Senate Traitors Enshrine Doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction 71-26

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than George Bush's immoral doctrine of pre-emptive war, 16 Republicans helped, HELPED!, the Senate's Democrat majority turn back the clock to the bad old days of mutually assured destruction and ratified THE NEW START, which is just the old madness. 13 actually voted for the thing. 3 didn't bother to show up.

From The Washington Post:

The final vote came after Senate Democrats accepted two amendments designed to placate Republicans who had qualms about the treaty. The amendments, which passed on voice votes with bipartisan support, emphasized the administration's commitment to a limited missile-defense program and to continued funding to modernize the aging US nuclear weapons complex.

The amendments were to the resolution of ratification accompanying the treaty, a nonbinding statement that codifies the Senate's understanding of the pact but does not directly affect its language. Republican efforts to alter the treaty language were defeated, with supporters of the pact arguing that such changes would have forced new negotiations with Moscow and effectively killed the treaty.

Thirteen Republicans joined all of the Senate's Democrats in voting for ratification, helping to exceed the 67 votes required. Three senators - all Republicans - were not present.

The amendments are meaningless, pure mental gestures by the effete for the effete.

Charitable observers will nevertheless say the US Senate ignored Russian threats to embark upon a new arms race if we didn't ratify, when the truth is this country under Barack Obama doesn't have the stomach to defend itself and couldn't declare its independence from the inside of a paper bag. It doesn't even know what it stands for, and couldn't articulate it if it did.

The moral center of America has melted, as the passage of repeal of DADT makes plain.

What are we fighting for? The right of Afghan men to parade their adolescent lovers as they do, to the disgust of every frontline soldier in arms?

Are we really in such a state of decline that we fear the Russians' ability to outspend us? The answer in truth is No. But what we do have is a population fed up with the protracted wars of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan and consequently now incapable of understanding the pressing need to rise above this squandering of resources and build up America's deteriorating strategic defenses. Barack Obama is a man made for just such a time as this.

The Russians will use the opportunity to build anyway, and cheat and lie about it as they always have done, which suits the Bolshevik in Chief Barack Obama just fine, a traitor to everything this country has stood for, who will get us all killed if something isn't done soon to stop him.

Clearly the Republicans are not the party to do it. The Stupid Party has struck again, snatching another defeat from the jaws of a victory won just weeks ago, and the Democrats are laughing all the way to New Year's Eve with feathers of healthcare, another year of stimulus spending, repeal of DADT, and this treaty in their caps. The corks will be a-poppin' on Nancy Pelosi's last flight as Speaker. 

Here are the names of the disreputable lot of Republican cowards:

Alexander-TN

Bennet-UT

Brown-MA

Cochran-MS

Collins-ME

Corker-TN

Gregg-NH

Isakson-GA

Johanns-NE

Lugar-IN

Murkowskie-AK (heh, heh, heh)

Snowe-ME

SPECTRE-D, PA (heh, heh, heh)

Voinovich-OH

The Republicans not bothering to vote on something so momentous:

Bond-MO

Brownback-KS

Bunning-KY.

Useless men and women, all.

A pox on them, and on their states.

I'm Barack Insane Obama, and I'm Full of Bolshevik

Effete Senate Republicans Rest on A Letter and A Resolution on START

The news that a resolution of understanding will be attached to the START treaty along with a letter from President Obama to address the misgivings of Republicans reminds one of the Executive Order on abortion the president provided when healthcare reform passed in March.

The language of the treaty will be the law, not the resolution nor the letter from the president, as surely as abortions will be paid for under Obamacare despite the Executive Order.

Fill your boots, men, and stop acting like the sissies everybody thinks you are.

Story here.

Obama's FCC Internet Commissars Impose Doctrinaire Anti-Capitalism

In other words, Marxism masquerading as "net neutrality," as John Fund for The Wall Street Journal makes plain here:

Over 300 House and Senate members have signed a letter opposing FCC Internet regulation, and there will undoubtedly be even less support in the next Congress.

Yet President Obama, long an ardent backer of net neutrality, is ignoring both Congress and adverse court rulings, especially by a federal appeals court in April that the agency doesn't have the power to enforce net neutrality. He is seeking to impose his will on the Internet through the executive branch. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a former law school friend of Mr. Obama, has worked closely with the White House on the issue. Official visitor logs show he's had at least 11 personal meetings with the president.

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney's agenda? "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. "But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."

A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist."

"You'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot." -- Barack Obama, January 29, 2010

Leading Commie Advocates Cooperation with Democrat Party

"It is certainly the case that in the US the real stuff of politics and governance occurs through the two mass political parties. Here is where the action is and it is here, mainly through the vehicle of the Democratic Party, that the peoples' movement fights for its interests. Serious politics cannot stand apart from these struggles...

For the foreseeable future Democratic Party circles will be an area of engagement for those wanting to make a difference.

That said, even with the growth of newly independent forces operating within the Democratic Party, it’s hard to see how the role of a communist party could be realized within these confines. ...

One does not have a crystal ball and even an unlikely outcome such as capturing the Democratic Party cannot be completely ruled out.

What is certain is that the CPUSA must be part of this broad struggle in which two trends – the old Democratic Party machine and the all peoples coalition – continue to coexist in cooperation and antagonism."

-- Joe Sims, co-editor, CPUSA's Peoples World, here, and quoted here. 

3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals Defends Fourth Amendment on Cellular Info

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Obama administration’s contention that the government is never required to get a court warrant to obtain cell-site information that mobile-phone carriers retain on their customers.

For more on the ruling against the Obama administration, which wants to spy on you without a warrant, just like the Bush administration did, go here.

6th US Circuit Court of Appeals Defends Fourth Amendment on Email

“The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s e-mails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause”, the appeals court ruled. The decision — one stop short of the Supreme Court — covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

So, how about all that email the NSA has already illegally read?

Read more on the story at Wired.com here.

Blame, or Credit, GLD for the Rise of Gold

With which Peter Cohan seems to agree:

The key hasn't been any inherent increase in gold's value to society. Instead, gold rose because a South African mine owner -- with help from consulting firm Bain & Co. -- invented a way to sell it to the masses without the hassle of physically delivering the shiny metal, explains a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article published Sunday. The question now is: How will the masses react when the parabolic price rise facilitated by this marketing coup ends up collapsing?

Me too. It's an easy place for fear to tread.

The rest is here.

They Make The Scanner Vans That Spy On You

as-e.com

They Make The Drones That Spy On You

insitu.com

Your Garbage Man is Spying on You, Too

Trucks are now armed with a cell phone, camera and incident reports so they'll have accurate information for police and, possibly, prosecutors.

The story is here.

Houston Police Test 40 lb Scan Eagle Drone To Spy on Americans

The video is here.

Test launch in Houston

Insitu Inc. Ground Ops, Houston

Close up by TV crew

Fly by footage

from insitu.com video

drone in a box

military use

insitu.com

We Have Created a Police State Monster in the Name of Homeland Security

A vast network of "fusion centers" in every state in America now routinely develops data bases containing centralized data files about Americans, their communications and their movements, who do such innocent things as gather for a ferry ride and take pictures but which some snitch reported as "suspicious."

From today's disturbing 8-page Washington Post story:

The vast majority of fusion centers across the country have transformed themselves into analytical hubs for all crimes and are using federal grants, handed out in the name of homeland security, to combat everyday offenses.

This is happening because, after 9/11, local law enforcement groups did what every agency and private company did in Top Secret America: They followed the money.

Read the whole thing, here.

The 20th Amendment isn't Working

David Fahrenthold here for The Washington Post provides a nice summary of the history of the 20th amendment, ratified in 1933, which was supposed to stop lame duck sessions, but hasn't, because of air travel.

It seems the founders weren't the only ones without a crystal ball.

Bank Failure Friday: 6 Tonight, 157 Year to Date

This is an updated post which corrects information previously posted in error:

#152 was The Bank of Miami N.A., Coral Gables, FL, costing the FDIC $64 million. Stated assets were short by 44%.

#153 was Chestatee State Bank, Dawsonville, GA, costing the FDIC $75.3 million. Stated assets were short by 48%.

#154 was Appalachian Community Bank FSB, McCaysville, GA, costing the FDIC $26 million. Stated assets were short by 35%.

#155 WAS UNITED AMERICAS BANK N.A., ATLANTA, GA, COSTING THE FDIC $75.8 MILLION, NOT $195.8 MILLION AS PREVIOUSLY POSTED. STATED ASSETS WERE SHORT BY 105%. STATED ASSETS WERE $242.3 MILLION WHEN TRUE ASSETS WERE MORE LIKE $118 MILLION. SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU TRY TO GET A LOAN AND THEY FIND OUT YOU EXAGGERATED YOUR ASSETS ON PAPER BY 105% AND SIGN YOUR NAME TO IT. NORMALLY YOU GO TO JAIL FOR FRAUD AND PERJURY, BUT IF YOU'RE A BANK YOU GET A TAXPAYER BAILOUT. 

#156 was First Southern Bank, Batesville, AR, costing the FDIC $22.8 million. Stated assets were short by 44%.

#157 was Community National Bank, Lino Lakes, MN, costing the FDIC $3.7 million. Stated assets were short by 26%.

Next Friday is Christmas Eve, and the Friday after is New Year's Eve, so I'm guessing that's a wrap for 2010: 157 bank failures vs. 140 last year.

But you never know.

Rush's Brain Goes on Vacation Early

Today he's said the SPENDING in the $857 billion bill extending the Bush TAX rates for two years was minimal, and that the majority of it, $700 some billion, had to do only with the tax rates.

Pure rubbish.

A lazy, over-generalized point showing yet again lack of show prep, and an effort to co-opt the outrage and the influence of the Tea Party, which Rush is trying to steer toward establishment politics to prevent it from exploding into a genuine third party movement.

The tax rates, extended for two years, will cost just over $207 billion, not $700+ billion. The rest is all tax credits, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax yet once again, and a host of other goodies handed out via the tax code in order to mask what's really going on: the rich and the poor getting special favors through the tax code at the expense of the chumps in the middle who must pay and pay and pay.

Wake up Rush, you dunderhead.

Here's a table breaking it all down.

On Narcissism

"People who complain overmuch about narcissists resent the competition."

-- Imam John

TSA Screeners Routinely Miss Guns and Bombs

According to this ABC news story, last fall a guy forgets he's got a loaded pistol in a carry-on but gets through security anyway in Houston and doesn't realize it until he's in his destination hotel room after the three hour flight.

And then there's this. The story says it was an international flight. Didn't he go through customs at the other end?

Do you think if we had profiled the Iranian-American, Farid Seif, we'd have found the weapon?

Whatever people may think TSA is doing at airports, it isn't security. It's security theatre.

Democrats Become The Party of No, Sort of

By a margin of 3 to 1, more Democrats in the US House voted last night against extending the Bush-era tax rates than Republicans who voted No:

Like the Senate, the vote on passage in the House was bipartisan. While 139 House Democrats voted for it, 112 opposed it; 138 Republicans voted yes and 36 voted no.

Full story here.

On Compromise

"Death turns compromise into capitulation."

-- Imam John