Top 10 of the decade.

Whiplash............

U.S. Postal Service will bring antidotes......

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If the nation ever faces a large-scale attack by a biological weapon like anthrax, the U.S. Postal Service will be in charge of delivering whatever drugs and other medical aid Americans would need to survive. In an executive order released Wednesday, President Barack Obama put the Postal Service in charge of dispensing ''medical countermeasures'' to biological weapons because of its ''capacity for rapid residential delivery.''...Link

$4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank............

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- To close out 2009, I decided to do something I bet no member of Congress has done -- actually read from cover to cover one of the pieces of sweeping legislation bouncing around Capitol Hill. Hunkering down by the fire, I snuggled up with H.R. 4173, the financial-reform legislation passed earlier this month by the House of Representatives. The Senate has yet to pass its own reform plan. The baby of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the House bill is meant to address everything from too-big-to-fail banks to asleep-at-the-switch credit-ratings companies to the protection of consumers from greedy lenders...Link

The media on terrorist alert once again.

It all came rushing back — the “War with Islam?” graphics, the terrorism experts, the breathless reports of a “suspicious van” parked near Times Square, and Chris Matthews mincing no words when describing the Al Qaeda threat. "They’re the enemy. They’re going to use any means they can to get us,” he said Tuesday on “Hardball” before moving on to the next segment and what’s being done to keep “killers off our airplanes.”...Link

Lots more military & economic aid to Yemen.

The United States is sharply increasing both military and economic aid to Yemen, as it has been doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to fight a growing threat from Al-Qaeda, officials said Wednesday. The threat has been highlighted by the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who reportedly confessed to being trained by an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen for his mission to blow up a US-bound jet...Link

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Liberals Wake Up: ObamaCare Stinks......

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care. The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. . . In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year...Link

Video of protesters stopping Iran hanging.....

Stunning footage has emerged of protesters in the Iranian city of Sirjan rescuing two men from being hanged by the regime. The video, uploaded to YouTube on Saturday, shows a brutal clash between Iranian authorities and protesters that was largely overlooked until Gateway Pundit found video footage of it. A Reuters report from last Wednesday stated that security forces "shot dead two gunmen" in the melee that followed the rescue, but, as Jim Hoft points out at Gateway Pundit, "the only ones with guns in the video are the regime thugs."..Link

States weighing marijuana reforms.........

Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb. "In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we've ever seen," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which supports reforming marijuana laws...Link

Prepare for a Keynesian Hangover......

In 2008, as the U.S. economy teetered under the weight of years of reckless credit expansion, the Bush administration decided against proposals to sweep out the bad debts from the banking system and then fix the regulatory structure—an approach based on tried and tested models from the S&L crisis and other financial crises. We will pay the price for this decision in 2010. That's because the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are plowing forward with Plan B: Nationalize credit creation and "stimulate" the private sector by spending in its stead...Link

Cat in a Box................

A ‘preemptive’ attack on Yemen................

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has a vision of "tomorrow's war." "Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war," Lieberman explained. "Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face." Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), also appearing on the program, seemed to agree, calling an attack against Yemen "something we should consider."...Link

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Obama vs. the liberals................

Tea parties -- they aren't just for conservatives anymore. Liberals are turning against President Obama with an energy that until now has been reserved for Fox News viewers who wear tri-corner hats and wave yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in a news conference Wednesday, declares that she won't ask House members to support Obama's Afghanistan troop increase in a January vote. "The president's going to have to make his case," she says, calling it a "vote of conscience."...Link

US quietly widened terror war to Yemen.

WASHINGTON — The United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against the Al-Qaeda terror network in Yemen, The New York Times reported. Citing an unnamed former top CIA official, the newspaper said that a year ago the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country. At the same time, some of the most secretive special operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, the report said. The Pentagon will be spending more than 70 million dollars over the next 18 months, and using teams of special forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels, the paper noted...Link

George W. Bush: Biggest Spender Since LBJ.

The Congressional Budget Office has released final budget numbers for fiscal year 2009. The numbers allow us to take a last look at the Bush administration’s record on spending from a statistical point of view. The following three charts show annual average real (or constant dollar) outlays during the tenures of recent presidents. Presidents were in office for either 4 or 8 budget years, except JFK (3 years), LBJ (5 years), Nixon (6 years), and Ford (2 years). President George W. Bush’s last year was fiscal 2009. Outlays that year were $3.522 trillion, according to the CBO. However, $108 billion was spending for the 2009 economic stimulus package passed under President Obama. Bush was thus roughly responsible for $3.414 trillion of spending in 2009, which includes outlays for the financial bailouts enacted under his watch. (For FY2009, $154 billion for TARP and $91 billion for Fannie and Freddie...Link

Healthcare Reform is a Lump of Coal.

Last week on Christmas Eve, after many backroom deals were made, the Senate passed the healthcare reform bill with a strictly partisan vote. I was pleased that my colleagues in the GOP are on the right side of this bill. Although this vote was a major step in healthcare reform becoming reality, they still have to reconcile the Senate bill with the House-passed version in conference committee. This could prove even more difficult and costly than the Senate vote. There was a little bit of controversy surrounding one particular Senator who was initially against the bill, but then, coincidentally, a large amount of Medicare funding specifically for his state was tucked inside and he ended up voting for it. One wonders how much more of that will have to go on to achieve final passage...Link

Iran protesters killed.......

At least four people have been killed and hundreds arrested amid violence between anti-government protesters and police in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Opposition sources said the nephew of reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was among those killed when police opened fire...Link

No Personal Stake, Little Interest In War.

I have had a couple of telephone conversations with a Maryland native who arrived in Afghanistan a year ago today - U.S. Army Capt. Jason Wingeart, who grew up in the Hereford Zone of Baltimore County. He's commander of Company B, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, stationed at an outpost in the volatile Charkh district of Logar province, south of Kabul. His unit's mission is to support the local government, train the Afghan police - a particularly daunting challenge - and to protect villagers and the district center from insurgent attacks. The phone conversations with Captain Wingeart, a bright and thoughtful commander who also served in Iraq, were remarkable for their technical quality; the young captain sounded like he was calling from a farm in Hereford, not an outpost 7,000 miles away, where soldiers have died in recent action. I found some irony in that: Technological advances in communications bring the war close to home, yet for most Americans, this war has become, eight years after Sept. 11, a remote and nebulous concept: Who are we fighting? What's the mission? How long before the mission is considered accomplished?...Link

Paul Takes Commanding Lead In GOP Race.

The same grassroots energy that propelled Ron Paul from a little-known Congressman to a force in the presidential primaries now seems to be transferring to his son in his Senate run in Kentucky. Public Policy Polling's (D) latest survey shows him easily ahead of Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who was recruited by the national party after Sen. Jim Bunning (R) was pressured not to seek re-election...Link

Update - S 604 - 31 Co-sponsors...................

Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.

Congress raises debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion.

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Thursday to raise the ceiling on the government debt to $12.4 trillion, a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Barack Obama has promised to address next year...Link

Take the profit motive out of the drug trade.

In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion. A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government's war on drugs summed up recently what he's learned from his long career: "This war is not winnable."Link

US Attacking Yemen After All.............

Just one day after a very public denial that American forces were in the process of attacking sites in Northern Yemen, President Barack Obama ordered multiple cruise missile attacks on sites across the tiny, coastal nation. The air strikes were coordinated with the government of President Ali Abdallah Saleh and the attacks left 120 killed, many of them civilians according to witnesses. President Obama called Saleh after the attack to “congratulate” him on the killings. The Yemeni government denied any US role in the attacks, despite American officials’ admissions. This is largely in keeping with the Saleh government’s policy, as they angrily denied reports of Saudi attacks in the north as a myth even as the Saudi government was giving a press conference detailing the attack...Link

A Peculiar Concept of Freedom..................

Jacob Sullum has a must-read piece on the folly of the Democrats' argument that government subsidized health care is somehow a fundamental human right. Sullum says this oft-repeated statement "reveals a radical assault on the traditional American understanding of rights."...Link

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Got a gun for X-mas to protect my other gifts.

Jim Gaffigan - Bacon - KING BABY - CD and DVD Available NOW! - Watch more Funny Videos

Christmas vacation is Sweet................

Link

All Night Long................

Turning cow manure into fuel-grade ethanol.

To critics who object to making ethanol fuel out of grain, Larry Lehr, of Waco, has an ecology-minded answer: Run it through a cow first. Lehr, who teaches environmental science at Baylor University, is planning to build a manure-to-ethanol demonstration plant at a model dairy that Tarleton State University is building in Stephenville...Link

Transform.............

Alyssa Milano's Evolution: Jersey Shore from Alyssa Milano

Dude Passes Out During Interview - Watch more Funny Videos

Spend, spend, spend.

In a rare early Saturday morning vote, the Senate passed a massive Pentagon spending bill that includes nearly $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a measure Republicans had tried to block as a means of delaying action on President Obama's health-care overhaul...Link

Soaring insurance stocks....................

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan shouted down Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) after she couldn't answer why insurance stocks have increased since major reforms have been stripped from health care legislation...Link

Change...............

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Dean says kill the Senate health bill......

WASHINGTON -- deanheated Dean says kill the Senate health bill: reportFollowing the jettisoning of both the public option and the Medicare buy-in provision, one of the nation's leading progressive voices on health care reportedly said Tuesday that the Senate bill is no longer worth supporting. "This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," former Gov. Howard Dean told political reporter Bob Kinzel of Vermont Public Radio. Kinzel relayed the news to The Plum Line's Greg Sargent, and the full VPR interview will air at 5:50 pm today...Link

Skip to 4 min for Music.............

Interest rates near zero.........

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it will shut down some of the emergency triage measures it put in place at the height of the financial crisis but will leave interest rates near zero out of continuing concern about the weak U.S. economy...Link

Iranian-Backed Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones.

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter...Link

Paul's Money Bomb Raises Over $240,000...

Capitalizing on small donors, the Rand Paul campaign yesterday received contributions in excess of $240,000, with an average contribution of less than $65. Over 4,000 individuals donated during the 24 hour period. According to Dr. Paul, “We’re ecstatic that our supporters, in these tough economic times, were able to donate so much of their hard earned cash. Meanwhile, my opponent continues to beg and plead with the establishment special interests for PAC money.” Yesterday marked the second highest one day online fundraising effort in the history of Kentucky politics. The original record was set by Dr. Paul’s campaign on August 20th, 2009 when the campaign raised over $440,000 in a single day. The Rand Paul campaign has now collected nearly $1.7 million total and over $575,000 for the quarter...Link

Paul goes from ridicule to respect..............

Ron Paul is a white-haired, soft-voiced, 74-year-old doctor who has twice failed in presidential campaigns and is frequently derided by his Republican colleagues as an ideologue from the party's libertarian fringe. No one would have been surprised if the Lake Jackson congressman had slipped off the political radar after his 2008 quixotic bid for the presidency, his ambitions for higher office thwarted. But Paul has refused to go out to the political pasture to live in comfortable irrelevance. As odd as it may seem, he has become one of the most influential Republicans in a capital city dominated by liberal Democrats...Link

Meet Gary Johnson.....................

Former New Mexico Republican Gov. Gary Johnson is a teetotaling triathlete who looks the part of the laid-back Mountain West politician. But don’t let the jeans and black mock turtleneck he's sporting on his new website fool you: Johnson is starting to sound like a mad-as-hell populist with an eye cast on 2012 and the building fury aimed at Washington. “I’m finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit,” he said in an interview with POLITICO this week. “I’m finding myself really angry over what’s happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I’m angry about cap and trade. And I’ve been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs.”..Link

Lefties Call for Alliance with Paulies.........

Citing Dr. Ron Paul's clear and unambiguous "non-interventionist" platform which condemns US troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war speakers at a rally headlined "No You Can't" called for an alliance between anti-war left and anti-war right on war and peace issues. Organized by the newly-formed anti-war coalition End US Wars, the rally was held in Lafayette Park in front of the White House last Saturday. The coalition announced a new alliance of national and grass-roots antiwar organizations and more than 100 leading peace activists. It featured a joint appearance of four former presidential candidates, former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader...Link

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House approves massive military spending bill.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a massive military spending bill to defray annual expenses, fund operations in Afghanistan, and pay for the troop withdrawal from Iraq. Lawmakers voted 395 to 34 for the 636.3-billion-dollar package, which does not include monies for President Barack Obama's recently announced decision to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan in a bid to turn that conflict around. The Senate was expected to act on the measure soon. The bill includes 101.1 billion dollars for operations and maintenance and military personnel requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan and to carry out the planned withdrawal of all US combat forces from Iraq by August 2010...Link

U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit.........

The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has - at least numerically - exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill. The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion...Link

The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.

Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit...Link

Nancy Pelosi in 'campaign mode'...........

Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted Wednesday that job creation and deficit reduction will be the central Democratic themes for the coming year – and that public support for health care reform will rebound once a bill has been sent to President Barack Obama. On the divisive issue of Afghanistan, the California Democrat ducked the question of how she would vote on increased war funding: “Let’s see what they request,” she said. But she has urged her party, including old allies on the anti-war left, to listen and give some “room” to Obama, recognizing that the president had been “dealt a very bad hand because there was no plan in Afghanistan for years.”...Link

The most powerful nerd on the planet............

A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn't have a commanding presence. He isn't a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren't partisan or ideological; they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn't know something, he doesn't bluster or bluff. He's professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor...Link

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$100,000 in Less Than 12 Hours..............

Less than 12 hours into Rand Paul’s one-day Tea Party “money bomb” fundraising event, the Kentucky Senate candidate had already surpassed the $100,000 mark, according to the real-time donation counter on Paul’s Web page. That total puts Paul, the son of libertarian champion, congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) at more than $400,000 raised during the fourth quarter...Link

Kucinich measure gains cosponsors.......

Dennis Kucinich's proposed congressional effort to end the Afghanistan war has gained a dozen bipartisan cosponsors during the week the Cleveland Democrat has circulated it.

Here's the cosponsor list provided by Kucinich's office: John Conyers, Jr.; (D-MI); Ron E. Paul (R-TX); Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD); Bob Filner (D-CA); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC); Lynn Woolsey (D-CA); Edward Whitfield (R-KY); Michael Capuano (D-MA); Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL); Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ); Eric Massa (D-NY); and Alan Grayson (D-FL)...Link

Swine flu shots for infants, toddlers recalled.

More than three-quarters of a million doses of swine flu vaccine for infants and children were recalled Tuesday in the United States after routine tests showed they had lost potency. Four lots of Sanofi Pasteur's injectable (A)H1N1 vaccine for children aged six months to three years old were recalled after tests conducted after shipping in November showed that the shots had lost strength, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a health alert sent to doctors. The recall involves some 800,000 doses of vaccine, some of which could well have been administered to young children...Link

Copenhagen summit carbon footprint..........

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of over half a million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show. Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights...Link

Neocon's are starting to love Obama.

Obama's Big Sellout..............

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing...Link

It’s Time to Leave Afghanistan..............

by Rep. Ron Paul

Statement before the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee on December 10, 2009 | Also posted at Antiwar.com

Mr. Speaker thank you for holding these important hearings on US policy in Afghanistan. I would like to welcome the witnesses, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and General Stanley A. McChrystal, and thank them for appearing before this Committee.

I have serious concerns, however, about the president’s decision to add some 30,000 troops and an as yet undisclosed number of civilian personnel to escalate our Afghan operation. This “surge” will bring US troop levels to approximately those of the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan with disastrous result back in the 1980s. I fear the US military occupation of Afghanistan may end up similarly unsuccessful.

In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels.” Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government.

Eight years into our own war in Afghanistan the Soviet commander’s words ring eerily familiar. Part of the problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It is our presence as occupiers that feeds the insurgency. As would be the case if we were invaded and occupied, diverse groups have put aside their disagreements to unify against foreign occupation. Adding more US troops will only assist those who recruit fighters to attack our soldiers and who use the US occupation to convince villages to side with the Taliban.

Proponents of the president’s Afghanistan escalation cite the successful “surge” in Iraq as evidence that this second surge will have similar results. I fear they might be correct about the similar result, but I dispute the success propaganda about Iraq. In fact, the violence in Iraq only temporarily subsided with the completion of the ethnic cleansing of Shi’ites from Sunni neighborhoods and vice versa – and all neighborhoods of Christians. Those Sunni fighters who remained were easily turned against the foreign al-Qaeda presence when offered US money and weapons. We are increasingly seeing this “success” breaking down: sectarian violence is flaring up and this time the various groups are better armed with US-provided weapons. Similarly, the insurgents paid by the US to stop their attacks are increasingly restive now that the Iraqi government is no longer paying bribes on a regular basis. So I am skeptical about reports on the success of the Iraqi surge.

Likewise, we are told that we have to “win” in Afghanistan so that al-Qaeda cannot use Afghan territory to plan further attacks against the US. We need to remember that the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 was, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, largely planned in the United States (and Germany) by terrorists who were in our country legally. According to the logic of those who endorse military action against Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was physically present, one could argue in favor of US airstrikes against several US states and Germany! It makes no sense. The Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to remain in Afghanistan because both had been engaged, with US assistance, in the insurgency against the Soviet occupation.

Nevertheless, the president’s National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones, USMC (Ret.), said in a recent interview that less than 100 al-Qaeda remain in Afghanistan and that the chance they would reconstitute a significant presence there was slim. Are we to believe that 30,000 more troops are needed to defeat 100 al-Qaeda fighters? I fear that there will be increasing pressure for the US to invade Pakistan, to where many Taliban and al-Qaeda have escaped. Already CIA drone attacks on Pakistan have destabilized that country and have killed scores of innocents, producing strong anti-American feelings and calls for revenge. I do not see how that contributes to our national security.

The president’s top advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said recently, “I would say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue, we’ll know it when we see it.” That does not inspire much confidence.

Supporters of this surge argue that we must train an Afghan national army to take over and strengthen the rule and authority of Kabul. But experts have noted that the ranks of the Afghan national army are increasingly being filled by the Tajik minority at the expense of the Pashtun plurality. US diplomat Matthew Hoh, who resigned as Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province, noted in his resignation letter that he “fail[s] to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” Mr. Hoh went on to write that “[L]ike the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by [the Afghan] people.”

I have always opposed nation-building as unconstitutional and ineffective. Afghanistan is no different. Without a real strategy in Afghanistan, without a vision of what victory will look like, we are left with the empty rhetoric of the last administration that “when the Afghan people stand up, the US will stand down.” I am afraid the only solution to the Afghanistan quagmire is a rapid and complete US withdrawal from that country and the region. We cannot afford to maintain this empire and our occupation of these foreign lands is not making us any safer. It is time to leave Afghanistan.

Major makeover of Wall Street regs passes.

WASHINGTON — The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession. The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators. The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it...Link

Ron Paul's Hour of Power..........

The decades-long campaign of Ron Paul to have the Government Accountability Office do a full audit of the Federal Reserve now has 313 sponsors in the House. Sometimes perseverance does pay off. If not derailed by the establishment, the audit may happen. Yet, many columnists and commentators are aghast. An auditors’ probe, they wail, would imperil the Fed’s independence and expose it to pressure from Congress to keep interest rates low and money flowing when the need of the nation and economy might call for tightening...Link

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Hooray beer..............

Looking for an excuse for your rampant alcoholism? How about cancer prevention: A new study released by the German Cancer Research Center says that a chemical in hops, the flavoring ingredient in beer, may block testosterone, making you less susceptible to catching prostate cancer. Hooray beer, indeed. An ingredient of beer may someday help ward off prostate cancer, new animal experiments suggest. The compound in question, xanthohumol, is found in hops — the bitter flavoring agent in beer — and is known to block the male hormone testosterone, which plays a role in the development of prostate cancer...Link

Solar power coming to a store near you.

Solar technology is going where it has never gone before: onto the shelves at retail stores where do-it-yourselfers can now plunk a panel into a shopping cart and bring it home to install. Lowe's has begun stocking solar panels at its California stores and plans to roll them out across the country next year...Link

‘Gutting’ Nuremberg.................

The Obama administration has asked the Department of Justice to dismiss a lawsuit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla against torture memo author John Yoo, asserting that Yoo cannot be sued for legal opinions he offered in the course of advising then-President Bush on national security matters. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley finds ths decision inexplicable. "The president literally has gotten onto a plane this evening to go to Norway," he told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday, "to accept the Nobel Prize, while his Justice Department is effectively gutting a major part of Nuremberg."..Link

Rise of the Fed bashers..............

They all laughed at Fulton and his steamboat,

Hershey and his chocolate bar . . .

-- George Gershwin

And at Rep. Ron Paul, the 2008 presidential candidate who had the zany idea -- as many laughing people thought -- that the Federal Reserve system could become a sizzling political issue. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, who does not laugh promiscuously, knows that it is no laughing matter that Paul has 317 co-sponsors (180 Republicans, 137 Democrats) for a bill to open the Fed's books to "audit" by the comptroller general...Link

Global message..................

Cynthia McKinney.....Open Letter to Obama.

Mr. President:
I am writing to urge you to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces.

I urge you to end the use of Predator drones that kill civilians.

I call upon you to cease all covert operations in Africa, Asia, and North and South America.

Too many of your military advisors are implicated in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace. Your Justice Department operates at the zenith of injustice, defending Bush Administration criminality in U.S. Courtrooms.

I wrote to you earlier suggesting that if you did not investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration, you would be viewed as their accessory. Sadly, war crimes and torture are now committed with your name on them.

Please bring our troops home now.

Cynthia McKinney......Link

Introducing Free Competition In Currency Act.

Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009. Currency, or money, is what allows civilization to flourish. In the absence of money, barter is the name of the game; if the farmer needs shoes, he must trade his eggs and milk to the cobbler and hope that the cobbler needs eggs and milk. Money makes the transaction process far easier. Rather than having to search for someone with reciprocal wants, the farmer can exchange his milk and eggs for an agreed-upon medium of exchange with which he can then purchase shoes.

This medium of exchange should satisfy certain properties: it should be durable, that is to say, it does not wear out easily; it should be portable, that is, easily carried; it should be divisible into units usable for every-day transactions; it should be recognizable and uniform, so that one unit of money has the same properties as every other unit; it should be scarce, in the economic sense, so that the extant supply does not satisfy the wants of everyone demanding it; it should be stable, so that the value of its purchasing power does not fluctuate wildly; and it should be reproducible, so that enough units of money can be created to satisfy the needs of exchange.

Over millennia of human history, gold and silver have been the two metals that have most often satisfied these conditions, survived the market process, and gained the trust of billions of people. Gold and silver are difficult to counterfeit, a property which ensures they will always be accepted in commerce. It is precisely for this reason that gold and silver are anathema to governments. A supply of gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government. Without the ability to inflate the currency, governments find themselves constrained in their actions, unable to carry on wars of aggression or to appease their overtaxed citizens with bread and circuses.

At this country's founding, there was no government controlled national currency. While the Constitution established the Congressional power of minting coins, it was not until 1792 that the US Mint was formally established. In the meantime, Americans made do with foreign silver and gold coins. Even after the Mint's operations got underway, foreign coins continued to circulate within the United States, and did so for several decades.

On the desk in my office I have a sign that says: “Don't steal – the government hates competition.” Indeed, any power a government arrogates to itself, it is loathe to give back to the people. Just as we have gone from a constitutionally-instituted national defense consisting of a limited army and navy bolstered by militias and letters of marque and reprisal, we have moved from a system of competing currencies to a government-instituted banking cartel that monopolizes the issuance of currency. In order to reintroduce a system of competing currencies, there are three steps that must be taken to produce a legal climate favorable to competition.

The first step consists of eliminating legal tender laws. Article I Section 10 of the Constitution forbids the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts. States are not required to enact legal tender laws, but should they choose to, the only acceptable legal tender is gold and silver, the two precious metals that individuals throughout history and across cultures have used as currency. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Congress the power to enact legal tender laws. We, the Congress, have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, but not to declare a legal tender. Yet, there is a section of US Code, 31 USC 5103, that purports to establish US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender.

Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. Gresham's Law describes this phenomenon, which can be summed up in one phrase: bad money drives out good money. An emperor, a king, or a dictator might mint coins with half an ounce of gold and force merchants, under pain of death, to accept them as though they contained one ounce of gold. Each ounce of the king's gold could now be minted into two coins instead of one, so the king now had twice as much “money” to spend on building castles and raising armies. As these legally overvalued coins circulated, the coins containing the full ounce of gold would be pulled out of circulation and hoarded. We saw this same phenomenon happen in the mid-1960s when the US government began to mint subsidiary coinage out of copper and nickel rather than silver. The copper and nickel coins were legally overvalued, the silver coins undervalued in relation, and silver coins vanished from circulation.

These actions also give rise to the most pernicious effects of inflation. Most of the merchants and peasants who received this devalued currency felt the full effects of inflation, the rise in prices and the lowered standard of living, before they received any of the new currency. By the time they received the new currency, prices had long since doubled, and the new currency they received would give them no benefit.

In the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham's Law no longer holds. If people are free to reject debased currency, and instead demand sound money, sound money will gradually return to use in society. Merchants would have been free to reject the king's coin and accept only coins containing full metal weight.

The second step to reestablishing competing currencies is to eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints. One private enterprise which attempted to popularize the use of precious metal coins was Liberty Services, the creators of the Liberty Dollar. Evidently the government felt threatened, as Liberty Dollars had all their precious metal coins seized by the FBI and Secret Service in November of 2007. Of course, not all of these coins were owned by Liberty Services, as many were held in trust as backing for silver and gold certificates which Liberty Services issued. None of this matters, of course, to the government, which hates competition. The responsibility to protect contracts is of no interest to the government.

The sections of US Code which Liberty Services is accused of violating are erroneously considered to be anti-counterfeiting statutes, when in fact their purpose was to shut down private mints that had been operating in California. California was awash in gold in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, yet had no US Mint to mint coinage. There was not enough foreign coinage circulating in California either, so private mints stepped into the breech to provide their own coins. As was to become the case in other industries during the Progressive era, the private mints were eventually accused of circulating debased (substandard) coinage, and with the supposed aim of providing government-sanctioned regulation and a government guarantee of purity, the 1864 Coinage Act was passed, which banned private mints from producing their own coins for circulation as currency.

The final step to ensuring competing currencies is to eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. Under current federal law, coins are considered collectibles, and are liable for capital gains taxes. Short-term capital gains rates are at income tax levels, up to 35 percent, while long-term capital gains taxes are assessed at the collectibles rate of 28 percent. Furthermore, these taxes actually tax monetary debasement. As the dollar weakens, the nominal dollar value of gold increases. The purchasing power of gold may remain relatively constant, but as the nominal dollar value increases, the federal government considers this an increase in wealth, and taxes accordingly. Thus, the more the dollar is debased, the more capital gains taxes must be paid on holdings of gold and other precious metals.

Just as pernicious are the sales and use taxes which are assessed on gold and silver at the state level in many states. Imagine having to pay sales tax at the bank every time you change a $10 bill for a roll of quarters to do laundry. Inflation is a pernicious tax on the value of money, but even the official numbers, which are massaged downwards, are only on the order of 4% per year. Sales taxes in many states can take away 8% or more on every single transaction in which consumers wish to convert their Federal Reserve Notes into gold or silver.

In conclusion, Madame Speaker, allowing for competing currencies will allow market participants to choose a currency that suits their needs, rather than the needs of the government. The prospect of American citizens turning away from the dollar towards alternate currencies will provide the necessary impetus to the US government to regain control of the dollar and halt its downward spiral. Restoring soundness to the dollar will remove the government's ability and incentive to inflate the currency, and keep us from launching unconstitutional wars that burden our economy to excess. With a sound currency, everyone is better off, not just those who control the monetary system. I urge my colleagues to consider the redevelopment of a system of competing currencies and cosponsor the Free Competition in Currency Act.