Sunday, August 19, 2012

Brick TeeVee's Privatizing Ryan Special!


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PRIVATIZING RYAN SPECIAL! We must begin with this JULIAN ASSANGE UPDATE: Start with DN on Thursday Ecuador Grants Julian Assange Asylum; U.S. Seen as "Hidden Hand" Behind U.K. Threat to Raid Embassy with Ben Griffin from Veterans for Peace UK and Assange attorney Michael Ratner@justleft Michael Ratner@theccr who explained "I think it’s clear that Julian Assange cannot get a fair trial in the United States. Not only are there calls for his lynching, essentially, where the vice president, Biden, has called him akin to a high-tech terrorist, but you understand what has happened to Bradley Manning the minute they got their hands on him in the United States—essentially an underground solitary prison, stripped. The U.N. rapporteur has called it cruel and inhuman treatment, akin to torture, and said it was likely torture. This is what Julian Assange would be facing. In addition, the Espionage Act itself is a political statute that is used to go after free speech. That’s what it was—that’s what it was designed for in the First World War. That’s what it does. And that’s why they want to get Julian Assange. They don’t like his message. They want to kill the messenger. Rather than do that, they should be looking at their own crimes and going after the people who have committed crimes. So the Ecuadorean ambassador is absolutely—or the Ecuadorean minister, absolutely correct. He has a right to asylum under the refugee convention, and he will not get a fair trial in the United States.". For more Ratner go to "Back Off": Assange Attorney Michael Ratner Urges U.K., U.S. to Respect Asylum Decision, Int’l Law.
Next we go to El Pias Garzón: "We will go to international court if UK blocks Assange exit" Judge Baltasar Garzón, who is leading Julian Assange’s legal team, announced Thursday that he will go before the International Court of Justice at The Hague if Britain refuses to allow the WikiLeaks founder to travel to Ecuador, the country that granted him asylum. In an interview after Ecuador had announced that it was approving Assange’s request for diplomatic asylum, the former High Court judge criticized the show of force and "threats of invading" the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where his client has been holed up since June 19. "Of course they can’t do that," he said. "They have to comply with diplomatic and legal obligations under the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and respect the sovereignty of a country that has granted asylum. "If Britain doesn’t comply with its obligations, we will go before International Court of Justice to demand that Britain complies with its obligations because there is a person who runs the risk of being persecuted politically," Garzón said. ..... Britain has said that that it won’t allow Assange out of the country unless his destination is Sweden. "We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the United Kingdom, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so. The United Kingdom does not recognize the principle of diplomatic asylum," said William Hague, the foreign secretary.
From the Institute for Public Accuracy ROBERT NAIMAN of justforeignpolicy.org explains "Three Basic Questions" the Media Should be Asking in Assange Asylum Case "As Americans who appealed to Ecuador to grant Julian Assange’s request for political asylum from the threat of U.S. persecution, we are delighted with the decision by Ecuador to grant Assange asylum. But there are three questions the media should be asking.
"The UK is now saying that it does not respect diplomatic asylum and has threatened to raid Ecuador’s embassy, which would be a grave breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The UK threat to violate international law is particularly extreme when one considers that these three basic questions have never been answered:
  • 1) why Sweden won’t agree to question Assange in the UK;
  • 2) why Sweden won’t promise not to extradite Assange to the United States if he voluntarily goes to Sweden;
  • 3) why the UK won’t promise to oppose an extradition request from the U.S. to Sweden if Assange voluntarily goes to Sweden."
COLEEN ROWLEY said today: "The entire U.S. Government’s fixation with secrecy that has led to over-classification of 92 million documents last year, the 'leak' frenzy that is driving the espionage prosecutions of so many former CIA, NSA and other government whistleblowers — also driving thousands of unnecessary polygraphs of government employees — is simply a gross over-reaction along with the UK threat today to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy to capture Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and thus deny his asylum."
At OpEdNews Ruth Hall asks Will Britain's Declaration of War Against International Law Backfire? Will British Embassies Be Stormed? If Britain acts on a local statute overturning international diplomatic law, Britain will have a tough time convincing other nations not to imitate its footsteps. By following through with the threat to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy and arrest Julian Assange, Britain would effectively be waiving any objection to Vladimir Puttin, Hu Jintao and Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado storming the British Embassies in Russia, China and Ecuador and arresting whomever they felt like arresting. While international law no more allows these countries to do that than it allows the U.K. police to raid the Ecuadorian Embassy, these countries could all pass quickie laws or write executive orders giving them as much legal authority to do these acts as the U.K. law gives to the U.K. police to conduct their international crime. Imagine hundreds of countries around the world retaliating and pointing to Britain's precedent for authority. Britain could raid the Ecuadorian Embassy on Thursday and find itself in total chaos on Friday. Britain's little local law does not have the ability to override international law regarding the sovereignty of embassy property. To storm the Ecuadorian embassy is not just an act of war and terrorism against the Government of Ecuador. It is also an act of war and terrorism against the world, thereby waiving any right of Britain to object to retaliation from any country, anywhere. Britain better hope any countries so retaliating don't have the death penalty for acts of war and terrorism. Once Britain opens the barn door, it can no longer claim its protection. Why would the Government of the U.K. risk the freedom and lives of its personnel around the world to break international law in apprehending a man who has not been charged with any crime, but who is just wanted for questioning regarding a broken condom? Who or what is running the Government of Britain, anyway? The only answer that makes sense is that Britain is bowing down to the country with the most weapons in the world: the United States. The leaders of Britain are apparently willing to risk British lives to kiss Barack Obama's behind. ..... So what do we in the United States do? Gee, there is an election coming up. If people continue to vote for the Democrats and Republicans, they will continue to get the same wars, lies and cuts in social programs that they have been getting for decades from the Democrats and Republicans. There are choices but a united vote against the Democratic/Republican lies would go a lot further than a split/losing vote. The Ministry of Truth is here and Obama runs it. (Remember, Romney also opposes truth.) Report the news and lose your freedom. Is this the world you want? Are you willing to stand up against the loss of your right to know? If you don't stand up now, pretty soon it will be too late. THIS JUST IN from theage.com.au Aug 19 'No' to diplomatic asylum for Assange THE United States says it does not believe in ''diplomatic asylum'' after Ecuador offered to let WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden on sexual assault allegations, stay indefinitely in its London embassy. An emergency meeting of the Organisation of American States has voted 23 to three in favour of a resolution proposed by Ecuador to convene a meeting of OAS foreign ministers this Friday at its Washington headquarters to discuss the standoff with Britain over Assange. The US, Canada, and Trinidad and Tobago voted against the resolution. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said Assange would remain in Quito's embassy as long as Britain refused to give him safe passage out. ''Mr Assange can stay indefinitely in our embassy,'' Mr Correa said. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Sweden would ''wait and see what happens''. Under a 1954 agreement, the OAS agreed to allow asylum in diplomatic missions for ''persons being sought for political reasons'', although not individuals indicted for ''common offences''. In a statement, the State Department said the US was ''not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognise the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law''. ''We believe this is a bilateral issue between Ecuador and the United Kingdom and that the OAS has no role to play in this matter,'' it said..... Washington has said it has no intention of ''persecuting'' Assange. While the US did not sign or ratify the 1954 convention, it has often used the safety of its embassies to protect activists. In May, Chinese human rights campaigner Chen Guangcheng fled to the US embassy in Beijing after evading house arrest. A WikiLeaks tweet said Assange would give a live statement today (2pm London time) at the embassy. AFP Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes at globalresearch.ca Ecuador President: "We Are Not A Colony" The once law-abiding British government had no shame in announcing that it would violate the Vienna Convention and assault the Ecuadorean Embassy, just as the Islamic students in the 1979 Khomeini Revolution in Iran took over the US Embassy and held the diplomatic staff captive. Pushed by their Washington overlords, the Brits have resorted to the tactics of a pariah state. Maybe we should be worried about British nuclear weapons. Let’s be clear, Assange is not a fugitive from justice. He has not been charged with any crime in any country. He has not raped any women. There are no indictments pending in any court, and as no charges have been brought against him, there is no validity to the Swedish extradition request. It is not normal for people to be extradited for questioning, especially when, as in Assange’s case, he expressed his complete cooperation with being questioned a second time by Swedish officials in London. What is this all about? ..... The Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino announced that Ecuador granted Assange asylum because "there are indications to presume that there could be political persecution." In the US, Patino acknowledged, Assange would not get a fair trial and could face the death penalty in a trumped up case. The US Puppet State of Great (sic) Britain announced that Assange would not be permitted to leave Britain. So much for the British government’s defense of law and human rights. If the British do not invade the Ecuadorean Embassy and drag Assange out dead or in chains, the British position is that Assange will live out his life inside the London Embassy of Ecuador. According to the New York Times, Assange’s asylum leaves him "with protection from arrest only on Ecuadorean territory (which includes the embassy). To leave the embassy for Ecuador, he would need cooperation that Britain has said it will not offer." When it comes to Washington’s money or behaving honorably in accordance with international law, the British government comes down on the side of money. The Anglo-American world, which pretends to be the moral face of humanity has now revealed for all to see that under the mask is the face of the Gestapo. JPMORGAN UPDATE: In HuffPoAOL Bonnie Kavoussi reports on our favorite classic sociopath Jamie Dimon: 'It's A Free. Fucking. Country.' Jamie Dimon wants you to remember what made this country great. The JPMorgan Chase CEO insisted in a New York magazine interview, published on Monday, that people should not blame big banks for the financial crisis. When asked him about his consistent defense of Wall Street and criticism of financial rules, Dimon pushed back, saying he considered himself more "an outspoken defender of the truth." "This is not the Soviet Union," he continued. "This is the United States of America. That's what I remember. Guess what.... It's a free. Fucking. Country." Since the financial crisis, Dimon has embraced his role as defender of Wall Street. Earlier this month, he said the larger problem surrounded scapegoating and finger-pointing, rather than systemic problems in his industry. Haha! Go watch the VIDEO of "Jamie Dimon's Anti-regulation Quotes" at the link! LIBOR UPDATE: The Telegraph Staff explains the latest in the Libor scandal: Lloyds Banking Group summoned by US regulators Florida attorney general Pam Bondi's office told the International Business Times that it was "actively reviewing the Libor matter" and had subpoenaed a total of 14 banks, including Lloyds banking Group. A spokesman for Lloyds said: “As with many others in the sector, the Group is assisting various regulators in their ongoing investigations into the setting of the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR). Until these investigations are completed, it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further.” Pressure on the banking sector over the Libor-rigging scandal intensified this week after it emerged that seven other banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, have been issued with subpoenas in the US. Ralph Silva, a banking analyst at SRN, said: "This is actually a bit surprising. We expected to hear more banks being served with Libor subpoenas, but we didn’t expect to see them all happen at the same time. "It’s quite clear that over the past six months [regulators] have put a tremendous amount of resources into this, and it looks like all those investigations are coming to a head right about now." MFGLOBAL UPDATE: Corzine walks! Zerohedges's Tyler Durden reports Jon Corzine Will Not Only Not Face Prosectuion, But May Be Launching A Hedge Fund Imminently In what should be the biggst non-news of the day, the NYT is reporting that not only will Jon Corzine not face any criminal prosecution for vaporizing hundreds of millions in client money (which subsequently condensed in the JPM middle office), but will in fact be launching ... wait for it... a hedge fund. "A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives. After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case." And algos... And glitches... And faulty software installs... And some junior person who has long since left the company... and, and, and, lots and lots of passive voice... Because in the Banana republic of the crave, no bundles can ever go to jail, no matter how heinous the crime, which is not to say other places are better: in Thailand you you shoot your secretary in the stomach during dinner with an Uzi and you don't even pay a $600 fine. But at least it puts things in perspective. So what is next in store for this former man of power? "Mr. Corzine, in a bid to rebuild his image and engage his passion for trading, is weighing whether to start a hedge fund, according to people with knowledge of his plans. He is currently trading with his family’s wealth. If he is successful as a hedge fund manager, it would be the latest career comeback for a man who was ousted from both the top seat at Goldman Sachs and the New Jersey governor’s mansion." So will Jon will be buying Italian bonds? We don't know. Ask him yourself. Our own msgeaux notices that Canceling this expenditure would cover SS for quite a while.
    F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for Beginners Catherine, News & Commentary on August 11, 2012 by a Solari Report Subscriber The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is the most expensive weapons program in US Defense Department history, costing almost 1.5 trillion dollars for around 2500 aircraft. The details I am examining here are entirely based on articles I have read in the media and not on experience. My interest on this issue stems entirely from my curiosity about one of the biggest engineering contracts of all time.
GO view this chart! PRIVATIZING RYAN We go to BTV's ljm for our first salvos! As smackdowns go, when it comes to Paul Ryan picking Ayn Rand as an idol, this posting is the most complete smackdown of Ayn Rand I could ever imagine could be written. It's probably worth stashing somewhere for argument points if the subject comes up and it totally goes with every discussion we've had about psychopaths. Ayn Rand admired psychopaths. Mark Ames: Paul Ryan’s Guru Ayn Rand Worshipped a Serial Killer Who Kidnapped and Dismembered Little Girls Yves here. There is one way that Mark Ames' underlying post needs a smidge of updating. Sadly, the technocratic elites in Europe are now firmly trying to inflict bone-crushing austerity on ordinary workers, despite visible evidence of its failure (debt to GDP ratios keep rising as the economies contract) and widespread public opposition. There the rationale is a bizarre combination of "punish the borrowers" when countries like Ireland and Spain were held up as poster children of economic success until the bust, and a need to hide the fact that what looks like rescues of the PIIGS is in fact bailouts of French and German banks. To celebrate today’s announcement that Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan will in a few months' time be a heartbeat from the presidency—and to honor this special moment, marking the final syphilitic pus-spasms of America's decline and fall–we are reposting for your edification Mark Ames' 2010 article about the man behind the Rand: Ayn Rand's unrequited adoration of a notorious serial killer, William Edward Hickman. Yes, Vice President-to-be Paul Ryan owes his entire "moral" worldview to a lowly groupie of serial killers, a 1920's prototype of today's "Joker" wannabees. Yes folks, in a few months' time Americans will finally be able to stand up and declare: "We are all serial-killer groupies now." More ljm Ryan is the Koch brothers boy. Adele M. Stan, Alternet Romney's Veep Pick: Paul Ryan, Koch Ally and 'Right-Wing Social Engineer' It's official: The Republican Party is now officially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers' political enterprise. How else to explain Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's pick of Rep. Paul Ryan, Wis., as his running mate. .... In case anyone should miss the point that Ryan is a very Kochy guy, Romney did his big reveal of running-mate Ryan this morning aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin, a decommisioned ship docked in the all-important swing state of Virginia. However important Virginia is to the electoral math, Wisconsin is a highly symbolic icon for the Tea Party. It's not only Ryan's home state; it's the poster state of right-wing triumph, the place where Gov. Scott Walker successfully fended off a recall attempt made by progressives in response to a bill he rammed through the state legislature that all but ended collective bargaining for the state's public employees. Much of the credit for Wisconsin's right turn goes to Americans For Prosperity, which boasts a particularly aggressive Wisconsin chapter, which began building a network of activists there in 2005. Ryan's association with the group goes back almost that far. .... It's not just Ryan. Rand is front and center with Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and the tea party. The second "John Galt" film is due to be released in December. The first one was a film for the tea partiers. Koch brothers have Paul Ryan's back Bob King, Politico Critics of the Koch brothers should have a field day with Rep. Paul Ryan on the GOP ticket: They've been one of his biggest campaign contributors. Koch Industries ranks as the Wisconsin Republican's sixth-largest source of campaign money throughout his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which says the company's PAC and affiliated individuals have given him a total of $65,500 in donations. That also ranks Koch as Ryan's biggest energy-related donor, based on the center's tally. It says energy- and natural resources-related contributors have given Ryan a total of $432,181 during his career, including $244,250 from the oil and gas industries. Wait! There's more! AYN RYAN? We go to Monitor correspondent Husna Haq who explains in her Chapter&Verse blog Paul Ryan does an about-face on Ayn Rand .... Paul Ryan, the boyish young representative from Wisconsin who is injecting Romney’s presidential bid with fresh conservatism, is an ardent Randian who often cites Rand as his inspiration for entering public service and the philosophical basis for his economic vision for America. "[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said in a 2005 speech to the Rand-devoted Atlas Society. "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are," he told the group, adding, "It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff." In fact, two years earlier Ryan told the Weekly Standard, "I give out 'Atlas Shrugged' as Christmas presents." .... .... But Ryan took his Randian devotion further, using it as the inspiration for his "Path to Prosperity," his controversial austere budget plan that calls for ending Medicare as a mandate and replacing it with a voucher system. .... ... "What’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now," Ryan said in a series of videos posted to Facebook in 2009. "I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault." Now here’s the funny thing. After years of praising Rand, assigning Rand readings to subordinates, and gifting friends and colleagues “Atlas Shrugged” for Christmas, Ryan has recently taken pains to distance himself from the conservative matriarch. The congressman from Wisconsin characterized his Rand-devotion as “urban legend” in a recent interview in the National Review. In fact, his romance with Rand was nothing more than a youthful dalliance, Ryan told the National Review. "I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them," he said. "…[but] I reject her philosophy." Why the sudden about-face? The atheist Rand, as the New Yorker pointed out in a recent piece, "is something of a philosophical wedge issue on the right, dividing religious conservatives from free market libertarians." As such, continued the piece, "Ryan’s sidestep from Rand was politically essential. As a Mormon, the last thing Romney needs is to alienate the Christian Right further by putting an acolyte of an atheist on the ticket." And let’s not forget the sting of social Darwinism, a no-no in these tough economic times. As the LA Times suggests, "[B]y the time he introduced his austere budget plan this year… Ryan was being depicted as a harsh absolutist. He did not need to be tied too closely to Rand and her sink-or-swim imperatives." .... Ryan told the Review. "It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview." And so, when push comes to shove, Ryan has shrugged off Ayn Rand. The only thing more insightful than Ryan’s devotion to Rand, it turns out, is his rejection of her. In an op-ed at the NYT David Stockman explains Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse. ..... Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade. A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut. ..... In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons. You might want to check out Romney campaign lied in response to Ryan insider trading story at examiner.com as well. Charlie Pierce at Esquire lays it all out in Paul Ryan: Murderer of Opportunity, Political Coward, Candidate for Vice President of the United States Leave it to Willard Romney, international man of principle, to get himself bullied into being bold and independent. Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead. .... Which is not to say this isn't a shrewd move. In one great swoop, Willard has recaptured a good portion of the elite political media, which has been crushing on Ryan's "courage" to take on the "tough choices" — none of which, it should be pointed out, likely will affect Ryan, who's already got himself an education out of the social safety net he now intends to shred, and certainly will never affect the haircut at the top of the ticket, or his great-grandchildren, for all that — and the coverage of the pick in the middle of the night showed that many of our finer chattering heads are already practicing tying the stem of the cherry with their tongues in preparation for covering the new Republican ticket. ...... Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare. In the lengthy — and now, very prescient — profile of Ryan that ran in The New Yorker this week, Ryan Lizza pinned him down on this very point. Ryan responded in fluent Weaselspeak....[....] The fact is that his "budget" will demolish federal spending on those very things, either directly, or by sending the deficit off in the direction of Alpha Centauri. But the quote illustrates something else about Paul Ryan: get him out of his comfort zone of being thought an intellectual by the likes of Louie Gohmert, and of being thought of as a bold thinker by half the buffet-grazers in the Beltway media, and he really is quite the political coward. (In this way, he is a perfect match for the man who picked him.) He does not have the raw balls to explain to the country that, no, he does not believe in government — not the federal government, anyway, and not as it was originally conceived, as the fundamental expression of a political commonwealth. ..... Yes, Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver, has done very well by the federal government that he seeks to dismantle. Come to think of it, so has Willard Romney, although we may never know exactly how well he's done by it. It turns out this is a match made in heaven, after all. Of course, it still could be that they're just trying to give poor Paul Krugman a stroke. Speaking of being on the Fed's dole while railing against it The Rude Pundit points out Paul Ryan's Family Is Rich Because of the Federal Government (Updated): ....The Ryan Incorporated Central webpage on the company's history says, "By the 1940's the Company had become a full-service grading contractor serving both private industrial and public transportation customers, including some of the original work at what would become O'Hare Airport." But on the website for Ryan Incorporated Southern, headquartered in Florida (there are various divisions of Ryan and, yes, still from the company founded by his great-grandfather that's run by Ryan's cousins), it's a bit more explicit: "The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System was completed 60 years later, was mostly Highway construction." And whose money built the interstate highway system? That'd be ours. In other words, you know how Barack Obama talked about how your business didn't build the roads that allow you to do business? Well, if you are in the Midwest, chances are that Paul Ryan's family did build some of the roads. And they got to be amazingly successful because the federal government gave them six decades of contracts and millions upon millions of dollars to build them. Are we clear here? We're talking about Paul Ryan, who, with his wife, is worth as much as $7.7 million and "much of the Ryans' wealth is in the form of trusts and inheritances." For Rep. Ryan, those trusts and inheritances are a result of money that the federal government spent on infrastructure. You wanna go further? Here's a list of defense contracts from the 1990s that went to Ryan Incorporated in its various forms. One of them, from 1996, is worth $5.6 million and went to Ryan Incorporated Central. So, just to get this right, Paul Ryan and his family are beneficiaries of expanded government spending to improve infrastructure. They continue to benefit from government contracts, including state and local ones. That's Paul Ryan, whose budget would inevitably gut most infrastructure spending and who, with Mitt Romney, wants to shrink federal spending to the point where, if the federal government had felt that way throughout a good chunk of the 20th century, his family would not have made a dime and, well, then we would have never heard about Paul Ryan. That's the depth of hypocrisy in play here..... And at Rolling Stone Tom Morello: 'Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against' Last week, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, the Republican architect of Congress's radical right-wing budget plan, as his running mate. Ryan has previously cited Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. Rage guitarist Tom Morello responds in this exclusive op-ed. Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine. Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage. I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings! Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions. ..... My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier. Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign – and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That's one possibility. But I'm not betting on it. Here's Robert Reich on why the Ryan pick is significant...it's all about the base. The Ryan Choice Ryan is not a firebrand. He’s not smarmy. He doesn’t ooze contempt for opponents or ridicule those who disagree with him. In style and tone, he doesn’t even sound like an ideologue – until you listen to what he has to say. It’s here — in Ryan’s views and policy judgments — we find the true ideologue. More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog. Ryan’s views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. ....... In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts proposed by Ryan would come from low-income programs. The Ryan plan would also turn Medicare into vouchers whose value won’t possibly keep up with rising health-care costs – thereby shifting those costs on to seniors. At the same time, Ryan would provide a substantial tax cut to the very rich – who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation’s total income. Today’s 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together. Ryan’s views are pure social Darwinism. As William Graham Sumner, the progenitor of social Darwinism in America, put it in the 1880s: “Civilization has a simple choice.” It’s either “liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest” or “not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.” Is this Mitt Romney’s view as well? Some believe Romney chose Ryan solely in order to drum up enthusiasm on the right. .... So in picking Ryan, Romney is motivating his rightwing base to get to the polls, and pull everyone else they can along with them. But there’s reason to believe Romney also agrees with Ryan’s social Darwinism. Romney accuses President Obama of creating an “entitlement society” and thinks government shouldn’t help distressed homeowners but instead let the market “hit the bottom.” And although Romney has carefully avoided specifics in his own economic plan, he has said he’s “very supportive” of Ryan’s budget plan. “It’s a bold and exciting effort, an excellent piece of work, very much needed … very consistent with what I put out earlier.” ..... At the same time, Romney wants to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, reduce corporate income taxes, and eliminate the estate tax. ..... We designed regulations to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. We taxed the rich and invested in public goods – public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health – that made us all better off. In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on our own in a competitive contest for survival. But choosing Ryan, Romney has raised for the nation the starkest of choices: Do we want to return to that earlier time, or are we willing and able to move forward — toward a democracy and an economy that works for us all? With the GOPher convention less than a fortnight away we also give Robert Reich our Last Word at CommonDreams.org Erasing W As Bill Clinton is resurrected by the Democrats, George W. Bush is being erased by the GOP — as if an entire eight years of American history hadn’t happened. While Bill Clinton stumps for Obama, Romney has gone out of his way not to mention the name of the president who came after Clinton and before Obama. Clinton will have a starring role at the Democratic National Convention. George W. Bush won’t even be at the Republican one – the first time a national party has not given the stage at its convention to its most recent occupant of the Oval Office who successfully ran for reelection. The GOP is counting on America’s notoriously short-term memory to blot out the last time the nation put a Republican into the Oval Office, on the reasonable assumption that such a memory might cause voters to avoid making the same mistake twice. As whoever-it-was once said, “fool me once …” (and then mangled the rest). Republicans want to obliterate any trace of the administration that told America there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and led us into a devastating war; turned a $5 trillion projected budget surplus into a $6 trillion deficit; gave the largest tax cut in a generation to the richest Americans in history; handed out a mountain of corporate welfare to the oil and gas industry, pharmaceutical companies, and military contractors like Halliburton (uniquely benefiting the vice president); whose officials turned a blind eye to Wall Street shenanigans that led to the worst financial calamity since the Great Crash of 1929 and then persuaded Congress to bail out the Street with the largest taxpayer-funded giveaway of all time. Besides, the resemblances between George W. Bush and Mitt Romney are too close for comfort. Both were born into wealth, sons of prominent politicians who themselves ran for president; both are closely tied to the nation’s corporate and financial elites, and eager to do their bidding; both are socially awkward and, as candidates, tightly scripted for fear of saying something they shouldn’t; and both presented themselves to the nation devoid of any consistent policies or principles that might give some clue as to what they actually believe. They are both, in other words, unusually shallow, uncurious, two-dimensional men who ran or are running for the presidency for no clear reason other than to surpass their fathers or achieve the aims and ambitions of their wealthy patrons. Small wonder the Republican Party wants us to forget our last Republican president and his administration. By contrast, the Democrats have every reason for America to recall and celebrate the Clinton years. Thanks Bob for that sunny outlook! But what about the illegal killings of Americans by the O! Administration? Or the illegal wiretapping of every electronic communication in America? Or the continuing hounding of Assange by The Most Transparent Administration Ever™? Or the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership nobody knows anything about? As Steve Hynde put it so succinctly in the Agonist I will not, while I am Editor in Chief of The Agonist, make a statement of endorsement of any candidate on behalf of The Agonist, nor will I prevent any Agonist diarist from endorsing a candidate purely on their own behalf. However, entirely on my own behalf I have this to say: we're in a class war, pure and simple, and it isn't enough to use the language of that war, although it's a good start. To talk of the 1% as "them" against "us" without acknowledging that the multi-millionaire president and his multi-millionaire staff, or multi-millionaire Democratic lawmakers, are anything other than part of the "them" is to ignore the evidence before our very eyes. Chris Hedges is spot-on when he writes that "Liberals bow before a Democratic Party that ignores them and does the bidding of corporations" and that "The liberal class prefers comfort to confrontation. It will not challenge the decaying structures of the corporate state. It is intolerant within its ranks of those who do." We should and must change that kow-towing into a general cry of "non serviam", "I will not serve". Ditto all that from the Brick TeeVee Crew. Of course the Beltway Bubalas are much happier discussing already-agreed-upon talking points between stints at said Beltway Buffet. Let the Cage Matches begin! This Tapper gets O! stooge STEPHANIEE CUTTER up against Mitt's KEVIN MADDEN while FAKE SNOOZE gets BOB GIBBBS facing off against ED GUILLESPIE. Not to be upstaged Face the Bob goes with DICK DURBIN up against RUDY GHOULIANI plus State of the Candy snags CUTTER and GOPher dreg ERIC FEHRNSTROM. Meet the David goes with a guvnor cage match featuring Maryland's MARTY O'MALLEY versus Virginia's BOB MCDONNELL. Throw bricks at GROVER NORQUIST on Face the Bob and This Tapper and SICK SANATARIUM on State of Candy! Lots more to read, watch and listen to below including BOB KINCAID on Majority Report, Catherine Austin Fitts with MAX, Carl Mayer on with PBC and so much more! Click anything and be instantly smarter! Have a great Sunday and a great week!
BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!©
Democracy NOW!
Monday, August 13, 2012 Tuesday, August 14, 2012 Wednesday, August 15, 2012 Thursday, August 16, 2012 Friday, August 17, 2012 GRITtv »»» GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW Bill Moyers: Reclaiming Our Media Power (Video) Today, cable news has turned our elections themselves into unbalanced action adventures or worse, situation comedies. And public television shows, barring Bill Moyers' own, are barely keeping afloat - or keeping anyone awake A re-post from May 2011
BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!©
»»» NASCAR on ESPN It's the Pure Michigan 400 from the Michigan International Speedway! Coverage from Brooklyn MI begins at 12 pm etNOON et! »»» MLB Sunday TBS Dodgers @ Braves 1:35 pm et
»»» MLB Sunday Night ESPN Red Sox @ Yankees 8 pm et
»»» MLB Monday Night ESPN Giants @ Dodgers 10 pm et
»»» MLB Wednesday Night ESPN Yankees @ White Sox 8 pm et
BRICK TEEVEE ACTION!©
The 1st Amendment is Our Permit Our permit to occupy is The First Amendment. Quickly sign the following statement which will be delivered to mayors, police chiefs and major media across the country:
    Our permit to occupy public squares and parks is in The First Amendment, which affirms "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered those protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them. Those other societies don’t have a First Amendment. Yet Washington affirmed the universal right to assembly and protest. We do have a First Amendment. The force being used to clear nonviolent protesters from public squares in our country is unacceptable. It must stop.

STOP the ACHE Appalachian Community HEALTH EMERGENCY Advocating for government action and protection of the public from the health crisis in mountain top removal communi ties
    Lawmakers concerned about the health effects on humans from mountaintop removal coal mining set forth legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives today. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (OH), Louise Slaughter (NY), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA), John Yarmuth (KY), Lynn Woolsey (CA), Judy Chu (CA), Raúl Grijalva (AZ), James Moran (VA), Michael Honda (CA), John Conyers (MI), and Keith Ellison (MN) introduced the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act [H.R. 5959] which would place a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACHE coalition presently consists of participants from Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain Health and Heritage Association, and Christians for the Mountains. “We encourage you, if you’re concerned about mountaintop removal’s effect on your community’s health, to join us in making your voice heard,” said Allen Johnson, executive director of Christians for the Mountains. “Please contact us, learn about the issue, and take action to protect your community.”

Community-Wealth.org community-wealth.org a project of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity. Featuring Community Wealth Building in Action: The Cleveland Model Something important is happening in Cleveland. The Democracy Collaborative—the host of C-W.org—in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities—is helping to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. Increasingly, this model is being referred to nationally as The Cleveland Model. Initial planning is now underway to assist other cities in Ohio and nationwide to replicate and adapt this innovative approach to economic development, green job creation, and neighborhood stabilization. Find more many resources at Community-Wealth.org!
NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.com Declaration of Internet Freedom Tired of fighting bad bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA? Want to stand up against those who are trying to control what we do and say online? It's time for something different. A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce a Declaration of Internet Freedom, a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided. It's time to stop playing defense and start going on the offensive. The open Internet is central to people’s freedom to communicate, share, advocate and innovate in the 21st century. But powerful interests want to censor free speech, block the sharing of information, hinder innovation and control how Internet users get online. And all too often, people in power are making political decisions behind closed doors about how the Internet should operate — and they're doing this without the involvement of actual Internet users. The result: policies that could close down the open Internet and destroy our freedom to connect. It’s time for us to reclaim the Internet for its users. Take action now and sign the Declaration of Internet Freedom..
CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE American Majority Rejects Washington Austerity Consensus – And We Demand Media Coverage by Roger Hickey, President, Campaign for America's Future: No more silent majority. The Campaign for America’s Future is joining with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (whose Co-Director, Dean Baker blogs regularly about economic bias in the media) and with FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to monitor the media’s coverage and representation of the American Majority views as they go into covering the big deficit fight. But we want to enlist YOU too. Send us accounts of unbalanced coverage in the national media and in your local newspapers and television. Call up reporters, editors, assignment people and tell them when they are under-representing the views of the American Majority. We should have at least half the experts, pundits, quotes and real people represented in their coverage. In a debate as important as the one we are going into, we can’t allow the media to ignore the American Majority. Much more at www.ourfuture.org
MOVE TO AMEND! www.movetoamend.org SIGN HERE NOW! And check out more actions on the Move to Amend Calendar featuring David Cobb's Barnstorming Tour! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net GET INVOLVED! And Alan Grayson is running again in FL-8! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com
SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network UPDATE! Michael Ratner on ANTIWAR RADIO Michael Ratner May 2, 2012: Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses his article “Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy;” Manning’s quasi-public trial (which is open to observation, yet vital evidence and court documents are withheld from the media and public); why the NY Times is just as guilty of “aiding the enemy” as Manning and WikiLeaks; how President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made a fair trial impossible; and how you can support Bradley Manning in his time of need.
DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATIONHelp save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.


B R I C K T E E V E E
brick_teevee_test.jpg
image ©2006 arkysue
THEY report. YOU throw bricks. ©
Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com HERE!
The essential guide for watching government propaganda IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of April 21, 2012
AFGHANISTAN: 2,099 US Military Dead as of Aug 17, 2012
The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises
Considering Democracy: 8 Things to ask your Representative

  • This Week (ABC) hosted by Jake Tapper
    • Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter
    • Romney campaign senior adviser Kevin Madden
    • ROUNDTABLE: Senate Budget Committee member Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; House Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; former TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky; former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee; Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist; and Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel.


  • Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
    • Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
    • former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, R-N.Y.
    • Grover Norquist
    • Kim Barker of ProPublica
    • ROUNDTABLE: CBS Political Director John Dickerson, the Washington Post's Nia Malika-Henderson, plus Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse from the New York Times


  • 60 Minutes (CBS) Summer reruns....
    • The Case Against Lehman - Steve Kroft talks to the bank examiner whose investigation reveals the how and why of the spectacular financial collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bankruptcy that triggered the world financial crisis. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis are the producers.
    • The Archbishop of Dublin - The sex abuse crisis in the Irish Catholic Church has rocked one of the most Catholic countries in the world and turned the archbishop of Dublin into an outspoken critic of the Church. Bob Simon reports. Tom Anderson is the producer.


  • Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
    Microsoft, NBC News Dissolve MSNBC.com Joint Venture NBC is buying Microsoft's 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com. Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation general manager of MSN.com Bob Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com. "There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions," said Vivian Schiller, NBC News' chief digital officer. "This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better." Okay then.
    • Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD)
    • Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA)
    • Senior Obama re-election adviser David Axelrod
    • ROUNDTABLE: NBC’s Chuck Todd; Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor Kasim Reed; Republican nominee and Tea Party backed candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, Republican Ted Cruz; the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne; and the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan.


  • State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours. CNN National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta hosts
    • Romney Senior Adviser Eric Fehrnstrom
    • Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter
    • Former Senator and GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum
    • CNN Political Director Mark Preston and USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich


  • HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
    HEAD ON
    Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
    • FRONT PORCH FRIDAY!!!!! Pull up a chair and grab a cold one! Listen HERE (mp3) NOW! Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!


  • YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
    desi-n-bradmothra
    The Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen: 6 minutes of green news, politics, analysis & snarky comment! BOOKMARK greennews.bradblog.com NOW!
    'Green News Report' - August 16, 2012 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama stumps for clean energy, while Romney promotes...coal; Wildfires rage across the West; Nuclear reactor in hot water; PLUS: Mutant butterflies in Japan. This may not end well... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
    • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): US CO2 emissions drop to 20-yr low (thanks to natural gas); KY to export coal to India; Rep. Ryan denies he lobbied for stimulus; Dallas to spray after West Nile virus deaths; Meet the new Ocean Health Index; Toilet Of The Future runs on sun ... PLUS: GOP 'Agenda 21' conspiracy theory, now offially in GOP platform ... and much, MUCH more! ...
    • BRADBLOG UPDATE: New Nationwide Study of Election Fraud Since 2000 Finds Just 10 Cases of In-Person Voter Fraud ... But now a major new nationwide analysis by News21 of all known cases of election fraud in the U.S. since 2000 underscores our years of accurate and detailed reporting once again...
    • BRADBLOG UPDATE: JUDGE UPHOLDS STATE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF GOP PHOTO ID VOTING RESTRICTIONS IN PA A state court has upheld the state constitutionality of the new Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction law in Pennsylvania which critics say may imperil the votes of more than a million legally registered voters in the Keystone State this November. .... We're still reviewing the opinion of Judge Simpson, who is a Republican, and will have a more detailed analysis of the specifics of his ruling in the coming days. Plaintiffs have already vowed to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court, where four votes will be needed to overturn the Commonwealth Court's ruling. ........
    • GUEST POST! Earnest A. Canning The Myth of GOP 'Fiscal Responsibility' and Paul Ryan as 'Fiscal Conservative' No doubt during this election cycle, like every election cycle over the past forty years, we'll hear from the GOP about "tax and spend" Democrats. Even though it doesn't detail how every Republican since Reagan has combined massive, unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthy with runaway, unpaid-for military spending --- creating a great excuse to destroy the New Deal safety net, in order to slash their runaway deficit-spending --- this chart is, nonetheless rather revealing...
    • Visit BradBlog.com to see who counts yer votes! Now up to 9,200+ Election Protection posts! Find out who's counting your votes and how at ElectionIntegrity.org too.


  • The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
    pbc show
    Listen at PeterBCollins.com!
    The Peter B. Collins Show covers American news and politics from the Left Coast. Veteran talk radio personality Peter B. Collins, based in San Francisco, delivers fresh interviews, commentary and analysis on a range of important topics, with views and voices you don’t often find in the corporate media.
    Holiday Break and Website Changes
      To my valued listeners: We are making some changes to the website and our terms, effective in January. We will continue to offer free podcasts–my new daily news and commentary. Our in-depth interviews will be available for $1 per episode, or to subscribers who pay $5 per month or more. Loyal listeners who simply can’t afford it should send an email to peter@peterbcollins.com, as we will be offering a limited number of scholarships to our friends who are hurting during these tough times. More information will be posted as we complete the revisions. I’m grateful to each of you for listening and supporting this work, and hope that the new model will enable us to keep it going well into the future. All the best, -pbc
    • PBC Standard Podcast August 13, 2012 Boiling Frogs: Journalist Rick Rozoff on NATO, Syria and More
    • PBC Standard Podcast August 14, 2012 Attorney Carl Mayer and Plaintiff Tangerine Bolen Fight Obama’s Lawyers Over NDAA Detention; Prof. David Coates of Wake Forest on the Domestic Political “Wars” that Drown Out the Foreign Wars
    • PBC Standard Podcast August 17, 2012 Boiling Frogs: Ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern on Obama’s Drones, Targeted Killings, Cyberwarfare and more


  • Ring of Fire Radio
    rofheader
    Find us at http://ringoffireradio.com and http://goleft.tv/ hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder
    Ring of Fire Radio - GoLeft TV - Robert F. Kennedy, Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder - Politics, Commentary, and News.
    This week on Ring of Fire August 17, 2012
    • Author Nancy Cohen will be here to discuss the ongoing war against women that the GOP is still waging.
    • Leadership expert Kathleen Schafer will discuss the leadership deficit that is plaguing our political system.
    • Truthout investigative journalist Mike Ludwig will tell us about the earthquakes and toxic waste that are coming from Ohio’s fracking boom.
    • Author Les Leopold will tell us how to fix our corrupt banking system in America.
    • And best-selling author and president of Libertas, LLC Cliff Schecter will be joining us to discuss this week’s biggest news stories.
    • VIDEO! THE HISTORY OF CORPORATE CORRUPTION & FRAUD with Robert Kennedy Jr & Mike Papantonio “Call us if you have a personal story about Fraud on Taxpayers or False Claims for Payment made by Corportations at 1-866-389-FIRE (3473)or contact us by email at info@ringoffireradio.com if you have evidence of fraud that robbed taxpayer dollars. If our government is paying too much due to fraud by a corporation, Ring of Fire wants to do a story on it.”
    • VIDEO! Papantonio: Republican Judicial Hacks Help Suppress Voters Mike Papantonio talks about how the Republican-controlled judiciary in our country is helping the GOP with their voter suppression tactics.
    Support Those Who Support Progressive Media! 2011 has certainly been a great year for Ring of Fire, and we’ve had some great sponsors that have helped support the show throughout the year. We wanted to take the time to personally thank each and every one of them, and we encourage all of our listeners to take the time to support those who have support us.
    • Join our blog at www.ringoffireradio.com. You can now SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST by clicking on the "Podcast" tab at the top of the Ring of Fire blog. Please help support progressive radio by signing up!
    Ring of Fire Radio Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts 8-11 et Sunday evenings on Chicago's Progressive Talk WCPT AM & FM and 4 pm et on Sirius/XM 167 featuring The PAP Attack! "We’ll bring you the stories that the mainstream media didn’t feel like reporting this week."


  • Majority Report with Sam Seder Streaming LIVE weekdays 11:30 am et @ Majority.fm!

    • August 13, 2012 A Debate on Paul Ryan and Much More
    • August 14, 2012 Bob Kincaid on Mountain Top Removal
    • August 15, 2012 Sam Does News
    • Aug 16, 2012 Ecuador and the UK Square Off On Assange and From the Archives an Interview With the Late David Rakoff
    • Aug 17, 2012 Cliff Schecter, News and Comedian Hari Kondablu With Movie Picks
    • MORE Podcast Interviews at Majority.fm!


  • On the Edge with Max Keiser Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
    maxheaderhiyall
    "HI Y'ALL! Tell the people! Tell the people!"
    WHO IS MAX KEISER? Max Keiser is a financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor and filmmaker. He is the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) the first Prediction Market. Max Keiser co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London. He also produces and presents documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s "People & Power" series. Max Keiser started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is the creator of KarmaBanque a site that enables activists to challenge corporate power.
    • VISIT PirateMyFilm.com!!! Crowd Funding for Pirates!
    • NEW! MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV PLUS here is Max Keiser’s official Facebook page And here is the official Keiser Report page
    The official Facebook pages for Max Keiser & Keiser Report STACY SUMMARY: For once and for all, here are our real Facebook pages, the other ones are fake. But if you feel like chatting to the fake ones, by all means, go ahead. Max Keiser & Keiser Report PLUS Stacey Herbert
    The “Keiser Report” has been begging europe to do this for years by maxkeiser READ European Banks Preparing To Boycott Big Three Rating Agencies (zerohedge.com)
    CNBC’s Admission, yes: Silver market is manipulated (skip to 9:30) by maxkeiser READ CNBC Host States Silver Manipulation is a Fact, NOT a Conspiracy! sliverdoctors.com with VIDEO! Once Barclays pointed the finger at BoE as colluding on Libor manipulation (instead of denying it), the roof got ripped off decades of blatant manipulation in these markets. The dollar and U.S. bonds have been protected with Fed interference and outright manipulation; same thing in the UK. And to bolster the price for sovereign bonds, the price of Gold and Silver has been manipulated down alongside the upside price movements of worthless paper. Ratings at CNBC have been plummeting this year – as the audience is way ahead of their talking heads on these points. When CNBC admits that markets, especially silver, are rigged, the few remaining viewers they have collectively sigh; ‘I heard that on Keiser Report three years ago.’ READ CNBC: Silver and Financial Markets Are Manipulated, But So What? Jesse's Crossroads Cafe
    Catherine Austin Fitts Commentary on Financial Holocaust
    • KEISER REPORT [KR327] Keiser Report: Jamievilles, Cramdowns and the Cantillon Effect with Azizonomics.com We discuss Jamie-villes in Ohio, suicide dummies in Vegas and truckloads of evidence piling up outside the Justice Department and yet no fraud can be spotted. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to John Aziz of Azizonomics.com about rehypothecation and deal flow in the City of London, the Cantillon effect and the cram down.
    • KEISER REPORT [KR328] Keiser Report: Frankenmarkets and Austrian Economics In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss unknown people whose solvency is uncertain operating faster than the speed of light in the “franken-market” and Max Keiser asks, “what if a high frequency trading algo bot shrugged?” In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Sandeep Jaitly of feketeresearch.com about the real Austrian economics of Carl Menger versus the fake Austrian economics of Ludwig von Mises. They also discuss how Ben Bernanke’s confusion about what money, how central banks are leading us into a second dark age and gold as the ultimate exinguisher of credit. Max and Sandeep also highlight the reason why rehypothecation in London is fraud. And, finally, Max hopes Lew Rockwell watches and learns.
    • ON THE EDGE [OTE172] On the Edge with JS Kim
    • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [Tam-1248] The Truth About That Dunkin’ Donuts Two For One Download show HERE (mp3)
    • Donate to ResonanceFM here!


  • ANTIWAR RADIO with Scott Horton
    antiwarradio.jpg LIVE (9-11am Pacific, 12pm - 2pm Eastern) Plenty of archives too!
    Listen at antiwar.com/radio
    Pepe Escobar June 30, 2012: Globetrotting journalist Pepe Escobar discusses his article “Syria and Turkey’s Phantom War;” Turkey’s violation of Syrian airspace in a purposeful, measured provocation and test of Syria’s defenses; the near-invocation of NATO Article 5 and a wider war (an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all); looking for ways to bypass the UN on Syria, since China and Russia won’t let an interventionist resolution pass the Security Council; grand plans for NATO expansion in the official “Assured Security, Dynamic Engagement” plan; counterrevolutions in the Middle East and South America, as the US looks to rebuild its portfolio of client states; and how Qatar has become the new superpower in the Middle East, surpassing even Saudi Arabia.
    SCOTT HORTON July 5, 2012: Scott says goodbye to Antiwar.com. Scott Horton is the former host of Antiwar Radio. Visit his blog Stress. Due to budget cuts Scott lost his gig at AntiWarRadio.com! Whoa! See ScottHortonShow.com for archives! Send emails to Scott at scotthorton.org to help Scott keep his podcast going!
    • Many more interviews at Antiwar Radio!


  • fauxnews
    • Robert Gibbs, Obama Campaign Senior Adviser
    • Ed Gillespie, Senior Adviser to the Romney campaign

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