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Thirty nine years ago today, Gram Parsons died in Joshua Tree, California.
I was in Columbia, Mo. when I learned about it. It was during my first great hitchhiking trip across these United States. I'd been a fan since the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, Gilded Palace of Sin, a few years before.
I still get sad thinking of his death. I wish he was still around and I was reviewing his 34th album.
Here's a couple of grainy film clips of Gram singing with Emmylou Harris.
30 Eylül 2012 Pazar
eMUSIC SEPTEMBER
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* Undercover by West Hell 5. On my recent trip to Amsterdam, I planned to go to a party put on by The Amsterdam Beat Club at a Club called Paradisio. (I was alerted to this by fellow GaragePunk podcaster Suzanne of Rock 'n' Roll Rampage.)
One of the bands playing was West Hell 5, an instrumental group featuring sax, guitar and organ. They call their sound "Mod & Crime," which is inspired by "old spy-fi & crime-soundtracks, 60's groove jazz, Vegas Grind and early rhythm 'n blues." It's a cool, greasy sound.
And I like their album cover.
Most the tracks are original though they do cover The Man from U.N.C.L.E. theme and "Secret Agent Man" (though I still like Junior Brown's cover of that one the best.)
Long story short, I missed the show at Paradisio. For some reason I thought it was on Friday. It was on Thursday. At least I have this album.
* Live in the Red by Pussy Galore. Before he detonated the Blues Explosion, Jon Spencer was the frontman for this rocking little unit from Washington, D.C.
They reveled in crazy noise, but they were far more fartsy than artsy. Listen close enough and you can hear strains of rockabilly and Rolling Stones but all on distorted overdrive. (Don't listen too close or you'll blow an eardrum.) Every song they ever tackled was a party out of control.
This was Pussy's last concert, recorded at CBGB's in 1989. If there was any petty onstage bickering that night, they left it off this album. But Spencer and the boys don't sound like a group at the end of its rope here. They play their songs, more than half of which are from their greatest album Dial "M" for Motherfuckerwith pride and spirit.
* Memphis Heat by Memphis Slim & Canned Heat. One of Canned Heats most remembered records was the double album they did with John Lee Hooker, 1971's Hooker 'n' Heat. Far less known is this team-up with piano man Memphis Slim.
"I want everybody to know just who I am," Slim sings in the title song. "Me and the Canned Heat are gonna have a little jam." And indeed they did.
This collaboration includes two sets of sessions in Paris, (where Slim was living at the time) in 1970 -- Heat at its prime -- and 1973, which includes contributions from The Memphis Horns.
While the horns add an extra dimension, they represent a departure from the guitar-centric boogie usually associated with Canned Heat. Still, the interplay between Slim's piano and Henry Vestine's guitar makes this a treat for any blues fan.
Slim handled all the vocal responsibilities except on "Five Long Years." (I'm not sure who sang it. It doesn't sound like Slim or Bobby "The Bear" Hite, the band's lead singer during those years.)
The best tracks here are One of Slim's best-known songs, "Mother Earth" -- much more upbeat than other versions I've heard him do -- and "Paris" an snazzy little ode to his adopted home. (He moved there in 1962 and would die there in 1988.)
Now I've got to get my hands on Gates On the Heat, Canned Heat's album they did with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.
* Between the Ditches by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. You might think that a trio consisting of a crazy slide guitarist, his wife on the washboard and his cousin playing a bass drum and junkyard percussion might be little more than a fun little novelty act.
But those who have enjoyed the recordings and/or the live shows of The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, know that this group from rural Indiana goes way beyond the novelty spectrum.
Sound familiar? Yes, I just reviewed this album in Terrell's Tuneup not long ago. Read the whole thing HERE
Plus:
3 Nancy Sinatra covers (I played these in my Nancy tribute in a recent Terrell's Sound World):
* "Lightning's Girl" by Lydia Lunch & 8-Eyed Spy
* "Some Velvet Morning" by Firewater
* "How Does That Grab You Darlin' " by Empress of Fur
All three are fine tributes in their own peculiar ways. But I still prefer Nancy's originals.
* Undercover by West Hell 5. On my recent trip to Amsterdam, I planned to go to a party put on by The Amsterdam Beat Club at a Club called Paradisio. (I was alerted to this by fellow GaragePunk podcaster Suzanne of Rock 'n' Roll Rampage.)One of the bands playing was West Hell 5, an instrumental group featuring sax, guitar and organ. They call their sound "Mod & Crime," which is inspired by "old spy-fi & crime-soundtracks, 60's groove jazz, Vegas Grind and early rhythm 'n blues." It's a cool, greasy sound.
And I like their album cover.
Most the tracks are original though they do cover The Man from U.N.C.L.E. theme and "Secret Agent Man" (though I still like Junior Brown's cover of that one the best.)
Long story short, I missed the show at Paradisio. For some reason I thought it was on Friday. It was on Thursday. At least I have this album.
* Live in the Red by Pussy Galore. Before he detonated the Blues Explosion, Jon Spencer was the frontman for this rocking little unit from Washington, D.C.They reveled in crazy noise, but they were far more fartsy than artsy. Listen close enough and you can hear strains of rockabilly and Rolling Stones but all on distorted overdrive. (Don't listen too close or you'll blow an eardrum.) Every song they ever tackled was a party out of control.
This was Pussy's last concert, recorded at CBGB's in 1989. If there was any petty onstage bickering that night, they left it off this album. But Spencer and the boys don't sound like a group at the end of its rope here. They play their songs, more than half of which are from their greatest album Dial "M" for Motherfuckerwith pride and spirit.
* Memphis Heat by Memphis Slim & Canned Heat. One of Canned Heats most remembered records was the double album they did with John Lee Hooker, 1971's Hooker 'n' Heat. Far less known is this team-up with piano man Memphis Slim."I want everybody to know just who I am," Slim sings in the title song. "Me and the Canned Heat are gonna have a little jam." And indeed they did.
This collaboration includes two sets of sessions in Paris, (where Slim was living at the time) in 1970 -- Heat at its prime -- and 1973, which includes contributions from The Memphis Horns.
While the horns add an extra dimension, they represent a departure from the guitar-centric boogie usually associated with Canned Heat. Still, the interplay between Slim's piano and Henry Vestine's guitar makes this a treat for any blues fan.
Slim handled all the vocal responsibilities except on "Five Long Years." (I'm not sure who sang it. It doesn't sound like Slim or Bobby "The Bear" Hite, the band's lead singer during those years.)
The best tracks here are One of Slim's best-known songs, "Mother Earth" -- much more upbeat than other versions I've heard him do -- and "Paris" an snazzy little ode to his adopted home. (He moved there in 1962 and would die there in 1988.)
Now I've got to get my hands on Gates On the Heat, Canned Heat's album they did with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.
* Between the Ditches by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. You might think that a trio consisting of a crazy slide guitarist, his wife on the washboard and his cousin playing a bass drum and junkyard percussion might be little more than a fun little novelty act.But those who have enjoyed the recordings and/or the live shows of The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, know that this group from rural Indiana goes way beyond the novelty spectrum.
Sound familiar? Yes, I just reviewed this album in Terrell's Tuneup not long ago. Read the whole thing HERE
Plus:
3 Nancy Sinatra covers (I played these in my Nancy tribute in a recent Terrell's Sound World):
* "Lightning's Girl" by Lydia Lunch & 8-Eyed Spy
* "Some Velvet Morning" by Firewater
* "How Does That Grab You Darlin' " by Empress of Fur
All three are fine tributes in their own peculiar ways. But I still prefer Nancy's originals.
Enjoy the Fall with a New Big Enchilada Podcast
To contact us Click HERE
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. Fall is falling. Here's some sweet rocking sounds to comfort you as the world around you decays.
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Here's the playlist:
(Background Music: Beginning of Autumn by Capra)
Bloody Mary by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
There is a Mall by Dennis Most & The Instigators
The Heretic's Song by The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies
Ain't Dumbo by The Night Beats
Horror Asparagus Stories by The Driving Stupid
Lightning's Girl by Lydia Lunch
(Background Music: Memphis Heat by Memphis Slim & Canned Heat)
Bang Your Thing at the Ball by Bob Log III
Can't Get Right by Jehoshaphat Blow
They Grew Wild for You by Goshen
The Young Psychotics by Tav Falco & Panther Burns
Feel Allright by The Oblvians
Don't Kick My Dog by Andre Williams
(Background Music: Autumn Sweater by Yo La Tengo)
Lucky Boy by Alien Space Kitchen
Drugs, Guns, Hookers by The Angel Babies
The Beat by Thee Vicars (R.I.P. Chris Langeland)
The Girl From Kook a Monga by Tommy Ridgely
Pretty Thing by Nightlosers
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. Fall is falling. Here's some sweet rocking sounds to comfort you as the world around you decays.
DOWNLOAD | SUBSCRIBE| FACEBOOK | SUBSCRIBE TO ALL GARAGEPUNK PIRATE RADIO PODCASTS |
Here's the playlist:
(Background Music: Beginning of Autumn by Capra)
Bloody Mary by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
There is a Mall by Dennis Most & The Instigators
The Heretic's Song by The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies
Ain't Dumbo by The Night Beats
Horror Asparagus Stories by The Driving Stupid
Lightning's Girl by Lydia Lunch
(Background Music: Memphis Heat by Memphis Slim & Canned Heat)
Bang Your Thing at the Ball by Bob Log III
Can't Get Right by Jehoshaphat Blow
They Grew Wild for You by Goshen
The Young Psychotics by Tav Falco & Panther Burns
Feel Allright by The Oblvians
Don't Kick My Dog by Andre Williams
(Background Music: Autumn Sweater by Yo La Tengo)
Lucky Boy by Alien Space Kitchen
Drugs, Guns, Hookers by The Angel Babies
The Beat by Thee Vicars (R.I.P. Chris Langeland)
The Girl From Kook a Monga by Tommy Ridgely
Pretty Thing by Nightlosers
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
To contact us Click HERE
Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Charlie Laine Ate My Brain by The Ruiners
Do You Understand by The Sinister Six
Lee, Bob & Lula by Love Struck
Garbagehead by Eric "Rosco" Ambel
We Ruined It (Ranch Version) by The Grannies
Jumpin' in the Night by The Plimsouls
Ghostified by Persian Claws
Her House is the Way to Hell by The Tombstones
Hog Heaven by The Shrunken Heads
Pachuco Hop by Joe "King" Carrasco
Playtex, the Cryptic Village Idiot by Sexton Ming
Putty In Your Hands by The Detroit Cobras
Ham and Eggs by Skip Manning
Sometimes Sometimes by April March
Cherry Bomb by Joan Jet with L7
Corpse Fishing by Found Dead in Trunk
Being by The Angry Dead Pirates
Bless You by The Devil Dogs
I Need Money (Keep Your Alibis) by Slim Harpo
The Slim by Sugar
Second Television by Mission of Burma
Dagger Moon by Dead Moon
Early Roman Kings by Bob Dylan
Ain't It Strange by Patti Smith
Time Has Come Today by The Angry Samoans
Beep Beep Beep by Andre Williams
I'm So Green by Can
Pinky's Dream by David Lynch
Old Shep by Al's Equinox Party
Deborah Lee by BBQ
Little Girl by The Syndicate of Sound
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Charlie Laine Ate My Brain by The Ruiners
Do You Understand by The Sinister Six
Lee, Bob & Lula by Love Struck
Garbagehead by Eric "Rosco" Ambel
We Ruined It (Ranch Version) by The Grannies
Jumpin' in the Night by The Plimsouls
Ghostified by Persian Claws
Her House is the Way to Hell by The Tombstones
Hog Heaven by The Shrunken Heads
Pachuco Hop by Joe "King" Carrasco
Playtex, the Cryptic Village Idiot by Sexton Ming
Putty In Your Hands by The Detroit Cobras
Ham and Eggs by Skip Manning
Sometimes Sometimes by April March
Cherry Bomb by Joan Jet with L7
Corpse Fishing by Found Dead in Trunk
Being by The Angry Dead Pirates
Bless You by The Devil Dogs
I Need Money (Keep Your Alibis) by Slim Harpo
The Slim by Sugar
Second Television by Mission of Burma
Dagger Moon by Dead Moon
Early Roman Kings by Bob Dylan
Ain't It Strange by Patti Smith
Time Has Come Today by The Angry Samoans
Beep Beep Beep by Andre Williams
I'm So Green by Can
Pinky's Dream by David Lynch
Old Shep by Al's Equinox Party
Deborah Lee by BBQ
Little Girl by The Syndicate of Sound
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Love For the Rockabilly Fillies
To contact us Click HERE
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Sept. 28, 2012
One of the most exciting CDs I’ve been listening to in recent weeks is The Blanco Sessions, the posthumously released, should-have-been-a-comeback album for rockabilly fireball Janis Martin. It’s an upbeat, generally happy CD, and yet there’s a sad story behind it.
Martin died of lung cancer in 2007, just a few months after she finished recording the album. It was the final raw deal for a woman whose career was full of raw deals. (It’s also a raw deal that it took five years to find a record company to release the album, but that’s another story.)
I’d like to be the first writer to do a piece on Martin without referring to the fact that in the 1950s her record company marketed her as “the Female Elvis.”
I guess I blew that.
That "female Elvis" bunk doesn’t do justice to Martin. It makes her sound like some kind of novelty act. She wasn’t.
True, the Virginia native (who signed to RCA Records in 1956. just months after Elvis did), was an early female practitioner — and one of very few — of rockabilly in her day. And she did have a song called “My Boy Elvis.” But she was very much her own person — an artist with a strong, confident voice.
A dynamic, vivacious performer with a natural rockabilly spunkiness, Martin might have achieved a long and productive career as a singer.
But at the age of 16 (15 by some accounts), she secretly married her boyfriend. And by the age of 17, after she got pregnant, she could no longer keep it a secret. RCA couldn't handle the potential scandal (remember, this was the late ’50s), so the company dropped the pregnant teenage rockabilly. It’s strange, but one of the first songs she recorded for RCA was one called “Let’s Elope Baby.”
An overly cautious and conservative record label was her first professional roadblock. Her second was her second husband, who hated being on the road so much in the early ’60s he gave Martin an ultimatum — your music career or your marriage. She chose the marriage and put a lid on the music for the rest of the time she was married to him — 13 years.
This album, lovingly produced by modern rockabilly singer and longtime Martin fan Rosie Flores, is something of an unintentional farewell letter from Martin. It wasn't the first time the two worked together. Martin contributed her vocals on a couple of songs on 1995’s Rockabilly Filly (Flores’ best album) — as did fellow rockabilly matriarch Wanda Jackson.
When Martin and Flores worked on The Blanco Sessions — recorded in April 2007 in Blanco, Texas — Martin had not yet been diagnosed with cancer. The illness certainly didn’t show in her voice, which sounded just as powerful as, though more mature and somewhat husker, than it did in her girlhood days.
Flores made no noticeable effort to modernize or force her own stamp on Martin’s basic sound, as producer Jack White did on Jackson’s recent album The Party Ain’t Over. There are no Amy Winehouse songs and no fancy studio tricks here. Flores just gathered a handful of capable Texas musicians and let the music rip, with Martin clearly out front.
The songs include a couple of tunes associated with Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s “Wild One (Real Wild Child),” originally recorded by Aussiebilly Johnny O’Keefe. But even better is “It’ll Be Me,” a classic, if under- appreciated, Jerry Lee B-side written by Cowboy Jack Clement. Martin delivers with fire.
She also performs some lesser-known rockabilly and neo-rockabilly tunes like “I Believe What You Say” (a minor hit for Ricky Nelson written by Johnny and Dorsey Burnette); “Find Out What’s Happening,” an Elvis song from the early ’70s; Ronnie Dawson’s “Wham Bam Jam”; and The Blasters’ 1983 ode to Hank Williams, “Long White Cadillac.”
Like most of her peers, beginning in her teen years, Martin was a fan of rhythm and blues. She kicks off this album with a billyed-up version of a Ruth Brown song “As Long as I’m Movin’.” She also covers “Roll Around Rockin’,” a lusty blues song by Carolina Beach Music master Billy Scott.
Martin’s roots are in country music, however. In the 50s, she toured with the likes of Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, and Faron Young. Among the country songs here are a soulful take on Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams.” It doesn’t quite match the intensity of Cline’s classic original, but it’s a worthy try.
On the other hand, I’d match Martin’s upbeat, rocking take on Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” against any version of that much-covered tune. (Let’s start a needless argument: the worst version of “Oh Lonesome Me” is Neil Young’s dreary take on his After the Gold Rush album. Talk among yourselves.)
In interviews, Flores has said that she believes Martin realized this would be her last album. It’s a fitting goodbye from a rock pioneer, rocking until the very end.
Also recommended:
* Working Girl’s Guitar by Rosie Flores. On the heels of The Blanco Sessions finally seeing the light of day, Flores will be releasing her latest album (coming Oct. 16), which as always is full of delights.
Although she has helped carry the rockabilly torch — and this work features a bang-up version of “Drugstore Rock ‘n’ Roll,” an early hit for Janis Martin, and a fresh take on Elvis’ “Too Much” — Working Girl’s Guitar isn’t a pure rockabilly album. Most of the CD is good basic roots rock, and it includes a tasty instrumental, “Surf Demon #5.”
One of the highlights here is Flores’ duet with former teen idol Bobby Vee (you read that right — Bobby Vee!); it’s a sweet ’50’s-style ballad called “Love Must Have Passed Me By.”
Another cool surprise is Flores’ arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” She does it jazzy, with a stand-up bass and soft acoustic guitar solos, subtly showing off her chops on the instrument.
Sept. 28, 2012
One of the most exciting CDs I’ve been listening to in recent weeks is The Blanco Sessions, the posthumously released, should-have-been-a-comeback album for rockabilly fireball Janis Martin. It’s an upbeat, generally happy CD, and yet there’s a sad story behind it.
Martin died of lung cancer in 2007, just a few months after she finished recording the album. It was the final raw deal for a woman whose career was full of raw deals. (It’s also a raw deal that it took five years to find a record company to release the album, but that’s another story.)
I’d like to be the first writer to do a piece on Martin without referring to the fact that in the 1950s her record company marketed her as “the Female Elvis.”
I guess I blew that.
That "female Elvis" bunk doesn’t do justice to Martin. It makes her sound like some kind of novelty act. She wasn’t.
True, the Virginia native (who signed to RCA Records in 1956. just months after Elvis did), was an early female practitioner — and one of very few — of rockabilly in her day. And she did have a song called “My Boy Elvis.” But she was very much her own person — an artist with a strong, confident voice.
 |
| Janis Martin in the '50s |
But at the age of 16 (15 by some accounts), she secretly married her boyfriend. And by the age of 17, after she got pregnant, she could no longer keep it a secret. RCA couldn't handle the potential scandal (remember, this was the late ’50s), so the company dropped the pregnant teenage rockabilly. It’s strange, but one of the first songs she recorded for RCA was one called “Let’s Elope Baby.”
An overly cautious and conservative record label was her first professional roadblock. Her second was her second husband, who hated being on the road so much in the early ’60s he gave Martin an ultimatum — your music career or your marriage. She chose the marriage and put a lid on the music for the rest of the time she was married to him — 13 years.
This album, lovingly produced by modern rockabilly singer and longtime Martin fan Rosie Flores, is something of an unintentional farewell letter from Martin. It wasn't the first time the two worked together. Martin contributed her vocals on a couple of songs on 1995’s Rockabilly Filly (Flores’ best album) — as did fellow rockabilly matriarch Wanda Jackson.
 |
| Rosie & Janis |
Flores made no noticeable effort to modernize or force her own stamp on Martin’s basic sound, as producer Jack White did on Jackson’s recent album The Party Ain’t Over. There are no Amy Winehouse songs and no fancy studio tricks here. Flores just gathered a handful of capable Texas musicians and let the music rip, with Martin clearly out front.
The songs include a couple of tunes associated with Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s “Wild One (Real Wild Child),” originally recorded by Aussiebilly Johnny O’Keefe. But even better is “It’ll Be Me,” a classic, if under- appreciated, Jerry Lee B-side written by Cowboy Jack Clement. Martin delivers with fire.
She also performs some lesser-known rockabilly and neo-rockabilly tunes like “I Believe What You Say” (a minor hit for Ricky Nelson written by Johnny and Dorsey Burnette); “Find Out What’s Happening,” an Elvis song from the early ’70s; Ronnie Dawson’s “Wham Bam Jam”; and The Blasters’ 1983 ode to Hank Williams, “Long White Cadillac.”
Like most of her peers, beginning in her teen years, Martin was a fan of rhythm and blues. She kicks off this album with a billyed-up version of a Ruth Brown song “As Long as I’m Movin’.” She also covers “Roll Around Rockin’,” a lusty blues song by Carolina Beach Music master Billy Scott.
Martin’s roots are in country music, however. In the 50s, she toured with the likes of Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, and Faron Young. Among the country songs here are a soulful take on Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams.” It doesn’t quite match the intensity of Cline’s classic original, but it’s a worthy try.
On the other hand, I’d match Martin’s upbeat, rocking take on Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” against any version of that much-covered tune. (Let’s start a needless argument: the worst version of “Oh Lonesome Me” is Neil Young’s dreary take on his After the Gold Rush album. Talk among yourselves.)
In interviews, Flores has said that she believes Martin realized this would be her last album. It’s a fitting goodbye from a rock pioneer, rocking until the very end.
Also recommended:
* Working Girl’s Guitar by Rosie Flores. On the heels of The Blanco Sessions finally seeing the light of day, Flores will be releasing her latest album (coming Oct. 16), which as always is full of delights.
Although she has helped carry the rockabilly torch — and this work features a bang-up version of “Drugstore Rock ‘n’ Roll,” an early hit for Janis Martin, and a fresh take on Elvis’ “Too Much” — Working Girl’s Guitar isn’t a pure rockabilly album. Most of the CD is good basic roots rock, and it includes a tasty instrumental, “Surf Demon #5.”
One of the highlights here is Flores’ duet with former teen idol Bobby Vee (you read that right — Bobby Vee!); it’s a sweet ’50’s-style ballad called “Love Must Have Passed Me By.”
Another cool surprise is Flores’ arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” She does it jazzy, with a stand-up bass and soft acoustic guitar solos, subtly showing off her chops on the instrument.
29 Eylül 2012 Cumartesi
The American Conservative Catches Fire!
To contact us Click HERE
Daniel McCarthy over at The American Conservative, a centre-right magazine fighting ideological rigidity in the 21st century Republican Party, argues that the GOP may no longer be a national party:
The words I bolded help me to grasp the quasi-tribal mindset that allows a group of people to have supported the spend-but-don't-tax financial madness of Bush/Cheney for EIGHT long years but then launch a mad Tea-Party the second Obama took the Oath of Office.
But maybe that's just me.
Update here's Red State man himslef Erick, Ericskon on Romney ten months ago:
Now here is Erickson today gamely wrestling with skull-crushing levels of cognitive dissonance:
*
If you haven't read that same magazine's 'The Revolt of the Rich', you're missing a fascinating piece that should make a few Best-of-the -year lists.
Daniel McCarthy over at The American Conservative, a centre-right magazine fighting ideological rigidity in the 21st century Republican Party, argues that the GOP may no longer be a national party:
Because conservatives over-identify with the GOP, and the GOP’s identity is determined by factional and regional ideologies, the result is that conservatives take their definition of conservatism from the party and that definition is more regional- and interest-based than philosophical. This accounts for the spectacle of the GOP periodically getting worked up about “big government” while in fact expanding government — welfare state, warfare state, banning internet gambling, you name it — whenever it’s in power. The blue state/red state psychological divide is more fundamental to the party’s understanding of the world than is any consistent view of the proper extent and uses of government.
The words I bolded help me to grasp the quasi-tribal mindset that allows a group of people to have supported the spend-but-don't-tax financial madness of Bush/Cheney for EIGHT long years but then launch a mad Tea-Party the second Obama took the Oath of Office.
But maybe that's just me.
Update here's Red State man himslef Erick, Ericskon on Romney ten months ago:
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.
I’ve been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled. The man has no core beliefs other than in himself.
Now here is Erickson today gamely wrestling with skull-crushing levels of cognitive dissonance:
The staggering irony is that those of us who did not want Romney are now the ones defending him to the hilt while the elitist jerks are distancing themselves from Romney as quickly as possible — both upset at what their media friends tell them is to come and upset that Mitt Romney might not actually listen to their sweet whispers as much as they originally presumed.
Mitt Romney can win. He needs to hone his message.
*
If you haven't read that same magazine's 'The Revolt of the Rich', you're missing a fascinating piece that should make a few Best-of-the -year lists.
The Adverts: Outtakes & Rehearsals, 1977-1978
To contact us Click HERE
The Adverts (more HERE), as befits as band who's critical stature has grown so much over the years, have been heavily bootlegged. If you readers out there can continue to fill up the COMMENTS section, I will continue to fill up your hard drive with unavailable Adverts stuff. My goal in so doing is, of course to try to convince you to buy the available albums ( I personalty own Crossing The Red Sea, The Wonders Don't Care and Anthology and I'm going to buy Cast of Thousands again soon) and to check out the amazing solo works of Mr. TV Smith.
Tracklist
A1 One Chord Wonders
A2 Newboys
A3 Quick Step
A4 We Who Wait
A5 Bored Teenagers
A6 Great British Mistake
A7 Bombsite Boy
B1 I Surrender
B2 Love Songs
B3 Fate Of Criminals
B4 Male Assault
B5 The Adverts
B6 My Place
B7 Television's Over
Back sleeve states:
"Side 1 - first five tracks are the 'Basement Tape' - a very rare tape from '77 recorded in their rehearsal room when The Adverts were still developing their unique sound, this tape was shopped around to many labels in '77 to get them a record deal while tracks 6 and 7 are rough mixes from the 'Crossing The Read Sea'.
Side 2 is made up entirely from 'Cast Of Thousands' out takes which sounded more raw and punk than when the LP came out"
Hey Advert-tarians, give us a word or two on
these rarities in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band!
Anagram Records
Amazon
iTunes
TV's Homepage
TV's MySpace
The Adverts (more HERE), as befits as band who's critical stature has grown so much over the years, have been heavily bootlegged. If you readers out there can continue to fill up the COMMENTS section, I will continue to fill up your hard drive with unavailable Adverts stuff. My goal in so doing is, of course to try to convince you to buy the available albums ( I personalty own Crossing The Red Sea, The Wonders Don't Care and Anthology and I'm going to buy Cast of Thousands again soon) and to check out the amazing solo works of Mr. TV Smith.
Tracklist
A1 One Chord Wonders
A2 Newboys
A3 Quick Step
A4 We Who Wait
A5 Bored Teenagers
A6 Great British Mistake
A7 Bombsite Boy
B1 I Surrender
B2 Love Songs
B3 Fate Of Criminals
B4 Male Assault
B5 The Adverts
B6 My Place
B7 Television's Over
Back sleeve states:
"Side 1 - first five tracks are the 'Basement Tape' - a very rare tape from '77 recorded in their rehearsal room when The Adverts were still developing their unique sound, this tape was shopped around to many labels in '77 to get them a record deal while tracks 6 and 7 are rough mixes from the 'Crossing The Read Sea'.
Side 2 is made up entirely from 'Cast Of Thousands' out takes which sounded more raw and punk than when the LP came out"
Hey Advert-tarians, give us a word or two on
these rarities in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band!Anagram Records
Amazon
iTunes
TV's Homepage
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The Ads Just Write Themselves
To contact us Click HERE
While I won't deny my obvious bias, the Republican ad campaign this time around seems so weak that rather than pissing me off it just makes me feel sort of sorry for them. I mean, Romney tried to turn up the robo-charm to ten on this ad but the next day, the Democrats just drop a bomb on it:
Then they release a better, if not spectacularly so, version of the same thing:
The reason their campaign is winning is that Obama's ad team have at their disposal, not just money, expertise and passion but that they also have Mitt Romeny's own words, which weaken him like Kryptonite:
Hell, even the mostly ignorable MoveOn.Org facilitated a powerful set of DIY political ads:
(see the rest of these heart-breaking series HERE)
Of course not everything is perfect, the NSFW "Wake the Fuck-Up" created by the Jewish Council for Educational Research with an assist from Samuel L. Jackson is a damn funny idea but just comes off as a little too hectoring for the audience in question.
And, finally, even all the good meme writers seem to be pro-Democrat, as this brilliant series that puts Mitt Romeny's words in the mouth of Arrested Development's Lucille Bluth:
While I won't deny my obvious bias, the Republican ad campaign this time around seems so weak that rather than pissing me off it just makes me feel sort of sorry for them. I mean, Romney tried to turn up the robo-charm to ten on this ad but the next day, the Democrats just drop a bomb on it:
Then they release a better, if not spectacularly so, version of the same thing:
The reason their campaign is winning is that Obama's ad team have at their disposal, not just money, expertise and passion but that they also have Mitt Romeny's own words, which weaken him like Kryptonite:
Hell, even the mostly ignorable MoveOn.Org facilitated a powerful set of DIY political ads:
(see the rest of these heart-breaking series HERE)
Of course not everything is perfect, the NSFW "Wake the Fuck-Up" created by the Jewish Council for Educational Research with an assist from Samuel L. Jackson is a damn funny idea but just comes off as a little too hectoring for the audience in question.
And, finally, even all the good meme writers seem to be pro-Democrat, as this brilliant series that puts Mitt Romeny's words in the mouth of Arrested Development's Lucille Bluth:
The Adverts: Top Rank, Sheffield, 1979
To contact us Click HERE
The Adverts (more HERE) fell apart in 1979. While I've always had a fondness for their album from that year, Cast of Thousands, it's reputation was quite bad up until this century. This '79 live show, which features just TV on inaudible guitar (Howard Pickup had just left and short-lived guitarist Paul Martinez hadn't yet joined), has circualted for some time (a version was posted over on the original Noise Addiction) and shows what a more keyboard dominated Adverts would have sounded like.
Tracklist
01. The Adverts
02. Back From The Dead
03. Male Assault
04. Fate Of Criminals
05. I Looked At The Sun
06. Television's Over
07. I Surrender
08. Bombsite Boy
09. New Church
10. Love Songs
11. Gary Gilmore's Eyes
12. No Time To Be 21
13. My Place
14. Cast Of Thousands
15. I Will Walk You Home
16. One Chord Wonders
17. The Adverts
Hey Advert-tarians, give us a word or two on
this version of the band in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band!
Anagram Records
Amazon
iTunes
TV's Homepage
TV's MySpace
The Adverts (more HERE) fell apart in 1979. While I've always had a fondness for their album from that year, Cast of Thousands, it's reputation was quite bad up until this century. This '79 live show, which features just TV on inaudible guitar (Howard Pickup had just left and short-lived guitarist Paul Martinez hadn't yet joined), has circualted for some time (a version was posted over on the original Noise Addiction) and shows what a more keyboard dominated Adverts would have sounded like.
Tracklist
01. The Adverts
02. Back From The Dead
03. Male Assault
04. Fate Of Criminals
05. I Looked At The Sun
06. Television's Over
07. I Surrender
08. Bombsite Boy
09. New Church
10. Love Songs
11. Gary Gilmore's Eyes
12. No Time To Be 21
13. My Place
14. Cast Of Thousands
15. I Will Walk You Home
16. One Chord Wonders
17. The Adverts
Hey Advert-tarians, give us a word or two on
this version of the band in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band!Anagram Records
Amazon
iTunes
TV's Homepage
TV's MySpace
The Week in Video: Joey Ramone, The Dollyrots, Glen Campbell, Jay Smooth and The Green Day Meltdown!
To contact us Click HERE
A cleverly-edited posthumous video features New Yorkers (famous and unknown) showing off Joey Ramone's beloved hometown:
Pop-punk-rock 'girl-group', The Dollyrots, have gone from Lookout Record to Joan Jett's Blckout Records to their own, Kickstarter-funded label, and still sound and look great!
As Johnny Cash did nearing the end of his days, country legend Glen Campbell is both surveying his past and creating a final present.
And hip-hop commentator man, Jay Smooth, reminds us why all Mitt Romney's family stories all sound weird.
Finally, the Green Day video of the week is not the rather tepid new track, "Stay the Night" but Bille Joe's meltdown at the iHeart Radio Festival. As a fan, I'm a tiny bit sympathetic but, realistically, I've got to admit that temper-tantrums do not become a man of his age.
Have a view on any of these videos?
Seen some interesting new videos?
Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
A cleverly-edited posthumous video features New Yorkers (famous and unknown) showing off Joey Ramone's beloved hometown:
Pop-punk-rock 'girl-group', The Dollyrots, have gone from Lookout Record to Joan Jett's Blckout Records to their own, Kickstarter-funded label, and still sound and look great!
As Johnny Cash did nearing the end of his days, country legend Glen Campbell is both surveying his past and creating a final present.
And hip-hop commentator man, Jay Smooth, reminds us why all Mitt Romney's family stories all sound weird.
Finally, the Green Day video of the week is not the rather tepid new track, "Stay the Night" but Bille Joe's meltdown at the iHeart Radio Festival. As a fan, I'm a tiny bit sympathetic but, realistically, I've got to admit that temper-tantrums do not become a man of his age.
Have a view on any of these videos?
Seen some interesting new videos?
Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
28 Eylül 2012 Cuma
The Sickness Which Has Infiltrated The Republican Party
To contact us Click HERE
I hate to say it, but just as there is the very real possibility Mitt Romney could become the next President of the United States, there is also still the very real situation that many Americans believe the nonsense that Barack Obama is some God-less communist who wasn't even born in States.
The fact Obama is a committed Christian, has held a firm foreign policy, has taken out Bin Laden, rebuilt America's reputation with the rest of the West (and much of the world), successfully bailed out the American auto-industry, established a desperately needed nationwide health plan (strikingly similar to Romney's), has focused on keeping taxes low for 98% of Americans - that is everybody who earns under US $250,000 a year - and is secure enough in himself to list Bush senior as one of his political inspirations suggests he is anything but the communist / socialist the Republican Party has painted him as.
Guess what America? You have a centrist leader who is arguably worth the hype. What did you expect? That America would magically have unemployment of five or six percent in this current climate? 8.3% is rough, really rough. But are you so insular to not understand what's happening in Europe with countries like Spain battling unemployment well into the 20s?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with conservative values, but as New Zealand Herald writer Matt McCarten explains, nearly all moderate conservatives in the Republican Party have been squeezed out one by one as the party has lurched ever further to the right. Just this afternoon I had a call from one of my oldest friends who happens to be a lifelong conservative. He described both the Republican Party and New Zealand's own Colin Craig (leader of the out-of-parliament Conservative Party) as dangerous jokes because of their fostering of simplistic, outdated and ill-informed attitudes. The main problem is New Zealand's dangerous joke is understood to be a clown by 99% of the population; the Tea Party is steering the Republican Party towards similar territory and yet nearly 50% of the American population has been hoodwinked. Startlingly, a fiscally conservative social liberal of the enormous esteem of Clint Eastwood is amongst the fooled.
Click here to read Matt McCarten's article.
I hate to say it, but just as there is the very real possibility Mitt Romney could become the next President of the United States, there is also still the very real situation that many Americans believe the nonsense that Barack Obama is some God-less communist who wasn't even born in States.The fact Obama is a committed Christian, has held a firm foreign policy, has taken out Bin Laden, rebuilt America's reputation with the rest of the West (and much of the world), successfully bailed out the American auto-industry, established a desperately needed nationwide health plan (strikingly similar to Romney's), has focused on keeping taxes low for 98% of Americans - that is everybody who earns under US $250,000 a year - and is secure enough in himself to list Bush senior as one of his political inspirations suggests he is anything but the communist / socialist the Republican Party has painted him as.
Guess what America? You have a centrist leader who is arguably worth the hype. What did you expect? That America would magically have unemployment of five or six percent in this current climate? 8.3% is rough, really rough. But are you so insular to not understand what's happening in Europe with countries like Spain battling unemployment well into the 20s?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with conservative values, but as New Zealand Herald writer Matt McCarten explains, nearly all moderate conservatives in the Republican Party have been squeezed out one by one as the party has lurched ever further to the right. Just this afternoon I had a call from one of my oldest friends who happens to be a lifelong conservative. He described both the Republican Party and New Zealand's own Colin Craig (leader of the out-of-parliament Conservative Party) as dangerous jokes because of their fostering of simplistic, outdated and ill-informed attitudes. The main problem is New Zealand's dangerous joke is understood to be a clown by 99% of the population; the Tea Party is steering the Republican Party towards similar territory and yet nearly 50% of the American population has been hoodwinked. Startlingly, a fiscally conservative social liberal of the enormous esteem of Clint Eastwood is amongst the fooled.
Click here to read Matt McCarten's article.
President Obama's Lost Theme Song - The Pointer Sisters Funk Classic "Yes We Can"
To contact us Click HERE
It's election season (which is almost a permanent state of mind in the USA) and I've just rediscovered a Pointer Sisters song which somehow wasn't Barack Obama's theme tune four years ago. With wife Michelle delivering a powerful speech yesterday at the DNC and Bill Clinton knocking it out of the park today with a speech so remarkable CNN's normally hard to excite Wolf Blitzer called it his best of the last 20 years, the stage is set for Obama tomorrow.
This song is unlikely to feature on the final day of the DNC because its title is soooo 2008, even though the song itself was recorded in 1973. If you only know the Pointer Sisters for songs like He's So Shy, Jump and I'm So Excited, you might be surprised to discover the breadth of their music, from the Grammy-winning country of Fairytale to the funk of this classic, Yes We Can. Girl groups have traditionally shied away from funk, but no-one told the sisters that nearly 40 years ago. Coupled with socially-conscious lyrics much like what the soul giants of the time were singing (Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Temptations, Staple Singers, Sly & The Family Stone etc), Yes We Can just might be the Pointer Sisters finest work.
It's election season (which is almost a permanent state of mind in the USA) and I've just rediscovered a Pointer Sisters song which somehow wasn't Barack Obama's theme tune four years ago. With wife Michelle delivering a powerful speech yesterday at the DNC and Bill Clinton knocking it out of the park today with a speech so remarkable CNN's normally hard to excite Wolf Blitzer called it his best of the last 20 years, the stage is set for Obama tomorrow.
This song is unlikely to feature on the final day of the DNC because its title is soooo 2008, even though the song itself was recorded in 1973. If you only know the Pointer Sisters for songs like He's So Shy, Jump and I'm So Excited, you might be surprised to discover the breadth of their music, from the Grammy-winning country of Fairytale to the funk of this classic, Yes We Can. Girl groups have traditionally shied away from funk, but no-one told the sisters that nearly 40 years ago. Coupled with socially-conscious lyrics much like what the soul giants of the time were singing (Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Temptations, Staple Singers, Sly & The Family Stone etc), Yes We Can just might be the Pointer Sisters finest work.
John Mayer's Song For Getting Older - "Born And Raised"
To contact us Click HERE
Yesterday it was my birthday and somebody who has become a dear friend in the short space of less than a year helped make it a very memorable one. Pam Corkery, my co-host on Newstalk ZB's The Two (Sunday evenings 9pm-midnight), organized me a succession of gifts - presented on-air no less - including a framed picture of the most remarkable Jack Tame adjectives, rubber matchsticks to help keep my eyes open on my overnight shifts, a plastic cricket set and 50 metres of bubble-wrap. Yes, 50 metres of bubble-wrap.
Two of those gifts sound like they need a little more explaining. The Jack Tame one relates to our (good-natured) ribbing of the young One News US correspondent's column, read by eager fans like Pam and myself each week in the Herald On Sunday. Jack provides a slice of life for his readers about living in the USA and undoubtedly one day I will have to explain to him how yes, I am a nice guy, but yes, I have also spent much of 2012 making fun of his plucking of adjectives from the adjective-tree to such an extent I once counted 737 in one column alone. Slight exaggeration. However, on the infrequent occasions Jack doesn't drown his piece with words like "sweaty," "billowed," and "luxuriated," Pam and I feel more than a little deflated. We look forward to it all week.
As for the bubble-wrap, a couple of times I've mentioned to Pam my love of bubble-wrap and how I spent several hundred dollars on it when packaging up all my stuff before setting off on the OE a couple of years ago. "There's never enough bubble-wrap," I'd said sweatily as my white singlet billowed in the late summer breeze of March 2010, luxuriating on the merits of the poppy-plastic. The gift harks back to something another very dear friend gave me for my 21st 10 years ago: six kilograms of the spicy Indian snack bhuja-mix. Who doesn't love bhuja! Though that was a lot of bhuja and kept even me going for a month or five.
Veering dangerously close to self-indulgence, Pam and I ended last night's show with this song, the title track from John Mayer's latest album Born And Raised. It's a song about getting older and like much of the album, is a homage to 70s-style singer-songwriters like Neil Young. Not coincidentally, Neil's old cohorts David Crosby and Graham Nash provide background vocals.
Listen out for lyrics about dreams not flying "as high as they used to," of it getting hard to "fake what I won't be," but still having both time and faith and the support of your family. For someone often accused of arrogance, these might just be his most relatable, humble lyrics.
 |
| John Mayer |
Two of those gifts sound like they need a little more explaining. The Jack Tame one relates to our (good-natured) ribbing of the young One News US correspondent's column, read by eager fans like Pam and myself each week in the Herald On Sunday. Jack provides a slice of life for his readers about living in the USA and undoubtedly one day I will have to explain to him how yes, I am a nice guy, but yes, I have also spent much of 2012 making fun of his plucking of adjectives from the adjective-tree to such an extent I once counted 737 in one column alone. Slight exaggeration. However, on the infrequent occasions Jack doesn't drown his piece with words like "sweaty," "billowed," and "luxuriated," Pam and I feel more than a little deflated. We look forward to it all week.
As for the bubble-wrap, a couple of times I've mentioned to Pam my love of bubble-wrap and how I spent several hundred dollars on it when packaging up all my stuff before setting off on the OE a couple of years ago. "There's never enough bubble-wrap," I'd said sweatily as my white singlet billowed in the late summer breeze of March 2010, luxuriating on the merits of the poppy-plastic. The gift harks back to something another very dear friend gave me for my 21st 10 years ago: six kilograms of the spicy Indian snack bhuja-mix. Who doesn't love bhuja! Though that was a lot of bhuja and kept even me going for a month or five.
 |
| Pam Corkery |
Veering dangerously close to self-indulgence, Pam and I ended last night's show with this song, the title track from John Mayer's latest album Born And Raised. It's a song about getting older and like much of the album, is a homage to 70s-style singer-songwriters like Neil Young. Not coincidentally, Neil's old cohorts David Crosby and Graham Nash provide background vocals.
Listen out for lyrics about dreams not flying "as high as they used to," of it getting hard to "fake what I won't be," but still having both time and faith and the support of your family. For someone often accused of arrogance, these might just be his most relatable, humble lyrics.
Martin Crowe's 50th Birthday - Highlights From His First Test 100
To contact us Click HERE
For my mate Marty Crowe, a spectacularly generous chap who also happens to be New Zealand's finest ever cricket batsman who celebrated a 50 of another kind today, his 50th birthday. Considering his test cricket 50 to 100 conversion was an outstanding 18:17, I'll hopefully be posting some more YouTube footage of him in 2062. But until then, enjoy the clip beneath which is highlights from Crowe's first test hundred back in 1984 against England. The innings is filled with the majestic shots which became famous around the cricket world over the next 10+ years, including a cover drive at the 50 second mark about as perfect as you could wish to see.
Bill Clinton Discussing His DNC Speech & Why Romney's Got It Wrong
To contact us Click HERE
Outside of Barry Gibb, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, this guy is probably my biggest hero. Not just the best President in living memory, hands down the best ex-President in living memory too. Here is Bill Clinton on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show discussing his home-run DNC speech and why the simplistic Republican argument of, "small government will solve all America's problems," is wrong.
 |
| Bill Clinton |
27 Eylül 2012 Perşembe
Anti-doping authorities don't play fair
To contact us Click HERE
Anti-doping authorities don't play fair against athletes
The system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it.
Michael Hiltzik
August 26, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120825,0,4618562,full.column
With the whole world atwitter over Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong's decision to drop his legal fight against anti-doping allegations, it's the right moment to be appalled at the travesty in sports this case represents.
It's not that the case will be seen as a major victory for sports anti-doping authorities. It's that the anti-doping system claiming its highest-profile quarry ever is the most thoroughly one-sided and dishonest legal regime anywhere in the world this side of Beijing.
It's a system deliberately designed to place almost insurmountable hurdles in the way of athletes defending themselves or appealing adverse findings. Evidence has emerged over the years that laboratories certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, have been incompetent at analyzing athletes' samples or fabricated results when they didn't get the numbers they were hoping to see.
Athletes' defense attorneys harbored some hope that by picking a fight with Lance Armstrong, the anti-doping system might have sowed the seeds for its own reform. Finally, it was thought, here was an athlete with the money and motivation to expose the legal sophistry, the pseudoscience, the sheer sloppiness that underlies sports anti-doping prosecutions all over the world.
Instead, the outcome shows that the system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it.
"We're talking about three, four, five years of litigation," says Mark Levinstein, a veteran sports lawyer and a member of Armstrong's legal team. "Who in his right mind would or could go through that?"
Before we go further, let's address the question most people think is the nub of the matter. Is Lance Armstrong a doper?
Here's the answer: I don't know. You don't know either. More to the point, Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, doesn't know. That hasn't kept USADA from declaring Armstrong to be guilty of charges it has not proved in public, or to attempt to strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. (It's not yet clear that USADA has the latter authority.)
And there lies what is, in fact, the nub of the matter. It shouldn't matter if you believe Armstrong doped in winning his titles. You should still be appalled, even frightened, by the character of the prosecution.
In part that's because under the rules written by the anti-doping system, athletes' cases are heard not in a court of law but in arbitration.
Arbitration is a system that more Americans are becoming familiar with, to their misfortune and distaste. It's where banks, brokerages, cellphone companies and other powerful business institutions force their customers to litigate grievances, for the simple reason that arbitration systems favor those who use them the most — banks, brokerages, cellphone companies, etc.
The real secret of why anti-doping agencies have been able to hound athletes out of their sports with impunity is that in this system they're not only the prosecutors but also the judges and juries. They write the arbitration rules, including those governing what evidence is relevant and under what circumstances it can be questioned.
Defending oneself in this system is horrifically expensive. The hiring of lawyers and scientific experts, the cost of visiting labs in foreign lands and attending hearings all over the country can drive a routine defense to six figures.
How many amateur athletes have the resources to do that? So most defendants give in and accept a suspension for a year or more. But countless innocent athletes, or competitors whose violations are clearly the result of an accident or blameless error, carry the stigma of cheater because they couldn't afford a defense.
"You're up against a prosecutor who drafts the rules, and goes back and changes the rules when they go against him," says Michael Straubel, director of the sports law clinic at Valparaiso University Law School and a defense attorney who handed USADA one of its rare defeats in an arbitration case.
The Lance Armstrong case has inspired several such stealth rule changes.
For example, World Anti-Doping Agency rules provide for an eight-year statute of limitations, meaning that anti-doping agencies aren't supposed to use test results older than that to bring charges against an athlete. But Armstrong has pointed out that USADA was basing its case against him on test results as much as 14 years old. Presto: WADA is proposing to update its statute of limitations to 14 years — and it's proposing that the update be retroactive.
Federal Judge Sam Sparks of Austin, Texas, who was asked by Armstrong to block USADA's case against him, found lots not to like about the agency's pursuit of the cyclist. He called USADA's charging document, a letter that listed Armstrong's purported doping violations, "so vague and unhelpful it would not pass muster in any court in the United States." The deficiency, he said, "is of serious constitutional concern."
He questioned whether USADA's real goal in bringing the charges was to combat doping in sports as it claimed, or whether its motivation was "less noble." Armstrong had argued that the case reflected a vendetta against him by anti-doping authorities, possibly conceived after he blew to smithereens leaked accusations against him in 2005, embarrassing a major WADA lab in the process.
Yet despite his concerns, Sparks last week dashed Armstrong's hopes on the same shoal that has wrecked the defenses of other athletes. He ruled that by competing in sports events, Armstrong implicitly agreed to arbitrate any doping charges against him. In other words, the matter was out of the court's hands.
And sure enough, anti-doping prosecutors almost never lose an arbitration. USADA has won all but three cases it has brought to arbitration since 2000. That's a record, it likes to suggest, that points to its unrivaled skill and integrity.
It should be obvious that if USADA's lawyers were that good they wouldn't be wasting their time badgering athletes for taking a Sudafed before competing or not being at home when drug testers arrive to take a random urine sample; they'd be making national news prosecuting Mafia killers or Wall Street bankers. (Test scheduling issues have constituted nearly 95% of USADA's caseload, according to its own figures.)
On the rare occasions when anti-doping prosecutors have to bring their cases before a legitimate court, they almost never win. Roger Clemens: two trials, zero convictions. Barry Bonds: four charges, one conviction (for obstruction of justice). After spending months pondering whether to bring Armstrong to trial for doping misdeeds, federal prosecutors abandoned the case in February.
You may choose to believe that Clemens, Bonds and Armstrong are guilty based on the size of their craniums or their superhuman physical achievements. But on the rare occasions when the facts have been tested in a courtroom subject to the rules of due process and evidentiary standards afforded ordinary Americans, they haven't measured up.
The biggest problem with the sports anti-doping system is that it's driven by anti-drug hysteria, not by reasoned judgments about what we expect from our athletes and what technological assistance should be permitted.
The same people lining up to brand Lance Armstrong a cheater will worship a pitcher who undergoes Tommy John transplant surgery to save his career. The Oakland A's Bartolo Colon will be missing 50 games for taking testosterone, but what about the batters he's faced who have had their eyeballs surgically refabricated with Lasik so they can read his pitches better?
Is the rule that it's OK to enhance your performance by scalpel but not by hypodermic needle? Then let's discuss that and establish exactly what the grounds are for the distinction. Until we clear that up, along with why caffeine isn't on the banned list but marijuana is, athletes will try anything they can to beat their records, thrill the masses and make money. And why not?
It's all well and good to say the goal of the anti-doping system is to ensure that sports stay clean, and it's certainly true that clean athletes have every reason to resent having to compete against cheaters.
But we've created a strange way to uphold these principles — a system that writes its own rule book, moves the goal posts at will, lies and fabricates to get the score it wants and fiercely resists playing before an objective umpire. Whatever you choose to think of Lance Armstrong, his case is just one more indication that the supposed guardians of honesty and integrity in sports are among the filthiest players of all.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
Anti-doping authorities don't play fair against athletes
The system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it.
Michael Hiltzik
August 26, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120825,0,4618562,full.column
With the whole world atwitter over Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong's decision to drop his legal fight against anti-doping allegations, it's the right moment to be appalled at the travesty in sports this case represents.
It's not that the case will be seen as a major victory for sports anti-doping authorities. It's that the anti-doping system claiming its highest-profile quarry ever is the most thoroughly one-sided and dishonest legal regime anywhere in the world this side of Beijing.
It's a system deliberately designed to place almost insurmountable hurdles in the way of athletes defending themselves or appealing adverse findings. Evidence has emerged over the years that laboratories certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, have been incompetent at analyzing athletes' samples or fabricated results when they didn't get the numbers they were hoping to see.
Athletes' defense attorneys harbored some hope that by picking a fight with Lance Armstrong, the anti-doping system might have sowed the seeds for its own reform. Finally, it was thought, here was an athlete with the money and motivation to expose the legal sophistry, the pseudoscience, the sheer sloppiness that underlies sports anti-doping prosecutions all over the world.
Instead, the outcome shows that the system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it.
"We're talking about three, four, five years of litigation," says Mark Levinstein, a veteran sports lawyer and a member of Armstrong's legal team. "Who in his right mind would or could go through that?"
Before we go further, let's address the question most people think is the nub of the matter. Is Lance Armstrong a doper?
Here's the answer: I don't know. You don't know either. More to the point, Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, doesn't know. That hasn't kept USADA from declaring Armstrong to be guilty of charges it has not proved in public, or to attempt to strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. (It's not yet clear that USADA has the latter authority.)
And there lies what is, in fact, the nub of the matter. It shouldn't matter if you believe Armstrong doped in winning his titles. You should still be appalled, even frightened, by the character of the prosecution.
In part that's because under the rules written by the anti-doping system, athletes' cases are heard not in a court of law but in arbitration.
Arbitration is a system that more Americans are becoming familiar with, to their misfortune and distaste. It's where banks, brokerages, cellphone companies and other powerful business institutions force their customers to litigate grievances, for the simple reason that arbitration systems favor those who use them the most — banks, brokerages, cellphone companies, etc.
The real secret of why anti-doping agencies have been able to hound athletes out of their sports with impunity is that in this system they're not only the prosecutors but also the judges and juries. They write the arbitration rules, including those governing what evidence is relevant and under what circumstances it can be questioned.
Defending oneself in this system is horrifically expensive. The hiring of lawyers and scientific experts, the cost of visiting labs in foreign lands and attending hearings all over the country can drive a routine defense to six figures.
How many amateur athletes have the resources to do that? So most defendants give in and accept a suspension for a year or more. But countless innocent athletes, or competitors whose violations are clearly the result of an accident or blameless error, carry the stigma of cheater because they couldn't afford a defense.
"You're up against a prosecutor who drafts the rules, and goes back and changes the rules when they go against him," says Michael Straubel, director of the sports law clinic at Valparaiso University Law School and a defense attorney who handed USADA one of its rare defeats in an arbitration case.
The Lance Armstrong case has inspired several such stealth rule changes.
For example, World Anti-Doping Agency rules provide for an eight-year statute of limitations, meaning that anti-doping agencies aren't supposed to use test results older than that to bring charges against an athlete. But Armstrong has pointed out that USADA was basing its case against him on test results as much as 14 years old. Presto: WADA is proposing to update its statute of limitations to 14 years — and it's proposing that the update be retroactive.
Federal Judge Sam Sparks of Austin, Texas, who was asked by Armstrong to block USADA's case against him, found lots not to like about the agency's pursuit of the cyclist. He called USADA's charging document, a letter that listed Armstrong's purported doping violations, "so vague and unhelpful it would not pass muster in any court in the United States." The deficiency, he said, "is of serious constitutional concern."
He questioned whether USADA's real goal in bringing the charges was to combat doping in sports as it claimed, or whether its motivation was "less noble." Armstrong had argued that the case reflected a vendetta against him by anti-doping authorities, possibly conceived after he blew to smithereens leaked accusations against him in 2005, embarrassing a major WADA lab in the process.
Yet despite his concerns, Sparks last week dashed Armstrong's hopes on the same shoal that has wrecked the defenses of other athletes. He ruled that by competing in sports events, Armstrong implicitly agreed to arbitrate any doping charges against him. In other words, the matter was out of the court's hands.
And sure enough, anti-doping prosecutors almost never lose an arbitration. USADA has won all but three cases it has brought to arbitration since 2000. That's a record, it likes to suggest, that points to its unrivaled skill and integrity.
It should be obvious that if USADA's lawyers were that good they wouldn't be wasting their time badgering athletes for taking a Sudafed before competing or not being at home when drug testers arrive to take a random urine sample; they'd be making national news prosecuting Mafia killers or Wall Street bankers. (Test scheduling issues have constituted nearly 95% of USADA's caseload, according to its own figures.)
On the rare occasions when anti-doping prosecutors have to bring their cases before a legitimate court, they almost never win. Roger Clemens: two trials, zero convictions. Barry Bonds: four charges, one conviction (for obstruction of justice). After spending months pondering whether to bring Armstrong to trial for doping misdeeds, federal prosecutors abandoned the case in February.
You may choose to believe that Clemens, Bonds and Armstrong are guilty based on the size of their craniums or their superhuman physical achievements. But on the rare occasions when the facts have been tested in a courtroom subject to the rules of due process and evidentiary standards afforded ordinary Americans, they haven't measured up.
The biggest problem with the sports anti-doping system is that it's driven by anti-drug hysteria, not by reasoned judgments about what we expect from our athletes and what technological assistance should be permitted.
The same people lining up to brand Lance Armstrong a cheater will worship a pitcher who undergoes Tommy John transplant surgery to save his career. The Oakland A's Bartolo Colon will be missing 50 games for taking testosterone, but what about the batters he's faced who have had their eyeballs surgically refabricated with Lasik so they can read his pitches better?
Is the rule that it's OK to enhance your performance by scalpel but not by hypodermic needle? Then let's discuss that and establish exactly what the grounds are for the distinction. Until we clear that up, along with why caffeine isn't on the banned list but marijuana is, athletes will try anything they can to beat their records, thrill the masses and make money. And why not?
It's all well and good to say the goal of the anti-doping system is to ensure that sports stay clean, and it's certainly true that clean athletes have every reason to resent having to compete against cheaters.
But we've created a strange way to uphold these principles — a system that writes its own rule book, moves the goal posts at will, lies and fabricates to get the score it wants and fiercely resists playing before an objective umpire. Whatever you choose to think of Lance Armstrong, his case is just one more indication that the supposed guardians of honesty and integrity in sports are among the filthiest players of all.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
Banned but better
To contact us Click HERE
Banned but better: Fly straight golf balls go extra distance
Blake Snow
August 21, 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/08/21/banned-fly-straight-golf-balls-go-extra-distance/
Polara's orignal golf balls did the impossible: They always flew straight. And their success was also their downfall: The balls worked too well for duffers with slower swings and better mechanics.
Apparently, no two golfers are bad in quite the same way.
Now the company is back -- and it has a solution.
You see, the original Polara Ultimate Straight golf ball uses a patented dimple design to reduce side spin, which causes hooks and slices. That dramatic anti-slicing effect comes at a price, though: lower lift, which reduces distance.
That’s not an issue for players who would otherwise live in the rough at the sides of the course. But it is for moderate slicers. With those folks in mind, Polara released a second ball this year, the XD. Like the original, it uses specialized dimples to self-correct side spin, but it does so with 25 percent less correction and more lift.
“Critical reception to our original ball last year was phenomenal,” Dave Felker, president of Polara, told FoxNews.com. “But some of our customers didn’t like the compromise in distance,” he adds, noting the Amazon user reviews that say as much.
“So we devised a ball with 50 percent correction instead of the original 75 percent. The result is a ball that gives people as much distance as normal golf balls, while still mitigating slice.”
I had a chance to test the new balls at my local driving range recently, and like the originals FoxNews.com reviewed last year, the new XD worked as advertised, adding about 10 yards more to my shot while keeping a straight line.
The new XD isn’t for everyone though. To understand the difference, consider that fairways range from 90 to 135 feet wide. Assuming a “terrible slicer” to be someone who hits balls 100 feet or more off the centerline, when using the original 75 percent correcting ball, said slicer would only be 25 feet off the line, well within the fairway.
When using the new XD, however, he would still be vulnerable to the rough. Since 50 percent reduction in slice equates to 50 feet off centerline, this would still put him in the thick stuff on narrower fairways (which are 45 feet off centerline).
'Our mission is to make golf more fun, that’s all.'
- Dave Felker, president of Polara
Hence, the XD is best for more moderate slicers – “light hitters or players with better mechanics,” Felker said — whereas the Ultimate Straight remains ideal for players who hit the stuffing out of the ball (i.e. men in general) or anyone with a more forsaken swing.
“If the first wasn’t right for you, this is perfect,” Felker said.
Still answering the critics
Of course, like last year’s original Ultimate Straight, the new XD is banned from USGA tournaments — everything from club championships to The Masters.
After all, the original short-lived Polara ball from the early 80s worked so well in reducing slice that the USGA created the “no asymmetrical balls” rule to ban it. The golfing authority then settled with Polara to have the ball removed from shelves until last year.
As such, golf purists say using a Polara is akin to using a cheater’s ball, steroids, or that sweet no-miss laser putter from Caddyshack II. “Isn’t it just easier to lie about your score,” wrote Real Clear Sports’ Jeff Neuman last year.
No big deal, Felker told FoxNews.com. “I don’t want to see nonconforming stuff made legal. Our mission is to make golf more fun, that’s all.”
To that end, the company plans to release additional performance-enhancing equipment for recreational players within the next six months. Felker won’t say what, but he’s quick to note the release will include more than just new balls.
“If you’re playing in the U.S. Open, these products aren’t for you,” he said. “We’ll continue to build gear that is only limited by the laws of physics, not USGA rules that don’t apply to the 85 percent of players who already play gimme putts, mulligans, illegal drops -- or just want to make their next round of golf as enjoyable as possible.”
Banned but better: Fly straight golf balls go extra distance
Blake Snow
August 21, 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/08/21/banned-fly-straight-golf-balls-go-extra-distance/
Polara's orignal golf balls did the impossible: They always flew straight. And their success was also their downfall: The balls worked too well for duffers with slower swings and better mechanics.
Apparently, no two golfers are bad in quite the same way.
Now the company is back -- and it has a solution.
You see, the original Polara Ultimate Straight golf ball uses a patented dimple design to reduce side spin, which causes hooks and slices. That dramatic anti-slicing effect comes at a price, though: lower lift, which reduces distance.
That’s not an issue for players who would otherwise live in the rough at the sides of the course. But it is for moderate slicers. With those folks in mind, Polara released a second ball this year, the XD. Like the original, it uses specialized dimples to self-correct side spin, but it does so with 25 percent less correction and more lift.
“Critical reception to our original ball last year was phenomenal,” Dave Felker, president of Polara, told FoxNews.com. “But some of our customers didn’t like the compromise in distance,” he adds, noting the Amazon user reviews that say as much.
“So we devised a ball with 50 percent correction instead of the original 75 percent. The result is a ball that gives people as much distance as normal golf balls, while still mitigating slice.”
I had a chance to test the new balls at my local driving range recently, and like the originals FoxNews.com reviewed last year, the new XD worked as advertised, adding about 10 yards more to my shot while keeping a straight line.
The new XD isn’t for everyone though. To understand the difference, consider that fairways range from 90 to 135 feet wide. Assuming a “terrible slicer” to be someone who hits balls 100 feet or more off the centerline, when using the original 75 percent correcting ball, said slicer would only be 25 feet off the line, well within the fairway.
When using the new XD, however, he would still be vulnerable to the rough. Since 50 percent reduction in slice equates to 50 feet off centerline, this would still put him in the thick stuff on narrower fairways (which are 45 feet off centerline).
'Our mission is to make golf more fun, that’s all.'
- Dave Felker, president of Polara
Hence, the XD is best for more moderate slicers – “light hitters or players with better mechanics,” Felker said — whereas the Ultimate Straight remains ideal for players who hit the stuffing out of the ball (i.e. men in general) or anyone with a more forsaken swing.
“If the first wasn’t right for you, this is perfect,” Felker said.
Still answering the critics
Of course, like last year’s original Ultimate Straight, the new XD is banned from USGA tournaments — everything from club championships to The Masters.
After all, the original short-lived Polara ball from the early 80s worked so well in reducing slice that the USGA created the “no asymmetrical balls” rule to ban it. The golfing authority then settled with Polara to have the ball removed from shelves until last year.
As such, golf purists say using a Polara is akin to using a cheater’s ball, steroids, or that sweet no-miss laser putter from Caddyshack II. “Isn’t it just easier to lie about your score,” wrote Real Clear Sports’ Jeff Neuman last year.
No big deal, Felker told FoxNews.com. “I don’t want to see nonconforming stuff made legal. Our mission is to make golf more fun, that’s all.”
To that end, the company plans to release additional performance-enhancing equipment for recreational players within the next six months. Felker won’t say what, but he’s quick to note the release will include more than just new balls.
“If you’re playing in the U.S. Open, these products aren’t for you,” he said. “We’ll continue to build gear that is only limited by the laws of physics, not USGA rules that don’t apply to the 85 percent of players who already play gimme putts, mulligans, illegal drops -- or just want to make their next round of golf as enjoyable as possible.”
Is Muhammad Movie a Contrived Fraud?
To contact us Click HERE
Bizarre story behind film that supposedly sparked middle east unrest
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, September 13, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/is-muhammad-movie-a-contrived-fraud
An anti-Muslim film that has been blamed for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen is likely a contrived fraud designed to stir up unrest in the Middle East while shielding the true reasons behind the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens.
A trailer for the film, entitled The Innocence of Muslims, has been on You Tube for over two months. Despite the alleged film maker’s claim that the movie was funded by rich Jewish donors to the tune of $5 million dollars, it has all the quality of a low budget film school project. The trailer has now been banned in several middle eastern countries, including Egypt and Afghanistan.
Indeed, the full film itself may not even exist, a doubt that has also been shared about the existence of its shadowy director Sam Bacile, who told the Associated Press this week that he was a 56-year-old “Israeli Jew” who lives in California, despite telling actors on set that he is Egyptian, while others have claimed he is an American.
Bacile claims he made the film to illustrate how “Islam is a cancer, period.”
However, numerous authorities have failed in attempting to locate a ‘Sam Bacile’ residing in California. Bacile is likely a pseudonym for the only real person who has been positively connected with the movie – Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian living in California who was convicted for federal bank fraud in 2010.
The movie itself – or the 14 minutes of it which have been released – is also highly suspect. Actors involved in filming were told “they were appearing in a film about the life of a generic Egyptian 2,000 years ago.” Following the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, all 80 cast members put out a joint statement stating that they were misled by the producer.
“The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose,” the statement says. “We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”
The film has been purposely dubbed and edited to elicit maximum outrage from Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad is depicted as a pedophile, a homosexual, a religious phony, a philanderer, a womanizer and a bloodthirsty dictator.
During dialogue, the actors words have been crudely dubbed to include references to Muhammad that were not in the original script.
As Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress involved in the movie, told Gawker, “In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn’t even called Muhammed; he was “Master George.”
“The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed,” writes Adrian Chen.
For example, at 9:03 in the trailer, the words “Is your Muhammed a child molester?” are heard, yet the actress’ voice has been dubbed as her lips do not form the word “Muhammed”.
As the Christian Science Monitor summarizes, the film looks like, “it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.”
Everything about the movie suggests it was a contrived fraud to artificially manufacture unrest in the middle east at a time where speculation that the U.S. and Israel are about to launch military interventions in Iran and Syria is rife.
The amateurish nature of the film may be a ruse to deflect suspicion away from its true purpose and the real identities of its creators.
“Those sniffing the air properly smell some sort of intelligence/influence operation in the whole situation,” writes Daniel McAdams, comparing the film to Kony 2012. “A purposely bad cover for what happened in Benghazi yesterday? A badly done attempted cover for what happened yesterday? Arabs — even Muslim Brotherhood — looking to score points by blaming “wealthy Jews” for making the film? A power struggle between Islamist factions in Egypt? Israelis attempting to make it look like Arabs made a crudely anti-Semitic cover story for a crude film?”
What’s known for sure is the fact that the establishment media has seized upon the movie as an excuse to explain away the attacks on the embassies in Cairo and Benghazi as just another instance of extremist Muslims getting riled up over nothing in particular.
Subsequent reports confirmed that the attacks were coordinated well in advance of the release of the Arabic version of the trailer this week and had nothing to do with the film, but the media immediately ran with that narrative.
This conveniently disguises the true narrative behind the attacks, which is the fact that the United States and other NATO powers are seeing their chickens come home to roost having armed and empowered Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic extremists in pursuit of regime change, most notably in Libya where the removal of Gaddafi was achieved via NATO’s support for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – which is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department and was responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq.
Given that these same militants are now being used by Gulf states and NATO powers in a bid to topple President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, their connection to the embassy attacks must be downplayed. This was evident when NATO stooge Ali Aujali, Libya’s Ambassador to Washington, ludicrously claimed that Gaddafi loyalists were responsible for killing Ambassador Stevens.
With embassies in Yemen, Tunisia and other countries now coming under siege, the mass media’s promotion of what would otherwise have been an obscure, ineffectual and downright laughable 14 minute You Tube trailer has now created a crisis that threatens the stability of the entire region.
The bizarre circumstances behind The Innocence of Muslims, its shadowy creators and the deliberate attempt to manipulate the film to offend Muslims clearly suggests that the whole farce was a contrived set-up to inflame tensions in order to justify an acceleration of U.S., Israeli and NATO aggression across the Middle East and North Africa.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Bizarre story behind film that supposedly sparked middle east unrest
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, September 13, 2012
http://www.infowars.com/is-muhammad-movie-a-contrived-fraud
An anti-Muslim film that has been blamed for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen is likely a contrived fraud designed to stir up unrest in the Middle East while shielding the true reasons behind the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens.
A trailer for the film, entitled The Innocence of Muslims, has been on You Tube for over two months. Despite the alleged film maker’s claim that the movie was funded by rich Jewish donors to the tune of $5 million dollars, it has all the quality of a low budget film school project. The trailer has now been banned in several middle eastern countries, including Egypt and Afghanistan.
Indeed, the full film itself may not even exist, a doubt that has also been shared about the existence of its shadowy director Sam Bacile, who told the Associated Press this week that he was a 56-year-old “Israeli Jew” who lives in California, despite telling actors on set that he is Egyptian, while others have claimed he is an American.
Bacile claims he made the film to illustrate how “Islam is a cancer, period.”
However, numerous authorities have failed in attempting to locate a ‘Sam Bacile’ residing in California. Bacile is likely a pseudonym for the only real person who has been positively connected with the movie – Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian living in California who was convicted for federal bank fraud in 2010.
The movie itself – or the 14 minutes of it which have been released – is also highly suspect. Actors involved in filming were told “they were appearing in a film about the life of a generic Egyptian 2,000 years ago.” Following the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, all 80 cast members put out a joint statement stating that they were misled by the producer.
“The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose,” the statement says. “We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”
The film has been purposely dubbed and edited to elicit maximum outrage from Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad is depicted as a pedophile, a homosexual, a religious phony, a philanderer, a womanizer and a bloodthirsty dictator.
During dialogue, the actors words have been crudely dubbed to include references to Muhammad that were not in the original script.
As Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress involved in the movie, told Gawker, “In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn’t even called Muhammed; he was “Master George.”
“The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed,” writes Adrian Chen.
For example, at 9:03 in the trailer, the words “Is your Muhammed a child molester?” are heard, yet the actress’ voice has been dubbed as her lips do not form the word “Muhammed”.
As the Christian Science Monitor summarizes, the film looks like, “it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.”
Everything about the movie suggests it was a contrived fraud to artificially manufacture unrest in the middle east at a time where speculation that the U.S. and Israel are about to launch military interventions in Iran and Syria is rife.
The amateurish nature of the film may be a ruse to deflect suspicion away from its true purpose and the real identities of its creators.
“Those sniffing the air properly smell some sort of intelligence/influence operation in the whole situation,” writes Daniel McAdams, comparing the film to Kony 2012. “A purposely bad cover for what happened in Benghazi yesterday? A badly done attempted cover for what happened yesterday? Arabs — even Muslim Brotherhood — looking to score points by blaming “wealthy Jews” for making the film? A power struggle between Islamist factions in Egypt? Israelis attempting to make it look like Arabs made a crudely anti-Semitic cover story for a crude film?”
What’s known for sure is the fact that the establishment media has seized upon the movie as an excuse to explain away the attacks on the embassies in Cairo and Benghazi as just another instance of extremist Muslims getting riled up over nothing in particular.
Subsequent reports confirmed that the attacks were coordinated well in advance of the release of the Arabic version of the trailer this week and had nothing to do with the film, but the media immediately ran with that narrative.
This conveniently disguises the true narrative behind the attacks, which is the fact that the United States and other NATO powers are seeing their chickens come home to roost having armed and empowered Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic extremists in pursuit of regime change, most notably in Libya where the removal of Gaddafi was achieved via NATO’s support for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – which is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department and was responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq.
Given that these same militants are now being used by Gulf states and NATO powers in a bid to topple President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, their connection to the embassy attacks must be downplayed. This was evident when NATO stooge Ali Aujali, Libya’s Ambassador to Washington, ludicrously claimed that Gaddafi loyalists were responsible for killing Ambassador Stevens.
With embassies in Yemen, Tunisia and other countries now coming under siege, the mass media’s promotion of what would otherwise have been an obscure, ineffectual and downright laughable 14 minute You Tube trailer has now created a crisis that threatens the stability of the entire region.
The bizarre circumstances behind The Innocence of Muslims, its shadowy creators and the deliberate attempt to manipulate the film to offend Muslims clearly suggests that the whole farce was a contrived set-up to inflame tensions in order to justify an acceleration of U.S., Israeli and NATO aggression across the Middle East and North Africa.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Thank You, Paul Ryan
To contact us Click HERE
Robert Kuttner
Co-founder and co-editor, 'The American Prospect'
09/16/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/thank-you-paul-ryan_b_1888870.html
Two years ago, the Democrats handed the Republicans their two crown jewels -- Social Security and Medicare. By targeting Medicare for budget "savings" that could be used to finance what the Republicans called Obamacare, the White House gave the GOP ammunition to contend that the Democrats were taking benefits away from seniors.
Expanding health coverage for the young and defense of Medicare for the elderly got depicted as a zero sum game. Republicans made huge gains in 2010 with seniors. Instead of the political winner it should have been, Obamacare became an epithet.
Then, in the aborted grand budget bargain of 2011, Obama was so eager to achieve a compromise on mostly Republican terms that he very nearly agreed to needless cuts in Social Security. Only Republican intransigence on any kind of tax hikes saved the president from himself -- or more precisely from his deficit-hawk advisers.
Now, however, Republicans have given Social Security and Medicare back to the Democrats (where they belong.) Polls show that Medicare is no longer a winner for the Republicans, and the Democrats have embraced the term, "Obamacare" as positive label.
The reason, of course, is Paul Ryan.
Thanks to Ryan's very explicit advocacy of scrapping public Medicare in favor of vouchers, seniors are returning to their natural Democratic home. The transparently bogus effort of the Romney-Ryan ticket to walk back Ryan's voucher proposal -- and alter it into a plan where seniors get to choose traditional public Medicare or vouchers -- only reinforces the voter perception of Romney as someone who keeps changing his story. The euphemism of "premium support" is fooling nobody and adds to the perception of Republican evasiveness.
The latest New York Times-CBS poll shows that some three quarters of likely voters favor keeping Medicare the way it is, and trust Obama more than the Republicans to defend it. This is a huge shift from last year.
Democrats, meanwhile, have acquired some spine. Defense of public Medicare against "vouchercare" has become part of their standard message.
So far, so good.
Also good ammunition against Romney-Ryan was Ryan's support in 2005 for a George W. Bush plan to allow younger workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes into private accounts -- a proposal that proved a political disaster and was subsequently scrapped.
But never underestimate the Democrats' capacity for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Lurking in the wings is the latest reincarnation of Bowles-Simpson, the bipartisan zombie that refuses to die. A "Fix the Debt" campaign," chaired by none other than Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, has become the darling of the centrist media and of Wall Street.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the National Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, several leading Democratic deficit hawks, and some 70 corporate CEOs have pledged to raise $50 to 100 million dollars in corporate money for this latest campaign, which promotes yet another a grand bargain of tax increases and cuts in Social Security and other social spending.
Bowles continues to be touted as Obama's next Treasury Secretary when Tim Geithner finally (mercifully!) calls it a day. Other Democrats who are part of this effort are former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who was chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2000, and former Democratic Congressman Vic Fazio, who once headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Rounding out this group of Democrats doing Republicans' bidding on fiscal issues are former Georgia Senator Samm Nunn and Wall Streeter and former Obama official Steve Rattner.
Shame!
Bowles and Simpson were featured on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday where they were described as "widely hailed as serious thought leaders on dealing with the country's economic problems."
Hailed, that is, by the same corporate media. The mainstream media just laps this stuff up, because Simpson, a Republican, is willing to criticize the Romney-Ryan ticket and Bowles, a Wall Street Democrat, is not shy about criticizing Obama. So they must be both courageous and right. As Bowles said on Meet the Press Sunday, "We don't think President Obama has gone far enough in his reduction on entitlement spending."
But Social Security continues to be in surplus, and to lend the rest of the government money. Its projected future deficits did not cause the current economic crisis. Its reduced revenues are the result of the crisis.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes. If median worker pay rose with productivity, instead of most of the gain in national income going to people like those on the "Fix the Debt Campaign", Social Security would be in surplus indefinitely. Social Security's modest projected shortfall can be erased by raising the ceiling on income subject to payroll tax, not by slashing benefits.
The corporate elite lives in a self-reinforcing bubble, where the deficit is the economy's most dire problem. An important study by political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Nathan Seawright interviewed a sample of very wealthy Americans. Not surprisingly, their views on the importance of budget balance versus job creation and social supports were far to the right of those of most voters. (Fully 87 percent of very wealthy respondents put deficit reduction as the most pressing national issue.)
This is conventional wisdom among the top one percent. Corporate CEOs of the sort who are underwriting this latest Bowles-Simpson assault don't need Social Security for their own retirement and don't mind sacrificing it on the altar of budget balance.
Back in the real world, Social Security is both good policy and good politics. As private pension plans keep being gutted and seniors interest earnings on savings accounts are basically nothing, Social Security is the one government guaranteed portion of retirement income. It is immensely popular, and to the extent Democrats are resolute in its defense, the program's popularity rubs off on them.
But because of pressure from corporate-funded groups like this one, the Obama Administration keeps coming close to buckling on the issue of traditional Democratic defense of Social Security. This will arise again as Congress gets closer to the dread "fiscal cliff," made up of expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January 2013 and the threatened budget sequester (that is the fruit of Republicans holding the government hostage in 2011.)
Given the importance of Social Security to regular Americans and its partisan value to Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, no sane Democrat should be associated with these efforts. But in an age of Citizens United and unlimited corporate donations, where Obama tacks back and forth between criticizing Wall Street and soliciting Wall Street executives for campaign funds, it is all too tempting to demonstrate fiscal "soundness" by joining this parade.
Thanks to Paul Ryan, however, the president may be spared again. The association of Romney-Ryan with the gutting of Medicare and Social Security offers just too tempting a political target to throw away for the sake of impressing Simpson, Bowles, and their corporate cronies. Or so we must hope.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
Robert Kuttner
Co-founder and co-editor, 'The American Prospect'
09/16/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/thank-you-paul-ryan_b_1888870.html
Two years ago, the Democrats handed the Republicans their two crown jewels -- Social Security and Medicare. By targeting Medicare for budget "savings" that could be used to finance what the Republicans called Obamacare, the White House gave the GOP ammunition to contend that the Democrats were taking benefits away from seniors.
Expanding health coverage for the young and defense of Medicare for the elderly got depicted as a zero sum game. Republicans made huge gains in 2010 with seniors. Instead of the political winner it should have been, Obamacare became an epithet.
Then, in the aborted grand budget bargain of 2011, Obama was so eager to achieve a compromise on mostly Republican terms that he very nearly agreed to needless cuts in Social Security. Only Republican intransigence on any kind of tax hikes saved the president from himself -- or more precisely from his deficit-hawk advisers.
Now, however, Republicans have given Social Security and Medicare back to the Democrats (where they belong.) Polls show that Medicare is no longer a winner for the Republicans, and the Democrats have embraced the term, "Obamacare" as positive label.
The reason, of course, is Paul Ryan.
Thanks to Ryan's very explicit advocacy of scrapping public Medicare in favor of vouchers, seniors are returning to their natural Democratic home. The transparently bogus effort of the Romney-Ryan ticket to walk back Ryan's voucher proposal -- and alter it into a plan where seniors get to choose traditional public Medicare or vouchers -- only reinforces the voter perception of Romney as someone who keeps changing his story. The euphemism of "premium support" is fooling nobody and adds to the perception of Republican evasiveness.
The latest New York Times-CBS poll shows that some three quarters of likely voters favor keeping Medicare the way it is, and trust Obama more than the Republicans to defend it. This is a huge shift from last year.
Democrats, meanwhile, have acquired some spine. Defense of public Medicare against "vouchercare" has become part of their standard message.
So far, so good.
Also good ammunition against Romney-Ryan was Ryan's support in 2005 for a George W. Bush plan to allow younger workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes into private accounts -- a proposal that proved a political disaster and was subsequently scrapped.
But never underestimate the Democrats' capacity for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Lurking in the wings is the latest reincarnation of Bowles-Simpson, the bipartisan zombie that refuses to die. A "Fix the Debt" campaign," chaired by none other than Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, has become the darling of the centrist media and of Wall Street.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the National Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, several leading Democratic deficit hawks, and some 70 corporate CEOs have pledged to raise $50 to 100 million dollars in corporate money for this latest campaign, which promotes yet another a grand bargain of tax increases and cuts in Social Security and other social spending.
Bowles continues to be touted as Obama's next Treasury Secretary when Tim Geithner finally (mercifully!) calls it a day. Other Democrats who are part of this effort are former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who was chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2000, and former Democratic Congressman Vic Fazio, who once headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Rounding out this group of Democrats doing Republicans' bidding on fiscal issues are former Georgia Senator Samm Nunn and Wall Streeter and former Obama official Steve Rattner.
Shame!
Bowles and Simpson were featured on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday where they were described as "widely hailed as serious thought leaders on dealing with the country's economic problems."
Hailed, that is, by the same corporate media. The mainstream media just laps this stuff up, because Simpson, a Republican, is willing to criticize the Romney-Ryan ticket and Bowles, a Wall Street Democrat, is not shy about criticizing Obama. So they must be both courageous and right. As Bowles said on Meet the Press Sunday, "We don't think President Obama has gone far enough in his reduction on entitlement spending."
But Social Security continues to be in surplus, and to lend the rest of the government money. Its projected future deficits did not cause the current economic crisis. Its reduced revenues are the result of the crisis.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes. If median worker pay rose with productivity, instead of most of the gain in national income going to people like those on the "Fix the Debt Campaign", Social Security would be in surplus indefinitely. Social Security's modest projected shortfall can be erased by raising the ceiling on income subject to payroll tax, not by slashing benefits.
The corporate elite lives in a self-reinforcing bubble, where the deficit is the economy's most dire problem. An important study by political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Nathan Seawright interviewed a sample of very wealthy Americans. Not surprisingly, their views on the importance of budget balance versus job creation and social supports were far to the right of those of most voters. (Fully 87 percent of very wealthy respondents put deficit reduction as the most pressing national issue.)
This is conventional wisdom among the top one percent. Corporate CEOs of the sort who are underwriting this latest Bowles-Simpson assault don't need Social Security for their own retirement and don't mind sacrificing it on the altar of budget balance.
Back in the real world, Social Security is both good policy and good politics. As private pension plans keep being gutted and seniors interest earnings on savings accounts are basically nothing, Social Security is the one government guaranteed portion of retirement income. It is immensely popular, and to the extent Democrats are resolute in its defense, the program's popularity rubs off on them.
But because of pressure from corporate-funded groups like this one, the Obama Administration keeps coming close to buckling on the issue of traditional Democratic defense of Social Security. This will arise again as Congress gets closer to the dread "fiscal cliff," made up of expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January 2013 and the threatened budget sequester (that is the fruit of Republicans holding the government hostage in 2011.)
Given the importance of Social Security to regular Americans and its partisan value to Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, no sane Democrat should be associated with these efforts. But in an age of Citizens United and unlimited corporate donations, where Obama tacks back and forth between criticizing Wall Street and soliciting Wall Street executives for campaign funds, it is all too tempting to demonstrate fiscal "soundness" by joining this parade.
Thanks to Paul Ryan, however, the president may be spared again. The association of Romney-Ryan with the gutting of Medicare and Social Security offers just too tempting a political target to throw away for the sake of impressing Simpson, Bowles, and their corporate cronies. Or so we must hope.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.
Romney's Breakfast of Billionaires
To contact us Click HERE
Greg Palast - Dollars & Sense Magazine | Tuesday, September 18. 2012
GregPalast.com
Greg Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is out. To read more about it, go to GregPalast.com, or visit The Konformist Blog at:
http://robalini.blogspot.com/2012/09/billionaires-ballot-bandits.html
To order via Amazon.com:
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Ballot-Bandits-Steal-Election/dp/1609804783/thekonformist
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Ballot-Bandits-Election-ebook/dp/B008EDPP00/thekonformist
On Friday, Governor Mitt Romney had breakfast with billionaires.
JOHN PAULSON, Paul Singer and Ken Langone who have dropped more than a million dollars each into the Romney “Super-PAC” Restore Our Future. As Butch said to Sundance, “Who ARE these guys?”
Singer's known as "The Vulture" on Wall Street. Langone's database company came up with the list of innocent Black voters that Katherine Harris wiped off the voter rolls of Florida in 2000. But who is Paulson, a guy so dark and devious he doesn't even have a nick-name?
I tried to join them ("Sorry, sir") just to ask why Romney was chowing down with the nation's most notorious billionaires and ballot bandits.
Here is just a bit about Breakfast Billionaire #3: John Paulson from my new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps—An investigation of Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck-Buddies. There's a comic book inside by Ted Rall with an introduction by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Get it here now.
It was just released today and already hit number one non-fiction PAPERBACK in the USA.
In August 2007, billionaire John Paulson walked into Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, with a billion-dollar idea. Paulson’s brainstorm had all the elements that Goldman found enchanting: a bit of fraud, a bit of flimflam, and lots and lots of the ultimate drug: OPM—Other Peoples’ Money.
Paulson’s scheme was simple. Paulson, a much followed hotshot hedge-fund manager, would announce that he was betting big on the recovery of the U.S. housing market. He was willing to personally insure that billions of dollars of shaky subprime mortgages, like the ones dumped on Detroit, would never go into default.
Now, all Goldman had to do was line up some suckers with more money than sense, some big European banks that handled public pension funds, and get them to put up several billion dollars to join with Paulson to insure these shaky mortgages. Paulson, to lure the “marks” into betting the billions, would pretend to put $200 million into the investment himself.
But, in fact, Paulson would be betting against those very mortgages. Paulson himself was the secret beneficiary of the “insurance” on the mortgages. When the housing market went bust, Paulson collected from the duped banks and they didn't even know it.
And Goldman would get a $15 million fee, or more, for lining up the sheep for the fleecing.
Goldman provided Paulson with a twenty-nineyear old kid, a French neophyte, to play the shill, making presentations to the European buyers with a fancy, 28-page “flip-book” about the wonderful, secure set of home mortgages the “clients” would be buying.
The young punk that Goldman put on the case texted a friend (in French — mais oui! —about the inscrutable “monstruosités”) while he was in the meeting, right as Paulson was laying on the bullshit.
The carefully selected bag of sick mortgages was packaged up into bundles totaling several billion dollars. To paint this turd gold, Paulson and Goldman brought in the well-respected risk-management arm of ACA Capital. Paulson personally met with ACA and gave them jive that he himself was investing in the insurance (as opposed to investing against the insurance).
Secretly, Paulson personally designed the package of mortgages to load it up heavily with losers, concentrating on adjustable rate mortgages, given to those with low credit scores, while culling out high-quality loans given by West Coast banker Wells Fargo. ACA, thinking Paulson was helping them pick the good stuff, put their valuable seal of approval on the mortgage packages, though they were quite nervous about their “reputation.” (But that’s what happens when you go out with bad boys.)
The mortgages in each package were dripping dreck—but with the ACA/Goldman stamp, Moody’s and Standard & Poors gave the insurance policies a AAA rating. European banks that hold government pension investments snapped up the AAA-rated junk.
In August 2008, over one million foreclosures resulted in the Goldman mortgage securities losing 99% of their value. The Royal Bank of Scotland, left holding the bag, wrote a check to Goldman Sachs for just short of one billion ($840,909,090). Goldman did the honorable thing . . . and turned over the money to Paulson (after taking their slice).
Don’t worry about the Royal Bank of Scotland. The British taxpayers and Bank of England covered its loss, taking over the bleeding bank.
And here’s the brilliance of it: when it came out that Goldman and other mortgage-backed securities were simply hot steaming piles of manure, their value plummeted further and the mortgage market, already wounded, now collapsed—and mortgage defaults accelerated nationwide. The result was that as the market plummeted, Paulson’s profits skyrocketed: his hedge fund pulled in $3.5 billion and Paulson put over a billion of it in his own pocket.
With Paulson skinning some of Europe’s leading banks for billions, there was a bit of a diplomatic and legal dustup. The SEC investigated, confirmed in detail Paulson’s scam and sued the kid at Goldman who acted as Paulson’s assistant, the one who couldn’t even follow the complex deal. Goldman paid a fine, but never admitted wrongdoing.
And Paulson received . . . a tax break.
Robert Pratt, a UAW member I met in Detroit, and several million others, lost their homes, including a Saudi prince who, in the recession, had to sell his Vail, Colorado, home ... to Paulson for just $45 million.
But now the bandit billionaire had a bit of problem. With $3.5 billion of ill-gotten lucre in his pocket, he needed something else in his pocket: politicians who would protect the tax dodge and keep the SEC enforcement dogs on a tight leash. Paulson wasn’t alone in profiteering from the savaging of the mortgage market. There was his billionaire buddy Paul Singer, known on Wall Street as “The Vulture.” Together they launched the super-PAC "Restore Our Future" with a check for one million each. They asked Bill Koch to throw in some change. Koch did: $2 million.
To restore the billionaires' future, the super-PAC's first order of business was to ally with Karl Rove. "Turdblossom," as George Bush called his mastermind Rove, had created a massive database on Americans, “DataTrust,” which works with a second massive database, “Themis,” funded by two other Koch Brothers, Charles and David. But that's another story in another chapter, read it, in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.
Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is out on September 18. You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
Or donate and get a signed copy of the book.
Copyright © 2012 Greg Palast, All rights reserved.
Greg Palast - Dollars & Sense Magazine | Tuesday, September 18. 2012GregPalast.com
Greg Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is out. To read more about it, go to GregPalast.com, or visit The Konformist Blog at:
http://robalini.blogspot.com/2012/09/billionaires-ballot-bandits.html
To order via Amazon.com:
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Ballot-Bandits-Steal-Election/dp/1609804783/thekonformist
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Billionaires-Ballot-Bandits-Election-ebook/dp/B008EDPP00/thekonformist
On Friday, Governor Mitt Romney had breakfast with billionaires.
JOHN PAULSON, Paul Singer and Ken Langone who have dropped more than a million dollars each into the Romney “Super-PAC” Restore Our Future. As Butch said to Sundance, “Who ARE these guys?”
Singer's known as "The Vulture" on Wall Street. Langone's database company came up with the list of innocent Black voters that Katherine Harris wiped off the voter rolls of Florida in 2000. But who is Paulson, a guy so dark and devious he doesn't even have a nick-name?
I tried to join them ("Sorry, sir") just to ask why Romney was chowing down with the nation's most notorious billionaires and ballot bandits.
Here is just a bit about Breakfast Billionaire #3: John Paulson from my new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps—An investigation of Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck-Buddies. There's a comic book inside by Ted Rall with an introduction by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Get it here now.
It was just released today and already hit number one non-fiction PAPERBACK in the USA.
In August 2007, billionaire John Paulson walked into Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, with a billion-dollar idea. Paulson’s brainstorm had all the elements that Goldman found enchanting: a bit of fraud, a bit of flimflam, and lots and lots of the ultimate drug: OPM—Other Peoples’ Money.
Paulson’s scheme was simple. Paulson, a much followed hotshot hedge-fund manager, would announce that he was betting big on the recovery of the U.S. housing market. He was willing to personally insure that billions of dollars of shaky subprime mortgages, like the ones dumped on Detroit, would never go into default.
Now, all Goldman had to do was line up some suckers with more money than sense, some big European banks that handled public pension funds, and get them to put up several billion dollars to join with Paulson to insure these shaky mortgages. Paulson, to lure the “marks” into betting the billions, would pretend to put $200 million into the investment himself.
But, in fact, Paulson would be betting against those very mortgages. Paulson himself was the secret beneficiary of the “insurance” on the mortgages. When the housing market went bust, Paulson collected from the duped banks and they didn't even know it.
And Goldman would get a $15 million fee, or more, for lining up the sheep for the fleecing.
Goldman provided Paulson with a twenty-nineyear old kid, a French neophyte, to play the shill, making presentations to the European buyers with a fancy, 28-page “flip-book” about the wonderful, secure set of home mortgages the “clients” would be buying.
The young punk that Goldman put on the case texted a friend (in French — mais oui! —about the inscrutable “monstruosités”) while he was in the meeting, right as Paulson was laying on the bullshit.
The carefully selected bag of sick mortgages was packaged up into bundles totaling several billion dollars. To paint this turd gold, Paulson and Goldman brought in the well-respected risk-management arm of ACA Capital. Paulson personally met with ACA and gave them jive that he himself was investing in the insurance (as opposed to investing against the insurance).
Secretly, Paulson personally designed the package of mortgages to load it up heavily with losers, concentrating on adjustable rate mortgages, given to those with low credit scores, while culling out high-quality loans given by West Coast banker Wells Fargo. ACA, thinking Paulson was helping them pick the good stuff, put their valuable seal of approval on the mortgage packages, though they were quite nervous about their “reputation.” (But that’s what happens when you go out with bad boys.)
The mortgages in each package were dripping dreck—but with the ACA/Goldman stamp, Moody’s and Standard & Poors gave the insurance policies a AAA rating. European banks that hold government pension investments snapped up the AAA-rated junk.
In August 2008, over one million foreclosures resulted in the Goldman mortgage securities losing 99% of their value. The Royal Bank of Scotland, left holding the bag, wrote a check to Goldman Sachs for just short of one billion ($840,909,090). Goldman did the honorable thing . . . and turned over the money to Paulson (after taking their slice).
Don’t worry about the Royal Bank of Scotland. The British taxpayers and Bank of England covered its loss, taking over the bleeding bank.
And here’s the brilliance of it: when it came out that Goldman and other mortgage-backed securities were simply hot steaming piles of manure, their value plummeted further and the mortgage market, already wounded, now collapsed—and mortgage defaults accelerated nationwide. The result was that as the market plummeted, Paulson’s profits skyrocketed: his hedge fund pulled in $3.5 billion and Paulson put over a billion of it in his own pocket.
With Paulson skinning some of Europe’s leading banks for billions, there was a bit of a diplomatic and legal dustup. The SEC investigated, confirmed in detail Paulson’s scam and sued the kid at Goldman who acted as Paulson’s assistant, the one who couldn’t even follow the complex deal. Goldman paid a fine, but never admitted wrongdoing.
And Paulson received . . . a tax break.
Robert Pratt, a UAW member I met in Detroit, and several million others, lost their homes, including a Saudi prince who, in the recession, had to sell his Vail, Colorado, home ... to Paulson for just $45 million.
But now the bandit billionaire had a bit of problem. With $3.5 billion of ill-gotten lucre in his pocket, he needed something else in his pocket: politicians who would protect the tax dodge and keep the SEC enforcement dogs on a tight leash. Paulson wasn’t alone in profiteering from the savaging of the mortgage market. There was his billionaire buddy Paul Singer, known on Wall Street as “The Vulture.” Together they launched the super-PAC "Restore Our Future" with a check for one million each. They asked Bill Koch to throw in some change. Koch did: $2 million.
To restore the billionaires' future, the super-PAC's first order of business was to ally with Karl Rove. "Turdblossom," as George Bush called his mastermind Rove, had created a massive database on Americans, “DataTrust,” which works with a second massive database, “Themis,” funded by two other Koch Brothers, Charles and David. But that's another story in another chapter, read it, in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.
Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is out on September 18. You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
Or donate and get a signed copy of the book.
Copyright © 2012 Greg Palast, All rights reserved.
26 Eylül 2012 Çarşamba
Significa 9-21-12
To contact us Click HERE
Time Samplers
http://timesamplers.com
Credit to Kenn Thomas & SteamshovelPress.com for tipping us off on this comic...
Two popular underground musicians (Lex & Cal) modify their electronic instruments and gear, allowing them to recreate any event in history. Through a combination of music, technology, particle theory, altered states, and a bit of the old ultra-violence, they begin to unravel the ugly truths of recorded history – proving that many “conspiracy theories” are fact.
This project aims to make alternative history more accessible through interactive graphic novels, games, and more. The stories cover ongoing research into secret societies, mind control, government cover-ups, and corruption from both past and present, with each adventure reflecting a different conspiracy-theory corresponding to actual research.
*
Kool Websites
Dinosaur Dracula
http://www.DinosaurDracula.com
When is it acceptable to start celebrating Halloween? According to Dinosaur Dracula, the start of September. The site is the new version of X-Entertainment.com, which also would annually start it's holiday celebrations after Labor Day, following with Thanksgiving Day & Christmas homages on November 1st. In any case, check it out and learn about kool thinks like Candy Corn Oreos & Pumpkin Spice Eggos...
Kettle Pizza
http://www.kettlepizza.com
Imagine authentic woodfired pizza from your kettle grill.
The KettlePizza® insert will turn your grill into a real pizza oven!
Works with all kettle grills including Weber® and others.
KettlePizza Ovens & Accessories Are Proudly Made In USA
Vienna Coffee Company
http://viennacoffeecompany.com
Our goal is to supply the very best, freshest specialty coffees available to coffee lovers throughout east Tennessee and the southeast. We roast our specialty coffee in a rustic 3000 sq. ft. Roastery in beautiful Maryville, Tennessee, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. Roastmaster John Clark and his staff (see our profiles here) invite you browse this site or visit us at the Roastery to learn why and how our PASSION for Great Coffee was born...
Is anyplace better for breakfast than IHOP?
http://www.ihop.com
*
Konformist Book Club: Best of Rivals
Joe Montana, Steve Young, and the Inside Story behind the NFL's Greatest Quarterback Controversy [Hardcover]
Adam Lazarus
Amazon
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Rivals-Quarterback-Controversy-ebook/dp/B008X5XUCE/thekonformist
Hardcover:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Rivals-Greatest-Quarterback-Controversy/dp/0306821354/thekonformist
Hardcover List Price: $26.00
Price: $17.16 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $8.84
Kindle Edition $12.99
Publication Date: August 28, 2012
JOE MONTANA AND STEVE YOUNG -- THEY WERE THE BEST... AND BEST OF RIVALS
In this revealing, in-depth look at the NFL's greatest quarterback controversy, Adam Lazarus takes readers into the locker room and inside the huddle to deliver the real story behind the rivalry-- when Joe Montana and Steve Young battled on and off the field and forged one of the finest football dynasties of all time. From 1987 to 1994, the two future Hall of Famers spurred each other on to remarkable heights, including three Super Bowl wins and four MVP awards, and set new standards for quarterback excellence.
The two men couldn't have been more different in background, personality, and playing style, and their competition created as much tension as it did greatness, forcing Montana to prove that he was still the game's best quarterback and Young to prove that he was a worthy successor.
Featuring candid interviews with Montana, Young, Jerry Rice, George Seifert, and many more, Best of Rivals brings to life the story of two sports legends, the golden era of football their rivalry presided over, and the amazing legacy it produced.
Editorial Reviews
Booklist, September 2012
“Lazarus provides solid backstory…Readers might be surprised to see how imperfect these great players (and their hallowed wide receiver Jerry Rice) could be in the heat of competition, but also to see the class with which these preternaturally competitive men handled their situation. Instructive as well as informative.”
From the Back Cover
Advance praise for BEST OF RIVALS
"Lazarus does a very good job explaining the dynamic of the Joe Montana-Steve Young competition of the 49ers heyday. I was particularly interested in this book because of the stiff competition those two provided to my teams."
--Bill Parcells, two-time Super Bowl winning head coach
"A fascinating look at one of the breathtaking one-on-one battles in NFL history. Young? Montana? Adam Lazarus takes two all-time greats and, against all odds, makes you pull
for both of them. Wonderfully done."
--Jeff Pearlman, author of the New York Times bestseller Boys Will Be Boys
"[Best of Rivals] is a must-read for 49ers fans of all ages. You will smile, cringe, and curse, then you will nod at the enduring lesson that, at some point, even the greatest of the greats will be replaced--whether they're ready or not."
--Jim Trotter, senior writer for Sports Illustrated
"Lazarus did an excellent job of showcasing the character of these two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, who had so much in common with their great skills, but were so very, very different in terms of personalities and their approach to the game."
--Joe Starkey, former play-by-play voice of the San Francisco 49ers
"It wasn't just that Joe and Steve won Super Bowls; it was that Joe and Steve were can't-miss theatre. The highs--and more importantly, the lows--of their careers and rivalry are important reading for anybody who loves the 49ers and their rich history."
--Brian Murphy, sports radio host on San Francisco's KNBR
"The ultimate story of pro football's ultimate rivalry, Adam Lazarus pulls us back to a golden era by the Golden Gate when to Niner fans Joe Montana was the nearest thing to a god and Steve Young's only fault was he wasn't Joe Montana."
--Art Spander, Pro Football Hall of Fame writer
"It seems like a fine idea to have two great quarterbacks on your roster, at least until Sunday when only one of them gets to play. Adam Lazarus takes you inside the dynamic but difficult partnership that was the Joe Montana-Steve Young era in San Francisco."
--Ray Didinger, Pro Football Hall of Fame writer
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0306821354
ISBN-13: 978-0306821356
*
Underrated Album of the Summer:
Clockwork Angels, by Rush
Still rocking after all these years...
*
Awesome Quotes: Goodfellas
“Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”
*
Game of the Month: Borderlands 2
http://www.borderlands2.com
A new era of shoot and loot is about to begin. Play as one of four new vault hunters facing off against a massive new world of creatures, psychos and the evil mastermind, Handsome Jack. Make new friends, arm them with a bazillion weapons and fight alongside them in 4 player co-op or split-screen on a relentless quest for revenge and redemption across the undiscovered and unpredictable living planet.
STORY
Borderlands 2 follows the story of four new Vault Hunters as they fight to free Pandora from the clutches of Handsome Jack, the brilliant, charismatic, and utterly despicable CEO of the Hyperion Corporation.
Players will fight across the whole of Pandora to stop Jack from awakening an ancient alien evil known only as "the Warrior." Their quest will bring them into contact with some familiar faces from the old game – most notably, the original four Vault Hunters: Roland, Lilith, Brick and Mordecai. They, along with some brand new characters, will help players defeat Jack, destroy the Warrior, and save Pandora.
*
Stoner Cooking: Breakfast Burrito
Ellie Krieger, All Rights Reserved
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/breakfast-burrito-recipe/index.html
Total Time:
38 min
Prep
25 min
Cook
13 min
Yield:
4 servings, serving size 1 burrito
Level:
Easy
Ingredients
2 teaspoons canola oil
1/2 small red onion, diced (1 cup)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 cup drained, rinsed canned black beans, preferably low-sodium
1/4 teaspoon chili flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs and 4 egg whites
1/3 cup (about 1 1/2-ounce) shredded pepper Jack cheese
Cooking spray
4 (10-inch) whole-wheat tortillas (burrito-size)
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream
1/4 cup salsa
1 large tomato, (4 ounces) seeded and diced
1 small avocado (4 ounces), cubed
Hot sauce
Directions
Heat the canola oil in a large nonstick skillet over a medium-high heat. Cook the onions and peppers until onions are softened and peppers are slightly charred, about 8 minutes. Add black beans and red pepper flakes and cook until warmed through, another 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to a dish.
Whisk together the eggs and egg whites then stir in the cheese. Spray the skillet with cooking spray, and reheat the skillet over a medium heat. Reduce heat to low and add eggs, scrambling until cooked through, about 3 minutes. Spread each tortilla with 1 tablespoon each sour cream and salsa, then layer with 1/4 of the black bean mixture, 1/4 of the scrambled eggs, some diced tomato and 1/4 of the avocado. Season, to taste, with hot sauce. Roll up burrito-style and serve.
Per Serving:
Calories 460; Total Fat 20 g; (Sat Fat 6 g, Mono Fat 4 g, Poly Fat 1 g) ; Protein 23 g; Carb 51 g; Fiber 12 g; Cholesterol 235 mg; Sodium 860 mg
Excellent source of: Protein, Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C,
Good source of: Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin K, Calcium, Iodine, Iron, Potassium, Selenium
Time Samplers
http://timesamplers.com
Credit to Kenn Thomas & SteamshovelPress.com for tipping us off on this comic...
Two popular underground musicians (Lex & Cal) modify their electronic instruments and gear, allowing them to recreate any event in history. Through a combination of music, technology, particle theory, altered states, and a bit of the old ultra-violence, they begin to unravel the ugly truths of recorded history – proving that many “conspiracy theories” are fact.
This project aims to make alternative history more accessible through interactive graphic novels, games, and more. The stories cover ongoing research into secret societies, mind control, government cover-ups, and corruption from both past and present, with each adventure reflecting a different conspiracy-theory corresponding to actual research.
*
Kool Websites
Dinosaur Dracula
http://www.DinosaurDracula.com
When is it acceptable to start celebrating Halloween? According to Dinosaur Dracula, the start of September. The site is the new version of X-Entertainment.com, which also would annually start it's holiday celebrations after Labor Day, following with Thanksgiving Day & Christmas homages on November 1st. In any case, check it out and learn about kool thinks like Candy Corn Oreos & Pumpkin Spice Eggos...
Kettle Pizza
http://www.kettlepizza.com
Imagine authentic woodfired pizza from your kettle grill.
The KettlePizza® insert will turn your grill into a real pizza oven!
Works with all kettle grills including Weber® and others.
KettlePizza Ovens & Accessories Are Proudly Made In USA
Vienna Coffee Company
http://viennacoffeecompany.com
Our goal is to supply the very best, freshest specialty coffees available to coffee lovers throughout east Tennessee and the southeast. We roast our specialty coffee in a rustic 3000 sq. ft. Roastery in beautiful Maryville, Tennessee, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. Roastmaster John Clark and his staff (see our profiles here) invite you browse this site or visit us at the Roastery to learn why and how our PASSION for Great Coffee was born...
Is anyplace better for breakfast than IHOP?
http://www.ihop.com
*
Konformist Book Club: Best of Rivals
Joe Montana, Steve Young, and the Inside Story behind the NFL's Greatest Quarterback Controversy [Hardcover]
Adam Lazarus
Amazon
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Rivals-Quarterback-Controversy-ebook/dp/B008X5XUCE/thekonformist
Hardcover:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Rivals-Greatest-Quarterback-Controversy/dp/0306821354/thekonformist
Hardcover List Price: $26.00
Price: $17.16 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $8.84
Kindle Edition $12.99
Publication Date: August 28, 2012
JOE MONTANA AND STEVE YOUNG -- THEY WERE THE BEST... AND BEST OF RIVALS
In this revealing, in-depth look at the NFL's greatest quarterback controversy, Adam Lazarus takes readers into the locker room and inside the huddle to deliver the real story behind the rivalry-- when Joe Montana and Steve Young battled on and off the field and forged one of the finest football dynasties of all time. From 1987 to 1994, the two future Hall of Famers spurred each other on to remarkable heights, including three Super Bowl wins and four MVP awards, and set new standards for quarterback excellence.
The two men couldn't have been more different in background, personality, and playing style, and their competition created as much tension as it did greatness, forcing Montana to prove that he was still the game's best quarterback and Young to prove that he was a worthy successor.
Featuring candid interviews with Montana, Young, Jerry Rice, George Seifert, and many more, Best of Rivals brings to life the story of two sports legends, the golden era of football their rivalry presided over, and the amazing legacy it produced.
Editorial Reviews
Booklist, September 2012
“Lazarus provides solid backstory…Readers might be surprised to see how imperfect these great players (and their hallowed wide receiver Jerry Rice) could be in the heat of competition, but also to see the class with which these preternaturally competitive men handled their situation. Instructive as well as informative.”
From the Back Cover
Advance praise for BEST OF RIVALS
"Lazarus does a very good job explaining the dynamic of the Joe Montana-Steve Young competition of the 49ers heyday. I was particularly interested in this book because of the stiff competition those two provided to my teams."
--Bill Parcells, two-time Super Bowl winning head coach
"A fascinating look at one of the breathtaking one-on-one battles in NFL history. Young? Montana? Adam Lazarus takes two all-time greats and, against all odds, makes you pull
for both of them. Wonderfully done."
--Jeff Pearlman, author of the New York Times bestseller Boys Will Be Boys
"[Best of Rivals] is a must-read for 49ers fans of all ages. You will smile, cringe, and curse, then you will nod at the enduring lesson that, at some point, even the greatest of the greats will be replaced--whether they're ready or not."
--Jim Trotter, senior writer for Sports Illustrated
"Lazarus did an excellent job of showcasing the character of these two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, who had so much in common with their great skills, but were so very, very different in terms of personalities and their approach to the game."
--Joe Starkey, former play-by-play voice of the San Francisco 49ers
"It wasn't just that Joe and Steve won Super Bowls; it was that Joe and Steve were can't-miss theatre. The highs--and more importantly, the lows--of their careers and rivalry are important reading for anybody who loves the 49ers and their rich history."
--Brian Murphy, sports radio host on San Francisco's KNBR
"The ultimate story of pro football's ultimate rivalry, Adam Lazarus pulls us back to a golden era by the Golden Gate when to Niner fans Joe Montana was the nearest thing to a god and Steve Young's only fault was he wasn't Joe Montana."
--Art Spander, Pro Football Hall of Fame writer
"It seems like a fine idea to have two great quarterbacks on your roster, at least until Sunday when only one of them gets to play. Adam Lazarus takes you inside the dynamic but difficult partnership that was the Joe Montana-Steve Young era in San Francisco."
--Ray Didinger, Pro Football Hall of Fame writer
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0306821354
ISBN-13: 978-0306821356
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Underrated Album of the Summer:
Clockwork Angels, by Rush
Still rocking after all these years...
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Awesome Quotes: Goodfellas
“Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”
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Game of the Month: Borderlands 2
http://www.borderlands2.com
A new era of shoot and loot is about to begin. Play as one of four new vault hunters facing off against a massive new world of creatures, psychos and the evil mastermind, Handsome Jack. Make new friends, arm them with a bazillion weapons and fight alongside them in 4 player co-op or split-screen on a relentless quest for revenge and redemption across the undiscovered and unpredictable living planet.
STORY
Borderlands 2 follows the story of four new Vault Hunters as they fight to free Pandora from the clutches of Handsome Jack, the brilliant, charismatic, and utterly despicable CEO of the Hyperion Corporation.
Players will fight across the whole of Pandora to stop Jack from awakening an ancient alien evil known only as "the Warrior." Their quest will bring them into contact with some familiar faces from the old game – most notably, the original four Vault Hunters: Roland, Lilith, Brick and Mordecai. They, along with some brand new characters, will help players defeat Jack, destroy the Warrior, and save Pandora.
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Stoner Cooking: Breakfast Burrito
Ellie Krieger, All Rights Reserved
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/breakfast-burrito-recipe/index.html
Total Time:
38 min
Prep
25 min
Cook
13 min
Yield:
4 servings, serving size 1 burrito
Level:
Easy
Ingredients
2 teaspoons canola oil
1/2 small red onion, diced (1 cup)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 cup drained, rinsed canned black beans, preferably low-sodium
1/4 teaspoon chili flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs and 4 egg whites
1/3 cup (about 1 1/2-ounce) shredded pepper Jack cheese
Cooking spray
4 (10-inch) whole-wheat tortillas (burrito-size)
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream
1/4 cup salsa
1 large tomato, (4 ounces) seeded and diced
1 small avocado (4 ounces), cubed
Hot sauce
Directions
Heat the canola oil in a large nonstick skillet over a medium-high heat. Cook the onions and peppers until onions are softened and peppers are slightly charred, about 8 minutes. Add black beans and red pepper flakes and cook until warmed through, another 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to a dish.
Whisk together the eggs and egg whites then stir in the cheese. Spray the skillet with cooking spray, and reheat the skillet over a medium heat. Reduce heat to low and add eggs, scrambling until cooked through, about 3 minutes. Spread each tortilla with 1 tablespoon each sour cream and salsa, then layer with 1/4 of the black bean mixture, 1/4 of the scrambled eggs, some diced tomato and 1/4 of the avocado. Season, to taste, with hot sauce. Roll up burrito-style and serve.
Per Serving:
Calories 460; Total Fat 20 g; (Sat Fat 6 g, Mono Fat 4 g, Poly Fat 1 g) ; Protein 23 g; Carb 51 g; Fiber 12 g; Cholesterol 235 mg; Sodium 860 mg
Excellent source of: Protein, Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C,
Good source of: Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin K, Calcium, Iodine, Iron, Potassium, Selenium
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