The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families

(Part one of a four-part series)

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]

J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US. They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.

CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches. He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3] The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb. The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.

Eustace Mullins came to the same conclusions in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, in which he displays charts connecting the Fed and its member banks to the families of Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller and the others. [4]

The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”. Yet the facts remain.

The House of Morgan

The Federal Reserve Bank was born in 1913, the same year US banking scion J. Pierpont Morgan died and the Rockefeller Foundation was formed. The House of Morgan presided over American finance from the corner of Wall Street and Broad, acting as quasi-US central bank since 1838, when George Peabody founded it in London.

Peabody was a business associate of the Rothschilds. In 1952 Fed researcher Eustace Mullins put forth the supposition that the Morgans were nothing more than Rothschild agents. Mullins wrote that the Rothschilds, “…preferred to operate anonymously in the US behind the facade of J.P. Morgan & Company”. [5]

Author Gabriel Kolko stated, “Morgan’s activities in 1895-1896 in selling US gold bonds in Europe were based on an alliance with the House of Rothschild.” [6]

The Morgan financial octopus wrapped its tentacles quickly around the globe. Morgan Grenfell operated in London. Morgan et Ce ruled Paris. The Rothschild’s Lambert cousins set up Drexel & Company in Philadelphia.

The House of Morgan catered to the Astors, DuPonts, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. It financed the launch of AT&T, General Motors, General Electric and DuPont. Like the London-based Rothschild and Barings banks, Morgan became part of the power structure in many countries.

By 1890 the House of Morgan was lending to Egypt’s central bank, financing Russian railroads, floating Brazilian provincial government bonds and funding Argentine public works projects. A recession in 1893 enhanced Morgan’s power. That year Morgan saved the US government from a bank panic, forming a syndicate to prop up government reserves with a shipment of $62 million worth of Rothschild gold. [7]

Morgan was the driving force behind Western expansion in the US, financing and controlling West-bound railroads through voting trusts. In 1879 Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Morgan-financed New York Central Railroad gave preferential shipping rates to John D. Rockefeller’s budding Standard Oil monopoly, cementing the Rockefeller/Morgan relationship.

The House of Morgan now fell under Rothschild and Rockefeller family control. A New York Herald headline read, “Railroad Kings Form Gigantic Trust”. J. Pierpont Morgan, who once stated, “Competition is a sin”, now opined gleefully, “Think of it. All competing railroad traffic west of St. Louis placed in the control of about thirty men.”[8]

Morgan and Edward Harriman’s banker Kuhn Loeb held a monopoly over the railroads, while banking dynasties Lehman, Goldman Sachs and Lazard joined the Rockefellers in controlling the US industrial base. [9]

In 1903 Banker’s Trust was set up by the Eight Families. Benjamin Strong of Banker’s Trust was the first Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The 1913 creation of the Fed fused the power of the Eight Families to the military and diplomatic might of the US government. If their overseas loans went unpaid, the oligarchs could now deploy US Marines to collect the debts. Morgan, Chase and Citibank formed an international lending syndicate.

The House of Morgan was cozy with the British House of Windsor and the Italian House of Savoy. The Kuhn Loebs, Warburgs, Lehmans, Lazards, Israel Moses Seifs and Goldman Sachs also had close ties to European royalty. By 1895 Morgan controlled the flow of gold in and out of the US. The first American wave of mergers was in its infancy and was being promoted by the bankers. In 1897 there were sixty-nine industrial mergers. By 1899 there were twelve-hundred. In 1904 John Moody – founder of Moody’s Investor Services – said it was impossible to talk of Rockefeller and Morgan interests as separate. [10]

Public distrust of the combine spread. Many considered them traitors working for European old money. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie’s US Steel and Edward Harriman’s railroads were all financed by banker Jacob Schiff at Kuhn Loeb, who worked closely with the European Rothschilds.

Several Western states banned the bankers. Populist preacher William Jennings Bryan was thrice the Democratic nominee for President from 1896 -1908. The central theme of his anti-imperialist campaign was that America was falling into a trap of “financial servitude to British capital”. Teddy Roosevelt defeated Bryan in 1908, but was forced by this spreading populist wildfire to enact the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He then went after the Standard Oil Trust.

In 1912 the Pujo hearings were held, addressing concentration of power on Wall Street. That same year Mrs. Edward Harriman sold her substantial shares in New York’s Guaranty Trust Bank to J.P. Morgan, creating Morgan Guaranty Trust. Judge Louis Brandeis convinced President Woodrow Wilson to call for an end to interlocking board directorates. In 1914 the Clayton Anti-Trust Act was passed.

Jack Morgan – J. Pierpont’s son and successor – responded by calling on Morgan clients Remington and Winchester to increase arms production. He argued that the US needed to enter WWI. Goaded by the Carnegie Foundation and other oligarchy fronts, Wilson accommodated. As Charles Tansill wrote in America Goes to War, “Even before the clash of arms, the French firm of Rothschild Freres cabled to Morgan & Company in New York suggesting the flotation of a loan of $100 million, a substantial part of which was to be left in the US to pay for French purchases of American goods.”

The House of Morgan financed half the US war effort, while receiving commissions for lining up contractors like GE, Du Pont, US Steel, Kennecott and ASARCO. All were Morgan clients. Morgan also financed the British Boer War in South Africa and the Franco-Prussian War. The 1919 Paris Peace Conference was presided over by Morgan, which led both German and Allied reconstruction efforts. [11]

In the 1930’s populism resurfaced in America after Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bank and others profited from the Crash of 1929. [12] House Banking Committee Chairman Louis McFadden (D-NY) said of the Great Depression, “It was no accident. It was a carefully contrived occurrence…The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all”.

Sen. Gerald Nye (D-ND) chaired a munitions investigation in 1936. Nye concluded that the House of Morgan had plunged the US into WWI to protect loans and create a booming arms industry. Nye later produced a document titled The Next War, which cynically referred to “the old goddess of democracy trick”, through which Japan could be used to lure the US into WWII.

In 1937 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes warned of the influence of “America’s 60 Families”. Historian Ferdinand Lundberg later penned a book of the exact same title. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas decried, “Morgan influence…the most pernicious one in industry and finance today.”

Jack Morgan responded by nudging the US towards WWII. Morgan had close relations with the Iwasaki and Dan families – Japan’s two wealthiest clans – who have owned Mitsubishi and Mitsui, respectively, since the companies emerged from 17th Century shogunates. When Japan invaded Manchuria, slaughtering Chinese peasants at Nanking, Morgan downplayed the incident. Morgan also had close relations with Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, while German Nazi Dr. Hjalmer Schacht was a Morgan Bank liaison during WWII. After the war Morgan representatives met with Schacht at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. [13]

The House of Rockefeller

BIS is the most powerful bank in the world, a global central bank for the Eight Families who control the private central banks of almost all Western and developing nations. The first President of BIS was Rockefeller banker Gates McGarrah- an official at Chase Manhattan and the Federal Reserve. McGarrah was the grandfather of former CIA director Richard Helms. The Rockefellers- like the Morgans- had close ties to London. David Icke writes in Children of the Matrix, that the Rockefellers and Morgans were just “gofers” for the European Rothschilds. [14]

BIS is owned by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Italy, Bank of Canada, Swiss National Bank, Nederlandsche Bank, Bundesbank and Bank of France.

Historian Carroll Quigley wrote in his epic book Tragedy and Hope that BIS was part of a plan, “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements.”

The US government had a historical distrust of BIS, lobbying unsuccessfully for its demise at the 1944 post-WWII Bretton Woods Conference. Instead the Eight Families’ power was exacerbated, with the Bretton Woods creation of the IMF and the World Bank. The US Federal Reserve only took shares in BIS in September 1994. [15]

BIS holds at least 10% of monetary reserves for at least 80 of the world’s central banks, the IMF and other multilateral institutions. It serves as financial agent for international agreements, collects information on the global economy and serves as lender of last resort to prevent global financial collapse.

BIS promotes an agenda of monopoly capitalist fascism. It gave a bridge loan to Hungary in the 1990’s to ensure privatization of that country’s economy. It served as conduit for Eight Families funding of Adolf Hitler- led by the Warburg’s J. Henry Schroeder and Mendelsohn Bank of Amsterdam. Many researchers assert that BIS is at the nadir of global drug money laundering. [16]

It is no coincidence that BIS is headquartered in Switzerland, favorite hiding place for the wealth of the global aristocracy and headquarters for the P-2 Italian Freemason’s Alpina Lodge and Nazi International. Other institutions which the Eight Families control include the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference and the World Trade Organization.

Bretton Woods was a boon to the Eight Families. The IMF and World Bank were central to this “new world order”. In 1944 the first World Bank bonds were floated by Morgan Stanley and First Boston. The French Lazard family became more involved in House of Morgan interests. Lazard Freres- France’s biggest investment bank- is owned by the Lazard and David-Weill families- old Genoese banking scions represented by Michelle Davive. A recent Chairman and CEO of Citigroup was Sanford Weill.

In 1968 Morgan Guaranty launched Euro-Clear, a Brussels-based bank clearing system for Eurodollar securities. It was the first such automated endeavor. Some took to calling Euro-Clear “The Beast”. Brussels serves as headquarters for the new European Central Bank and for NATO. In 1973 Morgan officials met secretly in Bermuda to illegally resurrect the old House of Morgan, twenty years before Glass Steagal Act was repealed. Morgan and the Rockefellers provided the financial backing for Merrill Lynch, boosting it into the Big 5 of US investment banking. Merrill is now part of Bank of America.

John D. Rockefeller used his oil wealth to acquire Equitable Trust, which had gobbled up several large banks and corporations by the 1920’s. The Great Depression helped consolidate Rockefeller’s power. His Chase Bank merged with Kuhn Loeb’s Manhattan Bank to form Chase Manhattan, cementing a long-time family relationship. The Kuhn-Loeb’s had financed – along with Rothschilds – Rockefeller’s quest to become king of the oil patch. National City Bank of Cleveland provided John D. with the money needed to embark upon his monopolization of the US oil industry. The bank was identified in Congressional hearings as being one of three Rothschild-owned banks in the US during the 1870’s, when Rockefeller first incorporated as Standard Oil of Ohio. [17]

One Rockefeller Standard Oil partner was Edward Harkness, whose family came to control Chemical Bank. Another was James Stillman, whose family controlled Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Both banks have merged under the JP Morgan Chase umbrella. Two of James Stillman’s daughters married two of William Rockefeller’s sons. The two families control a big chunk of Citigroup as well. [18]

In the insurance business, the Rockefellers control Metropolitan Life, Equitable Life, Prudential and New York Life. Rockefeller banks control 25% of all assets of the 50 largest US commercial banks and 30% of all assets of the 50 largest insurance companies. [19] Insurance companies- the first in the US was launched by Freemasons through their Woodman’s of America- play a key role in the Bermuda drug money shuffle.

Companies under Rockefeller control include Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco, Marathon Oil, Freeport McMoran, Quaker Oats, ASARCO, United, Delta, Northwest, ITT, International Harvester, Xerox, Boeing, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, International Paper, Pfizer, Motorola, Monsanto, Union Carbide and General Foods.

The Rockefeller Foundation has close financial ties to both Ford and Carnegie Foundations. Other family philanthropic endeavors include Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, General Education Board, Rockefeller University and the University of Chicago- which churns out a steady stream of far right economists as apologists for international capital, including Milton Friedman.

The family owns 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the national Christmas tree is lighted every year, and Rockefeller Center. David Rockefeller was instrumental in the construction of the World Trade Center towers. The main Rockefeller family home is a hulking complex in upstate New York known as Pocantico Hills. They also own a 32-room 5th Avenue duplex in Manhattan, a mansion in Washington, DC, Monte Sacro Ranch in Venezuela, coffee plantations in Ecuador, several farms in Brazil, an estate at Seal Harbor, Maine and resorts in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. [20]

The Dulles and Rockefeller families are cousins. Allen Dulles created the CIA, assisted the Nazis, covered up the Kennedy hit from his Warren Commission perch and struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to create mind-controlled assassins. [21]

Brother John Foster Dulles presided over the phony Goldman Sachs trusts before the 1929 stock market crash and helped his brother overthrow governments in Iran and Guatemala. Both were Skull & Bones, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) insiders and 33rd Degree Masons. [22]

The Rockefellers were instrumental in forming the depopulation-oriented Club of Rome at their family estate in Bellagio, Italy. Their Pocantico Hills estate gave birth to the Trilateral Commission. The family is a major funder of the eugenics movement which spawned Hitler, human cloning and the current DNA obsession in US scientific circles.

John Rockefeller Jr. headed the Population Council until his death. [23] His namesake son is a Senator from West Virginia. Brother Winthrop Rockefeller was Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas and remains the most powerful man in that state. In an October 1975 interview with Playboy magazine, Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller- who was also Governor of New York- articulated his family’s patronizing worldview, “I am a great believer in planning- economic, social, political, military, total world planning.”

But of all the Rockefeller brothers, it is Trilateral Commission (TC) founder and Chase Manhattan Chairman David who has spearheaded the family’s fascist agenda on a global scale. He defended the Shah of Iran, the South African apartheid regime and the Chilean Pinochet junta. He was the biggest financier of the CFR, the TC and (during the Vietnam War) the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia- a contract bonanza for those who made their living off the conflict.

Nixon asked him to be Secretary of Treasury, but Rockefeller declined the job, knowing his power was much greater at the helm of the Chase. Author Gary Allen writes in The Rockefeller File that in 1973, “David Rockefeller met with twenty-seven heads of state, including the rulers of Russia and Red China.”

Following the 1975 Nugan Hand Bank/CIA coup against Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, his British Crown-appointed successor Malcolm Fraser sped to the US, where he met with President Gerald Ford after conferring with David Rockefeller. [24]

Next Week: Part II: Freemasons & The Bank of the United States

[1] 10K Filings of Fortune 500 Corporations to SEC. 3-91

[2] 10K Filing of US Trust Corporation to SEC. 6-28-95

[3] “The Federal Reserve ‘Fed Up’. Thomas Schauf. www.davidicke.com 1-02

[4] The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Eustace Mullins. Bankers Research Institute. Staunton, VA. 1983. p.179

[5] Ibid. p.53

[6] The Triumph of Conservatism. Gabriel Kolko. MacMillan and Company New York. 1963. p.142

[7] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.57

[8] The House of Morgan. Ron Chernow. Atlantic Monthly Press NewYork 1990

[9] Marrs. p.57

[10] Democracy for the Few. Michael Parenti. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1977. p.178

[11] Chernow

[12] The Great Crash of 1929. John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Boston. 1979. p.148

[13] Chernow

[14] Children of the Matrix. David Icke. Bridge of Love. Scottsdale, AZ. 2000

[15] The Confidence Game: How Un-Elected Central Bankers are Governing the Changed World Economy. Steven Solomon. Simon & Schuster. New York. 1995. p.112

[16] Marrs. p.180

[17] Ibid. p.45

[18] The Money Lenders: The People and Politics of the World Banking Crisis. Anthony Sampson. Penguin Books. New York. 1981

[19] The Rockefeller File. Gary Allen. ’76 Press. Seal Beach, CA. 1977

[20] Ibid

[21] Dope Inc.: The Book That Drove Kissinger Crazy. Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992

[22] Marrs.

[23] The Rockefeller Syndrome. Ferdinand Lundberg. Lyle Stuart Inc. Secaucus, NJ. 1975. p.296

[24] Marrs. p.53

Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries. His Left Hook blog is at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com


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Constitution “Silly Stuff,” Says Illinois Congressman

Democratic Congressman Phil Hare, who caused outrage earlier this year when he told constituents who asked him about the legality of the health care bill, “I don’t worry about the constitution,” has sparked fresh consternation after he was caught on camera in an Illinois hotel labeling the founding document of America “silly stuff”.

Video confrontations with arrogant and dismissive Congress members uploaded to You Tube have come to represent the angst of the Tea Party movement, as elected representatives betray disdain and sometimes even open hostility to the rule of law that they are supposed to uphold on behalf of their constituents.

The latest example was provided by Illinois Congressman Phil Hare, who was asked on camera about his previous response to a question about Obamacare during a meeting with constituents, in which he told the audience “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.”

The new clip shows a citizen asking Hare, “Where in the constitution does it say that you can force people to buy health care?” to which Hare responds, “Oh boy, we’re not going there again are we?”

Watch the clip below.

“I think it’s a legitimate question,” states the constituent, as Hare ignores him and talks to other citizens.

However, Hare is soon confronted again as another man asks him, “How come you’re a member of the Socialist Party?” Hare denies the charge, despite the fact that his name appears on a list of Democrats who are in the ranks of the Socialist Party of America, which was released by the Socialist Party itself last year.

Hare’s entourage then try to get in the face of the original questioner, before demanding he identify himself.

Hare continues to refuse to answer the question about the constitutionality of the health care bill, dismissing it as “silly stuff”.

Phil Hare has been constantly harassed and harangued by citizens for his support of Obamacare and other issues. Back in June, a clip was released showing Hare being confronted by residents who accuse him of being a draft-dodger. Hare embarrassingly attempts to joke with the people filming him, asking “which side is my best?” before being pulled away by a member of his entourage.

Watch the clip below.



Hare embarrassed himself during the aforementioned confrontation back in April when he was corrected after claiming that language concerning the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness appeared within the Constitution , when in fact it appears in the Declaration of Independence.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hare responded. “Either one.”

Hare was then quizzed “Where in the Constitution does it give you the authority…?”

“I don’t know.” Hare angrily interrupted, refusing to allow the constituent to even finish the question.

The attitude of Hare and his colleagues on Capitol Hill towards their constituents and their open disdain towards the Constitution is one of the primary reasons why Tea Party members are having so much success in ousting establishment candidates.

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After October, Hare won’t have to worry about what’s contained in the Constitution, nor will he have to be concerned about reading bills that are thousands of pages in length, because he will be kicked out of office. Polls show Hare trailing his opponent by a healthy and growing margin as his snobbish and arrogant behavior comes back to bite him where it hurts.


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Palin Goes Rogue Against Tea Party Candidates

Pop quiz: Which of the following Republican primary candidates is Sarah Palin most likely to endorse?

(A) A solid conservative with the backing of local Tea Party groups and a track record of supporting limited government and lower taxes;
(B) A pro-life woman;
(C) Anyone remotely connected to John McCain.

If you answered "A," you haven't been keeping up with Palin's recent rash of endorsements. Despite her image as the maverick queen of the Tea Party movement, Palin has passed on a number of conservative standard-bearers in favor of candidates with better connections to either McCain, the Republican Party or the Susan B. Anthony List.

Her willingness to choose individuals over issues hasn't gone unnoticed by the Tea Party faithful.

"The bloom's off the rose," said Shelby Blakely, a member of the national leadership council of Tea Party Patriots, the nation's largest such group. "She's a company girl. She's a Republican, and not in a good way."

The expectation among many Tea Partiers was that Palin would use her star power to ignite the campaigns of principled but lesser-known conservatives. Even after she endorsed John McCain in his contested primary bid against Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayworth, few were worried, given that she owed McCain for making her his vice-presidential pick in 2008.

Tougher to justify was her May 6 endorsement of Carly Fiorina in the California Republican Senate primary. The race has a proven conservative in state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who lacks money and name recognition but has the backing of local Tea Party organizations and Republican Sen. Jim DeMint.

Too bad. Fiorina has the credentials that matter to Palin: She's a pro-life woman and she served as an advisor to the McCain presidential campaign. Fiorina may have waffled in the past on whether she was a Republican, and did not have voted for most of her adult life, but she says she's a conservative now, and that's good enough for Palin. DeVore, meanwhile, spent years in the trenches doing battle with the Democratic legislative majority.

In her announcement, Palin added another caveat: She called Fiorina the "conservative who has the potential to beat California's liberal senator Barbara Boxer in November." The implication was that Fiorina, with her millions, has a better shot than DeVore of winning the general election against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. And it's probably true--but that's the sort of calculation that matters to the professional election-watchers of National Republican Senatorial Committee, not the political rogues who make up the Tea Party.

Palin veered back into the Tea Party's corner with her backing of Rand Paul in the Kentucky Republican Senate primary over GOP establishment candidate Trey Grayson. She threw her support behind Nikki Haley, a Tea Party pick who's also one of Palin's pro-life "mama grizzlies," in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial contest. She's backing former Washington Redskin and Tea Partisan Clint Didier in the Washington Senate primary, although her endorsement came before GOP favorite Dino Rossi entered the race.

But she found herself at odds with Idaho Tea Partiers when she endorsed Vaughn Ward, the GOP establishment pick, over Raul Labrador in the 1st Congressional District primary. A state legislator with a staunchly conservative voting record, Labrador had the backing of Tea Party Boise--but Ward was Nevada state director of the McCain 2008 campaign. Again, Palin's debt to McCain trumped all other considerations. Labrador went on to defeat Ward in the May 25 primary.

In some ways, Palin remains a political maverick, only now it's because nobody can predict which candidate she'll endorse next. The more she strays from her base, however, the less valuable her support becomes.

As Blakely puts it, "If you keep endorsing the wrong people, after a while nobody's going to pay attention."


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More Scary Militia Propaganda

(Reuters) - Three times a week, Mike Lackomar climbs into his truck and drives the same delivery route through the suburbs of Detroit.

Lackomar is an independent contractor for a private parcel company. If you live northwest of this battered city and you recently purchased something from a home shopping network, there's a good chance the 36-year-old handled your package.

But there is one small item that never leaves his truck: a green nylon satchel Lackomar jokingly calls "the football," a reference to the briefcase with codes for a nuclear strike kept close to the U.S. president. Inside, along with a pocket knife and a small first aid kit, is a sealed envelope containing codes, rallying points and detailed plans that Lackomar would use to mobilize his squad of armed citizen-soldiers in an emergency.

Lackomar is a team leader in the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia (SMVM), the largest and most visible of this state's many small private armies. He is a husband, a father and a musician. But his favorite picture on his Facebook page shows him standing in front of a snowmobile trailer packed with rifles, clips and ammunition boxes, a picture he laughingly admits looks "like an evidence photo from the 6 O'clock News."

The SMVM is one of 200 armed militias in the United States, a number that has quadrupled since 2008, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights watchdog, which says they may have 6,000 members and many other adherents.

MILITIAS: HARMLESS UNTIL THEY ARE NOT

The United States is one of the few Western democratic countries that permit independent militias.

Their rapid growth coincides with a sharp rise in partisan rhetoric as the November U.S. congressional elections draw nearer. Depending on your perspective, they are either patriots or paranoid. Experts in law enforcement and academia are divided as to how big an actual threat they may pose. But they all agree on one thing: the groups are very well armed.

"Most (militia groups) are merely in the rhetorical and defensive stage," said Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice at California State University and an expert on militias and domestic terrorism. "But we don't know which groups are going to be benign and which are going to be small incubators for radicalism."

His point was underscored by the arrest in late March of nine members of anti-government extremist group called the Hutaree, whose website says its name means "Christian Warrior." They were charged with planning a cop-killing spree intended to spark a broad insurrection.

And in February, a computer engineer angry with the government crashed a small aircraft into an office building in Austin, Texas, housing the federal Internal Revenue Service. In a rambling six-page statement, the man said he hoped his act would help make "American zombies wake up and revolt."

Until their arrest, the Hutaree were considered brothers-in-arms by other Michigan militia groups, including the SMVM. At least two of the men indicted by the government in the case briefly trained with Lackomar's group.

Before the group hatched its plot, the only rap against it in militia circles was that its training practices -- like run-and-gun target shooting -- were not the safest.

"I knew a couple of the guys that are sitting in jail right now. They were nice people," said Lackomar.

That is not to say he condoned the group's plan. One Hutaree member who evaded the police dragnet asked a member of Lackomar's group for help retrieving weapons and other supplies he had hidden at the group's safe house.

Instead, he got some unexpected advice: Turn yourself in. The suspect ignored the SMVM member, who went to the police.

Far from joining a rebellion, Lackomar's group and other militia members denounced the alleged plot and applauded the way the FBI and state police handled the raids.

"Nobody got hurt," Lackomar said. "There weren't any shots fired. They got everyone needed. They stopped the plan."

For that stance, Lackomar and other group members took some heat from what he calls "ultra-right ideologues" who consider the Hutaree victims of political persecution.

"TOYS"

Lackomar's group claims to have about 150 regular members and another 150 informal affiliates. At its annual field day and picnic recently, held not far from where the Hutaree are alleged to have hatched their plot, fewer than 100 people showed up.

All self-respecting militias pack what they call "toys" and the SMVM is no exception. Lackomar, who never served in the armed forces, favors an AK-74 assault rifle, an updated version of the iconic Soviet AK-47. Others in the group with army or marine experience prefer the AR-15, a copy of the M16 they used in their military days.

One member, a vice president of a financial services firm who prefers to be identified only by his radio call name, uses a Spanish version of the Heckler & Koch G3, a gun with a terrific report that Lackomar says "will rattle your fillings." Hence the man's call name: Thumper.

"When he's laying on the ground firing, the muzzle blast will dig trenches in front of him," Lackomar says with a hint of envy.

The lack of standardized weapons reflects both the ad hoc, volunteer nature of the SMVM and its egalitarianism.

There are no ranks, only positions like team leader and unit coordinator -- all decided by the group on a democratic basis. To become a voting member of the SMVM requires only two things, Lackomar says: possession of basic gear and a demonstrated competency with a weapon at 100 yards -- a hurdle that Lackomar says took him six months to clear.

Those two requirements aside, the SMVM insists it's open to anyone, regardless of race, color, religion or national origin. Lackomar nonetheless acknowledges the group's actual makeup is overwhelmingly white. "We're probably a little lopsided into the white end of the spectrum," he said.

THE MAD HATTER'S FOOTBALL

The SMVM trains once a month in a state park about 45 minutes outside of Detroit. The training, which includes a winter survival course, is designed to keep the unit in a state of readiness for an emergency.

For Lackomar, whose radio call name is "Mad Hatter," the emergency that triggers a militia response and tearing into "the football" might be a replay of a massive power outage in 2003 that paralyzed parts of the United States.

He ticks off other "tripwires" that might "drive our unit into action," including the imposition of martial law, a possibility many in the militia movement deem an imminent threat.

"The longtime discussion between militias has always been, 'What is the final straw?'" Lackomar said. "Freedom of speech has to be the final line. If we find ourselves in a situation ... where our freedom of assembly is suspended, demonstrations are outlawed or restricted, that's going to be the tripwire that sets everything off."

An assault on another militia group, like the Hutaree, could be a tripwire, too, Lackomar and others say. All it would have taken were for a few facts to be different.

"If what happened ... was a true crackdown on militias by a government run amok," he said, "not only would you have had the other units in Michigan say, 'Stop,' but it would have gone on all over the nation."

Lackomar provided two instances where he said the Michigan militia had activated -- at least on a small scale. Both involved standoffs between the police and a property owner who Lackomar said was being "crapped upon." The militia showed up, cradling but not pointing their weapons, as a show of solidarity with the property owner. In one case, Lackomar said the cops backed down. In another the property owner relented. No shots were fired or verbal threats exchanged.

Mike Vanderboegh, a militia veteran in Alabama who runs the influential blog called Sipsey Street Irregulars, adopts a more provocative tone in discussing what might trigger armed conflict.

"I can't see this (tension between federal authorities and the people) ending in any other way other than conflict," he said in an interview. "They (the government) truly believe that when they issue an order they think it will be obeyed. I don't see how that can end other than civil war."

PROTECTING THE CONSTITUTION

The militia movement has no single national leader and it contains wildly divergent strains of thought, according to militia members and experts. These include white supremacists and neo-Nazis; "Millenarians," who say major social transformation is imminent; and believers in "Christian Identity," a pro-white version of Christianity.

But the vast majority seem to be "constitutional" militias, fans of low taxes and small government -- values similar to those of many conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

They also see the possession of firearms as not only a right protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution but a patriotic duty, a symbol of the citizen's equal standing with the government.

At the heart of the movement is a fierce allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and a belief that its rights and freedoms are threatened by the government.

One leading light is Robert Schulz, founder and chairman of We The People Foundation, a non-profit that organized two national gatherings last year. The meetings popularized a check list of alleged constitutional violations cited by elements of the conservative Tea Party movement and militias, according to "Midwifing the Militias", a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit which tracks hate groups.

Such violations included undeclared foreign wars, gifting and lending money and credit to private corporations, unconstitutional tax levying and unenforced immigration laws.

"What we have is government ignoring the Constitution," Schulz told Reuters in interview.

"TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY"

Militia members like Lackomar, who is rare in his willingness to talk to the media, say that the movement is a healthy, democratic phenomenon with a real public benefit: providing an armed civilian alternative to the police and military. Although they don't quote Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French observer of the United States, the militia members definitely see themselves as a deterrent to the "tyranny of the majority" that Tocqueville and others warned was a risk to the republic.

But the recent 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing served as a chilling reminder of the danger posed by so-called lone wolves: individuals fired-up by the movement's rhetoric -- and trained in militia warcraft -- who go on to stage attacks without the wider group's blessing.

Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted of the bombing, briefly associated with militia in Michigan in the 1990s before breaking away. When he resurfaced, in 1995, he murdered 168 people.

Private armies have a long history in America. In the 1850s, in the run-up to the American Civil War, anti-slavery and pro-slavery militias clashed in Kansas and Missouri, for example.

The modern militia movement was stirred into action in large part by George H.W. Bush's "New World Order" speech in 1990. The president's rhetoric fed into longstanding fears among far right groups like the John Birch Society about internationalism and the United Nations.

The resurgence then was also boosted by deadly sieges involving federal law enforcement officers in Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas -- events militia members viewed as examples of oppressive government force used against citizens.

Today, militia members and experts say a number of factors are driving the new surge:

* The 9/11 attacks, which revived the notion that citizens should defend the United States against threats.

* The 2001 Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, which stirred fears that the government would use enhanced powers against ordinary citizens.

* Anger at government failure to stop mass illegal immigration from Latin America.

* The recent recession, the worst since the 1930s.

* The election in 2008 of President Barack Obama. Many see Obama as a Socialist bent on growing government, raising taxes and confiscating guns; his status as the country's first African American president exacerbated fears about him, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

* Healthcare reform, seen as exemplifying oppressive government power and intrusion -- the contemporary version of a 1994 ban on assault weapons that enraged the right wing.

The extent to which healthcare reform is galvanizing the militia movement cannot be overstated. In more than a dozen conversations with militia members in recent weeks, the topic came up over and over again without prompting.

Even Lackomar, who has no insurance and admits "I'm one paycheck away from disaster -- and I have been for years," says: "I hate the reform." What infuriates him, he says, is that it was enacted despite widespread opposition.

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors militia websites, said anti-government extremists were widely citing healthcare reform as a justification for violence.

"Many militia members and other extremists believe that the recently passed health care legislation will be followed by the mass legalization of illegal immigrants, postponement or elimination of democratic elections, martial law and gun confiscation," it said.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Allegations of infringed liberties are amplified in some sections of the media and online where false stories flagging government plans to build internment camps to detain U.S. citizens in the event of unrest or to install a New World Order can find a willing audience.

"The Internet has really facilitated a lot of communications between the militias," Lackomar said. "It's also given a voice to a lot of the wacko element. So you have got to take the good with the bad."

Most law enforcement agencies see the bulk of militia members as law abiding citizens exercising their rights to associate, bear arms and speak freely.

But one factor separates the mainstream "anti-government right" from those on the fringe, said Mark Pitcavage, ADL director of investigative research -- conspiracy theories.

"If your conspiracy theories are pretty limited and mild, like Obama is not really a citizen, or if they're generic, like Obama is a Socialist and he wants to turn this into a Socialist country, that's one thing," he said.

"But if you have specific conspiracy theories about the New World Order, the unholy trinity, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) concentration camps, martial law or door-to-door gun confiscation, then you have crossed the line," he said.

Some say the partisan polarization of the country's news media, typified by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, has also contributed to the militia's resurgence.

Robert Churchill, author of "To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face", a book about militias in U.S. politics, credits popular Fox News presenter Glenn Beck with bringing some ideas espoused by militias to a wider audience.

"You are beginning to get a spillover from far right discourse into main stream Republican discourse," he said.

SEND MONEY, GUNS AND TEA

In the early 1990s the militias were politically isolated. Today, they appear to be an armed point along a much bigger popular continuum that includes the Tea Party and the Oath Keepers, both gaining momentum fast.

Lackomar and other militia members, while certainly sympathetic to the Tea Party's goals, insist the two groups are unconnected -- even informally. "What we've tried to do is to make it so our group does not take political positions, except for constitutional versus unconstitutional, and the necessary focus on the Second Amendment," Lackomar said.

Still, in conversations with Reuters, SMVM members expressed admiration for the Tea Party's rapid growth in the past year and its ability to draw big crowds and mainstream politicians like Sarah Palin.

The online invitation to the SMVM's picnic this year encouraged guests to "show, shoot, shout then sip some tea with us." Lackomar says the reference was designed to appeal "to people who might be put off by the pure militia aspect."

The picnic culminated with a shooting competition. Among the promised targets: Copies of the U.S. tax form known as the 1040.

The Tea Party movement has sought to distance itself from the militia phenomenon, but the Oath Keeper movement seems closer to it in many ways while also sharing some common ground with the Tea Party.

Founded just a year ago by a Yale-educated lawyer and former paratrooper named Stewart Rhodes, it actively recruits serving and former military personal and law enforcement and asks them to pledge to defend the constitution -- even if it means disobeying orders. One of their slogans is "Not on Our Watch. At the top of its home page -- oathkeepers.org -- is a painting showing a rag-tag group of colonial militia men fighting British regulars.

On a recent warm, windy evening, a new central Texas branch of the Oath Keepers had its first official meeting at a community center annex in a residential housing complex at Fort Hood military base -- site of last November's mass shooting by a Muslim officer who killed 13 people.

Children rode bikes in the parking lot while Erik McKinster, a 39-year-old sergeant in the 1st Cavalry Division, introduced the Oath Keepers and their mission to four acting and former soldiers aged from their mid-20s to around 40.

"We don't care if an unlawful order comes from a Republican or a Democrat or is bipartisan," he said. "We don't need to follow orders from the president if they are unlawful, the oath is to the constitution."

The Oath Keepers are not a militia, but they share some Constitutional militia values and echo their call to action under certain circumstances.

Among orders they pledge to ignore are "any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps" and any order to "support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people."

The Anti-Defamation League sees them as prey to far right conspiracies. "They are not any orders that anyone (in government) would actually give," said Pitcavage. "They're only orders that you think someone might give if you believe in incredibly elaborate conspiracy theories."

McKinster, who was raised Catholic and is now an evangelical Christian and father of four, said he doesn't "believe for a second that there are currently secret plans to impose martial law ... but there are cases from the recent past where this has happened."

The central Texas group has over 30 members, he said, but none among law enforcement yet.

LONE WOLF

Few people have spent as much time tracking militia groups and domestic terrorism as James Cavanaugh, who spent 36 years as a lead investigator with the U.S. bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Cavanaugh was a senior commander on investigations into the "Unabomber" case, the bombing by Eric Rudolph of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the 2002 Washington, D.C. sniper case and a rash of racially-motivated church fires in Alabama.

To cap it all, he led negotiations during the 1993 Waco siege at which around 80 people died. He talked by telephone with Branch Davidian leader David Koresh throughout the group's gun battle with federal agents in an attempt to secure the release and rescue of wounded agents and children.

He is concerned that even if most militia members are law-abiding, web-fueled paranoia and wild theories can tip an individual or a splinter group toward criminality.

"They (militias) all sit around the campfires, rattling sabers and looking into the woods believing that somebody's coming. To make sure they come, they plan an attack," he said.

"The reason they are dangerous is they live on the edge of the abyss," he said. "Sure, there are groups who dress in camouflage, stockpile guns legally, talk incessantly about crackpot conspiracy theories, that don't fall into the abyss.

"The problem is there is always ... (someone) who attaches themselves, and if the group doesn't go over the rails the individual does," he said.

While security authorities say the majority of militia groups operate within the law, law enforcement is watching. Quietly.

Lackomar says that on the eve of the 2008 presidential election, four SMVM leaders were simultaneously visited by the FBI agents, who wanted to know if the group had heard any chatter about possible violence if Obama was elected.

And the swiftness with which the Hutaree were infiltrated and brought down shows the Feds are not asleep at the wheel.

That is in part because digital tools work both ways, allowing authorities to infiltrate the groups more easily.

IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR

Back at the Michigan picnic near Detroit, Lee Miracle would do anything for a taste of baklava.

To the extent that the SMVM has a leader, it is Miracle, a 43-year-old, pony-tailed postal worker who has been a member of the movement for two decades.

For Miracle, as for a handful of other SMVM members, the militia is a family affair and all eight of his children, who are aged 6 to 18, have either trained with it or received weapons instruction. At the picnic in early April, Miracle's wife Katrina, a gracious Greek-American, came too, bearing not a weapon, but an enormous tray of baklava.

One of the group's more ominous looking pamphlets features Lee Miracle on the cover, standing on the front steps of a house, decked out in camouflage battle gear with a machine pistol resting on his hip. In the bottom left, a small child looks up at the armed, defiant figure in awe. "Defending your home is homeland defense," it reads.

In person, Miracle turns out to be a self-deprecating man with a fondness for jokes. What he seemed most frustrated about at the picnic was Katrina's refusal to give him any baklava.

"He has diabetes," she explained to a reporter.

Lackomar is also a family man. His sun visor has a kid's playing card attached depicting Loudred, a Rumplestiltskin-like Pokemon character, who spends much of his time stamping his feet on the ground and shouting. "My daughter says it fits me because I'm always yelling at other drivers," Lackomar said with a chuckle.

Yet he turns serious as he imagines scenarios under which the militia might mobilize, such as the day "it comes crashing down and the world ends" or the day "the communist Chinese or the Venezuelans or whoever come marching across the border."

His unit has been busy learning survival skills, such as making a bow from a sapling or fashioning a rock into a razor sharp knife.

"I carry, as part of my battle gear, a rifle and 290 rounds of ammo," Lackomar said. "If I can use a knife, and fashion a bow, and use that to feed my family, I can save the ammo for dropping bad guys."


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Obama’s Shadow Government

How many of these names do you recognize?

Adolfo Carrion, Aneesh Chopra, Ear; Devamey, Kenneth Feinberg, Carol Browner, Ed Montgomery, Todd Stern, Cass Sunstein, Ron Bloom, and John Brennan. If none of them ring a bell, it is because they and others are all part of a shadow government of some thirty “czars”; advisers to President Obama who did not submit to the Senate confirmation process and are exempt from Congressional oversight.

Article 2, Section 2, U.S. Constitution, an excerpt: He (the President) shall have power, by and with the advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or the heads of departments.”

The Constitution creates two types of positions in the executive branch: principal officers and inferior officers. The first of these are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The latter are not subject to this process.

The Obama administration began with a series of nominations that were found to be tax cheats and forced to withdraw before Senate confirmation. One of them, Van Jones, put in charge of “green jobs” was forced to resign when it became known that he was a self-identified communist. Carol Browner, responsible for environmental and energy issues, was on the board of the Commission for a Sustainable Society, the action arm of the Socialist International.

In the case of “special envoys” George Mitchell, Richard Holbrooke, and Dennis Ross, they all engage in ambassadorial duties, representing the nation to foreign entities and are responsible only to the president. Key elements of the nation’s foreign policy, particularly as regards the Middle East, remain hidden from the public, except in terms of the president’s public pronouncements.

All of the president’s cabinet secretaries in charge of various departments and agencies of the government are vested with administrative powers and all must be confirmed by the Senate. By virtue of the Administrative Procedure Act, these offices must hold public hearings and maintain records when decisions are made, thus creating a paper trail. All of these offices must have separate lines in Congress’s annual appropriations bills.

The bulk of the president’s czars are exempt from such oversight. They advise and answer directly to the president and a number of them exercise control over the decisions made by cabinet secretaries and agency directors, most of whom have been reduced to a role of carrying out their decisions, their agenda.

The U.S. government is being run out of the White House by a cohort of czars/advisers who do not answer to the American people and operate in the dark. This is part of the warning issued in “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.” The authors, Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, are both attorneys with extensive knowledge of the Constitution. Blackwell has been an ambassador.

These czars are essentially unconstitutional and illegal.

All presidents have had advisers, but none prior to Obama have had so many and none have been delegated vast powers. They represent a violation of the separation of powers essential to a democratic republic and all violate the need and expectation of transparency and accountability.

Some have demonstrated in their past publications and present statements that they are wholly incompetent to hold such power. The regulations czar, Cass Sunstein, has said that animals should have the same legal rights as humans. The science adviser, John Holdren, has advocated putting chemicals in the drinking water or requiring devices that would neutralize fertility, including compulsory abortion.

John Brennan, the terrorism czar, responsible for homeland security, downplayed the near disaster of the Christmas “underpants bomber” and claimed that all possible intelligence that could be secured from him had been in less than an hour after his arrest!

All these czars function in direct contradiction of the long history of such advisers to presidents and in contradiction to the framework of the U.S. Constitution designed to ensure that the executive branch is answerable to Congress.

The function (or lack of it) of elected senators and representatives is ugly enough as seen in the failure of Congress to exercise caution in the passage of bills that affect the economy and the lives of all Americans. The U.S. debt has increased to levels not seen since World War Two. Obamacare was an ugly process of bribery and closed-door deals that resulted in a straight party line vote that was a repudiation of the will of the people.

No one knows what these unelected and unsupervised czars are doing, but you can be sure they all are loyal advocates and agents of the socialist transformation of America.


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Obama Administration admits rationing panels exist in ObamaCare

Sarah Palin was right! Of course, when she mentioned it liberals went nuts claiming that she was fear-mongering. Now, President Obama’s Budget Director is heralding the cost cutting measure.

Just a reminder from the Governor:

Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Senator DeMint said:


“This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law. I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates. I mean, we want to bind future congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses.”

In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

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Don’t Be Fooled: Republicans Love Government Enforced Healthcare

Forget all the self-serving diatribes by Republicans about Obamacare. They are for government enforced health care. “Republicans were for President Barack Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it,” the Associated Press reports this morning.

Republicans trumpeted the “obligation” (at gunpoint) that Americans buy health care insurance from large monopolistic corporations for decades, long before Hill and Bill attempted to foist their version on the plebs.

Republican statists view health care at gunpoint as a “free-market route to guarantee coverage for all Americans — the answer to liberal ambitions for a government-run entitlement like Medicare.”

Of course Republicans don’t support Medicare. It does not fit the narrow confines of their partisan political ideology. Medicare was included as part of the Social Security Act of 1965, signed into law by president Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat.

Republicans are miffed because Obama and the Democrats co-opted their original concept, minus a mechanism they proposed for controlling costs. Republicans are not opposed to totalitarian care, they are simply opposed to the Democrat version.

If you believe Republicans are serious about controlling costs, look no further than Bush’s $3 trillion budget proposal in 2008 (a record at the time). When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion.

Mitt Romney — who was billed as the man who would save us from Obama and the “socialists” during the selection, er election — forced the residents of Massachusetts to buy health insurance. Lord Romney said government mandated health care is “a personal responsibility principle.”

Government invariably demands “personal responsibility” on the part of the plebs while it engages in corruption, starts wars under false pretense and kills millions of people, and enslaves future generations to bankster debt.

Romney’s health care at gunpoint was backed by Scott Brown, the Republican that had Democrats and the usual suspects at MSNBC and CNN chattering about a fascist rightwing takeover of Congress.

Brown replaced the late Democrat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. It was said his appointment would almost certainly lead to the collapse of Obamacare. Brown says his opposition to the new shakedown for large insurance corporations is over tax increases, Medicare cuts and federal “over-reach” — because Democrats are doing the reaching — on a matter that should be left up to states. It was a different story when his buddy Mitt was forcing gunpoint healthcare down the throats of Massachusettans.

In the case of states’ rights, Brown might want to look at the example set by the former leader of his party, George W. Bush. The Bush administration violated the Tenth Amendment by repeatedly meddling in the states in regard to medical marijuana, the federalization of education, and state control of the National Guard.

“The idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was a Republican idea,” health economist Mark Pauly of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School told the Associated Press. In 1991, Pauly published a paper explaining how a “mandate” (government coercion) could be combined with tax credits to force the commoners into compliance. Pauly’s paper was embraced by the George H.W. Bush administration.

Republicans like to tell you they are opposed to taxation. Instead, they use taxes as a carrot and a stick to force government mandates down your throat.

Nixon before Bush backed the idea of a mandate that employers provide insurance. Even the Heritage Foundation back in the day supported this government imposed “individual requirement.”

Later today in Nevada, the Republican Tea Party will gather and demand the ouster of Democrat Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats for passing Obamacare. The event will be led by the darling of the establishment Tea Party, former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. On Friday, Tea Party Sarah threw her support behind the establishment stalwart John McCain.

McCain’s latest authoritarian outrage is the “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010″ that, if passed, would turn the country into a military dictatorship. It was introduced with the participation of the notorious warmonger Joe Lieberman. Apparently the legislation is backed by Tea Party Sarah.

The Nevada event was organized by the Tea Party Express, an organization in bed with Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which is closely affiliated with the Republican-affiliated consulting firm Russo Marsh & Associates. In other words, the event in Nevada will be strictly an establishment Republican affair. The objective is not to get rid of government enforced health care, but to get of rid of Reid and put in a Republican. It is another example of the false right-left paradigm in action.

In January, the Tea Party Express supported Scott Brown. As noted above, Brown supported Romney’s version of Obamacare in Massachusetts.

Republicans will shamelessly exploit the compromised Tea Party and the efforts of the states to repeal Obamacare in order to win seats in Congress during the mid-term elections. If they manage to overturn the Democrat majority in Congress, they will not work to repeal Obamacare. They may nibble around the edges of the bill but will leave it largely intact. Republicans have no problem with the government forcing you to shell over your money to large insurance companies. Republicans are enforcers for the global elite and transnational corporations.

Both Republicans and Democrats need to be trounced in November. Obamacare needs to be challenged on Constitutional grounds. The establishment controlled Supreme Court, however, cannot be counted on to repeal the bill. It may take civil disobedience on the part of millions of Americans before this bill ends up in the dust bin of history where it belongs.


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The McCain-Lieberman Police State Act

The McCain-Lieberman Police State Act - by Stephen Lendman

If enacted, it will advance what this writer addressed in a December 2007 article titled, "Police State America - A Look Back and Ahead," covering numerous Bush administration laws, Executive Orders (EOs), National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, edicts, and various illegal acts targeting designated domestic and foreign adversaries, dissent, civil liberties, human rights, and other democratic freedoms.

Straightaway post-9/11, George Bush signed a secret finding empowering the CIA to "Capture, Kill or Interrogate Al-Qaeda Leaders." He also authorized establishing a covert global gulag to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment.

Other presidential directives ordered abductions, torture and indefinite detentions. In November 2001, Military Order Number 1 empowered the Executive to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest non-citizens (and later citizens) anywhere in the world for any reason and hold them indefinitely without charge, evidence, due process or judicial fairness protections of law.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other legal protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act, listing changes that include discarding the phrase "unlawful enemy combatant" for "unprivileged enemy belligerent." More on that below.

Seamlessly, Obama continues Bush administration practices and added others, including:

-- greater than ever surveillance;

-- ruthless political persecutions;

-- preventively detaining individuals ordered released - "who cannot be prosecuted," he said, "yet who pose a clear danger to the American people;"

-- a secret "hit list" authorizing CIA and Pentagon operatives to kill US citizens abroad based on unsubstantiated evidence they're involved in alleged plots against America or US interests;

-- weaker whisleblower protections;

-- state secrets privilege to block lawsuits by victims of rendition, torture, abuse or warrantless wiretapping; and

-- other anti-democratic measures.

Now, the March 4 S. 3081: Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 to interrogate and detain "enemy belligerents who commit hostile acts against the United States to establish certain limitations on the prosecution of such belligerents, and for other purposes."

On the Senate floor, John McCain explained it, saying "we still don't have a clear mechanism, legal structure, and implementing policy for dealing with terrorists who we capture in the (alleged) act of trying to bring about attacks on the United States and our national security interests at home and abroad."

These suspects have no right to "Miranda warnings and defense lawyers. Instead, the priority and focus must be on isolating and neutralizing the immediate threat and collecting intelligence to prevent" any attacks.

"I (also) believe we must establish a system for long-term detention of terrorists who are too dangerous to release, but who cannot be tried in a civilian court" because no evidence exists to convict them.

At a March 4 press conference, Senator Joe Lieberman told reporters:

"These are not common criminals. They are war criminals. Anyone we capture in this war should be treated as a prisoner of war, held by the military, interrogated for information that will protect Americans and help us win this war and then where appropriate, tried not in a normal federal court where criminals are tried but before a military commission."

S. 3081 Provisions

The bill imposes harsh police state measures, including:

-- targeting anyone worldwide, including US citizens, "suspected of engaging in (or materially supporting) hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means...;"

-- placing such individuals "in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act;"

-- transporting them to intelligence officials for more interrogation;

-- determining who may be a "high-value detainee (HVD);"

-- further interrogating those individuals by a "High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HVIG)....utiliz(ing) military and intelligence personnel, and Federal, State, and local law enforcement personnel....;"

-- having HVIGs submit their determination to the Defense Secretary and Attorney General after consulting with the Directors of National Intelligence, FBI, and CIA. "The Secretary of Defense and Attorney General (will then) make a final determination and report (it) to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination;"

-- designating seized individuals "unprivileged enemy belligerent(s);"

-- denying them Miranda rights:

-- deciding on a "Final (status) Determination" within 48 hours, "to the extent practicable;"

-- letting the President establish HVD interrogation group operations and activities, including whether detainees "meet the criteria for treatment as a high-value detainee for purposes of interrogation....," including the potential threat held individuals pose:

(1) for an attack against America, its citizens, US military personnel or facilities;

(2) their potential intelligence value;

(3) membership in or affiliation with Al Qaeda; and

(4) "such other matters as the President considers appropriate."

Pending final determination, detainees "shall be treated as unprivileged enemy belligerent(s)," defined as:

"An individual, including a citizen of the United States (to) be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities."

An "unprivileged enemy belligerent" means anyone (with or without evidence) suspected of "engag(ing) in (or materially supporting) hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," including alleged Al Qaeda members.

Raised Concerns

Designating individuals "unlawful enemy combatants" or "unprivileged enemy belligerents" places them in legal limbo, contrary to international law, the Constitution, and three recent Supreme Court decisions:

-- Rasul v. Bush (2004) establishing US court system jurisdiction to decide if Guantanamo-held non-US citizens were wrongfully imprisoned;

-- Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) granting US citizen Yaser Hamdi and other Guantanamo detainees habeas rights to challenge their detentions in federal courts; and

-- Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) denying Guantanamo military commissions "the power to proceed because (their) structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949."

Obama-ordered preventive detentions (against uncharged persons) and S. 3081 violate international law, the Constitution, and the above Supreme Court decisions.

Writing for the Jurist Legal News & Research, University of Utah Law Professor, Amos Guiora, calls the proposed bill "the latest example of panic-based legislation" in the wake of the (false flag) December airplane bombing and whether alleged 9/11 suspects will be tried in federal or military courts - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others falsely charged based on tortured-extracted confessions.

Holding detainees through "end of hostilities in the terrorism paradigm is a euphemism for indefinite detention....subject(ing) an extraordinarily broad group of persons" to cruel and inhumane treatment based on unsubstantiated charges, and denying them due process and judicial fairness.

Guiora calls the proposed law:

"a fundamental miscarriage of justice created by the unconstitutional denial of the right to counsel, the right to remain silent, the right to be free from arbitrary, let alone indefinite detention, and the right to a day in court." Unfortunately, too often "legitimacy and justification take a back seat" to expediency and the political climate of the times.

As a result, innocent victims are unjustly arrested, called terrorists, interrogated, tortured, indefinitely detained and denied all rights despite constitutional and international law protections.

"Republicans and Democrats alike have failed to articulate, create and implement a lawful interrogation, detention and trial regime for post-9/11 detainees. That is shameful and reflects negatively on two Presidents, the Congress and the Supreme Court."

The major media also. Their reports hype the threat, pre-determine guilt, and influence public opinion to believe government-charged individuals are dangerous, guilty, and should be confined to deter "terrorism."

Yet the Constitution's Fifth Amendment states:

"No person shall....be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law....;" and

The 14th Amendment reads:

No "State (may) deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Yet in a climate of fear and intimidation, everyone is potentially vulnerable to legislative lawlessness if congressional timidity lets S. 3081 pass in an election year.

According to Guiora, it comes down to "the rule of law or the rule of fear." Protecting American citizens and national security is one thing. Discarding core legal principles to do it reflects the worst elements of police state justice.


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The Shadow Government’s Healthcare Bill Rules

I recently wrote what I had hoped was a satirical article, poking fun at the fact President Obama could not feasibly have read all the legislation he has signed into law, centering on the on the mammoth 2,700 page Healthcare Reform Bill. And although some people appreciated the article, a couple of readers did not.

One lady reader condemned the piece as being negative, with no discernible point; while, she invested no more of her own thought in it than that. A male reader (who showed some thought) bought the truth that while Obama probably didn’t read the Healthcare bill – due to time constraints – he was certainly briefed with a detailed summary of it, highlighting the bill’s major points.

This gentleman, like many others, does not see the absurdity of legislation that is so long it could take weeks or months to read; after all, our Constitution was handwritten on about four or five pages.

Our Declaration of Independence was handwritten on one sheet of paper.

Our lawmakers and president should not be briefed on proposed laws, they should scrutinize every line, of every proposed law, as it is that important to the American people. And the American public should be given the opportunity to do the same, as President Obama promised.

Our presidents should veto any bill they cannot comfortably read and understand in one sitting. In fact, if there are legislative passages the average, literate Americans cannot understand, those too should be vetoed. Convoluted, long passages in legislation is simply an effort to hide tyrannical intentions. And with “voice votes” becoming popular, in congress, we are even denied the knowledge of knowing just who supports tyranny.

All points of legislation should be debated in Congress, by senators and representatives, not given “talking points” by unseen agents of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, to memorize and parrot to the corporate media.

In response, I asked the gentleman, above, who seemed to think a briefing was adequate, to consider what a colossal briefing Mr. Obama would have to have had to cover all 2,700 pages of just that one bill – the mislabeled Healthcare “Reform” Act.

If Mr. Obama was briefed in detail on the steady stream of hundreds of thousands of legislation pages proposed in congress, he’d be spending every waking moment being briefed, without doing any of it real justice.

Divinity students spend years in college studying the detailed summaries that highlight the major points in the 1,300 page Bible, and still not cover it all. Does the gentleman really think Obama can be briefed on something the size of ten novels, or two Bibles, in a month or so, especially considering all the other thousands of pages of Executive Orders (written for him) that he signs, or the thousands of pages of regulations that are annually issued by Executive Branch agencies?

Sadly, Mr. Obama – and our lawmakers – do no more than read (from teleprompters) or repeat “talking points” given to them by shadowy sources -the minions of the Shadow Government, that are beholden to the International Monetary/Banking Cartel.

Mr. Obama, and most all other politicians, avoid the subjects of who reads or writes the thousands of pages of legislation, regulations, directives, and executives orders that pour out of Washington annually, as they do not know who writes it all, and do not want to have to admit they don’t read much of any of it in any case. With one exception.

That exception, that was probably read by Obama, et al, was written into the Healthcare Reform Act as a loophole for the privileged: The president, his staff and family, Joe Biden’s staff and family, Nancy Pelosi’s staff, Harry Reid’s staff, and many other insiders are all exempted from the mandates of Obamacare. How nice, they’ve given it all to us taxpaying Americans to have, to hold, and to pay for.

It would seem to me that if most of the tenets of the world-wide Christian religion are contained within 1,300 pages of the Holy Bible, America does not need 900,000 to millions of pages of legislation, orders, directives, and regulations to be governed. How can we obey those laws if we don’t even know what they are?

But, the critical questions all thinking Americans will ask themselves run along the lines of who wrote the hundreds of thousands of pages of US legislation, orders, directives, and regulations that so severely affect our lives. That Madame and Sir was the point of my satirical piece, and is the important point of this article.


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Ron Paul “We Have Only One Party! And They Fight Over Power & Influence!

Ron Paul exposes the phony two party monopoly on MSNBC Morning Joe.

Dick Cheney backs Rand Paul’s NeoCon opponent in Kentucky

On Trey Grayson’s campaign site today is a quote from former Vice President Dick Cheney:

“I’m a lifelong conservative, and I can tell the real thing when I see it. I
have looked at the records of both candidates in the race, and it is clear to me
that Trey Grayson is right on the issues that matter – both on fiscal
responsibility and on national security.”

Indeed, Cheney– the man who helped construct the lies that sold the Iraq War, who endorses perpetual conflict and endless spending in order to maintain over 700 military bases overseas, and who still delusionally calls himself a “conservative”– came out in support of Trey Grayson, one of Rand Paul’s primary opponents.

As odd as it might seem that in modern America Dick Cheney, (or anyone from the Bush administration), might still have any credibility left to anyone after the ruinous legacy that they left behind, the Grayson campaign has proudly seized the endorsement, attempting to paint Rand Paul as weak on terrorism in the same way that the Neocon establishment tried to do to his father during the 2008 presidential election.

Last week Grayson’s campaign released an ad that stated:

“Paul thinks it’s not a problem if Iran has a nuclear bomb”

Nine years after 9/11, candidates are still exploiting fear for their own political gain, painting non-interventionism as isolationism and pushing the debunked myth that Iran is close to developing a nuclear bomb when our own CIA said that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

During his term as Vice President, Cheney ”ordered“ the media to “sell” a war with Iran to the American people, believing it needed only 35-40 percent of public support to do so. Even under the Obama administration the drumbeat to attack Iran has continued. Afraid that the American right might realize once again that the concept of pre-emptive war is not a conservative one, Cheney has thrown himself back into the picture, attempting to steer voters towards candidates who will continue the American pursuit of empire in the Middle East and Eurasia, and create new wars for his cronies to profit from.


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World Mourns As Communist Darkness Falls Upon America

In what is being described as one of the most astounding power grabs in modern history by newspaper headlines around the World, President Obama has succeeded in his audacious plan to remake America into a full fledged godless communist empire barely one year into his term with the enactment into law by the US Congress of his mammoth health care plan innocuously named H.R. 3200-Americas Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 and described by one Kremlin legal expert as having “nothing at all to do with health, but everything to do with control.”

To fully grasp the full and grim implications of Obama’s power grab over the American people with his Nationalization of the United States entire health care industry and student loan programme accomplished with the passing of this new law, it must be remembered that since taking office on January 20, 2009 he has also taken over their automobile, mortgage, and banking industries too with the Internet said being next “in his sights”.

More insidious than these takeovers that have been destroying America’s once vibrant capitalistic system is the new regime these once free peoples are now destined to live under, and where under their new health care law will require all of them to carry a National ID card (page 58) and allow their government unlimited access to all of their bank accounts and personal records (page 159).

And in a chilling instance of the ancient prophecies for these time of “The Mark of the Beast” becoming reality, the National ID card all of the American people will now be required to possess (regardless of age) is to be combined with their new government ID card under their upcoming new immigration laws allowing them to work and is biometrically designed to “read” the backs of their hands.

[Note: According to the Christian Bibles Book of Revelations, the ancients warned of a future time when everyone, both small and great, rich and poor, free or slave, would receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads which without they would not be able buy or sell anything.]

Though many have tried to warn these Americans about the plans for their Nations destruction at the hands of the Obama backed communist forces who have taken over their country [including our March 2nd report “Russia Warns US Communist Threat Endangering Entire World”] the propaganda organs in the United States have rendered silent nearly all opposition and dissident views from reaching them and they remain asleep to the true dangers soon to come upon them.

The same, however, cannot be said about the rest of the World where during this past week alone, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon signed a cooperation agreement with a Russia-led security group of ex-Soviet Nations as a counterbalance to the US led NATO forces (who are currently expanding their wars against the Muslim Nations to steal their vast oil and gas wealth) and one of China’s top military officers called for his Nation to build the World’s strongest military and move swiftly to topple the United States as the Global “champion.”

To how ignorant the American people have become to the yoke of communist oppression being pressed upon them by Obama’s forces we can glimpse from a report in today’s Los Angeles Times that says “The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.”

And as to why Obama and his communist forces would seek to keep from the American people what is really being done to them we had, also, previously warned about in our February 12th report “The “End Of Days” Are Upon Us, Warns Russian Patriarch” and wherein we had stated:

“Patriarch Cyril warns in his report though that the Motherlands efforts to halt the West’s godlessness “may be too late” as evidenced by the rising use among their political, military, banking and celebrity elite classes of the ancient Babylonian “Sign of the Horns” [formed by extending the index and little fingers while holding the middle and ring fingers down with the thumb, see photo bottom left] honoring the ancient god Marduk (Sumerian spelling in Akkadian: AMAR.UTU meaning “solar calf”).”

Now most important to remember about these ancient enemies of our human race Obama and his communist forces have aligned themselves with is how truly predictable they are; including the United States passing of their health care bill during the 2010 Vernal (Spring) Solstice [when daytime and nighttime are equal length] as a “celebration” to the ancient goddess Ēostre whose name was given to the Christian festival of Easter but whose origins stretch back into the mists of time to the mystery religions of Rome where the Cybele cult preformed their child sacrifices on what was then known as Vatican hill, but today is known as the home of the Pope.

And in these monsters predictability by aligning themselves with the ancient dates and ceremonies of old also comes the most secure protection from their destructive plans; such as the United States March 4, 2001 airing of the Lone Gunman television programmes pilot episode where an American government plot to fly remotely controlled planes into the World Trade Center was discovered, and which was exactly 6 months and 7 days from when the actual attack occurred.

It goes without saying, of course, that the propaganda media organs beholden to their godless communist masters will never inform their peoples about these things, and for those of us who do there is always great danger. But as the events in the United States are now showing to even those most in denial about what is truly happening, the time nears when hard choices will have to be made by everyone if freedom for our human race is to be saved.


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