I sure hope Oklahomans get rid of this one:

"Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.

What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.

'I think he’s going to be a little disappointed,' one of his aides remarked.

Inhofe was at least impatient.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hoped to spread two messages in Copenhagen: Global warming is a hoax, and there's no way the Senate is going to pass a cap-and-trade bill.

But it was early morning when he arrived at the Bella Center, and the halls were still half-deserted. He walked quickly, brushing off an aide who suggested that he slow down and take a breath.

'I don’t want to breathe — I want to get something done,' he said.

The senator didn't have any meetings scheduled in Copenhagen, and he did not see chief U.S. negotiator Todd Stern or the members of the House delegation, who were not scheduled to fly in until later in the afternoon.

But Inhofe's aides eventually rustled up a group of reporters, and the Oklahoman — wearing black snakeskin cowboy boots — held forth from the top of a flight of stairs in the conference media center.

'We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,' he said. 'It's just not going to happen.'

A reporter asked: 'If there's a hoax, then who's putting on this hoax, and what's the motive?'[Emphasis added, ed.]

'It started in the United Nations,' Inhofe said, 'and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.' [Emphasis added, ed.]

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: 'You’re ridiculous.' [Emphasis added, ed.]

Inhofe ignored the jab, fielded a few more questions, then raced to the airport for the nine-hour flight back to Washington.

After Inhofe left, some reporters were still a bit confused about what had happened and who he was.

'His name is Inhofe,' a German journalist told a Japanese reporter, 'but I don't know if it's one or two f's.'

This is why our country is so friggin' screwy. We have mental midgets who whore themselves out to the fossil fuel companies grandstanding in the Senate!

In honor of Chanukah, I give you the ULTIMATE brisket sandwich:

God Bless you, The Onion:


Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

A little funny and disturbing, but, like the caption says, more non-fiction than the usual fiction regarding European and Native American interaction in the Americas.

If you're a Republican, you have a lot of soul-searching to do:



This, once again, isn't about a difference of opinion. This is about believing in something that is demonstrably false. If you honestly confess to being a Republican, you need to rescue your party from batshit-wingnuttia.

Of course, I believe you don't have to. I would LOVE to see the Republican Party and conservative ideology implode. You guys need to start over. If, in the end, you end up a much more compassionate and saner force in American politics, we're all better off.

And, on a another note, I've had this discussion with several Republican/conservative friends of mine. They've bought into the ridiculous claim that Republicans (and by extension conservatives) were the driving force behind the Civil Rights Movement. What they fail to understand, however, is that back then, there wasn't just Republicans and Democrats. There was a divide between Northern politics and Southern politics.

In other words, what was true for Northern Democrats (like the Kennedy's and others) was not true for Southern Democrats (i.e. Dixiecrats, the segregationists).

That's why after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed (pushed by liberals and helped along by LBJ, a Southerner), all of those Southern racists left the Democratic Party and went to the Republican Party, where they currently reside.

Think Progress explains:

"To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a 'higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.' But this ignores the 'distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians' on the issue. When this is taken into account, the facts show that 'in both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans.'"

I am NOT saying all Republicans and conservatives are racist. I AM saying that racists reside in their party and movement and it's their responsibility to deal with them.

They won't say so openly, but there are those in our society who seem to think that slavery and child labor are good ideas. No, really. Rachel Maddow, as usual, says it best:



"But as Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress start lining up with corporate America and against new regulations now, consider the alliance that they are making.

Populist columnist David Sirota today made this catch from the business newsletter 'Inside U.S. Trade.' This is a D.C.-based publication on trade issues. It's especially for people in international business.

What else are business groups worried about and lobbying against other than the new Wall Street regulations? I wouldn't believe this if I had not seen it for myself.

But check this out, quote, 'Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a recent customs bill. American business groups are concerned, upset.' 'Worried' was the actual phrase, worried about laws against using slaves and child labor.

Quote, 'Business sources say the bill could cause DHS to more actively seek out imported products made with child labor, forced labor or convict labor.'

Oh, no. How will the corporations save themselves from that onerous rule that you can't use slaves and prisoners and children to make your products if you want to sell that product in the United States? Darn that liberal red tape.

Quote, 'Sources conceded that this was a sensitive issue because industry groups do not want to be seen as opposing strict measures guarding against human rights abuses. However, one source did expect a push from lobbyists closer to the finance committee mark-up of the bill.'

Wow. I'm guessing that business interests are OK with something like this being discussed in a subscriber-only industry newsletter publication like 'Inside U.S. Trade.' I'm guessing they might not want to let it become widely known that they are lobbying to stop rules against slavery.

But actually, you never know. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank that is very high profile in Washington and that maintains all sorts of Web sites and educational public venues to promote their ideas.

And on the Heritage Foundation's 'Overcriminalized' blog, the Heritage Foundation, too, singles out the Child Labor Safety Act, which levies fines and jail time for companies using child labor as an example of what they call 'trivial conduct that is now often punished as a crime.'

I mean honestly, 'Kids these days. In my day, you would be delighted to be chained to the loom for a few pennies a day.' For the record, the Heritage Foundation also singles out Neil Abercrombie's bill against war profiteering as another example of making something trivial into a criminal matter.

Business interests and their think-tank friends on the right have every right to lobby on anything they want to. Think that Wall Street, despite almost destroying the whole economy of the United States should be left to its own devices again? Go ahead, make your case. I would love to hear it.

You think that child labor and slave labor and forced convict labor are cheap and therefore cool with you? Go ahead, make your case. I would love to hear it.

But unless you're going to make your case for things like that in total secrecy, know that the case against you is there to be made, too and that that will apply to any member of Congress who sides with you as well, you child labor-endorsing, pro-slavery freaks."

I would love to say I'm surprised by this. But, sadly, I'm not. After explaining how wrong sweatshops were to a right-wing friend of mine, he went into a long explanation about the economic benefits we receive as a result of using sweatshops . . . and of the benefits the local population receives.

But, we love this bait-and-switch conservatives love to pull, don't we? On the one hand, they get their pundits and party faithful to make sure everyone "knows" that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and thus, through some sort of illogical extrapolation, conservatives are all abolitionists.

Meanwhile, the companies and business interests they fight to protect are promoting, "secretly" that slavery is not such a bad idea.

I'm sorry, but I would gladly sacrifice some small amount of GDP and/or jobs (assuming that the claims that such regulation will cost jobs and GDP, which I don't necessarily buy at this point) if that means we don't have products made by children or by slave labor in sweat shops.

You can call me naïve; I'd rather be naïve and able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning knowing I didn't support the complete degradation of other human beings than be "smart" and enrich myself on slave labor.

Whose side would Abraham Lincoln be on? Here's a tip: he wouldn't be on the conservative side on this one.

For all those who believe that government intervention doesn't work, suck it:

"Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades. [Emphasis added, ed.]

A load operator at Auto Parts Plus in Stafford, Va., crushes a car last week that was traded in during the 'cash for clunkers' program.

But there's little agreement about which programs are having the biggest impact. Some economists argue that efforts such as the Federal Reserve's aggressive buying of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities, as well as government efforts to shore up banks, are providing a bigger boost than the administration's $787 billion stimulus package.

The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. 'There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this,' said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner speaks last month at the construction site of a new elementary school in Berea, Ohio.

Economists say the money out the door -- combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon -- is fueling growth above where it would have been without any government action.

Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in the second and third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. The impact in the second quarter, calculated by analyzing how the extra funds flowing into the economy boost consumption, investment and spending, helped slow the rate of decline and will lay the groundwork for positive growth in the third quarter -- something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say the 1% contraction in the second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for the stimulus. [Emphasis added, ed.]

For the third quarter, economists at Goldman Sachs & Co. predict the U.S. economy will grow by 3.3%. 'Without that extra stimulus, we would be somewhere around zero,' said Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman. [Emphasis added, ed.]

Dave Anderson, chief financial officer of Honeywell International Inc., said the stimulus package actually froze business activity at first as firms tried to figure out how they could benefit from the government spending. The $787 billion package 'created actually a slowdown in order activity in terms of the flow that we would normally have anticipated,' Mr. Anderson said at a conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley. 'We anticipate that that's going to actually pick up in the second half of the year. I think it's not unreasonable to see several hundred million dollars of orders.'

Opinion, however, remains split about which program has had the biggest impact. 'I don't think the stimulus was necessarily as effective as people claimed it to be or claim it will be,' said Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist with Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. He credits the government's 'stress tests' of banks, which helped boost confidence on Wall Street and allow banks to raise capital and resume lending.

Economists say other programs are having an impact, including an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home-buyers that has spurred home sales. The cash-for-clunkers program, which provided financial incentives for consumers to trade in older vehicles, did the same for cars.

One big question: Will the boost evaporate once the programs end?

Stuart Hoffman, chief U.S. economist for PNC Financial Services Group, said the stimulus package 'caused this bit of a concentrated burst [that] probably will exaggerate the pace of economic growth,' since some areas, such as auto sales, could fall back to low levels."

The total effects of the stimulus still have a while to go before manifesting themselves. But, this is encouraging. It's too bad all the douchebags who don't believe in government intervention in the economy during times of recession won't pay attention. I guess it's hard to when you have your head up Milton Friedman's/Ayn Rand's/Ronald Reagan's ass all the time.

So here is my first person report on the so-called "Health Care Reform Town Hall" hosted by my Congressman, Gary Peters. All I can say is that Republicans, conservatives, and anyone else who goes to these town halls with their rhetoric is either stoned or stupid.

Disclaimer: I have not read the 1300 page health care bill (the main one). I never claimed that I did. I did not show up with my dad to my old high school, West Bloomfield High School, to defend the plan. I did, however, make perfectly clear multiple times that I was in favor of a single payer system, as put forth by John Conyers in H.R. 676.

On to the good stuff. I arrived home from work and had a brief dinner with my father. What I didn't know until I got home was that a gas main had broken at Orchard Lake Road between Long Lake Road and Pontiac Trail, backing up traffic by the high school to Walnut Lake Road. By the time we left our house at 5:45 pm, traffic was at a standstill. Normally, this drive takes a 1.5 minutes from my house. We passed WBHS at 6:30 pm to find a sea of protesters at the entrance and people with signs lining Orchard Lake Road on the side of the high school. The parking lot was beyond full; West Bloomfield Police had blocked off all entrances into the parking lot.

There were two signs of particular interest at this point. The first one insulted the late Senator Ted Kennedy by mockingly referring to him as a murderer (per the death of Mary Jo Kopechne). The other one was so offensive I committed what it said to memory.

"Barney Frank sucks - literally and figuratively."

Belittling a recently deceased public servant and homophobic bigotry in just the first few minutes. You stay classy conservatives!

We had to park the car several blocks down from WBHS, as the parking lot was full and the entrances were all blocked off anyway. Walking south down Orchard Lake Road, we saw numerous people with signs. Interestingly enough, the guy we walked with was very much in favor of a public health option and more: universal health care. I hoped he wasn't our only ally.

Arriving at the entrance of WBHS, we learn that the auditorium is full to capacity. Apparently, it had filled just after 5:00 pm. Oh, well, my dad and I thought. Let's stay outside and make fun of all of the protesters.

Again, I will state: I have not read the public option bill and I have never claimed to have read it. I showed up to do two things: 1) make fun of the right-wingers, since, given the nature of their posters, were nuttier than a shithouse rack and 2) provide support to the better option, universal health care via a single payer system. I.e. Medicare for all. I did not show up to defend the public option. That's the President's job.

For about two hours, we walked around and interjected ourselves into all of the silly arguments the right-wingers were having.

There was a common thread among some arguments. Numerous people tried to engage me asking if I had read the bill. When I said that I hadn't, in addition to chastising me for advocating something I had not read (I never claimed to advocate for it; I used my time to advocate for a single payer health care system), proceeded to give me ridiculous hypothetical situations.

I didn't think of this the first time someone tried this tactic on me, but I did on the second (and all subsequent attempts): I didn't believe they had actually read a bill that was over 1000 pages long. Congressional bills don't really qualify as recreational reading. I couldn't prove that they hadn't read it, either.

However, they could not prove to me that they had read it. Quoting something that I haven't read doesn't prove conclusively that you had read it. In reality, I think that this was an argumentative tactic dreamed up by Dick Armey and his anti-American anti-health care lobby, FreedomWorks. It allows you, if done correctly on the right sap, to pretend that you know what you're talking about without actually knowing anything.

But, I'm not a sap. And neither is my father.

Now, being employed by the University of Michigan School of Public Health (Disclosure: I did NOT, in any way, shape, or form, go there representing UM SPH), I have become privy to numerous facts relating to public health and health care in the United States. Some of these tear the arguments of these poor right wing souls to shreds.

But, like the good sheep they are, they simply did not want to believe them. I provided numbers and facts, they provided hypothetical anecdotes. One lady with a mustache (yes, a mustache), after I cleared up her misconceptions of Canada's health care, said, "Why don't you just shut the fuck up?"

Always classy.

What was also very glaring is that I had to explain to numerous people the difference between socialized medicine (UK) and single payer health care (Canada and Medicare). They all thought it was all the same. I guess that's how this works: you keep the people ignorant and then get them riled up against bogeymen that you invent.

Another guy claimed, after I explained that I worked for the University of Michigan School of Public Health, that I did not "create" wealth and that we shouldn't tax those that do. The tone was definitely that I was not as worthy as someone who "creates" wealth, i.e. a businessman.

My father, on the other hand, was busy explaining that he thought these little "protests" were motivated by the fact the Obama wasn't white. He's convinced there's a solid thread of racism running through these protests, and while I agreed with him, I simply stuck to explaining why single payer health care is the best thing this country needs.

This upset the sheep. Several people accused my dad of playing the "race card". One guy almost assaulted him.

All in all, these protests demonstrated that the right-wing could be convinced of anything, even to protest against their own best interest.

Ok, people. One last time. STOP listening to Jonah friggin' Goldberg (no relation, thank G-d). Nazism was NOT a left-wing ideology. It was an outgrowth of the German ultranationalist right.

Again, this is clearly verifiable. "But, wait, Jared," you dimwitted conservative d-bags cry out. "They were the National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Socialist! That proves they were on the left!"

Well, if I had an IQ smaller than my shoe size, maybe I'd think so as well. But, I don't, and I know that you can call yourself anything you want, but the fact remains ideologically Nazism was borne out of post-World War I German ultranationalism and anti-Semitism.

Fascism has no clear economic program. It can be highly interventionist (i.e. the Nazis) or hands off (i.e. Chile under Augusto Pinochet, whom we not only supported but pushed into power in the first place).

What is important to know about fascism, and more specifically Nazism in this case, is the central status of the state in individual affairs, and the demand of submission of authority to the state.

Fascists also generally believe in a strong central figure of authority in their state, an executive if you will. Thus, the argument that a strong executive has fascist undertones is not one to be dismissed outright.

Isn't funny that actual Nazi policies, like that one, were championed by conservatives when the Bush Administration ruled over America, but suddenly we're talking about a puny public option that doesn't go anywhere near far enough to bringing down the costs of health care or increasing access is now Nazi?

As I have stated earlier, the Nazis did not invent Germany's universal health care system. It was passed by Bismarck and helped lay the foundation of Germany's social democratic (center-left) parties. Universal health care was and is immensely popular in Germany (as in every other country where it exists, perhaps this is why Republicans and conservatives fear it so much) and most historians now agree that because Hitler could not have ruled by fear alone he needed to keep the citizens happy.

Thus, he continued a popular left-wing policy and introduced a couple of others that he had invented (hello, Volkswagen!).

So, please, conservatives, just come to terms with the fact that Nazism sprang from YOUR side of the political spectrum, not ours.

And, on a final note, I ran across this myth-busting piece from the UM School of Public Health today.

While some of the myths were not surprising, others were, and I would suggest that anyone for or against universal health care read them; yes, there are even myths that we lefties hold dear but aren't necessarily true.

My favorite, however, was this one:

"Myth #10

We have the best medical care in the world, so don't mess with it.

People often think that Americans get a lot more of the best medical care, and whenever it's been researched that's been shown not to be true. [Emphasis added, ed.] We spend over 50 percent more than the next closest Western country, predominantly because the prices of what we get are much higher. We don't have more physicians, we don't have more CT scanners, we don't have more hospitals than they do—it's just that each one of them costs more. [Emphasis added, ed.] The very same pill often costs 50 percent more in the U.S. than it does when it's purchased in other countries, even though the pill may have been made in the U.S.

The complexity of the health care system, the amount that's spent on marketing, [Emphasis added, ed.] and payments for services lead to it being much more expensive to deliver health care here. We will never contain health care costs in the U.S. until we deal with that.

Rod Hayward, M.D., Professor, Health Management and Policy; Professor, Internal Medicine, UM Medical School; Director, VA Center for Practice Management and Outcomes Research

Blows that "American exceptionalism" right out of the water, doesn't it? Just because our care is more expensive doesn't make it better. It just means we charge more. For marketing. And CEO salaries. And other administrative overhead.

After watching all the "Obama = Hitler" statements from the far-right vis-à-vis health care, I suddenly became scared. Like this woman here:



EXCEPT FOR ONE TINY LITTLE PROBLEM:

Hitler didn't invent Germany's universal health care system. Neither did his predecessor, Paul von Hindenburg, last President of the Weimar Republic. It didn't even start with Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor during World War I. It began with Otto von Bismarck and his social legislation of the 1880's.

I guess when you listen to the likes of Glenn Beck all day, facts just don't seem to phase you. After all, the tea-baggers forgot that the original Boston Tea Party was about a tax decrease, not an increase.

Seriously, why aren't progressives answering back on this one? I mean, it's not like this is an interpretative parcel of history; calling universal health care Nazi is so categorically and demonstrably false it's asinine.

Are you tired of those blowhards and ideological windbags who worship the so-called "free market" (which, like the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus, has never and will never exist)? Who think the best way out of our health care crisis is more of this "free market" that we've never seen before? Would you like some thoughts from a Nobel Laureate in economics on why health care cannot be treated like a normal product or service, like bread or TVs?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I present you, with limited commercial interruption (ok, ok, no interruption), Paul Krugman:

"Why markets can't cure healthcare

Judging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems — indeed, the only answer — is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.

Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow's Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care, which demonstrated — decisively, I and many others believe — that health care can't be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow's argument.

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care — but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either — they're not in business for their health, or yours.

This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers' point of view — they actually refer to it as 'medical costs.' This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there's a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need — not everyone agrees, but most do — this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.

The second thing about health care is that it's complicated, and you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping. ('I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary's!') That's why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don't trust them — they're profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.

Between those two factors, health care just doesn't work as a standard market story.

All of this doesn't necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful health-care systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn't work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence."

Let's go with this bread analogy again to demonstrate the moral viciousness that is your health insurance company. If you're a bread maker, in the long run you want to make as much bread as possible (emphasis on "in the long run" so we can ignore short term cuts in production). In other words, it's part of your business model to produce bread, the item that people want.

Not so with health insurance. You know your industry is shady when the one thing you're supposed to be providing is the one thing that you constantly try to limit. Your business model is based on as little care as possible, not the most.

Thus, we get situations of people getting surgery and then the insurance company deciding, long after the procedure is done and you're home, that they're not going to pay for it even though they said they would.

This public option does not go anywhere near where it should; much like Obama's stimulus package, it just doesn't do enough. Anyone who tells you it cost too much is just an dogmatic hack who is thinking with their ideology and not with facts.

We need single payer in this country, and we needed it 20 years ago.

It is clear that the so-called "free market" cannot and will not work on health care.

Seriously?

"Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans 'unreasonable' searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

'The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,' the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president's authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

Most former officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations about the case involved classified information. They agreed to talk about the internal discussions only after the memorandum was released earlier this year.

New information has recently emerged about the deliberations and divisions in the administration over some of the most controversial policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, like the decision to use brutal interrogation methods on Qaeda detainees.

Former officials in the administration said this debate was not as bitter as others during Mr. Bush's first term. The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.

Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.

Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

'Frankly, it was a bit of a turf war,' said one former senior administration official. 'For a number of people, crossing the line of having intelligence or military activities inside the United States was not worth the risk.'

Mr. Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties. The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain, pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.

Senior military officials were never consulted, former officials said. Richard B. Myers, a retired general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the discussion.

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.

Earlier that summer, the administration designated Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and sent him to a military brig in South Carolina. Mr. Padilla was arrested by civilian agencies on suspicion of plotting an attack using a radioactive bomb.

Those who advocated using the military to arrest the Lackawanna group had legal ammunition: the memorandum by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty.

The lawyers, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the Constitution, the courts and Congress had recognized a president's authority 'to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such actions to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and before.'

The document added that the neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Fourth Amendment tied a president's hands.

Despite this guidance, some Bush aides bristled at the prospect of troops descending on an American suburb to arrest terrorism suspects.

'What would it look like to have the American military go into an American town and knock on people’s door?' said a second former official in the debate.

Chief James L. Michel of the Lackawanna police agreed. 'If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city,' Chief Michel said, 'we would have had pandemonium down here.'

The Lackawanna case was the first after the Sept. 11 attacks in which American intelligence and law enforcement operatives believed they had dismantled a Qaeda cell in the United States.

In the months before the arrests, Mr. Bush was regularly briefed on the case by Mr. Mueller of the F.B.I. and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. The C.I.A. had been tracking the overseas contacts of the Lackawanna group.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article in March, Mr. Yoo defended his 2001 memorandum and its reasoning, saying that after Sept. 11 the Bush administration faced the real prospect of Qaeda cells undertaking attacks on American soil. 'The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law,' he wrote, 'because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War.'"

Oh. My. G-d. Of course this doesn't get picked up in the media. Why should it? The talking heads are too busy talking about Michael Jackson (still!) or repeating the same lies about health care reform.

Let this sink in for a minute. Cronies in the Bush Justice Department write a memorandum saying that up is down and black is white and suddenly it's legal?!

No, it's not. Just because you wished it so, Dick, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. This is all eerily similar to Scalia's reasoning that the United States could torture people because "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not punishment. Punishment (as in Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual) is defined as a consequence of one's illegal actions, according to Scalia. If all you want to do is elicit information, torture away!

So, in the same vein, Cheney and Yoo and the Bush Justice Department redefined what they wanted to do, i.e. law enforcement, which is explicitly prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act, to "national security." Voila! Problem solved!

Sorry, dickheads. You can't redefine everything to make yourselves rulers of the damned universe. Torture is torture, and it is a violation of United States and International Law (which we are required to follow, if we signed the proper treaties).

Using the military to arrest American citizens on U.S. soil and declare them "enemy combatants" so that they could be held in Gitmo without trial forever is illegal.

My heart will seriously be singing when I see Dick Cheney in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.

My idiot-sense is tingling when I watch this one:



That's Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)of Tennessee's 7th District (Which includes Nashville and the suburbs of Memphis, the wealthiest district in Tennessee), in case you didn't know.

"Let's agree that we're going to have PAYGO enforcement—that we're not going to cry 'emergency' every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don't go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules."

Apparently, to her, things like tsunamis and Hurricane Katrina aren't real emergencies.

Really.

Interesting how this Republican Congresswoman is all up in arms about spending, considering she voted for Bush's tax cuts and for continuing the War in Iraq. Apparently, the draining of the Treasury by unnecessary and unhealthy tax cuts as well as a war doesn't qualify as "spending."

Well.

What I find the most hilarious is that she says we shouldn't spend more when there are hurricanes or tsunamis. Coming from a state and district that will NEVER suffer from a tsunami or hurricane, no wonder she doesn't want to spend the money!

Friggin' cheapskate.

Glenn Reynolds demonstrates exactly how NOT to write an op/ed demonizing universal health care, which he is conflating with "socialized medicine":

"Lots of people are beginning to question the cost of President Barack Obama's healthcare 'reform' plans, and with good reason. (Just compare the original projections for Medicare with what it wound up costing in reality).

But there's another cost that isn't getting enough attention. That's the degree to which a bureaucratized healthcare system will squash medical innovation just as we reach a point where dramatic progress is possible. To see how important that is, I don't have to look any farther than my own family."

Got any evidence to back that up? Oh, wait, no, you don't. That's why you've decided the evidence you're going to provide is . . . personal anecdotes!

And how are you distinguishing between the Washington bureaucrat and the insurance company bureaucrat? Why is one so evil and the other one our saviors?

"Perhaps our medical history is more involved than most, but probably not by a lot. And yet many members of my family are living better, happier lives -- or, heck, just living -- because of medical innovations made in recent decades, innovations that probably wouldn't have been made under a government-run health system."

Wow, that's a stretch. Again, evidence to back that up? I'm waiting? Oh, and Glenn, most of those medical innovations were probably developed through public grant money. So shut the hell up.

"And as medical technology progresses by leaps and bounds, the next few decades are likely to see much greater progress, unless it's throttled by bureaucrats.

President Obama talks about the importance of prevention in a way that suggests that when people have heart attacks it's their own fault. But my wife, a longtime vegetarian and marathon runner, had a freak heart attack at the age of 37."

And if you didn't have the money to afford it, that's EXACTLY what the insurance company would have told her. Ironic, isn't it?

"It wasn't from too many Big Macs. After some rough patches, she's now doing well, thanks to an obscure and expensive anti-arrhythmic drug called Tikosyn, and an implantable cardioverter/defibrillator. Not too long ago, she'd have been largely bedridden. These medical innovations made the difference between the life of a near-invalid and a life that's close to normal."

Interesting that you mention Tikosyn. Because, you lying douchebag, it wasn't cleared exclusively through the "free market." It took studies supported by PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, using YOUR TAX DOLLARS to do it.

"My mother had a hip replacement. Her hip didn't break - she basically wore it out with exercise. When the pain got too bad, she got it replaced, and now she's moving around like before, only painlessly. Not too long ago, she would have been chairbound.

My father had prostate cancer; his doctor suggested waiting but on biopsy it turned out to be pretty aggressive. It was treated with radioactive 'seed' implants. He's now been cancer-free for several years, without the side effects of earlier treatments -- or, worse, of cancer.

My daughter had endoscopic sinus surgery this spring. She had been sickly and listless, complaining of constant migraine headaches, missing a lot of school, and generally looking more like a zombie than a teenager. Several doctors dismissed her problems, or prescribed antibiotics that didn't help much, until we found one who took the extra step.

A head CT scan done on a fancy new in-office machine showed a nasty festering infection, the surgeon cleaned it out, and now she's like a normal kid again. Before laparoscopy, her condition would probably have remained untreated, and she would have been another 'sickly' kid. Better to be well.

The normal critique of socialized medicine is to point out that people have to wait a long time for these kinds of treatments in places like Britain. And that's certainly a valid critique. I'm sure my mom and daughter would still be waiting for their treatments, while my father and wife would probably be dead."

Really? You ABSOLUTELY know this? How, Glenn? You're neither a doctor nor an public health official. You're just a right wing ideologue with an agenda. Furthermore, I have a news flash for ya: we have wait times as well. Most "waiting" in countries with universal health care is for non-life threatening elective surgery. In other words, people who wait are, generally speaking, just as healthy having waited than if they had waited less.


"The key point, though, is that these treatments didn't just come out out of the blue. They were developed by drug companies and device makers who thought they had a good market for things that would make people feel better."

Most receiving grant money, funded through YOUR taxes.

"But under a national healthcare plan, the 'market' will consist of whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. That means treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but otherwise the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments, to bureaucrats, mean more costs."

You've got no evidence to back that up. Don't you love how Glenn is describing the reality of OUR current health care system, with insurance companies deciding what will be covered, in order to maintain "cost-control"? Classic argumentative fallacies. How did this buffoon get a column?

"It doesn't always work that way, of course. The rise of proton-pump inhibitors like Nexium or Prilosec has made ulcer surgery a thing of the past. But to the bureaucratic mindset, those pills are a cost, and ulcer-surgery expenses can be dealt with by rationing. Let 'em eat Maalox while they wait."

Again, this is the mindset of the INSURANCE company, not of universal health care. You're a little confused; it's ok, too much Rush Limbaugh will do that to you.

"I exaggerate, but . . . well, maybe I don't."

Um, yes, you do. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: you're a LIAR.

"The truth is, despite the great promise of new medical technology out there now, in terms of new cancer treatments, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more, the potential marvels of the next twenty years will never be developed unless some developer thinks there's a market."

I don't disagree. But whether or not we have universal health care won't impact that.

"And with bureaucrats in charge of deciding what treatments to pay for, the existence of such markets will be much less certain. Oh, sure, federally-funded medical research will still go on at the NSF, NIH, etc. But turning that research into actual products is a different story."

Is that happening now? I don't think so, Glenn. Gawd, you're a moron.

"My family benefited from innovative treatments that probably wouldn't be around if the United States had adopted socialized medicine when that was first proposed over half a century ago. In 20 years from now, a lot more treatments -- and, probably, dramatically better treatments -- won't be around if we adopt a national healthcare program now."

BULLSHIT.

"It's ironic that the same Democrats who were pushing the medical prospects for stem-cell research during the last election are now pushing a program that will make such progress far less likely."

Are you KIDDING me? How is that related at all? It is the REPUBLICANS, with their theocratic agenda, that want to do away with stem cell research. THAT will negatively impact medical innovations, not whether or not we have universal health care.

And furthermore, just for the record, NO ONE in this country is talking about getting socialized medicine like they have in the UK. We're talking about SINGLE-PAYER. Do you know the difference, Glenn? Or is it all the same to you?

For those reading, please research "socialized medicine" and "single-payer health care" and understand that they are separate systems. And completely ignore Glenn Reynolds' asinine article. If you want to learn how NOT to write, by all means, go for it.

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.