ASSHOLE OF THE MONTH
from HUSTLER February 2010

“You lie!”, shouted South Carolina’s Joe Wilson as President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. The liar, however, was Representative Wilson. As Obama had claimed seconds before being heckled by the GOP lawmaker, nothing in the healthcare-reform legislation suggests illegal immigrants would be eligible.

It takes colossal gall to insult a sitting President—in the halls of Congress, no less. But ya know what? We don’t give a rat’s ass about that. We just think it’s too bad the spineless Democrats didn’t treat George W. Bush with as much abject contempt as the Republicans treat Obama. Bush deserved such treatment.

What bothers us about Wilson’s outburst is its apparent underlying racism, especially since nothing like this ever happened before. Consider the following: Wilson is a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization said to be riddled with radical neo-Confederates who advocate secession and defend slavery.

Beyond that, Wilson served as an aide to Senator Strom Thurmond, a notorious segregationist and racist. In fact, Wilson was so enthralled with Thurmond’s ugly philosophy that he castigated Essie Mae Washington when she came forward to reveal she was Thurmond’s illegitimate biracial daughter. At first, Wilson said Washington was.....

WALL STREET’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CEOs HAVE OBAMA’S TREASURY SECRETARY ON SPEED DIAL, AND IT PAYS.

by Robert Scheer
from HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

When Timothy Geithner headed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he was very good at mealtime, particularly with the Wall Street fat cats he was supposed to be governing. The details of his endless private dining with the likes of Sanford Weill, Robert Rubin and other big bankers responsible for the economic meltdown only came out after President Obama named him Treasury Secretary—and in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

“An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions,” the New York Times reported. “His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.”

You would have thought that the embarrassing disclosures of how tight this guy was with the banking bandits would have led him to change his social habits—and it has: Instead.....

SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY?

by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010

SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?

“Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.

John M. Cole, an 18-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments, revealed the panic of upper-echelon officials when Edmonds originally started talking back in 2002. “Well, the Bureau is gonna have to try to work something out.....

MORE AND MORE AMERICANS NOW QUESTION HOW OBAMA IS DEALING WITH HEALTHCARE REFORM, PERSONAL PRIVACY AND OTHER KEY ISSUES.

by Nat Hentoff
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2010

As Barack Obama approached his second year in the White House, the jubilant campaign shouts of “Change we can believe in!” and “Yes, we can!” were hardly ever heard during his public appearances across the nation. In August 2009, as the President was in New Hampshire defending his incendiary healthcare reforms, a protester shouted, “Keep your change, and I’ll keep my freedom!” Other demonstrators carried signs that, quoting James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, decried the government’s overreaching into personal liberties.

And in Pennsylvania, where newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter was a surrogate for Obamacare, an insistent citizen reminded the state’s senior senator, “This isn’t just about healthcare,” while another proclaimed, “You are trampling on our Constitution!”

Indeed it isn’t just about healthcare, but whatever bill is signed by Obama, the mutinous state of much of the nation may well impact the 2010 elections nationwide.

As I have detailed in previous HUSTLER columns, Obama has not only channeled Bush and Cheney in his assaults on the Constitution but has also gone further. Even skeptical me expected that the new.....

WILLIAM A NOTED REPORTER AND AUTHOR TELLS US HOW CORPORATIONS ARE DESTROYING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO FIX IT.

from THE Q & A with William Greider interviewed by Mark Johnson
in HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

William Greider is one of the experts who warned us ten years ago that our economy was headed into the shredder. A longtime observer of runaway capitalism, Greider has written several books and worked as a reporter for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post and Rolling Stone. He is currently national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

During his 40-year career he has crossed paths with the country’s most powerful people. He has examined in detail how and why America went from a thriving democracy to a nation run by bankers. In his latest book—Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country —Greider maintains that we are at an epic turning point in our history. It is time for people to step up and reclaim their role as true citizens.

HUSTLER: How did you recognize early on that our economy was in deep trouble?

WILLIAM GREIDER: Ten years ago I wrote in my book One World Ready or Not that our [economic].....

IT’S TIME FOR AMERICANS TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY. HERE’S THE CLARION CALL THAT SET THE HUFFINGTON POST ABLAZE.

by Larry Flynt
from HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

The American government—which we once called our government—has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “economic royalists,” who choose our elected officials—indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment’s hesitation, they took our money—yours and mine—to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don’t care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger has been quoted as saying we’re “useless eaters.”

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of.....

Asshole of the Month from HUSTLER Magazine -December 2009

Honestly, we’re not sure who the real Asshole should be—Alexia Kelley or President Obama for appointing her to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

We understand Obama’s thing about bringing political opponents into his government, à la Abraham Lincoln, but come on! Kelley, an antichoice zealot, will have the power to reduce abortion access in an agency charged with expanding it, or at least facilitating it. Given that, you might think Obama should be our nominee for Asshole of the Month. But since we still want to give the Prez time to prove himself, we’ll focus on the holier-than-thou Kelley.

As founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), Kelley is not just antiabortion but also anti-contraception. Hello? If you are against abortions, shouldn’t you be for birth control? Most mainstream Catholics have dismissed anti-contraception church doctrine as a quaint, unsophisticated relic of the Middle Ages.

Not Kelley. According to blogger Francis Kissling, Kelley is so anti-choice, she comes across as “more Catholic than the Pope.” While the CACG claims its agenda is “seeking common ground” with those in favor of choice, what’s clear is.....

Acclaimed independent filmmaker Kirby Dick tackles the topics mainstream media won’t touch. In 1997 he scored a cult hit with the provocative documentary Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Then in 2006, Dick went after the Hollywood censors. His exposé of the Motion Picture Association of America’s secretive movie ratings system, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, grabbed an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary. His most explosive and entertaining work yet, Outrage, skewers the homosexual hypocrites who push the GOP’s anti-gay party line while living a closeted lifestyle.

Interview from HUSTLER Magazine – December 2009

HUSTLER: In Outrage you name names: Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who’s bucking for a GOP Presidential nomination; Larry Craig, who was caught trying to solicit gay sex; and California Congressman David Dreier, whom we outed a couple of years ago.

KIRBY DICK: Crist is the most high-profile one, due to his political prominence right now. But the film also looks at Jim McCrery, recently retired representative from Louisiana. He had been outed by [gay and lesbian publication] The Advocate in the early ’90s, but the mainstream media almost universally avoided the story. I also include a section about former New York Mayor Ed Koch.We.....

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST CHRIS HEDGES WARNS THAT CHINA, RUSSIA AND OTHER MAJOR U.S. TRADE PARTNERS ARE READY TO DUMP THE DOLLAR. IF THAT HAPPENS, AMERICA’S FINANCIAL AND MILITARY DOMINATION WILL END, AND OUR ALREADY-BELEAGUERED ECONOMY WILL FLATLINE.

By Chris Hedges
Reprinted in HUSTLER Magazine December 2009
courtesy of Truthdig.com

THE WEEK OF JUNE 15, 2009, marked the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marked the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States, and it signaled the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. What is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama and the criminal class on Wall Street—aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history— may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, that fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat......

THE PRESIDENT IS TALKING THE TALK, BUT CAN HE REALLY KEEP WALL STREET IN CHECK?

by Robert Sheer
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2010

Are you kidding? Barack Obama wants Wall Street to make nice to Main Street because it’s the right thing to do? Yeah, that’ll work. “The fact is, many of the firms that are now returning to prosperity owe a debt to the American people,” President Obama told banking heavyweights in a September 2009 address on their turf. “It is neither right nor responsible after you’ve recovered with the help of your government to shirk your obligation to the goal of wider recovery, a more stable system and a more broadly shared prosperity.”

Oh, but they will; they will. Who doubts it? The laws haven’t changed, the same passive or overmatched regulators are still on patrol, and short-term profit is still the overriding goal of every trader, stockholder and executive on watch at the even bigger and more dominant financial firms that survived the crash. Now, to be fair, Obama wants to pass some new laws and change the regulatory structure. The questions that remain, of course, are how sincere is he, and what can he get passed through Congress in.....