Five children slaughtered in Washington.  14 people shot dead in New York.  Multiple officers killed in California and Pennsylvania.

In response to the growing, inexplicable violence in these here United States, President Barack Obama has shifted his sights.  The evacuation/invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has been evolved into what everyone has been asking for.  For the troops to come home.  But not for what most peace loving Americans here think.  President Obama has approved the need for military interference in America, based on the rapid increase in similarities between here and the Middle East.  The most obvious similarities have come in the form of our response to crisis  (an economy in shambles, a leader with wide support (forced, coerced or otherwise), high unemployment, major corruption and so on).  Death seems to be the solution people are choosing.  County battalions and convoys have already been scheduled and plotted, waiting for re-deployment (also coming home!)  I wouldn’t be surprised if the right to bear arms was lost and private property quartering of soldiers came back into stride.

It seems odd that in a time when most of the people in the U.S. don’t support the war, they choose to live in one at home.

You know those days that everything just feels a bit off, one way or the other.  Well, today I feel like my world is backwards.  It’s 2009 and everything must have dramatically shifted sometime when I was unconscious or something to that effect.  Just a few years ago, the world, much less my world, was a different scene.  I was in high school.  I was living at home (yeehaw!).  Only the huge bulky baseball players were being accused of using steroids.  People were sure Michael Jackson’s career was over.  The U.S. economy was doin’ alright, so I’m told.  I know sometime in the past two years the stocket (stock market) peaked.  The president was white.  The American people didn’t trust or like their government, especially former president George W. Bush.  “Young people” didn’t care too much for national and international affairs aside from P.Diddy telling them to go out and do something.

Today things are just plain opposite.  I’m not in high school anymore.  I live a thousand miles away from home.  Even the overpaid not-that-great baseball player Alex Rodriguez did steroids, and then lied about it.  (Personally, I prefer that all baseball players do steroids, I’d like to see a 1000ft home run sometime.)  And look how great Michael Jackson is doing.  In 2005 his only dates scheduled were court dates, now he has a sold out stint in London, including an extensive contract that we don’t even know how awesome it is.  It really is mindboggeling, but I’m okay with change.  But I’m not so sure about this…

I thought that America would learn…wait, before I continue, I’m going to just explain it.

We all know who won the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.  He ran an amazingly impressive campaign.  His budget for the campaign was as spectacular as his budget proposal is today.  His national tour seemed to be more of some spectacular event put on by AEG or some other promoter.  Every day I was seeing massive crowds at his rallies on the news.   It was in my former city of Portland that his rally drew a record amount of people, 75000 (still just saw it on the news).  It blew my mind to see that kind of devotion, especially at a time when people were so skeptical of big government.  And the people there were my friends.  People my age.  Even people that couldn’t vote love him.

It’s a far cry from the overwhelming skeptecism from across the board during the last administration, but for all past administrations really.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a mountain of faith placed in a U.S. president before.  “Oh my god, I looooove Obama.”  I hear that all the time, is he the new Tom Cruise or something?  I didn’t realize that political leaders were such statues of fandom.  That’s what’s scary about this change in our world today.

I feel like the fact that Obama was able to use and envigorate his role as celebrity has given him the approval of the American people.  I’m not saying that he’s doing a bad job, because really nobody knows, we have to wait and see.  Like he said, it’s about patience.  But people in America trust celebrities for whatever reason.  And one that can also be taken seriously is the greatest of them all.  America has almost just shunned away a lot of its God given right to question itself and those who run it.  Every day I run myself into some argument with an avid Obama fan about something without trying to.  The people who are so avid that they just skim through as many things about what he’s doing as they can and then regurgitate it to me as their argument.  They thrive on talking about it, I swear, he’s “…bigger than Jesus.” (thanks John Lennon.)

I feel like I need to end this now.  All I’m asking is please, don’t put so much blind trust in somebody.  We as a country have been duped many times, don’t be fooled by your desperate need for just a “change” from George W. Bush.

Goin in,

Cutter

America has always been a giver.  And supposedly what does America have more of than anyone else?  That’s right, money.  We’re the “richest” country in the world.  So why not give some money away.  We give it to everyone in our individual state, everyone in our country and for whatever reason everyone around the world.  There’s nothin’ wrong with helping people out.  And there’s nothin’ wrong with helping worthy causes.  But why not take some for yourselves?

Well, apparently America did concoct something a while ago for individual Americans to give money to so that they could have it later when they wanted/needed, the latter being more appropriate.  It was called Social Security.  Yes, I’m sure some of you have heard of it.  It didn’t really work out all that well, having been drowned out by the federal government and turned into a huge financial massacre.  But let me tell you this, America kept on giving. And now in this pretty fuckin’ crazy state that our economy is in, what do I see?  I see Americans opening up their wallets to the ones who need it most.  The homeless.  The ones who have been so thrashed by our dirty government and pittling economy that they have lost their jobs, houses, probably wives and maybe even children (unless you see them out on the corner with their hard working fathers).  Americans are still providing the hobos and hustlers of this country with steady cash flow, even in the face of this recession.  But how much do they really need it?  I’ve seen a consistent good will towards man attitude from the general populous of America my entire almost twenty year life.  What I’ve seen in the past year in the homeless population has been a little distilling.

I used to be able to go to the mall and come back 5-6 hours later and still see the same literally starving, heartbreaking poor man on the same damn corner.  Now, I walk into a Burger King and what do I see?  A meeting.  A meeting without any Burger King employees.  Without any employees period.  They are the homeless and the jobless, or so they seem.  I believe its more of a 40-60 split of people who really are homeless and starving and people who have cracked the system at these meetings. They tend to have marked territories, or extremely complex mapping grids designed for maximum efficiency.  Several different shifts on several different corners.  For the record, it can be done…living on the streets that is.  The people who have cracked the system are the ones, some of whom I’ve spoken to and have maintained friendships with, who are just like you and me.  They’re the suburbans, they’re the part time babysitters, they’re the bored housewives and they’re overly smart teenagers who have found out how to avoid getting a job.  Some of these teenagers report bringing in cash flow measuring $50-75 per hour.  That’s a better job than most Americans have.   Had.  These rabid teens say its the middle aged women that provide them with the most income. “They don’t even care what its for,” said one of the young schemers.  Its a lucrative business, not having a job. It’s as if they’re living on Social Security.  “Paid for by your community.”  These people have found your Social Security.

For those of you getting laid off…you know where to look.

The Associated Press is reporting that Legislators have reached an agreement over the bailout plan.  Senator Bob Bennett said, “I now expect that we will indeed have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate (and) be signed by the president.”   Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee said, “We’ve reached a fundamental agreement on a set of principles,” and it looks like the legislation will get pumped through the house sometime soon, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not provided an exact time frame.   It appears as though most of this is just political crossfire and that there are no actual issues that divide the partisan line.   At least the no oversight phrase has been revised.
It also seems McCain’s “suspension” was mere rhetoric.  He said he was going back to Washington, canceling his interviews and rallys, but as seen on Letterman last night, where McCain was scheduled, McCain canceled that show to do an interview with Katie Couric for the evening news.   Some suspension of his campain.  Video of Letterman below:

As I write this, we’re into the second day of stock market recovery after rumors, and now announcements, by the Feds of a systematic approach to address the turmoil in financial markets.  Can it be mere weeks ago that $4 a gallon gas was the intense focus of political rhetoric?  In both cases the situation was deemed a crisis but statements by the politicians in both cases seem equally disconnected from reality.

To wit:  One Democratic response to $4 gas was to shift “obscene” profits from the oil companies, to the poor U.S. consumer.  Fact is, oil companies made less in gross margin on sales (8.3 cents) compared to electronics manufacturers (14.5 cents) computer equipment (13.7 cents) and Microsoft (27.5 cents).  One might say, well look at absolute dollars, the oil companies are rolling it in.  Fact is, oil companies made $86 billion in profit last year (gasp).  But Financial Services, the very source of the current “crisis” made $137 billion.  And information technology companies made $103 billion.  We live in a free enterprise, capitalistic system.  How does government get to say how much profit I can make as an entrepreneur or investor?  Sadly, the Republican mantra of “Drill, baby, drill” makes no more sense.  Fact is, any drilling we launch now will take years to produce results and will not have an appreciable impact on our domestic energy supply.  Nor will tapping reserves.  Nor will the lame brained idea to waive the gas tax so Americans can drive a bit more on our dilapidating highway infrastructure that is underfunded.

Petroleum is a non-renewable, fixed quantity resource.  As it gets scarcer, prices will go up.  This is a law of nature that anyone taking Econ 101 will encounter in the first pop quiz.  The solution will lie in setting proper conditions for investment and development of alternative energy sources.  It’s a point that’s a bit more sophisticated than the political rhetoric, but tapping American ingenuity, resourcefulness and yes (gasp) the pursuit of profit is gonna be the path out of the energy crunch.  And by the way, higher prices are not such a bad thing.  It forces the issue and provides other solutions to be introduced into the marketplace and begin riding down the cost curve.  A bit more sophisticated, yes.  But could we shift the discussion a bit higher up the intellectual food chain?

Okay, fast forward to today.  I believe we just observed more lame rhetoric get stepped on by the Godzilla of reality.  The Feds have been scrambling in a reactive fashion to respond to the crisis in financial markets. (Which in this writer’s opinion makes $4 gas look like child’s play.)  Just about anyone who knows anything about the topic will agree this is the worst situation since the Great Depression.  The specific actions taken with respect to Fanny and Freddy, Lehman Brothers and AIG were “one offs” as officials scrambled to prevent things from getting worse.  These were not comprehensive, systematic actions.  Yesterday, rumors of just such an approach surfaced.  One can argue the merits of the proposal all day long, but suffice it to say some pretty bright financial professionals, people who are not politically born and bred, are behind the design.  Immediate response by the Speaker of the House  and her colleagues was to berate the idea, claiming the American taxpayer should not be saddled with bailing out mistakes of the fat cats on Wall Street.  The system is all the fault of the current administration (perhaps) and the answer lies in more and better regulation.

Well, a briefing just occurred for the politicos, staged by Treasury and Federal Reserve officials.  My hunch is it was akin to explaining how the corral gate is open, all the horses have run away, and looking to more and better regulation is like closing the corral gate.  Only problem is, the horses are still running away and getting farther and more scattered by the second.  Sure, lets keep the gate closed but let’s round up the horses first or we’ll be on foot for the foreseeable future.  When a potential failure of AIG could be described as the financial and economic equivalent of nuclear winter, I bet the dawn of reality set in.

Guess what?  Today the Speaker of the House is all for the plan.

Sometime last night a “hacker” on the forum 4chan.org also called /b/ and anonymous, managed to force their way into Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo! email that had been the subject of some controversy.  She probably had used this personal email because of the lack of oversight and archiving that goes on for official government emails.  At the root of the this is the “troopergate” scandal, and if the accounts had any incriminating emails.  Too bad that sometime last night both her gov.sara@yahoo.com and gov.palin@yahoo.com accounts had been deleted.  Some are saying this constitutes descruction of evidence.  An overview of the “incident” from pastebin (9.17.08@3:45PST):

1. THE INCIDENT
3. WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR:
5. - Very recently an anonymous poster on /b/ claimed to have hacked Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account.
7. - Sarah Palin used the e-mail address gov.sarah@yahoo.com for public communication. Several media outlets have confirmed this fact prior to this “incident”.
9. SOURCE: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/10/palin-email-privilege/
10. SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/15-7
12. - The e-mail address that the poster hacked was gov.palin@yahoo.com. This second e-mail address, previously unknown publicly, was used for private communcations.
14. - Yahoo e-mail addresses, unlike .gov e-mail addresses, are not subject to archiving and oversight. This fact has led to controversy from several sources, including fellow Republicans, asking her to release e-mails from her Yahoo account.
16. - The anonymous poster apparently panicked, and released the password onto /b/.
18. - Several other posters on /b/ took screenshots of the Inbox and various e-mails.
20. - Some of the screenshots reference several people in Alaska state government. One of these people is Sean Parnell, Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. Parnell mentions KFQD Radio’s Dan Fagan, to whom he gave an interview about Palin’s ACES initiative. Lt. Gov. Parnell’s e-mail address is verified via an Alaska Republican Central Committee contact listing.
22. SOURCE: http://gov.state.ak.us/aces/
23. SOURCE: http://www.alaskarepublicans.com/centralcommittee.aspx
25. - One of the screenshots references the Yahoo account fek9wnr, Todd Palin, Sarah’s husband who is at the heart of the controversy over her use of Yahoo e-mail for public dealings. The fek9wnr account was verified as being Todd Palin via a public posting to an automotive enthusiast BBS from August 2006.
27. SOURCE: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/centurionconversions/message/2309
29. - Several photographs of her family were allegedly downloaded from the e-mail account.
31. - A scan of profiles.yahoo.com put gov.palin@yahoo.com’s profile update date at 04/05/2008, long before any VP nod was apparent. If this were a fake, the perpetrator would’ve had to travel into the past and create an account or be very good at guessing who the VP candidate would be 5+ months later, not to mention faking an overwhelming amount of e-mails, photographs, verified private cellphone numbers, and other information.
33. - A good samaritan in the /b/ thread reset the password account with the intention of handing it over to Palin, a process known on /b/ as “white knighting”. This locked everyone else out of the account. The “white knight” posted a screenshot to /b/ of his pending message to one of Palin’s contacts about how to recover the account, but made the critical mistake of not blanking out the new password he set.
35. - Several other people in the /b/ thread then apparently logged in using this new password, and they all attempted to reset the password at once, causing a security trap at Yahoo to automatically put a 24-hour lockout on the account.
38. THE AFTERMATH:
40. - Sarah Palin was likely notified of the breach by morning, as she had then deleted both the gov.sarah@yahoo.com address (the one subject to the disclosure controversy in the media) as well as the gov.palin@yahoo.com address (the one that was hacked).
42. - The outright deletion of the accounts can be verified by attempting to pull up the public profile on both addresses, which both existed during the incident.
44. SOURCE: http://profiles.yahoo.com/gov.palin
45. SOURCE: http://profiles.yahoo.com/gov.sarah
47. - Both accounts were deleted simultaneously, thus linking the publicly-known e-mail address “gov.sarah” and the private e-mail address “gov.palin”.
49. - This outright deletion may have the potential to be viewed as destruction of evidence, considering that the e-mails in the now-deleted accounts are the subject of several legal controversies.
51. SOURCE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090303210_pf.html
53. - Several ZIP, RAR, and 7Z compilations of the downloaded screenshots, contacts, and photos were made available by anonymous individuals.
55. - 4chan is actively (some say over-actively) banning and deleting any posts of the screenshots of Palin’s account, contacts, or family photos.
57. - An anonymous poster to 420chan, using information from the e-mail account’s contact list, attempted to call Bristol Palin’s cellphone number using the AT&T phone relay service. Several others allegedly called the cellphone number itself and got Bristol’s voicemail. These posts were quickly deleted by 420chan moderators.
59. - A poster on /b/ did a lookup on the cellphone number which returned this information:
61. Type: Cell Phone
62. Provider: Dobson Cellular Systems
63. Location: Palmer, AK
65. - An anonymous individual has uploaded some of the screenshots to a photobucket account.
67. SOURCE: http://s405.photobucket.com/albums/pp134/anoncrack/
69. - A poster in /r9k/ e-mailed the compilations to ABC News producer Eamon McNiff who he/she claims is a personal contact of his/hers.
71. - Someone submitted a summary to Digg. As of this writing it has only 12 diggs.
73. SOURCE: http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/The_Incident_Did_4Chan_Anon_Hack_Palin_s_Yahoo_Email
75. - As of right now the media related to the incident sits mostly confined to 4chan and rapidshare, and thus either deleted, censored or under the radar.

Wikileaks has confirmed the authenticity of atleast one of the emails.  As the account dates back to 5 months before Palin was picked as VP, additionally there would be lots of fabrication and personal information that would have to be obtained for these to be faked.  If it looks real, smells real and tastes real, it probably is.    I just can’t believe Palin uses Yahoo! for her email as a state official.

GOP Presidential candidate Senator John McCain was recently interviewed by a local TV station in Maine, when asked about Palin’s foreign policy experience his reputation of straight talk was put to the test.

Reporter: “You’re sure she has the experience, but again I’m just asking for an example. What experience does she have in the field of national security?”

McCain: “Energy.  She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America. She is the Governor of a state where 20% of our energy supply comes from there and we all know that energy is a critical and vital national security issue. We’ve got to stop sending 700 billion dollars of American money to countries that don’t like us very much. She’s very well versed on that issue and she, uh, also represents is a Governor of a state that is right next to Russia and ah, ah, she really understands Russia and their newly aggressive behavior in the world which is also something that we have to be very concerned about.”

Erm, what?  A Governor from Alaska knows more about energy than say, a university professor, or maybe John Dingell, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee?  Senator, the question was about foreign policy not energy policy, so much for straight talk.

[wcsh6.com]

One of the most important videos you’ll ever see from C-SPAN: