Sunday, September 6, 2009

Headlines - Sunday

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Nothing could go wrong here:

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to "securitize" these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

It is time for everyone to start learning how to garden, hunt, and can food.

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Recent administration claims about the US 'starting over' in Afghanistan and adopting a "new" strategy which shouldn't be judged by the last eight years of failures came to a screeching halt this morning when a US jet attacked a pair of hijacked fuel tankers that were surrounded by civilians, killing at least 95. 
 
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It's always the leaker, never what was leaked
 
The CIA wants an investigation into who leaked the story about the secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad.
 
I'd like an investigation into who really outed Valerie Plame (treason) and one on who ordered and committed torture (war crimes).
 
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A hundred ways to change your life for the better.
 
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I want to know the names of those kids who stay home on Tuesday ...

So that I can keep my daughter away from them.  Unless, I suppose, they have a doctor's note confirming that they missed school because they were sick and not because they're being raised by psychopaths.

The reason I would even consider this is because of what I'm calling Niewart's Rule of Conservative Projection.  This rule states that conservatives privately engage in every behavior they publicly accuse liberals of doing - and not only that, but they go much, much farther than even their fevered accusations.

They accuse liberals of being uncivil on blogs and then publish personal information online.  They accuse liberals of disrupting town halls and other meetings and then strap on guns outside of places where Obama is speaking.  They accuse liberals of attacking them even when there is video evidence that they not only started the fight, but needlessly called the police and an ambulance to bolster their story.

So if conservatives are going to accuse President Obama of trying to indoctrinate their children, brainwash them even, and attempting to circumvent their parental responsibilities and authority, then I'm forced to assume that if I let my daughter play with their kids, they will strap her to a chair with duct tape, inject her with various chemicals and drugs and force her to become like them.

It's just simple logic, people.

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Matt Taibi - How Washington is Screwing Up Health Care Reform – and Why It May Take a Revolt to Fix It http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/05-6

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The man who ran as change you can believe in asks the Progressive Caucus how little change he can get away with. As digby makes clear, this is not leadership. As mcjoan makes clear, the political calculation is exactly backward.

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The GOP begins the quest for a new snake-oil salesperson

Apparently bored already with the current occupant, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico cast a wistful eye this morning at "some surprising names" among Republicans who might try to take back the White House in 2012:

Some major donors and GOP strategists have approached Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," about a national run, according to party sources.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican nominee in 1996, told POLITICO that he would like to see Army four-star Gen. David Petraeus — the head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan — run for president as a latter-day Ike

I can see the slogan now: "Petraeus 2012 — The General Who Won That War We Didn't Really Win and Everyone's Stopped Thinking About."

The other names floated in this "expansive search for more options" are even less inspiring, and it's no surprise. The Republican party has been so obviously uninterested in solving people's problems for so long that it can't create any compelling spokespeople. All the GOP knows is short-term distractions and hissy fits, and it's hard to build a career on that substantial enough to launch a presidential bid.

As a result, Republicans have only succeeded by finding a telegenic, faux-folksy frontperson to distract the public from the party's true agenda. Hence the Reaganite mantle was inherited not by an experienced conservative politician, but by George W. Bush, who was a clean slate in terms of substance but came with built-in name recognition and could fake an ordinary-guy persona. From there it's just a short step to smiling nonentities like Sarah Palin being convinced that they're the party's future.

Which, ironically, makes this my favorite part of the Politico puff piece:

Liz Cheney, a State Department official in the Bush administration, said it is "absolutely" possible for a Republican to win the presidency in 2012.

"The independents who were so critical will come back to the Republican Party when they realize, as they're coming to realize, that we're the ones that can be trusted both on the economy and on national security," she said. "So the substance is a lot more important than: Is it this person? Is it that person?"

One such person floated in a column in The Wall Street Journal is none other than her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. That's not happening, though it's sometimes hard to tell with his frequent appearances and sharp political rhetoric.

When asked if it's even plausible, she replied: "I think no. I mean, I'd love for it to. But no."

No, I'm not intrigued by the possibility of the Dark Lord summoning himself from his lair to campaign. What's amusing and coy about this is that the Cheney who might run — in 2016 if not 2012 — is Liz herself.

Seriously. Think Sarah Palin, with a stronger foreign policy background. (Not a plausible foreign policy background, of course — but like I said, for the Republicans, there's only so much to choose from.) Or a blonde, female Dubya.

Mark my words, it could happen.

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GOP pusher of Obama school indoctrination lie also pushes Republican values at school kids: 

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/09/05/greer-proselytizes-shool-kids-for-gop/#more-8931

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Faux News strikes again - this time they're going to address the more important issue of dancing, instead of the presidential address to joint session of congress.  

The network is nothing more than a propaganda organ for the . The network is nothing more than a propaganda organ for the Republican party. Honestly, it's not clear why a political party is permitted to own a TV network, which is basically what FOX is - at the very least, the entire network is one big political donation to the Republican party. Imagine if a TV network spent all of its time helping Democrats, the Republicans would destroy it. 

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vanjones

The Republicans can call Obama every name in the book, make up shit about him, and do everything they can to derail his presidency and little is said. Obama's guy signs a petition and calls the Rethugs 'assholes' and he's forced to resign.

This country is extremely fucked up.

And my party is full of gutless crapweasels.

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"Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party"

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, award-winning journalist, Max Blumenthal, joins us for the first extended interview about his debut book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. The book traces the rise of the radical right in the U.S. and how it used the concept of personal crisis to grow as a movement and eventually capture control of the GOP to transform it from the party of Dwight Eisenhower to the party of Sarah Palin.

I think the christian right has to be pissing off any real Christians there may be out there. Let's hope the little lambs run out of other cheeks to turn pretty soon and start wailing on the phony bastards that are giving them all a bad name.

The rest of us ought to wail on 'em for making our country a laughingstock all over the world, and on the media for giving them attention out of all proportion to their zero worth and giving them an impact that no bunch of fringe loonies should be allowed to have.

That said, the one thing they've done of any benefit is to shatter the Repug party. Perhaps we should just let them finish the job.

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Ready to fight back yet?

So what we're trying to do, first of all, is say, O.K., here is a government monopoly plan. We're designing a free-market plan. Now, they're very different models. You know, we tell Boris Yeltsin, "Get rid of centralized command bureaucracies. Go to the marketplace.  O.K., what do you think the Health Care Financing Administration is? It's a centralized command bureaucracy. It's everything we're telling Boris Yeltsin to get rid of. Now, we don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that that's politically smart, and we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it -- voluntarily.  -- then-House speaker Newt Gingrich, speaking to a Blue Cross/Blue Shield conference on 10/25/95 about Medicare. 

Republicans have opposed every social program that makes people's lives better for as long as there has been a republican party. They hate, on spec, every single thing that helps ordinary people because they see such programs as taking caviar out of the mouths of poor, helpless, underrepresented millionaires.

For more than a century they have been on the wrong side of every social issue.  Women's suffrage, civil rights, voting rights, social justice, social programs, Medicare...all of them. And given half a chance, they would do away with them all tomorrow.  In fact, 137 Repiglicans voted to abolish Medicare less than 6 months ago.

Go and read the rest: http://theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/3497/ready-to-fight-back-yet

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"The Cove" trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw5qgVp0jng

Is it really any worse than this?:

 
 
 
 
 
 



 

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