The GrassCity Gazette

aaronman · Apr 29, 2009

Congress Looks to Bolster Iran Sanctions

Congress is taking up a bipartisan proposal which would give the Obama administration more leverage over Iran by toughening economic sanctions on foreign oil and shipping firms that aid Tehran.

A group of Democrats and Republicans introduced legislation Tuesday that would give the president expanded authority to crack down on companies that export gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran.

The Senate bill, which is expected to be mirrored by a similar House bill, is expected to pass because it has broad support from both Republicans and Democrats and is not opposed by the White House.

Administration officials have signaled they would not block the proposal despite recent U.S. overtures to Iran. President Barack Obama and senior U.S. diplomats have directly appealed for Iran to cooperate in talks over the country's nuclear buildup, but Tehran has veered between interest and rejection.

Despite its own large oil reserves, Iran now imports as much as 40 percent of its gasoline because it has limited capacity to refine crude oil.

Under the Senate proposal, the foreign companies could be barred from doing business in the United States unless Iran complies with international demands to halt its suspect nuclear program. The bill would also allow the administration to freeze the assets of those companies under U.S. jurisdiction.

The measure could apply to several major firms and their subsidiaries - among them oil giants Shell, BP, Reliance and Vitol. The bill would also target shipping firms that deliver refined fuel to Iran and even insurers for the ships.

"We need to give them a choice: you can do business with Iran's $250 billion economy or our $13 trillion economy, but not both," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who is a lead sponsor of the bill along with Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. There are 25 co-sponsors.

Lieberman said he had raised the matter with Dennis Ross, the U.S. special envoy who deals with Iran policy, and Ross had not objected. Ross is currently visiting Gulf nations to discuss the administration's overtures with Iran's neighbors and could not be reached for comment.

The State Department would not discuss the specifics of the bill but said it was generally supportive of any move that would help press Iran to address concerns it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has repeatedly denied it is seeking to build a nuclear weapon and is only engaged in a civilian atomic energy program.

"We want to do whatever we can to put additional pressure on the (Iranian) government," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

Bayh and other proponents of the legislation said the expanded sanctions authority would fit in well with Obama's plan to engage Iran by providing him an additional "stick" in the existing "carrot-and-stick" approach on the Iranian nuclear program.

"The purpose of this legislation is to give President Obama a new tool in his diplomatic arsenal to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons," said Bayh.

Experts believe that Iran is three to four years away, some think sooner, from having the capability to make nuclear weapons. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - as well as Germany have offered the country incentives to stop reprocessing uranium that could fuel a nuclear bomb.

Iran has thus far ignored the offer and continues to amass enriched uranium, sparking grave fears in Israel, which has not ruled out military strikes to deal with the threat, the broader Middle East and elsewhere.

Bayh and others said their bill would provide the "best opportunity" to stop Iran from getting the bomb "without a resort to military force."
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kokopelli · Apr 29, 2009

If anyone used to listen to Glenn Beck on his old radio show, there were NWO conspiracy theorists that used to call in all the time. This was years ago too. Perhaps now there are too many things coming together to discount the fact that there is something going on. Even at its most benign, the current level of corruption in the government needs to stop and more people need to be aware of the dangers of the chemicals such as MSG and Aspartame in our food supply and how we are raping 3rd world countries for resources.

Dickie4:20 · Apr 29, 2009

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Bank savings interest rates are lower than a conservative's belly

You would think that with the banks unable to lend much money because of liquidity problems that they would want to attract deposits. For every dollar a bank has on deposit the Federal Reserve will print up ten dollars to lend the bank at interest rate that is today about zero. Instead the banks are paying as little as .05% on savings accounts; effectively a zero return.

This should have the Obama Adm. concerned. One of the reasons we got into this mess was that people couldn't get a decent return on savings and went looking for other things to invest in. Things that turned out to just be a series of big bubbles that inflated the economy. This hid the fact that we didn't make anything anymore. This also gave the Chinese the illusion that we could somehow pay for all the stuff we were buying from them.

Of course we are still buying a whole lot of stuff from China and we still have no way to pay for it. Maybe Obama thinks another bubble would be OK or maybe he has a plan or maybe he is too busy with other things. Did that pig just sneeze?

aaronman · Apr 30, 2009

TOTUS Mutiny

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJt0yXjpDNA]YouTube - "Move It Up" Obama Loses Track of Teleprompter[/ame]

aaronman · Apr 30, 2009

Jane Harman-Nancy Pelosi-PowerRangers-AIPAC spy ring

[ame=http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225894&title=your-government-not-at-work]Your Government Not at Work - Jane Harman Scandal | The Daily Show | Comedy Central[/ame]

AK Infinity · Apr 30, 2009

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prxin-Lj5Ks]YouTube - Condi Rice Pulls a Nixon: If the President Orders Torture, It Must be Legal[/ame]

aaronman · Apr 30, 2009

Know your history!

The Link between Obama & John Law

Obama's 100th day is upon us and the new president is ramping up an expansion of government that will place him alongside some of the most notorious dictators in history. CNN's senior political analyst Bill Schneider may believe Obama's personal qualities make him "the superpresident," but first and foremost, Obama with his $3.5 trillion budget sees himself as the new FDR, armed with a new New Deal.

But the New Deal wasn't new when FDR did it. The charismatic Roosevelt was more than 200 years behind John Law's Mississippi Bubble, described as "the first New Deal of the capitalist order," by John T. Flynn in his amazing book Men of Wealth.

In a chapter devoted to the money magician, Flynn cleverly calls Law the "evangelist of abundance." And conditions in France could not have been riper for Law's fiscal chicanery in 1715. France was completely ruined by Louis XIV, a ruler whom history has been much too kind to, according to Flynn. He ravaged the country he ruled, while being a "shallow, egotistical, pretentious coxcomb."

Louis spent vast millions on his palaces and engaged poets and writers to write of his virtues, long before the days of CNN. As Flynn explains, industry had not come to France, thus the king stole his wealth from small farmers and city-dwelling artisans through oppressive taxation.
John Law (1671â€“1729)

Those who managed to amass wealth in France did so by knowing "how to tap this stream of public money on its way to the government." There were no entrepreneurial fortunes being made, only parasitic ones.

While the typical French family lived as paupers, going barefoot and sleeping on straw, there were vast fortunes made by those granted government monopolies. Louis died in the fall of 1715 with his country hopelessly bankrupt. The treasury was empty and the army unpaid. It was proposed that the nation formally declare bankruptcy.

"France had come to the end of the road, as America did in 1933," Flynn writes, "save that she was impoverished in substance as well as in the collapse of her economic mechanisms."

But the regent did not want the public humiliation of bankruptcy, so "instead, he sought to accomplish the same end by a less frank device," and John Law's monetary theories finally had a taker.

When news reached John Law, who had been gambling his way across Europe, he quickly packed his bags and headed for Paris. Law, like Obama and FDR, was charming and eloquent. "He was handsome, tall, well-made, and full of dexterity and grace," writes Adolphe Thiers in The Mississippi Bubble: A Memoir of John Law. In addition to his physical attributes, Law "was a facile talker and a superb salesman," according to Flynn.

And just like Obama's and FDR's "deals," Law's prescription for what ailed France required no sacrifice. Instead, Law's plan called "for a pleasant journey along the glory road to riches."

Like all modern Keynesians, Law saw the economic problem as being one of not enough money. While on the lam from the law for killing Beau Wilson in a duel over Elizabeth Villiers's affections, Law spent time in Amsterdam and studied the workings of the Bank of Amsterdam. The world-famous bank had attracted debauched coinage from all over Europe since its founding in 1609. In the beginning, the bank held 100 percent reserves with the bank weighing and assaying coinage from around Europe and giving the depositor credit for an honest value in guilders.

But what sparked the imagination of Law was the Bank of Amsterdam's violating its charter by surreptitiously making the East India Company a loan from its vast pool of deposits. As Flynn points out, the foundation of modern finance and fractionalized banking was born. "Law perceived with clarity that this bank, in its secret violation of its charter, had actually invented a method of creating money."

And create money Law did. Although he started small with his privately owned Banque GÃ©nÃ©rale, within a year all royal revenues were to be paid in the Banque's notes and these notes were to be cashed on sight at government offices, making these offices essentially branches of Law's bank.

After devaluing the livre, the French government became, as described by Flynn, "drastic in the extreme." Any person making a profit from state contracts or out-of-state offices during the preceding 27 years was to make an honest accounting with rewards offered to informants. "Wealth became a crime," Flynn explains. "People of wealth were in a panic," hiding their money and attempting to flee.

Two years into Law's system, the livre was devalued again, by 40 percent. Despite the devaluations, Law's reputation continued to rise and by the end of 1718, the state took over Law's bank, which became the Banque Royale. A nomadic gambler just three years before, Law suddenly had immense power, controlling the monopoly on coining money, the collection of tax revenues, as well as tobacco and salt revenues. His Mississippi Company (Compagnie du Mississippi) would buy up the debt of the French government, a proposal Flynn compares to Roosevelt's plan to extinguish America's debt by having the Social Security Board purchase it.

Law inflated the money supply through the Banque Royale, he created jobs through public-works projects; he attempted to release the hoarded savings back into business with the promotion of Mississippi Company shares; he exploited France's colonial empire, relieved the debt-ridden government of its debts, and was making money for himself and his patrons. Law even renounced his Protestant faith and was accepted into the Catholic Church after he made generous gifts to the St. Roch parish.

Law's system unraveled a mere four years after it began. People fled Law's paper for the safety of gold and silver, despite Law's attempts to demonetize and confiscate specie. Ultimately, Law's system would only serve to forestall France's bankruptcy, not solve it. Law himself would die near poverty a decade later.

"As a New Dealer [Law] was not greatly different in one respect from the apostles of the mercantilist schools - the Colberts, the Roosevelts, the Daladiers, the Hitlers and Mussolinis, and, indeed, the Pericles - who sought to create income and work by state-fostered public works and who labored to check the flow of gold away from their borders," writes Flynn who goes on to point out that Law's use of a bank to create money out of nowhere to pay for government programs was imitated by Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini.

"Law is the precursor of the inflationist redeemers," Flynn explains. "Like all the inflationist salvations, his career was short."

We can now throw Obama in with the other inflationist New Dealers, and with a compliant Treasury and Federal Reserve and their expanding monetary tools at the ready, he can do more damage than even John Law. We can only hope that his career will be short and that the Fed's days are numbered.
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Dickie4:20 · Apr 30, 2009

Texas, Run by Secessionist Guv, Has Received More Federal Disaster Relief Than Any State | Mother Jones

AK Infinity · Apr 30, 2009

[ame="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/30487329#30487329"]msnbc.com Video Player[/ame]

"I don't want to run auto companies, and I don't want to run banks, I've got two wars I've got to run already--I've got more than enough to do."

~Barack Obama~

Dickie4:20 · May 1, 2009

Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds - The CNN Wire - CNN.com Blogs

Dickie4:20 · May 1, 2009

Supreme Court Justice Souter To Retire : NPR

aaronman · May 1, 2009

Barney Frank refuting claims of housing bubble in 2005:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE]YouTube - Barney Frank in 2005: What Housing Bubble?[/ame]

TheHapiClam · May 1, 2009

How to pick a nations pocket, and get medals for it...

Did Pentagon lose billions, pennies at a time? - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com
Did Pentagon lose billions, pennies at a time?

40 years later, whistle-blower still unable to force accounting change

They didn't LOSE anything, this is deliberate, coerced, manipulation of accounting procedures, by the Pentagon, known of and agreed to by Congress, and every President since Nixon.

This guy is whistleblower you should listen to. The math of this is staggering, and it's probably only the tip of the iceberg.

MountyBounty · May 2, 2009

EVIDENCE FOUND!!! Clinton administration's "BANK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION" They forced banks to make BAD LOANS and ACORN and Obama's tie to all of it!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64&eurl]YouTube - EVIDENCE FOUND!!! Clinton administration's "BANK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION" They forced banks to make BAD LOANS and ACORN and Obama's tie to all of it!!![/ame]

Wearechange.org

aaronman · May 2, 2009

aaronman · May 2, 2009

Obama wants to create internationally shared list of gun owners:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9X2VbhSH9o]YouTube - Guns, 2nd amendment[/ame]

"You cannot invade the mainland United States.
There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
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Dickie4:20 · May 3, 2009

Saturday, May 2, 2009

At Nuremberg they hanged the lawyers

The members of the Bush Crime Family (BCF) have been pushing the notion in the media that they had no idea what torture really was and these memos authorizing their war crimes were just a mistake. The problem with this notion is that in order to write Justice Dept. memos authorizing torture they would have had to do a basic search of the case law. Even if the convictions of the war criminals who used water boarding weren't available to the researchers at the DOJ, they did have a domestic case of a Sheriff in Texas (of course) who was convicted of water boarding prisoners and the case was appealed so it certainly would show up in any search.

Then there is small matter of the BCF muzzling anybody in Government who pointed out that water boarding was a crime. This in itself is proof that they knew what they were doing was a crime. The precedent was established at Nuremberg that lawyers who created such fiction to make people think such crimes were legal should face the full penalty for these crimes. As much as those who ordered the crimes and even more than those who carried out the orders.

AK Infinity · May 4, 2009

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0fwCa1DFM"]YouTube - {PART 1} Ann Coulter On CNN's Larry King Live [Joy Behar Hosts] - 05/01/09[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEFuffc7c-0"]YouTube - {PART 2} Ann Coulter On CNN's Larry King Live [Joy Behar Hosts] - 05/01/09[/ame]

aaronman · May 4, 2009

Councilman Arrested for Opposing Traffic Light Cameras

The mayor of Duncanville, Texas had a member of the city council arrested last Tuesday for speaking out against the use of red light cameras during an official meeting. The incident took place during the discussion of whether the city should spend $59,000 to make street repairs. Mayor David Green recognized Councilman Paul Ford to speak on the contract item.

"Thank you," Ford said. "I want to let you know that earlier this evening during briefing, Mayor Green threatened me that if he told me to stop talking and I didn't, he'd have me arrested, and I want to let you know what I told Mayor Green."

Green became outraged and shouted, "Mr Ford, you are out of order. You are not recognized Mr Ford. You need to cease right now."

While Green yelled, Ford continued his brief statement without stopping.

"Unlike those thousands of people who are getting red light camera tickets, I will have the opportunity for a jury trial. It will be a jury of my peers and I will confidently put my fate in their hands. And now I'm going to discuss agenda item number three. I will vote against it, and here's why."

Before he had a chance to explain that the city could find the money for those necessary street repairs by cutting the city manager's salary from $179,000 to $160,000 and reducing payments to local chambers of commerce by $40,000, Police Chief Robert Brown grabbed Ford. Ford repeated several times the statement: "Chief Brown, I will not leave voluntarily, but if you believe I am violating the law by discussing this agenda item, I will submit to arrest."

Brown did not respond. Mayor Green had the audio of the city council video tape turned off as Brown dragged the councilman out of the chamber. Ford ended up hospitalized from injuries sustained during the arrest.

Ford's comments referenced an earlier, private briefing of city council members where the mayor complained that Ford had attempted to "take control" of past meetings. To stop this, Green announced that he would instruct the city manager to remove any council member who disrupted a meeting. Over the past few council sessions, Ford raised the mayor's ire by insisting that the city code be amended to allow motorists the option of a jury trial when contesting red light camera citations and by his pointing out that only five percent of the 43,955 red light camera tickets issued in the city went to motorists accused of the straight-through violations most consider to be "red light running."

"I'm not the one who brought the red light camera scandal to Duncanville," Ford responded at the private meeting. "I'm the one who brought it to light, but I'm not the one who imposed it on us... I recognize that there probably is no city employee in this room who will stand up to you guys... Unlike those people who are getting red light camera citations, I will have an opportunity for a jury trial when you arrest me for whatever it is that you've discussed, whether it's disrupting a public meeting or disorderly conduct. I will have a jury trial, and it will be a jury of my peers, not yours. In other words, people who are not getting money from this city. And I will with conscience place my fate in their hands."

Mayor Green's expulsion of an elected member of the city council violated standard rules of procedure. Under Robert's Rules of Order, the binding code of conduct for most municipal organizations, Green would not have any authority to have Ford removed for making off-topic comments that lasted less than thirty seconds. The use of force to remove a member is considered an extreme measure and a last resort.

"Although the chair has no authority to impose a penalty or to order an offending member removed from the hall, the assembly has that power," the Rules state.

Under this set of procedures, a mayor would first have issued a warning to an unruly member and, if ignored, put the question of what to do about it to the entire city council. A majority vote would be required to have a sitting member removed from the chambers after that member is given an opportunity to speak in his own defense. Under Duncanville's city charter (2.15), only the full council can change the rules of procedure, not the mayor acting alone.

Ford has been released from the hospital but the mayor had a warrant issued for his arrest. Ford announced yesterday his intention to turn himself in. Since March, Ford has attempted to gather 1300 signatures to create a referendum on the red light camera program in Duncanville.
Click to expand...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IEr275vMNM]YouTube - Duncanville City Council Meeting April 7, 2009[/ame]

AK Infinity · May 5, 2009

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGmbzDLq5c]YouTube - US troops urged to share faith in Afghanistan - 04 May 09[/ame]

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