Mike's Blog Roundup
By Mike Finnigan Saturday Nov 15, 2008 8:00amThe Big Picture: 110 banks have asked for $220 billion under the bailout plan. Why? The banks aren't loaning out money which was what the 'Bailout' was supposed to accomplish. The American people are getting shafted while some of those who got us into this mess are doing just fine. Meanwhile, a noxious liar is given space in Bloomberg to assure us that the markets are perfect, and that the crisis is the fault of the liberal media... and Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae, because they lend money to black people.
TVNews Lies: New Blackwater scandal: Guns, silencers, and dog food
The Fifth Columnist: Republican woes and the end of ideology.
Southern Poverty Law Center: A $2.5 million verdict against the Imperial Klans of America
Feministe: The best source of patriotism since Fox News
Bob Geiger: The Saturday Cartoons...and speaking of cartoons...








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As each day brings us closer to 60 Senate seats and the end of Chimpy's corporate fascist nightmare, I find myself feeling more relaxed and less cynical.
The country is in worse shape than it was on November 4th, but unlike the poor folks in New Orleans, I have a feeling the good guys are about to arrive and TRY to help.
Was I supposed ot say first or frist?
to their effective 'minority' veto.
And even if the magical 60th seat falls to the Dims, there are enough Bluedog/Bushdog/DINOs to block any seriously reformative efforts...
The Klan will appeal, of course, all the way to the SCOTUS - where Scalia will defend the Klan as "just a buncha kids tryna have some fun" or some crap.
There oughta be an open season on white jerks who wear sheets. No bag limit.
There has to be a way to stop this 'lifetime job' for SCOTUS. How about each 4 yrs, a 'keep or fire' for all of them voted by the whole country.
First of all, these idiots are defending themselves. Second, this is a civil action that’s being heard in a Commonwealth of Kentucky Circuit Court, not a Federal court; and as we all know SCOTUS only hears federal cases. Given my first point, do you really think that these bozos have the skills and resources necessary to elevate this case to the federal level? The chances that they will ever get their case reviewed in the Commonwealth’s (State’s) appeals court are minimal, at best. The chances that they can work their way through all the levels of the state system then through all the levels of the federal court system are non existent. Edwards and the IKA are going to pay up just like Richard Butler and the Aryan Nations did in the late nineties. History is a good teacher; check it out some time.
Oh, and for the commenter that thinks that we should vote for our Supreme Court Justices, do you really want SCOTUS making their rulings based on popular opinion so they can get reelected? The reason the founders wanted them appointed for life is so they would not hold allegiance to anyone and would not have to worry about losing their job if they made an unpopular decision. If you want better justices, elect better presidents – oh that’s right, we just did.
Wish I could remember where I heard it but basically why can't the auto industry get the loans they need from the banks, who we've given all this money for the express purpose of making these kind of loans available to save the economy?
They're relying on the fact that the clusterfucks left behind by the Busheviks, in tandem with the usual bad faith of the GOP in Congress and the CorpoRat SCUM (SoCalledUnbiasedMedia), will conspire--will coalesce--to prevent the Dims and Mr Obama from accomplishing anything of substance in the four years allotted to them. Upon the complete and utter failure of the Dims to rectify, or prevent the rest of the coming financial implosion, the Pukes expect to be re-ensconces almost by acclamation, in 2012...
blaming the liberal media for the financial mess is totally ridiculous. freddie/fannie are way down the line when it comes to fault. although there is plenty of blame to go around,i blame wall street. they were behind/hired the financial engineers to design financial computer models to make money. essentially wall street was gambling "side bets". two big problems among many are credit default swaps and the rating agencies. the insurance if you will to hedge these bets couldn't be paid as we found out with AIG.
the rating agencies added pieces of questionable mortgages to investment bundles and getting a AAA+ rating WHY? the fees are high.
the bottom line wall street at times attempts to spread the blame. they knew they were writing questionable mortgages. they did NOT care. some writers were pressured to write these/approve these loans. WHY? because they immediately they sold them. they wanted as many mortgages written as possible. this was about some envy and a lot of greed. risk became so CHEAP for these gamblers they couldn't stop. they became over leveraged now were all paying.trying to blame the liberal media is total
propaganda for people NOT familiar with TRUE story.
Republican economists are like Christian Scientist parents who are willing to let their children die rather than allow an operation. Ideology trumps lives.
U.S. fatalities:
Iraq 4199
Afghanistan 627 (2008 being the highest)
30,794 Wounded.
to smuggle guns inside of large Dog-Food sacks from the new show "Sons of Anarchy"? Seems they were smuggling their weapons in false-bottomed oil drums.
Just Askin'
C&L (or at least some of its posters) was all for teh baylout. What's going on now? Oh, not what you were promised. It never is. Why the hell do some people think they are so smart when they are truly childlike in their naivete?
When will certain people wake the f up? You can't trust the corporate run government to do anything FOR you. It just does things TO you. The less it does, the better. Whenever they promise something will help you, you had better oppose it because it will most certainly not help you, almost always end up making things worse, and 100% of the time cost you money that you don't have.
Yes, by all means, let's just give up and do nothing, because the BUSH goverment is corrupt and incompetent. Let anarchy rule, let the economy collapse, let the poor starve, while the rich who created the problem retire to mansions filled with gold (literally).
The problem isn't that government doesn't work, it's that redneck idiots and greedy wannabee-millionaires have brought us the wrong government.
Giving up on a government that WE control is for cowards. WE CAN bring accountability, but it takes effort, something people who rely on worn-out (false) right-wing truisms can't seem to understand.
Believe Robert Reich's blog says when big companie get into trouble they generally file bankruptcy (chapter 11 or 13, not sure which). This protects them from creditors while the company regroups. Any losses are sustained by the shareholders and management. Instead, we get to 'bail out' these jerks and it is the taxpayers who are left holding the bag. Since the problem can be traced back to GREED I see no reason why my taxes should pay for it.
It seems that we have in our wisdom used our unprecedented post war influence and prosperity to create and expand our now global economy on the foundation of a consumerism that is fully dependent upon an ever expanding population of those drawn into the industrialized complex to squander increasing amounts of cash on a boat load of useless crap. In a nutshell, that is the operative definition of Market Economy. It obviously also includes your humble home, your basic or your outlandish car, and a refrigerator. And with those come good and bad loans and credit cards. This, anything but free, Market Economy has become America’s current heart and soul. So much so, that when there is a blip in that Market, our government sends out what they call tax rebate checks of a few hundred dollars each to those who are more likely to do just that, spend, rather than increase support to the poorest among us who might use extra food stamps and/or a few more weeks of unemployment compensation to buy the barest essentials.
When that doesn’t work beyond a tick in the tape, a full scale bailout for the now impoverished wealthy and their shares in the Market’s super financial corporations, which now sets the price of the formerly referred to as “Free” Market Economy to be a “toxic and illiquid 750 billion dollar” Market Economy which is indebted to those who covered their assets with a derivative multiplicity whose definition escapes even the nation’s financial czars who invented them and then proceeded to lend what basically amounted to good-ol’-boy cigar smoke with impunity to one another on a wink and a nod to the derivative assured tune of 531 trillion dollars, until ultimately none of the world trade financial giants would extend one day of credit even to each other for the internal distrust of insolvency. And slight choke on the smoke.
It draws an irony behind waging a yet fruitless war over the fall of the grandiose symbols of the Free Market Economy, the World Trade Center Twin Towers, brought down by foreign hatred of exactly that which even we ourselves might now see as a possibly treasonous Corporate American greed that would fully pulverize and devastate itself and the financial foundations of the entire world, as we now hastily throw buckets of money to the rich and pledge allegiance to “one nation, under financed in deregulation, with no justice dispensed, and all civil and financial liberty abdicated to the executive branch.”
The wealthy hold contempt for social governing when they are rich, but demand huge chunks of tax money to shore up profits when they are not, because they know from the outset that there is never a “trickle down.” Real money is always “sucked up.” And these tax monies as well are increasingly bled from the unfortunate working poor who have no voice in their need and in good times hold quietly to false hopes bandied about by the rich that the trickle will begin to pour. In good times they are the middle class and they have a price. And the rich say, this isolated incident and disaster is an enigma, this is a once in a life time drop in the market, and then snicker conspiracyism at a thoughtful comment on how the money moved the rumrunner into a more legitimate business. But it was the rumrunner who said it himself. And it may be that the crime is less organized than it might have been, but there will always be the municipal contract, and the Fed. And it will always be a contract on the poor, because the Free Market will never ask where the money comes from, so long as you have it. But the money will always change hands, be it by a bag runner in downtown Chicago or through an office high on K Street. It will now forever be an unchartered organization of disorganized crime. No organization is needed when the code of silent values are clear and the resemblance of ethics embraced. Those understanding these, will regulate themselves and as many as they may, until the end time. And when the end time looms, the top will pay dearly for the crowd to yell “kill” and some poor, needy, do-gooder will usually do it but good. So the world order lingers in the smog.
We have it in writing, the perfect world order, when the government, the commerce, and the organized godheads all agree. The perfect world order spreading freedom and prosperity throughout the world by the most deadly armed, heavily ammunitioned, and most highly tech-equipped military a sole world super power can provide to every corner of the globe, wherever corporate control of the provincial government and the gross national product of business is obstructed.
Hampered by those intent on a social integrity, those who revere ethnic communities and customs, those who fight to protect the land, water, and human rights of the uprooted indigenous peoples, and thwarted by those who impede the squandering of natural resources, biodiversities, and environmental symbiosis, the industrial expansion is disrupted also by its own, governments that fully fathom sovereignty, those already entrenched in established political and financial power know implicitly to resist another’s greed for their own. Although in the end, prosperity ruthlessly pursues from exactly these so established, those having an obtainable price, supplies them with munitions to establish the rule of Market law, and that coalition then colludes to advance the rule of their money at gunpoint. The Cold War was the Third World War. And the people of each nation lost and are losing still. The Market Economy, now surnamed “Money Talks”, won and conquered, and spreads peace and prosperity with each “smart bomb.” It is not the first end times.
We have it in writing, the perfect world order, when the government, the commerce, and the organized godheads all agreed. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Rome all grasped rigorously to the governing rule of law to kill the Christ, kill all that was good in the world so that the world order remained, so that peace was maintained, and power remained in the realm of the selfish and self-righteous. It is the world order. It is the Tower of Babel. And it is what the Book is all about: The ebb and flow of world order verses human decency. And the Market Economy is the world order, where money talks and rampant and vulgar consumerism is the Babylonian whore luring the rich and powerful to plunder at will. There is no new thing under the sun.
The sun rises. The truth falls
Under the scrutiny.
The sun sets. World Trade
Reigns and the storm
Gathers the nations.
There is no new thing
Under the sun.
Not even who. Who
Holds the reigns. And
Who does not. Not even
How. How the storm
Calms the waters raging
When the world is
In World Order. What
Rules where is written
In the end times
Long ago. Then and
There is no new thing
Under the sun.
When there is nothing, only manna, those that gather more have no more than they need and those that cannot have no lack. The rich decry it in their wealth and demand it in their poverty. So if it is good for Wall Street now, why is it never good enough for Main Street and why does no one now scream “We Will Never Forget”?
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