Pen's Pages

2010-06-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

The Usual Suspects Pt 1: Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness

This is the first installment of a series of articles in which I will introduce you to the cast of characters that pull all the strings behind the neocon movement, The Usual Suspects. This group has had a long and sordid history of criminal activity and have shown a propensity for sacrificing U.S. national security for their own agendas.

Today, I will introduce you to a rather infamous figure many of you probably already know. Richard Perle, The Prince of Darkness.

Perle served as an assistant Secretary of Defense for the Reagan administration and on the Defense Policy Board Adisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2003 under the Bush Administration.

Perle is a member of the Project for the New American Century, (PNAC), the Hudson Institute and is a resident fellow on the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also a disciple of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). You will be hearing those organizations quite often in this series, but let me point out now that Nitze, who founded the SAIS in 1944, was a former investment banker for a company that floated loans for the Third Reich. It was Nitze who wrote NSC Memorandum 68 which was the policy basis for the Cold War and led to the establishment of our never ending war economy. This document asserted, for the first time in U.S. history, a U.S. claim on any economic and social resources anywhere in the world.

Perle earned his nickname "The Prince of Darkness" for his radical ideas including the use of nuclear weapons. He is considered a hardliner and believes in military intervention in the domestic conflicts of foreign nations. Perle is on the public record advocating pre-emptive strikes against North Korea, Syria, Iran amongst other countries.

From 1969 to 1980, Perle was a staffer for Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. Less than a year after joining the staff, Perle was involved in the leaking of a CIA report on Soviet treaty violations. CIA analyst David Sullivan was author of the report and leaked it to Perle who in turn leaked it to the public. Sullivan quit before he could be fired and was subsequently hired by Henry Jackson, who only reprimanded Perle despite the CIA Director STansfield Turner's insistence that he be fired. The security leaks won't end there.

One could say he was "initiated" into the Usual Suspects in October 1970 when FBI wiretaps recorded him disclosing classified information to Israeli officials at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The information had been passed to him by NSC staff member Hal Sonnenfeldt, who himself was being wiretapped and had been repeatedly investigated by the FBI for suspected security leaks involving Israel.

In the late 70's, Perle, with his mentor Albert Wohlstetter, began promoting Turkey as a key US and Israeli strategic ally. When Islamic terrorists destablized that nation, a military coup established a pro-US regime. It was later found that the terrorism that had destabilized Turkey was carried out by the Turkish military in conjunction with the CIA and NATO. This is but one instance in which Perle was involved in western support for islamic militancy.

In 1980, Perle left his position as a Senate aide to become a consultant with the Abington Corporation. His first clients were Israeli arms dealers who wanted to sell the US weapons produced by Soltam Ltd., an Israeli company. Soltam agrees to pay Abington $10,000 a month for a period of one year. Despite Perle's resignation as a Senate aide, he inexplicably remained on the Senate rolls as a nonsalaried employee until May 31, 1981. During this period, Perle retained his Senate security clearance. William F. Hildebrand later tells the New York Times that Perle's arrangement with the Senate was not normal.

In 1983, it is Richard Perle who recommends that Michael Ledeen be hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism. Michael Ledeen, aka Kayser Soze, will be the subject of another installment of The Usual Suspects. Ledeen was considered by the CIA to be an agent of Israel.

It was during his stint as Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan that he was accused of corrupt dealings with Israel after he had recommended the purchase of an armaments system from Tamares, Ltd. who had paid him $50,000 in consulting fees just a year earlier.

Controversy surrounded Perles confirmation hearings for Assistant Secretary of Defense when he indicated he would like Stephen Bryen for deputy assistant. Bryen was previously investigated by the FBI for passing classified documents to an Israeli embassy offical in 1978. Once again, spying for Israel becomes a security concern due to Richard Perle.

Two decades later, Larry Franklin will be discovered to be the conduit between the Office of Special Plans, a secret Pentagon cell and two Israeli espionage agents. Richard Perle and many of The Usual Suspects operated out of the OSP in the buildup to the Iraq war.

In 1984, Perle urged the CIA to promote a propaganda program to get Soviet soldiers to defect to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. The CIA officers describe him as the craziest of the many extreme right-wingers they'd ever dealt with.

By 1986, Perle had completed negotiations on the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey. This put Turkey as the third largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt. Then he establishes a high-level US-Turkish consultation group co-chaired by the Pentagon and Turkish general staff. Perle is the American co-chair for this group. It is at this time that Richard Clarke is assigned by the State Department to "keep an eye on" Perle when he takes a trip to Turkey.

In 1987, Richard Perle resigned as Assistant Secretary of Defense under allegations he'd leaked classified information.

In 1989 Perle negotiated with Turkey an $800,000 contract for his own company, International Advisors Inc. (IAI), which he started with Douglas Feith. He received $48,000 annually. IAI is registered as Turkey's foreign agent with the Justice Department. In all, IAI receives $3.8 million dollars from Turkey over the next 6 years.

In 1995 Perle, along with Douglas Feith, illegaly act as advisors to the government of Bosnia during the Dayton peace talks without registering with the Department of Justice, as required by law. Perle goes on to serve as military advisor to Bosnia. Within months, Perle is lobbying to get Turkey to arm and train Bosnian muslims, which he claims is of vital interest to the United States.

It is soon after this that it becomes apparent to Interpol that the KLA has taken over heroin trafficking from Turkish criminal elements and that the KLA is also receiving protection from the US. Intercepted messages speak of the desire to drown the western infidels in drugs. Interpol realizes that Turkish-Albanian drug smuggling and political activities are deeply intertwined and that Osama bin Ladin is involved.

Perle was a signatory on the PNAC letter sent to President Clinton in 1998 calling for him to use military force against the Serbs. They urge Clinton to support the KLA.

This letter also calls for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. This letter claimed that diplomatic efforts had been a failure and military force was required to depose the Iraqi dictator. It was spearheaded by Ahmed Chalabi. The signatures read off like a roll call of all The Usual Suspects: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Richard Armitage, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, Frank Carlucci and others. These names will continue to crop up in interested places, such as the Niger Uranium forgeries, as this series continues.

He also chaired a study group that included other members of The Usual Suspects, such as Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, that created the strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. which recommended, among other things:

1: Armed incursions into Lebanon.
2: Strikes against Syria and Iran
3: The removal of Saddam Hussein from power
4: A move by Isreal away from liberalism and towards laissez faire capitalism. ie, Corporate Fascism.
5: Establishing a policy of pre-emptive strikes.

So far, three of those five recommendations have come to pass.

It was after receiving this paper that Netanyahu became a strong proponent of using American military force to drive Saddam out of Iraq. When Clinton refused, both Netanyahu and Blair were said to be furious.

On 9-11 the Sharon government instantly declared that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks and called for massive retaliation against Baghdad. Within two weeks, The Usual Suspects were making a feverish pitch to invade Iraq. Richard Perle was immediately brought into the inner sanctum.

It was Richard Perle, who during a July 10th, 2002 Defense Policy Board meeting, demanded the purging of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of all opponents of the Iraq war, and called for a U.S. military occupation and takeover of the Saudi oil fields and a total break with the House of Saud-just as his July 1996 IASPS "Clean Break" study had proposed.

Perle, along with fellow SAIS disciple Paul Wolfowitz, argued for over 19 hours the week after 9-11 for a war against Iraq, the removal of Saddam Hussein and most importantly the seizure of Iraqi oil, just as soon as the war in Afghanistan could be wrapped up.

It was Perle's contention that we needed only 40,000 troops to invade Iraq. He was critical of Gen. Shinseki's idea to use 250,000 troops. Perle went so far as to tell David Corn of the Nation that:

Forget the 250,000 figure, Perle said: "The Army guys don't know anything. They said we needed 500,000 troops in 1991 [for the Gulf War]. Did we need that many to win? No."

What's the Perle Plan? I asked.

"Forty thousand troops." he said.

To take Baghdad? Nah, he replied. To take control of the north and the south, particularly the north, where the oil fields are.

However, in a recent issue of the L.A. Times he is quoted as saying

I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that.

The L.A.Times also quotes him as saying:

I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists . . .'

It is interesting to note that in that same David Corn interview, he is quoted as saying this about Scott Ritter:

I said, President Bush was obligated to present a solid case to the American public, and so far Bush and his crew have only asserted that Saddam poses a threat. They have not proven that Saddam's supposed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction has made him a clear and present danger to the United States.

Perle moved closer and said, "Trust me."

Sorry, I answered, I don't think we should head to war merely on the say-so of a few government officials. Besides, I added politely, why trust you? Why not trust Scott Ritter?

Ritter, Perle huffed, is "unstable."

Low blow, I said.

Perle claimed he does not call everyone with whom he disagrees "unstable." But, he said, this was an appropriate term for a fellow who had changed his position 180 degrees.

Unstable may well be an appropriate term to describe Richard Perle.

In 2003, The Guardian reported Richard Perle as admitting the invasion of Iraq was illegal.

Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

Perle is also an advocate of Total Information Awareness technology.

His new spin on the Iraq fiasco is that it was a good plan but was executed poorly. This meme seems to be gaining ground amongst The Usual Suspects as a means to hang the failure of the Iraq war on the shoulders of Rumsfeld.

When asked if there would be a Democratic Party candidate he'd support for President, Perle named Joe Lieberman and Gov. Mark Warner, both strong DLC supporters.

Corruption seems to follow him wherever he goes:

On August 31, 2004, a special committee of the Board of Directors investigating the alleged misconduct of the controlling shareholders of Hollinger International submitted the 512-page Breeden Report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the report, Perle is singled out as having breached his fiduciary responsibilities as a company director by authorizing several controversial transactions which diverted the company's net profit from the shareholders to the accounts of various executives. Perle received over $3 million in bonuses on top of his salary, bringing the total to $5.4 million, and the investigating committee called for him to return the money.

Top Hollinger executives dismissed the report and have filed a defamation lawsuit against the head of the investigating committee, former SEC chairman Richard C. Breeden. However, in 2005 Mr Perle publically acknowledged he had been served a 'Wells notice'[3], a formal warning that the S.E.C.'s enforcement staff had found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to bring a civil lawsuit.

Perle once had close business ties with Conrad Black of Hollinger International Inc. which owns over 400 newspapers worldwide. Perle was the top executive of Hollinger Digital Inc. the media management and investment arm of Hollinger International. Now the two men have accused each other of swindling Hollinger International. The Breeden Report describes Perle thusly:

As a faithless fiduciary, Perle should be required to disgorge all compensation received from the company

Hollinger is demanding $22.9 million in reparations.

When he finally stepped down from the chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board in 2003, it was amid allegations of a conflict of interest. He had become an advisor for the telecommunications company Global Crossing, which wanted help cutting through resistance to its proposed sale to a foreign firm with ties to China. Perle was paid $750,000 and promised another $600,000 if the sale was approved. The moment he stepped down, Global Crossing announced their ties with Perle had been severed.

Prior to that, Perle had been an advisor to Loral Space and Communications, which had faced accusations of transferring rocket technology to China.

2010-06-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

Anthony Weiner Needs a Reality Pill

Today Anthony Weiner D-NY had the unmitigated gall as to defend Israels actions in international waters.

This was about instigating an altercation and they succeeded," Weiner, one of Israel's leading allies in Congress, told me. He insisted that the activists piloting the flotilla were offered other alternatives by Israel, such as docking the ship and transporting the supplies to Gaza by land.

"If you want to instigate a conflict with the Israeli navy it isn't hard to do," Weiner continued. "They were offered alternatives. Instead they chose to sail into the teeth of an internationally recognized blockade."

Pushed on whether the Israeli response, which killed at least nine, was disproportionate, Weiner wouldn't acknowledge it. "It's always easy to criticize the response to a hostile act, but for a week at least the Israelis were trying to prevent this altercation," Weiner said, adding that the Israelis had been "set upon."

There are so many things wrong with his depiction of events where do I begin?

This was about instigating an altercation and they succeeded.

No, Mr. Weiner, this was about bringing aid to Gaza citizens who are currently being starved to death by Israel in what some call the New Warsaw Ghetto. In case you missed it Mr. Weiner, there is an extreme humanitarian crisis in the Gaza strip. The economy has collapsed. They are experiencing 45% unemployment. Places that were destroyed by Israeli bombs over a year ago are still sitting in ruins. Electricity is sporadic. The people of Gaza are being subjected to a slow starvation that amounts to genocide.

If you weren't so emotionally invested in Israel, perhaps you could see this.

He insisted that the activists piloting the flotilla were offered other alternatives by Israel, such as docking the ship and transporting the supplies to Gaza by land.

Which was unacceptable Mr. Weiner because Israel refuses to allow parts to replace broken down farming equipment into the strip. It seems not allowing the people of Gaza to farm is part of the planned genocide by slow starvation planned for the New Warsaw Ghetto. Back up generators have failed because Israel won't allow those things to pass through by land either. Hundreds ofsick people have died because of this travesty alone. It seems that is also part of the planned genocide for the New Warsaw Ghetto.

"If you want to instigate a conflict with the Israeli navy it isn't hard to do," Weiner continued.

So you're argument is that a shipload of people armed with sticks and stones, trying to help end Israels New Warsaw Ghetto are "instigating a conflict" and so they deserved what they got? Really Mr.Weiner? Are you wearing such rose-colored glasses when you look at Israel that you believe this crock?

Oh, but you're not done are you Mr. Weiner?

"They were offered alternatives. Instead they chose to sail into the teeth of an internationally recognized blockade."

Excuse me, Mr. Weiner, but in case you missed it, this act of international terrorism happened in international waters. You aren't proposing that Israel has a right to commit acts in violation of international law in order to proceed with its plans to commit genocide in the New Warsaw Ghetto are you? Are you really so blinded by loyalty to Israel that you think it is acceptable for Israel to attack ships sailing under foreign flags in international waters?

Yes, Mr. Weiner, I think you are and I think that's a shame Mr. Weiner because most of the time you're a pretty decent Democrat.

"It's always easy to criticize the response to a hostile act, but for a week at least the Israelis were trying to prevent this altercation," Weiner said, adding that the Israelis had been "set upon."

Mr. Weiner, you need to remember your own people's history, your own people's Warsaw Ghetto. Perhaps then, you'd realize that trying to relieve the siege of Gaza is anythign except a hostile act. As for being "set upon", it was the activists trying to put an end to Israels genocide that were set upon, Mr. Wiener.

All Israel had to do to avoid conflict was not raid the flotilla.

We don't need anymore congressmen who believe black is white, war is peace, good is evil Mr. Weiner. We had enough of that with the neocons who, by the way, were working hand in hand with Mr. Netenyahu throughout the 90's and into this century. You really need to step back from this Mr. Weiner, it's obvious you've got too much emotional investment in the state of Israel to see clearly what that state has become under the far right wing Likud and Mr. Netenyahu. It's obvious that when it comes to Israel, you can't see that the neocons have taken over and you can't see that they're no better than the Nazi's.

It's really a shame, Mr. Weiner. I thought you were better than that.

Mr. Weiner, how do you describe THIS except to call it The New Warsaw Ghetto:

Medical ethics violated

The contribution made by medical personnel in making decisions in respect to the Palestinian diet in Gaza is grave and violates medical ethics. It is reminiscent of a situation whereby doctors monitor torture, believing that examining the tortured individual before and during the interrogation protects him from irreversible damages. The principles of medical ethics require medical teams to act on behalf of patients, as Gaza had not been struck by drought. Malnutrition there had not been forced by nature. We are dealing with a case of deliberate starvation (or "minimal diet") that can be stopped at any given moment.

Word games making pretense of not crossing red lines are invalid in a reality whereby pregnant women, babies, and children suffer from anemia, whose damage to their development is known. And did anyone look into the development of a child who grows up within this food pyramid? Will these security experts be kind enough to reveal to us the intimate connection between Israel's security and an anemic Palestinian child?

Or THIS:

Around 46 per cent of Gaza and West Bank households are "food insecure" or in danger of becoming so, according to a UN report on the impact of conflict and the global boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

The UN report says 34 per cent of households - with income below $1.68 per day and/or showing decreasing food expenditures - are "food insecure". The WFP officially defines "food security" as "the ability of a household to produce and/or access at all times the minimum food needed for a healthy and active life". It goes on to say that 12 per cent of households are "vulnerable" to food insecurity.

And does this remind anyone of how the Nazi's stripped the Jews of all their wealth?

the report points out that some action taken by families to continue to feed themselves - including the sale of land, jewellery and other assets" - will have an "irreversible impact on livelihoods".

What is the purpose of this:

The UN report comes against a background in which a 2004 survey of Palestinian households showed a "slow but steady" growth in actual malnutrition - as measured by reduced growth, vitamin deficiencies, anaemia and other indicators - among a minority of the population. The 2004 survey found "stunting" rates of abnormal height-to-body ratio at just under 10 per cent.

except an attempt by right wing extremists in control of the Israeli government to commit atrocities against the Palestinian peoples by slowly starving an entire peoples to death? How is this not slow and deliberate genocide? How is this NOT the New Warsaw Ghetto, just made more palatable by the slow, subtle nature of its inevitable "Solution" to the Palestinian problem?

2010-05-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

Davy Crockett, Daily Kos and Net Warfare Multiplicity.

My wife is descended from Davy Crockett so naturally all our kids have wanted to watch the old Disney shows about him and both Alamo movies. We let our kids know that most of what they see is complete BS. One bit of Disney BS is the scene in the wilderness where Crockett and Bowie drive off a much larger enemy force with a little trick the two of them have gotten adept at. They can fire and reload their guns much more quickly than normal men and can do so on the run. They run from hiding spot to hiding spot, firing rapidly and giving the impression to the enemy that they are up against a much larger fighting force than they really are. This forces the enemy to retreat when, if they knew they were only facing two men, they'd charge in and rapidly defeat them.

I don't know if there is a word for this tactic, but it is being used extensively against the left on the internet today. If someone can point out the name for this, great, but for now I'm going to call it Multiplied Duplicity, or Multiplicity for short. It is the tactic of making it seem that there is a large group of people who are on one side of an issue when in fact, it is only a small handful of people using multiple identities and who are usually being paid to work full time giving the impression they are part of a large movement which in reality doesn't exist.

I first heard about Multiplicity about 8-10 years ago from Joe Lyles of Conceptual Guerrilla. It seems that when Lyles was in college earning his law degree he belonged to the Young Republicans. It was there that he learned a standard tactic of theirs was to assault bulletin boards on the fledgling internet with multiple user ids and "work the web" to give the illusion that the vast majority of internet users were conservatives. This is why the internet seemed, in the early years, to be dominated by conservatives and their talking points. The truth, it seems, was that all those conservatives were actually just small groups of Young Republicans across the nation coordinating on a local level.

Lyles termed these guys the first Net Warriors. This was the beginning of Net Warfare. From day one Multiplicity was their standard tactic.

What drew me into Joe Lyles circle was the idea of becoming a Net Warrior myself. Joe had abandoned the right when his eyes had opened to the truth of their phoney conservative philosophy. He realized that conservatives only believed in one thing: Cheap labor. Everything else was BS. He exposed the truth behind every conservative meme in his excellent article "Defeat the Right in 3 Minutes.". It was this article that first brought him to my attention. It was on an older website of his that I, along with a host of other progressives, first learned all the tricks of becoming Net Warriors for the left. We would go onto websites back in the day when people were afraid to admit they were liberals - remember those days? They weren't that long ago - and take over the forums by challenging the conservatives and working together as a team. We employed multiple user ids and gave the impression that a great many progressives were there who - gasp! - actually disagreed with the "conventional wisdom" of the right.

This was rather unheard of at that time on the internet. A wonderful thing began to happen thanks to our efforts. People began to stop lurking on these websites and began to actually speak up. Our presence had emboldened them. Until we came along, most people were so brutally put down, name called, mocked and derided that no one had the courage to ever post there. The conservatives had full reign to spew their lying spin on everything. Once we challenged - and defeated - their hollow talking points, people began to feel they weren't alone. They were no longer afraid to agree that they thought the conservatives were full of shit.

By the time we left a forum, it no longer needed us anymore. There were plenty of progressives there who'd found their voices and were no longer intimidated into silence.

Which brings us to Daily Kos. The tactics being used at Daily Kos are the same tactics that the conservatives have always used. Ad hominem attacks, mocking the poster, derisive put downs, straw man arguments. Anything but actually addressing the issues. The purpose of which is to drive away progressives and silence those who stay so that only their spin dominates the website.

The thing is, just like when the Young Republicans created the first Net Warriors, these Konservassacks (conservative Kossacks) aren't really as numerous as they would lead you to believe. They are practicing Multiplicity. How do I know this? I've been watching them do it for many, many years and over that time they've made more than enough mistakes to give themselves away. Consider the following:

A: The Double Diary Incident. I was probably the only non-Konservassack who witnessed the Double Diary Incident. It was about two or three years ago, before Obama was elected. For a very brief time, maybe ten minutes, two diaries with the exact same titles hit the rec list just minutes after each had been posted. Both had to do with a single payer healthcare rally. Both came out one right after the other. Who could have foreseen such a coincidence? Certainly not the Konservassacks. They evidently knew that one diary about the rally was coming out with that name. Unfortunately, the other dairy about the rally with the exact same name came out just a minute or two before theirs did. The first diary was definately pro-single payer. The second diary was the exact opposite. It was full of spin that single payer wasn't ever going to happen and supported us going for the public option instead. In short, it was a hit piece against the single payer rally.

Naturally, I got curious and looked up who had recced each diary and found out that 90% of the people who'd recced the first diary had also recced the second. That seemed fishy to me as anyone who recced the first diary would hate the second one. Sure enough, by the time I'd finished checking out the second diaries rec list and went back to the main page, the first diary had already fallen off the rec list. So I rechecked the first diaries rec list and all those people who had recced both diaries had unrecommended the pro single payer diary.

This all happened within minutes of both diaries being posted. Why is the timing of this so pertinent? Because of the logistics of such a rapid response. If a large group of about 80-100 people had all known to rec, or been asked to rec, a certain anti-single payer diary and then mistakenly recced the wrong one, there would have been enough confusion caused that it would have taken a bit of time to sort out what had happened, get the word out and then rectify the situation. But the response time here was far too rapid for that. It took about one minute for me to call up the second diaries rec list and see it was almost identical to the first and in that short time, all the people who'd erroneously recced the wrong diary and rectified that situation.

That means one of two things: There were 80-100 people all sitting in an office somewhere paid no doubt by someone with a corporate agenda, or - which is more likely - there were 20 or so people, each with 5 alternate identities, sitting in an office somewhere, paid no doubt by someone with a corporate agenda, using good ole Multiplicity tactics to make it look like a large number of people believed that the public option was a better idea than sticking to our guns and demanding single payer.

B: There have been many instances, not just with me, but I've read others on this website note the same thing: People they are arguing with on Daily Kos forget that they've changed their names and continue the arguement under different personas. It happens often enough to know that sock puppetry is going on there.

A funny thing about sock puppetry on DKos. When my wife finally registered there about a year ago, I immediately got a message that sock puppetry would not be tolerated and I had been banned for it. I had to explain that - though the IP address was mine - the account belonged to my wife. I said they should have asked me before banning me. So Meteor Blades undid my ban and my wife now has an account. Meteor stated that there was so much sock puppetry going on that they couldn't respond to everyone guilty of it and just auto-banned them instead.

So this means one of four things must be true:

1: There is no Multiplicity going on at DKos because Multiplicity requires sock puppetry. Therefore, in the Double Diary Incident, there would have to be an office full of 80-100 people actually working together to pull off what they did that day. I don't believe this, however.

2: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and those responsbile have some way to mask their IP addresses. There are tons of IP Masking programs out there. No doubt, DKos can't guard against all of them.

3: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and those responsible have multiple PC's at their disposal. I doubt this as simply using masked IPs would be less expensive.

4: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and DKos is in on it. This has to be a seriously considered possibility as Markos has admitted he worked for the CIA when he started up the Daily Kos website. It is possible - and when one looks back on the history of the Daily Kos it certainly seems to be - that the Daily Kos was set up from day one to be an anti-populist website who's purpose was to undermine the left.

So whichever of the above are true, what this means is that a small group of people are actively working to give the impression that a much larger group has taken hold of the Daily Kos using the tactic of Multiplicity. If the average reader really understood that only a few people are basically holding an entire net community hostage - and by extension an entire political movement- they'd abandon the site en masse or else demand that the moderators do something to stop this deceitful manipulation.

The question is: is DKos in on it?

The only way to answer that question is to first prove that Multiplicity is happening. To do that might take no less than a paid hacker to break in and track down the culprits to their lair. The next time Blackwaterdogs "Obama is God" shoots to the reclist, or a diary against Obama hits the rec list and immediately after, the diary railing against it shoots to the rec list, we'd need someone to investigate all those names on the rec list and see if something fishy is going on.

Naturally, it would be preferable if the moderators did this, as they obviously have the power to do so, but we can't trust them to be truthful. So unless a hacker traces those IP addresses, we simply have no way to prove it's happening. And of course, we can't have hackers breaking into websites. But should we somehow manage to come up with the evidence, then we'd know once and for all if DKos is in on it or if an outside force is simply using an age old (in internet years) tactic against us once again.

Either way, the progressive movement would be better off being aware of such tactics and proceeding accordingly.

2008-11-26T10:59:00.000-08:00

Back When Kos Called Gates A "Shoot First Crazy Neocon".
Well, well, it seems the first blush is wearing off on the Obama honeymoon. People are getting up in arms over some of his recent appointments. While others are trying to defend his choices by saying that:

He is keeping his word to us by keeping Gates. This is what "new politics" looks like.

Which is to say it looks disturbingly much like the old politics. You know, the politics that Kos wrote about when he said:

Oh boy. Robert Gates, Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, is another shoot first crazy neocon

So let's take a look back at what we had to say two years ago and what is being said in todays "new politics".

Kos two years ago:

The target of Gates' anxieties was Nicaragua's leftist president, Daniel Ortega.

Take a look at what had Gates quaking in his boots:

Gates saw a calamitous situation in Central America in December 1984. Congress had ordered a halt to U.S. support for the Contra rebels, leaving Ortega free, as Gates saw it, to establish Nicaragua as a "permanent and well-armed" ally of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

He said the United States should acknowledge that the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua closely allied to Moscow and Havana "is unacceptable to the United States and that the United States will do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out."

In addition to airstrikes, he recommended withdrawal of U.S. recognition of the Nicaraguan government and recognition of a Nicaraguan government in exile that would be entitled to U.S. military support.

Economic sanctions should be considered, "perhaps even including a quarantine," Gates wrote.

Lots of parallels.

Republicans just aren't complete without a scaaaaary enemy to keep them up at night, and happy visions of "shock and awe" to salve their terror.

Gates is just another conservative coward.

As for Nicaragua, Ortega was defeated in elections four years later. And a few weeks ago, he staged a comeback and was elected once again president of Nicaragua.

Funny, that thing called "democracy".

Yes, funny indeed that thing called democracy. I'll get back to that in a minute. But Kos also had this to say about Gates:

Brilliant. Bush's penchant for bringing out the most corrupt of retreads of past Republican administrations continues.

Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.

This is who Bush has nominated for Secretary of Defense.

Looks like I'll have to do another Usual Suspects expose, this time on Gates. Yeah, THAT'S a guy to be excited about. Can't wait to read even more defenses of this pick by Obama telling us why we shouldn't be concerned. Why we should take a "wait and see" attitude.

Let's look at what else was being said about Robert Gates two years ago in McJoan's excellent diary, "Where have we heard this before?":

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is continuing to cite iffy intelligence about Iran and its involvment in Iraq.

SEVILLE, Spain Feb 9, 2007 (AP)— Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.

Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran....

Gates, who is attending his first NATO defense ministers meeting, said Iran is "very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves for these explosively formed projectiles. Now they don't represent a big percentage of the IED attacks but they're extremely lethal."

Gates said the raids combined with the movement of an additional U.S. aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf have created a stir, but said the Bush administration has no intention of attacking Iran.

At least he's not calling it a slam dunk.

So Gates is someone who will pass on the administrations lies and propaganda to further their agenda. Great. And keeping him is change HOW?

In summation, I think McJoan summed it up pretty well last year in her diary Who's Running This Show Anyway?:

So maybe we don't know anything until April, maybe it's September, maybe we have 35,000 more troops going into Iraq, maybe we don't. Secretary Gates today in a Senate Appropriation Committee hearing:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday the United States could consider reducing troop levels in Iraq later this year, contradicting comments by a senior military commander....

"The outcome of that evaluation is not foreordained," Gates told the defense subcommittee of the Senate's Appropriations Committee.

"I think if we see some very positive progress and it looks like things are headed in the right direction, then that's the point at which I think we can begin to consider reducing some of these forces," Gates said.

The gang that can't shoot straight. We're going to trust them with any more money, any more time, any more troops?

And now we're going to keep trusting Gates? Because Obama says so?

Which brings us back to that funny thing called "democracy". What is a democracy? There's an interesting take on what constitutes a democracy over at DemocracyNow:

Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? That’s exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, it’s been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madison’s. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didn’t call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch what’s going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well that’s one conception of democracy. And you know essentially we’ve seen an episode of it. The population very often doesn’t accept this. As I mentioned, just very recent polls, people overwhelmingly oppose it. But they’re atomized, separated. Many of them feel hopeless, unorganized, and don’t feel they can do anything about it. So they dislike it. But that’s where it ends.

In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. That’s why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, women’s rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesn’t happen as a gift. And it’s not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They don’t put it the way I’m going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, “Boston Globe,” you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesn’t have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So he’s free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didn’t bring him into office. So he owes them nothing

What he had was an army that he organized of people who got out the vote for Obama. For what the press calls, Brand Obama. They essentially agree with the advertisers, it’s brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they’re told and then go home. The Wall Street Journal, at the opposite end of the spectrum, also had an article about the same thing at roughly the same time. Talked about the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama’s agenda? Whatever that is. But whatever it is, the army’s supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work. Los Angeles Times had similar articles, and there are others. What they don’t seem to realize is what they’re describing, the ideal of what they’re describing, is dictatorship, not democracy. Democracy, at least not in the Lippman sense, it proved- I pick him out because he’s so famous, but it’s a standard position. But in the sense of say, much of the south, where mass popular movements developed programs; organize to take part in elections but that’s one part of an ongoing process. And brings somebody from their own ranks to implement the programs that they develop, and if the person doesn’t they’re out. Ok, that’s another kind of democracy. So it’s up to us to choose which kind of democracy we want. And again, that will determine what comes next.

So which kind of Democracy are we? The kind that isn't really a democracy at all? The kind that takes its orders from the top down? Or the kind that demands from the bottom up? You know, a REAL democracy? I think we all know the answer to that question.

In retrospect, this commment in the Kos diary looks poignantly tragic in its naivete:

783 Days Left (5+ / 0-)

I believe we are going to survive the Bush years! But he makes it difficult to sustain the belief. Why can't Bush appoint morally decent and competent people to positions in the government- instead of ideological screw-ups?

Indeed? And why can't Obama do the same? Because we don't MAKE him do so! And until this becomes a community that looks beyond just electing Democrats, we're never going to get to determine what comes next. We're just going to remain a community that pulls the lever for the "D" and then goes home.

I, for one, intend to express my dissatisfaction with the selection of "shoot first crazy neocons" like Gates, hardcore "free trade" economists from the University of Chicago like Goolsbee, and any other right wing wacko that Obama "tells us" we have to accept.

I'm not going home till the fights over.

2008-11-20T10:37:00.001-08:00

Let the UAW buy out the Big Three

That seems to me to be the best strategy. Loan the money to the UAW to allow them to buy out the Big Three and let the workers run the show.

Americans reaping the profits of their own blood, sweat and tears instead of some lazy CEO who never saw a resource he couldn't exploit. Imagine that.

2008-11-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

Today's appointment makes me feel good

I've been down on Obama since rumors started surfacing of the kind of people he's thinking of putting into office. However, with todays announcement of Eric Holder to be our next Attorney General, I have to say that I am quite pleased.

This IS change.

If you don't know who Eric Holder is, then let me explain why this man brings change to America.

In the early 90's the Democrats controlled Congress. Newt Gingrich had offered up his Contract On America and not only were many right wingnuts ready to sign on board but a lot of other people were getting concerned about what they perceived as corruption in our government. This was to be the beginning of the right wingnut wackos rise to power on the basis of their beliefs that Democrats didn't stand for anything.

Nothing represented that more to them than what became known as the Congressional Post Office Scandal.

What started as a simple case of embezzlement by a post office employee being investigated by the Capitol Police eventually grew into a national scandal that brought down one of the most powerful Democrats in office, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and ushered in a new age of Republican rule. The Republicans, of course, in 12 short years out corrupted and out scandalled anything the Democrats had ever dreamed of.

But back to the investigation:

evidence rapidly led to the inclusion of several other employees, before top Democrats in the House of Representatives moved to shut down the whole line of inquiry, despite protests from Frank Karrigan, chief of the Capitol Police.

A new investigation was started by the United States Postal Service, which eventually submitted a report which was held in silence by Speaker Thomas Foley (D-WA) until media reports of embezzlement and drug laundering leaked out in 1992.

Following public outcry, the Democratic leaders of the House were forced to refer the matter to the Committee on House Administration, which started its own investigation.

That committee broke into two parts along party lines, the Democrats issuing a report saying the matter was closed, but the Republicans issuing a dissenting report including a number of unanswered questions and problems with the investigation.

The Republican charges were largely ignored until July 1993, when the Congressional Postmaster Robert Rota pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, implicating Representatives Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) and Joe Kolter (D-PA). They were accused of heading a conspiracy to launder Post Office money through stamps and postal vouchers.

Ultimately, Rostenkowski was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, in 1995.

Dan Rostenkowski, Democratic Congressman from Chicago. One of the most senior members of Congress at the time of his downfall. 36 years he served his nation. Richard Cohen was to write a book about Rostenkowski in which he claimed that "The rise and fall of Dan Rostenkowski tracks the rise and fall of Democrats in the House." Republicans portrayed him as emblematic of the corruption of the Democratic Party and used it as a springboard to take over control of the reins of power during the Clinton administration.

And who brought down Dan Rostentowski?

Eric Holder.

It was Eric Holder's 17 count indictment that ultimately led to the downfall of Dan Rostentowski and the corruption within the Democratic Party.

This guy was once a part of the Justice Departments elite Public Integrity Section. There he spent 12 years rooting out corruption. He went after an Assistant Attorney General from New York. A Philadelphia judge. A Floridian treasurer. Several corrupt FBI agents.

Now he's our Attorney General. In my opinion, that means we should be seeing the return of integrity to that office. This guy will go after you if you're a Republican. He'll go after you if you're a Democrat.

I feel like a little sanity is finally starting to return.

Of course, the Republicans will start screaming he's the next coming of the Anti-Christ, but then, I said sanity was starting to return, I didn't say it was returning to them.

2008-11-18T00:35:00.000-08:00

GM: Give us 50mpg TODAY!!!

Not 10 years from now. Not 5 years from now. Not 2 years from now. TODAY. Starting IMMEDIATELY.

Because if 6 high school kids from Philly were able to do it a few years ago, then you can certainly do it RIGHT NOW.

It's called "The Attack" and it's a hybrid supercar with over 300 hp developed from a AC electric motor powering the front wheels and a 1.9L VW TDi biodiesel powering the rears. The batteries powering the electric motor act as capacitors able to discharge a lot of energy in short bursts, enough for 0-60 runs in the sub 4-second range. Under normal driving conditions the car is powered by the biodiesel engine and achieves 50mpg.

And the best part is, this super-hybrid didn't come from the Big 3 or some obscure Euro supercar maker, The Attack is the work of the West Philadelphia High School Electric Vehicle Team - a group of 6 high school, YES, high school kids.

While the righties claim GM's woes are all the fault of its workers, and others are coming forward with all kinds of ideas, from breaking GM into smaller parts to bankruptcy before bailout, it seems that Congress has caught a case of "bailout fatigue" that makes it likely no GM bailout is coming.

Though all sides agree that Detroit's Big Three carmakers are in peril, battered by the economic meltdown that has choked their sales and frozen loans, the White House and congressional Democrats are headed for stalemate over the government money that might go toward helping them.

Behind the logjam is a troubling reality for the car companies: Bailout fatigue has set in at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

The Senate Democrats' measure would carve out a portion of the Wall Street bailout money to pay for loans to US automakers and their domestic suppliers, but aides in both parties and lobbyists acknowledge they do not have the votes to pass it.

The White House and congressional Republicans insist that any automaker bailout money instead come from redirecting a $25 billion loan program approved by Congress in September to help the industry develop more fuel-efficient vehicles. The GOP would lift restrictions on that money to speed it to the carmakers.

Democrats want to leave that money alone and give the industry an additional $25 billion from the financial bailout funds.

The industry needs $25 billion to help them develop more fuel-efficient vehicles? Really?

Maybe they should be hiring those kids from Philly.

Barney Frank, at least, has the right idea:

A House version drafted by Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank goes further, requiring that US automakers immediately repay the loans next spring if they don't give the government an acceptable restructuring plan that shows they can survive, including details on how they will transition to making vehicles that use less gasoline.

Because if 6 high school kids could make a fuel efficient car that looks HOT for less than a tenth of a million dollars, several years ago, $25 BILLION should help GM start rolling them off the production line before business closes TODAY.

2008-11-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

Some reality for Markos Moulitsas (Kos)

Over at DKos, Kos himself has written up a little attack on every DLC'ers favorite whipping boy, Ralph Nader. He recently mocked Nader and his supporters and in response, received several emails and now was mocking the emailers as well.

Anyone who sails with the Nader crowd deserves nothing more than ridicule.

Fuck Ralph Nader, and fuck his supporters. If the past eight years hasn't smacked any sense into their addled brains, then nothing will. This site caters to the reality-based community. No one else need apply.

Well, I'm no Naderite, but I think Kos could use a huge dose of reality right about now.

Kos takes issue with Nader saying that there is only one party:

Saint Ralph

Said that there was no difference between the democratic and republican presidential candidates in 1980, with President Carter versus Ronald Reagan. Nader repeated this nonsense in 2000 with Gore versus Bush and handed the damn election to Bush.

Both Carter and Gore went on to win the friggin' Nobel Peace Prize. Reagan went on to murder 250,000 people in his insane wars in Central America, and the Dubya has terminated between 600,000 and 1.2 million people from his war in Iraq.

There are buckets of blood worth of differences between those candidates. And yes, Nader and his lunatic supporters need to be held accountable for these actions.

What Nader actually did was point out that the current system is fixed. You get two choices: A corporatist shill or a lunatic corporatist shill, ie, a boogeyman candidate to scare you into voting for the corporatist shill. The only logical choice for any sane person is to vote for neither. This, of course, leads to the lunatic being elected. Which is what happened.

However, let's get back to Kos assertion that DKos is a "reality based" commmunity. This is the reality about Barack Obama:

Can We Talk About The Real Obama Now? by Sam Smith

Obama supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts. David Sirota in the Nation wrote, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this big business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop 'frivolous' lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."

He voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill

He voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

He had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

He was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

He was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists

In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one of its "100 to Watch." After he was criticized in the black media, Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative organization. Writes Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, "Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures."

Added Henwood, "Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth."

Civil liberties

He supports the war on drugs

He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity

He supports Real ID

He supports the PATRIOT Act

He supports the death penalty

He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18

He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on Americans

Conservatives

He went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned Lamont

Wrote Paul Street in Z Magazine, "Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS."

Writes the London Times, "Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defense secretary.

Richard Lugar was rated 0% by SANE. . . rated 0% by AFL-CIO. . . rated 0% BY NARAL. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 0% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 27% by the National Education Association. . . rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters. . . He voted no on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. . . Vote against providing habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners. . .voted no on comprehensive test ban treaty. . .voted against same sex marriage. . . strongly anti-abortion. . . opposed to more federal funding for healthcare. . .voted for unconstitutional wiretapping. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations

Chuck Hagel was rated 0% by NARAL. . . rated 11% by NAACP. . . rated 0% by Human Rights Coalition. . . rated 100% by Christian Coalition. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 22% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 36% by the National Education Association. . . rated 0% by League of Conservation Voters. . . rated 8% by AFL-CIO. . . He is strongly anti-abortion. . .voted for anti-flag desecration amendment. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations. . . favors privatizing Social Security

Ecology

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

He supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the ethanol industry.

He led his party's reversal of a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling

Education

Obama has promised to double funding for private charter schools, part of a national effort undermining public education.

He supports the No Child Left Behind Act albeit expressing reservations about its emphasis on testing. Writes Cory Mattson, "Despite NCLB''s loss of credibility among educators and the deadlock surrounding its attempted reauthorization in 2007, Barack Obama still offers his support. Even the two unions representing teachers, both which for years supported reform of the policy to avoid embarrassing their Democratic Party 'friends,' declared in 2008 that the policy is too fundamentally flawed to be reformed and should be eliminated."

Fiscal policy

Obama rejected moratoriums on foreclosures and a freeze on rates, measures supported by his primary opponents John Edwards and Hillary Clinton

He was a strong supporter of the $700 billion cash-for-trash banker bailout plan.

Two of his top advisors are former Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Noted Glen Ford of black Agenda Report, "In February 1999, Rubin and Summers flanked Fed Chief Alan Greenspan on the cover of Time magazine, heralded as, 'The Committee to Save the World.' Summers was then Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, having succeeded his mentor, Rubin, in that office. Together with Greenspan, the trio had in the previous year labored successfully to safeguard derivatives, the exotic 'ticking time bomb' financial instruments, from federal regulation."

Robert Scheer notes that "Rubin, who pocketed tens of millions running Goldman Sachs before becoming treasury secretary, is the man who got President Clinton to back legislation by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, to unleash banking greed on an unprecedented scale."

Obama's fund-raising machine has been headed by Penny Prtizker former chair of the Superior Bank, one of the first to get into subprime mortgages. While she resigned as chair of the family business in 1994, as late as 2001 she was still on the board and wrote a letter saying that her family was recapitalizing the bank and pledging to "once again restore Superior's leadership position in subprime lending." The bank shut down two months later and the Pritzker family would pay $460 million in a settlement with the government.

Foreign policy

Obama endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia: "When I am president, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program."

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won't rule out a first strike nuclear attack.

He has endorsed bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda in violation of international law. He has called Pakistan "the right battlefield ... in the war on terrorism."

He supports Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted previous support for two-state solution to Mid East situation and refuses to negotiate with Hamas.

He has supported Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, saying "it must remain undivided."

He favors expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Although he claims to want to get out of Iraq, his top Iraq advisor wrote that America should keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama, in his appearances, blurred the difference between combat soldiers and other troops.

He indicated to Amy Goodman that he would leave 140,000 private contractors and mercenaries in Iraq because "we don't have the troops to replace them."

He has called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him.

He claimed "one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn't get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people."

He has hawkish foreign policy advisors who have been involved in past US misdeeds and failures. These include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, General Merrill McPeak, and Dennis Ross.

It has been reported that he might well retain as secretary of defense Robert Gates who supports actions in violation of international law against countries merely suspected of being unwilling or unable to halt threats by militant groups.

Gays

Obama opposes gay marriage. He wouldn't have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage

Health

Obama opposes single payer healthcare or Medicare for all.

Military

Obama would expand the size of the military.

National Service

Obama favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with one being promoted by a new coalition that would make national service mandatory by 2020, and with a bill requiring such mandatory national service introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

He announced in Colorado Springs last July, "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

On another occasion he said, "It's also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it's important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some." Some have seen this as a call for reviving the draft.

He has attacked the exclusion of ROTC on some college campuses

Presidential crimes

Obama aggressively opposed impeachment actions against Bush. One of his key advisors, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of criminalizing public service.

Progressives

Unlike his deferential treatment of right wing conservatives, Obama's treatment of the left has been dismissive to insulting. He dissed Nader for daring to run for president again. And he called the late Paul Wellstone "something of a gadfly"

Public Campaign Financing

Obama's retreat from public campaign financing has endangered the whole concept.

Social welfare

Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare,

Social Security

Early in the campaign, Obama said, "everything is on the table" with Social Security.

o

As things now stand, the election primarily represents the extremist center seizing power back from the extremist right. We have moved from the prospect of disasters to the relative comfort of mere crises.

Using the word 'extreme' alongside the term 'center' is no exaggeration. Nearly all major damage to the United States in recent years - a rare exception being 9/11 - has been the result of decisions made not by right or left but by the post partisan middle: Vietnam, Iraq, the assault on constitutional liberties, the huge damage to the environment, and the collapse of the economy - to name a few. Go back further in history and you'll find, for example, the KKK riddled with members of the establishment including - in Colorado - a future governor, senator and mayor after whom Denver's airport is named. The center, to which Obama pays such homage, has always been where most of the trouble lies.

The only thing that will make Obama the president pictured in the campaign fantasy is unapologetic, unswerving and unendingly pressure on him in a progressive and moral direction, for he will not go there on his own. But what, say, gave the New Deal its progressive nature was pressure from the left of a sort that simply doesn't exist today.

Above are listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or opposes with which no good liberal or progressive would agree. Unfortunately, what's out there now, however, looks more like a rock concert crowd or evangelical tent meeting than a determined and directed political constituency. Which isn't so surprising given how successful our system have been at getting people to accept sights, sounds, symbols and semiotics as substitutes for reality. Once again, it looks like we'll have to learn the hard way.

Sorry Kos, but it looks like it's NADER who's part of the reality-based community, not you.

But then, with the revelations coming from every direction that this presidency is not going to be what we all had hoped it would, I suppose Kos is feeling a little defensive about his role in helping the Democrats to elect another Wall Street sellout by making DKos a "Democratic Party" website and progressives be damned.

When progressives are damned, this whole planet is damned. So on behalf of the Naderites that I don't even belong to:

Fuck you Moulitas. And fuck your DLC supporters too.

2008-11-14T01:11:00.000-08:00

This is how they went about bankrupting America

Hat tip to stephdray over at DKos for some insight I just had to pass on:

So I was completely baffled by Henry Paulson's announcement yesterday that it wouldn't help to buy up the toxic mortgages as promised in the bailout.

At least, it baffled me until I read this article. And that's when it occurred to me--he can't buy up the toxic mortgages to stave off the meltdown because a vast majority of these loans don't exist.

Here's the money quote from this long but startling article by Michael Lewis in Portfolio.com:

That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. "They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford," Eisman says. "They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?"

Read the whole article. It's a real eye-opener. And if this doesn't convince you that we should bring tarring and feathering back to the forefront of our criminal justice agenda, nothing will.

What are the consequences of letting all the investment banking firms fail? I can think of some better uses for that 700 billion.

2008-11-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

Americans want healthcare, not health insurance.

Today I heard audio of Obama saying that every American should have health insurance. I certainly hope that was a simple semantic error on President Obama's part. Because Americans neither need nor want health insurance. What they need, what they want, is affordable health CARE.

I'm sure it's just a matter of semantics. I'm sure President Obama didn't mean that all Americans should have the same right to pay outrageous copayments for their prescriptions.

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.

Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mr. Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.

I'm sure he meant that all Americans should be able to have access to affordable medecine. I just wish he'd tighten up his semantics and SAY affordable healthcare, not health insurance for everyone. That would lessen people's stress because failure to pay medical bills is the number one cause of bankruptcy in America.

Secause some people might worry that he means everyone should have equal access to an insurance company that won't cover their child's critical leukemia treatment when what I'm certain he must mean is that everyone should receive whatever treatment their doctor deems necessary, at a sliding scale that they can afford.

Otherwise, he might come off sounding like this man who actually DOES get the difference between health insurance and healthcare - in a twisted, right wing sort of way.

I'm sure he didn't mean that every American should have equal opportunity to be denied benefits by for-profit health insurance companies for whatever ridiculous excuse they can some up with. What he really meant was that whenever any American anywhere needs healthcare, they should get it.

It's just semantics, I know, because I read Obama actually told the Illinois AFL-CIO:

"So the challenge is, how do we get federal government to take care of this business? I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out."

"A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. And as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, we have to take back the House." (Barack Obama in 2003 before the Illinois AFL-CIO)

But I just bring this up because now he's saying that those words were taken out of context. Now he's saying that everyone should have access to health insurance, not healthcare.

That's what Bill Clinton did back in the 90's.

Then, in 1992, Bill Clinton (who borrowed extensively from Jackson's 1988 proposals) put the call for universal health care at the center of his program. But, once president, his closeness to Wall Street and his intellectual dependence on Robert Rubin of Wall Street (who became his Secretary of the Treasury) made him leery of antagonizing the insurance industry. It was President Clinton's unwillingness to confront the insurance companies that led to his failure to honor his commitment to work toward a universal health care program (see my article "Why HillaryCare Failed," Counterpunch, November 12, 2007). The type of reform President Clinton called for was a health insurance based model called "managed care," in which insurance companies remain at the center of health care. An alternative approach could have been to establish a publicly funded health care program (which was favored by the majority of the population) that would cover everyone, providing medical care as an entitlement for all citizens and residents. This could have been achieved, such as by expanding the federal Medicare program to cover everyone. To do so, however, would have required neutralizing the enormous power of the insurance companies with a massive mobilization of the population against them and in favor of a comprehensive and universal health care program.

But President Clinton's loyalty to Wall Street prevailed. His administration's top priorities were reduction of the federal deficit (at the cost of reduced public social expenditures) and approval of NAFTA (without amending President George H. W. Bush's proposal, which Clinton had inherited, and refusing to address the concerns of the labor and environmental movements). These actions antagonized and demoralized the grassroots of the Democratic Party. Clinton lost any power to mobilize people for the establishment of a universal health care program. This frustration of the grassroots, and especially the working class, also led to the huge abstention by the Democratic Party base in the 1994 congressional elections and the consequent loss of the Democratic majority in the House, the Senate, and many state legislatures. At the root of this disenchantment with the Clinton administration was its unwillingness to confront the insurance companies and Wall Street. Could that happen again?

And I firmly believe, with all my heart, that President Obama and the new Democratic majority won't let us down AGAIN. They won't bait and switch the American public a SECOND time. I firmly believe that President Obama and the Democratic majority understand that Americans don't want to be at the mercy of for-profit health insurance companies. No thank you.

Americans want affordable healthcare.

2008-11-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

Evil Never Sleeps

They're attacking everywhere and the attack is relentless.

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall is already reporting on the new MSM spin:

This adviser said Obama knows that he must move strategically to balance his pledges to govern inclusively while promoting a progressive agenda. "It's up to him to educate people on a strategy to move forward." Part of that strategy, he added, will be persuading people to be patient about the pace of change.

Obama advisers take seriously the senator's rhetoric about governing in a bipartisan fashion. They are ready for potential conflict with some Democratic constituencies or with some liberal Democrats in Congress, whose pent-up demand for action may clash with Obama's priorities, and are prepared to say no.

Obviously, they don't want us to actually, you know, CHANGE anything. So the new meme is that change, that thing Obama made the centerpiece of his campaign, has to come slowly, if at all.

Over at Freeperville and on pretty much every national forum, the new meme is:

Well, the election has come and gone like a shot, apparently. After the interminable round of primaries, Operation Chaos, PUMAs, the conventions, Sarah-cuda, and all the rest.

In one night Obama and Biden have won.

This means we have a troika: Reid, Obama, Pelosi. The "rulers of peace" (ROP).

But this also means, they can no longer blame Bush and the evil Republicans for anything that goes wrong.

This includes:

the economy
the Middle East
taxes
tainted food from China
immigration
crime
unemployment
gas prices

Let us never lose an opportunity to loudly proclaim:

"OBAMA'S FAULT!"

Secondly, can we now revisit affirmative action? A black man has become President. This surely means that Sandra Day O'Connor's mythical 30-year period has passed.

Third, speaking of this: let us see what Obama's cabinet looks like. I foresee many laughs.

If laughing at a Dem is not redefined as a Hate Crime.

Which brings me to the fourth point: beware the ACLU, the Fairness Doctrine, and the Redistribution crowd.

In an earlier vanity, I compared Obama's tongue to Saruman's, in a famous passage from The Lord of The Rings. Let us pray and work to assure that we do not re-live Saruman's usurpation of the Shire; and that our Frodos, Sams, Merrys, and Pippins are equal to the task of Scouring the Shire at the end of the next two- or four-year election cycle.

Which brings me to the last point.

Whatever happens in the next four years, let us hold our heads high. For we can say, proudly, to all the world:

Don't Blame Me. I voted for McCain-Palin!

This isn't a lone voice in the Freeper wilderness. This meme is already being spread far and wide throughout the internet. So let's get this one straight:

When they elected Bush TWICE, it was unpatriotic to "blame them". Whenever ANY.THING. when wrong during Bush's two terms it was ineviably somehow "Clinton's fault" or "Clinton did the same thing", but now that they've found their party totally swept aside it's all going to somehow be Obama's fault?

This administration practices torture. This administration has committed war crimes. This administration has the worst economy since the Great Depression. This administration failed New Orleans. This country has been led by a kleptocracy. This administration outed it's own CIA agents. This administration failed to capture Osama bin Ladin while going to war with Iraq over non-existent WMD's.

And yes, I blame YOU, the people who voted for McCain/Palin.

To which they inevitably reply: "its time to move on." or "That's all in the past now." or their favorite comeback: "Get over it!"

We must remember every day for the rest of our lives that these people will NEVER go away. They will NEVER change their tune. They will NEVER stop. And so we must remain vigilant to their every move, their every meme. Even on days like today.

Evil never sleeps.

2008-11-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

I am so proud of America today.

I know a lot of people think they get it. They think they understand how incredible this day has been. That a black man in America could be elected President of the United States.

Well, most of them don't. Most of them didn't live through it. They weren't there. They never experienced a time when blacks were lucky to even get to vote. When riding on a bus with whites was considered controversial.

They never knew the America that forced a black man to carry a sign that read "I am a man."

Today, that America was swept aside.

I am so proud of America today.

2008-11-04T12:57:00.000-08:00

Why I seldom post at DKOS anymore

Today I posted a timely warning called Don't Vote Straight Party Ticket!!! in response to the #1 recced diary about how votes for Obama are being deleted in Philadelphia. I listed several findings by Black Box Voting and several independent studies made as well as reports about vote flipping and vote deleting already happening in the U.S.

You'd think that even if the diary weren't recced so that people could be warned, at least it would receive a favorable response.

You'd be wrong. The rabid attack dogs immediately lit into it. What? You say. Rabid attack dogs on DKOS? But that only happens over at Freeperville! DKOS is part of the "reality based" community of the progressive left.

Well isn't it?

Here are how some Kossacks instantly jumped on my diary, but first, the diary itself:

As the top recc'd diary reports: Those who vote straight party ticket are seeing their votes for Obama disappear. The diary then states
No one is quite sure why, but it's happening

But that's not true. People ARE sure why and they were warning that exactly this would happen in Pennsylvania weeks ago.

Not only did they warn you, they even told you WHO was doing it.

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidential vote counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to get the word out.

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

- Alabama
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin

Let me list those states again, because some commenters seem to be missing that point:

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

- Alabama
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin

This is the kind of thing that DKOS should have been on top of from day one. But everytime someone posts a diary about election integrity, instead of it getting rescued or rec'd, it quickly drops into oblivion.

Election fraud is literally the #1 most important issue facing Kossacks Every. Single. Day.

Not George Bush. Not Iraq. Not John McCain or the price of Palin's dress. Because without the ability to make our votes count, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

It isn't just Pennsylvania. Texas is also reporting strange things happening with voters who use the straight party option:

Texas Voters Urged to Avoid Straight-Party Option, After Vote-Flip Complaints
A number of voters in several Texas counties have been complaining that voting machines they used to cast early votes flipped their votes from Democratic choices to Republican ones.

Voters have reported that when they tried to vote a straight-party Democratic ticket, the machine flipped their choices to Republican candidates instead. In some cases, voters reported a problem only with the presidential race; in other cases voters reported the entire ballot being marked Republican by the machine.

The counties where the problems were reported use different kinds of voting machines from three of the top voting machine companies -- Election Systems & Software, Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions) and Hart InterCivic.

So it would be wise, if you live in one of the above 15 named states, to take the time to fill out the entire ballot and avoid the straight party option.

This has been going on for far too long:

California citizen Judy Alter discovered a high number of undervotes in the New Mexico presidential race in 2004. She traced these back to straight party votes that skipped counting the presidential race. Here is Alter's write-up on what she found:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/US/avoid-straight-party-option.pdf
(46 KB)

This is the short version of Alter's study of the 2004 Presidential Election of Santa Fe, New Mexico; It shows how Alter figured out that the straight party voting option did not contain a vote for president (or defaulted to Bush). She explains that the straight party option created the huge under-vote in NM and the other states with straight party voting.

According to Alter, most of the biggest exit poll shifts occurred in the straight party states.

Alter also has a long long version of the article, with charts and graphs as well as examples of the evidence she has from the hand filled out paper ballots counted on Sequoia scanners for early voting and absentee voting and the internal memory tapes of the Sequoia pushbutton DRE.

Her study in also posted on my website: http://www.protectcaliforniaballots.org

BOTH DRE AND OPTICAL SCAN SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MISCOUNTING STRAIGHT PARTY VOTES

Alter provides evidence from the absentee and early voting reports from Sequoia optical scan machines (paper ballots) that the straight party option for minor party candidates omitted votes. Two votes for straight Green party showed no votes for Cobb (the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate) next to his name.

According to articles archived on Voters Unite, straight party votes have been caught miscounting straight party votes in Wisconsin and Alabama as well.

ES&S Optical scan system: In Medford, Wisconsin, ES&S ballot scanners failed to count straight-party votes at all. About 27 percent of all votes cast in Medford during the Nov. 2004 election were not counted by voting system computers. -- http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=5061

ES&S optical scan system: In Baldwin County, Alabama, the ballot programming for straight ticket voting went awry in November 2006 by identifying one Republican as a Democrat.http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6868

It's not just ES&S: The following overly cryptic Diebold Product Advisory does not reveal what the "issues" are that cause unexpected results from certain straight party voting programming methods: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/Product-Advisory-Notice-straight-party-voting.pdf
(17 KB)

And now, the sadly expected reaction:

never post a diary like this without explaining that each state has its own procedures and rules. What's true in one state may be quite different in another. Geez, people in the same state don't even vote with the same voting machines! Voting is definitely not a "one size fits all" proposition in this country. I'm in Texas, and that's not how it works here. We were trained by the Obama campaign specifically on this issue. At least as it relates to early voting in Texas, this diary isn't accurate.

I can't speak to other states on the list.
- Elmo

To which I felt the need to point out:

So you're contending that Texas
doesn't have a straight party voting option?

Sorry, but you're full of shit:

Texas Voters Urged to Avoid Straight-Party Option, After Vote-Flip Complaints
By Kim Zetter October 29, 2008
A number of voters in several Texas counties have been complaining that voting machines they used to cast early votes flipped their votes from Democratic choices to Republican ones.

Voters have reported that when they tried to vote a straight-party Democratic ticket, the machine flipped their choices to Republican candidates instead. In some cases, voters reported a problem only with the presidential race; in other cases voters reported the entire ballot being marked Republican by the machine.
What are you Elmo? Some kind of Republican plant here to Pooh-pooh anyone that tries to keep our elections fair? Because Texas is most certainly having problems with the straight party option.

Get your facts straight.

I could post several other responses, but they were all along the same lines as Elmo's. Cries of Alarmist, "my kid could do it", etc. Scattered with a handful of recs as the most important message to get out to the electorate today quickly slipped by into oblivion.

Meanwhile, as of last count, the 3rd "How I voted" diary moves up the rec list. As if we don't already know how 99% of the people that visit DKOS already (think they)voted.

What % of those votes for Obama actually will end up being counted I wonder? And when will public awareness of this issue rise to the forefront?

Not as long as DKOS is the preeminent left wing website.

2008-10-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

The Rossi Testimony - minus interruptions and obstructions

Rossi gave his testimony recently and it was extremely hard to read the text of the court transcripts because his lawyers did everything possible to obstruct the deposition. The prosecuting attorneys had only 4 hours and most of that time was spent being harrassed by Rossi's grandstanding attorney. The result is that the transcripts are nearly impossible to follow. Here is a copy of the transcript minus interruptions.

The unedited file was 336 KB while just the Q&A's were 220 KB. Nearly a third of the prosecutors time was wasted by frivolous grandstanding by Patterson.

UNCERTIFIED ROUGH DRAFT TRANSCRIPT

DINO ROSSI,

sworn as a witness by the Notary Public,

testified as follows:

EXAMINATION

BY MR. WITHEY:

Q. Good morning, can you state your name and give your address for the record, please.

A. Dino Rossi. My address is 24632 Southeast 2nd Place, Sammamish, Washington, 98074.

Q. Mr. Rossi, my name is Mike Withey, I represent Justices Utter and Ireland. I have some questions for you this morning. Mr. Lowney will also have a few later. If you don't understand any Questions or feels too vague or unintelligible to answer, could you ask me to rephrase it?

A. Okay.

Q. And you've had your deposition taken before?

A. Only with the Public Disclosure Commission.

Q. The court reporter would probably appreciate it if you didn't use uh-huhs or huh-uhs, and the same with you so that she can get a verbal transcript.
Agreeable?

A. Understood.

Q. Do you understand this is a deposition taken pursuant to the civil rules and Judge Kallas's orders and that you're under oath and it may be used at a time of either hearing or at trial in this case?

A. Understood.

Q. And first of all, have you received Exhibit 1 which is the Subpoena Duces Tecum that was issued to you that was the subject of some legal --

A. Which is this one?

Q. This is a Subpoena that directs you to bring certain documents with you. Have you brought any documents with you, Mr. Rossi?

A. I have not brought documents.

Q. Have you conducted a search to determine whether there's any documents that are responsive to the Subpoena Duces Tecum?

A. I did look.

Q. And where did you look?

A. My computer. That's where it would have been.

Q. Where is the computer?

A. At my -- in my office.

Q. Did you search your personal residence?

A. Yes, I looked.

Q. And how long did it take you to look at your personal residence?

A. Well, my personal residence, probably about a half an hour at the most.

Q. Did you search your campaign headQuarters for any documents?

A. Looked.

Q. Did you search any business offices?

A. I don't have any other business offices.

Q. Okay. And was there anyone other than yourself that participated in this search?

A. Not for my personal.

Q. All right. And when did you do the search?

A. Shortly after this was received.

Q. And how did you go about determining whether any documents that you had were responsive?

A. I searched for BIAW.

Q. Anything else?

A. That was the main search I did because that was -- seemed to be the concern here.

Q. Well, it also refers to other local affiliated builder groups; correct? United B?

A. Well, that's part of the BIAW, isn't it? I don't know.

Q. Well, did you find any documents that you looked through to determine whether they were needed to comply with the Subpoena?

A. I didn't find any documents, any e-mails.

Q. Okay. And what kind of electronic search did you do? Did you just put in BIAW then?

A. Yeah, outlook search.

Q. Anything else?

A. No.

Q. Did you review any of your phone records?

A. No. I didn't look at the phone records.

Q. You said that the only other deposition you gave was with the Public Disclosure Commission; is that correct?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. You have to answer audibly, sir.

A. Yes, I'm sorry.

Q. Was that under oath?

A. Yes.

Q. And who was the person who took that deposition?

A. I don't remember his name.

Q. And what did you do to prepare for this deposition, Mr. Rossi?

A. This one today?

Q. Yes, sir.

A. Met with my counsel for about an hour this morning.

Q. And I'm not going to ask you to disclose anything that you said to him or he said to you but did you review any documents?

A. I read the lawsuit that you folks had filed, and I read that portion of it.

Q. And in addition to the lawsuit, did you review any documents, minutes or other documents that might refresh your recollection about occurrences in the past?

A. What was in the documents that you had put, the excerpts that you had.

Q. Okay. Other than what was in the complaint in the case, did you review any other documents?

A. I don't know what other documents there would be. What kind of documents are you talking about?

Q. Well, for instance, did you review any PDC findings?

A. PDC findings --

Q. Yes.

A. From where?

Q. From any time.

A. Concerning what?

Q. Concerning, including concerning yourself and concerning the BIAW member services corporation, any of the master builders association, anything related to the
PDC that the PDC published.

A. The book?

Q. Which book --

A. All I looked at was the complaint that you had and -- from your lawsuit, and I read that.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) And the attachments?

A. And the attachments.

Q. All right. So if the and the attachments didn't have any PDC documents fair enough?

A. Yeah, the attachments.

Q. Did you speak to anyone other than your attorneys about this deposition?

A. Talked to my wife about it last night that we're going into a political charade.

Q. Did you discuss your deposition with anybody in the press this morning?

A. This morning, no.

Q. Did you have a press conference this morning?

A. Yes, I did have a press conference but I --

Q. Was the subject matter of this deposition and the lawsuit?

A. Yes, we talked about the lawsuit from the standpoint of -- and what I said this morning was that this is one of the reasons why it was difficult to make a decision to run for public office, and which is the fact that having a political lawsuit like this being filed and then being forced off the campaign trail when I should have been today at the Seattle rotary giving a speech or doing TV interviews and radio interviews, have been taken off the campaign trail for political purposes to answer the Questions that I already did at the PDC, they did a six-month investigation, whether I was a candidate or not. And Christine Gregoire's political operatives did a phony complaint, they did extensive Subpoenas, not Subpoenas but depositions from people across the state and they determined I wasn't a candidate for office until December -- or sorry, October of -- 11 of 2007. And because I wasn't a candidate. The likelihood of me running again really wasn't all that high for quite a while there.

Q. This is what you told the press this morning?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. You have to answer audibly.

A. Yes.

Q. And you've given other press statements about this case, fair enough?

A. Yes.

Q. And you understand that when you were giving press statements you weren't under oath, fair enough?

A. Right.

Q. And now you are under oath and it's your statement, I would assume that what you told the press was true; correct?

A. I told the press --

Q. The truth?

A. I told them the truth. Their characterization of what I said may be something different.

Q. Other than your wife, did you discuss this deposition with Jill Strait?

A. My press secretary, yes.

Q. Yes. And did you discuss this with any officers or board member of the BIAW Member Service Corporation, Master Builders Association?

A. No.

Q. And you understand that the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine is here representing the Building Industry Association of Washington; correct?

A. There's the lawyer. You're on behalf of?

A. Both of you are.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) But that's the same firm that represented you in the election challenge in 2004; correct?

A. That's true.

Q. Was your consent asked to allow your prior firm the builders association of Washington in this case?

A. I don't recall being asked.

Q. Now, are you generally familiar with the provisions of the campaign finance laws and public disclosure act in this state?

A. Generally.

Q. And you are aware that the people passed an initiatives back in the '70s; correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Pardon me if I don't know your full political history. Did you happen to be in the legislature, take any votes on this law, if you can recall?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Have you read the law?

A. I've read parts of the law.

Q. Have you read any PDC interpretations of the law other than in your own case that you've already referred to?

A. Not that I recall.

Q. Have you received or read any candidate's guidelines to the public disclosure law or campaign finance law?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Would you agree that it's the responsibility of a candidate or a would be candidate for office to have -- to know the provisions of the campaign finance law in this state?

MR. WITHEY: Well, Mr. Rossi, the question was do you agree that a candidate or would be candidate has a responsibility to knowing the basic provisions of the campaign finance laws.

A. That's the same question again, isn't it?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You get to answer it now?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you agree it's your responsibility as a candidate for the highest office in this state to have a basic understanding of the campaign finance laws?

A. I have a basic understanding of the campaign finance laws, right. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer.

Q. I assume that your answer is yes?

A. Yeah, candidates, most candidates I know have a basic understanding of the campaign law. Maybe not as in depth as a lawyer as yourself or the other ones sitting around this table, but most understand the law and as far as the contributions and how those work and declaration of the candidate.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Great. How many different offices have you run for in your political career?

A. I've run for the state senate and I've run for governor.

Q. In how many campaigns?

A. Three state senate and two governor.

Q. And in the process of those elections, you had to get to know some of the provisions of the law that you've just described; correct?

A. True.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Mr. Rossi, do you agree that the public disclosure of campaign finances is in the public interest?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

A. Repeat the question, the court reporter.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you agree?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. Yes.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you believe it's part of the voter's right to know?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Mr. Rossi, do you believe that the public disclosure finance act is the party right to know?

Q. Do you agree that the public's right to know of the financing of public elections and political campaigns outweighs your own right to privacy as a candidate?

A. I think it's a good idea for the public to know.

Q. And have you -- are you aware of the provision in the law that the financial strength of certain individuals' organizations should not prevent or permit them to exercise a disproportionate or controlling influence on the election of candidates?

A. I'm not sure what the question is.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware of the provisions of the state law passed by the people that states that the financial strength of certain individuals and organizations should not permit them to exercise a disproportionate or controlling influence on the election of candidates?

A. I have not read that in the law.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you agree with that principle personally?

A. Explain what the principle is to me.

Q. The financial strength of certain individuals and organizations should not permit them to exercise a disproportionate or controlling influence on the election of candidates?

A. Oh you mean like SCIU helping pay for lawsuits like this, fuse and other ones that are are paying for sham lawsuits like this one, is that what you're talking
about?

Q. No, I'm asking you generally do you agree with that principle?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you agree with the principle that or are you aware of the principle in the initiative passed by the people that limiting campaign finances include reducing the influence of large organizational contributors?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware that the initiative of the people stated that limiting campaign contributions could reduce the influence of large organizational contributors?

A. That's true, it could reduce, and a group's like SCIU, the federal employees, and fuse, Evergreen process and all the other ones that are behind this
frivolous lawsuit.

Q. Do you agree that the BIAW is a large organizational contributor?

A. They're not as big as those big. They're big but not as big as those groups.

Q. Are you familiar with time PAC, Washington affordable housing council?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know they're PACs of the bye?

A. I know the PAC of change PAC.

Q. And what con treat discrepancy if any has your campaign taken to reduce the influence of either the BIAW or its PACs in this election, if any?

A. Well, the money that isn't coming into my coffers, money is being spent independently just like Evergreen process and SCIU and others, and so if that's what you're talking about. And that's going to Christine Gregoire who you both are working on behalf of.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you know anyone, any large organizational contributor that has raised over six and a half million dollars for activities other than the BIAW and its PACs?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you going to answer the

Question? The Question was, are you aware of anyone other than the BIAW and its PACs that have raised over 6 million dollars for its activity?

A. Yes. SCIU have raised over 20 million. I don't know what they're doing with all the money, they're spending it independently now, so it could all be coming here, who knows.

Q. You've made statements to the press about phone calls or meetings and conversations you had with people in the BIAW and other builder associations before you declared your candidacy for governor; correct?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Have you made statements to the press about contacts or phone calls you've made to BIAW related to before you publicly declared for governor; correct?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Did you make a statement to the press that because you have not declared yourself a candidate until, was it October of 2007?

A. October 11 of 2007.

Q. But because you had not declared yourself as a candidate on October 11, 2007, you were free to make calls on behalf of the BIAW adding that -- and discussing master builders' participation in their political activities?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Without reviewing the document do you know whether you made such a statement?

A. Let me see what you're referring to.

Q. So you can't determine whether --

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) This is Exhibit 2, an article from the Chris McGann PI capital lawsuit targets Rossi's relationship with builders. On the second page, Mr. Rossi --

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Have you had a chance to read the yellow marked portions of it? Is that an accurate quote?

A. That I hadn't declared myself a candidate. Obviously I had not.

Q. And you were free to make calls on behalf of the BIAW?

A. To try to repair a relationship problem that they had with the Seattle Master Builders.

Q. So is this statement, the yellow marked, accurate or accurate in part or inaccurate?

A. Well, it's not -- yeah, the call was about making -- bringing them back together.

Q. You took -- is it your position that any contact you had with BIAW or MSC or master builders association, you consider to be completely legal before you declared your candidacy for governor?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer the question?

A. Well, you know, I was not a candidate for governor, and at the time all that happened I was about 75 percent sure I would not run for office, and the reason I was pretty sure at that point in time, pretty close that I would not run for office, is because of this sort of thing, us sitting here today. You know, the fact that you folks served Subpoenas at my home pounding at 9:30 at night on the door, serving my teenage daughter with a Subpoena, this is the kind of nonsense that you have to go through for someone to run for public office. And so taking my family through that again, I'd already been through it once, and I've been through a very difficult campaign and through the election contest on top of that. And so to want to go through this again, you know, you folks have proven my case.

MR. WITHEY: Move to strike as nonresponsive. Could the reporter read the question back.

A. I answered the question. Why don't you want me to answer your question?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. My contacts with them were certainly legal. I was want a candidate for governor. I was about 75 percent sure I wouldn't run for public office at that point in time because the toll it takes on the family. Just like you folks, what you've done with me in bringing me here today in the last week of the campaign, serving my teenage daughter at my home with a Subpoena for me for a lawsuit I'm not even a party to. So, yes, this is a -- this is truly a more harassment than anything else. But am I able to do that? I was not a candidate, I wasn't soliciting money for me as a candidate? Not true.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Okay, so you did have contacts with the BIAW and the master builders association before October 11, 2007, related to your candidacy; correct?

A. That's completely false.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) What was your contact with the BIAW then related to?

A. I want the court reporter to read back what you said before. Because I think you said I was a candidate, which I wasn't.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) No, it doesn't matter, I'm going to withdraw the question and rephrase it.

A. I want to make sure what is on this record.

Q. We're entitled to do that, Mr. Rossi. We're going to go to the next question. Did you make --

A. I think that's what you said.

Q. Because you had not declared until then; correct?

A. Because I had not declared until then?

Q. Yes. You were not a candidate because you were not declared until October 11 --

(Deposition Exhibit 3 was marked for identification.)

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) This is Seattle Times article December 28th, ex judges target building industry group Rossi and the yellow marked portion if I could read it to you, sir. Rossi spokeswoman Jill Straight also denied the former judge's claim saying Rossi's discussions with building industry officials came before he was officially a candidate for office. Is that a true statement by Jill straight?

A. I was not a candidate for office.

Q. But she represented to the press that Rossi's discussion with building industry officials came before he was officially candidate for office. Is that part of the statement true as well?

A. Yeah, I was not a candidate for office.

Q. But did you have discussions with building industry officials before you became a candidate for office?

A. What was indicated in the article?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) No, as indicated in this sentence.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'm not asking you to agree to anything above, Mr. Rossi, I'm just saying did you have discussions with building -- as Jill represented to the press, did you have discussions with building industry officials before you officially declared as a candidate?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you going to answer the question?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Let me ask it again. Jill straight made a representation to the press as indicated in this article, fair enough?

A. True.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Okay. Was what -- did you authorize her to make this statement?

A. I didn't talk to her before she made this statement about making this specific statement.

Q. Do you believe it was an authorized statement in the sense that she spoke for the campaign?

A. She works for my campaign.

Q. Was there anything untruthful?

A. Can you read the Question back.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Was there anything untruthful about this statement she made to the press as indicated in this line, the yellow marked one?

A. No, but I'm not agreeing to everything else that was in this article.

Q. Didn't ask you to. Do you know who Doug barns is?

A. Doug barns is with the Seattle Master Builders.

Q. In 2007 do you know if he was president of that organization?

A. I don't remember his position.

Q. Who is Joe Schwab?

A. He's also with the same group.

Q. And John day?
A. With the same group.

Q. And prior to May 21, 2007, do you recall having a phone call or contact with them with respect to their position related to the election?

A. Prior to when?

Q. May 21st, 2007.

A. I don't know about the date.

Q. All right. And, well, did you have contact with them in your recollection, in other words, do you recall contacting one or all of them?

A. Yes.

Q. And what was the subject matter of that contact?

A. The subject matter was the -- there was a rift in between the two groups, BIAW and Seattle Master Builders, and so the idea was trying to mend fences between the two because it looked like a personality clash.

Q. Who informed you of that rift?

A. Tom Mc Cabe.

Q. And what did Mr. Mc Cabe tell you?

A. That the Seattle Master Builders were not supportive of their overall effort and, as I recollect that was really the conversation. Asked if maybe I could bring them all back together.

Q. And what -- on what issues had this rift developed along?

A. It was -- as I understood it more of a personality clash with Daimon Doyle who was a -- I think he was the head of the BIAW at that point in time. And with the folks that were at Seattle Master Builders, because they have, you know, different approaches to politics, the two different groups and don't always see eye to eye. But they're both small business oriented groups, and the idea that they should be one is better than a scattered shotgun effect when it comes to supporting pro small business candidates. And they support a lot of pro small business candidates all over the state, Republican and Democrat, including Judy Clibborn from the 41st district who was a Democrat and Tim she will done and other ones who in the legislature and throughout state government. And, you know, putting that together would have been more -- would be a stronger effort than them being separate.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Let's move on, Mr. Rossi, was political spending part of the rift that you've described?

A. Overall the groups together in their -- the political effort in their political financial health together is stronger, so in a general sense, yes.

Q. So I assume you discussed this rift then with Mr. Barns, Mr. Schwab and Mr. Day?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Is that correct?

A. Did I discuss it with them?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And you were aware that both groups had supported you in the past; correct?

A. They had.

Q. And you believed that even if you had discussed funding of -- or strike that. Even if you had discussed specifics about money, again, this is prior to when you declared, that that would have been completely legal because you were not declared as a candidate yet; correct?

A. Go ahead and read the Question back, please.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Mr. Rossi, did you tell the press it would have been acceptable to discuss money with these two groups, the BIAW and the master builders, but because you had not become a candidate at that time?

A. I said that I wasn't a candidate, and I was about 75 percent sure at that time I would not be a candidate for any office ever again after what we had gone through in 2004. And so the reality of that is we were talking in a general sense for them to come together to support pro business candidates.

(Deposition Exhibit 4 was marked for identification.)

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Mr. Rossi, Exhibit 4 is a Seattle Times article by Kurt Woodward of the associated press October 7, 2008 at 12 A.m.. and let me direct your attention to the second page of that, the yellow marked portion. I'll read it into the record, if I make a mistake please correct me. Rossi has said he was merely trying to patch a rift between the two groups, both of which had supported him in the past. Although their political spending was part of the schism, Rossi says he didn't discuss any specifics about money. Is that an accurate statement?

A. I didn't ask them to split money, a specific amount of money or any money in certain places.

Q. Okay.

A. That's true.

Q. And the rest of the statement is true about patching up the rift; correct?

A. That was the main issue.

Q. Now the next sentence, even if he had, Rossi has argued that that would have been acceptable since he hadn't become a candidate for governor yet. Did you also make that statement?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Is the next sentence accurate?

A. Right. It says time of candidacy was important -- yeah, I wasn't a candidate. I believe that I was about like I said 75 percent sure I would never run for office again. And I was just trying to patch up a relationship that obviously -- told be like Christine Gregoire having parts of SCIU fighting with each other and both groups supported her and she was trying to patch up the rift with SCIU.

Q. Move to strike as nonresponsive?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'm asking Mr. Rossi if you agree that the that in that sentence refers to discussing specifics about money.

A. Yeah, but I didn't do that.

Q. Right. Because you weren't declared a candidate?

A. I wasn't a candidate. I wasn't a declared or undeclared candidate, and that's what the six-month long PDC investigation found out, under oath, and that's exactly where we were. I was a private citizen at that point in.

Q. How many individuals within the BIAW or master builders like Mr. Barns or Mr. Schwab or Mr. Day did you contact with respect to their political activities prior to when you declared your candidacy?

A. I don't recall specifically contacting anybody else but those folks.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Well, you talked to Daimom Doyle, did you not?

A. Right. I already mentioned him earlier.

Q. Okay. Other than -- is your testimony other than Daimon Doyle, Mrs. Barn, swab and day, you had no contact with anybody at either BIAW or master builders association with respect to this topic; correct?

A. Which topic?

A. I didn't talk to -- I didn't call anybody else in that group that I remember that I recall.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Did you call anyone with master builders association of Pierce County about political spending?

A. I don't remember.

Q. Did you use cell phone or house phone or office phone or all of the above to call those individuals?

A. I don't recall.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Did you pay for any of the calls yourself in 2007 before you declared?

A. You mean like a pay phone or something?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) For instance a cell phone bill. Did you have a cell phone?

A. Yes aid a phone.

Q. What was your phone number?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Did you pay your cell phone bill by yourself personally or did some campaign or other agency pay it?

A. I wasn't a candidate office so it certainly wasn't a campaign that paid for it, I paid for my own cell phone.

Q. Thank you. And you're unwilling to give us even confidentially if we keep this confidential, you're willing to give us your phone number?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware, have you been informed that we've subpoenaed the minutes and notes and note takers of the building association to produce those minutes tomorrow and throughout the end of the week and next week?

A. I don't know about that.

Q. And your testimony would be that there would be no reference to any contacts you would make other than BIAW and master builders of King County in any of those minutes or notes related to your contacting them for the purpose of political funding?

A. Not that I'm aware of. How would I know what they put in their notes?

Q. Okay.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) What was the political spending that was part of the schism that -- or the rift, excuse me, that you've referred to?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I said what was the political spending aspect of the rift that you described?

A. The political spending would be their participation, or however they participate. I'm not sure how their mechanism works. But them being together as one group instead of going off in separate directions.

Q. Were your efforts successful?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) To mend the rift.

A. To mend the rift?

Q. Yes.

A. It was a personality conflict that I don't think ever got resolved.

Q. Was it in your interest to see if you could mend the rift between those organizations?

A. No, it wasn't my interest, it was in the interest of State of Washington to promote small business candidates and that is what the BIAW and the Seattle Master Builders do, and it was not specifically for any candidate, it was specifically to support pro business candidates like Judy Clibborn, Democrat from Mercer Island who was supported heavily by BIAW and other Democrats and Republicans across the state who are small business oriented people.

Q. Including yourself?

A. What's that?

Q. Including yourself?

A. I wasn't a candidate.

Q. Did you understand that the BIAW or some of the associations had the expectations of receiving donations for electoral activities for 2008?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

A. I'm not going to speculate what they were going to do and not do, I'm not involved in their meetings. I'm not part of their organization.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Well, were you aware that BIAW and other builder associations had received donations and made expenditures for your race for governor in 2004?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Did you have the expectancy that BIAW and master builders association would raise money for your candidacy if you decided to declare for governor?

A. I didn't know if they would or wouldn't. That was not discussed for me, because I wasn't a candidate. And if you look at most of the documents in your lawsuit you see the word if many times because I told people it had to make sense for my family, is there a reason for me to run for office again. And like I said, at this point in time I was 75 percent sure I'd never run for office again after what we had gone through before, and being here today is more evidence of it.

MR. WITHEY: Move to strike as nonresponsive.

MR. WITHEY: Do you understand how political committee is defined under the campaign finance --

Q. You spoke at a BIAW meeting at Semiahmoo in June 29, 2007 before you declared as a candidate; correct?

A. True.

Q. Because you had not declared, you believe your attendance at that meeting and the speech you gave was totally legal, fair enough?

A. It was absolutely legal. I was there giving a speech about how to improve the business climate for small and medium sized businesses. On behalf of the non-profit, non-partisan foundation called the forward Washington foundation that I founded. And these people are small business oriented folks and so they asked me to come up and give a talk.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Well, Mr. Lowney is going to ask you a few more questions about that meeting in May 21, 2007, just for your information. I'm going to move on to another topic?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware of the fact that the Public Disclosure Commission and Attorney General Rob McKenna have asserted in court that both of the BIAW member services corporation and the master builders association of king and Snohomish County committed multiple violations of the campaign finance laws by failing to register as a political committee in 2007?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Back on the record. In the break we've made a partial transcript of the deposition to -- as of this time, and we're having my staff come and get that on a USB port and she will send that to the parties, to counsel for Mr. Rossi and to the Court with the reQuest that we have a conference call, if possible, with the Court to go over the objections as I stated before, before the break.

Q. I'd like the next exhibit marked, please.

(Deposition Exhibit 5 was marked for identification.)

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Mr. Rossi, Exhibit 5 the executive summary and staff analysis of the citizen action letter filed by my clients, former Justices of the Supreme Court, and I'd like to direct your attention to Page 3, if I could, the yellow highlight. I'll read it to you, and correct me if I'm wrong. BIAW-MSC officers decided to approach the 15 local associations to ask them to contribute the difference between the estimated and actual retro refunds for use by change PAC in the 2008 election. Do you see that?

A. I see it.

Q. And then the next sentence says, following the solicitations, 11 of the 15 associations authorized BIAW, MSC to retain a portion of their 2007 retro program refund for use in the 2008 election. Do you see that?

A. I see that written here.

Q. Do you have any understanding or knowledge as to those transactions?

A. I'm not sure what this is about. The BIAW decided that the 15 local associations. That's the groups under BIAW or with BIAW?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Yes.

A. Is that what it is?

Q. Yes. I'm just asking if you're aware of --

A. No, I'm not.

Q. Thank you. The last is the conclusion of the PDC --

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Last page. Does support the allegation, the BIAW MSC committed multiple violations of RCW 42.17 by failing to register as a political committee, et ceterA. Were you aware of that conclusion of the PDC?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Go ahead, you can answer the

Question. I'm asking if you're aware of the finding by the PDC that BIAW-MSC failed to register as a political committee.

A. I read that in the newspaper.

Q. Did you -- okay. You have never read this document then?

A. I must have missed that part.

Q. Okay.

A. I saw the front of this document before.

Q. And as far as you understood, you understood that if you had contact with and -- with the BIAW prior to when you became a candidate for governor, that resulted in any contributions, that it was legal because you had not declared; correct?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware that Rob McKenna brought a lawsuit against the BIAW member services corporation?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you aware that the Attorney General Rob McKenna brought a lawsuit against BIAW MSC?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

A. When was this done?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) It was filed on September 19, 2008.

A. I read about that in the newspaper.

Q. Did you read the allegation? And I'll read it to you. Do you want me to give you a copy.

(Deposition Exhibit 6 was marked for identification.)

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Handing you what has been marked as Exhibit 6 let me read you from section 3.5, paragraph 3.5?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Complaint by the State of Washington against BIAW member services corporation. 3.5, as a result of the anticipated overage amount over the original estimate, BIAW MSC officers personally approached each of the BIAW's 15 local builders association and requested they contribute some or all of their excess unanticipated retro funds to assist with 2008 political campaigns. These personal visits to the local builders association occurred between March 7 and July 10, 2007. First of all, are you aware of that allegation?

A. I really don't have any knowledge of how BIAW organizes or gets their money.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) So it's your testimony that --

A. That I know.

Q. Sorry. It's your testimony that you knew of no such approach as indicated in this allegation; correct?

A. Approach. What do you mean approach?

Q. Well, it states, the BIAW officers personally approached each of the BIAW's 15 local builders association. I'm asking whether you then have no knowledge of such approach.

A. I'm not really sure who they approached or who they didn't approach.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Well, do you have any basis to contradict the statement made by Mr. McKenna in that?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

A. I'm not aware of who they approached or didn't approach.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) So you have no basis of agreeing with or disagreeing with that statement; correct?

A. That would be correct. I mean, I don't know who they approached or didn't approach?

Q. After Mr. -- Attorney General McKenna brought this complaint, have you ever called upon the BIAW MSC to not use those funds, that Attorney General of the state believed were improperly and illegally collected?

A. I haven't picked up the phone and talked to BIAW at all about this.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Were you aware that they endorsed you for governor on November 9, 2008 -- 2007, excuse me?

A. November when?

Q. 9, 2007.

A. Yes, they did. They being?

Q. The BIAW.

A. BIAW, yeah.

Q. To your knowledge, in 2007 did the BIAW member services corporation or the master builders association expect to receive contributions to further your electoral dollars, including your governor's race?

A. At what time?

Q. 2007 prior to when you declared.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Prior to when you declared in 2007, were you aware whether the BIAW member services corporation or the master builders association had expected to receive contributions to them for the governor's race?

A. I didn't know what contributions they were going to have or not, and I wasn't a candidate for governor and I didn't -- you know, I was not a candidate for governor until October 11 of 2007.

Q. Are you aware of the concept of improper coordination as it applies to the campaign finance laws?

A. In what way?

Q. Well, in the way that -- you've read -- strike that. Do you understand what independent expenditure is?

A. It means it's independent.

Q. Independent of what?

A. Of a candidate.

Q. Are there restrictions on such expenditures that you're aware of in the laws?

A. Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I don't believe you can tell them to run ads for you or not run ads for you. I think that's part of it.

Q. And if they did that, that would constitute improper coordination of a campaign with a --

A. If you told them to run a certain ad or.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'm just asking for your understanding.

A. I mean, you know, my understanding is that you can't tell independent folks, independent groups what they can say or not say, which is why in a campaign, having independent groups out there can be sometimes a detriment to the candidate because you just don't know what they're going to say or what they're going to do.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) As a candidate for governor, do you believe it's permissible for you to have contact with an individual organization for the purposes of asking them whether they would be willing to support your campaign?

A. There was no campaign to ask to support.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'm saying now?

A. Oh, now?

Q. Yes.

A. Ask a group to support my campaign, plenty of groups to support a campaign.

Q. So that would not be improper coordination. Fair enough?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Have you read any PDC staff memos regarding what constitutes improper coordination?

A. I can't recall reading those.

Q. What's your understanding of when a person who is considering running for office becomes a candidate for office under the campaign finance laws?

A. When they solicit or accept money, when they publicly declare that they are a candidate. You have 14 days from that time period to actually trial with the PDC. We decided -- I decided on October 11th that I would be a candidate. My wife and I made that decision that morning. And 14 days later we filed all the paperwork and made the public announcement on the 25th of October.

Q. When did you first become aware the BIAW was raising money for your campaign?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

A. You know, I don't know that they are going to raise money until you see something that they actually produce from it, so there's no knowledge of raising money because I had no campaign. And until we saw evidence of that on the air waves and the like.

Q. Do you recall when that first was?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Do you understand that the person can become a candidate where the existence of a political committee promoting the election of that individual for public office occurs with the knowledge and consent of an individual?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) that's your understanding? Is that your understanding?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) The question I'm asking you is whether there's other ways than what you suggested you could become a candidate, all right, and so I'm going to ask you whether you understand that you can become a candidate as follows: Where there's the existence of a political committee promoting the election of you in this case for public office --

A. Could we stop and ask for a clarification? What does that mean political existence. What does that mean?

Q. That means you're aware of a fact that political committee exists that's promoting your candidacy and you give consent to that.

A. Okay.

Q. Do you understand that that would then make you a candidate even if you had not declared?

A. If that were true, but that's not true in this case because I wasn't a candidate and there was no political committee set aside from me. You can believe I'm going to be a great senator and inform a group to try to support me in 2010. That doesn't make me a candidate.

Q. I understand, I think I've answered it.

A. Am I getting that clear, what I'm saying? Using you as an example. You can do that but it still doesn't make me a candidate.

Q. I'm asking you this. If you're aware and give consent to a political committee promoting your election, that makes you a candidate, correct?

A. And I gave no such consent.

Q. I'm asking whether you understood that that would make you a candidate.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) So your answer is you don't know?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you recall answering that I'm not a lawyer, Mr. Rossi?

A. Well, I'm not a lawyer.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Are you familiar with --

A. Sitting here in a room full of lawyers.

(Deposition Exhibit 7 was marked foridentification.)

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Handing you what has been marked as Exhibit 7, this is a copy of the Washington Administrative Code 390-05-200. And I'm going to read it to you, the first two portions of it. The following circumstance shall give rise to a presumption that an individual as a candidate, as that term is definede in RCW 42.17.020 paren 8, one, the existence of a political committee promoting the election of such individual for public office with the knowledge and consent of that individual. Did I read that correctly?

A. Yes, you did.

Q. All right.

A. So knowledge and consent is connected; right?

Q. Yes. So I'm asking you whether you understood that you could become a candidate in this manner even if you had not declared your candidacy.

A. If I knew they had a specific fund for me and I said go do it? That's my consent; right?

Q. My question is this. Do you understand that you could become a candidate in the manner set forth in this WAC even if you had not declared your candidacy for governor in October of 2007?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it. A. I did not give my consent to anybody just to start anything, any political activities on my behalf because I was not a candidate.
Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) But you understood, however, that if you had given consent to a political committee --

A. Which I didn't.

Q. Let me finish the Question, please. You understood that had you known about and given consent to a political committee to promote you for governor, you would become a candidate even before you'd declared your candidacy?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

A. I wasn't a candidate for governor.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) But you now understand that if the existence of a political committee --

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You understand that the existence of a political committee, all right --

A. Political committee that's outside my control.

Q. You understand the existence of a political committee promoting your election if done with your knowledge and consent would make you a candidate even if you had not declared?

A. I wasn't a candidate.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You understand that the extent to which the Attorney General determined that BIAW MSC was a political committee in 2007 and that they then with your knowledge and consent supported your candidacy, that that would be illegal; correct?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer it.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer the question?

A. I wasn't a candidate for governor.

Q. When did you first find out that the BIAW had moved $2 million of their budget into your governor's campaign?

A. Can you say that again? When did what?

Q. When did you first find out that the BIAW in a meeting in Spokane moved $2 million of their budget into your campaign?

A. First off, that's incorrect. There was no money moved into my campaign. He said into my campaign.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I did.

A. That's wrong.

Q. In November after you declared?

A. They cannot give 2 million into my campaign.

Q. So the extent to which they gave that statement that would be wrong; correct?

A. You're making that statement would be wrong.

Q. If the BIAW made that statement they would also be wrong; correct?

A. Right, because they can't move money into my campaign, that size of money.

Q. And in light of the definition of candidate that I just -- that you just were shown, did you take any efforts to determine whether the BIAW MSC or the master builders association were political committees under the campaign finance law?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) Do you understand the question?

A. Not really.

Q. All right then I'll rephrase it.

A. Redo it.

Q. What efforts did you undertake to determine whether the BIAW master services corporation or the master builders association of King County were political committees under the campaign finance laws?

A. At what time? When?

Q. In 2007 before you declared.

A. Before I was a candidate for governor?

Q. Yes. A. No.

Q. You did not?

A. No, I wasn't a candidate for governor.

Q. Do you think it was your responsibility as a potential, even if it's only 25 percent --

A. As a private citizen?

Q. No. Do you think it's your responsibility as a potential candidate to determine whether an organization that you've admitted calling members of was or was not a political committee?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

A. Can repeat back the question please.

The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. I was 75 percent sure I would never run for office again so I wasn't even considering myself a potential candidate at that point in time, so no.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) So in other words, it did not matter whether they were political committees or not as long as you had not declared as a candidate?

A. That's not what I said.

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'm asking you a different question. Does it matter to you whether the BIAW MSC or the master builders association were political committees in 2007 before you declared your candidacy?

A. It's nothing I had knowledge of. I mean, was a private citizen. MR. WITHEY: I'm going to have Mr. Lowney ask you a few questions, Mr. Rossi.

Q. (BY LOWNEY) Mr. Rossi, thank you again for being here today?

A. My pleasure.

Q. Are you familiar with the organization BIAW member services corporation?

A. What's member services corporation?

Q. That was yes or no question. Are you familiar with that organization?

A. I know Seattle Master Builders, is that the same thing?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) My question is, are you familiar with BIAW member service corporation, yes or no?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) No. The question is are you familiar with that organization?

A. I'm familiar with BIAW.

Q. Okay. My question is --

A. Master services corporation.

Q. Then the answer would be no?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm going to ask you the question again. Are you familiar with BIAW member services corporation? Yes or no?

A. Well, I'm not sure about -- I know what BIAW is. Building Industry Association of Washington. I don't know what the other part is. If that's the Seattle Master Builders then that's a different group, I don't know.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Let me say, to clarify, if this helps you, it is a separate corporation, BIAW member services corporation. Are you familiar with that corporation?

A. I've had no contact with anybody from the corporation with that -- that I know of. Maybe -- I don't know.

Q. Okay. Are you familiar with a group called people for efficient government?

A. No.

Q. Do you recall -- do you recall previously having any independent expenditures for any of your campaigns being investigated for improper coordination?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Do you recall previously having any independent expenditures for any of your campaigns being investigated for improper coordination?

A. I don't recall that being the case. I mean, your candidate, Chris Gregoire, is the only Attorney General from Washington history to be fined by the public disclosure commission for illegal campaign practices. I haven't.

Q. So the question is no you're not going it --

A. I don't recall that happening.

Q. Okay, thank you. When you ran for governor in 2004, did the BIAW fund independent expenditures either for you or against Christine Gregoire?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When you ran for governor in 2000, did the BIAW expend expenditures either for you or against Chris Gregoire?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Do you have any idea how much money the BIAW spent on those independent expenditures?

A. What was the question again?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Do you have any idea how much money it spent on these independent expenditures?

A. BIAW?

Q. Yes.

A. No.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. Did you coordinate, did you coordinate with BIAW during the 2004 election cycle?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Thank you. You can answer.

A. No.

Q. Did any of your campaign staff have regular contact with the BIAW during the period during which they were making independent expenditures in 2004 election cycle?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) To your knowledge did any of your campaign staff have regular contact with the BIAW during the time that the BIAW was funding independent expenditures during the 2004 election cycle?

A. I have no knowledge of that.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did you visit the BIAW headquarters in the 12 months before the 2004 election?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) If you can answer please do.

A. What was the question again.

Q. Did you visit the BIAW headquarters in the 12 months before the 2004 election?

A. So that would have been 2003? I don't recall.

Q. Okay. Did BIAW staff or officers visit your campaign headquarters during that time that you recall?

A. No, I don't recall.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Don't recall, okay?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did you share non-public information with the BIAW during the 2004 election cycle?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) If you recall.

A. No, that wouldn't be the right way to answer that. Read the question again.

Q. Did you share non-public information with the BIAW during that campaign cycle?

A. Non-public information such as?

Q. Yes. Information that you or your campaign had about the campaign, about your fund raising, about anything --

A. Yard signs, that kind of thing? What?

Q. Anything related to your campaign, sharing non-public information with the BIAW.

A. I never shared any non-public information with BIAW.

Q. Did the BIAW tell you or your campaign staff their campaign plans for independent expenditures during that election cycle?

A. No knowledge of that.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Now, Mr. Rossi, you did coordinate with the BIAW during the election recount process; is that correct?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'll ask the question again. You did coordinate with the BIAW during the election recount process, didn't you?

(Deposition adjourned at 12:19 p.m., to be reconvened at 1:00 p.m.)

AFTERNOON SESSION1:00 p.m.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) We're back on the record. Last before we broke you suggested -- you said you didn't not recall whether or not you coordinated with BIAW during the election recount process.

A. Can you read back what it was.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Well, I'm just going to move on.

A. Okay, good.

A. Well, I'd like to hear what you said.

Q. Actually, I was just getting to our place?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm going to give you what's been marked as Exhibit 8, and I'm going to mark something for you.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Have you seen this document before?

A. No. I don't know what it is.

Q. Okay. It does appear to be BIAW news highlights from January 3, 2005. Does that appear to be what it is?

A. I have no idea what this is.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. It does say on it --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'd like to direct -- MR. LOWNEY: I'm directing his attention to a particular --

A. Can I read the document first?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can read the portion that I'm referring you will to. It's the first paragraph, it's the only thing relevant.

A. I can't read anything else?

Q. The relevant portion is the first paragraph?

A. Thank you.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'd like the record to reflect that we've taken, what, two minutes to read a one-page document. This document does say --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) This document states that BIAW members and staff are continuing to do everything possible to assist Dino Rossi in finding the necessary 100 ammunition to legally challenge the election. Does that refresh your recollection as to assistance that BIAW provided you in your campaign during the recount process?

A. Is it doesn't say what they did. I don't know --

Q. I know, I'm asking does this refresh your recollection.

A. Well, they were helpful, sure.

Q. How were they helpful?

A. They were out there concerned about election fraud, which ended up resulting in the end where they found that a large number of people who were dead actually voted, and they found that there was hundreds more votes in King County that were cast that they couldn't actually connect to any individuals that cast the ballot. They found that thousands of felons had voted and they were out there looking through the country side to find where the election fraud was, and they discovered

Quite a bit of it in the end which I thought maybe I wasn't going too far out on a limb by saying every vote should have a voter.

Q. They provided this information directly to you and your campaign?

A. I don't know where it went from there. Nothing was given to me.

Q. Do you have any knowledge of them giving that information to you or your campaign?

A. I don't know where the information -- this was quite a while ago.

Q. Okay, so your testimony is you don't recall that happening?

A. Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what came across or what didn't come across.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) How much time did you spend at the BIAW headQuarters during the recount process?

A. I don't know that I was there. I'm not sure.

Q. Okay?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did any of your campaign staff work out of the BIAW headQuarters during the recount process?

A. No idea

Q. Did any of the BIAW staff work out of the Dino Rossi headquarters during that recount process?

A. I was hardly ever in the Dino Rossi headquarters during that election contest. You know, we had just gone through an election that came down to where after three million votes were cast, I was certified the winner by 261 votes, and then automatic recount had me certified by 43 votes, and then the hand recount by some of your friends like moveon.org during the recount process moveon.org and others. The hand recount flipped it by 129 votes in King County. The last thing I was interested in doing was being in political office at that point in time.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. After the hand recount 103 had found that you lost the 2004 election, you filed a lawsuit to try and overturn that decision; is that correct?

A. That's false.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Were you involved in challenging that final hand recount?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Was your name on a lawsuit challenging the recount?

A. The state party filed a lawsuit, I believe, is what it was.

Q. Did you give them the consent to file that lawsuit?

A. My consent wasn't necessary.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So did you give your consent for the party to file a lawsuit challenging the hand recount?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) The question is did you give your consent to that. That's the question.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can answer the question.

A. So what do you mean by consent? Did I write them a letter and tell them to go do it? What did I do? What is consent?

Q. Your name was on the lawsuit, is that correct, as a party to the lawsuit?

A. It was awhile ago.

A. I don't recall, but whether I gave consent or not, they're free to go do what they would like.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. Do you believe that you gave your consent for the party to file the lawsuit challenging --

A. Is that a question.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm saying your belief.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can answer that.

A. So you want me to speculate what I believed in 2005, is that what you want me to do?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) If you recall.

A. Don't recall.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did you see the complaint before it was filed?

A. I don't recall seeing the claim before it was filed.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did you want a revote?

A. Did I want a revote?

Q. Yeah.

A. Yes, I think that would have been the logical thing to do.

Q. And if the judge allowed a revote were you planning to have -- to have -- to participate as a candidate for the revote?

A. You know, actually what I said was that if the judge were to -- it was so muddled up at the end there was no way of knowing who actually won the election in the end, and if the judge flipped it over for me to become governor I would immediately resign, because I wouldn't want to be there as an illegitimate governor. And when you take a more accurate method by which is a machine count and overturn it with a less accurate method as many of your Democrat friend auditors said it was a less accurate method, and you would have nothing more than an illegitimate governorship. So I said at that point in time if the judge were to flip it over that I would immediately resign and seek for a revote so we can actually have a legitimate election. But you also would have to clean up the system of which our secretary of state, Sam Reed, didn't have a statewide database before, now he does, and with the statewide voter database he's wiped off 465,000 registration voting rolls that shouldn't have been there before. 465,000 --

Q. I'm going to have to strike as nonresponsive.

A. So there were 465,000 registrations he took off the voting rolls. He took off felons and dead people and the voting rolls are now cleaned up. That would have to also -- we try to move to clean that up before we actually go for a row vote.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When the lawsuit was not successful, did you make the decision not to file an 108 appeal?

A. Yes, I did. I pulled -- yeah, I said, I'm not going to go further than this. We had the majority of the Supreme Court that clearly would not be in favor for this. One used to work for Christine Gregoire herself and so it didn't make a lot of sense to go further than Wenatchee.

Q. And are you familiar with how much money the BIAW spent in supporting your recount effort and the -- yeah.

A. I'm not familiar with the total dollars that were spent.

Q. Does $1.7 million sound correct?

A. Sounds like a lot.

Q. Have you heard that term before?

A. Not 1.7, no.

Q. Did you have any conversations with the BIAW about their support for your effort during the recount and the election contest?

A. With BIAW?

Q. Yes.

A. I'm not recall what conversations we had, if any.

Q. Did you have regular conversations with the attorneys on the case, David Wright Tremaine during the election contest?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Were you represented by Davis Wright Tremaine during that election contest?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can answer the question?

A. What was the question?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. My understanding is they were representing the Washington state Republican party because they're the one that brought the suit, and I was part of that too, I guess. I was named on it, I guess, but I -- the state party was driving it.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) After the election contest was over, did you ask BIAW to assist you in paying off the legal fees owed to Davis Wright Tremaine?

A. I asked them to assist in paying the state party the legal fees of the state party had.

Q. How much money did you ask them for?

A. I don't remember what the bill was in the end.

Q. Does it sound possible that you asked them to pay $2 million towards your legal fees?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can answer the question.

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. I didn't ask them to pay $2 million for legal fees.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So if meeting minutes of the BIAW said that you asked for $2 million, would you think that those meeting minutes would be incorrect?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm just asking you if you feel that that would be incorrect, those meeting minutes?

A. Can I see the meeting minutes?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Do you need to see the minutes to refresh your recollection about whether or 112 not you asked for $2 million?

A. I'm just trying to decide if you're making this up or just like you have with this lawsuit, just like you did with the one with Mike McGavick, the phony lawsuit that was thrown out, you tried to cloud the issue on a major U.S. senate race in 2006 and was thrown out after the fact, I'm trying to figure out if you actually have any information here at all.

Q. I'm moving to strike that, but I would ask --

A. Because this is clearly -- what's going on here is a farce, and you did this with Mike McGavick and now you're doing it with me. Unfortunately it was allowed to go too far here. You've done this time and time again, this is what you do for a living, apparently.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And so it is your testimony today that you don't recall ever asking for $2 million from the BIAW?

A. No, that's not my testimony. My testimony is asking you for the minutes because I don't believe what you tell me because you're not a --

Q. I'm just asking --

A. Credible.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) What did you say?

A. It's not credible. Your lawsuit against Mike McGavick isn't credible and this isn't credible.

Q. Can I ask you to answer the question, which is do you recall whether or not you asked for $2 million from the BIAW to pay off your attorneys fees?

A. I said I don't recall asking BIAW for $2 million.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay, thank you. Do you recall asking for a smaller amount from the BIAW?

A. I don't know what the amount that covered the state party was. I don't remember?

Q. You don't recall how much you asked for? A. I don't recall. Q. Do you recall asking for money from the BIAW?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And if you don't recall you can say I don't recall. Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Now you can answer.

A. It wasn't my legal fees, it was the state party's legal fees.

Q. I understand.

A. And so you characterize it as my legal fees, which is inaccurate. And the dollar amount I don't recall what it was.

Q. Do you recall how much they ultimately paid --

A. No, I don't.

Q. Do you know, do you recall whether or not they paid -- whether or not the BIAW paid anything for your legal fees?

A. I don't recall what they did in the end.

Q. Okay. And did you ask about how the transaction would go down whether they should pay money to Davis Wright Tremaine directly or to the state Republican party, is that something you discussed?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Let's talk about the forward Washington case. In that case you did give testimony about becoming a candidate; is that correct? Yes or no?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) In the forward Washington case -- I'll rephrase the question. In the forward Washington case --

A. The public disclosure case?

Q. Yes. You gave testimony about when you became a candidate; is that correct?

A. The state Democratic party filed a phony PDC complaint just like you have here claiming that somehow I was a candidate, and what they hung their hat on is that we had filed paperwork during the election contest that said that I was a candidate. The reason we did that is because the PDC told us that we had to because they had no way of tracking money for the -- for election contest because they really had no mechanism for that. They're the ones that told us to. They did a six-month investigation and interrogated dozens of people and in the end they concluded that I was not a candidate as we've been talking about all day long. And that's after six months of trying to find whatever they could that would declare I was a candidate. Those words never crossed my lips that I was a candidate until my wife and I decided the morning of October 11, 2007, when I thought it was right for my family and it was the right thing to do would be to run for governor. And until then, and most of the time what we're supposed to be talking about here which was supposed to be back in 2007, like I said before, I was 75 percent sure I wouldn't be running for office again.

Q. But it is the case, is it not, that the question of your interaction with the BIAW never came up during that investigation; is that correct? 21

A. I don't recall.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You don't recall?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When you attended the semiahoo summer BIAW board meeting on June 29, 2007, you were giving a speech there for forward Washington; is that correct?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You were there to give a speech before Washington?

A. I was the lunchtime speaker and I gave a PowerPoint presentation on proving the business climate in the State of Washington for small and medium sized businesses. I was president of the forward Washington foundation which is a non-profit, non-partisan foundation that the Democrats filed a phony PDC complaint against. They tried to claim that somehow I was a candidate because I was using my first amendment rights of free speech, which I still actually have and had then, to talk about issues at the state level. And that's what I was doing there.

Q. Okay. And did you attend the executive committee meeting in the morning?

A. I don't recall that.

Q. Okay. And when did you arrive at semiahoo that day? 120

A. I don't remember.

Q. Did you attend the entire board meeting?

A. I don't think so. I gave a speech, a lunchtime speech.

Q. Do you recall who introduced you?

A. No. I've given thousands of speeches in the last couple of years. I don't recall everybody who has actually introduced me at these events.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And did you stay until the end of the meeting?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Do you recall having conversations with anyone else at Semiahmoo other than -- who did you give -- have conversations with there?

A. It wasn't that memorable so I'm sure I probably talked to -- I mean there was a lot of people there. I'm sure I probably talked to Tom Mc Cabe was there, he was with the BIAW.

Q. Do you recall any conversations --

A. Do you want me to think about it?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Yeah, go ahead.

A. I'm trying to remember. I mean, there were a lot of people there.

Q. Do you have -- so your testimony to the PDC was that you didn't collect any money prior to October 12, 2007, that was correct?

A. For what?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Is that your testimony?

A. For what?

Q. You told the PDC that you didn't collect any money for your 2008 governor race prior to October 12, 2007; is that correct?

A. Right. Well, I made the announcement on October 11 -- I mean not an announcement but that's when I made the decision.

Q. Did you receive any pledges for funds prior to October 12, 2007?

A. No.

Q. Did you spend any money on your campaign prior to that date?

A. It was no campaign. I wasn't a candidate for governor at that point in time, I hadn't made the decision until October 11 of 2007. I think we've already covered that.

Q. Did you spend any money on exploring the possibility of running for governor prior to that time?

A. No. That's an active of starting a campaign if you were to do that, and I did not do that.

Q. Did you have anyone assist you to set the ground work for a potential campaign prior to that time?

A. I mean, what kind of ground work? I don't understand what you mean.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Well, let's say did you ask anybody to start preparing a fund raising plan for you?

A. No, I had no fund raising plan. I was not a candidate for governor. At that point in time I was about 75 percent sure I would not be running for governor precisely for the reasons that we're here today, and the toll it takes on one's family to actually run for public office when you have people taking partisan pot shots at you and your family throughout this process like we're doing here today.

Q. Uh-huh. And so it is your testimony, would it be correct to say, that between October 12th and the end of the month you were able to from scratch create a fund raising plan and raise almost a half a million dollars?

A. Oh, certainly. I'll tell you exactly how that works is that when I started campaigning in 2004 -- well, actually 2003 when I became a candidate, I had 12 percent name ID statewide. You know, most people in the state knew Dino Rossi at that point in time. Right now when I started this last time I started with probably 80 or 90 percent name ID so I could easily pick up, you know, a phone book and find people who were contributors to my campaign last time just looking at my old PDCs and made phone calls. I made no phone calls to anybody for candidate before I actually became a candidate because I wasn't sure I was going to run. The conditions that I laid out for me to run was 75 percent statewide said I was not likely to do it is one of the main pieces was because of my family. You know, we have four children at that point in time there was between 6 and 16 years old. This is not an easy thing on the family. And that's why I had to make sure it was right for my family first before I made any decisions beyond that.

Q. And was it possible that your fund raising consultant was laying the ground work and lining up contributors prior to the time that -- prior to October 12th?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Is it possible?

A. I mean, I don't know. I mean it's -- I'm not going to say it's possible, that's for sure.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Do you have any reason to believe or disbelieve that your fund raiser, Amy Barns was contacting people ahead of time to line up contributors prior to October 12, 2007?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Contributors to your 2008 governors race.

A. The 2008 governors race. (The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. I have no reason to believe she was doing that.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And when you attended the -- you were a keynote at Semiahmoo, do you recall the BIAW presenting poll results?

A. I don't recall that.

Q. When did you first learn about BIAW's efforts to raise funds from their local affiliates for the 2008 governor's race? (The Reporter read back as requested.)

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) By affiliates I'm referring to Master Builders Associations and the other 15 or 17 local affiliates. You can answer the question, please.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When did you first learn of BIAW's efforts to raise funds from local affiliates for the 2008 governor's race?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So in 2007 in the April, May and June timeframe, did you have any idea that BIAW was trying to create a pot of money for the 2008 governor's race?

A. I know they were trying to come together on supporting all candidates across the state that were pro small business candidates. I don't know how their interworkings of the money works, I don't know if they have a separate pot for legislative candidates or a separate pot for Attorney General's. I have no idea how their funds work. So to tell you that I knew that they were doing something in that manner is inaccurate. It was for supporting all small business candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, and in a very general sense.

Q. Okay. So when did you first learn that the BIAW -- of the BIAW's efforts to raise funds from local affiliates for supporting local candidates in the -- or candidates -- excuse me, I'll restate that. When did you first learn about BIAW's efforts to raise funds from their local affiliates for electoral activities in the 2008 election cycle?

A. What's the question?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. I don't know about 2008, but they're always involved in BIAW's group and always involved in political activities continuously, and it's at a local level, state level, all the way around. I don't know if they do federal stuff, and so it's one continuous effort, just like your friends at SCIU or Washington state labor council who are picketing in front of the building right now who are paid by the Washington State Labor Council or others. It's a continuous effort and 128 so a distinction between '08 and some other time, I don't recall when that would have changed, if they're somehow aligned.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When you made the phone calls to the local officers of the MBA, at that point did you know that the BIAW was seeking funds from the MBA to fund electoral activities?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. They were seeking to fund electoral activities on a broad based sense, not just funds but having the support. Part of the problem was is that there was a personality clash between the Seattle Master Builders and the folks at the BIAW, and so me not being a candidate and about 75 percent sure I wasn't going to run again, they asked if I could bring the two together because they promote small business candidates around the state, which I support small business candidates around the state. So that's what happened.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And if you had brought them together, would that have resulted in the MBA pooling money with the BIAW for electoral activities?

A. I have no idea what they do, it's up to them.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And when you called -- when you made those three phone calls, did you -- who asked you specifically to make those three phone calls to John day, Joe Schwab and Doug barns that are reflected in the May 21st MBA -- 2007 MBA minutes?

A. I talked to Tom Mc Cabe. He said that there was a clash.

Q. And do you know when you spoke to Tom Mc Cabe?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Was it perhaps a week or two weeks or three weeks before you made the phone call or a day?

A. I'm not speculating. I don't know.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did Tom Mc Cabe tell you who these three people are or did you already know them?

A. I had met -- I knew John day and I had met Joe and Doug before.

Q. Okay. And did you know what their positions with MBA are?

A. I wasn't sure what their current or former positions are with the group.

Q. And where did you get their phone numbers?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Did you know that Daimon Doyle had previously asked the MBA for a contribution to their electoral activities?

A. Daimon Doyle was part of what happened here is that Daimon Doyle went and talked to them and said you will participate with us, and that was the part of the difficulty between the group because they don't have to do anything. And so they were upset and I think the personalities clashed. And in the broader political scope of this, it's better to have groups organized together, especially a group like this, it's one of the few that's a pro small business group and have them organized and go in a certain direction to support pro business, small business candidates. And unfortunately the relationship was pretty severely severed at that point in time.

Q. And so can you restate the question, please?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) That's the question.

A. What I got from Tom Mc Cabe is that the Seattle Master Builders weren't going to participate with them, you know, money or not, that wasn't really part of the conversation. It was about how they were not going to participate and these guys were not part of the crew, not part of the group.

Q. And that's helpful information but the question, if you could read it again please.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So just talking contributions, I know there's the bigger participation, just focusing on financial contributions, it sounds like you were aware that the BIAW had asked for a financial contribution from the MBA prior to you making those phone calls; is that correct?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Yes or no?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Were you aware that part of what Daimon Doyle was asking for was in April was a financial contribution for electoral activities?

A. From the MBA? That was part of the financial part was part of their overall participation, but they could give it or not, it's up to them.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. And so when you called Doug barns, how long was your conversation?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) How long was your conversation with Mr. Barns?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Do you recall talking about any financial contributions?

A. That I don't think so, no, I don't recall that.

Q. Did you talk about the 2008 governor's race?

A. No.

Q. Did you talk about BIAW's efforts to fund raise for its electoral activities?

A. Talked about them coming back together and found out from them what they were upset with with Daimon Doyle.

Q. And what were they upset about?

A. They were upset that he came in and said you will participate with us, and apparently they have a choice as to participate or not. And they didn't like being told that.

Q. And were you encouraging them to participate?

A. My goal was to try to bring them back together and participate as one because it's better to participate as one than scattered as a shotgun. At that point in time I clearly was not a candidate for governor.

Q. Right.

A. So the whole point of this was to bring it back together so they can support pro business candidates across the state.

Q. Financially and otherwise?

A. The whole package. They'd have to decide whether they wanted to do the financially or not.

Q. When you called Joe Schwab, do you recall how long your conversation was?

A. No.

Q. Did you talk about those same issues with him?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Do you recall talking about the 2008 governor's race?

A. No. You know, from the standpoint, everybody for the last three years before I decided to run again, every day would ask me a dozen times a day are you going to run again. Which is why in your lawsuit you have the word if so many times, if you actually wanted to highlight it you could find the word if. You say Jeff Hansel said, you know, if Dino doesn't run and others say if Dino runs. It's because every time I was asked that question I was very honest in saying first off to make sure it's right for my family and then we have to make sure if it makes sense to do. And so if there was any context of anybody asking that question anywhere, public or private, me saying I was running for governor never happened.

Q. Right, but is it safe to say that you were confident that if you decided to run, the BIAW would support you?

A. You know, I have no idea if they were going to support me or not until you get in there. When you make an announcement that you're going to run for governor you have all sorts of people that are asking you every single day, are you going to run again, are you going to run again, I sure you run again, it happens day after day after day especially when I say I m

A. 2004. You make the announcement and you look over your shoulder and see if anybody is with you. Have you ever run for office before?

Q. No.

A. Hopefully some day you will.

Q. And do you consider yourself a small business candidate?

A. A small business candidate?

Q. Yeah.

A. I'm a small businessman that supports small business candidates, you bet. I've always been supportive of small business candidates.

Q. Did you know that Joe Schwab was on the executive committee of the BIAW?

A. I believe that he was part of the leadership. I don't know what his title was, though.

Q. And did you talk to Joe Schwab about the BIAW having a strong program for funding electoral activities?

A. To fund -- to be involved in support of small business candidates across the state, sure.

Q. And with John day, the minutes that I know you have seen state that you reiterated that he claimed, he reported in the minutes that he reiterated to you, Dino Rossi, the board's sentiment that it was too early and there are building issues to address. Do you recall any of those details of that conversation?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'll just ask you if you can answer that.

A. Which minutes? Do you have it?

Q. The May 21, 2007 minutes. Have you taken a look at those prior to today?

A. Was I supposed to have it committed to memory? 139 Can I see it?

Q. Have you looked at them in preparing for this deposition or prior to the deposition?

A. I had one hour because the judge told us we had to come in here beforehand to sit down with my lawyer. I haven't had hours and hours to prepare like you have.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So if you take a look down -- I've given you what's been marked as --

A. You haven't highlighted anything so.

Q. I can give you a highlighted version. Just looking at the last paragraph on the first page where they're talking about -- I'm going to read it to you, the key passages. Doug moved in to discussion regarding the request from BIAW to use excess money from the ROII refund to fund the BIAW's war chest, and it goes down a little bit. Doug, Joe and John reported that they had received a call from Dino Rossi. John stated that he reiterated the board's sentiment to Rossi stating that it was too early and the association had building issues that needed to be resolved. Doug indicated he would call Daimon and let him know that the MBA has taken no action, though it doesn't mean that the board won't take action later. September would be a good time to make a decision. Do those minutes accurately reflect your recollection of the conversations you had with those three?

(The Reporter read back as requested.)

A. When they talk about building issues, it's part about the relationship back with the group between the BIAW and the Seattle Master Builders, I imagine that's what they're doing here with that conversation. And they were not interested in trying to smooth that over at that point in time. They were pretty furious.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) So who told you that they were furious, which of these three officers?
A. I don't recall which one, but they all had about the same story.

Q. That they felt like they were being imposed upon by -- and told what to do as opposed to being asked, would that be correct?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Is that what they told you?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did John day, and do you recall John day telling you that it was too early for the MBA to make a contribution to the BIAW for electoral activities as of that time you talked with him?

A. I don't recall him saying that. What I recall is that they were still upset with the fact that Daimon Doyle said you will participate with us and they said we don't have to do what you say, and that they felt that -- and as it's explained, they have different world they live in. The Seattle Master Builders live in a very -- you know, in your county, a very Democratic leaning county and they have to deal in those political realities, where BIAW serves most of the state which doesn't have the same concerns.

Q. Right.

A. And so they felt that they are very different and very separate, distinct, and they didn't have to do what Daimon Doyle said.

Q. Right. (Discussion off the record.)Here is where Mr. Lowney tells Mr. Patterson to Shut the Fuck Up.

(Recess taken.)

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) If we could go back on the record. We are back on the record. So you believed that it would be better for all the associations and BIAW to coordinate on their political support for candidates rather than going it alone; is that correct?

A. No. What I said is I think they should come together, and I thought it would be good for them to come together versus using a shotgun method. I was supporting pro business candidates around the State of Washington.

Q. And at the time in May your testimony is that you didn't -- you hadn't decided to become a candidate; correct, but if -- at that time did you feel that this support would be available if you did decide to run for office?

A. It was. It's like I said before, is when you make an announcement, you know, you make an announcement and there's a lot of people that say sure, I'd like you to run again and then you make an announcement and you look over your shoulder and see if anybody is with you, you know, and you just never know about these things. So, you know, this is my fifth race, second statewide, three for the state senate, so I've been through this before and I understand the thinking of folks that, you know, and how this works, so I don't count on anything.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) After you made the phone calls to those three officers, did you report them to anybody? Did you call Tom Mc Cabe back and tell him that you made the calls?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Did you make any notes about the calls?

A. No.

Q. Were they all made on the same day --

A. You can see I'm not much of a note taker.

Q. Were they all made on the same day or different days, do you recall?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Did you ever learn whether MBA had decided to join up with the BIAW on this effort or not?

A. In the end I left it, that was it. I don't know if they ended up -- what they ended up with participating with or coming together or not. In the end I speculate the rift was strong enough to where they didn't.

Q. And your impression of the rift was based upon both your conversations with Tom Mc Cabe and the local officers; is that correct?

A. With both sides.

Q. Yeah.

A. In hearing the argument.

Q. And so were you ever informed that the MBA chose to set aside a half a million dollars for the governor's race in 2008?

A. That I don't know about.

Q. If they had done so would you believe that your calls may have encouraged that decision?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can still answer, if you can.

A. I don't know what they were doing or how they were doing it. I don't know the internal workings of their financial situation. The whole point was is to support pro business candidates across the State of Washington. At that point in time, like I said before, I was 75 percent sure I would never be running for office again, and ask me on Tuesday whether I was right or not.

Q. So is it -- you said you did not -- well, I can't remember exactly what you said, but let's focus on the Master Builders Association of Pierce County for a minute. They also were having trouble coming together with the BIAW. Did you make any calls to any staff or officers or board members for the Master Builders Association of Pierce County?

A. Can you rephrase that?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Let me do it. Do you recall in the course of these sort of three months around April, May 2007 making any calls to anybody at Pierce County Master Builders Association?

A. I don't recall doing that.

Q. Okay. Do you recall going there in person for a meeting?

A. I don't recall that. I gave a speech there.

Q. Oh, you did give a speech there. When was that?

A. I don't recall when it was but I know it was -- I guess it was actually after I was a candidate.

Q. Okay. I'm going to hand you what has been marked as Exhibit 25. I'd ask you to sort of take a look through here, and what I'm going to ask you after you get a chance to look through is whether you recall making any calls or having any contacts with any of these organizations or officers in the time period around -- in the sort of three months give or take May of 2007.

A. You've got about 25 names per page and you have two, four, six, eight pages of just sheer names.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay.

A. And what's your question about it? During that time period around May did I talk to any of these people?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Three months give or take prior to when you announced for governor whether you initiated any contacts with these organizations or these people.

A. I don't know a lot of these people by name, I know their face. I don't know them by name. There's some that -- and I don't know when the time was though, and I don't know if it was in that window where I did -- I was asked to do an installation for somebody who became president, I think it was like in the Yakima are

A. It was eastern Washington. I can't remember -- I honestly can't remember the name though. I don't know any of those people. I mean, other than the ones we talked about, John day, I mean, I recognize those, Doug barns.

A. I'd say 95 percent of these names I don't recognize, first off. And I have no memorable conversation with any of these folks that I can think of within the timeframe you're talking about.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And as you read through this, did you note the names of these local affiliates or some of them are familiar to you and some of them are not, I assume?

A. Yeah. The --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) The names of the organizations on this. Well, let me ask you this. Do you recall making any contacts that you initiated with any of these organizations in this time period?

A. In this time period I gave speeches to various groups, rotaries, chambers, associations about -- on behalf of the Forward Washington Foundation about improving the business climate in the state of Washington for small and medium-sized business. Just like I did at the lunch you referred to in Semiahmoo. It's the same PowerPoint presentation I gave all across the state. There are some of these I'm sure I probably gave PowerPoint presentation to. But I've given like I said, thousands of speeches over the last couple years.

Q. Did Tom Mc Cabe ask you to call anybody other than the three names that we already talked about?

A. No, not that I recall.

Q. So he only asked you to call those three people but nobody else affiliated with the BIAW?

A. Not that I recall.
Q. Ever? A. Not that --

A. I've said that about four times.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Did anyone else at BIAW ask you to make phone calls to other affiliates or their officers or staff?

A. Not that I recall.

Q. Do you think that's something that you would recall?

A. If it were some memorable event I probably would recall it, but I wasn't a candidate at the time and I was about 75 percent sure I would never be running for office again. It doesn't slow down my support for small business candidates across this state, and that's really what we're talking about here.

Q. And then did you ask the Sam Anderson and some of the officers from MBA to go to lunch with you in approximately I believe June?

A. Yeah, I had --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) June of '07.

A. I'm not sure what the time was but it was part of trying to put them back together again with John day and Joe Schwab.

Q. Uh-huh. So it was the same sort of general dispute issues as you've testified to previously?

A. Yeah. That's where I got the full information as to why they were upset.

Q. And did anyone at BIAW know that you were 154 going on that lunch?

A. I'm not aware. I'm not sure.

Q. Did you ask these people you had lunch with whether they would support your candidacy for governor in 2008?

A. No, because there was no candidacy for governor in 2008. Like I said -- Q. Potential.

A. There was no potential. At that point I was more likely not to run than to run. The whole point was to bring -- to try to smooth over the ruffled feathers that had occurred when Daimon Doyle told them what they were going to do and they said we don't have to do what you say we're going to do.

Q. I'm going to hand you what has been marked as Exhibit 33, and I'll just read that fourth paragraph there. This is a chair officer's meeting, June 18, 2007. It says Monday, the 25th, Doug dawn and Sam planned to have lunch with Dino Rossi at the Bellevue club. Dino is trying to decide whether he wants to be a candidate for governor and wants to know what kind of support he will have. Does this accurately reflect what you said when you asked these individuals to lunch?

A. No, it doesn't.

A. That's not what I said. And that isn't accurate. When I asked them to lunch we were talking about them being involved with BIAW and being involved in supporting candidates across this state.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Because -- so your focus in the lunch was sort of like the focus of your phone calls which was trying to patch the MBA and the BIAW up in their political efforts to support small business candidates?

A. I wasn't a candidate for governor at that point in time, and like I said, I was about 75 percent sure I wouldn't run. Because of the stress on the family and how difficult it is to run for office statewide. We were five months away from making that decision before I -- whether I'd really run again or not, but in the end it ended up being in October 11th was the date. And so, yeah.

Q. And so at that time, just to repeat my question, you were focused at that lunch on the question of whether or not MBA would participate with BIAW and the other local BIAW affiliates in their political efforts; is that correct?

A. What I did was try to bring them together so that they would support pro small business candidates in the state and fully hear out what the problems were between the two. In the end, in the end they were -- it looked like there was
quite a rift in this effort because of the issue between Daimon Doyle and these folks, Joe and John.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And during this conversation at lunch, did you at that point learn that the -- that Daimon Doyle had asked the MBA for a contribution for their electoral activities?

A. What I know is that Daimon said you will participate with us, and they said we don't have to participate with you. Financial or otherwise they don't have to participate. All of them together are stronger than these guys separately, and that was the point I was trying to convey to this group. I wasn't a candidate at that point in time.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Right, no, I understand, I'm just trying to get into the details of the lunch and what happened at the lunch, and specifically did you talk about, for example, the MBA donating some of their retrospective rating money to the BIAW as had been requested of them previously by the BIAW?

A. I didn't talk about them specifically donating any money to any group. I'm not clear on actually how the BIAW raises all their money or what pots they put it in or how they -- or you know, how it gets done. That wasn't really my mission. My mission was to try to repair a fractured relationship, was my mission in sitting down and meeting with them and trying to figure out what their objections were and to participating fully with the BIAW.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) And who made the reservation for lunch?

A. I don't know. I think it was John day maybe, I don't know.

Q. Do you recall who paid for lunch?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Do you recall where lunch was?

A. Somewhere in Bellevue, because I was in Bellevue at the time.

Q. So no one from -- affiliated with the BIAW has ever explained to you how they would potentially get money or contributions from their local affiliates?

A. I'm not aware of how they raised the money they raised. I'm not privy to all the factions within -- all the ways of raising money within the organization. That's not ever been something I've been interested in learning about so I'm sure there's many ways to do whatever it is they do.

Q. Do you know how much money the BIAW spent in the governor's race this year?

A. I don't know. I imagine you're going to tell me.

Q. Nobody's told you?

A. I said I imagine you're going to tell me.

Q. No, I know, but I'm just wondering --

A. I don't know.

Q. That nobody has mentioned that to you?

A. All I'm trying to do is run my race for governor here of Washington state, and we're focusing on what we have to do in our campaign. What independent expenditure peopole do, they do it on their own and that's why they call it independent. And so how they raise their money is up to them, how they spend their money is up to them. I have no input into that either way, and so that's how this works, I understand that. That's exactly how this works.

Q. Did you give the BIAW any other assistance in their fund raising activities or any -- I'll strike that and say, did you give the BIAW any assistance in fund raising for their electoral activities prior to announcing as a candidate?

A. I don't recall doing that.

Q. Did you have contact with other BIAW decision makers other than Tom Mc Cabe?

A. I don't recall. Really Tom Mc Cabe was the one that called me.

Q. Did you ever have a meeting with Daimon Doyle?

A. I saw him at functions, like a function like this one, like the Semiahmoo one.

Q. Did he ever talk to you about the support of -- BIAW's support for running for office in 2008?

A. He like everybody across the state said I'd sure like you to run again and I said you know what, I haven't made that decision, and I've got to make sure it's right for my family first before I do something like this. And so BIAW cannot make that decision for me as a candidate, nor can you. You know, you have to check with my wife first, that's the first stop I have to go. And before I become a candidate. And so we went through this with a six-month investigation with the PDC, we went through the fact that the phony complaint filed by the state Democratic party tried to claim I was a candidate before I actually became a candidate. The only person that can make me a candidate is me. My wife running around saying I'm a candidate still doesn't make any a candidate. You can talk to the press all day long saying I'm a candidate and that doesn't make my candidate.

Q. Did you have contact with anybody, prior to announcing your candidacy, did you talk with anybody at the BIAW about what it would take for a Republican candidate to win in 2008?

A. I don't recall, I don't recall that. You know, I know what it would take, it would take more than what we had last time. We were out spent by well over a million dollars by special interest groups and the like. Well, probably more like $3 million in the end by special interest groups working for Christine Gregoire, many of which are working for her again this time and are, you know, behind things like this phony lawsuit.

Q. And do you -- did you have any conversations about your opinions on what it would take to win with anyone at BIAW that you recall?

A. I don't recall that.

Q. Do you remember -- do you recall having any conversations like that since you announced for governor?

A. I don't recall having those conversations with anybody at BIAW about what it takes to do this race since I've been a candidate for governor which started on October 11, 2007.

Q. And have you had other conversations with folks at the BIAW about your run for governor since you announced?

A. I don't understand. I mean, who at BIAW?

Q. I'm asking you what conversations you've had.

A. Give me a name.

Q. I don't know all the people at BIAW.

A. Tom Mc Cabe, no.

Q. But I think if you met them you would be able to tell me?

A. How many members does BIAW? 13,500.

Q. Decision makers, officers.

A. That's why I'm asking you to be specific about this.

Q. Thank you for the clarification.

A. Because there are plenty of people out there who are members of BIAW who are out there all the time that you bump into.

Q. Certainly?

A. People I don't know personally. No, actually I haven't picked up the phone and talked to anybody, nobody has picked up the phone and talked to me about what is going on with their independent expenditures, and because they wouldn't be independent then and that wouldn't be legal now, would it?

Q. And what about any of your consultants or your staff? Are you aware of any of your consultants or staff having discussions with the BIAW?

A. About what?

Q. About your election campaign or the governor's race?

A. I'm not aware.

Q. Have you taken steps within your campaign to make sure that such coordination does not occur?

A. My campaign staff knows that you can't coordinate with an independent expenditure because that wouldn't be legal, and which is why we don't coordinate with people who do independent expenditures, which is also why independent expenditures are dangerous things in a campaign because sometimes your own team can torpedo you with putting up an ad that you probably didn't want up there and causing a candidate more trouble than it's worth.

Q. And that prohibition on coordination was triggered when you declared yourself a candidate; is that correct?

A. I don't understand what you mean.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Is it your belief that the prohibition on coordination was triggered when you declared yourself a candidate?

A. Yeah, and coordination, define coordination.

Q. Coordination under 42.17, the Fair Campaign Practices Act, the coordination that we've been talking about.

A. I don't have that committed to memory. What does that mean? You're the lawyer here.

Q. Yeah, the type of coordination we've been talking about. I'm not talking about the nuances of that coordination prohibition, I'm talking about your understanding of when that prohibition comes into effect.

A. I want to know what your definition of coordination is before I answer the question.

Q. I'm afraid I can't give you a lesson on that.

A. Why can't you? Just give me what the law is. You know the law, I'm not a lawyer, you are.

Q. The way that you have just described the prohibition. I think that you previously said you couldn't coordinate because that would be against the rules.

A. You can't tell them what ads to run, you can't tell them what ads you can't run. Is that what you call the coordination?

Q. Sure, whatever you believe it is?

A. Is that the definition? Let's say it is for the purpose of this coordination.

A. Let's not say this is the definition of coordination.

Q. Among other things that definition of prohibition that you described is I believe --
A. Among the other things? What are the other things?

Q. I'm afraid I can't give a lesson?

A. I'm supposed to be able to tell you? I'm not a lawyer.

Q. I'm not asking you about your understanding what the prohibition is. Let's say for a second we're talking about the prohibition on what you just described, that coordination. When does it come into being?

A. So if I go talk to a BIAW member and they say how is the campaign going and I say it's going great, is that coordination? They look like the campaign is on track and somehow that's coordinating.

Q. I have a question for you. Were you able to answer it?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Well, I have a feeling you'll have an opportunity to have a conversation about that with your attorney after the deposition but right now I'm trying to take a deposition and I'm asking you a 166 question that --

A. For a word that I don't know the definition to and you want me to answer it? But I tell you, I did not coordinate as far as nobody that I know of has coordinated with BIAW and said that you should run certain ads or not run certain ads. I have no knowledge of that whatsoever, and I don't believe that would have happened. I certainly didn't do anything like that. But if your coordination definition goes beyond that, I don't know what it is, which is what I'm asking you to define. How difficult is that?

Q. And that prohibition that you just described, it's your position that that comes into effect when you announce yourself for -- as a candidate; is that correct?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm asking.

A. And normally I would consult with my attorney on something like this when it comes to the coordination pieces, and the idea that you can coordinate with a group outside your campaign that's running independent expenditure, you can't do that. I mean, as far as the coordination of running ads or not running ads. 167

Q. Have you shared -- have you or your campaign shared non-public information with the BIAW?

A. Not that I know of.

Q. If they -- have your campaign staff visited BIAW headQuarters in the past six months that you know of? 8

A. I'm out in the campaign trail 12 to 16 hours a day. I don't know that anybody's visited the head

Quarters -- campaign, BIAW's campaign headQuarters, is that what you said?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) BIAW's headQuarters.

A. In Olympia?

Q. Yeah.

A. That I don't know.

Q. Have you had BIAW staff visit your headQuarters?

A. Well, in the times I've been in the headQuarters I've never seen anybody from BIAW.

Q. And you haven't heard about it, such a meeting?
A. No, I haven't heard about such a thing either.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm going to hand you what has been marked as Exhibit 13. If I could direct you -- I gave you the whole thing, and I'm going to direct your attention if I might to the relevant portions of this?

A. What is this?

Q. This is the executive committee meetings from February 27, 2006. And I'm --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Excuse me, February 22, 2006. If you could turn your attention to Page 15, I know you'll want to glance through this and that's fine, I'll tell you I'm not going to ask you anything other than where it starts talking at the bottom of page 14. And specifically at the bottom of Page 15, pat Mc bride, it says pat Mc bride clarified what had taken place. He said his understanding was that Dino Rossi approached BIAW when he had a debt of $2 million, and we said not yet. Dino went back and found all but 235,000 and now Dino has come back and asked for help again. And I'm wondering if that refreshes your recollection about whether you asked the BIAW for $2 million to pay off your legal fees.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You can answer that.

A. Well, I don't recall asking them for $2 million, and it wasn't my debt, it was the state party's debt. The state party was the main driver behind the lawsuit for the election contest in Wenatchee. In fact, I never even was in Wenatchee during that lawsuit. I didn't show up, I didn't have to testify or anything in that lawsuit. And so asking for help for the state party was what this is actually I think referring to. But I didn't ask for 2 million that I know of.

Q. And at the bottom of page 14 it talked about that the original amount of the legal debt had been work, quote, worked down through contributions and efforts of BIAW staff working with the legal firms to write off amounts. Were you familiar that BIAW was negotiating with your legal team over the --

A. State party?

Q. Over the legal fees that were incurred in your lawsuit? 23

A. So what happened is the state party brought the election contest lawsuit, and then there was a bill that was owed. What people did to raise money for it from the state party level or what BIAW did on their own I'm not aware of what all the things that may have happened there.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Okay. But you do agree that you made these -- you don't recall the amounts but you do recall making these reQuests to BIAW to make these payments; is that correct?

A. I asked BIAW to help the state party out financially, yes.

Q. And here on the very top of Page 15 they suggest that they're making this contribution because there was an understanding that Rossi was still BIAW's best chance in 2008 to take back the governor's house with someone who is friendly to the building community. Hansel said there were numerous comments and commitments to make sure that BIAW move forward to create a strategy and fund. Now, when you asked the BIAW --

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) It is what this piece of evidence which is the BIAW's executive committee meeting minutes states. And what I read to you -- Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I know. My question is, when you asked the BIAW to assist the state party in paying off this legal debt, did you suggest that that would assist you in beginning your campaign for governor in 2008?

A. No. I was not a candidate for governor. And as I'm sure Mr. Hansel and anybody else will tell you, when they asked me if I was going to run again for governor I told them that it depended on was it right for my family, is it the right thing to do. And at this point in time, this is even before the other -- it was like a year and a half before the other conversations. And just coming off this last election in '04 and after the election contest, the likelihood of me running was 172 probably even less than the 75 percent negative that I had before. So what they characterize in minutes is what they characterize in minutes but it doesn't mean that's what I said.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) When the conversation happened over these particular contributions towards the legal fund, towards paying off the legal debt, was there any conversation that you recall about keeping the payments secret?

A. No.

Q. Is this something that you felt like should be kept secret at the time?

A. I don't know anything about that. I don't know what you're talking about.

Q. The fact that the BIAW -- the fact that you had asked BIAW for money to pay off your legal debt, was that something that you wanted to keep secret?

A. It's also the fact that you keep saying it's my debt. It was the state party's debt.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Paying off the debt.

A. The state party's debt.

Q. Okay, the state party's debt.

A. Thank you.

Q. And my question was -- well, I think you said it. So you didn't feel --

A. No, I didn't say -- ask the question properly with the state party involved in the question.

Q. That is sort of a question of law, I suppose, but I guess my question was, did you suggest to the BIAW that they should take steps to keep your solicitation of them or their payment for this legal debt secret?

A. I thought I already answered it.

A. I said no.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I'm going to hand you what's been marked as 15.

A. What is it?

Q. This is the Board of Directors meeting minutes from that same date where the board now is deciding to pay money towards these legal fees, and I'll just point your attention to -- do you know who Lyle Fox was? Do you know Lyle Fox?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) This is on page 12. There's a couple --

A. Where are you?

Q. Where it says about halfway up, Jeff Hansel, Dino Rossi. Hansel said Dino had gone to Hansel and requested help in retiring the lawsuit debt Dino was saddled with a huge debt and was seeking BIAW's help. Hansel indicated to Dino that BIAW would consider as long as he continued to work hard in getting the debt retired. The amount started at 2 million and was worked down considerably. Dino was in need of help to avoid litigation and negative PR. And then it goes on to say, the funds would be paid directly to the law firm.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) You just asked me where I was talking about. My question was is do you know who Lyle Fox is?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) My question is do you know who Lyle Fox is. I don't think you can strike my question.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) My question is do you know who Lyle Fox is?

A. I have met him before.

Q. Who is he?

A. He's a builder.

Q. So on page 13 there's a statement that says fox asked that the Dino Rossi reQuest for help be kept quiet in an effort to protect Rossi from any bad publicity. So is it your testimony that you didn't ask them to keep this Quiet?

A. No, I don't know why you would. Why would you keep it Quiet? And the other piece of this too is it says what you just read into the record, Dino Rossi was saddled with a debt. I wasn't saddled with a debt, the state party was saddled with a debt. So this is a characterization of someone's minutes of a conversations 176 about the state party's debt, and so to characterize it as my debt I think is a mischaracterization in the first place. And the idea here, I don't know why the state party would want to hide a -- they would want to hide a contribution from anybody.

Q. Well, let me ask you this.

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) Let me ask you this question. Why would the money, the contribution from the BIAW be paid directly to the law firm other than to avoid a paper trail?

Q. (BY MR. LOWNEY) I know, I'm asking, are there any other reasons that you could think of why the transaction would go down that way other than to make sure that there's no report that's filed with the PDC on that?

EXAMINATION

BY MR. MAGUIRE:

Q. Thank you, Mr. Rossi. Earlier Mr. Withey and Mr. Lowney were asking you a lot of questions about BIAW and they were throwing around some terms, BIAW and BIAW MSC or member services corporation. Do you have any familiarity with the structure of BIAW or any of its associated entities?

A. I really don't. I don't know what MSC is, how that works.

Q. So when you were being questioned by plaintiff's counsel earlier today about BIAW, do you have any idea whether they were referring to a non-profit political action committee or a local association?

A. No.

Q. Earlier you testified that you became a candidate for governor for the 2008 governor's race in October 11, 2007; is that right?

A. Right.

Q. When did you first communicate that decision to anyone?

A. My wife and I made that decision that morning, and then it was that day on the 11th, which once you say it publicly or even privately, honestly, if you say it privately you still that clock starts ticking, as I understand it, 14 days. So I had 14 days to try to do something, get moving.

Q. So prior to October 11, 2007, did you ever tell any BIAW officer or director or staff member that you intended to run for governor in 2008?

A. No.

Q. What did you tell them about your intentions, if anything?

A. That it had to be right for my family first and it's difficult to run for public office, let alone run for governor and that you end up being subject to, you know, all sorts of issues and smears and the like, just like this phony lawsuit we're here about today.

Q. Before October 11, 2007, did BIAW or any of the groups that you know to be affiliated or associated with the BIAW ask for your consent to receive contributions on your behalf with the intent to promote your candidacy? 180

A. Absolutely not because there was no candidacy.

Q. And so that means you didn't consent to any such thing?

A. No, I did not.

Q. Before October 11, 2007, did BIAW or any of the entities you know to be associated with BIAW ask for your consent to make expenditures on your behalf for the intent to promote your candidacy?

A. No. MR. LOWNEY: I'm going to object because it calls for a legal conclusion.

Q. (BY MR. MAGUIRE) Did you consent to any such expenditures to be made on your behalf with the intent to promote your candidacy?

A. No, I did not.

Q. Before October 11, 2007, did BIAW or any of the entities that you know of that are related to BIAW ask for your consent to purchase commercial advertising space for broadcast time to promote your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Didn't consent to that?

A. Didn't consent to that either.

Q. Prior to October 11, 2007 did BIAW or any of the groups that you know to be associated with BIAW ask 181 for your consent to promote your election as governor in 2008?

A. No.

Q. So you didn't consent to any such thing?

A. Didn't consent to that.

Q. Since January 1, 2007, has BIAW or any of these entities that you know to be associated with BIAW ever asked for your approval or encouragement to make an expenditure for any political advertising opposing Christine Gregoire or supporting your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever given approval or encouragement to them?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever collaborated with BIAW or any of the entities that you know to be associated with BIAW for the purpose of making an expenditure for any political advertising supporting your candidacy or promoting the defeat of Christine Gregoire?

A. No.

MR. MAGUIRE: Thank you, Mr. Rossi. I think those are all the questions I have for you today. I appreciate your patience.

EXAMINATION
BY MR. PATTERSON:

Q. Mr. Rossi, when did you decide to run for governor in 2008?

A. I made the decision on the 11th of October of 2007.

Q. When did you publicly announce you were a candidate for governor in 2008?

A. Public announcement was on the 25th of October 2007.

Q. When did you first ask for campaign contributions for your run for governor in 2008?

A. It was after we made the decision on the 11th, probably started on the 12th.

Q. When did you first accept any campaign contributions for and on behalf of your campaign for governor in 2008?

A. I would imagine that I believe it was the 12th of 2007.

Q. Now, there was previous litigation, was there not, as to whether or not you were a candidate prior to your announcement; is that correct?

A. We had a complaint, a phoney complaint filed by Christine Gregoire's political operatives about the Forward Washington foundation, that somehow I was a candidate for office. The PDC did a six-month exhaustive investigation with dozens of witnesses, and they came to the conclusion that I was telling the truth all along, Christine Gregoire and her political operatives were not, and they said no, that I was not a candidate before the 11th of October.

Q. Did you ever encourage BIAW at any point in time to raise funds to support your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Did you ever coordinate fund raising with the BIAW for your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Did you ever approve BIAW expenditures for your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Did you ever encourage BIAW expenditures for your candidacy?

A. No.

Q. Did you ever consent for BIAW to form a committee to support you as a candidate?

A. No, I did not.

Q. When I'm talking about BIAW I'm talking about 184 any affiliates or organizations that you were connected with BIAW.

A. I did not.

Q. And do you believe that you have fully complied with the law as it relates to campaign financing insofar as your run for governor?

A. Absolutely.

Q. Do you from time to time consult with attorneys as it relates to PDC issues and campaign finance issues?

A. Absolutely.

Q. And with regard to the allegations in the complaint, you've had an opportunity, you've indicated prior to this deposition to review the allegations in the complaint, have you not?

A. I did.

Q. And do you believe insofar as the allegations in the complaint insofar as attempted alleged illegal activity as it relates to you are well founded?

A. There was actually a phoney complaint, more as a political stunt. Very clearly, just like Mr. Lowney did before with Mike McGavick, it was dismissed after the election was over, and there seems to be a pattern with Mr. Lowney.

Q. And you obviously had other things on your agenda today, correct, Mr. Rossi?

A. On my agenda today I had radio stations that I was supposed to be involved with and talk to and TV, a very large interview with a TV station. And I was supposed to be speaking to the largest rotary in Washington state, the Seattle rotary, Seattle four, which Christine Gregoire got to speak to I believe last week, and now I won't have the opportunity because they only meet on Wednesdays, and it'll be after the election.

MR. PATTERSON: I have no further questions at this time.

EXAMINATION
BY MR. WITHEY:

Q. Just one or two follow-up areas if I could, Mr. Rossi. First of all, in your -- when the investigation, the six-month investigation with the PDC you described, were you aware whether the minutes of the Master Builders Association or the BIAW that you've seen in your deposition today were provided to them?

A. I have no idea.

Q. And you understand that the PDC made no ruling as to whether these minutes show any improper coordination; correct?

A. I have no idea.

Q. If the minutes that we've described to you show that Dino is trying to decide whether he wants to be a candidate for governor and wants to know what kind of support we will have, that information was not provided to the PDC; correct?

A. That I don't know.

Q. So your testimony, though, is that the minutes are false; is that right?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) The extent to which you were trying to decide what kind of support you would have in June of 2007, the extent to which anybody said that, they would be false; correct?

A. That would be false. I was about 75 percent sure I would not run for governor or any office as a 187 candidate ever again about that point in time.

Q. Have you reviewed the PDC interview with Dino Rossi to prepare for this deposition?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever reviewed it?

A. No.

Q. I suppose you've told them that you were 75 percent sure that you were not going to run at that time; correct?

A. I don't recall.

Q. Can you think of any reason why you wouldn't since you referred to 75 percent about fifteen or twenty times?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) I'll withdraw it. Can you think of any reason why you would not have told the PDC that you were 75 percent sure you were not going to run?

A. I just told them I wasn't a candidate.

Q. Can you think of any reason you didn't tell them that it was 75 percent sure you were not?

Q. (BY MR. WITHEY) You can answer.

A. I did.

Q. Did you inform the PDC of any contact you had with members of the Master Builders Association or Mr. Mc Cabe at the BIAW in the process of their investigation?

A. I don't recall that.

Q. Well, you recall that at the time of their investigation those events had already taken place; correct?

A. True. I don't recall that in the PDC.

Q. Can you think of any reason why you would not have told the PDC that?

A. I answered every question the PDC had. Just as I answered every question you had here today.

MR. WITHEY: Well, we'll let the judge decide that. For this stage I have no further -- let me finish please, Mike. I have no further questions. We'll ask the judge for a hearing, we'll ask the judge for sanctions on the basis I've previously said. And we have no further questions at this time, but we may have some further questions either before the election if ordered by the judge, or after the election.

THE WITNESS: And the record will show we gave them an extra ten minutes anyway. 18
EXAMINATION

BY MR. PATTERSON:

Q. You were asked by Mr. Withey about the PDC investigation. Did you in any way control that PDC investigation?

A. I'd have to say no control over it.

Q. Because the PDC, do they investigate what they want to investigate?

A. Anything they want to investigate.

Q. Do they ask questions that they want to ask?

A. Any question they want to ask they could ask.

Q. Was there any reason why they couldn't have had access to the minutes that were referred to here?

A. I don't know what they have access to or not. They had an assistant Attorney General working for them.

Q. Was this a lawyer that was doing this investigation?

A. It was actually the compliance person, I don't remember his name though. And they had a number of the PDC staff members working on this, and they had an Assistant Attorney General, more than one working on it, so they were working full time on this effort, and they determined in the end that I was not a candidate for governor, just as we talked about today.

Q. Did you fully and completely cooperate with that investigation?

A. Absolutely.

MR. PATTERSON: No further questions at this time.

EXAMINATION

BY MR. WITHEY:

Q. Mr. Rossi, you stated to the press that that investigation has resulted in the finding that you were not a candidate until October 11th; correct?

A. That's what they said.

Q. You've also said to the press that those raise the same issues as this lawsuit; correct?

A. Very similar issues, yeah. Was I a candidate or not a candidate.

Q. But you understand that the PDC did not resolve the issue as to whether these minutes show what they show; correct?

MR. WITHEY: Nothing further.

(End of rough draft.)

Vast swathes of text were deleted so that just the Q&A could be posted.

2008-10-31T03:27:00.000-07:00

Some Dare Call It Treason

I really hope those of you who listened to my initial warning back in 2006, And So It Begins, had the werewithal to invest in gold. What was selling just two years ago for $500 an ounce is now sitting at $767 and guess what? It's going to go up.

Not that the average Joe could afford to buy gold back then or now. But lots of people DID buy gold back two years ago, thus starting golds meteroic rise. Funny thing was, only those people privvy to the information that I posted up had reason to go out and start buying gold in such quantities that it drove the price up.

As I reported two and a half years ago, when the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 data, it marked the beginning of our journey to the economic meltdown we've witnessed the past few weeks.

And it was the opening salvo leading up to the penultimate act of Treason.

From April, 2006:

As this article points out, there is more to the Federal Reserve's recent announcement that they are going to stop reporting M3 data than meets the eye. What is M3 data? (for those who can't be bothered to read the link) M3 reports the total US dollars in circulation.

Why would the FedRes do that and who cares? Anyone remember their history lessons in school concerning the Great Depression? Remember your teachers telling you how people in Germany used to paper their walls with money because paper money was worthless? Did your Grandmother (like mine) or great-grandmother ever tell you how important gold was back then? The reason was because in order to fight inflation, the governments of the world printed off lots of money. With so much paper currency in the world, the value of money became negligible and only gold had any real value.

So listen up, because when the FedRes stops reporting on the amount of paper currency floating about there's a Really Good Reason Why.

That reason is because they don't want to let on that they are putting more and more currency into the market. The Feds have pumped up the money supply by 8% in the last year. They do this to fight inflation. But anyone with a knowledge of economic history knows where this road leads to. Depression. That is why savvy investors are liquidating and buying gold. Gold is the one hedge against a massive depression like we had in the 30's. So what has this done to the price of gold?

They've soared.

Gold is going through the roof. And now, with the price of gasoline going through the roof, inflation is about to explode. Making all those paper dollars worthless. Which in turn, drives up the price of gold even further.

And so it begins again. Welcome to economic hell. Hope you didn't have a future planned.

The point is not to say "I told you so.", the point is that I have a question:

Who do you think the people were who made a killing on gold back when the government stopped reporting M3 information? Why, the same people who had started printing lots of paper money that's who!

So here is a perfect example of the failure of the "free market" economists. They don't account for Kleptocracy. They pay lip service to self-interest insofar as they recognize it as a force, but they fail to take into account how that self-interest inevitably leads to criminal behavior or get rich quick and get out practices. What we have is a system in which it is in the best interests of those in charge to wreck the economy completely and thus make a killing on gold. That's not governance, that's treason. Yet it all makes perfect sense in the "free market" ideology of self-interest.

It doesn't make much sense from the perspective of a healthy society however. Which is why the entire "free market" ideology is the ideology of sociopaths.

Which brings us to another observation: this was an inside job from day one. Paulsen with Goldman Sachs. The Bush clan with Lehman Brothers .

And let's not forget Jeb has a history with AIG :

You will also see that all of the Sons of Bush Scams committed under the cover of Iran-Contra had different aspects, insurance aspects, insured by guess who? AIG. Jeb Bush, in what was his largest fraud, the IMC, or International Medical Corporation fraud, had all of the F&G, fidelity guarantee instruments. All of IMC’s F&G instruments (Fidelity & Guarantee instruments) that he purchased through the International Medical Corporation, were purchased through AIG. He would then subordinate them to various banks for loans, despite the fact that the assets that were pledged to purchase those fidelity and guarantee instruments, receivables and performance contracts were worthless. They were all bogus.

Oh yeah, these guys are pros at swindling people. The S&L Scandal. Medicaid fraud. Enron. Martin makes an interesting observation:

The Bush idea was (I remember Jeb used to say this) that, "Look, you hit them in every single hat they wear." That was the idea. He used to call them fodder. You hit the fodder in their hats as Taxpayers. You hit them in their hats as Investors and Savers. You hit them in their hats as Insurance Policy Owners through all these insurance scams his brother[W] was involved in. Then there was, of course, Jeb's International Medical Corporation. Jeb also liked health care scams. But that was the idea the Bushes had, that you take the American taxpayer (which they called "One Fodder Unit," or OFU) and you hit them in every single hat they wear.

This economic meltdown and the subsequent theft of $700 billion in taxpayer money wasn't a result of incompetence. It was a carefully designed plan. It was a theft, pure and simple.

It was treason.

2008-10-30T02:45:00.000-07:00

What would you do if...?

Over at Washblog there's an appeal from a progressive voter to get people to vote for Nader in Washington State. This is based on the assumption that Obama is going to win the state easily and people should therefore "vote their concience". ie, vote for the guy you REALLY wish could be president.

And why wouldn't that guy be Obama? Well, as the poster points out:

I believe Obama has the potential to be one of the best U.S. presidents in recent history (admittedly not a real high standard). But the operative word here is "potential." I believe Obama also has the potential to be a colossal disappointment, just as the Clinton presidency deeply disappointed progressives who had high hopes coming out of 12 bleak years of Reagan/Bush I leadership.

Which potential will be realized? It depends on the popular pressure Obama receives to do the right thing. We know he is under tremendous pressure by powerful private interests to do all the wrong things.

We've seen how this pressure has pushed him toward more conservative positions on many important issues: from his support for FISA/telecom immunity, reauthorizing the Patriot Act, "clean coal," offshore oil drilling, and nuclear power, to his hawkishness around Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia, to his choice of advisors, many of whom represent anything but the "change" he claims to bring to Washington, DC.

In the comments section below the post, one person responded:

In order to enact progressive change, you need to consider two things when deciding who to vote for. First, as you point out, the candidate you select needs to be interested in moving the country in a progressive direction. If that were the only criteria, I would consider voting for the Green Party candidate. But it's not.
The other half of the picture is the requirement, which you stumble around, that someone who shares your values actually have the ability to get into office. Neither Nader or McKinney have the ability to do that.

Voting against McCain and conservatives like him will never be the right answer. We need to vote FOR someone that we believe in, instead of against the scary candidate. So if people don't feel like they can vote for Obama because he doesn't seem "real" enough, I'll respect that choice, at least to a point.

This seems reasonable on the surface. However, one has to ask "up to WHAT point?" At what point is it not okay to feel like the Democratic candidate, it could be anybody, not Obama, though this time around, of course, it happens to be him. But at what point is it not reasonable to feel like you can't vote for the Democratic candidate?

And that brings me to my hypothetical "What if?"

What if you KNEW that Obama was not going to pursue a progressive presidency? What if you KNEW that Obama was going to tow the same corporate line as Bill Clinton in the 90's when he passed NAFTA? What if you KNEW that Obama was a conservative in liberals clothing and that he'd give lip service to a few "moderate" liberal ideals, but that in general, NOTHING would change in the USA that would close the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the nation?

What would you do then?

The reason I ask is because back in 1990 I told a friend of mine that the elections were fixed. That sounded preposterous to him back then, but nowadays everyone and their dog believes that the last two elections were fixed and that possibly this one will be as well.

At the time I told my friend this, Bush Sr. had the highest ratings in history. I told my friend that Bush Sr. would NOT be president after the next election. I told him that the reason was because Reaganomics had led to such a terrible deficit and such a shaky economy that it HAD to be corrected or else the wealthy elites would risk losing everything to a crash much like we had in the Great Depression. I asserted that the only answer was to raise taxes, something that the ruling class - I assurred my friend that We The People did NOT rule this country but an elite few Skull and Crossbones made all the decisions, INCLUDING who would be president - so I asserted that this ruling class needed taxes raised on the rest of the wealthiest citizens but that they couldn't let a Republican president do this because it would fly right in the face of the so-called conservative republican platform. Too many Republicans would wake up to the reality that their party leaders were all lying dogs who served another master.

In short, they needed to elect a Democrat to get them out of this mess.

Naturally, my skeptical friend wanted to know who I thought would be the next president. To which I replied, "Probably that guy in Arkansas, the governor, the one who looks the other way when they fly their drugs in from Central America."

I didn't even remember Clinton's name at the time, only that he was a Democrat who was in deep with the clandestine world of the CIA, ie, the Skull and Crossbones Society. So he made the logical choice.

I also told my friend that these same criminals planned on creating several economic blocs around the world. North America, Europe, etc. This was their overall objective. These blocs would help to control and consolidate their power. It would also be the ruin of the working class in America.

He said he didn't see how a Democratic president could get away with such a deal. Weren't the Dems the guys that stood up for the working class? I didn't know how he'd do it, I just insisted that he would.

Needless to say, the rest is history. Clinton becomes president. HE, not the Republicans, signs NAFTA. He balances the budget. The media attacks him relentlessly, but it's all smoke and mirrors to keep the populace occupied so they don't notice that their jobs are all shifting overseas. The European Union forms.

I knew then, as I know now, that we are not a democracy.

Then along comes Obama. The first I heard of him, everyone was praising this nobody from nowhere. Obama who? Until the past year, no one knew what Obama stood for, what he had done, what he would do. He was a complete enigma to most observers. Obama who?

He's been talking a fantastic talk the past few months. He's inspiring. He gives me hope. But so did Bill Clinton, even though I KNEW he wasn't really on the side of We The People.

And I even spoke once with Barack Obama. We argued, actually. He was defending Joe Lieberman and saying the progressive community should not attack him. I said we should. I tried to explain to him that holding our candidates accountable to the ideals and beliefs that we elected them to uphold was the very essence of democracy. Obama did not seem to understand. I was less than impressed.

So I have to wonder, as does the poster over at Washblog, is Obama for real? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. I HOPE so, but hope is what keeps the donkey chasing the carrot. Right up until the day he dies.

No one, of course, can ever KNOW what a candidate will do once he's elected. All we can do is infer what he'll do by what he says but most importantly, WHO HE SURROUNDS HIMSELF WITH.

Who does Barack Obama surround himself with? Well, let's look and see:

Austan Goolsbee
The University of Chicago economist, who by most accounts is playing a dominant role in vetting Obama's policy proposals on a wide range of issues, had managed to keep his name out of the press -- until three weeks ago. That's when news leaked of a meeting that Goolsbee held with Canadian officials to explain his candidate's call to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. After Canadian officials said that the economist had dismissed the tough rhetoric as political posturing, the Clinton campaign used their account to argue that Obama was insincere or a secret advocate of free trade. Obama's team tried to counter by insisting that Goolsbee has played only a minor, unpaid role in the campaign, but this was disputed by other Democrats with knowledge of his influence.

Goolsbee himself certainly believes in free trade. Unlike Alan Blinder, Paul Krugman, and other left-leaning economic experts who are questioning the axiomatic belief among economists that free trade is always good, Goolsbee's faith hasn't been shaken, according to colleagues.

Doesn't sound too encouraging. Sounds like more of the same ole, same ole to me. The University of Chicago? Home of the entire Free Trade braintrust? The birthplace of modern laissez faire capitalist economic theory? THAT University?

Yeah, THAT'S who Obama chooses to be his economic advisor. Feeling hopeful? Well, who else has he got on his economic team?

Christina and David Romer
At the same time that Obama is calling for higher income taxes on people making $250,000 or more, the Romers have found that tax increases are generally bad for economic growth and that they primarily discourage investment -- the supply-side argument that conservatives use to justify tax cuts for the rich. On the other hand, the Romers have shredded the conservative premise that tax cuts eventually force spending reductions ("starving the beast"). Instead, they concluded that tax reductions lead only to one thing -- offsetting tax increases to recover lost revenue.

Well, good and bad, not too encouraging however.

Okay, so here's something encouraging: Obama voted against CAFTA.

Daniel Tarullo
The discussion focused on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which Tarullo opposed and Obama ultimately voted against.
Tarullo, 55, teaches law at Georgetown University and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He joined Obama's advisory team in December 2006 and is the go-to guy on currency, foreign investment, and trade. With a book coming out this spring on the need for tighter regulation of banks, Tarullo is also involved in campaign policy discussions about financial regulation and the subprime-mortgage crisis.

Well, well! There actually might BE a carrot dangling in front of our faces! But is it a REAL carrot? Will Obama favor Tarullo's advice or Goolsbee?

Goolsbee is considered Obama's #1 advisor.

But my mind keeps wandering back to Obama voted AGAINST CAFTA.

I don't know, maybe I don't WANT to know, if Obama is just another insider like Bill Clinton was.

But if you KNEW that Obama was going to be just another "Free Trade" president, what would you do? Vote Nader? Vote for the guy you REALLY want to be president?

Well, what does that say about our democracy when the one guy everyone deep down would rather have as president doesn't have a chance in hell, but the guy who DOES just might be going to give us more of the same things that got us into this mess, just dressed differenly?

And if it turns out Obama is just Clinton Redux, then what?

Where would we go from there?

2008-10-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

The "You broke it, You pay for it" Plan

Don't know if anyone's read the IPC's excellent plan to address the bailout but I think THIS is how said plan should be paid for. Americans don't want to pay for the greed and avarice of the wealthy elite. They shouldn't have to.

And with IPC's ideas, they won't.

A Responsible Plan to Pay For Recovery: $900 billion in New Revenue

Below is our ten-point program to pay for this broader bailout. This plan would generate $900 billion a year until the costs of the bailout and stimulus program are paid for.

1. A Securities Transaction Tax: $100 Billion.

A fair plan to pay for the bailout should include a modest financial transactions tax on the buying and selling of stock and other financial products. A penny on every $4 invested would generate $100 billion a year. Other European countries already tax stock transactions, and these transaction taxes effectively discourage speculation.

2. A Wealth Tax Surcharge on Households with $10 million: $300 billion
Congress should institute a modest wealth tax surcharge on households with net worth over $10 million. These households currently own and control over 20 percent of the nation’s private wealth. They have realized huge gains from the manipulation of capital markets and the asset bubbles that created the current crisis. A modest surcharge — no more than 3 percent — could generate over $300 billion.

3. A Corporate Minimum Income Tax: $60 Billion
In August, the Government Accountability Office reported that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no income taxes between 1998 and 2005. These corporations paid nothing toward our shared expenses of defense, environmental protection, public health, and education. Ordinary taxpayers should not be left holding this bag. A minimum corporate income tax should contribute toward the bailout.

4. A ‘Disgorgement’ Recovery from Profligate CEOs: $40 Billion
Until several weeks ago, top CEOs and managers were collecting massive salaries and fees while they told the rest of us that “everything is fine.” These CEOs gorged themselves and have taken the money and run. The four biggest investment banks on Wall Street shelled out $30 billion in bonuses last year. One of them, Lehman Brothers, has just gone under. Another, Bear Stearns, was bailed out earlier this year. To help pay for recovery, the new Treasury authority should seek the payback of executive compensation inappropriately extracted in the years before the Wall Street meltdown.

5. An Income Tax Surcharge on Incomes over $5 Million: $105 Billion
A portion of the bailout cost should be financed with an emergency income tax surcharge on incomes over $5 million. Wealthy investors have been the big winners in the unregulated bubble economy. They have watched their incomes skyrocket over the last 25 years. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush has cut their taxes for seven years. Instituting a 50 percent tax rate on income over $5 million and a 70 percent rate on income over $10 million would generate $105 billion a year until the bailout is paid for.

6. An End to Overseas Corporate Tax Havens: $100 Billion
Congress should close down corporate tax havens that allow corporations to game the system and cut their taxes, sometimes to zero. This step would generate $100 billion from profitable companies that have paid no taxes over the last decade.

7. The Elimination of Subsidies for Excessive CEO Pay: $20 Billion
As taxpayers, we subsidize excessive CEO pay, through a host of tax loopholes, to the tune of $20 billion a year. Congress should close these loopholes, including the accounting gimmicks that permit companies to report one set of earnings to shareholders and another lower number to Uncle Sam.

8. The Elimination of the Tax Preference for Capital Gains: $95 Billion
The mega windfalls that Wall Street executives have pocketed over recent years will be generating additional income, in the form of dividends and capital games, for years to come. Under current tax law, dividend and capital gains income faces a mere 15 percent tax rate while income from actual work can be taxed at rates that go up to 35 percent. Taxing wealth and work at the same rates would generate $95 billion a year in revenue.

9. A Progressive Inheritance Tax: $60 Billion
In the near future, the moguls of the past quarter-century will be passing off the scene and leaving behind dynastic-size fortunes. A portion of this wealth should be taxed. A progressive estate tax on estates over $2 million — $4 million for a couple — could generate $60 billion a year in the short term and much more in outlying decades.

10. The Elimination of the Mansion Subsidy: $20 Billion
Wealthy taxpayers can currently deduct their mansion mortgage interest off their taxes. The richest 2 percent of U.S. households do not need to be subsidized by American taxpayers. Capping the home mortgage interest deduction for households with incomes over $200,000 per year would generate $20 billion a year.

2008-10-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

Moments of Truth

These are historic times and Monday didn't let us down in that regard. Monday was a day of truths revealed. We saw that Boehner and the rubber stamp Republicans CAN lose control of their party. We saw 40% of the Democratic Party, led by progressives, actually DO have spines.

We saw the myth of bipartisanship fail.

A day later we saw that the. world. didn't. end.

But the biggest Moment of Truth is yet to come. Nancy Pelosi's Moment of Truth.

In that moment, we will learn once and for all whether Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer were the right choices to lead the House. Because Nancy Pelosi must make a choice. If there's going to be a new bill, then she has to win votes. The big question is who's votes? The 66% of the Republicans who voted against any compromise with the Dems? Or the 40% of the Democrats who voted against rolling over to the Repubs. Which side will she choose?

Up until this day, Nancy Pelosi has angered and alienated many Democratic supporters by her stalwart refusal to put impeachment on the table, by her lack of leadership in regards to FISA, by her lack of courage to stand up and end the war in Iraq.

And Monday she once again showed a complete lack of leadership when she backed a bill that we now know was a farce.

Despite their shit-eating grins, Democratic leaders nearly got rolled today, but a mixture of luck and bad faith from Republicans saved them. How do you know that the Wall Street types were trying to steal from us, other than the fact that they said that the refusal to hand over money was akin to a terrorist act?

Well, Treasury officials had a secret conference call with Wall Street executives. Unfortunately for them, some bloggers were on the call.

Matt Stoller's diary :: ::
The 'Treasury boys' on the call made it clear that "the tranching is a mere formality, and the Treasury boys as much as said so. They could take the $700 billion max as soon as the bill has passed." That was always obvious.

And they admitted that "the exec comp provisions sound like a joke, They DO NOT affect existing contracts, they affect only contracts entered into during the two years of the authority of this program and then affect only golden parachutes." Both of these provisions were 'concessions' sought by Democrats.

We already know Pelosi tried to roll over for the Repubs once. Now the progressives have put forward a plan. Will she go with it knowing it will cost the remaining 33% of the Repubs but gain 40% of the Dems? Or will she cry "bipartisanship" and roll over for the WH and the Repub minority again?

It's the Moment of Truth for Pelosi and many House Dems.

2008-09-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

Progressives save America's collective asses today

Today was a great victory for progressives everywhere. Kucinich, Inslee, Conyers and many other Dems all stood up and said a big loud NO! to a bill that many Americans did not want to pass. A bill we now know was flawed.

Even as Nancy "Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi, Steny "Let 'em wiretap us" Hoyer and other Dems wanted to ram this bill down the American publics throats, Republicans, scared that the few "compromises" in the bill meant socialism and Progressives, aware that what the bill actually did was put a huge burden on the middle class to enrich the elite, came together put a stop to the fraud that was the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Kucinich and Co. literally saved America's ass today.

For the bulk of the remaining post I give a big nod to Gegner, whom I borrow shamelessly from:

The bill, as it stood today:

Gave far too much power to the very same people who caused this mess.

Didn't put the burden of the debt upon those who benefited the most.

Was roundly criticized by economists of both left and right.

Did not provide proper accountability.

Here is a peek at the draft that failed to pass the House:

(d) PROGRAM GUIDELINES.—Before the earlier of the end of the 2-business-day period beginning on the date of the first purchase of troubled assets pursuant to the authority under this section or the end of the 45-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall publish program guidelines, including the following:
(1) Mechanisms for purchasing troubled assets.
(2) Methods for pricing and valuing troubled assets.
(3) Procedures for selecting asset managers.
(4) Criteria for identifying troubled assets for purchase.
So it's all up to the Secretary to establish the rules. Same with Warrants - it's up to the Secretary to negotiate.

Yeah, Pelosi and Hoyer would have let Paulsen do as he saw fit. How on earth only 40% of the Dems had a problem with that is beyond me.
Boehner I can understand. He's rubber stamped this administration the whole way and he's not going to stop now, but Pelosi should have known better.

Thank God the progessives did.

SEC. 132. SUSPENSION OF MARK-TO-MARKET ACCOUNTING.
(a) AUTHORITY.—The Securities and Exchange Commission shall have the authority under securities laws (as such term is defined under section 3(a)(47) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78c(a)(47)) to suspend, by rule, regulation, or order, the application of Statement Number 157 of the Financial Accounting Standards Board for any issuer (as such term is defined in section 3(a)(8) of such Act) or with respect to any class or category of transaction if the Commission determines that is necessary or appropriate in the public interest and is consistent with the protection of investors

Repealing "mark to market" in the midst of a 700 billion dollar bailout allows the banks to surrender worthless paper at full face value. Where's the taxpayer protection?

"Federal Reserve Banks are authorized to pay banks interest on reserves under Section 201 of the Act. In addition, Section 202 permits the FRB to change the ratio of reserves a bank must maintain relative to its transaction accounts, allowing a zero reserve ratio if appropriate. Due to federal budgetary requirements, Section 203 provides that these legislative changes will not take effect until October 1, 2011."

Can anyone explain how allowing a zero reserve ratio is protecting the taxpayers?

The same Dems who have disillusioned so many in the Democratic Party are the same Dems who rushed to pass this - dare I say it? - peice of SHIT bill. The progressives balked and with them, the bill went down in flames.

The results are clear. The DLC "center" has failed. Neither left nor right will meet in the middle to "compromise" on a "bipartisan" bill.

Pelosi now has two choices:

1: Come back with a bill that satisfies the Republicans. (ie, the total sellout option that gives untold power to Paulsen and lets the rich rip off the American worker)

2: Satisfy the left. Get the progressive vote of Kucinich, Inslee, Conyers, etc. This would entail drafting a FAIR bailout bill that didn't burden the very people who were excluded from the table when the money was being made hand over fist by the elite. A progressive tax on the people who profited at the expense of the nation and the world. A plan the American people can get behind.

The choice is hers. The days to come will tell us which side Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and the rest of the Democrats who showed no spine stand on. Ours or the corporate elite.

Kudos the the progressives. It's nice to finally see Dems with spines.

2008-07-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Usual Suspects: The Heroin Connection

It's been nearly two years since I first posted my series, The Usual Suspects I, II, III, IV, and V, but a recent diary by lukery has inspired me to revisit this subject. New info has come forth that demands examination. Is the White House involved in heroin trafficking? Are The Usual Suspects up to more than just what they've put forth in the PNAC? The evidence seems to say so. The evidence seems to put The Usual Suspects right at the heart of a drug smuggling operation that supplies 93% of the worlds heroin and funnels money right to Al Queda.

As I originally posted in The Usual Suspects Part I: Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness, there has always been a suspected link between The Usual Suspects and heroin trafficking:

By 1986, Perle had completed negotiations on the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement with Turkey. This put Turkey as the third largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt. Then he establishes a high-level US-Turkish consultation group co-chaired by the Pentagon and Turkish general staff. Perle is the American co-chair for this group. It is at this time that Richard Clarke is assigned by the State Department to "keep an eye on" Perle when he takes a trip to Turkey.

In 1987, Richard Perle resigned as Assistant Secretary of Defense under allegations he'd leaked classified information.

In 1989 Perle negotiated with Turkey an $800,000 contract for his own company, International Advisors Inc. (IAI), which he started with Douglas Feith. He received $48,000 annually. IAI is registered as Turkey's foreign agent with the Justice Department. In all, IAI receives $3.8 million dollars from Turkey over the next 6 years.

In 1995 Perle, along with Douglas Feith, illegaly act as advisors to the government of Bosnia during the Dayton peace talks without registering with the Department of Justice, as required by law. Perle goes on to serve as military advisor to Bosnia. Within months, Perle is lobbying to get Turkey to arm and train Bosnian muslims, which he claims is of vital interest to the United States.

It is soon after this that it becomes apparent to Interpol that the KLA has taken over heroin trafficking from Turkish criminal elements and that the KLA is also receiving protection from the US. Intercepted messages speak of the desire to drown the western infidels in drugs. Interpol realizes that Turkish-Albanian drug smuggling and political activities are deeply intertwined and that Osama bin Ladin is involved.
Perle was a signatory on the PNAC letter sent to President Clinton in 1998 calling for him to use military force against the Serbs. They urge Clinton to support the KLA.

I'll get back to the KLA in a moment, but let's further establish Richard Perle's drug trafficking credentials. Let's go back to the Iran-Contra affair. Doesn't everything about The Usual Suspects eventually lead back to that?

According to this article, the Pentagon lists a close Perle associate with drug trafficking:

Even Adnan Khashoggi has financed wars with drug profits, the gist of a report written in 1991 at the Pentagon - declassified in July 2004 by the National Security Archives in Washington - of 104 "more important Colombian narco-terrorists contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations in both the U.S. and Colombia."

Remember, the word used by the Pentagon to describe the traffickers listed in the report, including Khashoggi, was "narco-terrorist." So Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense under Bush, a business partner of Khashoggi's at TriReme Corp., was in business with a narco-terrorist, according to the Pentagon's own records.

In 1999, the Washington Post detailed the link between the KLA and Al Queda:

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden. The KLA members...were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The intelligence reports document what is described as a "link" between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA --including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA.

The KLA's involvement in drug smuggling as a means of raising funds for weapons is long-standing. Intelligence documents show it has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers throughout Western Europe and the United States.
Drug agents in five countries believe the cartel is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling organizations in the world.
The documents show heroin and some cocaine is moved over land and sea from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere. The circuit has become known as the "Balkan Route."

So what we have here is the neocons supporting the KLA, which in turn is supported by Al Queda and financed through heroin smuggling. This same pattern emerges again in Chechnya. The Washington Post once again weighs in on the subject:

American officials said that several hundred Chechen fighters were trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and that bin Laden sent "substantial amounts of money" to equip Chechen rebels in 1999.

And do the neocons support the Chechens as well? Ya sure ya betcha!

in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

It looks like a literal Who's Who of The Usual Suspects.

So once again the neocons are supporting a group which is in turn supported by Al Queda. And is there a heroin connection? According to Healthhaven:

Chechen criminal groups and guerrilla factions reportedly play a significant part in the narcotics trade in Central Asia, Russia and the Caucasus region. In the First Chechen War guerrillas used funding from a variety of rackets as well as the sale of oil. However in the Second Chechen War the fighters received huge financial backing from Jordanian militant Ibn Al-Khattab, who joined with guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev and became a prominent figure in the war. This marginalized some figures such as Ruslan Gelayev, who turned to the drugs trade full time.

The Chechen mafia appears to dominate the traditional Russian mafia organizations in the drugs trade

Osama bin Laden and Chechen rebel leader Ibn Khattab are, as a CIA officer puts it, “intricately tied together” in a number of ways.

Neocons, Al Queda, Heroin. And then it all ties together from Chechnya to Al Queda to Turkey:

On the other side of the globe, to finance their separatist movement, Islamist leader Shamil Basayev and his Chechen followers transported Afghani heroin through Abkhazia to the Black Sea or through Turkey to Cyprus and then on to Europe.

lukery helps tie the neocons and their CIA operatives into the overall operation:

The operation includes propaganda and indoctrination in the form of financing, building and operating madrassas, control of media outlets and publishing houses, financing of terrorist groups, and heroin trafficking, as well as facilitating the requisite money-laundering apparatus. It is this operation that is at the heart of the gagging of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, and many of the names on Sibel's State Secrets Privilege Gallery are associated with this operation.

So now let's take a closer look at The Usual Suspects and see what kind of direct involvement we can find.

Back in October 2000, Michael Ruppert, who first broke Peak Oil, had this to say about Dick Cheney, whom I covered in Part IV of The Usual Suspects:

The success of Bush Vice Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion "pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.

The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers.

One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe."

These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand.

After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising documentation.'

"Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels.

"The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies.

"É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug cartels."

It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."

The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has operations all along this route.

It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think tank,

That last sentence I couldn't help but notice. The Aspen Institute. And where have I heard aspens mentioned in relation to Dick Cheney before? Oh yeah, it was when Judith Miller sat in jail rather than testify and possibly link Dick Cheney to the outing of Valerie Plame. Libby sent that infamous letter:

Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them

Probably nothing, but then, everyone's always wondered what the hell that meant.

There are many roots out there connecting The Usual Suspects to heroin, Al Queda and terrorism. The FBI was actually busily pursuing links to Turkish drug traffickers and the buying out of American politicians when Bush came into office and immediately squashed the investigation. Again, as reported by lukery:

Here's Sibel:

"...What happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress."

Vanity Fair reported the same thing, from a different source

"One counter-intelligence official familiar with Edmonds’s case has told Vanity Fair that the F.B.I. opened an investigation into covert activities by Turkish nationals in the late 1990’s. That inquiry found evidence, mainly via wiretaps, of attempts to corrupt senior American politicians in at least two major cities—Washington and Chicago.
[...]
[I]n December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. "It began in D.C.," says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. "It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on."

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. "There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on, "the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion," he says "It was to keep this from coming out."

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates.

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes.... One name, however, apparently stood out – a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname "Denny boy." It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert."

The ATC was formed by AIPAC. As you'll already know if you've read my series, AIPAC is a nexus around which all The Usual Suspects revolve. Around and around it goes, but in the end it always comes back to...The Usual Suspects.

2007-05-06T20:11:00.000-07:00

Brett Charles Lamb
1961 - 2007

There are few people in our lives that have the power to change us for the better. Fewer still that actually manage to do so. As I look back on my life, I realize that Brett Lamb was one of those people. He changed my life and I probably wouldn't be here today if not for him.

Whenever I think of the happiest times of my childhood, I always think of Brett, because Brett was always a part of them. I remember the summers when the hydroplanes would come to the Tri-Cities and he and I would sneak in for free. Not having to pay to watch the hydros was a birthright if you were a young boy living in Pasco. I remember the time we were playing football at the park and someone threw a long bomb to Brett. He raced for the ball, arms outstretched and then dived for it...headfirst into a tree. We thought he was dead. But I never could tease him much about that because that very same summer at that very same park I ran a slant out and as I streaked to the sideline my eye caught sight of a gorgeous girl walking down the sidewalk. My eyes locked onto hers a split second before I slammed into the light pole.

I can still see the girl laughing at me while all the guys were rolling on the ground. Brett never let me live that one down.

I don't try to remember my childhood much. In fact, I generally work hard to blot it out. But not my memories of Brett Lamb. Those are the good ones. Those are the bright golden memories of my youth that stand out amidst the otherwise painful darkness. The obstacle courses we would build to race around. The days at the basketball court. The time we made a tape recording, pretending it was Demented Radio and we were the Demented DJ's. The games we played as young boys, the girls we chased as young men. The songs we both liked.

But looking back across the span of a lifetime, there's one memory that defines my friendship with Brett. One memory that I see now forever changed my life for the better. It is that day that I've been thinking of ever since I got the terrible news that Brett had passed away at the young age of 45. It was a day shortly after my birthday...

Brett, his brother and sisters had called to wish me happy birthday. They wanted to know what plans I had. I didn't know. My grandmother was being mum on the whole occasion. He said to call him back when I found out. But as the day drew on, I began to realize that my grandmother was in one of her funks.

You see, her daughter, my mother, had had an incurable condition. One that the doctors said would kill her by the time she reached the age of 14. By force of will, my grandmother had kept her alive against all odds. Due to her constant care, my mother had lived to the age of 36. But when she finally passed away, my grandmother was devastated. She sank into a deep depression. I'd lost my parents and my sole surviving relative had become mentally ill. I was only 9 years old.

Then things took a turn for the worse. I was kidnapped. For five long months I never saw my grandmother again. When I finally escaped and got home, I found she was even worse off than she had been before. She'd had shock treatments. This was before One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Even though I was just a child, I think the shock treatments only made her condition worse. A lot of the time she was just fine. But then she'd slip into one of her funks and all she could do was mourn for the loss of her daughter.

During those times, it seemed like I was the one responsible for her, not the other way around. I was the one who had to feed us both. I had to make out the shopping list, rouse her enough that she would give me the money to do the shopping, make sure she took her meds and even make sure she drank enough water to stay hydrated.

I had a nervous breakdown at the age of 11. No one diagnosed it. No one treated it. I simply endured.

She had slipped into that state on my 14th birthday. When I reminded her it was my birthday I got the shock of my life. She didn't apologize. She didn't say "Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have forgotten." No. She acknowledged that she'd forgotten and then informed me that it didn't really matter anyways. She didn't care. She'd lost Donna, her baby, her child and that was all that mattered. Leave her alone. And I realized right then that I was totally alone in the world. She was good as gone to me. She might as well have died with her daughter. I was devastated.

The next day Brett called again. At first he was a bit miffed that I hadn't called him back but when I told him what had happened he must have heard something in the tone of my voice because he got his older sister Deb to drive him down there and they picked me up. They took me to this place I've never been to before or since. It was a steep vally with a train track passing 50 maybe 70 feet overhead. No river wound through it, just jagged rocks and a flat open field on one side at the bottom with a trail leading down. Deb had made a picnic lunch and Brett said he wanted to explore. Deb went down and began setting up a blanket and making sandwiches while Brett and I hiked on over to the bridge.

This railroad bridge was obviously not meant to be crossed. The gap between each board was wide enough for a person to fall right through and the drop would certainly be fatal. Nonetheless, Brett and I made our way across, one step at a time. I was scared to death but I was damned if Brett was going to have the guts to walk across it and not me. Looking back, in light of what was to happen, Deb must not have noticed us walking across it.

When we reached the other side we set off down the tracks a bit further. I was hungry and a bit impatient. I demanded to know where the hell he was taking us? That's when he looked around, saw a tree and went over and sat down under it. I came over to sit next to him as he pulled out a pipe and a small stash of weed.

"I wanted to get you high for your birthday" he explained "But I didn't have enough to share with Debs."

So we sat and got high and talked and at some point I said I'd race him back to the bridge and we tore off together. But as I got closer to the bridge I suddenly realized I wasn't going to stop. I kicked it into another gear and kept right on going. To my amazement, Brett sped up and stayed right with me step for step. I pulled a little ahead of him and he caught back up, he passed me and I ran even faster and pulled even again. We ran full bore across that bridge as fast as I've ever run in my life without a dog on my tail and the slightest misstep would have sent either of us plummeting to our deaths. But I wasn't ever afraid. I could feel this bond between us. Our steps were perfect, our timing was perfect, we wouldn't miss a single board. We wouldn't fall, we'd do it. And when we crossed the bridge, it was a perfect tie.

I could never have done that again in a thousand years. It should have been suicide.

As we stood there, leaning over, gasping for breath, I looked back at the bridge and the drop below. Deb was running up the hillside, screaming at us at the top of her lungs with more than a trace of hysteria present. Then Bretts eyes locked with mine and I knew he knew even as I was just realizing it myself. A death wish had seized me. It was gone now, wiped away in the race, in the competition, in the bond we shared, but it had been there, it had compelled me to cross that bridge. And then another realization hit me.

"Why'd you follow me across that bridge? You could have gotten yourself killed!" I gasped.

"Someone had to be there to catch you if you fell." he gasped back at me.

"Who the hell would have caught you?" I replied.

"You would have." he answered matter of factly, breathing more evenly.

I smiled. "Hell I would. We would have both fallen to our deaths."

We both laughed at that. Brett reached out and I gave him some skin and just then Deb reached us. She was furious and terrified. She ripped into us and kept ripping into us the whole way back and all we did was laugh about the whole thing which only made her angrier. Deb refused to give Brett a ride anywhere after that for a long, long time.

Later that night, when I got home, I checked on my grandmother to see she was okay, got her her meds, made sure she drank them down and made us both some dinner. I was okay. Everything was going to be alright. Because from that day forward I knew that someone out there gave a damn if I lived or I died. That knowledge gave me strength and changed my life forever.

Brett Lamb is dead now and I give a damn.

2007-02-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

It's all being done to keep you safe.

It's not because Bush's oil buddies want the Iraqi oil that they've used depleted uranium to invade Iraq. It's because that's the most effective way to Protect Americans from terrorism:

And it's certainly not because we needed to use depleted uranium in our shells to overcome the deadly Iraqi army or to help defeat insurgents. No. It's because we want to Protect You from terrorism:

Originally posted at Conceptual Guerilla's on 2006-08-17:
We don't do anything because of our own self-interest or the special interests of others. No. We do everything just For Your Protection. That's why we have to sometimes have a little fun with detainees:

We don't LIKE having to act as despicably as some Nazi pig or some Banana Republican dictator. No. We do what we HAVE to do because sometimes, it's a dirty job but it's For Your Own Protection:

And if sometimes some of our subordinates get out of hand, well, it's not because we trained them in such techniques or they lacked proper oversight. It's simply one of those things that are unfortunate, but it happens sometimes when we try to Protect You:

As you know, our enemy doesn't fight fair. And you wouldn't want us to have to fight with one hand behind our backs would you? So of course, sometimes we have to do things that you'd rather not know about, just so you can sleep soundly at night knowing it's For Your Protection:

And to further Keep You Safe, we make sure that we take the fight to them, rather than let them take the fight to us. That's why invading Iraq is Keeping You Safe from Terrorism:

And, of course, sometimes we have to maintain order right here at home. If things got out of order, for instance, if people tried to protest whenever they felt like it, just imagine what kind of message that would send to our enemies! That's why we have to take special measures against your fellow Americans. But rest assured, it's For Your Protection:

And you can't rightly expect us to Protect You if you don't allow us the powers to do so. That is why we need special powers that our founding fathers never foresaw two hundred years ago. I'm sure you don't mind since it's only to Keep You Safe:

So aren't you glad you voted Republican so that we can be there to Keep America Safe?

2007-02-26T20:29:00.001-08:00

Time for a little Seattle Tea Party?

Originally posted at www.washblog.com on Thu Aug 31, 2006:

With the revelation that King County has purchased Diebold voting machines, I think it's high time to reclaim our democracy. Think of what is at stake. I kid you not, the fate of humanity lies in the balance.
As Kieth Olbermann reminded us tonight, we did not descend from a fearful people. Over 200 years ago, our forefathers tossed the British tea into Boston Harbor.
I say we find out where they keep those diebold machines, march in there, grab them and toss them into the Puget Sound. It's time, folks, to put up or shut up. It's time to stop talking the talk and start walking the walk. It's time to think seriously about defending our nation.

2007-02-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

I'm baaaack!

I've been busily posting elsewhere and I've decided to move all those posts over to here for posterities sake (since no one actually comes HERE to read stuff but my writing does get read in several other sites.).

So for the next few weeks I'll be adding in all the blog entries I've written in the past 8 months that didn't get posted here.

2006-08-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

"The lock has broken."

I just finished reading this startling discovery and it's implications for the survival of mankind.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

According to their study, time is running out on the Amazon. It's experiencing its second year of drought. The roots are reaching deeper. Can they survive? For how long will they have to? Is it already too late?

One scientist put it quite succinctly. "The lock has broken". The Amazon has passed the tipping point. Global warming will increase by 50% when the Amazon, which helped counter global warming, releases its CO2 into the air and rapidly accelerates atmospheric change.

I just took my daughter to visit a college campus. She's a junior in high school and getting excited about going to college. I wonder what the point of it all is now. Of course, I won't stop her. She might as well live out her remaining years with some sort of hope.

I look at my son, who's 8 years old. He's just a child. He doesn't comprehend that we keep seeing record heat waves. It's all he's ever known. He can't comprehend that if the temperature keeps going up, we are all going to die. I can barely comprehend it myself. I am only now starting to realize that not only will we all die, but I'll die with him. Together. How will that be? How old will he be? Will he still be a child when the planet becomes inhospitable to life? Will I have the courage to do what has to be done when that time comes?

Do any of us really, fully comprehend the danger we are all in because of the greedy bastards who refused to do anything when we still had the chance? The same bastards who will just say it's Gods prophecy when we all die. My mind is still struggling with the possiblity that the lock HAS broken and we are past the point of no return. I don't think anyone ever seriously allows themselves to think about that possibility.

Well, we may have to in the next couple of years.

2006-07-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

Why The Usual Suspects are lashing out at Rice

The Usual Suspects have published a story in the latest issue of Insight in which they rip into Condi Rice as being incompetent and having reversed the administrations national security and foreign policy agenda. This coming from her handling of the Israeli/Lebanon crisis.

Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle were the most vocal of The Usual Suspects. Newt taking the opportunity to beat his World War III drum , even though it's technically World War IV now.

"North Korea firing missiles," Mr. Gingrich said. "You say there will be consequences. There are none. We are in the early stages of World War III. Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."

What was Condi's major faux pas?

"Rice attempted to increase pressure on Israel to stand down and to demonstrate restraint," said Stephen Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "The rumor is that she was told flatly by the prime minister's office to back off."

And as I've already pointed out in It's World War IV Stupid! How the Usual Suspects planned this all along. , attempting to reign in Israel's attack on Lebanon is definately the exact opposite of the neocons foreign policy agenda.

Is it any wonder, then, that people like Perle, Gingrich, Hannah, Bolton and Abrams are united in castigating Miss Rice? Afterall, Israels attempts to destroy Hezbollah are but the opening phases of the reimaging of the Middle East as laid out a decade ago by David Wurmser. This is called the Clean Break policy and the first step it called for has already been accomplished:

1: replace Saddam with an Iraqi National Congress. (check)

The next step is just getting underway:

2: Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syria by "Israeli proxy forces" in Lebanon and/or striking Syria proper.

Knocking out Hezbollah is merely the prelude to Israel positioning itself so that it can carry out the second phase of the plan detailed by Wurmser nearly a decade ago. It's spelled out plainly in Clean Break:

An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah,

That is why Israel planned the invasion over a year ago.

"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

It's all been planned out and now, suddenly Condi Rice is talking about "restraint" and "diplomacy". But as the neocons know, diplomacy and restraint aren't a part of the agenda. Or as their article pointed out:

They said by that time even Mr. Bush will recognize the failure of relying solely on diplomacy in the face of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

And there you have it: Diplomacy and Iran don't mix. World War IV is getting underway. How dare Condi Rice try to slow things down!

2006-07-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

It's World War IV Stupid! Or How the Usual Suspects planned global war all along.

So Newt Gingrich thinks we are seeing the beginning of World War III. Looks like he's been out of touch with his neocon buddies for quite some time then, because, as anybody who's followed the megalomaniacal ramblings of the Usual Suspects knows, this is actually World War IV.

The Usual Suspects have been planning this big brouhaha for some time and if you'd like, I'll take you down their little rabbit hole and show you the roadmap they've made. So whip out your Blue Pills and let's go...

Cross Posted at Conceptual Guerilla's.

The History of World War IV.

First off, a little history before we come to The Plan. As ex-CIA director James Woolsey told us several years ago (didn't Newt get the memo?), The Cold War was World War III. We are on the brink of World War IV, he told us back in 2003, and furthermore:

This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War

One can only hope can't they? The Military Industrial Complex must have been orgasming in ecstasy when they heard that. But that's not all Woolsey tells us of the neocons plans for our future and our childrens future:

He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.

Woolsey told the audience of about 300, most of whom are students at the University of California at Los Angeles, that all three enemies have waged war against the United States for several years but the United States has just "finally noticed."

So we've actually been fighting World War IV for several years now, but the United States has just "finally noticed". Sort of a delayed reaction, I guess, kinda like right after Katrina hit.

You might want to know a few details about the milieu in which Woolsey made this sweeping Declaration of War. He was at a "teachin" at UCLA. There were a series of "teachins" across the nations universities at the time.

A group calling itself "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism" sponsors the teach-ins, and the Bruin Republicans, UCLA's campus Republicans organization, co-sponsored Wednesday night's event.

The group was founded by former Education Secretary William Bennett, who took part in Wednesday's event along with Paul Bremer, a U.S. ambassador during the Reagan administration and the former chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism.

Newt really should be more in the loop. In fact, you can go back to the weeks after 9-11 to find that the World War IV meme was already in use by the neocons when Eliot Cohen wrote "World War IV: Let's call this conflict what it is." in which he also asserts, as Admiral Woolsey did, that the war

"began well before Sept. 11, and its casualties include, at the very least, the dead and wounded in our embassies in Africa, on the USS Cole and, possibly, in Somalia and the Khobar Towers."

And Cohen reiterates that "The Cold War was World War III." So obviously, Newt was completely out of the loop to have missed the entirety of World War III. But does Cohen name the same enemies as Woolsey?

The enemy in this war is

not "terrorism"...but militant Islam....Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles

there just one campaign....The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran....The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary

Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government, however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden...Second, the U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction...Third, the U.S. must mobilize in earnest...the beginning of a desperately needed "transformation" of the American military...

One can almost hear the Military Industrial Complex crying out at the end, "Oh God! Oh God! I'M CUMMING!" One can almost see the dollar signs in the corporatists eyes and hear the cash register going "Ka-Ching!".

But did Cohen, professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, come up with this meme or did he simply get the memo that Newt missed?

Actually, Woolsey gave a speech entitled "World War IV" just 4 days before Cohens article, so the memo had already been out there. Gee Newt, considering you shared a spot on the same defense policy board as Woolsey, you really should read your memo's more often!

Oh wait! I think I found the memo! Yep, it's right here called the Project For the New American Century (PNAC), established in 1997 and Woolsey, Bennett, Bremer and Cohen are all members of it.

Take a close look at the PNAC and you'll find many of the Usual Suspects are charter members. Billy Kristol is the chairman, Wolfowitz, John Bolton the man I tagged as being the Usual Suspect that outed Valerie Plame is a member:

Let's take a moment to consider something: Where did The Usual Suspects get their information about Valerie Plame? Who in the administration would have had access to Top Secret information pertaining to Valerie Wilson/Plame's role in nuclear proliferation? The only logical person to turn to for such information would have been John Bolton, State Dept. deputy secretary in charge of WMD's. Bolton played a central role in the Niger Yellowcake story.

And who was Bolton's assistant? David Wurmser, also a member of PNAC. And at last, we come to

The Plan

As detailed in The Wurmser Turns, David Wurmser gave us a very detailed look at exactly what World War IV is going to look like.

Damascus has been in Wurmser's sights at least since he began working with Perle at AEI in the mid-1990s.

For the latter part of the decade, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Ba'athist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by "tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments."

Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).

Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.

The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm', was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading "land for peace" by transforming the "balance of power" in the Middle East in favour of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.

Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon and "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper."

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria," the report argued, to create a "natural axis" between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq and Turkey that "would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula."

"For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity," it suggested.

There's the groundwork being laid for World War IV, way back in 1996. Israel must move into Lebanon and from there the attack on Syria begins. So how influential is David Wurmser? Read what I've uncovered about The Usual Suspects here, here and ashulmans diary here. Take special note of the list of "authors" at the bottom of ashulmans diary. Then take another look at the flowchart that shows Wurmser's place in the grand scheme of things. Wurmser's job at one time was to prove there existed a link between Al Queda and Iraq. Do any of the other names on that flowchart look familiar?

Woolsey, Gingrich, Perle, Cheney, Libby, Michael Ledeen (Keyser Soze himself!), Harold Rhode, Bolton, Shulsky, Rubin, Wolfowitz, etc.

These are The Usual Suspects, people, and this plan for starting World War IV has been long in the making.

2006-06-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

I'll give you your damned reply to "Cut and Run"!

Wait and See.

That's been the Republican answer to everything. Do nothing and just Wait and See.

Remember the way they helped Americans during Katrina? Prior to Katrina, we asked them to reinforce the levees. They wanted to Wait on that and See if they could build a bridge in the middle of nowhere in Alaska instead. We saw what happens when you Wait on maintaining vital infrastructure. When Katrina hit, their appointed crony over at FEMA took a Wait and See approach to saving lives. We waited for them to come help. Well, what did we see? Dead American bodies floating in the streets. They waited at the border and we saw Americans dying because they were made to wait at a bridge and not allowed to cross. That's what Republican who want to Wait and See got us.

Remember when they promised Fiscal Responsibility? Just you Wait and See what happens when Republicans are in charge, they said. Well we we didn't have to wait long before we saw. We saw the surplus turn into a deficit so fast a magician could only wish his sleight of hand was so quick. We've seen them slash taxes for the rich and spend like there's no tomorrow. Trickle down economics? Wait and See what happens, they said. We've seen Americans falliing further and further into debt because their bills are greater than their income. We've seen outsourcing of jobs. We've seen the average wage of an American go down while the average hours he puts in go up. One thing we DON'T see is any semblance of fiscal responsibility. Not since Clinton left.

Remember how they promised to clean up government? Just you wait and see when Republicans are in charge, they said. Well, we've seen unheard of levels of corruption and larceny and we're still waiting for justice to prevail. We're still waiting for the Culture of Corruption to come to an end. Don't count on it anytime soon. These guys are a bunch of snake oil salesmen and their gameplan is to scam American taxpayers for all they're worth and then Wait and See if there's anything we can do about it.

Remember what they said about Iraq? They said Saddam had WMD's. We'll find them, just you Wait and See. They invaded. Well, we waited and we saw that there never WERE any WMD's. They said they wanted regime change. We waited. They've had their regime change. What do we see? They're still there. They claimed we needed to wait till they installed the new government. We waited. What did we see? They've created a new government. They're still there. We've asked them what defines 'victory' in Iraq. Their response? Wait and see. Wait and see WHAT? We've waited and we've seen our boys die. We've seen Iraqi children die. We've seen depleted uranium dust poison every man, woman and child ON BOTH SIDES of this conflict. We've seen this toxic radioactive dust cloud rise up into our upper atmosphere where it's 22 BILLION YEAR halflife will pollute our planet long after we're all gone. How long will we have to wait and see the mutations caused by using depleted uranium?

But most of all, Wait and See sums up what they've done since 9-11. They invaded Afghanistan, they threw out the Taliban. But then they didn't finish the job. We;re still waiting for them to destroy Al Queda. We're still waiting for them to make Osama bin Laden pay for what he did. We're still waiting for justice for 9-11. And all we see is while they were off fighting a country with no ties to Al Queda, the Taliban have quietly crept back into Afghanistan. We see Al Queda still threatens to attack America again. We see Osama is still free.

We're done waiting Republicans, we've seen enough.

2006-05-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

1984

Here is an excellent expose on how our government has total control over all communications. They can read the news before the editors of the papers ever even receive the wires. It's complete, it's total, it's amazing, it's true.

2006-05-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

Foray's into Freeperville: How YOU can aid the mentally ill.

Here's the deal: there are a lot of people who are mentally ill out there and can't get professional treatment. They're delusional, live in a fantasy world and actively strive to prevent treatment for their condition. What's worse, it is slightly contagious and probably passed down to younger generations.

So we need to step up to the plate and go to bat for these people. They need our help. Even if you're an amatuer or just a volunteer, there's a simple way for you to be off assistance. Believe me, it's worth it for these poor victims of mental illness and it's worth it for our society as a whole.

All you gotta do is head on over to Freeperville. I'll be your guide.

First off, you need to remember you're there to HELP these poor, sick people. No matter how repugnant or obnoxious they seem to you, remind yourself, it's just a symptom of their illness. You may not be a mental health professional, but you're the one who's THERE, NOW. And they need you desperately.

Let me use my own experiences as an example to guide you on what to do and what NOT to do when you make your forays into Freeperville to aid the mentally ill:

One of the first discussion groups I ran into was a group of people suffering from the recurring delusion that Saddam possessed WMD's. This fantasy was being indulged by several members who believed that a new document, being translated by one of their members, showed that Saddam had a plan to produce mobile laboratories.

Notice the co-dependency behavior. Each of them seeks to reaffirm their own illness by gathering with others who share the same delusional mindset. Keep this in mind throughout your foray into Freeperville. As one patient plaintively asserts:

I cannot think of what kind of mobile lab would need that kind of equipment.

- "Measurement device for the speed of vibration"

- "Measurement device for the speed of rotation"

- almost sound like mobile enriching lab but I'm sure that is not really possible or efficient enough.

- "Ultrasonic wave test device"

- "Different pressure measurement devices"

- "Mobile testing device for metals"

- "X-Ray testing device"

- Sounds more like a mobile bio- or chem-weapons lab given that pressure vessels are key to production and you don't want any leaks or weakened materials.

Certainly doesn't sound like a mobile hydrogen production lab for weather ballons (like the Iraqi Survey Group said.)

This poor patient "cannot imagine what kind of mobile lab would need that kind of equipment...then he goes right ahead and imagines it. Well, the idea here is to point out the difference between the reality of a mobile biolab and the patients own fevered imaginings. Once they've come face to face with the difference between reality and fantasy, they can begin to come to grips with their own paranoid delusions. So I simply pointed out the obvious, which, while I'd like to quote directly, has been deleted by the moderators. (remember what I said about co-dependency), but it goes something like this:

There was no mention whatsoever in that document of there being present any of the necessary components for a mobile bioweapons lab: No incubator, autoclave, etc. It was a bit too early to start jumping at conclusions about what this lab was for.

Also, in that same place I found a man who suffered from severe memory block. It seems he can't remember anything about what Bush said in regards to Saddam having WMD's in the run up to the invasion. He swore that:

I honestly do not remember Bush telling the American people that Saddam has WMD ... We did not go to Iraq because we thought he had WMD. If Bush had said that, I would have hesitated to support him sending in ground troops. The WMD issue was only a factor in the decision that we should go SOONER rather than wait until he already had them.

Now that we got the dems quotes out there...it's time we start searching for these pre-war Bush quotes.

All he can seem to remember are the Dems saying that Saddam had WMD's, but he has a mental block that keeps him from remembering what REALLY happened in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Now, as a kind and helpful person, interested in aiding this poor person to overcome his handicap, I realized that here was a subconcious cry for help. When he said, "it's time we start searching for these pre-war Bush quotes" I realized it was my duty to supply them. So I did. But of course, the moderators, being just as mentally ill, reacted like any codependent would and immediately sought to help reinforce their friends delusion the only way they knew how: They deleted my response in an attempt to keep themselves in denial. But here's what I did, hopefully the patient had time to read it before his "friend" stepped in and deleted the comment:

WHEN (2002) WHERE WHAT

1 OCT 14 Michigan September the 11th changed the equation, changed our thinking. It also changed our thinking when we began to realize that one of the most dangerous things that can happen in the modern era is for a deceiving dictator who has gassed his own people, who has weapons of mass destruction to team up with an organization like al Qaeda.

2 OCT 28 Colorado [Saddam is] a person who claims he has no weapons of mass destruction, in order to escape the dictums of the U.N. Security Council and the United Nations -- but he's got them

3 OCT 28 New Mexico He's got weapons of mass destruction.

4 OCT 31 South Dakota There is a threat in Iraq. And the threat exists because a leader there not only has denied and deceived the world about whether or not he's got weapons of mass destruction, but this is a guy who's used weapons of mass destruction. He not only has them, he's used them.

5 NOV 01 New Hampshire We know he's got chemical weapons, probably has biological weapons.

6 NOV 02 Tennessee We know that this is a man who has chemical weapons, and we know he's used them.

7 NOV 02 Atlanta, Georgia He's a man who has said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them.

8 NOV 02 Florida He's a man who has said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them. ... You know, not only does he have weapons of mass destruction, but, incredibly enough, he has used weapons of mass destruction.

9 NOV 03 Minnesota This is a man who not only has got chemical weapons, I want you to remind your friends and neighbors, that he has used chemical weapons.

10 NOV 03 Illinois I see the world the way it is. Saddam Hussein is a threat to America. He's a threat to our friends. He's a man who said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, yet he has them.

11 NOV 03 South Dakota Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them.

12 NOV 04 Texas He said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction -- he has weapons of mass destruction. ... Not only has he got chemical weapons, but I want you to remember, he's used chemical weapons.

13 NOV 04 Arkansas This is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, promised he wouldn't have them. He's got them. ... He said he wouldn't have chemical weapons, he's got them.

14 NOV 04 Missouri He said he wouldn't have chemical weapons; he's got them.

I hope that is what you were looking for. :)

I figure the smile would go a long ways towards building trust. Sufferers of such deep-seated paranoid delusions have trouble trusting others. It is important for you to establish trust with them as much as possible. Always try to be friendly and helpful. If they need anything, like this person did, do your best to get it to them as quickly as possible and remember: Be Friendly! Because that is what we are - the only REAL friends they have, though they don't realize it yet.

Now here is a perfect example of what NOT to do when you try to go into Freeperville and assist the mentally ill: This discussion group was focused on homelessness. One person may have been an aide worker there to help, as I was, or he may have been a recovering patient himself, I don't know, but he brought the underlying issue to light:

What the heck is wrong with more funding? What homelessness does not exist? What does the bible say about sheltering the poor? Oh thats, rights, the bible only speaks about sins none of us on this board commit like homosexuality, not the failure to give charity.

Now, this brought up the recurring delusion that our government is somehow supposed to stay out of the business of helping its people. This is a very deep-seated neurosis that if left unchecked can bring immense suffering to millions of people worldwide, including the patient himself. So it was with no surprise whatsoever that I found a patient responding with the following comment:

It's not charity if it's a government program.

Here we see the most common symptom to these mentally deranged people. Government cannot be charitable in their worldview. Government has no role in society in making our world better for its citizens. Only citizens are allowed to be charitable to one another. Their panaoid distrust of government won't allow for a beneficent, helpful government. Therefore they fervently refute the idea as being outside the jurisdiction of our government. They need a healthy dose of We The People. Unfortunately, by this time I made the cardinal mistake. I had stuck around too long and let their selfish behavior get the better of me. My bedside manner lapsed when I responded:

Whenever someone complains about our government doing charity, I always tell them "Give unto Caesar, what is Caesars, and give unto God what is Gods, then STFU."

Well, obviously THAT wasn't going to earn their trust. What I SHOULD have said was "Remember when you feel the Government should not be in the business of giving public money to the poor the wisdom of Jesus "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is Gods" then rejoice that Caesar sees the wisdom of God also and gives to charities and the poor. Afterall, that's what God asks YOU to do isn't it? Why should you begrudge Caesar for doing the same? Rejoice and praise God that our government shares in his divine wisdom. They could be spending the money to launch a war of aggression against our neighbors instead. Which would God prefer?

Unfortunately, my moment of weakness was costly as this last attempt to give aid and solace to those poor mentally ill patients caused their moderators to ban me.

Which is why we need YOU dear reader, to step up and give of yourselves to aid these poor delusional bastards, er, patients in their time of need. Without your help, they may wander the world, spreading their disease to innocent others. So please, take a few minutes out of your day, show some compassion, go to Freeperville and help them to heal. Be kind, be respectful, have patience. Remember, they are Americans and they need YOUR HELP.

And for those who give of themselves, even for a day, (which is likely all the time you'll last over there before they ban you), I have this neat gift just for you: (no I WON'T send you a free shirt, but feel free to take the words and print them out on a shirt of your own. Just remember, use a local business, not some franchise that is owned by some remote corporation that is in turn owned by some multinational making shirts in Chinese sweatshops...buy American)

On the back of mine it reads:

But of course you can use this alternate backside if you wish:

Or feel free to make up one of your own.

Wear the shirt proudly. Be one of the few caring individuals who stepped forward to help and were BANNED from Freeperville!

2006-05-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

The Civil War Never Ended Pt. II: The reality of Trickle Down Economics

The Holy Grail of the right wing is the assertion that supply side economics (trickle down economics) works best for the economy while liberal, demand side economics is a failure.

As we all know, trickle down economics is a crock of shit, a myth created by cheap labor conservatives to keep the poor (read blacks and minorities) in poverty and allow the rich to "conserve" their wealth and hold on the reins of power. Trickle down economics is the credo of Corporate Feudalism.

And now we have the data to prove it.

As the center for American Progress reports, economic mobility in America is worse than any high-income nation besides England. In other words, we are trending back towards the strict English class structure of the aristocracy that our forefathers rebelled against 230 years ago.

The key findings relating to intergenerational mobility include the following:

Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.

Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.

Education, race, health and state of residence are four key channels by which economic status is transmitted from parent to child.

African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.

The difference in mobility for blacks and whites persists even after controlling for a host of parental background factors, children's education and health, as well as whether the household was female-headed or receiving public assistance.

After controlling for a host of parental background variables, upward mobility varied by region of origin, and is highest (in percentage terms) for those who grew up in the South Atlantic and East South Central regions, and lowest for those raised in the West South Central and Mountain regions.

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

It's easy to see two things from this study so far, Corporate America is very feudalistic, with the rich retaining all the wealth and power and the rest of us not moving on to be more successful than our parents.

In fact, most of us are finding things are worse:

Key findings relating to short-run, year-to-year income movements include the following:

The overall volatility of household income increased significantly between 1990-91 and 1997-98 and again in 2003-04.

Since 1990-91, there has been an increase in the share of households who experienced significant downward short-term mobility. The share that saw their incomes decline by $20,000 or more (in real terms) rose from 13.0 percent in 1990-91 to 14.8 percent in 1997-98 to 16.6 percent in 2003-04.

The middle class is experiencing more insecurity of income, while the top decile is experiencing less. From 1997-98 to 2003-04, the increase in downward short-term mobility was driven by the experiences of middle-class households (those earning between $34,510 and $89,300 in 2004 dollars). Households in the top quintile saw no increase in downward short-term mobility, and households in the top decile ($122,880 and up) saw a reduction in the frequency of large negative income shocks.

Emphasis mine.

So who does trickle down economics benefit? Only the richest and most powerful Americans. It actually hurts the huge majority of Americans. The Rags to Riches dream is just that, a dream. We now live in a feudal society where wealth and power are inherited, just like the old kings and queens of yore, and the rest of us are merely peons. Slaves to the cheap labor conservatives.

Households whose adult members all worked more than 40 hours per week for two years in a row were more upwardly mobile in 1990-91 and 1997-98 than households who worked fewer hours. Yet this was not true in 2003-04, suggesting that people who work long hours on a consistent basis no longer appear to be able to generate much upward mobility for their families.

THAT'S what trickle down economics has gotten us.

The Slavery of a permanent peasant class ruled by The Aristocracy of Wealth. Blacks stuck in their place at the bottom of the economic heap. The rich firmly entrenched. Just like the southern slave holders once envisioned.

The Civil War Never Ended.

2006-05-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

John McCain: The ends justifies the means

So what's new? A Republican who doesn't believe in the Constitutional Right to Free Speech? Dime a dozen you say? But this is John McCain the Republican darling and Heir To The Throne. The former Vietnam POW and gosh-darned real life HERO, who has sworn every six years to "protect and defend the Constitution." Apparently HE doesn't even believe in the 1st Amendment. As he said to a caller on Imus:

"I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

Note that shortly after that statement he says that

I'd campaign with Rick Santorum too.

Yeah. That's encouraging. Who does John McCain think he's kidding?

Hmmm, so his 'ideal' of 'clean government' overrides his commitment to uphold the Constitution? McCain talks a good talk about reform, but the problem is he's willing to trade fundamental rights to change our nation into his idealistic image of what he calls a "clean government". This guy's a zealot and an idealist who not only has no grasp of the Conservative Culture of Corruption but he also has no appreciation for what makes this country great. Toss out the 1st Amendment? Sure, the ends justifies the means. Or else he's a phoney, corrupt politician himself.

Oh yeah, I guess either way that DOES make him just like every other Republican.

2006-04-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

And so it begins

As this article points out, there is more to the Federal Reserve's recent announcement that they are going to stop reporting M3 data than meets the eye. What is M3 data? (for those who can't be bothered to read the link) M3 reports the total US dollars in circulation.

Why would the FedRes do that and who cares? Anyone remember their history lessons in school concerning the Great Depression? Remember your teachers telling you how people in Germany used to paper their walls with money because paper money was worthless? Did your Grandmother (like mine) or great-grandmother ever tell you how important gold was back then? The reason was because in order to fight inflation, the governments of the world printed off lots of money. With so much paper currency in the world, the value of money became negligible and only gold had any real value.

So listen up, because when the FedRes stops reporting on the amount of paper currency floating about there's a Really Good Reason Why.

That reason is because they don't want to let on that they are putting more and more currency into the market. The Feds have pumped up the money supply by 8% in the last year. They do this to fight inflation. But anyone with a knowledge of economic history knows where this road leads to. Depression. That is why savvy investors are liquidating and buying gold. Gold is the one hedge against a massive depression like we had in the 30's. So what has this done to the price of gold?

They've soared.

Gold is going through the roof. And now, with the price of gasoline going through the roof, inflation is about to explode. Making all those paper dollars worthless. Which in turn, drives up the price of gold even further.

And so it begins again. Welcome to economic hell. Hope you didn't have a future planned.

2006-04-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

H.R. 550: The poison pill that will kill Democracy

H.R. 550 is the bill put forth by Rep. Rush Holt that mandates a paper trail on our voting machines. Now, being as against Diebold and their ilk as I am, you're probably wondering about right now, how the fuck could such a good idea as making a paper trail for our electronic voting machines be the poison pill that will finally kill what little remains of our democracy?

Because this bill is flawed. Dangerously flawed.

The bill requires a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). That's good. We need that.

It sets a minimum audit requirement. 2%. That's not so good. We need 100% audit requirement. Currently, we have 0% requirement.

Requires the source code be made public. Well of course it should. WE pay for it. Plus it is critical to OUR freedom. Fuck Diebold and any other company that wants to keep their source code secret.

It requires the Election Comittee to open up the bidding process to the public. This is good too.

So with so much good, how can this be THAT BAD? Let's go back to how this all got started. It began with a cheap labor conservative plan called the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA). Typical doublespeak name from the CLC bastards right? It was written up in Bob Ney's office. This little Act created the Electronic Assistance Commission (EAC) and started all the paperless electronic voting machines. The lobbying firm that made this all possible representing the computerized voting machine makers such as Diebold was none other than Greenberg Traurig. While you might not have heard of them before, perhaps you've heard of their employee? Jack Abramoff.

Yeah, THOSE guys wanted the EAC created by HAVA and THOSE guys made it possible for Diebold to put us in this mess in the first place.

And H.R. 550 seeks to make the EAC a permanent entity with broadened powers. The bill gives the EAC "blanket authority" to conduct recounts in any state of their choosing and, if the state give permission, to conduct state and local recounts!!!

Do you think for one instant, for one fraction of an instant, that someone like Christine Gregoire would have won her election had the EAC been in charge of the recount? Do you think any state the Republicans control won't instantly INSIST upon a recount by the EAC INSTEAD of a local, state run, INDEPENDENT recount?

Then think about this: The EAC is an Executive commission. That's right. As in, it's members are all chosen by the President of the United States.

Now, if you'll recall, we have this little thing called the Constitution of the United States. It's seen better days, to be sure. But it still carries weight with some of us and it expressly grants the states the right to manage their own election systems. You see, the founding fathers didn't want a dictator to control our elections.

But that is PRECISELY what H.R. 550 will do. Give our election process over to the President of the United States. And when that happens, it's Officially Over. No more America. Kiss it goodbye.

2006-04-21T13:48:00.001-07:00

Hilton Hotels should be ASHAMED

Chances are, if you've ever eaten at Fran O'Briens Stadium Steak House on a Friday night in the last two and a half years you're a wounded soldier or you know and love someone who is. That's because that's how long the O'Briens, bless them, have been giving out FREE meals to wounded soldiers every Friday night. They intend to keep doing so until the last wounded soldier is released from Bethesda and Walter Reed.

The therapuetic value of these Friday nights for the soldiers is immesurable. Every staff member has gotten special training to deal with the needs of these returning heroes. If a man has lost his jaw, the cook can prepare a special puree so the steak tastes great and the soldier enjoys it. As Margaret, the banquet director, explains, "I've been working here for a long time. We're all like family here. When someone missing their lower jaw finally gets to enjoy a steak, we all cry,"

Fran's is located at the bottom of the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. But that's about to change because the Hilton is kicking them out on the street. Not because of giving away free food. Not because they don't pay their bills. No, the Hilton's cruel, heartless action is being done because the hotel chain refuses to abide by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

You see, the Hilton is more concerned about their liability with so many disabled people on their premises than they are about supporting our troops. Supporting our troops is just a catchphrase to rally the flag around the cause, don't you see, and silence all dissent. It doesn't really MEAN that the rich, elite have to actually, you know, SUPPORT our troops. THEY have to worry about more important matters, like making obscene profits.

And damn it all if one of those pesky liberal Big Government Regulations doesn't just stand in their way of doing their patriotic duty to make obscene profits. The Americans with Disabilities Act. You see, THIS is the deal:

The escalator that leads down into Fran O'Briens has been broken since 1998. The O'Briens have been fighting for six years to get that fixed. Hilton promised for years to do so but finally just boarded it up. At that point, the O'Briens asked if a lift could be put in to assist those disabled veterans in wheel chairs. That's when they got the eviction notice.

So how DOES a disabled vet get to eat at the steakhouse now? As 8ackgr0und N015e tells us:

1) You have to go to the lobby of the Capitol Hilton.
2) Then you have to go to the security desk.
3) Then you have to be escorted by the security guard on duty to a coat room.
4) The security guard punches in a code on the key pad and escorts you through the coat room.
5) Then he takes you to "the back of the house," as they call the service area in hotels.
6) Then they escort you to the lift and take you down to the basement.
7) When you get to the bottom, someone from the restaurant has to meet you and then escort you to the restaurant at the other end of the building.

Now you can eat.

A) When you finish your meal, someone from the restaurant has to contact the security desk.
B) Then they have to escort you to the elevator.
C) Then they have to wait until someone from security arrives.
D) Then the person from the security desk escorts you back up to the main floor.
E) Then they take you back through the coat room, again keying in the security codes.

Now you can leave.

A simple question: What if there's a fire?

This clearly is not "equal access" as demanded by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But rather than do the RIGHT thing, rather than do what is required by LAW, Hilton is going to evict the O'Briens, turn their backs on our troops and SAVE A BUCK.

The Hilton management should be ASHAMED.

Friends who DO support our troops would like you to help. This is their plea:

Marty and Hal need our help. For over six months they have been asking the Hilton Management for the terms for renewal of their lease. For over 5 months they were told not to worry they would have the renewal lease in a few weeks. About a month ago the Hilton folks stopped responding to their emails and voice messages for a status report and last week Hal and Marty received a one page eviction notice. No explanation was given. We suspect that at least part of the reason is the Friday night dinner Hal and Marty have been hosting for the last two and a half years. It may be that the Hilton folks are concerned about the increased liability of having so many severely injured and disabled soldiers in their basement each Friday (several have taken falls on the steep stairs at the entrance to Fran's (but no law suits or problems have ensued). It may be that there is very limited and problematic wheelchair access to the restaurant (although no ADA complaints have been filed). The truth
is that we don't know for sure but what we do know is that this is unfair. Unless we can change the minds of the folks at the Hilton Hotel Fran's will be out of business on May 1st and we will not have any place to hold our Friday night dinner for the injured soldiers and marines of Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals. If you are so inclined I would like to ask you to call and/or email the following two officials at the Hilton and voice your support for Hal and Marty and express your concern for the reasoning behind this seemingly arbitrary decision.

Please call them and feel free to share this with anyone else who might be willing to call.

Here are the people to call:

*Dan Boyle (212) 838-1558

daniel_a_boyle@hilton.com

Brian Kellaher (202) 393-1000*
-------------------------------

*Below more information from their website:

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comments or questions about our hotels, Hilton HHonors®, or our Web site.

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2006-04-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

Fucking Aye!

Sometimes there's just nothing else you can add to what's been said except to say "Fucking Aye!" This post by Kimberley is one of those times.

2006-04-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Who are the Terrorists we are supposed to be killing?

War is about killing the enemy. As Patton pointed out, a soldier in war is not supposed to die for his country, he's supposed to make the other poor bastard die for HIS. In the so-called War On Terror, therefore, it is our patriotic duty to kill or apprehend the terrorists that threaten our country. The problem is, the terrorists aren't who most people think they are.

Angel of Mercy eloquently points out here and here, that there isn't really a war on terror against the muslims and there never was. Just the other day We got that hard evidence here to back that up.

But there IS a War on Terror going on right now. It's just that the terrorists aren't who most people think they are and we aren't fighting the right people if we want to stop terrorism, as you'll see on the flip side.

As AOM points out, the Sham War On Terror began with Ronald Reagan in the 80's.

The War on Terror™, Chomsky notes, is not a spanking new, turn-of-the-milleniumm invention, cooked up in secret by Beelzebub Cheney and his band of subservient demons. No, it was first declared at the very outset of the ruinous administration of Ronald Ray-Gun. Amongst flimsy allegations of Soviet "state-sponsored terrorism" along with dangerous strategic proximity to US borders, ol' Ronnie declared a state of national emergency because "the policies and actions of the government of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the...United States." The degree of fear-mongering, absurdity and deceit in that one statement alone set a whole new standard. (Which has since been surpassed in hearts and spades...but he gets an A+ for effort. In truth, Nicaragua is somewhat smaller than North Carolina--with a mountainous central highlands--and had, at the time, about half its population. "Extraordinary threat." Have I got a bridge for you..!)

Bad Actor and his Secretary of State, George Schultz, maintained a steady stream of inflammatory rhetoric, claiming repeatedly that the war against international terrorism would form the core of their foreign policy as, indeed it turned out to do. (One of the ways they achieved this was by training and funding an extraordinary terrorist network which carried out massive atrocities in many countries; I'm referring to the Mujahedeen which became alQuaida...you may have heard of them.) The campaign against Nicaragua was waged from within--by sending money and munitions to the Contra terrorist army--and from without, by mining harbors and blowing fuel dumps to Kingdom come. This campaign left tens of thousands dead which is more of the population, in per capita terms, than the number of Americans killed in the Civil War and all wars of the 20th century COMBINED. Think about that. Official orders, which emanated from the White House, were given to attack "soft" or civilian, targets. You know, like markets, public utilities...and hospitals. As a result of this barbaric and multi-pronged assault, the country is ruined perhaps beyond recovery and it remains to this day, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Nicaragua's response was not to return violence for violence, but rather appeal to the World Court. They prepared and presented their case and the Court issued a summary judgement condemning US terrorism against what had been essentially a peaceful, plentiful sovereign nation and demanding an immediate cessation of military action and a payment of reparations. The US did nothing, not even acknowledge the decision. Nicaragua then approached the Security Council of the United Nations where a binding resolution to uphold international law was brought to the floor. The US vetoed it, along with Israel...and the war against Nicaragua was escalated. To this day, America remains the only nation on the planet to have been convicted of international terrorism by the World Court.

You get all that? A Republican President was found guilty of terrorism all the while claiming tiny little Nicaragua was the evil terrorists. Boy, what an excellent formula for gross miscarriage of justice they'd conceived of.

Have they continued to use this formula for their own ends? Look at post 9-11. Or as AOM says:

The shuck and jive our blighted administration has been handing the electorate ever since we invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001 has been "much ado;" flash and distraction and misdirection so we don't notice how much cash they're stealing and how our civil liberties are being spirited away from us. These rotters have squandered American blood and treasure for no purpose other than to secure physical control over petroleum reserves and critical pipelines for their delivery. Just ask yourself: Where's Usama Bin Laden RIGHT NOW..?

The truth is plainly before our faces. Since the fear of 9-11, Bush has tossed the Constitution in the toilet. He holds people in jail indefinately without charges by simply calling them "enemy combatants". The Patriot Act wipes away our political freedoms in exchange for "security" (ie, safety from sudden death due to terrorist attack). Yet, if we are so keen to keep our country secure, then why did this happen outside a nuclear power plant:

State police said the men drove up to the Beaver Valley Power Station in a tractor-trailer on Tuesday night to pick up two large containers of tools for a contractor for whom they worked. Security guards stopped the men for a routine inspection, but they drove away, police said.

The guards became suspicious and called police, who pulled the truck over about a mile from the plant. A state trooper got a warrant to search the vehicle and found a duffel bag, which he said contained $504,230 in mostly small bills.

The driver denied knowing anything about the money or who gave it to him, so the trooper seized it, police said.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Task Force responded to the situation in conjunction with state police, but he said they don't think terrorism is involved. He would not give any other details.

The men, who are from Houston, said they picked up the bag in Chicago and had no knowledge of its contents, according to police.

Investigators think the cash may have a drug connection. A police dog picked up the scent of drugs in the sleeper cab of the truck where the bag was found, police said.

Both men were detained and later released. No charges have been filed.

The men were released? Why? Who were they? Well the post-gazette is a bit more enlightening:

Police broadcast a description of the truck and Sgt. Davis pulled it over after spotting it on Route 168 south, near the Shippingport Bridge. He said the truckers were polite, but the passenger had no identification and said it had been stolen from the truck the night before.

"Your ID is stolen but not that bag of cash? Red flags were popping up all over," Sgt. Davis said.

So let's get this straight: A guy with no ID comes up to a nuclear plant with a duffel bag of half a million dollars and the police let him go because "they hadn't broken any laws." But regular citizens like you and I can be held indefinately, without charges, simply because the government wants to? And we are supposed to believe there really IS a War on Terror? Well alright then, just who are these supposed terrorists?

Let's take a look at the official military definition of terrorism:

It is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to obtain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coersion or the instilling of fear.

On 9-11, what political or religious ideological goal was acheived? Or should I ask who's ideological and religious political goals were obtained? Not Al Queda's.

Or to put it another way: Since 9-11, WHO has been stripped of their rights through intimidation, coersion and the instilling of fear? That's right, you and I.

So who's been terrorizing whom? Just who are the terrorists we are supposed to be killing?

2006-04-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

It's not Big Government the right distrusts.

Greenwald points out something very interesting about the right. They claim to distrust Big Government - at least, that's their excuse for backing legislation that reduces government oversite of Big Business - but in fact, they trust Big Government implicitly. As he points out:

As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.

Why is this? Simple. Right wingers, as usual, are LYING when they say they distrust Big Government. They don't and the way they defend Bush proves it. They distrust LIBERAL Government. Big Republican Government is just fine by them.

2006-03-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Can the right ever admit they were wrong?

Somehow I doubt it, but Susan G definately makes the case that it's time they did.

2006-03-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

Standing Down on 9-11: FBI obstruction and NORAD inaction

As we are coming to find out elsewhere our government bent over backwards to block FBI agents from raising the alarm prior to 9-11.

What most people don't realize is that we not only blocked FBI agents from raising an alarm, but as the following timeline to 9-11 will make clear, NORAD actually stood down on the day of the attack, going out of its way to allow the attacks to proceed unhindered.

I originally wrote this about three years ago. At the time, all the links worked and corroborated my timeline. The timeline quickly spread throughout the internet and even was emailed to me from my sister who had no idea I'd written it!

Within a couple months, many of the links started going down. These links were up for years and suddenly they went down all about the same time.

Anyways, here's the timeline for 9-11. Make of it what you will. I believe any rational person will be left wondering.

Timeline to 9-11

From the PNAC, Sept. 2000:

"...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catatstrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor."

Timeline to 9-11:

July 26, 2001 Ashcroft stops flying on commercial planes. See also Fox News and San Francisco Chronicle

August 4-30, 2001 24 hour fighter cover over the Bush ranch while the president is on a 30 day vacation.

August 6 Bush receives a briefing entitled "Bin Laden to Strike in US" and then left to go fishing the rest of the day.

Sept. 3, 2001 Salmon Rushdie banned from taking internal flights in the US.

September 10, 2001 Bush spends the night in Sarasota, Florida with a SAM missile battery placed upon the roof of the resort he was staying at.

Sept. 10, 2001 Top Pentagon officials cancel their plane trips for the next day due to a urgent warning.

Sunrise, Sept. 11, 2001 NORAD is conducting Operation Vigilant Guardian, a war game. They are fully staffed and alert with senior staff manning stations across the US. Extra fighter planes are put on alert due to the operation. See also, Ottawa Citizen, Code One Magazine, Aviation Week and Space Technology, and ABC News twice.

8:00 am All four hijacked flights are scheduled to take off. Flight 93 is delayed on the runway for 40 minutes.
Warren Buffet is hosting a charity benefit inside the high security Offut military base. Attending are several executives from the World Trade Center. (You'll have to scroll down a ways to find the Buffet reference.) Originally I linked to the New York Times

8:13 Communications lost with Flight 11 and transponder turned off. Flight considered a "possible" hijacking.

8:14 Captain Ogonowski begins turning the talk back button off and on, allowing air traffic controllers to hear that something is amiss.

8:16 Flight 175 takes off late.

8:20 Flight 77 takes off 10 minutes late.

8:24 Ogonowski flicks on the talk back button and airtraffic controllers hear hijackers talking to the passengers and realize Flight 11 has indeed been hijacked.

8:31 The FAA notifies NORAD of the hijacking of Flight 11.

8:42 Flight 175's radio and transponder are cut off. NORAD's technicians are now linked to Bostons flight control tower so they learn this the same time Boston does.
Flight 93 finally takes off.

8:43 Flight 175's transponder comes back on but with a changed signal not designated to any plane anywhere that day. Incredibly, this allows the flight controllers to track Flight 175 easily.

8:44 ELT from Flight 175 picked up signalling the flight has been hijacked.

8:45 New York traffic controllers finally informed of a problem with Flight 11

8:46 2 fighters scrambled at Otis airforce base. Flight 11 crashes into the WTC. 3 F16's are flying a training mission 207 miles from Washington. They are not recalled for another hour.

8:50 flight controllers lose radio contact with Flight 77. Again, since NORAD is now linked directly to the flight controllers, they learn this immediately.

approximately 8:50 two open telephone conference calls made between the FAA, NORAD, the Secret Service and several other government agencies. Cheney is heard speaking on these calls.

8:52 The 2 fighters take off from Otis airforce base. According to the flight leader, they were at "full blower all the way." That would be 1875 mph. They never intercept anything or play any part in the unfolding events. Even though they could easily intercept Flight 175.

8:55 a public announcement is broadcast in the South Tower saying the building is secure and people can return to their offices.

8:56 Flight 77, already far off course and not responding, turns off its transponder.

9:03 Flight 175 smashes into the South Tower. It is NOW, when all hell is breaking loose, that George W. Bush sits down with a class of 2nd graders and begins a 20 minute book reading. Card waits patiently for a pause in the reading to inform the president that america is under attack.

9:04 Calls come streaming in to NORAD. Air bases want to know what they can do. "The nation is under attack."-Col. Robert Marr
"Give me 10 minutes and I can give you hot guns"-Syracuse Air National Guard.
NORAD did not issue scramble orders to any of these Air bases until 10:01. George Bush reads The Pet Goat, page two.

9:05 This is the time that NORAD later claimed it was first notified of any hijackings even though
their technicians had linked in to Boston air control already!!!!
Card now informs Bush that "America is under attack."
Bush does not ask WHO is attacking the US. He does not ask what is being done. He does not ask anything at all nor does he give any orders. He says nothing.
The Secret Service does not hustle him away to Air Force One.

9:09 NORAD claims they ordered Langley AFB to battle stations.

9:16 FAA tells NORAD that Flight 93 has been hijacked. Incredibly, it will be 42 minutes before anyone sends any fighter planes in its direction! (although one General states that no planes were ever sent to intercept Flight 93 at all).

9:18 Bush finally leaves the schoolhouse, waiting until AFTER all reporters have left!

9:24 This is the time that NORAD later claimed it was first notified of Flight 77's hijacking. A claim it later retracted.

9:26 FAA orders a national ground stop, forbidding all military, commercial and law enforcement aircraft to take off.

9:27 Langley AFB ignores the FAA order and scrambles 3 fighters.

9:30 3 Fighters take off from Langley AFB. They can make it to the Pentagon in 7 minutes.

9:38 Flight 77 smashes into the Pentagon building. The 3 fighters from Langley have flown 24 miles from their AFB. That's an astounding 180mph. Well below their stall speed!!! Fortunately, the fighters hadn't stalled. Unfortunately, they were still so close to Langley because instead of being vectored towards Flight 77 they had been vectored to fly out over the Atlantic Ocean AWAY from the incoming plane!!!

9:45 passengers of Flight 93 call loved ones and inform them of a plan to try to retake the plane.

9:55 Bush finally gives the order to allow fighter pilots to shoot down US planes.

9:56 Still no fighter has intercepted Flight 93

9:57 "Let's roll."

3:00pm Bush joins Warren Buffet and several executives from the World Trade Center at Offut military base.

11:30 p.m., Bush wrote in his diary, "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today...."

(1)
CBS News 7/26/01:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml
AP 5/16/02:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52982,00.html
San Francisco Chronicle 6/03/02:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/03/hsorensen.DTL

(2)
Counterpunch 9/18/02:
http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney0918.html

(3)
New York Times 5/25/02:
http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivemar02/020525201.htm

(4)
London Times 9/27/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/londontimes092701.html

(5)
Sarasota Herald-Tribune 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/sarasotaheraldtribune091002.html

(6)
Newsweek 9/17/01:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp

(7)
Newhouse News, 1/25/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html
Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/ottawacitizen091102.html
Code One Magazine, 1/02:
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/2002/articles/jan_02/defense/
Aviation Week and Space Technology 6/03/02:
http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
ABC News 9/14/02:
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_1.html
ABC News 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html

(8)
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/AAL11Transcript.htm

(9)
MSNBC 9/15/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc091501.html
AP 8/12/02:
http://www.boston.com/news/daily/12/attacks_faa.htm

(10)
Christian Science Monitor 9/13/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/csmonitor091301.html
MSNBC, 9/15/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc091501.html

(11)
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
New York Times, 10/16/01 (C):
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/AAL11Transcript.htm

(12)
ABC News 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html
ABC News, 9/14/02:
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_1.html

(13)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://avstop.com/news/transcriptflight175.html
Newhouse News 1/25/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html

(14)
Newsday, 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newsday091002.html
Washington Post, 9/17/01]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=nation/specials/attacked&contentId=A41095-2001Sep16

(15)
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://avstop.com/news/transcriptflight175.html

(16)
USA Today, 9/3/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-02-choices-usat_x.htm
New York Times, 9/11/02:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html

(17)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology090902.html

(18)
New York Times 9/15/01:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nyt915.htm
NORAD 9/18/01
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm

(19)
FAA, 5/22/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/faa052203.html
UPI, 5/22/03 (B):
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030522-084337-7921r
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html
CNN, 9/4/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/cnn090402.html
ABC News, 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html

(20)
MSNBC, 9/23/01 (C):
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc092301c.html
Slate, 1/16/02:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2060825/
Dallas Morning News 9/16/01:
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/091601/ter_0916010027.shtml
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm

(21)
USA Today, 9/3/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-02-choices-usat_x.htm
New York Times, 9/11/02:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html

(22)
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
Boston Globe, 11/23/01:
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/planes_reconstruction.htm
New York Times, 10/16/01:
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/Wald1016.htm

(23)
Washington Times 10/7/02 and 10/08/02:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021007-85016651.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021008-21577384.htm
Daily Mail 9/8/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/dailymail090802.html
San Francisco Chronicle 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/sfchronicle091102.html

(24)
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html

(25)
New York Times, 9/16/01 (B):
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/nyt091601b.html
Telegraph, 12/16/01:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F16%2Fwbush16.xml
Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/albuquerquetribune091002.html
Washington Times, 10/8/02:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021008-21577384.htm

(26)
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html

(27)
Seattle Times, 9/16/01:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134342382_fighters16.html
CNN, 9/17/01:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.hijack.warning/

(28)
Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism - From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, p. 90
St. Petersburg Times 9/8/02:
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/08/911/The_drama_in_Sarasota.shtml

(29)
FAA 5/22/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/faa052203.html
AP, 8/19/02:
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/america_at_war/article/0,1426,MCA_945_1340414,00.html
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
New York Times, 9/15/01 (C):
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nyt915.htm

(30)
Time 9/14/01:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,174912,00.html
USA Today 8/13/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-08-12-clearskies_x.htm

(31)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/norad091801.html

(32)
NORAD Testimony 5/23/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/noradtestimony052303.html
Newsday, 9/23/01:
http://www.newsday.com/ny-uspent232380681sep23.story
NORAD, 9/18/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/norad091801.html

(33)
Washington Post 1/27/02:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

(34)
Washington Post 9/11/01:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/bush091101.htm
Salon, 9/11/01:
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/11/bush/print.html
CBS, 9/11/02:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/11/60II/main521718.shtml
San Francisco Business Times 2/1/01:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/02/04/story3.html

(35)
Washington Post 1/27/02:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

2006-03-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

This is how your tax dollars go to brainwashing our troops

This is off a list of what is and isn't allowable for our military to hear and read:

Wonkette - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion."

Bill O'Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK

Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."

Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK

ABC News "The Note" - OK

Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."

G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK

Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies."

Or as someone else pointed out: if you're a felon, drug addict or play with yourself, it's okay. If you're a liberal, forbidden.

Yeah, THAT'S what I want my democracy to be about. One Party, One Military, One Religion, you name it. Yeah, THAT'S what America was founded on.

Riiiight.

2006-03-06T01:17:00.000-08:00

Just had to share this with you.

I came across this in the Comments section of another blog.

As a foreign Born black its especially funny when people from all sides say theres no racism. In college one of my professors was so sure most minorities didn't face actual overt acts that he made us all write a paper on it.

Mine dealt with the difference between coming from a mostly Black society where all from the local skid row bum to the president were Black and learning at a young age that ones deficiencies or attributes were not tied up in ones skin color .

Then i came to America.Its more the little hurts that get to you. Its the sound of door locks snapping as you wait for a bus near a red light.Its the storeowner following you around the store.Its the clubs that become "members only" when you know all your co-workers go there and their not members.Its the two or three forms of ID you need to use a credit card. Its the cops stopping you as you take a walk one block from your house and asking you where your going because you've worked hard and moved into the "nice" part of town. Its people not getting into an elevator if you are the only one in it. Its women crossing the street at dusk if you approach them . Its the person clutching her purse tightly if she sees you. And yes its the NY cabbies making you late for that business meeting . But we adapt and we survive but it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt.Hell,Oprah couldn't get into some store a while back and shes a billionaire!!

There are worse acts that don't happen to most (guy dragged in Texas, Rodney King).But for me its the little cuts that last the longest.

His signature fit right in with the theme of my previous diary entry: A hungry man is an angry man.