In the movie "Witness" an Amish child is witness to a shooting death and is spirited away home for his own protection. Later his pacifist elders want to know how the boy could act other wise, after all how can you tell which persons are deserving of such. The boy simply replies that he will see by their deeds who is evil and should be struck.

This simple piece of wisdom strikes his elders dumb and they offer no real answer. And today I have learned of actions so evil, no not just, "oh that's wrong that shouldn't happen." Like say disenfranchising voters I mean EVIL.

Vulture Funds. What you never heard of those? Is it perhaps a result of your corperate news media? Yes. Yes it is.

So lets start with the what: What is a Vulture fund? Mr. Palast, Mr. Greg Palast would you please explain what a Vulture fund is?

GREG PALAST: Yeah, vulture fund is a term that’s used for bond speculators who take the bonds, the cheap debt of the third world, that may sell ten cents on the dollar, because no one expects to ever collect on these debts, they buy up the debts really cheap, and then they use political muscle, bribery or lawsuits to try to squeeze, not only get back the money that they put down -- in the case of Zambia, $3 million by Mr. Goldfinger -- or they'll try to get $40 million. In the case of the number one vulture here in New York City, Paul Singer, he's paid about $10 million and expects to collect $400 million from the Congo

Oh, you don't think that doing a bit of business, even "dirty" business qualifies as EVIL. And you would be absolutely right except that... US aid money in the from of debt relief is involved.

Hey I bet you do know that AIDS is out of control in many parts of Africa, and we the people send aid money to help. I think most would agree that offering charity to the sick and the poor is good work.

Mr. Palast I believe Amy Goodman has a Question for you.

AMY GOODMAN: At the end of 2005, Zambia announced the United States had agreed to cancel debts owed by Zambia worth $280 million. So what’s happened in this past year?

GREG PALAST: OK. The US taxpayer takes a hit. We pay $280 million. Zambia saves, in interest, around $40 million. The problem is, is that you have the vulture go into court in London and then use the court judgment in London to come into the United States and seize the $40 million from the government of Zambia's bank accounts in the United States, so that the money never gets to Zambia or never gets to be used by Zambia to buy medicine--

Well lets see, instead of money that's made available thanks to debt relief going to the sick it instead goes into the pocket of the very wealthy. That is EVIL.

But wait there's more, sadly.

GREG PALAST: Horrendous, because this $40 million for Zambia was specifically earmarked for fighting AIDS, where there's a 20% HIV/AIDS rate among adults in Zambia, and for education. 300,000 school kids are not going to be able to go to school because of this, unless Bush steps in. What's horrendous is the kind of con that's going on. You have a president of the United States standing up in front of Congress, saying give us money, give us billions to write off, in the State of the Union. He puts it in the budget, without anyone saying that, in fact, it's not getting to Africa, it's going to his biggest donors, who are short-stopping it by interjecting themselves and buying up the right to collect and then using the US courts and the British courts. Bush can put a stop to it tomorrow morning. The problem is, is that he's not been responding.

What?! how can this be? Why on earth would Dubya not want to put a stop this outright theft! Remember he's a compassionate conservative and a good christian man, right, RIGHT! Perhaps there is nothing Dubya can do, after all this is international business perhaps he has no good controls. Naa, that's just crazy talk, Mr. Palast would you do the honors and explain?

GREG PALAST: Under US law, the President of the United States has the absolute power to stop any vulture fund from collecting money from a poor nation, under the US Constitution. It’s called the power of comity. The African nations are pleading with George Bush to stop his big donors from collecting. Now, what's happening is, is that in the State of the Union, George Bush said we have to give debt relief to the poorest nations. The US taxpayers are putting up more than a billion dollars to write off the debts of the African nations, but what Bush isn't saying is that he is then allowing that money to be captured by his biggest donors, like Paul Singer, so that the money for debt relief is not going to the African nations, where they're desperately in need for, you know, funding for medicine for AIDS, for education, which is what it's earmarked for. These guys are actually going into US courts and saying, “Give us the money.” Now, George Bush, again, has the absolute power, and the judges are waiting for him to write a note. They're saying, “George Bush can ask us to dismiss this case in one minute, but we need something in writing from the White House.”

Emphasis mine, Evil theirs. You are now Witness to their actions but for you there is nowhere to flee to for safety. Not the courts, not the congress and of course not 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. Because just like in the movie "Witness" the crime was committed by the very people we trust to protect us from these very crimes.

End of line-The MCP wept.

"Truth is a 3 edged sword"- Kosh, "We are forced to swollow"-me

John Dean would rename his book Worse Than Watergate Way, Way Worse Than Watergate if he could he said recently on MSNBC's Countdown.

Today he spoke with Randi Rhodes regarding the recent firing of eight United States attorneys. And what did he have to add to this latest assault on our nation's checks, balances and over sight? That the newly appointed attorneys were placed there to "pad their resumes" so that they could then more easily be accepted for appointment to the bench in federal court!

If this is true this is just stunning! This administration has lied us into a war/failed occupation, they've made us in to a debtor nation like none other they deny our civil rights right down to the right of habeas corpus and now there not just packing the courts with their cronies but with their toadies!

And all that the network news reports is "and the band played on" as the Titanic sank unnoticed. How did we get here and more importantly how do we get this country and our selves back to where we were when all anybody needed to know about politics involved a blowjob?

"END OF LINE"-screamed the MCP.

The one man W. failed to give a nickname

I. "Scooter" Libby guilty.

In other left wing reality media:

Today The goddess, aka Randi Rhodes reads Congressional PDF and makes it sound riveting! But I'm just going to crib the part where the defective reveals the crime to all! Read the full .pdf here

In Sept. '04 the army determined that the in-house federal workforce at Walter Reed could perform support services at Walter Reed at a lower cost then the bid received from IAP worldwide Services. IAP protested this determination. As a result of the protest the army Audit Agency was directed to reevaluate the bid from the federal employees. It has been reported that the Army Audit Agency with drew its certification of the employee bid and unilaterally raised the bid by $7 million, thereby making the employee bid higher than the contractor bid. The Army then reversed its determination and resolved the A-76 process in favor of IAP.

Neat huh? Not only did this goniff ruin the crucial medical care our wounded troops required but he also screwed the good working people who had been and would have continued to do this, out of the very jobs that they would have provided for less tax dollars!

Should we be surprised at this level of injustice, cronyism, waste and fraud or should we be so used to the antics of the Bush crime family that we just take this in stride?

Hey speaking to conserve-abots who used to like bandying about the lie that Valie Plame's relationship with the CIA wasn't secret well turns out... Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald said:

...that despite reports in conservative media and Web site to the contrary, he was "100%" certain that Valerie Plame was in a "classified" position with the CIA when her name was leaked, although this was not an issue in the trial. He repeated that this was even in the original indictment. "That is just a fact," he declared.

Scooter lies, At Walter Reed our soldiers suffer and may die but all that consumes American media is who on American Idol gets naked for the "interwbes", sigh.

My hour is over, I give you the next 23, use them not for evil but only for good!

End of line. -The MCP.

SNAFU, it's all new again

Today we start off with The Sam Seder Show. Celebrity news is not news when it's not on E! But its funny that in the context of Sam's show talking about Rudy Giuliani is a lot like celebrity gossip.

So what was up with "America's Mayor"? It seems he's polling really well and closing the gap between himself and Jon "I'll say anything to make you love me Evangelicals" McCain.

Of course all the brown nosing up to the far right wing megachurchers is rough when your married to your third wife who was your former mistress while you lived in Gracie mansion while you were just New York City's perhaps most unpopular mayor.

Seeing as how your wife (#2, the first wife was his second cousin but who's counting) was still living in Gracie Mansion at the time and so were your children, Awkward!

I guess being unknown to the rest of the country outside of NYC is a real plus, Hizzoner you do know that these details are going to be used to smear you just as soon as the mud slinging phase of the primaries gets underway?

Oh hey fun fact (except for all the dead fire men that resulted, so actually it's a tragic fact) we came to know Giuliani as "America's Mayor" as we watched him stride about the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan on that terrible day the Twin Towers were raised to the ground in that murderous attack.

Now a natural question (unless you work for Viacom/CBS, Disney, Time Warner, News Corp. and NBC/GE) is shouldn't he have been too busy in a city wide command center coordinating the cities first responders and emergency resources. Sadly it turns out his command center was most unfortunately placed on the 23rd floor of Tower 7 of the World Trade Center.

It was placed there personally by him, against the advice of every one. If he had placed it in Brooklyn as he had been advised... He would have had a better place to be then the street where we all watched him because "too stupid to eat a pretzel" was AWOL hiding out at among other things a southern air base.

So don't expect this "America's Mayor" legend to lend its nonsensical myth to Rudy for overly long.

Next we bring in noted blogger Bill Scher , to discuss the state of The Conservative Movement: Stuck On Step 1. This discussion started with the most recent piece of disturbingly vile comedy that goes by the acronym of CPAC.

What happens when a bunch of bigoted bullies bellies up to the teat of conservo celebrity? Well the second thing is the apology that comes later when they are forced to own-up to just what they said openly on camera. But enough about Mann Coulter calling John Edwards a "Faggot", lets face it no man is as manly as she is so I think she has a case... moving on to substance here I will just let Mr. Scher tell it like it was (at CPAC, now 99% more reality free).

As I wrote here just before CPAC, the conservative "secular problem" is their severe lack of competitiveness with the 40%-43% of voters who don't regularly attend church.

Because of that problem, according to the exit poll data, conservatives no longer control Congress. In turn I concluded, "conservatives have to find a way to speak to the substantive concerns of secular voters: low wages, poor health care coverage, energy dependence, destabilizing foreign policy and the imposition of religious beliefs on others."

Yet the dominant diagnosis at CPAC was that the Republican Party just wasn't conservative enough.

Not enough slashing of our government. Not enough bashing of immigrants. Not enough promotion of heterosexuality. Not enough action to eliminate Britney Spears from American pop culture.

I'm afraid that last line was not a joke. I heard three different speakers point to singer's troubles as some sort of evidence of America's societal collapse.

Ok, um...well then trying to appeal to secular voters with these policies is a slam dunk, just like WMD. Tell me MR. Scher could any one at CPAC have managed to come up with anything even more offensive and insane? Yes?! DO TELL... I mean Newt Gingrich please continue.

failure of citizenship

...and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

So now it's suddenly so clear but of course blame the victims brilliant. Compassionate Conservative yeah I guess we can dispense with that bull shit now, huh?

Wow, full day's worth of liberal slant? No. Really? Really.

Some people call it an escalation some call it a surge, but I call it the Pap Attack! Please note this is an .mp3 audio file.

But wait there's more!

Do I even need to mention Walter Reed out patient building 18? You've heard about the black mold, rats, cockroaches, leaks and holes in the bathroom ceiling. But did you know about IAP World Services?

Funny story there, if it weren't for all the suffering wounded. It seems one Al Neffgen got himself a no bid contract for himself because I guess having done all the Ice delivery to New Orleans where millions of dollars worth of ice never got off the trucks which ended up costing even more to store it. But hey that's history lets find out what old Al is doing now that he's on his own. Armytimes.com

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer Posted : Saturday Mar 3, 2007 9:31:09

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The letter said Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

I've used up my hour, still to come, tomorrow or so I've come to expect, but with news like this I can only hope.

"End of Line."-The MCP.

The liberal media. I listen, watch and surf it up more than average, way more than average indeed. But first let me define what my interpretation of the liberal media is, by writing what it isn't, it isn't the corporately owned media, though perhaps with some (one actually) exceptions.

And that's just about everything on TV broadcast, cable and print. This brings me to this blog's title. I confess to being one of those strange creatures that listened to all fifteen hours a week of the now terminated "The Al Franken Show" on Air America. Not to mention listening to some or all of the other fine shows on that "content provider".

And that is part of my mission for this bit of text on the "interwebs" often I would listen to one host speak about a subject that another host had covered thoroughly and in depth, earlier in the broadcast day and now another host going on about the very same subject but being largely at sea compared to the earlier show.

So it was obvious the hosts didn't listen to one another nor communicate in another way. Indeed they were not even briefed from any given talking points like the conservabot channels.

I thought you know one of their staffers should listen in to the other shows and write a summery for each host so they could have a coherent and informed message.

But of course they are liberals, organization is too much to be asked for. And so here I am, I'm going to start blogging about what I hear and read in the reality based world of the left so that maybe we can have our pointed talks with out talking points.