The President Murders an American Citizen

One of the flat out most disturbing thing that Barack Obama has done is to claim that he has an absolute right to murder anyone, anywhere, any time based on his unilateral declaration that it is in the interest of national security.

Most recently, this was shown in the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki.

This was an extrajudicial killing with the only evidence made public being that he "inspired" people to wage war against us.

I really don't have the words to describe just how awful this is, but the Rude Pundit does. (and the essay is completely safe for work as well)

Just go read him.

I'm just thankful that I live in Maryland, where my vote for President does not matter in 2012, so I won't.<sup>*

*</sup>No, I won't vote Republican, I just won't cast a ballot for President, or I'll write in Howard Dean.

Pass the Popcorn, Mortgage Fraud Edition

And another shoe drops, as California leaving the 50 state mortgage deal, claiming that it's too bank friendly, joining New York, Delaware, Minnesota, and Massachusetts (link) in objecting to the blanket grants of immunity proposed:

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation's biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation's five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street's role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

“It has been  a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient," Harris told The Times in an interview.

Harris delivered the news in a letter sent Friday to Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the 50-state coalition.

Here are some other interesting bits:

The removal of California from the discussions is a major blow to fraying efforts by the coalition, which has been trying to strike a settlement deal with the big banks for months. The move by Harris to reject the settlement talks is also a key departure from efforts by the Obama administration, which has been pushing for a fast resolution to the so-called robo-signing scandal that erupted last year.

Just so you know, "Pushing for a fast resolution," translates to, "Throwing lawbreakers another get out of jail free card," because the Banksters are Obama's real base.

“This whole concept of a settlement on foreclosure abuse is probably dead,” said Christopher Whalen, the founder of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Nobody in their right mind is going to opt into a settlement right now.”

So one would hope.  Neither the Obama administration, nor their corrupt lackey Iowa Attorney Gen. Tom Miller have had the slightest interest in pursuing any allegations or real wrongdoing against big banks.

I'm not sure what is motivating the AGs to bail on what would be a win-win for them, they get to "wave the bloody shirt" of some sort of settlement payments while insuring their own access to Wall Street campaign donations, but it appears that either they think that the political calculus is changing, or they just want to do the right thing.

Not Enough Bullets…

The SEC has ruled that Congressmen, their staffers, and executive branch members are free to commit insider trading with impunity:

When you buy and sell stocks based on secrets you learned at the office, it could be insider trading.

But when a United States Senator does it, it's probably perfectly legal.

That's because the SEC has largely determined that trading stocks based on advance knowledge of action in Congress is not insider trading.

If anything, it's "outsider" trading — buying and selling shares based on knowledge of an outside force that's about to hit a company's share value.

Think of it like a trader who sees a satellite image of a hurricane bearing down on an oil rig — and shorts the oil company’s stock in expectation of the damage.

Except in the case of Capitol Hill, the members of Congress can be both the trader and the hurricane — buying and selling shares in expectation of the effect that their own action has on the company’s stock price.

Some critics say that's probably going on a lot on Capitol Hill — although they don't have any direct proof.

“It’s really quite outrageous,” said Craig Holman, the legislative representative for Public Citizen. “If you just take a look at the statistics, members of Congress are either geniuses when it comes to stock trading or they are in fact trading off of some of this insider information.”

A pair of recent academic studies found that House members beat the market in their personal stock trading by about 6 percent, and Senators beat the market by about 10 percent.

Just when you thought that Washington could not get any more corrupt.

God Bless The Onion

Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions

Occupy Wall Street Heats Up

First, we are now seeing support from unions and local civil society groups:

The “Occupy Wall Street” protests, now entering their third week, are poised to get a whole lot bigger than its core of 200 to 300 people, potentially even exceeding the protesters original goals of 20,000 demonstrators, thanks to recent pledges of support from some of New York City’s largest labor unions and community groups.

On Tuesday, over 700 uniformed pilots, members of the Air Line Pilots Association, took to the streets outside of Wall Street demanding better pay.

…………

The other eight organizations expected to join in the October 5 rally, based on its Facebook page, are United NY, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Working Families Party, VOCAL-NY, Community Voices Heard, Alliance for Quality Education, New York Communities for Change, Coalition for the Homeless, which have a collective membership of over 1 million.

Additionally, since the video of a New York City deputy inspector Anthony Bologna going crazy with pepper spray on protesters went viral, the protesters are actually getting some ink in the American press. (Google news shows more coverage overseas than in the US)

Additionally, they finally had a mass protest, and related mass arrests, on the Brooklyn Bridge.

If the protesters, or their new supporters, can manage to get their sh%$ together, and leverage their recent US media coverage, we might actually have a real a voice for stopping the looting and starting prosecuting.

Like I Said, the Manchurian Democrat

Click for full size

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Democrats are not feeling the audacity


But the Republicans are all fired up

In 2008, Barack Obama convinced millions of young voters to enthusiastically vote for him.

Between 2009 and now, he has convinced these same folks that they and their votes do not matter:

In thinking about the 2012 presidential election, 45% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, while nearly as many, 44%, are less enthusiastic. This is in sharp contrast to 2008 and, to a lesser extent, 2004, when the great majority of Democrats expressed heightened enthusiasm about voting.

The most depressing thing about all of this that it's likely that a lot of the new voters who came into the process are now likely to be apathetic for  years.

We know what happens when the only reason that people are given to vote Democratic is "The Republicans are Scary".  Just look at John Kerry's 2004 run, and I think that the Dems are progressively making this their only talking point, particularly if Obama gets his way and manages to gut cut Medicare and Medicaid.

H/t Americablog.

Hoocoodanode? Monsanto Edition

It turns out that what Montsanto thought was a win-win, it use of genes to create Roundup resistant crops, allowing it to make money on both the crops, and on the increased sales of its popular herbicide has had a not-unexpected side effect.

It seems that with Roundup Ready^® ready crops, farmers soak their fields in the herbicide, and so now we are seeing an explosion of herbicide resistant weeds:“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms.

How has this happened? Farmers over-relied on Monsanto’s revolutionary and controversial combination of a single “round up” herbicide and a high-tech seed with a built-in resistance to glyphosate, scientists say.

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia.

“Farmers are taking this threat very seriously. It took us two years to make them understand how serious it was. But once they understood, they started taking a very aggressive approach to the weed,” Culpepper told FRANCE 24.

“Just to illustrate how aggressive we are, last year we hand-weeded 45% of our severely infested fields,” said Culpepper, adding that the fight involved “spending a lot of money.”

In 2007, 10,000 acres of land were abandoned in Macon country, the epicentre of the superweed explosion, North Carolina State University’s Alan York told local media.

Imagine that.  It's so bad, that farmers are abandoning land.

The problem here is that the rulings changing the patent laws over the past few decades, which allow the patenting of genes and species, have made the seed business so lucrative that companies like Monsanto are inclined to skip appropriate testing in the rush to market.

The solution is, in addition to stricter regulation, is to remove the IP protections to genes and species, which will remove much of the incentive to cheat.