Randall's Blog

OK - I guess I'm like most people in that I have no idea what is going on in Washington. Things are getting stranger by the hour. I truly hope there is enough opposition to the Bush-sponsored Wall St bailout that it fails. The audacity of the plan that was proposed is breathtaking. $700 BILLION with no oversight or review!!!!

"Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

I know I'm no financial expert, but if you helped out all the people who are struggling to make mortgage payments so their homes are not in danger of foreclosure won't you also help the banks who are holding on to their money for fear of defaults? I believe the Democrats would have gone along with the original plan with a few tweaks. As I understand it the Republicans were the ones who balked at this monstrosity. Anyway, perhaps there is some hope that little people will be bailed out not Wall St fat cats.

On a different note, I have been working on my attic and I'm making good progress.

One final thing - Independent.co.uk
Exclusive: The methane time bomb

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide

Cheers!

Here are some articles that may be of value to help understand what's going on:

Fleecing What’s Left of the Treasury, By Chris Hedges TruthDig

Cash for Trash, By Paul Krugman The New York Times

Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis? By MICHAEL HUDSON CounterPunch

This is a web site to register your concerns to congress:

http://www.votenobailout.org/

I wanted to write a post about Sarah Palin - not that she deserves any more attention, but the prospect of her as president is too much for me to bear. Lots of people have written about her, though, more eloquently than I could have. Here is one such post - For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World.

Events of the last week, however, have left me thinking that Palin is not the most important issue on our radar screen. I have to say I'm scared... Things are moving so quickly that I can't keep up with the financial turmoil. The people that I usually turn to for perspective on these matters are as scared as I am. I can see it in their faces and read it between the lines of what they write. The ruling parties (Republican AND Democratic alike) will try to bail out their friends and contributors on Wall Street while the majority of Americans are left to twist in the wind. This is expected. My fear is that this may not work (or is this, perhaps, a good thing). Bush and his cronies have managed to bankrupt our whole country in eight short years. I fear that nobody will loan us the money to bail out the thieves that have been playing in the unregulated markets, making money at our expense.

Frankly, I'd like to see the hedge fund managers and bank CEOs in the poorhouse and the people about to lose their homes to foreclosure bailed out. But I'm dreaming again - this won't happen. The real question is: Will the greedy Wall Street scum that are responsible for much of this mess drag down the entire economy. Will the dollar spiral into the abyss? Will we find ourselves in a new depression? I can hope that there may be a silver lining - the collapse of our empire would be a plus for much of the world. Those that have been under the tyrants and dictators we have supported over the years. Those held in economic serfdom by our corporations. But there will be a lot of pain. Or worse yet, the ruling elite in our country will "go out with a bang" and start yet another war to provide cover for their thefts. The prospects seem grim - I'm ready to beam up now....

Last Saturday we went up to Saratoga Springs for the 2008 NY Capital Region Vegetarian Expo. It was a great event with lots of vendors, speakers and good food. Victoria met us there and stayed over Saturday night. My mom even walked around (a little anyway). It was in the Saratoga Springs City Center which is a nice building.

NAVS had a table as did VegNews

And AVS

We also spent some time talking to Gentle World and Amie Hamlin plus many more. We saw many vegetarian friends and even some greyhounds.

Remember, the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival is coming up on November 1st.

It's been 7 years since that terrible late Summer day that allowed Bush/Cheney to launch their reign of terror in earnest. What happened that day is still a topic of heated conversation from time to time - usually with people who believe the towers were wired with explosives or a missile hit the Pentagon. I guess you can't blame people for wanting a "smoking gun" to validate their suspicions about the administration. If either of these things did happen it would certainly have to be a conspiracy involving the highest levels of government. I don't believe either is true, yet I do believe a conspiracy existed, at the least to "allow the attacks" to proceed.

There are several lines of evidence that support this. Without a doubt the attacks of 9/11 have helped the Bush administration. You could argue that without the attacks of 9/11 Bush and Cheney would probably have had only one term as they were not particularly popular and they stole the presidency in the first place. I see the administration and Al-Qaeda as having a synergistic relationship. They feed off each other, need each other. It's no mystery why Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape to Pakistan - he's essential to the administration. The bin Laden family members (and members of the house of Saud) were helped out of the country after 9/11 in a similar manor. How nice that Osama bin Laden sent that tape just before the 2004 election to return the favor and help his friend Bush out.

Quite tellingly, Bush didn't want ANY investigation into the attacks of 9/11. And when he was pressed to investigate he did everything he could to undermine it. A summary of this information is here. Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission? You couldn't make this s*#t up! The strong resistance to do any investigation alone should raise serious suspicions in the minds of anyone who is thinking objectively. The film 9/11 Press for Truth recounts the courageous efforts of the "Jersey Girls" to get answers. In the end a lot of questions remain unanswered. Perhaps it was because only $15 million was spent on the 9/11 investigation - less than half the amount spent trying to dig up dirt on the Clintons!

I remember reading online and watching the the events on that day and thinking where is the Air Force? To think that a plane hit the Pentagon at 9:37 AM - 51 minutes after the first tower was hit is just about beyond belief. Fighters were sent in the wrong direction? They weren't flying at top speed? There are a long list of dubious reasons that no hijacked planes were intercepted that day (according to official accounts). Yet, to my knowledge not a single person was fired or even reprimanded because of failures on 9/11. Very strange, unless things DID go according to plan. I expect that they were waiting for the plane that was heading to Washington. A hit on the Pentagon would be a good reason to respond militarily. Perhaps the "mystery plane" over Washington was coordinating this aspect.

What about the towers? People have this fixation with them being wired with explosives. I'm no expert in building demolition but I'm thinking this would have to be a BIG operation - kinda hard to keep secret. When challenged about this I went back and looked at footage of the buildings collapsing to see if I could see anything that would indicate explosives. To me it looked like the buildings failed and started to collapse exactly where the planes hit them - entirely consistent with the official version of the story. Why is it so hard to believe that the twin towers would collapse after being hit with jumbo jets? I have heard people say that they were designed to withstand such an impact. So, things never fail even though they were designed to withstand something? If you could point to 20 identical buildings that were hit by planes and didn't collapse you might have an argument. Saying no other steel framed building has collapsed because of fire is not enough - they were hit with a jumbo jet AND there was a fire. Just get over it - they were hit with big planes and they collapsed.

This doesn't mean that there was no conspiracy. Clearly there was more than ample warning of an attack coming. Bush's response after a special briefing: "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Look at the tape of Bush in the Florida classroom when he is told of the second plane hitting. It's not shock, or surprise - more like recognition. He knew it was coming but now he didn't know what to do. What a great leader - kind of like a puppet without his puppetmaster. Where WAS Cheney anyway - secret bunker, doomsday plane? Will the truth ever come out? Perhaps Noam Chomsky is right and speculation of this nature is a waste of time. I don't know. The fact that 9/11 has become such a watershed event, in the American psyche if nothing else, means that the truth IS important. With so much noise and disinformation out there I suspect we will never know the full, true story. One thing IS certain, the Republicans have used 9/11 for their own POLITICAL advantage to the detriment of our nation.