Shortly after Glenn Beck said that President Obama is a racist who has “a deep seated hatred for white people,” the activist group Color of Change launched a campaign aimed at Beck’s advertisers. The campaign has enjoyed unparalleled success, persuading over forty companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Beck’s program.
In response to the action by Color of Change, a conservative activist created a web site to counter the growing opposition to Beck. DefendGlenn was created to instigate complaints directed at the companies who pulled their ads from Beck, and to thank his remaining advertisers. Instead, the site has become a repository of lies and disinformation, as well as a sycophantic center of blind adulation for Beck.
Shortly after Glenn Beck said that President Obama is a racist who has “a deep seated hatred for white people,” the activist group Color of Change launched a campaign aimed at Beck’s advertisers. The campaign has enjoyed unparalleled success, persuading over forty companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Beck’s program.
In response to the action by Color of Change, a conservative activist created a web site to counter the growing opposition to Beck. DefendGlenn was created to instigate complaints directed at the companies who pulled their ads from Beck, and to thank his remaining advertisers. Instead, the site has become a repository of lies and disinformation, as well as a sycophantic center of blind adulation for Beck.
Shortly after Glenn Beck said that President Obama is a racist who has “a deep seated hatred for white people,” the activist group Color of Change launched a campaign aimed at Beck’s advertisers. The campaign has enjoyed unparalleled success, persuading over forty companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Beck’s program.
In response to the action by Color of Change, a conservative activist created a web site to counter the growing opposition to Beck. DefendGlenn was created to instigate complaints directed at the companies who pulled their ads from Beck, and to thank his remaining advertisers. Instead, the site has become a repository of lies and disinformation, as well as a sycophantic center of blind adulation for Beck.
Shortly after Glenn Beck said that President Obama is a racist who has “a deep seated hatred for white people,” the activist group Color of Change launched a campaign aimed at Beck’s advertisers. The campaign has enjoyed unparalleled success, persuading over forty companies to withhold their advertising dollars from Beck’s program.
In response to the action by Color of Change, a conservative activist created a web site to counter the growing opposition to Beck. DefendGlenn was created to instigate complaints directed at the companies who pulled their ads from Beck, and to thank his remaining advertisers. Instead, the site has become a repository of lies and disinformation, as well as a sycophantic center of blind adulation for Beck.
Happy Saturday and welcome to the Dog’s serialization of his novel Dark Soul. This is a work in progress, so if you have any thoughts or suggestions, don’t be shy about offering them up. Sorry this is posted a little later than usual. There were internet connectivity issues here at the Dog house.
If you have just started reading this, you can find the previous chapters at the following links:
President Obama has re-nominated Ben Bernanke to sit as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for another four-year term, following glowing praises of Bernanke’s supposed financial genius in most of the media for his handling of the current economic crisis, while Obama himself has suggested that Bernanke helped save the US from another Great Depression.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech to the Jackson Hole symposium, delivered on Friday, has already been dubbed a “we saved the world” declaration by some commentators.
In fairness to Bernanke, nowhere in his remarks does he make such a grandiloquent claim, unlike British Prime Minister Brown, who did just that last December in the U.K. parliament.
However, underlying Bernanke’s narrative of events is the U.S. central bank’s conviction that the panic that hit global markets last fall was a kind of act of God, a phenomenon that was “collectively irrational”, and which the Fed contained by its policy of “lending freely against sound collateral.”
Is this fair, or does Bernanke’s speech signify that U.S. policymakers have understood nothing and learned nothing?
[snip]
Bernanke asserts in the final paragraph of his speech that “we have avoided the worst”. He may be right, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I’m more inclined to agree with Willem Buiter, who wrote recently in the Financial Times that “[t]he US Treasury, the Congress, the Fed and the other financial regulators have, through their behaviour since August 2007, confirmed and re-inforced the incentives for excessive risk taking by crossborder banks and any other financial institution deemed too systemically important to fail. The groundwork for the next financial boom and bust cycle, worse than what we are just emerging from, has been put in place.“
So exactly whose world has Bernanke “saved”, if anyones?
I should be feeling better–after all, Obama did commemorate Katrina and the flood in his radio address this morning. To his credit he also brought up levees and coastal restoration. But only time will tell if these words will be backed up by action or be mere empty words.
I have been upset and feel as if I’m almost physically ill. I cannot help but flash back, see the scenes of rescues and of the afflicted at the Superdome and the Convention Center and think of how so many suffered during Katrina and the federal flood and are still suffering. And I can’t help but wonder if Obama really cares about New Orleans. Because when I remember what happened during the flood and Katrina which turned the lives of so many upside down and think about the fact that Obama won’t be going there (which he wasn’t going to do anyway even if Ted Kennedy hadn’t passed) I’m depressed.
And others are also turned off by the fact that Obama has paid so little attention to Louisiana and her problems and those of her neighbors in the Gulf Region–a wound which Obama’s absence from Katrina observances has rubbed salt into. More below the fold…
Two amazing pictures of a rare snow leopard taken in a remote northeastern part of Afghanistan were released today by the Wildlife Conservation Society. These camera trap pictures were taken from the Sast Valley in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
Researchers are in the region conducting a wildlife survey with the goal of creating a protected area. The snow leopard is listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
Snow leopards have declined “over the past two generations (16 years) due to habitat and prey base loss, and poaching and persecution… Snow leopards are killed in retribution for livestock depredation, but also for commercial purposes, and poaching for illegal trade represents a significant threat… In Afghanistan, a new market has emerged which is difficult to police due to ongoing military conflict”.
Having had my birthday right around this time for what seems to be most of my life…. (yes, yes, thank you for the accolades! I take full credit for making the decision to be born today!)
…I can tell you that what they say about the Dog Days of Summer is true. Even though I don’t really know what it is, specifically, that ‘they’ say about them. But interestingly enough to me and probably twelve other people out of 7 billion, if you could find them, the Chinese horoscope says I am a Dog. I don’t really know what that means either.
But now that my B’day (yes it is today) is inextricably entwined with Katrina, I always feel a bit guilty on my B’day. Guilty, because I had asked the Universe (nice shoes, btw) to expose the Bush Reign Of Terror for the whole world to see. The Universe granted my wish on my Birthday.
I didn’t know it would be that costly. I apologize.
But perhaps it is one of those trade off things, Katrina was and is and always shall be one of the true heartbreaking tragedies of my life. Watching that suffering….
But just think, and I know it sucks to ask this, just think of where we would be if Katrina had not exposed to America just how BAD Bush was. At that point, war with Iran was still possible, and indeed, if their plans in Iraq would have developed as anticipated, (Who could have anticipated that the Iraqis didn’t want their country invaded and occupied and would…ya knw…resist and shit) we would have already invaded Syria at that point and been gearing up for Iran. Bu the Universe seemed to intervene, with a sever shortage of flowers and candy for the Liberators of Iraq…and then Katrina.
So maybe, in one of those horrid equations, Katrina actually saved lives, who knows.
Pointless rationalization and attempted expunging of irrational guilt aside…the end of August seems always seems to be a time of waiting, of some ominous foreboding, such as watching Katrina close in on NOLA day by day….and realizing how we small creatures really don’t have the power to affect life as much as we would want.
This August too, we seem to be waiting. Perhaps even waiting more than usual for the Big Wheel that seems to be stuck, to unstick.
Hurricane weather, waiting for the skies to change, for good or ill. We are waiting to see if the Dems sell out on Health Care. We are waiting for the torture investigations to begin, or drop the smoking gun. We are waiting to get out of Iraq, we are waiting to see if the new Surge “works” in Afghanistan. We are waiting to see how bad Congress sells out on Climate change.
And, sad to say, sad on the level of watching Katrina close in on NOLA, we are waiting for Climate Change to get bad enough that the deniers finally lose traction and we get to work saving the planet.
Waiting, in other words, for the hangover of Republican influence on politics and the media to fade, so that the Dems will finally stop being afraid of them and actually do their jobs.
A Progressive future, a good future, a future where the planet and it’s people survive, and live in a just and equal society where the Rule of Law applies to all equally and resource squandering greed is condemned and not celebrated….is circling in the skies above us. Along with a storm of tragedy unlike the human race has ever seen.
Shamans believe that to some extent we can affect the future. That by being in harmony with it, by pleasing the Universe with our actions (or with an amusing dance or good prayer or song) we can influence what kind of future we have. That we can clear the skies…or bring down a storm.
Right now, in this sort of hurricane weather, it is in a way even simpler. ALL we have to do is make the right decisions, decisions based on compassion, empathy, justice and equality, in harmony so to speak with the Rule of both Natural and man made Law and many, many storms can be averted. Things are………poised. What we do as Humans, the decisions we make in this time will (as always to some extent) determine what kind of future we will have….for the next Seven Generations.
It is a time to work hard and to out all of our effort and energy into making this change the right way, and I am proud to say that there is a GREAT group of people here doing exactly that.
Will it work? Who knows! That is, if we can detach a bit from the urgency and critical seriousness, part of the fun of being here, now.
KABUL (AFP) – Allegations of vote-rigging in Afghanistan’s elections gathered momentum on Saturday as the main challenger said he would not accept a compromised outcome and Western powers called for transparency.
The French foreign ministry said Paris has called a meeting of senior Western envoys to Afghanistan to discuss their response to presidential elections that have been marred by fraud allegations.
The White House, following on from revelations that its envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, had a testy meeting with President Hamid Karzai immediately after the August 20 vote, condemned any acts of fraud that might emerge.
As August becomes the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, post-election tension continues to increase. A Washington Post reporter provides an update from Kabul.
Michael Scheuer: “Oh sure we’re going to be attacked, Brian, and it doesn’t carry, and, you know, Rahm Emanuel wants an attack. He loves crisis, and crisis, the Democrats, he says, can get all of their programs through. These people simply do not care.”
WTF???
And this isn’t the first time Michael Scheuer has said something as horrible as this, nor is it the first time Fixed Noise has given him the air time to do so.
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