Author's posts
Jul 26 2009
60-70% of stock volume is “Ficticious”. One way or the other, we’re screwed
Crossposted at Daily Kos
hat tip to Inky99 who covered this first in his diary Stock market “Rally” is bogus, volume in market “ficticious”. I thought this subject was so pertinent it need to be expanded on.
From Bloomberg News, Joe Saluzzi, on July 6th, 2009
Saluzzi: ” The volume that you see during the day right now, somedays as high as 12 million across all three exchange, is ficticious. It’s not real, okay. I’m gonna say that 60-70% of this volume that you see coming across, it’s volume, but it’s done by what is called high frequency traders. These are machines. The biggest machine wins the game.”
More on how we are totally screwed one way or the other below the fold.
Jul 26 2009
Boot Gonzo says Texas Tech Faculty and Students
If you have not heard, Texas Tech University has taken on Ex-Bush Attorney General Alberto “I Don’t Recall” Gonzalez. According to thinkprogress.org
Gonzales will be a visiting professor leading a course on “contemporary issues in the executive branch” and focusing on “recruiting and retaining first generation and under-represented students.”
Students and angry alumni quickly spoke out, starting Facebook groups and writing scathing editorials. Many of the Texas Tech faculty, however, remained silent.
Not any longer. Approximately 45 Texas Tech faculty members have signed onto a petition calling Gonzales’ hiring “objectionable.” They charge that Gonzales is nothing more than a “celebrity hire” who won’t be worth his $100,000 salary.
Alberto Gonzalez claims that his course will, among other things, highlight the “accomplishes of the Bush Administration”.
I guess that means that classes will be short.
Contemporary issues in the executive branch, such as “how to commit war crimes” and “wiping your ass with the Constitution 101” will be covered in the course, unless Alberto Gonzalez forgets them or pleads the fifth.
And, “under – represented students” must be code language for “We are going to need more batshit neo-conservatives”
We’re gonna need a bigger boat. That way, we can set them all adrift together.
The protest by Students and Faculty has picked up a lot of steam. You can support their boycott of Alberto Gonzalez by joining the facebook group here
Despite the outrage coming from Texas Tech Students and Faculty, Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance is standing by his hiring of Gonzalez, who he says is a ‘close friend’ of his.
Why anyone would send their kid to a school for thousands of dollars so they can learn re-writing the rule of law from one of the worst liars and crappiest lawyers ever is beyond me. You’d be better off getting your law degree from Phoenix University online.
But, there is a way to solve this problem. We can save the fragile little minds of a whole class of law students by doing something today.
Investigate and Prosecute Bush/Cheney/Gonzalez et all for War Crimes.
War Criminals don’t take Sunday’s off, and neither should we.
You can find contact information for AG Eric Holder and President Obama beneath the fold. Send them an E-Mail this Sunday and demand a strong, independant Special Prosecutor who will go all the way in the fight to clear America’s name and prosecute the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Bush/Cheney Regime.
And, of course, YELL LOUDER!
Just don’t write the e-mail to AG Holder in all CAPS.
Jul 25 2009
Bill Maher: New Rule “Not everything in America has to make a profit”
And you wonder why they fear socialism.
“But Bill, the profit motive is what sustains Capitalism. Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species but we don’t try to fuck everything!”.
~snip~
“The problem with President Obama’s health care plan is not socialism, it is capitalism.”
~snip~
“It’s not just medicine, prisons used to be a non profit thing.”
~snip~
“It is not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private coporations and then the number of prisoners skyrocketed.”
~snip~
“And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was non-profit . . . TV NEWS!
I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkites day, and I thought, ‘Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.’ ”
Class warfare.
In order to make a super profit we rape the earth and enslave our fellow human beings. Can you think of ANYTHING that is Big Business that doen’t do one or the other?
We need to PUSH BACK, YELL LOUDER, whatever it takes.
We need to March on Washington this summer for health care if they are going to vacation while main street burns. We need to march for health care, for war crimes accountability, to audit the Fed, for many reasons.
The status quo is not just untenable, it is KILLING US.
We need to march for justice.
And I will lead the way, if you will follow me.
So, who’s coming with me?
Jul 24 2009
4,500+ people will die if Congress vacations w/o passing HCR. More than 9/11 or Katrina
Simulposted at Daily Kos
Consider this your health care reform talking point for the rest of the summer.
This is why this legislation is urgent. This is why it cannot wait!.
If Congress is allowed to go to recess without passing the legislation, that will be at least a 3 month delay, resulting in at least 4,500 more Americans dying than if the bill was passed now. That’s more than the number of people who died in 9/11.
We passed the Patriot Act overnight.
By the same measure of urgency of lives, the current Healthcare Reform Bill has been scrutinized to death. The deaths of those 4,500 Americans to be precise.
4,500 lives. That’s more than 9/11 or Katrina.
The article at democraticunderground.com goes on to blame Republicans for playing politics with our lives. I will not blame the Republicans because they are utterly powerless. I am blaming Harry Reid and Congressional Democrats.
Jul 23 2009
GBCNYC
Crossposted at Daily Kos
I don’t need to tell you that unemployment is through the roof. U6 is at 20+% nationwide, and in NYC it is as bad as anywhere else. At some point, we as a nation need to figure out that the private sector will not save us, rather they are strangling us, but, that is not why I write today, although it is an issue that must be addressed if we are to recover from the Bush/Cheney depression anytime soon.
In New York City you can see the class warfare at it’s prime. A few bonus baby Wall St types who tanked the whole economy on us yuk it up over drinks while a ton of busboys sweat it out for that extra buck.
Well, I have hit my breaking point. I have no job, no money, and no more patience. As much as I love the Big Rotten Apple, I have to say Good Bye, New York City.
This town is too rich for my blue collared blood. I have tried bootstraps. I have tried denying things like health care and dentist appointments, eating out and other non-necessities.
And I have had enough.
If that’s moving up then I’m moving out.
Jul 22 2009
Colbert on torture trials, John Yoo PUNKD
Watch
Laugh
Learn.
And now this should be an instant classic. Our Aussie brothers now how to pull a practical joke. Here they totally destroy John Yoo!
Just watch!
If only we were allowed to talk about politics on television, instead of engaging in the witch hunt for easter eggs on a daily basis.
I think there is one hidden up Lou Dobbs ass.
Jul 22 2009
Liz Cheney: Birther! Carville calls them “Pathetic”
Simulposted at Daily Kos
Larry King had James Carville and Liz Cheney on last night and the video of Rep. Mike Castle’s batshit insane constituents at the recent town hall came up. After playing the video where the woman shouts “I want my country white back!”, Larry says “That Lady is ticked” and then asks Carville “What do you think of this?”
Watch the video, transcript and batshit wingnut potential war criminal interpretation follows below.
Also, Attorney General Eric Holder’s contact info is posted below. If you REALLY want Liz Cheney to STFU, put her daddy on trial for war crimes.
Dialogue below the fold
Jul 22 2009
Shoot liberal fascists in the face – Michael Savage implies
After a minute of crying about how deprived he’s been by being banned from a country he doesn’t live in, Michael Savage Weiner goes from telling us the jews should’ve shot Fascists in the face to liberals are fascist in under a minute. I wonder how the gun toting lunatics listening will take it.
I made a commitment that no one’s ever going to put me in a gas chamber. Let me be very clear, I’m not getting into a box car, I’ll kill three of them before they put me in a box car. Now, that’s a metaphorical statement.
You see, I want to be very personal about this. 6 million Jews were killed, tortured, gassed, shot by the Nazi’s in WWII. Had only 100,000 of them gotten a gun, and when Hitler came to power and shot a Gestapo agent in the face when they came to take them away there would not have been a Holocaust. I have studied this inside and out. I am, I have studied this since I was a boy.
The Germans did it very quietly. They went to the Jews and they said you must come with us or report to the, to the police station. And they went like sheep. And their children were killed in front of their eyes and their hair was then used for packing guns, or whatever. If every Jew had gotten a .22, and when the nice German officer came and said “Are you ready for us Mr. Shmiedel” and Mr. Shmiedel said “Sure, one more moment, please” and came out blasting, that would have been the end of the Holocaust, because the Germans didn’t want to mess, it would have upset the rest of the middle class in Germany, who was not behind this by the way.
And if you say, “What does this have to do with Jackie Smith”, it has everything to do with Jackie Smith. Let me be very clear. Let me be really clear. What she did was fascistic, and she did it on her own. And if you think that liberals are incapable of being fascist, I have another guess coming for you. All of the fascism that is raging in the west right now is coming from the leftists, not from the right. All of the fascism that is raging in the west today is coming from so-called liberals who would like to ban speech, imprison people, re-educate people, or force taxation down peoples throats, this is all fascism. So I am the canary, in the, in the, in the cave.
In three steps this fuck job goes from the Jews should’ve shot fascist Gestapo to the liberals are fascists. And he wonders why he was banned from the U.K.
Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to walk a mile in Michael Savages shoes. Granted it would be hard being weighed down with all of his money, of course, but that is offset by being a dickless, brain dead ass clown.
The Jews went like sheep?
Fuck You, Michael Weiner!
Fuck you in your dirty fascist pork hole!
I hope you get reincarnated as a lobster so you can feel what it’s like to go in the pot.
My mother is Jewish. I only wish Polish Jews like her had just known that if they just shot the Germans in the face the big bad fascist Nazi’s would go away, since the middle class in “Good Germany” didn’t support Hitler.
This guy has been studying this since he was a boy? I could have asked the drunken homeless guy in my neighborhood to pull this out of his ass in 5 minutes.
So, you heard it from Michael Savage Weiner. Fascists should be shot. Liberals are fascist. The Right wing can’t be fascist since they don’t torture people, spy on people, use inflammatory hate speech or make wild calls to violence against other social groups.
I think the big question here is . . . .
How can we ban Michael Savage Weiner from America?
Jul 21 2009
NYTimes Feb 27, 1881: Trial by Torture
Simulposted at Daily Kos
The so-called confessions of tortured criminals are usually worthless, especially when others than themselves are inculpated.
~snip~
It were better that children never came into the world if they are born under a government which mistakenly inculcates falsehood as a means to escape punishment and suffering.
~snip~
And the founder of the Christian faith has said: ” It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than he should offend one of these little ones. ”
Please, contact The White House, Attorney General Eric Holder and Congress and demand justice for these crimes.
In a New York Times article from Feb 27 1881 the New York Times expounded on the family oriented torture and corporal punishment inflicted on children and how it was entirely unacceptable.
Often we are told by the faithful that we are all “Gods children”
128 years ago, this was common sense.
Today, not so much
The article centers around the practice of many 19th Century families who, when accusing their own children of wrong doing, after that child has plead their innocence, have beaten that child until a confession is given.
Such practices as solitary confinement, withholding of meals and other forms of torment, then seen as uncivilized and barbaric in 1881, were all justified and made legalish by the Bush/Cheney Administration.
The article uses several examples of lynchings to illustrate the opinion that torture is, effectively, lynch mob behavior. One such story tells the tale of the practice in a Northern California county of hanging a man from a tree who was accused of a crime. When the man was half dead they would lower him down and demand the names of his co-conspirators. This would happen two or three times, and then, when the crowd was satisfied they would hang the man until he died. Then they would round up those whom the first hanged man had accused and hang them as well.
The only difference between this and what happened under Bush/Cheney is that the assumed guilty usually aren’t killed. Usually.
Jul 21 2009
Class War 101: We need a new progressive tax system
It is time to set the top tax bracket above $1,000,000
As you can see in the graph below, many people live in poverty compared to the few wealthy. Mind you, this graph does not include the Capitalist class of the top 2%
This next graph shows how income has grown by percentiles over the last few years. Notice anything?
That’s right. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
If this is your first time, welcome to Class War 101
Anyone with sense can tell that we can not pretend that the American dream is to be a $250,000aire. The dream is to own your own home, to have a family, to have health care when you need it and a retirement and education for our children.
The way things are going, that will not happen anytime soon.
40 + years of supply side trickle down free market economics have devastated states and federal budgets. It is time to face the facts. We need a progressive taxation system that adequately taxes the millionaires whose wealth would not be possible without America.
After living high on the hog for so long, the rich can not plead poverty
It is time to get something back.
Jul 20 2009
Children tortured before parents, raped, all covered up by Bush/Cheney and our media
Simulposted at Daily Kos
Perhaps the worst incident at Abu Ghraib involved a girl aged 12 or 13 who screamed for help to her brother in an upper cell while stripped naked and beaten. Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, who heard the girl’s screams, also witnessed an ill 15-year-old who was forced to run up and down with two heavy cans of water and beaten whenever he stopped. When he finally collapsed, guards stripped and poured cold water on him. Finally, a hooded man was brought in. When unhooded, the boy realized that the man was his father, who doubtless was being intimidated into confessing something upon sight of his brutalized son.
Empathy is what keeps men from becoming MONSTERS.
Jul 20 2009
Specter strikes back! EFCA card check is DOA
From the NYTimes
Democrats Drop Key Part of Bill to Assist UnionsA half-dozen senators friendly to labor have decided to drop a central provision of a bill that would have made it easier to organize workers.
The so-called card-check provision – which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes – would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union. Currently, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election, a higher hurdle for unions.
The abandonment of card check was another example of the power of moderate Democrats to constrain their party’s more liberal legislative efforts. Though the Democrats have a 60-40 vote advantage in the Senate, and President Obama supports the measure, several moderate Democrats opposed the card-check provision as undemocratic.
In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.
