Obama’s Crusade to Save the Banksters

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1013&Itemid=1

Obama’s Crusade to Save the Banksters
Wednesday, 04 February 2009
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Much of Black America is hopelessly neutered, politically, incapable of even imagining a situation in which they would make demands of Barack Obama - "whom many believe is literally a God-send." In any case, the president's attentions are focused on his primary mission: to save the core institutions of the financial capitalist class at the unlimited expense of the real economy and its dependents - the rest of us." The sacrifice will be for nothing. "In the process of attempting to breath life into the bankster zombies, Obama and his bipartisan buddies will exhaust the capacity of the federal government to make money out of nothing."

"Obama's mission is to bring the mighty investment banks back from the dead."

The quickening spiral of economic decline finds Black America utterly without political or psychological defenses - damn near helpless, and pitifully so. Although it is common to hear Blacks half-joke that "white folks" waited until the system was in meltdown to hand over the White House keys to a "brother," it is Barack Obama who has pulled off history's biggest trick on African Americans. Obama caused Black America to drop its primary defense - a deep and abiding suspicion of the intentions of Power - at precisely the historical juncture when suspicion is most needed. As Constitutional power flowed into Obama's person on January 20, African Americans in their forty millions willed themselves to believe they had "overcome" - when, in reality, they had been overcome by the delusion that the new president did not represent the Power that was never to be trusted, always to be resisted. No, he was a walking, talking treasure to be protected by the group as a whole, the repository of ancient Black hopes and the living proof of change.

Most literate Black people are familiar with Frederick Douglass's maxim, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." But Black Obamites cannot conceive of making demands on "their" president, whom many believe is literally a God-send. Who would even think to make demands of an emissary from Jesus? Religion, that vaunted "rock" of Black society, once again knocks us senseless.

"Black Obamites cannot conceive of making demands on ‘their' president."

Shorn of defenses and politically neutered, Blacks become befuddled spectators to Obama's version of economic "recovery" - a desperate effort to resurrect from near-death the investment bankster class that ultimately made like Richard Pryor and, driven by its accumulated contradictions, set itself on fire. Obama must also fulfill his obligations to American Empire, which sustained through threat and force of arms the artificial, unjust U.S. global advantages that allowed the Wall Street banksters to believe they could forever feast on the world's sweat and resources while producing nothing themselves.

Between the multi-trillion dollar pincers of an addicted military and the limitless cost of detoxifying a universe of derivative, fictional assets, the real economy and those that depend on it will be squeezed beyond endurance.

Obama's mission is truly impossible: to bring back from the dead the mighty investment banks that were until lately the arbiters of economic development in the United States. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proclaimed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, "[T]oday, the pride of Wall Street - the investment banks - have practically stopped existing." The composition of Obama's economic team, which is suited only to the warped world of investment banking, shows the new president is determined to raise the dead. But even if such a resurrection were desirable, it cannot be done. By the end of 2007, the banksters had created $596 trillion in over-the-counter derivatives - 12 times the value of the gross planetary product of Earth. Bailout is a nonsensical proposition. What is occurring is a desperate effort to save the core institutions of the financial capitalist class at the unlimited expense of the real economy and its dependents - the rest of us.

"Bailout is a nonsensical proposition."

It is logical, therefore, that the misdirected "recovery" of the real economy is by design rudderless, lacking any guiding federal institutional structure or general plan for economic development, despite unprecedented projected spending. The Obama team's overarching goal, like the Bush team before it, is to recreate the primacy of investment bankers in guiding economic development - not to replace them with governmental mechanisms. Since the investment banksters "have practically stopped existing," the real economy's recovery effort will ultimately degenerate into a free-for-all grab fest amidst dwindling spoils.

In the process of attempting to breath life into the bankster zombies, Obama and his bipartisan buddies will exhaust the capacity of the federal government to make money out of nothing. At that point, it will be too late to pay for band-aid "reforms" to mend a gravely wounded economy and society. The self-immolation of the banksters, and the futile attempt to save them, will have destroyed the larger system.

Black folks will be powerless to affect the trajectory of disaster, so long as the Obama delusion holds sway. In any case, from its conception the Obama plan contained no transformational elements that might have narrowed the institutional gaps between Blacks and whites, nothing that would alter the two-to-one ratio of Black unemployment to white joblessness, or shrink the Black Prison Gulag, or bring Blacks closer to wealth parity with whites. African American economic standing relative to whites is likely to slip further, given the fragility of the Black middle class.

"From its conception the Obama plan contained no transformational elements that might have narrowed the institutional gaps between Blacks and whites."

Obama will preside over a society that is poorer, less fair, and likely to be engulfed in war, as the U.S. military tries to retain America's unjust advantages in the absence of any recovery.

The debacle will be exceedingly painful for Obama, who entered office with the apparent idea of creating a 21st Century "Era of Good Feeling," much like the harmony that was said to reign over (the white sectors of) the nation from around 1815 to 1824. Back then, with the collapse of the Federalists, American politics was dominated by the Republican-Democrat Party. President James Monroe won the White House in 1820 with only one electoral vote against him - the kind of bi- or non-partisan heaven (except for slaves and Indians) that Obama craves, and attempts to recreate in his own small way by populating his cabinet and advisory ranks with Republicans.

Those wishful souls that convinced themselves Obama would become the vessel in which to pour progressive ideas and programs in time of economic crisis, did not give him credit for having notions of his own - ideas that would sacrifice the people for the benefit of the banksters. Obama pursues his bankster rescue crusade in plain sight, yet white "progressive" supporters insist he's up to something else, and Black Obamites avow he's doing the work of God.

Not quite. More like the work of Goldman Sachs, in hopes it will rise again.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

Los Angeles has a shot to host 2016 Super Bowl

http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-super-bowl-quickhits31-2009jan31,0,6126001.story

Roger Goodell says Los Angeles has a shot to host 2016 Super Bowl
The NFL commissioner says league will take a hard look at it, regardless of whether Los Angeles has a team by then.
By Sam Farmer
January 31, 2009

Reporting from Tampa, Fla. -- In his annual Super Bowl news conference Friday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league would take a hard look at bringing the Super Bowl back to Los Angeles in 2016 -- the 50th anniversary of the game -- whether or not the city has a team.

The first Super Bowl was held in L.A., at the Coliseum, and 2016 would also mark the 70th anniversary of the 1946 L.A. Rams, the first integrated major professional sports team. L.A. businessmen Casey Wasserman and Tim Leiweke are trying to position L.A. to play host to Super Bowl L and the Pro Bowl that precedes it, either in the Coliseum or Rose Bowl -- or in a new stadium, if one is built by then.

Overtime changes?

Goodell said the NFL is going to take a hard look at how overtime games are decided, including the possibility of ruling out games being decided by a field goal on the opening drive of the extra period.

"It's been considered before, and I'm sure it will be considered among the alternatives," he said. "There are other ways of addressing the field goal on the first drive, and I think it's something the competition committee needs to consider."

He said that while historically about 30% of overtime games are decided when the team that wins the coin flip scores on its opening possession, that number has recently risen to roughly 47%.

"I think that's significant," he said. "It's something our committee needs to look at. When you couple that with the fact that our field-goal kickers are much more accurate than they have been in the past, that's a danger.

"We have talked about different concepts, and the committee will discuss this."

Bill Hicks on Letterman

Kenn Thomas
SteamshovelPress.com

In case you missed it last night, Mary Hicks and the previously censored Bill
Hicks bit is up at YouTube in three parts, the last of which (w/Bill) is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBC1dKGO2_A

Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation

http://www.prisonplanet.com/former-president-jimmy-carter-supports-call-for-new-911-investigation.html

Former President Jimmy Carter Supports Call For New 9/11 Investigation
Carter slammed Bush administration for exploiting attacks in 2004
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 30, 2009

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has become the latest, and perhaps most prominent, public figure to express support for a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

We Are Change Ohio attended a book signing by the former President in Chicago. Despite the best efforts of secret service personnel to abduct the person recording the conversation, the audio of Carter’s words were still captured.

Carter was asked, “I was just wondering if you’d support the victims’ family members that want a new investigation into 9/11.”

Carter clarifies the question before responding, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with it but I certainly would….it would be nice.

In October 2004, Carter told the London Guardian newspaper that President Bush exploited the 9/11 attacks and that the press had not held him to account.

“The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack … and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America,” Carter said.

“He’s repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated,” he added.

Carter responded to the atmosphere at the time by slamming the notion that questioning Bush’s actions was unpatriotic.

His rebuke for media cowardice about asking tough questions about the “war on terror” was also stinging.

“The press have been cowed, because they didn’t want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it’s hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved,” said Carter.

Carter’s support for a new investigation into 9/11 has been echoed by innumerable prominent public figures both in and out of politics over the last few years.

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, UK MP Michael Meacher, Japanese MP Fujita Yukihisa, former German Defense Secretary Andreas von Buelow, music icon Willie Nelson, and even vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin have all expressed support for a new inquiry into the September 2001 attacks.

SECRET AND SUPPRESSED II

SECRET AND SUPPRESSED II: BANNED IDEAS AND HIDDEN HISTORY INTO THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY
By Kenn Thomas and Adam Parfrey

http://feralhouse.com/titles/new_releases/secret_and_suppressed_ii.php

277 pages • 5.5 x 8.5 • ISBN: 978-1-932595-35-2
Price: $17

Secret and Suppressed II’s new revelations — Newspeak, The Illuminated, Parascience, and The Controllers — illuminate the paranoid and nightmarish post-9/11 planet.

Contributors: Robert Anton Wilson, Jim Hougan, Paul Krassner, Mae Brussell, Adam Weishaupt, Jim Marrs, Joseph P. Farrell, Mike Bara, Craig Heimbichner, Richard Sauder, Joan D’Arc, Al Hidell, Jay Weidner, Col. Fletcher Prouty, Adam Gorightly, Harry Helms, Mark Bruback, Douglas Hawes, William W. Flint, Jerry E. Smith, Robert Sterling, David Martin

An 8 page excerpt of book’s photo section:

http://konformist.com/2008/secretandsuppressed2.pdf

Excerpt, “Demons from the Far Side of Truth”:

http://konformist.com/2008/secretandsuppressed2-excerpt.pdf

Obama’s neocon

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4278.shtml

Obama’s neocon
The curious case of Richard Holbrooke
By Joshua Frank
Jan 26, 2009

In the wee morning hours on Friday, January 23, a U.S. spy plane killed at least 15 in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was Barack Obama’s first blood and the U.S.’s first violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty under the new administration. The attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may not be overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.

As the U.S. government fired upon alleged terrorists in the rugged outback of Pakistan, Obama was back in Washington appointing Richard Holbrooke as a special U.S. representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, like the remote control bombing that claimed human life, Obama’s vision for the region, in the embodiment of Holbrooke, may not be a drastic departure from the failed Bush doctrine. Or a departure at all.

“[Holbrooke] is one of the most talented diplomats of his generation,” Obama said during a January 22 press conference at the State Department. In his speech, Obama declared that both Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the “central front” in the War on Terror. “There, as in the Middle East, we must understand that we cannot deal with our problems in isolation,” he said.

In 1975, during Gerald Ford’s administration, Indonesia invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor set the stage for a long and bloody occupation that recently ended after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999.

Transcripts of meetings among Indonesian dictator Mohamed Suharto, Gerald Ford, and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have shown conclusively that Kissinger and Ford authorized and encouraged Suhatro’s murderous actions. “We will understand and will not press you on the issue [of East Timor],” said President Ford in a meeting with Suharto and Kissinger in early December 1975, days before Suharto’s bloodbath. “We understand the problem and the intentions you have,” he added.

Henry Kissinger also stressed at the meeting that “the use of US-made arms could create problems,” but then added, “It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.” Thus, Kissinger’s concern was not about whether US arms would be used offensively, but whether the act could be interpreted as illegal. Kissinger went on, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.”

After Gerald Ford’s loss and Jimmy Carter’s ascendance into the White House in 1976, Indonesia requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban on arms trades to Suharto’s government. It was Carter’s appointee to the Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.

During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Professor Benedict Anderson cited a report that proved there was never a US arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban the US initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians:

“If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never felt the force of the U.S. government’s ‘anguish,’ the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to express statements by General Fish, Mr. Oakley and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at least four separate offers of military equipment were made to the Indonesian government during the January-June 1976 ‘administrative suspension.’ This equipment consisted mainly of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War era planes designed for counterinsurgency operations against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons, and wholly useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The policy of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other counterinsurgency-related equipment has continued without substantial change from the Ford through the present Carter administrations.”

If we track Holbrooke’s recent statements, the disturbing symbiosis between him and figures like uberhawk Paul Wolfowitz is startling.

“In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington,” reported First of the Month following the terrorist attacks in 2001.

The article continued: “Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al Gore, was acutely aware that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing important roles in the next administration. Looking perhaps to assure the world of the continuity of US foreign policy, he told his audience that Wolfowitz’s ‘recent activities illustrate something that’s very important about American foreign policy in an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes between the parties.’ The example he chose to illustrate his point was East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons -- a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. ‘Paul and I,’ he said, ‘have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests.”

In sum, Holbrooke has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent. The results of which appear to have paid off.

In chilling words, Holbrooke describes the motivations behind support of Indonesia’s genocidal actions: “The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer -- which plays a moderate role within OPEC -- and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans . . . We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia.”

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press in June 2008. Check out the new Red State Rebels site at www.RedStateRebels.org.

Karzai accuses US troops of killing civilians

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cadec530-eb4a-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd2ac.html

Karzai accuses US troops of killing civilians
By Jon Boone in Kabul
January 26 2009

Hamid Karzai accused US troops yesterday of killing 16 civilians during a weekend military raid, putting further strain on the already brittle relationship between Afghanistan and the new Barack Obama administration in Washington.

The Afghan president flatly contradicted claims by the US military that all those killed during the attack early on Saturday morning were militants, and claimed two women and three children were among the dead.

In a year in which Mr Karzai intends to run for reelection, he was quick to respond to popular fury at the reports of casualties, which village elders put at 22, even though it will be days before a joint inquiry by US and Afghan officials is concluded.

Up to 1,000 Afghans protested yesterday in Mihtarlam, a small town about 50 miles north-east of Kabul, near where the incident took place. The crowd shouted anti-government slogans and pelted the provincial governor with stones.

The US military said there was no information to support the villagers' claims, saying US forces had been attacked by men and one woman firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades during an operation against a prominent Taliban commander.

Mr Karzai has become more vocal on the issue of civilian casualties in recent weeks, but yesterday's statement was the first public criticism of the US since Mr Obama took office.

The new US president's foreign policy team has made clear that Mr Karzai will have to address the weakness and corruption in his government, which they say is strengthening support for the Taliban.

But Mr Karzai says it is the deaths of civilians at the hands of foreign troops that "weaken government rule and empower the terrorists".

The presidential palace confirmed yesterday that it had sent a proposed new agreement to Washington and its Nato allies that would give Afghanistan more say over operations by foreign military forces and ban foreign soldiers from conducting house searches.

Obama administration: Expect rise in US casualties

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/25/obama-airstrikes-pakistan

Obama administration warns public to expect rise in US casualties
Vice-president Biden reveals US forces will step up operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Pakistani president tells American ambassador strikes 'do not help war on terror'
Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 January 2009

The Obama administration warned the US public yesterday to brace itself for an increase in American casualties as it prepares to step up the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan.

Against a background of widespread protests in Pakistan and Afghanistan over US operations since Obama became president, the vice-president, Joe Biden, said yesterday that US forces would be engaged in many more operations as it takes the fight to its enemies in the region.

The Obama administration is to double the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 60,000 and when asked in a television interview if the US public should expect more American casualties, Biden said: "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick."

Greater US involvement in Afghanistan is a political risk for Obama, with the danger that mounting American casualties could make the war as unpopular as Iraq. Obama, in his first military action as president, sanctioned two missile attacks inside Pakistan on Friday, killing 22 people, reportedly women and children among them. The attacks drew criticism from Pakistani officials at the weekend.

Pakistani president, Asif Zardari, told the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, that the strikes "do not help the war on terror". According to reports, he also warned her that "these attacks can affect Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terror".

A foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq, said: "With the advent of the new US administration, it is Pakistan's sincere hope that the United States will review its policy and adopt a more holistic and integrated approach towards dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism. We maintain that these [missile] attacks are counter-productive and should be discontinued."

Biden, in an interview with CBS news, defended the strikes, saying that Obama had repeatedly said on the campaign trail he would not hesitate to strike against any high-level al-Qaida targets. He suggested cooperation between the US and Pakistani counter-terrorist agencies would increase, with more US training for their Pakistani counterparts.

Over the last year, there have been at least 30 US missile attacks on Pakistan's wild tribal area, which is used as a haven for insurgents fighting international troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, condemned a separate US operation within Afghanistan that he said killed 16 Afghan civilians, prompting hundreds of villagers to demonstrate against the American military.

The US said the raid, on Saturday in Laghman province, killed 15 armed militants, including a woman with an RPG. But Afghan officials said they killed civilians, including two women and three children. In Laghman's capital, hundreds of protesters demanded an end to overnight raids.

Karzai warned the killing of innocent Afghans during US military operations "is strengthening the terrorists". He also announced that his government had sent Washington a draft agreement that seeks to give Afghanistan more oversight over US military operations. The document has also been sent to Nato headquarters.

The death toll on both the Pakistan borders and within Afghanistan has caused widespread public anger, with resentment directed at the US, as well as the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments.

"It undermines the position of the government, its ability to negotiate [a peace deal] with the militants when the Taliban can say: 'You're not even master in your own house,'" said Ayaz Amir, a newspaper columnist and an opposition member of Pakistan's parliament. "It undercuts the credibility of a government, whose credibility is already low."

Some of the strikes in Pakistan have killed senior al-Qaida militants but they tend to live with local families in the tribal area, making civilian casualties inevitable - which are then used by the Taliban as a recruitment tool.

Rustam Shah Mohmand, an analyst who was formerly Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, said that Pakistan had leverage it could use, by stopping supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan to pass through its territory or threatening to withdraw the Pakistani forces deployed along the Afghan border."

"If anything, the policy [of missile strikes] is going to be more focused, more aggressive, under Obama. There is going to be a 'surge' in Afghanistan," said Mohmand. "The Americans can't wage this war without Pakistan's assistance."

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/24/pakistan-barack-obama-air-strike

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009

Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.

Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the "war on terror" policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said "the time is right" to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.

Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.

The US missiles were fired by unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, to launch attacks.

The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.

The first attack yesterday was on the village of Zharki, in Waziristan; three missiles destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters of phonethat of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people.

The Pakistan government publicly expressed hope that the arrival of Obama would see a halt to such strikes, which stir up hostility from Pakistanis towards the government; in private, the government may be more relaxed about such attacks.

There is a lot of nervousness in the new administration about the fragility of Pakistan, particularly as it has nuclear weapons, but it also sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being linked. In the face of a Taliban resurgence, there is despair in Washington over the leadership of the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, and there will not be much disappointment if he is replaced in elections later this year.

But Washington insists on seeing as one of its biggest problems the ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida to maintain havens in Pakistan. Obama on Thursday announced he was making veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke by phone to the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari.

Press Secretary won't discuss alleged US strikes

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/White_House_press_briefing_0123.html

White House Press Secretary won't discuss alleged US strikes in Pakistan
David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Friday January 23, 2009

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' second White House press briefing started with a series of questions on economics and the stimulus package, but it wasn't long before a reporter asked about alleged US missile strikes in Pakistan which reportedly killed 15 early Friday morning.

But Gibbs refused to answer the question by NBC News' Chuck Todd, saying, "I'm not going to get into this matter."

After Fox News' Major Garrett joined the slight fray that erupted over the non-answer, asking if he considered whether there was "justifiable curiosity about the president's first military actions."

"There are many things that you should be justifiably curious about," Gibbs responded, perhaps taking a knock at Fox News in general, "but I'm not gonna get into talking about this."

"If other members of the US government are confirming this, why is it that you can't?" Todd wanted to know.

"I'm not going to get into these matters," Gibbs said with a smile.

Afterward, other reporters went back to the economy and didn't press Gibbs for more details about what could be the first military operation conducted during the Obama Administration.

At least seven people were killed, most of them foreigners, in a suspected US missile strike in northwest Pakistan, bringing to 15 the number killed in such attacks on Friday, officials said.

"Two missiles fired by a suspected US drone hit a house in Wana," a senior security official told AFP, referring to the main town in South Waziristan district and a known hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.

It was the second suspected US missile attack in northwest Pakistan on Friday, just hours after eight people were killed in North Waziristan.

Friday's suspected US missile strikes were the first since US President Barack Obama took office in Washington and came one day after he appointed veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Inside The LC: Part V

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr97.html

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
Part V
June 6, 2008

"Call them freaks, the underground, the counter-culture, flower children or hippies – they are all loose labels for the youth culture of the 60s …"
Barry Miles, author of Hippie

“This is how I remember my life. Other folks may not have the same memories, even though we might have shared some of the same experiences.”

So begins David Crosby’s autobiography, Long Time Gone (co-written by Carl Gottlieb). As it turns out, quite a few other folks seem to remember some people in Crosby’s life who are all but ignored in the lengthy book. The names are casually dropped only once, and not by Crosby but rather in a quote from manager Jim Dickson in which he describes the scene at the Sunset Strip clubs when The Byrds played: “We had them all. We had Jack Nicholson dancing, we had Peter Fonda dancing with Odetta, we had Vito and his Freakers.”

Following that brief mention by Dickson, Gottlieb briefly explains to readers that, “Vito and his Freakers were an acid-drenched extended family of brain-damaged cohabitants.” And that, in an incredibly self-indulgent 489-page tome, is the only mention you will find of “Vito and his Freakers” – despite the fact that, by just about all other accounts, the group dismissed as “brain-damaged cohabitants” played a key role in the early success of Crosby’s band. And the early success of Arthur Lee’s band. And the early success of Frank Zappa’s band. And the early success of Jim Morrison’s band. But especially in the early success of David Crosby’s band.

As Barry Miles noted in his biography of Frank Zappa, “The Byrds were closely associated with Vito and the Freaks: Vito Paulekas, his wife Zsou and Karl Franzoni, the leaders of a group of about 35 dancers whose antics enlivened the Byrds early gigs.” In Waiting for the Sun, Barney Hoskyns writes that the early success of The Byrds and other bands was due in no small part to “the roving troupe of self-styled ‘freaks’ led by ancient beatnik Vito Paulekas and his trusty, lusty sidekick Carl Franzoni.” Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer, former drummer and keyboardist for the band Love, went further still, claiming that Vito actually “got the Byrds together, as I remember – they did a lot of rehearsing at his pad.”

And according to various other accounts, The Byrds did indeed utilize Vito’s ‘pad’ as a rehearsal studio, as did Arthur Lee’s band. More importantly, the Freaks drew the crowds into the clubs to see the fledgling bands perform. But as important as their contribution was to helping launch the careers of the Laurel Canyon bands, “Vito and his Freakers” were notable for something else as well; according to Barry Miles, writing in his book Hippie, “The first hippies in Hollywood, perhaps the first hippies anywhere, were Vito, his wife Zsou, Captain Fuck and their group of about thirty-five dancers. Calling themselves Freaks, they lived a semi-communal life and engaged in sex orgies and free-form dancing whenever they could.”

Vito the Magnificent, King of the Hippies (from Mondo Hollywood)

Some of those who were on the scene at the time agree with Miles’ assessment that Vito and his troupe were indeed the very first hippies. Arthur Lee, for example, boasted that they “started the whole hippie thing: Vito, Karl, Szou, Beatle Bob, Bryan and me.” One of David Crosby’s fellow Byrds, Chris Hillman, also credited the strange group with being at the forefront of the hippie movement: “Carl and all those guys were way ahead of everyone on hippiedom fashion.” Ray Manzarek of The Doors remembered them as well: “There were these guys named Carl and Vito who had a dance troupe of gypsy freaks. They were let in for free, because they were these quintessential hippies, which was great for tourists.”

If these folks really were the very first hippies, the first riders of that ‘counter-cultural’ wave, then we should probably try to get to know them. As it turns out, however, that is not such an easy thing to do. Most accounts – and there aren’t all that many – offer little more than a few first names, with no consensus agreement on how those first names are even spelled (“Karl” and “Carl” appear interchangeably, as do “Szou” and “Zsou,” and “Godot” and “Godo”). But for you, dear readers – because I apparently have way too much time on my hands – I have gone the extra mile and sifted through the detritus to dig up at least some of the sordid details.

By all accounts the troupe was led by one Vito Paulekas, whose full name is said to have been Vitautus Alphonsus Paulekas. Born the son of a Lithuanian sausage-maker circa 1912, Vito hailed from Lowell, Massachusetts. From a young age, he developed a habit of running afoul of the law. According to Miles, he spent a year-and-a-half in a reformatory as a teenager and “was busted several times after that.” In 1938, he was convicted of armed robbery and handed a 25-year sentence following a botched attempt at holding up a movie theater. By 1942, however, just four years later, he had been released into the custody, so to speak, of the US Merchant Marine (a branch of the US Navy during wartime), ostensibly to escort ships running lend-lease missions.

"Carl Franzoni, described by Pamela DesBarres as "an intensely unappealing guy" (from The Hippie Revolution)"

Following his release from the service, circa 1946, Vito arrived in Los Angeles. What he did for the next fifteen years or so is anyone’s guess; there is virtually no mention of those years in any of the accounts I have stumbled across. What is known is that by the early 1960s, Vito was ensconced in an unassuming building at the corner of Laurel Avenue and Beverly Boulevard, just below the mouth of Laurel Canyon (and very near Jay Sebring’s hair salon). At street level was his young wife Szou’s clothing boutique, which has been credited by some of those making the scene in those days with being the very first to introduce ‘hippie’ fashions. Upstairs was the living quarters for Vito, Szou and their young son, Godot. Downstairs was what was known as the “Vito Clay” studio, where, according to Miles and various others, Paulekas “made a living of sorts by giving clay modeling lessons to Beverly Hills matrons who found the atmosphere in his studio exciting.”

According to most accounts, it wasn’t really the Mayan-tomb decor of the studio that many of the matrons found so exciting, but rather Vito’s reportedly insatiable sexual appetite and John Holmesian physique. In any event, Vito’s students also apparently included such Hollywood luminaries as Jonathon Winters, Mickey Rooney and Steve Allen. Nevertheless, though Paulekas claimed to be a serious artist (a painter, poet, dancer and photographer, in addition to a sculptor), there is scant evidence that I have seen that supports such claims (I am not, however, the most objective of art critics, as I am, as best I can determine, apparently not cultured enough to ‘get’ the majority of what passes for art).

As for his erstwhile sidekick, Carl Orestes Franzoni, he has claimed in interviews that his “mother was a countess” and his father “was a stone carver from Rutland, Vermont. The family was brought from Italy, from the quarries in the northern part of Italy, to cut the stone for the monuments of the United States.” That would make his father, I’m guessing here, someone of some importance in the Mason community, if Carl is to be believed. By Franzoni’s own account, he grew up as something of a young hoodlum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later went into business with some shady Sicilian characters selling mail-order breast and penis pumps out of an address on LA’s fabled Melrose Avenue. As Franzoni remembered it, his business “partner’s name was Scallacci, Joe Scallacci – the same name as the famous murderer Scallacci. Probably from the same family.” Probably so.

Franzoni, born circa 1934, hooked up with the older Paulekas sometime around 1963 and soon after became his constant sidekick. As previously mentioned, the group also included Vito’s wife Szou, an ex-cheerleader who had hooked up with Paulekas when she was just sixteen and he was already in his fifties. Also in the troupe was a young Rory Flynn (Errol Flynn’s statuesque daughter), a bizarre character named Ricky Applebaum who had half a moustache on one side of his face and half a beard on the other, most of the young girls who would later become part of Frank Zappa’s GTO project, and a lot of other oddball characters who donned ridiculous pseudonyms like Linda Bopp, Butchie, Beatle Bob, Emerald, and Karen Yum Yum.

Also flitting about the periphery of the dance troupe were a young Gail Sloatman (the future Mrs. Zappa, for those who have already forgotten) and a curious character on the LA music scene by the name of Kim Fowley. The two were, for a time, closely allied, and even cut a record together as “Bunny and the Bear” that Fowley produced (“America’s Sweethearts”). In 1966, Fowley produced a record for Vito as well, billed as “Vito and the Hands.” The 7” single, “Where It’s At,” which featured the musicianship of some of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, came no closer to entering the charts than did Fowley and Sloatman’s effort. Sloatman, by the way, soon found work as an assistant and booking agent for Elmer Valentine, who we will meet shortly.

Fowley, as with so many other characters in this story, has a rather interesting history. He was born in 1939, the son of actor Douglas Fowley, a WWII Navy veteran and attendee of St. Francis Xavier Military Academy. According to the younger Fowley’s account, he was initially abandoned to a foster home but later taken back and raised by his father. He grew up in upscale Malibu, California, where he shared his childhood home with “a bunch of actors and guys from the Navy.” At the age of six-and-a-half, Fowley had an unusual experience that he later shared with author Michael Walker: dressed up in a sailor suit by his dad and his Navy buddies, he was taken “to a photographer named William, who took a picture of me in the sailor suit. His studio was next door to the Canyon [Country] Store.” Right after that, he was driven down Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the near-mythical Schwabs Drugstore, where “everybody cheered and two chorus girls grabbed my six-year-old cock and balls and stuck a candy cigarette in my mouth.”

Nice story, Mr. Fowley. Thanks for sharing.

It’s probably safe to assume that childhood experiences such as that helped to prepare Fowley for his later employment as a young male street hustler, a profession that he practiced on the seedy streets of the city of angels (by Fowley’s own account, I should probably add here, just as it was James Dean himself who claimed to have worked those same streets with Nick Adams). Following that, Fowley spent some time serving with the Army National Guard, after which he devoted his life to working in the LA music industry as a musician, writer and producer – as well as, according to some accounts, a master manipulator.

Around 1957, Fowley played in a band known as the Sleepwalkers, alongside future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston. At times, a diminutive young guitarist named Phil Spector – who had moved out to LA with his mother not too many years earlier, following the suicide of his father when Phil was just nine – sat in with the group. During the 1960s, Fowley was best known for producing such ridiculous yet beloved novelty songs as the Hollywood Argyles’ “Alley Oop” and the Rivington’s “Papa Oom-Mow-Mow,” though he also did more respectable work, such as collaborating on some Byrds’ tracks and having some of his original songs covered by both the Beach Boys and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

In 1975, Fowley had perhaps his greatest success when he created the Runaways, further lowering the bar that Frank Zappa had already set rather low some years earlier when he had created and recorded the GTOs. The Runaways featured underage versions of Joan Jett and Lita Ford, whom Fowley tastefully attired in leather and lingerie. As he would later boast, “Everyone loved the idea of 16-year-old girls playing guitars and singing about fucking.” Especially, I would imagine, their mothers and fathers. Some of the young girls in the band, including Cherie Curry, would later accuse Fowley of requiring them to perform sexual services for he and his associates as a prerequisite for membership in the group.

Prior to assembling the Runaways, one of Fowley’s proudest accomplishments had been producing the 1969 album “I’m Back and I’m Proud” by rockabilly pioneer Gene Vincent, featuring backing vocals by Canyonite Linda Ronstadt. Just two years later, Vincent – a Navy veteran raised in that penultimate Navy town, Norfolk, Virginia – permanently checked out of the Hotel California on October 12, 1971 (there’s that date again), due reportedly to a ruptured stomach ulcer. Not long before his death, Vincent had been on tour in the UK, but he had hastily returned to the US due to pressure from, among others, promoter Don Arden. Known none-too-affectionately as the “Al Capone of Pop,” Arden had a penchant for guns and violence and he was known to openly boast of his affiliation with powerful organized crime figures. In addition to being a business partner of the equally nefarious Michael Jeffery, Arden was also the father of Sharon Osbourne and the former manager of her husband’s band, Black Sabbath … but here I have surely digressed, so let’s try to bring this back around to where we left off.

One other accomplishment of Fowley’s bears mentioning here: he received a guest vocalist credit on the Mothers of Invention album “Freak Out,” as did both Vito Paulekas and his sidekick, Carl Franzoni, to whom the song “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” was dedicated (some sources claim that Bobby Beausoleil also provided guest vocals on Zappa’s debut album, though his name does not appear in the album’s credits).

By at least as early as 1962, not long before Carl Franzoni joined the group, the Freak troupe was already hitting the clubs a couple nights each week to refine their unique style of dance (perhaps best described as an epileptic seizure set to music) and show off their distinctively unappealing, though soon to be quite popular, fashion sense. In those early days, they danced to local black R&B bands and to a band out of Fresno known as the Gauchos, in dives far removed from the fabled Sunset Strip – because, Franzoni has said, “There were no white bands [in LA] yet,” and “There were no clubs on Sunset Boulevard.”

That, of course, was all about to quickly change. As if by magic, new clubs began to spring up along the legendary Sunset Strip beginning around 1964, and old clubs considered to be long past their prime miraculously reemerged. In January 1964, a young Chicago vice cop named Elmer Valentine opened the doors to the now world-famous Whisky-A-Go-Go nightclub. Just over a year later, in spring of 1965, he opened a second soon-to-be-wildly-popular club, The Trip. Not long before that, near the end of 1964, the legendary Ciro’s nightclub began undergoing extensive renovations. Opened in 1940 by Billy Wilkerson, an associate of Bugsy Siegel, the upscale club had flourished for the first twenty years of its existence, with a clientele that regularly included Hollywood royalty and organized crime figures. By the early 1960s though the Strip was dead, and the once prestigious club had gone to seed.

Ciro’s reopened in early 1965, just before The Trip opened its doors and just in time, as it turns out, to host the very first club appearance by the musical act that was about to become the first Laurel Canyon band to commit a song to vinyl: The Byrds. By 1967, Gazzaris had opened up on the Strip as well, and in the early 1970s Valentine would open yet another club that endures to this day, The Roxy. Smaller clubs like the London Fog, where The Doors got their first booking as the house band in early 1966, opened their doors to the public in the mid 1960s as well.

The timing of the opening of Valentine’s first two clubs, and the reopening of Ciro’s, could not have been any more fortuitous. The paint was barely dry on the walls of the new clubs when bands like Love and The Doors and The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and the Turtles and the Mothers and the Lovin’ Spoonful came knocking. The problem, however, was that the new clubs were not yet well known, Ciro’s had been long left for dead, and nobody had the slightest idea who any of these newfangled bands were. What was needed then was a way to create a buzz around the clubs that would draw people in and kick-start the Strip back to life, as well as, of course, launch the careers of the new bands.

The bands themselves could not be expected to fill the new clubs, since, besides being unknown, they also – and yeah, I know that you don’t really want to hear this and I will undoubtedly be deluged with letters of complaint, but I’m going to say it anyway – weren’t very good, at least not in their live incarnations. To be sure, they sounded great on vinyl, but that was largely due to the fact that the band members themselves didn’t actually play on their records (at least not in the early days), and the rich vocal harmonies that were a trademark of the ‘Laurel Canyon sound’ were created in the studio with a good deal of multi-tracking and overdubs. On stage, it was another matter entirely.

Enter then the wildly flamboyant and colorful Freak squad, who were one key component of the strategy that was devised to lure patrons into the clubs (the other component of the strategy, hinted at in one of the quotes near the top of this post, will be covered in installment #7). Vito and Carl’s dancers were a fixture on the Sunset Strip scene from the very moment that the new clubs opened their doors to the public, and they were, by all accounts, treated like royalty by the club owners. As John Hartmann, proprietor of the Kaleidoscope Club, acknowledged, he “would let Vito and his dancers into the Kaleidoscope free every week because they attracted people. They were really hippies, and so we had to have them. They got in free pretty much everywhere they went. They blessed your joint. They validated you. If they’re the essence of hippiedom and you’re trying to be a hippie nightclub, you need hippies.”

As the aforementioned Kim Fowley put it, with characteristic bluntness, “A band didn’t have to be good, as long as the dancers were there.” Indeed, the band was largely irrelevant, other than to provide some semblance of a soundtrack for the real show, which was taking place on the dance floor. Gail Zappa candidly admitted that, even at her husband’s shows, the real attraction was not on the stage: “The customers came to see the freaks dance. Nobody ever talks about that, but that was the case.” Frank added that, “As soon as they arrived they would make things happen, because they were dancing in a way nobody had seen before, screaming and yelling out on the floor and doing all kinds of weird things. They were dressed in a way that nobody could believe, and they gave life to everything that was going on.”

For reasons that clearly had more to do with boosting attendance at the clubs than with any actual talents displayed by the group, Vito and Carl seem to have become minor media darlings over the course of the 1960s and into the 1970s. The two can be seen, separately and together, in a string of cheap exploitation films, including Mondo Bizarro from 1966, Something’s Happening (aka The Hippie Revolt) from 1967, the notorious Mondo Hollywood, also released in 1967, and You Are What You Eat, with David Crosby, Frank Zappa and Tiny Tim, which hit theaters in 1968. In 1972, Vito made his acting debut in a non-documentary film, The White Horse Gang.

Paulekas reportedly also popped up on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life, and Franzoni made an appearance on a 1968 Dick Clark TV special. The golden child, Godot Paulekas, was featured in a photo in Life magazine circa 1966, and the whole troupe showed up for an appearance on the Tonight Show. According to Barry Miles, Vito also “appeared regularly on the Joe Pyne Show and in between the bare-breasted girls in the late fifties and early sixties men’s magazines.”

Joe Pyne, for those of you too young to remember (myself included), is the guy that we have to thank for paving the way for the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Don Imus, Morton Downey, Jr., Jerry Springer and Wally George. For Mr. Pyne, you see, was the guy who pioneered the confrontational interview style favored by so many gasbags today. The decorated Marine Corps veteran debuted as a talk-radio host in 1950 and quickly became known for insulting and demeaning anyone who dared to disagree with him, guests and listeners alike. In 1957, he moved his show to LA, and by 1965, he was nationally syndicated both on the radio and on television. His favored targets, as you may have guessed, included hippies, feminists, gays, and anti-war activists, and his interviews frequently ended with his guest either walking off or being thrown off the stage. Nearing the peak of his popularity, Pyne died on March 23, 1970 at the age of forty-five, reportedly of lung cancer. His ideological offspring, however, live on.

To Be Continued …

World's Elite Visit Davos in Doubt

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123291975787013521.html

JANUARY 26, 2009
World's Elite Visit Davos in Doubt
Leaders, CEOs Seek New Model at Forum, as IMF Prepares to Lower Growth Forecast
By MARC CHAMPION

In the 38 years that business and political leaders have been trekking to the Swiss ski resort of Davos to talk about the world economy, the outlook hasn't been bleaker or global capitalism more racked with self-doubt.

Forty heads of state -- compared with 27 last year -- have signed up to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum that begins Tuesday evening with two questions dominating: Just how bad will this global recession get? And what will provide the growth needed to end it?

The International Monetary Fund is recalculating its estimate of global growth and on Wednesday is likely to lower it to less than 1%, similar to what the World Bank estimated last month, according to people familiar with the IMF calculations. The IMF is refining its estimates in light of lower-than-anticipated growth figures last week from China.

"Why are we surprised all the time, almost weekly" by bad financial news, said Victor Halberstadt, professor of economics at Leiden University in the Netherlands and a veteran of the Davos event. "Do we really understand too little about the economy? I'm afraid the answer may be 'yes,' and that is why policy makers are going to Davos."

Davos could mark an opportunity to seek a new economic model, he and others say. "Everyone is at a loss, this is the start of a period of huge improvisation. There is no longer any best practice around to refer to," Mr. Halberstadt says.

Over the years, Davos has become as much a marketing event, where companies look for business and polish images, as the intimate brainstorming venue of the event's early years, when a few hundred executives attended.

The five-day confab, which has signed up about 2,500 participants, will be a more sober affair than usual, organizers say. There are fewer gimmicks -- such as scents pumped into session rooms last year by a high-profile perfumer -- fewer movie stars have been invited, and fewer lavish parties are being thrown by governments and companies. Goldman Sachs won't be holding its usual party this year. "In the current environment, we didn't think it was appropriate," says spokesman Lucas van Praag.

Still, more than 1,400 chief executives and chairmen of companies are making the trip despite the deep slump in corporate revenues and stock markets.

And Davos doesn't come cheap. The annual corporate membership required in order to send executives costs 42,500 Swiss francs ($36,768), plus 18,000 francs to attend the meeting, not including accommodations, according to a Forum spokesman.

There have been gatherings during other economic crises, in the 1980s and 1990s, that seemed severe at the time. But none was so global or open-ended, says Klaus Schwab, who founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 and runs it through a nonprofit organization.

"This is absolutely new in Davos. The only parallel would be in 2002, where people were similarly concerned about terrorism," he says, referring to the Forum meeting that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.

This year, big government looks set to seize the Davos limelight from the banks, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds that attracted attention in recent years. The reason for this change, economists say, is simple: The taxpayer now holds what money and power remain in an ailing global economy. Many big banks are on government life support and even state-controlled sovereign wealth funds aren't offering capital to struggling Western corporations.

"This may be the first Davos where capitalism is widely viewed as a failure, rather than something to be admired," says Ethan Kapstein, professor of economics and political science at French business school Insead, who has been going to Davos since 1994.

In a sign of the times, many of the financial elite present at past sessions won't be coming this year. Richard Fuld Jr., former CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy in the fall, won't be back this year, according to the organizers. Nor will John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co., who was forced to resign by Merrill's new owner Bank of America last week. One point of contention was that he had scheduled a trip to Davos, even though Bank of America had signaled it wouldn't be a good idea for him to attend.

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs have chosen to stay home, though they will send other executives. Sir Win Bischoff, Citi's chairman, is scheduled to come, but was told last week he is being replaced at Citi by former Time Warner Inc. CEO Richard Parsons.

B. Ramalinga Raju, former chairman of India's Satyam Computer Services Ltd., was to have been on a panel this year at the Forum, but instead is in jail, arrested in connection with a massive fraud. One banker scheduled to attend, Edgar de Picciotto, chairman of Union Bancaire Privée, lost big -- to the tune of $700 million -- for clients by investing in Bernard Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.

The U.S. is likely to be the subject of finger-pointing at Davos, as the country where the global financial crisis started. It is also the focus of most hopes for recovery. Yet the Obama administration is planning to send just one official, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett, a longtime friend of President Barack Obama, is subbing for Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, and National Security Adviser James Jones, who are remaining in Washington "to advise the president on the near-term issues he must address," according to an administration official.

The headline governmental names this year instead come from emerging markets. China's premier, Wen Jiabao, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are to give speeches on Wednesday, at a time when their economies, too, are getting hit hard. Mr. Wen will be the first Chinese leader to go to Davos. The leaders of Japan, Germany and the U.K. speak later in the event.

"The capitalist myth is lovely and youthful. It kicked off the industrial revolution, but maybe we need a new one," says Richard Olivier, son of the late British actor Sir Laurence Olivier. Mr. Olivier, who owns a company that gives seminars, will give a dinner talk on business leadership at Davos, based on Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. The tale shows a heroic soldier turned bad, led to self-delusion by his own ambition and greed -- think Lehman Brothers, says Mr. Olivier.

German novelist Thomas Mann called Davos "the Magic Mountain" back when it was a center for tuberculosis cures. Whether people will find the medicine they are looking for at this meeting is doubtful. But Mr. Halberstadt believes it is a good sign politicians want to meet and talk informally at a moment when the globalized economy and its institutions will be under growing stress from protectionism and other threats, as governments respond to domestic pressures.

Amid the bad economic news, Mr. Schwab and others such as philanthropist and Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates will be pressing governments and CEOs to continue to address and fund other global challenges from climate change to dwindling water supplies to Third World disease. That, say Davos regulars, could prove to be a much tougher sell than a ticket to the Magic Mountain.

Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A6

Rabbit is gone: writer John Updike dies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/27/AR2009012701672.html

Rabbit is gone: writer John Updike dies
By Scott Malone
Reuters
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

BOSTON (Reuters) - John Updike, a leading writer of his generation who chronicled the drama of small-town American life with flowing and vivid prose, wit and a frank eye for sex, died on Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 76.

"It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning," said Nicholas Latimer of Alfred A. Knopf, a unit of Random House. "He was one of our greatest writers, and he will be sorely missed."

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author died in a hospice in Massachusetts, the state where he lived for more than half a century, prolific in his writing of novels, short stories, essays and criticism.

Updike's stories often focused on undercurrents of tension masked by the mundane surface of suburban America, which boomed in 1960s and 1970s as his career was taking off. Ripples of sexual tension were frequent.

An early short story, "A&P," chronicled an adolescent boy's inner turmoil when three bikini-clad teenage girls appeared in the supermarket where he worked.

"It's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach," Updike wrote, "and another thing in the cool of the A&P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor."

Updike's frank focus on sex came before the profound changes in U.S. culture of the late 1960s lifted some of the taboo from the topic. His publisher rewrote portions of his second novel, "Rabbit, Run," before its first printing out of fear of being charged with obscenity.

That novel introduced the fictional hero Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the subject of four Updike novels and a novella over four decades, which won him two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction.

'AMONG THE VERY BEST'

Updike was acclaimed nearly as much for his short stories, poetry and critical essays as for his 28 novels.

More than 800 Updike stories, reviews, poems and articles were published in The New Yorker magazine from 1954 through 2008. Many American readers strongly associated Updike with that publication.

"Even though his literary career transcended any magazine -- he was obviously among the very best writers in the world -- he still loved writing for this weekly magazine, loved being part of an enterprise that he joined when he was so young," said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.

"He was, for so long, the spirit of The New Yorker and it is very hard to imagine things without him."

William Pritchard, a professor of English at Amherst College who studied and knew Updike, said Updike stood out for his versatility -- writing fiction, nonfiction and verse.

"He stands, for me, at the very top of the practice of being a man of letters," Pritchard said. "Each activity was carried on with great intelligence and wit and love."

'MAKE EVERYTHING COUNT'

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike studied English at Harvard University, where he contributed to, and later edited, the satirical Harvard Lampoon magazine. After a year studying at Oxford, Updike moved to New York where he worked for two years on the New Yorker's staff.

In 1957 he moved his family to Ipswich, Massachusetts, a coastal town north of Boston, and later moved to nearby Beverly Farms.

A New England flavor features in Updike's 1984 novel "The Witches of Eastwick," set in a fictional Rhode Island town, which was made into a commercially successful 1987 film starring Jack Nicholson and Cher.

In a Reuters interview in 2005, he said his view of himself as a writer had changed in recent years as he produced an increasing volume of art and literary criticism and struggled with the short-story medium. When asked which genre he preferred, he paused.

"If I had been asked that 10 years ago I would have said short stories is where I feel most at home. I'm not sure I do feel totally at home any more, whether I have maybe written all my short stories," he said.

He was candid about the need to get writing published:

"I've become much more of a book reviewer and an art reviewer for that matter than I ever planned to. At least there is a comfort when you sit down to write one of these that you'll be sure that it will get printed and you'll get paid for it. It's not the case with a short story."

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York, Editing by Jason Szep and Frances Kerry)

Obama gets Mad mag treatment

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/01/obama_gets_mad_mag_treatment.html

Obama gets Mad mag treatment
Posted January 26, 2009
by Frank James

We all know that President Barack Obama has assumed the presidency at a time when that pressure cooker of a job is even more so right now because of the worst recession since the Great Depression and two foreign wars.

So Mad Magazine's new Obama cover spoofs the notion of the president's first 100 days but accelerates it to his first "100 minutes."

The caricature shows a completely stressed-out Obama puffing on several cancer sticks simultaneously as he holds his head in his hands. (That's what happens when the world knows your're a reformed smoker who admits to occasional lapses.) An open bottle of Pepto Bismol is on the desk, as is a bottle of Excedrin.

Meanwhile, splayed out on the desk before Obama are newspapers (including the Chicago Tribune!) with blaring headlines like "Automakers Broke!" "Taliban Threat!" and "Dow Crashes!"

The only thing the artist missed was the chance to take a swipe at the president for those those Alfred E. Newman ears of his. Talk about your low-hanging fruit.

Separately, Mad will have a lot fewer cracks at Obama. DC Comics, Mad's publisher, has announced that the magazine will be published on a quarterly basis instead of monthly, thanks to the economy and the advertising revenue woes afflicting the entire media industry.

Why An A**Hole is Always in Charge.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

New Links

Thanks to Rense.com, PrisonPlanet.com and others for the following:

http://www.net7technologies.com

Net 7 Security Switch

Most computer users leave their internet connection ON! Having an “Always On” internet connection is normal but it’s like leaving your front door wide open. Besides interrupting your normal work flow, Firewall and security software are only as good as the last update.

Net 7 Features

A simple ON / OFF internet connection
No software to load
No Firewall or Software update hassle
Small size sits next to your keyboard / monitor
Disconnects your Modem, Cable & Router
Disconnects your wireless access point
You “never need to turn off” your computer
Take control over your computer and security by locking out the internet connection on your terms. Don’t ever walk away from your computer and leave the internet access open when, with the simple push of a button, you can disconnect at will.

*

http://www.ibodstore.com

iBod Advanced Neurological Physiotherapy Kit for your iPod Shuffle

Featuring "OWN" Optimal Waveform Neuromodulation*

*Neuromodulation is the science of optimization of nervous system functions via application of idealized neuro-electrical harmonic tones.

You can optimize your mind and body with this digital iTunes recording of the precise waveform of a perfectly healthy and vigorous synaptic system -- as found in comparative studies of top-shape college athletes versus older and ill people who showed deformed syanaptic waves.

Download the tone, dock the booster, attach the sticky pads to your skin, and give your sore spots a gentle, pleasant, tingling sensation.

Reduce pain, accelerate healing, ease your stress, rejuvenate yourself...

The iBod docking Booster Unit and Sticky Pad Electrodes

REDUCED INTRODUCTORY PRICE! $99.00 for the complete iBod Kit.

*

http://ken.mtexpro.com/goland3/ppwl1

What Is OsoLean™ Powder?

Target Fat Loss

OsoLean™ powder is the shape of things to come! In a clinical study, this advanced protein peptide technology has been shown to enhance fat loss while maintaining lean muscle when combined with the OsoLean Plan™ and proper exercise.

OsoLean™ powder is a whey protein supplement containing whey protein, fat-loss peptides and calcium-rich minerals from milk.

Using a patented process, specific parts of whey protein, called peptides, are separated and concentrated to ensure the optimal level of fat-loss peptides.

*

https://www.checkoutmannatech.com/store.php

Experience complete wellness and share wellness solutions with others by learning more about Mannatech™'s new technologies.

*

http://www.mtexpro.com/

Grow Your Business!

Introducing the breakthrough system that makes sharing the Mannatech business opportunity and products a whole lot easier!

*

http://www.sustainlane.com/

Go Green @ SustainLane: People-Powered Sustainable Living Guide

The largest online resource for going green, with over 20000 product reviews, news, blogs, how-tos, local business and restaurant guides and more.

*

http://www.topsecrettaxsavings.com/

How Much Longer Do You Want to Overpay your taxes?

Sign up to receive a free copy of my Tax Secrets of the Rich special report right now. Inside you will learn the tried and true methods used by the wealthiest people in the country to slash their taxes to the absolute minimum. Because it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.

Drew Miles, J.D.
The Tax Savings Attorney™

*

http://www.dimensionalconsciousness.com/

Awakening Dimensional Consciousness...

You have just discovered the greatest secret in the world.

The path to the mysteries of the Universe, to awakening, is a personal one. In the end, it is your journey. Only your steps can take you there. Yet, for every journey there are guides, maps and tools to overcome obstacles in your way. To reach your destination.

Here you will find... Mystical knowledge, specialized tools without equal, and cutting-edge techniques so profoundly powerful, yet simple to do, there is only one thing to ask yourself...

*

http://www.usgrantguide.org

Get Your Government Grant

Learn How I Got a Free $13,000 Financial Aid Check From the US Government

*

http://www.fusionfall.com

FusionFall: The Cartoon Network Universe

*

http://www.cheetos.com

Cheeto: Home of America's greatest snack food

*

http://reservations.northstarattahoe.com/

Lake Tahoe Hotels - Winter Condominiums, Hotel Style Rooms, and Condos, directory of hotels in Lake Tahoe.

*

http://www.askheritage.org/

The Heritage Foundation: In case you aren't getting enough of the opinions of Rush Limbaugh & Sean Hannity already...

*

And here's some sites for casinos in Konformist Headquarters Las Vegas:

http://www.stationsportsconnection.com

Station Casinos Sports Connection
Bet Better. Bet Faster.

http://www.circuscircus.com
Circus Circus
Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

https://www.redrocklasvegas.com
Red Rock - Casino * Resort * Spa

Eva Mendes for PETA

The Nutrasweet Equalstika

Beast of the Month - November 2008

Beast of the Month - November 2008
Sarah Palin
Republican VP Candidate

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"Oh! Oh! Remember the time he picked Sarah Palin? I totally get it now! She's totally unqualified, and he's so old! There's a really good chance she'd be president!"
Stephen Colbert on John McCain's wacky sense of humor

Well, the 2008 election is over, and, for the first time in twelve years, George W. Bush didn't steal it. This, of course, is worthy of celebration, although the celebration so far seems misguided, misguided in a way that seems by design.

The korporate media, which has shilled for Barack Obama shamelessly throughout the campaign, went into overdrive, declaring the election was confirmation of what an amazing and transformational figure he was. Oh, and by the way, did we mention he was black? The two lessons of the election, therefore, were that Obama is totally rad and America is no longer racist (the only reason anyone could possibly be opposed to someone as awesome as Barack Obama.)

It's curious that while the establishment media was so quick to give Obama all the credit for the victory, they failed to point (and give) the finger to the one person who deserves credit for John McCain's loss: George W. Bush. After all, it is really Bush who loomed over the entire election like a frightening specter, and it is Bush who has given the entire GOP a deserved bad name. It is Bush and his disasters that turned both houses of Congress decidedly to the Democrats, and it is Bush in the end who convinced American voters to reject a fairly well-liked former Vietnam POW for an entity whose magnetic charisma couldn't cover how decidedly untrustworthy he is. The impossible hurdle facing McCain was hilariously spoofed on a Saturday Night Live guest-starring Will Ferrell as George W. Bush. Sounding like George Jr., Ferrell declared in a fake ad for McCain: "John was there for me ninety percent of the time over the last eight years. When you think of John McCain, think of me, George W. Bush. Think of this face. When you're in the voting booth, before you vote - picture this face right here. A vote for John McCain is a vote for George W. Bush. You're welcome." With that kind of background, a ham sandwich labeled "Democrat" would've been able to beat John McCain.

This, of course, is no mere trivial fact. If the election was a referendum on Bush and the last eight years, then that would mean the public was demanding economics that serve the middle class, working class and poor rather than mere crony capitalism and Wall Street bailouts, an end to the Iraq quagmire and a rejection of the militarism that has led to potential conflict with Pakistan, Iran and even both Russia and China, and an end to the massive criminality that has led to legalized torture and big brother snooping. If, on the other hand, the meaning of the election is that Barack Obama is just totally bitching, then nothing is demanded of him, indeed, everything is merely demanded of us, that we cry at his transcendental speeches and cheer him on in his sheer perfection.

Aside from George W. Bush, there's another dude who has evaded much of the blame for the loss in the election of John McCain: John McCain himself. From the start of the campaign, he appeared clueless, delusional and desperate, pathetically clinging to every right wing talking point to convince (unsuccessfully) the dwindling hardcore Republicans he was one of them. Meanwhile, he tied himself more closely to George W. Bush on Iraq than any other elected official alive, dooming him to be linked to that gigantic failure. And while the financial meltdown unraveled, all he could do was repeat the same old Republican mantras, mantras that only reminded the public that they've already had eight years too many of this crap. Still, when the election was all over, the korporate media felt sorry for the guy that, until he faced off against St. Obama, was one of their decided BFFs in the GOP. He wasn't so bad after all, they insisted, just a good man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The same couldn't be said about their treatment of Sarah Palin, The Konformist Beast of the Month, McCain's VP pick and the decided scapegoat of the 2008 election.

It didn't actually start out that way. When she was first announced as the pick by McCain, she became a populist sensation, a "hockey mom" turned Alaska governor who could match the celebrity cult devoted to Obama. It didn't hurt that "Caribou Barbie" was an attractive former beauty queen, looking MILFish with her trademark glasses and eerily similar to Tina Fey (something she would soon regret) or porn star Eva Angelina. Though there were nasty sneers about her in the establishment press from the start (for example, during the GOP convention, NBC blowhard Tom Brokaw could barely conceal his contempt for her) she gave an ass-kicking convention speech that cemented her popularity in the public, and suddenly, McCain passed Mr. Rock Star in the polls. This didn't appear to be a mere post-convention bounce, it appeared to be a game changer.

About right now, The Konformist should insert a little point: unlike most of the press which seemed stunned by her selection, we were indeed aware of her and not completely surprised. She was, after all, very attractive and charismatic, as well as the most popular governor in America according to public opinion polls. However, we pretty much dismissed her as a pick because, as any examination of her politics would reveal, she was a far right ideologue who, when exposed for what she was, would become quickly discredited, especially by a public with widespread loathing of the right wing policies of Bush, Cheney and co.

Tellingly, Obama didn't attack her on ideological lines. Instead, with his predictable level of smug arrogance (a decidedly notable trait of the guy) he mocked her as inexperienced, a curious claim from a dude with less than four years in the Senate and no record as either a mayor or governor. Why did Obama avoid pointing out that she was an ultra-right candidate? Perhaps because Obama's modus operandi is to evade all discussion of politics in politics, in hopes of reducing the campaign to a narcissistic cult of personality where issues are ignored.

What then followed from the Obamaheads were the predictable hack attacks, some laced with sexism in politics not seen since, well, since the Obamaheads went after Hillary. They were egged on by Obama himself, who took her now famous convention quote ("What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.") and declared about McCain-Palin less than a week after her speech: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig." The smirky comment echoed his not-so-subtle middle finger during a speech while referring to Hillary in the heat of the Democratic primary, or this comment from him about Ms. Clinton's political attacks: "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." (No reference to female biology in that statement whatsoever!) As with the Hillary comments (which, unlike the Palin dig, were basically ignored by the korporate media, as they were clearly mean-spirited if intentional) Obama would later insist the "lipstick on a pig" comment in no way referred to Palin. (As if somebody using the word "lipstick" in a political context less than a week after the GOP Convention could in any way be referring to her or her speech!) The Obamamaniacs followed in kind, and Palin became a point of almost obsessive derision, leading to charming things like Obama rallies where t-shirts declaring "SARAH PALIN IS A CUNT" were on open display. (Good thing "liberal" politics have removed sexism from the political debate!) Meanwhile, a West Hollywood Halloween display had a Palin effigy in a hangman's noose, something that probably would have been labeled slightly politically incorrect if it was Obama instead. But the multiple cases of sexist insults of Palin were pretty much downplayed by the korporate media, who instead focused on the theme that Sarah Palin and McCain voters were a bunch of racist, hate-filled inbreds.

Indeed, the mainstream press seemed to have a hard-on for destroying Palin from the start, mocking her credentials while latching on to news her seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant. The message behind these attacks: Palin was a cross-eyed hillbilly with a slut for a daughter who was unfit for office. Unfortunately for the korporate media, Palin-fever was so high after her convention speech, they toned down the criticisms.

This was merely a reprieve. As it turned out, Palin wasn't the big game-changer of the election, it was the financial crisis. As the economic downturn that hit Main Street suddenly swallowed Wall Street, derisions of Palin went into overdrive. The fixation of heaping hatred on Palin was so unhealthy, you'd think McCain's pick for VP had done something like shoot a friend in the face while drunk, or mastermind a pointlessly destructive war in the Middle East based on lies.

Okay, The Konformist no doubt knows what some readers are saying right now: this is the Beast of the Month prize here, you should be burying the bitch and not defending her. Fair enough. And we admit that many of the mockings of Palin were pretty damn funny, starting with the Stephen Colbert quote above. There's also this one from Matt Damon on Palin: "It's like a really bad Disney movie. The hockey mom, you know, 'Oh, I'm just a hockey mom.' And she's facing down President Putin... It's totally absurd..." (Personally, we think this is a pretty good movie pitch, and expect it to be in theaters in 2009, with Ice Cube in a supporting role as the goofy-but-lovable neighbor.) And then there's the increasingly hysterical performances by Tina Fey on SNL as Palin, performances that were so effective in mockery they pretty much trashed Palin's chances as a viable political candidate. Even a good-sport guest appearance on SNL by Palin couldn't stop the damage that had been done.

Still, The Konformist is about honesty, especially when others are being dishonest. So granted, Palin may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but for a party that has had Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle and George W. Bush as previous top two figureheads, is she really at the bottom of the curve? Sure, she looked bad in her interview with Katie Couric (so mock-worthy that Fey and SNL satirized her without changing her many bungled quotes) but did Couric suddenly get street-cred as a legitimate journalist by doing what was essentially a calculated smear job?

Let's compare Palin's treatment to her competitor in the VP contest, Joe Biden, a guy considered to be one of the more intelligent fellows in the Senate. Despite the gravitas he is given for his vast knowledge base, Biden is also known to be a virtual gaffe machine. Probably his most embarrassing one on the campaign trail this fall was declaring "the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs." This gaffe was given a few chuckles in the mainstream press, but no doubt if Palin said the same, it would've turned into "Potatoe-gate II" by the media.

Here's something to give a clue how rigged the game was: a list (courtesy of the No Quarter Blog) of the questions asked by another anchor, ABC's Charlie Gibson, to both Barack Obama (after securing the Democratic nomination) and Sarah Palin:

Obama interview:

* How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?

* How does it feel to "win"?

* How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?

* Who will be your VP?

* Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?

* Will you accept public finance?

* What issues is your campaign about?

* Will you visit Iraq?

* Will you debate McCain at a town hall?

* What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?


Palin interview:

* Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?

* Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?

* Questions about foreign policy:

-territorial integrity of Georgia

-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO

-NATO treaty

-Iranian nuclear threat

-what to do if Israel attacks Iran

-Al Qaeda motivations

-the Bush Doctrine

-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan

* Is America fighting a holy war?


Meanwhile, here's a good case against Ms. Palin that could've been presented, but was mainly ignored:

* SHE'S A RIGHT-WING HARDCORE CHRISTIAN: Thanks to George W. Bush, the ultra-right fundamentalist movement is in shambles, and John McCain has almost no influence among them. Palin is the best hope for the "Moral Majority" crowd to remain a powerful voting bloc, rather than become increasingly marginalized and disappear as a force in the political arena altogether.

* SHE'S A BIG PUSSY: Despite being a major media sensation, the McCain campaign was notoriously paranoid about letting her do anything crazy, like, say, speaking to the press. Her only encounters with the media were her VP debate with Joe Biden, and her interviews with Gibson and Couric. (Sorry, Sean Hannity, your softball interview doesn't count.) She didn't hold a single press conference during her campaign. What, is Palin trying to hide that she's secretly an idiot or something?

* HER CLAIM TO BE A FISCAL CONSERVATIVE IS A CROCK: Despite her far right leanings, her boast of being opposed to "big government" is, like it was for Reagan and Shrub, a lie. Under her six-year reign as Mayor of Wasilla, the city's debt grew from $1 million to $25 million (which for a city of 7,000 residents equals an extra $3,500 debt per capita) despite receiving an extra $27 million in federal funds. The city's budget grew 55% during her reign, while taxes increased by 43%, fueled by a 0.5 percent sales tax increase she personally pushed for. As Alaska governor, her 2007 operating budget was a record $6.6 billion, and in 2008 it went up to $11 billion, a 67 percent increase. When she ran for governor, she supported funding the now infamous Gravina Island Bridge, known as the "Bridge to Nowhere" thanks to its dubious merits, for which Alaska received $442 million. As governor, she cancelled the project but kept the money. Later, during the GOP, she disingenuously claimed she said "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere."

* SHE'S A WANNABE BOOK BANNER: This was such a widespread email rumor, it was even featured on the urban legends website Snopes.com. The korporate media, while quick to hack attack her throughout the campaign, were just as quick to dismiss this, even though the facts tell another tale. Here's the story: as a Wasilla city councilwoman, Palin had a hissy fit over the gay-friendly children's book Daddy's Roommate being in the public library. (Curiously, there's no word on her opinion about Heather Has Two Mommies.) When elected mayor, Palin asked Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons on multiple times if she would okay censoring library books with "objectionable" content if asked to. Emmons told her she wouldn't do this: Palin would fire her from the job in January 1997, claiming Emmons didn't give "full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla." She reversed herself the following day after a huge public outcry. So the scoreboard reads as thus: Sarah Palin isn't a book banner, she's merely someone who was interested in banning books, then tried to fire someone opposed to such a move. There, doesn't that make you feel better about her?

* SHE'S FOR A BIG SISTER POLICE STATE: The book-banning is merely part of a bigger issue of a woman who is a petty tyrant and authoritarian. Besides the Wasilla librarian, Palin successfully fired the police chief and the museum director and forced out two others out as mayor. As governor, she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in what appears to be a vendetta over an ex-brother-in-law. In another political feud while she was Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Chairwoman, she hacked into the computer of a fellow commissioner (a Republican, no less) to obtain evidence of wrongdoing. Add to this her GOP convention dismissal of opposition to abuse and torture of prisoners coming from Democrats like Obama who are "worried that someone won't read them their rights." The pattern emerging is of a woman who believes she is above the law and enjoys destroying her political opponents. Writer Naomi Wolf, who has increasingly warned of the rise of fascism in America, has concluded "Palin Power" is merely a Rove-ian push for a continued Bush-Cheney police state.


Instead of all this, we got the equivalent of "You might be a redneck" jokes.

Why the crude insults of Palin? Certainly a lot of this involves the Obama cult worship which seems to be centered in the mainstream press. If a ham sandwich could beat a Republican thanks to Bush, anyone who gets in the way of Barky becoming prez would be thrashed by the establishment media as well. And it doesn't hurt that Palin is pure white trash, the only racial group that can be mocked without it being labeled politically incorrect.

But perhaps the bigger reason for the hack attacks on Palin has to do with something bigger, namely the Wall Street bailout. This was, after all, the turning point in the election when the cheering for Obama and the scorn of Palin went into hyperspace. This leads to a political fact that many progressives clinging to the Democratic Party must squirm over: though the bailout was proposed by the Bush Administration, it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who got it passed through Congress. Indeed, Barack Obama personally took the lead in pushing the bailout through Congress. Coincidentally, even though September was one the worst months in Wall Street history with job losses beginning to explode, it was the same month he raised a record $150 million, more than double his previous record of $66 million. One has to wonder where all this money came from at a time of economic crisis.

Meanwhile, it was the hardcore conservative Republicans who were most opposed to the bailout, albeit only for ideological "free market" reasons. It is this same group of GOPers that looked upon Palin as their answer to "Obama as a savior" in politics. Unfortunately for them, McCain had decided to support the bailout, and Caribou Barbie was forced to defend something completely inconsistent with her politics. (Perhaps that is why when defending the bailout she invariably looked her most clueless.) It is telling to note that after the Wall Street crisis dominated the news, conservative establishment hacks like George Will, David Brooks and David Frum joined the chorus calling Palin unfit and began to shill for Obama. Even a still-devoted neocon like Christopher Hitchens suddenly jumped on the Obama bandwagon. This leads to a simple question: did Colin Powell endorse Barack Obama because he was black (as Rush Limbaugh would froth) or because he knows a good fellow tool for Wall Street when he sees one?

The good news is Sarah Palin may be toast as a politician thanks to Obamamania. It appears Republican competitors are already joining in the backstabbing, as rumors (likely false, and likely spread by the Mitt Romney team desiring to take over the GOP) have been spread that Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. At least we hope she is toast, but concede that political memory is short and if Nixon could comeback in 1968, anything is possible. This is especially true since there are no real charismatic Republicans waiting in the wings with the star power Palin has. (And besides, after trashing Palin for two months, will the establishment media be able to pretend Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal - two GOP governors deemed to be strong competitors with almost identical ideological slants - are any different in politics than Palin in 2012?) The bad news is if she was destroyed, it was for the wrong reasons, the end result of the thorough takeover of the Democratic Party by Wall Street plutocrats.

In any case, we salute Sarah Palin as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Sarah!!!