All Americans

Also read this: Obama -- Killing Us Softly With His Words ...

The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution

No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...

The Presidential Oath of Office

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

ACLU to Obama: ‘Entire world is not a war zone’

By Daniel Tencer~Raw Story

The American Civil Liberties Union has sent a strongly-worded letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to end an alleged program that allows ‘targeted killings’ of terror suspects outside of war zones.

In the letter (PDF), the civil liberties group argues that the alleged program — which, according to news reports, is now targeting at least one US citizen — is unlawful and unconstitutional, and could set a dangerous precedent leading to foreign governments killing people on US soil.

Frontline Edits Out Single-Payer

4/23/10

Silencing supporters of single-payer, or Medicare for All, is a media staple, but PBS's Frontline found a new way to do that on the April 13 special Obama's Deal--by selectively editing an interview with a single-payer advocate and footage of single-payer protesters to make them appear to be activists for a public option instead.

The public option proposal would have offered a government-run health insurance program to some individuals as an alternative to mandatory private health insurance. Not only is this not the same thing as Medicare for All, it's an idea many single-payer advocates actually opposed, arguing that it would leave the insurance industry intact as dominant players in the healthcare business (PNHP.org, 7/20/09).

Martin Luther King never in a million years would have made a joke such as the one Obama did at the recent WH Correspondents' Dinner. It was about drones. Martin Luther King had respect for humanity. As I see it, President Obama not only hasn't redirected America from the slippery slope of amorality, he apparently has brought his sled.

I want to talk about Obama in reference to personality vs. character, but I know many of my fellow progressives will bristle. My protest of the offensive joke may seem to them a petty over-reaction. I am one of those people who often discerns character or its lack thereof within the smaller life gestures, you know, those proverbial ones like how a person treats a waiter, shares (or not) an umbrella in the rain, untangles Christmas tree lights, etc.

Obama's drone joke I saw as his doing a little verbal two-step "on other people's graves" so to speak -- graves that his own decisions brought about. Heartless and shameless are the words that come to my mind.

I didn't watch Obama at the dinner. I read about the drones remark in an article entitled: "Did you Hear the Joke about the Predator Drone That Bombed" by Medea Benjamin and Nancy Moncias. An angry nausea invaded my stomach as I read. I speculated that the President’s joke probably did NOT bomb. Not enough, though it is good to see it has gotten a bit of indignant internet buzz. Part of the account:

President Obama

The bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel. So today we're announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration

Click for more pics

Gulf: 5 times what they originally claimed

Chevron Vs. Filmmaker

I just listened to NY’s Jonathan Tasini on the Brian Lehrer show on wnyc.

Tasini is facing an uphill race for US Senator from New York against Gillibrand, benefactress of Wall Street largess, particularly from SEC-investigated Goldman Sachs. She is the latest puppet crony for corporations within our Congress. Schumer, also from New York, was a major architect for deregulation on their behalf declares Tasini.

Such an uphill battle, in fact, that though he faced down Hillary Clinton for the Senate race long ago and won almost one-quarter of the vote, The New York Times recently declared in print that Gillibrand was running uncontested on the Democratic ticket, which is a damn lie, upsetting Tasini’s mom, most significantly.

Why no acknowledgment? Because an honest candidate not cronied up with oodles of corporate backing will be WILLFULLY ignored by our premier national newspaper. In your face, America. The fourth estate is totally cronied up with corporations. Doesn’t that make you want to get Tasini elected all the more??? Disenfranchise honest truth-to-power candidates. That's the name of this long-term game.

Link to pic

Interesting that whoever drove this, is also parked in a handicapped spot without a handicapped license plate. ... To be fair, maybe they have one of those things you stick on your review mirror, but it's kind of hard to see through the confederate flags in the back window

WaPo via boingboing

[T]he DMV agreed that the plate contains a coded message: The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify "Heil Hitler," said CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper. "CV" stands for "Confederate veteran" -- the plate was a special model embossed with a Confederate flag, which Virginia makes available for a $10 fee to card-carrying members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And 14 is code for imprisoned white supremacist David Lane's 14-word motto: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

[story begins 32 seconds into the video]

Seth Myers: This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?"

Jonathan Tasini FIGHTS BACK as Wall Street showers his senate opponent, BENEFACTRESS-OF-THE-CRONY-STATUS-QUO, Gillibrand, with campaign cash. He is launching a new website called: DUMPWALLSTREETMONEY-DOT-COM!!!!!

Please SIGN THE PETITION addressed to:

Tim Kaine / Chair / Democratic National Committee
and
Michael Steele / Chair / Republican National Committee.

“We believe that Wall Street’s undue influence over members of Congress, via campaign cash, is a central reason for the current economic crisis—too many legislators let Wall Street and banks run wild in return for pocketing checks to finance elections.

Therefore, we demand that the leaders of the two parties immediately call on every candidate for office, as well as all party-related committees, to return every dollar collected from Goldman Sachs-related contributions given the serious charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging a systematic fraud perpetrated on the American people by Goldman Sachs.”

Richard Fuld testified today that he was a complete moron and idiot (not that he could admit that he's just a plain old mobster, only with a better education and pedigree). Watch the video with Dylan Ratigan and Elliot Spitzer, and the article by Jennifer Taub below to see how they scammed millions of people out of their money

Barry Ritholtz: Paging Sergeant Schultz

The over-lawyered former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld, in prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee:

“Let me start by saying that I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of hearing anything about Repo 105 transactions while I was CEO of Lehman. Nor do I have any recollection of seeing documents that related to Repo 105 transactions.”

The Sergeant Schultz defense is among my very favorites.

Jennifer Taub: A Whiff of Repo 105

This is a year old, but the info is still relevant

The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the (Multi-national-megacorporations) Wal-Mart of the 1770s

200 years of jurisprudence is being overturned by our constitutional law educated President, observed guest pundit Jack Rice on Countdown 4-7-10. He and Olbermann were discussing the President's recent authorization of the assassination of an American citizen.

Of course the writ of habeas corpus -- a legal action, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention -- was overturned by the Bush administration and incredibly, to many of us, that decision was sustained by President Obama. The foundations of habeas corpus were established by the Magna Carta of 1215 in England. Our original 13 colonies used them to organize our constitutional republic.

Eli Lake explains how Bush and now Obama have legally accessed such extreme executive power :

Burger King commercials being tested for Arab TV:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

"How Saudis Really See Americans":

The ads were developed by Dubai-based Tonic Communications for the Gulf region’s Burger King franchise-holder, Riyadh-based Olayan Group, a Saudi-owned international conglomerate.

Olayan officials did not respond to an email and phone messages seeking comment, and a Tonic official said he was not given permission by his client to speak with a reporter.

But it is clear that the ads are targeting the Gulf region’s savvy and travel-loving young adult population. Of the 70,000 Saudis studying abroad on government scholarships, about 24,000 of them are in the United States.

Citigroup's Rubin's and Prince's "Duh" testimony in Congress about the financial crisis! So, sorry, America. We had no idea. Is that as good as the accountability gets?

Time to resurrect the story of Brooksley Born this week and try to sustain in our memory how clearly it indicts these masters of the universe who have gang-raped Americans of their financial security. The truth of Born's story won't be highlighted with any help from a corporate-loving media, unfortunately, or a Congress that colluded with the financial clique headed by Greenspan that "killed" messenger Born's message OVER A DECADE AGO.

This is an article I wrote about Brooksley Born back on October 24, 2009 for FDL's Seminal. With the assembly line of fresh hells and horrors and the kabuki exercises in faux-accountability the cronies of the banking industry are pulling with their paid off cronies in Congress, let us remember what actually was going down back then. I have bolded certain assertions worth remembering.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/11000

No Foes to Fraud — Greenspan, Rubin, Summers — Owe Brooksley Born and the American Taxpayer a Big Fat Apology and a Ton of Money
By: libbyliberal Saturday October 24, 2009 12:16 pm

I was at a branch of B&N tonight as the boxes of a fresh, new book, A Captain’s Duty, by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty (Hyperion Press) were being unpacked. Phillips has become a popular guest on radio programs this week. (WNYC, Leonard Lopate tomorrow, Thursday afternoon FYI). I had heard Phillips interviewed on NPR before I left for B&N, and to my surprise I had completely stopped my usual "multi-tasking" and was sitting riveted, hanging onto his every word.

Flipping through the book later, it did not disappoint. He is an intrepid, hard working, well-respected career Merchant Mariner … a captain .. who is now one of many vulnerable sea people in the million square miles of ocean off the coast of Africa vulnerable to pirating. These days, one small skiff with its sophisticated weaponry can easily overcome a ship. In 1991 the government of Somalia collapsed. There was mass starvation. Pirating subsequently began to thrive with a number of ambitious and lawless youth. In 2008 alone, pirates garnered $120 million for overtaking ships and crews and charging exorbitant ransoms.

One band of pirates incredibly meet their match with Captain Phillips, who dramatically relates his harrowing experience. Phillips offered himself up as a hostage in exchange for the safety of his crew. He endures a constantly life-threatening five day stand off and at one point nearly escapes. This enrages the pirates so much they intensify their cruelty toward him. He pits his will against theirs. His courage and his wit are dazzling.