The Treasury and the Federal Reserve wish to take all that nasty old mortgage and mortgage derived debt and make you and I, all of us, directly responsible for it. Paulson of Treasury is ex-Goldman Sachs CEO, one of the companies to be healed of its toxic paper. The Federal Reserve, despite its name, is actually a consortium of private banking interests. So these two parties, which have very large responsibility historically for getting the economy into this mess, now propose to effectively make indentured servants of us all to bail out their own industry.

They tell us that they, and Congress and government fiddling with the economy perhaps more generally, have made a royal mess of it. They have made such a mess of it that we must now give them carte blanche to do whatever they think best to fix it no matter how much of our money and our children's money they wish to take to do so. They tell us that they have made such a mess of it that either we agree with their plan or Else, and that the else will be upon our heads and conscience. We are being railroaded.

The manifold derivative instruments constituting this toxic sludge clogging up the system are doing so precisely because no one knows how to value these instruments. So the Treasury or some body stapled together for this purpose will presumably establish some arbitrary valuation. The decisions an actions cannot be questioned as immunity from prosecution for any actions taken has been placed on the table up front.

We are talking about $700 billion. Judging by historical precedent expect that to be in the neighborhood of an order of magnitude off. Fannie and Freddie alone have some $5 trillion of mortgages on their books. The derivatives nominal valuation is many times the value of the underlying mortgages in total. It is so large that and structured in such a way that there always were going to have to be losers. Which ones will the quasi-government banking interests allow to lose? I rather expect that the favorite financial institutions such as Goldman will not lose nearly as much as we the people will.

A economic czar is being set up to put you in debt indefinitely and destroy much of the last semblances of free markets. All this in the name of protecting you. Again. Just say NO.

Homeland Security assigns terror scores to travelers

Traveler Screening

This is completely unacceptable. The people rejected such programs implemented domestically. So the government does it anyway and more on all person who cross any border including Mexico and Canada. It does it without informing Congress until long after the fact. The program tracks significant public and governmental data about travelers and combines it into a secret dossier that the person cannot see or address if it is inaccurate. The data is kept for 40 years! The system gives a score to each individual tracked as to the possibility of being or supporting some king of terrorism or of any old criminal activity the DHS may choose to include! So the dossier will contain guesses and allegations that the person can neither see nor rectify. This is utterly wrong.

The information can be shared wih all government agencies including local and with unspecified third parties. This means for instance that this information may show up when you apply for any job that goes through a commonplace background check. This is a disaster of huge proportions. It is far more than merely a "terrorism score". It is your government setting up the machinery to ruin your life based on possible mistakes, guesswork or malice of any official in the chain.


STAND UP AND SAY NO WAY NOW! While you still can.

CNN.com - GOP�senators�propose�NSA spying bill - Mar 7, 2006

The idea that the American people will be satisfied by a bill that enshrines the blatant violation of law and of the rights of the American people as some new law deserves to be shouted down loudly and clearly. The old FISA rules for spying within the US are more than lenient enough and the Patriot act made such things even easier. That was bad enough but apperently was not bad enough for President Bush. He ignored the law. Now his minions wish to make an ex post facto new law to excuse his felonious violations and allow more of the same under "oversight". I hope the American people aren't too beaten down and dumbed down to fall for such a blatant ruse.

Bush administration wants to prosecute reporters for espionage

Hot off the morning press the Bush administration is threatening to prosecute reporters for espionage for publication of "classified" information. This would include explicitly telling the American people that the administration was illegally spying on them. This administration is prone to much higher levels of secrecy than previous administrations and has repeatedly refused to respond to even Congressional oversight. Efforts to stop the people from knowing what they are doing include massive "inetrviews" by the FBI of many government employees including polygraph tests for lack of leaks.

Folks, these clowns need to be slammed down hard. This is NOT the American way. Stop these turkeys now before it is much too late.

Firms Are Asked to Stop One-Drug Malaria Therapy

What vicious nonsense! Save as many people as you can now as a) technology is continuing to improve at increasing speed; b) it is the job of health organizations to do so; c) some of those people saved may in fact be inventor of the next great cures; d) there is no hard model that shows resistance to this drug increases that rapidly if it is used alone as compared to with other drugs. On the other hand the practice of selling inadequate treatments should end as this does risk the drug becoming ineffective for little gain.

But WHO is acting much too broadly before the science is in as far as I see.

CNN.com - Gonzales defends NSA, rejects call for�prosecutor - Jan 17, 2006

Is it up to one of the people possibly subject to investigation to approve or disapprove of an investigation? Have we sunk that far? Gonzales is Bush's man. If we can only have an investigation of this or any other incident if he approves then we are lost.

CNN.com - Cheney:�Spy program�key to terror war - Jan 19, 2006

The real safeguards in the form of relevant laws were ignored. So excuse us if we aren't satisfied by empty claims after the fact that no harm was done and claims that our civil liberites were safeguarded. By definition our liberties and rights were violated and they continue to be violated by a government that believes it is outside the law and believes that anything whatsoever is more important than the rights of the people.

All international communication is potentially to Al Qaeda? Communication that is domestic could also be to Al Qaeda. does this mean that all communication should be eavesdropped on by the government? Should all Americans be assumed guilty until proven innocent?

It is time to throw these autocrats out of office and in jail where they belong. But the people are too far gone to see this or to take any such action. We are on the way down in my humble opinion.

So, let me get this straight. Justice can't investigate a sittings president for what looks like a perfecty clear violation of laws protecting the American people. But it can open an investigation (and did) to hound the people who reported this violation?

To me it looks like Justice is not in the least concerned with "justice" if it is pointed at this administration.






Watchdog can't open spy probe

Bush Defends Legality of Domestic Spy Program - New York Times

It seems to me that the press is bending over backwards to trumpet the administrations claims it did nothing wrong when it authorized domestic spying on Americans without obeying even minimal laws. Could the media outlets be frightened by the earlier ploy by the administration to take legal action against them for even bringing the matter to the attention of the American public?

This American is real tired of reading Big Lies day after day in the press. By the time Congress investigates the administration and media will have ground it into most of the public that this blatant violation and real danger to the freedoms we hold dear was simply business as usual.