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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Fukushima’s operators lied, hid information

May 30, 2011 15:42 Moscow Time

Fukushima’s operators at loss but don’t show it

Garibov Konstantin
30.05.2011, 15:42
The operating company of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, “Tokyo Electric Power”, will not be able to liquidate all the consequences of the catastrophe by the end of this year. This was revealed by the company’s high-ranking representative who preferred to remain unnamed.Earlier, the company announced that it planned to stop the largest leakages of radiation by July and to lower the temperature in the three reactors which suffered most down to 99º Celsius in another half a year. This would have allowed bringing them into the state of so-called “cold stop”.
Source: Voice of Russia
ukushima-1. AFP PHOTO / HO / TEPCO
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The operating company of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, “Tokyo Electric Power”, will not be able to liquidate all the consequences of the catastrophe by the end of this year. This was revealed by the company’s high-ranking representative who preferred to remain unnamed.
Earlier, the company announced that it planned to stop the largest leakages of radiation by July and to lower the temperature in the three reactors which suffered most down to 99º Celsius in another half a year. This would have allowed bringing them into the state of so-called “cold stop”.
Meanwhile, the task turned out to be more difficult than it had seemed at first. It turned out that in all these tree reactors, the nuclear fuel had melted because of lack of refrigeration. It burnt through the reactors’ body frames and damaged their outer shells. This means that the system is no longer leak-tight – if one tries to put them out with water, it will pour out. 
In an interview to the Voice of Russia, an expert in nuclear and radiation security Maxim Shingarkin commented on the situation in Fukushima:
“In fact, this statement came with a big delay. The operating company deliberately concealed this information. The explanation is simple – the company is afraid that any checking by competent experts would reveal its inability to save the situation. Only recently, foreign experts founded a consultative body for the clean-up of the accident’s consequences. Moreover, the company is concealing the information about the amount of pollution of the environment.”
However, “Tokyo Electric Power” still pretends that it knows quite well how to clean-up after the accident. It plans to build water-purifying units at the Fukushima plant, which will cost $ 650 mln. But the cost can turn out to be even higher, because the water has been infected with radiation several times and may need a more complicated purifying. 
Moreover, this system of circulation may not withstand the summer typhoons. The roofs of three energy blocks were destroyed by explosions on March 11. The operating company suggests covering the holes in the roofs with some special polyethylene web, but the plant’s administrators doubt that this will be effective. Besides, summer showers can erode the ground, which, in its turn, can increase the onslaught of water into the plant’s lower premises. Showers have already increased the level of the water in one of the reactors by 20 cm.
In the other power blocks, the situation is also disturbing. About 85 tons of radioactive water have already accumulated there, and it is pouring out of the territory of the power plant. Not all the area around the plant has yet been covered with special synthetic resin which stops the spreading of radioactive dust.
630 monitoring stations in Russia’s Far East, situated both on land and on ships, are intensively watching the radiation situation. Fortunately, they haven’t yet revealed any increase of radiation which can be dangerous for people. The stations have already switched back to the normal mode of work, checking the radiation level once in 24 hours, not twice as they had done recently.
Still, it seems that the world has not yet recovered from the shock caused by the Japanese tragedy. Recently, Germany’s government decided to stop exploiting all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022. This is still the first country to take such a decision.
 

McCain Dethrones the Rule of Law

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Sneering at the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, Senator John McCain (R. Ariz.) bugled last week, "No president has ever recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, and neither do I. So I don't feel bound by any [60 day] deadline" to obtain congressional authorization to continue hostilities against Libya ordained by the Act.
The 2008 Republican presidential candidate effused over unlimited presidential war-making, insinuating that the downfall of the Republic would come from fighting too few wars, not too many: "Any President, Republican or Democrat, should be able to deploy armed forces whenever and wherever he deems necessary." Earlier in his political career, Senator McCain admonished that Congress has no "right to declare peace," and trumpeted: "[T]he fact is that the President of the United States is given the responsibility, the most grave responsibility of sending into harm's way our greatest national treasure, our young men and women."
Senator McCain's blather betrayed a sub-literate understanding of the Constitution and infidelity to his oath of office. The latter requires him to demand the impeachment and removal of President Obama for the greatest usurpation of congressional authority in the history of the United States. Instead, the Senator is conspiring with the president to facilitate the usurpation.
On McCain's gospel hangs an alarming tale. The rule of law has been dethroned and the president has been endowed with absolute power as the American Empire has eclipsed the American Republic.
Eleven score and fifteen years ago, our forefathers brought forth a new nation dedicated to the proposition that the law is king. They recognized that crowning the president with power to commence war unilaterally would be the death knell of the Republic. Thomas Paine sermonized in Common Sense, the Bible of the American Revolution, that "as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other."
In times of war, the law is silent and the executive is omnipotent. The Founding Fathers thus erected constitutional barriers against fighting too many wars. None fretted about fighting too few. Arresting portions of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the explanatory Federalist Papers were devoted to safeguards against military supremacy and the overthrow of civilian government.
The most important check against gratuitous wars that squander the lives and limbs of brave American soldiers was Article I, section 8, clause 11. It fastened on Congress exclusive responsibility for commencing war. Legislative power diminishes in wartime. Legislators have no incentive to concoct danger or other excuses to abandon peace. The president, in contrast, is strongly tempted towards war to aggrandize power and earn a place on Mount Rushmore. James Madison, father of the Constitution, elaborated with signature genius in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: "The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature."
Madison amplified in a written exchange with Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym Helvidius:
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
James Wilson underscored at the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention,
This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.
Abraham Lincoln exposed Senator McCain's Orwellian warping of the Constitution:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure.... Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don't."
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

John Bassett Moore, an authoritative scholar of international law, observed:
There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson voiced alarm at presidential war-making in his concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer:
[N]o doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country by his own commitment of the Nation's armed forces to some foreign venture.
In sum, there is nothing in the text, subtext, context or judicial interpretation of the Constitution that empowers the president to initiate war without prior congressional authorization. Yet presidential lawlessness persists and metastasizes like a cancer without provoking congressional or public rebuke.
Executive branch violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Patriot Act, or the Convention Against Torture are ignored. The state secrets privilege is invoked to deny victims redress for torture or comparable constitutional wrongdoing. Suspected "enemy combatants" are detained indefinitely without accusation or trial. Military commissions supersede civilian courts. The United States claims unique authority to attack with predator drones or otherwise any nation on the planet to advance professed humanitarian causes, "regional stability," or the credibility of the United Nations Security Council.
The Department of Treasury or Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve print or spend money without proper congressional oversight or direction. Annual Pentagon spending approaching $1 trillion is not audited.
Depend upon it. The day will soon come when the president usurps the congressional power to tax and to spend to address an asserted economic emergency with impunity. Most Members of Congress will meekly submit to vassalage and rejoice at their escape from responsibility for anything non-trivial.
The final destruction of the Republic can be prevented if the American people vote to oust every Member of Congress and every president unfaithful to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution.
That would mark one of history's finest hours in self-government.

ALSO CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SOURCES FOR EVERYTHING CONCERNING THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS:




Market strategist: “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression”

Margo D. Beller
CNBC
June 1, 2011
Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.
“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money,” he said. “They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.
“We need to find real yield and real returns on these assets. You see bad data, you see Treasurys rally, you see all bonds and all fixed-income rally and then the people who are betting against the U.S. economy start getting bearish on stocks. That’s a huge mistake.”
Stocks extended losses after the manufacturing fell below expectations in May and the private sector added only 38,000 jobs during the month.


FULL SOURCE ARTICLE BELOW


New York Stock Exchange
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images

Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.
"What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money," he said. "They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.
"We need to find real yield and real returns on these assets. You see bad data, you see Treasurys rally, you see all bonds and all fixed-income rally and then the people who are betting against the U.S. economy start getting bearish on stocks. That’s a huge mistake."
"Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything," Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.
"We have many, many homeowners that are totally underwater here and cannot get out from under. The technology frontier is limited right now. We definitely have an innovation slowdown and the economy’s gonna suffer."
However, he said he wouldn’t sell stocks.
"Any bears out there better be careful because the dividend yields on these stocks look awesome relative to all the other investment vehicles out there," Yastrow said. "So bears are going to have to find a new way to express their discontent with the U.S. economy."



May ISM Index Hits 53.5
Insight on what is called a weak ISM number, with CNBC's Rick Santelli, Steve Liesman, and Peter Yastrow, DT Trading. "I wouldn't sell stocks and any bears better be really careful," says Yastrow.

Amazon Tax Bill Passes California State Assembly

Amazon Tax Bill Passes State Assembly

Tuesday, May 31, 2011  |  Updated 5:32 PM PDT
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The state of California could collect more than $1 billion a year by taxing Amazon and other online retailers if a bill approved by the Assembly becomes law.
Assemblyman Charles Calderon, a Democrat from Whittier, says his legislation doesn't impose a new sales tax, but extends one that California should already have been enforcing.
AB155 passed, 47-16, with the support of one GOP lawmaker Tuesday. It now heads to the Senate.
Other Republicans rejected the bill because they said it would invite lawsuits, drive business out of California, and get the state entangled in the messy task of regulating the Internet.
The measure extends the sales tax to online companies that have a presence in the state, including those that work with sister companies with offices in California.
 

Fukushima: French research institute finds high radioactivity

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NHK
June 1, 2011
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A French independent radioactivity watchdog has found radiation in Fukushima Prefecture 60 times higher than the annual reference level for ordinary people recommended by an international commission.
Bruno Chareyron, director of the research institute CRIIRAD, briefed reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday on the results of its survey of the air in Fukushima Prefecture.
The measurements and calculations found an annualized amount of 60 millisieverts at a farm in Iitate Village in the prefecture.
The level is 60 times higher than the annual limit for ordinary people, except for radiation workers, of 1 millisievert, recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
The researchers also found high radiation levels in Fukushima City. At some places in the city, the levels of radioactivity were 7 to 9 millisieverts a year.
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Chareyron urged Japan to increase the number of monitoring spots so that it can provide the public with detailed information on the negative effects of the radiation caused by the troubled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The one-week survey from May 24th was conducted in cooperation with a Japanese nongovernmental organization.

Airline Passenger Disturbance Leads to F16 Escort

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Airplane annoyance leads to brouhaha in the skies over D.C.

Before things got out of hand, it was a typical annoyance that happens once a flight gets airborne: A passenger hit the recline button and sent his seat intimately close to the lap of the guy sitting behind him.
What followed wasn’t typical at all: a smack to the head, peacemakers diving about the cabin to intervene and a pair of Air Force F-16 fighter jets scrambling into the night skies over Washington.



F-16s were scrambled Sunday night to escort a United Airlines flight en route to Ghana back to Dulles airport. In this audio between the pilot of the United flight and the control tower, the pilot is heard saying that an assault has taken place.
F-16s were scrambled Sunday night to escort a United Airlines flight en route to Ghana back to Dulles airport. In this audio between the pilot of the United flight and the control tower, the pilot is heard saying that an assault has taken place.
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It happened late Sunday, just after a United Airlines Boeing 767 bound for Ghana with 144 passengers took off from Dulles International Airport.
Not long after the 10:44 p.m. departure for the overnight flight, the offending seat was lowered into the offended lap, and a fight ensued. A flight attendant and another passenger jumped in between, said sources familiar with the incident who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details.
The pilot has complete authority over the aircraft, a United spokesman said, and he decided to return to Dulles to sort things out rather than continue the transatlantic flight to Ghana when he was unsure of the scope of the problem.
Airline and Homeland Security Department officials said they had no other details on the incident.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, pilots have learned to be wary. In recent years, disturbances have revealed terrorist attempts to ignite explosives hidden in shoes and underwear. Air Force fighter jets stand ready to respond to situations such as this one, in which passengers, who might be terrorists, cause trouble in flight.
A 767 can take off with 16,700 gallons of fuel, and for the more-than-5,000-mile flight to Accra, Ghana, it probably would have needed all of it. The full load of fuel weighs more than 57 tons, and, although a 767 can get that weight airborne, it can’t land with it.
As the plane turned back to Dulles, an air traffic controller directed the United pilot to fly around for about 25 minutes, shadowed by the fighter jets, to burn off an undetermined amount of fuel.
Audio transmissions indicate that the two Air Force fighters scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base at 11:03 p.m, just as the plane reentered Washington airspace.
Five minutes later, the fighter escorts took up position 1,000 feet above the jetliner as it headed toward Dulles, sources said.
At 11:10 p.m., the controller asked about the passenger who slapped his neighbor, and a voice from the cockpit replied: “The passenger is not secured at this time; the passenger has settled down, though, but an assault has taken place, but at this time he is not secured.”
Members of the Dulles police force met the flight at the gate, said Rob Yingling, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Officers determined that the incident didn’t warrant pressing charges, Yingling said.
It was probably expensive, however.
In addition to the fuel cost — jet fuel averaged $3.03 a gallon last month — the flight was delayed until Monday. Given that no arrests were made, there was no official record of the incident, and the identities of the men involved were not known. It was unclear whether they were on the flight when it left Monday morning or, if so, where they sat, United spokesman Mike Trevino said.

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families

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Dean Henderson Global Research
June 1, 2011
(Part one of a four-part series)
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths.  But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.
According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]
So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?
This information is guarded much more closely.  My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds.  This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.
One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America.  A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild.  Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]
J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US.  They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.
CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches.  He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York.  Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3]  The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb.  The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.
Eustace Mullins came to the same conclusions in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, in which he displays charts connecting the Fed and its member banks to the families of Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller and the others. [4]
The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy.  Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”.  Yet the facts remain.
The House of Morgan
The Federal Reserve Bank was born in 1913, the same year US banking scion J. Pierpont Morgan died and the Rockefeller Foundation was formed.  The House of Morgan presided over American finance from the corner of Wall Street and Broad, acting as quasi-US central bank since 1838, when George Peabody founded it in London.
Peabody was a business associate of the Rothschilds.  In 1952 Fed researcher Eustace Mullins put forth the supposition that the Morgans were nothing more than Rothschild agents.  Mullins wrote that the Rothschilds, “…preferred to operate anonymously in the US behind the facade of J.P. Morgan & Company”. [5]
Author Gabriel Kolko stated, “Morgan’s activities in 1895-1896 in selling US gold bonds in Europe were based on an alliance with the House of Rothschild.” [6]
The Morgan financial octopus wrapped its tentacles quickly around the globe.  Morgan Grenfell operated in London.  Morgan et Ce ruled Paris.  The Rothschild’s Lambert cousins set up Drexel & Company in Philadelphia.
The House of Morgan catered to the Astors, DuPonts, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers.  It financed the launch of AT&T, General Motors, General Electric and DuPont.  Like the London-based Rothschild and Barings banks, Morgan became part of the power structure in many countries.
By 1890 the House of Morgan was lending to Egypt’s central bank, financing Russian railroads, floating Brazilian provincial government bonds and funding Argentine public works projects.  A recession in 1893 enhanced Morgan’s power.  That year Morgan saved the US government from a bank panic, forming a syndicate to prop up government reserves with a shipment of $62 million worth of Rothschild gold. [7]
Morgan was the driving force behind Western expansion in the US, financing and controlling West-bound railroads through voting trusts.  In 1879 Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Morgan-financed New York Central Railroad gave preferential shipping rates to John D. Rockefeller’s budding Standard Oil monopoly, cementing the Rockefeller/Morgan relationship.
The House of Morgan now fell under Rothschild and Rockefeller family control.  A New York Herald headline read, “Railroad Kings Form Gigantic Trust”.  J. Pierpont Morgan, who once stated, “Competition is a sin”, now opined gleefully, “Think of it.  All competing railroad traffic west of St. Louis placed in the control of about thirty men.”[8]
Morgan and Edward Harriman’s banker Kuhn Loeb held a monopoly over the railroads, while banking dynasties Lehman, Goldman Sachs and Lazard joined the Rockefellers in controlling the US industrial base. [9]
In 1903 Banker’s Trust was set up by the Eight Families.  Benjamin Strong of Banker’s Trust was the first Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.  The 1913 creation of the Fed fused the power of the Eight Families to the military and diplomatic might of the US government.  If their overseas loans went unpaid, the oligarchs could now deploy US Marines to collect the debts.  Morgan, Chase and Citibank formed an international lending syndicate.
The House of Morgan was cozy with the British House of Windsor and the Italian House of Savoy.  The Kuhn Loebs, Warburgs, Lehmans, Lazards, Israel Moses Seifs and Goldman Sachs also had close ties to European royalty.  By 1895 Morgan controlled the flow of gold in and out of the US.  The first American wave of mergers was in its infancy and was being promoted by the bankers.  In 1897 there were sixty-nine industrial mergers.  By 1899 there were twelve-hundred.  In 1904 John Moody – founder of Moody’s Investor Services – said it was impossible to talk of Rockefeller and Morgan interests as separate. [10]
Public distrust of the combine spread.  Many considered them traitors working for European old money.  Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie’s US Steel and Edward Harriman’s railroads were all financed by banker Jacob Schiff at Kuhn Loeb, who worked closely with the European Rothschilds.
Several Western states banned the bankers.  Populist preacher William Jennings Bryan was thrice the Democratic nominee for President from 1896 -1908.  The central theme of his anti-imperialist campaign was that America was falling into a trap of “financial servitude to British capital”.  Teddy Roosevelt defeated Bryan in 1908, but was forced by this spreading populist wildfire to enact the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  He then went after the Standard Oil Trust.
In 1912 the Pujo hearings were held, addressing concentration of power on Wall Street.  That same year Mrs. Edward Harriman sold her substantial shares in New York’s Guaranty Trust Bank to J.P. Morgan, creating Morgan Guaranty Trust.  Judge Louis Brandeis convinced President Woodrow Wilson to call for an end to interlocking board directorates.  In 1914 the Clayton Anti-Trust Act was passed.
Jack Morgan – J. Pierpont’s son and successor – responded by calling on Morgan clients Remington and Winchester to increase arms production.  He argued that the US needed to enter WWI.  Goaded by the Carnegie Foundation and other oligarchy fronts, Wilson accommodated.  As Charles Tansill wrote in America Goes to War, “Even before the clash of arms, the French firm of Rothschild Freres cabled to Morgan & Company in New York suggesting the flotation of a loan of $100 million, a substantial part of which was to be left in the US to pay for French purchases of American goods.”
The House of Morgan financed half the US war effort, while receiving commissions for lining up contractors like GE, Du Pont, US Steel, Kennecott and ASARCO.  All were Morgan clients.  Morgan also financed the British Boer War in South Africa and the Franco-Prussian War.  The 1919 Paris Peace Conference was presided over by Morgan, which led both German and Allied reconstruction efforts. [11]
In the 1930’s populism resurfaced in America after Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bank and others profited from the Crash of 1929. [12]  House Banking Committee Chairman Louis McFadden (D-NY) said of the Great Depression, “It was no accident.  It was a carefully contrived occurrence…The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all”.
Sen. Gerald Nye (D-ND) chaired a munitions investigation in 1936.  Nye concluded that the House of Morgan had plunged the US into WWI to protect loans and create a booming arms industry.  Nye later produced a document titled The Next War, which cynically referred to “the old goddess of democracy trick”, through which Japan could be used to lure the US into WWII.
In 1937 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes warned of the influence of “America’s 60 Families”.  Historian Ferdinand Lundberg later penned a book of the exact same title.  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas decried, “Morgan influence…the most pernicious one in industry and finance today.”
Jack Morgan responded by nudging the US towards WWII.  Morgan had close relations with the Iwasaki and Dan families – Japan’s two wealthiest clans – who have owned Mitsubishi and Mitsui, respectively, since the companies emerged from 17th Century shogunates.  When Japan invaded Manchuria, slaughtering Chinese peasants at Nanking, Morgan downplayed the incident.  Morgan also had close relations with Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, while German Nazi Dr. Hjalmer Schacht was a Morgan Bank liaison during WWII.  After the war Morgan representatives met with Schacht at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. [13]
The House of Rockefeller
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BIS is the most powerful bank in the world, a global central bank for the Eight Families who control the private central banks of almost all Western and developing nations. The first President of BIS was Rockefeller banker Gates McGarrah- an official at Chase Manhattan and the Federal Reserve.  McGarrah was the grandfather of former CIA director Richard Helms.  The Rockefellers- like the Morgans- had close ties to London. David Icke writes in Children of the Matrix, that the Rockefellers and Morgans were just “gofers” for the European Rothschilds. [14]
BIS is owned by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Italy, Bank of Canada, Swiss National Bank, Nederlandsche Bank, Bundesbank and Bank of France.
Historian Carroll Quigley wrote in his epic book Tragedy and Hope that BIS was part of a plan, “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements.”
The US government had a historical distrust of BIS, lobbying unsuccessfully for its demise at the 1944 post-WWII Bretton Woods Conference.  Instead the Eight Families’ power was exacerbated, with the Bretton Woods creation of the IMF and the World Bank.  The US Federal Reserve only took shares in BIS in September 1994. [15]
BIS holds at least 10% of monetary reserves for at least 80 of the world’s central banks, the IMF and other multilateral institutions.  It serves as financial agent for international agreements, collects information on the global economy and serves as lender of last resort to prevent global financial collapse.
BIS promotes an agenda of monopoly capitalist fascism.  It gave a bridge loan to Hungary in the 1990’s to ensure privatization of that country’s economy.  It served as conduit for Eight Families funding of Adolf Hitler- led by the Warburg’s J. Henry Schroeder and Mendelsohn Bank of Amsterdam.  Many researchers assert that BIS is at the nadir of global drug money laundering. [16]
It is no coincidence that BIS is headquartered in Switzerland, favorite hiding place for the wealth of the global aristocracy and headquarters for the P-2 Italian Freemason’s Alpina Lodge and Nazi International.  Other institutions which the Eight Families control include the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference and the World Trade Organization.
Bretton Woods was a boon to the Eight Families.  The IMF and World Bank were central to this “new world order”.  In 1944 the first World Bank bonds were floated by Morgan Stanley and First Boston.  The French Lazard family became more involved in House of Morgan interests.  Lazard Freres- France’s biggest investment bank- is owned by the Lazard and David-Weill families- old Genoese banking scions represented by Michelle Davive.  A recent Chairman and CEO of Citigroup was Sanford Weill.
In 1968 Morgan Guaranty launched Euro-Clear, a Brussels-based bank clearing system for Eurodollar securities.  It was the first such automated endeavor.  Some took to calling Euro-Clear “The Beast”.  Brussels serves as headquarters for the new European Central Bank and for NATO.  In 1973 Morgan officials met secretly in Bermuda to illegally resurrect the old House of Morgan, twenty years before Glass Steagal Act was repealed.  Morgan and the Rockefellers provided the financial backing for Merrill Lynch, boosting it into the Big 5 of US investment banking.  Merrill is now part of Bank of America.
John D. Rockefeller used his oil wealth to acquire Equitable Trust, which had gobbled up several large banks and corporations by the 1920’s.  The Great Depression helped consolidate Rockefeller’s power.  His Chase Bank merged with Kuhn Loeb’s Manhattan Bank to form Chase Manhattan, cementing a long-time family relationship.  The Kuhn-Loeb’s had financed – along with Rothschilds – Rockefeller’s quest to become king of the oil patch.  National City Bank of Cleveland provided John D. with the money needed to embark upon his monopolization of the US oil industry.  The bank was identified in Congressional hearings as being one of three Rothschild-owned banks in the US during the 1870’s, when Rockefeller first incorporated as Standard Oil of Ohio. [17]
One Rockefeller Standard Oil partner was Edward Harkness, whose family came to control Chemical Bank.  Another was James Stillman, whose family controlled Manufacturers Hanover Trust.  Both banks have merged under the JP Morgan Chase umbrella.  Two of James Stillman’s daughters married two of William Rockefeller’s sons.  The two families control a big chunk of Citigroup as well. [18]
In the insurance business, the Rockefellers control Metropolitan Life, Equitable Life, Prudential and New York Life.  Rockefeller banks control 25% of all assets of the 50 largest US commercial banks and 30% of all assets of the 50 largest insurance companies. [19]  Insurance companies- the first in the US was launched by Freemasons through their Woodman’s of America- play a key role in the Bermuda drug money shuffle.
Companies under Rockefeller control include Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco, Marathon Oil, Freeport McMoran, Quaker Oats, ASARCO, United, Delta, Northwest, ITT, International Harvester, Xerox, Boeing, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, International Paper, Pfizer, Motorola, Monsanto, Union Carbide and General Foods.
The Rockefeller Foundation has close financial ties to both Ford and Carnegie Foundations.  Other family philanthropic endeavors include Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, General Education Board, Rockefeller University and the University of Chicago- which churns out a steady stream of far right economists as apologists for international capital, including Milton Friedman.
The family owns 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the national Christmas tree is lighted every year, and Rockefeller Center.  David Rockefeller was instrumental in the construction of the World Trade Center towers.  The main Rockefeller family home is a hulking complex in upstate New York known as Pocantico Hills.  They also own a 32-room 5th Avenue duplex in Manhattan, a mansion in Washington, DC, Monte Sacro Ranch in Venezuela, coffee plantations in Ecuador, several farms in Brazil, an estate at Seal Harbor, Maine and resorts in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. [20]
The Dulles and Rockefeller families are cousins.  Allen Dulles created the CIA, assisted the Nazis, covered up the Kennedy hit from his Warren Commission perch and struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to create mind-controlled assassins. [21]
Brother John Foster Dulles presided over the phony Goldman Sachs trusts before the 1929 stock market crash and helped his brother overthrow governments in Iran and Guatemala.  Both were Skull & Bones, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) insiders and 33rd Degree Masons. [22]
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The Rockefellers were instrumental in forming the depopulation-oriented Club of Rome at their family estate in Bellagio, Italy.  Their Pocantico Hills estate gave birth to the Trilateral Commission.  The family is a major funder of the eugenics movement which spawned Hitler, human cloning and the current DNA obsession in US scientific circles.
John Rockefeller Jr. headed the Population Council until his death. [23]  His namesake son is a Senator from West Virginia.  Brother Winthrop Rockefeller was Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas and remains the most powerful man in that state.  In an October 1975 interview with Playboy magazine, Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller- who was also Governor of New York- articulated his family’s patronizing worldview, “I am a great believer in planning- economic, social, political, military, total world planning.”
But of all the Rockefeller brothers, it is Trilateral Commission (TC) founder and Chase Manhattan Chairman David who has spearheaded the family’s fascist agenda on a global scale.  He defended the Shah of Iran, the South African apartheid regime and the Chilean Pinochet junta.  He was the biggest financier of the CFR, the TC and (during the Vietnam War) the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia- a contract bonanza for those who made their living off the conflict.
Nixon asked him to be Secretary of Treasury, but Rockefeller declined the job, knowing his power was much greater at the helm of the Chase.  Author Gary Allen writes in The Rockefeller File that in 1973, “David Rockefeller met with twenty-seven heads of state, including the rulers of Russia and Red China.”
Following the 1975 Nugan Hand Bank/CIA coup against Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, his British Crown-appointed successor Malcolm Fraser sped to the US, where he met with President Gerald Ford after conferring with David Rockefeller. [24]
Next Week: Part II: Freemasons & The Bank of the United States
[1] 10K Filings of Fortune 500 Corporations to SEC. 3-91
[2] 10K Filing of US Trust Corporation to SEC. 6-28-95
[3] “The Federal Reserve ‘Fed Up’. Thomas Schauf. www.davidicke.com 1-02
[4] The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Eustace Mullins. Bankers Research Institute. Staunton, VA. 1983. p.179
[5] Ibid. p.53
[6] The Triumph of Conservatism. Gabriel Kolko. MacMillan and Company New York. 1963. p.142
[7] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.57
[8] The House of Morgan. Ron Chernow. Atlantic Monthly Press NewYork 1990
[9] Marrs. p.57
[10] Democracy for the Few. Michael Parenti. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1977. p.178
[11] Chernow
[12] The Great Crash of 1929. John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Boston. 1979. p.148
[13] Chernow
[14] Children of the Matrix. David Icke. Bridge of Love. Scottsdale, AZ. 2000
[15] The Confidence Game: How Un-Elected Central Bankers are Governing the Changed World Economy. Steven Solomon. Simon & Schuster. New York. 1995. p.112
[16] Marrs. p.180
[17] Ibid. p.45
[18] The Money Lenders: The People and Politics of the World Banking Crisis. Anthony Sampson. Penguin Books. New York. 1981
[19] The Rockefeller File. Gary Allen. ’76 Press. Seal Beach, CA. 1977
[20] Ibid
[21] Dope Inc.: The Book That Drove Kissinger Crazy. Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992
[22] Marrs.
[23] The Rockefeller Syndrome. Ferdinand Lundberg. Lyle Stuart Inc. Secaucus, NJ. 1975. p.296
[24] Marrs. p.53
Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries.  His Left Hook blog is at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

Congress to mandate homosexual indoctrination? SIGN PETITION TO KILL THIS BILL

Public Advocate Banner



Dear Pro-family American,

The Radical Homosexuals infiltrating the United States Congress have a plan:

Indoctrinate an entire generation of American children with pro-homosexual propaganda and eliminate traditional values from American society.

Their ultimate dream is to create a new America based on sexual promiscuity in which the values you and I cherish are long forgotten.

I hate to admit it, but if they pass the deceptively named “Student Non-Discrimination Act,” that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Better named the “Homosexual Classrooms Act,” its chief advocate in Congress is Rep. Jared Polis, himself an open homosexual and radical activist.

That’s why I need you to act quickly -- right away -- to protect our nation’s youth.

I have prepared the official “Protect Our Children’s Innocence” Petition to Congress for you to sign.

Please click here to sign it right away so I can rush it to the Capitol with thousands more.
You and I must defeat this disastrous legislation.

You see, the Homosexual Classrooms Act contains a laundry list of anti-family provisions that will:
*** Require schools to teach appalling homosexual acts so “homosexual students” don’t feel “singled out” during already explicit sex-ed classes;
*** Spin impressionable students in a whirlwind of sexual confusion and misinformation, even peer pressure to “experiment” with the homosexual “lifestyle;”
*** Exempt homosexual students from punishment for propositioning, harassing, or even sexually assaulting their classmates, as part of their specially-protected right to “freedom of self-expression;”
*** Force private and even religious schools to teach a pro-homosexual curriculum and purge any reference to religion if a student claims it creates a “hostile learning environment” for homosexual students.
And that’s just the beginning of the Homosexual Lobby’s radical agenda.

In fact, it will set them up to ram through their entire perverted vision for a homosexual America.

My friend, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this is not a fight we can afford to lose.

That’s why Public Advocate is leading the fight against this immoral legislation.
This is a battle for the survival of American values and the fact is, there’s no time to waste.

The Homosexual Classrooms Act will turn America’s schools into indoctrination centers and its classrooms into social laboratories -- and they’re pulling out all the stops to pass it.

You see, they’ve disguised the bill’s wicked purpose behind an innocent name: “The Student Non-Discrimination Act.”  Not only that, but they’re waiting to introduce this legislation in order to keep it under the radar.

The Homosexual Lobby knows that if pro-family Americans like you and me have time to alert the public of their radical agenda, they’ll have no hope of success.

They made that mistake last year and you and I had enough time to kill this bill.

This year they won’t make the same mistake and have successfully kept everything under wraps -- for now.

I’ve developed a massive program to launch the second they try to push this bill through -- mail, email, phones, and even radio and TV ads.

But that’s only possible with your support...

None of these things are cheap.  In fact, running a program of the size necessary to defeat this bill can get quite expensive especially with increases in postage and printing costs.

That’s why I need your generous contribution.  In addition to your signed “Protect Our Children’s Innocence” Petition, will you contribute $250, $100, $50 or even just $35 right away.

And every dollar counts in this fight so even if you can only chip in $10 or $20, it will make a difference.
Unfortunately, this agenda is nothing new.

In fact, other countries like Britain are already experimenting with this kind of legislation, such as mandating public schools inject pro-homosexual content into every aspect of education.

Word problems in math classes are now to include homosexual characters.  History classes will document the “civil rights” struggle against the “oppressive” pro-family establishment.

And it’s even started to infiltrate our state governments.

In California, lawmakers want to “require schools to portray lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals ... as positive role models to children in all public schools.”

Sexual deviants being held up as models of virtue?

If that makes you as sick as it makes me, you simply must join me in this battle for America’s children.

Please sign the “Protect Our Children’s Innocence” Petition to Congress and then send a generous contribution right away.  Your action will make all the difference.
And if all that wasn’t enough to convince you that action must be taken immediately, there’s more.

Many say that there will always be private schools and traditional homeschool families to teach traditional values to the next generation.

But the truth is, this radical agenda is NOT restricted to public schools.

Kevin Jennings, Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” has clearly stated that “every school, public, private or parochial has an obligation” to teach a pro-homosexual curriculum.

In fact, Jennings denounced school choice programs as “very dangerous” because they make it much harder to impose the Homosexual Agenda on our kids.

“Lord forbid a Baptist or Mormon school,” he added.

Jennings' ultimate goal is for all curriculum in “kindergarten, and first grade, and second grade – every grade” be infused with a pro-homosexual slant.

Traditional values will be squashed and demonized as old fashioned or out of date, or even as bigotry.

You and I cannot let them succeed.

Please sign the “Protect Our Children’s Innocence” Petition to Congress I’ve prepared for you right away.

And along with your petition, would you please send a generous contribution of $250, $100, $50 or even just $35?

And every dollar helps so even if you can only chip in $10 or $20, you will make a difference.

Thank you so much for all you have done.

Sincerely,

Eugene Delgaudio
President,
Public Advocate of the U.S.
P.S. Radical Homosexuals in Congress have a plan to indoctrinate our children in schools -- both public and private.

But Public Advocate is taking a stand.  Will you join me?

Please sign the “Protect Our Children’s Innocence” Petition to Congress I’ve enclosed.

And please, along with your petition, would you please send a generous contribution of $250, $100, $50 or even just $35 right away?

And every dollar counts in this fight so even if you can only chip in $10 or $20, it will make a difference.




Three Powerful New Films Coming to the Infowar

Prison Planet.tv
June 1, 2011
We have added several exclusive bombshell video interviews for subscribers at Prison Planet.tv – with more to come. Check out the trailers for these new presentations below and consider becoming a member at Prison Planet.tv.
The Secret History of Western Education – The Scientific Destruction of Minds
Part One of our exclusive interview with Charlotte Iserbyt breaks down how conditioning/training under a corporate agenda has replaced traditional education, leading to a deliberate dumbing down of Americans. Iserbyt further explains how Reagan signed agreements merging the U.S. and Soviet systems under the United Nations banner, turning over education and many other areas of public policy to global control.

In Part Two, coming soon for Prison Planet.tv members, Charlotte Iserbyt will unveil the connection of her father and grandfather to the elite Skull & Bones secret society, including an exclusive look at the official members list the public was never meant to see. Iserbyt also explores the research of Anthony Sutton and others who’ve made the connection between Skull & Bones, the Illuminati and experimental psychology from Germany that has been injected into the American education system since the late 1800s. Also in play is the elite’s control of the Left-Right political paradigm, infiltration of key policy groups and backing from globalist foundations that have threatened to undermine the American way for the better part of a century.
Following a successful anti-fluoride campaign in Canada, Dr. Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University in New York, visited the Infowars.com command center in Austin, Texas, to make appearance on the Alex Jones Show and tape “Deadly Fluoride: Hoax on the Run!”
Fluoride Hoax Exploding: Alex Jones Interviews Dr. Paul Connett
Fluoride Hoax Exploding: Alex Jones Interviews Dr. Paul Connett ontherun
Connett was in town to make an appearance before the Austin City Council and argue in favor of eliminating the dangerous neurotoxin for Austin’s water.
During the interview with Alex Jones, Dr. Connett presented in concise fashion overwhelming evidence of the health risks posed by water and food fluoridation.
The States Strike Back
The States Strike Back round5
In this special video presentation for Prison Planet.tv members filmed from the new Infowars television studio, Alex Jones hosts a round table discussion featuring Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, founder and executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center Michael Boldin, as well as activist and economic writer Brandon Smith of Alt-Market, to discuss the states’ rights movement and how Americans need to organize now to take back power usurped in a myriad of different ways by the federal government.
Rhodes explains how history tells us that tyranny can never be enforced without the aid of uniformed military and police, highlighting the case of East Germany where troops were told to stand down and two days later the Berlin wall fell. Rhodes documents how the implementation of a totalitarian infrastructure in the United States has led to the President having supreme power to assassinate US citizens by declaring them “enemy combatants” and how this sets an ominous benchmark for the level of power that has been accumulated by the executive branch of government.
Coming Tomorrow: Webster Tarpley & Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination

This is the trailer for the upcoming PrisonPlanet.tv exclusive interview with Dr. Webster Tarpley. In this interview, Dr. Tarpley reviews the writings of John P. Holdren, the current White House science advisor. This interview conclusively exposes scientific elite’s true agenda, world-wide genocide and the formation of a global government to rule.
Click here to subscribe to Prison Planet.tv and get exclusive access to this interview along with a mountain of other special video interviews and reports, as well as daily high quality video and audio archives for the Alex Jones Show , in addition to the live in studio video stream.

House Republicans Kill Kucinich’s Libya Withdrawal Bill

http://static3.infowars.com/2011/06/i/rotator/kbill.jpg
Published June 01, 2011
| FoxNews.com

Congress and Obama on Collision Course Over Libya War
"NATO and partners have just decided to extend our mission for Libya for another 90 days. This decision sends a clear message to the Qaddafi regime: We are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya."
-- NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a statement.
House Republican aides tell Power Play that a vote scheduled for today on Ohio Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill that would force the U.S. to withdraw from the Libyan civil war was yanked from the schedule only after it became clear that it might succeed.
“[Republican leaders] hadn’t seen much of a threat from [the Kucinich bill]. He’s kind of this marginal figure and having his resolution go down narrowly would be no big deal and might even send a message to the administration,” said one of the Republican aides. “But once they saw that there was substantial support, they were like, ‘Whoa.’”
While it’s hardly a sure thing that Kucinich’s bill would have drawn a majority, the broad-based, bipartisan support for the measure prompted House leaders to set the measure aside while figuring out how to proceed in dealing with President Obama on the ongoing Libya war.
So far, the administration has succeeded in flouting Congressional authority on the war. Past presidents have all been dismissive of the War Powers Resolution and members of Congress have even derided the legislation as an unconstitutional abridgement of their exclusive power to declare war, but both branches have abided by the law just the same since it was passed over Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973. It has been the imperfect agreement by which presidents and lawmakers have navigated the minor conflicts of the Cold War (Grenada, etc.), unipolar transitional periods (Bosnia, Somalia, etc.) and the current conflicts with militant Islamists.
But Obama has said that the resolution does not apply to the war because the U.S. commitment was too small to merit any kind of Congressional authorization. The War Powers Resolution says that Obama, having failed to obtain congressional authorization within the first 60 days of the conflict, is now in a 30-day period in which he must disengage U.S. forces. He’s got just a little more than two weeks before he is in clear violation.
Obama doesn’t want to bow to any congressional limitations on his power to make war. If he did, it could imperil his covert campaign in Pakistan and other smaller-bore operations, like drone strikes in Yemen etc. He may intend to break the back of the resolution, or to simply force Congress to fold on the issue, forever rendering it moot. Like his move to blow up the public financing of elections, Obama may be interested in making some history and expanding his powers.
The announcement of a 90-day extension of the NATO commitment to the stalemated civil war that has left Libya split along deep, centuries old tribal lines suggests that Obama is suiting up for a constitutional showdown in defense of the U.N.-backed mission.
Just because Republicans pulled back the Kucinich measure doesn’t mean that they are not concerned about where the Libya train is heading. Note well that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, part of the Senate leadership, was among the signatories to the letter notifying Obama that his 60-day grace period to wage unauthorized war had elapsed.
But the question is how will they confront Obama over this without A) seeming to undercut American forces in the field and B) setting a defensible new precedent for limiting presidential war powers. This is a generational question that Republican leaders don’t want to get wrong.

No Need For AC at Obama-House GOP Meeting
“Hopefully this vote will illustrate to Treasury Secretary Geithner and the 110+ House Democrats who’ve demanded a clean increase that this approach is not acceptable or responsible.”
-- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
President Obama will talk this morning to the Republican members of the House as the nation watches Washington in hopes that a fiscal train wreck can be averted.
But all public signs from both sides suggest it’s full speed ahead toward a summer of partisan rancor.
On Tuesday night, Republicans demonstrated there was no path forward for the president’s initial request of an increase to the nation’s $14.3 trillion borrowing limit without preconditions for spending cuts. Half of House Democrats defected on a test vote put forward by Republicans on a law that would have met Obama’s demand.
It was a defeat for the president and further proof that Democrats have to first agree amongst themselves on a debt plan before the issue can be resolved.
Obama, meanwhile, is flexing his own muscle. As Democrats abandon ship, the administration is using its megaphone to denounce Republicans as risking a default on federal obligations and an international economic crisis.
Even the president’s selection of a replacement for outgoing Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is a demonstration of the sharpening partisan divide in Washington. Obama tapped John Bryson, a former California utility executive who is more famous for helping to found the environmentalist group the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Obama tapping an environmental activist and ardent supporter of a crackdown on carbon emissions to head an agency that is supposed to facilitate business growth does not suggest the president is in much of a conciliatory mood.
Vice President Joe Biden recently helped explain the administration’s return to a more confrontational approach. The president’s team believes that the Republican embrace of a Medicare overhaul and the killing of Usama bin Laden have given the president the juice to roll over the GOP next year.
That new post-killing, Mediscare swagger, may prompt Obama to walk a little closer to the edge of an August 2 deadline for raising the debt limit or facing a partial government shutdown.
For their part, Republicans aren’t expecting much out of today’s White House meeting.
“He’s going to get a fair hearing,” said one senior House aide. “But I frankly don’t expect much more than a lecture on what he believes our obligations are.”

Weiner Woes Deepen
“I’m going to have to ask that we follow some rules here. One of them is going to be you ask questions and I’ll do the answers. That seem reasonable? Would that be reasonable, you the questions, I do the answers, and this jackass interrupts me? How about that as the rule of the game? Let me just give the answer.”
-- Rep. Anthony Weiner, D.N.Y. chiding a reporter and producer from CNN for pressing him to answer whether the crotch in a photo posted on his Twitter account is his.
Power Play hates to fault lawmakers for poor communications efforts. After all, public officials should be judged on how they execute their duties, not how well they schmooze the press.
But in the case of Democratic New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, one must cry out: What is that guy thinking?
Weiner held a press conference on Tuesday to address questions about a picture of a man’s tumescent, underwear-clad groin that had been posted on his Twitter account and directed at a co-ed from Washington State.
Well, actually, he held the press conference to avoid the questions. In a snappish, sometimes surreal series of exchanges, the unfortunately named lawmaker bickered with the press and refused to answer the two big questions surrounding the scandal: Is it his crotch? Was this a “hack,” as his office first said, or a “prank” as the office later described the incident?
Establishment press outlets, even those which were at first credulous about Weiner’s claim that he was the victim, have thrown up their well-manicured hands in bewilderment at Weiner’s stonewalling.
If he really wanted to move past the issue and talk about the debt ceiling and Clarence Thomas, as he has said, why wouldn’t he issue a brief, flat denial about the provenance of the photo and say one time whether this was a criminal, hostile hacking or a non-criminal prank?
Even assuming the scenario in the light most favorable to the congressman, this has been a total botch. Summoning reporters, stonewalling them and then barking at legitimate questions is not a great credibility builder.
The speculation that Weiner would run for New York mayor has now been squashed, and despite his insistence about directing his own avenues of discussion, it looks likely that Weiner will be forced to keep addressing the issue.

Texas Dems Try to Thwart Perry Run
"If you want to live in a high-tax state, or state that has a lot of big, costly government programs, than you're free to stay there. Or, you can move back to a state like Texas."
-- Texas Gov. Rick Perry talking to reporters about an upcoming special session of the state’s legislature.
Texas Democrats succeeded in filibustering a budget-slashing spending plan from Gov. Rick Perry and his fellow Republicans, forcing the potential 2012 presidential contender to delay any announcement for at least another week.
But Perry may be able to turn the move in his favor. He has called the legislature back into special session, which means different procedures that preclude the tiny Democratic minority in the state Senate from blocking the plan which cuts $15 billion over two years, including $4 billion in school cuts staunchly opposed by state government worker unions.
Perry has taken some knocks from fiscal conservatives in the past for not reining in spending sufficiently. Taking a hard line on a big budget fight is helping Perry, a former Democrat who has become a conservative darling, claim some of the fiscal hawk status so coveted currently in the GOP.
Perry has also taken advantage of the budget crisis to add a proposal overhauling the state’s Medicare program to his call for this special session. Perry has pushed for major changes in the way states obtain and spend Medicare funds and may be able to now move forward. You may not have noticed but it’s kind of a hot topic with Republicans right now.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will call on Perry Thursday as part of an ongoing effort to establish some conservative bona fides (he penned a Wall Street op-ed heavy on Reagan references and downplayed his personal relationship with his former boss, President Obama in a new interview at Real Clear Politics). While he’s in Austin, Huntsman will also no doubt be trying to get a read on Perry’s presidential aspirations.
Those wondering about Perry’s leaning need only look at the press conference he held to announce the special session. That guy was feeling it.

Palinpalooza Rolls On
“I don't think I owe anything to the mainstream media. I think it would be a mistake for me to become some kind of conventional politician and doing things the way that it's always been done with the media in terms of relationship with them, telling them to come along and 'we'll orchestrate this, we'll script this and we'll basically write a story for you' media about what we're doing every day. No, I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this and that would include not necessarily telling them beforehand where every stop is going to be.”
-- Sarah Palin “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
Sarah Palin is continuing to drive the press corps batty with her unscripted, unscheduled bus tour through the Northeast and points unknown.
A CBS journalist warned that a young producer could be hurt in a car crash trying to trail Palin’s tour bus as it makes its way up the I-95 Corridor, and pressies in general are exasperated by the cat and mouse game Palin is playing.
Palin, for her part, seems to be loving it. She told Greta Van Susteren that it is all part of her unconventional approach to public life and showed some pleasure at the thought of turning the tables on an establishment press corps that has so bedeviled her.
She is taunting them now: You’re the ones following me, so don’t complain.
When Palin popped in for a pizza dinner with Donald Trump, the press corps was like moths splattering themselves against a million-candle-powered searchlight. And the closer her land yacht rolls to New Hampshire, the greater the anticipation and interest becomes.

And Now, A Word From Charles
“This is the sequel: Summer of Recovery II. I'm sure they will announce it next year as well. Probably happen in 2018, the way it's going. We're seeing a historically, extremely, unusually weak recovery.
I notice when the press characterizes these numbers like the one on housing today, the word ‘unexpectedly’ is used. What is unexpected about it? We have 1.8 percent growth in the economy, extremely anemic. We have a sky-high price for energy and food, which is stealing money out of the consumer economy. We have 9 percent unemployment and we have this historic drop in the price of housing. There is nothing unexpected about it.”