Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama

Yes, racism is alive and well in America, promoted by the party of Richard Nixon, whose southern strategy fanned the flames of racism in the South in the late 60s and early 70s. Of course his strategy was cloaked in terms of "law and order," not direct calls for hangings, beatings and the like. Nevertheless, Churches were bombed, African-Americans were hanged and Caucasians who sided with Martin and Bobby were murdered. Nixon, admittedly, had a lot of help from the likes of George Wallace (Governor of Alabama), Bull Connor (Mayor of Birmingham) and the jackass Governor of Georgia, whose name escapes me, who enjoyed wielding ax-handles, when it came to stirring up fear and hatred.


I grew up in Birmingham and came of age during that time period. It was a horrible time.



Now, racism is not confined to the old confederate states. The hate speech we have been hearing are coming from places like Minnesota, of all places. One thing strikes me about the woman who said that she couldn't trust Obama because he is an Arab. The woman could barely speak proper English....even American English.



Ignorance is one of the greatest threats to America!



October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist


IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.


Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.


“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.


Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.


All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.


What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.


By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.


That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.


We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.


Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.


It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.


From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.


McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.


No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”


This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.


The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.


There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.


Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.


To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.


But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.



Meet Your debate Sponsors; YUCK!

That's right -- from the people who wiretap your phones and are praying for a government bailout comes the TOTALLY fair and nonpartisan vice presidential debate!


Of course, this isn't your League of Women Voters, tired, outdated debate! This baby is organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the group run by Paul Kirk (D), who has lobbied on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry, and Frank Fahrenkopf (R), the nation's leading gambling lobbyist.


But since Kirk is a Democrat and Fahrenkopf is a Republican, the Commission HAS to be nonpartisan, right? Well, it is, unless of course you're a candidate representing Independents, or the Green party, or you're poor, or anti-corporation. Then you can't get into the debates to save your life.


A lot of fuss has been raised over the impartiality of tonight's moderator, Gwen Ifill. Yet, no one is examining the larger bias of tonight's debates toward the interest of corporations. Ifill may have reflected certain biases toward the Obama camp in the past, but the ENTIRE debates are being run by an organization funded by corporations like Anheuser-Busch.


Where is the outrage over this bias toward corporations? Where is the outrage that the previously unbiased League of Women Voters was ousted in favor of the Commission on Presidential Debates that effectively hijacked the democratic process in favor of cronyism and corporate cash?


Joe and Sarah have agreed to answer questions with responses no longer than two minutes to prevent embarrassing gaffes. Many similar agreements are hashed out between the parties pre-debate, behind closed doors. No one really knows what the Democratic-Republican debate contract looks like because the contract is not available to the public.


While these arrangements surely benefit the parties, they harm the American people, who aren't likely to receive much information during the short two-minute window. Two minutes is enough time to repeat a stump speech, or deliver a sample audience-tested zinger, but it's hardly adequate time to explain economic or foreign relations platforms.


Since AT&T is one of the sponsors, what is the likelihood that topics like FISA and telecom immunity will be breached? Because Wachovia is other other sponsor, will Gwen ask about the failure of the Free Market and Deregulation? Surely, no moderator in their right mind will bring up the corporate sponsorship of our elections during a debate SPONSORED by the very corporations that are taking over America.


Sounds like some good, old-fashioned aggressive moderating to me!



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Dave Lindorff: The Revolution That Failed




The grassroots rebellion that led to the House's rejection of the Bush Administration's Wall Street bailout bill on Monday flamed out on Friday, overwhelmed by a massive lobbying campaign by Wall Street and by a propaganda push in the corporate media in favor of passage.


The House, which had voted 228-205 against a bailout at the beginning of the week, voted 283-171 in favor of an even more expensive plan only four days later, after the Senate passed a bill containing over $100 billion in tax breaks (mostly for the wealthy), and after House leaders added a bunch of those infamous "earmarks" to buy the votes of reluctant House members.


Interestingly, one of the things that was used to frighten members of Congress into passing this unprecedented bill was a plunging stock market, which plunged into record low territory for the year on Monday and Thursday. Yet after rising modestly during the morning, reportedly on "anticipation" that Congress would pass a bailout, once the vote was in, the equities markets all started heading south. Clearly investors weren't particularly optimistic that throwing almost $1 trillion in borrowed money from taxpayers at banks and investment houses would do much for the nation's struggling "real" economy.


One reason for investor pessimism is no doubt news that car sales and housing prices in September slumped to record lows, and that the September jump in unemployment was the highest since the 9/11 crisis in 2001. Another was probably the inclusion of a provision in the bill as passed by both House and Senate that allows the Treasury to buy bad debt not just from U.S. banks, but from foreign banks as well. As several critics of the plan have observed (but as the corporate media have failed to report to their undying shame), this means American tax dollars will be flowing out of the country to shore up the balance sheets of foreign institutions, in the name of keeping overseas investors in the market for U.S. treasury securities.


There may have been no other option for a country that is having its economy run into the ground by a voracious war machine that absorbs close to $1 trillion a year in revenues, and by economic policies that have, particularly over the last eight years, encouraged the wholesale flight abroad of the nation's manufacturing base.


Numerous critics of this record giveaway to Wall Street note that the whole scheme is unlikely to do anything to shore up the economy, which seems headed into a long and deep recession. It is not even likely to do anything much to ease the frozen credit markets, since there are no constraints to prevent the banks that collect all the money from investing it in more speculative areas that offer the lure of higher returns than simply lending to corporate America or to homeowners. There's nothing either in the measure to prevent the recipients of the money from investing or lending the money abroad. And given that lack of constraints, why wouldn't they? If the U.S. economy is going into the dumps, why lend money here at relatively low rates of return, when it can be lent more profitably and at higher rates in growing economies such as China, Brazil, or Russia?


Democrats in the House, and Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, were rolled by Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who, along with President Bush, sketched out scare stories of a 1930s-like Depression if taxpayers' money wasn't handed over in short order. "No time for hearings," they cried. "This has to be done immediately or America is doomed."


Where had we heard that kind of nonsense before? Oh yeah, in October 2001, when Congress was similarly rolled into passing first a bill launching an unending and borderless "War" on Terror and into passing a Constitution-wrecking USA PATRIOT Act. And then again in 2002 when Congress was again rolled, this time into authorizing a war against Iraq, which was presented as not a war authorization, but just a "diplomatic hand-strengthening" measure designed to get Iraq to stop developing alleged weapons of mass destruction (which, it should have been obvious at the time, he wasn't actually developing).


No matter. So weakened, leaderless, and ideologically rudderless is the Democratic Party under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that it let itself be rolled again. So anxious is candidate Obama to appear in step with the imagined centrist zeitgeist that he actually joined Republican opponent John McCain in helping to pass this ripoff legislative boondoggle, thus assuring that if he manages to win the White House, he will inherit a bankrupt government incapable of doing anything significant of a progressive nature.


Americans who were scared by the media and the Administration into fearing that their retirement savings were going into the toilet unless the bailout passed can watch their already deflated portfolios languish there, now that it has passed.


The lesson is clear. No grassroots rebellion that focuses on Congress as its battleground, or that counts Republican or Democratic elected officials as its troops, will go anywhere. The government party will hew to the people with the money.


A wiser course of action would be the wholesale rejection this Election Day of all incumbents who voted for the bailout bill in both House and Senate. Do that once, and watch how much better Congress responds to citizen pressure the next time around.


DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2008 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Bush Wants To Bankrupt America: There is Method To His Madness


It is been the long term goal of the GOP to undo all things FDR. The only way to do that is to bankrupt the treasury.

By Sam Hamod

07/01/03: "ICH" -- - Some have wondered if GW Bush knows what he's doing with his tax cut that benefits the corporations and the very rich, and cuts away the remaining money of the poor and the middle class. I say yes, he does know what he'd up to, as do his corporate advisors and his neo-con economist friends and theorists, chief among them Grover Norquist. Norquist has been the chief architect behind the dismantling of the American federal financial structure in terms of benefits for the common citizen, but has helped to create the superstructure of tax breaks for the very rich and the corporatocracy that now has a choke-hold on America.

The plan is very simple, but not obvious on first blush. Make sure that all the money is gone from the U.S. treasury, make sure the deficits are so great that all social and educational programs are cut, increase the military and security budgets to "protect our nation" with all these monies going to corporations and security firms who are extra-national (not tied to any country, but actually more than multi-national in that they are outside the purview of any nation at any single moment) and stave in the social security fund by allowing it to go to private corporations for "investment"-and you have the perfect scenario for saying, "only the private sector can save us-we're broke and they have the money to run every program, fund every program, but of course, at huge costs and profits for the private corporations." Our only resource will be the corporate lenders, especially the large extra-national corporations who will have loyalty to no one except their corporate coffers and large share owners throughout the world.

This plan is so obvious at this point that it is hard to believe because it is happening so fast and the Democrats and even conservative non- neo-con Republicans don't realize what Bush and his neo-con buddies are up to.

Of course, this is easier to accomplish with all of our attention being focused on 9/11 matters, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the WMDs, threats to our nation, threats to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (where we lose troops everyday to Iraqis and Afghans fighting against our occupation), but we keep sending in more troops to basically protect Bechtel and Halliburton. Soon, we'll also hire private contractor troops, some from other countries and others from selected American security firms. All the time we are occupied with this, just as Orwell predicted in his novel, 1984, the Bush team will be destroying our civil liberties and taking away our social and educational programs in order to fund "security measures" and will keep blinking yellow, orange, and red codes at us.

I want to make this article short so that you have time to think about this and alert your congressperson and senator as to what's really going on. Bush has already started pushing for privatization in Iraq and Afghanistan and in America-it's only a short step from this huge debt he has created from the great surplus he inherited. *God only knows what kind of deficit he's going to create as he lets the dollar drop freely, so that consumers have to pay more for goods and our balance of trade goes to hell, the national debt at its current rate will take over 100 years to pay off-if we can even then get a hold on it according to some economists who are upset (see articles by Paul Krugman and others)sat the Bush team's actions. But they fail to see the real motive behind all this seeming disaster. Yes, it's a disaster for us, but it's a windfall for Bush and his corporate friends who will soon be running everything. *Actually, through their lobbying, they are running most things at this point-simply see the astounding inflation in drug prices compared to the low national inflation rate, the false "shortage of natural gas"-a commodity that is endless in the world and in its supply in America-the artificial shortage of electricity (as done by Enron and others to jack up prices and now FERC saying that though California did sign contracts with utilities under duress, they are still bound by the contracts even though they were lied to when signing the contracts-which is fraud in any honest person's mind, but not in the mind of FERC) and now our need for added security that is endless because it will not be long before Bush brings terrorists to our shores by either his behavior, or allows some actors within the Republican camp to fake terrorist raids so that possibly martial law will follow.

Friends, we are in a mess of catastrophic proportions on so many fronts that it will be difficult to unravel all the various strains of this explosive Bushian virus. I use the term virus, because Bush is trying to pack the courts with his appointees from the neo-con right, placing government officials in corporations and in some cases, in law schools so that the neo-con approach to the destruction of the federal government may have academic credentials and blessings. Yes, this is an artificially created virus intended to kill the patient, namely, our democracy and our formerly free and decent lives.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Tuesday, September 30, 2008

GOP's Huge Failure Of Leadership

David Gergen excoriates the GOP’s “huge failure of leadership” for failing to get more than 1/3 of their caucus to vote for the bailout bill and calls them “poor babies” for using the Nancy-Pelosi-hurt-my-feelings excuse.


video_wmv Download | Play video_mov Download | Play (h/t Heather)


It’s really the house of Republicans whom I think bear it especially tonight. Two-thirds voted against it. You did have - to be fair to the Republicans, it was a Republican president, a republican Treasury Secretary who supported this, who pushed it, but it was House conservative Republican members who derailed it.

Now, they have strong reasons why they voted against it. But let there be no doubt that if we pay a huge price as we paid today, if we basically continue to pay a huge price in the next couple of days, lost a 1$.2 trillion as you said in equity value a day and it may get worse tomorrow and in the days following. Let there be no doubt it was the house Republicans who derailed this. They were against it from the beginning. They made that clear.

This business about Nancy Pelosi making a speech. Yes, she shouldn’t have said that and yes that was inappropriate. But the fact that they changed their minds because of that, oh poor babies, she has a few words and the House Speaker, you know, made them run back to their partisan corners. You know, forget that nonsense.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain Looks Like The Fool He Is

Chris Matthews cuts through the spin and pins the blame squarely where it should be: On House Republicans and John McCain who promised to deliver their vote.

video_wmv Download | Play video_mov Download | Play


“McCain said he was going to lead the Republican charge, he was going to make sure that this was a bipartisan success. He called charge, and the Republican retreated. That’s what happened here.


Politico’s Mike Allen writes:


McCain takes credit for bill before it loses

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.


The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.


Think about how bad this is for McCain. He “suspended” his campaign last week and promised to get the House GOP on board. The bill failed today because those very same Republicans bailed once Pelosi hurt their feelings. McCain put his leadership credentials on the line and failed. Not a little fail, but an Epic Fail. And the worst part about it is he and his campaign have been claiming for the past 48 hours that it was McCain’s leadership that got the bill passed.


Marc Ambinder asks the right question:


So if McCain wanted credit for passage, should he share some of the blame for its defeat?


TPM’s Greg Sargent wonders if the failure to pass the bailout with cause McCain’s suspension stunt to backfire:


In political terms, John McCain needed this bailout bill to pass. Now that it’s failed in the House, it’s clear that this could pose a serious blow to his campaign — and that his big campaign suspension gambit could backfire badly.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Bush and Fed Run End Around Congress

Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed’s emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed’s expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone. Read on…

I’m not an expert on the economy or Wall St., but this sure looks like an end-around by the Bush administration to give away hundreds of billions of dollars without the approval of Congress.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


The News Media and Palin

Howard Kurtz writes today that, in advance of this week's vice-presidential debate, "some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they're piling on" the beleaguered McCain soul/running-mate, whose interviews last week with Katie Couric more-or-less oscillated between "crash" and "burn." But what gives with the journalistic self-censorship? Kurtz is probably referencing the conversation from this past week's Reliable Sources, in which ABC News' Jake Tapper suggested that the press is having a hard time cutting through the signal-to-noise ratio of the blogosphere:



KURTZ: Well, is this all just media whining, or does she have some responsibility? It's not that we want to talk to her because we want to hang out with her. We want to ask questions that presumably the public want to ask of her.


TAPPER: Jessica was talking about the two lines of attack that you're getting from Republican partisans and Democratic partisans -- the press has been too mean to her, the press is not being tough enough on her. It's possible that those are both correct.

But the difference is the press defined largely, as the McCain camp did early on, which is liberal blogs, tabloid media, "US" magazine. They were mean to her. They were inappropriate to her. But that's not to say that the mainstream media was.


But I think that the McCain campaign has successfully taken all of the inappropriateness of that initial coverage of Palin and turned it around so that the media is now boxed in and can't really push back to say, well, I don't understand what she's saying here, or I don't understand, is this person actually prepared for this job?


Frankly, I don't know what the point of having a press is if they cannot cut through the fog of conversation to offer a sincere assessment of Sarah Palin's acumen. As Kurtz notes, it's not a problem that conservative columnists have been having of late: "...pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough says Palin 'just seems out of her league.' National Review Editor Rich Lowry called her performance 'dreadful.' Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a 'train wreck.' Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: 'If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.'" That said, we are talking about the same media that went hog-wild in dissecting the phrase, "lipstick on a pig." That was a pile-on of undampened enthusiasm.


Actually, the larger bombshell about "censorship" comes earlier, and off-handedly, in Kurtz's column, where he notes that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has apparently been "barred...from [McCain's] plane" by the campaign.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Shuster Nails McCain Economic Advisor

These people, the Goopers, actually live in a reality all their own.


SHUSTER: Joining us now John McCain's chief economic adviser. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain said over the weekend that he wasn't phoning it in, that would get lawmakers to get support this, Republicans. What happened?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, David, today Barack Obama failed the American people. what should have been a --


SHUSTER: Whoa, specifically, how did they fail them?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: At every point when John McCain came and tried to put together a negotiating process with all parties at the table --


SHUSTER: Whoa, back up a sec. You said today. How was John McCain involved in negotiations today? If you can't answer that specifically, how did the democrats fail them today?



HOLTZ-EAKIN: Today, Speaker Pelosi delivered an incendiary partisan speech at a moment when bipartisanship was needed to prevail. John McCain put together a process where the Republicans were at the table. At every point in that process as he tried to develop --


(In other words, Pelosi told the truth about the fascist Gooper policies!)


SHUSTER: Let's take your first point, Doug. So you're saying, fair enough, partisan speech. fair enough. That would also then mean that republicans today put their own feelings, their own hurt feelings about partisanship, ahead of the good of the country. right?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: Look, John McCain worked the phones today. He worked the phones every day. He's visited with members of the Republican party. This was a tough vote. A week ago they were excluded from the process. There was no deal. Taxpayers weren't protected. He moved the bill to match the principles they wanted. They really were counting on some Democratic participation in that.


SHUSTER: Doug, if he was moving it as much as you said, why was John McCain nowhere to be found on Saturday night? I mean, he was off having dinner with the Liebermans, which is fine, but up on Capitol Hill you have the House Republicans, the Democrats, Secretary Paulson eating pizza out of boxes in the Speaker's office negotiating until 1:00 in the morning. Where was John McCain on Saturday night?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: Let us be very clear that John McCain understands that had he looked like he would have been the key to the success, the Democrats would have attacked him and killed the deal. That's what you saw today. They were not going to let McCain do the job that he was trying to do, deliver a bill to help the American people. The American people will lose as a result of this. John McCain understood if he had kept a low profile, talked to members of Congress as he did, called those members who were reluctant, he did his job and doing it with the low profile necessary.


(What B.S.! McCain is not the president yet. He is a candidate. He isn't even part of the leadership in Congress, nor a member of any of the committees involved in the financial crisis. So, what the hell was he even doing in D.C., claiming to be America's economic savior when he knows little about the subject? Trying to save his campaign, I suspect, and his own party made him look like a fool)


SHUSTER: Where was the low profile last Thursday, Doug, when John McCain decided he needed to suspend his campaign and go to a meeting at the White House? Where was the low profile then?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: Beginning last Tuesday, Harry Reid said Republicans needed to be in on this. John McCain needed to deliver votes. Speaker Pelosi said continuously she was not going to deliver Democratic votes. Republicans had to do it first. John McCain suspended his campaign to get relief for the American families.


(That's not what she said. She said that any rescue of Wall Street, proposed by the Republican administration, would have to be a shared responsibility on the Hill. In other words, the Democrats don't entirely trust the Bush administration. Who does.?)


SHUSTER: Right back to the original point.


HOLTZ-EAKIN: Yes, we are.


SHUSTER: No, no. Wait a second.


HOLTZ-EAKIN: We are back to the Democrats once again sabotaging a bipartisan effort to help the American families.


SHUSTER: You said he was there to deliver Republican votes. The fact of the matter is, he did not.


HOLTZ-EAKIN: He took process from dead in the water to a vote in the House of Representatives this morning. absolutely dead in the water, no hope whatsoever, a bill everyone condemned. This morning we had a vote only because of John McCain. That vote could have been successful, but the Democrats behaved poorly. That's too bad.


SHUSTER: Because the Democrats' poor behavior, because Republicans got their feelings hurt, that's why this vote blew up, right?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: This is a serious matter that should have been conducted in a serious bipartisan fashion. That's not what we saw at many points in this process. The Democrats displayed no commitment. Where was Barack Obama today? If you look at what he said, he was praising the passage of the bill. Bill didn't pass.


SHUSTER: He was supporting it and you issued a statement saying he wasn't supporting it. Doug, first of all, before we go, only about 20 seconds, what does John McCain think we ought to do next?


HOLTZ-EAKIN: He's going to land and you'll hear from him. He's in Iowa right now. Tune in.


SHUSTER: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, economic advisor for the McCain campaign, thanks for coming on.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Special Prosecutor For Political USA Firing Scandal


As
Murray Waas wrote about yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, acting on the guidance of the DoJ Inspector General, has decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the USA firing scandal. Unfortunately, there will be no grand jury for Gonzo.

video_wmv Download | Play video_mov Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Bloomberg:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes arising from the Bush administration’s firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

An internal Justice Department review of the dismissals recommended the appointment today after finding there was a possibility officials made false statements, obstructed justice or committed wire fraud. The report said the matter warranted further investigation by an attorney who has the ability to compel witnesses to cooperate.

“The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require,” Mukasey said in a statement.



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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bailout, shmailout. Executive pay still safe.


Posted Sep 29 2008, 01:12 PM by Kim Peterson

Filed under:


The bailout provisions that limit executive pay? Yeah, right. If you believe that, I have $700 billion in bad real estate to sell you. I read the executive compensation part of the bailout bill (which you can read here, but trust me, you don't want to).


The idea is pretty clear. Cut the pay for bosses at banks that sell toxic assets to the government. Take back the bonuses the execs got if a bank's financial statements prove inaccurate. Ban them from getting golden parachute payments.


But the loopholes in these conditions are huge -- huge enough certainly for a smart company to get around.

Read More...



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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


What Did Pelosi Say That Isn't True?

Even as the wreckage of the Wall Street bailout bill was still smoldering on the House floor Monday, Republicans held a news conference in which they blamed "partisan" remarks by the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for scuttling the bill.

But anyone who looked at the transcript of Pelosi’s speech released by her office might have been puzzled by the complaints.

The transcript seemed relatively tame — with only relatively mild shots at the Republicans in the text.

But a review of the video of Pelosi’s comments shows the speaker deviated substantially from her prepared remarks when she stepped into the well of the House at about 12:20 p.m. Monday afternoon – delivering a series of ad-libbed jabs at President Bush and his party.

Pelosi’s office continued to distribute the as-prepared version of her remarks as late as 1:24 p.m. — an hour after she had delivered the more incendiary version of her speech on the House floor.

Among the remarks Pelosi made on the floor that were not included in the prepared text:


"When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton's surpluses — four years in a row, budget surpluses, on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies within two years, he had turned that around ... and now eight years later the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything-goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today. They claim to be free-market advocates when it's really an anything-goes mentality, no regulation, no supervision, no discipline. ..."

"... Democrats believe in a free market ... but in this case, in its unbridled form as encouraged, supported by the Republicans — some in the Republican Party, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos."

Pelosi's office did not immediately return a call for comment.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Blunt reaches out to Hoyer

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is reaching to House Democratic leaders, hoping to reignite talks on the bailout bill.

Aides confirmed that Blunt spoke to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Barney Frank by phone Monday afternoon after the bailout failed to pass the House.

Aides said Blunt did not discuss specific changes to the bill. However, some Republicans are calling for a change in mark-to-market accounting rules as a possible way to attract GOP support.

“You can’t do things that drive yes votes away, either on our side or the other side,” Blunt told Roll Call.

Blunt also told Roll Call he thought he had 75 votes going on to the House floor before the vote, but they fell well short of that.

“They knew that’s what I thought we had,” he said.

(Do we smell sabotage? Gopper sabotage against gooper? WTF?)


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Thinking The Unthinkable




Why weren't the bankers and governments thinking the unthinkable a few years ago, when this nightmare was obvious to the rest of us, none of whom are economists?

Financial Crisis: Think the Unthinkable


Totems are tumbling, shibboleths lie shattered.


When the US Republican administration proposes buying banking assets worth more than several European countries put together, you know the normal rules are being torn up. That means politics has to change too.


In the US, despite the rows over detail, Republicans and Democrats alike have been ready to think the previously unthinkable.


Here the Labour government has had to move fast to respond to changing circumstances, and more will need to be done. But the Conservatives have proved slow to keep up with seismic events, opposing the measures our economy needs. The scale of the challenge is considerable.


Dodgy lending decisions in the US housing market have infected financial institutions across the globe. Over-complex bundling of assets, lent round the world and back again, meant banks, credit ratings agencies and national regulators all struggled to understand where the risks lay. Banks have lost confidence in each other and global credit markets have frozen up. Add to the mix, wild fluctuations in world oil prices and increasing food prices.


The Irish economy is now in recession. France and Germany have experienced negative growth. And the UK economy is under pressure too. Governments, central banks and regulators across the world are rightly taking unprecedented action to promote financial stability.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.


Bailout or Blowout.........

Markets to Congress: Bailout -- or blowout

Posted Sep 29 2008, 10:09 AM by Jon Markman
Rating:


Members of Congress shocked the world today by voting down legislation aimed at resolving the U.S. credit crisis, evidently determining that it was far from the comprehensive bailout or rescue plan that its promoters claimed and instead was little more than a larger version of several failed attempts that have come before. Investors responded by throwing a fit, punching the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 600 points by 3:30 p.m. ET.


The House move was one part nihilism, one part bluff-calling and one part an expression of total constituent outrage, and only history will be able to judge if representatives' snub of their political leadership will rank among the greatest blunders of all time or a brave move of principle. Both views will have their day in court, for dispassionate analysis of the $700-billion bailout plan reveals that it was in fact deeply flawed -- failing to provide a solution to the big problems that plague the banks while at the same time affronting the deep sense of exasperation among ordinary Americans that they were being asked to pay for the sins of the wealthy. One bank analyst said taxpayer sentiment was not 9-1 against, or 70-1, but rather, "there is no 1."


Putting aside the moral issues, here was the problem with the proposed law:


For the 15 months, the Federal Reserve has been trying to turn banks' bad mortgage loans into cash by allowing them to turn them in as collateral for Federal loans. With each new program with names like "term auction facility," the Fed has lowered its requirements for the quality of the loans it would take, widened the number of financial institutions eligible for the program, and stretched out the amount of time the institutions could keep the laundered money.


The only change in the new plan -- called the "troubled asset recovery program," or TARP -- is that the Fed will accept almost any kind of loan, from virtually any financial institution, and now it is just giving the money away rather than making a loan. That's why this one costs so much more. But it still doesn't get at the two root problems in the banking system. Read More...



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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.



Two Portraits of a Bioterror Suspect

As FBI Paints Ivins as Killer, Friends Recall Him as Good, if Flawed

By Anne Hull, Marilyn W. Thompson and Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2008; A01


Two days before he was found unconscious at home, felled by a lethal dose of Tylenol and valium, microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins logged on to one of the "express computers" on the second floor of the library in downtown Frederick.


He typed in the name of a Web site devoted to the anthrax-mailings investigation, a perplexing, unsolved case that had dragged on for seven years. At 7:13 p.m., the computer connected to a page that included comments from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who was confident that the case soon would be solved. "I tell you, we've made great progress in the investigation," he said.


Earlier that day, Ivins had been released from a psychiatric hospital, where the FBI had used the opportunity to obtain a DNA sample from him. Agents assigned to 24-hour surveillance followed him as he returned to his modest Cape Cod house outside the gates of Fort Detrick. Then Ivins "wasn't seen again," FBI documents say, until paramedics carried him out of his home unconscious.


The scientist who had spent his career studying lethal bacteria chose one of the simplest but most painful ways to die: acetaminophen poisoning, which causes liver damage and internal bleeding.


Some details of Ivins's final days emerged last week in a new release of FBI documents. The bureau found no suicide note, as it had hoped, and only sketchy evidence to bolster its case that Ivins was a diabolical and plotting criminal.


The new material emphasized the two irreconcilable versions of the man the FBI blames for the nation's most deadly act of biological terrorism.


The fatal spores used in the 2001 mailings came from a single flask in his custody, the FBI said, and for years Ivins displayed secretive behavior that fit the profile of a murderer who stuffed poison-laced letters into a Princeton, N.J., mailbox. He stalked members of a sorority, sent packages anonymously from out-of-town mailboxes, used false names in bizarre letters and e-mails, and took mysterious nocturnal car trips, sometimes rolling back his odometer.


But Ivins's defenders have cast enough doubt on the FBI's case that key members of Congress are demanding hearings. One recipient of an anthrax-laced letter, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), for the first time has publicly questioned the FBI, especially its conclusion that Ivins acted alone.


Friends say Ivins's psychiatric troubles intensified as the FBI hounded him, showing his children photos of victims and saying, "Your father did this." They knew Ivins as a father who cheered on his son's ball games and as a volunteer who cleaned out the muddied rescue vehicle used when two boys were swept away in a creek. Even in the face of the FBI's revelations -- the guns, the obsessions, the aliases -- Ivins's friends rationalized the details.


"For everything they want to pin on him . . . there is a counter to it, an alternate explanation," said Katie Carr, the former deputy commander at USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked for 27 years. "There are an awful lot of us in the community that surrounded Bruce who are not satisfied. Please prove it."


Ivins's attorney, Thomas M. DeGonia, likens his client to a diamond held up to the light. Turn it just so, and it could fit the FBI's idea of a sociopath. Turn it another way and see a flawed 62-year-old man. "The obsession with a sorority and the anthrax killings, these are two completely unrelated things," DeGonia said.



Brainy but Quirky


Growing up in Lebanon, Ohio, Ivins was a brainy kid with a quirky personality. A neighbor remembers Ivins inviting him into his garage one day to show off a stick of dynamite he was cutting in half with a surgical instrument. "He kind of grinned, with the scalpel in his hand, with his [other] hand on the dynamite," Robert Surface said.


Bruce's pharmacist father, Princeton graduate T. Randall Ivins, ran the local drugstore, and his mother, Mary Ivins, had a keen intellect and belonged to the Hill History Club. Ivins's parents attended the Presbyterian church and played bridge, but Ivins's older brother, Tom, said there was physical abuse in the house. Their father sometimes slept at the drugstore.


Ivins later said he felt "desolation" in high school, though most remember him as academically gifted if slightly awkward. The 1964 Lebanon High yearbook shows a skinny kid posing with the track team, all elbows and heavy black glasses.


A science standout, Ivins entered the University of Cincinnati in 1964 and earned his bachelor's and advanced degrees in microbiology. At 29, he married Diane Betsch, 20. They headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Ivins had postdoctoral work.


"He was a very bright scientist and an awfully nice guy," said Priscilla B. Wyrick, then Ivins's professor at UNC and now the chair of the microbiology department at Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University. Wyrick had belonged to the sorority Chi Omega and remembers Ivins asking her about its rituals. "After about the second time he did it, I told him to buzz off," she said.


But Ivins's interest in another sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, frightened microbiologist Nancy L. Haigwood, a member who knew Ivins at UNC. Both ended up living in Gaithersburg, and one morning, Haigwood came out of the apartment she shared with her boyfriend and found "KKG" spray-painted on their Honda.


"Bruce figured out where I lived and what my fiance's car looked like," said Haigwood, now the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton. She filed a police report and later confronted Ivins, who denied it.


By then Ivins was working at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, in Frederick. He and his wife adopted twins, and Diane Ivins opened a day care at their home. She later led Frederick County Right To Life, participating in antiabortion rallies. The couple attended St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church. They scrimped to buy a $140,000 house across the street from the Army installation. The slender Ivins often rode his bike to work, reminding one colleague of a scarecrow on wheels as he pedaled across the base.



A Respected Scientist


Within USAMRIID's high-security laboratories, Ivins was the go-to man for researchers probing anthrax disease. Ivins specialized in spore preparation, taking wet bacteria samples and culturing them in glass flasks. Ivins experimented on mice, rats, golden guinea pigs and monkeys, first injecting the animals with test vaccines and then blasting them with anthrax. After a few days, he counted bodies.


His research earned scientific notice, and the Pentagon awarded him its highest civilian honor in 2002 for helping solve a problem that had delayed production of the anthrax vaccine used to inoculate U.S. troops. The FBI suggested that Ivins's determination to promote the importance of the vaccine may have been a motive in sending the letters.


Ivins also worked to help develop vaccines offering broader protections. Partly through his efforts, the Army secured two patents that could aid in the production of a vaccine then under development. Ivins stood to gain some money from the patent rights, but hardly a financial bonanza.


"This was a guy who drove an older car with bare tires, who wore threadbare clothes. He was not in this for money," said another former supervisor, Jeffrey J. Adamovicz.


Although his work was going well, by 2000 Ivins was seeing a psychiatrist who prescribed for him the anti-depressant Celexa. The drug brought little relief. "I get incredible paranoid delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs," he wrote in an e-mail.


That summer, Ivins attended weekly therapy sessions at Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick, telling a counselor of his plans to travel out of town to watch a young woman play soccer. If she lost, Ivins said, he would poison her, according to the counselor, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. "It was not a crime of impulse," the counselor said. "It was planned with cunning." The counselor notified authorities, who said nothing could be done without the intended victim's last name or address.


By mutual agreement, Ivins stopped seeing the counselor, whom he felt he could no longer trust. He cryptically wrote a friend, saying that his counselor "wanted to get me put in jail."


He also was using out-of-town mailboxes to anonymously send gifts and cards to someone in another city. He apparently made an 11-hour round-trip one night to leave a package for that person. When the FBI later questioned him, he explained that he liked taking mindless drives.


Ivins used a variety of names and e-mail addresses -- "jimmyflathead" was one -- and he rented a postal box under the name Carl Scandella. That was the name of Nancy Haigwood's husband -- her boyfriend at the time of the car vandalism.



Clues, and Holes, in the Case


The anthrax letters mailed in the fall of 2001 were distinguished by childlike block handwriting that warned: "We have this anthrax. You die now. . . . Death to America. Death to Israel." Though the FBI did not match Ivins's handwriting to that in the letters, agents were struck by phrasing in an e-mail he sent Sept. 26, after the first letters were mailed: "Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and saran gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans."


Ivins spent several late nights in the lab alone before the mailings. The FBI called the nighttime hours unusual, although his friends said they were not. Ivins later told agents he was merely escaping problems at home. He seemed fine that fall when he enrolled in an American Red Cross disaster-relief course with Peggy Magnanelli, a fellow volunteer who remembered how Ivins later stepped up to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees.


Ivins's professional skills were such that the FBI took him into its confidence as it analyzed the powder contained in a letter to Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.). He was kept informed as the bureau began a global quest to identify the distinctive genetic fingerprint of the bacteria packed into the mailings.


Eventually, it all came down to a single flask kept in Ivins's custody. In 1997, he had received anthrax spores prepared at Dugway Proving Ground, an Army test facility in Utah. Ivins cultured the Dugway spores, mixed them with his own and stored the unique concoction in a flask about the size of a half-pint of milk.


He labeled it "Dugway 97," then at some point added the name RMR 1029, which stands for "Reference Material Request." A prosecutor later called it the "murder weapon" in the anthrax case.


The FBI concluded that Ivins was the sole culprit in the mailings, growing the distinctive material in his lab, packing it into pre-stamped envelopes bought in Frederick and secretly driving six hours round-trip to Princeton, N.J., to mail them. Of special note, the bureau said, was the fact that the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority had an office on the same street as the Princeton mailbox.


But the case had holes. No one had spotted Ivins in Princeton, and hair samples taken from the Nassau Street mailbox did not match his DNA. Moreover, Ivins was not the only person with access to RMR 1029. The FBI at first said about 100 people had access, but that number multiplied with the finding that Ivins had kept the flask in two different USAMRIID buildings, each with its own lab technicians and cleaning crews.


The FBI also made the case that Ivins, once so trusted, had tried to deceive investigators. When scientists were asked to give the FBI bacterial samples from their labs, he did not follow protocol. His second sample, the FBI later said, had been doctored.


By then, it was 2007. Ivins had worked without incident among pathogens for five years after the anthrax mailings.


Late last year, the circle was closing around Ivins. In November, the FBI searched his property, with his family sequestered at a hotel. Agents seized a Glock 34, a Glock 27 and a Beretta pistol, as well as directions to the home of a female former co-worker.


The lab revoked his access to pathogens. He kept office hours but was mixing anti-anxiety drugs with sleeping pills and alcohol. Someone alerted a fellow scientist who was in a 12-step recovery program that Ivins needed help. This spring, Ivins did two stints in rehab. His wife visited often.


This year, the FBI met with Ivins three times, documents say, including once in early June as prosecutors prepared to indict him. Out of the blue, Ivins contacted his counselor from 2000 to ask if he could obtain his patient records. The counselor no longer worked at Comprehensive Counseling Associates but said if the records still existed, they would be at the office.


Ivins, who tried to implicate several of his colleagues, e-mailed himself at an oddly named address to say that he was doing his own investigation and "should have been a private eye!"



A Pledge of Violence


On July 9, Ivins announced in group therapy that he was a suspect in the anthrax case. He vowed to kill co-workers who had wronged him. The account of this session came from Jean C. Duley, then a clinic addiction specialist. The next morning, Duley called Frederick police and later went to court to get a restraining order.

Ivins was taken into custody and sent to a Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital for evaluation. His house was again searched; seized were hundreds of rounds of ammunition, homemade body armor, a bulletproof vest and a handwritten note about Duley. Also found was a copy of "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," a novel based on the lives of Alan Turing and Kurt Godel, two towering figures of modern logic. Both men died in bizarre suicides, Godel in Princeton in 1978 from starvation and Turing, a Princeton alumnus, of cyanide poisoning in 1954 after applying the poison to an apple.


The trove of documents released since Ivins's suicide has added to the image seen by his counselors: a madman, driven by obsessions. He tracked members of Kappa Kappa Gamma and showed his command of the sorority's secrets in entries on Wikipedia. He became obsessed with Kathryn Price, a winner of "The Mole" television reality show, and wrote strange e-mails to her under a phony name, Cindy Wood.


"Family and friends deserve to know he had two sides," one of his counselors said. "In all my years of counseling, I never felt scared, except by this person."


But even after his death, the FBI acknowledged that the central forensic evidence in its case against Ivins left room for doubt. "There's always going to be a spore on the grassy knoll," said Vahid Majidi of the bureau's weapons of mass destruction directorate.


Days after his death, Ivins's family and friends prepared for a memorial service that drew so many people to the small Fort Detrick chapel that overflow chairs were hustled in by Army personnel. One weeping colonel after another praised Ivins's devotion to work and family, while co-workers recalled his endearing habits -- such as Tupperware lunches of lima beans and Jell-O.


At Ivins's house nearby, dead leaves covered the small yard where agents had come again to rummage through trash. They found notes Ivins wrote in the psychiatric hospital detailing his anxieties, including his fear of incarceration. They carted away the scraps of paper to log as evidence, passing a wooden shed with peeling paint where they had also searched for clues. The scientist's blue Saturn sat in the driveway, empty.


Staff researcher Julie Tate and staff writer Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

House ignores Bush, rejects $700B bailout bill



Wonder where we would be now, if the Greedy Old Pukes had rejected this drunken frat boy and his evil side-kick, Dick Vader, years ago instead of covering up for them.

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

In a stunning vote that shocked the capital and worldwide markets, the House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive without it. The Dow Jones industrials plunged nearly 800 points, the most ever for a single day.

Democratic and Republican leaders alike pledged to try again, though the Democrats said GOP lawmakers needed to provide more votes. Bush huddled with his economic advisers about a next step. The House was to reconvene on Thursday instead of adjourning for the year as planned.

Stocks began falling even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was officially announced on the House floor. The 777-point decline for the day surpassed the 721-point previous record, on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, though in percentage terms it was well short of the drops on Black Monday of October 1987 and at the start of the Depression.

In the House chamber, as a digital screen recorded a cascade of "no" votes against the bailout, Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley of New York shouted news of the falling stocks. "Six hundred points!" he yelled, jabbing his thumb downward.

Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite loud protest from their constituents back home. Not enough members were willing to take the political risk just five weeks before an election.

More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill.

The overriding question for congressional leaders was what to do next. Congress has been trying to adjourn so that its members can go out and campaign for the election that is just five weeks away.

"The legislation may have failed; the crisis is still with us," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a news conference after the defeat.

"What happened today cannot stand," Pelosi said. "We must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that message."

At the White House, Bush said, "I'm disappointed in the vote. ... We've put forth a plan that was big because we've got a big problem." He pledged to keep pressing for a measure that Congress would pass.

Republicans blamed Pelosi's scathing speech near the close of the debate — which attacked Bush's economic policies and a "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation" of financial markets — for the vote's failure.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House," Minority Leader John Boehner said. Pelosi's words, the Ohio Republican said, "poisoned our conference, caused a number of members that we thought we could get, to go south."

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the whip, estimated that Pelosi's speech changed the minds of a dozen Republicans who might otherwise have supported the plan.

That was a remarkable accusation by Republicans against Republicans, said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee: "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country."

The presidential candidates kept close track — from afar.

In Colorado, Democrat Barack Obama said, "Democrats, Republicans, step up to the plate, get it done."

Republican John McCain spoke with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke before leaving Ohio for a campaign stop in Iowa, a spokeswoman said.

The legislation the administration promoted would have allowed the government to buy bad mortgages and other rotten assets held by troubled banks and financial institutions. Getting those debts off their books should bolster those companies' balance sheets, making them more inclined to lend and easing one of the biggest choke points in the credit crisis. If the plan worked, the thinking went, it would help lift a major weight off the national economy that is already sputtering.

Monday's action had been preceded by unusually aggressive White House lobbying, and Fratto said that Bush had been making calls to lawmakers until shortly before the vote.

Bush and his economic advisers, as well as congressional leaders in both parties had argued the plan was vital to insulating ordinary Americans from the effects of Wall Street's bad bets. The version that was up for vote Monday was the product of marathon closed-door negotiations on Capitol Hill over the weekend.

"We're all worried about losing our jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared in an impassioned speech in support of the bill before the vote. "Most of us say, 'I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it — not me.'"

Said Boehner, after the vote: "Americans are angry, and so are my colleagues. They don't want to have to vote for a bill like this. But I have concerns about what this means for the American people, what it means for our economy, and what it means for people's jobs. I think that we need to renew our efforts to find a solution that Congress can support."



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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.