Octafish
Octafish's JournalFunny how many friends the Republicans have all of a sudden the election's over.
I'm certain that I pulled the "Democratic" lever, but all that came out were these lousy puke policies.
Reverse Robin Hood has run the government since Nov. 22, 1963.
The people Smedley Butler talked about.
And no one goes to jail, except innocent Democrats.
Just Everyday People
More on those who seem to have silently fallen off the real fiscal cliff: The Homeless.
Stop World War for Oil and Empire and Budget Dilemma Solved
How NAZIs think:
"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat." - Hermann Goering
How free people think:
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Why our elected officials have such a hard time choosing between the two is a real baffler.
What do you think? Guns or Butter? Neither or both or a new recipe?
You make an excellent point.
Anyone going faster than the posted 55 (or whatever) on the Interstate?
Well, they are breaking the law, which is almost everyone.
Only law-abiding citizens should own firearms, which would rule out most everyone.
+ Infinity
Thanks to television, alcohol and the BFEE, people have become so stupid that they no longer realize they have a choice: They can either stand to do something to stop gun violence or they can sit and allow things to continue as they are.
Like she's a businesswoman or CIA or both, which is convenient and saves time.
From Pambazuka:The US Ambassador to the UN has coddled, pampered, nurtured and protected the ruthless dictators of Eastern Africa, shielding them from legal and political accountability.
There was a time, once, when the US wanted peace, independence and democracy for the people of Africa. As a Democrat myself, I'd like to move toward those goals. I appreciate infinitely that you do, too, Sabrina1.
HSBC, Too Big to Jail, and the US Two-Tiered Justice System
Greenwald spells out the situation.
HSBC, Too Big to Jail, and the US Two-Tiered Justice System
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian Dec. 12, 2012
The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.
But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.
This two-tiered justice system was the subject of my last book, "With Liberty and Justice for Some", and what was most striking to me as I traced the recent history of this phenomenon is how explicit it has become. Obviously, those with money and power always enjoyed substantial advantages in the US justice system, but lip service was at least always paid to the core precept of the rule of law: that - regardless of power, position and prestige - all stand equal before the blindness of Lady Justice.
It really is the case that this principle is now not only routinely violated, as was always true, but explicitly repudiated, right out in the open. It is commonplace to hear US elites unblinkingly insisting that those who become sufficiently important and influential are - and should be - immunized from the system of criminal punishment to which everyone else is subjected.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/12-4
Jobs. That's rich!
''Peddle'' is a loaded term, implying profit motive, siddithers.
Likewise, "conspiracy story" implies unfounded in fact.
What an interesting choice of words, though, yours. Both terms are used to paint their object as somehow "tainted" in their reportage. I challenge you to find any falsehood in what I post. Feel free to go through my journal here and on the old DU. I admit, I have made mistakes. When I was made aware of them, I admited it and thanked the person who corrected the record.
Both terms you used also are liberally applied by supporters of the Warren Report, a study demonstrably based on incomplete and biased data supplied by U.S. government agencies directly implicated by the facts of the case.
For instance, the role of the CIA in obstructing investigators in 1963 and the Congressional investigation in the 1970s.
For instance, the role of the FBI in destroying evidence after the assassination and in letting at least one suspect walk free.
For instance, the role of the Warren Commission in fitting the "facts" to "prove" Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt as a lone gunman.
Getting back to my original point: Where have posted anything in support of FDR, JFK or other liberals on DU, siddithers? Is there even one example?
Money Laundering HSBC Fined $1.9 Billion: HSBC Profited $22 Billion in 2011
A slap on the wrist! Are you kidding me? People get their lives ruined for bouncing a check and banksters get away, scot-free.
Slap on the wrist for drug dealer's bank
Justice Department outlines HSBC transactions with drug traffickers
By Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post, Tuesday, December 11, 6:18 PM
Mexico’s fearsome Sinaloa Cartel was so practiced at laundering millions of dollars in drug profits at the Mexican branches of the global bank HSBC that it packed bulk cash in boxes that were measured to slide neatly under the teller windows.
The Justice Department’s record $1.9 billion settlement Tuesday with HSBC exposed the continuing ability of drug cartels, rogue nations and terrorist financiers to move billions of dollars through the international and U.S. banking systems.
SNIP...
But a string of august names in global banking — Credit Suisse, Lloyds Bank, ABN Amro, ING Bank N.V. and now HSBC — have reached settlements in the last couple of years with the U.S. government for billions of dollars in tainted transactions. These investigations have revealed that weaknesses in the financial system lay not with the so-called hawala brokers of Karachi, Pakistan, but the bespoke bankers of London, Amsterdam and Geneva, and their American affiliates.
SNIP...
One of the world’s largest banks, HSBC has its headquarters in London and $2.5 trillion in assets. It earned nearly $22 billion in profits in 2011.
CONTINUED...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-outlines-hsbc-transactions-with-drug-traffickers/2012/12/11/1b8130c4-43bf-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html
Gee, Mr. Holder. You'd think someone would be going to jail or losing a business or their reputation. But, no. "Time to move on."
Cass Sunstein would approve.
Ask Cass Sunstein, the nuclear lobby is a really interesting thing.
Look what their bosses report:
Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility
By ERIC LIPTON
The New York Times
Published: August 22, 2012
WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago.
SNIP...
Exelon’s efforts peaked in 2011, White House meeting records show. Mr. Rowe flew to Washington in March, and met with William M. Daley, then Mr. Obama’s chief of staff; Cass Sunstein, then the head of the White House office that oversees all federal regulations; Lisa P. Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Gina McCarthy, the agency’s top air pollution official. Exelon’s competitors were seeking extra time to comply with the rule, which the administration was under a court order to issue. Exelon and its industry allies argued against any extension.
SNIP...
In the weeks before the draft rule was issued, Exelon lobbyists attended two other White House meetings, records show, giving it greater White House access than any other company or environmental group trying to influence the outcome. The Exelon meetings included Mr. Sunstein, who supervised the process, while utilities arguing against the regulations also made their case, but to lower-level staff members, the records show.
SNIP...
“It is a huge mistake to associate the number of meetings with the ultimate product of the rule-making process,” said Mr. Sunstein, who resigned his post this month. “And I want to put ‘huge’ in bold letters.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/us/politics/ties-to-obama-aided-in-access-for-exelon-corporation.html
Demonstrating balance, fairness and objectivity and a blonde disregard for its advertisers' not infrequent felonies, NYT even brings in an expert on the subject from the American Enterprise Institute at the end.
My 2 cents on Mr Sunstein.
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