White House Will Not Support SOPA, PIPA

This is another victory for Occupy Wall Street and other activist groups that have been this proposed legislation. This amoral administration can be forced to do the right thing but we have to keep the pressure on. Next stop: the pipeline, Afghanistan, minimum wage, financial regulation and corporate accountability, money in politics, Bush tax cuts, creating JOBS, etc., etc.:

 Opponents of online piracy regulation bills SOPA and PIPA scored a major victory on Saturday.

The White House has officially responded to two online petitions, "Stop the E-PARASITE Act" and "Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information," which urged the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

The authors of the statement, Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff, said that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," the statement read in part.

Full article

Video: David Icke's Documentary at Occupy Wall Street (Part 1 of 2)

Video: Creation - Power To The People - Occupy Mix

Video: OWS Protesters Re-Occupy Liberty Square!

Occupy Wall Street Prepares to Occupy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Source:

...on Sunday and Monday, the movement will take to the streets again to honor one of America's most famous protesters: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The events will begin with a Sunday night vigil at New York's Riverside Church, to be followed the next day by a baker's dozen protests across the nation against the Federal Reserve Bank.

[...]The Sunday night vigil will feature performances by a host of musicians, including Patti Smith and Steve Earle, as well as speeches by Russell Simmons, Yoko Ono, Norman Siegel and other notables. The following day, OWS plans a march from New York's African Burial Ground to the city's Federal Reserve Bank, which is located mere blocks from Wall Street. The event, called "Occupy the Federal Reserve," will be one of thirteen linked protests taking place in every city that has a Federal Reserve Bank, as well as Los Angeles (which doesn't have a Federal Reserve Bank, but is pretty important anyway).

Asked why OWS has taken aim at the Fed, Holder argues that the institution has become a key driver of economic injustice in America: "The Federal Reserve undermines our democracy. It's filled with bankers who are pushing for a deflated currency that will help inflate their pockets."

But ultimately, she notes, Sunday and Monday's protests will focus on honoring Dr. King's legacy of social engagement -- and making sure that it continues: "We're hoping to help inspire a new generation of activists and visionaries."

Poll: Many voters clueless about 2012

Politico:

Just over half of those surveyed, 53 percent, correctly answered Massachusetts when asked where Romney served as governor, according to a Pew Research Center poll. And only 45 percent of voters were able to identify South Carolina as the state where the next primary will be held, while just 44 percent identified Ron Paul as the GOP hopeful who opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Sixty-nine percent of voters gave the correct answer of Newt Gingrich when asked which GOP 2012 candidate once served as House speaker, the survey found.

A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats answered each of the above questions correctly. All in all, 43 percent of voters gave correct answers to at least three of the four questions, or 48 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats.

Israeli Spies Disguised themselves as CIA Agents

Once again we see how Israel feels free to do whatever they want whether or not it's the behaviour of an American ally:

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts.

"It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."

Full article

U.S. judge backs multiple rifle sales reporting

A small victory. But a victory that will save lives:

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to block new federal rules requiring gun dealers in four states bordering Mexico to report the sales of multiple semi-automatic rifles, a victory for the Obama administration.

The administration issued the reporting requirements last year despite opposition from the gun industry as part of a stepped-up effort to clamp down on the weapons flowing across the border to violent drug cartels in Mexico.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ordered more than 8,000 gun dealers in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California to report the sale within five business days of two or more semiautomatic rifles to the same person.

That also includes rifles with a caliber greater than .22 and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

Mexican officials have complained bitterly about guns illegally coming from the United States. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have died in the drug wars since 2006 when the government there decided to take on the cartels.

Full article

Obama's Most Vocal Black Critics Dial Back Attacks As Election Year Begins

That's a mistake. But it's the same old story. The American people are fed up with the politicians but continue to vote for the same people because they are fed the myth about the 'lesser of two evils." Because Republicans are so unfriendly to African-Americans does not mean they should vote for someone who does nothing for them but ignores them. Barack Obama is not only ignoring the plight of his most ardent supporters, he's thumbing his nose at them. Why do we always fall for that trap. They promise us the sky and moon and deliver nothing but hardship. I'm disappointed in West and Smiley. I thought they wouldn't just go along with the crowd:

The dynamic duo of PBS host Tavis Smiley and professor/activist Cornel West was it again in Washington Thursday evening during a live television broadcast of a program addressing poverty.

The two have made a traveling roadshow out of their roles as the loudest African-American critics of President Obama.

The forum, presented and moderated by Smiley and aired on C-SPAN, follows Smiley and West's 18-city tour last summer that called attention to the growing number of Americans in poverty, particularly blacks. During the tour, and at the original poverty forum last year, Smiley and West became lightning rods for accusing Obama of failing to adequately address problems affecting blacks.

But for two and a half hours on Thursday, Smiley and West made few waves for the president. It was several other panelists who expressed their dissatisfaction with Obama, including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore.


Moore said the president's term has "been a disappointing three years....He thought he would be a nice guy. He turned the other cheek. ...Right now, we don't need a nice guy. We need someone who will stand up and kick some butt for his country."

Full article

Terry Branstad, Iowa Governor, Slapped With $1 Million Sexual Discrimination Lawsuit By State Commissioner

Huffington Post:

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is facing claims he discriminated against the state's openly gay Iowa’s workers’ compensation commissioner by asking him to resign and cutting his salary after he refused.

As the Des Moines Register is reporting, commissioner Christopher Godfrey is asking for $1 million in compensation, while alleging defamation, harassment, sexual discrimination and extortion against the state. "When you're treated differently than everybody else, and you're subjected to treatment that's different than anybody else...and the reasons that they give as the basis for the action that they've taken against you is flat-out false...it really only leaves one other reason," Godfrey told local news channel WHO-TV.

Full article

D.C. mayor asks feds to close Occupy site

Once again we see how there is no difference between the two parties...and how they handle Occupy Wall Street. Both serve the same master. Occupy is inconvenient:

Two of the more persistent camps in the "Occupy" movement should be consolidated, says District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray. But demonstrators at both camps are unconvinced they should go along with the demand.

Pretty amusing. DC has been crime ridden for decades. And this mayor has the nerve to talk about crime and dangerous:

Gray has expressed concerns about rodents, poor sanitation, and a risk of petty crime at the McPherson Square site, a small city park surrounded by office buildings and busy streets a few blocks from the White House. In a letter this week to the National Park Service, Gray wrote "since both Occupy D.C. locations are under federal control, it falls to you to take immediate steps to remedy this dangerous situation."

Full article

John McCain: SuperPACs Will ‘Destroy Political Process,’ Predicts ‘Scandal’ Because of Them

So do something about it. You've been in the Senate for decades. Show some leadership:

One of the biggest headlines of the Republican primary race so far – and the point Stephen Colbert is trying to make with his satirical campaign – is the story of SuperPACs.

Take Newt Gingrich. Gingrich’s poll numbers in Iowa were competitive until these shadowy groups started attacking him with TV ads. Nearly half the political ads run in Iowa  - and they saturated the airwaves – were negative ads against Gingrich, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. Many of those attack ads were put on the air by the SuperPAC called Restore Our Future, which is run by former Mitt Romney aides and supports his candidacy.

Because of U.S. campaign finance laws, the Romney-supporting SuperPAC can’t have any official contact with the Romney campaign, but we did ask Romney if he believes the SuperPACs should go away.

“I think the campaign finances laws that we have in this country are terribly counterproductive,” Romney told us on the campaign trail earlier this month.  “They limit how much money campaigns can raise and yet allow other entities to raise unlimited amounts.”  Romney added, “The campaigns should be the ones responsible for their own ads.”

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Lisa Murkowski Staffers Wagered Bets On Wildfire Office Pool

Lisa Murkowski Staffers Wagered Bets On Wildfire Office Pool

Severe criticism from the wildland firefighters association and the parents of a fallen firefighter have committee staffers for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski apologizing for an office pool on how many acres wildland fires will destroy.

Chris Christie praises Obama political skills

Politico:

In a wide-ranging interview with Oprah Winfrey, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has kind words for President Barack Obama, calling him “charismatic,” “genuine” and “as good a politician as I’ve ever seen.”

Winfrey, who is a well-known friend of the Obama family, asked Christie what he thought of the president’s reelection chances. The New Jersey Republican responded with a raft of compliments, according to the AP, which has obtained a full transcript of the interview.

“Those who underestimate Barack Obama, underestimate him at their own peril. He’s as good a politician as I’ve ever seen,” Christie said. “I think he’s very charismatic. And I think he’s genuine. I think what he says he believes, he believes. That’s a very dangerous politician.”

But the governor also said in the interview, set to air this Sunday, that the president is to blame for not facilitating a truce between the two parties in Congress.

“The only person who can call a truce, when Congress is at war at itself, is the president,” Christie said, according to a video clip posted on Oprah’s website.

“I work with Democrats, and we fight like crazy in public, but then we get in a room together and say, ‘there is a boulevard between getting everything I want and compromising my principles.’ I won’t compromise my principles, but I acknowledge I won’t get everything that I want. That’s what’s not happening in Washington right now. The only person that can make that happen is the president,” he added.

Americans Elect 2012 presidential run: The third-party group has cash, but no candidate

Their approach is all wrong. We need someone who is not the two-party system. The candidate should be a committed champion against the old, corrupt order. Don't look to the same people who have been part of the problem:

A new group that hopes to tap into a rising appetite for a third party presidential challenger has discovered that $30 million in secret cash can buy ballot access and attention, but not necessarily a dream candidate.

The group, Americans Elect, failed to generate interest in possible campaigns from Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lamar Alexander, and its intensive outreach to a host of other prospective candidates, including former Nebraska Sens. Chuck Hagel and Bob Kerrey, hasn’t yielded much public enthusiasm for its efforts.

Even Jon Huntsman, who top Americans Elect officials have supported, has ruled out the possibility of seeking the group’s nomination — and this week he reaffirmed his intent to continue his long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination after a third-place finish in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

Instead, Americans Elect has attracted attention from the allies of potential candidates who don’t seem well-suited to the group’s goal of leading a centrist surge on election day, including obscure figures such as Buddy Roemer, and those who seem to defy the group’s moderate positioning, such as Donald Trump and Ron Paul.

Full article

The Transformation Of American Factory Jobs, In One Company

Source:

Larry Sills is the CEO of Standard Motor Products, like his dad and his grandfather before him. The company makes replacement parts for car engines. Larry grew up with the company, and he has seen the workforce change over the years. A few decades ago, a lot of his workers had no high school degree. Some couldn't read.

"We had a plant in Connecticut where we didn't realize it, but they were illiterate," he says. "And then when we switched to the next generation, we had to be able to read the instructions. To our astonishment, they couldn't do it."

But in today's factory, workers don't just have to know how to read.

"We have a microscope, a hot stand, snap gauges, ID gauges," Ralph Young says. "We use bore mics, go-no-go plugs."

Capitalism on Trial in GOP Presidential Fight

You can credit Occupy Wall Street for this whole debate. Proof: No one brought it up during 2007/8 primary debates:

The merits of capitalism are normally reserved for debate in classrooms, or for economists to ponder at think tanks and the Federal Reserve. But for the past week, the hallmark American system of free enterprise has been thrust into the court of public opinion by the most unlikely group – Republicans running for president and scrutinizing Mitt Romney’s tenure at the private-equity firm Bain Capital.

Republicans, by their very nature, are supposed to like capitalism.

Yet these candidates — namely Newt Gingrich but also the back-runner Rick Perry — charge that on Romney’s watch, Bain profited while some companies in which he invested went bankrupt and workers lost jobs. The problem with their criticism is, for the most part, that’s one of the ways capitalism is designed to work.

The prosecution has lobbed plenty of insults at Romney — “crony capitalism,” “backdoor socialism,” “vultures” — in an effort to drag him down from his front-runner status. They portray him as a ruthless tycoon who casually dishes out pink slips before speeding away in a Maserati.

But go too far, and they run the risk of abandoning the capitalist roots that conservatives (and plenty of liberals) say make America great. That’s caused the accusers to back off a bit from their charge.

Full article

SOPA Author Lamar Smith: Copyright Violator?

Shows he's not motivated by conviction but some lobbyist has gotten to him:

Our chief SOPA correspondent is out of the office today but this story from VICE magazine was really too good to leave uncovered here at WPN, so I’m tagging in to share the story.

So if you’ve been following the saga of SOPA, you are likely familiar with the author of the bill, Rep. Lamar Smith. He’s been a regular cast member in this epic struggle for Internet freedoms. If you’re short on time, though, here’s the abridged version: Lamar Smith believes the Internet is a wretched hive of scum and villainy when it comes to copyrighted material because he thinks people regard copyrights the same way they regard the newspaper you put in the bottom of a bird’s cage.

Turns out, however, that the copyright-violating apple doesn’t fall far from the tree for Mr. Smith.

Full article

Billionaire U.S.-Canada bridge owner sent to jail

Maybe we should have more of this. No one is above the law--no matter how rich:

A judge ordered the 84-year-old owner of Detroit's Ambassador Bridge to jail Thursday for failing to meet court orders on a construction project linking the span to adjacent interstates.

Wayne County Judge Prentis Edwards said Manuel "Matty" Moroun and top lieutenant Dan Stamper will stay in jail until they comply with a 2010 order to get the work going. It's unclear how long they'll be behind bars after an appeals court hours later refused to suspend the decision and release them.

"It is clear that the Detroit International Bridge Co. does not intend to comply with the court orders unless meaningful sanctions are imposed," Edwards said.

Lawyers for Moroun and Stamper asked Edwards to freeze his decision while they appeal, but the judge declined.

Is The GOP Really a Conservative Political Party?

Another GOP presidential primary season and another "non-conservative" is being chosen. This despite all the bragging by the candidates during the primaries about who was more Conservative. Instead it is the establishment that has chosen Romney. Just look all the endorsements he has. What it proves is voters are not whom really decide. It's money that rules. And the GOP is first and foremost a big business party.

Four years ago the GOP chose John McCain, who like Romney, had suspect Conservative credentials:

Senator McCain might help his cause with conservatives if he stopped calling himself a conservative. He is damaging their brand name. And conservatives should stop, now, demanding that he be a conservative: that is not a condition precedent for being the better choice for president. Conservatives should remember that the fault McCain is not a conservative is partly their own: They have not succeeded in making conservatism the iPod in the marketplace of political philosophies.

To conservatives, John McCain sounds like the Devil. That is his fault, not theirs. He has dissed them and enjoyed it. That is not presidential, and if he does not stop he will not be president. He should make-and is making-amends, and not for his own sake, or for the conservatives', but for the country's.

The same column argued in 2008, like today with Romney, that the GOP should tolerate McCain because he is the lesser of two evils, even if he isn't a conservative:

It is time for conservatives to accept reality (accepting reality is another conservative trait); and the reality is (1) John McCain will be the Republican nominee for president and (2) he will make a far better president than the Democratic alternative.

Lew Rockwell got it right:

The Republican Party is not now, never was and never will be a conservative party. It is what it has always been — a representative of the rich and of big business.

Both Bushes were suspect Conservatives. George W. described himself as a "compassionate" Conservative which is the same as saying he is not really conservative. Bob Dole was no firebrand:

The moderate Bob Dole was the candidate in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.  Bush ran on the “compassionate conservatism” platform—a clear indication he wasn’t entirely comfortable with traditional conservatism.

Finally, there was the “maverick” John McCain in 2008, who was compelled to reach out to leading conservatives in an effort to make amends for years of seemingly taking pleasure in poking them in the eye.