Look At Me! I'm A Victim!

I'm on David Horowitz's email list. The stuff though is painful to read. He projects so much fear and works so hard to be a victim, that I can't help but wonder how he rouses himself from his urine stained sheets every morning.

His term, Islamofascism, indicating an Islamic control over a corporately controlled nationalistic government is laughable. The fact that Islam and Fascism don't go together, is at the center of the West's problems with the ME. Islam is at odds with the entire idea of usery and the fiat money system. Two things that allow finance to rule governments in the Western World.

In the US and the rest of the modern world, banks print money from nothing using in the past, a 10/1 ratio of assets to money (created from thin air), to loan out. Now that ratio has been suspended to help banks print all the money they need, to stay solvent while engaging horribly wasteful business practices.

but I digress, in the Western World, banks essentially print money from nothing and use various schemes to take ownership of everything. They loan money, then expect interest in sums that exceed the quantity of money loaned. So some defaults are always guaranteed. As loans tend to be secured, the bank gains real property for nothing.

The idea of loaning money with interest is known as usury. Usury is forbidden in Christianity and Islam. In Islam it is commonly the law. Those that are caught committing this crime, lose their heads. No really. They are chopped off.

In Christianity, things are more evolved. Here in Texas, evangelicals teach us that God and Jesus want us to be wealthy. And you get wealthy by giving the evangelicals money. So sign the back of your social security check and mail it in. God will provide for you.

In Christianity Mammon and Jesus are one and the same.

So finally, Islam makes it hard to do business, and take ownership of everything. The banks can't just go in, loan money, foreclose and then loan again to develop on their properties. So the West has a great deal of trouble gaining a foothold in owning everything that they own now.

Now you might have noticed that the Saudi Royalty doesn't subscribe to this belief. The House of Saud and the Bin Ladens own CitiBank, Bank of America, TXU, Oncor... So this makes them the good kind of Mammon worshiping Islamics that the Mammon worshiping Christians like.

And so on to the world's most pathetic victim with Josh Marshal reporting.

Republican Spokesman Col. Steven A. Boylan

Update:
Though the email came from Boylan's computer, he denies writing it.

Col. Steven A. Boylan, the Public Affairs Officer nd personal spokesman for Gen. David G. Petraeus sent Glenn Greenwald an email.

You gotta read it to believe it. This guy actually thinks that Alan Colmes of Hannity and Colmes is a liberal! Just because Colmes is presented as a Republican Penile Puppet to represent the Sean Hannity version of liberal, doesn't mean he is one.

For a time I listened to Sean Hannity and I can understand why the Republican Spokesman for the US Marine Corps would stick to for Right Wing Shows. The adulation expressed is almost embarrassing. There have been a number of times when Sean has been fawning over a prominent Republican Guest like the respected Colonel, and I half expect him to start asking, "Do you like my soapy hands there?" As far as I'm concerned, what Sean Hannity does in his own time is his business, but the fawning worship he emits on the radio sometimes makes me want to puke.

If the good Republican Colonel just prefers to meet with media personalities that have fawning teenage crushes on him, that is fine with me. But it is a lie to pretend that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Maulkin and others of that ilk represent a fair and balanced spectrum. Who is he trying to fool?

Bill Moyers On The Growing Power Of The Executive Branch

h/t Crooks And Liars

This is a must see program. Watch it here.

The two lawyers in the program scare me a bit. They seem to think that the Dems are going to fix things. So far the Dems seem to be happy being Republican lap dogs.

For the remainder of this administration, the US Constitution is dead. Neither the Congress, Justice Department or Executive Branch is pretending that it is relevant.

And why would the next President let go of the powers gained by Bush? It is the nature of politics for people to work to increase their powers. The next President will enter office with the ability to listen in on private phone conversations between Bill and Melinda Gates. They'll have the privilege of being able to read emails between the board members of IBM. They'll be able to listen in on phone calls from all the big legal firms in the US.

Why would Hillary Clinton or Rudolph Gulliani want to give up those powers? Imagine if you could listen in on the phone calls of any business leaders you want? Or better yet, listen in on the phone calls, of the family members of rival politicians?

This is the power that Bush has now. Why would the next president give up these powers? In the old Soviet Union, the government built up a massive spy apparatus to keep track of most of the population. This gave bureaucrats at all levels of government, extraordinary powers. The entire government became infested with infighting, cliques and reciprocal blackmail. It became a government that could barely function and existed to feed on itself.

This is the logical outcome of a growing spying program. Once spying without oversight, becomes a legitimate government function, the program can't help but grow. Every functionary wishing to expand their power base will use spying to climb the ladder and accumulate power. Every manager then, has to employ spying in order to watch those coming after their jobs. Soon bureaucrats will spend as much time spying on each other as they do getting their real duties done.

FBI and CIA agents will begin spying on each other. Distrust will build between departments. Walls will build up with lost paperwork and records. Though Homeland Security will continue to hard to work centralize data services, government organizations will simply forget to get all of their paperwork entered to begin with. With a few secrets kept, more will follow. And with that, more blackmail.

Over time, the government will find itself wasting massive quantities of resources, policing itself.

We've seen this pattern before. The old Soviet Socialist Republic continued as long as it did with this model, because it was seeing ever increasing wealth. It's oil production kept growing, and the government could afford this massive waste of resources.

Then, USSR saw oil production peak and go into decline. Suddenly the Ruble was losing value. Waste and fraud became too expensive to tolerate at the high levels that it had ascended.

Perestroika came. Criminal bosses through out the bureaucracy were killed and their bodies dumped. Government offices closed overnight. From the highest levels of the Kremlin down to sanitation services, the criminal shakeup rippled throughout the system. Bodies were found all over Moscow every morning, as old grievances were settled and new criminal networks reformed in a system that was being forced into a fiscal diet by it's own impoverishment.

And at the street level, the population was squeezed. The black market flourished as bureaucrats streamlined their operations, stealing from their own departments in order to keep functioning, by working outside a government ruled by red tape. A third shadow government evolved and grew from the ruins of the old.

The population as a whole, saw all manner of centralized services come to a halt. They experienced food lines, poverty, hunger, and a severe lack of medical services.

And in this way, the US is in much the same shape. Almost all of our food comes from the Carlysle Group. They control almost all of the US food supply, from farm to grocery shelves. If anything happens to this one privately owned corporation, the grocery store shelves will dry up. If the dollar loses value fast enough, the whole food delivery chain will be interrupted, like it was during Perestroika.

After all, does a corporation have a responsibility to provide food to a population that cannot pay for it? The current wisdom is that they don't. And we see now that with the National Guard gone to Iraq, that the US cannot respond well to domestic emergencies.

And the kicker is that world oil production is now in decline. See Edgar's Quick Chart for a simple illustration of the current curve.

So now we have the same trigger effect here in the US, that tore down much of the old USSR. We are making many of the same mistakes the USSR made. We are over investing in a giant government bureaucracy, designed to be a massive spy and domestic control apparatus. We are massively devaluing the dollar. Our banks have abandoned the 10/1 fiat ratio! We are engaged in great resource sucking wars in the ME.

If we do nothing but jog in place, collapse is inevitable. As our money supply spews into uncharted territory and world energy declines, the dollar will lose value at an ever faster pace. The private sector will go into bankruptcy with the entire economy resting in the US government, just as the USSR did. But it will support itself with useless dollars. It's own employees won't be able to buy stuff to live on.

At Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, GAO, Congressional Offices, State Department, all levels of state and local governments, we'll see the same thing. The government will be buying crap using their regular budgets, and the employees will trade those things for other goods so that they can feed their kids. Our law enforcement officials will be trading weapons and ammo for cigarettes and baby formula.

We've seen this happen in many other countries. It has happened everywhere there has been a currency collapse. It is the logical outcome of these events. The entities closest to the source of new monies, become the most corrupt and become the only economy of that nation.

For those of you in Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA or whomever, that read blogs like mine for a living, you know what I'm talking about. You've seen it too. You went to college to learn about this stuff, right? Are you set up in a good position to sell government *surplus* out the back door if it comes down to keeping your family fed? Or are you on a short list to get kicked to the curb? Have you made the *right* friends?

For myself, I'm too much of an asshole to survive well in a two-faced government or high end corporate job. I was taught to do my best to say what I feel and to be honest. I haven't always lived up to the ideal of being completely honest, but I can't help but try. I believe that we we do in this life, carries into whatever follows. So I'm doing my best to carry what integrity I have left, forward.

As a result, though friends have suggested I stop blogging and writing about issues like this, I feel it is wrong to lie, simply for convenience or the illusion of personal safety. During a period of perestroika, the citizens are as much at risk as government employees. The employeees of KGB during its shakeups, were going after each other's family and friends as alliances of power shifted and waned. Organized crime members that operated inside and outside of the government kidnapped and killed in order to gain control over employees inside the government.

The lesson we gained from the USSR is that no one is really safe during a government collapse. The government employees, their family and friends, critics like me and people suffering from the vagarities of fate, all suffered and were endangered. People were executed just to free up their homes and apartments for resale!

Here's an article by Dmitri Orlov, with thanks to FlyingMonkeyWarrior.

In it he lays out a case that shows that the USSR was better prepared for their collapse than the US is. I think our government is aware of this. And that they think that somehow, massive expenditures in Homeland Security will allow them to control the population when the crunch comes. This doesn't seem though to be the lesson we got from Perestroika. The people did best during that time, that ignored the government and built their own closed communities. They didn't rise up in mass and try to overthrow the government. They were too worried about food, clothing and shelter. The government itself, became its own enemy. It came to fight itself.

Will the US fall to the same fate? I'm guessing it will. After all, how are the citizenry gonna grab their knives and pitchforks and go after the Gov if their SUVs are out of gasoline? Simply denying the enemy the resources to wage war is enough to avoid war. The ones with the huge resource base are already in the government. Homeland Security will be fighting the FBI. The most productive use of their crime fighting resources will be to go after fraud, mismanagement and crime in other agencies. Then they can take those confiscated resources and sell them elsewhere.

While they worry about this crap, I'll worry about my garden. If they need to make an example out of me. They know where this loudmouth lives.


On another front, my chickens have mostly decided they want to spend their nights in the oak tree above their pen. They won't sleep were the light and timer is, so I'm not getting but one egg a day. Those bastards. This spring, I may be getting more chicks from large breed birds. I like the Orpingtons. They are heavy and have short wings. So they can't fly up into trees.

My experiment this year with Winter Wheat is coming along nicely. I have a small plot planted, and it is all about three inches high now.

T. Boone Pickens

h/t Edgar

Fire Funnel Near The San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant

Perfected: The Ann Coulter Song

I think Leah Kauffman is already perfect!

Timeless Wisdom & Warnings from the Inventors of America

How To Lowball A Sales Pitch

h/t Edgar

I saw this on the Dallas Morning News today.
Cost of 'War on Terror' could rise to $2.4 trillion
Congressional Budget Office expects the funds would keep 75,000 troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 10 years.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
October 24 2007: 12:57 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and anti terrorist efforts abroad could cost the country $2.4 trillion over the next ten years, according to a report Wednesday.

The money, over 70 percent of which would go to support operations in Iraq, includes the estimated $600 billion spent since 2001, Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag said in testimony before the House Budget Committee. That estimate includes projected interest, since the government is borrowing most of the funds required.

continued...

I'm sure there are lots of falsehoods, bad estimates, bad assumptions and just plain bad thinking in this report, but a couple already stand out for me.

This will cost $2.4 trillion if we have 75,000 troops in Iraq. Who honestly thinks that we'll reduce the troop load or pull mercenaries out, so long as the moeny is flowing?

Let's change that to $3.84 Trillion.

Real inflation is what, over 10% a year? What kind of numbers might that lead to? $8 trillion, $10 trillion?

Then later in the article we learn that the war is a bargain because it makes up a smaller percentage of the GDP than the Vietnam war did. WooHoo! Its better than Vietnam! Yay, it beats having your eye poked out by a sharp stick! Weee! It must be made of chocately goodness.

But then who doesn't believe that today's economic numbers are not a farce?

Ok, so they pulled some GDP numbers out of their ass, then and pulled some cost estimates out their ass, then they made an ass pie and said it is good.

I'm impressed over here, I can tell you.

Of course all of this goes out the window when Bush orders and attack on Iran. How about $50 trillion?

Does $50 Trillion sound high? In 2003 I mentioned around town that the Iraq war would have to go into the $trillions. I was laughed at. After all it was going to be a cakewalk and the oil revenue would pay for th whole thing, with profits. Our economy would actually improve as the Iraqi reconstruction progressed.

Back then though, the sin of all sins was to compare the war to Vietnam. Now Bush brags that the war is just like Vietnam.

Sean Hannity and others that pine for a World War II for our generation, will soon have their wish. And I case say that now, because Bush has removed the taboo of referring to our adventures in the context of World War III.

Showdown With Iran

If you ever had any doubts as to Bush's position on Iran and where we are headed, this program should clear them up.

Showdown With Iran

Osama Bin Laden Comes To George Bush's Rescue

h/t Crooks And Liars

Well coincidences of coincidences.

Once again, as Bush is asking for more billions for a war in a time when he says the US can't afford it, Osama Bin Laden releases a new video to help him campaign.

Bush is so lucky to have a friend like Osama Bin Laden who will release a scary tape, every time Bush needs funding for his favorite war.

And Bush needs a friend like Osama Bin Laden. Bush just got through making speeches about how America is running out of money and can't afford domestic programs. Now he needs money for Iraq. After the chewing we got for asking S-CHIP, some would say that asking for huge quantities of money for Iraq is hypocritical. But Osama Bin Laden feels his pain.

Bush is kind of like a dad, that spends all of the household money at the bar, then comes home and screams that he can't afford to buy the kids shoes or food. After all, what do you think he's made of, money? After all, the bar needs his money, the family at home is just a bunch of useless whiners.

And that is the situation here. From Bush's perspective, Iraq is the most important thing in the universe, and well, America is crap.

Bush understands that the reason we have the United States of America is to provide a conduit to ship all it's wealth to Iraq.

Bush understands that America doesn't need to spend money on America. America is just not worth it. America doesn't need investments in infrastructure or social programs or education. America is just a stepping stone for Bush's greater glory.

If you love Iraq, help Bush strip America for parts, and help him carry all of our stuff down to the pawn shop. Bush needs money for his foreign adventures in is our duty to spend every last dime enabling him on his mission.

If you don't, he's gonna come home drunk and beat the crap out you.

Ouch

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study

Ashley Seager
Monday October 22, 2007
The Guardian

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.

Article continues
"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy," said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable energy.

The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.

The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.

However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.

Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.

Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.

The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society."

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. "The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life."

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about "peak oil" - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in "institutionalised denial" and that action should have been taken sooner.

"When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak," he said. "Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency."

Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. "If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis."

He accused the British government of hypocrisy. "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables," he said. "This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. "

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: "Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world's oil resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and affordable supplies of energy."

The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country's electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.

Where's Waldo?

See if you can figure out what is missing.

250,000 flee raging wildfires around San Diego

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- A quarter-million people fled their homes amid wildfires that had burned 100,000 acres around San Diego County, officials said Monday.
art.sandiego.damage.kgtv.jpg

Five homes burned to the ground Monday morning on a Rancho Bernardo, California, cul-de-sac.

"The situation continues to deteriorate," fire chief Bill Metcalf said at 10 a.m. Pacific time, with numerous structures lost across the county.

"I think there's a very good possibility it will reach the coast before it's finished," Metcalf said of one of the fiercest blazes.

Metcalf said the fires were consuming homes in the communities of Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Forest Ranch and Lake Hodges.

"We have more houses burning than we have people and engine companies to fight them," San Diego Fire Capt. Lisa Blake said, according to the Associated Press. "A lot of people are going to lose their homes today."

On one cul-de-sac in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, five of six homes burned to the ground, leaving flames from gas lines flickering amid the ruins, according to a KGTV report.

continued...

Have you figured it out yet? Then try the link to the full article?. Maybe the clue is in the full text?

Have you figured out what is missing yet?

Perhaps this may help?

Maybe these people can help?

Who's to blame for foreclosure crisis?

I love this quote, Mr. Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 years, said in a recent 60 Minutes interview that he "didn't really get" how subprime loans could wreak havoc on the economy until last year.

Regardless of who is at fault, the Fed is determined to keep this bubble moving. Now the 10/1 Fiat rate has been suspended to keep the lending increasing. So now the banks are generating funds out of a vacuum with no clear rules. The increased flow of monies will result in increasing inflation.

Regardless of who you blame, you and I will be paying the price. and the price will keep rising, as bad lending is official policy now.

Here is a snippet from the foreclosure article, click the link to see it in full.
Is it the guy with 70 houses? The cash-flow-happy mortgage brokers? Alan Greenspan? Yes, yes and yes.

By PAT BEALL

Palm Beach Post Commentary

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Michael Sichenzia has a problem. The former mortgage whiz who spent time in New York state's prison for mortgage fraud knows that bad home loans claimed some victims and fattened bank accounts for others.

But telling them apart isn't easy. "The thing we have the most difficulty doing nowadays is figuring out who has legitimately been taken advantage of, as opposed to who went into the transaction with their eyes open," says Mr. Sichenzia, now lead investigator for the Deerfield Beach law firm of Glinn Somera & Silva, which handles foreclosure cases.

That's because so many had something to gain from the mortgage bubble, says Bill Davis, president of Private Funding Specialists and past president of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers' Palm Beach County region — and many of those people went about their business winking and nodding. "It's everybody," he says. "The Federal Reserve participated, the big lenders played a part, the credit ratings agencies had a part, so did hedge funds and borrowers, appraisers."

The local results: In the six months ending July 1 of this year alone, more than $1 billion in mortgages defaulted in Palm Beach County and along the Treasure Coast. Not every borrower, though, was seeking shelter. And not everyone was duped into an onerous deal.

"I had a guy who called me who owns 70 homes," says Stuart broker Michael Morgan. "I know a lady who owns 16. It's the room of 1,000 doughnuts. How many can you eat? Two? Three? Well, how many houses can you live in?"

At the top of the market, though, home sales were all about cash flow. In 2005, a Point Manalapan home sold for $1.52 million in April, $1.82 million in June and was back on the block in August for $2.25 million.

Dozens of local borrowers now in default loaded up on risk by taking out two mortgages simultaneously: one for 80 percent of the home price and another for the remaining 20 percent. Fifty-eight of those piggy-back loans imploded within four months.

"People do need to take personal responsibility," says Ellen Schloemer, executive vice president of the Washington-based Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group. "But I think people relied on their mortgage professionals to get them through it, when they probably should have thought of them as a used-car salesman."

IRS says rich getting richer

CORRECTED: IRS says rich getting richer: report

(Corrects to add dropped word "postwar" in first paragraph)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The richest one percent of Americans earned a postwar record of 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent a year earlier, reflecting a widening income disparity among different classes in the nation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing new Internal Revenue Service data.

The data showed that the fortunes of the bottom 50 percent of Americans are worsening, with that group earning 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent the year before, the paper said.

It said that while the IRS data goes back only to 1986, academic research suggests that the last time wealthy Americans had such a high percentage of the national income pie was in the 1920s.

The article cited an interview with President Bush, who attributed income inequality to "skills gaps" among various classes. It said the IRS didn't identify the source of rising income for the affluent, but said a boom on Wall Street has likely played a part.

Dana Perino Explains Irrationality

I like the S-CHIP comments. Bush vetoed the bill to expand S-CHIP because he wants S-CHIP expanded.

And we must be afraid if Iran gains the knowledge to build nuclear weapons, then they will wipe Israel off the face of the map. This is known in the White House as World War III.

Be very afraid of World War III.

World War III

Bush's latest speech is a doozy. He warns that the US cannot allow Iran to gain the knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon. That until they can prove that they are not making a weapon, the US must increase the pressure.

This is exactly the same kind of false statements he made in order to justify a war on Iraq. And just like in Iraq, the UN and other countries are arguing that they have already proved him wrong. That Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program and that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

But Bush doesn't believe that proof in the form of evidence and facts is good enough. What he wants is for Iran to prove a negative. Something that cannot by definition be proved. The same demands could be made to anyone. I could ask Bush to prove that he doesn't have a nuclear weapon stashed in a self storage facility in a major city, set to go off when he makes a cell phone call. Bush could not prove that he doesn't. By Bush's own logic we should take action because he cannot prove that he doesn't have such a weapon at the ready. What do you do when someone can't prove that they don't have a doomsday weapon? Can you prove that you don't have one, or that your neighbor doesn't have one? Of course not. If you can't prove you do have one, then obviously you are hiding the evidence.

The UN and Russia both say that they have inspected Iran's nuclear program and have stated unequivocally that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Saddam opened up all of his facilities for inspection and proved well enough the the UN that he did not have a program for the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But no amount of proof can disprove a negative. And so it is impossible to for anyone to meet Bush's burden of proof required to prevent war.

Since Bush is asking that the unprovable be proved, and this can't be done, then he will lead us into war. Until the fundamentally laws of the universe change, then Bush can dare anyone to prove that they aren't a three headed lizard from Beeblebrox, with technology that makes them appear completely indistinguishable from humans, and take action if they can't prove it.

Here's the Wikipedia Entry on this..

Negative proof

This article is about a logical fallacy. The term "negative proof" can also refer to a proof of impossibility.

The fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative is a logical fallacy of the following form:

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false."

It is asserted that a proposition is true, only because it has not been proven false. The negative proof fallacy often occurs in the debate of the existence of supernatural phenomena, in the following form:

* "A supernatural force must exist, because there is no proof that it does not exist".

However, the fallacy can also occur when the predicate of a subject is denied:

* "A supernatural force does not exist, because there is no proof that it does exist.".

Appropriate occasions

In some cases a reversed burden of proof may be appropriate. This occurs when there are two competing explanations, and neither can be confirmed by observation. For example: when an empirical relationship has been observed, but the underlying mechanism is unknown, it may be reasonable to infer from the lack of conflicting evidence that the observed relationship is most likely causal. (see Inference to the Best Explanation)

Criteria for selecting the best explanation in this case could involve Occam's razor, which states that the best explanation tends to be the one requiring the least amount of additional assumptions. Such an explanation invokes the fewest intermediate factors while maintaining its predictive power; that is, its ability to explain current data and to predict future data.[1] However, according to the scientific method, the relationship is not formally proven in this instance, and to assert that it is so until disproven is fallacious.

The law in most democracies also allows negative proofs in criminal cases; namely, a defence lawyer may argue:

X is innocent because there is no (or insufficient) proof that X is guilty

And as this entry points out, in Democratic societies we assume innocence and prove guilt. This comes from the idea that no one should be falsely convicted. So the existence of proof is needed for conviction, rather than the absence of proof. Infamous events such as witch trials helped lead to this way of thinking. Just as Bush is asking Iran to prove that they aren't thinking about nuclear weapons, people were once required to prove that they weren't witches. Then they were tortured until they confessed. If they didn't confess to being witches, then they were convected and executed. The verdict was almost always the same, everyone accused, was a witch.

Likewise, Bush is on his own witch hunt. He asked Saddam to prove that he wasn't a witch. Now he's asking Iran to prove that it isn't populated by witches. If they deny their weapons program and open themselves up to even US inspections, they still won't be able to prove that they don't have a secret program. Of course if they say they do, they are guilty also. So no matter what, they are guilty. Bush wins no matter if they have a program or not.

In previous cases we have Iraq and North Korea. North Korea saw that not having a nuclear weapon would get you attacked. So they got one. Then Bush caved on sanctions and is doing what he said he would never ever do. He is bribing North Korea, just like Bill Clinton did. Bush was defeated, because North Korea snubbed him and developed a nuclear weapon and bragged about it.

Iran doesn't seem to have this option. Their nuclear program is not far enough along. And unless they can accomplish what they aren't trying to do, then they will be invaded.

I doubt that Bush believes that the course is taking will avoid WWIII. Everything his done so far, seems calculated to provide the opposite effect of his stated goals. With Turkey poised to grab the Kurdish oil fields in Iraq and Bush preparing to bomb Iran, it looks like Bush is trying to start WWIII. And all the way up to the fateful day when he gives an escalation that the next president will be unable to back down from, he'll tell us that he is making peace through endless war.

Here's a bit of video from his speech.


Col. Sam Gardiner says we are already doing special ops in Iran.


From February 2007, we can strike Iran within 24 hours of Bush giving the order. Seymour Hersch discusses war plans.


More Seymour Hersh, on Negroponte. He says that Negroponte was too moral to get along with Cheney! Negroponte's claim to fame is his work to train and direct death squads in Chile!


From January 2007


Joe Scarborough Reports. Wayne White tells us that an attack on Iran will not include ground troops. I can believe this. We don't have the troops for a ground assault. This will be a bold experiment. We seem to be counting on the fact that we don't think that Iran will fight back. If they do fight back. It seems we won't be ready. This is a perfect set up for the draft.


And finally, an Iranian photo tour

Turkey Set To Begin Iraqi Offensive

From CNN.

Turkey approves Iraq incursion

(CNN) -- The Turkish parliament has approved a military incursion into Iraq to take on Kurdish separatist rebels.

The move, which is causing great anxiety among U.S. and Iraqi officials, was approved on Wednesday by 507 votes to 19.

Parliamentary approval, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before the debate, would not necessarily trigger immediate military action and many analysts doubt a full-scale invasion will be launched.

Turkey has already massed 60,000 troops in the region and over the weekend it shelled farms across the border.

But the chances of such military action raises great concerns in the United States, which fears it would undermine the stability of the American-backed government in Baghdad and jeopardize the supply lines that support U.S. troops in Iraq.

And it heightens anxiety in Iraq, where officials have been taking all-out diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey from carrying out cross-border assaults against Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels in northern Iraq.

Speaking as news of the vote was announced, U.S. President George W. Bush -- who said there already are Turkish troops stationed in Iraq -- said "we are making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq."

He noted that Iraq considers the issue sensitive. Saying Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi traveled to Ankara to discuss the issue with Turkish officials, he said the diplomatic discussions on the issue are positive.

"There's a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks send massive troops into the country," said Bush.

Meanwhile, Barhim Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, who is Kurdish, told CNN that Iraqis believe the "prospect of unilateral action will mean irreparable damage to bilateral relations, and will be a bad consequence to Iraq, bad consequence to Turkey, bad consequence to the region."

Salih said before Wednesday's parliamentary vote in Turkey that such a move would also set a grim precedent.

"If Turkey were to give itself the right to interfere in Iraq militarily, what is there to stop other neighbors from doing so?"

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called for a series of steps to tackle the dispute, including the dispatching of top-level political and security delegation to Turkey.

Al-Maliki phoned Erdogan on Wednesday and reassured him that Iraq has banned PKK terror activities, his office said.

"Al-Maliki expressed his understanding for the Turkish suffering caused by terrorist activities and he expressed his sorrow for the loss of tens of Turkish civilian and military martyrs during Ramadan as a result of the PKK's terrorist acts.

"He reaffirmed the government's determination to continue banning the terrorist activities of this organization on Iraqi land and the importance of continuing dialogue between both sides," al-Maliki's office said in a statement.

The office said Erdogan expressed his desire for good relations with Iraq and stressed Turkey's determination to cooperate with the government to deal with the PKK and welcomed negotiations and talks on the issue.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu News Agency reported that Iraqi Vice President al-Hashimi said Turkey "should give a chance to the Iraqi government to prevent cross-border terrorist activities" against Turkish targets.

Al-Hashimi -- a top Iraqi Sunni Arab leader and one of Iraq's two vice presidents -- arrived in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Tuesday to meet with Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

Cross-border trade

In an agreement signed in late September, Iraq agreed to crack down on the PKK, which the U.S. and the European Union consider a terrorist organization.

Iraqi army has no plan to deploy its soldiers near the rugged Turkish-Iraqi border to take on the Kurdish rebels targeting Turkey, and Iraqi authorities are satisfied with the efforts by the Iraqi Kurdish regional authorities to deal with the militants there, a top Iraqi military official told CNN Wednesday.

"It's a mountainous area, difficult terrain and our troops are not trained for that," said Lt. Gen. Nasier Abadi, Iraqi Armed Forces deputy chief of staff.

But Abadi said it is in the interest of the Kurdish Regional Government to deal with the Kurdish rebel problem because of its economic relationship with Turkey.

"They can't afford the PKK to spoil it," he said.

Abadi underscored the importance of cross-border trade, saying that the Kurdish region lost $1 million a day in trade when the Iraq-Iran border was closed during the recent Ramadan holiday.

Iran closed border points in the Kurdish region to protest an arrest of a man the U.S. military called a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, a point disputed by Iran.

Abadi added that the Turkish military in the past has conducted a series of hot-pursuit-style raids over the vast and mountainous border into northern Iraq in recent years and it didn't find a single Kurdish rebel.

He said most PKK rebels are believed to be in southern Turkey, Syria and Iran.

"They are very good at hiding; it's guerrilla warfare up there," Abadi said.

Armenian issue

The United States has been attempting to use its influence to keep Turkey from launching an incursion but a U.S. domestic political dispute involving the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire around 90 years ago has enflamed passions in Turkey and presented challenges for American diplomacy.

Ties between the NATO allies are strained over a symbolic measure making its way through Congress that would declare the Ottoman-era killings of Armenians "genocide."

Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to drop the House resolution. "One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire. The resolution on the mass killings of Armenians beginning in 1915 is counterproductive," Bush told reporters.

Two senior U.S. military officials told CNN that commanders in Europe have been told to be "prepared to execute" alternatives to using Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey if Turkey follows through on threats to restrict U.S. use of the base in retaliation for the resolution, which a House of Representatives committee approved last week.

Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that Pentagon planners are looking at "a broad range of options" to keep food, fuel and ammunition flowing to U.S. troops in Iraq if Turkey pulls the plug on Incirlik.
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"We're confident that we'll find ways to do that," Ham told reporters at the Pentagon. "There's likely to be some increased cost and some other implications for that, and obviously we'd prefer to maintain the access that we have."

The move is a preliminary step to ensure that alternative aircrews, planes, fuel and routes are lined up and that troops in Iraq will see minimal interruption in their supply lines, the senior officials told CNN.

If You Don't Like Me, You're A Terrorist

Check out Bruce Fealk's blog.

He has more video on Joe's campaign to paint everyone who disagrees with him, as a traitor and a terrorist.

The Republican campaign to shut up the public is really reaching new lows. Their recent attacks on low income families and children used in political ads, is sickening.

They are on the defensive and being the pro-violence and slaughter for money party, they are likely to get even more dangerous. We should remember that the Brown Shirts in Italy saw a similar political transformation.

Check out this video of Ralph Nader. He tells us that Congress isn't pursuing impeachment because they believe that if they try, Bush will order an aerial attack on Iran and declare Martial Law at home. As he points out, if this is true it is a scary thought. If it isn't true, then it shows just how irrationally paranoid Congress is.

Trent Wisecup Speaks For Rep Joe Knollenberg

h/t Crooks And Liars.

Trent Wisecup explains Joe Knollenberg's definition of patriotism.

True Americans that don't hate America are defined by the following.

1. They don't want to expand SCHIP.
2. They want to expand the war into Iran.
3. They are loyal Republicans.

If you disagree with any of these three points, then you're a terrorist that hates America, because Rep Joe Knollenberg's position on these issues is that these are the things that define what America is.

According to Rep Joe Knollenberg 71% of Americans are evil terrorist loving traitors. Or do we use Congress's Approval ratings of 14% to determine that 86% of American's a traitors?



A video on Despotism that explains What Trent Wisecup was trying to communicate.


And following is my open email to Joe.


To the Honorable Joe Knollenburg.

I just saw the video where Trent Wisecup explains that you believe that anyone who disagrees with you about anything is a terrorist traitor to America.

If you take only Congress's approval ratings that comes out to more than 245 million evil terrorist loving unpatriotic Americans.

Trent says that anyone who doesn't want to expand the war into Iran hates America too. Why do you feel that this one issue the only purpose for America, and it's only purpose is to wage war on Iran?

Why do you feel that your love of America depends on waging war on Iran?

Why do you feel that almost all Americans are terrorist loving traitors?

Ry Cooder - Vigilante Man

The Late Great John Fahey In 1969

Interviewing John is Laura Weber. She evidently had a regular show on PBS teaching guitar. She died in 1995 at the age of 70.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4

Celebrities In Politics

h/t Dennis Perrin

One of the Republican's favorite rants these days, is about celebrities speaking out about politics. They believe that celebrities shouldn't be allowed to speak about politics, unless they are speaking on behalf of Republican causes.

For instance, radio celebrities like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, all agree that celebrities should not use the media to promote political viewpoints, that they disagree with. Their favorite targets are Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and lately, Sally Field.

Recently, I was talking to another musician about this and he argued that musicians should be allowed to write political material. I asked him what he would've done about Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan. He pointed out that the public expects these people to be writing political material so that's ok. He went on to argue that Sean Penn should use his resources to promote politics. I asked, don't you expect that of Sean Penn. He didn't have an answer, so I went on explaining that I thought that every American should have the right to free speech. He said yes he agreed that all Americans should have the right to free speech, but celebrities shouldn't be liberals and shouldn't be allowed to promote political views.


Here's a very famous liberal giving a speech promoting a Democratic candidate. Does the Republican Party wish that this celebrity had never become involved in politics?

Bush and Gonzales Do Approve Of Torturing People

So we are still continuing Saddam's legacy of torture centers and rape rooms. Is there no limit to how low we can go?

h/t Crooks And Liars

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
Published: October 4, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

continued...

I Thought This Guy Was A Comedian, At First....

This guy has the worst science education ever. This what you get if you're fairly smart, but assume that all of your ignorance is fact.

This kid just makes up a bunch of crap then passes it all off as though it is true. We call this lying.

So is he a comedian? Is he just really stupid? Is he just a liar?

You decide!

Satan Invented Evolution Part 1 Disproving the Big Bang


Satan Invented Evolution Part 2 God created the World


Satan Invented Evolution Part 3 Impossiblity of Abiogenesis

Brian McGough Answers Rush Limbaugh

h/t Crooks And Liars

The position of the Republican Party is clear, shit on the troops if they don't follow the neocon line. The Republicans are being true to form. They hate and fear everyone that isn't just like them. They love themselves and any soldiers that happen to live in the same land of ignorance and paranoia that they live in. so in this way, they can say they support the troops, but only certain troops. The rest are phonies.

The Answer


Some Clarification


Harry Reid On This


The Vote Vets Ad


Dana Perino


'Phony' Major General (Ret.) John Batiste


Rush Shitting On The Troops, In His Own Words

BlackWater Uber, US Troops Suck

So says a number of our representatives.

Tom Davis (R-VA) says that US Troops can't do the job.


Chris Hays (C-Co) sasys that Blackwater is really, really wonderful. They do a job that our troops don't want to do, and couldn't do.


If you don't like BlackWater, then you hate the US Troops.

US Troops Vs. Blackwater

I'm listening to CSpan today. they are playing the BlackWater hearings.

Erik Prince and many of our representatives are singing the same tune. They say our soldiers suck. Our military is poorly trained, poorly equipped and costs too much.

BlackWater employees are superior in every way to US Military personnel. From the way some of the Republicans are going on, it sounds like we need to just disband the US Military and hire BlackWater to take over their role.

I am ashamed to hear so many people line up to bash our men and women in uniform while singing the praises of BlackWater.