TPM: Was C-Span Caller A Prankster -- And Has He Done It Before?

[mod mom]

Was C-Span Caller A Prankster -- And Has He Done It Before?
Eric Kleefeld | December 23, 2009, 4:21PM

Yesterday, the blogosphere was abuzz with a caller to C-Span who was quite alarmed while speaking to Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), wondering if his prayers to strike Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd dead had instead hurt Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, who'd missed a morning procedural vote on Health Care Reform. We've found some evidence that this could have been a prank. And even if the caller is on the level, it might not the first time he's said some pretty weird stuff on a C-Span call-in.

Back in April, a man with a very similar voice, and also from Georgia, called in and asked David Brooks if he, as a sophisticated New Yorker, would help to bring down the black man in the White House. Brooks was laughing in disbelief at what he was hearing.

Both calls had a certain prankish, over-the-top quality to them. The caller to Brooks said he was at the Jekyll Island Club -- a very high-class location in Georgia -- but sounded more like a caricature of an unsophisticated, racist Southerner. The caller to Barrasso referred to his fellow conservative activists as a "tea bag group," a term that many genuine Tea Partiers regard as an offensive epithet. Both callers got worked up emotionally -- energy and ambition in the Brooks caller's case, and urgency and panic from the Barrasso caller.

Are they the same man? Were they serious calls or pranks -- and with the current state of right-wing activism, how can you tell the difference? We here at TPM report, and you folks...well, we wouldn't want to violate any trademarks. But listen to both and tell us what you think.

-snip
VIDEO @ LINK:

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/was-c-span-caller-a-prankster----and-has-he-done-it-before.php?ref=fpb

ONE COMMENT SUGGESTS THE REASON JEKYLL ISLAND CLUB WAS USED IN THE APRIL CALL WAS DUE TO THIS CONSPIRACY:



Griffin's book investigates debt, inflation and the 1910 meeting at the Jekyll Island Club where seven men, representing nearly 25 percent of the world's wealth, met to set up the banking cartel now known as the Federal Reserve System. It came about largely in response to the Panic of 1907 and J. P. Morgan, although not attending in person, was one of the main organizers. (JP Morgan's proposed taxpayer-assisted takeover of a bankrupt Bear Stearns nearly 100 years later might be astonishing to some—not at all to Mr. Griffin). In response to a hypothetical question “What is the Federal Reserve System?” the author claims “It is not federal and there are no reserves... furthermore, the Federal Reserve Banks are not even banks”.

The banking cartel, according to Griffin, was alarmed by the “new trend in industry to finance future growth out of profits rather than borrowed capital” and the way to reverse the trend “was to intervene in the free market and... favor debt over thrift. To accomplish this, the money supply simply had to be disconnected from gold and made more plentiful or, as they described it, more elastic”.

From a banker's perspective savings and checking accounts are liabilities and all forms of business and consumer debt count as assets, so lending institutions want people and businesses in debt forever. In plain language, if you live within your means and pay your credit card bills in full every month, you're a financial terrorist. In Griffin's words:

It is important to remember that banks do not really want to have their loans repaid... they make a profit from interest on the loan... (and) if a loan is paid off, the bank merely has to find another borrower, and that can be an expensive nuisance. It is much better to have the existing borrower pay only the interest and never make payments on the loan itself. That process is called rolling over the debt (and) one of the reasons banks prefer to lend to governments is that they do not expect these loans ever to be repaid.


In order for this to work the banking system had to completely cut the umbilicus tying the country to a gold or precious metal backed currency. When President Nixon made the final break in 1971 the road was clear for fiat currency and arcane bookkeeping methods that allowed the Fed to create money out of nothing while blowing a lot of smoke, hoping no one would catch on. Actually, some people are beginning to.

http://www.booksourcemagazine.com/showstory.php?sid=archive/e0805

I THINK SOMEONE'S BEEN PUNKED! :rofl: