Mike's Blog Roundup
By Mike Finnigan Saturday Nov 01, 2008 7:00amOpen Left: Court says Colorado's Secretary of State is violating Federal law with voter purges
Les Enragés: This whole story should give you the right to call BULL-SH*T!! to any Republican who ever opens their pie-hole and lets the words 'free market' emit from it, in perpetuity.
Foolocracy: Utah's polygamous groups release a 'Voter's Guide'
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: David Broder is more hacktacular than usual
Blue Gal: One of the many reasons I left Alabama
Bob Geiger: The Saturday Cartoons
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This prediction... “Kind Of Says It All...”
Why is it every year the day after Halloween the Dallas Morning Nudes run articles about Dia de los Muertos, with the insistance that the latter has nothing to do with the former?
They're both about the dead; they're both about the Roman Catholic holidays All Saints Day and All Soul's Day which fall on November 1st and 2nd respectively. It's just the Celts like other groups observe holidays starting with the evening before the actual date. Both have been largely appropriated by merchants, the only key difference is Hollywood has had a large stamp on Halloween, with Trick-or-Treaters dressed as the current monster du jour of the silver screen.
Les Enragés: This whole story should give you the right to call BULL-SH*T!! to any Republican who ever opens their pie-hole and lets the words 'free market' emit from it, in perpetuity.
Here is Bill Moyer with Kevin Phillips.
Here is first Nader and then at 01.26, Chomsky from 1996, "Capitalism in the Real World".
Highly recommended. It is a controlled market for our Fat Cats that control what we would like think of as 'Our' Government and a free market for everyone else.
The Republicans went to hell ages ago but the Democrats also have no credibility with me, they are both bought and paid for by Wall Street.
Kevin Phillips would make a great Treasury Sec.
Thanks, Alice X for the link. Watched all 3 parts of Kevin with Moyers. The next 20 yrs. are going to be rough.
The link to Kevin Phillips is quite good, the three-parter is well worth the time spent watching it. It makes you want to clone Bill Moyers, doesn't it?
Under related video is this lecture from Phillips, American Theocracy: Radical Religion Oil and Borrowed Money - almost an hour long, it is depressingly sad, but true. And yes, the next 20 yrs. are going to be VERY rough.
a couple years ago i had the opportunity to go to alabama. my cousin in NYC is a fashion exec. she invited me to go down to nashville then drive into northwest area of alabama to the town of florence
alabama(muscle shoals).she was going to interview a few fashion designers. actually florence was pretty cool. a college town university of northern alabama. one of the artist we were to visit had a studio outside of florence. well during our drive i could NOT believe all the churches we passed. every corner and several little red brick some tiny. i've been all over. i've never seen anything like it. these churches were practically on top of each other. so religion and going to church is HUGE down their.it's RED down their. florence itself was kind of a cool town. i may go back.
Why Else?
But seriously folks, If you only knew how the World at Large looks at the religiosity of America, America looks like it is full of morons. We see people come even to here in Thailand and standing on corners with bible in hand and screaming out about sinners etc. Nobody listens to them and people here are respectful by nature, but I have to tell you it seems as if America is sending it's loonies out into the world to tell everyone they are damned. It seems especially strange here because the people (Buddhist) are more philosophical than religious.
Believe me, if they took away the TAX EXEMPT Status of the church in America most of that would go away.
It would not surprise me to see this on the Daily Show, fricken hilarious!
CNN Video
Thanks for the link to Les Enragés Mike but my article is based on the work of Ellen Hodgson Brown, JD, whom I must acknowledge.
Her article I relied on heavily:
THE NOT-SO-INVISIBLE HAND:
HOW THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM
KILLED THE FREE MARKET
Her homepage: Web of Debt
Her blog: Web of Debt Blog
This is by no means a case where the student has surpassed the master.
Here:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2008/11/fu...
…is a hand stuffing cash into a politician's envelope.
In a free market, wouldn't there be no patents or copyrights or DMCA etc? If company A produces something, then its quality goes down or becomes dangerous, I could then go start company B that makes an identical product but with higher quality etc and I would gain the consumers trust and start making more money. Company A would then have to step up their game or perish, if they step up the increased competition causes prices to go down. This is all well and good except in the real world you need capital and time to do that, then you have to deal with patents and other non-competitive bs. Also if company A is large enough, they can prolly litigate you into oblivion. Also consumers have a tendency to show brand loyalty and are not always perfectly informed.
The fact is, the closest thing we have to a real free market is Linux and open source software. I can download a Linux distribution, change a few icons, add some software, then sell my version in the same afternoon if I wanted to as long as I allow others to do the same with my version. In case no one has noticed, it is the free marketeers that are trying to destroy that model see the Microsoft/SCO (I put the slash as SCO's Darrell McBride was an MS flunky) vs Linux trials that occurred not that long ago for evidence. Let's look at Disney as well, they sure do love using public domain stories but don't like to contribute to the public domain and they'll sue you into oblivion if you use their "stories".
Anyone see the hypocrisy yet?
I've spent the last hour reading that site and many of it's links. It verifies that my brain has been telling me.
As I watch the Canuck buck falls against the greenback I've done a lot of head scratching? What occured to me was the "tech bubble" (just as a comparison) where nothing of value was produced or any real money generated. Seems to be a pretty fair overview of the US finacial system as a whole now.
Another point of view might be, the USA is fucking broke and living on borrowed time!
Who cooks with thyme anymore?
As it happens you've hit the nail right on the head. The main thing that made me start looking at market manipulations is that I was sure that the Canadian dollar should have been going up WRT the $USD especially after the US borrowed nearly a trillion to finance the so-called 'bailout' of Wall Street. It turned out that there was manipulation going on, and the central banks of Europe, Japan and Canada were involved.
As to the tech and housing bubbles, this is what you expect from crony capitalism, where there has been a total lack of either regulation or transparency. It's a high stakes Ponzi scheme.
Thanks for posting this BLUe Gal. All readers should go and watch the short video she posted. It speaks volumes about what the country faces now, and would face even more gravely should mccain/palin win (or steal) the election next Tuesday.
ALL MUST VOTE FOR THE OBAMA/BIDEN TICKET ON NOVEMBER 4 - THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY DEPENDS ON YOUR VOTE.
xxx
Commodity Futures Modernization Act 2000
Question the legality of this Act in regard to the States Laws and Sovereignty
Specifically page 262-
“This title shall supersede and preempt the application of any State of local law that prohibits or regulates gaming or the operation of bucket shops (other than antifraud provisions of general applicability)”
Could a legal case be made regarding the portion of this Act that it could be overturned retroactively as illegal regarding the infringement of State’s rights and any of the gains questioned in turn regarding persons/corporations may of received during the Act’s inception 2000 to the present day?
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