What's That Panicky Crashing Sound?

Around the neighborhoods of middle and lower class America, "Wall Street" is known as being synonymous with greed. The heart of capitalism resides on that street in the minds of many of us and for the most part, it is true. World markets started tanking yesterday while ours was closed and Asia and Europe already have had bad days today. Many analysts attribute their fiscal woes to us and that the international downturn is being called a reaction to our sub-prime mortgage fiasco and credit card/national debts.

Anyways, thats what I hear around the Internets and cable news services. I'd like to add something personal to the discussion. I live in a neighborhood in Manhattan that is next to Murray Hill and is known as a semi-quiet and wealthy area of Manhattan (relatively speaking since almost all of this island is wealthy compared to the rest of the country) where many people in the financial markets live because it is close to their offices, more of which are actually in midtown as opposed to downtown. That whole 9/11 thing scared many to flee north.

So back to me. Once a week or so I meet up with some friends that I know not through politics but live in Murray Hill and we have common connections, you know, meeting people in the neighborhood, etc etc. Well this morning the market was on their minds and fear was the big thing. A few knew that this will pass eventually and tried to use that to remain calm, self-assurances and whatnot. Of course it will pass, but not before doing considerable damage to many people's pocketbooks. Then there was an older gent that mentioned he's been through many of these "corrections" and that there are opportunities in this.

And thats when it struck me, this is all about fear and greed. Yeah, yeah, common sense I know. But this morning it really hit me on how everything in our society that causes stress is based on those "seven deadly sins." Some try to act on the opposite, but it is just so easy to be greedy (especially in Manhattan) and then when you screw people with things like credit card policies and sub-prime mortgages, it can come back to haunt you.

Well it is haunting many in the financial markets right now, with the Dow Jones down two or three or four hundred points. Who knows where it will end up today. No matter what the average of those 30 blue chip stocks is at 4:30PM, the problem still remains. Greed and fear, not to mention lust, envy and the other three dominates many of us and those that have the power on "Wall Street" have the ability to inflict pain on us all.

Fox Fans The Flames Of Fear

Local and national news channels have been doing a good job of covering the heart breaking stories of people that have lost their homes and in a few cases their lives from the massive fires in Southern California. Fox News is busy stoking the fears of their brainwashed audience instead. Even though most of the TV crowd loves this "if it bleeds (or burns), it leads" but they still do a decent job of reporting and not opining their politics. Fox News on the other hand...doesn't give a shit.

From RawStory:

Fox & Friends, the conservative cable channel, was panned Wednesday for breathlessly reporting a sketchy, four-year-old FBI memo as if it offered new information linking America's enemies in the "Global War on Terror" with a plot to burn down southern California.

The morning team was back at it Thursday, as anchor Alisyn Camerota introduced a segment on the fires that again mischaracterized and over-inflated warnings from a 2003 interview with an al Qaeda detainee.

Camerota said Fox's fear-mongering was "based on some information the FBI sent to local law enforcement in California and other Western states ... that there was a plot afoot to set three or four different" fires. Left unsaid by the Fox news-reader was that the FBI warning was sent more than four years ago, described a potential plot that made no mention of California, could not be proven accurate and did not raise alarms from forest-fire officials at the time. (Such caveats all were included in an Associated Press report on the warning at the time.)

Seriously, how do they get away with this crap? Do they care about their integrity, even just a little bit?

Falafel Fascination With Lesbian Gangs

O'Reilly likes to tout that he brings the news that is relevant to people who watch his show. With that said, there has to be a lot of Americans out there that are being harassed by gangs of lesbians. It is something I worry about every waking moment. According to O'Reilly and his focus on this ridiculous idea, it is something you should be terrorized about too.

From The Southern Poverty Law Center:

A "national underground network" of pink pistol-packing lesbians is terrorizing America. "All across the country," they are raping young girls, attacking heterosexual males at random, and forcibly indoctrinating children as young as 10 into the homosexual lifestyle, according to a shocking June 21 segment on the popular Fox News Channel program, "The O'Reilly Factor."

Titled "Violent Lesbian Gangs a Growing Problem," the segment began with host Bill O'Reilly briefly referencing for his roughly 3 million viewers the case of Wayne Buckle, a DVD bootlegger who was attacked by seven lesbians in New York City last August. Deploying swift, broad strokes, O'Reilly painted a graphic picture of lesbian gangs running amok. "In Tennessee, authorities say a lesbian gang called GTO, Gays Taking Over, are involved in raping young girls," he reported. "And in Philadelphia, a lesbian gang called DTO, Dykes Taking Over, are allegedly terrorizing people as well."

(snip)

The Authorities Disagree
Nine-millimeter Glocks painted pink? Dykes taking over? More than 150 lesbian gangs in the Washington, D.C., area alone? These claims are, as Wheeler suggested, "very, very interesting." They're also very, very flimsy. Gaithersburg, Md., Detective Patrick Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, an intelligence-sharing organization of 400 criminal justice professionals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, said there is no evidence whatsoever of a lesbian gang epidemic in his region. "Our membership reports only one lesbian gang," Word told the Intelligence Report.

Sgt. Brett Parson, a member and former commander of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, also questioned Wheeler's numbers. "We have 150 to 175 total gangs in the D.C. area, and out of those only nine where the predominance of members are female," he said. "You simply can't make the jump that they are lesbians. I think it is fair to talk about violence and female gangs. But to sensationalize or marginalize a community by making a statement like that seems irresponsible."

Sgt. Parson, there is nothing responsible about Bill O'Reilly and the "experts" he brings on to prove his hateful theories and remarks. It is amazing that Bill still has three million viewers. It is incredible that one single person would buy his bullshit. Then again, when one is sucked into being made afraid of people that they have no contact with (especially when groups being attacked are mostly fictitious) it is easy to tune in to learn about who they should be afraid of next. Speaking of next....what will the Falafel come up with next week? I hear those two-headed Democrats are especially creepy.

Olbermann Helps To Take The Terror Out Of The London Incident

Keith had Larry Johnson on the show yesterday to talk about what most of the media wasn't reporting about the two car bombs found yesterday in London. While government officials are allowed to spout off terrorizing details without question, Olbermann and Johnson look at what really went down without terrorizing the viewers.

Calling BS On London "Bomb"

The media is going crazy over a potentially deadly car bomb at Piccadilly Circus in London this morning. Reports claim that it could have killed hundreds and wounded even more, but the police bravely detonated the device and everyone was saved from an act of terror. Or was it? Perhaps this was just another situation used to scare the crap out of people and keep their minds off of other things. Larry Johnson explains things at his site.

From No Quarter:

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incediary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.

The fact that "officers courageously disabled the trigger by hand" coupled with the report of the smoke in the car leads me to believe that the mad London "bomber" tried to construct a Molotov cocktail of sorts and lit a cloth fuze. Fortunately he left the windows in the car up and there was not enough oxygen to really get the fire going. Looks like the brave British police reached in and snuffed the flame.

Meanwhile the major news outlets are doing their best to maximize ratings by making this out to be another victory over the terrorists. It is a fact that actual terrorists are out there, but this is the act of some lone quack. If a well organized outfit like Al Qaeda had been behind this, things could have been much, much worse.

Oh and by the way, Londoners are shrugging this off unlike the press.

Man On Dog Santorum Goes Hollywood

The buzz around Pittsburgh is that former Senator Rick Santorum wants to make a movie. Not about man on dog sex thankfully, but almost as bad. Now that he can't spread fear of terrorism as an elected official, the next realm for it will be on the big screen. Working with a former Mel Gibson associate, Rick wants to film a movie about an Iranian terrorist.

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Rumors have been buzzing throughout Harrisburg that Santorum was connecting with McEveety, who produced Mel Gibson blockbusters such as "Braveheart," "The Passion of the Christ" and "We Were Soldiers," on a project.

(snip)

The story follows three Iranian brothers who take disparate paths in their lives, including one who becomes a terrorist.

At this point, Santorum's project doesn't have a title, and no decision has been made on where it will be filmed and whether it could end up giving the Pittsburgh area's film industry a boost.

Even for someone that would stoop to film the Passion of the Christ should have nothing to do with a politician that has constantly decried Hollywood for its moral depravity. It isn't surprising to see a Republican that bashed Hollywood for socially conservative votes to turn around and use the movies for his own gain. Nor is it hard to fathom that such movie would center around terrorism coming from all places, Iran.

Who in their right mind is going to finance this flick?

"Get A Life"

Are you a Republican that constantly worries about terrorism? When a truck hurtles down the street and rocks a manhole cover, do you scurry for a spot to keep you safe? Well the Mayor has some advice for you, "Get A Life." Paralyzing fear over events out of your control are ridiculous to worry over. Finding yourself watching Fox News for hours on end may be attributable to such conditions, as well as listening to George Bush for too long.

From WCBS-TV:

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said.

That "What, me worry?" attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg's advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn't let it tax their brains.

"You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist," he added.

Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for the sound advice. Some people really need to chill when news stories such as the JFK "terror" plot make the news. In addition to relaxing and not worrying about imminent death caused by all the people that hate America, why not look deeper into the story and get yourself some good old-fashioned knowledge. George Bush may not approve of this, since he wants you to get all of your information from him and Fox News, but that is just too bad.

For instance, consider the hypothesis that the President and his buddies utilize fear of terrorism in order to gain popularity and continue the status quo of shredding the constitution and bleeding our treasury dry while our troops are senselessly killed. Does this sound outrageous? Not if you exercise a little common sense and become aware to what is going on with military contractors such as Halliburton, the NSA wiretapping scandal, and many other realities that our country sadly faces. So get on Google or your favorite search engine and start gathering information that you might not know about.

Olbermann Slams Bush's Paranoia Campaign

Keith lays out a timeline in 2004, 2006 and this year on how Democrats got media attention...and how the Republicans stole it away with fear.

Olbermann Eviscerates Rudy Guiliani

Guiliani made a few comments this week saying that if the people do not vote for Republicans, our country will be on defense and the war on terror will go on longer. Basically America will be safer with people like Guiliani and Bush. Those two men oversaw a disaster here in New York. The latter ignored the warnings of the impending doom and the former merely stood in the limelight for his own benefit. If Guiliani really cared, he would have had coordinated the radio systems of the NYPD and FDNY, a move that would have saved the lives of hundreds of brave firefighters on that day.

The Mantra

President Bush's popularity (or what is left of it) came from one thing and one thing alone, fear. It wasn't simply "9/11", it was the fear of another attack and his faux determination to get the terrorist that perpetrated that terrible act. His determination was only to exert control over the country in order to carry out the plan to destroy America as we know it. Civil liberties are on the decline, our popularity across the globe is almost non-existant and wealth is flowing at an uncontrollable rate towards the elite.

How the hell did he do this? It was fear, and the primary tool of that was to say that if we didn't attack our enemies over there, they would come here. But, how true is that statement? The military and many diplomats say it isn't.

From McClatchy:

“The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature,” said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It’s a poor choice of words that doesn’t convey the essence of the problem - that walking away from a problem doesn’t solve anything.”

U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.

Foreign-born jihadists are present in Iraq, but they're believed to number only between 4 percent and 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgent fighters - 1,200 to 3,000 terrorists - according to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center.

Even conservative think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation knows this. If they can admit to the truth, it shows that America really is waking up to Bush's failed policy and the tools he uses to implement them. It is time to throw off the yoke that George Bush has around our collective neck and choose a new direction. It is time to get the hell out of there and focus on what is truly important for the United States.