from HUSTLER Magazine July 2011

• Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas’s sidekick on the U.S. Supreme  Court, recently made headlines for proclaiming in California Lawyer  magazine that the 14th Amendment (citizenship,due process and equal- protection clauses) does not extend to protecting women against sex discrimination.  Apparently he doesn’t consider women to be “people.”  In  fact, Scalia believes women, gays and all emerging minorities should be  left at the mercy of the prevailing political majority when it comes to  ensuring fair treatment.  Back in September 2010 he told an audience at  the University of California Hastings College of Law that “if the current  society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex…you have legislatures.”

• Curveball, an Iraqi informer whose real name is Rafid Ahmed  Alwan al-Janabi, claimed that Saddam Hussein’s regime was developing mobile biological warfare labs, thereby building a case for the  Iraq War.  After more than seven years of hostilities and the deaths of  thousands of U.S. troops and countless Iraqi civilians, al-Janabi recently admitted to the Guardiannewspaper that he was full of shit:“I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime.  I and my  sons are proud of that.” And we’re proud to also deride the CIA. In  2004 the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reported that the spy  agency “withheld important information about Curveball’s reliability”  from U.S. analysts dealing with the informant’s claim.  For God’s sake,  al-Janabi was a cab driver.

THE BANKERS AND OTHER WHEELER-DEALERS WHO IMPOVERISHED THE NATION CONTINUE TO ENRICH THEMSELVES.

By Robert Scheer
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE September 2011

Republicans are the party of the super rich, pure and simple, and all that Tea Party garbage about small government is nothing but a big-lie propaganda ploy by an extremely radicalized fringe of the GOP that betrays its moderate heritage.

This is coming from a journalist who still thinks Dwight D. Eisenhower was the best modern day American President after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and who got along just fine with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon when he profiled them. Nixon even wrote me a letter expressing thanks for my “objective” reporting on his domestic policy, which included a call for a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Try finding a single Republican politician today who is proud to support either of those sensible Nixon proposals. Even the two Bushes look pretty reasonable compared to the current crowd that wants to wipe out Medicare and Social Security to save our tax dollars for even more exorbitant gifts to the bankers and other corporate hotshots who impoverished the nation while enriching themselves.

At a time when 10 million Americans will have lost their homes by year’s end, when $5.6 trillion in home equity has been wiped out, when most workers face steep unemployment rates and stagnant wages, Republican ideologues insist that extending the Bush-era tax cuts is the best way to create jobs. The Republicans are drunk on the notions of voodoo economics whereby giving more money to those who already have obscene amounts is good for the rest of us.

Even former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who supported the Bush tax cuts, has come to his senses by arguing against their extension in the midst of the global economic crisis: During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press he stated, “This crisis is so imminent and so difficult that I think we have to allow the so-called Bush tax cuts all to expire. ”With regard to how much the U.S. government could save from letting income taxes go back up to levels last seen under President Bill Clinton—an estimated $3.6 trillion—Greenspan said, “That is a very big number.”

He specifically shot down the absurd notion that those tax cuts will reduce the deficit by freeing up more money in the hands of the rich for investment. When host David Gregory asked his guest if he believed that the tax cuts pay for themselves, as Republicans argue, Greenspan replied unequivocally, “They do not.”

The GOP argument that the tax cuts will generate new economic activity because wealthy people will invest more flies in the face of a reality in which the rich are awash with cash but do not spend it in ways that create jobs in this country, as opposed to U.S. corporate investment abroad.

As the New York Times reported, “In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2%, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.”

And to add insult to injury, the top executives—who seem unable or unwilling to create increased their own compensation by a whopping 12% over the previous year, leaving the median pay at $9.6 million for those in control of the 200 leading companies. The Times report added that “CEO pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all of those taxpayer-financed bailouts.”

What the Republicans want you to forget is that the recession brought about by their wild deregulatory policies, allowing Wall Street greed to run wild, was launched by their much-hyped “Reagan Revolution, ”which is the basis of our debt crisis. The debt now looms so large because the government had to bail out many of those same corporations, quite a few of which—most notably General Electric and AIG—pay no taxes and have no problem paying truly obscene amounts to their top executives.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is making as much as he did before the recession hit, a recession that his GE Capital division did much to cause with its reckless loans. AIG, saved with a government infusion of $170 billion, has lavishly rewarded its top executives but has provided no relief for the homeowners ripped off by its phony credit default swaps.

The result of the Reagan Revolution is that the top 1% of Americans own 40% of the total national wealth, mocking the idea that we are a middle-class-based democracy. That is because the after-tax income of that top 1% has more than doubled in the 30 years since Reagan assumed the Presidency. That’s after-tax income, so don’t tell me they are hurting from too high taxation.

The reality is quite the opposite: The rich are getting richer while the purchasing power of wages and other income for most Americans has been declining. How obscene then that the Republicans want to gut programs like Medicare, Social Security and workers pensions, which are the main barrier keeping most Americans from a life of retirement in poverty.
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Before serving 30 years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

THE SLY APPOINTMENT OF A HEARTLESS MEDICAL CZAR HAS LAWMAKERS AND CITIZENS SEETHING.

By Nat Hentoff
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE September 2011

I’ve never forgotten U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, in his chambers, firmly instructing me, “From the First Amendment, all our liberties flow.” This fundamental freedom includes objecting to government dictates.

A powerful example is the storm of nonpartisan protests against President Obama’s appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is responsible for the healthcare of one in three Americans.

For years, Berwick has been a fervent admirer of how the British nationalized healthcare system decides the costs of treatment and medications. If these costs are deemed too expensive for patients near the end of life or with little prospect of improvement, healthcare is denied.

Here in this country, with the federal government determined to slash staggering budget deficits, cost-benefit healthcare is a primary goal of Obamacare. As it is for Berwick, who infamously made his intentions clear even before being named CMS head honcho. “It’s not a question of whether we will ration care, ”he said during an interview with Biotechnology Healthcare magazine. “It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Fearful that Congressional confirmation hearings would be too controversial prior to the 2010 midterm elections, Obama first sneaked Berwick into a recess appointment. Earlier this year, Berwick did appear at such hearings and—what do you know?—backtracked from his previous declaration of “love”(his word) for the British system.

But what Berwick does truly believe is fully documented in his pre-Obama articles and interviews. Even though anger and fear of Obamacare is mounting nationwide, he still holds his crucial position because the President renominated him in January 2011. But without confirmation, Berwick’s tenure will last only until the end of this year.

On March 5, 2011, Berwick’s doomsday was predicted in a LifeNews.com report titled “Senate Democrats Abandon Rationing Czar Donald Berwick.” The Democratic leadership had received an ominous letter from 42 Republicans. If Berwick’s nomination is sent to the floor, it spelled out, they threatened a filibuster—thanks to having enough numbers, plus some errant Democrats—to cut off Berwick’s budding career as the ultimate decider of how long some of us dependent on government healthcare can live.

Considering the number of Americans 90 years old and over requiring medical attention, not to mention hospital stays, Berwick’s presence as head of Medicare and Medicaid Services could have terminal consequences for some octogenarians as well.

But rationing would go beyond that. Many of us younger Americans may well get diagnoses requiring fast and expensive medical care. In a May 2010 DailyCaller.com article, Michael Tanner—like myself, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute— addressed Berwick’s long public love affair with British healthcare. Tanner pointed out that “750, 000 patients are awaiting admission to British NHS [National Health System] hospitals…. The latest estimates suggest that for most specialties, only 30% to 50% of patients are treated within 18 weeks. For trauma and orthopedics patients, the figure is only 20%.”

And dig this: “Overall, ”Tanner continued, “more than half of British patients wait more than 18 weeks for care. Every year 50, 000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed. The one thing the NHS is good at is saving money. After all, it is far cheaper to let the sick die than to provide care.”

How could Obama have resisted appointing Berwick, an ardent admirer of the NHS—except when testifying before Congress—to run the cost-efficient core of Obamacare? Whatever ruse the President may devise to keep Berwick in charge of reducing part of the national budget deficits, persistent public use of the First Amendment to oust him will only mean the appointment by Obama of yet another healthcare czar. Meanwhile, even if Berwick is removed, he may unobtrusively remain as an adviser to our doctor in chief.

That’s what happened when former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota)—a key Obama adviser on how to bring the British system to these shores— withdrew his nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services because of what were euphemistically called tax difficulties. Yet Daschle remained a frequent visitor to the Oval Office to counsel Obama on healthcare efficiency.

As long as Barack Obama is President, many of us will be confronted by what Bruce Chapman wrote on DiscoveryNews.org: “We all face the end-of-life-treatment choices, either because of someone we love, or ourselves. Families, doctors, hospitals all do the best they can and situations vary.

“But when the government is involved and has built-in cost-cutting incentives, there is a tremendous incentive to warp the decision-making process and make it a financial triage issue. That is what President Obama was hinting at in several of the comments he has made in the past about end-of-life care. He thinks that the government cannot afford to take care of all the old and terminally ill and still give full care to the young and fit.”

Whatever your age, it would be reasonable—in self-defense—to keep the ultimate cold-hearted creator of Obamacare in mind when you go to the polls in November 2012.
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Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom:The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America; Living the Bill of Rights; and the forthcoming Is This America?

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A UCLA STUDENT POSTS AN OFFENSIVE VIDEO AND GETS A HARSH LESSON IN REALITY.

By Alexandra Cuerdo
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE September 2011

Hot. Fucking. Mess. That’s what Alexandra Wallace is. She’s the University of California, Los Angeles, student-turned-dropout behind the videotaped racist rant “Asians in the Library,” which she ignorantly posted on YouTube. What followed was a media explosion—including 6 million views, a dozen death threats and countless headlines.

We’ve seen this before. Celebrity misspeaks fill a weekly quota in the tabloids. Fanatical rage posts flood YouTube on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. But the viral “it” factor is an elusive bug. It took the perfect storm—of poor timing and even poorer judgment—to stoke Wallace’s 15 seconds of fame to a sky-high fever.

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northern Japan—claiming thousands of lives and triggering a nuclear disaster. On that same day, Wallace trash-talked Asians’ supposed inability to teach their children to “fend for themselves.” In the video she called herself a political science student with “American manners.” Versus, of course, the “hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into our school every single year.”

Wallace went on to declare, “In America we do not talk on our cell phones in the library! I swear, they’re going through their whole families, just checking on everybody from the tsunami thing.” Then, as the cherry on top of the shit-show sundae, the perturbed blonde imitated an “Asian” language. Her disparaging line “Ohhh! Ching chong ling long ting tong?! Ohhh!” inspired a Web site, aptly named Ohhhching chonglinglongtingtong.com, and T-shirts, all proceeds of which were donated to Japanese relief funds. Wallace’s tirade also turned the limelight to Jimmy Wong, who racked up a zillion YouTube views with his tune “Asians in the Library.” Wong’s catchy refrain “Ching Chong/It means I love you” made it to iTunes and recently earned him an interview with National Public Radio.

So why did Wallace do it? LA Weekly suggested a classic con: the publicity stunt. Some sleuthing revealed that Wallace sought fame. She aspired to model professionally, she loved Jersey Shore, and a month before her cause célèbre she’d planned a series of “comedic videos” similar to “Asians in the Library.” The Sacramento Bee found her father’s Facebook profile, which let slip that Wallace was even searching for domain names for a future blog—maybe AsiansInTheLibrary.com?

But those dreams changed once she became a YouTube sensation. Hackers on forum giant 4chan posted Wallace’s e-mail, phone number and address the day after her infamous rant. Her Model Mayhem profile—an online portfolio to attract employment opportunities—was so flooded with outraged spam that it was taken down. Multiple Facebook groups reposted Wallace’s personal information and encouraged viewers to respond directly to the outspoken student.

In a formal apology published in UCLA’s Daily Bruin, Wallace explained how she wanted to “produce a humorous YouTube video” but in stead offended “the entire Asian culture.” She made a “mistake” that caused “the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats and being ostracized from an entire community.”

Guess no one told Wallace that the Asians she offended are everywhere these days. And that they—along with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and many others worldwide—would see the derogatory clip and counterattack.

Today Wallace reigns as the new face of institutionalized, not-so-secret racism. She’s the living, breathing flaw of the Internet Age: the video we can’t stop sharing, the wreck we can’t stop watching, the bitch we can’t stop shaming. In two minutes and 52 seconds—the running time of “Asians in the Library”—Wallace flung her college career down a black hole.

But we’re missing the bigger picture. We live in a culture that’s at once sensitive and desensitized. We’ve taken her words person ally. We’ve gotten angry. And although it’s okay—and understandable—to be pissed off, there’s a limit to the madness. There’s righteously annoyed, and then there’s calling Alexandra Wallace a “slut that deserves to die.” Let’s face it: Not many of us would be so forward in person. Online raging is so much easier to do, but it doesn’t make it any better or the words any nicer.

Maybe when we can own our rage, we can find a better way to express it. Beau, an original cast member of the Tony award-winning Def Poetry Jamon Broadway, gave it a shot. Imitating Wallace’s emotional voice, he examined the reasons for her racism in a posted video of his own. “If only these Asians would learn English,” Beau said. “If only they understood that I’m here too. That I share this place with them, that I belong here, that the hordes and swarms invading the system I’ve learned remember who I am as the world changes.”

And then Beau—looking right into the camera, like Wallace did the fateful day she aired her dirtiest laundry online— concluded, “I’m so afraid I’ll have to fend for myself, without what I’ve been told was mine.”

Beau got to the heart of Wallace’s anxiety—that the Asian hordes, whether at UCLA or anywhere else, are the bad guys and that they all want a piece of the pie she rightfully owns, the one we call America. But we know better. America is for everyone. And if you want a piece, you’ve just got to shut up and take it.
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Alexandra Cuerdo, the daughter of Filipino immigrants, attends UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. “I’m a writer, director and decent cook,” she says. “And really, I don’t even go to the library.” Attention college reporters: If you have an idea for a story involving your school— streaking, stripping, partying, pranks, protests, political or censorship issues, etc.— please contact us at Features@LFP.com. If you get the green light, Larry Flynt will send you a check with his name on it. Besides the financial windfall, a HUSTLER story will look good on your résumé.

WHAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA HASN’T TOLD YOU
By Karl Grossman
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE September 2011

Media coverage of the Fukushima Daiishi nuclear power plant, which was severely damaged as the result of an earthquake and resultant tsunami on March 11, 2011, has been outrageously poor.  Rather than dig for the truth, mainstream journalists and their “experts” have simply parroted the assurances of Japanese and other officials that the amounts of radioactivity being released were low and thus posed “no health threat.”

Decades ago scientists thought there was a “threshold dose” of radiation.  That’s because when nuclear technology began exposing people to radioactivity, they didn’t promptly fall down dead.  But as the years passed by, it became evident that lower levels of radioactivity take time to manifest as cancer and other illnesses.  In fact, there is a five-to-40-year “incubation” period.

Now most scientists acknowledge that any amount of radioactivity can lead to illness and death, especially in fetuses and children (whose cells divide more rapidly than those of adults).  As the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself has stated: “Any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer.”

Reporters covering Fukushima have noted that potassium iodide pills being distributed in Japan “block radioactivity.” However, they work only on the thyroid gland, filling it with “good” iodine so radioactive iodine-131 cannot be absorbed and cause thyroid cancer.  But there are hundreds of other fission products for which there is no magic pill.  These include cesium-137 and strontium-90, two of the fission products discharged after hydrogen explosions rocked four of the Fukushima power plant’s reactor buildings.

The media has given voice to egregious errors.  One example is the lack of understanding about the explosions that blew the roofs off the aforementioned reactor units.  It was reported that zirconium fuel rods were to blame.  Missed was the bigger picture: Zirconium is used in a nuclear plant’s fuel rods because it allows neutrons to pass freely so a chain reaction can be sustained.  But the material is extremely volatile.  It explodes at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  Pound for pound, zirconium has the explosive power of nitroglycerine.

At lesser heat it emits hydrogen, which also can explode.  That is what occurred twice at Fukushima.  There are around 20 tons of zirconium in an average nuclear power plant.  Using zirconium is like building a bridge with firecrackers.

Then there were the reports about three GE nuclear engineers who’d resigned in 1976 because of suspected defects in the GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor, the same type installed at the Fukushima Daiishi plant.  This was in line with the spin that flawed design was the problem,not nuclear power itself.  In fact, the Mark 1’s design was only one factor that prompted GE’s Dale Bridenbaugh, Richard Hubbard and Gregory Minor to leave the nuclear industry.

The main reason is summed up in their statement to Congress’s Joint Committee on Atomic Energy: “We did so [resigned] because we could no longer justify devoting our life energies to the continued development and expansion of nuclear fission power—a system we believe to be so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet.”

Then there were the over-the-top declarations.  “I love nuclear power,”Fox’s Geraldo Rivera declared.  Appearing on The O’Reilly Factor, right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter said that radiation is “good for you.”  Even host Bill O’Reilly was taken aback.  “You have to be responsible,” he cautioned her.

Coulter’s remark is based on a scientific concept known as hormesis, which holds that a moderate amount of a toxin can be beneficial.  Therefore, some nuclear scientists believe that exposure to radioactivity, at least in small doses, exercises the recipient’s immune system.  These scientists, many of whom are employed as health physicists in nuclear laboratories and other facilities, are supposed to protect people.  Hormesis has been dismissed by national and international agencies involved with radiation protection.

Meanwhile, there was the disinformation about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former USSR.  Reporters, commonly using it as a baseline in projecting the potential impact of radioactivity released from the Japanese reactors, have written that only several hundred people died as a result of the meltdown in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Such a low figure ignores the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of Chernobyl: a book published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences titled Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.  After studying health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports—some 5,000 in all—from 1986 to 2004,a team of scientists from Russia and Belarus determined that the accident actually caused the deaths of 985,000 people worldwide.  More, they wrote, will follow.

That’s the real baseline for a major disaster at one nuclear power plant.  Fukushima involves several reactors and a series of spent fuel pools.  The radiation assessment was raised to a level seven—the highest international rating for a nuclear accident, equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.  But the potential toll might be far greater than Chernobyl’s—more than a million dead.

While covering the crisis in Japan, reporters have also been remiss by declaring that “no one died” as a result of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.  That myth was dispelled by the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation by Harvey Wasserman, Norman Solomon, Eleanor Walters and Robert Alvarez (a former U.S.  Department of Energy official).

I did a TV documentary on the impact of the TMI partial meltdown, Three Mile Island Revisited.  Besides addressing the increase of cancer cases and birth defects in the area surrounding the nuclear power plant, it revealed that TMI’s owner had quietly issued payouts, many for $1 million apiece, to settle claims involving residents who’d suffered health impacts or lost family members due to radiation exposure.

Data from the Radiation and Public Health Project, a nonprofit organization, claims that infant mortality near Three Mile Island increased by 47% in the two years after the accident and that cancer-related deaths of children under ten were 30% higher in 2004 than they were in 1979.

On March 11, 2011, CNN.com went even further than declaring “no one died”: It reported that the TMI “incident caused no injuries or significant releases of hazardous material.” Moreover, the media failed to mention that in recent years Japan has become a global giant in the selling of nuclear power plant reactors.  Worldwide, about 80% of them are of GE and Westinghouse manufacture or design.

In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse’s nuclear division.  Meanwhile, Hitachi entered into a partnership with GE to run its nuclear division.  How might this huge stake in selling nuclear reactors influence what Japanese officials have been saying about Fukushima? The disaster was certainly not good for business.

Then there was the media line that “we don’t have a choice but nuclear power.” The Christian Science Monitor asserted that “finding other forms of energy that can provide a stable base load of electricity—other than coal—remains difficult.”

Renewables Are Ready is the title of a 1999 book written by two Union of Concerned Scientists staffers.  Today a host of safe, clean, renewable energy technologies are more than ready.  Combined with energy efficiency, they render nuclear power unnecessary.  Also in 1999, Scientific American—a conservative publication—ran a cover story titled “A Plan for a Sustainable Future.” Its author noted, “Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100% of the world’s energy,eliminating all fossil fuels.”

More recently, in October 2009, the British magazine New Scientist presented a United Nations report declaring that “renewable energy that can already be harnessed economically would supply the world’s electricity needs.”

But the mainstream media have continued to ignore the fact that safe, clean, renewable energy technologies are available to provide our energy needs.  For example, wind power is less costly than the price tag of a nuclear plant, which can range from $12 billion to $15 billion.

A pioneer journalist on nuclear technology is Anna Mayo, who from 1969 to 1989 penned a Village Voice column titled “Geiger Counter.” Japan’s nuclear industry, Mayo recently commented, “is trying desperately to conceal the extent of radiation exposure, and they’ve wheeled out the same, old lies…as usual.” Unfortunately, the media have bought this deadly nuclear deception.

Regarding the impact of the disaster on the United States, Dr. Richard Webb—a nuclear physicist and author of the landmark book Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants—said it will take a year for the Fukushima reactors to cool down.  Yes, a year! And during that time “all kinds of things can happen” involving both the reactors and the spent fuel pools, Dr. Webb added.  He is especially concerned that another severe explosion could release many tons of radioactive poisons.

What has happened already is a clear-cut disaster.  But if there are even worse discharges ahead, a horrific catastrophe is in store.  The jet stream blows in an eastward direction—toward the United States.  Consider the fallout that affected so many Americans during the 1950s and 1960s thanks to atmospheric atomic bomb tests.  At that time, the devices contained 15 to 30 pounds of uranium, and fission (the splitting of atoms) lasted for just a second.

There are 200,000 to 300,000 pounds of uranium in each of Fukushima’s reactors, and nuclear fission has been taking place continuously since the power plant was commissioned in 1971.  A massive amount of lethal, radioactive poisons accumulated.  The math is clear, and we are downwind from Japan.

 
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Karl Grossman is an investigative reporter, board member of BeyondNuclear.org and professor of journalism at the State University of New York’s The College at Old Westbury.  His six books include Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power.  Grossman, the longtime host of the nationally aired TV program Enviro Close-Up, has also written and narrated Three Mile Island Revisited, The Push to Revive Nuclear Power, Chernobyl:A Million Casualties and other documentaries.

from HUSTLER Magazine July 2011

Justice Thomas,sir! You are a failure,pure and simple. Oh, sure, you’ve achieved high office and riches far beyond those of other men, but money and power are not the true measure of a man.  Honesty,integrity and compassion are.  So on that score,sir, you are a total disgrace.

You are a cheat! A sex addict! A liar and a self-hating Negro. You are those things and more.And,with all due respect, we have to wonder about your IQ.But then, you’ve wondered about that too, haven’t you? Nothing came easy for you.You had to really knuckle down to get the grades you got. You disagree, sir? Let us take a trip down memory lane.  Yes, Justice Thomas, this is your life!

You were born in Pin Point,Georgia,an economic backwater without household plumbing, sewer system or paved roads.Your father abandoned you at age two. Your mother struggled to make ends meet, and you frequently went to bed hungry. But fate interceded at age seven when circumstances forced you to move in with your grandfather.  He was the one who taught you the value of hard work and self-reliance.  You owe him for that.

Although you did surprisingly well in high school and college,when you graduated from Yale Law School, your grades were, well, lackluster. This prompted law firms where you sought employment to reject you as an affirmative action beneficiary who had been pushed through the system. How that must have rankled you—even though it was,in fact,true.

In 1975 you read Race and Economics by Thomas Sowell and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. These books eventually formed the framework for your legal philosophy and your subsequent contributions to the Reagan Administration while serving in the U.S.Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and later on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  Yes! You were on your way to the top of your profession. You had proven that self- reliance,determination and a willingness to sell out your fellow man could compensate for a less-than- stellar intellect.

Those were heady days allegedly filled with porn, alcohol and womanizing.  At least that’s what your former girlfriend Lillian McEwen stated in a CNN online article.She also said that after you finally gave up drinking, you became mean and abusive,especially toward your son.  You are still mean and abusive,but now it’s toward working-class Americans.

Other women have come forward with allegations similar to McEwen’s, but none stand out as much as Anita Hill, who almost torpedoed your 1991 Supreme Court nomination.  She claimed you were guilty of sexual harassment,a notion McEwen finds credible based on your porn addiction.  It’s ironic that for all your scholarly speeches and judicial decisions,the words you will always be most famous for are,“There’s a pubic hair on my Coke can.”

You ascended to the Supreme Court despite Ms. Hill’s assertions. Finally, after having used affirmative action to climb your way up the ladder of success,you were in a position to pull it up after you. Let’s look at some of your Supreme Court decisions:

In Adarand Constructors v.Peñaand in Gratzv. Bollinger you struck hammer blows against equal protection and affirmative action laws that were designed to level the playing field in education and employment for minorities.You sure showed those Yalies what you thought of the help they gave you.

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow and Cutter v. Wilkinson you allowed tax-free religious groups to participate politically—in direct conflict with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.  That’s why we now have churches that pooh-pooh evolution and that think Earth is only 6,000 years old influencing what’s taught in our schools.  Nice going.

In Planned Parenthood v.Casey you indicated your clear desire to overturn Roe v. Wade,which gave women the right to have an abortion.  Isn’t this the kind of case from which a Catholic should recuse himself?

Recusalis a word that’s used a lot when your name comes up, Justice Thomas. For example, shouldn’t you have recused yourself from the Citizens United v. FEC decision? Allowing corporations to spend as much money as they want—in effect to buy politicians—clearly benefited your good friends,Charles and David Koch.  After all, you’ve been a paid speaker at their strategy retreats and,based on recently revealed tax returns, they provided you with four days at the exclusive Rancho Las Palmas resort near Palm Springs, California,during one of their powwows.

Not to mince words, the Koch brothers are evil sons of bitches who deny climate change despite the overwhelming evidence. But then, the two billionaires only care about profits from their planet-destroying oil pipelines. So what’s your excuse? Oh, yeah. The paid getaways… and the fact that your wife, Virginia, is the indirect recipient of Koch brothers money.

That brings us to the really big brouhaha in your life: your failure to disclose on your income tax forms—for the last 20 years—Virginia’s earnings from far-right groups that have benefited from your conservative decisions on the Supreme Court.That,sir,is a crime punishable by up to one year in jail and a $50,000 fine. We understand there are numerous other conflicts of interest that are also being looked into.

People are starting to talk,  Justice Thomas.  They are saying you should be impeached, and that brings us back to our previous “self-hating Negro” assertion.  Your disregard for judicial ethics and public opinion go far beyond mere arrogance.  We see it as a subconscious desire to be punished for your ill deeds.  In that regard,sir,we truly hope you succeed. P.S. Should you ever revert to reading porn—if indeed you ever stopped—we are prepared to offer you a 50% discount on a subscription to HUSTLER.

OBAMA PROPOSES KILLING FEDERAL AGENCIES THAT PROVIDE LOW-INTEREST MORTGAGES IN FAVOR OF PRIVATE BANKS.

by Robert Scheer
from HUSTLER Magazine July 2011

The idea that your home is your castle has deep roots in the history of human liberation, and owning your own home, providing an inviolable sanctuary for the family, is a cherished aspect of the American Dream. Your turf, protected by the Constitution from official intrusion, has been key to the notion of a democracy of middleclass stakeholders supported by various government programs going back to the Founders. Not being beholden to the whims of an oppressive landlord, possessing a property deed and buying out the mortgage is a critical enterprise in preserving freedom. That enterprise is now under frontal assault from the Obama Administration.

According to a 31-page policy statement issued in February 2011, the administration is abandoning the government’s time-honored role in helping Americans achieve home ownership by underwriting low-interest mortgages through the government-sponsored agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Now President Barack Obama proposes to turn over the entire mortgage industry to the same private banks that sabotaged the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders by “securitizing” our homesteads into poker chips to be gambled away in the Wall Street casino. Instead of punishing those banks, which forced 50 million people into foreclosure or deeply under water on their mortgages, he wants to reward them.

The proposal was originated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and involves nothing less than a total “winding down” of the nearly 80-year-old federal housing program, setting instead a new goal of a twotiered America in which the masses are content to be mere renters of the American Dream. Such a deal for a country where, as the report concedes, “half of all renters spend more than a third of their income on housing, and a quarter spend more than half.”

This is the same Geithner who during his tenure in the Clinton Treasury Department championed the total deregulation of the then-emerging market in collateralized debt obligations. As a result, people’s home mortgages were sliced and diced into the toxic securities that created what Geithner’s new report calls the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Later, as president of the New York Fed, Geithner cheered on the banks as they went hog-wild, conning folks into buying homes they couldn’t afford and stuffing them into the incomprehensible securities that form the rot at the core of our bankrupt economy.

This is a made-in-the-U.S. nightmare that we inflicted on the world, thanks to an explosion in those toxic securities brought on by the deregulation that most of the Obama economic brain trust supported when they worked for President Bill Clinton and during the ensuing bubble years when they enriched themselves. As the report admits: “The U.S. is…the only high-income country in which securitization plays a major role in housing finance.”

Yet instead of ending that practice, Obama now calls for more of the same: “The administration believes the securitization market should continue to play a key role in housing finance.” Indeed, the plan’s goal of eliminating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will dry up the alternative public funding that has provided a source of mortgage support ever since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched Fannie Mae to check the power of the banks over mortgages. Now Obama proposes to eliminate that check, leaving would-be homeowners to the tender mercy of the banking giants.

Of course Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had morphed into for-profit enterprises, also bear responsibility for the meltdown. Just as with the Wall Street firms, the massive bonuses paid out to these housing agencies’ top executives were contingent on the value of their stock prices, which in turn were fattened by the sale of those same toxic assets. As the Obama report puts it, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s profit-maximizing structure undermined their public mission.” What the administration should have proposed is to return the government-sponsored housing agencies to their original function as nonprofit entities supplementing, rather than aping, the practices of greedy bankers.

What Obama neglected to discuss is the demise of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grand experiment at the hands of Democratic Party hustlers who turned the agencies away from their “original mission” and into their personal piggy banks while getting Democrats in Congress to approve regulations enabling their greed.

The folks around President Obama know this sad tale well because some of them were principal actors in the housing agencies’ betrayal of the public trust. Just take the case of Tom Donilon, whom Obama recently appointed to the highly sensitive position of National Security Advisor. It was Donilon who was the top legal counsel and lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005, a period when the agency went off the tracks in backing Countrywide and other private-sector bandits in their irresponsible ripoff scams.

Donilon, who reportedly received $10 million in the three years leading up to the scandal of 2004—when Fannie Mae was fined $400 million for juggling its books to enhance executive bonuses—will never have any trouble financing a home purchase. Not so the tens of millions of Americans who have lost their homes because of Donilon’s reprehensible actions and the many more in the future who will be denied government support in trying to get a place of their own.

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Before serving 30 years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

Mr. President: I’m sure you realize that for the 2012 Presidential campaign you cannot use the same threadbare rhetoric which helped get you elected in 2008. “Yes, We Can” and “The Audacity of Hope” have lost the power they once held. Young voters, black voters, progressive voters and swing voters are no longer seduced by them. You need something new. So here are a few suggestions: “This Time I Mean It” speaks directly to voter concerns about your willingness to fight for the people. “The Other Guy Is Worse Than Me” will no doubt also have a ring of truth to it. Then there’s “Don’t Blame Me—I Voted for McCain.” Those foregoing slogans probably need some fine-tuning, but here’s one I think is perfect for you: “The Audacity of Compromise.” Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something. You have to. As it stands, you can no longer count on any of the groups that supported your Presidential bid last time around.