This was on Pelosi’s book tour stop in Coral Gables, Florida on August 8th, 2008. Pelosi speaks about the New World Order and explains how it’s written on the One dollar bill.
WeAreChangeFL.org
FederalJack.com
Published July 2008
The Director of National Intelligence produced this report; it states, "the purpose of this Vision document is to chart a new path forward for a globally networked and integrated Intelligence Enterprise for the 21st century based on the principles of integration, collaboration, and innovation."
Essential Documents are vital primary sources underpinning the foreign policy debate.
Sy Hersh and Faiz Shakir. First reported here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/c...
Proposed False Flag event for an excuse to attack Iran.
Vaccines - Secret Shots given to soldiers & covered up by Military
Youtube
Radio Australia
July 29, 2008
The International Monetary Fund says there’s no end in sight to the credit crisis gripping world financial markets.
As Australia’s NAB and ANZ have already discovered, the IMF believes banks are in for more pain as mortgage defaults soar and economies slow. The IMF has a particularly gloomy assessment of the US economy, and it came on the same day as the Bush administration revealed America’s budget deficit will climb to a record high of more than half-a-TRILLION dollars.
GENEVA, July 30 (Reuters) - The collapse of world trade talks deals such a blow to international negotiations that the prospect of agreeing effective solutions to global warming or the spread of nuclear weapons seems more remote than ever.
"If we cannot even manage trade, how should we then find ourselves in a position to manage new challenges like climate change?" said European agriculture chief Mariann Fischer Boel after talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva fell apart on Tuesday. "It is a failure with wider consequences than we have ever seen before."
Countries aim to agree a successor by the end of next year to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a 1997 treaty which commits developed countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions and which expires in 2012.
Like trade pacts, climate agreements have to be reached by consensus -- something that has proven impossible among the 153 WTO members.
The Geneva failure augurs badly for United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen in late 2009, and for faltering global efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, highlighted by the dispute over Iran's atomic programme, analysts said.
"It will greatly undermine trust in multilateral goodwill," said Mark Halle of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. "Nobody thinks we can get a climate deal without overcoming the deep mistrust in the developing world."
The fact that the WTO's "Doha development round", touted as a way to help poorer countries get more from world trade, foundered on a dispute between the United States and and big emerging economies has hit hopes for a post-Kyoto deal.
"It will be extremely difficult (for developing countries) to rebuild their confidence in the multilateral system about the desire of the rich to do anything," Halle said.
BALANCE OF POWER
The rise of the big developing economies, Brazil, China and India, since the Doha round began in 2001, will also change the dynamic in climate talks, said Bruce Stokes, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
"Certainly India in particular will be a key player in Copenhagen," he said.
"China's last minute objections to a Doha deal underscore their leverage, that will of course be even greater," he added.
Under Kyoto, only developed countries have greenhouse gas limits, but at Copenhagen, developing nations with the fastest growing output of carbon dioxide blamed for global warming are under pressure to brake their own emissions.
India in particular is resisting any negotiated binding curb, and its firm line in Geneva -- where a dispute with the United States on protecting its farmers felled the trade talks -- suggests it may show little flexibility on climate change.
Persuading developing countries to accept emissions curbs is seen as vital to bringing Washington, which turned its back on Kyoto under President George W. Bush, back into a rules-based global climate pact.
Coincidentally, India is one of the emerging world's nuclear powers, which built an atomic arsenal in defiance of U.S.-led efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
For some policymakers, failure in Geneva was a symptom of a major change in the global order, which is likely to be just as evident in climate talks.
"The collapse of the WTO talks is another sign of the decline of Western power," said a European Union official involved in policy planning. "It's no longer enough for the United States and the Europeans to agree on the objective in order to achieve the desired outcome."
The reluctance of emerging countries to accept curbs on greenhouse gases is another sign of the changing world order, which the EU official put down in part to opposition to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and a perception that Washington remains bogged down and unable to prevail in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
He pointed to this month's veto by Russia and China of a U.N. resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe, and to persistent difficulty in persuading them to back tougher measures against Iran and Sudan, as signs of this power shift.
For the EU's trade negotiator, haggard and bitterly disappointed after nine days of ultimately fruitless talks, the failure in Geneva was a blow for those who hope the world can find consensus to solve global problems that affect everyone.
"We have missed a chance to seal the first global pact of a reshaped world order," said Peter Mandelson. "We would all have been winners from a Doha deal. Without one we all lose." (Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Brussels) (Editing by Paul Taylor and Catherine Evans)
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A senior CIA official this month confronted Pakistani officials over ties between the country's intelligence service and militants in the tribal areas, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Citing defense and intelligence sources, the Times said that the trip by agency deputy director Stephen Kappes demonstrated a harder line being taken against Pakistani ties to those responsible for the surge of violence in Afghanistan, including militant Maulavi Jalauddin Haqqani.
Earlier this year, the US military pressed for Pakistani troops to hit the Haqqani network in the tribal areas.
"It was a very pointed message saying, 'Look, we know there's a connection, not just with Haqqani but also with the other bad guys and ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it," a senior US officials told the Times, referring to Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency.
The daily said the meeting could be a sign that the relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan's ISI "may be deteriorating".
A US official said there was no evidence of official Pakistani support of Al-Qaeda, but there was "genuine and longstanding concerns about Pakistan's ties to the Haqqani network, which of course has ties to Al-Qaeda."
The report comes after premier Yousuf Raza Gilani met with US President George W. Bush in Washington and urged him not to act "unilaterally" against militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal zones.
Gilani insisted Monday that Pakistan was committed to fighting extremists.
Pakistan's fledgling government caused concern in Washington by launching talks with militants soon after beating allies of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf in elections in February.
Militants kidnapped 30 troops and police in northwestern Pakistan's Swat Valley on Tuesday, a day after killing three intelligence officials, threatening a shaky truce in the region.
The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at giving the mission a green light, The New York Times reported today.
The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.
Intelligence reports have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.
Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago, infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times reported.
The Bush team would like to leave office next January having put bin Laden, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks, behind bars or in his grave.
But sending U.S. forces into Pakistan would be controversial and risky. The rugged mountain area is populated by bin Laden sympathizers, hurting the chances that such a raid could succeed. It would also trigger a diplomatic outcry from the Pakistani government.
The United States has conducted a series of aerial drone attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, killing several key Qaeda figures and narrowly missing bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, in one strike. But an attack earlier this month killed several Pakistani border guards instead and has made Pakistan less willing to allow U.S. strikes on its territory.
The Taliban of Pakistan, who are close al Qaeda allies, have grown alarmingly stronger in Pakistan's lawless border areas and threatened the regional capital of Peshawar last week.
Pakistan's new coalition government, which has made a series of truces with the militants in recent months, was forced over the weekend to launch an offensive to push the militants back from the outskirts of Peshawar.
Pakistan called the operation a success, even though none of the heavily armed militants in the area were reported killed.
Pakistan announced Sunday that Bush had invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to Washington next month. High on that visit's agenda is the question of whether Pakistan can restrain the Taliban by itself or whether the United States could decide to take action in the tribal areas.
A separate report said the Bush administration has also begun a "major escalation of covert operations against Iran ... to destabilize the country's religious leadership."
The charge was made by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine.
By David Milliken Reuters
BASEL (Reuters) - The world needs higher interest rates to tackle a clear inflation threat, even though economic growth is likely to be hit harder than most observers expect, the Bank for International Settlements said on Monday.
The Swiss-based BIS -- a meeting place and think tank for the world's central banks -- gave a gloomy outlook for both inflation and growth in its annual report, published after a three-day meeting of central bankers from over 100 countries.
BIS General Manager Malcolm Knight said central banks faced their greatest challenge in years, with growth slowing even as inflation pressures intensified.
"Clearly, the downside risks for future growth complicate the task of monetary policy," he said in a speech to the BIS annual meeting. "But there must in the end be a forceful response to confront the danger that inflation expectations could rise appreciably, with all the attendant problems that would bring."
The tone of the annual report was darker than last year after what the BIS described as the worst financial market turmoil since World War Two, and the bank saw a "significant risk" of recession in the United States, the world's biggest economy.
But this did not mean central banks should abandon their focus on fighting inflation, even if the BIS was concerned to point out that there was no single solution for all banks.
"With inflation a clear and present threat, and with real policy rates in most countries low by historical standards, a global bias towards monetary tightening would seem appropriate. That said, the circumstances of different countries, both actual and prospective, currently rule out a 'one-size-fits-all' approach," the BIS said.
"Moreover, should the global economy slow sharply and inflationary pressures recede, the bias to tightening would evidently also be reduced," it added.
The BIS said the financial market turmoil which spread from the U.S. subprime mortgage market in the middle of last year was the consequence of a classic unsustainable credit boom, and that disruption to the banking system limited the potential of interest rate cuts to boost demand.
Tax cuts and more government spending might have some merit, but the countries whose government finances were solid enough to afford that tended to be those less affected by the turmoil, the BIS added.
"In the aftermath of a long credit-driven boom, it would not be surprising to see turmoil in financial markets, slowing real growth and temporarily rising inflation," it said.
"Their interaction does appear to point to a deeper and more protracted global downturn than the consensus view seems to expect. At the same time, inflationary forces, particularly in emerging market economies, could also prove unexpectedly strong and persistent."
Knight, who leaves the BIS in September, said forecasts that current high inflation in industrialized countries was a temporary blip could not be fully trusted because of a significant rise in consumers' inflation expectations and past failures in accurately predicting rising commodity prices.
"It would seem imprudent from an inflationary perspective to rely heavily at this stage on such an outcome," he said.
U.S., EURO ZONE, JAPAN
The BIS was most pessimistic about the U.S. economy, saying that as well as the housing downturn there was a danger that consumption would take a further hit from people trying to rebuild savings depleted by past over-borrowing.
A bright spot for the United States was exports, helped by a weak dollar and the fact that other economies seemed to be less affected by its slowdown than in previous downturns -- though Britain appeared to be suffering a similar property-led malaise.
Strong business investment and falling unemployment meant prospects for domestic demand were good in the euro zone, especially Germany, though France, Spain and Ireland would have to cope with the end of house price booms.
Prospects were not so good in Japan, where weak wage growth and narrow profit margins in small firms meant demand from consumers and many businesses was vulnerable to rising prices.
Then there was the general fallout from the credit squeeze and rising oil and commodity prices, the BIS added.
"Fears are building that the global economy might be at some kind of tipping point. These fears are not groundless," the BIS said.
CENTRAL BANK REACTION
Analyzing how central banks had reacted to the crisis, the BIS said that most -- including the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and Bank of England -- appeared to have set rates on the same criteria as before the crisis.
But the U.S. Fed had cut rates more rapidly, and the Reserve Bank of Australia raised rates faster than past behavior would have suggested.
"For these central banks, it appears that something not present in the equations, perhaps a shift in the economic outlook not present or reflected in the contemporaneous output gaps and rates of inflation, must have influenced policy in a decisive way," the BIS said.
The BIS repeated its call that central banks and regulators should do more to curtail future credit booms.
"It would have been better to avoid the build-up of credit excesses in the first place. In future, this could be done through the establishment of a new macrofinancial stability framework which would call for both monetary and macroprudential policies to 'lean against the wind' of the credit cycle."
* For a copy of the report and Knight's speech, go to www.bis.org
So much for that second-half rebound.
Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal.
It ain't gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter.
This thing's going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We're caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.
Only this will be a different kind of recession -- a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 -- whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.
Since last June, we've seen a fairly consistent pattern to the economic mood swings. Every three months or so, there's a round of bad news about housing, followed by warnings of more bank write-offs and then a string of disappointing corporate earnings reports. Eventually, things stabilize and there are hints that the worst may be behind us. Stocks regain some of their lost ground, bonds fall and then -- bam -- the whole cycle starts again.
It was only in November that the Dow had recovered from the panicked summer sell-off and hit a record, just above 14,000. By March, it had fallen below 12,000. By May, it climbed above 13,000. Now it's heading for a new floor at 11,000. Officially, that's bear market territory. We'll be lucky if that's the floor.
In explaining why that second-half rebound never occurred, the Fed and the Treasury and the Wall Street machers will say that nobody could have foreseen $140 a barrel oil. As excuses go, blaming it on an oil shock is a hardy perennial. That's what Jimmy Carter and Fed Chairman Arthur Burns did in the late '70s, and what George H.W. Bush and Alan Greenspan did in the early '90s. Don't believe it.
Truth is, there are always price or supply shocks of one sort or another. The real problem is that the underlying fundamentals had gotten badly out of whack, making the economy susceptible to a shock. The only way to make things better is to get those fundamentals back in balance. In this case, that means bringing what we consume in line with what we produce, letting the dollar fall to its natural level, wringing the excess capacity out of industries that overexpanded during the credit bubble and allowing real estate prices to fall in line with incomes.
The last hope for a second-half rebound began to fade earlier this month when Lehman Brothers reported that it wasn't as immune to the credit-market downturn as it had led everyone to believe. Lehman scrambled to restore confidence by firing two top executives and raising billions in additional capital, but even that wasn't enough to quiet speculation that it could be the next Bear Stearns.
Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of worrisome news from nearly every sector of the economy.
American Express and Discover warn that customers are falling further behind on their debts. UPS and Federal Express report a noticeable slowdown in shipments, while fuel costs are soaring. According to the Case-Shiller index, home prices in the top 20 markets fell 15 percent in April from the year before, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac report that mortgage delinquency rates doubled over the same period -- and that's for conventional home loans, not subprime. United Airlines accelerates the race to cut costs and capacity by laying off 950 pilots -- 15 percent of its total -- as a number of airlines retire planes and hint that they may delay delivery or cancel orders of new jets from Boeing and Airbus. Goldman Sachs, which has already had to withdraw its rosy forecast for stocks, now admits it was also too optimistic about junk bond defaults, and analysts warn that Citigroup and Merrill Lynch will also be forced to take additional big write-downs on their mortgage portfolios.
Meanwhile, General Motors, already reeling from a 28 percent plunge in the pace of auto and truck sales, now confronts the fact that it won't get any help this time from GMAC, its once highly profitable finance arm, which is reeling from an increase in delinquencies on home and auto loans. With the carmaker hemorrhaging cash, whispers of a possible default sent the price of insuring GM bonds soaring on the credit default market.
You know things are bad when middle-class Americans have to give up their boats and Brunswick, the nation's biggest maker of powerboats, is forced to close 10 plants and lay off 2,700 workers.
For much of the year, optimists took comfort in the continuing strength of the technology sector and exports to fast-growing countries around the world. But even those bright spots have dimmed.
Tech stocks got hammered yesterday after software maker Oracle and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion warned that the pace of corporate orders had slowed.
And both India and China raised interest rates and bank reserves sharply in an effort to tame inflation and slow their overheated economies, even as the air continued to rush out of their real estate and stock market bubbles.
Like the rain-swollen waters of the Mississippi River, this sudden surge of downbeat news has now overflowed the banks of economic policy and broken through the levees of consumer and investor confidence. At this point, there's not much to do but flee to safety, rescue those in trouble and let nature take its course. And don't let anyone fool you: It will be a while before things return to normal.
Lee Rogers
Rogue Government
June 12, 2008
The conspiracy theorists over at Michelle Malkin’s web site Hot Air, have now been forced to admit that the conspiracy theories they endorsed surrounding the infamous puppy toss video were completely false. Several months ago, Hot Air went into damage control mode when a video showing a U.S. Marine tossing an innocent and defenseless puppy over a cliff while on patrol in Iraq surfaced on the Internet. Malkin and others immediately claimed that the video was a fake. With no conclusive evidence, they endorsed theories including ones that claimed the puppy was actually a stuffed toy and that the audio in the video was edited to recreate the puppy’s cries for help as it was tossed over the cliff. Lance Cpl. David Motari who was identified as the Marine tossing the puppy over the cliff has now been kicked out of the Marines. The puppy toss video was cited as the reason for his separation. The bottom line is that Malkin and all of her brainwashed followers will simply do anything to defend what the U.S. military does even if it flies in the face of factual information and common sense. Simply put, the U.S. military is not fighting for freedom over in Iraq when George W. Bush and the criminals in Washington DC are implementing a police state in the U.S. and shredding the Constitution. Since this is the case, there should be no reason for Malkin and others to run cover for military personnel based upon the premise that they are fighting for freedom. There is very little freedom left in this country, so its time to ask what the U.S. military is really doing in Iraq and in over 100 countries around the world.
From the AP:
The Marine Corps on Wednesday said it was expelling one Marine and disciplining another for their roles in a video showing a Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq.
The 17-second video posted on YouTube drew sharp condemnation from animal rights groups when it came to light in March.
The clip shows two Marines joking before one hurls the puppy into a rocky gully. A yelping sound is heard as it flips through the air.
"That’s mean. That’s mean, Motari," an off-camera Marine is heard telling the Marine who tossed the black and white dog. The off-camera Marine snickered slightly afterward.
Lance Cpl. David Motari, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment at Kaneohe Bay, is "being processed for separation" from the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps said in a news release. He also received unspecified "non-judicial punishment."
The Marine Corps didn’t say what role Motari played in the clip.
The video was viewed tens of thousands of times before YouTube took it down due to a violation of the site’s terms of use.
"The actions seen in the Internet video are contrary to the high standards we expect of every Marine and will not be tolerated," Marine Corps Base Hawaii said in a news release. "The vast majority of Marines conduct their duties with honor and compassion that makes American people proud."
The second Marine, Sgt. Crismarvin Banez Encarnacion also received unspecified "non-judicial" punishment.
Kurt Nimmo writing for InfoWars has called on Michelle Malkin to apologize for using ridiculous conspiracy theories to defend this incredibly cruel act. Kurt sums up the absurdity of the situation below.
Michelle Malkin, the neocon going by the handle Allahpundit, and all the other neocon camp followers, will support the troops no matter what they do, no matter how many dogs, farm animals, children, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and toddlers they torture, kill, and dismember. After all, most neocons hate all things Muslim, they viscerally loathe all “pinkos” and people who exercise the First Amendment.
The terror war is a complete fraud and we are not over in Iraq fighting for freedom. It is time for propagandists like Malkin to face the facts. Ask yourself how much credibility Malkin and her followers have when they resort to baseless conspiracy theories with no factual evidence to spin the truth of what was an obviously authentic video of a U.S. Marine engaging in some incredibly disgusting behavior. This puppy toss video is just the tip of the iceberg. Look at the torture, the killing of innocent civilians, the depleted uranium scandal, countless cases of corruption and waste. With all of this in mind, it becomes impossible to justify the continued occupation of Iraq regardless of how Malkin and others try to spin it.
JERUSALEM - An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said Friday.
“If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
“Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable,” said the former army chief who has also been defense minister.
It was the most explicit threat yet against Iran from a member of Olmert’s government, which, like the Bush administration, has preferred to hint at force as a last resort should U.N. Security Council sanctions be deemed a dead end.
Defiance
Iran has defied Western pressure to abandon its uranium enrichment projects, which it says are for peaceful electricity generation rather than bomb-building. The leadership in Tehran has also threatened to retaliate against Israel — believed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal — and U.S. targets in the Gulf for any attack on Iran.
Mofaz also said in the interview that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, “would disappear before Israel does.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not address Mofaz’s comments directly but said that “all options must remain on the table” and said more could be done to put financial pressure on Tehran.
“Israel believes strongly that while the U.N. sanctions are positive, much more needs to be done to pressure the regime in Tehran to cease its aggressive nuclear program,” spokesman Mark Regev said.
“We believe the international community should be considering further tangible steps such as embargoing refined petroleum headed for Iran, sanctions against Iranian businessmen traveling abroad, tightening the pressure on Iranian financial institutions and other such steps,” he added.
Mofaz’s remarks came as he and several other senior members of Olmert’s Kadima Party prepare for a possible run for top office should a corruption scandal force the Israeli prime minister to step down.
Party rival
Iranian-born Mofaz has been a main party rival of the Israeli prime minister, particularly following the 2006 elections when Olmert was forced to hand the defense portfolio to Labor, his main coalition partner, at Mofaz’s expense.
Mofaz, who is also designated as a deputy prime minister, has remained privy to Israel’s defense planning. He is a member of Olmert’s security cabinet and leads regular strategic coordination talks with the U.S. State Department.
Israeli planes destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.
A similar Israeli sortie over Syria last September razed what the U.S. administration said was a nascent nuclear reactor built with North Korean help. Syria denied having any such facility.
Independent analysts have questioned, however, whether Israel’s armed forces can take on Iran alone, as its nuclear sites are numerous, distant and well-fortified.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Picture a cozy weekend at Camp David for President Obama, Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton and their lively spouses.
They'd talk policy and politics in the confines of the rustic retreat. After the long campaign and all the bruised feelings, Michelle Obama could finally reach out to Bill Clinton, as she recently said she's been wanting to do.
To be exact, she said: "I want to rip his eyes out."
Then added: "Kidding."
They could bring along Obama's national security adviser, let's say Samantha Power. She's the foreign policy specialist who had to leave the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster."
Now that Clinton is angling to become Obama's running mate, the question arises how two frosty rivals and their seething camps might come together without sticking flag pins into each other.
It's all pretty awkward right now.
Clinton's aides and surrogates are boldly pitching her for the No. 2 spot even as many of them, like her, refuse to acknowledge she's failed in her quest for No. 1. Instead, she said she's open to being Obama's running mate.
For months, she's cast her rival as wet behind the ears and herself as the one to be trusted to deal with crises in the middle of the night.
In an Obama-Clinton White House, he'd take the 3 a.m. call. She might or might not be awakened.
For his part, Obama has painted Clinton as a figure of another time and himself as a clean break from all that's past and passe about Washington. He'd be eager to bring in his own team, to bring "change," the coin of his realm.
Then there's Bill, a man of deep experience, in-your-face opinions and more baggage than a boxcar.
Even so, some Democratic strategists are salivating at the prospect of Obama and Hillary Clinton joining forces.
They are fixated on her electoral strengths and not at all on Oval Office atmospherics or what might be done about her husband.
Obama's side is trying to tamp down the veep speculation that threatens to overshadow his historic achievement as the first black presidential nominee, but in a way that does not seem dismissive of her and does not rule out the chance of offering her the position.
They can't afford to dismiss her, or, more precisely, the more than 17 million voters who turned out for her, including masses of blue-collar voters in swing states, Hispanics and older voters, especially women.
Obama picked his words with exquisite care when he talked about Clinton with supporters, directly addressing his but really speaking to hers.
"You can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country — and we will win that fight — she will be central to that victory," he said.
Clinton, of course, has already fought that fight for another president, her husband, and lost. She's also assailed Obama's health care plan, which does not mandate universal coverage, as seriously deficient.
Obama purposely did not address in what capacity she might take another run at health care. It's unlikely he knows. He and Clinton have yet to talk in a serious way.
The Illinois senator is famously willing to meet with difficult people, even Iran's hard-line, terrorist-underwriting, nuclear-developing, anti-American president.
But a sit-down with Clinton isn't coming together too quickly, days after he proposed that it happen once the dust settled.
After he secured the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, he called her in the evening, missed her and left a message.
She got back to him.
Then they ran into each other backstage Wednesday between delivering speeches at a Washington conference. Obama said they'd have a conversation in "coming weeks."
It's an awkward time.
And then there's Bill.
May 29, 2008—
Is Rachael Ray, the talk-show host, cookbook author and magazine editor, a terrorist sympathizer?
Dunkin' Donuts, worried that its customers might think so, abruptly yanked an ad in which Ray wears a scarf that resembles a keffiyeh -- a traditional headdress worn by Arab men -- after conservative commentators became enraged by the ad and even threatened to boycott the company.
Ray, who signed on as the company's pitchwoman last March, will continue to appear in other ads and commercials.
The controversial ad, which appeared earlier this month on the doughnut chain's Web site to promote its iced coffee, came under fire nearly two weeks ago when pro-Jewish blogger Pam Geller posted it under the headline "Rachel [sic] Ray: Dunkin Donuts Jihad Tool."
"Have you seen Rachel [sic] Ray wearing the icon of Yasser Arafatbastard and the bloody Islamic jihad," Geller wrote. "This is part of the cultural jihad."
Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin took up the cause last week, when she wrote on her Web site michellemalkin.com: "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons."
After pulling the ad May 24, Dunkin' Donuts issued a statement from Margie Myers, senior vice president of communications for Dunkin' Brands: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by the stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, as of this past weekend, we are no longer using the online ad because the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee."
Ray's publicist Charlie Dougiello wrote in a e-mail, "This is a nonstory."
He confirmed that Ray was wearing a black and white scarf with a paisley floral design that was chosen by the stylist for the shoot and echoed Dunkin's statement. "Absolutely no symbolism was intended," he said. "However, given the possibility of misperception, Dunkin is no longer using the commercial."
Debbie Schlussel, a Detroit attorney who writes a daily column for her conservative Web site debbieschlussel.com., said, "I think they [Dunkin' Donuts] ought to be applauded for that."
But Laila Al-Qatami, spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League, a Washington-based civil rights and cultural organization, believes that this is all much ado about nothing. "I think Dunkin' Donuts jumped the gun," she said, adding that the scarf's mere resemblance to a keffiyeh makes the company's action seem "unreasonable."
Al-Qatami says the real keffiyeh has been worn for decades by Arab men to protect their heads from the heat. More recently, the black keffiyeh has become associated with the Palestinian people because of Arafat's frequent use of it.
Favored in the 1980s by supporters of the Palestinian cause, these days the keffiyeh is just as likely to make a fashion statement as a political one. Trendy clothing store Urban Outfitters initially sold keffiyeh-like scarves until Jewish customers protested, according to commentator Malkin, but reintroduced them with different colors in several global markets. Fashion house Balenciaga glamorized them on the runway.
When celebrities and public figures don them, however, they are likely to draw heat. Before Ray's recent keffiyeh kerfuffle, there was the racket over Ricky Martin. Three years ago, the pop singer wore a red keffiyeh to show support for Palestinian human rights, Al-Qatami said.
When he learned that it had been inscribed with the phrase "Jerusalem is ours" in Arabic, he apologized, saying, "I had no idea that the keffiyeh scarf presented to me contained language referring to Jerusalem, and I apologize to anyone who might think I was endorsing its message."
Other celebrities, such as Collin Farrell, Mary Kate Olsen and Kanye West, have been singled out by Malkin for wearing "hate couture."
Al-Qatami believes people like Malkin and Schlussel are overreacting. "It's just an article of clothing," she said. "It only carries that kind of symbolism for people like Debbie Schlussel, who are promoting fear of Arabs."
Schlussel, the Detroit attorney and blogger, disagrees. She compares the keffiyeh to the Ku Klux Klan's white hoods. "People need to realize it's not just clothing," she said. "It's come to symbolize the garb of terrorism."
Schlussel said it's no accident that in some pictures and videos of Islamic terrorists who have kidnapped and killed Americans, their faces are covered with a keffiyeh.
In February, she took John McCain's daughter Meghan to task when several pictures surfaced of her wearing keffiyehs. In one, her mother, Cindy, sits beside Meghan, who has the headscarf wrapped around her neck. "It didn't occur to her that her daughter shouldn't be wearing that," Schlussel said. "The possible future first lady doesn't see that?
"People need to be educated," she added. "I think they can't have an excuse these days when wearing that."
Alistair Barr
Daily Times
May 29, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO: By April, Gary Holloway was almost three years into retirement. He’d built a new home by a lake in Texas, bought a boat and was working on his golf game. While taking on some part-time work, Holloway also travelled for months across the US with his wife, from Seattle to Washington DC, catching up with old friends and family.
That life of leisure abruptly changed about six weeks ago when Holloway got a phone call from his former employer, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, or FDIC, which regulates US banks and insures deposits.
Earlier this year, the FDIC began trying to lure roughly 25 retirees like Holloway back to prepare for an increase in bank failures. It’s also hiring about 75 new staff. Holloway quickly went back to work. ANB Financial NA, a bank in Bentonville, Ark with $2.1 billion in assets and $1.8 billion in customer deposits, was failing and an expert like Holloway was needed to value the assets and find a stronger institution to take them on.
On May 9, life for ANB ended when the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, another bank regulator, announced that the lender was closing. Only three banks have failed so far in 2008. But that number is set to surge as the credit crunch slows economic growth and hammers some lenders that grew too fast during the recent real-estate boom, experts say.
Things may get worse before they get better: At least 150 banks will fail in the US during the next two to three years, according to a projection by Gerard Cassidy and his colleagues at RBC Capital Markets.
If the current economic slowdown deteriorates into a recession on the scale of those from the 1980s and early 1990’s, the number of failures will be much higher this time around — probably as high as 300 of them, by RBC’s reckoning. That’s a massive surge compared to the recent boom years of the credit and real estate markets. From the second half of 2004 through end of 2006 there were 10 consecutive quarters without a bank failure in the US — a record length of time, Cassidy notes.
Texas Ratio: Cassidy and his colleagues have developed an early-warning system for spotting future trouble at banks called the Texas Ratio. The ratio is calculated by dividing a bank’s non-performing loans, including those 90 days delinquent, by the company’s tangible equity capital plus money set aside for future loan losses. The number basically measures credit problems as a percentage of the capital a lender has available to deal with them.
Cassidy came up with the idea after covering Texas banks in the 1980s. Until the recession hit that decade, many banks in the state were considered some of the best in the country. But as problem assets climbed, that view was cruelly challenged, Cassidy recalls. Along with his colleagues, Cassidy applied the same ratio to commercial banks at the end of this year’s first quarter and found some disturbing trends.
UCBH Holdings Inc, a San Francisco-based bank, saw its Texas Ratio jump to 31% at the end of the first quarter from 4.7% in 2006, according to RBC. The Texas Ratio of Colonial BancGroup, based in Montgomery, Ala., jumped from 1.5% in 2006 to 25% at the end of March.Sterling Financial Corp., headquartered in Spokane, Wash., had a Texas ratio of 1.9% in 2006. It was nearly 24% at the end of the first quarter, RBC data show.
These banks are nowhere near RBC’s 100% critical threshold, and several lenders have raised new capital since the first quarter. For instance, National City Corp. topped RBC’s list with a Texas Ratio of 40% at the end of March, though the bank did raise $7 billion in new capital in April.
CD signs of stress: Other lenders are already in more dire straits. IndyMac Bancorp a large savings and loan institution and a leading mortgage lender, is one of Cassidy’s biggest concerns, with a whopping Texas Ratio around 140%.
IndyMac is currently offering the highest rates on one-year CDs, according to Bankrate.com. Others in the top 10 include Corus Bankshares, Imperial Capital Bancorp and GMAC bank.
When Countrywide Financial was struggling last year, its federal savings bank unit began offering some of the highest CD rates in the US to build deposits. Bank of America has since agreed to acquire Countrywide and it didn’t make it onto Bankrate.com’s list of top 10 CD rates this week.
Construction loan destruction: Construction and development, or C&D, loans made up 83% of the Chicago-based bank’s total loans at the end of 2007, according to RiskMetrics Group. This type of loans helps to pay for things like the building of real-estate development projects and the construction of office buildings.
Small and medium-sized banks found it difficult to compete with large lenders in the national markets for mortgages and other consumer loans. So many focused on C&D loans because this type of financing relies more on local, personal connections, said Zach Gast, financial sector analyst at RiskMetrics. As the real estate market boomed, C&D loans did too. A decade ago, bank holding companies had $60 billion of these loans. That number is now $480 billion, according to Gast, who also notes that C&D loans are almost never securitized, so they’re held on banks’ balance sheets.
Such rapid loan growth usually creates trouble later. Indeed, delinquencies represented 7.1% of total C&D loans at the end of the first quarter, up from 0.9% at the end of 2005, Gast said. Colonial BancGroup had 37% of its loans in C&D loans at the end of last year, while Sterling Financial had 33% and UCBH had 20%. East West Bancorp a rival to UCBH, is also exposed, with 25% of total loans in C&D assets at the end of 2007, RiskMetrics data show.
Regulators: Where were regulators when these banks built up such large exposures? That’s a question RBC’s Cassidy has been asking himself, noting that “they dropped the ball in a big way.” Officials at the FDIC declined to comment.
Efforts by the Securities and Exchange Commission to make sure banks report accurate earnings may have made the situation worse, Cassidy says. Bank regulators try to encourage institutions to build reserves in good times, so they’re ready for downturns. But the SEC has been worried that banks might use reserves to smooth reported earnings, so it advised some lenders that they couldn’t set aside reserves if they weren’t experiencing commensurate credit losses, Cassidy explained.
Crisis redux? The FDIC had highlighted 76 banks that it considered troubled at the end of 2007. That’s up from 50 at the end of 2006, which was the lowest level for at least 25 years. Once identified by regulators, troubled banks are often required to limit or halt loan growth and shrink their balance sheets by selling some assets, Cassidy said. Resolution and receivership specialists at the FDIC, like Gary Holloway, value troubled banks’ assets as quickly as possible and try to find a stronger bank to absorb the weaker entity through an acquisition.
The current crisis hasn’t reached the scale of the savings and loan crisis. In 1990, more than 1,500 banks were on the FDIC’s troubled watch list, out of a total of roughly 15,000. More than 1,000 banks failed in 1988 and 1989, FDIC data show. But it’s possible for such comparisons to understate the scope of the coming wave of insolvencies.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Following last September’s crash of a Gulfstream jet used by the CIA for torture flights that contained 4 tonnes of cocaine, more customs officials and cops have been caught in drug smuggling and drug dealing rackets.
Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
"The investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people — “from distributors to overseas sources of supply” — and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France," according to a CNN report.
Meanwhile in Texas, Cameron County Constable Saul Ochoa was arrested by the FBI yesterday morning for possession and distribution of marijuana.
Ochoa’s brother is Justice of the Peace Benny Ochoa III of Port Isabel and his cousin is Port Isabel Police Chief Joel Ochoa.
"The grand jury charged Ochoa with possessing five to 10 pounds of marijuana on four different days in May with the intent to distribute. Each of the four counts carries a maximum five years in prison and $250,000 fine," according to a Brownsville Herald report.
While reports of customs agents and cops dealing drugs are almost routine, the real head of the hydra has always been CIA involvement in smuggling drugs that end up on America’s streets, a symbiotic process that also helps finance wars and terrorist groups to do the bidding of the U.S. government around the world.
The corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to the gargantuan sprawling CIA drug smuggling racket, the silence is deafening.
In September 2007, a Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel.
After accident investigators arrived on the scene they discovered a cargo of nearly 4 tonnes of cocaine.
Journalists discovered that the same Gulstream jet had been used in at least three CIA "rendition" trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.
Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary American Drug War features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.
Former DEA agent Cele Castillo, who has appeared on The Alex Jones Show many times, personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.
Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the You Tube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in central America.
AP
NEW YORK - U.S. home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter, a closely watched index showed Tuesday, a somber indication that the housing slump continues to deepen.
Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. The quarterly index covers all nine U.S. Census divisions.
Prices nationwide are at levels not seen since the third quarter of 2004, according to Maureen Maitland, a S&P vice president. However, the index is still up 60 percent versus 2000.
Two narrower indices set record declines in March versus the previous year. The 20-city index tumbled 14.4 percent, the lowest since that index was started in 2001. The 10-city index plunged 15.3 percent, a record in its 20-year history.
"There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee.
Nineteen of the 20 metro areas reported annual declines, with 15 of them posting record lows. Six metro areas lost more than 20 percent.
Las Vegas had the worst performance in March, falling 25.9 percent from a year earlier, followed by Miami and Phoenix. Only Charlotte, N.C., stayed above water, gaining less than 1 percent over the previous year.
Last week, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said home prices fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter, the largest drop in its 17-year history and only the second quarter of price declines recorded.
The OFHEO index is narrower in scope and is calculated using mortgages of $417,000 or less that are bought or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. That excludes properties bought with some of the riskier types of home loans.
(This version CORRECTS that 20-city and 10-city metro area figures are for March sted 1st quarter) )
