September 14, 2009 archive

To All Americans, Is it Time to Fight for Our Independence?

The people of the United States of America are not happy.  Fascism is tearing this country apart.  There may be the face of many leaders, but this is indeed becoming a fascist state, these united states of America.  And now there are two fighting, bickering, angry factions (maybe 3) of every day Americans fighting the public fight against each other while the fascists hide behind them.

There is a piece of paper written at the birth of this nation that allows the people to disallow this from happening.  But we are all too busy fighting each other.

An exerpt:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Look, when corporations and shadow money men are calling the shots, having the laws written, and screwing the people with their wants, isn’t something terribly wrong here?  Is there not some recourse for the citizens and their original consent given to govern?  Did we ask for this?

Ask Not What The Corporations Can Do For You…

Simulposted at Daily Kos

And so we find ourselves in the early Twenty First Century in a pitched battle. Will we have a government of the Corporations, by the Corporations and for the Corporations. Or a government of the People, by the People and for the People?

As we wait to see if the Supreme Court headed by a Corporate (well Republican, but it is a distinction without much difference) appointed Chief Justice will preside over a new era of politics wherein there are no limits on Corporate donations to political candidates….thus ensuring that all candidates will sell out to the Corporation who bids the highest…

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Four at Four

  1. The NY Times reports a Judge rejects the settlement between the Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission over Merrill Lynch bonuses.

    The $33 million settlement “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality,” wrote Jed S. Rakoff, the judge assigned to the case in federal court in Lower Manhattan…

    “It is quite something else for the very management that is accused of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those victims’ money should be used to make the case against the management go away,” the judge wrote…

    The proposed settlement, the judge continued, “suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger; the bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth.”

  2. Bloomberg reports Nobel Prize- winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system.

    “In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.” …

    “It’s an outrage,” especially “in the U.S. where we poured so much money into the banks,” Stiglitz said. “The administration seems very reluctant to do what is necessary. Yes they’ll do something, the question is: Will they do as much as required?” …

    “We’re going into an extended period of weak economy, of economic malaise,” Stiglitz said. The U.S. will “grow but not enough to offset the increase in the population,” he said, adding that “if workers do not have income, it’s very hard to see how the U.S. will generate the demand that the world economy needs.”

  3. The LA Times reports U.S. officials troubled by fake currency flowing from Peru. “A flood of high-quality counterfeit U.S. money from Peru is perplexing federal authorities, who say the shadowy networks that are responsible are also engaging in other criminal activity that poses a threat to national security. Over the last year, authorities and banks have recovered at least $7.8 million in fake notes across the United States that they believe were manufactured in Peru, according to Secret Service statistics.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan.

Child psychology, Osama bin Laden, and you UPDATED

So let’s see what America’s plans for the future are.

It’s really easy to find out.  How?  Just look at what “Osama bin Laden” tells us to do, and realize that we will do the opposite.

Let’s look at what he’s telling us to do now, shall we?

1.  He’s telling us that we’re never gonna win in Afghanistan.   That means we’re never getting out of Afghanistan, we’re gonna send more troops and more money until we DO “win”.  Why would we do anything this fool tells us to do, right?  We’ll show him!  We’re gonna stay there and we’re gonna win!  We’re gonna win if it destroys our country!

2.  He’s telling us we should question our close political ties with the war-criminal state known as Israel.   That means we’re gonna be even closer to the war criminal state known as Israel!  We’re not gonna do anything Osama bin Laden wants us to do!  No way!  We’re gonna annex Israel as the 51st state, only with “special privileges” and we’re gonna send even more billions and more weapons so they can commit more war crimes!  

Osama bin Laden is not the boss of me!

The irony of this is so iron-meter-shattering that somebody, somewhere, is laughing their ass off.

Wild Card Caption Contest! DONE !

FDL’s Slinkerwink has an action diary up on the rec list now at the orange with a new idea inside it. Cool idea. Slinkerwink plans to create a youtube slideshow.

I’ve got plenty of real estate left (especially on my left cast)!

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Tumbling Dice Open Thread

Snowe(d): Trigger is OUT, Co-Op Cop-Out is in. Won’t even risk it, the cowards

Crossposted at Daily Kos

From ThinkProgress.org

Sen. Snowe, regarding a “trigger” for a Public Option

Snowe:     “It’s(a trigger) not on the table, and it won’t be, we’ll be using a Co-Op as an option, as a means for injecting competition in the process.

    They’re not even going to risk a trigger, the cowards.

    I’m SUPER PISSED.

More below the fold, and a Call to ACTION.

Seventy Two Kilos

Now that is alot of vaccine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Docudharma Times Monday September 14




Monday’s Headlines:

Reform Opposition Is High but Easing

Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme

Harrassed Tamils languish in prison-like camps in Sri Lanka

Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

It’s now or never in Cyprus

Cargo ships navigate Northeast Passage for the first time

Safari operators enraged as Zanu-PF rewards the faithful with stolen share of lucrative trade

George Mitchell tries to secure Israeli settlement freeze to revive peace talks

‘Mubarak asked PM for settlement halt’

Grupo Televisa CEO Emilio Azcarraga Jean has a life like a telenovela

U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind



By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 13, 2009


WASHINGTON – When President Obama travels to Wall Street on Monday to speak from Federal Hall, where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a “reluctant shareholder” in America’s biggest industries and financial institutions.

But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a series of federal interventions, the government is the nation’s biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small.

Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation’s economy – 26 percent – than at any time since World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent owned by the government.

Pakistani artists persevere amid increasing militancy

At a university in Punjab, the music department is off-campus, relegated to a dank basement. Singers and playwrights face the risk of attacks from militants who deem the activity un-Islamic.

By Mark Magnier

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan – To find the music department of the University of the Punjab, travel several miles from the main campus to a red-brick building, down some dark stairs, left through a shadowy corridor and into a warren of small, windowless rooms.

The dank basement befits a department exiled after a militant student group called it un-Islamic, un-Pakistani and unwanted. There were threats, protests, machine-gun-toting bodyguards. Then, the basement.

These are the front lines of Pakistan’s culture wars, a very real battlefield with bombs and bloodshed where musicians, filmmakers, painters and theater groups face off against the Taliban and other militants.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry XIV

Art Link

Incompletion

Unfinished Woman

Some assembly required.

Includes non-factory installed equipment.

Read instructions completely before beginning.

Mistakes are not correctable.

Insert tab A into slot B.

Batteries are not included.

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–June, 1993

My Apologies 20090914

Folks, I am sorry that I did not post the regular Pique the Geek here last evening.

Things are going poorly for me.

Homeless News Roundup

Camp Runamuck; a Glimpse of the East Providence Homeless Community

Truthout

September 9, 2009

Katie is 19 and would only give her first name. She wears a bright-colored t-shirt and a mini skirt that would make any teen’s father crazy. Her tattooed belly and pierced lip are strangely elegant. She is a pretty girl who lives in Camp Runamuck with her boyfriend.

“I’ll never be a materialistic person again in my life. I will not be greedy,” she says. “You can put 100 people together, blacks and whites, gays, drug addicts who are completely different, but we all get along because we’re stuck in the same position. We all get bit by bugs.”

Camp Runamok

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