Dave Clark Five
“Because”

Mike Smith of the Dave Clark Five died this week. R.I.P.

1 CommentEmail Post Toggle Meta

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does-and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty’six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

Full article at Progressive Magazine

2 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S. I’m not rightwing and it makes me suspicious.

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

People, I’m really starting to get worried here.

Stocks Fall on Inflation Fears

NEW YORK, Feb. 29 — U.S. stocks took a dive Friday on worries about inflation and the sputtering economy, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging 2.5 percent in the afternoon, or 315 points, to close at 12,266. .

Leading the Dow lower was American International Group, one of the country’s leading insurers. It’s stock fell 7 percent after reporting a $5.3 billion quarterly loss as it wrote down $11.1 billion on credit derivatives linked to subprime mortgages.

The S & P 500 index fell 2.7 percent, or 37.05 points, to close at 1,330.

Traders were also nervous about the rising price of oil and its effect on inflation. The cost of a barrel of oil went over $103 early in the day but moderated later. In addition, a monthly survey by Chicago purchasing managers showed a weaker business market than anticipated in that area, according to the Associated Press.

8 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

[White House press secretary Dana Perino] said Goeglein had accepted responsibility and has apologized for… (brace yourselves here)… “not upholding the standards expected by the president.”

BWAAAHAAHAHAHA… STANDARDS?… BUSH???… BWAAAHAAHAHAHA!!!

White House Aide Resigns Over Plagiarism

WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House official who served as President Bush’s middleman with conservatives and Christian groups resigned Friday after admitting to plagiarism. Twenty columns he wrote for an Indiana newspaper were determined to have material copied from other sources without attribution.

Timothy Goeglein, who has worked for Bush since 2001, acknowledged that he lifted material from a Dartmouth College publication and presented it as his own work in a column about education for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind. The newspaper took a closer look at his other columns and found many more instances of plagiarism.

Keeping him on and upping his pay would have been much more fitting from this administration.

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

A case of blatant dereliction of duty. Mukasey fits into the Bush/republican mode perfectly.

Mukasey Refuses Probe of Bush Aides

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday refused to refer the House’s contempt citations against two of President Bush’s top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime.

Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers were right in refusing to provide Congress White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

“The department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers,” Mukasey wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The House voted two weeks ago to cite Bolten and Mukasey for contempt of Congress and seek a grand jury investigation. Most Republicans boycotted the vote.

Mukasey was given a week to reply but only needed one day. It surprises me that he even made the attempt. Against justice and the will of the people, republicans will protect their own.

5 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

it was being revised to correct flaws = taking the scientific evidence out that Bush doesn’t like.

A congressional panel will investigate why a federal agency is withholding a report describing potential health threats near 26 heavily polluted areas in the Great Lakes region, lawmakers said.

The handling of the matter by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “raises grave questions about the integrity of scientific research” at the agency, “as well as the treatment of its scientists,” U.S. Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak said in a letter Thursday to CDC Director Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding.

Dingell is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Stupak is chairman of its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Both are Michigan Democrats.

CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said the agency would make an announcement soon about its plans for the report. Earlier this month, he said it was being revised to correct flaws.

More at Yahoo

1 CommentEmail Post Toggle Meta

Totally outrageous……….

More at the Washington Post

Source: AlJazeera

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

Hiding from and fearing perceived enemies. Isn’t this the way a chicken shit twelve-year-old would act?

Maintaining an open-door policy would always be in our best interests.

“Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raúl Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him,” Bush said, referring to the new Cuban president. “He gains a lot from it by saying, ‘Look at me, I’m now recognized by the president of the United States.’ ”

Bush said a decision to meet with some foreign leaders could be counterproductive. “It can send chilling signals and messages to our allies. It can send confusion about our foreign policy. It discourages reformers inside their own country. And, in my judgment, it would be a mistake” with Iran and Cuba, he said.

6 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

Not that we need a reminder of how wrong they were or how much they lied or how fucked we are 5 years later because of their lies……

From Editor & Publisher:

Today marked the fifth anniversary of the day deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress that the U.S. would need no more than 100,000 troops to secure postwar Iraq and get the hell out. Here’s how The New York Times reported it at the time: “In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon’s second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general’s assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.

“Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, ‘wildly off the mark.’ Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war’s duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward….

“‘I think you’re deliberately keeping us in the dark,’ said Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia. ‘We’re not so naïve as to think that you don’t know more than you’re revealing.’…

“At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy’s comments.

A further excerpt from the Eric Schmitt article follows.
*

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq.

He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that ‘’stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible,” but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it.

”I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction,” Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help….

Read more »

8 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

“Slowdown“? How many top economists heads exploded upon hearing this new lingo?

Other terms Bush could have used: “Deceleration”, “Slackening off”. It’s not too late… he still might!

If we’re to believe all is rosy in Iraq and Afghanistan, then it must be here also.

Bush Says US Not Headed Into a Recession

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Thursday the country is not recession-bound and, despite expressing concern about slowing economic growth, rejected for now any additional stimulus efforts. “We acted robustly,” he said. [...]

Bush’s view of the economy was decidedly rosier than that of many economists, who say the country is nearing recession territory or may already be there. “I’m concerned about the economy,” he said. “I don’t think we’re headed to recession. But no question, we’re in a slowdown.”

We can still climb out from under this mess if we all worked together to help raise big-corp’s bottom line. I’m sending my tax refund to Exxon Mobile. Those people are in dire straits! And, besides, my generosity will be returned in good time. The oil and gas giant will be sure to hike it’s leg and “trickle” all over me.

2 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta

WH on Pelosi’s Request: “Truly Contemptible.” “A partisan political stunt” and “a complete waste of time,” according to the top House Republican.

And I have to agree. Justice will never be brought to bear on the Bush administration. Welcome to the United States of Crapland.

Pelosi Wants Bush Aides Investigated

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Justice Department on Thursday to open a grand jury investigation into whether President Bush’s chief of staff and former counsel should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

Pelosi, D-Calif., demanded that the department pursue misdemeanor charges against former White House counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to testify to Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors in 2006 and against chief of staff Josh Bolten for failing to turn over White House documents related to the dismissals.

She gave Attorney General Michael Mukasey one week to respond and said refusal to take the matter to a grand jury will result in the House’s filing a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration.

2 CommentsEmail Post Toggle Meta