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"Since all phenomena, is a product of one's own mind,
empty of meaning, like a magician's illusion,
having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection,
one might burst out in laughter."
- Longchenpa, 13th century Tibetan monk.
Howdy My Fellow 'Merikans, Happy 4th of July! The following article goes into some detail on just how we Americans lost some of our rights concerning free and open discourse of differing opinions. A free marketplace of ideas is the cornerstone of democracy. I believe this is one of the biggest issues facing us as a free society. Good ol' Ronald Reaguns, wish he stuck to selling soap. I personally don't listen to talk radio or much talk TV. I prefer to intake news and opinions by reading. There are millions of Americans that listen to talk radio daily. Since the end of the Fairness Doctrine in the mid 80's listeners have been getting nothing but right wing facist propaganda. A scene from a red state little town: "Ya know Mildred, that's right what Rush Limbaugh says, big government does take away all our rights and freedoms with all their fancy rules and regulations! I do miss the old name of our town though, has a much better ring to it than since that big multinational corporation renamed it "Toxic Sludgeville." Oh well doesn't matter too much since half the town was laid off after them corporate mergers. Well, I better git down to Walmart and start my shift." I am having fun here at the big fat idiots expense. Any way, a very good serious article to get some perspective on what has happened in the last 20 some years. Be careful with those firecrackers. Thanks, Dave
June 30, 2002
Commentary / Edward Monks: The end of fairness: Right-wing commentators have a virtual monopoly when it comes to talk radio programming By EDWARD MONKS For The Register-Guard
Recommend this story to others. ONCE UPON A TIME, in a country that now seems far away, radio and television broadcasters had an obligation to operate in the public interest. That generally accepted principle was reflected in a rule known as the Fairness Doctrine.
The rule, formally adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, required all broadcasters to devote a reasonable amount of time to the discussion of controversial matters of public interest. It further required broadcasters to air contrasting points of view regarding those matters. The Fairness Doctrine arose from the idea imbedded in the First Amendment that the wide dissemination of information from diverse and even antagonistic sources is essential to the public welfare and to a healthy democracy.
The FCC is mandated by federal law to grant broadcasting licenses in such a way that the airwaves are used in the "public convenience, interest or necessity." The U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine, expressing the view that the airwaves were a "public trust" and that "fairness" required that the public trust accurately reflect opposing views.
However, by 1987 the Fairness Doctrine was gone - repealed by the FCC, to which President Reagan had appointed the majority of commissioners.
That same year, Congress codified the doctrine in a bill that required the FCC to enforce it. President Reagan vetoed that bill, saying the Fairness Doctrine was "inconsistent with the tradition of independent journalism." Thus, the Fairness Doctrine came to an end both as a concept and a rule.
Talk radio shows how profoundly the FCC's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine has affected political discourse. In recent years almost all nationally syndicated political talk radio hosts on commercial stations have openly identified themselves as conservative, Republican, or both: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Michael Reagen, Bob Grant, Ken Hamblin, Pat Buchanan, Oliver North, Robert Dornan, Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et al. The spectrum of opinion on national political commercial talk radio shows ranges from extreme right wing to very extreme right wing - there is virtually nothing else.
On local stations, an occasional nonsyndicated moderate or liberal may sneak through the cracks, but there are relatively few such exceptions. This domination of the airwaves by a single political perspective clearly would not have been permissible under the Fairness Doctrine.
Eugene is fairly representative. There are two local commercial political talk and news radio stations: KUGN, owned by Cumulus Broadcasting, the country's second largest radio broadcasting company, and KPNW, owned by Clear Channel Communications, the largest such company.
KUGN's line-up has three highly partisan conservative Republicans - Lars Larson (who is regionally syndicated), Michael Savage and Michael Medved (both of whom are nationally syndicated), covering a nine-hour block each weekday from 1 p.m. until 10 p.m. Each host is unambiguous in his commitment to advancing the interests and policies of the Republican party, and unrelenting in his highly personalized denunciation of Democrats and virtually all Democratic Party policy initiatives. That's 45 hours a week.
For two hours each weekday morning, KUGN has just added nationally syndicated host Bill O'Reilly. Although he occasionally criticizes a Republican for something other than being insufficiently conservative, O'Reilly is clear in his basic conservative viewpoint. His columns are listed on the Townhall.com web site, created by the strongly conservative Heritage Foundation. That's 55 hours of political talk on KUGN each week by conservatives and Republicans. No KUGN air time is programmed for a Democratic or liberal political talk show host.
KPNW carries popular conservative Rush Limbaugh for three hours each weekday, and Michael Reagan, the conservative son of the former president, for two hours, for a total of 25 hours per week.
Thus, between the two stations, there are 80 hours per week, more than 4,000 hours per year, programmed for Republican and conservative hosts of political talk radio, with not so much as a second programmed for a Democratic or liberal perspective.
For anyone old enough to remember 15 years earlier when the Fairness Doctrine applied, it is a breathtakingly remarkable change - made even more remarkable by the fact that the hosts whose views are given this virtual monopoly of political expression spend a great deal of time talking about "the liberal media."
Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian society, where government commissars or party propaganda ministers enforce the acceptable view with threats of violence. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about it. Yet the almost complete right wing Republican domination of political talk radio in this country has been accomplished without guns or gulags. Let's see how it happened.
As late as 1974, the FCC was still reporting that "we regard strict adherence to the Fairness Doctrine as the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest - the sine qua non for grant for renewal of license." That view had been ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court, which wrote In glowing terms in 1969 of the people's right to a free exchange of opposing views on the public airwaves:
"But the people as a whole retain their interest in free speech by radio and their collective right to have the medium function consistently with the ends and purposes of the First Amendment. It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount," the court said. "Congress need not stand idly by and permit those with licenses to ignore the problems which beset the people or to exclude from the airwaves anything but their own views of fundamental questions."
Through 1980, the FCC, the majority in Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court all supported the Fairness Doctrine. It was the efforts of an interesting collection of conservative Republicans (with some assistance from liberals such Sen. William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat, and well-respected journalists such as Fred Friendly) that came together to quickly kill it.
The position of the FCC dramatically changed when President Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as chairman in 1981. Fowler was a lawyer who had worked on Reagan's campaign, and who specialized in representing broadcasters. Before his nomination, which was well received by the broadcast industry, Fowler had been a critic of the Fairness Doctrine. As FCC chairman, Fowler made clear his opinion that "the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants." He quickly put in motion of series of events leading to two court cases that eased the way for repeal of the Fairness Doctrine six years later.
At almost the same time, Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who became chairman of the Commerce Committee when Republicans took control of the Senate in 1981, began holding hearings designed to produce "evidence" that the Fairness Doctrine did not function as intended.
Packwood also established the Freedom of Expression Foundation, described by its president, Craig Smith, long associated with Republican causes, as a "foundation which would coordinate the repeal effort using non-public funds, and which could provide lobbyists, editorialists and other opinion leaders with needed arguments and evidence."
Major contributors to the foundation included the major broadcast networks, as well as Philip Morris, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T and TimesMirror.
Packwood and the foundation argued that the Fairness Doctrine chilled or limited speech because broadcasters became reluctant to carry opinion-oriented broadcasts out of fear that many organizations or individuals would demand the opportunity to respond. The argument, which appealed to some liberals such as Proxmire, thus held that the doctrine, in practice, decreased the diversity of opinion expressed on public airwaves.
In 1985, the FCC formally adopted the views advanced by Packwood and the foundation, issuing what was termed a "Fairness Report," which contained a "finding" that the Fairness Doctrine in actuality "inhibited" broadcasters and that it "disserves the interest of the public in obtaining access to diverse viewpoints." Congress, and much of the rest of the country, remained unconvinced.
Shortly thereafter, in a 2-1 decision in 1986, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a new FCC rule refusing to apply the Fairness Doctrine to teletext (the language appearing at the bottom of a television screen). The two-judge majority decided that Congress had not made the Fairness Doctrine a binding statutory obligation despite statutory language supporting that inference. The two judges were well-known conservatives Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork, each thereafter nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Reagan. Their ruling became the beginning of the end for the Fairness Doctrine.
The next year, 1987, in the case Meredith Corp. vs. FCC, the FCC set itself up to lose in such a way as to make repeal of the Fairness Doctrine as easy as possible. The opinion of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals took note of the commission's intention to undercut the Fairness Doctrine:
"Here, however, the Commission itself has already largely undermined the legitimacy of its own rule. The FCC has issued a formal report that eviscerates the rationale for its regulations. The agency has deliberately cast grave legal doubt on the fairness doctrine. ..."
The court was essentially compelled to send the case back to the FCC for further proceedings, and the commission used that opportunity to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. Although there have been several congressional attempts to revive the doctrine, Reagan's veto and the stated opposition of his successor, George Bush, were successful in preventing that.
It is difficult to underestimate the consequences of repeal of the Fairness Doctrine on the American political system. In 1994, when Republicans gained majorities in both chambers of Congress, Newt Gingrich, soon to become speaker of the House, described the voting as "the first talk radio election."
Although it is not susceptible to direct proof, it seems clear to me that if in communities throughout the United States Al Gore had been the beneficiary of thousands of hours of supportive talk show commentary and George W. Bush the victim of thousands of hours of relentless personal and policy attack, the vote would have been such that not even the U.S. Supreme Court could have made Bush president.
Broadcasters' choice to present conservative views is not purely about attracting the largest number of listeners. Broadcasters and their national advertisers tend to be wealthy corporations and entities, operated and owned by wealthy individuals. Virtually all national talk show hosts advocate a reduction or elimination of taxes affecting the wealthy. They vigorously argue for a reduction in income taxes, abolition of the estate tax and reduction or elimination of the capital gains tax - positions directly consistent with the financial interests of broadcasters and advertisers.
Imagine a popular liberal host who argued for a more steeply graduated income tax, an increase in the tax rate for the largest estates and an increase in the capital gains tax rate.
Broadcasters and advertisers have no interest in such a host, no matter how large the audience, because of the host's ability to influence the political climate in a way that broadcasters and advertisers ultimately find to be economically unfavorable.
Hence we wind up with a distortion of a true market system in which only conservatives compete for audience share. Whether the theory is that listeners listen to hear views they agree with, or views they disagree with, in a purely market driven arena, broadcasters would currently be scrambling to find liberal or progressive talk show hosts. They are not.
The beneficiaries of the talk show monopoly are not content. Immediately after he became House speaker, Newt Gingrich led the Republican battle to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which, free of some commercial considerations, had broadcast a wider spectrum of opinion. Although not fully successful, that campaign led to a decrease in federal funding for the CPB, a greater reliance on corporate "sponsors" and a drift toward programming acceptable to conservatives.
No reasonable person can claim that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine has led to a wider diversity of views - to a "warming" of speech, as the FCC, the Freedom of Expression Foundation and others had predicted.
Perhaps it should not be a surprise that the acts of President Reagan, Reagan's FCC appointments, Sen. Packwood, Justice Scalia and failed Supreme Court nominee Bork and the first President Bush should combine to ultimately produce, in my town, a 4,000 hour to zero yearly advantage for Republican propaganda over the Democratic opposition.Nor should we overlook the Orwellian irony that the efforts of an organization calling itself the Freedom of Expression Foundation helped result in so limited a range of public expression of views.
Perhaps the current president, aware that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine had the opposite effect of what was publicly predicted by his predecessors and aware that a monopoly on public expression is inconsistent with a democratic tradition, will direct his administration to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. What about that cold day in hell?
Edward Monks is a Eugene attorney.
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Copyright © 2002 The Register-Guard
Howdy Mystery, Suspense, Thriller Fans, This is quite a story. If any of you are interested in how to launder huge sums of money when the penalty for getting caught is death, than look no further. This lesson brought to you by the Bush family where GW Bush's granddaddy Prescott Bush laundered Nazi industrial fortunes before, during and after WW II. What!? I am accusing members of the Bush family of treason? Again!? Rockefellers and Allen Dulles too. This article has plenty of references and uses real named sources. Not the typical "an un-named source in the Defense Department, disguised as a cockroach that is hiding under a rock says-" kind of reference. This is a well written account that is a page turner. Enjoy. Thanks, Dave
Rense.com
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How The Bush Family Made Its Fortune From The Nazis The Dutch Connection
By Attorney John Loftus ©. 2000-2002 John Loftus 7-2-2
John Loftus, is a former U.S. Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes prosecutor, the President of the Florida Holocaust Museum and the highly respected author of numerous books on the CIA-Nazi connection including The Belarus Secret and The Secret War Against the Jews, both of which have extensive material on the Bush-Rockefeller-Nazi connection. For the Bush family, it is a lingering nightmare. For their Nazi clients, the Dutch connection was the mother of all money laundering schemes. From 1945 until 1949, one of the lengthiest and, it now appears, most futile interrogations of a Nazi war crimes suspect began in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Multibillionaire steel magnate Fritz Thyssen-the man whose steel combine was the cold heart of the Nazi war machine-talked and talked and talked to a joint US-UK interrogation team. For four long years, successive teams of inquisitors tried to break Thyssen's simple claim to possess neither foreign bank accounts nor interests in foreign corporations, no assets that might lead to the missing billions in assets of the Third Reich. The inquisitors failed utterly. Why? Because what the wily Thyssen deposed was, in a sense, true. What the Allied investigators never understood was that they were not asking Thyssen the right question. Thyssen did not need any foreign bank accounts because his family secretly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to transfer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was transfer the ownership documents - stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts--from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Holland to his American friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Herbert Walkker. Thyssen's partners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future President of the United States. The allied investigators underestimated Thyssen's reach, his connections, his motives, and his means. The web of financial entities Thyssen helped create in the 1920's remained a mystery for the rest of the twentieth century, an almost perfectly hidden underground sewer pipeline for moving dirty money, money that bankrolled the post-war fortunes not only of the Thyssen industrial empire...but the Bush family as well. It was a secret Fritz Thyssen would take to his grave. It was a secret that would lead former US intelligence agent William Gowen, now pushing 80, to the very doorstep of the Dutch royal family. The Gowens are no strangers to controversy or nobility. His father was one of President Roosevelt's diplomatic emissaries to Pope Pius XII, leading a futile attempt to persuade the Vatican to denounce Hitler's treatment of Jews. It was his son, William Gowen, who served in Rome after World War II as a Nazi hunter and investigator with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. It was Agent Gowen who first discovered the secret Vatican Ratline for smuggling Nazis in 1949. It was also the same William Gowen who began to uncover the secret Dutch pipeline for smuggling Nazi money in 1999. A half-century earlier, Fritz Thyssen was telling the allied investigators that he had no interest in foreign companies, that Hitler had turned on him and seized most of his property. His remaining assets were mostly in the Russian Occupied Zone of Germany (which he knew were a write-off anyway). His distant (and disliked) relatives in neutral nations like Holland were the actual owners of a substantial percentage of the remaining German industrial base. As innocent victims of the Third Reich, they were lobbying the allied occupation governments in Germany, demanding restitution of the property that had been seized from them by the Nazis. Under the rules of the Allied occupation of Germany, all property owned by citizens of a neutral nation which had been seized by the Nazis had to be returned to the neutral citizens upon proper presentation of documents showing proof of ownership. Suddenly, all sorts of neutral parties, particularly in Holland, were claiming ownership of various pieces of the Thyssen empire. In his cell, Fritz Thyssen just smiled and waited to be released from prison while members of the Dutch royal family and the Dutch intelligence service reassembled his pre-war holdings for him. The British and American interrogators may have gravely underestimated Thyssen but they nonetheless knew they were being lied to. Their suspicions focused on one Dutch Bank in particular, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, in Rotterdam. This bank did a lot of business with the Thyssens over the years. In 1923, as a favor to him, the Rotterdam bank loaned the money to build the very first Nazi party headquarters in Munich. But somehow the allied investigations kept going nowhere, the intelligence leads all seemed to dry up. If the investigators realized that the US intelligence chief in postwar Germany, Allen Dulles, was also the Rotterdam bank's lawyer, they might have asked some very interesting questions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles' client as well. Nor did they ever realize that it was Allen Dulles's other client, Baron Kurt Von Schroeder who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rotterdam Bank was at the heart of Dulles' cloaking scheme, and he guarded its secrets jealously. Several decades after the war, investigative reporter Paul Manning, Edward R. Murrow's colleague, stumbled across the Thyssen interrogations in the US National Archives. Manning intended to write a book about Nazi money laundering. Manning's manuscript was a dagger at Allen Dulles' throat: his book specifically mentioned the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart by name, albeit in passing. Dulles volunteered to help the unsuspecting Manning with his manuscript, and sent him on a wild goose chase, searching for Martin Bormann in South America. Without knowing that he had been deliberately sidetracked, Manning wrote a forward to his book personally thanking Allen Dulles for his "assurance that I was "on the right track, and should keep going.'"Dulles sent Manning and his manuscript off into the swamps of obscurity. The same "search for Martin Bormann"scam was also used to successfully discredit Ladislas Farago, another American journalist probing too far into the laundering of Nazi money. American investigators had to be sent anywhere but Holland.. And so the Dutch connection remained unexplored until 1994 when I published the book "The Secret War Against the Jews."As a matter of historical curiosity, I mentioned that Fritz Thyssen (and indirectly, the Nazi Party) had obtained their early financing from Brown Brothers Harriman, and its affiliate, the Union Banking Corporation. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family's holding company for a number of other entities, including the "Holland American Trading Company." It was a matter of public record that the Bush holdings were seized by the US government after the Nazis overran Holland. In 1951, the Bush's reclaimed Union Bank from the US Alien Property Custodian, along with their "neutral" Dutch assets. I did not realize it, but I had stumbled across a very large piece of the missing Dutch connection. Bush's ownership of the Holland-American investment company was the missing link to Manning's earlier research in the Thyssen investigative files. In 1981, Manning had written: "Thyssen's first step in a long dance of tax and currency frauds began [in the late 1930's] when he disposed of his shares in the Dutch Hollandische-Amerikanische Investment Corporation to be credited to the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, N.V., Rotterdam, the bank founded in 1916 by August Thyssen Senior." In this one obscure paragraph, in a little known book, Manning had unwittingly documented two intriguing points: 1) The Bush's Union Bank had apparently bought the same corporate stock that the Thyssens were selling as part of their Nazi money laundering, and 2) the Rotterdam Bank, far from being a neutral Dutch institution, was founded by Fritz Thyssen's father. In hindsight, Manning and I had uncovered different ends of the Dutch connection. After reading the excerpt in my book about the Bush's ownership of the Holland-American trading Company, retired US intelligence agent William Gowen began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Mr. Gowen knew every c orner of Europe from his days as a diplomat's son, an American intelligence agent, and a newspaperman. William Gowen deserves sole credit for uncovering the mystery of how the Nazi industrialists hid their money from the Allies at the end of World War II. In 1999, Mr. Gowen traveled to Europe, at his own expense, to meet a former member of Dutch intelligence who had detailed inside information about the Rotterdam bank. The scrupulous Gowen took a written statement and then had his source read and correct it for error. Here, in summary form, is how the Nazis hid their money in America. After World War I, August Thyssen had been badly burned by the loss of assets under the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty. He was determined that it would never happen again. One of his sons would join the Nazis; the other would be neutral. No matter who won the next war, the Thyssen family would survive with their industrial empire intact. Fritz Thyssen joined the Nazis in 1923; his younger brother married into Hungarian nobility and changed his name to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. The Baron later claimed Hungarian as well as Dutch citizenship. In public, he pretended to detest his Nazi brother, but in private they met at secret board meetings in Germany to coordinate their operations. If one brother were threatened with loss of property, he would transfer his holdings to the other. To aid his sons in their shell game, August Thyssen had established three different banks during the 1920's -- The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, and the Union Banking Corporation in NNew York City. To protect their corporate holdings, all the brothers had to do was move the corporate paperwork from one bank to the other. This they did with some regularity. When Fritz Thyssen "sold" the Holland-American Trading Company for a tax loss, the Union Banking Corporation in New York bought the stock. Similarly, the Bush family invested the disguised Nazi profits in American steel and manufacturing corporations that became part of the secret Thyssen empire. When the Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, they investigated the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam. Fritz Thyssen was suspected by Hitler's auditors of being a tax fraud and of illegally transferring his wealth outside the Third Reich. The Nazi auditors were right: Thyssen felt that Hitler's economic policies would dilute his wealth through ruinous war inflation. He had been smuggling his war profits out through Holland. But the Rotterdam vaults were empty of clues to where the money had gone. The Nazis did not know that all of the documents evidencing secret Thyssen ownership had been quietly shipped back to the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, under the friendly supervision of Baron Kurt Von Schroeder. Thyssen spent the rest of the war under VIP house arrest. He had fooled Hitler, hidden his immense profits, and now it was time to fool the Americans with same shell game. As soon as Berlin fell to the allies, it was time to ship the documents back to Rotterdam so that the "neutral" bank could claim ownership under the friendly supervision of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intelligence chief in 1945 Berlin, was well placed to handle any troublesome investigations. Unfortunately, the August Thyssen Bank had been bombed during the war, and the documents were buried in the underground vaults beneath the rubble. Worse, the vaults lay in the Soviet Zone of Berlin. According to Gowen's source, Prince Bernhard commanded a unit of Dutch intelligence, which dug up the incriminating corporate papers in 1945 and brought them back to the "neutral" bank in Rotterdam. The pretext was that the Nazis had stolen the crown jewels of his wife, Princess Juliana, and the Russians gave the Dutch permission to dig up the vault and retrieve them. Operation Juliana was a Dutch fraud on the Allies who searched high and low for the missing pieces of the Thyssen fortune. In 1945, the former Dutch manager of the Rotterdam bank resumed control only to discover that he was sitting on a huge pile of hidden Nazi assets. In 1947, the manager threatened to inform Dutch authorities, and was immediately fired by the Thyssens. The somewhat naive bank manager then fled to New York City where he intended to talk to Union Bank director Prescott Bush. As Gowen's Dutch source recalled, the manager intended "to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Heinrich and the Rotterdam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen interests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and confiscated as German enemy property. "The manager's body was found in New York two weeks later. Similarly, in 1996 a Dutch journalist Eddy Roever went to London to interview the Baron, who was neighbors with Margaret Thatcher. Roever's body was discovered two days later. Perhaps, Gowen remarked dryly, it was only a coincidence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks immediately after trying to uncover the truth about the Thyssens. Neither Gowen nor his Dutch source knew about the corroborating evidence in the Alien Property Custodian archives or in the OMGUS archives. Together, the two separate sets of US files overlap each other and directly corroborate Gowen's source. The first set of archives confirms absolutely that the Union Banking Corporation in New York was owned by the Rotterdam Bank. The second set (quoted by Manning) confirms that the Rotterdam Bank in turn was owned by the Thyssens. It is not surprising that these two American agencies never shared their Thyssen files. As the noted historian Burton Hersh documented: "The Alien Property Custodian, Leo Crowley, was on the payroll of the New York J. Henry Schroeder Bank where Foster and Allen Dulles both sat as board members. Foster arranged an appointment for himself as special legal counsel for the Alien Property Custodian while simultaneously representing [German] interests against the custodian." No wonder Allen Dulles had sent Paul Manning on a wild goose chase to South America. He was very close to uncovering the fact that the Bush's bank in New York City was secretly owned by the Nazis, before during and after WWII. Once Thyssen ownership of the Union Banking Corporation is proven, it makes out a prima facie case of treason against the Dulles and Bush families for giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. PART TWO The first key fact to be proven in any criminal case is that the Thyssen family secretly owned the Bush's Bank. Apart from Gowen's source, and the twin American files, a third set of corroboration comes from the Thyssen family themselves. In 1979, the present Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (Fritz Thyssen's nephew) prepared a written family history to be shared with his top management. A copy of this thirty-page tome entitled "The History of the Thyssen Family and Their Activities"was provided by Gowen's source. It contains the following Thyssen admissions: "Thus, at the beginning of World War II the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart had become the holding of my father's companies - a Dutch firm whose only shareholder was a Hungarian citizen..Prior to 1929, it held the shares of .the August Thyssen Bank, and also American subsidiaries and the Union Banking Corporation, New York.The shares of all the affiliates were [in 1945] with the August Thyssen Bank in the East Sector of Berlin, from where I was able to have them transferred into the West at the last moment" "After the war the Dutch government ordered an investigation into the status of the holding company and, pending the result, appointed a Dutch former general manager of my father who turned against our family.. In that same year, 1947, I returned to Germany for the first time after the war, disguised as a Dutch driver in military uniform, to establish contact with our German directors" "The situation of the Group gradually began to be resolved but it was not until 1955 that the German companies were freed from Allied control and subsequently disentangled. Fortunately, the companies in the group suffered little from dismantling. At last we were in a position to concentrate on purely economic problems -- the reconstruction and extension of the companies and the expansion of the organization." "The banking department of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, which also functioned as the Group's holding company, merged in 1970 with Nederlandse Credietbank N.V. which increased its capital. The Group received 25 percent.The Chase Manhattan Bank holds 31%. The name Thyssen-Bornemisza Group was selected for the new holding company." Thus the twin US Archives, Gowen's Dutch source, and the Thyssen family history all independently confirm that President Bush's father and grandfather served on the board of a bank that was secretly owned by the leading Nazi industrialists. The Bush connection to these American institutions is a matter of public record. What no one knew, until Gowen's brilliant research opened the door, was that the Thyssens were the secret employers of the Bush family. But what did the Bush family know about their Nazi connection and when did they know it? As senior managers of Brown Brothers Harriman, they had to have known that their American clients, such as the Rockefellers, were investing heavily in German corporations, including Thyssen's giant Vereinigte Stahlwerke. As noted historian Christopher Simpson repeatedly documents, it is a matter of public record that Brown Brother's investments in Nazi Germany took place under the Bush family stewardship. When war broke out was Prescott Bush stricken with a case of Waldheimers disease, a sudden amnesia about his Nazi past? Or did he really believe that our friendly Dutch allies owned the Union Banking Corporation and its parent bank in Rotterdam? It should be recalled that in January 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to "cloak" his accounts. But cloak from whom? Did he expect that happy little Holland was going to declare war on America? The cloaking operation only makes sense in anticipation of a possible war with Nazi Germany. If Union Bank was not the conduit for laundering the Rockefeller's Nazi investments back to America, then how could the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank end up owning 31% of the Thyssen group after the war? It should be noted that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest industrial conglomerate in Germany, and with a net worth of more than $50 billion dollars, one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp family, famous arms makers for Hitler, leaving the Thyssens as the undisputed champion survivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up money to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? The enormous sums of money deposited into the Union Bank prior to 1942 is the best evidence that Prescott Bush knowingly served as a money launderer for the Nazis. Remember that Union Banks' books and accounts were frozen by the U.S. Alien Property Custodian in 1942 and not released back to the Bush family until 1951. At that time, Union Bank shares representing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of industrial stocks and bonds were unblocked for distribution. Did the Bush family really believe that such enormous sums came from Dutch enterprises? One could sell tulip bulbs and wooden shoes for centuries and not achieve those sums. A fortune this size could only have come from the Thyssen profits made from rearming the Third Reich, and then hidden, first from the Nazi tax auditors, and then from the Allies. The Bushes knew perfectly well that Brown Brothers was the American money channel into Nazi Germany, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi money back to America from Holland. The Bushes had to have known how the secret money circuit worked because they were on the board of directors in both directions: Brown Brothers out, Union Bank in. Moreover, the size of their compensation is commensurate with their risk as Nazi money launderers. In 1951, Prescott Bush and his father in law each received one share of Union Bank stock, worth $750,000 each. One and a half million dollars was a lot of money in 1951. But then, from the Thyssen point of view, buying the Bushes was the best bargain of the war. The bottom line is harsh: It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920's, but giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush's bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed allied soldiers. As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen's coal mines used Jewish slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and historical questions to be answered about the Bush family's complicity. ___ First published September, 2000 This article is provided courtesy of Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz and Tetrahedron Publishing Group www.tetrahedron.org http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/bush_nazis.html
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Hi, I have been busy and not in a writing mood. I work at the Seattle Space Needle and I keep hearing threats about the next terror attack mentioning Seattle in the "chatter". I sent some things Dave forwarded me about right-wing politics and money laundering. When I am not doing a booked magic show, I work for tips at Seattle Center. A person working for tips sees the mood of people's pockets. It is grim. Greed has stolen about 60 billion dollars from people. I saw a bumper sticker last week that said "If God wanted us to vote he'd give us candidates." What is worse? Screwing an intern, or screwing the country? Magic Mike http://funandmagic.com/
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A man and his son were traveling to the bank one Saturday morning when they stopped at a corner. The little boy hearing a "Beep..Beep..Beep" and ask his dad where the sound was coming from.
His dad replied that the sound was comming from a near by dump truck that was backing up and that sound was to warn people behind it to get out of the way.
When they arrived at the bank the lines were long (as usual) and so they got into one of the lines behind a rather large lady.
All of a sudden another man's beeper started to go off and the little boy with fear in his eyes said - "Look out Dad - she's backing up!"
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<< The Rules -- This Time By Men
We always hear "the rules" from the female side. Now here are the rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note ... these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE!
1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us bitching about you leaving it down.
1. Birthdays, Valentines, and Anniversaries are not quests to see if we can find the perfect present yet again!
1. Sometimes we are not thinking about you. Live with it.
1. Sunday = sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Don't cut your hair. Ever. Long hair is always more attractive than short hair. One of the big reasons guys fear getting married is that married women always cut their hair, and by then you're stuck with her.
1 . Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. We don't remember dates. Mark birthdays and anniversaries on a calendar. Remind us frequently beforehand.
1. Most guys own three pairs of shoes - tops. What makes you think we'd be any good at choosing which pair, out of thirty, would look good with your dress?
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. A headache that last for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.
1. Check your oil! Please.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.
1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us. We refuse to answer.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.
1. Let us ogle. We are going to look anyway; it's genetic.
1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did not need directions, and neither do we.
1. The relationship is never going to be like it was the first two months we were going out. Get over it. And quit whining to your girlfriends.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. We are not mind readers and we never will be. Our lack of mind-reading ability is not proof of how little we care about you.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as navel lint, the shotgun formation, or monster trucks.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. Foreign films are best left to foreigners. (Unless it's Bruce Lee or some war flick where it doesn't really matter what the hell they're saying anyway.)
1. It is neither in your best interest or ours to take the quiz together. No, it doesn't matter which quiz.
1. BEER is as exciting for us as handbags are for you.
1. I am in shape. ROUND is a shape.
1. Thank you for reading this; Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight. But did you know we really don't mind that? It's like camping.
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Vote Republican: It's easier than thinking
Visualise a special prosecutor
It's not a War, it's a Con Job!
Imperialism: A way of life bombing for
Prosperity is boring: Vote GOP for graft, recession and war
If you can read this you are not the President
Another Bush another recession
Democracy was getting old anyway
The GOP: You're not invited
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -GW Bush 5-21-99
Bush and Sons, Inc. (formerly the United States of America)
GW Bush: Born on third base, thought he hit a triple
Some people are just too stupid to be President
GW Bush: How dumb is too dumb?
The Pretzel lives!
GW Bush: Not a crackhead anymore!
GW Bush: Born with a silver spoon up his nose
Elect Bush: Because you have waited for armegeddon long enough
Bush is a punk ass chump
(((((((((((((((((((((( PLANET PROCTOR 2002-18 - http://www.planetproctor.com
"The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative nature of the whole world." - FDR, 1945
FUHGGEDABOUDIT The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you try to recall the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraquay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion, where you will join those who have forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. ("Forgetfulness" by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins)
"On June 25, 1951, the first U.S. commercial color TV program was broadcast to 4 cities; but no one had a color TV, so nobody saw it." - Phil's Phunny Phacts
KUSHNER COOKS! Excerpts from playwright Tony Kushner's graduation address at Vassar, class of 2002: "Hasn't this past year, your senior year, hasn't it been the worst year ever in the history of humankind? Maybe it's the beginning of the end of the world, but please, you should not feel personally responsible. Blame someone else, blame your parents, why not? They are blaming your grandparents. Or blame the Bush Administration. That's what I do. If that gets old, blame Ralph Nader. And Happy Graduation! "What to say to the graduating class of 2002, to you vibrant young people leaving college and entering the great world beyond just in time to be trampled flat by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? 'Duck!' might be a good place to start. "Stockpile canned goods and huge vats of water. Beyond that, what to say? You wanted to hear from a playwright, at least some of you did, at least someone at Vassar did, unless a mistake has been made and you actually meant to invite Tony Kushner, the British Holocaust historian... "Am I a symptom of your despair, and if I am, why couldn't you have gone for someone a bit more techno-savvy, someone from the movies, Spiderman for instance?...Or do you want everyone to think you're gay? Is that it? Is it because I'm gay? Did you hope to shock your grandparents? But you know, since the Bush Administration began issuing those warnings every ten minutes that more terror is on its way and that we apparently can't do Thing One about it, I have been feeling incredibly uninterested in sex... "It's time to stop talking. Oh, it always goes like this. I start out not knowing what to say, and before I know it I can't shut up. So commence already!...I am certain you are aflame.Hurry hurry hurry, now now now, damn the critics and the bad reviews: "The world is waiting for you! Organize. Speak the truth."
"The [Pledge of Allegiance] decision...generated an emotional debate, especially in a country that puts 'In God We Trust' on the item most sacred in its philosophy -- the dollar." - Madrid newspaper article
AIN'T IT THE TRUTH? L.A. audio producer Tony Palermo writes in a recent Radiodrama Digest: "Years ago, a friend explained to me that there are two types of license available to you. One is a hunting license. It permits you to go into the woods and blow the brains out of some poor animal. "The other kind of license is 'poetic license.' It permits you to go into the real world and blow the brains out of the truth."
"I have no problem blowing up Baltimore in a movie if it's done with joy and style." - Baltimore Director John Waters on "The Sum of All Fears"
UNDER THE RADAR An Australian saloon patron was awarded 60,000 dollars ($33,600 American) for breaking his arm in a 1997 fall onto a Sydney barroom floor made greasy by a patron wearing pork chops as shoes, according to a Times Wire report.Ross Lucock had won the meat in a bar raffle and strapped the porkers on after being told he would not be served more alcohol "because he was barefoot." "Babes at the Bowl" will celebrate a $22 million buck renewal of the ladies' restrooms at the Santa Barbara Bowl on July 13th. with drinks such as "The Royal Flush" and "The Tidy Bowl". Tickets are $50 @ (805) 560-0895. The Ladies Only blast will be held in the 45-stall, 1,700-square-foot facility. Publicist and FST pal Mo McFadden quotes executive director Sam Scranton as saying, "Now we can serve more beer." And speaking of babes, Russian-born Oxana Fedorova - whose school records declared her:"Physically in good condition. Knows the rules for maintaining and firing weapons. Knows how to keep state secrets."-- was just crowned Miss Universe; fictitious interactive cyber-star Lara Croft was signed to a multi-million-dollar (on paper) contract by the Creative Artists Agency; and Iranian police have expelled that little doll, Barbie, from their country, proclaiming her a "Trojan Horse." (Are they confused over there, or what?) Oh - and a "Monocle Lewinsky!" is available @ www.eyeglass.com
"Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle and Jack Lemmon were at one time ape-masked members of Ernie Kovaks' Nairobi Trio." - Phil's Phunny Phacts
LIMB, OH, AND SIP? Paintings of George Washington created in the past showed him standing behind a desk with an arm behind his back, or with both legs and arms visible. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were represented. Hence, the expression: "Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg." And early politicians sent their assistants to local taverns, pubs and bars to "go sip some ale" and report back on people's political concerns. The two words "go sip" were eventually combined when referring to local opinions and thus, we have the term -- "gossip."
"The EuroPacific Growth Fund Report describes Vivendi Universal as a 'multimedia giant that owns Universal Studios, pay-TV's CANAL+, the world's largest recorded music company (UMG), and owns major European interests in telecommunications, water treatment and -- waste management.'" - Phil's Phunny Phacts
THE SOUND OF SILENCE Classmate John Lahr wrote a brilliant New Yorker article on Richard Rodgers recently in which he quotes him as saying: "People have a need for melody just as they need food or personal contact. When I finish a tune, I'm high...You own the world. You own yourself. You're the boy in the bubble." But he was less ecstatic about his longtime collaboration with lyricist Lorenz Hart and once confided to Diahann Carroll, the star of "No Strings" (music and lyrics by Rodgers), "You just can't imagine how wonderful it feels to have written this score and not have to search all over the globe for that drunken little fag." Hart was obviously a very talented but somewhat lost soul; and when he died at only 43, his last words were -- "What have I lived for?" But then Rodgers met Hammerstein, and "in nine musicals over nearly twenty years," writes Lahr, "the pair revolutionized the nature of musical storytelling." Rodgers adds, "We had written 'Oklahoma!' and every time one of us blew his nose, it was a symphony." "Although his music is still with us," John reveals, "the remains of the great man himself have disappeared," and even his own daughters have not turned up a grave or an urn, let alone a memorial to his art. I've had the supreme pleasure of being mentored by Richard Rodgers for "The Sound of Music" (when I was "17 going on 18") and of being John Lahr's friend for many years. Cheers to them both!
"The rich? A lot of crumbs held together by their own dough." - Lorenz Hart
HE'S A POET AND HE KNEW IT Estelle Shirbon wrote in Reuters that Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall, who started to write at 47 when a "muse" appeared in his flat ("I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears, 'Write! Write!'") was so bad "he was often asked to perform just so the audience could laugh at him." But now, Dundee, a city dedicated to obscure memorials, and recently unveiling two eight-foot bronze statues of comic strips characters Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx, has recognized the late McGonagall as "absolutely dedicated to the art of awful poetry." Billy, who died in 1902, was the victim of many hoaxes, including a note from "King Theebaw of Burmah" granting him the title of "Knight of the White Elephant", which he used for the rest of his life; but the highlight of his career came when he showed up at Queen Victoria's residence at Balmoral Castle convinced he was to be knighted, only to be turned away and ordered never to return. "Affection for the self-styled tragedian of the Victorian age has grown since his demise," writes Estelle, "culminating in the plan to engrave the first two verses of 'The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay' in the ground near the bridge: 'Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky..."
"Although I am too small a man to make propositions which might affect a reform in this dreadful state of things, nevertheless I may as well sing my fool's song to the end, and say...what could and should be done." - Martin Luther, 1520 COME ON-A MY HOUSE... Said God, after 74 years, to crooner Rosemary Clooney, who according to director Mike Nichols sang "like Spencer Tracey acts." According to the showbiz obit in the L.A. Times, she released her first solo disk in 1946 -"I'm Sorry I Didn't Say I'm Sorry When I Made You Cry Last Night." She did a lot of crying "backstage" during her long career but laughed all the way to the bank when she reluctantly gave voice to "Come On-a My House", a quasi-Armenian song in a pseudo-Italian accent written by author William Saroyan and Ross "David Seville" Bagdasarian - creator of the singing Chipmunks. Other highlights are "Tenderly", "Me and My Teddy Bear", "Botch-a-me", "Too Old To Cut The Mustard", (with Marlene Dietrich!), "This Ole House", "Mambo Italiano" and the" Night Before Christmas" song -- with Gene Autry. She was at Robert Kennedy's murder at the Ambassador and soon after suffered a mental blow-out herself, being institutionalized for many years; but she made a miraculous comeback, re-achieving a measure of her past success, "But," she said, "people ask me to sing 'Doggie in the Window', which wasn't even my song. It was Patti Page's. I just hope she gets asked plenty of times to sing 'Come On-a My House.'"
"Either Do Something Very Beautiful or Very Useful." - Motto from Bell Lab
ONE INTERNET, UNDER GOD... "Rolling Laughter" July 14th Benefit: http://www.wyngs.org Big Brother sez get anyone's driver's license: http://www.license.shorturl.com/ Cat Fights!!! (Thanks to April Winchell): http://www.catboxing.com/ And for everything evil: http://www.villainsupply.com/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay, from Chris Meyer
"HAVE A HAPPY FARCE IF YOU LIE!" and LISTEN to 7 minutes with the Firesign, July 4th, on NPR's "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED"!!
++++++++++++(JULY 4, 2002)++++++++++ * FIRESIGN: http://www.firesigntheatre.com * FIREZINE: http://www.firezine.net * FIRESIGN STUFF: http://www.lodestone-media.com * RARE RE-RELEASES: http://www.laugh.com * FUNNY TIMES: http://www.funnytimes.com
I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, If you don't think that Bush and the family buddies from the Ole Boys Club at Yale's Bonesmen Society are stealing from you every day you are blind. They not only steal your stocks and 401k funds, they steal from you every time you pay your electric and heating bill. Every time you gas your car. They took from you when you paid more for products that cost more because of higher energy costs to manufacturers and transportation. The Bush family partners started with the train robber baron Harriman and the robber barons of Standard Oil. Their next partners was the metal industry of Nazi Germany. Their latest partners are the Islamic Countries and the Energy Companies. George W. Bush's speech is like the guy trying not to get caught by joining the lynch mob. Here are some stories I saw by doing a search for Bush and Enron, Bush and Germany, Bush and Rockefeller, Bush and Harriman, and Bush and Harken. When CEO Cheney got a windfall from Halberton, thousands lost their jobs and pension funds were devalued.
The general counsel of the SEC during the investigation of Bush's Harken trades was James R. Doty, who earlier represented Bush in his purchase of the Texas Rangers, made with the proceeds of his sale of Harken shares. During the SEC investigation, which occurred while his father was president, Bush was represented by Robert Jordan, who had been a law partner of Doty at the Baker Botts firm. Bush named Jordan ambassador to Saudi Arabia last year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21953-2002Jul3.html
And now it seems more than ironic that a man appointed by George Bush Senior as the SEC chairman, and who cleared George Bush of any impropriety over Harken (in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary) has now been appointed to oversee the largest corporate fraud in US history. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00033.htm U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan selected Richard Breeden, who headed the SEC from 1989-1993, to act as the court-appointed monitor in the SEC's civil fraud suit against WorldCom. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00033.htm
The complicity of the Bush administration in the happenings of Enron had detrimental effects on the enronomy (there's that word again). Sixty billion dollars just disappearing from the enronomy must have a detrimental effect, and let's face facts, there is no way that members of this administration didn't know what was going on When Lay threatened that his close friend Bush, would fire Hebert unless he obeyed, Hebert refused. Lay ordered Bush to fire Hebert, and Bush complied in August 2001. Hebert has been on record about all of this for months, but he recently made a new, even more explosive charge. Hebert says Bush also let Lay INTERVIEW him and other candidates for FERC Chairman in the first place! http://www.globalfreepress.org/enronomics.shtml
http://www.citizenspokane.com/enrongate.htm THE ENRON BUSH CONNECTION
By: Uri Dowbenko The phony US energy crisis has deep ties to the Bush Family. One of the prime beneficiaries of the "crisis" is Enron Corporation and its Chairman Ken Lay, a major corporate and personal contributor to George Bush Jr.'s presidential campaign.
Even though California Gov. Gray Davis has reached into California residents' deep pockets to bail out the utility companies through emergency legislation, Washington Gov. Gary Locke has balked.
According to KCPQ-TV's Chris Daniels' "A Disturbing New Twist in Western Power Troubles, "Governor Locke says, 'It's unjustified, it's obscene, and clearly hurting all consumers.'"
Like other western governors, Locke has had to pay for electricity at any price.
In November of 1999, for example, electricity was purchased for $29 a megawatt hour.
A year later, the price increased to $160 an hour, according to sources at Tacoma Power.
Last month it was at $525.
Locke expressed his indignation saying, "I've very disappointed in President Bush that the new administration will not be intervening."
But why should he intervene?
One of Bush's largest campaign contributors is Enron Corporation, a Texas-based company which is part of the defacto global energy oligopoly-cartel.
Although diversifying into other business, Enron has been best known as the largest buyer and seller of natural gas in the United States. Its 1999 revenues of $40 billion had made it the 18th largest company in the United States.
Enron is also invested in energy projects around the world, including the UK, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Mozambique.
One of the global energy cartel's most visible players, Enron saw its corporate profits rise 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 2000.
Enron shareholders should ask -- did dividends come from price gouging US citizens?
How George Bush Jr. Got Layed
Federal Election Commission records show that Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay donated more than $350,000 directly to Bush campaigns since 1997.
Lay also gave another $100,000 to Republican candidates and fundraising committees.
In addition, Enron Corporation, including employees, also donated $1.5 million in soft money to Bush and Republican committees.
More recently, Lay and his wife donated $10,000 to the "Florida Recount Fund," and another $100,000 to the "Presidential Inaugural Fund."
As one of his fundraising "Pioneers," Lay helped raise more than $100,000 for Bush's campaign for president.
In consideration of these numbers, is it too much to ask for a phony and contrived power "crisis" as a payback?
Naah, not at all...
According to newswire reports, as a new energy advisor for President Bush, Ken Lay says that precap prices for wholesale electricity in the West "is not even a short-term solution." |
Not coincidentally, Enron is the largest power marketer in the United States. A cap would limit the prices it and other wholesalers could charge to utilities. Wholesale power prices were deregulated under the landmark 1996 law but retail rates were not.
Lay said the federal government should limit itself to an "advisory" role, letting California leaders resolve a "pretty much self-inflicted problem."
California's rolling blackouts have come as the two large utilities, PG&E Corp. and Southern California Edison, have struggled under huge debts through buying electricity at higher wholesale prices than they can recoup under the retail rates they are allowed to charge.
In the short term, Lay said, the state government will have to "buy the power to fill the short positions of the utilities."
And to ensure Enron's unconscionable profit, he should have added.
Enron's Pug Winokur, Shadow Government Insider
On the Enron corporate website, one of the Board of Directors, Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur, Jr., is described as Chairman and CEO of Capricorn Holdings, Inc., and Former Senior Executive Vice President, Penn Central Corporation.
As the Insiders' Insider, "Pug" Winokur has been such a permanent fixture in the Washington Old Boy Network that he's even mentioned in a 1978 book by Daniel Guttman called "The Shadow Government."
Historically Winokur's Capricorn Holdings was used as an investment vehicle in NHP, an apartment management firm headed by Roderick Heller III.
In turn, NHP's assets included oft-purloined and defaulted HUD Section 8 subsidy housing, a notorious and well-known vehicle for fraud and money laundering.
Winokur was also on the Board of Directors of Harvard Endowment Fund, which purchased 50 percent of NHP, making the prestigious Harvard a prototypical, but very low-profile, slum landlord. (See Bushwhacked: HUD Fraud, Spooks and the Slumlords of Harvard" http://www.conspiracydigest.com/bushwhacked1.html)
It should also be noted that George Bush Jr. attended Harvard Business School. Later, after Bush joined Harken Energy Corp and became a director, the largest stock position and seat on the board was acquired by Harvard Management Co.
Ironically, from 1988 to 1997, Winokur was also the Chairman and CEO of DynCorp, one of the government's largest contractors in data acquisition and management.
Since DynCorp had a contract from the Department of Justice, Winokur would have profited from the DoJ Asset Seizure Program, as well as HUD's Operation Safe Home seizures which targeted low-income tenants and mortgage holders in the inner cities.
In addition DynCorp is one of the lead contractors for the new phony War on Drugs in South America called "Plan Colombia," another tax-payer supported scam to bring monies into DynCorp's coffers.
Now there's a guy who understands that the only way to do a deal is to get it rigged from the very beginning.
Enron's Son of a Spook
Enron dealmaker Frank Wisner, Jr. muscled the company into lucrative overseas contracts, most notably in India and the Philipines.
Enron's deal to manage a power plant in the Philippines was due largely to Wisner's efforts. Based in Subic Bay, a former US military outpost, the power planet was taken over by Enron in 1993, two months after the last US troops left the base.
Wisner is also credited with helping Enron win a $2.8 billion deal in India, building a power plant near Bombay. Now the project is under heavy fire for being over-priced, and the deal continues to simmer with allegations of bribery.
Wisner Jr. must have learned his tradecraft from his father Frank Wisner Sr., one of the CIA's prime operatives.
Wisner Sr., who worked at CIA from 1947 until just before his "suicide" in 1965, was involved in 1) the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala, toppling the goverment of Jacobo Arbenz for United Fruit Company, 2) the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, and 3) the secret operations against Indonesian President Sukarno.
Unlike his spooky father, Frank Wisner Jr., however, was a former Pentagon official before his job at Enron.
Enron's Ken Lay and the Bush Boys
Enron Founder and Chairman Kenneth Lay also worked in the Pentagon for the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War.
Lay is a close friend of George Bush, Sr. In fact, his Houston home in River Oaks is near the Tanglewood residence of the former President and CIA Director.
Although there have been no published reports of Bush Sr. doing favors for Lay, three of the Bush Boys have used their father's name to get contracts for Enron.
According to an article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, Neil and Marvin Bush tried to influence government officials for an Enron bid to rebuild Shuaiba North power plant in Kuwait.
Ironically this power plant was destroyed in George Bush's Persian Gulf War. Enron abandoned the bid a year ago.
In 1988, then Texas governor George Bush Jr., reportedly telephoned Rodolfo Terragno, Argentina's Public Works Minister, to ask him to award Enron a contract to build a pipeline from Chile to Argentina.
"He assumed that the fact he was the son of the president would exert influence. I felt pressured. It was not proper for him to make that kind of call," Terragno told The Nation.
Finally, when Carlos Menem, another Bush Sr. crony, became president of Argentina, Enron won the bid.
Neil Bush, director of the failed Denver-based Silverado Savings and Loan, created a subsidiary of his oil company to conduct business in Argentina in 1987.
Argentina finally got so fed up with the Bush Boys, they formally had a parliamentary investigation regarding their so-called "business dealings.
Enron Rigs Washington During the Clinton Years
Even though it has strong ties to the Republican Party, Enron also did remarkably well during the Clinton years.
Most importantly, they got a ban lifted on Export-Import Bank financing of projects in China.
This allowed Enron to move forward on overseas projects guaranteed by US taxpayers. In other words, if Enron "fails," you pay.
Enron also got new rules instituted at the Ex-Im Bank that allowed the bank to finance projects on the basis of projected cash flow.
This insider track helped Enron make multi-billion dollar deals overseas with US taxpayers guaranteeing their performance.
* March 1993, Enron made a deal to develop new European markets for Russian gas.
* November 1993, Enron made a $1 billion deal with Turkey to develop two power plants. Ex-Im Bank provided $285 million in financing. The Overseas Private Investment Council(OPIC)covered insurance costs.
* August 1994, Enron made a deal to build a power plant in India. ExIm provides major financing and OPIC provides an additional $100 million.
* November 1994, Enron made a deal to build a $130 million power plant in China. Ex-Im Bank again provided the financing.
Moral of the story? When you're a monopoly capitalist, it doesn't matter who's in office. Republicans. Democrats. They all bribe the same.
Lawsuit Against Enron Alleges Conspiracy
Unfazed by the bogus and contrived energy crisis, the San Francisco City Attorney is filing a lawsuit against Enron and eleven other companies.
The filing says that Enron "conspired to restrict supplies and drive up prices" costing consumers additional charges "on the order of 1 billion dollars."
Washington's Governor Locke says President Bush needs to take counter-measures or the economy will suffer on a national level.
"If the federal government doesn't act, you're going to see a lot of jobs go away, a lot of business close down..." says Locke. "We need help from the federal government immediately to help stabilize the situation."
Is this Enron's first visible and public Bush payoff?
It just might be the best "energy crisis" money can buy.
Hi, Dave sent this to me about the influence being peddled by Big Biz and lobbyists. I haven't heard about anyone getting money back yet or anyone arrested, except for a cable company that evidently didn't pay anyone off or have anyone appointed to the White House. I was threatened with arrest again this weekend for performing for kids and adults on a public sidewalk that was adjoining 3 street fairs. If you would like to help me with my attorney and fees you can send me a tip at my site at http://funandmagic.com/leaveatip.html . Have a magic day and pass this on, Magic Mike http://funandmagic.com/ Now here's Dave....
Yo Yo Jack, I have a feeling that the political landscape resembles a bad horror flick. The hero fighting the invasion of reptilian beings disguised as humans discovers that his allies have become those slimy reptilians. There is no longer an opposing force to counter the takeover of the world. The hero feeling betrayed, retreats to the woods and takes up dope smoking and mushroom picking. The world becomes a giant stinking swamp, perfect for breeding infinite generations of reptiles. Until the next big asteroid strikes the earth and the hairy mouse is the only survivor once again. How do we get out of this mess? Check out the authors web site. www.ourfuture.org The revelations of the DLC policies are sickening. Why don't they just call themselves what they really are. Reptile Republicans. See Ya, Dave
Published on Tuesday, July 30, 2002 in The Nation The DLC Comes to Manhattan by Robert Borosage This past weekend, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) convened a national conversation in New York City. Politicians of all stripes gathered to rub shoulders with lobbyists and corporate contributors in the smarmy swirl that characterizes DLC meetings. The DLC generally uses these occasions to suggest ways that Democrats can benefit by becoming more like Republicans. But on this occasion, members of the DLC should have considered following the example set by Fed Chair Alan Greenspan in his recent Senate testimony: admit up front that they've been wrong. For in the current situation, the DLC is simply out of step with the needs of the country and the opinion of a growing majority of Americans. Here are just a few of the issues the DLC gets wrong:
1. At a time when the public thinks big business has too much influence in Washington, the DLC's mission is to increase the influence of business in the Democratic Party. Or as Simon Rosenberg, head of the DLC's corporate-funded political action committee, the New Democrat Network, put it, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party." But today, two-thirds of the public says big business already has too much influence in Washington. By 50 to 37 percent, Americans say Bush favors the interests of big corporations over ordinary working people. By 49 to 37 percent, they say Democrats favor ordinary working people. That advantage would disappear if the DLC has its way.
2. New Democrats joined with conservative Republicans in contributing to the current mess. DLC icon Senator Joe Lieberman and other New Dems joined with Gingrich and Republicans to pass securities "reform," a centerpiece of Gingrich's Contract With America, over President Clinton's veto. The measure, which the DLC touts to this day, made it harder for shareholders to hold executives and accountants liable for misleading reports. Clinton is surely right to now point to this measure as contributing directly to the current scandals.
New Democrats in the House and Senate, led by the ethically challenged former New Dem co-chair Representative Jim Moran, worked with Republicans to frustrate Arthur Levitt, Clinton's chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in Levitt's attempt to ban auditors from doing consulting for the companies they audit. As Clinton notes, this led directly to the Enron scandals, in which auditors had every incentive to ignore shady off-the-books maneuvers.
And Lieberman, the DLC's favored candidate for President, made the fight against honest accounting of executive stock options his personal mission. Honest accounting, urged by such "radicals" like Alan Greenspan and Warren Buffett, would have tempered the abuse of stock options; as things stood, executives had a multimillion-dollar incentive to cook the books in the short term so they could cash out. Lieberman continues to block efforts for this reform to this day, but now claims, in his best Claude Raines imitation, to be shocked that stock options have been abused, and haven't been used to redistribute wealth, as he thought.
3. New Dems joined with Republicans in diluting efforts to clean up the current mess. New Dems in the House offered bipartisan support for the Republican accounting reform bill that was certified as harmless by the accountants' lobby. Before the WorldCom revelations, when it looked like reform was going to be bottled up in the Senate, Lieberman and DLC head Al From launched a PR drive to warn Democrats against being antibusiness and doing too much.
Lieberman, as chair of the Senate Operations Committee, has been notably reluctant to trace Enron's use of political money and clout in the Bush and Clinton Administrations and Congress. Part of the reason may be that, according to Federal Election Commission reports, the New Democrat Network PAC received more than $250,000 in contributions from companies implicated in the Enron scandals, including $25,000 from Enron in 2000 and $20,000 from Arthur Andersen last year.
4. Led by Senator John Breaux, New Democrats have helped to block a real prescription-drug benefit for seniors. The key issue is whether the benefit will use the power of Medicare to negotiate the best price for seniors. For drug companies, this is heresy. They headed a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for Republicans last month, after which President Bush repaid them with a speech opposing efforts to limit drug prices. New Dems are less expensive. According to a study released by Public Citizen, the New Democratic Network pocketed some $475,000 from drug companies over the past twenty-one months, and its single biggest donor was the drug lobby, at $50,000. Breaux is also leading the efforts to turn Medicare into a voucher program, which would increase risk and cost to seniors already struggling to pay soaring health costs on fixed incomes.
5. The DLC champions privatization of Social Security as a centerpiece of its program for the new century. Or in DLC speak, as Will Marshall, one of its founders, puts it, "using choice and competition to advance...the big social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare." The DLC provides bipartisan support for a Bush folly that, as Senator Tom Daschle says, would turn Social Security from a guarantee into a gamble.
6. The DLC trumpets the corporate trade agenda, scorning efforts to build environmental and worker rights protections into trade accords. The DLC campaigns on this cause to this day, even as the US trade deficit has reached levels that Alan Greenspan announces are unsustainable, the dollar is sinking and a harsh readjustment is threatened.
7. The DLC opposes affirmative action. DLC leaders initially criticized Clinton's decision to mend, not end, affirmative action. The Hyde Park Declaration, their last major policy statement, contains a thinly masked call to end affirmative action, saying we should "shift the emphasis of affirmative action strategies from group preferences to economic empowerment of all disadvantaged citizens."
8. The DLC's political advice is often wrongheaded. The most recent DLC insight is that Democrats should target affluent, white, office-park males-one of the most Republican constituencies in the electorate. To appeal to that constituency, the DLC says, Democrats should abandon any populist rhetoric, tone down the drive for corporate accountability, embrace fiscal austerity and free trade, and distance themselves from unions. That may make for good corporate fundraising, but it's hard to imagine a better recipe for defeat.
9. The DLC remains wedded to fiscal austerity, even though we've gone from peace and prosperity to war and recession. Like George W. Bush, the DLC sees no reason to allow fundamentally changed conditions to affect its ideological positions. Its support for investment in education and worker training, innovation and R&D, and its opposition to Bush's tax cuts, have been laudable and helpful. But it remains wedded to a Coolidge Democrat position, arguing that returning the budget to surplus would help generate growth (by lowering long-term interest rates). The DLC has little to offer on policies needed to respond to the current crisis, because interest rates are already low, consumers and companies are tightening their belts, the stock market is tanking and the trade deficit is unsustainable.
Since the DLC is infamous for taking credit for every victory and blaming others for every defeat, its leaders are not likely to admit that they've been wrong. So a word of advice to aspiring politicians hoping for a future in the Democratic Party: Go to the banquets. Meet the money. Taste the food. But be wary of the moonshine they are peddling at the podium.
Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future (www.ourfuture.org).
© 2002 The Nation Company, L.P.
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Hi, Molly Ivins was on Donahue with Ralph Nader last week, live in Houston, talking to Enron employees. Here is a column she wrote a few weeks ago. I was threatened with arrest again this weekend for performing for kids and adults on a public sidewalk that was adjoining 3 street fairs. If you would like to help me with my attorney and fees you can send me a tip at my site at http://funandmagic.com/leaveatip.html . Have a magic day and pass this on, Magic Mike http://funandmagic.com/ Now here's Molly....
Posted on Sun, Jul. 21, 2002 'We' is not me or a lot more of us Molly Ivins
AUSTIN - There's some stiff competition in the Stupidest Thing Said Yet Department about the swoon in the financial markets. But among the heavy contenders we must surely count those who are now saying that they know who's responsible, and it is us.
According to this theory, you, me and Joe Bob Doaks made Ken Lay do it. Came as a surprise to me, too. Naturally, as a liberal, I just love guilt, so I was ready to sign right up for this one, but try as I may, I can't get it to make a lick of sense. Nevertheless, several of our heavy ponderers and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page insist that we did it.
It seems that "we" - a word they use rather promiscuously, in my opinion - were seized by greed and folly in the '90s. "We" were so stupid that we thought stock markets only went up, and "we" are whining like children only because "we" don't understand that in the big, tough, he-man world of capitalism, we must take risks.
Who you callin' "we," white man?
Let me count the ways that this one is a crock. It's not as though the 1990s are exactly lost in the mists of time here. Children under 10 can recall large portions of the decade. And as I remember it, you, me and Joe Bob Doaks were sittin' out here, enjoyin' the Clinton economy, which produced zillions of new jobs, except that unless you had a college degree (and 69 percent of Americans don't have one) you had to work about three of them just to make ends meet.
Sure, people were gettin' rich. It just wasn't us. Go back and look at the numbers - astonishing increase in wealth, almost all of it going to the top. The richest rich people got all of it. Only at the very height of the Clinton boom did the working class finally budge back to where it was in the late 1970s.
You can get all the numbers from Kevin Phillips' new book, Wealth and Democracy: How Great Fortunes and Government Created America's Aristocracy. And I can name for you the honor roll of people who regularly raised Cain about this very thing in the '90s - we were not "oblivious" - and we raised Cain about exactly the structural, regulatory flaws that now have proved to be so disastrous.
"We" are not in the greedhead class. "We" are not the CEOs who increased their pay from 85 times what the average worker made in 1990 to 531 times what the average worker made in 2000.
More than half of us still have no stake at all in the stock market, so be careful with your "everybody." And many of "us" who do have a stake in the stock market are not day-traders or people who know dog about Nasdaq or any darn thing about the New Economy - which someone, not "us," kept claiming was a perpetual motion machine. "We" wound up in the stock market only because "we" were encouraged to put our savings into these 401(k)s, and that's all "we" know about any of it.
Take your "we" and shove it.
Now that I have concluded that satisfying rant, let's try our daily dose of practical suggestions on how to fix this mess. The Senate voted 97-to-zip for the Sarbanes bill, which is a good beginning. But the House Republicans, led by Rep. Michael Oxley, will do their best to neuter it. And according to the published reports, Capitol Hill is crawling with business lobbyists trying to wreck the bill.
The major immediate unplugged hole is expensing stock options. But there are some larger ones as well. The entire derivatives market is sorely in need of regulation - its excesses should have been curbed at least after the Long-Term Management fiasco.
Robert Bryce, author of Pipedreams, a book on Enron to be released in October, calls derivatives "the finance world's equivalent of anabolic steroids." And just as fatal in the end, too.
A few days after the 1992 election, Enron and several other companies began petitioning the Commodities Futures Trading Commission for an exemption from regulatory oversight on energy derivatives contracts. A few weeks later, lame-duck Chairwoman Wendy Gramm and one other commissioner (the commission was short two of its five members) exempted the energy companies from CFTC's authority.
And Bryce reports in his book that the companies were exempted even if the contracts they sold were designed to defraud or mislead buyers! The then-chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the CFTC, Rep. Glen English, said: "In 18 years in Congress, this is the most irresponsible decision I have come across." Give that man the Cassandra Award.
That's nuts and needs to be fixed. But it is also an indication of how deeply political this scandal is. All the pols pointing fingers at the CEO-nistas should turn those fingers right around at themselves. Twenty-two years of pretty much uninterrupted administrations putting foxes in charge of various governmental henhouses, and this is what you get.
Worse, Congress itself is so deeply corrupted by campaign contributions (legalized bribery) that it has constantly acted against the public interest, in favor of the corporate interests.
Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045
"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 600SL convertible."
Hi, What came first, the chicken or the egg? I haven't written in awhile and I have stuff waiting to send you and I can't decide what to put first , the humor or reality. I better start with the humor! Then a great article by Molly Ivins about this stock mess, and then a very good story Dave sent about the influence being peddled by Big Biz and lobbyists. It makes me question Lieberman's choices. I haven't heard about anyone getting money back yet or anyone arrested, except for a cable company that evidently didn't pay anyone off or have anyone appointed to the White House. I was threatened with arrest again this weekend for performing for kids and adults on a public sidewalk that was adjoining 3 street fairs. The Bellevue, WA. Lt. Hersey wasn't handing out kisses or hugs when he said I would be taken to jail if I didn't leave. He said the City had leased all the public property in a 6 square block radius to the fairs. I don't believe him. I said I would have to see him in Federal Court about it. Oh, well, here I go again. I have to fight for the right for amatuer performers to use public property for their act or there would be no performers. You can't have only licensed acts in licened spots. That amounts to censorship, when you can say who can have a license and who can't. If you would like to help me with my attorney and fees you can send me a tip at my site at http://funandmagic.com/leaveatip.html . Have a magic day and pass this on, Magic Mike http://funandmagic.com/
Two guys are bungee-jumping one day. The first guy says to the second. "You know, we could make a lot of money running our own bungee-jumping service in Mexico."
The second guy thinks this is a great idea, so the two pool their money and buy everything they'll need - a tower, an elastic cord, insurance, etc.
They travel to Mexico and begin to set up on the square. As they are constructing the tower, a crowd begins to assemble. Slowly, more and more people gather to watch them at work.
The first guy jumps. He bounces at the end of the cord, but when he comes back up, the second guy notices that he has a few cuts and scratches. Unfortunately, the second guy isn't able catch him, he falls again, bounces and comes back up again.
This time, he is bruised and bleeding. Again, the second guy misses him. The first guy falls again and bounces back up. This time, he comes back pretty messed up - he's got a couple of broken bones and is almost unconscious.
Luckily, the second guy finally catches him this time and says, "What happened? Was the cord too long?"
The first guy says, "No, the cord was fine... but what the heck is a 'pinata'?"
=-=-=-=-
One day some guys were doing a survey "boxers" or "briefs".
They went to a 25 year old man and said "boxers" or "briefs"? He said briefs.
They went to a 40 year old man and said "boxers" or "briefs"? He said boxers.
Then they went up to a 80 year old man and said "boxers" or "briefs"? And the old man replied - "depends?"
Hi, Here is a Planet Proctor from Hollywood. I was threatened with arrest again this weekend for performing for kids and adults on a public sidewalk that was adjoining 3 street fairs. If you would like to help me with my attorney and fees you can send me a tip at my site at http://funandmagic.com/leaveatip.html . Have a magic day and pass this on, Magic Mike http://funandmagic.com/ Now here's Molly....
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((PLANET PROCTOR 2002-19 - http://www.planetproctor.com
"Why don't they change it to 'one nation under Canada'? That way, everybody would be happy" - Robin Williams in The New Yorker
ONE NOTION, UNDER DURESS Robin's right, of course. And after watching him LIVE last Sunday on HBO, I wonder why anyone else even HAS to be funny. Anyway, without exception, the faith of our Founding Fathers was deist, not theist, best expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which spoke of "the Laws of Nature" and "Nature's God." Thomas Jefferson said, "I have examined all the known superstitions of the word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth... "The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind...to filch wealth and power to themselves. [They], in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ." To which Thomas Paine adds, Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins...and you will have sins in abundance." Jefferson also called the Bible, a "dunghill." And Paine said, "I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by [attaching] it to this filthy book." "Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses," he wrote, "Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. " James Madison stated that "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." And John Adams wrote in the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: "The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." - From "The Faith of Our Founding Fathers" By Dean Worbois @ http://www.postfun.com/pfp/worbois.html
"The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs." - Author Daniel Quinn
A NUDE BILL OF WRONGS? "We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, delusional, and other, liberal, bed-wetters. "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of NO RIGHTS.
ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything. ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be. ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy. ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes. ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care. ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair. ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure. ARTICLE VIII: You don't have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat. ARTICLE IX: You don't have the right to a job. All of us sure want all of you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training to make yourself useful. ARTICLE X: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to pursue happiness - which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights." (Attributed to Georgia Rep Mitchell Kaye - from John Galt) "LARP reports that Rick Dees overheard two KIIS sales people talking about a new assistant.'We've got to teach her right from wrong,' said one. To which the other answered, 'Go ahead, you teach her what's right...'"
FINANCIAL ADVICE FROM H.I.C. Sore loser Garry Goodrow advises us that if we had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00. With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser a year ago -- the beer, not the stock -- drank all the beer and turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you'd have $214.00. Current investment advice? Drink heavily and recycle. Also by this week's Barron's, by way of Ivan Berger, what financial acronyms mean: EBITDA = Earnings Before I Tricked the Dumb Auditor. EBIT = Earnings Before Irregularities and Tampering. CEO = Chief Embezzlement Officer. CFO = Corporate Fraud Officer. NAV = Normal Andersen Valuation. EPS = Eventual Prison Sentence.
"Bush had good speechwriters; it's just that this time the ventriloquists were failed by the dummy."- Richard Cohen, Washington Post
RX 2002 +St. Mom's Wort: Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to six hours. +Empty Nestrogen: Suppository that eliminates melancholy by enhancing the memory of what a pain in the ass your kids were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait until they moved out. +Peptobimbo: Liquid silicone. Two full cups swallowed before an evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and improves flirting for single gals. +Dumberol: When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low IQ, leading to enjoyment of Country Western music. +Flipitor: Increases life expectancy by controlling road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers. +Antiboyotics: When administered to teenage girls, is highly effective in improving grades, freeing up phone lines, and reducing money spent on make-up. +Menicillin: Increases resistance for older women to such lines as, "You make me want to be a better person...can we get naked now?" +Buyagra: Injected prior to shopping. Increases potency and duration of spending spree. +Extra Strength Buy-one-all: When combined with Buyagra, can cause a buying frenzy so severe the victim may even come home with a Donnie Osmond CD or a book by Dr. Laura. +Jack Asspirin: Relieves the headache caused by a man who can't remember your birthday, anniversary or phone number. +Anti-talksident: A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to share their life stories with total strangers. +Sexcedrin: Bedroom aerosol spray for men. More effective than Excedrin in treating the, "Not now, dear, I have a headache," syndrome. +Men-Gay: A rub-in ointment that enables single women to identify who to cross off the dating pool. (Attribution Unknown)
"Former Israeli Prime ministeGolda Meir is quoted as saying, 'There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel'." - David White, New Zealand
WHAT AN ASS! Sightless psychic Ulf Buck, 39, claims that people's backsides have lines which can be read like those on a palm, although he claims in a Reuters release, "The bottom is much more intense -- it has a much stronger power of expression than the hand in my experience. It goes on developing throughout your life." He sees his blindness as a great asset (sic), since customers don't risk having their identities revealed and he believes that even amateur butt readers can assess (sic) someone's personality. "An apple-shaped, muscular bottom indicates someone who is charismatic, dynamic, very confident and often creative. A person who enjoys life," he said. "A pear-shaped bottom suggests someone very steadfast, patient and down-to-earth." He claims he's been groping a stockbroker for over two years. "No stockbroker would keep asking a blind clairvoyant to tell them about future stock prices if they didn't believe I could to it," he said and added for the skeptics out there, "I do not need to feel bottoms for my own pleasure. My wife is quite beautiful enough for me." Once more --- with feeling?
"Malibu? I will probably not again live in a place with a Chevrolet named after it." - Author Joan Didion from the Funny Times' "Curmudgeon" column
HEY, HEY, L.A.! Like, wha's happenin' here this summer, dude? Like - uh - not much. Except that I'm really groovin' behind "BB3" (That's Big Brother, to you who are out of the loop). Not only am I working for them, I'm like totally ADDICTED, man! I'm even gonna pay to see the steamin' streamin' video online! Like, uh, I missed the nude peanut-butter bikini contest last night! Bummer! The sad part is - I'm serious. It's fascinating! This year, with the help of my pal, producer Jon Kroll, there's a reason why it's 'numero uno' in its timeslot -- a sense of humor, maybe? And I urge you all to take a taste. (First one's free.) Paul Williams needs to be stroked as well for his brilliant work on making "Rolling Laughter" for the WYNGS benefit (aiding folks with spinal injuries), such a great success at the Improv last Sunday. Thanks to all the great comics who participated; but my favorite line, as emcee, was from Sarah Silverman who said: "I was raped by my doctor. Which is a bitter sweet thing for a Jewish girl." And my wife Melinda is in rehearsal with Kelly "6 Feet Under" Waymire in "Post Mortem" (sic?), to be presented evenings at ARCADE, 8741 Washington Blvd in Culver City, from July 25 to the 28th (my birthday?). Call 310.253.9097 for reservations and times.
"A financial statement is like a bikini. What it reveals is interesting; what it conceals is vital." - Ex-Frontier Savings Pres. Dan Levin, Letters to the L.A. Times
SPIDER DANCE! http://www.blogjam.com/beta/camp_spidey.gif SITE FOR SORE AYES? http://www.filthymess.com/ SUICIDE CELL SMOCKS? http://www.pxdirect.com/inmate_u.htm "M II M" reviewed by the Christian Childcare Action Project: http://www.capalert.com/capreports/meninblackii.htm
++++++++++++(JULY 16, 2002)++++++++++ * FIRESIGN: http://www.firesigntheatre.com * FIREZINE: http://www.firezine.net * FIRESIGN STUFF: http://www.lodestone-media.com * RARE RE-RELEASES: http://www.laugh.com * FUNNY TIMES: http://www.funnytimes.com
