Leading from behind......

[majorette%2520barry%2520copy%255B13%255D.jpg]

The Putin humiliations need no great explanations.....bu Obama behaving like a capricious woman ! Ouch .......

Russia Makes a Fool Out of Obama, Over and Over

The worst has finally happened. It took much longer than expected -- nearly two thousand days -- but Barack Obama's foreign policy has finally collapsed, leaving Americans to gape slack-jawed at the smoking ruins. Obama has undermined American influence and honor in ways that will be very difficult to repair.

Writing in the Moscow Times, Russian attorney Vladimir Berezansky plays the funeral dirge. He calls Russia's granting of asylum to Edward Snowden a "Suez moment." By this he means that China and Russia have effectively burst the bubble of American power in the same way that the U.S. burst the bubble of French and British power during the Suez crisis. The latter two nations were never the same afterwards, and, Berezansky argues, neither will the USA be after Snowden. Watching Obama's helplessness as these two malignant dictatorships thumb their noses at America reminds one of nothing so much as the Iran hostage crisis and the Afghanistan invasion, where Jimmy Carter's presidency ran aground.

Russia went out of its way to snub and provoke the United States and to humiliate Obama. It took the minimum amount of time and gave Snowden the maximum number of benefits available. Russia sent a clear message that it cares nothing for its relationship with the United States, has no fear of Obama's retaliatory moves, and believes that there will be none anyway. Obama replied by making it clear that he would not impose any tangible sanctions, such as an Olympic boycott, once again handing another easy victory to Putin.

Leon Aron, the dean of American Russia watchers, believes that Obama's feeble response to Russia on Snowden, canceling a scheduled personal meeting with Putin, was a fatal display of weakness and a national disgrace. Aron points out that Obama could have refused to attend the upcoming G-20 summit in Russia, where the meeting was scheduled, or he could have attended and strongly confronted Putin over what amounts to an act of war against the United States. Predictably, Obama chose to do neither. He'll attend the summit, sparing Russian face, but won't meet with Putin in protest, sparing Putin the post-meeting press conference where Obama calls him to account. Instead of punishing Putin, Obama is basically doing him a favor.

Putin did the worst he could to the U.S. on Snowden, and the U.S. responded with maximum softness. Obama's message to Putin is clear: grab for more. Russian political pundits were openly laughing at Obama's feebleness.

Political Information Agency General Director Alexei Mukhin told Interfax:

The Soviet Union hosted the Olympic Games without the Americans in 1980. Nevertheless, everything was just excellent. Even if Washington makes a similar step during the Sochi Olympics, this won't mean anything unpleasant for Russia. In 1980, the Americans were supported by a number of countries, but now this can't be replayed, because of the EU's position, among other things. It looks like, in its desire to sting the Russian leadership, Washington has outsmarted itself in the situation surrounding Snowden. The Barack Obama administration has behaved like a capricious woman.

Of course, Obama never thought he'd need to show any backbone where Russia is concerned, so naturally he's not ready to do so. His "reset" policy was supposed to turn Russia into a cooperating partner on issues like Snowden, and it has blown up in his face, just as his critics predicted it would from the first.

Russia was happy to sign a nuclear weapons treaty that called on only the USA to cut weapons. When Obama sought a second round that would actually impose some cuts on Russia, Putin told him to drop dead.

No progress whatsoever has been achieved in inducing Iran to abandon nuclear weapons. To the contrary, Russia not only continues to support Iran, but is now helping Iran support Syria, and flouting U.S. policy there as well.

Putin has escalated an appalling crackdown on civil society, which has seen him arrest his leading critic, Alexei Navalny, on clearly political charges and sentence him to five years at labor. America's moral leadership in Russia has vanished; America has betrayed those who stand for its values.

The most utterly humiliating moment for Obama on Russia, however, has not been on the foreign policy front. Russia recently passed a law making it illegal for any homosexual to act gay in public. This law makes gay Olympic athletes subject to arrest in Sochi, Russia, during the 2014 Winter Olympics scheduled to be staged there. The Kremlin has said it will enforce the measures. This has resulted in a furious backlash. Celebrities from Harvey Fierstein to Steven Fry to Mr. Sulu have openly called for a boycott, and 88 U.S. congressmen have signed a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding action. As a result, Obama faces the lowest moment of his presidency: he must either side with the gays and follow the path of Jimmy Carter into an Olympic boycott, or he must side with his "reset" policy and permanently alienate a key element of his political base. There is no way out.

Everywhere Obama has turned, Putin has been there to stick a finger in his eye. Just like Neville Chamberlain, Obama thought the power of his personality could convert a malignant dictator into a reasonable partner. Just like Chamberlain, Obama's policy of appeasement has collapsed into humiliating failure, with devastating consequences for future generations to bear.

Ironically, in a recent interview with Jay Leno, Obama didn't disagree when Leno accused Putin of acting like Hitler on the homosexual question. This equation is percolating throughout the internet these days. Obama's bitterness at being betrayed by Pooty was palpable. Yet despite acknowledging Putin's evil, Obama is unable to confront it. He can respond only with confused half-measures that just make the situation worse. This is precisely the problem Obama's critics were worried about when he took the Oval Office: his total lack of foreign policy credentials left him adrift and unable to recognize that his balloon was losing altitude until it spectacularly crashed.

On internet forums, Obama's critics have taken to writing his name commencing with the numeral zero rather than a letter, and that just about sums it up. So far, Obama hasn't even had the fortitude to fire his ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, the architect of the ruinous reset, whose service in Russia has been a Keystone Cops fiasco from the first moment. When Snowden walked into Moscow, McFaul should have walked out.

As Hitler could not have wished for better than Chamberlain, Putin could not have dreamed of more than Obama. The president won't make the highest American values part of his relationship with Russia, maybe because he doesn't share them, and he won't stand up for American values and honor by making Putin pay dearly for crossing them, maybe because he doesn't care about them.

The phantom menace......

Official: Embassy Attack Threat “Had No Basis in Fact”

Terror plot manufactured to dampen opposition to drone strikes

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 12, 2013

A high-ranking Yemeni security official has told McClatchy that the Obama administration’s recently announced terror threat which supposedly targeted US embassies had “no basis in fact” and was manufactured merely to dampen opposition to drone strikes.

Image: YouTube

After initially warning of a terror plot “thought to have been one of the most serious against American and other Western interests since the September 11 attacks,” the US closed 20 embassies and consulates earlier this month, 18 of which reopened yesterday.

The announcement of the threat occurred as it was simultaneously acknowledged that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last year was linked to a clandestine CIA arms smuggling operation based in the Libyan city that was being used to transport arms to rebels in Syria, many of whom are allied with Al-Qaeda militants.

The announcement of the threat against US embassies also served to justify blanket NSA surveillance, leading some to suggest that the alleged plot was being hyped to distract from the Edward Snowden scandal. It was later claimed that the NSA had intercepted a “conference call” of Al-Qaeda members during which militants discussed an attack.

However, in a report entitled U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats, McClatchy cites, “A high-ranking Yemeni security official speaking on the condition of anonymity,” who told the news outlet that the threat “had no basis in fact,” with the source bemusedly attributing “media reports about imminent terror strikes to a single official’s comments, which he cast as a misguided attempt at shifting public opinion in the face of increasing and unpopular American drone strikes.”

Dozens of people, labeled “suspected militants” by the US, have been killed in Yemen over the last two weeks as a result of at least eight drone strikes, attacks that have outraged Yemeni citizens. According to Princeton University professor and Yemen expert Gregory Johnson, the drone strikes are actually serving to recruit more terrorists.

“There are strikes that kill civilians. There are strikes that kill women and children. And when you kill people in Yemen, these are people who have families. They have clans. And they have tribes. And what we’re seeing is that the United States might target a particular individual because they see him as a member of al-Qaeda. But what’s happening on the ground is that he’s being defended as a tribesman,” said Johnson.

Figures show that 50 civilians are killed for every one terrorist taken out by a drone strike, which means that 95% of the victims are innocent men, women and children.

As Ron Paul notes in his column today, while the Obama administration is conducting drone strikes in Yemen to supposedly target Al-Qaeda terrorists, the White House is simultaneously supporting the allies of Al-Qaeda terrorists, the vast majority of whom have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, in Syria.

Furthermore, as the high-ranking Yemeni security official reveals, the administration is also apparently manufacturing terror plots in order to justify these drone strikes as well as mass NSA surveillance.

Leadership shown by selection or contemplation of the selection of key appointees in postions of great authority ?????

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-12/why-larry-summers-ego-matters

( Barack , put Larry Summers down and walk slowly away from the teleprompter... )

Why Larry Summers' Ego Matters

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/12/2013 16:49 -0400

Banking Practices

Citibank

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Comptroller of the Currency

Creditors

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

India

Larry Summers

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Submitted by F.F. Wiley via Cyniconomics blog,

'Larry Summers for Fed Chair' proponents are working hard to reverse his generally poor reputation and seem to have gained some ground. They’ve tempted even Fed skeptics like me with reports that Summers doesn’t believe much in quantitative easing. But his supporters are also making claims that don’t stand up to the facts.

For example, some Summers fans have tried torewrite history by claiming that his pre-2008 opposition to derivatives regulation was nothing more than an objection to CFTC Chair Brooksley Born’s so-called “crude” proposals. In fact, Summers fought for legislation banning virtually all regulation for over-the-counter derivatives, not just the type favored by Born.

What’s more, he continued to defend pre-crisis banking practices long after Born’s 1999 resignation, as shown by his harsh dismissal of Raghuram Rajan’s famous 2005 warning of rising financial sector risks. Summers even led the charge to discredit Rajan.

My reason for writing about Summers once again, though, isn’t to discuss specific policies but to revisit the character issues that seem to follow him from job to job. And to explain why they matter.

Two weeks ago, I shared an account of White House officials being driven to wits’ end by Summers’ obsession with status symbols, such as personal chauffeurs and important-looking seating locations at presidential speeches. In another post a few months ago, I referred to his mantra that you should never admit mistakes.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think we should be wary of power-hungry egotists whose personal philosophy is to obscure the truth.And there’s one more story – told in Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men and then again in former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair’s Bull by the Horns – that helps to explain why.

Both authors wrote extensively about the Obama administration’s what-to-do-about-the-big-banks discussions in 2009. For much of the first half of that year, policymakers debated using the FDIC’s resolution process or other methods to shift at least some of the burden of the financial crisis onto the right parties. By that, I mean bank shareholders, bondholders and executives, not taxpayers. Citibank was the test case, since it was horribly managed and surviving solely on a succession of Treasury Department bailouts.

How the banks preserved our toxic status quo

Unbeknownst to most of us in 2009, the battle lines in the debate were weighted strongly against Citi.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was the bank’s guardian angel, advocating relentlessly for its interests and fighting to block proposals its management didn’t like.

On the other side: Summers, Bair, President Obama, former Fed Chair Paul Volcker (Obama’s top independent economic advisor) and CEA Chair Christine Romer all wanted Citi to pay a steep price for its mismanagement. All five of these heavyweight policymakers wanted to restructure Citi as a prelude to a tougher approach to all of our mega-banks. And Bair was suggesting a prepackaged bankruptcy, in which the bank would continue to operate as a smaller entity after haircutting creditors, stripping bad assets, tossing out management and wiping out shareholders.

In other words, there were five top policymakers who wanted to strike a blow on behalf of taxpayers and just one – Geithner – defending Citi’s management. (I’m not counting Citi’s hopelessly captured regulators at the Fed and the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, since these organizations weren’t part of Obama’s inner circle.)

Against these seemingly insurmountable odds, how the heck did Geithner win?

My reading of Confidence Men suggests four reasons (the fourth repeated in Bull by the Horns):

Rather than leading from the Oval Office, the president relied on his lieutenants to set direction. He never actively pushed them to restructure Citi even after explicitly stating that he wanted to see this happen.

Geithner convinced the others that he was putting together a restructuring plan (which would require Bair’s help), but never actually did so.

Volcker had almost no influence because he spoke mostly with Obama and his role was informal.

The FDIC was remarkably kept in the dark. Geithner, who had no interest in the regulatory process and knew little about bank resolutions, was in the driver’s seat as Treasury Secretary. Neither he nor Summers told Bair, our foremost expert on these matters, that Obama favored a restructuring. Summers’ decision to withhold information was especially damaging, since he and Bair stood on the same side of the debate. But this is apparently how Summers rolls, always working to elevate his own role while marginalizing other players.

Here’s an excerpt from Confidence Mendescribing Summers’ underhanded approach:

Bair got a call from Summers’s office ... Summers was gracious and eager, particularly interested in discussing the basics of how a prepackaged bankruptcy might work on a bank like Citi. Bair ran through it.

Summers was circumspect. He didn’t tell her that he and Romer were now, for the most part, in Bair’s camp and that they’d be in a “showdown” Sunday with Geithner about the future of big banks like Citi. He asked how deep the hole was – the hole that some funds, from somewhere, would have to fill if the bank were shut down and reopened. She said it was about $600 billion tops, and explained the “intrinsic value” calculus.

...Without context, though, Bair couldn’t really discuss how these cost estimates could shape options and policy. She just considered it an informational call and told Summers to call anytime.

And this is Bair’s direct account of the same conversation (from her book):

It was a confusing conversation because his comments seemed completely opposite from what I was getting from Tim. Again, only later would I learn (by reading Ron Suskind’s book) that Summers had been pushing to nationalize Citi and break it up. If only he had let me know, we could have worked with the White House to impose some accountability on the institution. It would have completely changed the political dynamic and the growing anger and resentment against the government’s seemingly endless willingness to throw money at big institutions. The public justifiably wanted retribution. Citi should have been led to the pillory.

In other words, Summers refused to enlist Bair’s support even as he needed her answers to basic questions. And he kept the reasons for his questions secret. Kind of like engaging your doctor in general discussion without revealing your symptoms or requesting an examination.

Ultimately, Geithner exploited Summers’ poor teamwork to shield the big banks from any serious challenges to their government-sponsored chokehold on the economy. Geithner’s success was one of our biggest failures. And the story behind it shows that Summers’ character flaws matter. They’re not harmless personality quirks, as his supporters would like you to believe. On the contrary, the man’s humongous ego can stand in the way of policies that need to be enacted. In my opinion, this is inexcusable. It should rightly eliminate him from the Fed Chair discussion, and before you even consider his poor track record as a public figure.

On a related matter…

Congratulations are in order to India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In my earlier post on the Fed succession, I asked the following:

Why not appoint someone with a track record of getting things right, you ask? Someone like a Rajan – with a proven ability to think critically about economic theory, while foreseeing developments that more famous economists only recognize in hindsight?

Last week, Singh chose Rajan to be the next governor of the Reserve Bank of India, to replace the outgoing chief, Duvvuri Subbarao, on September 4.

In a world of fairness and accountability, there would have been a bidding war for Rajan’s services. As it is, India’s central bank will get a guy who saw the global financial crisis before the fact, whereas Obama’s shortlist consists only of folks who’ve been blinded by the spectacularly flawed models of mainstream economic theory.

and.....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-12/forget-apology-eric-holder-owes-american-people-resignation

( Hitler had Erich Von Manstein....)

Forget Apology: Eric Holder Owes The American People A Resignation

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/12/2013 09:03 -0400

Bloomberg's Jon Weil, who has compiled the following stunning array of lies regarding the DOJ's enforcement activity disclosed by none other than its head, Eric Holder, is far too kind when he says that the "fast and furious" Holder owes the American people an apology. What we really owes is at least a resignation (and frankly much more, but it is too early on Monday to become too politically incorrect). And considering that the DOJ in its now former employee Lanny Brauer's words refused to prosecute those banks which were deemed "too big to prosecute", the lying here has now became a meta phenomenon, as the DOJ is effectively caught lying about lying. How many more meta levels of higher up fraud "inception" can Holder take this, before the American people finally demand his head, metaphorically-speaking of course? Sadly, judging by the response to unprecedented scandals coming out of this administration so far, the answer is... more.

From BBG's Jonathan Weil:

Eric Holder Owes the American People an Apology

The Justice Department made a long-overdue disclosure late Friday: Last year when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder boasted about the successes that a high-profile task force racked up pursuing mortgage fraud, the numbers he trumpeted were grossly overstated.

We're not talking small differences here. Originally the Justice Department said 530 people were charged criminally as part of a year-long initiative by the multi-agency Mortgage Fraud Working Group. It now says the actual figure was 107 -- or 80 percent less. Holder originally said the defendants had victimized more than 73,000 American homeowners. That number was revised to 17,185, while estimates of homeowner losses associated with the frauds dropped to $95 million from $1 billion.

The government restated the statistics because it got caught red-handed by a couple of nosy reporters. Last October, two days after Holder first publicized the numbers, Phil Mattingly and Tom Schoenberg of Bloomberg News broke the story that some of the cases included in the Justice Department's tally occurred before the initiative began in October 2011. At least one was filed more than two years before President Barack Obama took office.

After their initial story, I asked a Justice Department spokeswoman, Adora Andy, several times over the course of a month for a list of the people charged and their case details so I could look them up myself. She promised repeatedly to provide one, until she finally stopped responding to my requests.

Her e-mails to me were priceless. On Oct. 19, Andy said: “We’ll have a list to you -- it will take some time to pull it together.” On Oct. 26, she said: “You will get a list,” explaining that “this is a labor-intensive process.” On Nov. 5, she said: “It looks like we should have the list to you by the end of the week if not sooner.” On Nov. 13: “Hold tight. Finalizing things on this end. Should have something to you tonight.” Again, no list. “I assure you I’m working as hard as I can to get this to you along with the lead agency on this matter, FBI,” she said later that same day. “It’s just very laborious with so much going on and so little staff.”

My column about the Justice Department's refusal to come clean ran a few days later last fall. And it seems obvious now why I wasn't given the list. The government would have been handing me the proof that the numbers it was touting were wrong.

In an updated press release Friday, which corrected its initial release of last October, the Justice Department said a review of the cases found that the inflated figures included defendants who had been sentenced or convicted in fiscal year 2012 -- not just people who had been criminally charged, as originally reported. Its original, lofty tally also included cases in which the victims weren't distressed homeowners.

"As a result, the announcement overstated the number of defendants that should have been included as part of the Distressed Homeowner Initiative, as well as the corresponding estimated loss amount and number of victims," the Justice Department said.

When Holder first trotted out these figures last October, he bragged during a press conference about the results of the government's "Distressed Homeowner Initiative," which he called “a groundbreaking, yearlong mortgage-fraud enforcement effort” and “the first ever to focus exclusively on crimes targeting homeowners.” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan joined him at the press conference.

What a charade. No wonder the government found it so difficult to bring a meaningful number of accounting-fraud cases against bank executives after the financial crisis. Its own books were cooked.

* * *

This was the second time, mind you, that Holder's Justice Department had pulled a stunt like this. In December 2010, Holder held a press conference to tout a supposed sweep by the president’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force called "Operation Broken Trust." (The mortgage-fraud program was part of the same task force.) As with the mortgage-fraud initiative, Broken Trust wasn’t actually a sweep. All the Justice Department did was lump together a bunch of small-fry, penny-ante fraud cases that had nothing to do with one another. Then it held a press gathering.

Read on here

Expect more Heisman posing on these from POTUS ........ although I'm sure he was just getting ready to fine tune but not stop killing lists of Americans.....And the Banksters are right after Kills Lists on his " To Do " List..... Yeah , right .......Don't know what pose you strike for IES or Dept of Ed Employees needing AR-15s......Don't know what moves you make to appoint a confirmed liar as the point person for NSA Review Group - maybe they just don't care anymore how things even look or figure we're just to dumb and / or lazy to pay attention ? Are they right ?

Can you say We ARE A Banana Republic ?

As Head Of NSA Review Group Obama Appoints Same Person Who "Apologized" For Lying To Congress

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/12/2013 20:21 -0400

Corruption

national intelligence

It is almost as if the Obama administration is intent on making every possible PR (and of course governance, but it's really the Fed that is in charge of the US so that part is irrelevant) mistake, and then some more.

Recall that on Friday, to much fanfare, the president took credit for the revelations presented by Edwards Snowden (because, you see, he would have addressed all the NSA issues regardless, ignoring for a minute that without Snowden all speculation about pervasive NSA domestic surveillance would be dismissed as simply more conspiracy theory), and announced that he would conduct a review of the policies and espionage procedures in place at the NSA.

Also recall that in a Senate hearing this March,Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect phone records of millions of Americans. This was just three months before the revelations of an NSA leaker made it clear that Clapper was not telling the truth. Pressed on his false testimony before Congress, Clapper apologized for giving an “erroneous” answer but claimed it was just because he "simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act." As Ron Paul said: "Wow."

Well, we have no idea what Ron would exclaim at this latest reveleation from the government, although we have a few phrases in mind. Moments ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported the following:

DNI Clapper Announces Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies

At the direction of the President, I am establishing the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to examine our global signals-intelligence collection and surveillance capability.

The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.

The Review Group will brief its interim findings to the President within 60 days of its establishment, and provide a final report with recommendations no later than Dec. 15, 2013.

James R. Clapper
Director of National Intelligence

A question arises: how does one know they are living in an unmitigated disaster of a banana republic where not even an attempt at hiding the crime and corruption takes place? Well, we are not absolutely certain, but we have a distinct feeling that when the president appoints as his impartial "reviewer" of the ultra top secret NSA's policies and capabilities the one man who was caught and exposed and subsequently apologized for lying to Congress, that may be a pretty damn good sign.

Sadly, that is precisely what just happened.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/mcconnell-dont-open-obamacare-exchanges-if-privacy-isnt-protected_745961.html

1:48 PM, AUG 12, 2013 • BY JOHN MCCORMACK

Reuters recently reported that security testing for Obamacare is months behind schedule. And Michael Astrue, former HHS general counsel and Social Security commissioner, has warned in THE WEEKLY STANDARD that "unless delayed and fixed" the Obamacare exchanges will "inflict on the public the most widespread violation of the Privacy Act in our history."

Today, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell sent a letter to a top official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking for the exchanges to be delayed until the government can guarantee that the privacy of Americans will be protected.

"While I believe we ought to repeal this law and replace it with commonsense reforms that lower cost, Americans ought to be assured, at an absolute minimum, that their personal and financial data will be safe from data thieves," writes McConnell. "I am asking you to delay opening the exchanges until the Inspector General can guarantee the security of the exchanges."

IRS Refuses to Answer Congressman on AR-15s for ‘Standoff Capability’

“Do they need a SWAT team to make sure you’ve paid your taxes?”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 12, 2013

The IRS has refused to answer Congressman Jeff Duncan’s question on why IRS agents are training with semi-automatic AR-15′s designed for “standoff capability”.

Back in May, Congressman Duncan (R-SC) visited the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Maryland as part of his investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s large scale ammunition purchases.

While at the facility, Duncan witnessed eight or nine IRS agents using AR-15′s at a 100 yard indoor firing range, leading him to wonder, “Why in the world do we have IRS agents with long gun capability….why are they training with that….why do IRS agents need that capability?”

Duncan noted that the style of firearms training the IRS agents were taking was called “standoff capability,” meaning they could target an individual from a long distance away.

“Why do IRS agents need standoff capability?” Duncan asked at a recent public forum. “They should be checking my tax forms, they should be doing audits.” The Congressman questioned why the federal agency couldn’t call on US Marshals or local law enforcement if they were visiting a potentially dangerous criminal.

“I asked that question – I have not got an answer because my committee does not have jurisdiction over the Internal Revenue Service, so I can’t bring IRS agents in front of my committee and ask them questions,” said Duncan, adding that the IRS merely sent him a response pointing to their website stating that agents do train with weapons they carry, “validating the fact that they do carry AR-15′s,” according to the Congressman.

Duncan said he would now encourage his peers who do have jurisdiction over the IRS to ask the federal agency why its agents are now apparently carrying “standoff capability” assault rifles because, “The IRS has not been cooperative. My committee doesn’t’t have direct oversight over the IRS so I’ve been trying to build support for an investigation. The IRS has not shown me any information on why they need to train with AR-15′s.”

As Joshua Cook points out, the Department of Education is also acquiring tactical weapons, along with numerous other federal agencies that wouldn’t be expected to require such deadly weaponry.

When asked whether the Department of Education should have its own SWAT team, Duncan responded, “Absolutely not, that’s the whole concern with the IRS. Do they need a SWAT team to make sure you’ve paid your taxes?”

“This just as bad as the Dept. of Education actually having agents who are on armed and trained with AR-15s. Both are symptoms of a federal government that is out of control and whose powers have grown well beyond those outlined in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution,” added Steve Hoffman, the Southeast Regional Director for the Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC).

CIA Director Brennan Confirmed as Reporter Michael Hastings Next Target

August 12, 2013

Print Version

Source: San Diego 6

This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter's sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).
Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor’s President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government's continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.
After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster's spokesperson responded in lightning speed. Two emails were received; one acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story and the other said, “Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”
The emails also prompted a phone from CIA media spokesman Todd Ebitz. He said they were saddened by Michael’s death and reiterated their position that they had a cordial working relationship with the investigative reporter.

Read More...

Unsealed court-settlement documents reveal banks stole $trillions' worth of houses

August 12, 2013

Print Version

Source: Boing Boing

Back in 2012, the major US banks settled a federal mortgage-fraud lawsuit for $1B. The suit was filed by Lynn Szymoniak, a white-collar fraud specialist, whose own house had been fraudulently foreclosed-upon. When the feds settled with the banks, the evidence detailing the scope of their fraud was sealed, but as of last week, those docs are unsealed, and Szymoniak is shouting them from the hills. The banks precipitated the subprime crash by "securitizing" mortgages -- turning mortgages into bonds that could be sold to people looking for investment income -- and the securitization process involved transferring title for homes several times over. This title-transfer has a formal legal procedure, and in the absence of that procedure, no sale had taken place. See where this is going?
The banks screwed up the title transfers. A lot. They sold bonds backed by houses they didn't own. When it came time to foreclose on those homes, they realized that they didn't actually own them, and so they committed felony after felony, forging the necessary documentation. They stole houses, by the neighborhood-load, and got away with it. The $1B settlement sounded like a big deal, back when the evidence was sealed. Now that Szymoniak's gotten it into the public eye, it's clear that $1B was a tiny slap on the wrist: the banks stole trillions of dollars' worth of houses from you and people like you, paid less than one percent in fines, and got to keep the homes.

Now that it’s unsealed, Szymoniak, as the named plaintiff, can go forward and prove the case. Along with her legal team (which includes the law firm of Grant & Eisenhoffer, which has recovered more money under the False Claims Act than any firm in the country), Szymoniak can pursue discovery and go to trial against the rest of the named defendants, including HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and US Bank.
The expenses of the case, previously borne by the government, now are borne by Szymoniak and her team, but the percentages of recovery funds are also higher. “I’m really glad I was part of collecting this money for the government, and I’m looking forward to going through discovery and collecting the rest of it,” Szymoniak told Salon.
It’s good that the case remains active, because the $1 billion settlement was a pittance compared to the enormity of the crime. By the end of 2009, private mortgage-backed securities trusts held one-third of all residential mortgages in the U.S. That means that tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to foreclose. This hasn’t stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the breakdown of law in the judicial system. But to this day, the resulting chaos in disentangling ownership harms homeowners trying to sell these properties, as well as those trying to purchase them. And it renders some properties impossible to sell.
To this day, banks foreclose on borrowers using fraudulent mortgage assignments, a legacy of failing to prosecute this conduct and instead letting banks pay a fine to settle it. This disappoints Szymoniak, who told Salon the owner of these loans is now essentially “whoever lies the most convincingly and whoever gets the benefit of doubt from the judge.” Szymoniak used her share of the settlement to start the Housing Justice Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to raise awareness of the continuing corruption of the nation’s courts and land title system.

Your mortgage documents are fake! [David Dayen/Salon]
(Image: Foreclosure, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from andrewbain's photostream)

Luke , let me show you the power of the dark side...... NSA , just like a father to all of us.....

Former CIA, NSA Chief: Obama Wants Americans to Accept Surveillance

Hayden: Making Americans Comfortable Makes Them 'Less Safe'

by Jason Ditz, August 11, 2013

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Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden addressed President Obama’s promises of more “transparency” for the surveillance programs, saying that his goal is just to make Americans comfortable enough to accept the program.

That’s what every critic of the president has been saying since the Friday speech, of course, but instead of taking the position that do-nothing “reforms” were aiming to pull the wool over the American public’s eye, Hayden insisted that even the glorified PR campaign is “going to be hard.”

That’s because Hayden claims that literally “steps to make Americans more comfortable will actually make Americans less safe.” That’s in spite of the fact that those steps are designed to keep the surveillance leviathan alive and the public placated.

President Obama’s many promised reforms mostly centered around having spy agencies work together on a website that touts their activities to the American public and hiring a single “privacy officer” with no authority to somehow handle the entire NSA and FISA court system.

Catharsis Ours

Monday, August 12, 2013

Has America abdicated world actual leadership - as compared with " Leading From Behind aka Following " ? JUST a few recent examples of why many Americans feel the country has gone to hell in a hand basket . And leadership starts at the top , so let's start there........