It takes quite a lot to render me speechless. Congratulations, Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R)!



I do not know what is worse: actually having enough mindless, unquestioning ideology to actually make public policy around the belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old (or that she even believes it herself) OR thinking that turning Arizona into Chernobyl is a good idea.

I'm stunned.

Please, oh please, oh pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top can Sarah Palin get the GOP nomination in 2012?

"Sarah Palin and her defenders have cited numerous ethics complaints against the Alaska governor as a practical reason for her resignation. Fighting the claims, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News Monday, was immobilizing her: 'I'm not going to let Alaskans go through a year of stymied, paralyzed administration and not getting anything done.'

Naturally, skeptical observers have wondered how Palin would handle being president if some ethics complaints are enough to make her unable to run a state. Palin's answer: if she was president, the Department of Law would protect her.

Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House the 'department of law' would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

'I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out,' she said

There is no Department of Law at the White House. Alaska does have a Department of Law."

I see two things here: one, she lacks an elementary understanding of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States. And when I say elementary, I mean elementary. As in elementary school. As in I had to learn all of the executive departments back in fourth grade.

Two, the fact that Alaska has a Department of Law (not criticizing that) and Sarah Palin automatically assumes that the federal government has to have one represents another form of narcissism endemic to conservatives nowadays. You see it on Wall Street and you see it in the self-righteous tirades of the religious right.

Sorry, guys, the world does not revolve around you and your humongous egos. And if Sarah Palin does win the nomination (which is still a possibility) all Barack Obama has to do is show up on election day.

Via Crooks and Liars, here's a hilarious yet interesting video on the absurdity of our current health insurance industry:

Ezra Klein on health care insurance companies:

"Insurers often complain that their critics don't understand their business practices. It would be hard to say that about Wendell Potter. Potter, whose name sounds like that of a character in a Frank Capra movie, worked in the health insurance industry for more than 20 years. He rose to be a senior executive at Cigna. He was on their calls, at their board meetings, in their books. And today, at a hearing before Sen. Jay Rockefeller's Commerce Committee, he testified against them.

What drove Potter from the health insurance business was, well, the health insurance business. The industry, Potter says, is driven by 'two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.'

Think about that term for a moment: The industry literally has a term for how much money it 'loses' paying for health care.

The best way to drive down 'medical-loss,' explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people. You won't, after all, have to spend very much of a healthy person's dollar on medical care because he or she won't need much medical care. And the insurance industry accomplishes this through two main policies. 'One is policy rescission,' says Potter. 'They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment.'

And don't be fooled: rescission is important to the business model. Last week, at a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Rep. Bart Stupak, the committee chairman, asked three insurance industry executives if they would commit to ending rescission except in cases of intentional fraud. 'No,' they each said.

Potter also emphasized the practice known as 'purging.' This is where insurers rid themselves of unprofitable accounts by slapping them with 'intentionally unrealistic rate increases.' One famous example came when Cigna decided to drive the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust in California and New Jersey off of its books. It hit them with a rate increase that would have left some family plans costing more than $44,000 a year, and it gave them three months to come up with the cash.

The issue isn't that insurance companies are evil. It's that they need to be profitable. They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for shareholders. And as Potter explains, he's watched an insurer's stock price fall by more than 20 percent in a single day because the first-quarter medical-loss ratio had increased from 77.9 percent to 79.4 percent.

The reason we generally like markets is that the profit incentive spurs useful innovations. But in some markets, that's not the case. We don't allow a bustling market in heroin, for instance, because we don't want a lot of innovation in heroin creation, packaging and advertising. Are we really sure we want a bustling market in how to cleverly revoke the insurance of people who prove to be sickly?" [Emphasis added, ed.]

Isn't that the whole justification for capitalism? People believe markets work better because they're more efficient and more innovative? This is why universal health care WILL come to the United States.

I'm done worrying about cost. First off, there shouldn't have been worry in the first place. Secondly, even if it were going to be more expensive, I say this:

If we can find money to start unnecessary and illegal wars, to bail out Wall Street, give tax breaks to those that don't need it, etc., then there's money for health care. I find it obscene that these issues come instead of universal health care. It would outrage anyone in the industrialized world that these things come with a priority over universal health care. We, in the cruelest of ways, go one step further.

In honor of my old AZA chapter, Hank Greenberg AZA #151, get ready for some serious cuteness overload.

WARNING: If you do not have a cuteness dampener installed on your computer, it may explode after viewing this picture:

Republicans love to talk about so-called "entitlement" programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. How about this "entitlment":

"Shortly after 1:30 on the afternoon of March 18, two dozen traders in AIG's financial-products division stepped away from their Bloomberg terminals and huddled around televisions to watch their boss, CEO Edward Liddy, testify before Congress. There was much at stake. These were the people who received the greater part of $165 million in 'retention bonuses' that had suddenly become, to borrow a phrase, toxic.

As the hue and cry to return the money grew, the traders had thought that Liddy would stand up for them. The ruddy-faced, 63-year-old former Allstate CEO, who had been installed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September, was, if not exactly one of them, at least someone who understood the rules of the game as it had been played—and who understood what they were entitled to under those rules, even if those rules were unspoken. In AIG's glory years, executives like Joseph Cassano, the former head of financial products, took home more than $300 million. That was the kind of money you couldn't talk about.

But as Andrew Cuomo stoked public outrage by threatening to release the names of the bonus recipients, it became clear that the game was changing. When AIG employees had arrived at their desks that morning, they found a memo from Liddy asking them to return 50 percent of the money. The number infuriated many of the traders. Why 50 percent? It seemed to be picked out of a hat. The money had been promised, was the feeling. A sacred principle was at stake, along with, not incidentally, their millions.

Everyone on Wall Street is prepared to lose money. Bankers have expressions for disastrous losses: clusterfuck, Chernobyl, blowing up … But no one was prepared to lose money this way. This felt like getting mugged.

Jake DeSantis, a 40-year-old commodities trader at AIG, was an unlikely face of Wall Street greed. Stocky and clean cut, with an abiding moral streak, he'd worked summers for a bricklayer in the shadow of shuttered steel mills outside Pittsburgh; he was valedictorian of his high-school class and attended college at MIT. Compared with the way many of his Wall Street brethren lived, with their Gulfstreams, Hamptons mansions, and fleets of luxury cars, his life wasn't one to invite scorn. He had canvassed for Obama in Scranton on Election Day and drove a Prius. His division at AIG was profitable. And since joining the company in 1998, he had never traded a single credit-default swap.

Now his boss was selling him out. DeSantis left work that day feeling that his world was falling apart. The next day, the House passed—by a wide margin—a bill that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses at firms that were bailed out. The Connecticut Working Families Party planned to bus protesters to the homes of AIG executives in Fairfield County. There were death threats. 'It's been terrifying,' says his wife's mother, Lynnette Baughman. 'It's like a witch hunt.'

It was in this environment that DeSantis sent his remarkable resignation letter to the New York Times. In the letter, which ran as an op-ed on March 25, he compared himself to a plumber ('None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house')"

Interesting analogy you have there. If that plumber and electrician worked for the same company, and that company was sued into bankruptcy, guess what? Both the plumber and the electrician would get "cheated" . . . and be listed as debtors in bankruptcy court.

What if the plumber turned a blind eye while the electrician was being careless? In a court of law, BOTH are legally responsible.

I say bullshit if DeSantis claims he and no one else in his division had no idea what Cassano and his gang in London were doing. It's just not possible. But let's pretend that that's the case.

Let's say the plumber didn't know. The electrician burn downs the house. The company gets sued into bankruptcy. In the real world, he still wouldn't get paid.

If DeSantis thinks the bailout was the government being generous with our money, he's sorely mistaken. The bailout was done so our economy didn't implode.

"and announced that he would quit AIG and donate his bonus to charity. The letter, passionate and wounded and oddly out of touch with ordinary Americans, put a human face on Wall Street's anger. When DeSantis arrived at the office the morning his letter appeared in the paper, the AIG traders gave him a standing ovation. In some quarters of the press, he was vilified. (As Frank Rich put it in the Times, 'He didn't seem to understand that his … $742,006.40 (net) would have amounted to $0 had American taxpayers not ponied up more than $170 billion to keep AIG from dying.')"

And Frank Rich is 100% correct.

"But the fracas was useful: DeSantis had succeeded in opening up an honest conversation—as typically emotional and awkward and neurotically charged as is any conversation on the subject—about money, the first this town has had in years.

In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too. As populist rage has erupted around the country, stoked by canny politicians, an opposite rage has built on Wall Street and other arenas where the wealthy hold sway. Its expression is more furtive and it’s often mixed with a kind of sublimated shame, but it can be every bit as vitriolic.

'AIG pissed some people off, and now you’re gonna screw everyone on Wall Street?' rails a laid-off JPMorgan vice-president. (Despite the honesty of the conversation, many did not wish to be quoted by name.)

'No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?' e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague."

Exhibit A in entitlement and a superiority complex. It doesn't matter where you go to school. If you fuck up an industry, your salary (or lack thereof) should reflect that.

Why should he be paid the same as that guy who drives a truck? Because he screwed up! On purpose! Why is this so hard to understand?

There was a doctor on Nova's Doctor's Diaries program who had bad credit and went for 3 years without health insurance because he lost his job.

He was a Harvard educated doctor. Yes, Ivy League. And no, he didn't lose his job because he nearly destroyed the health care industry in the United States. Is he entitled to exorbitant luxuries because of his education, which, I must say, was MUCH, MUCH, MUCH harder than yours?

"'I'm not giving to charity this year!' one hedge-fund analyst shouts into the phone, when I ask about Obama’s planned tax increases. 'When people ask me for money, I tell them, 'If you want me to give you money, send a letter to my senator asking for my taxes to be lowered.' I feel so much less generous right now. If I have to adopt twenty poor families, I want a thank-you note and an update on their lives. At least Sally Struthers gives you an update.'"

Ladies and gentlemen, your unashamed Wall Street douchebag.


"It is difficult to sympathize with these people,"

No, it's not. I find it terribly easy not to sympathize with them.

"their comments laced with snobbery and petulance. But you can understand their shock: Their world has been turned on its head. After years of enjoying favorable tax rates, they are facing an administration that wants to redistribute their wealth. Their industry is being reordered—no one knows what Wall Street will look like in a few years. They are anxious, and their anxiety is making them mad.

Their anger takes many forms: There is rage at Obama for pushing to raise taxes ('The government wants me to be a slave!' says one hedge-fund analyst);"

You think THIS is slavery?! Try working a minimum wage job.

"rage at the masses who don't understand that Wall Street's high salaries fund New York's budget ('We're fucked,' says a former Lehman equities analyst, referring to the city); rage at the people who don't 'get' that Wall Street enables much of the rest of the economy to function ('JPMorgan and all these guys should go on strike—see what happens to the country without Wall Street,' says another hedge-funder)."

The. World. Does. NOT. Revolve. Around. You. Go on strike, you Randian asshole. You don't think you'd be replaced in 10 seconds?

"A few weeks ago, I had drinks with a friend who used to work at Lehman Brothers. She had come to Wall Street in the mid-eighties, when the junk-bond boom spawned a new class of globe-trotting financiers. Over two decades, she had done stints at all the major banks—Chase, Goldman, Lehman—and had a thriving career directing giant streams of capital around the world and extracting a substantial percentage for herself. To her mind, extreme compensation is a fair trade for the compromises of such a career. 'People just don’t get it,' she says. 'I'm attached to my BlackBerry. I was at my doctor the other day, and my doctor said to me, 'You know, I like that when I leave the office, I leave.' I get calls at two in the morning, when the market moves. That costs money. If they keep compensation capped, I don't know how the deals get done. They’re taking Wall Street and throwing it in the East River.'"

So what? You answer your phone at 2:00 am so you're entitled to $50 million while you send your company so far down the toliet that it needs to be bailed out?

Your pay should reflect your job performance, which in turn should reflect your company's job performance. You are NOT entitled to all that wealth and privilege if your company goes down the drain.

"Now, a lot of people in New York have BlackBerrys, and few of them expect to be paid $2 million to check their e-mail in the middle of the night. But embedded in her comment is the belief shared on Wall Street but which few have dared to articulate until now: Those who select careers in finance play an exceptional role in our society."

No, they THINK they do. There's a difference between fantasy and reality. And if they can't tell the difference, they shouldn't be on Wall Street. They should be at Bellevue.

"They distribute capital to where it's most effective, and by some Ayn Rand–ian logic, the virtue of efficient markets distributing capital to where it is most needed justifies extreme salaries—these are the wages of the meritocracy. They see themselves as the fighter pilots of capitalism.

Wall Street people are not moral idiots (most of them, anyway)—it's not as if they've never pondered the fairness of their enormous salaries. 'One of my relatives is a doctor, we're both well-educated, hardworking people. And he certainly didn't make the amount of money I made,' a former Bear Stearns senior managing director tells me. 'I would be the first person to tell you his value to society, to humanity, is far greater than anything that went on in the Bear Stearns building.'"

FINALLY! Some honesty/reality!

"That said, he continues, 'We’re in a hypercapitalistic society. No one complains when Julia Roberts pulls down $25 million per movie or A-Rod has a $300 million guarantee. We have ex-presidents who cash in on their presidencies. Our whole moral compass has shifted about what's acceptable or not acceptable. Honestly, you can pick on Wall Street all you want, I don't think it's fair. It's fair to say you ran your companies into the ground, your risk management is flawed—that is perfectly legitimate. You can lay criticism on GM or others. But I don’t think it's fair to say Wall Street is paid too much.'"

When you take taxpayer money, yes, it is fair to say Wall Street is paid too much.

And let's be honest: if the Hollywood studio making a movie with Julia Roberts in it or the New York Yankees received a taxpayer bailout, you and I both know their salaries would sink faster than a fat kid on a kneeboard.

"Of course, it is precisely the flawed risk management that has brought Wall Street salaries under scrutiny. No one has ever been hurt—not financially, anyway—by a Julia Roberts movie. But with their jobs in jeopardy and their 401(k)s in the toilet thanks to a market in which banks took risks with great upside and seemingly little downside, the Minions of the Universe are looking at the Masters with a newly skeptical eye. 'There’s this perception that the people on the Street were making money for nothing,' says a mortgage-investment banker. 'You have a political and media class who make the mortgage originators and bankers out to be the villains. But are they? They were doing what Congress wanted them to do. Is the guy who lied on his mortgage application the victim here? This whole narrative that the downtrodden were the victims and the money guys were the perpetrators really doesn’t stand up to rational challenge.'"

Yes, that's it. Millions of people facing foreclosure ALL lied on their mortgage applications.

Someone should psychoanalyze this guy to see if he's a sociopath.

Back here on Planet Earth, it's far more plausible and realistic that what ACTUALLY happened was that there was a system in place, created from a deregulatory atmosphere in Washington D.C. and encouraged by Wall Street, that provided incentives to mortgage lenders to give outrageous mortgages to people, and then in turn tricking those people into believing they could pay them back or refinance later.

"But the issue of pay is hardly ever discussed rationally. 'Compensation gets so emotional,' says the Bear Stearns managing director. 'Everyone has a point of view. The truth is, the market determines what people are worth. Did I think I was overpaid? You betcha. But a lot of people are overpaid.'"

Again, more honesty!

That's right Wall Streeters: you're not paid shitloads of money because you're a hard worker. You're paid that much because the market could and would pay you that much.

"The fault line in the argument over compensation is whether the last 30 years of wealth accumulation are part of the natural order of the economy, to be tampered with at the nation’s peril, or an aberration—a giddy, delirious break from reality in which eight-figure bonuses were considered normal.

For those who spent their entire careers in the boom, the natural order of things looked something like this: Newly minted Ivy League graduates flocked to the city to position themselves close to the ever-expanding capital pie and collect the seven-figure crumbs. In return, they joined charity boards, donated to philanthropic causes, booked reservations at restaurants, bought art, kept the waiters and artists and chefs employed, and, yes, paid taxes that cleaned up the city. Consumption and benevolence merged into an enlightened, if garish, form of economic organization. The noblesse oblige was trickle-down.

As Washington denuded the regulations that had constrained finance, the banks themselves encouraged their employees to pursue maximum risk. Bonuses were paid based largely on short-term profits. 'It was the culture of what some called IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,' says Jonathan Knee, a senior managing director at Evercore Partners. Wall Street championed the ethos of 'Eat what you kill.' The most aggressive employees, those who took the greatest risks, thought of themselves less as members of a firm and more as independent contractors entitled to their share of the profits. In this system, institutions tended to be hostage to their best employees. 'The feeling is, if people don't get compensated adequately, they're going to go out and do this on their own,' says Alan Patricof, who founded the private-equity firm Apax Partners.

For these people, it is difficult to imagine a world in which they are not at the top of the socioeconomic heap. But a number of economists and academics are arguing that it was not always this way, and that what we're seeing now is 'a return to normalcy,' as Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at NYU, puts it. Until the late seventies, banking was a career choice more akin to being a corporate lawyer or a doctor than a high-flying hedge-fund manager. Until the eighties, Wall Street counted for about 20 percent of all corporate profits in America, but by the peak of the bubble, it had grown to an astounding 41 percent. 'Wall Street became a high-margin business because of the deregulated environment,' Moss says. 'You basically had a casino culture operating in the financial-services industry.' And that huge profitability led to great influence. 'The system as a whole became unstable because Wall Street developed this disproportionate influence. It's an entire system of belief they had to create,' says Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the IMF. In a recent Atlantic article, Johnson describes Wall Street's influence as a ruling oligarchy, not dissimilar to those of the crony capitalists that have controlled the levers of power in places like Russia, Argentina, and Indonesia. The solution, according to people like Paul Krugman, is to make banking regulated, less profitable, and 'boring' again.

It should come as no surprise that being a banker—indeed, simply being rich—is going to be a lot less fun under an Obama administration. In winter 2007, as the Democratic-primary contest got under way, Obama showed up at a Goldman Sachs client meeting to explain his economic agenda to a conference room full of potential campaign contributors. When he opened up the session to questions from the audience, one attendee lobbed the question that was surely on the mind of everyone in the room. 'Are you going to raise my taxes?'

Obama looked out across the millionaires sitting around him. 'Yes,' he answered, without a flicker of hesitation, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

During the campaign, Obama was never shy about his promise to undo the Bush tax policies. But it was easy to ignore his occasional lapses into populist rhetoric and focus on his intense intelligence and Ivy League education. Now, in the wake of the crisis, Wall Street's politics are shifting rightward. 'All the rich people I know took George Bush for granted,' says an analyst at a midtown hedge fund. 'I'm a Democrat, but I agree with Rush Limbaugh on a lot of this stuff,' rails the wife of a former AIG executive.

The anger masks a deeper suspicion that Obama fundamentally doesn't respect their place at the table. 'I think he doesn’t have an appreciation for how hard it is to build these companies, the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into them,'"

And the rest of us don't work hard? Because if WE fuck up, we lose our jobs. And our health care. And maybe our homes.

"says a senior executive from a failed Wall Street firm. 'It’s just that he has no passion for it. He speaks dispassionately about the whole situation, except when he's beating up on the Wall Street fat cats.'

The argument that Obama has in fact done a great deal to help Wall Street—to the tune of trillions of dollars—doesn't have much truck with these critics."

Ungrateful little shits. WE saved your asses. A little more appreciation should be in order.

"'If you really take a look at what Obama is promising, it's frightening,' says Nicholas Cacciola, a 44-year-old executive at a financial-services firm. 'He's punishing you for doing better. He doesn't want to have any wealth creation—it's wealth distribution. Why are you being punished for making a lot of money?' As a Republican corporate lawyer puts it: 'It's the politics of envy, and that's very dangerous.'"

1) He's not punishing you for doing better. He's making the tax structure more fair.
2) How did you make all that money? On whose backs were those millions taken from? You need to stop detaching yourselves from HOW you made your money. You lose focus on the fact that often you make money because you were able to get someone else to sacrifice something. Case in point: Wal-Mart.
3) Politics of envy? Get over yourself. It's the politics of NECESSITY. As in we need to do these things so the country doesn't go bankrupt and we turn into a Banana Republic.

"'Nobody likes having their taxes go up,' says Whitney Tilson, who runs the investment firm T2 Partners and was a member of Obama’s Tri-State Finance Committee. This was a view that was comically on display at the scores of anti-tax 'tea parties' that took place across the country last week. 'Rich Democrats don't like having their taxes raised either … Naturally, when you try and take the bone away, even if they didn't deserve that bone in the first place, nothing starts a fight more than raising taxes.'"

Thus part of the problem. We need to get away from the "me, me, and only me" concept.

"The crisis seems to have exposed a generation gap on Wall Street. For a bit of perspective, I spoke with a Goldman veteran who had left years ago to run his own private-equity firm. He's 55, which is old by Wall Street standards—at some firms, if you're not upper management, you're encouraged to get out, with your substantial nest egg, by 50. He had arrived on Wall Street in 1980, on the eve of the junk-bond mania, and watched how radically his peers changed the city. 'When I started, people made a lot of money, but it was an order of magnitude less than what people made from 1995 to 2005. You know, some of my friends and I, we complained bitterly that we had bad luck that we started when we did. We said, 'Gee, I wish we had graduated from school in 1990, not 1980.' We thought we'd be making a hell of a lot more money. And now, the guys who graduated from school in 2005, arguably those guys won't make very much money at all. So the truth is, when you hit Wall Street determines in large part whether or not you’re wealthy.'

To Wall Street people who have grown up in the bubble, the meaning of the crisis is only slowly sinking in. They can't yet grasp the idea of a life lived on less. 'Without exception, Wall Street guys have gotten accustomed to not being stuck in the city in August. So it becomes a right to have a summer home within an hour or two commute from Manhattan,' says the Goldman vet. 'There's a cost structure of going with your family on summer vacation that's not optional. There's a cost structure of spending $40,000 to send your kids to private school that is not optional. There's a sense of entitlement, that you need that amount of money just to live, that's not optional.'

'You can't live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000,' he continues. 'And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He's being disingenuous. He knows that you can't live in New York on $75,000.'"

Boo-fucking-hoo.

"That was an argument I heard over and over: that the high cost of living like a wealthy person in New York necessitates high salaries. It was loopy logic, but expressed sincerely. 'You could make the argument that $250,000 is a fair amount to make,' says the laid-off JPMorgan vice-president. 'Well, what about the $125,000 that staffers on Capitol Hill make? They’re making high salaries for where they live, maybe we should cut their salary, too.'"

Touche. I agree. Congress needs a pay cut.

"Part of the problem, the Goldman vet explains, is that there's a vast divide between where the public is and where the bankers are. The public registers how fundamentally the system has changed; the bankers are far from getting to that point."

Well, they need to get there, ASAP.

"'When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like Goldman, they would tell me, 'If the government doesn't bail us out, we're going down.' They really thought they were going to zero, and without exception, they all forget that now,' he says. 'They forget that their company's stock was going to zero. It's a state of delusion; they don't remember those days. The flip side of that is, every guy except the Goldman guy remembers that Goldman was bailed out.'"

You damn right we remember.

"I asked him what will happen if Congress succeeds in regulating compensation. 'These guys will not work on Wall Street,' he says flatly."

Good. Let's hope that those that replace them will be less evil.

"'People go to Wall Street out of greed. When I was interviewing for jobs, frequently some form of the question came up: How much do you want to make money? If my answer was something like—and it wasn’t—but if my answer was, 'I'm here for intellectual betterment,' their response might have been, 'University is a great place for you.' They want people who think 'I'm greedy, I want to be a billionaire.' That was viewed as a really good thing.'

The greed won't disappear, of course. 'The smart people are going to make money in good times and bad times,' one investment adviser tells me. 'They'll figure out how to game the system,' says the former Bear Stearns managing director. 'You may get a new set of players. This may be a movement back to partnerships and boutique firms. This could be their moment.'

There's a vast woundedness now on Wall Street, which is hard to contemplate after the period of triumphalism so recently ended. In this conversation about money, there’s a lot to work through. Just months ago, the masses kept what anger they had to themselves, and the bankers were close-lipped about what they thought they were owed by society. There wasn’t much of a dialogue about the haves and have-nots and who was entitled to what. For the privileged, it was a lot more comfortable when things remained unspoken. Almost more than the loss of money, they are concerned with the loss of status and pride.

'I was at a cocktail party on Friday. Some guy said to me, 'You work on Wall Street? How’s that working out for you?'' says the JPMorgan banker who was forced out in a recent round of layoffs. 'There was a little bit of nastiness there.'

It was a feeling I heard a lot as I spoke with Wall Street bankers, analysts, and traders. They had believed Wall Street was where the winners of American capitalism went. Now they were feeling shamed for their work. 'You wear a nice suit on the subway, and people look at you,' the former JPMorgan VP continues. 'I know it's not wrong to be an investment banker in New York these days, but I get that feeling. Now anyone who made money on Wall Street has done the American people wrong?'

Could this really be the new pecking order? A future where banking is boring, salaries are capped, taxes are high, and—worst of all—you get to carry the blame for the Great Recession of '09? It’s almost too much to bear.

'I always thought what I did was somewhat honorable,' the mortgage-investment banker recently told me. He had been trading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities he thought were triple-A- rated investments until his fund blew up and put him out of work. 'Suddenly, the simple fact I work on Wall Street means that I'm a bad person? You know, I lost my job. I’m more of a victim.'"

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman lays it out in layman's terms for us:

"Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There's a word for this: it's evil."

It takes simple language from an Ivy League professor to really have it hit home for us.

Still not convinced?

Here, I'll put in another set of facts:

Torture DOES not, and DID not work.

Happy?

Cough-prosecute Bush Adminstration Officials who authorized torture-Cough cough.

Bonnaroo 2009 Widget

Leave it to Matt Taibbi to say what we're all thinking with regard to the so-called "Tea Bag" Protests (As an aside, can we PLEASE find anyone word to use? I've seen videos of these protests, and when I couple these images to the phrase "tea-bagging", I get the absolute worst of mental pictures):

"It took a good long while for news of the Teabag movement to penetrate the periphery of my consciousness — I kept hearing things about it and dismissing them, sure that the whole business was some kind of joke. Like a Daily Show invention, say. It pains me to say this as an American, but we are the only people on earth dumb enough to use a nationwide campaign of 'teabag parties' as a form of mass protest, in the middle of a real economic crisis.

What's next? The Great Dirty Sanchez-In of 2010? A Million Man Felch? (Insert Rusty Trombone joke here).

This must be a terrible time to be a right-winger. A vicious paradox has been thrust upon the once-ascendant conservatives. On the one hand they are out of power, and so must necessarily rail against the Obama administration. On the other hand they have to vilify, as dangerous anticapitalist activity, the grass-roots protests against the Geithner bailouts and the excess of companies like AIG. That leaves them with no recourse but to dream up wholesale lunacies along the lines of Glenn Beck’s recent 'Fascism With a Happy Face' rants, which link the protesting 'populists' and the Obama administration somehow and imagine them as one single nefarious, connected, ongoing effort to install a totalitarian regime.

This is not a simple rhetorical accomplishment. It requires serious mental gymnastics to describe the Obama administration — particularly the Obama administration of recent weeks, which has given away billions to Wall Street and bent over backwards to avoid nationalization and pursue a policy that preserves the private for-profit status of the bailed-out banks — as a militaristic dictatorship of anti-wealth, anti-private property forces. You have to somehow explain the Geithner/Paulson decisions to hand over trillions of taxpayer dollars to the rich bankers as the formal policy expression of progressive rage against the rich. Not easy. In order to pull off this argument, in fact, you have to grease the wheels with a lot of apocalyptic language and imagery, invoking as Beck did massive pictures of Stalin and Orwell and Mussolini (side by side with shots of Geithner, Obama and Bernanke), scenes of workers storming the Winter Palace interspersed with anti-AIG protests, etc. — and then maybe you have to add a crazy new twist, like switching from complaints of 'socialism' to warnings of 'fascism.' Rhetorically, this is the equivalent of trying to paint a picture by hurling huge handfuls of paint at the canvas. It's desperate, last-ditch-ish behavior.

It's been strange and kind of depressing to watch the conservative drift in this direction. In a way, actually, the Glenn Beck show has been drearily fascinating of late. It’s not often that we get to watch someone go insane on national television; trapped in an echo chamber of his own spiraling egomania, with apparently no one at his network willing to pull the plug and put him out of his misery, Beck has lately gone from being a mildly annoying media dingbat to a self-imagined messiah who looks like he's shouldering more and more of the burdens of Christ with each passing day. And because he’s stepping into a vacuum of conservative leadership — there's no one else out there who is offering real red meat to the winger crowd — he's begun to attract not professional help but apostles, in the form of Chuck Norris (who believes we have to prepare for armed revolution and may prepare a run for 'president of Texas') and pinhead Midwestern congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, a woman who is looking more and more like George Foreman to Sarah Palin's Joe Frazier in the Heavyweight Championship of Stupid. Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!

This new Holy Trinity of right-wing basket cases has been pushing all sorts of crazy hallucinations of late, from Bachmann warning that the Americorps program would eventually be turned into a regime of forced re-education for American youth, to Beck's meanderings about Obama creating FEMA-run concentration camps to warehouse conservative dissidents, to Norris and Beck stirring up talk of secessionist movements. And a lot of people are having fun with this, because, well, it's funny. It's like a Farrelly Brothers version of right-wing political agitation. But it's also kind of sad.

After all, the reason the winger crowd can't find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other [Emphasis added, ed.]. That's why even people like Beck's audience, who I'd wager are mostly lower-income people, can't imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over [Emphasis added, ed.]. Beck pointedly compared the AIG protesters to Bolsheviks: '[The Communists] basically said 'Eat the rich, they did this to you, get 'em, kill 'em!'' He then said the AIG and G20 protesters were identical: 'It's a different style, but the sentiments are exactly the same: Find 'em, get 'em, kill 'em!'' Beck has an audience that's been trained that the rich are not appropriate targets for anger, unless of course they're Hollywood liberals, or George Soros, or in some other way linked to some acceptable class of villain, to liberals, immigrants, atheists, etc. — Ted Turner, say, married to Jane Fonda.

But actual rich people can't ever be the target. It's a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master's carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you're a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit [Emphasis added, ed.]. Whatever the master does, you're on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that's what we've got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can't be mad at AIG, can't be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it's struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It's really weird stuff. And bound to get weirder, I imagine, as this crisis gets worse and more complicated."

All these so-called "Tea Party" protests are a sham. Yes, the people that go to them are "sincere", but the actual protests aren't organized at the grassroots level; they're being egged on by right-wing think tanks and Fox News.

And, as Matt wrote, their anger is misdirected. They're not angry at the bankers who sent the economy down the tubes. No, they're angry at the Obama Administration having to spend money in order to fix it.

People on the left aren't fans of the bailout plan either; no one wants to give money to rich people who don't deserve it. But, we, unlike the useful idiots in the street yesterday, we think it should have gone farther, with more oversight, and be much harsher on the banks. You know, the dipshits that caused the whole mess to begin with.

I ask: what would you do instead? What are your plans? It's interesting: all those protests today was righteously indignant about paying more taxes (which, ironically enough, most of them won't do; in fact, most will get lower taxes) as a result of all the spending we have to do, but I have yet to see anyone say what we should do as an alternative.

By the way, in case you're wondering, NO, WE SHOULD NOT GIVE TAX CUTS AND CUT SOCIAL SPENDING. Tax cuts create even BIGGER deficits and cutting social spending would be catastrophic to a nation suffering from massive deflation, unemployment, and a devalued dollar.

Most importantly, regardless of what negative effects they would do, neither would actually resurrect the economy.

And all for what? Increased tax rates to Clinton levels? This isn't tyranny, to paraphrase Jon Stewart. This is losing.

Conservatives, you guys lost the election. Furthermore, your ideology and policies destroyed the economy. The nation elected liberals (or those that sit left-of-center) to fix it. Yes, they'll do things you disagree with. But that's not despotism. That's democracy.

Deal with it.

There's never been enough Republican hypocrisy when it comes to the Coleman-Franken fiasco (By the way, just in case anyone has forgotten, Franken still has not been seated in the Senate, despite winning the election). Now, of course, we can add irony:

"The three-judge panel charged with reviewing the votes cast in the tightly-contested Minnesota Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken has declared a winner in the race.

'Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election,' concluded the judges, who determined that the challenger was entitled to a certificate of election that will clear the way for him to be seated in the Senate.

The ruling came after a review of disputed ballots, which the Coleman camp had demanded be counted, turned out to favor Franken by a margin of nearly 2-1.

That gave the comedian and author turned candidate a lead of 312 votes in the race for the seat once held by the late Paul Wellstone.

If this was just about identifying the winner, the determination by the judges would be the end of it. After all, the panel did rule that 'the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately.'

But the top lawyer for the Coleman camp, which has been heavily financed by Republican senators in Washington who have shown no bones about their willingness to drag the count out, dismissed the latest setback for his candidate as 'really inconsequential.'

Attorney Ben Ginsberg [Emphasis and link added, ed.] promised an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court as the latest in the Coleman team's dead-ender strategy. That appeal must come within 10 days after the three-judge panel -- which was appointed by the high court to resolve the matter -- issues its final order.

But Franken's attorney, Marc Elias, did not appear to be sweating it.

'The problem that former Senator Coleman has is he lost fair and square,' explained Elias. 'He lost because more people voted for Al Franken than voted for Norm Coleman. No amount of lawyering or sophisticated legal arguments is going to change that.'

While Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie expressed his hope that the Supreme Court's decision might settle things and get his state a second senator after a five month delay, Ginsberg and his paymasters in Washington won't necessarily be giving up. They're sending signals regarding federal appeals that, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, could keep the seat vacant for another six months. [Emphasis added, ed.]

Why is this hypocritical? Because, in 2000, Republicans criticized and obstructed every attempt to recount the ballots. Gore was called a "baby" and a "sore loser", even though the recounts were never completed. (Further studies have shown, as I pointed out, that had the recount been done correctly, Gore would have won the election)

In contrast, the Minnesota recounts have long been completed. All legal challenges to votes have been exhausted. Al Franken clearly won the election. Yet the Republicans won't concede defeat. Who's the sore loser now?

Why is this ironic? Because the lead attorney involved in the Coleman campaign is one Benjamin Ginsberg. Who is Benjamin Ginsberg? He was one of the lawyers who argued against the Florida recounts on behalf of Bush in 2000.

A lawyer who argued against a recount in Florida in 2000 is holding up the results of another recount in 2008 (2009). That's irony.

Want some more irony? In the movie Recount, which is a fictionalized dramatization of the Florida 2000 recount, Ben Ginsberg, as played by Bob Balaban, notes just after finding out that the Gore campaign wishes to engage in a recount, says, "[Bill Daley's] daddy [Richard Daley] stole the election for JFK and now he's gonna steal it for Gore."

Ben Ginsberg stole the election for George W. Bush. So is he now gonna steal it for Norm Coleman?

I received this email Tuesday morning from Former Michigan Representative Leon Drolet, on behalf of his organization, The Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. As this is right-wing propaganda/mindless drivel of a particularly heinous nature, I will unfortunately have to intersperse my response into each paragraph, as the lies and half-truths are abound:

"April 15 is tax day; a day that millions of Americans docilely pay their tribute to state and federal government politicians and bureaucrats who think they can spend your money better than you can. But this tax day is different because something new is happening. This tax day, millions of Americans are getting in their cars and driving to Taxpayer Tea Party protests around the country."

You mean these so-called "tea parties" that are not the organized from the bottom-up at all but rather by big think tanks and the Republican establishment? Those tea parties? Oh, ok. Just checking.

By the way, Leon, you do know that the real Boston Tea Party was caused by a tax decrease, not a tax increase, right? Oh, I'm sorry. Facts aren't really your thing, you big reactionary douche bag.

"The Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, Michigan's largest and fastest-growing taxpayer rights organization, is cosponsoring our state's biggest Tea Party protest at noon this Wednesday on the steps of the state capitol Building in Lansing. I hope you'll join us.

This tax day is different, but not just because President Obama's budget quadruples the national debt in one year.[Emphasis added, ed.]"

Quadruples the debt? So, you're telling us we're going from a $10 trillion debt (itself double of the $5 trillion debt Bush inherited in 2001) to a $40 trillion debt? Really? Where are you getting those figures, Einstein? Who's doing your arithmetic for you? Mr. Magoo?

You probably mean deficit. But, there's a huge difference between the federal debt and the federal deficit. Your error wasn't completely accidental, I believe. Because, upon further examination, people would see that 2009's enormous deficit is due to economic stimulus, a necessary measure due to the way the federal government mishandled financial regulation beginning with Reagan in 1981 and continuing through the Clinton years (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act), and even further accelerated on an unprecedented scale through the nightmare called the Bush Administration.

On the other hand, Bush inherited a surplus in 2001. He immediately turned that record surplus into continuous record deficits. And what were those deficits from? Enormous and unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans (no doubt in service of a right-wing agenda left over from the Reagan Administration, i.e. "Reaganomics", which has continually been shown to be a complete and utter failure) and an illegal, unjust, and most importantly UNNECESSARY war.

Where were you then buddy? Oh I forgot. Republicans and conservatives only care about "fiscal responsibility" when a Democrat is in office. Sorry about that. Please continue your hypocritical call to arms.

"Or because of Governor Granholm's 2007 state income and business tax hikes."

Necessary after a decade of Engler's tax cuts.

"It's because citizens (like you) are sick of hearing about how they should pay more in taxes, while government employees' salary and benefit costs skyrocket."

Wait, what? You're seriously going to argue that our state's budgetary problems come from government employees?!

"Just last week, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average public employee is paid $39.25 an hour in salary and benefits - $11.90 an hour more than comparable private-sector citizens. Benefit costs for government workers cost $13.38 an hour compared to $7.98 for private-sector workers. Who is serving who?"

Your figures are either wrong or taken completely out of context or are counting something that shouldn't be counted. But, let's assume that they're correct. Given we've had stagnating wages for the last 30 years, let's not get into the trap thinking government employees are getting rich. They're not.

My dad is an attorney for Wayne County (that's Detroit for you non-Michiganders). Would you like to compare his salary to an attorney in the same kind of law (family law) in the private sector? Warning: don't come to that gunfight with knife. You'll most assuredly lose.

And, again, let's assume that your figures are true . . . so? Government employees make "decent" wages because their union fought for them. What a concept! Collective bargaining and unionization actually improving the lives of workers! Oh, I forgot. Unions are evil and things like the Employee Free Choice Act will usher in the Apocaplyse. Please continue while I vomit.

"While a large turnout at our Taxpayer Tea Party protest is important, the MTA knows more action is needed before politicians are forced to sober-up from their orgy of fiscal irresponsibility. You see, I know how politicians think because I've been one. I served six years in the Michigan state legislature and four years in county government."

How did that inflated government salary and those overgenerous benefits treat you? Perhaps, instead of picking on middle class government employees, we should trim the fat on your $79,650 per year plus a $12,000 expense account that you earned as a State Representative. P.S. That's actually the same amount that government employees make per year, when you factor in their benefits. Except that they don't get an expense account.

"During my time in the legislature, I learned that politicians aren't stupid."

Well, at least one was. And now he runs the Michigan Taxpayer's Alliance.

"They're very clever at making decisions that help them gain and keep power. It only seems like they're stupid because, while their decisions are good for them, they're bad for you, the taxpayer.

I don't like that system. In fact, I think it stinks."

You apparently didn't mind being a part of it, though. And reaping the benefits, you hypocrite.

"That’s why I started the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. The MTA is changing those incentives so that it's in the politicians' interest to make you a winner, not the tax-eaters.

How? By inflicting pain on politicians who vote to raise your taxes.

Last years' battle to recall Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon for raising state taxes put Lansing's politicians on notice. Dillon wasn't recalled,[Emphasis added, ed.]"

So, that didn't work out for you, did it? Could it be that the Michigan electorate is fed up with your bullshit? Sorry, please continue.

"but taxpayers sent shockwaves through the Capitol by collecting more than enough signatures to force the Speaker to face a recall election. And taxpayers won big-time when the U.S. federal courts ruled in our favor and forced the Michigan Legislature to scrap laws they had enacted to hinder recall petition circulators.

That right, we won in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court in Cincinnati. Won what? Politicians had insulated themselves from citizen-led political uprisings by passing laws making it almost impossible for citizens to recall them. The Court said 'no way' to those restrictive laws and struck them from the books. We won a shiny new tool - a greatly expanded recall option - for citizens seeking to hold politicians accountable for hiking taxes."

How about holding politicians responsible who get too far into bed with industry lobbies that lobby for companies that pollute the Great Lakes . . . or deny their workers a living wage . . . or, on a grander scale . . . starting illegal wars? Nope? Just for tax increases, I see.

"Battling to recall the House Speaker wasn't cheap - the Michigan Democratic Party and the Speaker spent well over a million dollars to fight the recall. And the taxpayers' victory in court wasn't inexpensive either.

The Michigan Taxpayers Alliance needs your support to fight these important battles on your behalf."

Ah. Finally some truth. You need money. Well, why didn't you say so in the beginning? Here, let me pull out some of my never-even-on-a-cold-day-in-hell savings? How's that for you?

"The cheap and easy thing to do is to become another mild-mannered informational organization, shaking our finger at politicians in newspaper columns, handing out flyers at public hearings, and meekly testifying in Lansing against proposed tax hikes: 'Please, sir - don’t hurt me again.' But lawmakers would only politely pretend to listen while calculating whether the MTA has real power - as in money, organization, or motivated members.

When politicians know that taxpayers have money, organization and motivated members - and are prepared to use them effectively - they realize the game has changed. If they’re confident we don't have them, it's business as usual.

MTA has earned some of that street-cred - they know we're not bluffing. The tax-raisers realize that we'll fight in them the streets (the Dillon recall), in the courts, and in arming taxpayers with the tools to fight back - MTA workshops trained over 3,000 homeowners on how to appeal their property tax assessments this year."

Have you helped the many Michiganders who face foreclosure because of unfair deregulation in the financial industry? If so, I'm waiting to hear about it . . . still waiting . . .

"This is a fundraising request."

No shit.

"You will NOT receive email fundraising requests from me very often."

How about NEVER? I would like to NEVER receive email fundraising requests from you. Is NEVER good for you?

The fact that you have to send out an email asking for money for a right-wing cause speaks volumes about the quality of your cause to begin with.

"You can choose to delete it, of course, but please don't."

Oops. Too late.

"The MTA is an organization that fights every day to make YOU more powerful in the political arena - to keep your money in your pocket."

No, it fights to make YOU, and the wealthiest you surround yourself with, more powerful.

"I know times are economically brutal right now."

No shit, Sherlock.

"The economy has actually increased the amount spent in Lansing by lobbyists (up six percent in 2008) competing for every last dime in the state. Please help the MTA fight back by making a contribution right now.

This week's MTA cosponsored Taxpayer Tea Party protest in Lansing serves as a warning. We're ready to fight for your future - will you help?"

I already did. I helped vote out you Republican assholes from my district in the State Legislature.

"This year is critically important. The economic crisis is an excuse and opportunity for local governments to seize more power and raise city, township, school and county taxes. They'll say tax increases are necessary to protect 'vital services' - all while salary and benefit costs of government employees continue to explode."

Until you're ready to take a HUGE pay cut, there's no reason middle class government employees should either. And, I hate to break it to you, but vital services are just that: VITAL.

"The tax-takers will still hugely outspend us but, the tax-takers waste much of their resources on fancy offices, staff, and overhead. Our resources go directly into the front lines to protect taxpayers. We have no offices or expensive overhead. We work out of our homes using cell phones, the internet and email."

Oh, you're a regular Che Guevara. Somehow I highly doubt you don't have any offices or expensive overhead. And if you don't, it's probably because you can afford to not have to worry about getting paid as you're already probably fabulously wealthy, getting rich off the backs of the working poor.

"We do have expenses, but we're lean-and-mean because we have to be. We know that to even the odds every dime we raise must be spent as effectively as possible.

The MTA won't give up on the future of Michigan, no matter how difficult or dark things may appear. We won't quit fighting to restore prosperity for Michigan's citizens (as opposed to prosperity for Michigan's government)."

Have you even seen the unemployment figures for Michigan? Upwards of 12% in February 2009? Where was all that prosperity during the Bush years?

"It is just not in us to quit."

Please do. It would make our lives better and easier.

"The time for complaining is over. Its time to DO something. Be a continued part of the fight by supporting the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance.

Thank you for making it possible,

Leon Drolet
Chairman, MI Taxpayers Alliance"

People like you, Leon, are the reason this state is in the shithole. You view ordinary workers as lazy free-loaders when in fact they are the backbone of this state. You spend years in the legislature tying the hands of the government, and then complain when that same government needs to raise taxes because you created serious budget deficits.

But, the mere fact that you are a former Michigan State Representative tells me that the winds are changing in Lansing. Good riddance to you, asshat. Enjoy your new job. The less of you conservative/libertarian nutjobs we have in the State House, the better.

Truth to power from . . . Charlie Chaplin? . . . :

"I'm sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness - not by each other's misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate - has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man - cries for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say: 'Do not despair.' The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural!

Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written the kingdom of God is within man not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful - to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security.

By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason - a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us unite!"

Yes, I know it's from The Great Dictator, but for some reason, as others have pointed out, it has lots of meaning today.

And this post goes out to that wonderful Hospital and Molecular Epidemiologist-in-training, Alicia . . .

You know those stories about the so-called "Somali pirates"? Turns out some the blame for this situation lies with us, specifically Western European nations using the waters of the coast of Somalia as a dumping ground/fishing free-for-all:

"Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as 'one of the great menaces of our times' have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the 'golden age of piracy' – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls 'one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century'.

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed 'quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.' This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: 'What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live.' In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: 'Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.' Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to 'dispose' of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: 'Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.'

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: 'If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters.'

This is the context in which the 'pirates' have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent 'strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence'.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: 'We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.' William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know 'what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.' The pirate smiled, and responded: 'What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.' Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?"

The use of the word "pirate" is itself loaded. What we have come to define as "piracy" in the 17th, 18, and 19th century was only defined in one direction. In other words, what William Scott did was piracy. But what Francis Drake, Hernán Cortés, Vasco Núnez de Balboa, Christopher Columbus, Francisco Coronado, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, John Cabot, James Cook, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, and a host of others did was essentially the same thing, in addition to, in some cases, what amounted to genocide, and they're considered heroes.

Or how about out the record and movie industry's definition of pirate? Or Rice Tec's definition of the word pirate?

Now, while certainly the action hostage-taking and violent actions of the "Somali pirates" are rightfully condemned, it seems to me that perhaps 1) we need to stop letting thieves and usurers define the word "pirate" and 2) consider our own actions in this situation.

But, as with many instances where Western powers have done something wrong, the parties involved will completely ignore or back away from their culpability and call their enemies something horrible in an effort to allow them to continue to pollute and plunder without guilt.

Until we recognize our fault and STOP DUMPING TOXIC WASTE INTO THEIR COASTAL WATERS AND PLUNDERING THEIR OCEAN FOR SEAFOOD, we should expect the "piracy" to continue.

Holy shitballs:

"Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of 'Little Dorrit,' Charles Dickens's scathing indictment of Victorian England's debtors' prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America.

Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.

In 1970, the Supreme Court ruled that it violates equal protection to keep inmates in prison extra time because they are too poor to pay a fine or court costs. More recently, the court ruled that a state generally cannot revoke a defendant's probation and imprison him for failing to pay a fine if he is unable to do so.

That has not stopped the practice. In Georgia, poor people who cannot pay off fines — plus a monthly fee to the private company that collects the payments — are often sent to jail for nonpayment, according to Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. In 2006, the center sued on behalf of a woman who was locked up in Atlanta for eight months past her original sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine.

Until a few years ago, the police in Gulfport, Miss., regularly did sweeps of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, identified people with unpaid fines, and put them in jail. Defendants who could not pay were forced to remain there until they 'sat off' their fines. The city ended the practice after it was sued.

Prisoners’ rights advocates worry that in these hard times, when government budgets are under pressure, courts and prisons will get even tougher about forcing indigent defendants to pay costs and fees, and will imprison more of them if they cannot come up with the money. The government should be helping people on society’s margins build productive lives. Throwing them in jail for being poor makes that much more difficult."

The United States now imprisons more of its own population than any other country on Earth. We constantly talk about excessive government spending, as we slowly turn our prison system over to the private sector (more expensively), as I detailed here.

No, when it comes time to "cut costs", we imprison people (or extend their sentences) because they can't pay a fine, or we cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, or we don't pay for the proper body armor for our troops.

But, we sure as hell always get the B-2, and the missiles, and the arms, and the prison industrial complex, and Halliburton, or any number of expensive things we don't need.

And now we put people in prison because, essentially, they are too poor to pay a fine. Who are we?

I haven't said it lately, but Keith Olbermann is AWESOME, and here's why:

"Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest atrocity from the banks. The vast, engorged, gluttonous multi-national corporations. Whose sneezes can be fatal to our jobs. Whose mistakes can turn us into the homeless. Whose accounting errors can be so panoramic that they can make our economy tremble and force us to hand them billions after billions in a blackmail scheme that has come to be known as 'bailout.'

Five weeks ago Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer of Citigroup, went back to Congress, tail seemingly between his legs, and, with entreaty dripping from his voice, announced 'I get the new reality and I'll make sure Citi gets it as well.'

In point of fact, as Bloomberg News reports today, what Mr. Pandit 'got' was a new $10 million executive suite for himself and his key associates.

This is the same Mr. Pandit who said he would show his leadership by accepting compensation of $1 a year. In fact, he then 'accepted' a total compensation package for 2008 of $38 million.

Enough!

Mr. Pandit, you're probably just a good actor and a damned liar and a con man. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume instead, that you just can't tell the difference between $1 and 38 million of them. That would certainly explain the maelstrom into which you, and your colleagues at Citi and your counterparts elsewhere, have gotten us, including the vast majority of us who are innocent bystanders.

Your bank says your new $10 million office is part of a global strategy of space reduction that will ultimately save billions. It seems entirely appropriate to remind everyone, sir, that this promise could be fulfilled by Citi saving $2 a year for a billion years.

God knows you guys have pulled off every other accounting trick every dreamt up by immoral man. You, Sir, and the other corporate pirates like you — those who are saved from your obsessive spending and greed and self-aggrandizement by the taxpayer — who then pretend to atone — who then publicly promise good behavior — and who then revert immediately to the rapaciousness that is your only skill.

You, sir, all of you, need to be fired.

Enough!

And Mr. Pandit's corporation should be cut up into little pieces. And when he and the other ultra-millionaires wonder what hit them, we should make sure they are easily reminded. Our representatives should entitle the legislation that ends their moral ponzi schemes, 'The Punish Vikram Pandit Act of 2009.'

The far right in this country, without the slightest provocation, screams 'socialism,' and the sheep who follow it, who do not know what the word means and do not know it is only being used because 'communism' now rings laughably hollow. In this cry of fire in a crowded unemployment line, there is outrage.

But there is also license. They think this is socialism? There is a million miles of reform to go before we hit socialism but if they're going to call us names whether they apply or not let's give them real reform.

Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations, for their debts, and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts!

AIG gives 'failure bonuses' to the cretins whose dalliances in derivatives brought the company and part of the nation to her knees? Spin off that division whose traders are owed the 165 million in bonuses, under fund it, and cause it to go bankrupt.

Enough!

Let those with bonuses owed, stand in line before a bankruptcy referee, and wind up — just as you and I would — with half a cent on the dollar. Northern Trust fires 450 employees in December. Then takes a billion six in bailout money. Sponsors a golf tournament. Flies hundreds of clients to Southern California for private Oscar Parties including the renting of an airplane hangar and the hiring of the group 'Earth, Wind & Fire?'

Enough!

Fire the executives. And fire up the Justice Department to figure out just how much fraud was involved in asking for a billion-six in bailout money when Northern Trust said nothing as the checks were written, even though it knew in advance that millions could be saved by simply cutting the fluff and the trumpery.

Thirteen more companies that took bailouts, signed the mandatory documents that said they owed no back taxes lied turned out, per Congressman John Lewis of Ways and Means today lied — they owe, just among those thirteen firms, 220 million in back taxes?

Enough!

Have the IRS take these companies, immediately, to the tax courts to which the rest of us are liable. And strip those ancient, outdated laws of Corporation, so that the officers of the corporation are personally liable for their companies' debts, just as you or I would be. And if the monopolies of radio or television rear up to support the corporate structure, to say a contract is a contract, even though that isn't true for a union these days, only for an AIG Trader. Take the invisible, unused Sword of Damocles they still fatuously insist hangs over their heads, and make it real.

Enough!

Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market.

And, yes, if a voice of the privileged classes unfairly uses his cable platform to call our neighbors who are the victims of this, 'losers' to insist he alone speaks for the real people.

Or if another, indicts without equal time for defense a particular elected official, and then offers himself as a candidate for that very official's seat, in violation of all canons of good or even fair broadcasting then tell the cable industry that the free ride is over and it is time that it too be regulated by the FCC.

Enough!

To all of you in the Corporate boardrooms.

Stop viewing the public's reaction to this naked, unhindered robbery of the public coffers, and your audacious, immeasurable sense of proprietorship and entitlement stop viewing our anger as some kind of brief impediment, some traffic delay that keeps you from your God-given corporate ballpark sponsorships, and perpetually remodeled offices, and the divine right of $38 million 'compensation packages.'

You, gentlemen and ladies, and not the good and long-suffering average people of this country, you are fomenting rage in this nation. You are the losers in this equation, and the people are the generous ones; they have not assembled in the streets with pitch-forks and flaming torches. You are the ones perceived — understood in a visceral and even transcendent way — as the committers of what is becoming class economic rape.

And heed this one word before these people grow weary of forgiving you, and instead decide to bring the 'good life' — which you have built on their backs — crashing down on top of your heads. When the next boardroom needs re-modeling, or the next bonus paid, or the next jet purchased, remember that one word:

Enough!"

The man has said it all. Frankly, no one should be surprised that the banks would do this. We all knew it would happen. They lobbied, and got, thanks to their Republican puppets in Congress, stipulations in the bailout that would not limit their compensation.

Done in the name of "bipartisanship" and "compromise", I suppose.

Those pushing for a bailout I guess just "hoped" that these corporate criminals and robber barons would do the right thing and not generously compensate themselves on our dollar.

Well, gee, skippy, such "hope" was wasted on the wrong set of people. These are the most greedy, selfish, egotistical people on the planet. If they can get a big bonus, then they will.

And if I hear another schmuck scream about "contracts", I will scream and just say: UAW. Remember Shelby and McConnell and all of these Southern Republicans (and their Northern counterparts, I'm looking at you Mitt Romney) who, while working full time for foreign automakers and part time for their constituents (if at all) made a point that the UAW needed to renegotiate their contracts before any loans were given.

I guess a contract is only a contract when you're a greedy banker on Wall Street and not when you're a union auto worker.

Sorry, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Those "executive" contracts? Only paper, as far as I'm concerned.

And if you're one of those bankers who thinks that you're "entitled" to that lavish bonus while your company goes belly up and in need of a bailout because you "worked hard", I say tough shit.

Sue. That's right. Sue your company. Make them go to court. And, if you want to go that route, expect visits from the IRS, FTC, SEC and a host of other federal regulatory agencies. If you manage to make it out without jail time, I'll be impressed. Then you'll get to see that multimillion dollar bonus reduced to next to nothing.

As it should be. You, and you alone (along with your puppets in Congress and the White House) are to blame for killing this economy. It's like Keith said. You're lucky we don't come pounding on your penthouse doors and string you up by your balls. And loot your possessions while we're at it. You're lucky you're not in jail.

A bailout wasn't a blank check to allow business to continue as usual. It was a way to avoid a statutory bankruptcy because our economy couldn't survive it. As far as you, a banking executive, should be concerned, it is bankruptcy. We don't need you; we just can't have your bank completely die (which is looking like many are going to anyway).

This isn't socialism. If it were, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

No, this is corporatism, which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from fascism.

Just so everyone is clear, because there's a lot of misinformation out there, here is one accounting of the reasons behind the economic crisis:

"Financial deregulation led directly to the current economic meltdown. For the last three decades, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch, on a bipartisan basis, steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. 'Sold Out' details a dozen key steps to financial meltdown, revealing how industry pressure led to these deregulatory moves and their consequences:

1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.
2. Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting -- tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.
3. The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives -- which became the basis for massive speculation.
4. Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
5. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.
6. Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal "risk-assessment models."
7. Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.
8. Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.
9. Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
11. The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.
12. Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms."

Please note: BOTH Republicans AND are to blame here. What is important to remember is that it was CONSERVATIVE, FREE MARKET ideology, with support from BOTH parties, that caused this mess.

So, let's avoid the red herring of blaming "liberals". Yes, Democrats are to blame, but only insofar as they were following conservatives.

Didn't you hate the kid who always showed up late to lecture, never paid attention, but always, always, ALWAYS raised their hand and managed to waste everyone's time with their inane questions? Do you remember that audacity?

Here's the King of Audacity himself, Dick Cheney, further demonstrating his douchebaggery:

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Americans are less safe now that President Barack Obama has overturned Bush terrorism-fighting policies and that nearly all the Republican administration's goals in Iraq have been achieved.

'There is no prospect' that Iraq will return to producing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorists, Cheney asserted, 'as long as it's a democratically governed country, as long as they have got the security forces they do now and a relationship with the United States.'

Fulfilling campaign pledges, Obama has suspended military trials for suspected terrorists and announced he will close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as overseas sites where the CIA has held some detainees. The president also ordered CIA interrogators to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual's regulations for treatment of detainees and denounced waterboarding, part of the Bush program of enhanced interrogation, as torture.

Asked on CNN's 'State of the Union' if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe with those actions, Cheney replied, 'I do.'[Emphasis added, ed.]

'I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11,' Cheney said.

'I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles,' he said. 'President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.'

Some Democratic lawmakers and other administration critics have denounced those and other Bush programs, such as warrantless surveillance, as counterproductive and illegal. In defending these policies established by President George W. Bush following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said he had seen a report itemizing specific attacks that had been stopped because of the intelligence gathered through those programs.

'It's still classified. I can't give you the details of it without violating classification, but I can say there were a great many of them,' he said.

Cheney said the U.S.-led invasion on March 19, 2003 (March 20, Iraq time) has led to democratic elections, a constitution and the defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq, and undermined Iran's efforts to influence events in Iraq.

'We have succeeded in creating in the heart of the Middle East a democratically governed Iraq, and that is a big deal, and it is, in fact, what we set out to do,' he said.

Asked if he was declaring 'mission accomplished' — those words graced a banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that heralded Bush's overly optimistic declaration on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations had ended in Iraq — Cheney replied: 'I wouldn't use that, just because it triggers reactions that we don't need.'

He added: 'But I would ask people — and the press, too — to take an honest look at the circumstances in Iraq today and how far we've come.'

In a wide-ranging interview, Cheney also:

_Agreed that Obama had inherited 'difficult' economic circumstances but rejected efforts to blame the Bush administration.

'We are in the midst of a worldwide economic period of considerable difficulty here,' he said. 'It doesn't do just to go back and say, 'Well, George Bush was president and that is why everything is screwed up,' because that is simply not true.'

_Contended that Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Democrats with top positions on congressional banking committees, blocked Bush administration efforts to reform lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 'I think the collapse of those two institutions, as much as anything, contributed to the financial difficulties we've been living with since,' he said.

_Worried that Obama was using the economic crisis 'to justify a massive expansion in the government and much more authority for the government over the private sector, and I don't think that's good.'

_Dismissed criticism from some conservatives that Obama is taking on too much and too quickly.

_Criticized Obama's choice for ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, as lacking experience in the region. Cheney said he didn't support Hill's work in dealing with North Korea on nuclear issues during the Bush administration.

_Called his former chief of staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby 'an innocent man' who deserved a pardon from Bush. The issue of pardoning Libby was a subject of intense disagreement with Bush at the close of his presidency, Cheney said.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in the investigation of the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Bush commuted Libby's sentence and saved him from serving time in prison, but Libby remains a convicted felon."

1. No, you thieving, murderous asshat: YOU made Americans less safe with your torture and detainee policy. Have you not bothered to read from soldiers involved in interrogation in Iraq that some of the most prominent reasons many became involved in the insurgency was Abu Ghraib? No, of course not. You're too busy pointing to the New York Times vindicating one of your lies, when in fact it was your own planted information that that particular article was referring to.

And since when was torturing people necessary to protect the American people?

By the way, it DEFINITELY was illegal. We just haven't found anyone with the balls to prosecute you yet.

2. " . . . justify a massive expansion in the government and much more authority for the government over the private sector, and I don't think that's good." As opposed to you and Bush, who used 9/11 to justify a massive expansion in the government and much more authority for the government over people's privacy, in addition to launching a war against a country that did not attack us, resulting in the deaths of thousands of servicemen and women and, more importantly, over a million Iraqi civilians. But more authority over the economy? No, that's a crime. Gosh, you're a douchebag Dick Cheney.

If Americans are less safe now, it's because of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. Pull your heads out of your asses.

Why I wish Bernie Sanders was MY Senator:

"The late Milton Friedman was a provocative teacher at my alma mater, the University of Chicago. He got his students involved with their studies. He was a gifted writer and communicator. And he received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to economics.

But Friedman was more than an academic. He was an advocate for, and popularizer of, a radical right-wing economic ideology.

In today's political and social reality, the University of Chicago's establishment of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute (in the building that has long housed the renowned Chicago Theological Seminary) will not be perceived as simply a sign of appreciation for a prominent former faculty member. Instead, by founding such an institution, the university signals that it is aligning itself with a reactionary political program supported by the wealthiest, greediest and most powerful people and institutions in this country. Friedman's ideology caused enormous damage to the American middle class and to working families here and around the world. It is not an ideology that a great institution like the University of Chicago should be seeking to advance.

Those who defend the Milton Friedman Institute will assure us that it will encourage a free and open exchange of ideas. That may very well be true. But if the goal of the institute is simply to do non-ideological research, there are a lot of names that one could come up with other than that of the most polemical and ideological economist of his time.

My suspicions only deepen when I read on the University of Chicago website that donors who contribute more than $1 million to the project will have a special relationship with the Institute as members of a Milton Friedman Society and will be expected to facilitate the institution’s 'connections to leaders in business and government.'

I work in Washington, D.C., and I know about the power that big money has over process. When the insurance companies and the drug companies and the oil companies and the banks and the military-industrial complex make contributions to political campaigns, we usually know exactly what it is they want in return.

Maybe I'm being cynical and maybe these big players who are kicking in millions for the Milton Friedman Institute are merely interested in promoting open academic discussion and research. Maybe that is the case.

Frankly, I doubt it.

The timing of this project is a little ironic. Friedman earned his bread by denouncing government at virtually every turn. He, like his acolyte, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, believed that a largely unregulated free market constituted the most superior form of economic organization imaginable. Well, the tune of the right-wing free marketeers has changed a bit in the last few months.

My colleagues in the Senate and I are now picking up the pieces of a banking system brought to the edge of collapse by this theory of deregulation and by the insatiable greed of a small number of wealthy financiers playing in the market and engaging in incredibly risky—if not illegal—behavior.

In the rush to bail out Wall Street, we saw President Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the people in U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable—folks who loved Friedman's ideas and who, no doubt, would be prepared to financially support a Milton Friedman Institute—reverse their longstanding rhetorical opposition to government intervention.

Instead, they demanded that we come to the rescue of the financial firms that had lined up in front of Congress for their emergency welfare checks.

For years, all of these people, including the president of the United States, have been telling us that government should not be involved in ensuring healthcare for all Americans as a right of citizenship. ('What a terrible idea!')

They have been telling us that the government should not be involved in making quality education affordable to all people, that the government should not be empowered to ensure that we reverse greenhouse gas emissions, that government should not regulate pollution that contaminates our air and water and land, and that the government should not provide a strong safety net for our children, for our seniors or for the disabled.

Well, it turns out that when the shoe is pinching their foot, they have become the strongest believers in government intervention—especially if working people and the middle class are bailing them out.

But the issue here is not just economic policy. It goes deeper than that. It touches on the core of who we are as a society and as a people. Are we as human beings supposed to turn around and not see the suffering that so many of our brothers and sisters are experiencing? Are we content to be living in a nation where, thanks in part to the Friedmanite ideology, the richest 1 percent owns more than the bottom 90 percent and the top one-tenth percent owns more than the bottom 50 percent?

Should we ignore the reality that under Bush, more and more billionaires were created in a period when we had, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world? Some 18 percent of our kids are living in poverty and we are shocked that we have more people in jail than any other country on earth, including China. Are we supposed to ignore those realities?

With all due respect to the late Milton Friedman, his economic program is nothing more than a wish list for the greediest, the most monied interests in our society. At the same time that this ideology is supported by the rich and powerful—except when they’re lining up in Washington for their welfare checks—this same ideology is almost unanimously opposed by working families and middle-class people across this country.

If I went before the people in a town hall meeting in Vermont and asked for a show of hands of how many people thought it would be a good idea to abolish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, people would think I was crazy. Not one person in a hundred would support that idea because it is so patently absurd.

Even in the case of conservative Republicans, no GOP candidate would ever run on a platform of abolishing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They may attempt to abolish these programs while in office, but they will never discuss that agenda on the campaign trail.

What would some of the items on Friedman's wish list be? First of all, the Friedmanites would be supportive of the concept of a culture of greed. They want people making billions of dollars on the covers of Time and Newsweek because these people are supposed to be our national heroes. We are not supposed to recognize a teacher who makes $40,000 a year opening up the minds of young people. We are not supposed to recognize a childcare worker who makes $18,000 a year giving poor children an opportunity to grow intellectually and emotionally. Those jobs are not considered important work.

But if you're a billionaire on Wall Street creating exotic financial instruments that end up being worth nothing, you are considered a hero. The fact that this culture of greed has permeated our political culture means that corporate CEOs can now earn more than 400 times what their workers earn without fearing a political backlash.

This wish list for the rich would include having the wealthy pay as little as possible in taxes. It would include the destruction of the American labor movement, abolishing the minimum wage and doing away with regulations that ensure workplace safety and keep our food and products safe.

Now we have a case study for what happens when the ideology of Milton Friedman becomes the operating ideology of the government. Under Bush, the median family income has declined by thousands of dollars. Millions of Americans have entered the ranks of the poor. Some 7 million have lost their health insurance. Some 3 million have lost their pensions. And the gap between the very rich and everybody else has grown much wider.

Right-wing economists have argued that we can simply trust wealthy people and large corporations to do the right thing. Recent history has demonstrated what a silly idea that is.

Our country is due for a transformation. We have endured years of right-wing ideology and we are eager to move in a different direction. I believe that we will see a major reordering of social and economic priorities, and that this last general election represented a repudiation of right-wing economic arguments.

We will see the day when healthcare is a right of citizenship in the United States.

We will see a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and an understanding that never, ever again can we allow an administration to manipulate and deceive its way into a war.

Our role as progressives is to remind our country that alternatives are possible, that social democratic movements in Northern Europe and elsewhere have secured universal access to quality healthcare and have effectively abolished the kinds of poverty and homelessness we see in our society. This will not happen on its own: it will require popular engagement and organization. But the changing political landscape has provided us with an opportunity to advance the cause of social and economic justice.

In the Bush era—a period in which some of Friedman's greatest admirers managed the U.S. economy—the top 400 families in this country saw their wealth increase by $670 billion.

Yet we have children in this country who have no healthcare, children who are undernourished and children who sleep out on the streets. From an economic perspective, from a moral perspective and from a philosophical perspective, the ideology of Milton Friedman is dead wrong. And the University of Chicago is making a serious mistake in establishing a new platform for its failed ideas."

I hate this culture of the CEO. It's all ME, ME, ME. These people produce little to nothing (sorry, they "steer the ship") and yet are the only ones, when times are tough, think they are entitled to keep earning what they have earned and living the life they have always lived as if nothing is wrong.

Trust me: none of them could do the job of your typical blue collar worker or working poor. Neither could I, for that matter. Why does American culture suggest that the hardest working person is a lawyer, a banker, or a CEO?

We all are hard workers. Milton Friedman's upbringing didn't teach him that. Thus, his entire socioeconomic philosophy stemmed from the belief that it is the richest among us who work the hardest, most morally upright, and can do whatever they want.

Nope. Sorry. I don't believe that.

And the damn GOP loves to justify the greed and over-luxurious lifestyles of these people by making abstract comparisons to the working class. I'm sorry, but these people are NOT working class, so your analogies don't apply.

I share Senator Sanders' optimism regarding universal health care. It's not a question of if, but when.

And when it does happen, it will be about f*cking time.

Bank Bailout 2.0:

"The top members of a key House panel told banking leaders Wednesday they must win over a disgusted public and work harder to right the deeply troubled financial system.

'I urge you going forward to be ungrudgingly cooperative,' said Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. 'There has to be a sense of the American people that you understand their anger ... and that you're willing to make some sacrifices to get this working.'

Frank also asked banks to impose a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures until Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner comes up with a systemwide mortgage modification.

The panel's top Republican, Spencer Bachus of Alabama, said the bankers and Congress will have to do their part to sway people by 'winning back their trust and their confidence.'

Taxpayers are furious with big banks that benefited from the federal bailout designed to get credit moving again but that also spent lavishly on company retreats and office redecorating, and lawmakers are feeling the heat for signing off on the $700 billion plan.

Eight chief executives and company chairmen were testifying before Frank's panel in what was the first examination by lawmakers since they passed the legislation last year.

Members of both political parties have been smarting over the implementation of the financial package, which started under President Bush and now is in the hands of the Obama administration. The lingering suspicions present one of President Barack Obama's biggest obstacles as he attempts the dual challenge of prodding the financial sector to ease credit while aiming to create jobs with an economic stimulus package.

The CEOs were met with deep skepticism from lawmakers who told tales of furious constituents and aggressively quizzed them on how they have used more than $160 billion in taxpayers' money.

Even so, the banking leaders brought a message of accommodation and gratitude. They applauded the program for making more loans available and promised to pay their share of the money back to the Treasury over time. Anticipating confrontations over their own compensation, several asserted that none of the government's money went to bonuses or dividends.

'We are frugal,' said Wells Fargo's John Stumpf. 'We're Americans first. We're bankers second.'

They also generally agreed with lawmakers' calls for better cooperation and better public relations. They were contrite and conceded they face a bitter public. They had little choice but to acknowledge as much, given intense anger by both lawmakers and the public as the troubled financial system continues to spiral downward in the midst of an already deep recession.

'We understand taxpayers are angry' and they are right in demanding that institutions receiving their money take a 'conservative, sober and frugal' approach to using it, said Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America.

Added Lloyd C. Blankfein of the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.: 'We have to regain the public's trust and do everything we can to help mend our financial system to restore stability and vitality.'

Yet, for all the words of contrition, the CEOs also sought to show they were being prudent.

'We lent more even as customers cut back on their spending' during the last financial quarter of 2008, said JP Morgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon. Still, he added: 'We stand ready to do our part going forward.'

Robert P. Kelly of The Bank of New York Mellon promised 'a very good return on the investment for taxpayers' and acknowledged 'we still have a long way to go' to jump start the U.S. credit market.

Hearings on the bailout were taking place across the Capitol, with the CEOs appearing in the House while Neil Barofsky, the watchdog of the government's Wall Street rescue package, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told that Senate panel that there are 530 active corporate fraud investigations, and 38 of them involve corporate fraud and financial institution matters directly related to the economic crisis.

Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accused Merrill Lynch & Co. executives of corporate irresponsibility by secretly and prematurely awarding $3.6 billion in bonuses as taxpayers were bailing out the industry.

Cuomo made the claims in a letter to Frank, saying that instead of disclosing its bonus plan in a transparent manner designed to assure the payments were warranted, Merrill Lynch moved the date of bonuses to richly reward 'failed executives.' Cuomo says Bank of America, which acquired Merrill last fall, was apparently complicit in the move to award bonuses before Merrill's dismal fourth quarter earnings were announced.

Pressed about the report at the House hearing, Lewis said Bank of America urged Merrill to reduce the bonuses 'substantially' as it prepared to take over the failing company but couldn't force it to make changes until the takeover was completed.

'We had no authority to tell them what to do, just urge them what to do,' Lewis said. That said, he added: 'Major changes will be made.'

On new bailout initiatives that Geithner announced Tuesday, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, assailed the administration for what a lack of details.

'He had nothing really to say,' Shelby said. 'We want to know where the specifics are and he doesn't have them.'

The bankers are not sympathetic figures in Congress, particularly in the more populist House. The initial spending of the bailout funds was secretive, lacking strict requirements that the banks account publicly for how they were using the money.

Banks weren't helped by reports that Wall Street firms doled out more than $18 billion in bonuses to their employees last year or that Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo had planned conferences in Las Vegas. Goldman Sachs moved its three-day event to San Francisco; Wells Fargo canceled its employee recognition retreat.

Most of these bankers didn't beg for their money. They were selected because they were relative healthy banks that could spur more banking activity and eliminate the stigma of taking taxpayer money for other financial institutions."

Here we go again. You know, it's only with bankers that you hear the excuse, "Well, I've worked hard so I deserve a bonus."

Everyone works hard. I work hard. My father works REALLY hard. Are we entitled to bonuses? No, and we didn't cause an economic crisis. You see, in the real world, others dictate to us what our salaries will be. Additionally, if our performance goes down, even if we continue to work hard, we can expect our pay to go down as well.

Only bankers, specifically Wall Street ones who consider themselves Masters of the Universe, think THEY should set their own salaries.

I'm sorry, we all work hard. If you screw up so bad that you need the taxpayers help, it is a foregone conclusion you SHOULD (although, let's face it, not necessarily WILL) take a HUGE pay cut.

And where are all those Republicans in the Senate and the House? Demanding that the banks restore "taxpayer confidence"? I'm sorry, you colossal morons; I don't give two shits about my confidence.

If the auto workers in Detroit need to take drastic pay cuts, then so do the bankers. And, unlike President Obama (yes, yes, I love saying that, too), I don't think they should be making $500,000, no matter how bad the New York Times thinks that is.

What is good for the UAW, who didn't do anything wrong, is good for the bankers, who caused the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. Let them make what an auto worker makes. Anything more would be insulting.

Or are bankers, lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians the only ones entitled to a decent living?

This isn't a normal blog post. There are no politics, no philosophy, no nothing. It's just my words.

I've always considered the written word to be mankind's greatest achievement. Knowledge and progress would just not be possible without it.

Maybe I've felt this way because I've always been good at writing. I don't know. But, I'm using this blog right now to express how I feel, because, frankly, it's one of the best ways I know how.

My mom died Monday afternoon. Here's what we know: my father called her at 1:00 pm and actually talked to her. Nothing appeared wrong. He told her that he was going to the dentist because one of his teeth broke.

After the conversation at some point, my mom put her bed sheets in the washer (Mondays were the days she washed her bedding). She went downstairs and put them in the washer. On her way back upstairs, she grabbed two bananas for a snack (although most of the time, she only ate one and saved the other one for after dinner).

Once upstairs, she probably got cold and climbed back into bed.

My dad came home a little after 4:00 pm. He called out to say he was home, like he always did. No answer. He went upstairs and poked his head into the bedroom. There, he found a Merck medical manual on the bed and my mom, looking "like a rag doll", lying on the floor against the side of the bed. Her color had already changed. Her hands had turned blue. He called 911 and the fire department came out and tried to resuscitate her. They were unsuccessful. They believed she had been gone for a couple of hours.

My dad had called me at 4:50 pm, just as I was pulling into the doctor's office. I was going to see the doctor because I thought I had strep. Turns out it was just a canker sore in the back of my throat. It even feels better now.

He called and told me I had to come home. Mom was non-responsive, he said. After seeing the doctor, I came right home. All during the car ride home, I did not ever think that something was really wrong; I simply thought she needed to go to the hospital and rest.

When I got home, the fire truck was there, and a cop car was parked in the street with the ignition still on. I parked my car at the front of the straight part of our circular driveway. Our front door was open, but not the first door with a large window. I see my dad standing in front of it. I run to the door. The second I open it, without my dad even saying a word, I knew something was terribly wrong.

The cop was standing in the foyer, along with the two firemen. My dad tells me mom just died. I threw my keys down on the floor. I take my coat off and just put it on the floor of the foyer. I go upstairs and see my mother. She was under the covers, her face pale, her eyes open. And that's that.

Some people might think, "why in the hell is he writing this, broadcasting it to the world?" I have to. Writing is an outlet. No one could read this and I would still write it. I was born with a soapbox attached to my feet and I have to do it. Even if no one listens. I don't bottle things up. I speak my mind.

My mom was an incredible person. She ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS knew the right thing to do. I didn't do ANYTHING without talking to her about it first. If she didn't approve, I didn't do it.

She was conscious and all alone when she died. She didn't deserve that. She needed to have her family with her. I can't imagine what she went through, and every time I think about it in my head, I can't get over what she might have felt or thought. What if she felt no one loved her? What else would you think if you died alone?

It simply wasn't true. That's why she didn't deserve that. She needed to know we all loved her more than anything. She was the leader of our house for a reason. But, she'll never know. Instead, all I can think about is this incredible woman, on par with Maimonides and Socrates with her wisdom, Einstein with her intelligence, and Mother Theresa with her love of her family, dying all alone, experiencing agony that I would never wish upon even my worst enemies (if I even have any).

Life is never going to be the same. My mom was the house organizer, leader, center. She was rational and logical and ALWAYS knew the proper thing to do. And her cooking . . . oh fucking shit.

But we must move on. Jennifer is taking the Michigan Bar Exam in a few weeks. And she WILL pass.

And I WILL get into medical school. If I don't make it in this time, I will find out what needs correcting and do it. And try again. And again, if need be. Because now, it's not just for me. It's for the person that I wanted to be at my White Coat Ceremony, taking pictures, and crying her eyes out like she always did.

I love you, Mom. You have left a void that will never be filled. Always know that you ARE NEVER, and WILL NEVER be alone. I love you more than anything.

I just hope to G-d I can make it through.

In the same vein of this post, here is an article from The Onion entitled, "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' from January 17, 2001, I kid you not:

"Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that 'our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.'

'My fellow Americans,' Bush said, 'at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas.[Emphasis added, ed.] The time has come to put all of that behind us.'

Bush swore to do 'everything in [his] power' to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street. [Emphasis added, ed.]

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

'You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,' said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. 'Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?' [Emphasis added, ed. How about two wars, Dubya?]

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further. [Emphasis added, ed. Seriously, I'm SCARED about how prophetic this was.]

Wall Street responded strongly to the Bush speech, with the Dow Jones industrial fluctuating wildly before closing at an 18-month low. The NASDAQ composite index, rattled by a gloomy outlook for tech stocks in 2001, also fell sharply, losing 4.4 percent of its total value between 3 p.m. and the closing bell.

Asked for comment about the cooling technology sector, Bush said: 'That's hardly my area of expertise.'

Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge's coastal plain to oil drilling. [Emphasis added, ed. Remember "Drill baby, drill"?] As a sign of his commitment to bringing about a change in the environment, he pointed to his choice of Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior. Norton, Bush noted, has 'extensive experience' fighting environmental causes, working as a lobbyist for lead-paint manufacturers and as an attorney for loggers and miners, in addition to suing the EPA to overturn clean-air standards.

Bush had equally high praise for Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft, whom he praised as 'a tireless champion in the battle to protect a woman's right to give birth.'

'Soon, with John Ashcroft's help, we will move out of the Dark Ages and into a more enlightened time when a woman will be free to think long and hard before trying to fight her way past throngs of protesters blocking her entrance to an abortion clinic,' Bush said. 'We as a nation can look forward to lots and lots of babies.'

Continued Bush: 'John Ashcroft will be invaluable in healing the terrible wedge President Clinton drove between church and state.'

The speech was met with overwhelming approval from Republican leaders.

'Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close,' House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. 'Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. [Emphasis added, ed. Like friggin' Nostradamus, those geniuses at The Onion.]Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton's America.'

'For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped,' conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. 'And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up.' [Emphasis added, ed.]

An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.

'After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012,' Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. 'That's not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in.'

'You have no idea what it's like to be black and enfranchised,' said Marlon Hastings, one of thousands of Miami-Dade County residents whose votes were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. 'George W. Bush understands the pain of enfranchisement, and ever since Election Day, he has fought tirelessly to make sure it never happens to my people again.'

Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

'We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,' Bush said. 'Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.' [Emphasis added, ed. Guilty, guilty, and guilty]

'The insanity is over," Bush said. 'After a long, dark night of peace and stability, the sun is finally rising again over America. We look forward to a bright new dawn not seen since the glory days of my dad.'

Holy. Crap.

Holy crap:

Satellite Picture of National Mall on Inauguration Day

Via Rising Hegemon:

"Dear World:

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

Hahahahahaha! Humor in an Information Age.

Do you remember back in 2000, in that month-long period when we didn't know who the next President was (although it's been established that had the Democrats done the recount properly, Al Gore would have been our 43rd President; he did win the popular vote)? Well, I completely forgot, but David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars remembered this SNL clip from that time.

SNL did an opening skit where the American people would get a message from the President in the projected future. One week it was Al Gore, another it was George W. Bush. Will Ferrell's skit seems eerily prophetic, given it was made before we even knew who won the election in 2000:



I know we're all crazy for Obama right now; the number of people at the National Mall, at least from on T.V., seemed massive. However, his stimulus package needs to be better (more infrastructure spending, but don't take my word for it, take Paul Krugman's).

And, most importantly, he (or someone in his administration) needs to hold the Bush Administration accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. We do not need nor will the country allow a repeat of Ford's pardon of Nixon or Clinton's turning the other cheek towards George H.W. Bush's pardons of the culprits behind Iran-Contra.

"Yes, we can" must not turn into "maybe, we will . . . "

For all of you people who have been flag waving, cheering on the continuation of the war on Gaza without any sort of regard for the impact that it has had on the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, I hope you're happy about this:

"A few days ago, I met a European ambassador stationed in Israel. The man, a great friend of Israel, launched an emotional monologue and spoke from the bottom of his heart.

'Make no mistake,' he said. 'I understand why you embarked on the operation in Gaza, and many of my colleagues also understand and even support it, but a few days ago you started to cross red lines.'

The ambassador continued, reiterating his support and his love for Israel. 'We too would like to damage Hamas, we too would not sit by quietly if they were firing rockets at us,' he said. 'It was clear to us that innocent people would be hurt in any operation in Gaza, and we were prepared to accept that up to certain limit, but in the past few days it seems that your action is getting out of control, and the harm to civilians is tremendous.'

The straw that broke the camel's back for that ambassador was the Red Cross report from Gaza that small children had been found wounded, near the corpses of their mothers, under the ruins of their homes, and other reports of civilians on the verge of dying in places ambulances could not reach because of the fighting.

'The international organizations in Gaza are talking about 200 dead children,' he said. 'I don't know how to explain these things to myself, never mind to my government,' added the ambassador. 'Your action is brutal and you don't realize how much damage this is causing you in the world. This is not only short term. It's damage for years. Is this the Israel you want to be?'

A similar message also came across in a conversation that President Shimon Peres had with the delegation of European foreign ministers who came to Jerusalem a week ago. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Union Commissioner responsible for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy, said to Peres: 'You have the right to self-defense, but what is happening in Gaza is beyond all proportion. I am telling you, Mr. President, Israel's image in the world has been destroyed.'

Even though the issue is not being accorded much attention in Israel, in Europe, the Arab countries and even the United States, the main story regarding Gaza is the many civilians hurt in the fighting. According to United Nations reports, approximately 300 civilians were among the more than 900 Palestinians killed. People are seeing images from Gaza of a sort that were not broadcast in previous wars, such as Kosovo or Afghanistan. Incidentally, these pictures are hardly being broadcast at all in the Israeli media.

With the start of the fighting, the Foreign Ministry instructed its foreign delegations to prepare daily reports on the press that Operation Cast Lead was receiving. In the first days the reports were sparse, in part because of Christmas and New Year's, but then they began to fill up with scores of negative items describing Israel's attacks on innocent people in Gaza. 'You see the reports in the morning and you feel ill,' said a senior official.

In some of the countries, especially those more critical of Israel, more extreme voices are being heard. Thus, for example, a group of non-governmental organizations called on the Spanish prime minister's party to recall the Spanish ambassador from Tel Aviv to protest Israel's 'war crimes.'

'Our problem'

A senior Israeli diplomat who serves in a delegation on the East Coast of the United States described how he is repeatedly asked in media interviews about Israel's war crimes in Gaza, or about the disproportionate response to the Qassams. 'The harm to civilians in Gaza is causing huge damage that will only increase each day the operation continues,' the diplomat said.

This is not a problem of public relations. It is difficult to impossible to explain the harm to civilians. The Foreign Ministry's efforts to emphasize that Hamas is using civilians as a human shield have only slightly contained the short-term damage.

Nevertheless, the problem is the medium- and long-term damage, which may be manifested abroad as increased anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Indeed, yesterday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni sent a statement to world leaders, calling on them to act to stop the wave of anti-Semitism aroused by the action in Gaza.

The Foreign Ministry considers the 'Durban 2' World Conference against Racism, scheduled for April in Geneva, as the point when they can determine the extent to which Israel's standing as a democratic country that respects human rights has been damaged.

Israel has rallied many countries against the conference on the grounds that it will become a platform for anti-Semitism, and has also announced, along with the United States and Canada, that it will boycott the conference. The United Nations Human Rights Council, which is organizing the conference, has gone on the defensive and has tried to assure Israel that it will do its utmost to ensure the conference will be balanced. After the operation in Gaza, the Foreign Ministry believes Israel will be on the defensive internationally, and 'Durban 2' is an almost certain defeat."

Hamas cannot be defeated militarily. No matter what damage has been done in this war, in 2-3 years time things will be right back to where they were. Maybe worse. And international opinion has just been shot to hell, even among Israel's "friends".

For years, I opposed divestment; I thought it was misguided and wouldn't solve anything. I still oppose it for the same reasons, but I took comfort in the fact that the divestment movement never went anywhere.

That might not be true anymore.

And I would boycott any product produced by Israeli settlements, but frankly, like I've said earlier, I don't purchase ANY Israeli products on a regular basis for it to make a difference.

What needed to happen was what I suggested when Hamas won elections in January 2006 (holy crap, has 3 years passed by already?).

Despite that I still can't stand Hamas, and their nationalism is just as bad, if not worse, than ultra-nationalist right wing Zionism (of the Herut variety), they were elected and negotiations needed to happen. NOTE: Simply talking to them does NOT imply that one is condoning their ideology. Israel just simply didn't get that; frankly, neither do many pro-Israel people, many of my friends among them.

And I'm afraid this current conflict has intensified the polarization of the two sides. Of all the news reports I've seen, pro-Israel rallies have been blind right-wing flag-waving ceremonies at best, outright hatefests at worse (see Max Blumenthal's video). Conversely, anti-Gazan war protests have devolved into Hamas love fests.

Hamas must be engaged politically; the reverse is also true. Hamas cannot break Israel or Zionism militarily. The sooner both sides see that neither can be broken by military might, the sooner they realize the folly of their ways.

I don't agree with Mitch Albom often, but I think he hit a soft spot (Hang on until the end if you've already read this because I'm going to editorialize/put my two cents in):

"This was Christmas night. In the basement of a church off an icy street in downtown Detroit, four dozen homeless men and women sat at tables. The smell of cooked ham wafted from the kitchen. The pastor, Henry Covington, a man the size of two middle linebackers, exhorted the people with a familiar chant.

'I am somebody,' he yelled.

'I am somebody!' they repeated.

"Because God loves me!"

"Because God loves me!"

They clapped. They nodded.

A toddler slept on a woman's shoulder. Another woman, holding a boy who looked to be about four, said she was lucky to have found this place open because 'I been to three shelters, and they turned me away. They were all filled.'

As she spoke, a few blocks to the south, cars pulled up to the Motor City Casino, one of three downtown gambling palaces whose neon flashes in stark contrast to the area's otherwise empty darkness. Sometimes, on a winter night, all that seems to be open around here is the casino, a liquor store and the pastor's kitchen, in the basement of this church. It used to be a famous church, home to the largest Presbyterian congregation in the upper Midwest. That was a long time ago -- before a stained-glass window was stolen and the roof developed a huge hole. Now, on Sundays, the mostly African-American churchgoers of the I Am My Brother's Keeper Ministries huddle in a small section of the sanctuary that is enclosed in plastic sheeting, because they can't afford to heat the rest.

As food was served to the line of homeless people, I watched from a rickety balcony above. My line of work is writing, partly sportswriting, but I come here now and then to help out a little. This church needs help. It leaks everywhere. Melted snow drips into the vestibule.

'Hey,' someone yelled, 'who the Lions gonna draft?'

I looked down. A thin man with a scraggly black beard was looking back. He scratched his face. 'A quarterback, you think?'

Probably, I answered.

'Whatchu think about a defensive end?'

That would be nice.

'Yeah.' He bounced on his feet. 'That'd be nice.'

He waited for his plate of food. In an hour, he would yank a vinyl mattress from a pile and line it up next to dozens of others. Then the lights would dim and, as snow fell outside, he and the other men would pull up wool blankets and try to sleep on the church floor.

This is my city.

'Them Lions gotta do somethin', man,' he yelled. 'Can't go on the way they are.'

*****

And yet...

And yet Detroit was once a vibrant place, the fourth-largest city in the country, and it lives in the hope that those days, against all logic, will somehow return. We are downtrodden, perhaps, but the most downtrodden optimists you will ever meet. We cling to our ways, no matter how provincial they seem on the coasts. We get excited about the Auto Show. We celebrate Sweetest Day. We eat Coney dogs all year and we cruise classic cars down Woodward Avenue every August and we bake punchki donuts the week before Lent. We don't talk about whether Detroit will be fixed but when Detroit will be fixed.

And we are modest. In truth, we battle an inferiority complex. We gave the world the automobile. Now the world wants to scold us for it. We gave the world Motown music. Motown moved its offices to L.A. When I arrived 24 years ago, to be a sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, I discovered several letters waiting for me at the office. Mind you, I had not written a word. My hiring had been announced, that's all. But there were already letters. Handwritten. And they all said, in effect, 'Welcome to Detroit. We know you won't stay long, because nobody good stays for long, but we hope you like it while you're here.'

Nobody good stays for long.

We hope you like it while you're here.

How could you not stay in a city like that?

*****

And yet...

And yet to live in Detroit these days is to want to scream. But where do you begin? Our doors are being shuttered. Our walls are falling down. Our daily bread, the auto industry, is reduced to morsels. Our schools are in turmoil. Our mayor went to jail. Our two biggest newspapers announced they will soon cut home delivery to three days a week. Our most common lawn sign is FOR SALE. And our NFL team lost every week this season. A perfect 0-16. Even the homeless guys are sick of it.

We want to scream, but we don't scream, because this is not a screaming place, this is a swallow-hard-and-deal-with-it place. So workers rise in darkness and rev their engines against the winter cold and drive to the plant and punch in and spend hours doing the work that America doesn't want to do any more, the kind that makes something real and hard to the touch. Manufacturing. Remember manufacturing? They do that here. And then they punch out and drive home (three o'clock is rush hour in these parts, the end of a shift) and wash up and touch the kids under the chin and sit down for dinner and flip on the news.

And then they really want to scream.

Because what they see -- what all Detroit sees -- is a nation that appears ready to flick us away like lint. We see senators voting our death sentence. We see bankers clucking their tongues at our business model (as if we invented the credit default swap!). We see Californians knock our cars for ruining the environment (as if their endless driving has nothing to do with it). We see sports announcers call our football team 'ridiculous.' Heck, during the Lions' annual Thanksgiving game, CBS's Shannon Sharpe actually wore a bag over his head.

It hurts us. We may not show it, but it does. You can say, 'Aw, that's the car business' or 'That's the Lions,' but we are the car business, we are the Lions. Our veins are right up under the city's skin -- you cut Detroit, its citizens bleed.

We want to scream, but we don't scream. Still, enough people declare you passé, a dinosaur, a dying town, out of touch with the free-market global economic machine, and pretty soon you wonder if they're right. You wonder if you should join the exodus.

*****

And yet...

And yet I had an idea once for a sports column: Get the four biggest stars from Detroit's four major sports together in one place, for a night out. The consensus cast at the time (1990) was clear. Barry Sanders was the brightest light on the Lions. Steve Yzerman was Captain Heartthrob for the Red Wings. Joe Dumars was the most popular of the Pistons. And Cecil Fielder was the big bat for the Tigers.

All four agreed to meet at Tiger Stadium, before a game. I picked up Dumars at his house. He was alone. No entourage. Next we went for Sanders, who waited in the Silverdome parking lot, by himself, hands in pockets. When he got in, the two future Hall of Famers nodded at each other shyly. 'Hey, man,' Barry said.

'Hey, man,' Joe answered.

At the stadium Yzerman, who drove himself, joined us, hands also dug in his pockets. As conversations go, it was like the first day of school. Awkwardness prevailed. Later -- after we chatted with Fielder -- we sat in the stands. The hot dog guy came by, and we passed them down: Lion to Red Wing to Piston. And when Yzerman put his elbow in front of Sanders, he quickly said, 'Excuse me.'

Somehow I can't see that being duplicated in Los Angeles. ('Kobe, pass this hot dog to Manny') or New York City ('Hey, A-Rod, Stephon wants some mustard'). But it worked in Detroit. The guys actually thanked me afterward.

Stardom is a funny thing here. You don't achieve it by talking loud or dating a supermodel. You achieve it by shyly lowering your head when they introduce you or by tossing the ball to the refs after scoring a touchdown. Humility, in Detroit, is on a par with heroism. Even Dennis Rodman didn't get really crazy until he left.

*****

And yet...

And yet we live among ghosts. Over there, on Woodward Avenue, was Hudson's, once America's second-largest department store; it was demolished a decade ago. Over there, on Michigan and Trumbull, stood Tiger Stadium, home to Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg and Al Kaline and Kirk Gibson; it lasted nearly a century, until the wrecking ball got to it last year. Over there, on Bagley, is the United Artists Theater, which used to seat more than 2,000 people; it hasn't shown movies since the 1970s. The famous Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard -- the birthplace of the auto assembly line -- used to hum with activity, but now its halls are empty, its windows are broken, and its floors gather pools of water. On Lafayette Avenue you can still see the old Free Press building, where I was hired, where those letters once arrived in a mail slot. It used to house a newspaper. It doesn't anymore.

Any mature city has its echoes, but most are drowned out by the chirping of new enterprise. In Detroit the echoes roll on and on, filling the empty blocks because little else does. There is not a department store left downtown. Those three casinos hover like giant cranes, ready to scoop up your last desperate dollar. We have all heard the catchphrases about Detroit: A city of ruins. A Third World metropolis. A carcass. Last person to leave, turn out the lights.

For years, we took those insults as a challenge. We wore a cloak of defiance. But now that cloak feels wet and heavy. It has been cold here before, but this year seems colder. Skies have grayed before, but this year they're like charcoal. We've been unemployed before, but now the lines seem longer; we hear figures like 16% of the labor force not working, Depression numbers. I read one estimate that more than 40,000 houses in our city are now abandoned. Ghosts everywhere.

*****

And yet...

And yet we remember when the streets were stuffed, a million people downtown at a parade, as our hockey team was given a royal reception; every car carrying a player was cheered. This was 1997, and the Red Wings, after a 42-year drought, had once again won the Stanley Cup. Players and coaches stepped to the microphone and heard their words bounce back in waves of sound and thundering applause. Yzerman. Brendan Shanahan. Scotty Bowman. A hockey team? Who does this for a hockey team? Hockey is an afterthought in most American cities. Here, we wear it as a nickname. Hockeytown. We know the rules. We know the good and the bad officials. We sneak octopuses in our pants legs and throw them onto the ice at Joe Louis Arena.

Who loves hockey like this? What other American city comes to a collective roar when the blue light flashes? And what other American city goes into collective mourning when two of its players and a team masseur are seriously injured in a limo crash? People in Detroit can still tell you where they were when they heard about that limo smashing into a tree in suburban Birmingham six days after the Cup win of '97, forever changing the lives of Vladimir Konstantinov, Slava Fetisov and Sergei Mnatsakanov. Vigils were held outside the hospital. Flowers were stacked at the crash site. The TV and radio news broke in with updates all day long. How critical? Would they skate again? Would they walk again?

Remember, these were two hockey players and a masseur, Russians to boot; none of them did much talking in English. Didn't matter. They were ours, and they were wounded. It felt as if there was no other news for weeks in Detroit. 'You hear anything?' people would say. 'Any updates?'

When people ask what kind of sports town Detroit is, I say the best in the nation. I say our newspapers will carry front-page stories on almost any sports tick, from Ernie Harwell's retirement to the Detroit Shock's winning the WNBA. I say sports is sometimes all we have, it relieves us, distracts us, at times even saves us. But what I really want to tell them about is that stretch in 1997, when the whole city seemed to be nervously pacing around a hospital waiting room. I can't do it justice. It's not that we watch more, or pay more, or cheer louder than other cities. But I will bet you my last dollar that, when it comes to sports, nobody cares as much as Detroit cares.

*****

And yet...

And yet the gods toy with us. They give us the Lions. Our football team puts the less in hopeless. Its owner, William Clay Ford, has been in charge for 45 years. He's seen one playoff win. One playoff win in nearly half a century? Meanwhile, the backstory on Lions failure could fill a library. Blown games. Blown trades. Some of the most pathetic drafting in history, much of it orchestrated by Matt Millen, a former player who was hired out of the TV booth. Honestly, how many teams can use first-round draft picks on a quarterback, a receiver, a running back and two more receivers, as the Lions did from 2002 through '05, and not have a single one of them on the team just a few years later? And two of them out of the NFL altogether?

Wait. Here's a better one. In the last 45 years -- or since Ford took over -- the Lions have had 13 non-interim head coaches, and not a single one was ever a head coach in the NFL again. Not one. Rick Forzano. Tommy Hudspeth. Monte Clark. Darryl Rogers. Wayne Fontes. The list goes on. Nobody wanted them after Detroit. The Lions don't just hurt your reputation, they permanently flatten your tires.

Joey Harrington, a star college quarterback of unflagging optimism who foundered after the Lions drafted him with the No. 3 pick in 2002, once told me of a fog that seems to settle over inhabitants of the Lions locker room -- an evil, heavy cloud of historic disappointment that becomes self-perpetuating. Maybe it's the curse that Bobby Layne supposedly cast on this team after it traded him, saying it wouldn't win for 50 years.

That was 51 years ago.

No wonder Bobby Ross, who once coached San Diego to a Super Bowl, turned in his whistle and walked out of Detroit in the middle of a season. No wonder Sanders, the best running back Detroit ever had, quit the game at age 30. He actually gave money back rather than continue to play for the Lions.

Against this awful tapestry, in an economic crisis, in the darkest of days, came the 2008 season. What cruel fate could conjure such timing? After going 4--0 in the preseason (how's that for irony?), the Lions fell behind in their first regular-season game 21-0, in their second 21-3, in their third 21-3 and in their fourth 17-0 -- all before halftime. Their fifth game was the closest all year. They lost by two points. The margin of defeat? Our quarterback du jour, Dan Orlovsky, lost track of where he was and ran out of the back of the end zone for a safety.

Stop laughing. Do you think this has been easy? Do you think it's fun watching four guys miss tackles on a single play? Do you think it's fun watching Daunte Culpepper arrive, fresh off coaching his son's Pee Wee games, and get the nod as starting quarterback? There were days when it seemed as if all you needed to be on the Lions roster was a driver's license.

Week after week, as our businesses suffocated, as our houses were foreclosed and handed over to the banks, our football team lost -- to Jacksonville by 24 points, to Carolina by 9, to Tampa Bay by 18. And then, on Thanksgiving, the Tennessee Titans came to town with a 10-1 record. In front of the only national TV audience we would have all year, our Lions fumbled on their second play from scrimmage. A few plays later, Tennessee's Chris Johnson ran six yards untouched into the end zone -- the beer vendors were closer to him than the Lions defenders -- and before you could check the turkey in the oven, the Lions were down 35-3.

At halftime Sharpe wore that bag over his head and joined his colleagues in loudly suggesting that the NFL take the annual tradition away from the Motor City. 'We have kids watching this,' Sharpe said. 'And they have to watch the Detroit Lions. This is ridiculous. The Detroit Lions every single year. This is what we have to go through.'

No, Shannon. This is what we have to go through.

*****

And yet...

And yet it's our misery to endure. There's a little too much glee in the Detroit jokes these days. A little too much flip in the wrist that tosses dirt on our coffins. We hear a Tennessee player tell the media that the Thanksgiving win didn't mean much because 'it was just Detroit.' We hear Jay Leno rip our scandalous former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, by saying, 'The bad news is, he could be forced out of office. The good news is, any time you get a chance to get out of Detroit, take it.'

We hear Congress tongue-lash our auto executives for not matching the cheaper wages of foreign car companies. We hear South Carolina senator Jim DeMint tell NPR that 'the barnacles of unionism' must be destroyed at GM, Ford and Chrysler. Barnacles? Barnacles are parasites without a conscience. Sounds more like politicians to us.

Enough, we want to say. The Lions stink. We know they stink. You don't have to tell us. Enough. The car business is in trouble. We know it's in trouble. We drive past the deserted parking lots of empty auto plants every day.

Enough. We don't need more lofty national newspaper laments on the decay of a Rust Belt city. Or the obligatory network news piece, 'Can Detroit Be Saved?' For too long we have been the Place to Go to Chronicle the Ugly. Example: For years, we had a rash of fires the night before Halloween -- Devil's Night. And like clockwork, you could count on TV crews to fly in from out of town in hopes of catching Detroit burning. Whoomf. There we were in flames, on network TV. But when we got the problem under control, when city-sponsored neighborhood programs helped douse it, you never heard about that. The TV crews just shrugged and left.

Same goes for the favorite Detroit cliché of so many pundits: the image of a burning police car in 1984, after the Tigers won the World Series. Yes, some folks went stupid that night, and an eighth-grade dropout nicknamed Bubba held up a Tigers pennant in front of that burning vehicle, and -- snap-snap -- that was the only photo anyone seemed to need.

Never mind that in the years since, many cities have done as badly or worse after championships -- Boston and Chicago come to mind -- and weren't labeled for it. Never mind that through three NBA titles, four Stanley Cups, Michigan's national championships in college basketball and football, and even another World Series, nothing of that nature has occurred again in Detroit. Never mind. You still hear people, when we play for a title, uncork the old 'Let's hope they don't burn the city down when it's over.'

Look, we're the first to say we've got problems. But there's something disturbing when American reporters keep deliciously recording our demise but nobody wants to do anything about it. We're not your pity party. You want to chronicle us? We've been chronicled enough. As they say when a basketball rolls away at the playground, Yo, little help?

This is why our recent beatdown in Congress was so painfully felt. To watch our Big Three execs humiliated as if they never did a right thing in their lives, to watch U.S. senators from Southern states -- where billions in tax breaks were handed out to foreign car companies -- tear apart the U.S. auto industry as undeserving of aid, well, that was the last straw.

Enough. We're not gum on the bottom of America's shoe. We're not grime to be wiped off with a towel. Detroit and Michigan are part of the backbone of this country, the manufacturing spine, the heart of the middle class -- heck, we invented the middle class, we invented the idea that a factory worker can put in 40 hours a week and actually buy a house and send a kid to college. What? You have a problem with that? You think only lawyers and hedge-fund kings deserve to live decently?

To watch these lawmakers hand out, with barely a whisper, hundreds of billions to the financial firms that helped cause this current disaster, then make the Big Three beg like dogs and slap them with nothing? Honestly. There are times out here we feel like orphans.

*****

And yet...

And yet we go on. The Tigers were supposed to win big last season; they finished last in their division. Michigan got a new football coach with a spread offense and an eye on a national championship; the Wolverines had their first losing season since 1967.

But we will be back for the Tigers and back for Michigan and -- might as well admit it -- we will be back for the Lions come September, as red-faced as they make us, as pathetic as 0-16 is.

And maybe you ask why? Maybe you ask, as I get asked all the time, 'Why do you stay there? Why don't you leave?'

Maybe because we like it here. Maybe because this is what we know: snow and concrete underfoot, hardhats, soul music, lakes, hockey sticks. Maybe because we don't see just the burned-out houses; we also see the Fox Theater, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Whitney restaurant, the riverfront that looks out to Canada. Maybe because we still have seniors who call the auto giant 'Ford's', like a shop that's owned by a real human being. Maybe because some of us subscribe to Pastor Covington's words, We are somebody because God loves us, no matter how cold the night or hard the mattress.

Maybe because when our kids finish college and take that first job in some sexy faraway city and a year later we see them back home and we ask what happened, they say, 'I missed my friends and family.' And we nod and say we understand.

Or maybe because we're smarter than you think. Every country flogs a corner of itself on the whipping post. English Canada rips French Canada, and vice versa. Swedes make lame jokes about Laplanders.

But it's time to untie Detroit. Because we may be a few steps behind the rest of the country, but we're a few steps ahead of it too. And what's happening to us may happen to you.

Do you think if your main industry sails away to foreign countries, if the tax base of your city dries up, you won't have crumbling houses and men sleeping on church floors too? Do you think if we become a country that makes nothing, that builds nothing, that only services and outsources, that we will hold our place on the economic totem pole? Detroit may be suffering the worst from this semi-Depression, but we sure didn't invent it. And we can't stop it from spreading. We can only do what we do. Survive.

And yet we're better at that than most places.

*****

Here is the end of the story. This was back on Christmas night. After the visit to the church, I drove to a suburb with an old friend and we saw a movie. Gran Torino. It starred and was directed by Clint Eastwood, and it was filmed in metro Detroit, which was a big deal. Last year the state passed tax incentives to lure the movie business, an effort to climb out of our one-industry stranglehold, and Eastwood was the first big name to take advantage of it.

He shot in our neighborhoods. He used a bar and a hardware store. He reportedly fit in well, he liked the people, and no one hassled him with scripts or résumés.

The film was good, I thought, and familiar. The story of a craggy old man who loves his old car and stubbornly clings to the way he feels the world should behave. He defends his home. He defends his neighbors' honor. He goes out on his own terms.

When the film finished, the audience stayed in its seats waiting, through the closing music, through the credits, until the very last scroll, where, above a camera shot of automobiles rolling down Jefferson Avenue along the banks of Lake St. Clair, three words appeared.

MADE IN MICHIGAN.

And the whole place clapped. Just stood up and clapped.

To hell with Depression. We're gonna have a good year."

While certainly sports heavy, this column hit it home for me. I would like to travel and see the world. I know there are things beyond the mitten of Michigan. But, for some odd reason that I can't explain, though I'm not from Detroit and I've never lived in Detroit, there's a part of me that says, "This is our city."

It's not that the city belongs to me; rather, it is that I belong to the city. Only around 25% of Michiganders hold any sort of college degree. We all know it, we just don't want to believe it. The truth is, I belong to Detroit in that I need to use my education and skills to better the area, specifically Detroit.

That's one of several reasons why Wayne State University School of Medicine is my first choice for medical school. Why I want to practice emergency medicine at Detroit Receiving (someday). I'd be letting people down if I didn't.

Since I know my history, I can tell you that even us in the suburbs know that without Detroit, there would be no West Bloomfield, Birmingham, Farmington Hills, or any other suburbs in Macomb, Oakland, or Wayne counties.

Ironically, my attention was brought to this piece by someone who had moved from Michigan to Los Angeles.

In Alexandra Pelosi's documentary, Friends of God, she interviewed Conservative comedian Brad Stine. In a clip from one of his shows, he proclaimed that Christians and Southerners were the only two kinds of people one could poke fun at in contemporary America. Saving my criticism that that is not true, he neglected to mention what Albom presents here: the utter mocking of Detroit.

I've said this before, but I remember during the blackout of 2003 when radio pundits were expecting Detroit to erupt in rioting and looting. Except that there wasn't. Detroit (and Detroiters) bear the brunt of the most jokes.

What about Los Angeles, the most pretentious city on Earth, or New York, the most obnoxious? Or Dallas, the most redneck? Or D.C., the most out-of-touch? Please note: People mock Detroit for what they think Detroit is, whereas the commentary on the above mentioned cities mocks what people in those cities do.

Do people honestly think they can relieve themselves of Detroit and they won't suffer? No man is an island, as they say. And, when it comes to the working class of this country, you can't your nose off to save your face.

We are our brother's keeper, and if Detroit goes, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the country gets a rude wakeup call.

Here's a video making my point from yesterday:

I Am Against the War on Gaza and I Want a Ceasefire

I don't usually title posts, but I feel it is appropriate this time. I have largely kept quiet since the fighting began on December 27. In the beginning (from 2000 to late 2002)I had been far more hawkish. Indeed, I even believed much of the right-wing propaganda regarding the conflict. While it has been nearly 9 years, I blame that on ignorance.

The truth is that I have slowly come to realize that the conflict is not black and white but loaded with LOTS of gray. Successive Israeli governments have done awful and atrocious things, just as Israel's enemies have. Am I making a moral equivalence? No, but that doesn't mean I can ignore the plight of millions of refugees or the millions of people living under a brutal - yes, I said it - brutal occupation or the thousands who have suffered under military strikes.

Do I oppose the Israeli occupation? You damn right I do. Do I oppose these horrific wars that end up killing hundreds of innocent people in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon? You damn right I do.

I won't apologize for how I feel. I don't view war and violence as virtuous things nor do I think you can solve problems with them. Over the past several weeks I have seen a number of friends update their statuses on Facebook (remember, kids, in this digital age even your "private" lives are more public than you think) callously calling for more war or even counting the number of Qassam rockets that fell on Israel.

To be honest, in this regard, I feel very lonely in that I feel I am the only one (of my Jewish friends that is) who opposes the war on Gaza and the siege and blockade that came before it.

So be it. I am a man of principle and I won't back down.

However.

Part of what kept me hawkish and ignorant for several years was the fact while I see plenty of hate and intolerance from supporters of Israel is because I saw the same if not more from detractors of Israel.

Hate and vitriol back and forth ad nauseam and ad infinitum from the two sides. I began to see I didn't really belong anywhere. And when I did research in The Michigan Daily on how the conflict played out over the years at UM, I found that students and other activists have been doing the same thing for decades.

Over time, you get cynical and you withdraw.

I will never be an anti-Zionist. While I no longer believe that anti-Zionism equals anti-semitism, I don't believe it is a viable political ideology, at least currently.

And I have always (and I still do) believe in Jewish self-determination. I will never stop believing that the Jewish people and the Jewish people alone have the right to determine our fates. The Dark Ages are over.

I used to be very dismissive of groups like Gush Shalom, B'tselem, and Jewish Voice for Peace. Now I support much of what they say. While I don't always agree with some of their rhetoric (especially from Jewish Voice for Peace, although not to be confused with the nutcase-filled Jewish Witnesses for Peace in Ann Arbor), I feel that American Jews are pigeon-holed into moving into a right-wing Zionist camp.

I know I felt that I was. The right just fed off the stuff the anti-Zionist activists threw at them. "See? Look at how much those Israel protesters hate you! Let's support the Wall! Or the bombing of Lebanon. Or the decimation of Gaza."

But, I now know there is another way. Anshel Pfeffer writes in Haaretz:

"There is, though, a third stream of Jews - perhaps not the widest one, but I believe quite significant - who have more complex and uncomfortable feelings on the matter. They care deeply for Israel and understand even why its government felt compelled to launch the devastating Operation Cast Lead, but they are extremely disturbed and hurt by the level of civilian deaths and destruction that almost seems part and parcel of the action. Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this. And they live with those doubts, often unexpressed, even among families and close friends because the worst thing they find is that others around them don't seem to discern between the different nuances, and can't find in themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side. They begin asking themselves very awkward questions: Are they surrounded by latent racists, or is something wrong with them that denies the feelings of certainty of those around them? Or does everyone have similar doubts but are simply afraid to express them?"

And, as James Zogby notes:

"But now comes a new set of Jewish voices, arguing that, of course, Hamas is wrong, but that this show of overwhelming force by Israel will only escalate the cycle of violence. Expressing concern for Israel's security and remorse for Palestinian suffering, these groups all understand that the violence is unproductive and a result of the absence of real peace. They, therefore, all insist on a serious push toward a just peace as the way forward.

It is not a question of whose voice is the loudest, but that at last there is a debate reflecting the diversity of views within the American Jewish community. This, by itself, may help open up the policy debate."

In the current conflict, you can see two very distinct sides: one views the bombing of Gaza as genocide. Because of this, Hamas are the heroes (This could also be said of Hezbollah in the 2006 war in Lebanon).

The other applauds the bombing. Hamas is a terrorist group that cannot be negotiated with, no matter how many elections they win. If civilians die, it is thus Hamas' fault.

I fit in neither. As I have long argued there is pain and injustice on both sides. To dismiss one cannot help the other.

I oppose this recent war on Gaza. I haven't participated in any protests because, frankly, the protests I have seen do NOT represent me nor my beliefs. I am not one-sided. I am pro-Israel AND pro-Palestine. To believe one needs to be only on one side or another is just a continuation of the same.

And this idea of "either or" spreads beyond me or the people I know. You have Dore Gold and Alan Dershowitz writing that even if many civilians die, the response is appropriate, given how Hamas hides among civilians. And then you have others who make Qassam rockets sound like firecrackers.

I don't understand why the Israeli government continues to believe that raining fire down on Gaza will make the Palestinians more likely to reject Hamas. How do Israelis respond to suicide bombings and even the Qassams? They get fired up. Why should the Israeli government expect different from the Palestinians?

I certainly like the idea of this:

"Because of the rocket fire, all the academic institutions in the south of Israel are shut, and because of the war, thousands of students have been called up. But outside the line of fire, college and university studies are continuing as usual, as though there were no war.

The students' fight against the tuition increase, the lecturers' struggle over their salaries, and the battle of the institutions of higher education over budgets - all were good reasons for repeated strikes over the past two years. But now, when - over a few days of an unnecessary and cruel war - hundreds of people have been killed and a fortune has been wasted that could certainly compete with the annual higher education budget, no one is talking about a strike.

There should have been a strike. There should have been a strike after Gilad Shalit was captured, to tell the government that we will not carry on with life as usual until he is returned. Speak to Hamas, we should have said, lead us to reconciliation. But we didn't go on strike, because they told us there was contact with the captors and that the government was doing everything it could; they told us the army and the Shin Bet security service knew what they were doing and that there was no alternative, because only by force can we bring back our captured soldiers. And even after the Second Lebanon War, which sowed death, destruction and hatred - but didn't bring back the captives - we didn't strike.

We should actually have gone on strike many years ago - in the days of the first intifada, when the Israel Defense Forces closed the schools and universities in the territories for months on end. They told us then not to bring politics onto campus, and that the army knew what it was doing; they told us we couldn't let the Palestinians throw stones, and so we kept teaching.

Those same years, when educational institutions in the territories were closed repeatedly for many weeks, when entire villages and cities were placed under curfew - that was the period when the suicide bombers and Qassam launchers of today were growing up. Then too, they told us there was no one to talk to, and we continued as usual. The head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank, who prohibited the Palestinians from owning hundreds of books that had been placed on a blacklist, was selected as the dean of the humanities faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and he, like most of the Orientalists from the IDF and Shin Bet, assured us there was no one to talk to.

Dr. Taisir Aruri, a physicist, was expelled from the territories after he gave a speech at a Peace Now rally in favor of two nations for two peoples. Hundreds of lecturers, teachers and students were among the thousands of Palestinians arrested and held without trial. But we still didn't go on strike.

Now too, we are continuing as usual, as the same leaders who failed and repeatedly chose force over dialogue are bombing and killing, just like Hamas. It's not too late to call for dialogue, with Hamas and with any Arab leader prepared to talk with us. It's not true that there isn't anyone to talk to or that there isn't anything to discuss. After all, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (and reiterated by the Arab League in 2007) is a clear offer to accept Israel into a region that has rejected it. And until Israel ends the fighting, responds to the Arab initiative and begins talks about the release of Gilad Shalit and the Palestinian prisoners - and about how Jews and Arabs will live here together and separately - we have to hold a peace strike."

I know I may be inviting hate mail or whatever with what I have written. But, before anyone decides which tree to hang me from, know this:

All that I have written is what I believe. And what I believe should not be too controversial: that peace and co-existence is more important than ideology.

Oh, and if you want to write about how stupid or ignorant I am now, odds are I have read more books and taken more classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict than you could ever hope to. So bite me.

Wow. Fox News is complete nonsense. Check out this article about the military vote:

"A poll by the Military Times newspaper group suggests that there is overwhelming support for John McCain among U.S. troops in every branch of the armed forces by a nearly 3-1 margin.

According to the poll, 68 percent of active-duty and retired servicemen and women support McCain, while 23 percent support Barack Obama. The numbers are nearly identical among officers and enlisted troops.

The Military Times, which publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times, polled 80,000 subscribers from Sept 22 to Sept. 29. The non-scientific survey gathered 4,300 respondents -- all of them registered and eligible to vote.

A racial divide was immediately evident among the respondents. Nearly eight in 10 black servicemembers chose Obama, while McCain captured 76 percent of white voters and 63 percent of Hispanic voters.

Numbers among men and women respondents were also visibly different. Men overwhelmingly said they would vote for McCain, 70 percent to 22 percent. But among women the margin was much closer: 53 percent support McCain, while 36 percent support Obama.

U.S. troops also said in the poll that they prefer McCain to handle the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 74 percent said McCain would perform better, while just 19 percent said Obama would.

Four years ago the Iraq War was the single most important issue on which the military voted. But the war now ranks third in importance to these voters. The most important issue among the respondents was character (42 percent), followed by the economy (25 percent) and the Iraq War (16 percent).

There was a racial divide on these issues, as well. Black servicemembers said the economy was the No. 1 issue that affected their vote, and white troops said character was paramount.

The Military Times offered certain caveats for its poll, which was open only to its 80,000 subscribers. Responses were entirely voluntary and were not focused on a representative sample of the public, as scientific polls are. The troops polled were also somewhat older than average enlisted servicemembers and included more officers than is representative of the military as a whole. [Emphasis added, ed.]

Yet judging by the numbers, it appears that the Democratic party has not made many inroads into the traditionally Republican military."

I love that last sentence. Making such a determination with unreliable data. Any student of statistics should see that the poll by The Military Times is so flawed. Yet here's Fox News making a conclusion they have no position to make.

That's Fox News' new slogan: "We're full of shit, and you know it!"

Here's an interesting piece by Harold Pollack, a former professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health (my current employer) who is now an associate professor at the University of Chicago:

"Before my present gig, I taught public health at University of Michigan. I and my colleagues were involved with several ventures to address that state's urban poverty and related health ills. It's not news that Flint, Detroit, and other urban centers have struggled. Despite serious economic challenges, Michigan was relatively fortunate to have a strongly unionized workforce, well-financed retirees, strong philanthropy, and other assets that somewhat buffered the health system against from the worst consequences of deindustrialization. I left Michigan in 2003 to do similar work in Chicago. It's not entirely my fault, but things in Michigan have worsened since my departure.

My former UM public health colleague Paula Lantz and UCLA political scientist Mark Peterson note in Friday's Free Press, that one million Michiganders are uninsured. They note the large hole Medicaid is placing in the state budget.

Earlier this week, the excellent, real-newspaper part of the Wall Street Journal had an amazing story about hospital closures in Detroit.

The title speaks for itself: 'Nonprofit Hospitals Flee Cities for Suburbs, Leaving Poor Behind.' The Journal's opening paragraphs captures the raw emotion I encountered many times within the economically and racially segregated environment of greater Detroit:

'After nonprofit giant Ascension Health closed the doors on Detroit's Riverview Hospital, the only hospital on the city's blighted east side, some residents directed their anger at St. John Hospital and Medical Center, the system's lone remaining outpost in the Motor City.

In renovations at St. John, the local Ascension subsidiary moved the lobby so that it overlooked the wealthy and almost exclusively white suburb of Gross Pointe Woods rather than Detroit, which it had faced for more than 50 years. William Anderson, who had directed medical education at Riverview, told the WSJ that he believed the health system was saying, 'We do not want to be in Detroit where there are so many poor, black people.' The hospital system denied that charge, saying the change was dictated by the particulars of the site.'

You can imagine how that went over in Detroit's hyper-segregated environment.

Of Detroit's 42 hospitals that operated in 1960, four remain. Locals know a thing or two about the agony of auto plant closings. Local hospital closings are also a heavy blow. A hospital is more than a site of care. It provides employment to hundreds or thousands of people ranging from brain surgeons and nurses to the telephone operators and custodial staff. Hospitals provide an economic anchor for local medical offices, pharmacies, and sandwich shops. Hospital security personnel generally outnumber city police in the immediate vicinity, providing needed protection from crime. Hospital closures are especially demoralizing when they come to symbolize a community's economic decline.

Retaining healthcare providers is becoming more difficult with each passing year. Within a $2.4 trillion healthcare system, providers have opportunities to make money. Few of these opportunities are in stressed locations like east Detroit. One in four people in Detroit lack health coverage. Many of the rest have Medicaid, on whom hospitals often lose money. If you are a hospital executive, locating in a poor Detroit neighborhood is not a marketing advantage when you are trying to court well-insured suburban yuppie patients.

Hospitals, for-profit and nonprofit too, have generally responded the way big institutions do. Ascension's local subsidiary shut down three Detroit hospitals in the past decade. Meanwhile, Ascension opened a new $224 million hospital in a nearby suburb. Ascension does provides significant charity care. The Journal pointedly notes the church-based nonprofit chain makes a lot of money. It owns 67 hospitals, and reported a net income of $351 million last year.

Detroiters are understandably bitter. Ascension has indeed behaved rather shabbily. Yet the underlying problem is not the refusal of some chain to retain a money-losing facility. The real problems reside in a public and private insurance system that makes it very, very hard for hospitals to survive in this environment.

I recently visited Detroit on a research project examining HIV screening in emergency care. In many ways, Detroit gets a worse rap than it deserves. When I tell my friends I am going to Detroit, they have visions of Kurt Russell's travails in Escape from New York. "Don't go roaming around," my mom tells me with some concern.

With time to kill, I violated Mom's advice and walked around. I passed the Detroit Institute of Art, the Museum of African-American History, the Symphony, and much else. Like Chicago, Detroit features great architecture and a beautiful housing stock. Yet there's no escaping that Detroit has fallen on hard times. Its Amtrak station is so run-down it barely supports a candy machine. City government is under-funded, demoralized, and performs very poorly by virtually any measure.

I stopped into the huge General Motors building. Completed in 1923, it is an official National Historic Landmark, a renowned architectural achievement of Albert Kahn. I passed underneath opulent ceilings and a beautiful old Cadillac parked for display in the lobby. The complex is now called Cadillac place. They don't do much with cars there anymore. Most of the place is now used for welfare offices and other public services.

I don't know how to reverse such profound industrial decline. I do know that we can give health insurance to every American citizen. I know that we can ensure that every American city has the fiscal resources to operate effective hospitals.

My experiences in Detroit and Flint taught me something else. The Journal quotes my Michigan colleague Rich Lichtenstein on the litany of sad statistics regarding Detroit's poverty, HIV incidence, and infant mortality. The statistics would be much worse, were it not for Paula and Rich and so many others on the ground who have spent years improving breast and cervical cancer screening, enrolling kids in SCHIP, getting the word out on diabetes and hypertension, helping to link pregnant women to prenatal care, helping incredibly stressed young mothers be better, and sometimes safer, parents to their children.

This is the hard, often overlooked world of social services and public health. People who read my pieces know that I'm alarmed about the nation's dilapidated public health infrastructure, so oddly neglected alongside our nation's colossal thirteen-digit investments in personal medical services.

As we enter the election homestretch in a time of economic crisis, our nation reevaluating how we do things. This comes through both choice and hard circumstance. I'm sure many readers are wondering how they (you) should change your lives to match this moment.

If all goes well on election day, some of my students and colleagues will go to Washington to enact needed change. That's one terrific road, but you don't have to go that far. You can go to Detroit, or Chicago, or Cleveland, or New York, or LA, one of hundreds of other places and make a real difference.

Maybe you even want to go to school with those clowns or to learn how to do this stuff right. It brings many frustrations, but it's a good life. You make change on a human scale, one life at a time. These days, we certainly need the help."

People really do have horrible misconceptions of Detroit. When I was applying for jobs, I applied for many down at Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center. Though it is located in midtown and there is still some blight, the area itself is nice, considering all the new buildings that have been going up.

That said, the blight on Detroit is there and is a symptom of a larger disease, to which our free market fundamentalists should carry most of the blame. Detroit used to be a manufacturing center, but now much of that is gone. In its place we have rampant poverty, segregation, and, as this post shows, horrid access to health care, if you are a poor Detroiter.

All the more reason that we need a PROPERLY FUNDED universal health care. This is the only way. The Republicans and the conservatives can pout and whine all they want, but this is what must happen. For the good of the country. At least that's my view.

Here's an awesome video by Larry Lessig, Stanford Law Professor, genius, innovator, great thinker, and awesome man. I first discovered him two years ago when I saw videos of his various talks, using his very unique and creative presentation style.

This video is an excellent continuation of that creativity, and its topic is something which, in the grand scheme of things isn't gravely important (with the war, global warming, etc.) but IS VERY important when looking into America's future. He talks about net neutrality, or the idea that Internet USERS, meaning all of US, get to decide what content we wish to view, and not ISPs. He begins with a startling statistic, represented by a striking graph: a near-complete depletion of broadband penetration during the entire Bush Administration.

He then discusses two business models for the Internet. The first one, favored by the ISPs, is based on cable television. The companies that we pay for access to the Internet should decide our content, much in the same way that cable companies decide the content of their cable networks (which channels and programs may be available for viewing).

The other one, which should be favored by all democracy loving people in the United States and the world, is that of the telephone companies. We, the consumers, pay for Internet service and we use it however we see fit, provided a few exceptions that no civil libertarian would ever argue, just telephone companies allow us to call and talk to whomever we choose, and to talk about whatever we want (with the obvious exceptions - watch the video to see what those exceptions are).

He quotes the former head of eBay in her letter on Net Neutrality, and I have to quote it because it is so jaw-dropping:

"Lawmakers in Washington are seriously debating whether consumers should be free to use the Internet as they want in the future."

He then demonstrates how John McCain, first as the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, helped implement the disastrous technology policies that contributed to the elimination of most ISPs. Lessig points out that what an ISP in France provides at around $45 U.S. would cost twice as much here and provide only 1/10 of the service. Again, Lessig explains how this is the direct result of bad policy.

Lessig shows, from McCain's own platform, how he will help win the battle over net neutrality on behalf of the ISPs, and NOT the consumers. Finally, he juxtaposes the result of bad technology policy with bad foreign policy (i.e. the war on Iraq) and states that what we need is an admission: of not only that mistakes in policy were made but also admission of responsibility, something which George W. Bush and his criminal cohorts have never done.

John McCain, as evidenced by his platform (again watch the video to see exactly how), will continue these policies, let alone never admit that they were wrong in the first place.

Lessig wasn't making an advertisement for Obama; rather, he was being honest about what needs to happen. He discusses that not only was net neutrality a foundational feature of the Internet, but net neutrality is what helped spark so much technological innovation. Would the iPod be around if it hadn't been for the net neutrality of the Internet? Be honest.

A return to that level of competition and innovation is key. Instead of thousands of ISPs prior to Bush, we've now got essentially two. That's bad. Anyone who has dealt with their cable company should know this.

Now, to be fair, the Democrats share in the responsibility for this mess: the Telecommunications Act of 1996 helped in this ISP consolidation. But these were and are conservative policies, and it's clear that they are failures.

What we need is an acknowledgment that consumers' access to the Internet must filtered based on content and that the consumers, not the ISPs, are to decide what they want to view. I'm glad Lessig made this video and I encourage all to watch it.

I'm not going to pretend I understand completely what is going on with the current catastrophes on Wall Street. I leave that to people much more educated in that field (and, in return, I would like to have the floor yielded to me by conservatives whenever topics like Jewish history, Middle Eastern history, or science come up; they don't know shit):

"How did it come to this? The banksters issue a threat: Hand over $700 billion in taxpayers' money–on top of the $600 billion already forked over–or we'll take down the global economy.

There will be a lot of obfuscation—fingers pointing every which way—but the story is very clear.

The immediate cause is the inflating and busting of the housing bubble. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan will be remembered for stoking a bubble economy. Coming out of bursting of the dot.com bubble, Greenspan lowered interest rates and kept them there. With his war and tax cuts, President Bush racked up record deficits. Struggling with stagnant incomes, Americans took on record debts. Foreign creditors, like Chinese central bankers happy to loan us money to buy their goods, flooded the U.S. with dough. With mortgage rates low, housing prices rose. An unregulated shadow banking system began marketing exotic mortgage-backed securities across the globe. As the housing bubble grew, brokers hawked shakier and shakier Alt-A and subprime mortgages. Ninja loans—no income, no jobs, no assets—became the rage.

Since the brokers sold off the mortgages immediately, they had a stake in making the loan, not whether the loan would be repaid. The banks and investment houses sliced and diced the loans into ever more exotic securities, which got prime ratings, although no one really knew what was in them. European banks and others bought more and more of the stuff. To escape capital limits, they invented credit default swaps in which companies like AIG guaranteed the loans in case of default. That totally unregulated over-the-counter market soared to $60 trillion. Banks set up off-balance-sheet entities to evade capital limits. Investment houses like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers borrowed at 30 times their capital to speculate in these markets. Wall Street's executives were pocketing tens of millions from the take.

The regulators turned their heads. Greenspan not only fueled the cheap money; he cheered on the exotic mortgages, even while refusing to acknowledge, much less limit, the housing bubble. The Securities and Exchange Commission exempted five major investment houses from their normal capital requirements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's executives profited personally as their enterprises started buying Alt-A mortgages.

Everything was great so long as housing prices went up. When they topped out, the bottom fell out. Defaults and foreclosures soared. Suddenly, no one knew what the value of the securities they held was, much less what was in the balance sheets of other banks. Much of the exotic paper turned toxic; no one wanted to buy it. As the banks slowly were forced to write down its value, they had to raise capital. With everyone trying to sell at the same time, the values went through the floor. Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch collapsed into bankruptcy or fire-sale mergers. The insurance giant AIG and Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the federal government.
And now, Washington is gearing up for the largest bailout in history, throwing an estimated $700 billion more to buy up the toxic paper from the banks to keep the entire financial system from collapsing.

This catastrophe was the direct result of conservative misrule. In the Great Depression, our grandfathers learned a simple lesson: Finance is too important to be left to bankers. So President Franklin D. Roosevelt saved the banks, but in exchange put them in a regulatory straitjacket. Currencies, interest rates, capital requirements, limits on leverage and on financial instruments—all were regulated to create a banking system that could provide financing needed by businesses and homeowners without debilitating speculative excesses.

In the 1970s, with the country experiencing stagflation, oil shocks and the Vietnam War, and with President Nixon moving to floating currencies, banks started pushing hard for deregulation. Wall Street money in Washington paved the way. With the election of Ronald Reagan, true believers—those whom George Soros calls 'market fundamentalists'—took over Washington. Government was the problem, not the solution. Deregulation was the order of the day.

Conservatives argue now that the problem was poor regulation, not unbridled markets. But conservatives trumpeted that markets were self-correcting, and so systematically set out to weaken the regulatory agencies—not simply repealing laws, but appointing regulators who scorned the very responsibilities they were given.

Republicans led this charge, naturally, but Democrats also imbibed the conservative Kool-Aid. Deregulation became a bipartisan enterprise; Democrats began trumpeting their dedication to markets, and pocketing contributions from Wall Street. The deregulation of the savings and loans in the first months of the Reagan administration was a bipartisan effort. That disaster, which allowed S&Ls essentially to gamble with government guarantees, ending up costing taxpayers about $150 billion. We didn't learn the lesson.

Led by such zealots as Republican Phil Gramm, Congress freed the banking system from its New Deal restraints. With the support of Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, ending the divide between commercial and investment banks. Commodity exchanges were exempted from regulation, leading to the over-the-counter credit swap trading that Warren Buffett warns is a financial weapon of mass destruction. The SEC exempted five investment houses—Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Lehman Brothers—from capital requirements. Three of them are now gone. Questions about the survival of the other two triggered the current frenzied bailout. With the cop on the financial beat disarmed, the casino opened for business.

So once more we pay dearly to learn the lesson. Finance cannot be left to bankers. Banks can get too big to fail; unregulated financial systems tend to speculative frenzies because the speculators can profit greatly by taking very large bets—and now have good reason to believe that the government may cover their losses.

We need new and strict regulation on the entire financial system—no more shadow entities operating on the side. That regulation should include strict capital requirements, limits on leverage, transparency, and policing of instruments allowed and compensation schemes. We've got to rearm the cop on the financial beat—and elect leaders and appoint regulators who do not scorn the government they lead.

This won't be easy. The bailout is designed to forestall a global depression. A depression would be destructive, but in the destruction the most irresponsible firms would be liquidated, the wastrels would be ruined, and the public would demand that government crack down on Wall Street.

With the bailout, getting Wall Street back under control won't be easy. Wall Street is using the crisis that they've created to demand immediate action. Regulation, their lobbyists argue, can come later. Forget about a stimulus for the economy. Don't complicate the bailout with requirements for renegotiating the mortgages or keeping people in their homes.

Wall Street wants the rescue without the regulation. The wastrels will have their losses covered. Wall Street money will bribe Congress to leave them alone. The public may be more relieved than angry. The market fundamentalists are already blaming the crisis on government, not on the banksters on the make.

The reality, however, is clear. Finance cannot be left to bankers. Citizens have to get into this argument. We've got to demand conditions on any bailout. (See the conditions we’re seeking here.) And we’ve got to reject the market fundamentalism, the scorn for government and cynicism about the common good that has led us directly into this debacle."

The Wall Street investment firms holding a gun to our collective heads saying, "Give us what we want or witness a new Great Depressions" need to get something through your heads: the American taxpayers are not a charitable organization. This bailout is not a gift, no matter how much you want us to be. This is a loan, and you better pay us back, with interest.

Others have noted what REALLY needs to happen: actually getting a significant stake in these companies so that when they do start turning a profit again some of those profits will go back to the American taxpayer. Most importantly re-instituting those pesky regulations that we enacted to help prevent this sort of thing in the first place.

Let's hope Congress (Frank and Dodd are being good so far) gets their act together and makes sure the American people didn't just give the richest, most unsympathetic, and now most hypocritical (remember, these are the same people and entities that fight governmental social services as making the government too much of a nanny state) people on the planet.

And, on a final note, let me ask this: we're being told time and again in this crisis that we NEED to come up with the money for this bailout; basically, to cover the behinds of people who acted unethically and until the last few administrations, illegally, in their immoral greed.

Why do we not NEED to come up with the money for universal health care in this country?

Are you kidding me?

"Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

'We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses,' party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign 'election challengers' to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they 'have a good reason to believe' that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a 'true resident of the city or township.'

The Michigan Republicans' planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being 'true residents.'

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

'You can't challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,' said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. 'I don't think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.'

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, 'mean-spirited.'

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP's plans are another indication of how John McCain's campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm's founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party's plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state's Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP's voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group's 'election integrity' program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Nowling who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to 'make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.'

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, 'I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.'

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse's remarks and Carabelli's plans.

'At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,' he said. 'Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

'When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,' Hebert went on, 'your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,' who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be 'based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.'

'But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason' for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as 'crazy.'

“You would think they would think, 'This is going to look too heartless,'' said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. 'The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.'"

Are Republicans really this evil? Michigan Republicans, just in case you're wondering, preventing people from voting if they previously registered at a house that has been foreclosed, is illegal:

MICHIGAN ELECTION LAW (EXCERPT)
Act 116 of 1954


168.507a Moving to another township or city; voting at place of last registration; affidavit; applicability of subsections (1) and (2); forms; cancellation of registration; voting in person or by absentee ballot.

Sec. 507a.

(1) A registered and qualified elector of this state who has moved from the township or city of a county in which he or she is registered to another township or city of a different county within the state after the sixtieth day before an election or primary election shall be permitted to vote in the election or primary election at the place of last registration upon the signing of a form containing an affidavit stating that the move has taken place. This subsection shall apply if the county in which the elector is registered has implemented the county file as the official file pursuant to section 509e.

(2) A registered and qualified elector of this state who has moved from the city or township in which he or she is registered to another city or township within the state after the sixtieth day before an election or primary election shall be permitted to vote in the election or primary election at the place of last registration upon the signing of a form containing an affidavit stating that the move has taken place. This subsection shall apply if the county in which the elector is registered has not implemented the county file as the official file pursuant to section 509e. [Emphasis added, ed.]

(3) The form or forms required by this section shall be approved by the secretary of state and shall state that the move has taken place and shall authorize the clerk of the city or township to cancel the voter's registration. A voter coming under this section shall be permitted to vote either in person or by absentee ballot.

How can Republicans honestly try and trick African Americans to vote for them knowing full well that this move specifically targets them? (Not saying that all people who have had their homes foreclosed are all African American; indeed this move is also inherently anti-poor and anti-working class)

As others have noted, Michigan's election laws make perfect sense in this area: people should be able to vote at where they were last registered, based on a voter's registration and NOT based on a property title.

Holding property as a requirement to vote is undemocratic and un-American, yet Republicans would have no problem with this idea. I guess, to them, even democracy should be privatized; holding property is a reward to voting.

Even renting smacks of this mentality. Because once we go down this road, we might begin to see that people would have to earn the money to vote, and that's simply not right.

I sure as hell hope that this fails.

Quote of the day, via the New York Times:

"Today’s necessary but likely very expensive action for taxpayers is the consequence of regulatory neglect and of a broader political system's reluctance to take on what should have been clearly seen as festering problems." - Lawrence H. Summers, Former Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration

That does it. If you are a Republican and think this was ok:



. . . then you're evil. Just plain evil. And that ain't an exaggeration. There will be a special circle of Hell for those Republicans who think there is nothing wrong with using the deaths of thousands of people for political gain in this way.

Well, it didn't take long for someone to point out the lies in the speech from the candidate for Republican Vice-President and religious-fundamentalist-anti-choice-hypocritical-corrupt Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin:

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: 'I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere.'

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a 'bridge to nowhere.'

PALIN: 'There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.'

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: 'The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.'

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: 'She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,' he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more 'responsible' for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: 'She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,' he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under 'federal status,' which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin 'got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.'

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: 'We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.'

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate."

I mean, seriously, when do the lies end? These were not just Palin's lies but the lies of other prominent Republicans. They all know that under Republican rule nearly all Americans have become worse off; until January 2007 they controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the ENTIRE executive branch (not just the White House, as the attorney firings prove, i.e. the Justice Department) and half of the Supreme Court (and, when Sandra Day O'Connor left, more than half).

The only people to do better under Republican rule (yes, I use the word rule because they govern like fascist dictators, and yes, I used the word fascist because it's no longer a cliche and Godwin's Law no longer applies; see the recent preemptive raids and arrests of both RNC protesters and journalists like Amy Goodman) are the very well off.

Most of Americans make less money, pay higher health insurance premiums (my mother's pension after working for the State of Michigan's Family Independence Agency includes health insurance and her premium, even after taking me off because I now get health insurance through UM as an employee which will also go up, nearly doubled), pay more for gas, work longer hours, and are generally worse off (many more people have actually lost health care altogether). How do people keep voting for these people?

They vote for them because Republicans distract people from voting for their class interests. Notice how they didn't mention one word about the economy at the RNC? Because they don't have a plan except a continuation of the same failed and ruinous policies. They distract by painting anyone who questions Palin's qualifications (which other Republicans and conservatives are doing, see Peggy Noonan's gaffe from September 3)as ganging up on her.

They distract by campaigning against gay marriage, affirmative action, and other things. They galvanize their base by using these things and then you know what they do? Work for the economic elites who bought and paid for them. Remember in 2004 when Bush made all those promises to the religious right and there were gay marriage bans all across the country (including, unfortunately, Michigan)? What was the first thing he did after "winning" reelection? Privatize social security (which failed miserably.

In short, we need to remember that this country has gone down the drain and it is ALL because of Republican rule. Please, people. Don't vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. If you do, and they win, expect your lives to get much, much worse.

Surprise, surprise (Nothing to follow, this article says it all):

"The old saying holds true: The rich do get richer.

Even as world financial markets broke down last year, personal wealth around the world grew 5 percent to $109.5 trillion, according to a global wealth report released on Thursday by Boston Consulting Group.

It was the sixth consecutive year of expanding wealth. The fastest growth was among households in developing regions, such as China and the Gulf States and among families who were already rich.

That wealth also is increasingly concentrated among the richest.

The top 1 percent of all households owned 35 percent of the world's wealth last year. Meanwhile, the top 0.001 percent, ultra-rich households holding at least $5 million in assets, commanded $21 trillion -- a fifth of the world's wealth.

The planet also continues to mint new millionaires rapidly. The biggest jumps in 2007 came from emerging countries in Asia and Latin America. Overall, the number of millionaire households grew 11 percent to 10.7 million last year.

BCG notes that, while the rich are still rich, they have been making some adjustments as a result of the financial crisis.

This year, assets are being shifted to more conservative investments, more money is being kept onshore in home markets and some individuals have curtailed new investment.

Yet BCG cautioned the outlook for wealth markets and the banks who serve them, is dimmed by the current financial crisis.

North American personal wealth growth slowed to 3.8 percent last year, compared with 9 percent in 2006, reflecting the the mortgage crisis and the onset of the credit crunch last summer.

'The financial crisis continue to cast a pall over established wealth markets,' said Victor Aerni, a Zurich based partner who coauthored the report.

BCG, which advises banks and wealth managers, forecasts personal wealth will continue growing, but at a slower pace. This year, with Wall Street suffering through one of its worst slumps in decades, growth in assets is expected to rise less than 1 percent.

Things will improve over the next five years, BCG said, with personal wealth growing more than 3 percent annually -- well off the 8.5 percent set between 2002 and 2007.

Wealth is growing at much faster rates among the rest of the world. Households in Asia, the Pacific Rim excluding Japan and Latin America saw the greatest growth, with wealth rising 14 percent. That growth was fueled by manufacturing in Asia and commodities in Latin America and the Middle East, as well as more currency and political stability.

BCG observed that banks, brokerages and money managers will have little choice, but to expand their presence in these fast growing centers. Dubai and Singapore, the firm said, are becoming regional private banking centers offering greater competition to traditional havens such as Switzerland."

Just found this video of Mario Cuomo's speech at the DNC on July 16, 1984 (I was just 11 days shy of being six months old). In honor of that speech and with the hope that the delegates at the current DNC in 2008 will also honor that speech, here it is:

Must. Post. New. JibJab. Cartoon. Hilarious.