Well if this banking and finance stuff is too hard to keep track of and you are interested in what’s really happening right now, watch this video. Its 30 minutes and plus it s cartoon. Kid safe and educational.

At the very least, watching this video will make you aware of why things are the way they are in the world currently. For me personally, I felt like this as I was watching the video.

It seems as if there is some anti mass media initiatives succeeding in Britain. This could be a backlash to the endemic surveillance and the “big Brother” type atmosphere in the UK.  The Facebook campaign started a backlash against the mass media driven choices for entertainment.

From the article:

Rage Against The Machine have sensationally outsold X Factor winner Joe McElderry to take the Christmas number one!

Thanks to a Facebook led campaign, the Los Angeles band’s 1992 anthem ‘Killing In The Name’ has secured the Yuletide top spot after shifting 502,000 downloads, according to the Official Charts Company.

Merry Christmas Rage!

In an explosive accusation out of Russia Today, a correspondent in Washington D.C. has claimed that after speaking to several intelligence officials in the U.S., that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated while exposing herself to supporters in December 2007, was a possible target of Dick Cheney’s personal “hit squad”?!?! Quoted from the article:

On Wednesday, Washington-based investigative journalist Wayne Madsen quoted US intelligence officials as making ‘prominent’ references to Bhutto as a probable target of the program.

“I spoke to several US intelligence officials who were telling me that this assassination team may have targeted politicians in other countries,” Madsen told Russia Today.

“One name mentioned prominently was former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who may have been a victim of this particular program.”

This new unspecified CIA program, which was hidden from Congress for 8 years, sounds like the resurrection of the Phoenix program from the Viet Nam war era. The Phoenix program was a U.S. government sanctioned covert effort in which elite military units working in conjunction with the CIA and a host of other intelligence agencies carried out assassinations and kidnappings targeting the neutralization of enemy leaders, infrastructure and informants.

I am reticent to publish anything on this blog without independent verification but the allegations are potentially catastrophic to the Bush administration, and they are just that, allegations. Having not fully comprehended the impact of  this pontification if this were ever reported in the mainstream press here in the U.S.– regardless, the insinuation is enough to be the “tipping point” that may get Cheney and friends prosecuted if this turns out to be factual.

Surely, the next stage of arguments will be that this program “kept America safe”, that is if the U.S. mass meddia ever reports the issue…

Click the link to the story along with a video news piece with the wild allegation…

I have sat back quietly and watched “Mr. Change” Barack Obama and its time to speak out. I think I have given Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt and now its time to comment.

Despite his initial speech to the world promising a new era of “Transparency” and open government, he has gone back on almost every single one of his promises and stances in his first 100 days in office. Its time to record some of this “Change” he has promised us.

Before you try to slam me or make assumptions about this post or this blog, go back into the archives and check out some of the criticism I’ve leveled at our last great president and his shining administration. At this point its not the false “right vs. left” argument thats distracting most of the people in this country, its really and issue of the Federal government vs. the American people.

So without further ado, lets see how the latest presidential administration is handling the new “Change” they been touting since last year. This latest report is brought to you by Rawstory.com.

According to Michael Isikoff on the Rachael Maddow show detailed a “secret meeting” between Obama and his closest officials and select members of Civil rights groups and the press. From the article:

The meeting was off the record, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported that Obama was “demonstrably not pleased” when told that he was “allowing President Bush’s policies to become his own.” Obama also “curtly” dismissed any suggestion of a truth commission or even a single symbolic torture prosecution.

At the same time, probably one of the least effective Congress’s in the history of our government voted 90-6 to pull any funding regarding the closure of  the U.S. run Guantanamo Bay gulag. Not only do we have a president that continues to carry on W’s policies, we have a more than ever complicit Congress just following along.

I dont know if this is the “change” I’ve been looking for…

KING: A lot of things to go into, Jesse. What do you make of the Cheney/Limbaugh?

VENTURA: I don’t have a lot of respect for Dick Cheney. Here’s a guy who got five deferments from the Vietnam War. Clearly, he’s a coward. He wouldn’t go when it was his time to go. And now he is a chicken hawk. Now he is this big tough guy who wants this hardcore policy. And he’s the guy that sanctioned all this torture by calling it enhanced interrogation.

KING: Do you think Rush Limbaugh’s a better Republican than Colin Powell?

VENTURA: No, not at all. In fact, if you compare the two, let’s look at Colin Powell, who’s a war hero, who strapped it on for his country, and didn’t run and hide.

KING: Twice.

VENTURA: And then you look at Dick Cheney who ran and hid. I have no respect for Dick Cheney. I have tremendous respect for General Powell.

I wonder how talking head Neocons like Ann Coulter will respond. Not only was he a badass Navy SEAL in Vietnam, he was a professional wrestler as well. I guess that rules out the “far left liberal wussy” card… On another note, Mr. Ventura puts his money where his mouth is because he no longer lives in the United States and apparently now resides in Mexico. Ventura for President!

Heres the video clip from the Larry King show just in case you missed it…

It looks like a great great time… and surprisingly, the police are present for the event but instead of beating and teargassing the party goers, they do what all cool cops should do and let the fun loving, peaceful people enjoy “the outdoors”.

Oh the many uses and even more joyful side effects of the wonder chemical/bio weapon known as Aspartame! Lets review the tumultuous history of this chemical concoction…

DECEMBER 1965
While working on an ulcer drug, a chemist at pharmaceutical manufacturer GD Searle accidentally discovers aspartame, a substance that is 180 times sweeter than sugar, yet has no calories.

AUTUMN 1967
GD Searle approaches eminent biochemist Dr Harry Waisman, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Joseph P Kennedy Jr Memorial Laboratory of Mental Retardation Research and a respected expert in the toxicity of phenylalanine (which comprises 50 per cent of the aspartame formula), to conduct a study of the effects of aspartame on primates. Of seven monkeys fed aspartame mixed with milk, one dies and five others have grand mal epileptic seizures.

SPRING 1971
Dr John Olney, professor of neuropathology and psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine, whose research into the neurotoxic food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical cousin of aspartame) was responsible for having it removed from baby foods, informs Searle that his studies show that aspartic acid, one of the main constituents of aspartame, causes holes in the brains of infant mice. One of Searle’s researchers, Ann Reynolds, confirms Olney’s findings in a similar study.

8 MARCH 1977
Searle hires prominent Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld as its new CEO to try to turn the beleaguered company around. A former member of Congress and defence secretary in the Ford administration, Rumsfeld brings several of his Washington colleagues in as top management.

JANUARY 1981
Rumsfeld states in a Searle sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld vows to ‘call in his markers’ and use political rather than scientific means to get the FDA on side.

21 JANUARY 1981
One day after Reagan’s inauguration, Searle re-applies to the FDA for approval to use aspartame as a food sweetener.

AUTUMN 1983
The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame go on sale in the US.

1 OCTOBER 1985
Monsanto, the producer of recombinant bovine growth hormone, genetically engineered soya beans, the pesticide Roundup and many other industrial and agricultural chemicals, purchases Searle for $2.7 billion.

1989
The FDA has received more than 4,000 complaints from consumers about adverse reactions to the sweetener.

19 APRIL 1993
The FDA approves aspartame for use in hard and soft candies, non-alcoholic flavoured beverages, tea beverages, fruit juices and concentrates, baked goods and baking mixes, and frostings, toppings and fillings for baked goods.

You can read the whole excellent article here. So as you can see, good ole Rummy, in addition to being one of the worst secretary’s of Defense ever to hold the office, was also instrumental in getting Aspartame approved! Hey, there may be more to this Illuminati thing after all.

Oh what interesting times we live in. The once mighty GOP party has now been reduced to a sideshow. While I’m not exactly a fan of either the democratic or republican party, the recent events in the world of conservative politics are bizarrely entertaining.

First, lets start off with CPAC (a.k.a. Crazy People Are Congregating), because thats exactly what it was. It first started out with Michael “Slum Love” Steele giving a speech at the conference dropping urban knowledge on the crowd when it came to horrid mismanagement by the republican party during the last 8 years.

“Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad.”

My bad? On no no no, what the republican party was responsible for is waay beyond “my bad”. The last 8 years is definitely in the “oh Snap!” territory homie. The only thing that could’ve made that speech worse is if he was chewing on a leg of southern fried chicken and waving it around blessing the crowd with flying bits of crispy crust as he was speaking on the podium.

The speech was then it was followed up by the most bat shit crazy member of congress ever,  Michele Bachmann yelling off camera to Mr. Steele “You be da man! You be da man!”. Watch the piece below by Keith Olberman for the bizarre video:

This was followed up by the “climactic” passionate speech by Rush Limbaugh dressed in all black, who looked like a seedy porn producer before a casting couch session with his shirt unbuttoned displaying his hairy chest (wheres your “Bling” Rush?). At one point of  his speech, he was fist bumping fellow panel members as to denote that he was “hip” and knew how to communicate in an urban fashion.

This is a new low point for the republican party. When a former drug addicted, gluttonous, delusional talk show host becomes the “unofficial” leader of one of the two major political parties of the most powerful country in the world, you’ve hit the bottom of the barrel folks.

The only thing the republican party has managed to accomplish is to show traditional conservatives how much the GOP party is out of touch with them, and more glaringly, it poignantly illustrates the fact that the party is full of posers and fakes who are struggling to try to adjust to a world that has already passed them by.

Instead of reiterating the fact that he wants Barack Obama to fail, why doesn’t Rush steer the GOP flock to solutions instead of criticism?? First the republicans put us in a war on two fronts in the mid east, they then stand idley by as the corporations rape the American public. Our nation is on the verge of complete insolvency, and he’s dreaming for the country as it used to be. If I didn’t know any better, I’d still think hes on getting high on Oxycontin.  Needless to say, at this point the state of the GOP party is so out of touch, I wouldn’t even blink an eye if they held a CPAC after party with Vanilla Ice as the musical performer.

They got one part of the “urban” behavior down, they are acting like genuine crazy ass crackheads.

GOP, you’re fakin the funk!

Hey, what do you know? More relevant news that the Mainstream media isn’t reporting. They would rather have you wring your hands over Michael Phelps’ olympic sized bong hits and totally remain oblivious to the fact that 8 different state legislatures have drawn a line in the sand and are introducing bills declaring sovereignty from the United States!

So far the tally is includes the following:

1. Washington

2. New Hampshire

3. Arizona

4. Montana

5. Michigan

6. Missouri

7. Oklahoma

8. Hawaii

The main precedent on the claims by the states are recited by the 9th and 10th amendment of the Constitution (part of the bill of rights). Most of this legislation is in the preliminary stages and is not earth shattering news but this is definitely something that should be a blip on the medias’ radar. The most serious and tangible of these eight are surprisingly, New Hampshire of all places.  From Pat Dollard’s blog:

The New Hampshire state legislature took an unbelievably bold step Monday by introducing a resolution to declare certain actions by the federal government to completely totally void and warning that certain future acts will be viewed as a “breach of peace” with the states themselves that risks “nullifying the Constitution.”

This act by New Hampshire is a clear warning to the federal government that they could face being stripped of their power by the States (presumably through civil war!)

The remarkable document outlines with perfect clarity, some basics long forgotten. For instance, it reminds Congress “That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever;. . . . . therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force;”

Federal gun crime laws? Void. Federal drug crime laws? Void. The gazzillion other federal criminal laws that deal with anything other than the specific enumerated crimes? ALL VOID.

Looks like states are fed up and no longer trust the federal government to look out for our best interests as a nation. Just look at California…

Maybe the federal government knew this was coming? I can’t help to think that this is why Northcomm plans to deploy 20,000 active duty troops in the United States by 2011 (“Just in case” of some civil unrest!?!?). Coincidence?

Stay tuned chiiiildren!

Publicintegrity.org was kind enough to compile the mostly complete list of failures of the Bush Administration during these last 8 miserable years. Of course some of the “failures” can be disputed but most of them are verified and abject failures in policy and outright inaction. See whe whole list here.

Of course listed here are mostly policy failures, this isn’t taking into account the other statistics like the skyrocketing deficit, the fact that “W” has taken more vacation than any other president in history and the fact that under Bush’s watch, over 200 years of representative democracy has been transformed into to a quasi facist state that no longer follows free market principals.

You’re doing a hella of a job W! Good riddance!