And how was your day? As for me—Ecclesiastes 1 says it all: the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible….

Ecclesiastes 1

¹The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

²Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

³What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

⁴One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

⁵The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

⁶The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

⁷All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

⁸All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

⁹The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

¹⁰Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

¹¹There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

¹²I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

¹³And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

¹⁴I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

¹⁵That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

¹⁶I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

¹⁷And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

¹⁸For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Wells Fargo Class Action Update

Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire, has agreed to serve as counsel for our Class Action Lawsuit against Wells Fargo in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, and she has also signed on as counsel in Palm Beach, Florida (United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida) against U.S. Bank, a suit which also questions the bias, independence, and/or partiality or control of the Florida state judiciary.  These two suits will now become the focal point of our attentions.  In the short-term, we may need a little time to bring Dr. Taitz up to speed on the litigation, and she to bring our cases in line with Real-Politik and concerns about “justiciability” (are we able to obtain justice?  that’s an open question in America today).  We are dead serious about financial reform in this country, and even homes which have been sold at foreclosure are subject to redemption.

Peyton Yates Freiman is in Boise and can be reached at 512-923-1889.  He is our “front man and flag man” for all cases.  He does so much work that I occasionally even pay him….(lol!).  What we can now offer is a menu of services including special attention to your own case in addition to the class action. We want to bring everyone in the United States together on this Wells Fargo case—we may ultimately consolidate it in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, San Diego, in other words, to one of the cities somewhat more “central” to Wells-Fargo’s operations.

Bob Rivernider has just begun working for a “mortgage audit” company in Palm Beach Gardens and he is the lead plaintiff in the USBANK case, and can be reached at 561-315-2487.  His apparently company charges $675-$1500 for mortgage audits and these documents can be used in any and all litigation, although, frankly, you probably need us to manage your litigation, especially now.

The Taitz-Lincoln agreement provides that Lincoln (and Freiman, acting through Tierra Limpia/Deo Vindice) will act as Trustee and Property Manger for all cases involving individual properties, while Taitz will serve as legal counsel, subject to possibly needing to obtain local counsel in every state outside of California.

Anyone interested in joining the class action against Wells Fargo, now is the time to get in touch with me or Peyton or Robert.  Whoever is interested, please fax a copy of your NOTE and MORTGAGE CONTRACT to me in care of Dr. Kathy Lawson at 561-691-1423 along with any special notes/narrative you’d like to provide.

We are going to seek nationwide class certification on a minimum of two points:

(1)

All Wells Fargo Contracts are identical nationwide and all of them provide NO consideration from Wells Fargo to you (the borrower/debtor), so they are not in fact BILATERAL contracts supported by mutual consideration at all, and they only become binding UNILATERAL contracts upon YOUR perfected and completed performance, which they often obstruct by manipulation of terms/conditions of servicing.

(2)    All Promissory Notes made out to Wells Fargo (and/or absorbed banks now subsidiary to Wells Fargo) have been securitized, which breaks privity of contract, precludes determination of holder in due course, and renders the notes uncollectable—not ABSOLUTELY VOID but VOIDABLE, NON-ACTIONABLE, NULLITIES relative to the controlling law of contract and commercial paper.

I am certainly open to suggestions for additional possible nationwide class action issues, but these two, if successful, will destroy Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (merged into Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.).

We pledge that it is our purpose to eradicate fraudulent lending by soft-money credit analysis in the United States.  Tierra Limpia/Deo Vindice stand for the proposition that ACTUAL PRODUCTION AND LABOR are the sole sources and arbiters of meaningful value.  Credit is nice for board games and thought experiments, but its time as the arbiter of wealth has come and gone, and it is time to restore that “Old Time Religion” of the work ethic epitomized in that grand old Hymn, so appropriate for this time of year, the Harvest Season, “Come Labor on! Who Dares Stand Idle?  Who Dares Stand Idle on the Harvest Plain?  While all around him waives the Golden Grain.  Does not the Farmer to each worker say, ‘Go Work, Today!”  The Old Latin name for this hymn was “Ora, Labora” roughly translated as  ”Pray by Working.”

Deo Vindice

“May the Lord God be with you,

and with thy spirit!”

Charles E. Lincoln, III

Spiritual Patriot

Tierra Limpia

Irony of Ironies: Music used as effective torture device

I confess a certain satisfaction at seeing this headline: I have known my whole life that, just as music can be used for healing and educational enhancement, there is little that can be more imaginably ironic than the use of music as mind-bending torture, but the association between music and the extortion of confessions goes back thousands of years, into Roman and even earlier Indo-European history.  ”To sing like a canary” or even “to sing” is a prison metaphor for a cooperative “snitch” (captured in several dozen movies including classics with Edward B. Robinson), while “make him sing” is an analogy for coerced confession and acting involuntarily as an informer.  I recall being alone in a large class of Criminal Procedure students at the University of Chicago Law School who argued vociferously that playing background music unsolicited—whether loudly or continually or that conveyed a certain message—could be (and was in cases we read in class) effectively torture.  Of course I actually remember being one voice alone against my entire class on many occasions in Law School, and else where, which is probably why my favorite movie is V-for-Vendetta and I was wearing my old relic-of-a-childhood-in England, a Guy Fawkes’ mask, long before that movie, and very shortly after 9-11……

Of course, I simply cannot understand why the Republicans in Congress are so anxious about the closing of Guantanamo Bay.  President Obama and his Attorney General Holder have both advocated and promised that this administration will institute prisons of exactly the same nature and for exactly the same purpose (indefinite detention of “terrorism” suspects without trial) inside the Continental United States.  He only plans to improve the Guantanamo experience by making it available to all of us: exactly as you’d expect, he plans to use torture and indefinite detention without discrimination by race, creed, or colour against all Americans….and that is absolutely consistent with his general respect for and commitment to the Constitution…..(i.e., nil).  ”Remember, remember….”

Musicians crank up the volume on Guantanamo debate

AP, Oct 21, 2009 11:00 pm PDT

A coalition of mega-bands and singers outraged that music — including theirs — was cranked up to help break uncooperative detainees atGuantanamo Bay is joining retired military officers and liberal activists to rally support for President Barack Obama’s push to shutter the Navy-run prison for terrorist suspects in Cuba.

Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails are among the musicians who have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, which launched Tuesday.

On behalf of the campaign, the National Security Archive in Washington is filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking classified records that detail the use of loud music as an interrogation device.

“At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture,” said Thomas Blanton, executive director of the archive, an independent, nongovernmental research institute.

Based on documents that already have been made public and interviews with former detainees, the archive says the playlist featured cuts from AC/DC, Britney Spears, the Bee Gees, Marilyn Manson and many other groups. TheMeow mix cat food jingle, the Barney theme song and an assortment of Sesame Street tunes also were pumped into detainee cells.

A November 2008 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody makes several references to the use of loud music as an interrogation tool.

In one case interrogators played music to “stress” Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a citizen of Mauritania who has been at Guantanamo for more than seven years, because he believed music is forbidden, the report says.

Over a 10-day period in July 2003, Slahi was questioned by an interrogator called “Mr. X” while being “exposed to variable lighting patterns” and repeated playing of a song called “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” by the bandDrowning Pool, according to the committee’s report.

Maj. Diana Haynie, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said loud music has not been used with detainees since the fall of 2003.

Jayne Huckerby, research director at New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, said high-decibel music was also used against detainees at clandestine prisons run by the CIA.

As part of an earlier FOIA request for information about these “black sites,” Huckerby received a top secret CIA document dated December 2005 in which the agency explains that the use of loud music or white noise is needed “to mask sound and prevent communication among detainees.”

If decibel levels are kept at 79 or lower — roughly equivalent to a garbage disposal — detainee hearing won’t be damaged, the agency said.

Huckerby says that music was not used as a “benign security tool,” but as a way “to humiliate, terrify, punish, disorient and deprive detainees of sleep, in violation of international law.”

CIA spokesman George Little said the CIA used music only for security, “not for punitive purposes — and at levels far below a live rock band.”

Founders launched National Campaign to Close Guantanamo with ads on cable television urging Congress to reject the “failed Bush-Cheney policies.”

Obama pledged to close the jail by January, but logistical snags and Republican opposition on Capitol Hill have made fulfilling that promise less likely. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who warns that closing the prison would endanger national security, has fueled the resistance.

A group opposing the closure of the prison, Keep America Safe, said in a statement Tuesday that those held at Guantanamo are dedicated to killing Americans.

___

On the Net:

Close Gitmo Now: http://closegitmonow.org/

Keep America Safe: http://www.keepamericasafe.com/

IS THE FED MONETIZING DEBT? Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

What do they mean “is the Fed Monetizing Debt?”   There would be no “money” in circulation today AT ALL if the Federal Reserve weren’t monetizing debt!  (No disparagement of the Crown of St. Peter intended….)

http://theburningplatform.com/groups/quinns-daily-dose-of-reality/discussions/is-the-fed-monetizing-debt

IS THE FED MONETIZING DEBT?

These charts are so symetrical. The Fed has purchased $297 billion of Treasuries and $945 billion of Mortgage bonds since March. They have done this to artificially reduce interest rates to benefit mega banks and risk taking borrowers. They have done this on the backs of Senior Citizens who now get .30% on their MM funds. You may ask yourself where did the Fed get the $1.242 Trillion to buy these bonds. When you have a printing press it’s easy. They created the $1.242 Trillion out of thin air. And you were wondering why the value of the dollar continues to fall. These two charts are a picture of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Ben Bernanke makes Bernie Madoff look like a two bit small time criminal.

“Free cheese is only found in mousetraps.” — Russian proverb

Judicial Sanctions violate the Constitution, as does Judicial Immunity for Violation of Fundamental Rights

On Tuesday, October 13, 2009, Judge Clay D. Land imposed Rule 11 Sanctions in the amount of $20,000.00 on Dr. Orly Taitz.

To put it all in perspective, keep in mind that sanctions are very common in modern litigation. Sanctions in amounts comparable to those imposed on Orly are routinely imposed for failure to cooperate in discovery, for delaying the dates of trial or depositions, and “fee-shift” on the British model (”Looser pays attorneys’ fees”) has gotten more and more “popular” as means of “locking the courthouse door” to all but a few who can, basically “take their lumps as they come.”   Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson, a close friend of mine in Florida, was sanctioned $15,000.00 a couple of years ago in the Palm Beach County 15th Judicial Circuit for “Dragging her Feet” in divorce proceedings.  Ridiculous impositions such as this amount to little more than Judicially order expropriation designed to close the courthouse doors on all but the richest litigants.

I would say that in essence, it was something of an honor for Orly to have been sanctioned in this manner and I frankly hope that she realizes that the government does not bother to injure harmless people who pose no threat to the established order.

What’s unusual about Land’s sanctions entered against Orly is that they are purely punitive rather than compensatory (no “fee shifting” involved here), and that the conduct for which Orly is being punished is purely “content-related” rather than having to do with actual violations of well-known or established court rules. Judge Land’s biggest points are that Orly’s suits on behalf of officers seeking to question their chain of command were completely frivolous from the beginning (basically because Officers should serve unquestioningly, despite their oath to uphold the Constitution), Orly’s suits were completely political from the beginning, filed to advance her own “political agenda.”

In this context, it is obvious that Judge Land’s purpose is political. That political aspect of Judge Land’s order almost smells of “bribery” at the end of his 43 page order when JUDGE LAND OFFERS THE ENTIRE $20,000.00 SANCTION AGAINST ORLY, IF COLLECTED, TO THE NATIONAL INFANTRY FOUNDATION, A PRIVATE ORGANIZATION OF ARMY VETERANS. If this is not an example of a Judge trying to make political hay off a potentially controversial ruling, I have no idea what is. Judge Land’s expression of purpose is an overture to the Army, in essence, to say, “Support me and do not question your President—every time an attorney loses YOUR right to Freedom of Speech and the right to Petition in MY Court, there will be a compensatory contribution to the memory and honor of those who served without questioning, so SHUT UP!” That’s how I read it, anyhow.

Orly now needs to prepare for appeal, which will involve, for example, filing for a stay of execution of judgment against her. She is apprehensive that Judge Land will just sanction her an addition $10,000 or more for every subsequent filing. I can only say: this raging bull is out of his pen—let him do as much damage as he can, because the imbalance in his red-eyes and flaming nostrils will become more apparent to everyone, the worse he does. In other words, I think the wilder Judge Land’s behavior at this stage, the better are Orly’s chances on appeal, although the imposition of sanctions is typically reviewed only for “abuse of discretion” and “a judge’s lawful discretion” includes just about everything except murder with malice aforethought IN the Courtroom.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us, “Blessed are they who suffer persecution for the sake of Righteousness” and later that the people of God are “sheep sent out among wolves.” Psalm 69 reminds us how long is the history of unjust persecution the innocent, and of the particularly vindictive punishment inflicted on those who try to avoid or even fight the ways of evil. So do Isaiah 59 and dozens of other passages of Holy Scripture.
Orly is an innocent but righteous victim here, but we need to realize that the flaws are systemic, and are attributable in part to doctrines such as “judicial immunity”, whereby an “Unjust Judge” can punish a repetitive filer by violating her First Amendment Right to Petition rather than finally awarding her justice (cf. Luke 18: 1-8).

Many unjust judges have used Rule 11 with increasing frequency to lock the courthouse doors to all injured parties. Conservatives are certainly at fault for supporting “Tort Reform” and lacking sympathy for the injured and abused in society. “Tort Reform” is one of the engines behind the increasing use of sanctions to throw parties and their attorneys’ out of the system.

Liberals are at still greater fault, I think, for scorning the idealism of the Founding Fathers, for despising individual autonomy and initiative, and generally for creating interest-based “safe zones” where privileged minorities can wreak havoc on the rest of society, and thereby subvert true democracy.

The Constitution was our hope (and the hope of the whole world) in ages past. If it is to be our hope in years to come, we desperately need to curtail judicial immunity where constitutional rights, especially the right to petition, are involved, so that judges can feel at least some of the sting which they can now inflict on others, at no cost to themselves.

In my own experience, I was sanctioned $150,000.00 by Judge Walter S. Smith of Waco for the dastardly crime of “spearheading a movement to have the Texas Family Code declared unconstitutional.” What was curious about the sanctions imposed on me is that I was neither a party nor a witness in the lawsuit wherein I was sanctioned. If a truckdriver veers off course and takes out a house, when his 18 wheeler crashes into it, he will be fired, license suspended, and may well do some jail time, especially if people were injured inside the house. When a Judge veers off course and imposes sanctions on a person who was neither a party nor a witness nor ever summoned or subpoenaed in a case, that party has no right of appeal (unless he intervenes) and no easy way of collateral attack. Judges have too much power. Judges can violate the Constitution continually and suffer no adverse consequences.

And so, Judges occupy a uniquely powerful position in society, and all Freedom-Loving Americans should work for judicial reform and stripping away the—not merely unconstitutional but anticonstitutional privileges–not only of judges, but of the conformist lawyers under whose protection judges aggrandize ever greater power to themselves, at the expense of the people.

Orly Taitz is the antithesis of a conformist lawyer, and it is for that reason that she is being sanctioned, why she is now being made a prey—precisely because she has turned away from evil, as in Isaiah 59: 14-15:

So justice is driven back,
and righteousness stands at a distance;
truth has stumbled in the streets,
honesty cannot enter.

Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

In Cohens v. Virginia, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1821, Chief Justice Marshall wrote that for a court to refuse to exercise its jurisdiction was “treason” to the constitution.

Judge Land has built his entire assault against Orly’s integrity based on the doctrine of abstention—that he has jurisdiction which he should ignore. The 5th Circuit Mindes case from 1971 specifically found constitutional questions regarding the military and the application of its rules were subject to Judicial challenge, yet Judge Land ignores the substance of the very precedent he cites. (Note: the 11th Circuit in Atlanta branched off from the 5th Circuit in New Orleans in 1981, but all earlier 5th Circuit precedent remained as the foundation of 11th Circuit Law, and the 11th and 5th Circuits, crossing Dixie, still share a great deal of, mostly rather repressive, jurisprudence in common).

Judge Land issued a 43 page order condemning Orly, for among other things, utilizing the Courts for political purposes, and yet he proposes to use the $20,000.00 he expects to obtain from Orly for what can only be called a political contribution to advance certain political positions and philosophical assertions within the army.

Judge Land is clearly utilizing his power under Rule 11 to attempt to sanction Orly for legitimate exercise of her First Amendment Right to Petition, and that of her clients. Post-judgment motions and an appeal will be filed.  Anyone who knows Orly’s determination knows that.

I have been concerned about the question of Judicial Immunity, and the perverting effect this has on judicial decisionmaking and power, for many years.  I believe and submit that the 1996 Amendments to 42 U.S.C. Sections 1983 and 1988 set the standard of review of judicial conduct as “clearly in excess of jurisdiction.”  This means that, under Federal Civil Rights substantive law (Sections 1983 & 1988 are normally considered merely formal or procedural, but the 1996 amendments were substantive, and 1988(a) is clearly substantive), a Judge can be held liable, at least for costs of litigation and attorneys fees, where his conduct was “clearly in excess of jurisdiction.”  The Senate Report at 1996 USCCAN 4216-7 clearly confirms that this standard is applicable to Federal as well as State Court Judges.

What do these case decisions mean? « Livinglies?s Weblog

What do these case decisions mean? « Livinglies?s Weblog

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Maybe next year, if the dollar goes into tripled-digit hyperinflation (e.g. like Zimbabwe today, Argentina in the 1980s, Germany in the 1920s, they’ll make Obama the first man in history to receive two Nobel Prizes in consecutive years by giving him the Nobel Prize in Economics….

It does seem strangely bizarre that Obama’s own supporters on the Democratic left (such as Salon.com’s editor in chief Joan Walsh) are struggling to defend Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize while apologizing “even as we acknowledge disappointment with Obama on State Secrets, Torture, Iraq, and Afghanistan” (you know, minor issues relating to world peace like those which constitute, well….just about everything he’s touched in the past nine months, see http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh// for October 10, 2009), the rest of the Country is reeling from the sensation that this is all just a really bad joke, including my favorite commentator on civil rights and civil liberties, the author of How would a Patriot Act?.  The key quote from the article below is, in my opinion:

[Obama has] worked tirelessly to protect his country not only from accountability — but also transparency — for the last eight years of war crimes, almost certainly violating America’s treaty obligations in the process.  And he is currently presiding over an expansion of the legal black hole at Bagram while aggressively demanding the right to abduct people from around the world, ship them there, and then imprison them indefinitely with no rights of any kind.

All put together it makes me want to cry for my beloved but hopelessly insecure homeland, the United States of America, home of the zombie-like sleepwalkers and cowards who are letting this all happen (i.e., what seems like at least 75% of the population and maybe more)!  But seriously, what Obama is doing on the foreign front to protect the Bush legacy is nowhere nearly as sinister and corrupt as what he’s doing at home—pushing his domestic socialist agenda in cooperation with the corporate-financial giants, i.e. the international Banks, such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase just to name the top-three leading culprits, whose disregard for the fundamental elements of common law contract and property law is rapidly turning this country into a nation of homeless vagabonds….one foreclosure at a time, 70 foreclosures per morning and afternoon per session per county court, all across the United States, from sea to shining sea!

Glenn Greenwald

FRIDAY OCT. 9, 2009 07:10 EDT

(updated below – Update II)

When I saw this morning’s top New York Times headline — “Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize” — I had the same immediate reaction which I’m certain many others had:  this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website, that it was just some sort of strange joke someone was playing.  Upon further reflection, that isn’t all that far from the reaction I still have.  And I say that despite my belief that — as critical as I’ve been of the Obama presidency regarding civil liberties and Terrorism — foreign affairs is actually one area where he’s shown genuine potential for some constructive “change” and has, on occasion, merited real praise for taking steps in the general “peace” direction which this Prize is meant to honor.

Obama has changed the tone America uses to speak to the world generally and the Muslim world specifically.  His speech in Cairo, his first-week interview on al-Arabiya, and the extraordinarily conciliatory holiday video he sent to Iran are all substantial illustrations of that.  His willingness to sit down and negotiate with Iran — rather than threaten and berate them — has already produced tangible results.  He has at least preliminarily broken from Bush’s full-scale subservience to Israel and has applied steadfast pressure on the Israelis to cease settlement activities, even though it’s subjected him to the sorts of domestic political risks and vicious smears that have made prior Presidents afraid to do so.  His decision to use his first full day in office to issue Executive Orders to close Guantanamo, ostensibly ban torture, and bar CIA black sites was an important symbol offered to the world (even though it’s been followed by actions that make those commitments little more than empty symbols).  He refused to reflexively support the right-wing, civil-liberty-crushing coup leaders in Honduras merely because they were “pro-American” and “anti-Chavez,” thus siding with the vast bulk of Latin America’s governments — a move George Bush, or John McCain, never would have made.  And as a result of all of that, the U.S. – in a worldwide survey released just this week — rose from seventh to first on the list of “most admired countries.”

All that said, these changes are completely preliminary, which is to be expected given that he’s only been in office nine months.  For that reason, while Obama’s popularity has surged in Western Europe, the changes in the Muslim world in terms of how the U.S. is perceived have been small to nonexistent.  As Der Spiegel put it in the wake of a worldwide survey in July:  “while Europe’s ardor for Obama appears fervent, he has actually made little progress in the regions where the US faces its biggest foreign policy problems.”  People who live in regions that have long been devastated by American weaponry don’t have the luxury of being dazzled by pretty words and speeches.  They apparently — and rationally — won’t believe that America will actually change from a war-making nation into a peace-making one until there are tangible signs that this is happening.  It’s because that has so plainly not yet occurred that the Nobel Committee has made a mockery out of their own award.

But far more important than the lack of actual accomplishments are some of the policies over which Obama has presided that are the very opposite of peace.  Already this year, he not only escalated the American war in Afghanistan, but has ordered air raids that have produced things like this:

That was from a May airstrike in which over 100 Afghan civilians were killed by American jets — one of many similar incidents this year, including one only a week ago that killed 9 Afghan civilians.  How can someone responsible for that, and who has only escalated that war, possibly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the very same year that he did that?  Does that picture above look like the work of a Nobel Peace laureate?  Does this, from the May airstrike?

Beyond Afghanistan, Obama continues to preside over another war — in Iraq:  remember that? — where no meaningful withdrawal has occurred.  He uttered not a peep of opposition to the Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians at the beginning of this year (using American weapons), one which a U.N. investigator just found constituted war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.  The changed tone to Iran notwithstanding, his administration frequently emphasizes that it is preserving the option to bomb that country, too — which could be a third war against a Muslim country fought simultaneously under his watch.  He’s worked tirelessly to protect his country not only from accountability — but also transparency — for the last eight years of war crimes, almost certainly violating America’s treaty obligations in the process.  And he is currently presiding over an expansion of the legal black hole at Bagram while aggressively demanding the right to abduct people from around the world, ship them there, and then imprison them indefinitely with no rights of any kind.

It’s certainly true that Obama inherited, not started, these conflicts.  And it’s possible that he could bring about their end, along with an overall change in how America interacts with the world in terms of actions, not just words.  If he does that, he would deserve immense credit — perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize.  But he hasn’t done any of that.  And it’s at least as possible that he’ll do the opposite:  that he’ll continue to escalate the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan, preside over more conflict in Iraq, end up in a dangerous confrontation with Iran, and continue to preserve many of the core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies that created such a stain on America’s image and character around the world.

Through no fault of his own, Obama presides over a massive war-making state that spends on its military close to what the rest of the world spends combined.  The U.S. accounts for almost 70% of worldwide arms sales.  We’re currently occupying and waging wars in two separate Muslim countries and making clear we reserve the “right” to attack a third.  Someone who made meaningful changes to those realities would truly be a man of peace.  It’s unreasonable to expect that Obama would magically transform all of this in nine months, and he certainly hasn’t.  Instead, he presides over it and is continuing much of it.  One can reasonably debate how much blame he merits for all of that, but there are simply no meaningful “peace” accomplishment in his record — at least not yet — and there’s plenty of the opposite.  That’s what makes this Prize so painfully and self-evidently ludicrous.

UPDATE:  Remember how, during the Bush years, the GOP would disgustingly try to equate liberals with Terrorists by pointing out that they happened to have the same view on a particular matter (The Left opposes the war in Iraq, just like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah do! or bin Laden’s criticisms of Bush sound just like Michael Moore’s! ).  It looks like the Democratic Party haslearned and adopted that tactic perfectly (“‘The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,’ DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO”; Republicans are “put[ting] politics above patriotism,” he added).

Apparently, according to the DNC, if you criticize this Prize, then you’re an unpatriotic America-hater — just like the Terrorists, because they’re also criticizing the award.  Karl Rove should be proud.  Maybe the DNC should also send out Joe Lieberman’s 2005 warning that “in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”  Hamas also thinks that Israeli settlements should be frozen — a position Obama shares.  So, by the DNC’s Rovian reasoning, doesn’t this mean that Obama “has thrown in his lot with the terrorists”?

UPDATE II:  On Democracy Now, Naomi Klein calls Obama’s award ”disappointing, cheapening of the Nobel Prize,” and adds:  ”I think it’s quite insulting. I don’t know what kind of political game they’re playing, but I don’t think that the committee has ever been as political as this or as delusional as this, frankly.”  On Daily Kos, Michael Moore writes ironically:  ”Congratulations President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize — Now Please Earn it!”  Mairead Maguire, the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, says she’s “very disappointed” with this award, noting:  ”President Obama has yet to prove that he will move seriously on the Middle East, that he will end the war in Afghanistan and many other issues.”   And my Salon colleague, Alex Koppelman, adds several thoughts about the efforts by the DNC and some Democratic groups to explicitly equate opposition to the Prize with “casting one’s lot with terrorists.”

Wake Up Call to Homeowners Facing Foreclosure

You would think that tens of thousands of home owners would be in court standing their ground and just asking some simple questions about why anyone has the right to take their families home.  But they are not.  Just look at the sad statistics.  In the last 3 years 6 Million homes have been taken mostly illegally.  This number is only going to increase in the coming months and years.  I do not have the exact number of  cases were people are exersising their rights but by some estimates it is less than fifty thousand!  Why do you think this is the case?  We believe like most things in life people are just to dependent on getting the information they need from main stream media.  Niniety percent of the major publications, TV and Internet sites have next to nothing about all the fraud going on in banking, government and big business in gerneral.  Get on the net and think for yourself.  Ask questions in search engines like, “foreclosure help” ” Can I save my home” and many other terms and phrases will bring you a wealth of information not found on TV or major publications.  If you have questions call Robert at 860-599-5557

Our “Nanny State” Tries to Regulate Everything, even Nannies?

One thing seems reasonably certain: if the current trend continues, there will be NOTHING left unregulated in “the Land of the Free.” Almost every day, some new outrage comes to light, especially in the area of privacy and the family.   Ronald Reagan has been an inspiration to me my entire life, although I certainly do not approve of everything the Reagan administration did in the years 1981-1989, especially in the realm of monetary policy and government finance, but I’m still happy, even proud, to say I cast my first Presidential vote for Ronald Reagan as well as my second (and I did so while I was a graduate student at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the number of Republicans could be counted on the fingers of one hand, or so it seemed).   One of Ronald Reagan’s greatest quotes, in my opinion, was that “The most frightening sentence in the English language is, ‘we’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.’”  It is so true, so horribly true!  Government “protection” is in fact nothing BUT the ultimate “protection racket.”  As any serious reader of my blog knows, last year Judge Walter S. Smith bestowed upon me the astounding honor of recognizing my “crusade to have the Texas Family Code” declared unconstitutional by sanctioning me $150,000.00 in a case to which I was neither summoned as a party nor ever subpoenaed as a witness.  I still need to do something about that, but it’s frankly difficult.  The Family Code in Texas, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, and in fact every state of the Union from which I have ever heard any news on the question has but one REAL purpose, and that purpose is to put the State bureaucracy in charge of every minute aspect of daily private life.   And in that regard, I read some news from Michigan that so totally appalls me that I must recognize it here.  Apparently now, in the age of Obama and the triumph of “nanny state” socialism, friendship between working mothers is or ought to be subject to regulation, as this article below from Michigan shows.  I personally think this is a horrible outrage and everyone should be up in arms, demanding that the State GET OUT OF OUR LVIES AND OUR HOMES!:

State to mom: Stop baby-sitting neighbors’ kids

By JAMES PRICHARD, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 29, 7:23 pm ET

IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”

Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.

“Being a good neighbor means helping your neighbors who are in need,” Ahmed said in a written statement. “This could be as simple as providing a cup of sugar, monitoring their house while they’re on vacation or making sure their children are safe while they wait for the school bus.”

Snyder learned that the agency was responding to a neighbor’s complaint.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. “But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense,” Boyd said.

“We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable,” she said. “When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene.”

State Rep. Brian Calley, R-Portland, said he was working to draft legislation that would exempt situations like Snyder’s from coverage under Michigan’s current day care regulations.

The bill will make it clear that people who aren’t in business as day care providers don’t need to be licensed, Calley said.

“These are just kids that wait for the bus every morning,” he said. “This is not a day care.”

Snyder, 35, lives in a rural subdivision in Barry County’s Irving Township about 25 miles southeast of Grand Rapids. Her tidy, comfortable three-bedroom home is a designated school bus stop. The three neighbor children she watched — plus Snyder’s first-grader, Grace — attend school about six miles away in Middleville.

Snyder said she started watching the other children this school year to help her friends; they often baby-sit for each other during evenings and weekends.

After receiving the state agency’s letter, she said she called the agency and tried to explain that she wasn’t running a day care center or accepting money from her friends.

Under state law, no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers. Snyder said she stopped watching the other children immediately after receiving the letter, which was well within the four-week period.

“I’ve lived in this community for 35 years and everyone I know has done some form of this,” said Francie Brummel, 42, who would drop off her second-grade son, Colson, before heading to her job as deputy treasurer of the nearby city of Hastings.

Other moms say they regularly deal with similar situations.

Amy Cowan, 34, of Grosse Pointe Farms, a Detroit suburb, said she often takes turns with her sister, neighbor and friend watching each other’s children.

“The worst part of this whole thing, with the state of the economy … two parents have to work,” said Cowan, a corporate sales representative with a 5-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter. “When you throw in the fact that the state is getting involved, it gives women a hard time for going back to work.

“I applaud the lady who takes in her neighbors’ kids while they’re waiting for the bus. She’s enabling her peers to go to work and get a paycheck. The state should be thankful for that.”

Amy Maciaszek, 42, of McHenry, Ill., who works in direct sales, said she believes the state agency was “trying to be overprotective.”

“I think it does take a village and that’s the best way,” said Maciaszek, who has a 6-year-old boy and twin 3-year-old daughters. “Unfortunately you do have to be careful about that. These mothers are trying to do the right thing.”

___

Associated Press writers Randi Goldberg Berris and David Runk in Detroit and Kathy Barks Hoffman in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

The Mortgage Crisis and Monetary Policy, by Charles Edward Lincoln, IV

My dad is a property management consultant with a J.D., and this past summer, between my 11th and 12th grades, and while I was in my second summer at Harvard Summer School,  (2009) I got a firsthand look at what his trust & advocacy organization (Tierra Limpia/Deo Vindice Foundation) does in trying to help people keep their homes in the face of the national foreclosure crisis/epidemic hitting the United States for the past two years.   I don’t know where to begin except that I think I began to understand a little bit about money and homeownership over the summer, what it is and how it works, and it made me very interested in economics, which is not something I had ever really thought about before.  Working with my Dad has inspired me to refocus my educational plans on economics and history, instead of “just” pre-Law.

I suppose everybody has the idea that money is something fixed, tangible, and “real” in some way, and that money is just a medium of exchange that is used to buy things, like houses, like cars, like almost everything we have.   Last summer I learned a very different perspective on exactly how money works and what the relationship between money and property really is.  My parents both have Ph.D.s in Anthropology with specialties in Archaeology/Ethnohistory, so (obviously) I know that not all societies have anything remotely like what we call “money” and that “money” in fact is a relatively recent invention in cultural evolution/human history.

Homes of course, have a very, VERY long history in cultural evolution and human history, and it could be said that the increasingly “fixed” nature of the nightly sleeping place was part of what made humans “human” during the 3-5 million years or so between the earliest identifiably Hominoid ancestors and fully modern Homo Sapiens sapiens (Linnaeus).

What I learned from my dad over the summer, and what makes me think that I should study economics, is that HOMES are MONEY and MONEY is MADE FROM HOMES.   Obviously, it’s not quite that simple, but Dad says that that the economy of the United States of America really doesn’t produce anything anymore EXCEPT HOMES and MONEY—and that’s sad because America in the 19^th century was probably the invention center of the world and in the 20^th century (at least up through the 1960s) was still the manufacturing and production center of world.  But then Henry Kissinger and Nixon went to visit the Chinese Communists, and now the Chinese Communists are the leading capitalists (well, at least the leading manufacturers) in the whole world.

Money apparently comes into existence very systematically through loan applications.  I guess I always just thought that the government authorized a certain amount of money to be printed and that’s how we get money.  But instead, it turns out that money is a reward for productivity, or at least for maintaining the façade or semblance of productivity that well-behaved social conformity can apparently create: the more you conform to certain norms of money-management, credit handling, and “work ethic”, the more money you get—at least until the economy goes haywire like it did over the past ten years.  Then EVERYBODY gets money whether they are productive social conformists or not.  Politicians apparently do this as a way of buying votes and lulling people into somnolent catatonia where they really have no idea just how bad off they are, with their money being completely worthless and their homes being bigger and better and ever increasingly expensive in about the direct proportions (but opposite directions).

Now what money is came as a big shock to me, also.  “Money” is nothing but a “promise to pay” which by law must be accepted as a “tender” (i.e. offer) of payment.  Money itself is just (intrinsically) worthless paper.  But the money we put in our pockets and bank account ledgers all takes the form of “notes”, and all “notes” are basically “promises to pay.”  However, and this is where my Dad’s J.D. comes in handy, “notes” or “promises to pay”, when accepted by a National Banking Associations, are actually defined by law (Title 12 of the United States Code, Section 1813l) as “deposits in money.”

What this means is that when a National Banking association accepts a note, say, for a house worth $500,000.00, they are required by Federal law to itemize this on their “dual entry” ledger of assets and liabilities as an “asset” which is to say a “deposit” of $500,000.00.   Ironically, if a person comes into the bank with $500,000.00 in actual money, this sum must be listed on the bank’s dual entry accounting ledger as a “liability” for the simple reason that a deposit in cash must be repaid upon demand, while a “note” deposit will never be repaid: it becomes part of the Bank’s “Wealth” until it is returned or canceled upon final payment (but by then the bank has received payments of the principle amount of the note plus interest, which interest may amount, over 30 years, to 2-4 times the face value of the note).

I have come to understand that, in essence, credit extended by modern versions of traditional commercial paper has taken the place of “capital” as the motivating and controlling factor in the control and impulse of production in the modern world.   Struggles over the establishment, extension and expansion of personal and consumer credit shaped the growth and development of society during the 20^th century from “progressive liberalism” of William Jennings Bryan and Lloyd George.  Metal-standards of currency (e.g. gold and sterling silver) were abandoned in favor of credit standards based on production, measured through income tax and contributions to programs such as social security, which seemed likely to measure both individual ability and need simultaneously.   Thus it is that Karl Marx’ 1875 restatement of Christian sharing first articulated in Acts 4:32-35, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” became the motto of the modern redistributive socio-political order, even as communism itself was rejected.

In the United States and England, early 20^th century governmental monetary and public-credit policies were synonymous with the planting of the seeds, which ultimately grew into the modern welfare state.  In the 1930s, the credit-inflationary economics of John Maynard Keynes took both the U.K. and U.S. by storm after the stock market crash of 1929 and in particular the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has basically dominated the economic policies of Western European and the Western Hemisphere generally up until the present time.

The conflict (the Hegelian “contradiction in all things”) which led to the current mortgage crisis, it seems to me, is that which has arisen is between private corporate interest in credit and welfare and the governmental policies of privatization coupled with “deregulation” of financial responsibility and “credit reserve” laws defining standards for “purchase on margin” or “minimum downpayment” requirements for the purchase of securities or other types of property (such as real estate) on credit.  Such standards were in fact imposed in 1933-34 as part of the adoption of Keynesian inflationary economics in the United States, via the enactment of the Securities and Exchange laws relating specifically to the issuance and marketing of “notes.”  The coupling of “deregulated” private bank credit lacking marginal reserve or downpayment requirements with governmental stimulus policies aimed to compensate for the lack of productivity, declining tax revenues, etc., has had the effect of setting up the economy analogous to a car on high acceleration with no brakes or steering wheel.