industry but failed so obviously to meet its objectives that there is a growing chorus of calls for the legalization of illicit drugs. In the United States, that brings together odd bedfellows. Libertarians in the tea party movement, for example, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of former police officers, narcotics agents, judges and prosecutors who favor legalizing all drugs, not only marijuana, the world's most widely-used illicit drug.

"Taking all this together, there is reason to believe that we are at the beginning of the end of the drug war as we know it," says Aaron Houston, a veteran Washington lobbyist for marijuana policy reform. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But how many people in the late 1920s, at the height of the government's fight against the likes of Al Capone, would have foreseen that alcohol prohibition would end in just a few years? Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 and is now considered a failed experiment in social engineering. Alcohol and marijuana prohibition have much in common: both in effect handed production, sales and distribution of a commodity in high demand to criminal organizations, both filled the prisons (America's population behind bars is now the world's largest), both diverted the resources of law enforcement, and both created millions of scoff-laws. (Reuters)
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posted: 8/23/10                   0       6
#39 



8/12/2010 Let's hear those ideas: In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with “social entrepreneurs” can solve some of society’s most intractable problems
POLICYMAKERS on both sides of the Atlantic are keen on a new approach to alleviating society’s troubles. On July 22nd Barack Obama’s administration listed the first 11 investments by its new Social Innovation Fund (SIF). About $50m of public money, more than matched by $74m from philanthropic foundations, will be given to some of America’s most successful non-profit organisations, in order to expand their work in health care, in creating jobs and in supporting young people (see table).

As well as the CEO, the fund chose Venture Philanthropy Partners and New Profit, two of the leading intermediaries created by a new generation of philanthropists. These people take a businesslike approach to giving that The Economist christened “philanthrocapitalism” in 2006. Both organisations invest donors’ money in a portfolio of non-profit groups. They take a close interest in the growth of these groups and measure their performance obsessively. In building his Big Society, Mr Cameron also expects to rely on such intermediaries, of which the Big Society Bank is likely to be foremost. Indeed, in some respects Britain may be ahead of America in using public funds to drive social entrepreneurship and innovation. “Unlike America,” notes Mr Goldsmith, “Britain has benefited from a decade of deliberate thinking about how government should work with the social sector.” A new corporate form, the public-interest company, has given British social entrepreneurs greater flexibility in using the profit motive to scale up social innovations. America is starting to follow suit, with the B-corp, a hybrid of for-profit company and non-profit organisation. (The Economist)
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posted: 9/27/10                   0       1
#40 
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7/27/2010 The year America dissolved
It was 2017. Clans were governing America. The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable. As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police. The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money. With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base. (Paul Craig Roberts)
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posted: 7/28/10                   0       7
#41 



7/26/2010 'US psywar plan includes 2 hot wars'
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the United States and Israel plan to attack two countries in the Middle East as part of a conspiracy to apply pressure on Iran. "We have precise information that the Americans have devised a plot, according to which they seek to launch a psychological war on Iran," Ahmadinejad stated in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Monday. "They plan to attack at least two countries in the region within the next three months," he added. He said the US seeks to achieve two main objectives with the scheme. (Press TV)
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posted: 7/27/10                   0       7
#42 



7/25/2010 Ex-CIA chief: Strike on Iran seems more likely now
A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program. Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was "way down the list" of options. But he tells CNN's "State of the Union" that such action now "seems inexorable." (Associated Press)
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posted: 7/26/10                   0       9
#43 



7/21/2010 Obama Is Preparing to Bomb Iran
After about two and a half years during which the danger of war between the United States and Iran was at a relatively low level, this threat is now rapidly increasing. A pattern of political and diplomatic events, military deployments, and media chatter now indicates that Anglo-American ruling circles, acting through the troubled Obama administration, are currently gearing up for a campaign of bombing against Iran, combined with special forces incursions designed to stir up rebellions among the non-Persian nationalities of the Islamic Republic. Naturally, the probability of a new fake Gulf of Tonkin incident or false flag terror attack staged by the Anglo-American war party and attributed to Iran or its proxies is also growing rapidly. (Webster Tarpley)
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posted: 7/27/10                   0       9
#44 



7/13/2010 Obama faces growing credibility crisis
Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, got into hot water this week for daring to speak the truth – that the Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives in November. But it could be even worse than that. Contrary to pretty much every projection until now, Democratic control of the Senate is also starting to coming into question. While Mr Obama’s approval ratings have continued to fall, and now hover at dangerously close to 40 per cent according an ABC-Washington Post poll published on Tuesday, the fate of his former colleagues in the Senate looks even worse.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.” In private, informal advisors to Mr Obama are almost as negative. According to one, the US public’s loss of confidence in Mr Obama’s leadership is a factor above and beyond their dissatisfaction over the state of the real economy, which continues to slow as last year’s $787bn stimulus starts to run dry. The adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, said the public did not know what Mr Obama really believed. Examples include his lukewarm support last year for a public option in the healthcare bill and his equally lukewarm support today for a Senate bill that would extend unemployment insurance and aid state governments to keep teachers in their jobs. (Financial Times)
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posted: 7/23/10                   0       12
#45 



6/24/2010 DISCLOSE Act: House Passes Major Campaign Finance Legislation
The final vote was 219 to 206 in favor of the DISCLOSE Act, with only two Republicans -- Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and Joseph Cao (R-La.) -- crossing party lines. The bill would provide tough new disclosure rules for groups that invest in the election process. In addition to forcing all 501c4 groups to stand by the ads they sponsor during elections (with the CEO of the organization literally forced to appear in the spot), the law would also require groups that met certain criteria to reveal who was funding their election activity. The latter provision sparked intense pushback from a host of business groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. House Democratic leadership had granted an exemption from that particular element of disclosure for the NRA. But after fierce objection to the carve out, the bill's author, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), expanded the loophole to include other organizations as well. The legislation was pulled from consideration late last week when passage became uncertain. House leadership made impassioned pleas to their colleagues on Thursday morning (see below) before heading to the floor this afternoon to finally vote. (Huffington Post)
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posted: 8/1/11                   0       1
#46 



6/15/2010 Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US
A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.

The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined. That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats. (CNet News)
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posted: 6/22/10                   0       22
#47 



6/9/2010 Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool
As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies -- including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate. There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas. (Washington Examiner)
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posted: 6/16/10                   0       23
#48 



5/29/2010 Argentina’s former president: Bush once claimed, ‘the best way to revitalize the economy is war’
"We had a discussion in Monterrey. I said that a solution for the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan," he claimed to have suggested. "And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war, and that the United States has grown stronger with war." Asked to clarify, Kirchner added: "He said that. Those were his exact words." (The Raw Story)
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posted: 5/31/10                   0       18
#49 



5/27/2010 Obama cancels Gulf drilling projects
Takes responsibility for response, works to clean up mineral agency

Mr. Obama said his administration has been trying to clean up that agency, the Minerals Management Service. MMS' chief, Elizabeth Birnbaum, an Obama nominee, quit her post Thursday just before Mr. Obama held a press conference. Mr. Obama was not sure whether Ms. Birnbaum resigned or was asked to leave. (Washington Times)
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posted: 6/22/10                   0       5
#50 




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