Matt Taibbi can be a bit out there, and he’s not really correct about the Commodities Future Modernization Act or how come derivatives are unregulated (partly because they are too new, and partly because of not the Republicans, but Greenspan, who argued that they shouldn’t be and at the time was the great and all-powerful Oz of the economy – btw, Ron Paul and the anti-Federal Reserve extremists are looking a bit better now, ain’t they?), but this exchange is utterly priceless.
October 2008 archive
Oct 15 2008
Homo Blintzes Killed My Breakfast!
I’m starving.
I sat down to eat this morning, toasted a slice of organic, sprouted, whole-grain Ezekiel bread, frosted it with the fat-free
“I can’t believe its not,” then raised it to my mouth.
But I never took a bite… on account of the Gay Blintzes.
Oct 15 2008
Love and Death in Colombia (My Story – Part IV)
Note: I know, I know. I haven’t published Part III yet and here comes Part IV. Well what can I say? I have an unruly mind and it won’t always go where I tell it to – sometimes it just goes where it will. In this case it skipped straight to Part IV. I’ll go back and do Part III later. Probably.
“The mind is a monkey.” ~ Old Chinese saying
Oct 15 2008
The Organic Silver BB?
A few days ago, Jill Richardson brought us news to pay attention to with the question “Can Organics Save Us from Global Warming?” Jill excitedly brought news of a new study from the Rodale Institute entitled Regenerative Organic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming. After now having taken the time to read this report, it seems worth seconded Jill’s excitement … even if perhaps seeking to dampen it a little bit.
Oct 15 2008
Four at Four
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The class war continues with news from NY Times that the “Next Victim of Turmoil May Be Your Salary“. Of course that assumes we all have a salaries, but I’ll let that slide for today.
What, then, will the next stage of the downturn be about? It is likely to revolve around the worst slump in worker pay since – you knew this was coming – the Great Depression. This slump won’t be anywhere near as bad as the one during the Depression, but it also won’t be like anything the country has experienced in a long time…
The events of the last several weeks have removed any serious doubt that the economy is in a recession. In a recession, businesses cut back on their workers’ hours, hand out raises that don’t keep pace with inflation and often skip paying bonuses. These cuts in hours and pay are the main way that a downturn affects families, because only a small share of workers actually lose their jobs…
Every recent recession has brought an effective pay cut of somewhere between 3 and 7 percent for the typical family. The drop typically happens over a period of about three years, lasting longer than the recession officially does, as pay fails to keep up with inflation.
And in case no one has noticed, the United States of America is going broke because almost no one wants to pay taxes. The LA Times reports our Federal budget deficit hits record $455 billion. “The final accounting for fiscal 2008 produced a larger shortfall than had been projected, reflecting the start of federal efforts to address the economic emergency… The deficit is likely to be even bigger next year as the country copes with the worst financial crisis since the Depression.”
“The new figure breaks the previous record deficit of $413 billion in 2004 and more than doubles the 2007 deficit of $162 billion. It has focused new attention on government spending, coming just days after the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits to record the overall national debt, which passed $10 trillion.”
Four at Four continues with bank “drama”, emerging economies, and torture.
Oct 15 2008
How Do You Feel?
I had a few subjects, deep and dark and complex and existential, that I wanted to write about today. But I couldn’t. I tried, but I just couldn’t. Why?
Because I feel too damn good.
It is a warm sunny day, I have plenty to eat and a roof over my head…and The Republicans are about to have the shit crushed out of them in an election that I consider a turning point in human history. Everything I was going to write was about the past. About how Republicans and their icky mindset and meanness and hatred have fucked everything up.
I couldn’t do it. I feel too good to go there today. I don’t want to think about the past eight years and what a nightmare they have been. I am too on edge, too excited, while trying not to be, too happy, while trying not to be, too relieved. That’s it, too relieved. I want to forget that the last eight years ever happened and start building the future. I want to breathe free again, without having the outrages and crimes stuck in my throat at every breath.
It is perhaps the worst attitude possible, for someone who wants to make sure that the last eight years never happen again. Because The Powers That Be are certainly going to feel the same way. It will soon be “time to move on and not dwell on the past and point fingers.” And we just plain can’t do that.
So I am jumpy, it is hard to concentrate. I am stuck between emotions.
Hmmm….
Fuck it!
I am going to go ahead and be happy!
Ding Dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The wicked old witch!
But………..wait! We have SO much work to do! We have proven blogging works in changing the public discourse! It is our responsibility to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, both to make sure Bush doesn’t escape justice and that Obama doesn’t sell out! We need to make sure that we use the little bit of power we have to move the world in the right direction! This is critical!!!! It is less than three weeks til the election, something could still go wrong! How DARE I indulge in happiness, dammit!
Oy!
So….how do you feel, here, now, poised on the brink of history and a new world? Has it sunk in yet?
Oct 15 2008
Last Chance For The Republican Myth
Tonight is the last debate, Senator McCraaazy’s last shot at convincing America that there is something….anything! redeemable in the Conservative myth of America.
And myth it is. And under their stewardship, the myth has died.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
Joseph Campbell
They based their myth, their religiosity towards their version of the myth of America, on false metaphors, false precepts, and when they came up hard against reality, their myth was proven to be a lie. Reagan’s ‘Shining City On The Hill’ has been sacked, looted, and tarnished by his successors. The people who believed in American Exceptionalism have proven to be unexceptional, and in fact, incompetent at making their myth …work.
Perhaps the problem lies in the concept of a God granting you that Exceptionalism, in this case Jesus, and then violating everything that your God preached.
There will be plenty of fingers pointed after the Republicans are buried under the landslide of the man that they called the Antichrist. But you can rest assured that they will not be pointed at the myth itself. It will be determined that men failed the myth, not that the myth failed the men.
Oct 15 2008
Secret Memos Show White House Approved CIA Torture
Joby Warrick at The Washington Post has an article today confirming what many of us have suspected for some time: the CIA asked for and received written approval for its “enhanced interrogation” program, which notoriously includes the use of techniques like waterboarding. Condoleezza Rice confirmed in hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that she and other White House “Principals” had been briefed on the CIA’s torture program in early 2002. (ABC News had broken the story first, last spring.)
According to Washington Post article today, CIA director George Tenet pushed for the written confirmations of support, wary of legal entanglements for CIA personnel involved in the abusive interrogation program. He first asked and received the CIA’s get-out-of-jail card in June 2003, and then again after the Abu Ghraib story broke in mid-2004.
Oct 15 2008
Lets Re-Visit the Flyers Puck Drop {Video not seen? and Pics}
No wonder the hockey puck, whoops, hockey mom dressed her youngest daughter in a Flyers Shirt and led her onto the ice, using her, as she even said, as a Political Tool to try and silence the crowd!
Take a look at the reception received on arriving at the rink outside.
The following pics and the video link to the FOX 29 News Report, which I moved to a couple of video saver sites, was posted at the VFP group board site by brother ‘Nam Vet Bill Perry, Service Officer Disabled American Veteran CSO, who sigs with this:
Make ANY ERROR in the VA Claims maze, & you’ll be forced into a 2 year Appeal process Get Expert Advice, Evaluations, & Treatment
Oct 15 2008
Be Very Ascared: Worse Than The Great Depression
The economic meltdown on Wall Street has sent shockwaves across the globe.
Political economist William Engdahl believes the “US faces an economic depression that will be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930’s.” He goes on to state that “European goverments are furious at the corruption and fraud that has come out of the New York financial community.”
October 15, 2008 – 4 min 55 sec
F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.
Oct 15 2008
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
A Transition through Poetry XXX
 Up on the Roof
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