blog.arithm

Remember when Fox called this a “Terrorist Fist Jab”?

Whatever the future may hold, today is a good day.

This whole Obama tax misquote propaganda thing is getting out of hand.

As seen on Facebook:

1. McCain Supporter changes status to “thinks she better run and buy her new ride today before all her money is taken by taxes after tomorrow”
2. Obama Supporter changes status to “<Obama Supporter> is wondering if the <McCain Supporter> is making over 250k a year, and if so, can he get a bit of the action. Hook a brother up!”
3. <McCain Supporter> at 1:24pm November 3
   Apparently you don’t watch the news, you only need to make $120K to get screwed now.
4. <Obama Supporter> at 2:03pm November 3
   Hmmm… haven’t heard that on the stations I watch. Send me a link.
5. <McCain Supporter> at 2:09pm November 3
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G88ebXY2uaI
   Bill Richardson stumping for Obama
6. <Obama Supporter> at 2:20pm November 3
   That clip says if you make <120k, you’ll get a tax cut. It does not say that if you make over it, you’ll get a tax increase, which is what I’m assuming you’re referring to. Are you defining getting screwed as not getting a tax cut, or by having your taxes raised?
7. <McCain Supporter> at 2:24pm November 3
   It’s only a matter of time.

   Moment of Zen
   

8. <Obama Supporter> at 2:26pm November 3
   In 5 billion years, the sun will turn into a Red Giant. After a few million years, it will become a White Dwarf. Then, after tens of billions of years, it will burn out. It’s only a matter of time.

The Obama guy was honest enough to follow the McCain-ite’s bulletproof logic through to it’s natural and inevitable conclusion:  If Barack Obama is elected to the Presidency of the United States of America, the sun will cease to shine. He’ll get your money… AND YOUR SUNLIGHT.
BOOGAH BOOGAH BOOGAH!

Oy vey.  Go Obama.

On October 11, 2002 Congress approved the “Iraq War Resolution” granting the Bush administration authorization to invade Iraq.  It was to be a quick war, we were told.

Six years later, 1 in 3 Iraqis have been killed, wounded, or displaced.  Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed with tens of thousands more seriously wounded.

The three trillion dollar Iraq War, burning through $10 billion dollars per month, has been funded with deficit dollars — money we do not have.

How much longer will we borrow to wage a war founded on lies; when our ailing economy threatens jobs, education, healthcare, and disaster relief?

On Saturday, October 11th, 2008, Bostonians will gather in Boston Common to make a stand.

For more information, see the official rally website and the program for a list of performers and speakers.

Update: This drew a much larger crowd than I anticipated; where I expected to see hundreds, there were thousands. Still much smaller than it needs to be, but encouraging.

Crowds will certainly grow as the economy worsens.

In light of recent events, I want to remind myself of an extremely important fact that I have read a number of times, and yet somehow always seem to forget or, more likely, ignore.

From the opening of Murray N. Rothbard’s The Case Against the Fed:

By far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might expect, the CIA, the DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of Congress. They are accountable: A Congressional committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets, and is informed of their covert activities.

The Federal Reserve, however, is accountable to no one; is has now budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of the nation’s monetary system, is accountable to nobody.

America’s Founding Fathers held a deep distrust of centralized banking. Before long, we may find out why, first-hand, for ourselves.

Plus a counter-game recommendation.

I’m still trying to get my head around what the hell is going on, but best I can tell is that Colonel Klink, social climber that he is, has somehow lifted himself from an obscure commandant of Stalag-13 to the very highest levels of the  American military industrial complex.

And he appears to be a mere thirty-two words away from unilateral control over the American banking system.

Where’s Hogan when you need him?

Seriously though, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last two days trying to get a better handle on what’s really happening.  As someone who, until just about a week ago, knew virtually nothing of American or international finance, I’m the first to admit that I have no idea what I’m talking about.  That said, here’s my take on it all; oddly enough much of which can best be summarized via this tiff between Naomi Klein and Andrew Sullivan:

I think they both might just be right.  Certainly an administration that relies on shock doctrine to achieve it’s goals could leverage a generation of Americans raised on the concept of credit as money — after all, “Life takes Visa” doesn’t it? — to engineer a self-imposed financial disaster.

C’mon, let’s put on our tinfoil hats and ask a few “what if” questions.

• What if the current administration colluded with the likes of Goldman Sachs to setup mortgage packages that were difficult to trace and, more importantly, doomed to fail.
• What if these mortgages were promoted as part of an ownership society, a get-rich concept sold to an American public that grew up on credit and believing in the words of Gordon Gekko: that somehow greed “will save that malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
• In other words, what if the current administration set out with the intent of producing a — this — disastrous event as a means of furthering an agenda?

Of course, some would call this financial terrorism:

And if it’s true, they’re damn right.  But terrorism to achieve what end?  What’s the agenda? More profit for Bush cronies as the dollar collapses?

I wonder if the Bank of Klink will offer a good Dollar to Amero exchange rate..

Recently on The View, Nancy Pelosi stated that “if somebody had a crime that the president had committed” (what she later refers to as “the goods”), she might consider impeachment hearings.

Um.  Okay.  Well, here are the goods. Or, at least, the tip of the iceberg:

Vincent Bugliosi, the L.A. attorney who prosecuted Charles Manson in 1970 and recent author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, presented documented evidence that Bush Administration officials took the country to war under false pretenses and are therefore, under law, guilty of the deaths of over over 4,000 American soldiers. Not to mention what the war has done to the Iraqis.

On Friday, Mike Barnicle interviewed Ron Suskind, author of The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which presents documented evidence that the White House ordered the CIA to “manufacture” evidence connecting Iraq to Al-Queda.

I think its time for Ms. Pelosi and others to stop pretending that Congress’ daily order of business is more important than calling into question the widespread misconduct overarching this highly questionable administration.

At the very least, an illegal war resulting in thousands of deaths and expenditure of trillions of dollars — much of it unaccounted, much of it now in the coffers of businesses directly connected to Bush Administration officials — is an extremely dangerous precedent to let stand.

In the 9th grade — freshman year in high school — my history teacher was Mr. Stack, whom I remember being short and solid, kind and wise.

At the beginning of the year, Mr. Stack had the class read chapters by Howard Zinn. It was one of our first lessons. I was awed; stunned at what I was being asked to read. The next day we read, instead, from the high school textbook. Mr. Stack asked the class to compare Zinn’s work to passages from that official history tome. The class debated. Mr. Stack said very little.

At the time I thought I had learned the lesson. Simply put: History is subject to interpretation. And Zinn’s work was an example of a radical interpretation.

Today, looking back, I can’t help but think that I took this lesson the wrong way. Backwards.

Funny. Twenty years later I am still learning from Mr. Stack.

Last Friday the House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration’s abuse of executive power. For the first time the case for impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee over the span of what became a six hour session, attended by twenty members of the Judiciary Committee. Dennis Kucinich and four other members of Congress testified. Kucinich called for impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.

Videos of the hearing are here.

Kucinich is now assembling signatures from an online impeachment petition which he will present to members of Congress this week. Midnight tonight is the deadline.

If you are an American and value the freedoms afforded to us by the Constitution; if you would like to ensure that a Bush Administration legacy of curtailed Constitutional rights does not endure, please consider signing the petition.