Daily Archives: August 4, 2011

08/4/11

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, Guest: Tea Party Like ‘Psychotic’ Drug Addicts, Norway Killer

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read more at The Blaze…

“It reminds us of addiction because addicts are seeking something that they can’t have,” Peele said. “They [Tea Party members] want a state of happiness or nirvana that can’t be achieved except through an artificial substance and reminds us of the Norway situation, when people are thwarted at obtaining something they can’t, have they often strike out and Norway is one kind of example to one kind of reaction to that kind of a frustration.”

“They are adamant about achieving something that’s unachievable, which reminds us of a couple of things. It reminds us of delusion and psychosis,” Peele stated rather self-assuredly.

Sticks and stones asshats. We won’t stop doing the right thing just because you try to denigrate us and put us in our place. We will stop the insane spending and we will reduce the size of this Marxist government. The Tea Party is the American Spring. Your bias, hatred and evil intentions know no limits, do they?

08/4/11

Chris Christie Blasts ‘Crazies’ After Appointing Muslim Judge: The ‘Sharia Law Business Is Just Crap’

Read more at The Blaze…

Scratch off Chris Christie… I already wrote him off because of his pro-global warming stance. The political love-fest with Christie is officially over. Anyone who does not stand against Shariah law is bat-fricking looney tunes.

From Mediaite:

“Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed,” he told a reporter asking about the complaints that he may be inadequate to be a judge because he defended Muslim Americans who were wrongly arrested post-9/11. “He is an extraordinary American who is an outstanding lawyer and played an integral role in the post-September 11th period in building bridges between the Muslim American community in this state and law enforcement,” Gov. Christie argued, adding that he was “disgusted, candidly, by some of the questions he was asked… at the Senate judiciary committee.”

But it was a follow-up question on the fear of Sharia Law that set the governor off. “Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all, it’s crazy!” he cried. “The guy is an American citizen!” He concluded that the “Sharia Law business is just crap… and I’m tried of dealing with the crazies,” adding with disgust and frustration that “it’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.”

08/4/11

Communist Party Amps up Rhetoric: “Prepare for War”

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

The Communist Party USA is amping up its rhetoric as it prepares to confront the “Tea Party” and the GOP in the coming months.

Rick Nagin

Ohio Communist Party leader Rick Nagin sets the tone in today’s Peoples World:

 

The best thing that can be said about the distasteful debt ceiling deal is that it is behind us and hopefully the real challenges and issues facing the American people can now be frankly addressed.

The AFL-CIO leadership, which met with President Obama the day after the agreement was reached, correctly said the deal ignores and undermines the nation’s ability to confront the real problem – America’s job crisis. They blasted it as “a product of extortion by House Republicans,” one that is “even more right-wing than the average Republican.”

The labor leadership recognized that, given the balance of forces in Congress, Obama had no choice but to negotiate. Not to do so would have been politically disastrous, but doing so meant that Republican demands to slash essential programs and weaken Social Security and Medicare were on the table.

While threatening to eliminate nearly 2 million jobs in 2012 (according to the Economic Policy Institute), the deal spared the basic entitlements for the time being. But the battle over these, as well as Democratic demands to increase revenues through taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, will be shifted to November when the fight will resume in the deficit super-committee.

This gives a few months for the president and his allies to rally people and expose the Republican aims, which polls show are highly unpopular. During the negotiations, Obama had no choice but to be diplomatic. The Republicans took the hits for throwing tantrums and walking out while Obama gained in stature and respect.

But now that the unsavory deal is done, the time for diplomacy is over and the time has come to take off the gloves and tell the truth. The Republicans are no ordinary opposition party with whom the Democrats can have amicable and respectful differences. They are racist, anti-labor, anti-democratic extremists, beholden to fascist-minded billionaires. They are hell-bent on wrecking the economic security of working people and turning the government into an open tool for corporate plunder.

Last November, working people suffered a major setback. The right wing was able to play on mass anger and frustration over the slow recovery and blame the Democrats for the crisis caused and sustained by Republican policies. In Ohio, Wisconsin and other states the Democratic base, pounded by right-wing media, did not turn out in sufficient numbers to overcome the frenzied, corporate-funded Republican campaign of bigotry and Big Lies.

The result was a Republican takeover in these states as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives, and an immediate, unprecedented, far-flung attack on civil, democratic and trade union rights.

In Ohio, in just six months Gov. John Kasich outlawed collective bargaining for public employees, slashed funds for education, health care and local government services, enacted a voter suppression law, put key state assets up for sale, restricted reproductive freedom, expanded gun rights and opened state parks to reckless plunder by gas companies.

If the Republicans take over the White House in 2012, it will be Kasich on steroids for the entire country. As Vice President Joe Biden warned the AFL-CIO in March, every effort must be made to “keep the barbarians from the gate.”

It is urgent for President Obama, the Democrats, the labor movement and all progressive allies to rally the troops, expose the danger and prepare for war.

Communist Party rhetoric is not usually this extreme. The fact that they are throwing caution to the wind, tells us they understand the huge stakes in next year’s election cycle.

If the Communist/Dems win in 2012, America’s march towards socialism will be almost impossible to stop.

If the “Tea Party” wins (NOT the GOP),  Americans will have a fighting chance to save their country.

The Communist Party USA understands this.

Do you?

08/4/11

Venezuela to Compensate American Oil Companies for Nationalization?

By: John C.K. Daly of OilPrice.com

If Cuba’s Fidel Castro is America’s favorite Latin American bête noire, then Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez qualifies as Washington’s reigning Prince of Darkness.

In 1960, Fidel Castro nationalized US business interests without compensation, bringing down on impoverished benighted country 51 years of sanctions that continue to the present day.

Similarly, four years ago Chavez completed the nationalization of foreign oil interests, transferring their shares to the state-owned petroleum company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., more commonly referred to by its acronym PDVSA.

The screaming was heard echoing through the boardrooms and canyons of Wall Street.

Now the picture appears to be shifting, as Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters this week, “We’ve never said we wouldn’t pay” the two U.S. multinational corporations Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Phillips, “the only two that didn’t accept our laws and didn’t accept (the terms of a compensation deal for confiscated assets) and took the dispute to the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID.”

As Ramirez is also the president of PDVSA, his comments should not be taken lightly. Ramirez added that the arbitration processes “are moving forward and we have to defend ourselves because those mechanisms are so perverse that if you don’t show up they execute you.”

Venezuela’s oil industry had been under private control until 1974, when Venezuela nationalized it, setting up PDVSA. Venezuela’s oil production is centered in the Orinoco Oil Belt, which analysts believe contains the world’s largest reserves of extra-heavy oil, with an estimated 300 billion recoverable barrels.

In the 1990s PDVSA began a so-called “oil opening,” where it allowed more and more foreign private companies to extract oil, via majority shares in joint ventures and the operating agreements.

In February 2007 Chavez announced a new law-decree to nationalize the last remaining oil production sites that are under foreign company control, to take effect on 1 May, allowing the foreign companies to negotiate the nationalization terms. Under the new regulations, the earlier joint ventures, involving ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Statoil, ConocoPhillips, and BP, were transformed give PDVSA a minimum 60 percent stake. The process completed a government initiative begun in 2005, when the Chavez administration transformed earlier “operating agreements” in Venezuela’s older oil fields into joint ventures with a wide variety of foreign companies. Thirty out of 32 such operating agreements were transformed by the end of 2005 – only two challenged the transition in court, and no guesses as to who the companies were. Most foreign companies accepted the new arrangements, including Chevron, Statoil, Total and BP, but ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refused

Ramirez had not referred to the compensation issue since expressing confidence last November when he averred that Venezuela would emerge victorious in the arbitration proceedings, saying then that the multinational companies’ aspirations were “unreasonable.”

If not “unreasonable,” then certainly “greedy,” as according to media reports, Exxon-Mobil alone is demanding compensation ranging from between $7 and 12 billion.

Ramirez said that Venezuela scored a victory at the Washington-based ICSID in June 2010, when the World Bank tribunal unanimously ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over any dispute that dated back prior to 2006.

When Chavez’s government was sued before the ICSID for its 2007 nationalization policies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips not only demanded compensation for seized assets, but also refunds for higher taxes and royalties paid prior to 2006.

Sure gonna be interesting to watch.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Venezuela-to-Compensate-American-Oil-Companies-for-Nationalization.html

By: John C.K. Daly of OilPrice.com