Isn't it JUST SUPER!

..."we must constantly remind ourselves and each other of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's vision: "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

Its not the Bush Administration that continues to spy on us. Its not the Cheney Administration and John Yoo, now explaining why there will be no retreat from the insults to Habeas Corpus. Preventive detention isn't rolling off the lips of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzalez anymore.

"Since fatuously declaring his to be a "change" administration, President Barack Obama has quickly donned the blood-spattered mantle of state secrecy and executive privilege worn by the Bush regime." The Intelligence Daily

The retrograders at Justice, and the nEOBu$hians in the Obama administration didn't even read the memo about preventive detention being UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Its so much better having our rights trampled by a democratic regime. So much different.

Barack Obama will be in charge of the biggest domestic and international spying operation in history. Its prime engine is the National Security Agency (NSA)-located and guarded at Fort Meade, Maryland, about 10 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. A brief glimpse of its ever-expanding capacity was provided on October 26 by The Baltimore Sun's national security correspondent, David Wood: "The NSA's colossal Cray supercomputer, code-named the 'Black Widow,' scans millions of domestic and international phone calls and e-mails every hour.... TruthOut

So much better, so reassuring to know that the Constitutional Professor at 1600 has no more respect for your Bill of Rights than that Texan who enjoyed CHOPPING BRUSH SO MUCH!

Luckily, we have Congress to protect us!

solidarity & peace

Rick Spisak
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” Thomas Paine

COMMENT BY "X"
BY NAME WITHHELD for Privacy Sake (should any shreds exist)

In fairness, we DID know this about him, that he would do this. This is an excellent piece. Thank you SO MUCH for sending it on ... I believe he is as much or more of a nazi than bush. It was kinda evident with that rollout of the obama fellows. Each one of them that I had communication with was an unmitigated ASSHOLE. I am seriously now contemplating leaving this country. To go where? To look at different faces. That would be good enough. I'm really really REALLY disillusioned. This healthcare bullshit is just another coverup.. instead of DEATH CAMPS they're just taking people out with false diagnoses and toxic meds. Diabetes and cancer are INDUSTRIES along with countless new fake diseases EVERY DAY and now this sonofabitch and his senate and congress want to sign us up for MANDATORY SANCTIONABLE IF WE REFUSE HEALTH CARE>

In a word or two: FUCK THEM.

And, thank you for listening.

Take care.

I'm probably going to forward your email around.
Happy 4th.


PART II
By RW Spisak

I will confess, I never quite liked KoolAid.

While, my initial judgment on (b.o.) was that anybody who rose so meteorically
was certainly some Very Important Patriotic Machine's cat's paw

My more pragmatic assessment was that anything even the "famous potted plant" of the IRAN CONTRA HEARINGS so long ago, was preferable to the McCain-Palin ticket, I will admit to harboring some glimmer of "hope" that a CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, was going to be somewhat more "sensitive" to subtle nuances of the BILL OF RIGHTS, little inconsequential things like you know, say, HABEAS CORPUS, or UNREASONABLE SEARCH and SEIZURE, or you know... FREEDOM OF SPEECH. [it's the little things, you know]

It's the little things, so nearly completely abandoned by the shills in CONGRESS, I DID, I admit it, HARBOR SOME TINY CRUMBS OF HOPE! (as brother jackson [the reverend, not the now sainted child molester] is fond of intoning - KEEP... HOPE... ALIVE...)

But as I explained yesterday to an ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA (proselytizer) who accused me of being a [gasp] A KNOWN SINGLE PAYER ADVOCATE -

I explained, one of the virtues of being a progressive. Is that, while it can be exciting running with the vanguard of history, We do have the special pleasure, granted those who are perennially ahead of the POP-ular Wisdom.

We knew Nixxon was shredding the Constitution and manipulating elections, America did eventually become aware. We guessed that Reagan's illegal war, on the poor in Central America was a bad idea, and that Saint Raygun's policies of providing Missile Equipment to the same IRANIANS who held American hostages was a bad Idea, America came around, and while everyone was proclaiming our recent COWBOY president, a real down home HERO American, who was everyday, pertectin 'murca with torture and secret prisons... America eventually sussed that out too. We progressives got the joke, just alittle ahead of the MOB!

So I can only hope that they will eventually become aware that NO ONE WILL STAND UP TO TYRANNY - until they demand, that the BILL of Rights again becomes a bulwark of our Liberty.

Depending on the paid agents of CORPO-LOBBY-LAND presently filling seats in Congress, the sons and daughters of LOBBYISTS are not safeguarding our Constitution from the agents, of Tyranny.

They represent them, and their license to steal your sons and daughters.

These are indeed, the times that try our souls.
May providence and our own mutual self interest be with us.

solidarity & peace
Rick
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” Thomas Paine


COMMENT BY "X"
BY NAME WITHHELD for Privacy Sake (should any shreds exist)

...it is disheartening.


COMMENT BY "X"
BY NAME WITHHELD for Privacy Sake (should any shreds exist)

Dear Rick

Thank you for writing this and last night's peice -- my discontent has been smoldering and my patience being tried as I try to make sense out of what is really happening. Asking myself, 'Am I too impatient?', ' Am I not seeing the big picture?' I am so disappointed (Pollyanna is my middle name) and I want so badly for this not to be so. I could throw up!

NAME WITHHELD

Ginning Up a little Change

From a story reported on Truth Out

Essay by RW Spisak Jr.
for AveryVoice.com

..."For example, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a Florida Republican, bought Citigroup stock valued between $1,001 and $15,000 on Oct. 2, the day before the House passed the financial rescue bill and President George W. Bush signed it into law, records show. She opposed the bill.

Eleven days later, she bought $1,001 to $15,000 worth of Bank of America stock. It was on the same day that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told leading banks that he expected them to accept billions in bailout money to prevent a financial meltdown.

Brown-Waite, who has since left the committee to join the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and her spokeswoman would not comment for this article. The precise value of her investments is not publicly known because financial disclosure reports provide only broad ranges, although some members include detailed brokerage reports..."

The original article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer further states that "The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest."

How can you face your constituents and tell them you are carefully weighing banking policy or TAX POLICY when it seems that you took time away from overseeing the largest credit and banking crisis since The Great Depression to line your pockets?

Will you be using the same "ME FIRST" logic as you work to develop National Tax Policy?

I'm sure that your constituents would be surprised to know ..."Many details about the massive financial bailout last fall were widely known outside Capitol Hill. Yet members of the Financial Services Committee were privy to closed-door discussions, staff briefings and political horse-trading decisions between political parties, Congress and the White House. Banks lobbied Congress and the administration heavily.

Banks that received bailout money spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center found that the banks spending the heaviest got the biggest rescue packages...."

I'm sure your constituents are proud as peacocks about your dedication to making a BUCK. Happy for you, just knowing you could take advantage of your inside knowledge of the banking and securities changes, rushed through by the Bush Administration. I know, I sleep better knowing the Congresspersons of your caliber (small bore) can even now find time out of the hectic pace of the oversight of MELT DOWN of the American Credit System, to feather your own, nest. You set a high bar. Maybe there are even more in your FUTURE!

Sleep well, Now I just hope your temporary seat on the Taxation Committee, leaves time for you to still make a little on the side!
Drop her a note, let her know just how you feel!
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite,
Florida Republican 5th District

WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE
414 Cannon House Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20515
Phone (202) 225-1002

BROOKSVILLE OFFICE
16224 Spring HIll Dr Brooksville,
FL 34604
Phone (352) 799-8354

Richard W. Spisak Jr.
www.AveryVoice.com

Do my eyes deceive me?

Florida's Senator Bob Graham on the Colbert Report May 20th 2009.

Did I just see Bob Graham defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the Colbert Report? Very Nearly, Well Almost, just about.

Colbert's segment May 20th focused on the RIGHTWING's "PELOSI FRONT". They've been "Thumping the BIG-MEDIA DRUMS" for more than a week now trying to stir up dust about the discrepancies between the CIA's version of who told what to whom, during the 2002 Congressional briefings on TORTURE. * & **

It is profoundly wished in the crusty dank regions where conservatives hatch their nefarious plans that by attacking Pelosi they draw attention to her and create enough free floating confusion about what the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Yoo administration meant when they said "We do not Torture."

We just have that new stuff in the Improved Market-Tested Mumbo-Jumbo Box, we like to call it - ENHANCED interrogation.

When during a recent press conference Speaker Pelosi was asked was she calling the CIA liars?, the always plain-spoken Pelosi stated without mincing words "she was mislead." Pelosi, has stated she was not informed about the TORTURE ("E.I."), and this has led to a spattering of faux-news, sketch comedy segments with special appearances by Uncle Newtie G., and back from his 8 year tour of Secret Undisclosed Locations disgraced former VP Cheney and by special arrangement with the Obama Administration, a guest slot featuring Leon [no honest I really am a dem] Panetta (currently mayor of spooktown) who defended the CIA, by stating that it is not their business to deceive??? [REALLY?]

He continued to lie by saying they were comprehensive and forthcoming in all their briefings. [Who writes that stuff?]
What else would you expect from Cheney era spooks, but full-disclosure RIGHT?

Senator Bob, Chair of the Intelligence Committee at the time (in 2002) said, [while meticulously never mentioning that Pelosi woman] quoted from his notoriously thorough diary, stating flatly his daily logs "do not reflect three of the four meetings that the CIA claimed".

According to Senator Bob, chair of the Intelligence Committee at the time, it just didn't happen. He went on to say the one meeting that did occur roughly when the CIA reported that it did, the attendance was such that it couldn't have included high level security briefings because there were people in attendance who could not have been present at such briefings. [BOB TALKS OUTTA SCHOOL?] (He has a book to promote!***)

When Colbert asked "if a Senator found out about water-boarding what would he do? Write it down?" "No" Graham replied, "he would try to engage the MEDIA!" - you, dear readers are the media!

IT wasn't CORPO-FAUX-NEWS he was talking about!

solidarity & peace
RW Spisak

* [Cheney Yoo-Speak ] "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"
(with the all new improved market tested language)

** [The Rest of the World - Prosecutable WAR CRIMES]

*** America - The Owners Manual by Senator Bob Graham

Supplemental
"“I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them,” Graham told me by phone moments ago, in a reference to the terror suspect who had been repeatedly waterboarded the month before.

Graham is the only other Dem aside from Pelosi to get briefed in 2002, so they are both in effect asserting that no Dem was briefed on the use of EITs that year. The date of the next briefing was in February 2003.

Graham claimed he would have remembered if he’d been told about the use of torture. “Something as unexpected and dramatic as that would be the kind of thing that you would normally expect to recall even years later,” he said. " [greg sargant's blog]

WATCH THE CLIP

RE Experience

by RW Spisak

It is a rare thing, for Americans to elect a person who has been president before, unless it's for a second term. President Obama will have to wait a few years, for that election. This in fact addresses your concern about our current president's lack of presidential experience.

While it's true, he hasn't say, run an oil company, or even a baseball team... as did our former business school educated president. [Who spent us into this hole, by cutting taxes, (his all-purpose cure) while pretending that the costs of Iraq, and Afghanistan didn't need to be accounted for in the actual budget.] Our current president who having achieved a very high quality legal education, proceeded, not to cash in on Greed St, but instead went to work in a community to improve the lot of unemployed steel workers. [That's experience, unfortunately for many Americans we need, right about now!]

That might not compare to the gilded son of a CIA chief, Senator, and President, but it seems like he cared about investing his life in helping others. He didn't dodge a war, or even National Guard service, like the "former governor" who served before him.

You evidently may not recall, the blame shuffling of the Bush administration during the post 9/11 hearings when they pointedly discussed their perception of the shortcomings of President Clinton's several responses to earlier attacks on the towers, and the USS Cole, some of us do.

But you also inadvertently forget that in the period just before former President Bush took one of his many ranch vacations, he received a briefing that specifically HIGHLIGHTED Bin Ladin's immanent plans to attack this country from the air, using the exact techniques that had been planned for just months earlier at a European defense summit, where an attack from the air by hijacked planes, was prepared against. Like you Ms. Rice's memory needed refreshing, because her widely reported disingenuous initial comments were, "WE HAD NO IDEA of that sort of impending attack".

I guess there are times, when a compromised memory can be of some small service.

Orignial L2E entitled: Obama's Poor Record

Government in the Sunshine it's NOT!

It's time for a Virtual March on Tallahassee!
by RW Spisak Jr.

Government in the Moonshine (by the light of a New Moon) Government lit by a nightlight - out of the Sunlight is how they like to run the people's business in Tally. They purposely exempted themselves, so that they and their colleagues the lobbyists, can meet under the tables, behind closed doors, inside the pockets of wealthy corporate interests, and only emerge blinking into the sunlight after the deals are done. And after those same wealthy pockets have been carefully re-feathered with the peoples tax-money!

Another hand out to the insurance industry, no problem! All the lobbyists thought it was a great idea. No pesky reporters needed, nor need any time be made for public testimony. On the other hand there is time for the DRILLING LOBBY! Offshore oil drilling pipes up onto the former white sand, no problem. The tankers, drilling platforms and storage tanks will look good alongside the bikinis. If these knowledgeable ladies and gentlemen suggest that overnight the lost tourist dollars will be replaced by environmentally friendly DRILLERS no problem, we heard no facts that might contradict. They all nodded in unison, like windup dolls. If their friends the lobbyists, propose that drilling and pipelines will fit well alongside the former tourist friendly beaches, no one testified otherwise. They didn't have time for that kind of testimony?

If they decide to gut voter rights and open the pipeline to unregulated outside political money with no oversight? It's strictly the lobbyists business not any business of the public. After all two secret minutes of scheduled public comment is more than enough? All the lobbyists agreed.

Floridians, we need a VIRTUAL MARCH on the secret business conducted in the Tallahassee backrooms.

During a budget crisis the only talks are informal, by the light of the black cat and the darkside of the moon? No SUNSHINE HERE, the Legislature exempted themselves from SUNSHINE!.

Send them your eyes, WE ARE WATCHING! Send them your ears, WE ARE LISTENING to their foolishness. Send them your hands, which will be casting votes to oppose ONE PARTY MISRULE in Tallahassee. Send them your feet, WE ARE WALKING AWAY from secret sweetheart deals, where the good old boys and girls from UPSTATE, write checks to their lobbyist buds, with lucrative tax-money padded jobs with maybe an private aircraft hanger on the side. They've been thinking it's strictly their business, not yours! Let's show them how wrong they are!

It's time for a virtual MARCH ON TALLAHASSEE. There's budget money for corporate give-aways but no money for teachers, cops and higher education, but a walkaway guananteed bonus for the retiring legislator? OOPS thanks for the strong stench of a wake up call kiddies! You may have been brewing something sweet for many years, but finally even down state we can smell that sweetheart deal you brewed.

Its time for a VIRTUAL MARCH ON TALLAHASSEE.

They have counted on the distance, and the cost and the poverty of the electors to isolate them from oversight. They and their lobbyist golfing pals have been running amuck for far too long. You've stayed to long at the fair boys and girls, and the nasty brew you've been cooking for way too long has finally caught up with you. Too much overreaching has gotten you way way out on a limb, there kiddies, and the people have caught on.

Its time for a VIRTUAL MARCH ON TALLY - RALLY THE TROOPS! RALLY IN TALLY -CALL THEM, MAIL THEM, FAX THEM, TELL THEM THE GOOD OLD DAYS FOR THE GOOD OLD BOYS ARE OVER, TIMES UP!
Government by the light of the Dark side of the MOON is SO OVER!


Its time for a VIRTUAL MARCH ON TALLAHASSEE.

Florida Senate
Jeff Atwater President of the Senate
(850) 487-5100
FAX (561) 625-5103

Florida House
Speaker Larry Cretul
(850) 488-1157
Fax: (850) 488-9707

MORE REPUBLICAN VOTING REGISTRATION SHENANIGANS

"TALLAHASSEE — A House council hurriedly passed a sweeping rewrite of Florida election laws Friday, shutting down public comment after just two minutes and prompting an uproar from opponents."


Part 1

Well, well, shutting down public comments, after two whole minutes of debate??? REPUBLICANS, once again looking for "fraud" in all the wrong places...
Just another attempt to manufacture a republican controlled electoral system.

We've seen again and again across America, State House Republicans invent new "helpful" voting rules. Over and over inventing fresh constraints limiting democratic processes. Pretending to see fraud, where there has been none, inventing new ID requirements. Devising "protections" against non-existent election fraud. See the pattern?

It would seem that unless REPUBLICANS can purge the rolls, and restrict participation, they don't think it's FAIR?

They have through recent manipulations already made it so difficult that non-partisan organizations like the LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS can no longer to assist in enrolling voters. That's what they call PROGRESS???

Why is it that reducing participation, and creating new restrictive voting rules, are priorities for republican lawmakers. Can you decipher it?
They don't think you can.

Its' really not that hard to figure out. Republicans would be happier, if most Americans just didn't vote. The smaller the electorate, the easier for the RADICAL Republican Minority to manipulate the levers of government.

Are they really interested in protecting us from non-existent fraud, or from a competitive elections. They are convinced you don't care!

Part 2
There has been no fraud found in ANY of the states, in which republican legislators have recently found the need to create new voter eligibility restrictions.

Florida has had reasonable ID restrictions for years, this state has never allowed any old home made ID. Once again we find REPUBLICANS trying to railroad new restrictions on ID requirements and tightening the rules under which voter registrations are collected, all to solve a non-existent problems. Or is it to scratch an unspeakable itch.

Finally increasing the distance to 100 feet, for voter information and assistance is also unnecessary. Removing lawyers who can assist with voters questions, that is manipulation, not intended in anyway to assist voters. Evidently gerrymandering alone has been inadequate to their purpose.

Support Redistricting Reform - there will be a petition drive headed your way on the next few weeks.

More from the No Geneva Protections Crowd

The reason the rules of warfare exist is not merely to protect nation states, or soldiers under formal military arms. Non-state actors have long been a part of warfare. The armed citizens who confronted the military on Boston Commons, were not state actors. General Washington insisted that even Hessian mercenaries, thought guilty of extreme brutality in battle were to be treated with respect, and not harmed, when held as prisoners. General Washington was a civilized soldier, which is more than can be said of America's last commander in chief.

The purpose of the civilizing laws of war, is an attempt however limited, to extend basic human rights and dignity to all under arms. These rules represent an important part of the compact of civilization and the rule of law. Laws to make war even slightly more humane however partial, remain an important step in the right direction. The banning of the use of poisonous gas after World War I (originally marketed to reluctant participants, as the War to End All Wars.)
That there are those who act outside civilized law is a reality. We Americans, must act according to the highest standard of humanity, not sink to the level of any lawless group, religious or not.

Regarding the discredited Bush policies, again and again, evidence has been brought to light revealing that torture policies, emanated directly from meetings in the White House. Former President of the Senate and Vice President, Richard Cheney took personal credit for those policies on more than one occasion. Decisions reached by the Bush Cheney administration, in the White House guided the official torture policies, not the actions (as Rumsfeld's Defense Department tried to suggest) of out of control random actors. Despite President Bushes repeated denials of torture. What was the Bush regimes definition of torture? They had an opinion from their attorney Mr. Yoo.

[Mr. Yoo's 40-page, January 9, 2002, memo advised the Defense Department that neither the Geneva Convention nor the War Crimes Act applied to the treatment of Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, he said, was a "failed state" and so not a party to the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war from "physical or mental torture or any other form of coercion" to secure information, as well as from humiliating or degrading treatment. Members of the Taliban militia were not POW's but simply illegal combatants, he said.]

National Guardsmen from West Virginia did not bring leashes, and dog collars from home. The policies used in Guantanamo, were specifically imported to prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. "Black Sites" and Extraordinary Rendition are not the policies of a civilized nation. They do not represent the American tradition of "rule of law".

The duplicity of the Bush Administration that simultaneously proclaimed that they did not torture, based on their own spinning of the definitions of "Torture" have been discredited again and again. History will reveal, that the destroyed CIA tapes of "enhanced interrogation" are not the only evidence of the inhumane policies of the Bush Administration.

We are a nation of laws, and Bush's signing statements notwithstanding the law has survived the misdeeds of the Bush Administration. We are wiser for it. Support the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law!

solidarity & peace
Rick Spisak