Thursday, October 28, 2010

The most expensive campaign.................

PASADENA, Calif. – It's hard to turn off Meg Whitman. The most expensive campaign for governor in U.S. history — about $162 million and counting — is inundating California voters with an unprecedented array of TV and radio ads, glossy magazines, smartphone messages, Facebook videos, postcards and phone calls that will test how far a Republican dollar can go in a state Democrats often dominate. A typical TV viewer in Los Angeles will see 23 of her commercials this week alone, many roughing up Democrat Jerry Brown, according to Democrats tracking her ad buys. The story of the Silicon Valley billionaire is being told in four languages — English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese. There are book-like mailers, billboards and text messages reaching voters and supporters, all while she's jetting to appearances across the state.Link

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Whatever Happened to the Antiwar Movement?

Remember all those marches, all those placards, those giant puppets and loud displays of moral outrage? It’s vanished! Gone! Evaporated like morning mist! At one point, millions were marching in the streets in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, people all over the world, and then – nothing! Never in the history of politics has a movement retreated faster and more completely – but in this case, it was a voluntary retreat, an act of self-abolition.Link

Monday, October 25, 2010

California to get another $900M from feds.

Federal lawmakers say the state of California is getting another $902 million in federal funding to advance the design and construction of a high-speed rail system initially running from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The funding announcement is being made in the days leading up to a high-stakes election featuring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican Carly Fiorina. One of the key battlegrounds in that race is the Central Valley, where the vast majority of the new funding is going.Link

The Strikes are about Debt.

France's massive strikes are costing the national economy up to euro400 million ($562 million) each day, the French finance minister said Monday, as workers continued to block ports, oil refineries and trash incineration plants to protest a plan to raise the retirement age to 62. France's 12 refineries remained shut down Monday after nearly two weeks of protests despite raids last week by riot police that forced some to open access to fuel stocks. At ports in Marseille and Le Havre, dozens of tankers are still anchored offshore, waiting to unload.Link

Friday, October 22, 2010

Does John Dennis Have a Chance?

John Dennis may live in Pacific Heights, but his similarities to fellow posh neighborhood resident Nancy Pelosi end there. The Republican challenger to most-powerful San Franciscan Pelosi supports Proposition 19, wants a repeal of the Defense of Marriage act, and is even OK with gays serving in the military. That puts him more in step with most San Franciscans (who admittedly haven't seen much of Nancy Pelosi lately). But does that mean he stands a chance in hell of unseating the Speaker of the House of Representatives from her Eighth District perch? According to a poll, mathematically... no.Link

Costly virtual border fence in tatters.

Reporting from Washington — The Department of Homeland Security, positioning itself to cut its losses on a so-called invisible fence along the U.S.- Mexico border, has decided not to exercise a one-year option for Boeing to continue work on the troubled multibillion-dollar project involving high-tech cameras, radar and vibration sensors.Link

WikiLeaks releases trove of Iraq documents.

As promised by a Twitter posting on Friday afternoon, the whistleblower site WikiLeaks is about to release a large number of documents related to hostilities in Iraq, and analysis of the documents by selected news sources has already begun to appear. "See TBIJ, IBC, Guardian, Spiegel, NYT, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, Chan4, SVT, CNN, BBC and more in the next few hours," the brief notice boasts. "We maximise impact." At 4:47 EST, however, the site noted that Al Jazeera had broken the embargo on the documents by 30 minutes and that all other news sources were being released from the embargo as a result. So far, BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel have English-language reports on various aspects of the release. There is also more detailed analysis at iraqwarlogs.com.Link

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Repeal not best tactic on healthcare law.

A top Senate Republican suggested Monday night that the party's prevailing strategies to curtail the new healthcare law might not be good ideas. Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that repealing the new healthcare reform law — or looking to defund it — were not good options. "I don't think starving or repealing is probably the best approach here," Gregg said on the Fox Business Network. "You basically go in and restructure it." That's a change of pace even for Gregg, who's been among almost all fellow Republicans in the House and Senate who've called for the repeal of the measure, which Democrats passed through Congress earlier this year and President Obama signed into law.Link

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Calif pot law could spark court action.

US drug czar says feds may ask court to intervene if California voters legalize marijuana. Federal officials haven't ruled out taking legal action if California voters approve a ballot initiative that would legalize recreational medical use in the state, President Barack Obama's drug czar said Wednesday. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, Director of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske said Justice Department officials are "looking at all their options" for responding to the measure, which would conflict with federal laws classifying marijuana as an illegal drug.Link

Philosopher Vs. Politician

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Professors endorse marijuana legalization.

More than 65 professors of law from universities nation-wide gave their endorsement on Tuesday to California ballot initiative Prop. 19, which would allow for the regulation and taxation of the state's cannabis trade, which could generate billions in taxes for the cash-strapped state. The professors, from schools such as Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, New York University, UCLA, Berkeley, George Mason University, Emory and the Washington College of Law, signed an open letter published by the "Yes on 19" campaign, all calling for legalization.Link

Monday, October 18, 2010

Scion A/V Video: Melvins - Electric Flower from Scion A/V on Vimeo.

US will enforce marijuana laws.

Less than three weeks before California voters hit the polls, the Justice Department issued a preemptive message concerning a ballot measure making worldwide headlines. "Attorney General Eric Holder says the federal government will enforce its marijuana laws in California even if the state's voters approve a ballot measure to legalize the drug," Pete Yost reports for the Associated Press. He made the comments in a letter to former chiefs of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, dated Wednesday. "We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law," Holder wrote.Link

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Pentagon braces for huge WikiLeaks dump.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Sunday it had a 120-member team prepared to review a massive leak of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents, which are expected to be released by the WikiLeaks website sometime this month.Link

Friday, October 15, 2010

Drug decriminalization policy pays off.

Next month, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, a measure to legalize marijuana. Because no state has ever taken such a step, voters are being subjected to a stream of fear-mongering assertions, unaccompanied by evidence, about what is likely to happen if drug prohibition is repealed.Link

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Ron Paul, Barney Frank and 55 others.

Later today, Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. Ron Paul and 55 congressional co-signers are sending a letter to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform advocating defense cuts. The letter is good not just on cuts, but on theory: It's as much about where we can save money as why we don't need to spend the money. Here's the core of it, with my emphases.Link

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

'12 Run Depends On Fall Of U.S. Dollar.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) told reporters Saturday that the bulk of the economic crisis is yet to come, and that a White House '12 bid largely hinges on his anticipated fall of the U.S. dollar. Prior to appearing before the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention in Richmond, Paul called a complete implosion of the U.S. currency system "95% likely... [because] right now the whole world is racing to beat their currencies because they think it's going to help trade...But let me tell you, if the bombs started to fall on Iran, hold your hat, because that would be, I believe, the end of our dollar system. And we would have a real skirmish to find out what we're going to replace this government with."Link

John Dennis Should Be a Liberal's Pick.

There's an unusual candor about John Dennis that you don't often get from a politician who's running in one of the two major parties. But then again, a small businessman from New Jersey who grew up in a housing project can afford to be candid and honest when the media has marginalized him as a mere outlier against the most powerful person in congress, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. He's not even a politician. In fact, Dennis had rarely engaged the political realm until the 2008 Presidential election, in which he actively campaigned for Republican party outcast, Ron Paul. This time around it's Paul helping out Dennis, who he has endorsed.Link

The Fed's Magic Money-Printing Machine.

It’s amazing, given the attention the Tea Party allegedly is paying to government waste and government spending, that there hasn’t been more controversy about the now-seemingly-inevitable arrival of “QE2” – a second massive round of money-printing cooked up by the Fed to prop up both the government and certain sectors of the economy. A more overtly anticapitalist and oligarchical pattern of behavior than the Fed’s “Quantitative Easing” program could not possibly be imagined, but the country is strangely silent on the issue.Link

Monday, October 11, 2010

The Fed Warms Up The Printing Press.

It sounds like the Federal Reserve is about to create a lot more money out of thin air. The idea would be to help the economy by driving down interest rates for businesses and ordinary people, encouraging everyone to borrow and spend more money. To drive down interest rates, the Fed would probably buy medium- or long-term bonds.Link

Is That How They're Made?...............






Link

The Libertarian Denominator.....








Link

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Republican Actually Running Against Pelosi.

SAN FRANCISCO — John Dennis, a candidate for California’s Eighth Congressional District, recently stood in a gay bar in the Castro district of San Francisco and came out of the closet — ever so slowly — to a table of six older gay men. “O.K., we’re all sitting here, we all have a drink here?” Mr. Dennis said, taking a deep breath. “O.K.: I’m a Republican.” “Oh. My. God,” responded Chris Craig, a 72-year old Democrat who is retired. “Are you sure?” another man at the table asked. Mr. Dennis smiled and nodded, and continued on in his curious and probably quixotic mission: to unseat Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, a Democrat who was elected to her 12th term in 2008 with a slim 72 percent of the vote.Link

Palin bad, Paul good.

Friday, October 8, 2010



Student finds tracking device on his car.

A Silicon Valley college student says the FBI confronted him and threatened to "make things difficult" for him if he didn't hand over a GPS tracking device he found on his car, says a report at Wired.com.Link

Guy Rides His Scooter Backwards And Performs Tricks - Watch more Funny Videos

The Problem with Obamacare is.

Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers. Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald's (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won't be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees. The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether. Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.Link

Thursday, October 7, 2010

This was on FOX.......crazy.

US Treasury Bonds....We have a lot.

Today's POMO is over: at $2.069 billion, the operation was right in line with our expectations, coming in at a lofty 12.16 submitted to accepted ratio, as investors apparently are not too crazy about the yield perspective of the 4 2013 CUSIPs that were repruchased. However, what is far more important is that with holdings of $821.1 billion, the Fed is now officially the second largest holder of US Treasurys. Next up- China.Link

Ron Paul on the Colbert Report 10/06/10 from joe safety on Vimeo.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Prop 19 Pot Legalization Leads With 52%.

​The latest poll on California's Proposition 19, which would legalize adult marijuana recreational marijuana use and allow local governments to regulate and tax sales, shows the ballot initiative ahead with 52 percent supporting it and 41 percent against it. The poll [PDF], released late Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, shows strong majorities of independent (65 percent), Democratic (63 percent), and Latino (63 percent) likely voters support Prop 19 when read the full ballot title and label, as do those ages 18 to 34 (70 percent). Those 35 and older are divided on the measure.Link

The Postal Service Service Is Going Broke.

Sagging under the weight of skyrocketing labor costs, the U.S. Postal Service is nearly out of cash. The agency posted a $3.8 billion loss last year and it has projected cumulative losses of $238 billion over the next decade. On Thursday, the independent panel that oversees the service denied a proposal to increase the cost of mailing a letter from 44 cents to 46 cents, dealing a further blow to an agency that has struggled to adapt in an increasingly paperless America. With the latest setback to restructuring, some pundits are suggesting radical ways to rethink the venerable service--including complete privatization.Link

Friday, October 1, 2010

Rick Sanchez fired.

Ron Paul at 7 percent in the poll.

Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are the clear leaders of the 2012 Republican presidential primary field, according to a new Gallup poll out Thursday. Thirteen Republicans received support in the survey, demonstrating the wide open nature of the field, but Romney and Palin were the only potential candidates to earn more than 15 percent in the poll, with Mike Huckabee trailing not far behind. The three former governors were the only candidates to receive more than 10 percent, with Romney receiving 19 percent, Palin getting 16 percent and Huckabee at 12 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich came in fourth in the poll, getting 9 percent.Link

New way to generate human stem cells.

WASHINGTON — US researchers have found a new, "remarkably efficient" way to generate human stem cells that could provide an alternative to using embryonic stem cells in treating disease, a study published Thursday said.Link