Marco Rubio and Batista
The words “scum” and “Republican” by now can be used interchangeably, as the examples provided each day by both leaders and rank-and-file continue to wipe out any remaining doubts about separate meanings we might charitably entertain. Lexicographers take note.

Politician Rubio: Florida has long been a haven for some of the worst reactionary scum from Latin America, and Rubio amply lives up to that tradition.

Marco Rubio (R-FL) has long blamed Fidel Castro for the fact that his parents left Cuba.  Now it appears they were fleeing Fulgencio Batista!  And he’s mad that anyone would distinguish between the two, or suggest that he’s clueless.

In a campaign ad last year, he said: “As the son of exiles, I understand what it means to lose the gift of freedom.” Rubio’s biography on his Senate website previously said he was “born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who come to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” It has been changed to say Rubio “was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban exiles who first arrived in the United States in 1956.”

It is very hard to imagine a Cuban or Cuban American getting confused about the difference between 1956 and 1959, or the difference between Castro and Batista.  But when it comes to Florida and Cuba, rationality goes straight out the window.

Thanks to: Two Weeks Notice: A Latin American Politics Blog

Editor’s Note:
OK, all’s well and good in lalaland, but, as we could expect, no rightwing scumbag is ever an orphan when it comes to the American mainstream media.  There’s always plenty of willing apologists at the ready. Here’s the notorious provocateur Jennifer Rubin, who naturally enjoys a regular column with the insidious Washington Post, filing her defense of Rubio.  Consider the material below and make your own judgment. After following the convolutions, it’s hard to fathom how they expect to absolve Rubio of willful intent to deceive.

Marco Rubio hits back

By Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post 10.21.11

The Post reported yesterday that the parents of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had not fled Cuba after Fidel Castro had risen to power but some years before. Nevertheless, the report found: “They showed that between the couple’s admission for permanent U.S. residence and Castro’s victory on Jan. 1, 1959, his father spent five days in Cuba and his mother spent no more than two months and three days there. The passports show that Rubio’s mother made at least four short trips to the island after Castro’s victory, including a month-long stay in February and March 1961.” It was during that trip that Rubio’s mother determined she couldn’t live under the Communist regime.

Rubio put out a statement slamming the report:

To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous. The dates I have given regarding my family’s history have always been based on my parents’ recollections of events that occurred over 55 years ago and which were relayed to me by them more than two decades after they happened. I was not made aware of the exact dates until very recently.

What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate. My parents are from Cuba. After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times. In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family’s matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return.

They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.

Moreover, there is some question about whether Rubio ever specifically claimed his parents left the island after the Castro revolution. The Miami Herald, which has closely followed Rubio’s career, notes that in fact Rubio has previously stated that his parents left before Castro’s rise. The reporter observes:

But the top of the story suggests Rubio himself has given this “dramatic account”: that “he was the son of exiles, he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after ‘a thug,’ Fidel Castro, took power.”

However, the story doesn’t cite one speech where Rubio actually said that.

To back up the lead, the Washington Post excerpts from a 2006 address in the Florida House where Rubio said, “In January of 1959 a thug named Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and countless Cubans were forced to flee. . . . Today your children and grandchildren are the secretary of commerce of the United States and multiple members of Congress . . . and soon, even speaker of the Florida House.”

The catch: If you listen to the speech, Rubio isn’t just talking about those who specifically fled Cuba after Castro took power. He doesn’t say that his parents fled Cuba. Instead, he was talking about “a community of exiles.” That is: He was talking about all the Cubans who live in Miami. . . .

Though the story said his parents left for economic reasons, it’s silent about the fact that the dictator before Castro, Batista, was so brutal that it made Castro look like a good alternative at first.

In sum, the Herald reporter says, “Rubio’s office has told both the Washington Post, the St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald that his parents came to the United States prior to Castro taking power. And he has said it more than once.” If Rubio was “embellishing,” he did an awfully poor job of it. The best evidence of inaccuracy is Rubio’s Senate biography (that says his parents left after Castro), which Rubio apparently never corrected.

Certain press accounts are absurdly unfair. Alex Burns from Politico proclaims, “Richard Blumenthal won a U.S. Senate election even after it was reported that he exaggerated his Vietnam War service. Joe Biden became vice president despite having once lifted a family history from the British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock and passed it off as his own.” If Burns has similar evidence concerning Rubio, he should cough it up.

If this is the best they have on Rubio, he’s in no peril whatsoever. To the contrary, Rubio, having gone through a mainstream press attack, will likely endear himself to an even greater degree to the conservative base. If there’s one thing that all conservatives can agree on, it is their loathing of mainstream media (sic-it must be because they truly believe it’s so full of fiery radicals!).

By Jennifer Rubin  |  10:00 AM ET, 10/21/2011

Categories:  Senate Republicans

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ARCHIVES: Articles you should have read the first time around, but missed.

Posted by Jacob Sloan on October 3, 2011

Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:

No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude” for the company’s donation.

“These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe,” Dimon said. “We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”

Now readers can point out that this gift is bupkis relative to the budget of the police department, which is close to $4 billion. But looking at it on a mathematical basis likely misses the incentives at work. Dimon is one of the most powerful and connected corporate leaders in Gotham City. If he thinks the police donation was worthwhile, he might encourage other bank and big company CEOs to make large donations.

And what sort of benefits might JPM get? The police might be extra protective of your interests. Today, OccupyWallStreet decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge (a proud New York tradition) to Chase Manhattan Plaza in Brooklyn. Reports in the media indicate that the police at first seemed to be encouraging the protestors not only to cross the bridge, but were walking in front of the crowd, seemingly escorting them across. Over 700 of the marchers were arrested, and the media has a rather amusing “he said, she said” account, with OccupyWallStreet claiming entrapment and the cops batting their baby blues and trying to look innocent.

We simply don’t know whether the police would have behaved one iota differently in the absence of the JP Morgan donation. But it raises the troubling perspective that they might have.

• Posted in: Banks, Bribery, corporate watch, Corruption, JP Morgan Chase, New York City, NYPD, OccupyWallStreet, Police, Wall Street 

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By Rand Clifford

In the late Douglas Adams’ masterpiece of wit, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is…42.

Philosophers whose ancestors built the gargantuan computer Deep Thought to calculate an answer to that Ultimate Question were mortified upon learning that their computer spent 7.5 million years to come up with, 42. Deep Thought’s response was along the lines of: How do you expect to understand the answer, when you don’t understand the question?
Perhaps a correlation is there regarding Corporatocracy’s denigration of the Wall Street Occupiers for not having a clear message; for not having a tidy answer to Corporatocracy’s question of, “What’s the Problem?”

Specific grievances probably outnumber protestors—even counting their rapidly-multiplying allies around the country. When virtually everything has been fouled by Wall Street kinds of casino juju, and corporate criminality in general, how might a single clear message be formulated?

Ultimately, Corporatocracy seems to be asking for an answer to a question they don’t understand—I mean, under the circumstances, if they actually have to be told what the problem is, doesn’t that imply a complete vacuum of understanding?

Of course their posturing is all lies; they know precisely what evil they propagate—and will do everything in their expanding powers to continue to inflict the same upon the “other 99 percent”. Virtually everything they do has roots in some breed of lie.

And since they’ve gotten such a smother of denigration out of the “no clear message” chicanery, maybe it’s time to skin their little pet by pronouncing a clear message in triptych—right off the top?

At least it’s my opinion that the following three demands offer clear initial focus:

1)  End corporate personhood

2)  End the Fed

3)  End military adventurism

Corporate Personhood

Regarding deceit being Corporatocracy’s constant companion, beginnings of corporate personhood represent a fine example. It’s widely believed that a Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling in May of 1886 was responsible for bestowing upon corporations all the rights, under the Constitution, of “…all persons born or naturalized in the United States…”

Actually, in that 1886 “Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific Railroad” case, the SCOTUS carefully avoided the issue of corporate personhood—the “landmark ruling” was birthed by J.C. Bancroft Davis, a former railroad company president turned court reporter. J.C. slipped the ruling into the headnotes of the case—voila! Instant landmark ruling.

Please see the article, Artificial People for a fuller picture.

For us 99 percent, a premier reward of ending corporate personhood would be the invalidation of the SCOTUS ruling in 2010 that removed any restrictions on the amount of money corporations may spend on elections (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission). Put another way, denying corporations absolute ownership of elections would be a violation of their free speech as “…persons born or naturalized in the United States”, as guaranteed under the first amendment.

The SCOTUS ruled essentially that the will of voters shall not infringe upon the right of corporations to choose and control American leadership….

Testing the limits of smarminess, Mitt Romney told a maverick in the herd at the Iowa State Fair (birthplace of deep-fried butter on a stick): “Corporations are people my friend.”

Surely, some of Mitt’s best friends are corporations. But his assertion has as little to do with corporations actually being people as it does with Mitt seeming presidential. His goo-goo condescension is effectively cloaked, apparently; otherwise, people might be more sensitive to his uncanny ability to make babies cry. But of course it doesn’t matter now that the SCOTUS gave corporations the keys to elections.  

The Federal Reserve

Deceit from the get-go. The Federal Reserve is not federal, and it has no reserves; the name was conjured primarily to fool people into believing the Fed is part of the government, and might somehow appear on the horizon to save us on a rainy day.

Sorry, the Fed creates rainy days so they can steal property for pennies on the dollar, as they did with farms during the Great Depression. Current head of the Fed, Ben Bernanke—he even admitted the Fed caused the Great Depression. Ben apologized, and promised they would never do it again…..

The Fed is a private corporation insatiably sucking blood from America with debt money. One thing governments like about debt money is how it makes war easy by eliminating the mess of having to directly raise money for war. Overall, it seems hard to imagine any single private entity inflicting anything even close to the damage the Fed has inflicted, and inflicts, on us 99 percent, our country, and countries with valuable resources, especially oil.

James Madison, fourth president of the United States, called the private international banking cartel of which the Fed is a part, the “Money Changers”. And Madison said, “History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

Thomas Jefferson said:

    “I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

Abraham Lincoln:

    “The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at the rear is my greatest foe.”

Some of America’s most profound history orbits the power of the international banking cartel (some might say Rothschild Bankula) seizing control of the nation’s issuance of money. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. Seems plenty clear.

We have had three private central banks. The first was born in 1791 as the Bank of the United States, 70% owned by foreigners. Primary opposition focused on the fact that it was unconstitutional, creation of such a bank with a monopoly on issuing money. This first central bank had a 20-year charter; only the vote of Vice President George Clinton in 1811 saved us from renewal of that charter.

Britain (home of the City of London, throne of Bankula) attacked us soon thereafter. Whether or not the War of 1812 was a direct result of non-renewal of the first central bank’s charter, that’s a matter of history, which Napoleon called, “A set of lies agreed upon.” History keeps proving him right.

Anyway, President Monroe signed into law the charter for the Second Bank of the Untied States on April 10, 1816. This bloodletting also came with a twenty-year charter—at the end of which, President Jackson was able to disengage Bankula from America’s throat. Later, when asked what his greatest accomplishment had been during his two terms as President, Andrew Jackson replied “I killed the Bank.”

He stopped charter renewal of the second Rothschild-controlled central bank. Jackson even has “I Killed The Bank” written on his tombstone. Many believe this populist message relating to banking helped to launch the Democratic party.

To the monstrous misfortune of us 99 percent, with utmost deceit and malice aforethought, the Federal Reserve Act was slimed through while most of congress was on Christmas break, 1913. Woodrow Wilson, JP Morgan’s bag man (much of Wilson’s administration were Morgan men), immediately signed it into law. And now, 98 years later, we’ve been all but bled white.

Getting Bankula off our throat this time seems nearly impossible. As proven over the years, a most dangerous thing a president might do is defy private central banking.

In the words of Niall Ferguson, of the House of Rothschild:

    There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.”

Joining that tiny elite club might be one of the greatest achievements possible for our 99 percent.  

Military Adventurism

It’s conceivable that nobody really knows how much we spend on “defense”. Between the Fed, and the Pentagon—it’s surprising our jar has any cookies left at all.

Black operations, information blackouts for national security, all the “unknown unknowns”…the Pentagon is such a black hole that $2.3 trillion are “unaccounted for” and nobody seems to have a clue where it all went. Despite getting double billing in the lengthy list of amazing 9/11 coincidences, the money is still missing.

There was certain scuttlebutt about the issue for months…but then, Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld chose to make a formal public announcement on 9/10/01. And if that’s not an amazing coincidence by itself, making it news the day before 9/11 would bury the story…whatever hit the newly-renovated area of the Pentagon was aimed precisely at the only department so far to settle back into the renovated area. That department was the Army’s Resource Services Washington, consisting of mostly civilian accountants tasked with finding out where the missing $2.3 trillion went. 34 of the department’s 65 employees—over half of the only people that could have been hot on the missing trillions’ trail—were killed, all their work vaporized. Beyond amazing, maybe even an unknown known unknown, the richest kind.

The Pentagon is so out of control they are even inventing new kinds of “defense”, such as the utterly ominous, humanitarian aggression; killing foreign civilians to protect them, mostly from the air.

We currently spend more on “defense” than all the world’s other countries combined. So:

Close our nearly 1,000 military bases on foreign soil. Stop the wars of plunder, whatever they may currently be veiled as. Stop the neocon obsession with taking over the world (“benign global hegemony”). Bring our troops home with a new mission: Defense. Imagine…a whole new mission for the Department of Offense: Defense.

The 1 percent may pretend that offense and defense are the same thing, that a good offense is the best defense. But the world—that other 95 percent of global population—knows the difference quite clearly.

No Leadership?

Is the main reason Corporatocracy denigrates the “occupiers” for having no defined leadership because there’s no clear target for assassination? Who’s to disappear when nobody invites disappearance? Leaders can be lightning rods; lack of leaders makes it impossible to know exactly where to strike. Disappearing the whole lot of those “without a clear message” might be tempting, but even with martial law would be messy, bad for the image.

Power concedes nothing without a fight, never has, never will. We are in the fight of our lives, for our lives. If we turn back now…game over, despite our fantastic advantage in numbers.

Mitt Romney has the audacity to co-opt the term, “occupy”—as in, he’s ready to occupy the White House. “This is dangerous class warfare,” he says, even though his 1 percent has been balls-to-the-wall waging class warfare against our 99 percent at least since the Reagan days. Well, a man like Mitt being the president of the world’s “superpower”, even if it has been so gutted, is so in debt to the Money Changers, and the presidency is fundamentally puppetry…it would still be mace in the face of our 99 percent.

Perhaps Mitt will choose as his running mate, deep-fried butter on a stick…not to be confused with Palin, and a stick.

http://starchiefpress.com/  The novels, Priest Lake Cathedral, and Voices of Vires will be available soon.

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As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has been a five-watt bulb sitting in a 100-watt socket. Perry: An opportunistic imbecile, smart enough to play in the American political sandbox, but deadly on serious issues. (c) 2011 Jim Hightower’s latest book, “If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates,” is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.

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to real change in America why haven’t you sent at least a few dollars to The Greanville Post (or a similar anti-corporate citizen’s media?). Think about it.  Without educating and organizing our ranks our cause is DOA. That’s why our new citizens’ media need your support. Send your badly needed check to “TGP, P.O. Box 1028, Brewster, NY 10509-1028.” Make checks out to “P. Greanville/ TGP”.  (A contribution of any amount can also be made via Paypal and MC or VISA.)

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Extra! September 2011
Carolyn Cutrone and Steve Rendall, FAIR!

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