DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet Thursday, May 1, 2008

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be “suicided” on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago - comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.

“If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized,” she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, “Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me,” said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.

During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.

Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.

“We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, “I’m hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level.”

“No I’m not planning to commit suicide,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance in July, “I’m planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government,” she said.

“Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young said,” according to an AP report.

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

Click here to listen to the entirety of the last interview with Palfrey.

UPDATE: In an almost uncanny development, as soon as this article started to go viral on the Internet, Time Magazine released a story claiming that Palfrey told author Dan Moldea that she would rather commit suicide than go to jail. What a funny coincidence!

RELATED: Palfrey Considered Call Girl’s “Suicide” Possible Murder

FLASHBACK: D.C. Madame: “Big Names” May Be On Client List

Developing…

Political cartoon: G. W. Bush’s Iraq Legacy by Mike Peters

Telecom immunity: where does your Rep stand?

Where does your representative stand?

For more than five years, AT&T and other telephone companies broke the law and violated their customers’ privacy rights by sending billions of private domestic internet and telephone communications and records to the National Security Agency.

The Bush administration has been lobbying Congress to let the phone companies off the hook. But recently, the House of Representatives stood strong and passed a bill that would hold them accountable.

Enter your zipcode at StopTheSpying.org to find out how your House representative voted on the recent bill denying the telecom industry immunity for their criminal involvement in spying on the American people.

See also:

• EFF: The Case Against Retroactive Amnesty for Telecoms
• Wikipedia: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
• American Civil Liberties Union: FISA
• Wikipedia: Legal challenges to NSA warrantless searches in the United States

New video of Boston Dynamics BigDog robot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dog

Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage – New York Times

Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage – New York Times
March 19, 2008
Editorial

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.

It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.

Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man “who helped introduce me to my Christian faith,” and said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”

Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright’s radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright’s comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but “rightly offend white and black alike” and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.”

Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.

He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Transcript & Video: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race - New York Times

Reporting: Criticizing Pastor, Obama Assesses Race in America – New York Times, Obama Urges U.S. to Grapple With Race Issue – New York Times

What Obama Said, By The Editors – Two views from guest contributors on Senator Barack Obama’s “Race in America” speech. – New York Times

Examining the Origins of America’s ‘Founding Faith’

Highly recommended. Click the first link to listen to the 39 minute interview and to read an excerpt from Steven Waldman’s book:

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2008 · Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America’s religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.

Waldman is the co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a website devoted to spirituality and faith issues. In tandem with his book, Beliefnet has opened an online archive of historical documents related to the separation of church and state, and religious freedom in America.

Making analog televisions feel useful

I received my digital TV converter box gov’t coupons over the weekend. In case you’ve not yet seen or heard any of the commercials, or flipped through the newspaper to find a advertisement for this program, there is a looming deadline for analog television. In February of 2009, all broadcast signals in the USA will switch over to digital and television sets that can receive only analog broadcasts will display only dancing salt and pepper from that moment forward.

All TVs since 2005 have been fitted with digital as well as analog tuners. (Televisions that don’t have tuners included in their manufacture are just called “monitors.” You’d be hard-pressed to buy one of these on accident.) So if your TV is less than 3 years old, you’re in the clear. If it’s not, you’ll need a converter box for it to pull in even your local broadcast channels – such as PBS – over the air.

The FCC has mandated that we all be sufficiently notified and that there be coupons available for citizens to use toward lessening the financial hardship of the switch. Each of us is allowed up to two coupons. You’ll need a converter for every TV you use after February 2009 that is analog-only. The official website to request these coupons is DTV2009.gov. There is additional information and tools at this website, including a tool for locating where to buy a converter, but it’s likely that any retailer who sells televisions will have converters available.

NOTE: Digital TV is not the same as HDTV (High Definition TV). Normal Digital TV converter boxes will not enable you to watch over-the-air HDTV programming. You have to buy a converter capable of HDTV as well as Standard Definition DTV to see this programming. Read this page at DTVFacts.com to learn more.

DTVFacts.com aims to better educate consumers and does an excellent job of it.

ConsumerReports.org has a terrific website dedicated to the transition.

From ElectronicHouse.com: “A new report by the consumer advocacy group MassPirg (Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group), finds many retailers are misleading consumers about the upcoming analog-to-digital television transition.”

Wikipedia’s page on the transition is available here.

DTVAnswers.com is another informational site, published by the National Association of Broadcasters.

If you have any specific problems or would like to learn more about individual converter boxes or other hardware, I highly recommend searching or posting a new message to the Audio Video Science Forum.

Newegg.com has converter boxes available in their “Set-top box” category, but I’m not sure if they can accept the coupon. I’ll provide an update when I find out.

Prison Nation - New York Times

Prison Nation - New York TimesMarch 10, 2008

Editorial

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

By David Michael Green, AlterNet. Posted March 7, 2008.

…

It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in the months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic primaries and caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in the popular vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear that Clinton’s got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or perhaps more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday.

…

Anyhow, let’s say we end the primary season about where we are now, with Obama about 100 delegates up, and having won more votes and more states than Clinton, but with neither candidate over the magic nomination-clinching line. It would be fairly outrageous for the Clintons to seize the brass ring at that point, but they will not care in the slightest what the ramifications of their actions might be for the party or the country. The Clintons will do anything - and I mean anything - to get the presidency. This is a sickness that infects the hearts and minds of some people much more than others. Because of their own needs, most prominently a very deep-seated personal insecurity, they simply need the validation of being president, and they go after it like a heat-seeking missile headed toward a power plant.

…

Maybe it goes to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people in black robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in her favor. Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and collectively they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow technical (and very Pyrrhic) victory.

If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that.

It would be the morally proper thing to do, and it just might even be successful, especially in the longer term.

If this seems an improbable quest, remember that Obama’s support is quite passionate - he’s not just your standard-issue marginal political preference for, say, Joe Biden over Chris Dodd. Nor would this be some personal (and absurd) vanity project, like Ross Perot’s. His supporters would be outraged at the stealing of the nomination from its rightful owner, and they’re a motivated bunch. Black voters would feel particularly slighted, and would be likely to follow Obama elsewhere. That alone would be enough to finish off the already badly-damaged Clinton candidacy in the general election. Given this moral high ground, too, I don’t think Obama would be perceived as the Ralph Nader who gave the election to McCain. Perhaps, because of access restrictions, he wouldn’t even be able to get on the ballot in many places, except as a write-in.

In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he can’t win in 2008, the country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills. There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way.

…

Unfortunately - really, very unfortunately - it’s an almost impossible trick to pull off given the structure of the American political system, and I have joined lots of other smarter people counseling against the effort, suggesting an attempt at hijacking the Democratic Party instead. Not for nothing was the last new major party born in America 150 years ago. It’s not an accident that for about three-fourths of the country’s history it’s been Republicans or Democrats. Period.

…

(Read the whole thing here: http://www.alternet.org/election08/78973/?page=1)

Mardi Gras: Made in China

Plot synopsis via AllMovie.com:

One of the better known traditions of the annual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, LA is the beads — most folks wear lots of cheap plastic beads while they wander the city’s streets in search of fun, and men hoping that women will flash their breasts usually toss ladies their beads in what they hope will be considered a fair exchange. However, while in New Orleans, those beads symbolize a wild party and low-level exhibitionism, on the other side of the world they mean something else. In Fuzhou, China, a man named Roger Wong owns a factory that produces the majority of the beads tossed to strangers during Mardi Gras, and to his employees, the beads mean work days of 14 to 20 hours, for which they are paid less than ten cents an hour. Most of the workers in Wong’s plant are young women, whom he says are less likely to cause trouble or make demands than their male equivalent. The workers live in a dormitory where they can be fined one month’s wages if a member of the opposite sex is found in their room. And most are struggling to support themselves and their families on wages that are low even by the standards of a Chinese sweatshop. Mardi Gras: Made in China is a documentary which explores the dramatic contrast between the conditions under which Mardi Gras beads are made and what happens with them once they arrive in the United States; both American revelers and Chinese workers are given a perspective on how the other half lives, and what can be done to make their circumstances more equitable.

Mardi Gras: Made in China official website

IMDB

RottenTomatoes.com