Tennessee has been in mourning since Monday, 26 September 1966, 45 long years ago, due to the Missing In Action (M.I.A.), Killed in Action (K.I.A.) status of SP4 Marvin Foster Phillips, 20, of Gruetli, TN, United States Army, 114th Assault Helicopter Company, who was on a combat assault mission in the Delta region of South Vietnam over Vinh Binh Province, he was the gunner on a UH-1B aircraft that crashed in the South China Sea.
Capt. Henry L. Mosburg the pilot assigned to the 114th Assault Helicopter Company. On September 26, 1966, he was assigned a combat assault mission in the Delta region of South Vietnam over Vinh Binh Province. He departed with a crew of four, including himself. On the second pass on a target near the mouth of the Son Co Chien River, Mosburg's aircraft was fired on by small arms. As the aircraft prepared for a third pass, it was noticed that one of the helicopter's rockets was on fire on the left side of the aircraft. Observers watched the tail section of the aircraft fall away, causing the helicopter to fall toward the water in a steep spin
Markets down 2 plus percent, were up 7 plus percent
There will be those who will be quick to blame today's ugly market on Obama's speech last night. And they would be wrong. We did see market pundits who wrote that his speech was not strong enough. How that applies to the markets we have no idea. The speech/program laid out by the President last night means absolutely nothing if congress does nothing with it. If the debt ceiling fiasco is any indication of how well the two parties can work together then expect unemployment to be around for awhile. In fact, we would be much better off were it his speech that impacted the market.
By now we hope you are not one of the few that is not aware of the mess the European Union is in. We suspect however that not many are aware of just how inextricably linked our Banks (which we bailed out), our Multi-national Corporations (many of which we bailed out), the FED (who has foreign Banks, who also received U.S. tax payer dollars, as members) and most especially our tax payer dollars are to the European mess. Which is why you should be way worried about Europe. Because just as our banks were responsible for the world wide crash in 2008, it will be our's and the European banks that could lead to an even bigger crash! We pray not. But we can not be blind to the threat. Especially when it is on us for not sending one damn bankster to jail. For not holding anyone accountable. As a result, well, if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you always got........screwed!
30 year GOP operative talks, A must read
This post by Mike Lofgren was originally posted on Truthout. Mr. Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. Blew us away. So much so that we will not comment and present the material as he wrote it. The only thing we will do is put his foot notes first so you know the man writing the post a bit better and be encouraged to read what he has taken the time to write
Footnotes:
[1] I am not exaggerating for effect. A law passed in 2010 by the Arizona legislature mandating arrest and incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business front group that drafts "model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. The draft legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.
[2] I am not a supporter of Obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies. But when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80 years, I wanted him to succeed, so that the country I served did not fail. But already in 2009, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was – jobs for Americans? Rescuing the financial system? Solving the housing collapse? – no, none of those things. His top priority was to ensure that Obama should be a one-term president. Evidently Senator McConnell hates Obama more than he loves his country. Note that the mainstream media have lately been hailing McConnell as "the adult in the room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the Tea Party freshmen
[3] This is not a venue for immigrant bashing. It remains a fact that outsourcing jobs overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert downward pressure on US wages. The consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. It does no good to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of globalization; Germany has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial base.
[4] The cowardice is not merely political. During the past ten years, I have observed that Democrats are actually growing afraid of Republicans. In a quirky and flawed, but insightful, little book, "Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred," John Lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.
[5] The GOP cult of Ayn Rand is both revealing and mystifying. On the one hand, Rand’s tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so prevalent among the hard right. On the other, Rand exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing but contempt for Christianity. Apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist "values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over Rand at the same time they thump their Bibles never have to explain this stark contradiction. And I imagine a Democratic officeholder would have a harder time explaining why he named his offspring "Marx" than a GOP incumbent would in rationalizing naming his kid "Rand."
Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"
Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)
Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
More 9-11, if the truth were available would anyone want it
From Zero Hedge, George Washington
9/11 Commission Admits It Never Got The Facts ... But No One Wants to Hear From the People Who Know What Happened
9/11 Commission: We Never Got All of the Facts
9/11 Commissioners admit that they never got to the bottom of 9/11. For example:- 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue
- 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ." He also says that it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11
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