By ALEXANDER COCKBURN | CounterPunch

Call any Jewish friend across the few days and the degrees of separation from someone financially devastated by Bernie Madoff are often only one or two. One rich Jewish friend in New York volunteers that because of some intricate family dispute his own money hadn’t been parked at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. On the other hand his uncle had woken up the morning after Madoff’s arrest to discover that the $40 million he’d entrusted to Bernie was gone forever, along with the multi-million pension fund of his workforce, which he’d also entrusted to Madoff.read more »

MEMORANDUM

TO: The president-elect
RE: Foreign policy
FROM: Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations

There are only two and a half months—76 days, to be precise— between Election Day and your Inauguration, and you will need every one of them to get ready for the world you will inherit. This is not the world you've been discussing on the trail for the last year or more: campaigning and governing could hardly be more different. The former is necessarily done in bold strokes and, to be honest, often approaches caricature. All candidates resist specifying priorities or trade-offs lest they forfeit precious support. You won, but at a price, as some of the things you said were better left unsaid. Even more important, the campaign did not prepare the public for the hard times to come.

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Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America

By Peter Phillips

Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population—the majority of people living in the US. Mainstream media include a number of communication mediums that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources.read more »

By Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore.
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By Richard Backus

21/09/08 "ICH" --- There are an ever-increasing number of linkages between politicians, big businesses, and rich individuals designed to promote their joint prosperity at the expense of the general public. Money flows in both directions between these “players” under various “pay for play” schemes. Because they unfairly absorb federal tax revenue or deprive the general public of legitimately earned benefits, I refer to these schemes as “scams'. Most are technically “legal' being based upon law or statute, or founded upon government policy and practice, but have been set up in ways designed to benefit favored individuals. In most cases, these practices are promoted by Republican politicians serving their primary clients, rich individuals and “big business”. Hopefully, in the coming elections, legislators will be chosen which will have the courage to rectify these abuses. The following are just a few of the more popular scams.read more »

By Gretchen Morgenson | International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK: It looks as if we got through the weekend without another scramble to save a troubled financial company with a trillion-dollar balance sheet.read more »

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By: D. H. Williams

The Libertarian Party is dead, and Bob Barr killed it.

Bob Barr continually tries to steal the support created by Ron Paul and his r3VOLution. Today Bob Barr was invited by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to attend a press conference held at the National Press Club in Washington D. C.,
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An Alaskan's Opinion

Claim: Letter written by a resident of Wasilla, Alaska, offers viewpoint of Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Status: True.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2008]read more »