Hey gang! Looks like ya found yourself another conspiracy. But sorry to burst your bubble the group was not always private. It started as a public group with links from my sig line. It only went private to protect people’s real life names.

All you have there is one comment by one member of the group. And it’s one comment had I seen I would have argued against also. Continue to fight that strawman all you want… but if you have any serious questions about the group ask away. You may find out that everything isn’t as it seems.



UPDATE: Read the comments before you comment. I explain more there. Serious questions were answered.

UPDATE 2: This diary is directed at buhdy because he wrote the diary I’m responding to and a select few.. you know who you are. I’d advise anyone else go read something else, this stuff is messy and lame, which is why I want a truce.

I believe government works. The Republican party says government doesn’t and shouldn’t work unless the discussion is about defense spending.

A year ago it was chaos, it looked as if the economy was going to implode. Like many generations before us we learned the lesson that an unregulated market builds bubbles. On the inflate many get rich off of transaction fees and rising asset values. When the bubble pops the negative feedback loops or vicious cycles are devastating. We saw the transferred devaluations move from housing values to Wall Street securities and from there to all sectors of the economy. Autos, small banks, 401ks, mutual funds, university endowments. It wasn’t clear when the wave would stop but we knew something had to change. The government’s normal economic tools were used up after too many bubbles and they were wrong in scale for the job. As a last resort the government stepped it up with once in a lifetime moves like TARP and the ARRA also known as the stimulus. Yet 9 months after the stimulus was passed it’s critics are fiercely attacking it. They say it’s not working, it’s wasteful, it should stop.

The Young Turks found this video of Al Franken laying the smackdown to a Hudson Institute stooge Diana Furchtgott-Roth. She was trying to scaremonger that the public option would increase medical bankruptcies, but was rejected by the logical and knowledgeable Senator.

AF: I wanna ask you, how many bankruptcies because of medical crisis were there last year in Switzerland?

DFR: I don’t have that number for you but I could get back to you.

AF: I can tell you how many it was. It was zero. Do you know how many medical bankruptcies there were last year in France?

DFR: I don’t have that number for you but I could get back to you if you like.

AF: Ya it’s zero.

Crossposted to the Daily Kos (with Poll) and The Progressive Electorate

That was just one of a host of new lines that Rep. Grayson threw out there tonight on the Ed Show. My other favorite was when he said the party of No has become the party of Nobody.

Crossposted to the Daily Kos (PLEASE REC) and the Progressive Electorate PLEASE VISIT 😉.

H/t AP photo

I’ve been waiting for this!! The Bernie Madoff story was good but I was waiting for a Wall Street arrest on someone who affected all of us. Billionaire Raj Rajarantnam may be that man. He, along with five others were arrested today for alleged insider trading.

The New York Daily News is all over this one.

A piggish hedge fund hotshot who ranks among the world’s richest men was charged by the feds Friday with making millions of dollars on insider-trading tips.

Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of the New York-based Galleon Group, was among six people charged in what federal prosecutors labeled the largest-ever hedge fund insider-trading case.

“The defendants operated in a cozy world of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a news conference announcing the arrests.

Rajaratnam, who Forbes ranked as No. 559 on its 2009 list of the world’s billionaires, was snared in a $20 million insider-trading case touted by the authorities for its first-ever use of court-authorized wiretaps against Wall Street big wheels.

“They may have been privy to a lot of inside information, but there was one secret they did not know – and that was that we were listening,” Bharara said.

Crossposted at the Progressive Electorate. Please share a post with us!

This video from Robert Greenwald shows civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Some may find this video disturbing.

Here’s what Greenwald says about this part of his film series.

Well-reasoned foreign policy results in more housing and jobs, better health care and education. When that policy consists of applying a military solution to a political problem, however, it results in death, destruction, and suffering. I witnessed the latter during my recent trip to Afghanistan–the devastating consequences of U.S. airstrikes on thousands of innocent civilians.

Crossposted @ the Progressive Electorate and the the Daily Kos  

They just didn’t know they were making that case. (Warning FOX link don’t click unless absolutely necessary) Today it was announced that both President Obama and General Odierno agreed that they will not release photos of US detainee abuse.

A senior administration official told FOX News that Obama told his legal advisers last week that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos because he believes they would endanger U.S. troops, and that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented in federal court.

So, the pictures are so bad that they endanger Americans here and abroad? Yes. That’s one of the most important reasons to prosecute for torture. It could save lives.

Charles Graner the ‘ringleader’ of the abuse at Abu Ghraib is appealing his 10 year Leavenworth sentence and dishonorable discharge. Graner is this guy, pictured with the mother of his child Lynndie England.

The Times Online has this story

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.