Thursday, November 29, 2007

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Finished the Ellison Band show for last week.

Soon, no second amendment.....

Gun-Grabbers Crank Up Anti-Second Amendment Propaganda
TruthNews | November 27, 2007
Kurt Nimmo
Now that the Supremes have agreed to rule on the Second Amendment, the corporate media has launched a full-court press to convince America it does not have a right to bear firearms.
"Activists on both sides of the steaming debate over guns ought to be able to agree, at the very least, on two things. The first is that the language of the Second Amendment is, grammatically speaking, incomprehensible. The second is that the time has come for clarity from the Supreme Court about whether the "right to bear arms" is an individual or collective one," writes Andrew Cohen for CBS News.

In fact, the Second Amendment is quite explicit: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Cohen and other gun-grabbers concentrate on "the three, jarring, comma-spliced clauses of the amendment," that is to say they attack the grammar of the amendment and would have us believe our forefathers were indecisive and "were no more willing or capable of making tough decisions about contentious issues (like gun rights) than are their modern-day counterparts," that is to say a gaggle of appointed statists determined to dismantle the Constitution.
Cohen is a postmodern apologist for state power over the individual. The Supremes, he declares, "should chart a course that does to the Second Amendment what we long ago did to the First Amendment; identify a strong individual right but allow for that right to be trumped from time to time by certain kinds of regulations." In other words, the state should agree in principle that the individual has a right to bear firearms but that principle should be "trumped," that is to say denied, by the exigencies of state power. Put another way, you may have a right to bear arms, at least on paper, but in practice the state will "regulate" (deny) that right.
"So we would then get a Second Amendment that both recognizes our right to own and possess guns and recognizes the government's ability to restrain that right in certain, yet-to-be-determined ways."
Nonsense. The founders realized that the individual had a natural, indivisible right to possess firearms precisely because of the nature of state power. It has nothing to do with "certain, yet-to-be-determined" exigencies of the state.
In regard to grammar and the trickery Andrew Cohen has in mind, founder George Mason, who co-authored the Second Amendment, wrote during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution in 1788: "I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
That should resolve Cohen's grammatical problem, but it will not, of course.
In Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Richard Henry Lee wrote: "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves."
Zachariah Johnson, arguing in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, wrote: "The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them."
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms," declared Samuel Adams in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789.
George Washington understood well what Cohen and the gun-grabbers do not: "Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
Thomas Paine knew that "horrid mischief" would ensue if the people were denied their right to arms. "The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside."
Thomas Jefferson: "Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
In fact, Jefferson considered it not only a right for the individual to be armed, but a duty. Predictably, Cohen and the gun-grabbers do not make mention of this philosophic attitude, preferring instead to tell us the founders were conflicted and, absurdly, wanted to postpone the debate "for another day."
Cohen and crew believe Congress, after a Supreme Court "decision," has the right to regulate our firearms out of existence. Patrick Henry had something to say about this: "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Finally, Thomas Jefferson explained precisely why there is a Second Amendment: "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
Indeed, let them… before it is too late.

Man who traied 9/11 attackers is employed by CIA

Alleged Trainer Of 9/11 Hijackers a CIA Informant
Sakka attempts to plug holes in 9/11 official story, claims Hanjour did not pilot Flight 77
Prison Planet | November 27, 2007

In a London Times report , Louai al-Sakka, now incarcerated in a high-security Turkish prison 60 miles east of Istanbul, claims that he trained six of the 9/11 hijackers at a camp in the mountains near Istanbul from 1999-2000.
Sakka was imprisoned in 2005 after being caught making bombs that he planned to use to blow up Israeli vessels.
Sakka asserts that he is a leading Al-Qaeda operative, having directed insurgency attacks in Iraq and also the beheading of Briton Kenneth Bigley in October 2004.

Some of Sakka's account is corroborated by the US government's 9/11 Commission. It found eviden ce that four of the hijackers – whom Sakka says he trained – had initially intended to go to Chechnya from Turkey but the border into Georgia was closed. Sakka had prepared fake visas for the group's travel to Pakistan and arranged their flights from Istanbul's Ataturk airport. The group of four went to the al-Farouq camp near Kandahar and the other two to Khaldan, near Kabul, an elite camp for Al-Qaeda fighters.
When Moqed and Suqami returned to Turkey, Sakka employed his skills as a forger to scrub out the Pakistani visa stamps from their passports. This would help the Arab men enter the United States without attracting suspicion that they had been to a training camp.

"But, as with many things in the world of Al-Qaeda, there might be smoke and mirrors," reports the Times. "Some experts believe that Sakka could be overstating his importance to the group, possibly to lay a false track for western agencies investigating his terrorist colleagues."
However, when one considers what other experts have said about Sakka, it appears that his intentions towards "western agencies" are anything but deceptive - since Turkish intelligence analysts concluded that Sakka has been a CIA asset all along.
Prominent Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that Sakka was hired as a CIA informant in 2000, after receiving a large sum of money from the agency. This would explain why he was "captured" but then released on two separate occasions by the CIA during the course of 2000.
Sakka was later captured by Turkish intelligence but again ordered to be released after which he moved to Germany to assist the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
Shortly before 9/11, Sakka was allegedly hired by Syrian intelligence - to whom he gave a warning that the attacks were coming on September 10th, 2001.
In his book At the Center of the Storm , former CIA director George Tenet writes, that “a source we were jointly running with a Middle Eastern country went to see his foreign handler and basically told him something big was about to go down.”
"This is very likely a reference to Sakra, since no one else comes close to matching the description of telling a Middle Eastern government about the 9/11 attacks one day in advance, not to mention working as an informant for the CIA at the same time. Tenet's revelation strongly supports the notion that Sakra in fact accepted the CIA's offers in 2000 and had been working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies at least through 9/11 ," writes 9/11 researcher Paul Thompson , who was also interviewed for the London Times article.
Were the alleged "interrogations" of Sakka on behalf of the CIA merely a smokescreen to enable instructions to be passed on? This is certainly the view of Turkish intelligence experts, who go further and conclude that "Al-Qaeda" as a whole is merely a front group for western intelligence agencies used to foment a "strategy of tension" around the world.
Is Sakka still in the employ of western intelligence agencies? His apparent effort to plug the holes in the official 9/11 story is fascinating.

According to Sakka, Nawaf al-Hazmi was a veteran operative who went on to pilot the plane that hit the Pentagon. Although this is at odds with the official account, which says the plane was flown by another hijacker, it is plausible and might answer one of the mysteries of 9/11.
The Pentagon plane performed a complex spiral dive into its target. Yet the pilot attributed with flying the plane (Hani Hanjour) “could not fly at all” according to his flight instructors in America. Hazmi, on the other hand, had mixed reviews from his instructors but they did remark on how “adept” he was on his first flight.

Exactly how "adept" one has to be to pull off maneuvers that would be impossible for veteran crack fighter pilots is not explored in the Times report.

American debt in the trillons

This came from a headline MSN story

Feds' budget tricks hide trillions in debt

Every year, tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars are quietly added to the national debt -- on top of the deficits that we hear about. What's going on here?

By Scott Burns

When it comes to financial magic, the government of the United States takes the prize. Sleights of hand and clever distractions by purveyors of line-of-credit mortgages, living-benefit variable annuities and equity-indexed life insurance are clumsy parlor tricks compared with the Big Magic of American politicians.
Consider the proud trumpeting that came from Washington at the close of fiscal 2007. The deficit for the unified budget was, politicians crowed, down to a mere $162.8 billion.
In fact, our government is overspending at a far greater rate. The total federal debt actually increased by $497.1 billion over the same period.
But politicians of both parties use happy numbers to distract us. Democrats routinely criticize the Republican administration for crippling deficits, but they politely use the least-damaging figure, the $162.8 billion. Why? Because references to more-realistic accounting would reveal vastly greater numbers and implicate both parties.

Talk back: What worries you most about the national debt?

You can understand how this is done by taking a close look at a single statement on federal finance from the president's Council of Economic Advisers. The September statement shows that the "on-budget" numbers produced a deficit of $344.3 billion in fiscal 2007. The "off-budget" numbers had a surplus of $181.5 billion. (The off-budget figures are dominated by Social Security, Medicare and other programs with trust funds.)
Combine those two figures and you get the unified budget, that $162.8 billion. In the past eight years we've had two years of reported surpluses and six years of reported deficits. Altogether, the total reported deficit has run $1.3 trillion.

Some numbers don't add up

But if you examine another figure, the gross federal debt, you'll see something strange. First, the debt has increased in each of the past eight years, even in the two years when surpluses were reported. Second, the gross federal debt, which includes the obligations held by the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, has increased much faster than the deficits -- about $3.3 trillion over the same eight years.
That's $2 trillion more than the reported $1.3 trillion in deficits over the period. Can you spell "Enron"?
In other words, while our reported deficits averaged $164 billion over the past eight years, government debt increased an average of $418 billion a year. That's a lot more than twice as much.
How could this happen?
Easy. The Treasury Department simply credits the Social Security, Medicare and other trust funds with interest payments in the form of new Treasury obligations. No cash is actually paid. The trust funds magically increase in value with a bookkeeping entry. It represents money the government owes itself.
So what happens if we take out the funny money?
When the imaginary interest payments are included, Social Security and Medicare are running at a tranquilizing surplus (that $181.5 billion mentioned earlier). But measure actual cash, and the surplus disappears.

How to control deficit spending

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., says Social Security and Medicare are the keys to cutting federal budget deficits.

In 2005, for instance, the Social Security Disability Income program started to run at a cash loss. 2007 is the first year that Medicare Part A (the hospital insurance program) benefits exceeded income.
The same thing will happen to the Social Security retirement-income program in six to nine years, depending on which of the trustees' estimates you use. During the same period, the expenses of Medicare Part B and Part D, which are paid out of general tax revenue, will rise rapidly.
Despite this, the Social Security Administration writes workers every year advising them that the program will have a problem 34 years from now, not six or nine years. In fact, the real problem is already here. It will be a big-time problem in less than a decade.
Count on it.