New Watergate - Right Wing Nuttery For All to See

[Guest Tom Scully]

If your big enough like JFK was, they just kill you. The alternative is that they assassinate you, politically.

If only following results the leads in the crimes of the JFK and Oswald murders and of Watergate I were this fruitful!

...I learned the key to the master look

I learned to float in the water clock

I learned to capture the lightning shock

I'm the lover of the bayou

And I got cat's an' teeth and hair for sale

I'm the lover of the bayou

Look out, look out, Baron Zombies on your tail

I'm the lover of the bayou

I cooked the bat in the gumbo pan

I drank the blood, drank the blood from a rusty can

Turned me into the Honga man

I'm the lover of the bayou-McGuinn / Levy

2008:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121824246529126197.html

AUGUST 9, 2008.How to Bring Innovative Ideas To a Machine-Politics State

By DAVID FEITH

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is touted as a possible running mate for Republican John McCain. At 37, Mr. Jindal could bring youth and enthusiasm to the ticket.

But what about the Bayou State? Doesn't it need bright young leaders?...

...A rising leader among them is Kevin Kane, a native New Yorker smitten with Louisiana since attending Tulane University in New Orleans in the 1980s. Confident the state will reverse course with the right help, Mr. Kane moved with his family to the Big Easy this spring to establish the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a think tank promoting reforms rooted in market solutions and limited government....

..."Having a think tank under Edwin Edwards would have been meaningless," says Stephen Gele, a member of the Pelican Institute's Board of Directors. "You could have done a 50-page paper, but who would have read it? Edwards would have made up his mind over a game of Bourré" -- a Cajun gamblers' pastime, similar to Spades -- "and that would have been the end of it."

"Today there's much more pressure coming from bottom up," Mr. Gele adds, which increases the power of "policy wonks, bloggers and the average citizen." The Pelican Institute plans to marshal that power to focus lawmakers on basics: better government transparency, lower corporate taxes and improved schools.

Of these, education may be most important. When Katrina upended the New Orleans public school system (and teachers union) practically overnight, the state became an education policy laboratory -- and a crucible for the school-choice movement.

New Orleans is now a boom town for charter schools. Louisiana is, as of June, the ninth state to offer school vouchers, through a $10 million Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program. ...

2010:

http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/01/26/acti...enators-office/

...Fallin was one of the Republican representatives who introduced a bill that said the nation owed O’Keefe a debt of gratitude for his undercover videos...

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/201...rested_for.html

...O'Keefe on Thursday gave a speech to the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a libertarian group in New Orleans....

...Robert Flanagan's attorney, J. Garrison Jordan, said he believes his client works for the Pelican Institute. Asked the motivation for the alleged wiretap plot, he said: "I think it was poor judgment. I don't think there was any intent or motive to commit a crime."

http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/fru...er-of-the-week/

FOX News Video: Chris Wallace and the James O’Keefe Interview… Power Player of the Week

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 28, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/26...e-phone-scheme/

Updated January 26, 2010

Filmmaker Who Targeted ACORN Arrested in Alleged Senate Phone Scheme

The independent filmmaker who brought ACORN to its knees last year with an undercover expose was arrested this week along with three others, including the son of a federal prosecutor, and accused of trying to interfere with the phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office.

O'Keefe, 25, already was in Landrieu's New Orleans office Monday when Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel, both 24, showed up claiming to be telephone repairmen, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office said Tuesday. Letten says O'Keefe recorded the two with his cell phone.

In the reception area, Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan in Shreveport, and Basel asked for access to the main phone at the reception desk.

After handling the phone, "Flanagan and Basel next requested access to the telephone closet because they needed to perform work on the main telephone system," Letten's office said.

The men were directed to another office in the building, where they're accused of again misrepresenting themselves as telephone repairmen.

They were arrested later by the U.S. Marshal's Service. Details of the arrest were not available. A fourth man, Stan Dai, 24, was also arrested, but Letten's office said only that he assisted the others in planning, coordinating and preparing the operation.

Click here to read the affidavit....

...Bill Flanagan's office confirmed his son was among those arrested, but declined further comment....

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/01/...rgate-part-one/

You see, Flanagan is the son of the acting US Attorney for Western LA, William Flanagan. Flanagan, Sr., had only been in charge for a week–since January 18, when Bush’s US Attorney for the district, Donald Washington, stepped down–when his son got busted on federal property elsewhere in the state.

But that’s not the only neat connection that Robert Flanagan has. Last year–from January to April–Flanagan, Jr., interned for Congresswoman Mary Fallin (R-OK). And Fallin is one of just 31 Representatives who co-sponsored a resolution honoring James O’Keefe and his ACORN-filming accomplice, Hannah Giles. (Fallin was joined on the resolution by such notables as Joe Barton, Louis Gohmert, Steve King, and Jean Schmidt.)

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/01/...te-explanation/

Why was O’Keefe filming the apparent bugging?

I raised this question in my first post on this. One of Landrieu’s staffers reported–and O’Keefe admitted–that filmed the interaction between the Landrieu staffer and Flanagan and Basel.

WITNESS 1 further stated that when FLANAGAN and BASEL entered the office, O’KEEFE positioned his cellular phone in his hand so as to record FLANAGAN and BASEL.

[snip]

O’KEEFE further admitted to recording FLANAGAN and BASEL inside of Senator Landrieu’s office.

Backgrtound:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/17-11

September 17, 2009 by Salon.com

The Distracting Benefits of ACORN Hysteria

by Glenn Greenwald

ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years -- an average of $3.1 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries.

...Exactly as one would expect, the prime beneficiaries of all of that pillaging continue to grow. The banks that almost brought the world economy to collapse but then received massive public largesse because they were "too big to fail" are now bigger than ever; as The Washington Post delicately put it: "The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance." Everything involving the government turns out well for these "behemoths" because they own and control the U.S. Government....

..So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy -- could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry? ...

Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic)...

...That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...009/12/12/acorn

Major victory for ACORN and the Constitution - Glenn Greenwald ...

Dec 12, 2009 ... Major victory for ACORN and the Constitution. By Glenn Greenwald. (updated below). In September,

...Though rarely invoked, the ban on "bills of attainder" is no technical or legalistic right; it's vital. Allowing Congress -- rather than courts -- to pass judgment on parties' guilt and then punish them for it is to circumvent all of the due process rights guaranteed in a judicial proceeding. It virtually ensures that, as happened here, guilt will be imposed due to political passions and a lynch mob mentality rather than a careful and fair examination of evidence. It also leaves weak and unpopular parties far more vulnerable to punishment. The fact that groups far more powerful than ACORN have actually been found guilty of serious wrongdoing yet have never been de-funded by Congress -- particularly defense contractors -- illustrates that danger......

[Guest Tom Scully]

A new thread on this topic has now materialized, so I'll reference it.:

"Senator Landrieu phone plot"

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15363

[John Dolva]

''It virtually ensures that, as happened here, guilt will be imposed due to political passions and a lynch mob mentality rather than a careful and fair examination of evidence. It also leaves weak and unpopular parties far more vulnerable to punishment.''

I'd like to comment on that from a leftist perspective. (using Marxist terminology)

For this to happen there must be preparatory work done.

People do not, in a civilized society, naturally act unthinkingly. Marx while basically deviding the world into the Bourgeisie and the Proletariat, seeing the Proletariat as the new Slave Class, as Wage Slaves. he also divided the Proletariat into groupings from the lowest, the Lumpen, the ignorant self serving, with no class consciousness, available for the highest bidder, or even any bidder. One could herd the KKK, Scabbers (union busters, wreckers, informants, provocateurs) etc into this grouping. Keep this one in mind.

To the highest, the educated, politicised, unionised, self sacrificing frontline vanguard, with the apathetic, potentially, and often so, getting going when the going gets tough, and other subgroupings, a particularly important one being Wage Slaves with Bourgeois Aspirations, the Petit Bourgeisie, who are so lacking in class consciousness but by no means stupid, that allies with the Bourgeoisie.

So, more Lumpens and Petit Bourgeoisie are needed. I think there the destruction of peoples mind capacities mentioned by John B elsewhere through the legal distribution of very toxic substances like lead, pseudo narcotics, MADMA, and its pharmaceutical equivalent, discovered by German Chemists in 1912, and numerous other brain function impairing substances that saturate our environment The privatisation of education and the lowering of standards across the board, but particularly in the public system, even such as Reagans doing away with free milk at schools, and then the glorification of blind Patriotism, the blase' acceptance of large scale violence, whether it be by persons or the government, plus the Path to Glory, enhanced by a slavish devotion to Money Money Money, accomplishes this.

So one must look to its genesis, for therein, in the struggles, the lessons lie, waiting to be learnt.

EDIT : typos+(I know Peasantry, Monarchy, Aristocracy and Guilds etc are a factor too, but this is 150 to 100 years later)

Edited January 28, 2010 by John Dolva