John Sez: I can’t even begin to sing the praises of Mr. Paul. In addition to being a guitar player non-parel, he was the inventor and innovator who(almost) single-handedly transformed the recording industry; think of where we would be without the electric guitar or multi-track recording. Although I use music technology which wasn’t available in Mr. Paul’s heyday, everything I use can trace its genesis to Les Paul.

 Although I never met the man, I owe him a great debt of gratitude. Rest easy, Les Paul. Thank you, sir. You will be remembered.

 Story from Press Association:

Guitar hero Les Paul dies, aged 94

Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multi-track recording has died, aged 94.

Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital, New York, with his family and friends by his side.

As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock and roll and multi-track recording, which enabled artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.

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John Sez: The lies have been coming fast and furious from the White House; so much so, that I’ve become flabbergasted to the point that I’m not even sure what to say any more. Can any one say (if they have been paying attention, of course) that they actually trust the President any more? Considering he has flipped flopped on just about every campaign promise he has made, I can’t say that I have all that much confidence in him or his administration.

I really thought that Bush was the worst President we ever had…

Video from CNN:
 
 
John Sez: The title above doesn’t really give due recognition to the seriousness of this particular situation, but I couldn’t seem to find words strong enough.

First, there was a story of the Drudge Report with the Title of: “How His Healthcare Plan Will Eliminate Private Insurance”, which linked to a video where Obama said he wanted a single payer health care plan in a speech in 2003 (side note, single payer health care wasn’t even on the table, nor part of the negotiation process).

Then in response, according to CNN, there was a White House video posted of Linda Douglass (head of communications for the health care bill) where she stated the following:

          “…one of [her] jobs is to keep track of all the     disinformation that's out there about health insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this one — take a look at this one," she says, pointing to the Drudge headline.

"Well, nothing can be farther from the truth. You know the people who always try to scare people whenever you try to bring them health insurance reform are at it again, and they're taking sentences and phrases out of context and they're cobbling them together to leave a very false impression."

Because Obama has spoken so much about health care reform, she says, "there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there, they simply cherry pick and put it together and make it sound like he's saying something that he didn't really say."

 On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the White House having a, er, health care communications czar. Even though she is promoting a lie to cover what Obama said (why I HATE politics and polititions),they have as much right to spew as anyone else.  But, according to a later Infowars story, there is a post on the White House website which reads the following:

“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

 Oh. OK. The President want American citizens to tell the government if they get an e-mail or see something on the web about the health bill that is contrary to the White House stance.

Waitaminute...

What?

That Can’t be right, can it? Holy crap…it IS right.

Folks, Bush was bad. No, strike that, downright awful. He did a great deal of damage to our Constitution and to our civil liberties as a whole. But Obama, after promising to fix all of that , has taken the ball from Bush and is running with it as fast as he can in the same direction of Mussolini and Stalin. Is the current administration heading America down the cess-pool of a tolatarian tyranny, or am I way, way off base?

Story from Infowars:

(Video is the Obama clip mentioned at the beginning of this post.)
White House Calls for Citizens to Inform on Opponents of Obamacare

The Obama White House is calling for informer-citizens to denounce opponents of the president’s health care plan. A post on the White House website posted today reads:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The post by Macon Phillips, the White House Director of New Media, does not indicate what the Obama White House will do with the information.

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John Sez: I take it that this is Russia’s response to our beefing up our supposed missile defense programs (which are all in Russia’s backyard) as well as the Obama (and Bush, the last time around) administrations backing of Georgia’s attacks on South Ossetia.  I really hate to say it, but I can’t blame Russia for this show of military strength. 

 Does anyone smell a new cold war brewing? Or is that scent blocked out by the stench of a possible hot war with a superpower?

 Story from The New York Times:

Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.

By MARK MAZZETTI and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.

The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets — and be poised for war.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.

“I don’t think they’ve put two first-line nuclear subs off the U.S. coast in about 15 years,” said Norman Polmar, a naval historian and submarine warfare expert.

The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the United States Navy, and not one of the larger submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.

According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.

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John Sez: Blackwater has a long and sorted history both in and out of the Iraq combat zone where they came to infamous public attention. There has been video after video posted on sites like YouTube and Liveleak, which show Blackwater mercenaries killing Iraqi civilians in cold blood, shooting civilian cars off the road just for fun, and even engaged in military exercises right here in the US (most notably in New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina). Bush made sure that there was no oversight of what the mercenaries were doing (nor how many of them had actually been deployed, or where, or even how many were killed). 

 The company decided to change its name from Blackwater to XE after a great deal of public pressure and exposure was brought to bear on their actions (as well as lawsuits which they wrer protected from by the bush administration). And, as usual for the Obama administration, Blackwater mercenaries are still being hired out by the DOD and deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as continue to train our police forces (why would the police need that kind of military training?).

And now it seems that some fellows on the inside are implicating (the very recently resigned) Blackwater founder, Erik Prince, in the murder of people who were cooperating with a federal investigation into the company.

This is simply a sick situation. Why are we, the good ol’ USA, the guys in white hats, the protectors of freedoms, the friken GOOD GUYS fer chrissakes, why are we using MERCINARIES to fight our battles? I can only think of two reasons; one is that someone(s) is making a HUGE amount of money in the transaction and that these merc’s are doing things that our military would consider illegal.

 Story from The Nation (not a source i generally like, but Scahill's reporting is always accurate):

(Video that follows is a very brief over view of Blackwater by pre-eminent author and researcher on the subject, Jeremy Scahill. The video is pre-Obama, so insert his names as well when Scahill points fingers at Bush.)

 Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder By Jeremy Scahill A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

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John sez: I saw this one comming since the advent of e-mail. It's too bad, as the Post Office is probably the most trusted (and most reliable) part of the entire governmnet structure.

Story from AP:

Post office looks at changing hundreds of offices

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer
 
WASHINGTON – The local post office long has been the center of many American communities, but with people turning increasingly to the Internet to send messages and pay bills, financial losses are forcing the Postal Service to consider consolidating or closing hundreds of local facilities.

The post office is facing a $7 billion loss this year despite a 2-cent rate increase. The agency has shed 150,000 workers since 2000, removed hundreds of mail collection boxes and taken other steps to save money.

Now the agency has sent a list of nearly 700 potential candidates for closing or consolidation to the independent Postal Regulatory Commission for review, and officials say more may be added.

Some of the offices could be closed while others might have some of their functions consolidated with other offices. For example, in some cases preparing mail for delivery may be shifted from Office A to nearby Office B, but the first office still might offer services such as selling stamps and mailing parcels and letters. In other cases one of the offices might be closed.

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John Sez: I’ve been harping on the over-medication (specifically of children) of people in this country for years. And every few years a study or two comes out that does nothing more than proves my point. According to a Reuters article: “About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.”

 More than 10 percent by 2005? So, it’s a safe bet that just about 20 percent, or approximately 35 million people are currently taking anti-depressants. One in five SS citizens. Let that sink in for a minute.

 These figures beg the question, why are so many people taking these drugs? First off, the guide books for diagnosing and prescribing drugs are written with an un-healthy amount of input by the pharmaceutical companies. Also, a great many doctors receive kickbacks to prescribes these drugs (those generally good looking folks in snappy business-wear, who traipse into a doctor’s office dragging behind them a suitcase on wheels while you are sitting there waiting for way too long to see your doctor, are not coming to simply say ‘thank you’. Or, at least, not in words.). Additionally, I’ve heard from first hand reports (as well as numerous news articles) how the VA is dispensing anti-depressants like PEZ to our soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. To paraphrase Major General Smedly Butler’s quote about war, “Medicine is a racket”. 

Also note that the study makes mention that the use of these drugs has not risen in the black community...the people who are most under-insured. I wonder if the numbers will rise to 1 in 3 if the so called 'health bill' is passed?

 Story from Reuters:

Antidepressant use doubles in US, study finds

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday.

About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

"Not only are more U.S. residents being treated with antidepressants, but also those who are being treated are receiving more antidepressant prescriptions," they added.

More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health.

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Apparently, the Obama administration, working in conjunction with other European nations, is beginning the process of rolling out the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which will make searching your computer for illegally downloaded content fall under the banner of national security.

As a musician, I fully understand an artists need to protect what belongs to them (although I am in total disagreement with how the matter has been handled by the RIAA and other associated organizations), but why is this now becoming a reason for national security as opposed to it being a civil matter? I can clearly see such cases brought to the court as a suit tantamount to theft, but I don’t understand how downloading a song or movie is a threat to national security.

Since the Bush administration, there has been a push to make criminal activities equate to terrorism (in the Patriot Act it claims that even a misdemeanor can trigger anti-terrorism law, and you can be hauled away and imprisoned indefinitely in a military prison with no lawyer, phone call, or legal recourse whatsoever), and the Obama administration is building on that structure not only to criminalize everything they can,  but to bring  as many activities (illicit or not) under the banner of the Federal government as opposed to local law enforcement or the courts.

So how will these new policies be enforced effectively? Just thinking about my own laptop, I have mp3 music on there, a smattering of video material, a video game or two, pdf’s of books and various documents, and photographs- all are legal. How can a cursory check of my computer show if any of that material is illegally download or not? Would I have to produce receipts that I legally purchased the products? What about material that is copyrighted to me; would I have to carry around copies of the copyright paperwork to prove that? What about items that are legally copied (like backing up my cd collection to a digital drive, downloading free books from Project Gutenberg, music given freely by other musicians that I am acquainted with, and so on), what would I have to do to prove all that?

Obviously, the logistics involved make such a law un-enforceable. Or, more to the point, makes such a law selectively enforceable (like the terrorism watch list, which has well over a million names of American citizens on it – do you really think there are a million terrorists in the country right now?) or simply gives the government the legal go-ahead to survail it’s citizenry at will, with no warrant or probable cause. The former of these points has already been proven (go take a flight somewhere, you’ll see what I mean), but the latter seems very likely as well.

A recent report on the Glen Beck Show (note: personally, I despise Mr. Beck; he is a very, very simple man surrounded by a complex world he doesn’t seem to readily grasp. BUT this is the only mainstream news show that I found which reported on this) profiled the website CARS.GOV (the governmental web-site tie-in for the cash for clunkers policy of the Obama administration) which, when you log on to the system states the following: “This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is property of the U.S. government. Any or all uses on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign”.

So, in effect, when you log onto the CARS system you not only give up any property rights that you might have concerning your computer, but you are also authorizing the federal government to search your computer, make a record of the search, and if any of the contents of your hard drive gets ‘red flagged’ the government will turn that information over to the law enforcement authorities, not only of this country but of any country of it’s choosing. All this without probable cause or a warrant. This type of behavior is CLEARLY unconstitutional, and is seemingly nothing more than a governmental invasion of privacy which was strengthened in the last administration and is clearly being continued (with GUSTO, I might add) by the current administration.

The first video is about the ACTA, credited to RT

The second is the clip from Glen Beck
 
 
John Sez: Here we go again. Georgia is poking and prodding at South Ossetia, trying to instigate a violent response from Russia. Georgia has absolutely no hopes of winning in such a confrontation, even though they have immense backing from the US government (which is how the current Georgian government  came to power in the first place)so the question lingers as to WHY they are attempting to mess with the Russian Bear.

They claim it is to reclaim the land of South Ossetia and roll it back into Georgia proper. But I don’t think they would risk their entire country in the attempt to win a small sliver of land from a super-power. The only reason that I can see for this situation is that Iran and Russia are very strong trading partners, and have mutual defense treaties between them. If Iran is attacked (by the US or Israel) Russia might intervene on behalf of Iran. If you look a map or atlas of the region, draw a line from the SW region of Russia, through Georgia going south and you end up…oh, look, you end up in Iran. What better way to keep Russia from intervening in an attack on Iran then to keep their ground troops and supplies from getting through.

See folks, when you take a look at the larger picture in the global chess game, the perspective changes. Do we REALLY want to risk a war with Russia over Iran? Is it, in any way, in our best interest? No…it’s not.
 
Story from AFP (posted on Raw Story):

Russia warns of force if more Georgia 'provocations' 


 Russia on Saturday warned Georgia its military reserves the right to use force if the ex-Soviet state continues "provocations" in the Caucasus, one week ahead of the first anniversary of their 2008 war.

The Russian defence ministry accused Georgia of firing several times with mortars and grenades over the last four days on the capital of its rebel South Ossetia region which is recognised as independent by Russia.

"Such actions seriously worry the Russian defence ministry," the ministry said in a statement on its website.

"If such provocations posing a threat to the population of South Ossetia and the Russian military continue, the defence ministry reserves the right to use all the forces and means at its disposal."

The angry statement came just ahead of the August 7 anniversary of the start of the war, when a Georgian military attempt to retake South Ossetia was rebuffed by Russia. Moscow then sent troops and tanks deep into Georgian territory.

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John Sez:  This is a very strange story. It claims that these supposed innocent tourists started off in Turkey, went to Iraq (which, if you haven’t heard, is not tourist friendly due to a war going on there), traveled to the Kurdish section of the country (the Kurds have no great love of Americans, due to the fact that Saddam Hussein, who is responsible for massacring thousands of Kurds, was installed by the US in the first place), then decided to go hiking on the Iraq-Iran border (which, if you haven’t heard about Iran, is problematic due to the fact that the US keeps threatening war – or to back a war started by Israel – with Iran due to a supposed WMD program that we have no proof of; add to this the fact that Iran sits between two countries that the US is currently invading, Afghanistan and Iraq, which might make them a little, er, touchy), went too far on to the Iranian side and were captured by Iranian troops. 

 So, there are two logical explanations for this situation. First is that these were indeed tourists, who either haven’t picked up a newspaper in 30 years or are complete morons for traveling into a war torn region who’s people have no great love for Americans. Second:  that these men are spies or contractors hired by the DOD (or some other department) to do some recon or stir up some mischief, and that the ‘tourist’ story is their cover. Either way, I’ll bet that this will end up as part of the rhetoric that will propel us towards a stronger war footing with Iran.

Story from the AP:

Report: 3 American hikers arrested in Iran

By YAHYA BARZANJI, Associated Press Writer

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – The U.S. State Department said Friday it was investigating reports that three American tourists have been detained by Iranians while hiking near Iran's border with the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Two Kurdish officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information, said the Americans apparently were arrested after entering Iranian territory without permission.

U.S. helicopters were buzzing overhead and many U.S. Humvees had moved into the Kurdish city of Halabja to search for the Americans, said a Kurdish border force official.

According to a security official, a fourth American who stayed behind at a hotel because he was sick said the missing Americans were tourists hiking near Halabja and the border town of Ahmed Awaa.

According to this account, the four had traveled to Turkey, then entered the Kurdish region Tuesday through the Ibrahim Al-Khalil border point in Zakho, the official said. They visited the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah on Wednesday. The next day, three of them took a taxi to Ahmed Awaa where they told their companion that they planned to stay at a nearby resort, the official said.

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