Neither Fox, Al Jazeera, mentioned this as being part of the story. I guess thats it… if they don’t mention it as part of the story it isn’t part of the story.

Bill: “Iran takes over and then you have a situation that is 10 times worse because the oil flow then goes under the Jihadists in Iran … Do you wanna debate geopolitics with me? ”

Dave:  ”So there it is … Its all about oil…you just answered the question…”

Bill: “Absolutely its all about oil the whole world is about oil”

Dave: “It’s all about oil.. thats why we’re there… big deal”

Bill: “Your shows not going to be on the air…”

At this point Dave interrupts Bill and they start rehashing the argument again. I wonder where Bill was going with the “your shows not going to be on the air” statement.

Related articles

• Obama signs Iran sanctions bill (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

I found this photo of a smokestack being demolished and couldn’t resist placing it next to the World Trade Center demolition for easy comparison. My new opinion is that a population who consumes the official story in light of such blatant evidence will continue to be taken advantage of. one could make a Darwinian argument that they almost deserve it.

I recently sent a letter to Washington state representative Rick Larsen voicing my support for an audit of the Federal Reserve HR 1207.  Below is his response:

Dear Wes:

I was recently catching up on my correspondence and realized I had not yet responded to your message. Thank you for contacting me about the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (HR 1207). I appreciate hearing from you and apologize for the delay in my response.

As you may know, HR 1207 would repeal the restrictions on Federal Reserve audits and require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct an audit of the Federal Reserve immediately and make its findings available to Congress. HR 1207 has been referred to the House Committee on Financial Services where it awaits further review.

I do not support HR 1207 and will not be signing on as a cosponsor to this legislation. I would like to take this opportunity to explain my position to you.

The Federal Reserve is already subject to independent audits. The GAO has audited the Federal Reserve over 100 times since it was created in 1913.  The Federal Reserve has also been audited dozens of times by independent accounting firms.

The GAO is not allowed to audit the Federal Reserve’s decisions on monetary policy or its transactions with foreign governments and central banks for very good reason. Opening up the Federal Reserve’s day-to-day decisions on monetary policy exposes our monetary policy to politics.  The Federal Reserve is an independent agency for a reason.  If the financial markets think that the Fed’s actions are politicized, investors will lose confidence in the Federal Reserve and our markets will decline.

The Federal Reserve and Congress have recently taken steps to increase the transparency of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has begun publishing their balance sheet on their website, www.federalreserve.gov.   This report gives information about the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and lending programs and provides considerable new information about the number of borrowers at their various facilities, and the collateral pledged. Congress also passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act (HR 1106) in March to allow the GAO to audit some of the Federal Reserve’s emergency actions, such as their guarantees of Citigroup and Bank of America.

I believe the Federal Reserve should continue to be subject to public scrutiny. The Federal Reserve does not always make the right decisions. Both Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have admitted that the Federal Reserve has made mistakes in the past. Congress is learning from these mistakes and I am working with my colleagues to fix them through reforming the regulation of our financial markets to prevent a crisis from reoccurring. As the 111th Congress progresses I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me. Although we disagree on this issue I am sure there are many more issues on which we agree. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or other issues of concern for you.

Sincerely,

Rick Larsen

United States Representative

Washington State, 2nd District

Rick says that the federal reserve has been audited over 100 times… that’s great but we are interested in the monetary policy side of things which has been audited in the past however the results are not made available to Congress or the public.  He goes on to say that if we ever did audit the monetary policy things would become politicized and our markets would crash.  Alan Greenspan has admitted before that the Federal Reserve cannot be overruled by any other agency of the United States government  (  see video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVmxQsvj6lo&feature=related ).  The bill has already attracted over 282 House lawmakers as cosponsors http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/08/31/what-would-a-federal-reserve-audit-show/ and there is supposed to be a decision this October.  I wonder what will happen.

If we adjust our foreign policy so that we weren’t intervening covertly in the matters of sovereign countries we would drastically reduce the risks to Americans.  Behaving morally and peacefully and honestly takes all the wind out of extremism arguments.

We should be taking action to improve our foreign policy before debating the finer points of much less important arguments.

If we cannot take care of our outrageous behavior from within our country then surely some other supernational form of government will eventually take care of this for us.  This would result in much less autonomy over our own destiny.  Once we have shown that we are irresponsible and incapable of managing our own affairs why would we be given a second chance?

Clearly we are no longer worthy to be the financial center of the world… no longer trustworthy to be the sole superpower of the world… no longer an example of an industrial center of the world…

Interesting times await us. 

In the beginning of the documentary there is a slow zoom into the all seeing eye sitting atop the pyramid on the US dollar.  This was as close as the documentary gets to suggesting a cause of the national debt on anything else outside of Republican tax cuts, health care, and general overspending.

It informs us that every man woman and child in the country is approximately $35,000 in debt, that all of this money is being borrowed to us, and that we are paying interest on the borrowed funds.  It goes on to look at the recent Republicans in the White House who have been elected on low tax ideologies.  It blames them for spending the same amount as before and more while at the same time lowering taxes.  It then praises Bill Clinton’s administration for balancing the budget.

It then takes a short look at the cost of wars and their effect on the national debt.  And the rest of the documentary seems to focus on the cost of health care and how it is unsustainable.  It shows a graph of the projected cost of health care over the next 20 years… about 10 years from now in the healthcare demands fully consume the entire budget.

So after watching this documentary I feel like we need to raise taxes, put more strict spending controls on the government, and stop electing Republicans.  At least that’s the way it appears the movie is designed to make you feel.  I also felt like the movie was suggesting that if you want low taxes and keep on electing promoters of low taxes and you are indirectly at fault for the gross economic debt.

The documentary seems to be paving the way psychologically for Obama to push through health-care reform.

Obama’s position on NAFTA from his website: http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/02/28/fact_check_on_inaccurate_repor.php

Obama spokesperson Bill Burton says that Obama all will work to make NAFTA a better deal for American workers.  Including amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards.

In the Democratic debate on February 27, 2008: paraphrasing… Obama said that he wants to be an advocate on behalf of the workers.  Shipping jobs overseas leaving employees without health care, pension, and with seven dollar an hour jobs is devastating on the community.  That’s not the way we’re going to prosper and move forward.

Associated Press October 10, 2007…

Active trading is a key way to keep the United States competitive.  “Were not going to draw a moat around the United States economy.  If we do that then China is still trading, India is still going to be trading”… Obama voted against the Central American free trade agreement CAFTA and opposes the pending trade deal with South Korea.  “I think that NAFTA and CAFTA did not reflect the interests of the American workers but reflected the interests of the stock owners on Wall Street because they did not contain the sorts of labor positions and environmental provisions that should have been embedded and should have been enforceable in those agreements.”.

2007 United States global trade debt by country: http://import-export.suite101.com/article.cfm/us_global_trade_debt_by_country

China … US$259.1 billion (up 11.4% from 2006, up 59.9% from 2004)
Japan … $83.1 billion (down 6.1%, up 10.5%)
Mexico … $74 billion (up 15.4%, up 64.4%)
Canada … $65 billion (down 10.7%, down 1%)
Germany … $44.5 billion (down 6.9%, down 2.8%)
Nigeria … $28.9 billion (up 12.5%, up 97.3%)
Venezuela … $28.4 billion (up 0.6%, up 40.4%)
Saudi Arabia … $24.5 billion (up 1.8%, up 57.3%)
Ireland … $21.6 billion (up 7.5%, up 12.5%)
Italy … $20.9 billion (up 3.7%, up 20.4%)
In this article… http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/19/barack-obama-stephen-harper-canada-visit Obama is quoted as saying “now is the time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism” and that he promised that the United States would continue to meet its international trade obligations.

Obama included a “buy America” provision in his $787 billion economic stimulus package which originally proposed that only US steel be used for infrastructure projects.  The provisions have since been watered down.

I will paraphrase his comments here: Obama is a candidate in which many special interests have invested and will be expecting many favors once he is in office. The public-relations firms that were hired successfully focused on the personalities and not on the issues. Obama’s public relations firm won this year’s marketing prize narrowly beating out Apple. He bring up Walter Lippman’s opinions on how the populations are ignorant spectators that are not capable of their own critical thinking whose opinions are formed not by themselves but suggested through media propaganda.

Obama organized an army to get him elected. Now the Army is waiting for instructions. He likened this to a dictatorship. I did not quite understand this analogy. He asked what we could anticipate if this army becomes active instead of just bystanders. Public relations firms want uninformed votes to buy the campaign. This propaganda will undermine the democracy and election the same way it has undermined the markets.

Obama now has no debts to the Army who elected him. He is only in debt to Wall Street and special-interest financiers. He spoke of rhetoric versus actions… so far as actions have been to appoint Biden who was a war supporter and big backer of the anti-bankruptcy laws that were passed it up years ago which were a blow against the poor.

He also appointed Raul Emanuel who was also a strong supporter of the war and longtime Washington insider. He was also a recipient of funding from hedge funds. His previous job was an investment banker. Robert Rubin and Larry Summers were selected by Obama to handle the economic problem. These two individuals were recycled from the Clinton administration and were responsible for something that led to the economic meltdown. Chomsky then quotes another guy saying that selecting these two to handle the economic problem and is like selecting Osama bin Laden to head up the anti-terrorism unit. He then noted that Bloomberg said those gathering on November 7 to give advice on the economy should be receiving subpoenas. All were involved in fraud.

The statements that you hear about Afghanistan and Pakistan and Russia are quite hawkish.

That was the interview in a nutshell. Typical Chomsky. Fox news has been echoing these ideas lately which is interesting.
]]> http://www.wesedholm.com/2008/12/01/chomsky-on-obama/feed/ 0 http://www.wesedholm.com/2008/11/14/thomas-jefferson-nails-it/ http://www.wesedholm.com/2008/11/14/thomas-jefferson-nails-it/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:06:14 +0000 Wes http://www.wesedholm.com/?p=249 I thought this was appropriate again:

“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. ”

Thomas Jefferson