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Friends
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pelosi under fire! hehe
pelosi under fire! hehe
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first day
gretchen: bus has wifi? me: yes ow my whole being commuting will take some suffering used to gretchen: how does this commute work? where is your yahoo place i don't think it's called an office anymore me: when it's that big it's called the belly of the beast ( more chat )
I've been home 43 minutes, just putting off going to Wally's. Wally's is friendly and it's the only place I'd dine alone, I'm too tired to do anything at home, but I'd so much prefer not to go out by myself. Gretchen says, "i think you should have sushi and pretend to be an 80s japanese business man. drink sake. maybe wear a suit." But alone I can't brave the marble and disco and neon of Miyozen, however much verisimilitude. |
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I recieved this email from the C.E.O. of the Freedom Investor Club today
This is the first club event I've seen that is open to the public, but you must pre-register which you can do by going to this website: http://www.ficinvestors.com/foreclosureevent/Meetings are being held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, New York and Toronto. The event is free, but to take advantage of the investments discussed, you will need 20k. Andrew and I have been ecstatic about the investments we've made as a result of information we've learned from the club. Andrew and I will be attending the San Francisco event August 5th. ( body of email ) |
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truth
The following is one article in a newsletter called the "Privateer". INSIDE THE UNITED STATES THE END OF US LAW In a deeply disturbing article in the New York Times, published on July 16, journalist Adam Liptak reported that on July 15, the Virginia Federal Appeals Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detention of civilians captured in the United States. Please read that again: “The indefinite military detention of civilians!” Mr Liptak’s article proceeds to the legal particulars of this case, but they are clear enough in his outline. Undeveloped, regrettably, are the enormous principles involved here. The accused in the case is a foreign national - residing legally in the US - who was arrested by the civilian authorities in 2001. After about two years in civilian courts hands, he was transferred to the US military by the simple means of re-designating him as a “terrorist”. He has been in military hands ever since. In terms of the principles involved, the true importance of this case is that the Appeals Court has opened the door wide for the US Administration to have the civilian authorities arrest people and then transfer them on their own say-so to US military authorities. Once that is done, they can be held indefinitely! The Appeals Court ruling was wide enough to apply to Americans. Mr Liptak headlined his story precisely enough: “Court Backs Bush On Military Detentions”. De Facto - US Martial Law Is Imposed: In principle, the Rule of Law has hereby ended inside the United States. When the civilian courts simply hand people over to US military authorities who have expressed an “interest” in them, the Rule of Law is no more. Such an act by the US civilian courts vacates the space specifically reserved for them in the American Constitution. They have vacated their position as the third independent branch of government. There are now two systems of courts inside the United States. The civilian courts which, under this ruling, will stand as a forward screen giving a facade of normalcy. One step behind them will be the US military authorities which can demand the hand-over of anybody in civilian custody - and the civilian courts will comply. Under this ruling, who is to decide which people should be so treated? The US Executive Branch of government. By this ruling, the Executive Branch has in its hands the means with which to incarcerate anybody, simply on its own say-so, and hold them indefinitely! That is a tyranny! It is with a haunting sense of intellectual anticipation that The Privateer has to refer back to the front page of our previous issue where we dealt precisely with the nature of Martial Law. The real form of martial law arrives when the US military itself gains the power to arrest American and all other civilians. The Very Last Line(s) Of Self-Defence: This ruling by the Federal Virginia Court of Appeal is certain to travel to the US Supreme Court. But it might not even be heard - if the Supreme Court decides not to hear this case. If that is the outcome, then in full legal terms it is all over because the lower Federal Appeal Court’s decision will stand. If the US Supreme Court does hear the case and decides to overturn the lower Appeal Court, then all is well and the US military and its jails have, for the moment, been parked on the sidelines. But, in hearing this case, if the US Supreme Court upholds the lower Federal Court, then it is most certainly all over. The United States would become a tyranny under permanent Martial Law. The Commander in Chief rules. The other and very last line of self-defence is if the American public itself wakes up to this and what it means to their future. But the likelihood of that happening is at present very small - the true defenders of the American Constitution being very few. This is a bigger potential crisis than ANY US financial collapse. The future of freedom is at stake. |
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FREEDOM!
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/20 08/07/we-dont-know-how-close-to-victory-w e.html History shows that people usually don't know when we are about to win. We are lousy at knowing whether we have a chance at victory. When people struggling for liberty and justice face seemingly overwhelming power and impossible odds, they can suddenly breakthrough and win when things seem most hopeless and they least expect victory. |
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Spain and Italy 2008 - Part II: Granada
Here is the second part of the summary of our trip to Spain and Italy. aquafemme is also keeping a separate log of our events and mine will probably plagiarize greatly from her summary, but add pretty pictures. I'll always put these behind a cut because there are lots of pics. I'm not putting all of them here, though. At Flickr I have a set for Granada and a collection for the entire trip that will be growing as we continue going through our pictures. ( Day Six: 08-May-2008 ) ( Day Seven: 09-May-2008 ) |
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Maybe this will help.
One or two minute news reports on the nightly national news about the recent collapsing of the nation’s fifth largest investment bank, Bear Stearns, will not give you any insight into the inner workings of how we, the taxpayers, were just swindled out of a minimum $29 billion dollars. However, to understand the rip-off in the simplest of terms is to have experienced watching a street hustler conning an unsuspecting rube with the shell game. After Michael Moore’s brilliant expose of the Carlyle Group in "Fahrenheit 9-11," hundreds of millions of people around the world now have a very clear picture of how the Bush family has been in league with Saudi oil tycoons including the Bin Laden family in a private-equity giant known as the Carlyle Group. As well, the Bush-Cheney oil magnate regime is closely aligned with the Council on Foreign Relations, which was founded by the Rockefellers. It is no mystery how crude oil has gone from $22 a barrel to over $107 a barrel during their tenure helming the nation. Up until March 14, 2008 and that week of the Bear Stearns collapse, there existed Carlyle Capital Corporation Limited (ticker symbol CARYF) which is an affiliate of the Bush family’s Carlyle Group. According to articles in the Washington Post and Dow Jones Market Watch on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, Carlyle Capital, which earlier had assets of $21.7 billion, expected certain unnamed lenders to “substantially seize” all of its remaining assets. Carlyle Capital began receiving accelerated margin calls, demanding cash to cover mortgage-backed securities losses, by these same unnamed lenders. The Washington Post report, according to Market Watch, suggested “that the private equity firm's three co-founders, William Conway, David Rubenstein and Daniel D'Aniello, are considering a plan to pump new money into the fund.” But eight days later, on March 19th, Market Watch reported that “Carlyle Capital, the bond fund affiliated with private equity firm The Carlyle Group, said Wednesday that its liquidators have found the fund's ‘substantial liabilities’ are likely to exceed its assets and it's therefore considered insolvent.” Carlyle Capital: Insolvent. Broke. Bankrupt. $21.7 billion written down and transferred to new ownership. But not so bad compared to the U.S. national debt created under the Bush Administration’s oversight of the United States, which according to the U.S. National Debt Clock as of April 5, 2008 now stands at $9.439 Trillion dollars, and growing at a rate of $1.69 Billion per day. It stands to reason that the Bush’s Carlyle Group would pay the price for the transgressions of its affiliate, Carlyle Capital. But reason, law and justice are not the rule of the day. It is the shell game that rules our country currently. So who was the scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb, the Oswald if you will in this diabolical world of high finance? Obviously, it was Bear Stears, the nations’s fifth largest investment bank. When you play with the devil, expect to get burned by the devil. And so it happened that JP Morgan Chase & Co was gifted Bear Stearns via the Federal Reserve, at the expense of you and me, the American taxpayers, a burden to be shard by our children. JPMorgan and The Federal Reserve: Joined at the Hip Bear Stearns is not without fault. It played the game of greed, and apparently was selected as the loser in a game of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities musical chairs. The shell game came to roost at Bear Stearns doorstep, just a wee bit late to enjoy the radical changes made in late March 2008 whereby the Federal Reserve (a privately-owned European-controlled Central Bank to the United States) is now lending billions to investment banks, just months ago considered taboo and antithetic to our banking system. And in some sane financial quarters this outrageous, radical, unprecedented banking practice is still considered dubious at best. Others consider it downright illegal and an abuse of power: the fox letting more foxes into the henhouse. Still other journalists and investigators may want to consider whether or not the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve, and its European equivalent, are lending to banks are really backed by enough precious metal assets. Or is fiat paper good enough now. Does the Federal Reserve really have this amount of money to lend, or is it simply pushing digital ones and zeroes, dollars backed by air from one computer screen to another? The ultimate shell game. How will we know? We can’t. No one is allowed to see the accounting for the Federal Reserve. And if the Federal Reserve has this capital, and the United States has $9.439 Trillion in debt, then who is really running the show here? Are the citizen-taxpayers of the United States in effect just indentured servants to the Federal Reserve, our nation’s primary lender? Which unnamed lenders seized Carlyle Capital’s assets, and triggered the domino effect on Bear Stearns, well known as a chief creditor of Carlyle Capital? This is an important fact in determining who made the call which culminated in the Bear Stearns collapse, used as justification by the Federal Reserve to essentially hand over Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase & Company, like a no-bid contract without bankruptcy hearings and due process. It is also a well-known fact that the Federal Reserve system was largely set up by J.P. Morgan after meetings held beginning November 22, 1910 (following the Panic of 1907) on the Jekyll Island estate of J.P. Morgan. A brief rundown of the attendees of this infamous gathering will lend some much needed historical perspective. In attendance: --European banker Paul Warburg representing the Hapsburgs of Europe and Kuhn, Loeb & Co --Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York; --A.P. Andrews, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department; --Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller Jr.; and three JP Morgan ranking leaders: --Henry P. Davison , senior partner of J. P. Morgan Company --Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan-dominated First National Bank of New York --Benjamin Strong, representing J. P. Morgan himself. What is vital to understand is that the Federal Reserve would not exist if it were not for the birthing process due almost entirely to J.P. Morgan’s bank and its cronies. These and other ties have bound both J.P. Morgan and the Central Bank together for almost a century. The implications to and burdens upon the citizen-taxpayers of the United States because of these historical bedfellows can not be understated. Additional insight into the creation of the Federal Reserve may be gleaned from G. Edward Griffin’s “The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve.” The Visible Players: “The Price of Doing Business” So is it really a surprise to see that the Federal Reserve, abetted by George W. Bush and current Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, is forcing U.S. taxpayers to pony up another $30 billion-- like a no-bid Halliburton contract-- to J.P Morgan in order to “bailout” (read: hostile takeover) Bear Stearns from a “crisis” in large part due to the collapse and insolvency of the Bush’s Carlyle Group affiliate Carlyle Capital? No surprise at all to those who have followed the Bush Administration as it has de-regulated numerous business sectors to the point of an almost complete absence of consumer-citizen-taxpayer protection across the board. Is a President who protects public welfare passe? Are the nation's highest leaders, namely Bush and Cheney, allowed to freely abuse the public trust in the name of national security? Does it even matter to anyone that Bush seized power by virtue of five Supreme Court judges who overuled the Florida Supreme Court on a Saturday when Gore just overtaking Bush in the Florida recount? "Do you remember walkin' in the (quick)sand...." In 2008, does “conflict of interest” by the nation’s highest officials have any negative consequences to those perpetrators, or is impeachment or imprisonment just a tired yesteryear concept, a minor, modern risk now considered by political leaders and CEOs as “just the price of doing business” in a Bush-Cheney New World Order America? Or, are Americans finally figuring it all out? Maybe the shell game is finishing, just as the invisible players and puppet masters try to scurry into new vehicles of despotism, changing their company names and public representatives, erasing past sins in Orwellian tradition. (See Halliburton and its spawn KBR for more insight into this practice.) Even now National City Bank is being marketed for takeover. The names must be changed to protect the guilty. If the public reviles Republicans now, the puppet masters will try to bribe and blackmail Democrat leaders into submission. But maybe, just maybe, the trigger of the Bear Stearns collapse will finally bring out enough public ire and rebuke in a way that revelations about September 11th being an inside job and Building Seven collapsing from controlled demolition have not. Maybe allowing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians to be slaughtered in the name of freedom was not enough to awake Americans; maybe allowing thousands of U.S. servicemen and women to die was not enough; and maybe the disgrace of America in the eyes of the world was not enough. Maybe only when Americans start taking it on the wallet will their anger turn into action, and force the Congress to charge both the President and Vice President with high war crimes, fraud, and theft of government funds. Polls, which have been notoriously doctored to downplay years of public suspicions and mistrust of the Bush Administration and its bitch-- the Congress--can no longer hide the fact that the Bush Administration is even more reviled than Nixon at the height of Watergate. The New York Times and CBS both reported on April 4, 2008 that its most recent poll showed that “More than 80 per cent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction.” A glimmer of hope. So what do Bush and Cheney plan to do? Distract everyone by instigating a nuclear crisis with Iran: the shell game squared- the genocidal version. That’ll keep Americans occupied enough to forget about these banking scandals. |
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new vote on impeachment?
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/bushaction
YOUR elected representative has the power to help restore our democracy and stop the outrageous abuses of executive power occuring right now. Congressman Dennis Kucinich has proposed a resolution with 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush, meticulously documenting abuses of power that include lying us into war, torture, warrantless spying, and much more. To read the articles, go to: http://afterdowningstreet.org/bush The Democratic "leadership" says "impeachment is off the table". Working with citizens across the country, Kucinich has put it on the table. Now it's our job to make sure that our representatives cosponsor H Res 1258. Please call your representative at 202-224-3121. Call EVERY DAY. And please send them an Email: http://www.democrats.com/35-articles-of-impeachment Then, don't stop. Print flyers. Go after the local media and go after your representative with meetings, honk to impeach sessions, sit ins, and every other form of nonviolent pressure. It usually doesn't take much to turn one of these cowards around. |
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dare you?
its long but dont miss it.
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Missing!
One E.R.A. (personally secretary to the deceased Sir Roger) - needed for Saturday evening 5:55pm. Dinner will be served. :D |
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