Mortgage Marauders

LET US PURSUE the Mortgage Marauders who DROVE Americans to this financial cliff. Let's track who is the most merciless towards those it helped to financially wreck. Let's chase down every single banking institution that - like drug dealers - made credit so cheap and easy - knowing that Middle America, already being relentlessly CRUSHED for DECADES by policies that are robbing them blind - with transfers of unimaginable wealth to the top 1/10th of 1% of Americans - LET US descend on THEM. How dare they drive Americans from their homes, wreck their lives and their ability to resurrect that life and then HOUND those same Americans as dead beats!!!

Bin Laden Blames US... For Everything

In a news conference today Bin Laden blamed the US for global warming. It seemed that short accusation would be the whole of the terrorist leader's statement, when, suddenly, he blurted out that the US was also to blame for the whole NBC/Conan/Leno debacle. Laden further insisted it was the US that forced Paula Abdul to leave American Idol, and by far the worst crime - of late - the US forced the NFL to put the Pro Bowl on the week BEFORE the Super Bowl. "It's all your fault, US of A!" He screamed, running back to his cave. He grabbed at the bush he uses to disguise the cave entrance from predator drones and attempted to slam it shut. It made an indistinct scratching sound.

AMERICANA TURPIS thy name is RUSH LIMBAUGH

How much uglier can we get?

Framed for Life

This case is one of those 'gems' if such a term can be used that shows the appalling holes in our judicial system.

Literally framed for a murder they did not commit with the full knowledge of both the police AND the DA's office Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee were sent away, the former for life (without possibility of parole) for a murder they didn't commit. That facts are nauseating.

What is worse though is the self-serving laws put into place and sustained there by the US Supreme Court to cover the asses of many an incompetent if not outright corrupt DA.

The phrase, 'no Constitutional right to NOT be framed' has been used by many in the old boy's network to protect those backsides. What is stunning is that they say this with a straight face. No one poses the question, "So, Mr. Solicitor, if YOU were framed you'd be fine with that?!"

The fact is that this 'claim' is, in itself a lie. The Bill of Rights does indeed give you and I the right not to be framed. It exists in the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. And also in the Tenth: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

So it could be argued we 'have' an, as yet (and even phrasing it this way infuriates me) 'undiscovered' right to not be framed. The Ninth has rarely been used - but used it was most famously in two cases, Griswold vs. State of Connecticut (381 U.S. 479 (1965) and of course Roe v Wade. Despite any misgivings about the latter one might have, the point was, 'do American's have the right of privacy"? And the argument was made that that 'right' which all humans 'recognize' could then be discovered within the Ninth Amendment.

The same appalling insanity that has allowed judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for generations allowed, for instance, the Bush Administration to pass the near-draconian Patriot Act. Within its framework any ONE of us - yes, US citizens could have been deemed an 'enemy combatant' and hauled off WITHOUT appeal even to the most fundamental of human rights, habeas corpus. The revulsion we all feel toward that is the same we should feel about this utter BS of 'there being no Constitutional provision against being framed' by an incompetent or corrupt DA.

I recommend everyone familiarize themselves with this case and write to their representatives in Washington.

And God bless the incredibly brave and resilient Mr. Harrington for never, in 25 years, giving up! A man who was shortly bound for Yale, instead being framed and tossed away like so much dead meat into a prison, where the corrupt state and local officials assumed he'd disappear - refuses to give up or give in. It is indeed a testament to the enduring power of the human spirit and even more, for those in our country who have been abused by its very institutions to REFUSE to allow us or those institutions to forget what they are SUPPOSEDLY founded upon: Justice.

The NRA Parasite: Ginning fear to Gin Dollars

The NRA hard at work spreading, like the rest of the 'conservative' corporate machine, lies and fear. Here they work hard to derail attempts by America's mayors to ban the sale or manufacture of automatic weapons - a weapon with only one DESIGNED purpose: the killing of as many humans as possible in as s...hort a time as possible. The NRA has blanketed regions with their fear & hate mail, threatening the mayors of smaller towns until many abandon this sensible program. The NRA is a PARASITE that lives off generating fear in ignorant Americans. It's only true aim is to continue it's existence for it's administration by whipping up paranoia, thus increasing the amount of membership dues it takes in.

NUMBERS THAT MAKE YOU SUFFER

To help you understand: 1/10th of 1% of Americans control 90% of ALL the wealth in America and last year made 50% of all the income generated. Let's move this to the new Dallas football stadium with 80,000 seat capacity and pretend it represents all of America:

Just 80 people in that stadium control more wealth than 71,920, (or 90%) of the others in that stadium.

What's more: because the tax laws are completely skewed in their favor (among other benefits) these 80 individuals earned more - just last year - than the 'bottom half' or 40,000 of those hard working, bustin'-their-chops-every-damn-day Americans filling those seats.

These economic royalists are so far removed from the Reality of this world that they literally cannot comprehend how this gross distortion between the ultra-rich and the rest of us creates unimaginable suffering - and not just for us but for the world.

They have suckered the ever shrinking American middle class for decades, using the lure of cheap and easy credit, to make the middle class - you and I, believe we too could exist in their realm. It was a lie. All the while, as we were being led to believe the "American dream" was still attainable these people, these economic royalists, were stealing this country blind through their powerful lobbying of our elected representatives, rewriting tax laws to favor them while their PR people screamed that you and I were suffering a the hands of 'big government'. The sad thing is the truth of all this is easily found. It's all right in front of us. But they brilliantly went about the process of dumbing down America while at the same time buying up every media source - newspaper, radio or TV that they could. Now just six corporations own well over 90% of ALL media outlets in this country.

What is needed is a fundamental understanding that the extremes of wealth and poverty must be eliminated. There is no call here to storm the castle gates - such actions have never solved this problem which is largely spiritual in nature.

What must be done is for us all to arise, as one voice and adamantly insist that this despicable greedy behavior will no longer be tolerated in today's world.

No one should feel it is business as usual to own half a dozen palatial estates while five miles away a single mother is being evicted from her rat-invested one bedroom apartment. It is fundamentally wrong.