Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Roseanne Barr says Elect Me!

http://www.roseanneworld.com/blog/2011/08/im-tired-of-watching-as-2.php

McGraw heads to Nashville court

McGraw heads to Nashville court

Singer/actor Tim McGraw performs live at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on September 16, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris, Getty Images)
Singer/actor Tim McGraw performs live at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on September 16, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris, Getty Images)





Updated: 11/28 11:37 pm
Tim McGraw is taking on his record label executives this week in a bid to end his contract with them. 
The country star's lawyers and Curb Records executives will be in Nashville's Chancery Court on Wednesday battling over whether or not McGraw has sufficiently fulfilled his contract with the label.
The hearing will consist solely of oral arguments and no witnesses will be called.
Curb Records bosses sued McGraw in May for breach of contract, alleging he recorded and delivered his still-unreleased album, Emotional Traffic, prematurely. The label executives claimed they had the contractual right to decide on the timing of McGraw's album releases.
Responding to the suit, McGraw's lawyers said, "The label is holding the album hostage from country music in an attempt to force Tim McGraw to serve perpetually under a contract that he has already fully and faithfully completed."
The singer then countersued Curb and asked the court to award him punitive damages, an advance payment for his latest recordings and a ruling that he has fulfilled his contract.

American Airlines files for bankruptcy

American Airlines files for bankruptcy

@CNNMoney November 29, 2011: 9:54 AM ET
American Airlines filed for bankrutpcy protection Tuesday morning.

American Airlines filed for bankrutpcy protection Tuesday morning.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- American Airlines, one of the few major U.S. airlines to avoid bankruptcy, finally succumbed Tuesday and filed for chapter 11.
Corporate parent AMR also filed, and said that American, American Eagle and all other subsidiaries will honor all tickets and reservations and operate normal flight schedules during the bankruptcy filing process, using its $4.1 billion in cash.

The airline also announced that Gerard Arpey, its chairman and CEO, is retiring. He is being succeeded by Thomas Horton, who was named president of the company in July 2010.
In an interview with CNN's Richard Quest Tuesday after the filing, Horton insisted that American customers should see "business as usual" in spite of the bankruptcy. But he said that the cost disadvantage for American compared to other major U.S. carriers that have already gone though bankruptcies of their own since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks left it no choice.
"Folks at American have worked very hard and honorably to avoid that path over the last decade, but it became clear that gap had become too wide now, it had become untenable, and it was time to turn the page," he said.
Before Tuesday's filing, American and Southwest (LUV, Fortune 500) were the only major U.S. airlines that had not filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
American has been widely seen as the weakest of the major airlines for some time now. It has reported a profit in only one quarter since 2007, and it lost $4.8 billion over those 3-1/2 years. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect its losses to continue through at least 2012.
Still the company officials had been insisting that it was not looking at bankruptcy.
As recently as last month, company spokesman Andy Backover, responding to questions about a possible bankruptcy, said "Regarding rumors and speculation about a court-supervised restructuring, that is certainly not our goal or our preference. We know we need to improve our results, and we are keenly focused as we work to achieve that."
On Tuesday, Horton told CNN that bankruptcy "never has been a goal or preference." He said that American faced an $800-million-a-year cost disadvantage compared to the labor deals at its competitors. But he said efforts to renegoiate both its labor contract and its debt structure had proved unsuccessful.
"Clearly it was our preference to do this in consensual fashion," he said. "Unfortunately, we were not successful in that regard." American will now gain significantly greater leverage in those talks given the bankruptcy court's power to void contracts.
The airline announced a massive order for 460 jets from Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) and Airbus in July in an effort to modernize its fleet. Horton said American intends to move ahead with that purchase and keep the financing package for the planes in place.
American was the world's largest air carrier as recently as 2006. But mergers have dropped it to third in terms of miles flown by paying passengers, behind United Continental (UAL, Fortune 500) and Delta Air Lines (DAL, Fortune 500).
The airline said that its cash reserves, coupled with the cash from ongoing ticket sales, should give it the funds it needs during reorganization, and that it will therefore not need what is known as a "debtor-in-possession" loan that bankrupt companies typically use to operate under Chapter 11.
Shares of AMR (AMR, Fortune 500) were not trading Tuesday. Share had already plunged nearly 80% since the start of the year through Monday's close, and they tumbled another 63% to 60 cents a share in pre-market trading before the halt. Shareholders are typically wiped out during the bankruptcy process. To top of page

Norwegian mass killer ruled insane, likely to avoid jail

Joan Rivers
A Russian reporter was fired for giving President Obama the finger. I don't condone her actions, but I'd like the name of her manicurist.

Norwegian mass killer ruled insane, likely to avoid jail


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File picture shows Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik (L), the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, as he sits in the rear of a vehicle while transported in a police convoy as he is leaving the courthouse in Oslo July 25, 2011. REUTERS/Jon-Are Berg-Jacobsen/Aftenposten via Scanpix

OSLO | Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:53am EST
(Reuters) - Court-appointed psychiatrists have concluded that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is criminally insane, prosecutors said on Tuesday, meaning he is likely to be sent to a psychiatric institution indefinitely rather than to jail.
Breivik killed 77 people in July by bombing central Oslo and then gunning down dozens of mostly teenagers at a summer camp of the ruling Labour Party's youth wing, in Norway's worst attacks since World War Two.
Prosecutors said Breivik, a self-declared anti-immigration militant, believed he had staged what he called "the executions" out of his love for his people.
"The conclusion ... is that he is insane," prosecutor Svein Holden told a news conference on Breivik's psychiatric evaluation. "He lives in his own delusional universe and his thoughts and acts are governed by this universe."
If the court accepts the psychiatrists' conclusions, Breivik
would be held in a psychiatric institution rather than in a prison. Norwegian courts can challenge psychiatric evaluations or order new tests but rarely reject them.
Breivik could be held as long as he poses a threat to society but may be released if found to be healthy.
One survivor of the shooting rampage on Utoeya island said Norway had to be protected from Breivik.
"The most important thing for me is not to punish Breivik," 20-year-old Bjoern Ihler, a survivor of the shooting rampage on Utoeya island, told Reuters. "What matters to me is that he no longer poses a threat to society."
CONDITION PERSISTS
Breivik had developed paranoid schizophrenia and was psychotic at the time of the attacks, Holden said, adding that his condition was persisting.
In their report the psychiatrists described many different forms of "bizarre delusions."
"They especially describe what they call Breivik's delusions where he sees himself as chosen to decide who shall live and who shall die, and that he is chosen to save what he calls his people," said Holden.
"Breivik has stated that he committed the murders, or executions as he calls them, because of his love for his people," he added.
In a manifesto posted on the internet shortly before his killing spree on July 22, Breivik declared he wanted to protect Norway from what he said was the threat of Muslim immigration.
Breivik could legally be freed if declared healthy. "If he is not psychotic and does not pose a danger to society, then his sentence cannot be upheld," prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told the news conference.
If the court accepts the psychiatric evaluation, Breivik would still be put on trial but could not be jailed.
He could face court hearings every three years to determine if he needs to remain committed to a psychiatric institution, and could be held for life if he remained a threat.
The penal system of the Nordic nation of 4.9 million inhabitants is based, perhaps more than in other countries, on the principal of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Norway does not have the death penalty and the maximum criminal sentence is 21 years.
"PERFECT KNIGHT"
During his 13 conversations with two mental health experts, which lasted about 36 hours, Breivik called himself the "most perfect knight" to live after World War Two.
Breivik also claimed that his organization, which he calls the Knights Templar after the mediaeval religious order, will take over power in Europe and put himself forward as the future regent of Norway and the continent.
"The experts also describe Breivik's intentions to conduct breeding projects with Norwegians and organize them in reserves," said Holden.
Breivik, who is currently being held in isolation in prison, was not aware of the conclusion of his psychiatric evaluation, prosecutors said.

Leveson Inquiry: Editors 'knew phones were hacked'

Leveson Inquiry: Editors 'knew phones were hacked'

Paul McMullan 
 
Mr McMullan said the News of the World had been "one of the least bad" papers for phone hacking
A former News of the World journalist has said phone hacking was carried out "for our editors" who were aware of it.
Paul McMullan accused ex-NoW editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who deny knowlege of hacking, of "trying to drop me and my colleagues in it".
"I don't think anyone realised that anyone was committing a crime at the start," he also told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics.
Earlier, the Guardian's Nick Davies said the media could not self-regulate.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

President as Piñata


ThinkProgress
"You can’t be authentic unless you’ve got a single-digit I.Q." -- Bill Clinton on the GOP primary

November 26, 2011

President as Piñata

A YEAR before President Obama faces re-election, take a look at what has happened to other Western leaders confronting voters in this economic vortex.
Spain’s Socialist government was defeated in a crushing landslide vote a week ago, leaving the party with its fewest members of Parliament since democratic elections were introduced in 1977. That’s the pattern for incumbents from Ireland to Finland, Portugal to Denmark: Spain’s was the eighth government to topple in Europe in two years.
In this economic crisis, Obama will face the same headwinds. That should provide a bracing warning to grumbling Democrats: If you don’t like the way things are going right now, just wait.
President Obama came into office with expectations that Superman couldn’t have met. Many on the left believed what the right feared: that Obama was an old-fashioned liberal. But the president’s cautious centrism soured the left without reassuring the right.
Like many, I have disappointments with Obama. He badly underestimated the length of this economic crisis, and for a man with a spectacular gift at public speaking, he has been surprisingly inept at communicating.
But as we approach an election year, it is important to acknowledge the larger context: Obama has done better than many critics on the left or the right give him credit for.
He took office in the worst recession in more than half a century, amid fears of a complete economic implosion. As The Onion, the satirical news organization, described his election at the time: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”
The administration helped tug us back from the brink of economic ruin. Obama oversaw an economic stimulus that, while too small, was far larger than the one House Democrats had proposed. He rescued the auto industry and achieved health care reform that presidents have been seeking since the time of Theodore Roosevelt.
Despite virulent opposition that has paralyzed the government, Obama bolstered regulation of the tobacco industry, signed a fair pay act and tightened control of the credit card industry. He has been superb on education, weaning the Democratic Party from blind support for teachers’ unions while still trying to strengthen public schools.
In foreign policy, Obama has taken a couple of huge risks. He approved the assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, and despite much criticism he led the international effort to overthrow Muammar el-Qaddafi. So far, both bets are paying off.
Granted, the economic downturn overshadows all else, as happens in every presidency. Ronald Reagan, the Teflon president, saw his job approval rating sink to 35 percent in January 1983 because of economic troubles. A faltering economy sent the popularity of the first president Bush into a tailspin, tumbling to 29 percent in 1992.
By comparison, President Obama has about a 43 percent approval rating, according to Gallup.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois tells me he thinks that liberals will eventually unite behind the president. “It’s never going to be the first date we had four years ago,” he said. “But I don’t question the fact that he’ll have the support of the left.”
Still, it’s hard to see how Obama will replicate the turnout that swept him into office, or repeat victories in crucial states like Florida and Ohio.
Then again, Republicans face a similar enthusiasm gap with their likely nominee, Mitt Romney. (Republicans keep searching for any other candidate who they think would be electable, when they already have one: Jon Huntsman. They just don’t like him.)
Earlier this month, I asked Bill Clinton — who has a better intuitive feel for politics than anyone I know — about Obama’s chances for re-election. “I’ll be surprised if he’s not re-elected,” Clinton said, adding that Obama would do better when matched against a specific opponent like Romney.
Clinton said that Romney did “a very good job” as governor of Massachusetts and would be a credible general election candidate. But Clinton added that Romney or any Republican nominee would be hampered by “a political environment in the Republican primary that basically means you can’t be authentic unless you’ve got a single-digit I.Q.”
I’m hoping the European elections will help shock Democrats out of their orneriness so that they accept the reality that we’ll be facing not a referendum, but a choice. For a couple of years, the left has joined the right in making Obama a piñata. That’s fair: it lets off steam, and it’s how we keep politicians in line.
But think back to 2000. Many Democrats and journalists alike, feeling grouchy, were dismissive of Al Gore and magnified his shortcomings. We forgot the context, prided ourselves on our disdainful superiority — and won eight years of George W. Bush.
This time, let’s do a better job of retaining perspective. If we turn Obama out of office a year from now, let’s make sure it is because the Republican nominee is preferable, not just out of grumpiness toward the incumbent during a difficult time.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

TV Attack Ads Aim at Obama Early and Often

November 26, 2011

TV Attack Ads Aim at Obama Early and Often

Inside the debate halls, the clash may be Republican versus Republican. But offstage, conservatives are mounting a unified and expensive air assault on the candidates’ common opponent: President Obama.
Nearly a year before Election Day, Republican presidential candidates and conservative action groups are already spending heavily on television advertising aimed at casting Mr. Obama as a failure.
Their tactics, the aggressive and sometimes misleading kind not typically used until much further along in a campaign season, have led to a spat with Democrats in what is shaping up to be the most costly election advertising war yet.
In an advertisement from Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that is now running on national cable television, Mr. Perry looks directly into the camera and declares: “Obama’s socialist policies are bankrupting America. We must stop him now.”
A new commercial from Mitt Romney that ran last week in New Hampshire displays a litany of depressing assertions about the economy. “Greatest jobs crisis since Great Depression. Record home foreclosures. Record national debt.” And it renders judgment on Mr. Obama’s presidency: “He promised he would fix the economy. He failed.”
In the past six months, conservative groups like those affiliated with Karl Rove and the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, and, increasingly, Republican candidates themselves, have spent more than $13 million on advertisements carrying a negative message about Mr. Obama, according to an analysis by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.
And it is only going to grow more intense.
“These dollar figures we’re talking about now are going to seem quaint in a few months,” said Kenneth M. Goldstein, president of the analysis group. “And they’ll seem really quaint in eight or nine months.”
Total television advertising spending on the 2012 election cycle could top $3 billion, up from $2.1 billion four years ago, Kantar estimates, fueled in part by the rise of independent groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns.
Candidates have previously tended to use their early advertising to introduce themselves to voters in gauzy terms. But this time around, Mr. Obama’s opponents are betting they can employ early attacks to define an image of him at the very beginning of the election season, before Democrats fully unleash the hundreds of millions of dollars being raised by the president. Their perceived advantage: airwaves not yet clogged with competing political messages.
But going negative so early also carries substantial risks. One is that many voters are not yet paying much attention to the campaign and will not do so until much closer to next November, meaning the advertising expenditures could be largely wasted. And negative messages now could alienate moderate and independent voters who blame excessive partisanship for Washington’s troubles in addressing the nation’s big problems.
Still, the Republican candidates seem eager to escalate the fight. Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry have both brushed off criticism that they deliberately distorted Mr. Obama’s words in their most recent commercials — controversies that only brought them additional attention.
Mr. Perry took remarks by the president about the need to do more to lure foreign investment out of context to suggest that Mr. Obama believes Americans are lazy. And Mr. Romney edited a video clip to put in Mr. Obama’s mouth a thought actually expressed by a supporter of Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race, misleadingly suggesting that Mr. Obama believes he cannot win if he talks about the economy.
The White House and its allies have hardly been shy about going after the Republicans. Democrats have already run advertisements in Arizona, Iowa and South Carolina against Mr. Romney, who, if he wins the nomination, will be the subject of an intense Democratic effort to show him as an unprincipled flip-flopper.
Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama group founded with the help of Bill Burton, a former White House spokesman, has spent almost a million dollars on television advertisements.
Although Mr. Obama is all but certain to have a substantial fund-raising advantage over his eventual Republican rival, Mr. Burton said that in the early going, when outside groups are playing a particularly prominent role in laying out the arguments on both sides, conservatives have a big lead over their liberal counterparts.
“This is asymmetric warfare,” he said, “but we’re pretty confident that we’ll be more effective and more strategic in how we spend our money.”
Crossroads GPS, a conservative advocacy group founded by Mr. Rove and other Republican strategists, has placed the biggest bet so far on negative messages. By its own count, it has spent about $20 million this year on political advertising. Much of it was broadcast during the debt-ceiling debate this summer, when it singled out members of Congress with advertisements that portrayed Democrats and Mr. Obama as fiscally irresponsible and unable to fix the economy.
In recent weeks, the group has taken on Mr. Obama and his economic agenda, spending $2.6 million on a commercial that criticizes his support for an upper-income tax increase and suggests a split on the issue between Mr. Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
It ends with a nod to the Republican line of attack that Democrats are inciting class warfare: “President Obama, it’s time to attack problems, not people.”
Crossroads has been accused of not portraying Mr. Clinton’s words accurately. While he did express doubt that raising taxes in a sluggish economy could be effective, he said he supported the general principle of higher taxes for the wealthy. 
Many of the Crossroads advertisements have been running in swing states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and have been timed to coincide with presidential trips.
“It creates a scenario where the president’s visit is greeted with a strong counterpoint to the argument he’s making,” said Jonathan Collegio, communications director for Crossroads GPS.
“And in battleground states where the issue framing is going to impact 2012, it’s critical to be making your point there early and often,” Mr. Collegio said. “There may be some value in advertising now that will be impossible to achieve toward the end of the campaign, when virtually all of the advertising on television and radio is political.”
Crossroads is hardly the only conservative group that is spending heavily on anti-Obama advertising, thanks in large part to court decisions that have allowed independent organizations to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. Americans for Prosperity, the organization founded with the backing of David H. and Charles G. Koch, is also playing a busy early role.
The Americans for Prosperity approach has been slightly different, portraying the Obama administration as not just fiscally imprudent but also corrupt. In its latest advertisement, a 60-second spot that has been running heavily in places across Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Virginia, an announcer repeatedly names Solyndra, the government-backed solar power company that went bankrupt and has become a focus of conservative anger over wasteful spending.
Then it suggests that Solyndra’s political ties to Democrats played a role in its winning a government loan guarantee: “Is this the change we’re supposed to believe in? Tell President Obama you shouldn’t use taxpayer dollars for political favors.”
An analysis from Kantar Media showed that in recent weeks Americans for Prosperity has already spent $2.4 million buying airtime for the advertisement, which has been broadcast nearly 4,000 times.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

LEAKED! NYPD Disorder control documents from the night of the eviction of Liberty Plaza

Doc Rocket
LEAKED! NYPD Disorder control documents from the night of the eviction of Liberty Plaza How well did they follow?

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

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NDAA detention provision would turn America into a “battlefield”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial   1402565016 705d95495b
The Senate is set to vote on a bill next week that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.
“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor Monday, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.
The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.
“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”
  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.
“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.
The ACLU is urging citizens to call their Senator and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of Congressional oversight.
We have been warning for over a decade that Americans would become the target of laws supposedly aimed at terrorists and enemy combatants. Alex Jones personally documented how U.S. troops were being trained to arrest U.S. citizens in the event of martial law during urban warfare training drills back in the 90′s. Under the the National Defense Authorization Act bill, no declaration of martial law is necessary since Americans would now be subject to the same treatment as suspected insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
If you thought that the executive assassination of American citizens abroad was bad enough, now similar powers will be extended to the “homeland,” in other words, your town, your community, your back yard.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Walmart’s Black Friday Disaster: Website Crippled, Violence In Stores

Walmart’s Black Friday Disaster: Website Crippled, Violence In Stores
Fire sales turned into a firestorm for Walmart this morning as the company’s web servers buckled under Black Friday traffic. Shoppers from around the country waited until the middle of the night for sales only to experience broken checkout pages, emptied shopping carts, and login errors. This caused their desired items to go out of stock before they could buy them, leading to mass frustration and ill will towards the discount store chain. Meanwhile at its physical stores, 20 people were pepper sprayed by a fellow customer, and 2 people were shot outside separate locations. Walmart will need to sort out its servers in preparation for the upcoming Cybermonday blitz or it risks losing customers to Amazon.
We’ll let traditional news outlets cover the offline violence and focus here on Walmart’s web fiasco. Disgruntled online shoppers flocked to the GottaDeal.com forums to voice complaints about Walmart’s website problems. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the issues were, but the forums had complaints coming in every minute at one point last night from customers in Florida, Mississippi,  New York and many other places.
Many expected deals to go live at Midnight local time only to have to wait up until 3am EST. Visitors then feverishly filled shopping carts but suddenly found them empty when they went to checkout. Others were confronted with the error message “We’re having temporary difficulties arriving at the destination you requested”. Login problems also arose, with users being asked to enter their credentials when already signed in. One customer reported that they complained about the checkout disruption on Walmart’s Facebook Page but later found their post deleted.
The entire Walmart site does not appear to have crashed. By keeping the site up despite the issues, Walmart may have sought to conceal the errors and avoid press coverage of the discontent. Loyal customers said they hadn’t had such problems since 2006 when Walmart experienced a similar breakdown of its site. The company pulled in $418 billion in revenue during the 2011 fiscal year, so today’s disruption could have cost it a lot of money.
While it might be too late to save Black Friday, Walmart better be scrambling to fix its website for Cybermonday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, just 36 hours away. The corporation acquired two startups Kosmix and OneRiot this year and formed its Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs in an effort to improve its ecommerce offering. However, it’s competing with powerhouse Amazon, whose cloud hosting division may protect it from the outages that plagued Walmart today.
If the errors persist on Cybermonday, shoppers may seek out a more reliable ecommerce solution. When customers post “I’m so frustrated I’m going to cry” and “an hour and a half of nonsense. shame on you Walmart!”, something has to change.
Update 3:3o pm PST: We’ve learned that Amazon online ordering also experienced an outage this morning as well. Both Amazon and Walmart should expect record traffic this weekend through Cybermonday.
Update 11/26 1:15 am PST: We’ve received word that this summer, Walmart laid-off its VP of Engineering/Ops Gene Wojciechowski. He was apparently well respected by engineering staff, and his absence may have caused Walmart to be less prepared to meet the Black Friday traffic surge.

SHADOW CONGRESS: More Than 170 Former Lawmakers Ply The Corridors Of Power As Lobbyists

SHADOW CONGRESS: More Than 170 Former Lawmakers Ply The Corridors Of Power As Lobbyists

SHADOW CONGRESS: More Than 170 Former Lawmakers Ply The Corridors Of Power As Lobbyists
It’s not exactly breaking news that Washington is stuffed to the gills with lobbyists. One good government group recently tallied 8 lobbyists for every member of Congress during the health-care reform debate. But what doesn’t get as much attention is that, over the last few decades, a vast army of what might be called uber-lobbyists has taken shape in the capital, made up of retiring lawmakers eager to cash in on K Street after a lifetime of making do with public sector salaries.
We’ve compiled a close-to-comprehensive list of former members of Congress currently working on behalf of private interests in Washington’s influence-peddling industry. We count 172 of them — almost one-third the number of current members of Congress.
See an interactive graphic of the Shadow Congress here.


Members of this Shadow Congress — not all of whom are registered lobbyists — hail from 41 of 50 states (Texas has the most, with 17) and they’re almost as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. Some, like Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, were powerful congressional leaders, whose presence on K Street has drawn scrutiny in the past.
But far more are low-profile back-benchers we’d never heard of and we doubt you had either: say, George Hochbrueckner, who served five terms as a New York Democrat, stepping down in 1995, and now works at Nossaman LLP; or Bill Zeliff, a three-term New Hampshire Republican who left Congress in 1997 and is now at the Livingston Group. For these run-of-the-mill lawmakers, it’s not hard to see how a second career based on leveraging their direct knowledge of the legislative process and their cozy relationships with current lawmakers — credentials they never fail to tout on their websites — could seem more appealing than the other options likely on offer: a visiting professorship at the local college, say, or a seat on the board of a smallish company.
By the same token, some of the members of the Shadow Congress are ensconced at brand-name law and lobbying firms like Alston & Bird or Patton Boggs, or they run powerful trade associations. But a surprising number have chosen, essentially, to hang out a shingle, setting up eponymous one- or two-person shops built around their principals’ connections. One firm, Advantage Associates, has taken that concept to a new level, bringing together nine former lawmakers — all white men, four of whom are named Bill — under one roof. As Advantage puts it on their website: “No one knows the way around Capitol Hill better than those who have previously served in Congress.”
You can find an interactive graphic of the Shadow Congress here.
(Research: John Grennan and Derek Hawkins. Graphic: Erik Hinton and Al Shaw. Special thanks to the Center for Responsive Politics.)
Bill Zeliff, Bob Dole, George Hochbrueckner, K Street, Lobbyists, Shadow Congress, Tom DeLay

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality
Brandon Watts lies injured as Occupy Wall Street protesters clash with police in Zuccotti Park
Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images
US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.
To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.
I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.
That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.
The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.
For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).
In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.
But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.
Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Finding Purpose After Living With Delusion

 
 
 
November 25, 2011

Finding Purpose After Living With Delusion

ATHENS, Ohio — She was gone for good, and no amount of meditation could resolve the grief, even out here in the deep quiet of the woods.
Milt Greek pushed to his feet. It was Mother’s Day 2006, not long after his mother’s funeral, and he headed back home knowing that he needed help. A change in the medication for his schizophrenia, for sure. A change in focus, too; time with his family, to forget himself.
And, oh yes, he had to act on an urge expressed in his psychotic delusions: to save the world.
So after cleaning the yard around his house — a big job, a gift to his wife — in the coming days he sat down and wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, supporting a noise-pollution ordinance.
Small things, maybe, but Mr. Greek has learned to live with his diagnosis in part by understanding and acting on its underlying messages, and along the way has built something exceptional: a full life, complete with a family and a career.
He is one of a small number of successful people with a severe psychiatric diagnosis who have chosen to tell their story publicly. In doing so, they are contributing to a deeper understanding of mental illness — and setting an example that can help others recover.
“I started feeling better, stronger, the next day,” said Mr. Greek, 49, a computer programmer who for years, before receiving medical treatment, had delusions of meeting God and Jesus.
“I have such anxiety if I’m not organizing or doing some good work. I don’t feel right,” he said. “That’s what the psychosis has given me, and I consider it to be a gift.”
Doctors generally consider the delusional beliefs of schizophrenia to be just that — delusional — and any attempt to indulge them to be an exercise in reckless collusion that could make matters worse. There is no point, they say, in trying to explain the psychological significance of someone’s belief that the C.I.A. is spying through the TV; it has no basis, other than psychosis.
Yet people who have had such experiences often disagree, arguing that delusions have their origin not solely in the illness, but also in fears, longings and psychological wounds that, once understood, can help people sustain recovery after they receive treatment.
Now, these psychiatric veterans are coming together in increasing numbers, at meetings and conferences, and they are writing up their own case histories, developing their own theories of psychosis, with the benefit of far more data than they have ever had before: one another’s stories.
“It’s a thrilling time, because people with lived experience are beginning to collaborate in large numbers,” said Gail A. Hornstein, a psychologist at Mount Holyoke College and author of “Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness.” “They are developing their own theories, their own language about what their experiences means from the inside.”
Mr. Greek is one of the most exceptional, having built a successful life and career despite having schizophrenia — and, he says, because of it. He manages the disorder with medication, personal routines, and by minding the messages in his own strange delusions.
Schizophrenia is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I know a lot of people with the diagnosis don’t feel that way, but the experience changed me, for the better. I was so arrogant, so narcissistic, so self-involved, and it humbled me. It gave me a purpose, and that purpose has been very much a part of my recovery.”
The Village Eccentric
Like many idealistic undergraduates, Mr. Greek arrived at Ohio University in Athens on a mission. Only, like many undergrads, he wasn’t completely sure what it was.
“To discover a psychological code that people should live by, to create world peace,” he said. “Something like that.”
The town was ready to listen, regardless. It was the fall of 1981, and Athens still had one sandal planted in the 1960s; communes thrived in the Appalachian foothills to the north, and big ideas were in the air, at least in the streets and bars near campus, where professors and students gathered.
One stood out. “You can’t imagine how intense he was back then,” said June Holley, a friend and business consultant in Athens. “He had this long, very thick, curly chestnut hair and wild eyes; he looked like a lion. He could be loud, and I think a lot of people just didn’t want to deal with it.”
Local residents gave him the sidewalk, avoided eye contact, and generally accepted him as one variety of village lunatic — in a town with a rich history of them.
He knew the role, at some level. The son of a college math professor and a lawyer, progressives both, Milton Thomas Greek grew up in Roanoke, Ill., and neighboring Benson, about two hours southwest of Chicago. He declared himself an atheist early and often, which in a devout Christian community was one way to stir the air — and the boys who ruled the schoolyard.
“They told me I was damned — damned! — and came after me,” Mr. Greek said. “Now I see that it was just an excuse, like picking on the fat kid for being fat, or the nerd for being a nerd. But at the time I thought it was all about religion.”
He did not discover the secret to world peace and, by senior year, was in a troubled marriage, and began seeing and hearing things others did not. One day he saw a homeless man in the Athens bus station with eyes “like landscapes that went back into the man’s head infinitely far, stretching on for eternity.” God’s eyes; who else?
Later, he was hitchhiking, and a man with long hair and sandals pulled over to offer a ride, his eyes rippling with the same eternal light as the street person’s. Jesus? It had to be (“I’d already met God, so it made sense.”) The man said something about a small town in the woods, and Mr. Greek thought that that town had to be heaven.
His marriage collapsed. His friends stopped calling. He was back at home in Illinois when a doctor finally gave him a diagnosis — schizophrenia — and prescribed medication.
It seemed like a charade, from start to finish. The doctor never asked what he thought his hallucinations meant, or whether the strange thoughts were linked to experiences in his life. He stopped taking the pills.
“I became very suicidal,” he said. “I had no idea what’s happening to me during this entire time. I had been this big atheist, but here I am thinking that the rapture is about to start and that I’m the Antichrist — all this religious imagery.”
Why?
The answer was obvious and ultimately liberating, but he had to spend a long time wandering in the woods — literally — to find it.
It was 1984, he had begged his way back into Ohio University for graduate studies in sociology, still lost in his own mind, his thoughts turning darker by the day. He was alienating classmates, professors, friends.
About the only exception was Ms. Holley, a graduate student some 15 years his senior who enjoyed his company, and one day he decided to visit the commune where she lived, with her family and several other families. It took him two days to find it, the first spent wandering the misty woods until dark in a waking, delusional dream, and the second stumbling into a clearing just off Hooper Ridge Road, where Ms. Holley and her friends took him in.
Over the next several months they sat with him, accepted him as a member of the tribe, and encouraged his mission to improve the world at face value. And save his life they probably did, in part by suggesting that he seek help.
It was Ms. Holley who delivered the message. “I trusted her completely, so when she said I was hallucinating — when she used the word ‘hallucination’ — I knew it was true,” Mr. Greek said. “I would have to give the medication another try.”
He was lucky. It worked, blunting the psychosis enough that he was able to complete a programming course and find work, first in Illinois and later back in Athens at Ohio University’s Information Technology department. In time he found something more: During a snowstorm in 1996, Mr. Greek knocked on the door of a neighbor he had seen around Athens, a single mother with two teenage children, carrying a full-time job plus graduate classes, who was at that very moment (he would learn later) praying for something to get her through the winter.
The man at the door did not exactly look like a savior, in his beat-up jeans and unruly hair, his soft eyes and half-smile. But he offered to cook dinner — stir fry — on a day when the fridge was nearly empty.
The two neighbors became friendly, then close, and finally fell for each other. Neither can say exactly when it happened, but she remembers looking out her window one day to see Mr. Greek pull up to his apartment across the street, his old Honda coughing white smoke. He popped the hood and backed away from the car in slow motion, staring at the engine, then turned abruptly toward his apartment — and vanished, falling face-first into some bushes. “I thought, ‘Well, O.K., he’s got something,” she said. “I’m not sure what. Absentmindedness, maybe?”
They married in 2003 (Mr. Greek’s wife, an artist, asked that her name not appear in this article, for her own privacy), and she helped him fit his religious delusions, now controlled by medication, into a coherent personal story that has guided his day-do-day life.
The frightening voices and ominous signs saying that he was damned were no more than embodiments of his very real childhood terror of being cast out, as the schoolyard boys threatened. His search for heaven on earth was in part an attempt to escape that fate, to find a secure place. But it also dramatized a longing to put the world right, a mission that may have started as vain fantasy, but in time became an emotional imperative, a need to commit small acts of kindness, like cooking dinner for a snowed-in neighbor.
A Regimen for Coping
“He has this long list of causes that he’s extremely passionate about, and he has strong opinions about almost everything, but he’s also very sensitive to his relations with people and open to other philosophies,” said Melissa Van Meter, who has worked with Mr. Greek at the university and holds very different political views. “It has just impressed me that he could handle so much personally and do so well professionally.”
“When I began to see the delusions in the context of things that were happening in my real life, they finally made some sense,” Mr. Greek said. “And understanding the story of my psychosis helped me see what I needed to stay well.”
Mr. Greek’s regimen combines meditation, work and drug treatment with occasional visits to a therapist and a steady diet of charitable acts. Some of these are meant to improve the community; others are for co-workers and friends, especially those dealing with a psychiatric diagnosis.
To help others experiencing psychotic delusions, he relies on his own theory of what delusions may mean. In an analysis of 20 delusional experiences, all described by sufferers in the first person, Mr. Greek identifies four story lines.
Among them are the rescuer (on a mission to save a particular group); the self-loathing person (lost in a sense of extreme worthlessness); the visionary (on a journey to spiritual realms to bring back truth); and the messianic (out to transform the world through miracles, or contact with deities) — the last of which is his own psychosis story.
Each, in Mr. Greek’s reading, grows out of a specific fear or trauma, whether isolation, abuse or family dysfunction, in the same way his own delusional story symbolized a fear of being a social reject. He is preparing the study for publication in a psychiatric journal and has put much of his thinking into a manual for families dealing with psychosis, called “Schizophrenia: A Blueprint for Recovery.”
Mr. Greek’s analysis of the story lines in psychosis is certainly not the first of its kind, nor the most comprehensive. Psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and brain scientists have spun out hundreds of ideas about what goes on during a delusion.
But until recently patients themselves — that is, nonprofessionals who have lived with hallucinations and delusions — had little more than their own strange story to study, in any detail. Now they have dozens, and Mr. Greek is one of a small number of such “native” theorists who argue that the content of a delusion should not be ignored but engaged, carefully, once a person has his or her hallucinations under control.
Underlying Needs
“By exploring a person’s anomalous beliefs and experiences, we are better able to understand the underlying feeling and needs that give fuel to these experiences,” said Paris Williams, a psychologist who has struggled with psychosis and recently published a doctoral dissertation analyzing the content of six people’s delusions, which has informed Mr. Greek’s work.
For instance, said Dr. Williams, who is working on a book called “Rethinking Madness,” “we can find ways to make them feel safe when they believe they are being persecuted by malevolent forces, or find ways to help them feel empowered when they experience demanding voices.”
One place Mr. Greek feels safe is in a clearing in the woods behind his house, where on a recent afternoon he disappeared wearing a tie-dyed shirt and old jeans with the knees worn completely through. He practices mindfulness meditation here, tuning in to the rhythms of life that usually pass unnoticed.
Back at home, he runs thoughts and perceptions by his wife. “He says things like, ‘Is that a marching band I’m hearing, or am I just hallucinating?’ ” she said. “I’ll say, ‘Uh no, I don’t hear a band, Milt,’ and he’s fine.”
And he visits a therapist when stress levels are running very high. The therapist has given him diagnoses of schizophrenia and “mood disorder, not otherwise specified,” according to his medical records, and she treats him in sessions and with an antipsychotic drug, adjusting the dosage up or down depending on his mood.
Since his mother’s death, Mr. Greek and his wife have taken several more emotional blows, with other close relatives dying. He has been especially stretched, between his work, various community projects, and traveling to speak, often to police groups about how to understand psychotic thinking when dealing with people on the street.
It was too much, and in August he visited his therapist again, and soon after made a deal with his wife. “She and I signed a contract identifying and limiting volunteer work I will do next year,” he said in an e-mail. “I am being coached on how to say no.”
The world is not yet saved from itself, nor for that matter is Athens. But even a messianic rescuer needs a day off, if only to come back stronger the next.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Egyptian stock exchange suspended after 5% dip

Egyptian stock exchange suspended after 5% dip

An Egyptian family walks past the closed Egyptian stock exchange building  
 
The stock exchange was shut for two months earlier this year during protests against Hosni Mubarak
Trading on Egypt's stock exchange was automatically suspended on Tuesday after the main EGX 100 index fell 5%.
It followed a 4% fall on Monday, and came as Egypt's ruling military council began talks with protesters following violent clashes in the capital.
The exchange reopened after an hour, and ended the day 5.5% lower.
Egypt's stock exchange shut for two months from January during protests that ousted ex-President Hosni Mubarak.
The EGX index has now lost 47% of its value since the start of the year.
The total loss in value during the first ten minutes of trading was 7.5bn Egyptian pounds ($1.2bn; £700m).
The suspension occurs against a backdrop of intense confrontations between government forces and protesters calling for regime change.
Egypt has been ruled by an interim military council led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi for the past nine months.
Clashes between protesters and security forces in the past four days have claimed 28 lives, according to the Egyptian health ministry.

Damn. Check out the UC Davis English Department homepage

Dave Stroup
Damn. Check out the UC Davis English Department homepage.

The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.

Man Bites Off Part of Deputy's Ear During Fight, Police Say

Man Bites Off Part of Deputy's Ear During Fight, Police Say


PALMDALE, Calif. (KTLA) -- A suspect who allegedly bit off part of a deputy's ear and tried to take his gun during a struggle has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and mayhem.

Police say a deputy stopped 41-year-old Miguel Delacruz while he was walking in the 200 block of East Palmdale Boulevard around 3:45 a.m. Monday.

The deputy wanted to know why Delacruz was walking in the middle of the street in the 38-degree weather, authorities said.

Delacruz allegedly became combative.

Authorities say he bit off part of the deputy's ear and tried to grab his gun.

Additional deputies arrived and helped subdue him.

Delacruz, who was on probation for kidnapping, was being held without bail.

Doctors could not reattach the missing part of the deputy's ear because of the risk of infection.

2 weekend Occupy arrests in Minneapolis

2 weekend Occupy arrests in Minneapolis

11:58 PM, Nov. 20, 2011  |  
12 Comments
MINNEAPOLIS — Two people arrested in Minneapolis during a weekend protest against Wall Street remained in custody Sunday, while a video posted on the Occupy Minnesota website showed an officer appearing to use his squad car to push one of the men out of the way during the demonstration.
The men were arrested Saturday at a foreclosed home that was being occupied by protesters. One was arrested on charges of burglary and trespassing, while the other was arrested for obstruction of justice after refusing to move for police. A video posted on the group’s website shows the man standing in front of a squad car, as an officer slowly begins driving the car forward — causing the man to be pushed back.
“I think a police officer, using his vehicle on any civilian — unarmed and peaceful — is just wrong,” said Osha Karow, one of the organizers of the Minnesota protest.
Police Sgt. John Sullivan said no one has reported any injuries, and he’s not aware of anything nefarious on the part of police. He said he hadn’t seen the video, so he had no further comment.
About two dozen protesters returned to the foreclosed home Sunday as fire officials boarded up the house. Police were on hand, but Sullivan said the protesters were peaceful and there were no arrests.
Meanwhile in Duluth, about a dozen protesters were sharing one large tent Sunday. Duluth police had told the protesters they must remove their tents from a downtown plaza by midnight Sunday night or face arrest.
But Occupy Duluth spokesman Tyler Nord said police told protesters they could have one tent. He pointed to a letter posted on the group’s website.
The letter, which is dated Nov. 16 and appears to be on letterhead from the city’s police department, says the city offered to allow “one single structure for shelter during cold weather.” The letter also says a “park special use permit” would be required.
Duluth police spokesman Jim Hansen said the group needs to get that permit and hasn’t done so yet.
“We don’t have a permit with parks and rec, but we have a written communique from the police department saying everything will be fine,” Nord said. He said protesters were meeting with police this morning, something Hansen could not confirm.

Super-committee failure triggers blame game

Super-committee failure triggers blame game

US President Barack Obama speaks to the media (21 Nov 2011) President Barack Obama has said there will be "no easy off ramps"

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The super-committee's failure to reach agreement on reducing the US deficit means we are now deep into the blame game, positioning for next year's presidential election.
President Barack Obama blames Republicans, hell-bent on protecting the richest American's at all costs.
Republicans blame him for a lack of leadership and the Democrats for an addiction to tax rises which will kill jobs.
Failure to agree will trigger savage cuts, in particular to the defence budget. That was the whole idea - that the alternative would be so bad they would have to reach agreement.
The White House intends to keep the pressure on Republicans, giving them the choice of - in many cases - breaking their promise to never put up taxes, or putting their country at risk.
The statement from Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, issued directly after the committee announced defeat, is meant to chill your blood and send shivers down your spine.
He warns the automatic cuts to his budget would "tear a seam in the nation's defense" and "lead to a hollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned".
Given this dire warning you might think he would be backing Republican congressman Buck McKenon, who says he will bring forward a bill to stop the automatic trigger and so prevent the "crippling" of America's military.

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The White House may not have wanted failure, but it is well within their game plan”
But no. President Obama has warned he will veto any such attempt.
"There will be no easy off-ramps on this one," he said.
"We need to keep the pressure up to compromise - not turn off the pressure.
"The only way these spending cuts will not take place is if Congress gets back to work and agrees on a balanced plan to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2tr."
Mr Panetta, of course, backs his president.
"I join the president in his call for Congress to avoid an easy way out of this crisis," he said.
"Congress cannot simply turn off the sequester mechanism, but instead must pass deficit reduction at least equal to the $1.2 trillion it was charged to pass under the Budget Control Act."
The White House may not have wanted failure, but it is well within their game plan.
At the moment they are quite happy that the political contest is Obama v Congress, not an actual Republican candidate.
All next year they will allow the idea to hang in the air, that Republicans would rather guard the rich against the disappearance of Bush-era tax breaks, than guard their country against attack.
The Republican nominee will be put on the spot about which he or she would prefer.
The president's ratings are not great. But the last survey suggested only 9% of Americans respected Congress.
President Obama will not be too unhappy if that is driven even lower, and a Republican candidate is tied to the decisions of his or her party in the House and Senate.