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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
November 20, 2012
Did President Obama campaign on behalf of Elizabeth Warren?
I know he endorsed her a few weeks before the election.
Either way, I'm going to do all I can to help her and him -- including letting them know when they're off on the wrong track or supporting the wrong cause or person.
For instance, Cass Sunstein, the guy who led the effort to forgive Bush, Cheney and the rest of the warmongers who lied America into two illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous wars.
November 19, 2012
On January 11, 1944, in the midst of World War II, President Roosevelt spoke forcefully and eloquently about the greater meaning and higher purpose of American security in a post-war America. The principles and ideas conveyed by FDR's words matter as much now as they did over sixty years ago, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center is proud to reprint a selection of FDR's vision for the security and economic liberty of the American people in war and peace.
“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
Source: The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Samuel Rosenman, ed.), Vol XIII (NY: Harper, 1950), 40-42
12 How. 152: “Necessitous men,” says the Lord Chancellor, in Vernon v Bethell, 2 Eden 113 (1762), “are not, truly speaking, free men; but, to answer a present emergency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose on them.”
SOURCE: http://www.fdrheritage.org/bill_of_rights.htm
FDR Thought ALL Americans Entitled to the Economic Bill of Rights
On January 11, 1944, in the midst of World War II, President Roosevelt spoke forcefully and eloquently about the greater meaning and higher purpose of American security in a post-war America. The principles and ideas conveyed by FDR's words matter as much now as they did over sixty years ago, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center is proud to reprint a selection of FDR's vision for the security and economic liberty of the American people in war and peace.
“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
Source: The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Samuel Rosenman, ed.), Vol XIII (NY: Harper, 1950), 40-42
12 How. 152: “Necessitous men,” says the Lord Chancellor, in Vernon v Bethell, 2 Eden 113 (1762), “are not, truly speaking, free men; but, to answer a present emergency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose on them.”
SOURCE: http://www.fdrheritage.org/bill_of_rights.htm
November 17, 2012
Republican: Puts interests of the monied class ahead of the working people, keeps Wall Street ahead of Main Street, jails whistleblowers, forgives corporations, CEOs, warmongers, torturers, and traitors, and balances the budget at the expense of the New Deal and the Great Society. Check.
Blackface: A form of entertainment enjoyed by ignorant people that features white performers pretending to be a stereotyped African American. In the case of a politician, pretending to favor liberal and progressive policies in speeches, while actually pushing for their opposite in conference and signing them into law. Check.
PS: It saddens me that Dr. West has chosen this language only in that it brings up such hurtful reminders of how far we have to go as a society, as an administration, and as a democracy.
Break it down.
Rockefeller: Liberal guy who put social progress and public service ahead of personal prosperity as long as it didn't get in the way of the real wealth and power. Check.Republican: Puts interests of the monied class ahead of the working people, keeps Wall Street ahead of Main Street, jails whistleblowers, forgives corporations, CEOs, warmongers, torturers, and traitors, and balances the budget at the expense of the New Deal and the Great Society. Check.
Blackface: A form of entertainment enjoyed by ignorant people that features white performers pretending to be a stereotyped African American. In the case of a politician, pretending to favor liberal and progressive policies in speeches, while actually pushing for their opposite in conference and signing them into law. Check.
PS: It saddens me that Dr. West has chosen this language only in that it brings up such hurtful reminders of how far we have to go as a society, as an administration, and as a democracy.
November 13, 2012
While he forgave CIA torture, banksters & Telco spying, Holder did crack down on Gov. Don Siegelman.
I look forward to his second term.
Do YOU think Gov Siegelman got a raw deal?
November 13, 2012
A Strange Resignation
Why was Petraeus Really Ousted?
by BART GRUZALSKI
CounterPunch Nov 12, 2012
EXCERPT...
The other possibility is good old-fashioned pillow-talk, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Christine Keeler’s association with John Profumo, British Secretary of State for War, led to his resignation in the early sixties.
In the Profumo Affair, as it has come to be called, no secrets were exposed. In Petreaus’ case the pillow-talk may have exposed an outlawed and illegal activity of our CIA. Broadwell, Petreaus’ biographer and lover, inadvertently may have revealed what was a “top secret” during a public talk at the University of Denver. She was in the Q&A part of the event when a questioner asked the following innocuous question: “General Petraeus in his new role has a very difficult situation now in the center of the situation in Benghazi. Do you have any comments?”
Broadwell did. After giving a bit of background, she mentioned that the “ground forces at the CIA Annex were requesting reinforcements.” Then she added: “I don’t know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoners.” She told her audience that the attack was thought to be “an effort to get them back.” Oops.
U.S. officials have not made reference to that possible motive in numerous accounts of the Benghazi attack and for good reason. ““The CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless,” said a CIA spokesperson in a statement issues on Sunday night.
Looks like we could have a smoking pillow but we’ll probably never know. In our “democracy” the military and other forces act “in our name” but we are often not told what is done or why, even if it is as illegal as torture, or extrajudicial killings, or renditions, or, as may be the case here, illegal detentions. Contrary to what the public is led to believe, the main reason for many facts being classified as “top secret” isn’t so that the designated-enemy-of-the-moment won’t know—the “enemy” usually knows only too well, as Iraqis knew about the torture that was going on. The reason for secrecy is to keep the facts from us, the people, so that we are not a fully informed citizenry. That’s one reality of “top secret” in our nominal democracy.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/12/why-was-petraeus-really-ousted/
Thank you for a great OP, KoKo. We really are in gangster times.
CIA Torture never stopped.
That was supposed to have stopped.
A Strange Resignation
Why was Petraeus Really Ousted?
by BART GRUZALSKI
CounterPunch Nov 12, 2012
EXCERPT...
The other possibility is good old-fashioned pillow-talk, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Christine Keeler’s association with John Profumo, British Secretary of State for War, led to his resignation in the early sixties.
In the Profumo Affair, as it has come to be called, no secrets were exposed. In Petreaus’ case the pillow-talk may have exposed an outlawed and illegal activity of our CIA. Broadwell, Petreaus’ biographer and lover, inadvertently may have revealed what was a “top secret” during a public talk at the University of Denver. She was in the Q&A part of the event when a questioner asked the following innocuous question: “General Petraeus in his new role has a very difficult situation now in the center of the situation in Benghazi. Do you have any comments?”
Broadwell did. After giving a bit of background, she mentioned that the “ground forces at the CIA Annex were requesting reinforcements.” Then she added: “I don’t know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoners.” She told her audience that the attack was thought to be “an effort to get them back.” Oops.
U.S. officials have not made reference to that possible motive in numerous accounts of the Benghazi attack and for good reason. ““The CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless,” said a CIA spokesperson in a statement issues on Sunday night.
Looks like we could have a smoking pillow but we’ll probably never know. In our “democracy” the military and other forces act “in our name” but we are often not told what is done or why, even if it is as illegal as torture, or extrajudicial killings, or renditions, or, as may be the case here, illegal detentions. Contrary to what the public is led to believe, the main reason for many facts being classified as “top secret” isn’t so that the designated-enemy-of-the-moment won’t know—the “enemy” usually knows only too well, as Iraqis knew about the torture that was going on. The reason for secrecy is to keep the facts from us, the people, so that we are not a fully informed citizenry. That’s one reality of “top secret” in our nominal democracy.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/12/why-was-petraeus-really-ousted/
Thank you for a great OP, KoKo. We really are in gangster times.
November 12, 2012
It may not be meant to.
Distracted from the point, a reader may instead ponder how FDR, come to think of it, resembles a bad Democrat rather than come to consider how Democrats today are hot to pursue bad policies -- Republican policies.
Personally, I think the New Deal was great.
Speaking of the internment of Americans of Japanese heritage in concentration camps, the guy who recommended the policy, John McCloy, is little known by people today. He's almost never mentioned in the press.
PS: A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission
Something else conservatives don't like mentioned, how the present ties back to World War II and control of The Bomb:
Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday
November 12, 2012
Cantor is Mr. Inside Information.
November 11, 2012
Total Information Awareness
The NSA thought they were talking about graft and turned it over to FBI, supposedly.
November 9, 2012
Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westheusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself
By Melina Hussein Ripcoco, Brilliant at Breakfast
Alternet.org
April 8, 2008
Ted Westhusing, was a champion basketball player at Jenks High School in Tulsa Oklahoma. A driven kid with a strong work ethic, he would show up at the gym at 7AM to throw 100 practice shots before school. He was driven academically too, becoming a National Merritt Scholarship finalist. His career through West Point and straight into overseas service was sterling, and by 2000 he had enrolled in Emory University to earn his doctorate in Philosophy. His dissertation was on honor and the ethics of war, with the opening containing the following passage: "Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge." Would that all military commanders took such an interest in the study of ethics and morality and what our conduct in times of war says about our development as human beings. Would that any educational system in this country taught ethics, decision making, or even political science that's not part of an advanced degree anymore.
Ted Westhusing, the soldier, philosopher and ethicist, was given a guaranteed lifetime teaching position and West Point by the time he had finished with his service and his education. he felt like he could do more for his country by trying to shape the minds coming out of the academy that were the ones that would be military commanders. He had settled into that life with his wife and kids, when in 2004 he volunteered for active duty in Iraq, feeling like the experience would help his teaching. He had missed combat in his active duty and it seemed like an important piece for someone who not only philosophized about war, but who was also preparing the military's future leaders.
But more than that, he was sure that the Iraq mission was a just one; he supported the cause and he bought the information that was put in front of him. Considering that vials of powder were being tossed around hearings by the highest level of military commanders how could he not? This was a man who was so steeped in the patriotism of idealistic military fervor that he barely could fit in regular society. His whole being was dedicated to this path, and he was proud to serve his country.
Once in Iraq, he found himself straddling the fence between a questioning philosopher and an unquestioning soldier. Westhusing had thought he was freeing a country in bondage, keeping America safe from a horrible threat, and spreading democracy to a grateful people. But the reality of what was happening in this out of control war was too much for him. His mission was to oversee one of the most important tasks left from the war; retraining the Iraqi military by overseeing the private contractors that had been put in charge of it.
As the assignment went on he found that everywhere he looked he was seeing corrupt contractors doing shoddy work, abusing people, and stealing from the government. These contractors were being paid to do many of the jobs that would normally be done by a regulated military, and they bore out the worst fears of those who don't believe in outsourcing such vital work. He responded to the corruption that he saw by reporting the problems up the line, but the response from his commanding officers was disappointing. He had, for much of his career, idolized military commanders, and in that assignment he found himself with some of the military's most famous faces, doing the most important job, but he was terribly disappointed and alarmed to realize that they were greedy and corrupt themselves.
CONTINUED...
http://www.alternet.org/story/81678/is_david_petraeus_dirty_ted_westhusing_said_so,_and_then_he_shot_himself
COMPLETE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ripcoco.com/2008/04/is-david-petraeus-dirty-ted-westheusing.html
Gee. What kind of person would make money off war?
Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself.
Col. Westhusing was in charge of training the new Iraqi army and overseeing civilian contractors.
He is remembered as a good man, a brilliant man who followed the Cadet Code:
"I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”
Col. Westhusing was the Army's chief ethicist and someone who suspected something was wrong with David Petraeus, way back when. Then, just when he was about to come home to his loving wife and family, he became a suicide.
Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westheusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself
By Melina Hussein Ripcoco, Brilliant at Breakfast
Alternet.org
April 8, 2008
Ted Westhusing, was a champion basketball player at Jenks High School in Tulsa Oklahoma. A driven kid with a strong work ethic, he would show up at the gym at 7AM to throw 100 practice shots before school. He was driven academically too, becoming a National Merritt Scholarship finalist. His career through West Point and straight into overseas service was sterling, and by 2000 he had enrolled in Emory University to earn his doctorate in Philosophy. His dissertation was on honor and the ethics of war, with the opening containing the following passage: "Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge." Would that all military commanders took such an interest in the study of ethics and morality and what our conduct in times of war says about our development as human beings. Would that any educational system in this country taught ethics, decision making, or even political science that's not part of an advanced degree anymore.
Ted Westhusing, the soldier, philosopher and ethicist, was given a guaranteed lifetime teaching position and West Point by the time he had finished with his service and his education. he felt like he could do more for his country by trying to shape the minds coming out of the academy that were the ones that would be military commanders. He had settled into that life with his wife and kids, when in 2004 he volunteered for active duty in Iraq, feeling like the experience would help his teaching. He had missed combat in his active duty and it seemed like an important piece for someone who not only philosophized about war, but who was also preparing the military's future leaders.
But more than that, he was sure that the Iraq mission was a just one; he supported the cause and he bought the information that was put in front of him. Considering that vials of powder were being tossed around hearings by the highest level of military commanders how could he not? This was a man who was so steeped in the patriotism of idealistic military fervor that he barely could fit in regular society. His whole being was dedicated to this path, and he was proud to serve his country.
Once in Iraq, he found himself straddling the fence between a questioning philosopher and an unquestioning soldier. Westhusing had thought he was freeing a country in bondage, keeping America safe from a horrible threat, and spreading democracy to a grateful people. But the reality of what was happening in this out of control war was too much for him. His mission was to oversee one of the most important tasks left from the war; retraining the Iraqi military by overseeing the private contractors that had been put in charge of it.
As the assignment went on he found that everywhere he looked he was seeing corrupt contractors doing shoddy work, abusing people, and stealing from the government. These contractors were being paid to do many of the jobs that would normally be done by a regulated military, and they bore out the worst fears of those who don't believe in outsourcing such vital work. He responded to the corruption that he saw by reporting the problems up the line, but the response from his commanding officers was disappointing. He had, for much of his career, idolized military commanders, and in that assignment he found himself with some of the military's most famous faces, doing the most important job, but he was terribly disappointed and alarmed to realize that they were greedy and corrupt themselves.
CONTINUED...
http://www.alternet.org/story/81678/is_david_petraeus_dirty_ted_westhusing_said_so,_and_then_he_shot_himself
COMPLETE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ripcoco.com/2008/04/is-david-petraeus-dirty-ted-westheusing.html
Gee. What kind of person would make money off war?
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