happy halloween

samuel alito
This is the man that we will not stop hearing about for the remainder of 2005. Sam Alito is the supreme court nominee. A brief backround, an Italian catholic from Jersey, he went to YALE law school, and he's got two kids. Enough personal backround.

It would appear that these men that this administration appoint run with the same old GOP crowd. In the early eighties he was assistant to Rex Lee, Reagans Solicitor General (Lee, a morman, and not just any morman, a direct descendant of Jon Lee, who thought it was a good idea to kill unarmed unbeleivers). For two years in the late eighties sam was the assistant to attorney general Meese, another YALE graduate. Meese was a Reagan-Bush man too, who wanted to eradicate porn. Bush Sr. nominated Alito as well, in 1990 for the third circuit appeals court. Round the Neo-cons we go.

The most talked about case thus far (very early in the "game") is from 1991 when he argued that a women should be forced to tell their husbands before an abortion. Another case that will surface soon, is Doe vs. Groody, where Alito stated the case that police officers where aloud to strip search a woman and her TEN year old daughter while a search warrant was issued only for a man and his home, quite a violation of their rights. Could you imagine it being ok to have unauthorized stip searches? I bet the replacement for harriet miers is pleasing all those bushco supporters, and disapointing all those dems.

There is so much manure to cut through from both republicans and democrats that I cant find any truth. The supreme court has become a tool for both parties, and its all cronyism, its difficult to interpret a system that is consitantly dishonest with us, but we have to try. The senate has the majority, holding on to 55 of the possible 100 votes, but that shouldnt matter, these men and woman should be voting on behalf of us, not their party, or their religouse beleifs.
Deciding who should decide our freedoms for us? It doesnt even sound right, everything comes with political party ties, why should this obviouse republican, self proclaimed catholic, decide whats right for all of us?

i thought more fish would fry
But there is still hope. It seems now (a whole four hours later) that Libby will become a tool for Fitzgerald. The Special Prosecutor has made it clear enough that the heart of the investigation could not be finished because of the lies by (at least) Libby. Scooter, was an appointed official by this administration, in turn, he will be their fall guy. ...BUT... This remains unresolved, and Libby will have the opportunity to plea bargain, i would imagine that this is the route Pat Fitzgerald will take to catch the bigger fish, a higher ranked Bushco official perhaps, hopefully, because otherwise this is a pretty anticlimatic ending. As i said in my post prior to this, I Lewis Libby is a member of PNAC, and he aint going down too far, or badly, he knows too much, thats why he lied.
 

the fall guy

ONE indictment.

I. Lewis Libby (aka "scooter") has been indicted today, five counts: 1 count obstruction of justice, 2 counts of perjury and 2 counts of making false statements.

I have also heard reports that he has resigned. He is just the fall guy. Today on all the news shows this has been rehashed over and over again. The real point, which has been lost entirely just about everywhere, is the war was sold to us with the lies that Joe Wilson uncovered. This vidictive white house administration, then came into the Wilson household, outing his wife, Valerie Plame, disreguarding the covert status of this CIA agent. It is ashame that the spotlight goes unshared, and we cannot extend the coverage to the lies that Bush himself told everyone. The white house has let the Libby take the fall, he is the lesser known of the key leak players, he is Cheney's guy. Rove is still "under investigation" somehow, but to indict Rove would have hit too close to W. Most people never heard of Libby, and besides, worse case scenerio for Libby, is a pardon from the president. Hes a memeber of PNAC for gods sake and so the Lies of Bushco continue.
Libby is not the only one, so how special a prosecutor is fitzgerald? Not sure.


at 2 pm fitzgerald will speak to the press, and at 3 pm joe wilson and valerie plame's lawyer will speak.

 

inflation

"Inflation is a process in which the prices of most goods and services are increasing from year to year or month to month."
It seems that the news is a bit more bleak than they are aloud to divulge, especially in the fourth and most important, shopping season, quarter. While hopes for a steady economy through the end of the year may help in keeping the consumer, consuming, energy prices are increasing and so is the cost of living.
Just in time for winter, the highest increase for one month in fifteen years, energy prices jumped more than 7%. People heating their homes with natural gas may see a spike in cost up to 48% greater than last years bill. Main stream media is keeping hope alive by insisting that there is no housing bubble, however the cost of a home from last year to this year rose 23%, (expect another ten percent in 2006). The average cost of a home across the country is over two hundred thousand dollars, to buy these homes last year, about forty two percent were with no money down. From 1955 to 1995 home prices rose with inflation, which was basically nothing, but for the last nine years they rose 45%, this is leaving home ownership at a thirteen year low. We are told not to fear inflation, but unemployment rates are on the rise, food costs have increased 1.4% in the month of September, and also last month wholesale inflation rose at its fastest pace in fifteen years.
The Federal Government's official poverty level was based in 1965, and even at that outdated figure, last year 37 million people lived at that poverty level. This would give a family of three a monthly income of less than fifteen hundred dollars. In places like California, the northeast or southern Florida as one person you'll need at least double or triple just be able to pay for your basic life package, nevrmind expecting people to live in this country with the federal minimum wage at a stale, five dollars and fifteen cents an hour. It only appears to be getting worse.

There are going to be attempts at drilling for natural gas in the United States, in places that were once "off limits". Yesteday The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee authorized drilling in Alaskas Arctic Wildlife Refuge in a 13-to-9 vote. Senator Pete V. Domenici the committee's chairperson said, ''We must produce more of our own oil". It is laughable that this is the solution, (clearly alternitives are not the route we need to already have gone in). This is just a waste of money for us, and a waste of the Alaskan Wildlife, we will run out of oil, drilling is a waste of resources. Energy companies are trying to convince state legislators to allow them to drill off Hilton Head Island too.

There are winners in all of this, the oil companies are making all the money right now, they will make each other more wealthy once they start poking more holes in the earth, and they destroy ecosytems. It is all for money, and as long as the oil company runs this country, the oil companies will be making money, they are their best interst, not us.



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ahmed chalabi
Ahmed Chalabi and the United States have a long history together. Chalabi was born in Iraq and lived there until 1956 when he and his family left. He grew up in Britain, and studied here in the US, but he yearned to go back to Iraq to claim what had been his families land, and to get rid of the man he blamed for the fall of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Ahmed Chalabi has played a part in almost all of the big stories coming out of the Iraq war. Chalabi is currently the Interim Minister for oil and Deputy Prime Minister in Iraq. He was the head of the INC, the Iraqi National Congress, a group started in 1992, whose purpose it was too overthrow Saddam Hussein. In 1998 the US gave 97 million dollars to support Iraqi opposition groups, most of the money was funneled through the INC, hence through Chalabi.
In early 2004 we could spot Ahmed Chalabi sitting behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union Address. President Bush has said that his coversations with Chalabi were brief, and he remained vague on content, but it was clear chalabi was doing quite a bit of talking with everyone from Bushco to the main stream media. In fact until recently, the pentagon had been paying chalabi 330.000 dollars a month for intelligence information. Chalabi was Colin Powell's source for the BAD information he used to try to convince the UN to support the war in Iraq. The INC was a major source for, Judith miller and her quest to convince the american public that the Iraq WMD threats were real, and credible. She and our President were convincing us with information from a source whose ultimate goal was to be the future president of Iraq. It was so easy to swindle us. Within days of 911 there were meetings with Chalabi to discuss a strategy for invading Iraq. Chalabi was in charge of gathering the right information for this invasion, and he did. He was also behind the falsehood that the Iraqis would be showering US soldiers with flowers, and praise. Before the war Chalabi had been trying to please the americans to push foward with his own agenda, and it had worked he found himself a place in the Iraqi government, until charges began to surface that chalabi and US oil companies were plundering the Iraqi oil fields. When this became public, the relationship started to take a nosedive. In 2004 the US and Iraq armies raided his home, and computers, and also the offices of the INC, the organization we had finaced and a man our government used for the invasion of Iraq, it seemed Chalabi and bushco were just using each other to benefit themselves.
So here we are, in the midst of a war we cant seem to get away from, brought on by bad intellegence, a Grand Jury gathered to seek justice for a woman whose career was demolished, while Judith Miller, who is a Bushco pawn, acts as though shes the victim. We have been lied to and deceived by the people who are chosen to represent us. Bushco has put its own interests before the interests of this country. Aligning themselves with anyone who is willing to tell them what they need to hear to produce results for their bottom line. Before September eleventh had ever occurred this was the plan for Iraq. The collapse of the World Trade Center only quickened the pace. We have broken the 200 billion dollar mark in iraq, there have been close to fifteen thousand of our troops severely wounded, over twenty six thousand iraqi civilians dead, and former CIA covert agent, Valerie Plame is a household name, this is all because of the lack of respect this administration has for americans, Americans who are or have put their lives in harms way for this government. This war is in all of our names, whether you like it or not, the rest of the world watches, as we fumble.
 

will this man indict senior white house officials?
It seems there will be some movement from the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame Leak. His first step will be to send letters to those he has targeted throughout his nearly two year investigation. Since the beginning the white house had a definite opinion on it, Scott McClellan said "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they will no longer be in this administration." the current White house stance on the issue is, "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration." Tomorrow it may very well be "if anyone in this administration was convicted of a crime they will no longer be in this administration." . We should expect the news any day now some are speculating as many as twenty two indictments. He could offer plea agreements, or there could also be a report saying no crime was committed, but you would wonder why miller sat in jail for so long for what would turn out to be nothing. If Fitzgerald felt the need for indictments, then there must be strong evidence of the outing of a covert CIA agent, in direct retaliation for her husband, Joe Wilson, for breaking the big lie about Iraq seeking yellow cake uranium from Niger, that bush sold to us in his state of the union address, as a reason for war. If the Special Prosecuter was to indict senior members of the bush administration, bush's approval ratings would be in the single digits. Most of these people in Washington seem to be in government for wrong reasons, it makes them money, this is how we ended up in Iraq, no one wanted to disagree too much with anyone, some lies weren't that hard to figure out, like this yellow cake uranium. Time is running out.

 

are these filthy birds worth the trouble?

The Avian Flu, H5N1 strain, has been around since 1997. I heard about it two or three years ago, SARS was the big concern at the time. However, Today is the day that the Avian Flu has come into our lives at full force thanks to the media. Lets just look at this rationally, there is no need to scare everyone. Currently there are just a few ASIAN countries in which there have been outbreaks of human infractions of the avian flu H5N1 strain, the survival rate is low because there is no immune protection for humans, (as it is a bird flu), but with that said, our current risk remains LOW. To have a true crisis unfold the avian flu would have to jump from human to human, which it has never done. It needs to mutate before that can happen, and luckily, so far this strain , H5N1, has been very slow at mutating.
So why all the news coverage?
Bushco.
The return of the "automatic trigger" (see previouse post under same title) we just heard about after Hurricane Katrina, yet another reason to give them control. He has said earlier this week that he is considering the use of troops to impose a quarantine, and isolation in the event of an outbreak, because according to bush, "The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it". The WHO has been saying a pandemic is "just a matter of time", since the last pandemic in 1968. The CDC estimates that the average number of people that die from the flu every year is 36.000 people, so far the human fatalities for the bird flu is, below a hundred. I am aware of the need to address these health threats, but right now there is no simple solution to this threat, so the media must stop the scare-mongering. There has been a lot of talk about this being worse than the pandemic 87 years ago. The media should be telling us about such a scenario, this should have been paired with common sense, all news lacked any.
As americans, as members of the global community, we need a lesson in hygiene, and consideration. Illnesses such as the flu, go round and round, spreading from children to elderly, and everyone in between because of those selfish people who cannot look beyond them self. First of all if you are sick stay home, if your children are sick keep them home. wash your hands often, wash your children's hands often, cover your mouth, use a tissue, be considerate, if you are an employer stress the importance of keeping production up, by keeping the flu out. In Asia they dont kiss hello, or shake hands, they bow, this is a part of their culture we should embrace. These simple measures, should be the first line of defense, not dragging in the military (who we have not enough of as it is). If our president did not have an agenda, and chose to address this bird flu issue, he would have done so with discretion, and directed us in using common sense for keeping each other well during the upcoming cold and flu season.





 

the libby letter
Well Judith Miller is out of prison, and has testified. She needed a "waiver of confidentiality" from her source, ( I Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff) to allow herself to take the stand. The Letter, combined with a phone call, some dealings with Special Counsel, and shes a free woman. The letter that I Lewis Libby sent Miller is eithor, some spy tactic, secret code that he has put out to the public, in a short poem, OR Libby is some kind of a crack pot, breaking into prophecies of biological threats, and suicide bombers. Conspiricay theorists are haveing a great time, especially with his last paragraph which is where it breaks into a poetic code, truly...

"You went into jail it was summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover-Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the iranian nucleor program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work-and life."

Miller was the final witness Fitzgerald needed her testimony before concluding the probe into who outed Plame as a covert CIA agent..
It is time for the indictments to roll in, or not. We will certainly know befor the end of the month, The grand jury expires Oct. 28.

The Letter