time*treat's Blog

If they had spent as much effort on Madoff as on Martha...

If I ever need someone to substitute write for my blog...

"You're being persuaded below the level of choice and reason."

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/01/30/porcupine-day/

Let's go to the tape, shall we? Start around the 3:00 mark; you'll only need a couple of minutes.

[After a couple of years of this, we might actually miss Bush.]

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee voiced strong support for the nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, after a closed-door meeting Monday.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who chairs the Finance Committee, said he will hold a hearing next week to consider Daschle's nomination.

"Senator Daschle made mistakes on his taxes. They were disappointing mistakes, but it is clear that they were not purposeful mistakes," Baucus told reporters after the meeting.

"The fact is, Tom Daschle remains eminently qualified to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services," Baucus continued.

The former Senate majority leader recently paid $146,000 in back taxes and interest to correct lapses on his personal taxes. The questions surround unreported taxable income related to a car and driver provided by private-equity firm InterMedia Advisors LLP, unreported consulting income and improper deductions for charitable giving.

The Finance Committee held a bipartisan meeting Monday to allow Daschle to explain his mistakes in person. Republicans leaving the meeting said they had no comment on private discussions.

The tax problems complicate a nomination that otherwise was expected to proceed without difficulty. They come after revelations about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, during Geithner's confirmation process, embarrassed the Obama White House.

Daschle also appeared before reporters to reiterate his apology for the errors. "I deeply apologize to President Obama, my colleagues and the American people. I would hope my mistakes would be viewed in the context of 30 years of public service," Daschle said.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., also speaking to reporters after the meeting, said Daschle deserved no blame for the mistakes. He faulted InterMedia Advisors for failing to provide Daschle with a 1099 form to inform him that he had taxable income.

[If we could just get enough dems to catch up on their back taxes, the financial crisis might be solved. ][Wesley Snipes must be rolling over in his cell.]

(I wrote about this on Jan 25 - Change you CAN'T believe in)

source - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5636297.ece

The banner headlines greeting President Obama’s decision to close the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay and secret CIA prisons may have concealed how he has retained one of the most controversial weapons in the War on Terror.

Under executive orders signed on January 22, the CIA appears to have preserved its authority to carry out renditions – by which hundreds of terrorist suspects have been abducted and transferred to prisons in countries with questionable human rights records such as Egypt, Morocco or Jordan. [Oh, there's no question at all]

The measure, disclosed by the Los Angeles Times yesterday, gives some indication of how Mr Obama’s promise of change may be slower to be realised than once hoped, with the new Administration coming under concerted attack across a range of issues.
...

An administration official was quoted yesterday defending rendition. "Obviously you need to preserve some tools. You still have to go after the bad guys," said the official. "It is controversial in some circles. But if done within certain parameters, it is acceptable." [The 'parameter' being whose fingernails are being pulled, and who is doing the pulling. If this sort of thing is "acceptable" then what makes one side any more "good" than the other?]

Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur's (D) comments to her constituents to stay put instead of moving out after foreclosure.

She has also spoken against the SPP, NAFTA highway, and the NAU.

She voted against the Wall Street bailout bill both times.

Listening to her speak, while seeing that "D" behind her name ... is just surreal.

http://otd.oyez.org/articles/2009/01/26/unanimous-court-holds-passenger-can-be-frisked-jan-26-2009

Supreme court holds that passenger can be frisked.

Case Reference: Arizona v. Johnson

In another case testing the boundaries of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Supreme Court ruled that a police officer may search a suspect during a routine traffic stop if she believes that suspect may be armed and dangerous but has no justifiable reason to believe that they are committing a crime.

After stopping a car for a routine traffic violation in April 2002, Tucson police officer Maria Trevizo said she decided to search passenger Lemon M. Johnson because he was wearing gang colors and appeared dangerous. [There are colors "reserved" for gangs? I'd better check my crayon box.]

The pat-down search produced a gun and marijuana, and Johnson was convicted in Pima County Superior Court. [There was a time when neither of these items were "ill-eagle". We are fast approaching the day when both will be.]

Johnson appealed, arguing that evidence against him should have been suppressed because the search was unconstitutional. The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed and overruled the lower court.

The Arizona Supreme Court declined to review the case.

The state urged the Supreme Court to review the case, contending that an officer who fears for his or her safety is justified in searching someone believed to be armed and dangerous even if the suspect isn’t committing a crime.

On June 23, the justices accepted the case for review. They heard oral arguments during the fall term.

On Jan. 26, a unanimous court overturned the lower court ruling, which found for the defendant.

“To justify a patdown of the driver or a passenger during a traffic stop… just as in the case of a pedestrian reasonably suspected of criminal activity [like ... walking], the police must harbor [or at least claim to] reasonable suspicion that the person subjected to the frisk is armed and dangerous,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court.

Question presented: Whether, in the context of a vehicular stop for a minor traffic infraction, an officer may conduct a pat-down search of a passenger when the officer has an articulable basis to believe the passenger might be armed and presently dangerous, but had no reasonable grounds to believe that the passenger is committing, or has committed, a criminal offense. ["might be", as in "is it humanly possible", as in "all of us".]

No word yet on whether it is lawful to shoot someone in the back while they are restrained on the ground, or to follow such action with confiscating any citizen's recording devices that document said event.

Hmm, while they're at it, maybe they can search your wallet and take any money they [h a r b o r  reasonable suspicion to] believe is more than you should have on you. -- y'know, 'cause you 'look' poor.

My wife and I were watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?" "No," she answered. I then said, "Is that your final answer?" She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."

So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."

And that's when the fight started....


I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?"  It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said. So I suggested, "How about the kitchen?"

And that's when the fight started....


Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage.  I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, 'The weather out there is terrible.' My loving wife of 10 years replied, 'Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?'

And that's when the fight started....


A man and women were asleep like two innocent babies. Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a loud noise came from outside. The woman, bewildered, jumped up from the bed and yelled at the man 'Holy <snip>. That must be my husband!'

So the man jumped out of the bed; scared and naked jumped out the window. He smashed himself on the ground, ran through a thorn bush and to his car as fast as he could go. A few minutes later he returned and went up to the bedroom and screamed at the woman, 'I AM your husband!'

The woman yelled back, 'Yeah, then why were you running?'

And that's when the fight started....


I tried to talk my wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95. Instead, she bought a jar of cold cream for $7.95. I told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold cream.

And that's when the fight started....


A woman was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She was not happy with what she saw and said to her husband, 'I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.'

The husband replies, 'Your eyesight's damn near perfect.'

And that's when the fight started....


I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order first. "I'll have the strip steak, medium rare, please." He said, "Aren't you worried about the mad cow?" "Nah, she can order for herself."

And that's when the fight started....


My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table. My wife asked, 'Do you know her?' 'Yes,' I sighed, 'she's my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since.'

'My God!' said my wife, 'who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?'

And that's when the fight started....


After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later. The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt.' So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' and she processed my Social Security application.

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office. She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.'

And that's when the fight started....


When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive... so, I took her to a gas station.

And that's when the fight started....


My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She said, 'I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.' I bought her a scale.

And that's when the fight started....


My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, 'What's on TV?'

I said, 'Dust.'

And that's when the fight started....

(Why should ochoop17 have all the fun? )

Early in 2008, I did a few blogs about food shortages and also plans to outlaw the sale of vitamin supplements and make small (home) scale food production very inconvenient.

As supplements are classified as FOOD, you can currently buy as much of them as you want. Once they become classified as TOXINS or "controlled" substances , then their sale becomes subject to gov't permit. To see how well that works, look no further than people who have gotten arrested for buying "too much" allergy & cold medicine (Gary Schinagel, for example - www.globegazette.com/articles/2008/09/23/news/local/doc48d877436e870927909116.txt ) - That hissing sound you hear is Libs wetting their beds defending the "i n t e n t i o n" of the law. Results don't matter, just "i n t e n t i o n".

Back to B6. The FDA was petitioned to ban the sale of B6 based on it being similar to a drug -- developed from, you guessed it, B6. Here is one of the many articles about it you didn't hear from the lame-stream-media: www.naturalnews.com/023514.html

But, hey, what do I know? I just make it all up and draw paranoid conclusions. Not to worry... except, there is that little matter of finding the actual petition. Check the PDF.

www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&d=FDA-2007-P-0410-0002

The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture: Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.

If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee.

When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.

Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.

Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.

The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed. ...

That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos. ...

For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.

Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.

(the rest)
www.allannairn.com/2009/01/torture-ban-that-doesnt-ban-torture.html

or www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2594

Any "loi-ya" worth his fee knows it's all in the wording - letter of the law, they call it.

... completely off the chain?

Just a hint of "Not gonna take it", with this guy.

... your actions reflect upon everyone who wears that same type of uniform.

The Texas ratio is a measure of a bank's credit troubles. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_ratio

Earlier in 2008, I was posting about bank failures (among other things) and I took just a bit of an issue with the secrecy of the "troubled institutions" list - as if you don't have a right to know. If you're still content (after bailout-mania) to listen to the beady-eyed liars who told you "don't worry, be happy" right up to the moment when they screamed "imminent economic crisis", this post isn't for you. Nothing to see, here, move along.

For the few who think my track record is good enough, here's someone else's thoughts on the matter of potential bank failures.

http://grannymillerblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/are-you-prepared-if-your-bank-fails.html

If you want to cut right to the chase and know about your own bank, someone else put together a long list of banks in the U.S. and their "Texas Ratios" - http://www.lewrockwell.com/chris/banks/banks.html

No guarantees, just putting info out there, FWIW; which is more than you'll get from regulators [who will make sure their own ASSE(t)S are safe first, before they tell you anything] or from the 'useful idiots' who always defend [and want to believe] the liars right up until the moment the truth is unavoidable.

Satire. Almost.

Now for a little British humor.