Obama Approval Rating Revisits Rock Bottom Despite Positive Media Spin

Rasmussen poll suggests Democrats face trouncing in midterms unless they can engineer a political stunt to rescue Obama’s credibility

 Despite positive corporate media spin amidst a cacophony of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, Barack Obama’s approval rating matched its record low today according to Rasmussen Reports.
Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll numbers indicate that Obama’s approval index rating has now revisited a low of -22, the weakest level recorded for this President.
This low has been matched despite generally positive media spin in favor of Obama over the last week, even in the face of vociferous criticism even from his own liberal supporters.
“The Rasmussen Reports Media Meter shows that media coverage of President Obama has been 55% positive over the past week. Coverage of the president has become significantly more positive over the past week,” states the report.
The fact that Obama’s approval rating has revisited its all time low in spite of positive media coverage is undoubtedly a consequence of his wife Michelle’s luxurious Spanish holiday, the lavishness of which has been shoved down Americans’ throats even as they labor under a worsening jobs picture and the onset of a double-dip recession and even a depression according to some analysts.
In addition, Obama has come under fire from people on the left over a multitude of issues, including his expansion of the Bush-era wars and his failure to close Guantanamo Bay or end warrantless secret spying on American citizens.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’ public meltdown in calling leftists “crazy” and saying they ought to be “drug tested” for criticizing Obama has further ruptured Obama’s support on the left and led to people like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann vehemently chastising Gibbs’s conduct.
With Obama’s support in free fall, the threat of an engineered political stunt, a staged terror attack, or even a war with Iran has never been greater, and the only way Democrats can hope to avoid a complete trouncing during the midterms and rescue Obama’s credibility is to exploit one of these three potential scenarios.

DoD’s lost $8.7 Billion: What About The Pentagon’s Missing Trillions?

 The Defense Department is unable to account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in Development Fund for Iraq monies it received for reconstruction in Iraq, reports Federal News Radio today.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) issued a report today that claims a “weakness” in the DoD’s “financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds.” The money vanished “because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds,” explains the Inspector General. “The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.”
DFI revenue is generated from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq, and surplus funds from the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program as well as frozen Iraqi assets, according to SIGIR.
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If you believe the money was simply lost through shoddy accounting practices, you may also be interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. Simply put, the money was pilfered.
You may recall then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s admission on September 10, 2001, that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion. This money was supposed to go for our “national defense” against CIA assets like Osama bin Laden and tin horn dictators like Saddam Hussein and the mental case Kim Jong-Il.
It became a non-story of little interest the next day when cave Muslims violated the laws of physics and supposedly attacked us for our freedom. It now basically resides in the corporate media memory hole.
$2.3 trillion amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.


Nobody knows exactly where the $2.3 trillion went. But some think it was siphoned off through companies like DynCorp, AMS, and Lockheed Martin, which control the bookkeeping for federal agencies, where fraud is rampant, unchecked and very lucrative for corporate and government insiders, writes Uri Dowbenko. “The fraud is so egregious, in fact, that the sovereignty of the nation itself can be questioned when bogus accounting systems can mask the revenue streams and expenditures of federal agencies to such an extent.”
Fraud and thievery is rampant in Iraq. In June, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in federal property went missing or unaccounted for at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A report from the State Department revealed that 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for and pays nearly $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered to authorized users, according to the Associated Press.
Money slotted for Iraq development — rebuilding what the Pentagon destroyed — has a funny way of disappearing. Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad. More than $9 billion went missing. “The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn’t care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair.
Grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, told Rep. Henry Waxman that if the cash had gone to “ghost employees” he would have known about it. Bremer sheepishly told Rep. Dennis Kucinich he had no idea where the money went.
Instead of launching a criminal investigation and tracking down the thieves, the SIGIR study suggests “that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.”
In other words, the solution is to have the same pack of wolves watch over the chicken coop.

Kucinich, Ron Paul: Get US troops out of Pakistan

 Two US lawmakers — a Republican and a Democrat — proposed a bill this week demanding the withdrawal of all US troops in Pakistan, where they are conducting covert operations against militants.
“We have known that US forces have been operating in secret inside the territories of Pakistan without congressional approval,” Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich said Friday, pointing to reports the United States was stepping up its presence there.
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He said the House of Representatives was expected to take up the resolution next week. The measure was introduced late Thursday.
Kucinich said the covert operations were a “violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution introduced after the Vietnam War that only allows the president to send US armed forces into military operations abroad if Congress approves the decision or if the United States is under a serious threat or attack.”
Full article here

Volcker Warns: We Are Running Out Of Time

 America is running out of time to fix its huge economic and fiscal problems, warns former Fed chair Paul Volcker, who now heads a financial advisory board to President Obama.
“Restoring our fiscal position . . . sorting out a reasonable approach toward limiting carbon omissions, and producing domestic energy without unacceptable environmental risks all take time,” Volcker writes in The New York Review of Books.
“We’d better get started. That will require a greater sense of common purpose and political consensus than has been evident in Washington or the country at large.”
The risks associated with the virtually unprecedented levels of public debts as the U.S. emerges from recessions are evident, Volcker notes, and must be effectively dealt with now. Dealing with uncontrolled borrowing is “not a matter of intellectual awareness but of practical confrontation,” he says.
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Obama pleads for $50 billion in state, local aid

 President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.
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Nuclear War Between Koreas: Brought To You By The U.S. Government

Edited By: Paul Joseph Watson
Kim Jong-Il has put North Korean troops on combat alert and threatened military action if the South trespasses in its waters as global stock markets freak out at the prospect of a war which, if it occurs, can be blamed on the U.S. government’s history of arming the Stalinist dictator with nuclear weapons.
Korean markets plunged 3.3 per cent overnight as investors were spooked at escalating tensions between the two countries following South Korea’s allegation that the North was responsible for the March 26 torpedoing of one of its warships
Kim Jong-il responded to the charge by putting his military on combat alert, telling them to “prepare for war,” and threatening action if South Korea trespasses in its waters off the peninsula’s west coast.
On Monday, President Obama also told the U.S. military to prepare for conflict as it plans to carry out anti-submarine and other naval exercises with South Korea.
As we have documented, North Korea’s nuclear belligerency was almost exclusively a creation of the U.S. government in that they armed the Stalinist state both directly and indirectly through global arms dealers under their control, namely Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. While labeling North Korea as part of the “axis of evil,” the U.S. government was enthusiastically funding its nuclear weapons program at every stage.
Both the Clinton and Bush administrations played a key role in helping Kim Jong-Il develop North Korea’s nuclear prowess from the mid 1990’s onwards.
Just as with Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons program, it was Donald Rumsfeld who played a key role in arming Kim-Jong-Il.
Rumsfeld was man who presided over a $200 million dollar contract to deliver equipment and services to build two light water reactor stations in North Korea in January 2000 when he was an executive director of ABB (Asea Brown Boveri). Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB confirmed that Rumsfeld was at nearly all the board meetings during his involvement with the company.
Rumsfeld was merely picking up the baton from the Clinton administration, who in 1994 agreed to replace North Korea’s domestically built nuclear reactors with light water nuclear reactors. So-called government-funded ‘experts’ claimed that light water reactors couldn’t be used to make bombs. Not so according to Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, who stated, “LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran. This is true of all LWRs — a depressing fact U.S. policymakers have managed to block out.”
“These reactors are like all reactors, they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we’re trying to prevent it acquiring,” said Sokolski.
The U.S. State Department claimed that the light water reactors could not be used to produce bomb grade material and yet in 2002 urged Russia to end its nuclear co-operation with Iran for the reason that it didn’t want Iran armed with weapons of mass destruction. At the time, Russia was building light water reactors in Iran.  According to the State Department, light water reactors in Iran can produce nuclear material but somehow the same rule doesn’t apply in North Korea.
In April 2002, the Bush administration announced that it would release $95 million of American taxpayer’s dollars to begin construction of the ‘harmless’ light water reactors in North Korea. Bush argued that arming the megalomaniac dictator Kim Jong-Il with the potential to produce a hundred nukes a year was, “vital to the national security interests of the United States.” Bush released even more money in January 2003, as was reported by Bloomberg News.
Bush released the funds despite the startling revelation, reported by South Korean newspapers, that a North Korean missile warhead had been found in Alaska.
Construction of the reactors was eventually suspended, but North Korea had an alternative source through which they could obtain the nuclear secrets vital to building an atom bomb arsenal – CIA asset and international arms smuggler AQ Khan.
In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia that manufactured key parts for centrifuges.
Khan’s collaborator B.S.A. Tahir ran a front company out of Dubai that shipped centrifuge components to North Korea.
Despite Dutch authorities being deeply suspicious of Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, the CIA prevented them from arresting him on two occasions.
“The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”
Lubbers stated that Khan was allowed to slip in and out of the Netherlands with the blessing of the CIA, eventually allowing him to become the “primary salesman of an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how,” according to George W. Bush himself, and sell nuclear secrets that allowed North Korea to build nuclear bombs.
“Lubbers suspects that Washington allowed Khan’s activities because Pakistan was a key ally in the fight against the Soviets,” reports CFP. “At the time, the US government funded and armed mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden. They were trained by Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Anwar Iqbal, Washington correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told ISN Security Watch that Lubbers’ assertions may be correct. “This was part of a long-term foolish strategy. The US knew Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but couldn’t care less because it was not going to be used against them. It was a deterrent against India and possibly the Soviets.”
In September 2005 it emerged that the Amsterdam court which sentenced Khan to four years imprisonment in 1983 had lost the legal files pertaining to the case. The court’s vice-president, Judge Anita Leeser, accused the CIA of stealing the files. “Something is not right, we just don’t lose things like that,” she told Dutch news show NOVA. “I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of.”
In 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharaf acknowledged that Khan had provided centrifuges and their designs to North Korea.
Through their policies in aiding North Korea to build light water reactors, and via the CIA asset AQ Khan who was protected at every step of the way while he helped provide North Korea with the means to build a nuclear arsenal, the U.S. government itself is directly complicit in providing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il with the nuclear weapons he now threatens to use against U.S. ally South Korea.
North Korea is controlled by a hereditary Stalinist dictatorship that has starved two million of its citizens to death in favor of building a million-man army. Some people put the figure at four million, one-quarter of the population. In the far north of the country there is a network of forced labor gulags where people who have ‘expressed a bland political opinion’ are, along with their entire families, tortured, raped and executed. Horrific bio-chemical experiments are performed on mass numbers of people. Babies are delivered and then stamped to death by the camp guards. If the mother screams while the guards are stamping on the baby’s neck, she is immediately assassinated by a firing squad. These guards are rewarded with bonuses and promotions for ripping out prisoners’ eyeballs.
The North Korean people are enslaved by a government that is using food as a weapon. Perhaps this is why the EU and the United States, via the UN World Food Program, resumed the shipment of hundreds of thousands of tons in food aid at the end of February 2003. This goes directly to the sitting dictatorship, which then decides who gets it by their level of allegiance to the state. Food aid only increases the power of Kim Jong-Il and yet it is veiled by the UN in bleeding heart humanitarian rhetoric. The money goes straight to enabling the North Korean leadership to live in the lap of westernized luxury with casinos and lavish new cars.
President Bush publicly claimed to loathe Kim Jong-Il and yet his administration, like Bill Clinton before him, set the policy to help North Korea obtain nuclear expertise. The U.S. intelligence network also protected AQ Khan and allowed him to provide the means with which North Korea acquired their nuclear capability.
If the tensions between the Koreas were to escalate into all out war, don’t expect the castrated American corporate media to mention how Kim Jong-Il grew to be such a threat in the first place – with the aid of nuclear weapons enthusiastically supplied by the U.S. government and its surrogates.

Forget Sarah Palin: It’s Rand Paul’s moment and Ron Paul’s opportunity

 Behind the scenes the insider Republican establishment is now in an uproar as the odds are high that Rand Paul wins the Republican nomination for senator from Kentucky. This would be a major embarrassment to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and raises a big question about 2012: Why is Sarah Palin getting so much attention, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) so little, from the national media and pundit classes?
Certain pundits appear strangely infatuated with Palin, but it seems to me that if Ron Paul runs for president in 2012, he could win a plurality of delegates in a multi-candidate field. My guess is that Ron Paul does run for president and Sarah Palin does not, but who knows? Why is it that major media are so unwilling to take a close and serious look at Ron Paul as a potential candidate for president, while they pant with excitement at every breath Palin takes?
If Rand Paul wins, it sends cold chills up the spines of Washington Republicans, and it may well force the media to take a close look at what happens if Ron Paul runs for president.
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Bill for Afghan war could run into the trillions

 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate is moving forward with a 59-billion-dollar spending bill, of which 33.5 billion dollars would be allocated for the war in Afghanistan.
However, some experts here in Washington are raising concerns that the war may be unwinnable and that the money being spent on military operations in Afghanistan could be better spent.
“We’re making all of the same mistakes the Soviets made during their time in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and they left in defeat having accomplished none of their purposes,” Michael Intriligator, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, said Monday at a half-day conference hosted by the New America Foundation and Economists for Peace and Security.
“I think we’re repeating that and it’s a history we’re condemned to repeat,” he said.
Intriligator also argued that the real, long-term cost of the war in Afghanistan may completely overshadow the current spending bill.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimated that the long-term costs – taking into account the costs of taking care of wounded soldiers and rebuilding the military – of the war in Iraq will ultimately cost three trillion dollars.
Intriligator suggested that a similar calculation for the costs of the war in Afghanistan would indicate a long-term cost of 1.5 to 2.0 trillion dollars.
“Why are we putting money into Afghanistan to fight a losing war and following the Soviet example rather than putting money into [our] local communities?” he asked.
The Senate has been under pressure to approve the spending bill before the Memorial Day recess at the end of the month.
On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the 59-billion-dollar bill drafted by the committee’s Chairman Daniel Inouye and Sen. Thad Cochran.
Gaining the approval of the Senate Appropriations committee may be the easy part in the push to get the bill to Obama’s desk by the end of the month.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already indicated that the spending bill will face more intense opposition in the House as congressional Democrats are predicted to offer put up some resistance to the funding for Obama’s 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan.
Experts at the event today expressed their concern with both the physical cost of the war as well as the tradeoffs in spending required by the ongoing costs of fighting the Taliban insurgency.
“The climate bill, for all its defects, if it has a prayer of passing, might provide some of the money we need to keep the momentum on building a green economy going. But so could the savings from an Afghan drawdown,” said Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Intriligator emphasised the human cost of fighting a counterinsurgency campaign not just for U.S. soldiers but for Afghan civilians.
“We can’t distinguish the insurgents or Taliban from the rest of population so we kill a lot of innocent civilians,” he said.
A number of think tank events this week and the Obama administration’s push to gain support in Congress for the supplemental appropriations bill coincided with a high-profile visit last week by Afghan President Hamid Karzai who spent four days in meetings with Obama and members of his cabinet as well as with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Karzai’s trip to Washington and the warm reception afforded to him by the White House and lawmakers appeared to be part of a public relations offensive to build support in Washington for Karzai’s government and Obama’s troop surge.
Karzai’s visit came as polls have shown a major downturn in U.S. support for the war in Afghanistan and support amongst NATO allies has been dwindling.
In early April, news emerged that Karzai, in a closed door meeting, threatened to drop out of politics and join the Taliban.
A senior Obama administration official retorted that Karzai might be sampling “Afghanistan’s biggest export” – a reference to the widespread opium cultivation in Afghanistan.
The publicity campaign is facing an uphill battle this month but the administration has much to gain by putting a good face on the U.S. relationship with Karzai.
Indeed, the White House will need Karzai’s cooperation if it is to get Congressional support for passing the spending bill and will require Karzai’s assistance if Obama is to meet his goal of beginning U.S. troop withdrawals by mid-2011.
Karzai’s trip appears to have made some progress in showing off a “reset” relationship between the Obama White House and the Karzai government but a number of voices here in Washington are raising concerns over whether a U.S. victory in Afghanistan is possible by mid-2011 or at any time in the near future.
“The fear was that if we withdraw from Afghanistan there will be civil war and external great powers will take sides. Is that worse than losing American soldiers day after day? So there’s a civil war. So the regional great partners take sides. Why wouldn’t they? It’s their neighbours. It’s their borders.” said Michael Lind, policy director of the Economic Growth Programme at the New America Foundation, at Monday’s conference.

Senate panel approves money for Afghan, Iraq wars

 WASHINGTON – A Senate committee on Thursday approved another $33.5 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this year, although some members said they did so reluctantly.
The action by the Senate Appropriations Committee is the first step toward congressional approval of the extra war spending that President Barack Obama requested in February to support his surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan.
But the money still must be approved by the full Senate and also by the House of Representatives, where the majority Democrats are split over the wisdom of continuing the wars.
The Senate panel unanimously approved $33.5 billion for the Pentagon for the two wars and a little under $4 billion for the State Department to help fund a “civilian stabilization strategy” to deliver more economic aid to Afghanistan as well as neighboring Pakistan.
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Congressman Ron Paul: Stop the Bailout of Foreign Banks!

Kagan Involved In 9/11 Cover Up

Supreme Court Nominee Helped Obama Shut Down 9/11 Families Lawsuits

 By: Steve Watson

In addition to the attacks on free speech, detainee rights and the close connections to Goldman Sachs, another noteworthy black mark on the record of Elena Kagan, the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is that she played a significant part in killing off the efforts of 9/11 victims’ families to bring lawsuits against members of the Saudi Royal family for financial links to the conspiracy.
Last year, thousands of family members filed suits claiming that Saudi Arabia and four of its princes actively aided in financing the terrorist attacks through front groups posing as charities.
The New York Times ran a report in June highlighting how documents uncovered by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.”
The documents consisted of “several hundred thousand pages of investigative material” assembled by the 9/11 families, according to the report.
The families also pointed to a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 that deals with the Saudi role in the attacks.
Had the cases been heard, the exposure given to the Saudi connection would have undoubtedly opened the flood gates for more suppressed evidence surrounding the attacks to emerge.
“The revelations would undoubtedly shatter the official explanations of the September 11 attacks and point to complicity on the part of US intelligence and security agencies.” writer Barry Grey noted at the time in his excellent piece on the government’s effort to shut down the lawsuits.
“Given its longstanding and intimate ties to the Saudi royal family and Saudi intelligence, it is not possible to believe that the CIA would have been unaware of Saudi support for Al Qaeda and at least some of the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals, as they were preparing to carry out the attacks on New York and Washington.” Grey wrote.
Enter Elena Kagan.
In her previous role at the Justice Department as Obama’s Solicitor General, she declared that “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims” owing to “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”
Kagan effectively protected the oil rich Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action to hold it liable for the attacks.
The move just happened to come less than a week before Obama was scheduled to meet and bow before Saudi King Abdullah as part of his “rebuilding” trip to the Middle East.
More than 6000 9/11 family members denounced the move as an “apparent effort to appease a sometime ally” in a public statement.
Less than a month later, The Supreme Court ruled that it would not allow any of the lawsuits to go ahead, agreeing that the Saudi princes should be protected by sovereign immunity – a concept that seems to have no bearing on CIA drone delivered missiles raining down on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Following the debacle, Senators Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham introduced legislation to allow US citizens to sue foreign governments if there is evidence they may be supporting terrorist activity. Spector said of Kagan “She wants to coddle the Saudis”.
The Saudi 9/11 Connection
Senator Bob Graham, who sat on the 9/11 Commission, has also charged that Saudi involvement in the attacks has been covered up.
As we have previously reported, US authorities, including the FBI, allowed the entire Bin Laden family to fly out of the US, and back to Saudi Arabia, in the days after 9/11, without questioning any of them.
Furthermore, agency documents later revealed that the FBI were aware that Osama Bin Laden himself may have personally chartered one of the flights. They subsequently redacted his name from the records in order “to protect privacy interests.”
The documents provide clear proof that the FBI was protecting the Bin Laden while the rest of the world was being told that he had masterminded the biggest terror attack in history. The FBI then attempted to cover up this fact.
The same documents revealed that the Bureau did not consider a single Saudi national nor any of the Bin Laden family worthy of investigative value.
The protection of Bin Laden by federal authorities has been ongoing since BEFORE 9/11 when agents were told to “back off the Bin Laden family” in order to protect business interests that the Bush family had with the Bin Ladens and other Saudi nationals.
The FBI asserts that no one on the planes that left had any terrorist links, yet documents (specifically FBI document 199I WF213589) uncovered back in November 2001 prove this to be a falsehood.
The Obama administration is now continuing the exact same long running policy as the Bush administration by obediently backing the Saudi monarchy and keeping secret this vital information on 9/11.

Look Out, Obama Seems to Be Planning for a Lot More War

 There’s more war in America’s future – a great deal more, judging by the Barack Obama administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months.
These documents and deeds include the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the Ballistic Missile Defense Report, the nuclear security summit in New York and the May 3-28 United Nations nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, as well as the continuing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the 2011 Pentagon war budget request.
The United States government presides as a military colossus of unrivalled dimension, but the QDR, which was published in February, suggests Washington views America as being constantly under the threat of attack from a multitude of fearsome forces bent on its destruction. As such, trillions more dollars must be invested in present and future wars – ostensibly to make safe the besieged homeland.
The NPR says the long-range US goal is a “nuclear-free” world, but despite token reductions in its arsenal of such weapons, the Pentagon is strengthening its nuclear force and bolstering it with a devastating “conventional deterrent” intended to strike any target in the world within one hour. In addition this document, published in April, retains “hair-trigger” nuclear launch readiness, refuses to declare its nuclear force is for deterrence only (suggesting offensive use) and for the first time authorizes a nuclear attack, if necessary, on a non-nuclear state (Iran).
Meanwhile, Obama is vigorously expanding the George W Bush administration’s wars, and enhancing and deploying America’s unparalleled military power.
The Obama administration’s one positive achievement in terms of militarism and war was the April 9 signing in Prague of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia that reduces deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 warheads each. It was a step forward, but all agree it was extremely modest, and it does not even faintly diminish the danger of nuclear war.
Full article here

Lieberman Looks to Strip the Citizenship of 1 Million Americans Without Charge or Trial

 The climate of fear, created out of the well exaggerated Times Square incident last week has allowed Joe Lieberman and fellow establishment lawmakers to introduce a bill that would drive the final nail into the coffin of the Bill of Rights. Lieberman says the bill is design to “close loopholes” that allow individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list purchase firearms, explosives and to have basic rights of due process if and when they are tried for a crime.
Despite the fact that the FBI’s terror watch list has been repeatedly found to contain children, people of mistaken identity and individuals whose only crime was to attend antiwar rallies, the media is pushing the agenda as a fight over whether or not so-called terrorist should have any rights at all. The problem is that none of these people have been charged with a crime, let alone tried and found guilty by a trial of their peers. Nearly 1.5 million Americans would be stripped of their rights without trial and without recourse.
Are we still the land of the free if we begin to strip people of their civil rights based on their political/religious beliefs? If we being to strip innocent children of their god given rights based solely on their names and do not provide any legal recourse or action of defense for these people, are we still a free society? Or has the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned of in his farewell speech grown to such proportions that it has swallowed this republic whole? Has the promise of security convinced us that we should relinquish our rights as Americans? Most likely not enough of us, which is why the media is doing all they can to frame this as a debate about terrorists. These are not terrorists; they are Americans who have committed no crime. If they have committed a crime, then they should be charged and tried publicly, not by military tribunal as Lieberman would have it, so that the American people can see the full evidence against them.
When we do not demand to be part of the system of justice and demand that the burden of proof lay with the government, not the accused, then we will continue to see more fear mongering and assaults on our liberties. One example, the recently demonized Hutaree Militia, was arrested and lambasted by the media for their supposed plans to kill police officers. Since then even the Judge presiding over the case as publicly questioned the government’s case against the men saying there is no evidence linking such a plot to the Hurtaree Militia. Yet, the media cannot be expected to recant or to reconsider their smear campaign against American’s who are active in militias, as this was their intended purpose. The Hurtaree case, the Times Square incident and second Times Square incident just yesterday (involving what the media called “a suspicious package”, yet turned out to just be a cooler) shows that the media is more concerned with pushing fear then they are with informing us.
The dangers of Lieberman’s legislation are vast. Existing legislation, the Military Commissions Act, already allows for indefinite detention of Americans deemed “enemy combatants”. Now with Lieberman’s legislation, if passed, Americans can be in essence declared “enemy combatants” without even committing a crime. They can be stripped of their rights, convicted using secret evidence or anonymous testimony and shipped to a secret “black site” prison. No legal action or appeals process, only a direct act of Congress to reverse the law would save them- if it was even known who was being held where.
We are in serious risk of crossing a line that cannot easily be undone. We are about to hammer the final nail into the coffins of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If we do so; if we exchange our liberties for the illusion of security, we forfeit the very ideals that make America great. The concepts of individual liberty and equal justice that this nation was founded upon will be forsaken and we will join the ranks of dozens of other nations whose government’s chief task is to police the people.
As Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would surrender their liberty for security, deserve neither”.

Geithner Makes the Case for a Bank Tax

 Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, urged Congress on Tuesday to impose a 10-year, $90 billion tax on the largest financial institutions to recoup the costs of the 2008 bailouts. But he faced skeptical questions from lawmakers on the structure and purpose of the fee.
The Obama administration proposed the tax, which it calls the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, in January, amid public anger over the bank bailouts. The tax is not part of the overhaul of financial regulations being debated by the Senate.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday, officials from the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable sharply criticized the proposal. While lawmakers did not reject the idea outright, some questioned its impact on consumers and small businesses, as well as the timing.
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Federal Government Outpaces Private Sector in Job Creation

 PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup’s Job Creation Index for April reveals significantly more hiring within the federal government than in the private sector. Both show a substantially more positive picture than state and local governments, where firing far eclipses hiring.

Gallup’s Job Creation Index is based on the percentage of American workers who say their employers are hiring minus the percentage who say their employers are letting workers go. The overall Index value for American workers in April tilts positive, with 27% of workers saying their places of employment are hiring, and 22% saying their employers are letting people go — resulting in an overall +5 Job Creation Index.These overall numbers, however, mask significantly different patterns across employment sectors. Based on these reports from workers, the federal government is a growth industry, while employment at state and local governments is shrinking.
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‘Debt Like Cancer’ Addressed by Obama Commission on U.S. Debt

 President Barack Obama’s debt commission started grappling with how to reduce the U.S. government’s red ink in the first of a series of meetings aimed at producing a plan to be sent to Congress.
The panel’s three-hour meeting yesterday produced little disagreement over the dimensions of the fiscal challenge, underscored by testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and White House Budget Director Peter Orszag on the potential for the nation’s debt eventually precipitating an economic crisis.
The challenge facing the panel is devising a plan proposing hundreds of billions in tax increases and spending cuts that can get backing from at least 14 of the 18 its members, the number needed to forward any plan to Capitol Hill, and then win support in Congress.
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Is The CIA Behind Mexico’s Bloody Drug War?

 On April 23, two patrol cars were ambushed by armed gunman in downtown Ciudad Juarez. In the ensuing firefight, seven policemen were killed as well as a 17-year old boy who was caught in the crossfire. All of the assailants escaped uninjured fleeing the crime-scene in three SUVs. The bold attack was executed in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas of the city. According to the Associated Press:
“Hours after the attack, a painted message directed to top federal police commanders and claiming responsibility for the attack appeared on a wall in downtown Ciudad Juarez. It was apparently signed by La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel. The Juarez cartel has been locked in a bloody turf battle with the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“This will happen to you … for being with El Chapo Guzman and to all the dirtbags who support him. Sincerely, La Linea,” the message read.” (“7 Mexican police officers killed in Ciudad Juarez”, Olivia Torres, AP)
The massacre in downtown Juarez is just the latest incident in Mexico’s bloody drug war. Between 5 to 6 more people will be killed on Saturday, and on every day thereafter with no end in sight. It’s a war that cannot be won, but that hasn’t stopped the Mexican government from sticking to its basic game-plan.   
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Gerald Celente: Finance reform, just a show

Judge Napolitano: Immigration law will ‘bankrupt the Republican Party’

 After Fox News analysts spent most of Friday defending Arizona’s bill to target illegal immigrants, Judge Andrew Napolitano offered a different take on the controversial measure.
When asked about Gov. Jan Brewer, Napolitano said her signing of the bill into law will have disastrous consequences:
Napolitano: She’s gonna bankrupt the Republican Party and the state of Arizona. Look at what happened to the Republicans in California with the proposition –
Cavuto: What happens?
Napolitano: Ah, Hispanics — who have a natural home in the Republican Party because they are socially conservative — will flee in droves. She’s also gonna bankrupt her state, because no insurance company will provide coverage for this. And for all the lawsuits that will happen — for all the people that are wrongfully stopped — her budget will be paying for it. Her budget will be paying the legal bills of the lawyers who sue on behalf of those that were stopped.
This will be a disaster for Arizona — to say nothing of the fact that it’s so unconstitutional that I predict a federal judge will prevent Arizona from enforcing it as soon as they attempt to do so. That will probably be tomorrow.
The new law, which will take effect in late July or early August, was cheered by many, including Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose tough crackdowns have made him a hero in the anti-illegal immigration community. He said it gives him new authority to detain undocumented migrants who aren’t accused of committing any other crimes.
“Now if we show they’re illegal, we can actually arrest them and put them in our jails,” Arpaio said.
Critics claim the bill will effectively encourage racial profiling. President Barack Obama branded it “misguided.” Hispanic groups across the country tend to agree with Napolitano’s assessment of the bill.
Immigrant advocates say the bill could worsen an already tenuous relationship between law enforcement and Hispanics in Arizona.
State Sen. Rebecca Rios, a Phoenix Democrat and fourth-generation Arizonan, said she’s concerned about her 14-year-old son being harassed by police because of his brown skin, black hair and dark-brown eyes.
“I don’t want my son or anyone else’s son targeted simply because of their physical characteristics,” Rios said. “There’s no reason I should have to carry around any proof of citizenship, nor my son.”

Clinton Advisor: Reno Threatened To “Tell The Truth About Waco” If Not Reappointed To Office

 President’s powerful right hand man drops bombshell on 17th anniversary of Siege
 Edited by: Steve Watson

A close advisor to Bill Clinton during his White House tenure dropped a bombshell this week on the seventeenth anniversary of the Waco siege.
Dick Morris, a longtime friend of Clinton and political advisor during his first term in office, told Sean Hannity that the President was not going to appoint Attorney General Janet Reno to a second term in office following the federal barrage on the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel.
“Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover and in fact was so ashamed of what he did in Waco that he was not going to appoint Janet Reno to a second four year term” Morris stated.
“She told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day for his new term, that ‘if you don’t appoint me, I’m gonna tell the truth about Waco’ and that forced Clinton’s hand in reappointing her.” Morris continued.
Rather taken aback Hannity responded “I don’t remember you telling this story before.”
“No, it’s never been said before.” Morris answered.
The comments stemmed from a discussion regarding Clinton’s recent remarks that the Tea Party could “breed a new Timothy McVeigh”, with Morris explaining that McVeigh had stated that the BATF’s armed assault in 1993 had contributed to his violent mindset.
“I think that President Clinton might want to examine his own connection with the Oklahoma City bombing in terms of Waco, before he starts accusing people in walkers and wheelchairs who are trying to keep their medicare of being provocateurs” Morris asserted.
Before moving on Hannity said “Wait a minute, so what was the truth about Waco that Reno threatened to use against him?”
“I have no idea,” replied Morris, “but I know that he told me, Clinton told me that ‘I couldn’t not appoint Reno because she would have turned on me over Waco’.”
Watch the video:

Morris’ contention is not to be taken lightly, according to Clinton’s communications director, George Stephanopoulos: “Over the course of the first nine months of 1995, no single person had more power over the president, and therefore over the government, than Dick Morris — no question about it.”.

Morris went on to become campaign manager of Bill Clinton’s successful 1996 bid for re-election.

The “truth” that Reno threatened to reveal, later came to light – the BATF fired the first shots at Waco and orders were given to use a prohibited chemical weapon in the form of CS gas grenades against the men, women, and children at Mount Carmel. This information was highlighted in the PBS Frontline documentary investigation Waco: The Inside Story, which reference FBI audiotapes and documentation.

While the cover story read that David Koresh burned his own family and followers to death in a mass suicide pact, the FBI later admitted firing the “potentially flammable devices” into the Davidian compound.

Morris’ revelation indicates that Clinton oversaw a cover up of the Waco siege and that Reno felt far enough removed from it to use it as an effective tool of political blackmail.