Saturday, March 28, 2009

The definition of insanity....doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different outcome


What surprises us that a declaration of war creates a war? In this case, a war that has gone on for 30 some years that will cost the United States over $14 billion this year alone.

What surprises us about the lack of gun control creates uncontrollable gun violence? In this case violence that has killed 7,337 people since January 2007 in this war alone.

What surprises us about demand creating supply? In this case drugs on one side and guns on the other.

What surprises us about draconian unpopular laws creating social disorder, mass civil disobedience and unsustainable demands on civil society?

Steele Ridiculous


Charles M. Blow writes in the New York Times this morning about the circus that is known as the Republican Party. His witty and insightful piece highlights the empty heads that now constitute their "leadership".

These are serious times that require serious thinking by seriously thinking people.

Maybe it’s me but has anyone heard anything of substance from any of the clowns of the media/political circus known as the Republican Party?

Eric Kantor was asked yesterday morning by the comedy team of Doocy/Carlson if he found “symbolism” in the fact that the Republican “budget” proposal only contained 19 pages when the Administrations budget was some 140 pages. You bet there’s symbolism in that - one was substantial, the other, well, empty.

It is truly distressing that in a time that demands rational thinking and cooperative effort that the best the Republican’s can come up with are the likes of Cantor, Limbaugh, Steele, Malkin, Hannity, Levin, Coulter, etc who don't represent American ideals in any way. They are deeply wounded people who are incapable of intelligent discourse.

http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/steele-ridiculous/?apage=4#comment-16815

Friday, March 27, 2009

The Market Mystique

Dr. Krugman nails it again...as he points out, we've got foxes protecting hen houses....

The bank I use, Wells Fargo, has become absolutely predatory charging outrageous fees for simple banking and holding incoming funds for as long as they legally can. I received a check from a Fortune 100 company and Wells held it for 18 days….18 days!

Banking in the US is a mess. Banks have become the enemy of their customers. They are big and strong and impossible to talk to.

It seems to me that what is needed at this point is besides strict regulation is nationalization of the largest banks. We then turn them into “national” banks owned by the government (the people) and a second banking system that goes back to the days of toasters, state banks. Small regional banks that know their customers.

With strict regulation as to what the National Banks can and cannot do banking will become much more competitive.

We cannot afford to have a system that holds us hostage to ever increasing fees.

I don’t like banks, I never have. But I NEED a bank the same way I need electricity. Our local electric company is regulated and they still manage to get electricity to us all while remaining in the background. Have you ever heard anyone say that they hate their electric company? Not true of banks, telecoms and cable providers-monopolists all.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/was-i-unfair/#comment-157171

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Obama's 'Science' Fiction

Charles Krauthamer must be the smartest person on the planet, or he may be second behind Limbaugh, or third behind Hannity or maybe first amongst equals, what's the difference. You guys are experts on science, bioethics, medical ethics, economics, governance, science, so many things...it must be really awesome to be you. You are smarter than scientists, doctors, effective politicians, Nobel Prize winning economists and it seems the vast majority of the people of the planet, after all, so many of us are so wrong about so many things in your eyes. Wow, what it must be like to be so smart about so many things.
3/13/2009 1:28:11 AM

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

From The Torches and Pitchforks File......Psssst, pass it on.


Help Us Dig Up The Praise That Today's Bailout Bandits Once Received
"Over the past few months we've seen the media begin to cast a hairy eye on many of the financial characters it once dubbed as experts, creators of great wealth and oracles of market behavior. Many of these people are now considered the perpetrators of our current financial crisis.

We need your help to collect the heaps of praise that newspapers, magazines and TV news shows doled out when times were good. Now that times are bad, it's even more important to remind ourselves how easily the wool can be pulled over the media's eyes and, consequently, those who consume it.

We want to find laudatory reports on not only the alleged Ponzi fraudsters like Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, but also executives like former Merrill CEO John Thain and former top Citigroup adviser Robert Rubin. We need your help to research front-page magazine spreads, fawning TV interviews, and any other gratuitous praise of the perpetrators of this economic meltdown. It doesn't matter how far back you need to go.

Email submissions+praise@huffingtonpost.com with the articles you find. Include your name, the date the article was published, and let us know if you would like to remain anonymous.

Some examples of people to start with are John Thain, Robert Rubin, Dick Fuld, John Mack, Ken Lewis, Jacob Ezra Merkin, Vikram Pandit, Allen Stanford, Bernie Madoff and Walter Noel to name a few."

This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test.

America is constipated from having gorged on an imagined banquet.

Our national dialog is dominated by those whose political voice still screams from the narrowness of their own greed-those who earn millions of dollars a year to spew that which profits them, regardless of the truth. Listen to the dialog, it’s shallowness is appalling yet it still dominates our discourse.

The real ability to address real issues is drowned out by the noise spewed across our airwaves. Jon Stewart vs. Jim Kramer. Rush Limbaugh against us all the rest of us. Sean Hannity screaming unverifiable absurdity - nothing real, nothing of substance, just the stuff that is believed by those too lazy to unveil the truth.
Instead of thinking and learning we allow our own laziness to substitute for genuine rational, intelligent and informed discourse.

There is NOTHING today that cannot be verified by a simple Web search if we will are only willing to use some of our God given intelligence and energy to find it. Our discourse is dominated by the petty because we allow it to be so.

The issues are lost in a scream-fest. Some of us who think that we are betrayed by the captains of finance, others who bemoan the loss of the politics of the 1980’s. We are a bewildered populace assaulted by a media that has degenerated by a narrowness fed only by its own ratings and greed.

The American people must emerge from the fog of the absurd idea of God given right to live in energy thirsty McMansion’s and the unsustainable belief that unfettered access to petroleum and the monsters that gulp it up is a right granted to American’s because we are somehow exceptional.

No longer America, no longer.