Conservative Governor Haley Barbour Pardons 4 Killers

And this is supposed to be a top Conservative voice in the Republican Party.

In his last days in office, outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned four men convicted of murder, a state official said Monday.

David Gatlin, Joseph Ozment, Charles Hooker and Anthony McCray received full pardons and were released at 1 p.m. Sunday, said Suzanne Singletary, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. All four were serving life sentences and worked as trusties at the governor's mansion, she said.

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Obama and NeoConservatives Turn 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty' On Its Head

If re-elect Obama it is clear that there will continue to be an erosion in our rights. So what was the point of elected Obama if continue the Bush gang's attack on American freedoms? What makes it so bad is that the left that supported Obama in 2008 are willing to give him a pass in 2012 despite his betrayal of their trust:

...very little ink has spilled regarding the Administration’s newly codified authority to suspend certain liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Defense is one of the few legitimate federal functions. The military may be government’s most effective endeavor. Nonetheless, we do not want our streets subject to martial law; one of the “long train of abuses” precipitating our Declaration of Independence.

Under the National Defense Authorization Act, the military may incarcerate U.S. citizens indefinitely without formal charges. Should the Justice Department declare you a terrorist, or simply associate you with terrorists, your rights may be abridged. Instead of innocent until proven guilty, citizens deemed guilty will be unable to prove innocence.

Despite Obama’s veto threats and publicly prattling about “reservations,” Senator Carl Levin (D, MI) claims the administration privately pushed for the enactment of several of the most frightening provisions embedded in this legislation. Apparently the White House specifically sought that American citizens, even those detained domestically, can at government’s discretion, be indefinitely incarcerated without recourse to a speedy trial.

American citizens can now be treated in the same manner as foreign combatants captured overseas.

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'Doomsday Clock' moved closer to midnight

Source:

The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic indicator made famous by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since its inception in 1947, was moved Tuesday from six minutes to five minutes before midnight as a warning about nuclear dangers and climate change.

"Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing," the group said in its statement explaining the move.

The group also cited Japan's nuclear reactor disaster last year as a concern. "A major question to be addressed is: How can complex systems like nuclear power stations be made less susceptible to accidents and errors in judgment?"

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons.

The clock was not moved in 2011; in 2010 it was moved back one minute.

Confidence Grows, but Remains In Recession Territory

The economy is still weak. And if there is any financial turbulence the whole thing will come crashing down again. And then there will be no helping the economy:

Today, two new indicators provide yet more evidence that Americans are feeling better about the economy. Gallup reports that Americans' economic confidence is at a seven-month high. The National Federation of Independent Business reports that small business confidence is also up for the fourth straight month. Likewise, the most recent Reuters/University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment has shown four straight months of improvement. And the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index jumped more than 9 points, to 64.5, in December.

Yet while confidence is definitely trending upward in recent months, levels appear to be mired in recession territory, long after the recession ended.

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PolitiFact: Jon Huntsman says Utah was No. 1 in job creation when he was governor

PolitiFact | Jon Huntsman says Utah was No. 1 in job creation when he was governor

Jon Huntsman says Utah was No. 1 in job creation when he was governor

During the Sept. 7, 2011, Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman tried to burnish his economic credentials.

Taking a swipe at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, another Republican presidential candidate, Huntsman said, "I hate to rain on the parade of the Lone Star governor, but as governor of Utah, we were the No. 1 job creator in this country during my years of service. That was 5.9 percent when you were creating jobs at 4.9 percent."

We decided to check whether Huntsman was right -- and in a tale that only a statistical economist could love, we found that the answer is a lot more complicated than you might expect.

When we asked the Huntsman campaign for data to back up the claim, they directed us to a blog post at National Review Online, the website of the well-known conservative magazine. The item, posted June 20, 2011, compared employment statistics for several governors.

Monitor: Why Romney's Win in NH will be Bigger than You Think

Monitor: Why Romney's Win in NH will be Bigger than You Think - The Huffington Post

The last 48 hours have been horrendous for Mitt Romney. A poor debate performance Sunday morning (his first one) was followed by 2 gaffe filled days on the trail. Newt Gingrich's suicide charge at Romney is full on and Huntsman appears to spit venom anytime the topic is Romney. Add to this the DNC attacks the last several months and you have a candidate facing one of the most severe multi-front political attacks in modern political history. So it may come as a surprise to hear that we think Romney is going to win big today in NH, crossing the 40% threshold and become the first non-incumbent GOP presidential candidate to ever win both Iowa and NH.

And this is why we need to build our own on-line community

And this is why we need to build our own on-line community

How long should the PEOPLE depend on Facebook, Twitter, etc... for our networking needs????

The reason I have worked so hard to get We are the Democracy up and running is because of this dynamic. Big Money is buying the internet. They are NOT our allies. Facebook is already systematically censoring activists. How much worse will it get when Goldman Sachs gets involved in the management of Facebook?

Please share this thread with everyone you know. Ask them to get involved in the WE are the Democracy project. This is the one place on the internet where you can connect with folks across the broad spectrum of the PEOPLE's Movement. Please do your best to help us grow so that when Facebook and twitter, etc... become unusable - there will still be a place "of our own" on the internet.

Who Is New White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew?

Predictably Obama has replaced one banker with another. This is another poke in the eye for the left. Did Bush have as many bankers in his administration? Still, Obama's supporters will continue to support this fraud of a President no matter how much he betrays them and gives them the finger. Because he is the 'lesser of the two evils.' This is the mistake we make every election cycle. We vote either party because there is no alternative to the two-party system:

President Obama announced Monday afternoon that White House Chief of Staff William Daley is stepping down after just 361 days in the job (back in November, he was effectively demoted, giving up many of his duties but not his title, so the move isn't totally unexpected). Replacing Daley as the president's right-hand man will be Jacob Lew, better known as Jack. Here's your cheat sheet on the new White House chief of staff.

1. He's a numbers guy. Lew is currently the director of the Office of Management and Budget, running the numbers for the administration. It's his second tour of duty in that job. He also held it from 1998 to 2001 during the Clinton administration. Prior to returning to his OMB chair, Lew worked for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as deputy secretary for management and resources, a chief operating office-like position he inaugurated.

[...]4. He's part of the 1 percent. Don't take his liberalism to mean that Lew is a wild-eyed socialist though. In fact, he's a former banker. In 2008, he served as chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments, a division of the Wall Street behemoth. That group was involved in controversial practices like proprietary trading, and was involved in shorting the housing market as the economy lurched toward collapse. Perhaps in keeping with his resume, Lew has rejected the view of many fellow liberals who argue that deregulation of the financial sector contributed to the crash, saying, "[I don't] personally know the extent to which deregulation drove it, but I don't believe that deregulation was the proximate cause." Expect to hear muffled howls of unhappiness from the left, which will be glad to see Daley go but upset at Lew's positions.

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Video: Arkansas Grandmother Forced to Rob Bank?

Saudi Denies Bank Info Breach by Israeli Hackers

Source:

A top Saudi banking official on Tuesday denied an Israeli media report that hackers from Israel obtained credit card and bank account details of thousands of Saudi citizens, retaliating for an attack on Israeli accounts.

Talaat Hafez, secretary-general of the media office in the kingdom's banking authority, denied a report by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot that Israeli hackers were threatening to release the financial information they obtained if hackers continue to publish Israeli credit details on line.

Hafez was quoted by the Saudi online newspaper Sabq.org as saying that Saudi bank customers' financial information was safe and there was "no need for customers to be concerned" because Saudi banks' information networks were very secure.

Hafez also said officials had received no reports from Saudis about their data being breached.
The dueling reports underscored the hostile relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel's statehood.

Is Romney Picking Christie for VP Spot

I've already stated that Romney will choose NJ Governor as his running mate. They are campaigning together as if Christie were chosen already.

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Record-High 40% of Americans Identify as Independents in '11

This is a repudiation of the two-party system. Now to convert those numbers into a third party challenge:

The percentage of Americans identifying as political independents increased in 2011, as is common in a non-election year, although the 40% who did so is the highest Gallup has measured, by one percentage point. More Americans continue to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, 31% to 27%.

These results are based on more than 20,000 interviews conducted in 20 separate Gallup polls in 2011. Gallup has computed annual averages of party identification since 1988, when it began regularly conducting interviews by telephone. The prior high percentage of independents was 39% in 1995 and 2007.

Gallup records from 1951-1988 -- based on face-to-face interviewing -- indicate that the percentage of independents was generally in the low 30% range during those years, suggesting that the proportion of independents in 2011 was the largest in at least 60 years.

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Constitutional Scholar: White House Entirely Ignoring Article 1, Section 5

Jessica Yellen says the President could've done made the appointment when the Congress was truly in recess without opposition but has instead chosen to play politics:

John C. Eastman, a professor at Chapman University School of Law who is an expert on the constitutional separation of powers, says that the White House simply ignored the section of the Constitution, which governs when Congress can adjourn, when President Obama claimed to use the "recess" appointment power on Wednesday to name a director to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and three members to the National Labor Relations Board.

Eastman says that under the terms of the Constitution Congress was not in recess this week, it was in session.

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U.S. Debt is Now Equal to Economy

It must be considered a betrayal of the public trust for the U.S. government to have given us such debt. They have put political expediency above the future of our nation. While many of us sacrifice for our children Washington has been indifferent to our next generation. The Congress is universally disliked by the American people but are able to retain their positions of power. This suggests they act without our approval. So the American people as a whole are blameless. And since they act without our consent they are illegitimate. Only a revolution in government will restore the supremacy of We The People:

The soaring national debt has reached a symbolic tipping point: It's now as big as the entire U.S. economy.

The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion.

That's roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year: $15.17 trillion as of September, the latest estimate. Private projections show the economy likely grew to about $15.3 trillion by December — a level the debt is likely to surpass this month.

The American people do not control their government because it has been corrupted by great wealth:

But the hand-wringing over the new breed of deep-pocketed outside groups has become a process debate – wrapped in the language of legal arcana and plausible deniability. And, when the candidates are pushed to call for an end to the ads or changes to the legal landscape that spawned them, they mostly back down.

It’s a kabuki dance that allows candidates to keep their hands clean even as they become major players in a new big-money system that seems likely to dominate presidential politics for the foreseeable future.

With all that debt the potential for financial disaster looms over our nation. And there doesn't seem anyone out there with any solutions that could possibly get the attention of an indifferent national government:

Higher interest rates on U.S. debt will increase our annual deficits and accelerate the growth of the national debt, potentially triggering a spiraling crisis of confidence like that we have seen in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and other European countries. And as we have seen in those countries, the crisis of confidence can reveal itself in rising interest rates not over years, not in months or weeks, but suddenly over a few days or hours.

Unlike the European countries which have recently experienced debt crises, the U.S. does not have a larger entity waiting in the wings ready to bail us out with outside capital. If we try to respond to market demand for higher interest rates by, in effect, turning on the printing presses and printing more dollars, that will only deepen our economic crisis and spread economic panic.

Who thinks that's a risk we should take? Who's willing to bet the republic that the U.S. will always be the safest place in the world to invest capital, that we'll always be the lowest cost borrower in the world?

It's a risk and a bet that I'd prefer not to make. Common sense says that we can't continue to operate on trillion dollar annual deficits forever, running up the national debt to successively higher and higher record levels.

Fact-checking the weekend's GOP debates

Source: CBS

Ron Paul cited a staggering number in the Republican presidential debate Sunday - $15 trillion supposedly spent by the Fed "bailing out their friends." Like Mitt Romney and his claims about creating jobs in the private sector, Paul came up with that shocker by presenting an unbalanced look at balance sheets.

Here is a look at some of the claims in a pair of lively GOP debates on the weekend and how they compare with the facts:

PAUL: "I don't see how we can do well against Obama if we have any candidate that, you know, endorsed, you know, single payer systems and TARP bailouts and don't challenge the Federal Reserve's $15 trillion of injection bailing out their friends."

THE FACTS: First, there are no fans of government-run, single-payer health insurance in the Republican field, despite Paul's suggestion otherwise Sunday. Newt Gingrich once endorsed the idea of requiring everyone to have health insurance, and Romney introduced a mandate for health coverage as Massachusetts governor. But that's a far cry from a Canadian-style health system that makes government the primary payer of people's medical bills.

TARP is the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that was proposed by President George W. Bush and passed by Congress in 2008 to help rescue imperiled financial institutions. Nearly all of the money has been paid back, with interest.

Paul's slam against the Fed ignores the fact that most of the $15 trillion he is talking about involved loans that were quickly repaid, sometimes the next day. And that's if these Fed transactions can even be considered loans in the conventional sense.

When the Fed lends money to banks, it creates the money out of thin air. When the banks pay it back, the money disappears from the system. If a bank borrows $5 billion from the Fed one day, then pays it back the next, and a week later borrows $5 billion more and quickly pays it back, the total would be listed as $10 billion, even though it's just the same money going back and forth and the treasury is in no sense being emptied.

That's how a federal report counted a running total of about $15 trillion in emergency Fed loans to domestic banks and their foreign subsidiaries between 2007 and 2010. The actual loan total, once paybacks are accounted for, is estimated at $1.1 trillion.

Fact check: Obama's 'Promises Kept' ad

Source: USAToday:

President Obama's reelection campaign is circulating a video of promises the then-candidate made during an Iowa caucus victory speech in January 2008, claiming he kept the promises he made that night. Not quite.

To be sure, the president signed a major health care law, ended the long war in Iraq and signed multiple "middle-class" tax cuts, just as his campaign boasts.

But the health care law isn't expected to make insurance "affordable and available to every single American," as Obama promised. And though he pledged to be a president who "brings our troops home" from Iraq, thousands of those U.S. troops are now stationed in neighboring Kuwait. Most glaringly, he has failed at "bringing Democrats and Republicans together" as he so optimistically promised four years ago.

Soldiers on Lockdown After 'Sensitive' Military Equipment is Stolen from Washington Base

Source:

More than 100 soldiers were on lockdown Sunday after "sensitive" military equipment was stolen from a base in Fort Lewis, Wash.

The soldiers were put on lockdown Wednesday after items such as scopes, night vision goggles and range finders went missing from Joint Base Lewis-McChord over the holidays, myFOXSpokane.com reported.

Lewis-McChord spokesman Matt Hinkle said Saturday that the army was carrying out a criminal investigation into the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division after the "sensitive" items went missing, The News Tribune reported.

"They'll be on base until the items are found," Hinkle, who estimated the company contained about 100- 200 soldiers, said. "This is the unit's property that's come up missing."

"We're going to continue to conduct this investigation as thoroughly as possible," I Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield added. "We will get to the bottom of this matter."

Neither Hinkle nor Dangerfield confirmed exactly what pieces of equipment were missing but Dangerfield said that many military items including night-vision goggles and military ID cards were considered "sensitive," according to the newspaper.

Family members were allowed to visit the soldiers for the first time Friday, myFOXSpokane.com reported.

Officials are offering a $10,000 reward for the return of the equipment.

Transcript: 'Meet The Press' GOP Presidential Debate (1-8-12)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

DAVID GREGORY:

09:02:46:00             Speaker Gingrich, why shouldn't Governor Romney be the nominee of this party?  What about his record concerns you most or makes him-- disqualified to be the nominee?

                                      NEWT GINGRICH:

09:02:58:00             Look, I-- I think what Republicans have to ask is who's most likely in the long run-- to survive against the kind of billion dollar campaign the Obama team is gonna run.  And I think that a bold Reagan conservative with a very strong economic plan is a lot more likely to succeed in that campaign than a relatively timid Massachusetts moderate who even The Wall Street Journal said had an economy plan so timid it resembled Obama.

09:03:25:00             So I think you've gotta look at, you know, Massachusetts was fourth from the bottom in job creation under Governor Romney.  I-- we created 11 million jobs while I was Speaker and I worked with governor-- with President Reagan in the entire recover of the 1980s.  That is they-- there's a huge difference between a Reagan conservative and somebody who comes out of the Massachusetts culture with an essentially moderate record who I think will have a very hard time in a debate with president.

09:03:49:00                           (OVERTALK)

                                      DAVID GREGORY:

09:03:49:00             Speaker Gingrich, bottom line, you believe that Governor Romney is unelectable?

                                      NEWT GINGRICH:

09:03:52:00             Well, I don't believe he's unelectable but I think he has a much-- I-- look, against Obama's record, I think , you know, the fact is President Obama's gonna have a very hard reelection effort.  But I do think the bigger the contrast, the bolder ideas, the clearer the choice, the harder it is for that billion dollar campaign to smear his way back into office.

                                      DAVID GREGORY:

09:04:10:00             Speaker, this your flier that you're--

                                      NEWT GINGRICH:

09:04:12:00             Right.

                                      DAVID GREGORY:

09:04:12:00             --circulating here in New Hampshire.  It says very clearly, "Romney is not electable."

                                      NEWT GINGRICH:

09:04:15:00             I think he will have a very hard time getting reelected.  Getting elected?

                                      DAVID GREGORY:

09:04:19:00             Governor?

                                      MITT ROMNEY:

09:04:22:00             David-- I'm very proud of the record that I have and I think the one thing you can't fool the people about New Hampshire about is-- the record of a governor next door.  And people have watched me over my term as governor and saw that I was a solid conservative and that I brought important change to Massachusetts.

09:04:36:00             They recognized that I cut taxes 19 times.  Balanced the budget every one of the four years I was in governor.  Put in place a $2 billion rainy day fund by the time I'd gone.  We had-- we'd seen job losses-- in the month leading up to my-- becoming-- the governor and then we began to finally create jobs.  And by the way, we created more jobs-- in Massachusetts than Barack Obama's created in the entire country.

09:04:58:00             We also got our state police to enforce illegal immigration law, put in place-- English immersion in our schools.  I'm very proud of the conservative record I have and I think that's why some of the leading conservatives in today's-- world who are fighting the conservative battles of today that don't have any axe to grind have gotten behind my campaign.

09:05:16:00             Governor Nikki Haley of-- of South Carolina.  Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.  Right here, the great senator of-- of New Hampshire, Ken-- Kelly Ayotte.  These are conservative who looked at my record, looked at my plan to get this economy going.

09:05:29:00             I happen to believe that if we want to replace a lifetime politician like Barack Obama, who had no experience leading anything, you have to choose someone who's not been a lifelong politician, who has not spent his tire-- en-- entire career in Washington, and instead has proven time and again he could lead in the private sector twice, in the Olympics and as a governor.  We've got to nominate a leader if we're gonna replace someone who is not a leader.

Related:

• Video: GOP New Hampshire Presidential Debate (1-7-12)  
• Transcript: New Hampshire GOP Presidential Debate (1-7-12) 

 

Senator Warns of New Batch of 'Super Painkillers' That Could Fuel More Deadly Robberies

Drugs, and their abuse, explains much of the violence in our society. We need to rethink the role of prescription drugs in our society. We might want to ask whether the powerful pharmaceuticals have us drugged-up and violent:

 Following fatal shootings in two New York pharmacy robberies, a U.S. senator is warning that a new batch of "super painkillers" now under review could force repeats of recent violent robberies that left six people dead.

"It's tremendously concerning that at the same time policymakers and law enforcement professionals are waging a war on the growing prescription drug crisis, new super-drugs could well be on their way, flooding the market," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The FDA needs to grab the reins and slow down the stampede to introduce these powerful narcotics."

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Video: GOP New Hampshire Presidential Debate (1-7-12)