Saturday - July 25, 2009

Gosh, Really?

According to the Somerville Times in 2007, as a Harvard Law School student, Obama got 17 parking tickets during 1989-1991 from the Cambridge Police Department that he left unpaid until just weeks before he announced his bid for the presidency.

“In other words, as a practicing lawyer in Chicago, he allowed these tickets and penalties to remain unpaid; as an Illinois state senator he allowed these tickets and fines to remain unpaid; and as a United States senator he allowed these almost-two-decade-old signs of his disdain for the law to remain unpaid,” commented John LeBoutillier on Newsmax.com.

The Washington Post said two years ago that the tickets included parking without a proper permit and parking in a bus stop.

The Associated Press reported in 2007 that Obama’s “healthy stack” of parking tickets was finally paid, including late fees, “two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign.”

Said Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for Obama’s campaign during his race to the White House, “He didn’t owe that much and what he did owe, he paid. … Many people have parking tickets and late fees.”

On a somewhat related note, it turns out that his homey Henry Gates is a commie radical. Well, no shiz, mo’fo!

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor at the center of the current national race controversy, has recruited radical black activists to his university department, is a prominent supporter of reparations for the descendents of slaves and has immortalized a communist and socialist activist.

Since 1991, Gates has been teaching African American studies at Harvard, where he serves as the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. De Bois, an American civil rights activist, sociologist, historian and author, was an avowed communist and also a socialist sympathizer.
...
Gates himself is a strong supporter of affirmative action and a key member of the reparations movement for the descendants of African slaves. He joined an effort to bring a class action lawsuit for reparations and reportedly has been working privately to urge political and business leaders to keep the issue of slavery at the forefront of social-justice discussions and to support his campaign for reparations.

One of Gates’ major sources of intellectual inspiration is Herbert Aptheker, a seminal scholar of African-American history who was a radical American leftist. Aptheker was for decades a leading theorist of the Communist Party U.S.A. before resigning in 1991.

Hey, Barry O, is there any more room under that bus?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/25/2009 at 04:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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   Wednesday - July 22, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.  HAPPY 1 9 8 4 … Should oooeld comraaads beeee forgot ……

You will recall that yesterday I posted something that I found very upsetting. Yeah I know. I find lots of things upsetting.
Anyway ... I posted this.

Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games

I thought that was pretty damn bad and I still do. 

One day last week, or heck it could have been only a couple of daze ago (not trying to be cute. DAZE, as in daze is correct at the moment)
an article appeared in the paper saying that some city councils were placing chips in people’s trash bins, called wheelie bins here, (must be due to the wheels) to not only see if they were mixing recycle with unwanted stuff. Oh No.  They were also attempting to learn what sort of things were being thrown away to determine the possible wealth of the thrower.  I’ll bet they haven’t advanced that far in the USA. Yet. 

Well, when I opened the morning paper today I was greeted with this.  The paper date said 2009 but I think that was a typo. Should have read 1984.
Here ya go.  And I’m certain it will not surprise any of you.  This is what our brave new world has come to.

Councils use bugs to spy on public illegally
Councils and other official bodies are using hidden tracking devices to snoop on the public, a report by Sir Christopher Rose has disclosed.

By Christopher Hope Whitehall Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 22 Jul 2009

THE TELEGRAPH

Officials have continued to use the gadgets, which allow them to follow covertly people, despite a warning that the practice is prohibited.

The scale of the secret operations was set out in a report published on Monday by Sir Christopher, the chief surveillance commissioner. He found that the number of official surveillance operations increased last year, despite a government pledge to reduce them for trivial offenses.

Sir Christopher also criticised the Home Office for trying to make it easier for the police to use legally covert surveillance.

“It should not be acceptable that the use of covert powers is made ‘easy’ for any public authority,” he said. It was important that “covert surveillance is necessary, proportionate and carried out in a way which is compliant with human rights”.

Sir Christopher’s report said that the tracking devices could only be used “for the prevention and detection of ‘serious crime”.

Documents released earlier this year showed how, in 2007, the Environment Agency attached one of the trackers to a vehicle in order to monitor suspected dumping of illegal waste. Sir Christopher’s office reprimanded the agency. The mistake was blamed on erroneous advice from the Home Office stating that “affixing a magnetic device to a vehicle on the public highway” was “not a criminal offense”.

I’m not posting the entire article.  You can read it if interested at the telegraph dot com. I’m simply using that story to lead into this one which is even more scary because it appears so much more a matter of the natural order of things, whereas here at least some will and are complaining.

Kremlin gives itself powers to spy on all Russian mail.
The Russian government has given itself sweeping powers to spy on its own citizens after a new decree gave intelligence services unlimited access to read all mail without a warrant.

By Miriam Elder in Moscow

+
The decree, reminiscent of Soviet-era domestic spying tactics, allows security services – including the FSB, Foreign Intelligence Service and police, as well as customs, drug and prison agencies – to obtain information on senders and addressees from the postal service.

It also foresees FSB agents - the successors to the Soviet-era KGB - setting up monitoring sites at all the country’s post offices.

Kremlin critics denounced the measure as a return to Stalinist tactics of surveillance.

“We are returning to a totalitarian regime,” said Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights activist. “It reminds one of Soviet times. And the worst thing is, the people don’t care.”

The communications ministry, which issued the decree, denied it violated the constitutional right to privacy.

“This document carries a technical character,” a ministry spokesman said, denying that security services would see their powers broadened with the decree. “It does not infringe the rights of postal recipients or human rights.”

The spokesman said officials would still need a court warrant to open mail, but there is no mention of that in the decree, published on the ministry’s website.

The decree, which came into force on Tuesday, is ostensibly designed to tackle crime.

It will have a wide reach. Russia is an overwhelmingly poor country outside Moscow and St Petersburg and people rely heavily on postal communications. Email use remains limited.

Freedoms have been severely curtailed under the rule of the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former spy who briefly headed the FSB. Foreign intelligence activity, as well as surveillance of Russians, have grown under his watch.

Dissent is not suffered and the government has steadily increased its surveillance of the internet as its use grows in the country.

In the latest case, FSB officers on Tuesday opened a criminal case against Igor Averkiyev, a writer based in the Urals city of Perm, for an online article critical of the Kremlin’s strategy in the republic of Chechnya.

Mr Averkiyev was accused of inciting extremism. He was already investigated early last year for an article comparing Mr Putin to Hitler.

SOURCE FOR THOSE NAUGHTY RUSSKIES

Posted by peiper     on 07/22/2009 at 05:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Scary Stuff • Tyrants and Dictators •  
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   Friday - July 17, 2009

Read The Bill

Investor’s Business Daily: It’s Not An Option

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

IBD found this commie stinker in just 16 pages. What do you think might be hidden in the other 1000 pages?

Source Link to IBD

Oops, it’s too late!

(AP) – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A second House committee has approved health care legislation that President Barack Obama is seeking.

The vote in the House Education and Labor Committee was 26-22. A few hours earlier, the Ways and Means Committee passed its portion of the bill.

Democrats are hoping to push the entire measure through the full House for a vote by the end of the month, but to do that, they still need approval in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Republicans are methodically seeking to strip out many of the central provisions of the bill, but have been outvoted consistently.

READ IT AN WEEP. Go to page the bottom of page 15:

(a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED.—Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term ‘‘grandfathered health[Discussion Draft] insurance coverage’’ means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 (as defined in section 100(c)) if the following conditions are met:
(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.
(B) DEPENDENT COVERAGE PERMITTED.
Subparagraph (A) shall not affect the subsequent enrollment of a dependent of an individual who is covered as of such first day.

So, whoopty do, you can enroll your kids if they aren’t already in your plan. But you the citizen CAN NOT CHOOSE to join a different plan after this bill becomes law. Yeah baby, land of the free!!

Posted by Drew458     on 07/17/2009 at 12:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Obama, The One •  
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   Sunday - June 28, 2009

Ring Around a Rosie, A Pocket full of Posies, Ashes,Ashes, ALL FALL DOWN!

And fall down it did.

Chinese didn’t get this one right.
Never seen a building collapse quite this way.  There are five other photos ...HERE . 

Posted by peiper     on 06/28/2009 at 12:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Architecture • Commies •  
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“We didn’t know what we voted for…”

Yes, that’ll be the mantra if and when this cap and tax bill becomes law. Ditto for national kill-Republicans-and-conservatives ‘healthcare’.

We didn’t know? Why not? Because we didn’t read the bill!

I ran into this about fifteen years ago, around the time that now-Congressman Mike Turner was making his first run for Dayton Mayor. The Dayton City Commission at that time had passed, without reading, a gun-control bill that banned several common firearms from the city limits. As a then-sitting Democrat City Commissioner explained at my neighborhood association meeting, ‘We just rely on our staff to tell us what’s in the bills…’

No excuse. The buck stops with the elected official.

The issue was that the bill outlawed the very firearms the Dayton Police used. There was a huge stink, which I think may have contributed to Mike Turner’s mayoral victory. Sadly, the Dayton City Commission has always had at least a 3-2 majority, so all Mr. Turner could do was mitigate some of the more egregious legislation.

Now, the Dayton City Commission is 5-0 Democrat. We are pretty much in the same shape as Flint, MI. I expect bulldozers in 5… 4… 3…

So now Congress, also a bastion of ‘Democrats-that-can’t-read-without-staff’, passes the cap and tax bill. (I thought Democrats were for the little people?) John Boehner had this to say. After this, the ‘we didn’t know’ excuse should fail the donks:

That’s right, they don’t even read what they’re voting on.

Target for 2010: everybody that voted for this. Democrats, certainly. Especially the Stupid Party GOP members who should know better or just do an Arlen Spectre:

Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
Mike Castle (R-DE)
Mark Steven Kirk (R-IL)
Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)
John McHugh (R-NY)
Dave Reichert (R-WA)
Chris Smith (R-NJ)

Oust them! Especially Mary Bono. (I really always liked Sonny, shame wifey doesn’t measure up.)

Posted by Christopher     on 06/28/2009 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • Government • Corruption and Greed • Obama, The One • Oppression • Outrageous •  
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   Thursday - June 18, 2009

Rush Limbaugh: Obama is Destroying the Economy

Rush has made his opening monologue from June 8th available on YouTube. It’s broken into ten parts. Here’s part one, as viewed through the DittoCam:

“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” - Charles A. Beard

Posted by Christopher     on 06/18/2009 at 07:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • Editorials • Government • Obama, The One • Scary Stuff •  
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   Sunday - June 07, 2009

Russia wheels out the evil weapon of history, distorting facts.  So what’s new?

A week ago I read a book review for something called,
REMEMBER US, by Ruth Derksen Siemens, and published by Pandora Press.  It is not an inexpensive book and I confess I’m going to have to wait awhile for the paperback and a good price at AMZN.  But it’s on my must have list. 

What Heffer writes about here doesn’t cover my book per se but does remind me of the horror that must come with living under that regime.

It’s a sad story (and true) of a family broken up and one side never seeing the other side again.  How any of them managed to survive the gulag is as much a mystery to me as how anyone was able to survive the Nazi death camps.  I guess survival of the fittest maybe.

In 1929 two families fled for their lives. One catches the very last train to freedom in the west, but the other narrowly misses it, and ends up spending decades in prison camps.  Well, these many years later as so often happens, a large cache of correspondence was uncovered and is the basis for the book. And it is chilling.  I’ve never understood how or why the swastika, as a symbol of what it assuredly is, has been banned all over Europe and yet you can buy hammer and sickle jewelery and Soviet mementos and flags and display them. ?? 

Maybe the gulags weren’t death camps in the very same way that camps were under the Nazis.  But they were death camps non the less and nobody cared.
In fact, from what I’ve read about them, the dead might have been the lucky ones.
So this piece from Simon Heffer is timely. Very. 

Distorting the facts about the Second World War may well be a prelude to a battle over a land corridor through Poland, writes Simon Heffer.

By Simon Heffer
Published: 4:24PM BST 06 Jun 2009

There are few things more dangerous or terrifying than when a nation, or the state apparatus that controls it, falls into the grip of a collective delusion. Such was the case in Nazi Germany, when a straightforward decision was taken to scapegoat Jews, Communists and, in the end, anyone else who didn’t agree with the prevailing madness, and persecute them to the point of mass murder. Stalin, in his own pursuit of totalitarianism, behaved similarly.

Some of us hoped that, in Europe at any rate, such absurdities were over; but a dispatch from The Daily Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent last week showed that the madness is back, in Russia at least, and with it the determination to abuse and manipulate history.

A research official in the Russian defence ministry has published an essay saying that Poland effectively started the Second World War by refusing to accede to Germany’s “modest” demands. We may take it that this man’s view reflects that of the Russian state; it is certainly widely interpreted as such.

Russia has been struggling with its idea of itself since the international humiliation of losing its empire nearly 20 years ago. For a time its sudden wealth – thanks to a high oil price and the value of other of its minerals – restored its amour propre. Although its rulers locked up people who sought to push democracy to its natural conclusions, such as the former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, poisoned troublemakers and threw the odd journalist out of windows, the money enabled it to offer the pretence of being a dynamic and powerful economy. Rolexed men in expensive suits climbed in and out of BMWs all over Moscow, and an idea was perpetuated that Russia could feel good about itself.

Then the oil price collapsed, soon after the militarily successful but diplomatically disastrous war with Georgia last year. Once more Russia was poor – with many of its greatest businessmen broke – and an international pariah. So now history, that much-abused weapon, is brought out of the armoury.

To the rest of the world, the Stalin era is one of shame for Russia. The country is seeking to change this. The cynical pact with the Nazis, concluded between Molotov and Ribbentrop a little more than a week before the outbreak of war, is now defended as an essential prelude to the defence against the “inevitable” attack by Hitler. It enabled Russia to occupy half of Poland and the Baltic States.

As the genocide or occupation museums in Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn all show (and I have visited them all), the miseries inflicted by the Communist occupier on Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were vicious, bloody, murderous and had nothing to do with protection against Hitler.
They were about the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe, a process interrupted by the Nazi invasion of 1941 but pursued with ruthless savagery after 1944-45. Oh, and by the way, Stalin was so reconciled to the “inevitable” Nazi invasion for which this occupation was a “preparation” that he ignored all warnings that it was coming.

The Russian view now is that if only Poland had let Germany have a land corridor to Danzig – then a “free city” but effectively German, with a strong Nazi organisation and surrounded on three sides by Poland in its new, post-Versailles boundaries – there wouldn’t have been a Second World War. That is such idiotic nonsense that only a regime founded on lies, as Putin’s and Medvedev’s is, could seriously attempt to peddle it. Whatever Poland had done, Hitler would have annexed it. It had been his plan since Mein Kampf. It was where Germany’s Lebensraum was to be. The Czechoslovaks had made concessions to him (forced by us, not least), and they were not deemed enough: occupation followed.

There is no point trying to reason with the Russians about how they ought to know this. They don’t want to know it. Reason doesn’t come into it.

Further proof of the madness comes in the suggestion by the Russian government that it is planning to pass a law to make it an offence for Russians (and, more sinisterly, for foreigners – though how that would work remains to be seen) to describe what happened in Poland and the Baltic States between 1939 and 1941 as an “occupation”. If you still cannot grasp how evil this proposal is, imagine if the German government were to do the same – saying that it would criminalise the statement that Nazis had occupied Poland (or France, or the Low Countries, or anywhere else) during the last war. Germany would become a pariah state overnight.

So why are we not exercised by Russia’s wicked distortion of the past? And what else is to come? Are we to expect a further revision of the view about the Katyn massacre of 1940, when, on Stalin’s specific order, 6,000 Polish soldiers were murdered by Soviet executioners? It is only in the last few years that the Russians have owned up to doing this, having hitherto blamed the Germans. Perhaps now they will blame the Poles for this too, possibly even speculating that it was a collective suicide.

In history there is a distinction between revisionism and distortion. The former makes a sensible reinterpretation of known facts, often with the support of additional and uncontestable evidence, such as newly unearthed contemporary documents. Distortion requires no new evidence, but can require the disregarding of facts we already know. It is clear what the Russians are doing: and I fear it is not merely to make themselves look good, or to rehabilitate Stalin and his ideas, or to use history to seek to humiliate a troublesome and fiercely independent neighbour.

When the Baltic States threw out the Russian occupier in 1991, a part of the former East Prussia annexed by Stalin – Kaliningrad, the former city of Königsberg – remained Russian. However, like that other Baltic city, Danzig, it now finds itself landlocked away from its motherland. Poland is to its south and west, Lithuania to its east. Are the Russians trying to tell us something? Is Russia about to make a demand for a land corridor through Poland to Kaliningrad, for the same reasons that Hitler sought one to Danzig 70 years ago? If so, is Russia intending to argue that the denial by Poland of land access to Königsberg could provoke a big international fight, and possibly terrible destruction, and that it would be Poland’s fault for not giving into a “modest” demand?

I simply don’t know. But when people start twisting history and wielding it as a blunt instrument without any provocation, we are wise to start asking ourselves why.

SIMON SAYS

Posted by peiper     on 06/07/2009 at 09:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Jack Booted Thugs •  
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   Thursday - June 04, 2009

Chavez says US sought to assassinate him. this belongs in the , “oh if only” catagory.

If memory serves, didn’t he make this claim a few years ago also?

2009-06-04 Caribbean-Latin America
Chavez says US sought to assassinate him
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has charged that he eluded a US intelligence plot to kill him, in a move likely to pile new pressure on already uneasy ties with the United States.

Chavez, appearing on state media Tuesday for the first time since walking out in the middle of his own television marathon days earlier, claimed he ducked an assassination plot in El Salvador where he was to have attended the swearing in of its new president. “The information was very specific. It was all ready to take place, they were going to carry out an attack against me on arrival in San Salvador,” Chavez charged.

He insisted the alleged plan aimed to launch “one or several missiles at the Cubana jet that was readied for the trip” in Caracas. Chavez, the closest regional ally of communist Cuba, said he received information on the plot from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

He did not immediately elaborate. But he claimed “Venezuelan coup plotters went to San Salvador two weeks ago. I know them. They are the ones who have sworn they would kill me.”

CIA: Chavez did not accuse US President Barack Obama personally, saying US intelligence activities operate outside the president’s authority. “I am not accusing Obama. I think the American president has good intentions,” Chavez said. “But over and above Obama, there is the CIA, and all of its tentacles.

I have no doubt US intelligence services are behind this.” Referring to a Venezuelan fugitive, Chavez claimed “Luis Posada Carriles’ people” also were behind the alleged plot and urged Obama to extradite him. 

rantburg.com

Posted by peiper     on 06/04/2009 at 11:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Jack Booted Thugs • Stoopid-People • Tyrants and Dictators •  
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   Monday - June 01, 2009

GM: the takeover begins

What was that bit about “controlling the means of production”?

General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday as part of a plan under which the government will pump another $30 billion into the company with the aim of re-creating the troubled automaker.

GM’s bankruptcy filing is the fourth-largest in U.S. history and the largest for an industrial company. The company said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets.

Under the plan, GM would eventually have 50 percent fewer liabilities and far fewer product lines. The $30 billion government infusion is on top of about $20 billion in taxpayer money GM already has received in the form of low-interest loans.

Senior administration officials, who declined to speak for attribution, said the U.S. government will be a “passive” investor but will oversee operations at the new GM because “the taxpayer will want us to.”

Not one of President Obama’s senior economic advisers could or would venture a guess as to when taxpayers would see a return on their massive and White House-engineered investment.

“We’re not here to predict,” a senior official said when asked about any timeline for taxpayer payback.

The White House was more certain about GM’s future access to the taxpayer till—it’s over.

“One never says never, but this is it in terms of support for GM,” a senior official said.

GM will follow a similar course taken by Chrysler LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 protection in April and hopes to emerge from its government-sponsored bankruptcy this week.

The plan is for the federal government to take a 60 percent ownership stake in the new GM. The Canadian government would take a 12.5 percent stake, with the United Auto Workers getting a 17.5 percent stake and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

One of the 5 greatest companies the world has ever seen, run into the ground by poor management, greed, excessive government regulation and unionism. And the tens of millions of investors ... get nothing. With the government(s) now owning absolute controlling interest in the corporation.

“We’re not here to predict” how long it will take for the gov to turn the company around and start paying back some of that nearly infinite amount of taxpayer investment. Yeah? Well I will. It’s called the Twelfth of Never. As in : No Business Run By The Government Will EVER SHOW A PROFIT, EVER.

I fully expect Ocommie to come up with a new law REQUIRING all citizens to purchase their next vehicle from either branch of Government Motors. Which will put Ford out of business pretty soon.

Now, let’s add to the bullshit. Let’s add another dozen sheep to the amount of wool being pulled over the citizen’s eyes. You want to know how CNN is covering this story? Like this:

How’s that for effective misdirection? Oh sure, in t h e o r y it’s correct, because of that whole “government of the people, by the people” thing. But the reality is that you, me, and everyone else will not have as much as a whisper’s worth of input.

This is an outrageous act of Socialism. Communism. Fascism. The label doesn’t really matter. It’s the government taking over business and dictating terms. It’s a total loss of freedom, a death knell rung on the golden bell of Capitalism, a usurpation of everything that America is supposed to stand for. Better for GM and Chrysler to go out of business.

And what does the Communist Newspeak Network see it? They are GLEEFUL. It’s Pop The Champagne Time over there. Here’s the link.

Note how the article has not one but TWO sidebar links to “GM’s junk heap” which list a dozen or so less than classic vehicles the company has made over the years. Like the “unsafe at any speed” Corvair, which had balance issues when the owners removed the front fender weights, and the Vega, which sold by the millions when America wanted a cheap little car that got good mpg [and let’s ignore the underlying theory of assembly line sabotage because this was one of the first American cars built with lots of robotized automation], and the Aztek, which was an odd looking but actually highly practical crossover vehicle. All of these vehicles were attempts to open up new market areas for GM. They were all about risk taking, which is what Capitalism is all about. Sure, in the long run they may not have all been the best ideas. That’s what “risk” means: sometimes you don’t get it right.

Notice that there are also two links to the other sidebar on “GM’s declining market share”. Yes, GM has lost market share for ages now. How much of that was due to the media I wonder?

PS - the price of gas is soaring, as if you didn’t already know that. Almost 20 cents in 2 weeks. Expect it to get worse, far worse. $3.50/gal by August. This cycle will continue until the new Obamamobile hits the market, with it’s 3 cylinder 40hp engine and a top speed of 48mph, which will get you around just fine on the 5 gallons of gas per week you are rationed for.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/01/2009 at 09:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Big Business • Commies • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Saturday - May 30, 2009

Oh This Really Hurts

Even Russia seems to think the USA is now a failed Marxist State under Obammunism.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Go and read the rest. Man, it really hurts when even PRAVDA gets it right.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/30/2009 at 02:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies •  
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   Tuesday - May 19, 2009

Leopards do not change their spots.  And once Red, well those spots don’t change much either.

OK this might not have much to do with Reds as in Communist. Exactly.
But the old attitudes and way of thinking seem to have changed little.  This is really bizarre.

If I read this correctly, the Russian state is saying that it will be against their new law to question the role of the USSR in parts of Europe after WW2.
Russia didn’t invade or occupy eastern Europe.  They object to the use of the word ‘occupy’ and will punish those who think in those terms.
Well, isn’t my business and I doubt it would have any impact on my personal life.  But the USSR DID in fact occupy Eastern Europe and the record is very clear.

The new law could also be used to bar Western historians who accuse the Red Army of carrying out atrocities during its advance on Berlin or point out that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were once allies under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

But here. Read this for yourself. If nothing else it’s good for a chuckle.  I guess this makes me persona non grada too.

Russia threatens to bar Europeans who deny Red Army ‘liberated’ them.

Eastern Europeans who believe their countries were occupied by the Soviet Union after the Second World War could soon be barred from Russia under new proposals given official weight by the Kremlin.

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Published: 4:29PM BST 19 May 2009

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, created a commission of 28 legislators and senior intelligence officers which will identify foreign “revisionists” who “disparage the international prestige of the Russian Federation”.

The move, condemned as “Orwellian” by its critics, comes shortly before the Russian parliament is expected to pass controversial legislation outlawing the “rehabilitation of Nazism”.

The bill has attracted criticism because of its definition of Nazi rehabilitation, with those who “belittle” the Soviet Union’s role in the war or criticise it in any way being regarded as equally culpable as those who glorify Hitler.

Those found to contravene the new law, which Russia insists is little different from Germany’s Holocaust-denial legislation, face up to five years in prison.

Foreign countries whose officials who the commission rules to be guilty of the new crimes will face sanction as well. The bill gives Russia the authority to expel ambassadors or sever diplomatic relations with offending nations and to impose full transport and communications blockades on them.

The legislation is thought to be primarily aimed at states like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which maintain they were occupied rather than liberated by the Soviet Union. Sergei Shoigu, a senior cabinet minister who initiated the legislation, has already said it could be used to ban senior Estonian officials.

A Russian MP yesterday said that the Baltic states deserved “to suffer punishment” for holding such views.

The new law could also be used to bar Western historians who accuse the Red Army of carrying out atrocities during its advance on Berlin or point out that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were once allies under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

Seen as a way of teaching recalcitrant former Soviet states respect, the legislation has won almost universal backing in the Russian parliament.

But opposition politicians, who have no representation in parliament, have attacked the bill, saying it effectively reintroduces state ideology for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“The creation of this commission allows the state to impose its own idea of political will and ideology,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former Duma deputy who was forced out of parliament in 2007 by a law banning independent MPs.

“The former KGB will once again decide what is anti-Soviet and what is not.”

Mr Ryzhkov said that the new legislation was also part of a continuing rehabilitation of Stalin as it will effectively outlaw criticism of many of the former Soviet dictator’s policies.

An officially sanctioned history text book, introduced into schools two years ago, presented Stalin as a great leader while glossing over his repression of millions of Soviet citizens.

TELEGRAPH

Posted by peiper     on 05/19/2009 at 11:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • News-Briefs •  
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   Thursday - April 23, 2009

Obama intelligence official says interrogation provided ‘high value information’.

So then, just what is the savior of the world up to with his looney tune release of top CIA documents?

I don’t think I need to post the entire article.  In fact, you can read it in papers at home no doubt.
What I want to post instead is this other bit that appeared this morning.
Naturally there’s one part that sticks out ....

President Barack Obama’s top intelligence official sent a memo to his staff saying “high value information” was obtained during interrogations using controversial techniques.

TOBY HARNDEN in WASHINGTON

Last Updated: 12:51AM BST 23 Apr 2009

Adml Blair’s original note to his staff last Thursday said “high value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organisation that was attacking this country”.

The memo is an embarrassment for Mr Obama because the conclusion reached by Adml Blair, who oversees the CIA and 15 other US intelligence agencies or departments, undermines a central plank of the White House argument – that the harsh techniques did not work.

Personally, I thought the article was of interest, especially as O’s own man claims info gotten from terror scum was valid.

Now for another bit of news from Mr. Harnden, in Washington.

Q&A: Barack Obama and the CIA ‘torture’ memos
What was the purpose of the memos?

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 6:19PM BST 22 Apr 2009

The four memos, written by Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury in 2002 and 2005, describe the harsh interrogation techniques that they judged to be legal and available for use by the CIA against al-Qaeda suspects.

What were the methods?

They included depriving prisoners of sleep for up to 11 straight days, keeping them in a dark, cramped box, placing them in “stress positions” and putting insects into the box to exploit their fears. The most controversial method is “water-boarding” - a type of simulated drowning, used since the Spanish Inquistions and prosecuted by the US as a Japanese war crime after the Second World War.

Were these methods torture?

Most now judge that they were, particularly when used in combination for extended periods. Some former Bush administration officials maintain, however, that the arguments in the memos were essentially correct because the prisoners suffered no long-term damage. The methods have not been authorised since 2005.

Were they effective?

Opinion is sharply divided. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden maintains they were, as does Vice President Dick Cheney. Even Mr Obama’s own intelligence chief, Admiral Dennis Blair, says that “high value information” was given up. Critics, however, say that prisoners will say anything when tortured and information is therefore unreliable as well as morally tainted.

Why did Mr Obama release the memos?

He was responding to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, though he could have resisted. The White House said that most of the details had been leaked anyway and that making the memos public was a way of getting all the information out and “moving on”.

Could this backfire on Mr Obama?

Yes. The issue shows no signs of going away and congressional investigations could turn into a political circus. CIA operatives say that the saga has torpedoed morale and will lead to spies avoiding taking risks for fear of prosecution - thereby making America more vulnerable to another terrorist attack.

AMERICA VULNERABLE

Posted by peiper     on 04/23/2009 at 09:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Obama, The One •  
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   Wednesday - April 22, 2009

OH THEY’LL LOVE HIM IN EUROPE.  Barack Obama: Bush officials could be prosecuted.

That’s the headline people.  But then I guess you already know.

Question ... if things work out here and we can sell this place in say a year.  Will I have a country to come home to?
Will I want to?

This is really getting scary and I don’t mind tellin’ ya I’m worried more now then I was after the election.  I knew things weren’t gonna go our way.
We all expected that.  But man oh man this is really the start of some very bad news.  Sure hope I have it bass ackwards and am shown to be wrong.
But how can I be unless that line about bowing to the left is wrong.  And come on, how many of us believe that the line is not correct?
Oh damn.  “bowing to the left.”

Enjoy the read.  Comrades.

Barack Obama: Bush officials could be prosecuted over ‘torture’ documents
US President Barack Obama has bowed to pressure from the Left by opening the door to Bush administration officials being prosecuted for approving alleged torture by CIA interrogators.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 12:20PM BST 22 Apr 2009

IN A DRAMATIC SHIFT by a White House that on Monday had brushed aside questions about the issue by insisting the American president was “focused on looking forward”, Mr Obama indicated that officials could be called to account for the US losing its “moral bearings”.

Last week, Mr Obama made public four memos written by officials in President George W. Bush’s administration that contained explicit details of the CIA’s methods of extracting information from al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2005.

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, told ABC News that “those who devised policy ... should not be prosecuted”.

But Mr Obama on Tuesday drew a sharp distinction between CIA interrogators who believed they were acting legally and the officials who had approved the advice.

“For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it’s appropriate for them to be prosecuted,” he said.

“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.”

Mr Obama’s dramatic u-turn raises the prospect of the three men who wrote the memos - Jay Bybee, a former assistant attorney general who is now a federal judge, and his deputies John Yoo and Steven Bradbury - and others facing congressional investigations and even criminal charges.

The president has faced an uproar from former CIA chiefs and deep concern from current operatives but also a fierce reaction from Left-wing groups and Democrats on Capitol Hill determined to pursue the authors of the memos and other senior Bush officials.

Mr Obama visited the CIA on Monday in an attempt to placate the agency. But there was no sign of the anger on the Left subsiding as as it emerged that the highly controversial technique of “water-boarding”, a type of simulated drowning, had been used 266 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, two senior al-Qaeda prisoners.

Mr Obama’s abandonment of his previous position that the US should “move forward” and put the “dark and painful chapter in our history” behind it came after he was urged by Democrat senatorsSenator Dianne Feinstein of California, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged him not to rule out prosecutions.

On Monday night, Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, told Fox News it was “disturbing” that Mr Obama’s administration had released some documents “but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort”.

Posted by peiper     on 04/22/2009 at 09:09 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Insanity • Obama, The One • Outrageous •  
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   Monday - March 30, 2009

CHINA’S WORLDWIDE WEB OF CYBER-SPIES.

China in the news big time with regard to cyber thingy.  To be exact, worries over China’s hi-tech spy network.

Just for the heck of it I went to Google looking for info and “Sink Me” as the man said in that old movie, darn if I didn’t find reporting on this subject as far back as 2001.  And it goes further back then that but I just stayed in that one year of 2001. I don’t really know if I should be worried or not.  At my age I doubt I’ll see any results of bad news this day anyway. What? Me Worry?

So then, here was the headline on page 13 of today’s paper.

EXPOSED:  CHINA’S WORLDWIDE WEB OF CYBER-SPIES.

But I couldn’t find the exact story under that headline online.  Typical Telegraph. But I did find a BBC article that was close but NOT exactly the same as what I saw in the Telegraph.  Damn sorry bout that too because the Telegraph seemed to have a more complete story.  The journalist there (Telegraph) is Malcolm Moore if you want to hunt further.

Major cyber spy network uncovered

So anyway .... here’s the deal.
The Telegraph says that a “vast” cyber network code named GhostNet has penetrated 103 countries and infects at minimum a dozen new PCs every week.

They say that GhostNet has been designed to infiltrate sensitive ministries and embassies across the world. This part of a result of a ten month investigation carried out by a Canadian group.  Apparently some people are far more concerned then I am but they’re far younger then I am. 
Here’s what the BBC has to say.

Major cyber spy network uncovered

An electronic spy network, based mainly in China, has infiltrated computers from government offices around the world, Canadian researchers say.
They said the network had infiltrated 1,295 computers in 103 countries.
They included computers belonging to foreign ministries and embassies and those linked with the Dalai Lama - Tibet’s spiritual leader.
There is no conclusive evidence China’s government was behind it, researchers say. Beijing also denied involvement.

The report, Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network, comes after a 10-month investigation by the Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), which comprises researchers from Ottawa-based think tank SecDev Group and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies.
They were acting on a request from the Tibetan spiritual leader’s office to check whether the computers of his Tibetan exile network had been infiltrated.
Researchers found that ministries of foreign affairs of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan appear to had been targeted.
Hacked systems were also discovered in the embassies of countries including India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Thailand, Germany and Pakistan.

Analysts say the attacks are in effect industrial espionage, with hackers showing an interest in the activities of lawmakers and major companies.
Compromised
The researchers said hackers were apparently able to take control of computers belonging to several foreign ministries and embassies across the world using malicious software, or malware.
“We uncovered real-time evidence of malware that had penetrated Tibetan computer systems, extracting sensitive documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama,” investigator Greg Walton was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

They say they believe the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on governments in Asia.
By installing malware on compromised computers, hackers were able to take control of them to send and receive classified data.
In this case, the software also gave hackers the ability to use audio and video recording devices to monitor the rooms the computers were in. But investigators said they did not know whether or not this element had been used.

According to the New York Times, the spying operation is the largest to have been uncovered in terms of the number of countries affected.
In an abstract for a second report released on Sunday by two Cambridge University researchers - entitled The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware Surveillance of the Tibetan Movement - investigators said while such attacks were not new, these particularly stood out for their ability to collect “actionable intelligence for use by the police and security services of a repressive state, with potentially fatal consequences for those exposed”.
CORRECTION: The BBC News website mistakenly gave the impression in an earlier version of this story that the IWM produced the “Snooping Dragon” report. We wish to stress that this report is entirely separate from the “Tracking GhostNet” report.

BBC NEWS

Posted by peiper     on 03/30/2009 at 10:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies •  
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