January 16, 2009 08:00 AM
Mike's Blog Roundup
Comments from Left Field: Nearly 50 years ago, another Republican president said farewell to the nation with what was essentially a warning about George W. Bush and his administration
MotherJones Blog: Palin to be a no show at Obama's dinner for McCain
Truthdig: Bank of America...literally
Culture11: The War on Drugs militarizes our police, enriches our enemies, undermines our laws, and condemns sick people to suffering
Balloon Juice: The most miserable dude in DC right now
AlterNet: A collection of some of the best essays on Gaza
i believe many of us knew the original TARP amount was NOT going to be enough. this financial fiasco is deeper than they tell us. they did a good job putting a lot of blame on home owners. it's more about wall street and the financial institutions: poor investments/poor Trading,credit default swaps, mortgage backed
securities and other DERIVATIVES. the credit market remains chilly. so consumers can't come to the rescue.
more foreclosures as many homeowners are upside down on equity. there are homes that cost 600-700k
a few years ago selling for 350k. the cycle will be foreclosures and unemployment so the banks won't lend.
2009 will be an interesting year.
I don't think it has anything to do with the reasons that are being stated.
Those are just the mechanism through which Wall Street Crooks stole a huge chunk of change.
The real reason behind this is as follows.
The first of the Baby-boomers are eligible for retirement this year. The Baby-boomers put all of their retirement money into Wall Street.
Hmmmmmmmmmm...
Huge transfer of wealth from Wall Street to the Baby-boomers; or,
Light bulb goes off.
An engineered crash of the economy that will transefer all of the Baby-boomers retirement money into the accounts of Wall Street Criminals.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Tough choice if you work on Wall Street.
"I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
that all men are boors.
Are you suggesting that all men are boring boors or boorish bores?
Normally, I abhor the barring of ALL boors based upon the level of boredom.
barf
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/1354...
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
are often the source of the problem.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http:/...
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ct...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http:/...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
thats easy for YOU to say.
"Kucinich on the Destruction of the UN Headquarters in Gaza"
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle...
Washington, Jan 15 -
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza on the House Floor:
“The attack on the United Nations headquarters in Gaza is further proof that a post-legal era in world affairs has taken shape; where law and moral principles are irrelevant, where might makes right, where retribution and vengeance, even against innocent children, fails to shake us from moral lethargy or political paralysis.
“Collective punishment, disproportionate use of force, using U.S. planes, helicopters and munitions to attack a wounded, starved and thirsty civilian population of mostly children trapped in a box called Gaza has become acceptable, perhaps because we have already accepted the deaths of over one million innocent civilians in Iraq in a war based on lies.
“There is a way out. We must ask those who were given our armaments for defense to stop the aggression, end the blockade, end the occupation, and reconnect with the high sentiments that rallied their own suffering, wounded people to nationhood generations ago. When we recognize the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, when we come to grips with the reality of suffering on both sides, we may yet find a way to save ourselves."
Here's a brief speech by a Jewish British lawmaker denouncing what Israel is doing in Gaza as similar to what the Nazi's did to his grandmother:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8
And one more thing:
The right wingers are apparently spitting mad that Obama skipped Bush's last speech and went out to dinner instead.
Ha!!!!!!:
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
If PE Obama is wondering, he didn't miss a thing, unless he likes to hear a string of lies rattled off together.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
The goul crawls out of his bunker to pat himself on the back and expects people to pay attention.
Well he deserves to get snubbed after he refused to let the Obama's stay in the guest house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpC3GPlO9_U&fe...
Thanks for this great George Bush send-off song.
I just sent it to everyone.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
My favorite Bushism, in which he spoke the truth;
4. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/bushquotes...
And thanks for the link.
Yes, I agree with you. Bush's freshman "misplaced modifier" grammar goof makes him sound like an idiot-- but it just doesn't matter.
He communicated with his audience-- an author's first and almost only responsibility-- that's what matters and in that Bush succeeded. Period.
He "catapulted the propaganda", for example, and it didn't matter to his audience, the audience that mattered at the time, that "catapult" means primarily to hurl an object and so Bush was really saying out loud that he Bush was hurling his own propaganda (re. privatizing Social Security in 2005, if I'm remembering correctly-- imagine THAT catastrophe if it had gone forward)-- an indelible image for me of a chimp catapulting his own feces-- but Bush's language missteps are themselves part of the propaganda message.
Watch what they do, not what they say-- actions are more powerful than words.
My two cents.
He does work on the basic principle of alienation, and encourages the mindless to identify with him, against the 'elite' who speak grammatical English, but in his basic dislike of everyone, I think he goes too far. He leaves only the most idiotic comfortable with identifying with him. Of course, if all his policies weren't total failures, that might not happen. Au contraire....
Without the War on Drugs(TM) the Privatized Prison Corporations(TM) would lose billion$ in revenues and thousands of fat boors will be forced into giving up their keen paramilitary uniforms and be unemployed or forced to get REAL skills and jobs.
Without the War on Drugs(TM) millions of people would grow cannibis in their backyards, in effect growing a/an:
Analgesic, antidepressent, antiemetic, sleep inducing, non addictive, intoxicant, appetite stimulant drug.
This would deprive Pharmaceutical Corporations billions of dollars in profits that are rightfully THEIRS nevermind why.
Without the War on Drugs(TM) farmers could grow hemp for paper pulp, which yields at least ten times the product per acre over timber and produces a better product which would render timber-for-pulp crops obsolete.
ect ad infinitum
I can't remember the other stuff and I need a nap.
By keeping drugs illegal we (the people with $$$) can arrest millions of poor mostly brown skinned people and take away their right to vote.
It's not that poor people are more likely to do drugs; it's that poor people are more likely to get caught doing drugs. They are also not likely to be able to hire the lawyers to get off either.
I love presidential warnings!
Here is one from Kennedy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSGwnz7XpY&fe...
...Kennedy may have been talking about the very same ("people") that Eisenhower was referring to!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
i fucking hate the drug war, we have sacrificed way too much to wage this hypocritical "war"
and i appreciate anyone who speaks out against the travesty that is the war on drugs.
but, the pasted quote--"The War on Drugs militarizes our police, enriches our enemies, undermines our laws, and condemns sick people to suffering"--is somewhat misleading.
the 'war on drugs' is today's excuse to inject our military imperial power into countries that we have no business messing with. such as bolivia. the DEA then becomes an arm of the US intel service, interested more in economic and political issues than with drugs. and the reason the above quote is somewhat misleading is that the war on drugs does not 'undermine' our laws. oftentimes the militarized forces are actually in developing countries to provide security and enforce laws that were foisted on an unwilling population meant to enrich corporations, the local elite and international capital.
the drug war benefits the IMF, the corporo-prison complex, national elites and the MIC, all the while destroying lives and undermining democracy.
From my day to day bush calendar:
"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein and his willingness to terrorize himself."
-president bush, January 29, 3003-
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Dank of America 7.25 and dropping like a stone.
See what 20 Billion dollars buys you America? A STRONG bank, just like 2 trillion or so got us a stable financial system.
"too big to fail"....
what too big to fail should mean: forced break-up of company
the wall street blackmail bill has made things much worse. it just made banks like BoA even bigger, and more detrimental when they implode from their own bad judgment.
There are 2 different kinds of banks. Ones that are chartered by the Federal Government and ones that are chartered by the state governments.
This has been the biggest ongoing debate in US History. Jefferson and Hamilton argued tooth and nail about this issue. There are really only 3 political arguments that dominate American history. The slave issue; which has become the civil rights issue. The protective tarrif; which has become the argument for or against Free Trade and NAFTA; and, whether or not the Federal Government can charter the banks. The ebb and flow of time has swung the pendulum back and forth on these 3 issues since our Founding Fathers.
The Federally Chartered Banks tend to make a huge amount of money for the people at the top.
The state chartered banks tend to make local investments in the community.
There is a direct link between the growth of the national banks and the death of small communities.
The money just doesn't get invested in local businesses and cottage industry when all the money is controlled by the powerful bankers. It also ends up turning into a huge embezzlement scheme. The national banks have a long history of collapsing in this country. Here we are again just like clockwork. Probably my biggest issue with the national banks is a that they don't work. It's a broken banking model that is ALWAYS doomed to failure. You can't look at a single era in American history and make the argument that the idea of national banks worked even marginally well. The state banks have only collapsed on time and that was the Panic of 1857. The reason they all collapsed was becuase the national banks ganged up on them and drove them all under.
I really do see the collapse of the national banks as the best thing that could possibly happen. It's a crying shame for the 1% at the top; but for the rest of us, this is exactly what needs to happen for us to rebuild our communities.
reports online, the end of Circuit City. Filing bankruptcy did nothing, and they could not find any investors to bail them out. All US stores will be closed and over 30,000 layed off.
I was kicking around the idea of opening up a computer store. Looks like I don't need to worry about the competition.
Unless, some of those 30,000 ex-employees decides to do the same thing
Bank of America - now not just treating their customers poorly, but also their employees and the entire American public!
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