Not-so-strange bedfellows

The people pushing now for passage of the bailout package are an alliance including the Bush White House, the Democratic leadership, and the Republican leadership.

Are the past eight years beginning to make sense now? Sometimes it takes a crisis for the true nature of things to become apparent.

Finally: An Election Fraud Whistleblower

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GOP Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore is the person we have been waiting for, the inside expert who is now detailing how election fraud is done. Spoonamore is founder and former CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. This clip is part of a ten-part interview – go to You Tube to see it all – click here*, and the rest of the clips will be available on the right hand side.

Spoonamore, a Republican and McCain supporter, claims that Saxby Chambliss lost by five points to Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002, that Bush lost to Kerry in 2004, and that the machinery is in place to steal the current election. He details how it is done – in a separate case now working its way through the courts, King Lincoln v. OH Sec. of State, he describes how the electronic part of the Bush “victory” in Ohio in 2004 was done: Votes that were supposedly to be transmitted to the Secretary of State’s office were first routed through a computer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That computer happened to be owned by a company called SmarTech. That is coincidentally is the same company that hosted the domain for the Bush White House that allowed them to communicate outside official channels. That’s where the tallies were likely changed.

According to an affidavit filed by Spoonamore in the case, “computer placement, in the middle of the network, is a defined type of attack.”

Spoonamore also claims that the “religious Christianist far right” is behind much of this fraud. That would make sense – fundamentalists are so sure that they are right about everything that any means justifies their ends. That’s the danger of fundamentalism.

This is from Mark Crispin Miller, who has done a yeoman’s job in working the election fraud issue:

According to this piece from Black Box Voting, the election results in Illinois, Colorado and Kentucky will be routed to private servers–just as in Ohio in 2004. As Stephen Spoonamore has made clear, this is an extremely dangerous arrangement, whose only purpose would be to facilitate the theft of the election.

The primary reason that this story doesn’t get a full public airing, and that it is relegated to back burners and assigned to conspiratorial limbo, is that the Democratic Party won’t take the issue seriously. When McCain waltzes into the White House after a stunning upset on November 4th, when forecasted congressional gains don’t materialize, and when lightweight beauty pageant queen Sarah Palin becomes our Vice President, perhaps they will take note.

But I doubt it.

*Best quote from the interview: “Diebold machines are not poorly designed. They are brilliantly designed. They are designed to steal elections.”

Taxing Those Responsible

I have no problems with the House vote today even though the conservative Republicans probably had some philosophical reasons for doing it – you know, like let the market work. You can’t fix stupid+stubborn. And I resist this notion that is being sold by everyone everywhere that something has to be done soon. That’s the same rationale that got us the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq war. I doubt that caution and prudence will make things worse.

A couple of ideas are out there, but not seriously considered. They have to do with making the people caused the mess clean it up. One would be a surtax on high income taxpayers to pay for the bailout. The second idea is a small tax, say a quarter percent (.0025) on all stock transactions. It would raise about $150 billion per year, and would make Wall Street pay for Wall Street’s problems.

These are reasonable ideas that address the idea of personal responsibility. But so powerful is our financial sector, so much influence does it wield on the hill, that they are not even considered.

We’re a long way from out of this mess. As Ravi Batra suggests, the current bailout package could make our economy even sicker than it is by increasing interest rates for all borrowers. And anyway, it is probably just enough to get us through the election. Then it happens all over again.

Note: If your 401K has taken a big hit, remember that John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. He wants equal distribution of misery (Churchill’s definition of socialism).

Note: Hank Paulson, while at Goldman Sachs, collected $38 million in bonuses while his company increased its leveraged debt from $20 billion to $100 billion. I’d say his pocket is a good place to start when looking for money for this fix. Why not just give it back to us?

Talk Radio For the Rest of Us

From the Thom Hartmann Program, Friday, Setpember 26, guest, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont):

Caller: I just wanted to ask you if you share my anger at the Democratic leadership and Dodd and Frank. The way I’m seeing it, they have embraced the Paulson bailout plan, with modifications, but basically, they’ve embraced the urgency of it and that that’s the only way to do it, even though there’s a whole slew of economists saying there are other ways and let’s put the brakes on this and slow down. And now I see the Republicans have taken that and said “Let’s stop”. I think this is the worst thing the Democrats have ever done. Is it just me?

Sanders: No. As a matter of fact I just made that point to Chris Dodd within the last hour. My wife in Burlington is a very good observer. She doesn’t get caught up in the turmoil, and she’s sitting home watching the TV, and her perception is that in fact it is now that Democrats are identified with Bush’s bailout program while the right wing Republicans are out there saying they’re going to protect taxpayers from Wall Street.

There’s going to be some meetings today and I will continue to voice that perspective. Number one, we should be thinking thoughtfully about this. It is not clear that we have to move in quite the time frame that Mr. Paulson has suggested. And number two, bottom line is if a bailout is to occur, then the people, the class of people, who caused the problem, pay for it.

Barney Frank, to his credit, has supported the concept and has been vocal. On NPR the other day he repeated his thought that there should be surtax on the very wealthy. But we are not seeing that in the plan.

In the House Peter DeFazio is proposing a stock transfer tax of a quarter of one percent that would raise about $150 billion per year, and in that sense we would let the stock market bail out the stock market.

Either of those ideas makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not embraced them yet.

There’s been an immense capture of wealth by the upper classes during the Bush Administration. Now’s the time to give back. But the idea that the people who benefited from Wall Street’s malfeasance should pay for it is never even broached. It’s eerie.

Jim Lehrer Slips Up

Debate moderators are chosen for their ability to project gravitas, but their real job is to keep the candidates from veering into substance. Journalists don’t become moderators without selling their souls, internalizing the sellout, and then believing in their phony selves. Jim Lehrer is a professional sycophant whose audience is comprised of higher IQ patrons of public television. He’s a good moderator.

But Jim Lehrer accidentally asked a good question the other night – it didn’t get the answer it deserved – that would not be proper. But it was a good question, nonetheless. Addressing Obama:

As president, as a result of whatever financial rescue plan comes about and the billion, $700 billion, whatever it is it’s going to cost, what are you going to have to give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan?

The reason why we can’t fix our problems, why we don’t have a health care plan, why college education sinks our kids into lifelong debt, why our infrastructure is crumbling underneath us, why we don’t have a national rail system … is that we use our surplus wealth to take care of our wealthy. Obama is talking about doing something about some of these problems (I don’t know how serious he is) and is also talking about offering some tax relief for ordinary citizens, burdened as they are by two onerous income taxes. But if he is elected, he’ll not be able to do anything, and Lehrer made it perfectly clear why – the money is to be spent rescuing the wealthy sector, and won’t be available.

I don’t think that’s an accident. George Bush came to office in 2001 faced with a huge problem – an accidental budget surplus brought about by an unforeseen flurry of economic activity and a stock market bubble. He set out to eliminate it as fast as he could by giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts. It was a dangerous time, and he faced the challenge with resolve and courage. Had the surpluses been allowed to go on, Americans would have demanded the things listed above, and there would be no good reason to say no.

Deficits are intentional. Surpluses are accidental and problematic. We are an enormously wealthy country – we have money to provide for a reasonable retirement for everyone, health care and public transportation and education of our youth, but these are not the things that the owners of the country want for us. These things are egalitarian – they have a leveling effect. So our leaders present us with an endless series of hobgoblins – imaginary monsters to fight – and fighting them absorbs all of our surplus and redirects it at the military industrial complex. Much of the debate last Friday was dedicated to reinforcing the notion that we must fight these imaginary monsters.

It’s been that way all of my life. We fought a massively expensive Cold War with the Russians that lasted from the early 1950’s until 1991. We never actually fought them, but they were the reason why we invested our surplus wealth in missile systems and aircraft carriers. Every time we wanted to attack someone, it was the really the conspiring Russians that were causing the problem.

But the Russians never really threatened us in any meaningful way. We threatened them with missiles, they responded. We occupied West Germany, they occupied East. But they mostly stayed in their sphere, we in ours, and both were happy with that system.

It was a good system, a good way to assure that our surplus wealth was directed at Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. Russia was useful. But then she went and collapsed on us, catching everyone by surprise, and we had no enemy to fight, and no justification for misuse of that surplus wealth. Our leaders frantically searched for enemies, even settling on little Libya at one point. Who to fight? Who to scare us with? For a time during the 1990’s (there’s still some residual) they said we were involved in a global war on drugs, but that didn’t really resonate the way Russia did – foreign substances did not really take the place of really evil foreign people. It was hard to put a face on that enemy. But it was all we had.

We were adrift, having no real enemies, and along came that surplus, and the problem was apparent to all in power – there was a real threat that our wealth would be used to force some kind of equality upon us – health care, educational opportunities, infrastructure – we were starting to dream.

And along came terrorism. Finally, a new and permanent enemy – one to last generations, one to justify the continued squandering of our wealth in such a way that ordinary people do not benefit. Warfare, the GWOT, the counterinsurgencies, Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan are really part of a bigger war, class warfare. We ordinary Joe’s who produce the wealth of our land are the enemy.

The bailout is a massive wealth transfer, and as always, it is directed upward. It, along with military spending, will preclude any spending on ourselves for things we want for ourselvesfor decades to come. It is being presented to us as a fait accompli, and will be driven into us like a spike by both Democrats and Republicans.

Whenever there is “bipartisan” agreement in Washington, there is going to be a massive screwing. The job of politicians and the media right now is to garner public support for the latest wealth transfer. That’s been the push for the last few weeks – not to fix Wall Street so much as to con the American public into accepting the idea that we owe Wall Street anything; that keeping them healthy will keep us healthy. That’s why Lehrer’s question was so appropriate.

It’s never been a perfect system. The bailout may not pass. Occasionally we win a thing or two. There is still some residual of the New Deal and Great Society in our land – Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance and the like – those are ways that we use our surplus wealth to help each other. Those programs really work and we can easily afford them. But they interfere with other objectives, so we are told are too costly, that they must be reined in. The object of a successful McCain presidency will be to turn these programs into profit centers for the wealthy, and to squeeze ordinary people out. If Obama is elected, there will be a full court press to keep him from implementing anything he has espoused.

My money is on McCain. I’m not far away from Social Security. I’m feeling unlucky.

The Rescue Plan

h/t: Dr. Peter Rost

So Long, Luke

You’ll be missed.

A Pointless Encounter

Like most people who watched the debates, I was cheering for a particular candidate. I was hoping to see Obama score points, and cringed when McCain rattled off the names of foreign leaders like the ingredients to a pizza. “The old fart knows a thing or two”, I thought.

In other words, I am getting caught up in it. I had to stop myself. Wait a minute, I thought, Russia didn’t invade Georgia – Georgian President Saakashvili attacked South Ossettia, which does not want to be part of Georgia, and the Russians responded. The Americans were probably involved behind the scenes, urging Saakashvili on.

And wait a minute – Iranian President Ahmadinejad never said that he wanted to wipe Israel off the map – that’s American propaganda, a dubious translation of one of his statements at Columbia University provided by an Israeli general.

Wait a minute – what’s with this worship of Israel? Even as they debated the Israelis are carrying out a brutal siege of Gaza, starving people, withholding the basics of life from them, punishing them, stealing land and building a wall on land they do not own. It’s heinous and criminal. But this is America, and both candidates know better than to cross AIPAC. Discouraging. Undebatable.

These are lies that American leaders have to promote if they are to be bestowed credibility. They have to bow before the statue of official truth as they enter the great debate hall.

Obama is useless on Iraq – he may have been right in 2002 when he opposed the initial attack, but official truth has taken hold of him, cut off his balls. Now we talk about this thing they call “the surge”, which was a bipartisan escalation of the conflict. Officially, the surge worked, and calmed the place down. Now we’re having success.

The Iraqi people are never at issue – even though they want us gone. Their opinion does not matter. We’re not done saving them. Two million of them have left the country in fear, hundreds of thousands of them are dead. But they don’t matter.

For a long time a civil war raged on as Sunnis and Shiites fought for control – the Shiites have won out, and the battled has simmered. The U.S. is also paying ransom to various factions to stay calm, much the same way Saddam Hussein used to keep a lid on things. That’s what happened.

But the “surge”? Silly propaganda. But that’s how it works in the motherland – framing, George Lakoff calls it – the ability to control our public discourse by controlling what can and cannot be said. The “surge” is not real – it’s a mere rhetorical sideshow. But those who support the war against the public’s desire have corralled the rest of us into talking about Iraq only in terms of the surge.

In 2006, when the Republicans lost the election in a landslide over the Iraq issue, they went on a propaganda counteroffensive to retake control of the debate. Rather than cut back troops, they did the opposite – they proposed to increase troops. Their fallback position had us staying at the same level – status quo. But the Democrats caved, and there was no change in our Iraq policy despite the election outcome.

That was the purpose of the “surge” – to drive a point home to the American public: Think what you want about Iraq – you cannot change it.

We are in Iraq permanently. It’s about oil and bases. Neither party will change that. Obama is worthless on Iraq. He offers no change.

In fact, he is no different from McCain on a whole host of foreign policy issues. It’s the same saber rattling, the same posturing, the same reverence for Israel and its crimes, the same curtsies to official truth. The debate was a reminder that there are really very few differences between the two parties.

I’m going to vote for Obama. I think he will give us better judicial appointments. I think he’s a very smart man who is very well qualified to occupy the office of president, but make no mistake – the president is naturally constrained. Clinton’s “change” lasted for all of six months – his was one of the quickest sellouts on record. He was a quick study, and learned right away that he simply could not have his way on most issues due to the power of the media and corporations and wealthy families. So he gave in, and played the game. I expect the same from Obama. The debate revealed the straight jacket that both McCain and Obama must wear. They cannot break out of official truth. Neither offers anything new.

Which reminds me of this – don’t worry, Wulfgar – I’m voting for Obama. But this is poignant:

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Wait a minute – Montana is lost. It’s going for McCain. Why waste my vote on Obama?

Corporate Socialists Exposed

Thanks to Jay Stevens for this delicious link.

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Screwed Again, Naturally

The Bush Administration wants to pass the proposed bailout bill in Iraq-like fashion – that is, to create a sense of urgency, as if doing nothing right now, this instant, will result in catastrophe. In this scenario, reluctant Democrats, and some Republicans as well, are merely cattle to be stampeded into a plan that will subsidize some of our wealthiest citizens. All for the public good, of course.

Suppose the Bush people met and concocted a strategy to get this bill passed, and it went something like this:

1: URGENCY URGENCY URGENCY – everything must happen now. If we don’t act now, this crisis will only get worse.
2: Darth Vader goes down to capitol hill to emphasize URGENCY. It’s only the second time his lying honorable self has been down there, the first time to tell lies about Iraq.
3. Emphasize that everyone agrees in principle on what must be done. There is no debate about that.
4. Throw some morsels to opponents to give them strategic cover for their votes – limits on executive pay, oversight committees, that sort of thing. Focus the debate on trifling side issues.
5. Have John McCain threaten to cancel the forthcoming debates because of the URGENCY of the situation.
6. Give Democrats more strategic cover, allowing them to outsmart McCain by coming to agreement in time to thwart his plan to thwart the debates.
7. Salute the spirit of bipartisanship that results in a colossal screwing of the American public.

Politics is not random, and the events we are witnessing occurring by happenstance. The enemies here, the people against whom all of this action is directed, are recalcitrant Democratic and Republican legislators who want to take it slow and be cautious, and, of course, the American people. In the end we will get a very bad bill, and another huge wealth transfer to our wealthy classes. Like Iraq and the Patriot Bill before, it will all have been done so fast that it will be law before we have a chance to think about it.

That’s how politics works. It’s how very smart people manage to get what they want, again and again and again, and why we are wrong to place our hopes in Democrats. They do not stand for the common good or the common man. They are merely the vessel in which false hope resides.