Mood:  mischievious

The press has been repeating a memo mailed to them by the Eleison Group, an ad agency which specializes in getting religious people to vote for the Democratic party and "progressive" causes, that the McCain campaign has created a powerful Web ad/video, "the One," which supposedly uses imagery from the "Left Behind" books to make people believe Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

No, really.  The Antichrist.  The Father of Lies. 

Anyway, I watched the video many times, because it's pretty funny, and no urge to scour the Mark of the Beast from my skin overcame me, nor had I a feeling that Barack Obama was heading my way with four guys on horses behind him.

So I decided to take a poll to see whether anyone else felt that way after seeing this particular Web ad.

Please watch "the One," then take the poll.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 10:46 PM MDT

Updated: Saturday, 16 August 2008 4:21 PM MDT

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We could be as little as five years away from clean, cheap fusion power.

Fusion, if you need a refresher, is one of two nuclear reactions that can give us energy.

Nuclear fission, the reaction we now use in nuclear power plants, splits the center (or "nucleus") of a heavy atom like uranium, thorium or plutonium into smaller atoms to release energy in the form of heat and radiation.  We also use fission in nuclear weapons.

Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which light atoms like hydrogen, lithium, boron or helium are fused together into larger atoms, which also releases energy and radiation.  Nuclear fusion is used along with fission in some nuclear weapons (usually the ones called "hydrogen bombs").

Nuclear fusion is harder to make happen outside of a hydrogen bomb.  So far, fusion reactors are great, huge things that consume more power than they make.  By contrast, the very first nuclear reactor (under the west stands at Amos Alonzo Stagg Field in The University of Chicago in 1942) made more energy than it consumed (essentially none) from the beginning.

But there are different ways to make this reaction happen that haven't really been explored with the money and energy that have gone into the big-iron thermonuclear reactors built so far, and the monstrous ITER reactor under construction in France (with American help in funding and design).  Possibly the most promising one - one which its developers say could be producing power in as little as three to five years - is the Bussard Polywell fusion reactor.

Dr. Robert Bussard, a nuclear physicist from the fun old days who designed a nuclear-powered cruise missile for the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s, also the father of the concept of the "interstellar ramscoop," was one of the major exponents of the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) concept.

Not many years ago, Dr. Bussard presented a talk at Google entitled "Should Google go Nuclear?" (amid rumors that Sergei Brin and some of the other investors in Google were thinking about funding him):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

For those who, like me, like written presentations of technical data better, there's a written transcript:

http://askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/Should%20Google%20Go%20Nuclear.pdf

and a Web page on the progress made by Dr. Bussard's group:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/bussards-inertial-electrostatic.html

ICF doesn't have to emit or use neutrons - the boron-11 (80% of natural boron is boron-11) + proton (ionized hydrogen) inertial confinement reaction emits no neutrons and it emits charged particles that can be captured in the magnetically-active inertial confinement grid to produce electrical current directly. 

Boron-11 + proton  -->  Helium-4 + Helium-4 + energy

Producing electrical current in the reactor is something no other reactor design, fusion or fission, does.  It's brilliant - it has far fewer systems and parts than other reactor designs.  Instead of a huge concrete reactor dome next to a large concrete building holding the generators and water pumps and auxiliary diesel generators, a Bussard Polywell fusion power reactor would sit in a single building, about a story or two tall.   The transformers would be the same, because electrical power is electrical power.

What's better is that the power wasted when a nuclear reactor or an oil or coal furnace heats water into steam to spin electrical generators, then pumps the water from the cooled steam back into the reactor is not wasted in this design.  Much, much more of the energy made by the Bussard Polywell design goes out of the reactor as electricity.

Finally, and best of all - no meltdowns.  When a Polywell fusion reactor breaks, it just stops.  No explosions, no radioactivity, no muss, and no fuss.

Calculations indicate that a full-scale Polywell IEC reactor could produce as much as 128 gigawatts of power.  Normal fission reactors and oil and coal power plants top out at 1 - 2 gigawatts.  And Polywell fusion reactors are much, much cheaper to build per unit of energy generated than current nuclear reactors.

The projected cost to build the first power-generating Polywell IEC reactor is about $200 million, with a generating capacity of a gigawatt.  The reactor would be 4 meters (about 4.3 yards or 13 feet) across and weigh 14 tons.  You could install one inside a medium-sized freighter.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/bussards-inertial-electrostatic.html

By comparison, it costs between $2,000 million ($2 billion) and $3,800 million ($3.8 billion) dollars to build modern fission power plants for a generating capacity of 1.05 and 1.15 gigawatts.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/01/17/18348080.php

So electricity made by Polywell fission plants could cost up to nineteen times less than electricity generated by existing nuclear plants.  And if the boron-11 + proton reaction can be made to work in large Polywell reactors, this would be CLEAN nuclear power, with no neutrons and very little, perhaps no radioactive waste.

Say that three-fourths of your utility bill is related to power generation costs and fuel, and your power is all made by nuclear power plants (both very conservative assumptions favoring present-day utilities).  If you pay 12 cents/kilowatt-hour for power, 9 cents of that may be traceable to power plant operations and fuel. 

Replace the current power plant with a Polywell fusion power plant, and this part of your electricity rate drops to 0.47 cent.  Your overall power rate becomes 3.47 cents instead of 12 cents.  You get to spend 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour you use on other things, assuming your power use remains the same.  Your power bill drops by 71 percent.

If you, for the sake of argument, use 2,000 kilowatt-hours of power a month, your power bill is 240 dollars a month if you pay 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.  Drop that rate to 4.8 cents and your bill drops to $69.40.

Interestingly, power output in Polywell reactors varies exponentially with physical size.

Double that hypothetical 4-meter Polywell reactor in size and you get a reactor theoretically capable of generating 128 gigawatts!  (exclamation point mine)

I don't know how much that 8-meter Polywell reactor would cost to build, but even if it cost a billion dollars, the part of your electricity bill traceable to power plant construction and operation would be reduced up to 128 times.

Using that analysis of mine again, this part of your present 12 cents per kilowatt-hour electrical power rate falls to 0.07 cents.  Your rate could drop to 3.07 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

Say again that you use two thousand kilowatt-hours a month.  At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, now you pay $240 a month for power.  At 3.07 cents per kilowatt-hour, that bill is now $61.40 most of it payroll, debt service, maintenance of the power distribution grid, etc.  The power generation cost (assuming a 128 gigawatt power plant) for 2000 kilowatt-hours would be $1.40.

Since nuclear power right now is twice as cheap as coal power and many times as cheap as oil, even cheaper than natural gas, the cost advantage of fusion power over fossil power is even greater.

We're really talking about knocking the props out from under Russia and OPEC.  If we get this concept to work and sell these plants around the world, Vladimir Putin is going to have to drink generic brand vodka.   Works for me.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 7:01 PM MDT

Updated: Wednesday, 24 November 2010 7:29 PM MST

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Just in case we need reminding why disarmament and "peace-oriented" defense policy don't work, the Russians decided to remind us two days ago.

But some people won't learn until it's too late. 

One of them is Barack Obama.

Hear him explain why in his own words:

This is your country on dope on January 20th 2009 if Obama wins. 

Any questions?

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:55 PM MDT

Updated: Tuesday, 12 August 2008 10:34 PM MDT

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Vladimir Putin has been playing terrorist for years, now.   Maybe not a big surprise for someone who used to work for the KGB, but cheesy behavior for a head of state all the same.

Now he's going whole Adolf Hitler hog - terrorizing entire countries.  The Cold War just came back.

I've heard talking heads say that we need Russian help with Iran, but it seems to me that we've been played by those two countries on the nuclear issue, as well as on Iran's involvement with Iraqi terrorists, the two areas the talking heads say we need Russia's help with.  If what we see now is "help," we can do without it.

Europe needs Russian natural gas.  Maybe they also need to drill in the Baltic and other areas which have deposits of natural gas, as well as exploring alternative fuels (something we're badly overdue to do here in the United States, too).  Certainly they need to think about Putin's next step.  Putin and his generals have their walking shoes on, and they've behaved more aggressively than the occupants of the Kremlin have since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

And we need allies that don't screw us over when we're not watching.

A President who doesn't go play women's volleyball at the Olympics when an ally of ours is being invaded by Russia would be nice, too.   That tiny rattling you may have heard during the Olympic Games yesterday was George W. Bush's balls rolling down his pants leg and down the stadium bleachers in Beijing.

Not that Obama was much better - oh, he'd file a complaint at the United Nations - the same United Nations whose Security Council Russia has a veto over, and the same United Nations whose Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, slobbered all over Putin's shoes when he promised to start paying full UN dues for the first time in the past several decades.

McCain talked a good game, and he had a good suggestion (he actually made it prior to the invasion) - kick Russia out of the G8.  They don't belong there, anyway - based on national economic health, India and Brazil both have better claims.  

When the ravages of crony capitalism catch up with the Russian energy and mining industries, we may see babushkas in the streets asking for handouts again. 

The Russian stock market took a dive earlier, when with his trademark finesse, Putin made the same noises about the head of a major metals conglomerate that he did about Khodorovsky before taking the oil company Yukos away from him.  It rebounded slightly after the new President of Russia, Medvedev, made vague critical noises about his boss; then took another hit when war broke out.  Medvedev told everyone the war's almost over today, which you can take several ways, none of them very cheerful.  The Russian stock market's up a little again.

But when Russia gets the bad news about economic sanctions (about the only handle we have on the bastards), their stock market is going to look like ours after September 11th, 2001.   Try running a company with a vodka buzz on without overseas orders, guys.

For those of you who cut History of Western Civilization, part 2 when they were discussing the Sudetenland Crisis, Adolf Hitler did the same thing Putin's trying in Czechoslovakia.  

In 1938, some German-speaking people lived in a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland.  According to Hitler, the Czechs decided to pick on Germans living in their country after Germany had built up the world's largest military force.  Go figure.  Next thing you know, the German Army is bounding through Czechoslovakia and the Sudeten Germans aren't nearly as important as taking over Czechoslovakia.

Sound familiar, anyone?  Putin is the new Hitler.

And, because we didn't reactivate the military draft when it became clear we were in a century-long war with fanatical Muslim terrorists, who might someday get nuclear weapons (and with the progress we're making right now with Iraq and North Korea, that sounds more and more like a "certain to" than a "might"), we have very few strategic options apart from very harsh language.  Or, if John McCain is elected, very, very harsh language, interspersed with cluster bombs.

They call it a War Against Terror because we're supposed to mobilize industry, build the armed forces up, start up the draft, and get ready to kick ass.  What happened?

Putin had the nerve to say that he was upset because we brought the Georgian soldiers serving beside our own soldiers in Iraq back home to fight, so we weren't being very good partners.

Just wait until McCain gets into the White House, asshole.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 7:25 PM MDT

Updated: Monday, 11 August 2008 9:30 PM MDT

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A close reading of the Eleison Group's analysis of McCain's "The One" versus the ad itself shows that the Eleison Group brought all of the bad faith and deception of which they complain to their analysis.  They lied, and they lied and they lied.

For those of you who don't know, the Eleison Group is a political ad agency whose Web site www.eleisongroup.com advertises its services as getting strongly religious people to accept the Democratic Party's agenda. (Getting Catholics and Evangelicals to vote for Obama should be tough - his votes against requiring abortion clinics not to kill babies who survive abortion procedures in the Illinois State Senate are a matter of public record.)

According to co-founder Eric Sapp, "Eleison Group is going to be a group that works with Democrats and progressive non-profits to engage the faith community, help people communicate their values in an authentic way, and push forward on the notion that the best way to engage faith in the public square is from a place of religious humility instead of one of religious arrogance." 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 10:34 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 10 August 2008 12:53 AM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

I am stunned.  A shooting war has broken out between Russia and Georgia and until just now, CNN has been talking about some sex scandal involving John "Senator Gone" Edwards.

I managed to get Email to my contact list before CNN as much as mentioned the Russian-Georgian War.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7549594.stm

Trouble between Russia and Georgia has been brewing for some time - minor skirmishes on their border and in the South Ossetia region of Georgia which wants to break away and become part of Russia.  There's been a lot of major harassment - dead animals thrown in rivers running through both countries, Internet warfare against the Georgian government, minor armed actions.

Since Georgian troops are serving in Iraq alongside our own, they have urgently requested that we airlift their troops back home to help in the defense of their homeland.   The US also has troops in Georgia training their army; we have civilians working in the oil industry there as well.

The precipitating event seems to have been breach of a ceasefire between South Ossetian separatists and Georgian government forces - the separatists attacked the Georgian government, provoking a harsh response from the Georgian internal security forces.  Russia has used the death or injury of Russians serving as peacekeepers in the South Ossetia region as an excuse to invade Georgia.

So far, only delays in the admisssion of Georgia to NATO have kept this from being the first shot in another European, possibly a World War.

It's as I've been saying - Russia has been arming for an aggressive foreign policy which will almost inevitably lead to war.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:49 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 10 August 2008 12:51 AM MDT

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While playing with Muckety.com (which specializes in interactive Java-based maps of personal and corporate relationships among the nation's powerful) I discovered a bit of news that got past me while I was having surgery and recuperating from it in late June and early July:

James A. Johnson, head of the Vice-Presidential Search Team for Barack Hussein Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign, resigned from that post in June 2008.

http://news.muckety.com/2008/06/11/johnson-resigns-from-obamas-vp-search-team/3361

According to the muckety.com article,

"Obama appointed Johnson last week to a three-member team to vet possible running mates. But the longtime Washington insider became a lightning rod for criticism after the Journal reported last weekend that he had been the recipient of at least five real-estate loans totaling $7 million from financially beleaguered Countrywide Financial, as a friend of chief executive Angelo R. Mozilo.

At least two of the mortgages were at rates below market averages, though the Journal wrote that is difficult to predict a market rate without access to nonpublic information about a borrower’s credit history.

Johnson, who vetted vice-presidential nominees for John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984, was the chief executive of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. The government-sponsored shareholder-owned company is the biggest buyer of Countrywide’s mortgages.

Johnson’s ties to Mozilo became a campaign issue after Republicans pointed out that Obama had been critical of the mortgage lender in campaign speeches.

During his years at Fannie Mae, Johnson reportedly worked closely with Mozilo - naming him chairman of Fannie Mae’s national advisory council in 1996. An American Banker article in 1999 said the two men had a “close friendship.’”

Criticism mounted after the New York Times reported today that Johnson was involved in several controversial executive compensation decisions, serving on the boards of five companies that granted lavish pay packages to their executives - and, in some cases playing a key role in approving them.

One of the better-known cases involved UnitedHealth Group, a Minnesota company, where Johnson was a board member and later headed the compensation committee, according to Times reporter Leslie Wayne. The company came under fire after chief executive William McGuire was granted more than $1.4 billion in stock options - some $618 million of which was returned as a result of settlements with federal regulators and shareholders.

McGuire resigned, but kept $800 million from the package.

That and cases like it led Obama to introduce legislation last year that would give shareholders an advisory role in executive compensation packages. The measure, called “Say on Pay,” passed the House and is still pending in the Senate.

Johnson was also criticized by oversight groups for the number of corporate boards on which he served while holding a full-time position at Fannie Mae. Besides United Health, he was a director of Goldman Sachs, KB Homes, the Gannett Corporation, Temple Inland and Target.

Johnson said in his statement today that he had done nothing wrong, saying “blatantly false statements and misrepresentations” were written about him.

“Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept,” Obama said in an e-mailed statement.

Obama said he is “confident” his vice presidential search process will produce “a number of highly qualified candidates” in coming weeks.

The remaining members of the vetting team are Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy Jr., and former deputy U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder."

The New York Times article which Muckety.com cited above led with a summary that seemed to dismiss the problem with Johnson as being a partisan smear, but the following paragraphs tell a different story.

I'll let you decide whether this is just politics as usual, or whether or not Obama is the shag toy of the big national banks:

"Republicans and their presumed presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, have criticized Mr. Johnson, the former chairman of Fannie Mae, accusing him of getting favorable rates on three home mortgages totaling $1.7 million as a friend of the chief executive of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, the troubled mortgage lender that has became a symbol of the excesses that led to the crisis in subprime mortgage."

That was the second paragraph from the top, and given what comes next, I wonder whether or not typical journalistic practice - the "inverted pyramid" style of reporting in which the facts are trotted out first, then the speculation and editorializing (if any) are presented - would have called for this paragraph to be placed dead last in the article.

Here's what came afterward:

"Mr. Johnson was also involved in some of the more controversial executive compensation decisions in recent years, serving on the board of five companies that granted lavish pay packages to their executives — and often playing a key role in approving them.

One of the more well-known cases involves UnitedHealth Group, a Minnesota company, where Mr. Johnson was a board member and later head of the compensation committee.

The company came under fire after the chief executive was granted more than $1.4 billion in stock options — some $618 million of which was returned as a result of settlements with federal regulators and shareholders.

The executive, William McGuire, resigned, but he kept $800 million from the package.

Because of cases like UnitedHealth Group, Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, introduced legislation in the Senate last year to restrict runaway compensation.

The measure, informally called “Say on Pay,” would give shareholders an advisory role in setting executive pay packages. It passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

In introducing the measure, Mr. Obama said it was intended to “force corporate boards to think twice before signing over millions of dollars to C.E.O.’s.”

He added that “the rate at which executive pay has grown, as compared to stagnating wages among American workers, is rightfully frustrating shareholders and employees alike, especially given the lackluster performance of many of the companies paying these high salaries.”

Now, shouldn't all of that have come first? 

This is the news - that Obama has been very cozy with the same investment bankers and executive board members who got us in the foreclosure crisis in the first place, and who have been giving each other multi-million dollar "golden parachutes" even when they screw up, while ordinary employees don't get raises for years and years, and sometimes have to take pay cuts.  These are the people who run his campaign, who tell him what to do and what to say.

And if you have to have political commentary, instead of blaming John McCain for Obama's cluelessness (or even Obama's collusion with the big banks), this is what the lead paragraph should have been:

“Jim Johnson is an unusual choice for Obama to have heading up his vice-presidential selection committee,” said Charles M. Elson, head of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“Johnson found himself in the middle of the controversy that spurred the introduction of the Say on Pay bill,” Mr. Elson said. Given that Mr. Obama is leading the effort to rein in such excesses, “that makes it more strange,” he added.

Say on Pay is directed at the kind of decisions that led to enormous compensation packages at UnitedHealth Care and at four other companies where Mr. Johnson headed the compensation committees. One of them was Goldman Sachs, where Mr. Johnson defended a pay package granted to Henry Paulson, now the treasury secretary, that allowed Mr. Paulson to keep an extra $26 million in stock options.

At some of the companies where Mr. Johnson sat on the board, controversy erupted after packages were approved that included the backdating of options — or the practice of granting options to corporate executives on dates when the company’s share price was low, to guarantee the maximum profit when the options were exercised.

UnitedHealth Care reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and shareholders over the issue in December.

In return for his work on the UnitedHealth Care board, Mr. Johnson received more than 3.1 million stock options, with an underlying value of about $175 million. He also received a director’s fee of $400,000 a year.

Oversight groups have also raised questions about the number of boards on which Mr. Johnson served while holding a full-time position at Fannie Mae. Besides UnitedHealth and Goldman Sachs, he served on the boards and compensation committees of KB Homes, the Gannett Corporation and Temple Inland. He was also a board member at Target.

“He was on the boards of five companies at the time we had flagged him in our reports,” said Paul Hodgson, senior research analyst at the Corporate Library, a company that analyzes corporate governance issues. “Two of those were involved in the backdating of stock options, and the levels of executive compensation at four of them were considered excessive.”

In other words, Obama went out and got himself one of the biggest corporate robbers in history as chairman of his vice-presidential selection team.  He says one thing on the floor of the Senate and before the microphones and cameras, but does the exact opposite when no one's paying close attention.  The people who are paying for Obama's Presidential run are, mostly, the people who are profiting from the bind that so many American citizens are in these days.

If Obama and his team are as bright as they and their friends in the press tell us they are, how did this get past them?   If they care so much about the common man, couldn't they be bothered to pick up a newspaper or search the Internet for information about their new, rich friends?

Or am I missing the point here?  Will the Obama campaign will take ANYONE'S money?   Dirty or clean?

 -

And what does the Obama campaign have to say about all this?

"The Obama campaign did not directly respond to questions about Mr. Johnson, nor did it provide additional information about the terms of the mortgages that he received from Countrywide.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama responded by saying, “I am not vetting my V.P. search committee for their mortgages.”

Because if you did, BO, you'd discover a fetid rat's nest of sweetheart loans, golden parachutes, and other ways of picking the pockets of corporate shareholders (a group which includes any citizen with an investment account, and any member of a mutual fund or IRA). 

These people are the real bank robbers of the 21st century - the real home invaders, and the real world-class thieves.  They suck money out  of private corporations in return for very, very little - business decisions which more often than not turn out very badly for the corporations involved - and walk away with MILLIONS in company shares and cash.

And Obama doesn't check up on their finances before he lets them run his campaign.  Could it be because his job is to cover up for them?

He's done it before, with the "Class Action Reform Act," a rapacious piece of legislation against which almost every other Democratic senator voted - but not Obama.  He anchored that bill in the Senate, made sure it passed through the Senate. 

So now, thanks in part to Senator Obama, corporate thieves and crooks must be sued through the already overburdened Federal court system, not at state or local levels.

And he'll do it again.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 1:37 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 3 August 2008 1:49 PM MDT

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The Teamsters Union officially announced their support for Barack Obama on February 20th, 2008.

http://www.teamster.org/08news/nr_080220_6.asp

According to the big boss Teamster, James Hoffa, Jr., 

“Senator Obama will stand with the Teamsters when it comes to fighting for working families,” Hoffa said. “This endorsement begins a partnership to change America. Together we will reinvent the political process and give a voice to those who have been ignored by the Bush administration for the past eight years.” Hoffa emphasized Obama’s commitment to rebuilding and strengthening the national transportation infrastructure, a key priority of the Teamsters Union.

“Senator Obama will fight to rebuild our transportation infrastructure,” Hoffa said. “He will work with us to address critical issues from our ports to our highways, rails and airports. We need a president who is focused on rebuilding America and Barack Obama will be that president.”

That was then.  This is now.

According to the Denver Post, August 3, 2008 Sunday edition, page 10K:

"Union objects to Frontier deal"

The Teamsters union is trying to block bankrupt Frontier Airlines' new $75 million financing agreement with private equity firm Perseus LLC, objecting to labor-cost cuts required by the deal.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 435 Frontier workers, including its mechanics, filed a motion Friday in bankruptcy court asking a judge to reject the agreement.

The Teamsters said Frontier is illegally trying to throw out existing labor contracts."

The Web site muckety.com is a wonderful tool for digging out information on who's connected with whom:

http://www.muckety.com/2008-Barack-Obama-VP-search-team/5030085.muckety

for example, shows the membership of Barack Obama campaign's Vice-presidential search team:

James A. Johnson, Eric A. Holder, and Caroline Kennedy.

As we can see from THIS muckety.com map,

http://www.muckety.com/Perseus-LLC/5001487.muckety

Mr. Johnson has many fingers in many pies, but his butt is firmly in the Vice-Chairman's swivel recliner at Perseus LLC.

However, James A. Johnson is no longer affiliated with the vice-presidential search team for Barack Obama's campaign, owing to a Wall Street Journal article that uncovered the possibility that Johnson got sweetheart loans (in other words, loans on much better terms than ordinary mortals can get) from Countrywide Financial Services.

You'd think that if Obama were all that concerned with making things better for Teamsters, he wouldn't take help or money from Perseus LLC after they just tried to invalidate Teamster contracts with Frontier Airlines - wouldn't you?

The result of support for Obama for the Teamsters at Frontier Airlines is that a huge investment bank which has Obama in their pocket has told Frontier that these particular Teamsters... well, that they lose. 

The Teamsters at Frontier Airlines lose money if the labor cost cuts in Perseus' financing agreement with Frontier survive court challenges, and they lose that wonderful influence that Obama promised the Teamsters before they decided to come down from the fence on his side instead of Hillary Clinton's.

BS walks, money talks.  Look at the results so far before you cast that vote in November, people.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 12:23 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 3 August 2008 2:00 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Disgust with the wide gulf between Obama's carefully cultivated image as a populist who, if he does say so himself, is too pure and honest to take money from registered lobbyists and what he really does is spreading across all political persuasions. 

Counterpunch magazine has been unsparing in shining the light of day on Barack Obama's willingness to take money from anyone with a pulse.   In fact, they've been unsparing in criticizing everything and everybody - if you need to raise your blood pressure, just spend some time surfing their Web site.  They have something to offend everyone.

Counterpunch correspondent Pam Martens has written a two-part article on exactly how much money Obama's taken, and from which lobbyists' political action committees (PACs).  I ran the first part of Ms. Martens' article a week and some days ago; here are some excerpts from the second part:

 http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05062008.html

"Bankrolling a Presidential Campaign

The Obama Bubble Agenda

by Pam Martens

The Obama phenomenon has been likened to that of cults, celebrity groupies and Messiah worshipers. But what we’re actually witnessing is ObamaMania (as in tulip mania), the third and final bubble orchestrated and financed by the wonderful Wall Street folks who brought us the first two: the Nasdaq/tech bubble and a subprime-mortgage-in-every-pot bubble. 

To understand why Wall Street desperately needs this final bubble, we need to first review how the first two bubbles were orchestrated and why.

In March of 2000, the Nasdaq stock market, hyped with spurious claims for startup tech and dot.com companies, reached a peak of over 5,000. Eight years later, it’s trading in the 2,300 range and most of those companies no longer exist. From peak to trough, Nasdaq transferred over $4 trillion from the pockets of small mania-gripped investors to the wealthy and elite market manipulators.

The highest monetary authority during those bubble days, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, consistently told us that the market was efficient and stock prices were being set by the judgment of millions of “highly knowledgeable” investors.

Mr. Greenspan was the wind beneath the wings of a carefully orchestrated wealth transfer system known as “pump and dump” on Wall Street.  As hundreds of court cases, internal emails, and insider testimony now confirm, this bubble was no naturally occurring phenomenon any more than the Obama bubble is.

First, Wall Street firms issued knowingly false research reports to trumpet the growth prospects for the company and stock price; second, they lined up big institutional clients who were instructed how and when to buy at escalating prices to make the stock price skyrocket (laddering); third, the firms instructed the hundreds of thousands of stockbrokers serving the mom-and-pop market to advise their clients to sit still as the stock price flew to the moon or else the broker would have his commissions taken away (penalty bid). While the little folks’ money served as a prop under prices, the wealthy elite on Wall Street and corporate insiders were allowed to sell at the top of the market (pump-and-dump wealth transfer).

Why did people buy into this mania for brand new, untested companies when there is a basic caveat that most people in this country know, i.e., the majority of all new businesses fail? Common sense failed and mania prevailed because of massive hype pumped by big media, big public relations, and shielded from regulation by big law firms, all eager to collect their share of Wall Street’s rigged cash cow.

The current housing bubble bust is just a freshly minted version of Wall Street’s real estate limited partnership frauds of the ‘80s, but on a grander scale. In the 1980s version, the firms packaged real estate into limited partnerships and peddled it as secure investments to moms and pops. The major underpinning of this wealth transfer mechanism was that regulators turned a blind eye to the fact that the investments were listed at the original face amount on the clients’ brokerage statements long after they had lost most of their value. 

Today’s real estate related securities (CDOs and SIVs) that are blowing up around the globe are simply the above scheme with more billable hours for corporate law firms.

Wall Street created an artificial demand for housing (a bubble) by soliciting high interest rate mortgages (subprime) because they could be bundled and quickly resold for big fees to yield-hungry hedge funds and institutions. A major underpinning of this scheme was that Wall Street secured an artificial rating of AAA from rating agencies that were paid by Wall Street to provide the rating. When demand from institutions was saturated, Wall Street kept the scheme going by hiding the debt off its balance sheets and stuffed this long-term product into mom-and-pop money markets, notwithstanding that money markets are required by law to hold only short-term investments. To further perpetuate the bubble as long as possible, Wall Street prevented pricing transparency by keeping the trading off regulated exchanges and used unregulated over-the-counter contracts instead. (All of this required lots of lobbyist hours in Washington.)

But how could there be a genuine national housing price boom propelled by massive consumer demand at the same time there was the largest income and wealth disparity in the nation’s history? Rational thought is no match for manias.

That brings us to today’s bubble. We are being asked to accept on its face the notion that after more than two centuries of entrenched racism in this country, which saw only five black members of the U.S. Senate, it’s all being eradicated with some rousing stump speeches. 

We are asked to believe that those kindly white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people. 

The number one industry supporting the Obama presidential bid, by the start of February, -- the crucial time in primary season -- according to the widely respected, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, was “lawyers/law firms” (most on Wall Street’s payroll), giving a total of $11,246,596. 

This presents three unique credibility problems for the yes-we-can-little-choo-choo-that-could campaign: (1) these are not just “lawyers/law firms”; the vast majority of these firms are also registered lobbyists at the Federal level; (2) Senator Obama has made it a core tenet of his campaign platform that the way he is gong to bring the country hope and change is not taking money from federal lobbyists; and (3) with the past seven ignoble years of lies and distortions fresh in the minds of voters, building a candidacy based on half-truths is not a sustainable strategy to secure the west wing  from the right wing.

Yes, the other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn’t. That makes it not only a legitimate but a necessary line of inquiry. 

The Obama campaign’s populist bubble is underpinned by what, on the surface, seems to be a real snoozer of a story. It all centers around business classification codes developed by the U.S. government and used by the Center for Responsive Politics to classify contributions. Here’s how the Center explained its classifications in 2003:

“The codes used for business groups follow the general guidelines of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes initially designed by the Office of Management and Budget and later replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)...”

The Akin Gump law firm is a prime example of how something as mundane as a business classification code can be gamed for political advantage. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Akin Gump ranks third among all Federal lobbyists, raking in $205,225,000 to lobby our elected officials in Washington from 1998 through 2007. The firm is listed as a registered federal lobbyist with the House of Representatives and the Senate; the firm held lobbying retainer contracts for more than 100 corporate clients in 2007. But when its non-registered law partners, the people who own this business and profit from its lobbying operations, give to the Obama campaign, the contribution is classified as coming from a law firm, not a lobbyist. 

The same holds true for Greenberg Traurig, the law firm that employed the criminally inclined lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig ranks ninth among all lobbyists for the same period, with lobbying revenues of $96,708,249. Its partners and employee donations to the Obama campaign of $70,650  by February 1 --  again at that strategic time -- appear not under lobbyist but the classification lawyers/law firms, as do 30 other corporate law firm/lobbyists. 

Additionally, looking at Public Citizen’s list of bundlers for the Obama campaign (people soliciting donations from others), 27 are employed by law firms registered as federal lobbyists. The total sum raised by bundlers for Obama from these 27 firms till February 1:  $2,650,000. (There are also dozens of high powered bundlers from Wall Street working the Armani-suit and red-suspenders cocktail circuits, like Bruce Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs; J. Michael Schell, vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup; Louis Susman, managing director, Citigroup; Robert Wolf, CEO, UBS Americas.  Each raised over $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)"

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 12:10 AM MDT

Updated: Monday, 14 July 2008 12:15 AM MDT

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Barack Obama has stated that the "surge" in Iraq is not working. 

Although you wouldn't know it from the so-called "mainstream media's" failure to cover the story, this is just another in a pathetic series of lies from Obama.

Don't take my word for it -  Scripps-Howard News Service's Deroy Murdock says:

"July 10, 2008, Thursday 5:03 PM EST...  "

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Islamo-puritanism sealed its doom


DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service

As al Qaeda in Iraq's fortunes wane, it has no one but itself to blame.  President Bush's troop surge indisputably has crushed al-Qaeda and other terrorists, while Iraqi soldiers have honed their ability to hammer deadly insurgents.

But much of al Qaeda's damage has been self-inflicted. Largely overlooked is the Islamo-puritanism that it inflicted on the Iraqi territories it seized.  Rank-and-file Iraqis tasted life under bin Laden-style Islam, and they gagged.  They responded by collaborating with American and Coalition forces to expel these mad zealots from their midst.

At one level, al Qaeda's religious decrees have been nearly comical.

As the Institute for War & Peace Reporting's Sahar Hussein al-Haideri revealed before she herself was murdered in June 2007, terrorists targeting what they considered pagan symbols bombed a statue of several women hauling jars on their shoulders.

"Do these statues work with police? Were they translators for the Americans or members of the dissolved Ba'ath party?" Mosul police spokesman Brigadier-General Sa'eed Ahmed al-Juburi asked the Institute. "Those terrorists are a bunch of idiots."

Al Qaeda's agenda for Mosul included a decree that clothiers cover the heads of their in-store mannequins. Some relented, and shrouded their mannequins with plastic bags.

"I don't know where these groups came from," shop owner Mutaz Ahmed told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "They want to take us back 1,400 years. But if you want to stay alive, you have to obey their orders."

Extremists banned soap in public baths because the Prophet Mohammed lacked it back in the 600s."

As anyone who went to school with Saudi exchange students could have told you.

"Al Qaeda took particular interest in clamping down on various food items.

"Sammoun," a type of bread popular in Mosul, also was prohibited, since Mohammed never ate it. Islamo-puritans found the sight of cucumbers and tomatoes side by side sexually charged, so they ordered produce stands to keep them apart, and told restaurateurs like Khalaf Khalid to serve them on separate plates.

'We obey them because they threatened to blow up the restaurant and kill us if we didn't,' Khalid said, back when al Qaeda was in command.

Al Qaeda also took a "Just Say No" attitude toward ice. Mohammed didn't have it, so Mosul's residents could not, either.

"They prevented production and sale of ice in Mosul from last year," Khalaf Abed Al-Hadidi, an ice manufacturer, told Agence France Presse. "Last summer was tough for us, but we couldn't use the ice factory.

As part of a general crackdown on public displays of joy, al Qaeda even banned wedding parties in Mosul."

As James Glassman, the State Department's chief of public diplomacy, observed at Manhattan's Council on Foreign Relations, "What began to turn the tide in Iraq was when Iraqis began to realize that this was a murderous ideology that was killing Muslims and justifying it by saying, 'If I think you're not a good Muslim, it's OK for me to kill you.'"

"They threatened to kill me if I used an electric shaving machine," barber Atta Sadoun told Agence France Presse. He added that al Qaeda forbade the removal of men's facial hair and forced him to install a sign saying he used scissors but no electric shaver. He said several colleagues who refused were killed. Al Qaeda also bombed women's beauty parlors."

According to restaurateur Hashim Abdullah Al-Hamdani, al Qaeda murdered two of his employees and injured his son. Why? His establishment served both male and female students from local colleges.

Episodes like these eventually led exasperated Iraqis, including Sunni imams, to work with American and Coalition forces to boot al Qaeda from Iraq. This has helped Iraq enjoy its current relative peace.

These bizarre, frightful incidents illustrate the bottomless depravity of America's chief enemy in Iraq. This is a glimpse of how Iraq could look if U.S. forces prematurely withdrew, and the bad guys returned. This also is a cautionary tale of the insanity that likely would erupt wherever al Qaeda or any of its allies gained power."

"Finally, al Qaeda's chilling tenure in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq puts the lie to the notion that Islamofascists merely are defending themselves against America's allegedly over-assertive foreign policy and Israel's supposed anti-Muslim menace. Combating ice, cucumbers, and wedding gowns has nothing to do with the policies of the Pentagon or the Knesset. It's all about building a bridge to the 7th Century."

Mr. Murdock has the guts to speak the truth about Iraq; while it's not as safe or as peaceful as either we or the people who live there would prefer, you can say that about almost every major city in the United States.

And thereby hangs a home truth about not only Barack Obama but the entire class of politicians who make a nice living from lying to us about the origins and extent of violence in today's world - both the proximate and ultimate cause of violence is those who commit violence, not economic want or social inequity.

Murderers and muggers do what they do because they have no respect for the sanctity of other people's lives.  And the effective cure for violence isn't pouring money into social programs, or violence would have been eradicated after billions were poured into "the war on poverty," starting back in the 1960s and continuing to this day.

What we need are politicians with the audacity to speak the truth.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:27 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 11 July 2008 7:30 PM MDT

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