by Siegfried Lemelson
Friday, July 18, 2008 PERMANENT LINK
Nancy Pelosi is a wretched example of a politician — and a person. It is sickening to hear her talk. It just makes me want to puke when I see her botoxed face on TV. If she is a "liberal" then we are doomed, and our Congress needs to be thoroughly reamed out in the coming elections.
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For those who think Merrill Lynch is only involved in stocks take a walk around their site (especially the products and solutions portion of the "Individuals" dropdown). A lot of people do not realize that their workplace 401K's and retirement funds are ultimately managed by Merrill Lynch.
If you're not horrified by now, you're either naive, moralistic to the point of delusionally assuming this is a blow only to promiscuity, or simply deliberately avoiding looking at either the big or small picture, for fear of having a deeper understanding. ... Click for more ...
"The System" responded magnificently to the idea of a bail-out. Stock markets rose around the world, and suddenly, we're all wearing sunglasses even at night because our future is so bright!
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Excerpt: A US Senate investigative panel accused two prominent banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland on Wednesday of helping wealthy Americans hide billions of dollars and evade taxes.
The Senate panel said its probe found that LGT Bank in Liechtenstein and UBS in Switzerland have maintained thousands of US client accounts with billions of dollars in assets that have not been disclosed to the Internal Revenue Service.
When I first read this headline my jaw just fucking dropped. Not due to the revelation, but that it has taken the Congress nearly eighty years to figure this out. Where in the hell have these people been, for Christ's sake? The uber rich have been doing this for decades. It has become more that just a cliché, it's actually Smithsonian material. Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts are one of the first things tax accounts suggest to hid ones ill-gotten gains.
Excerpt: The most dire fact of all: Florida lost more jobs in the past 12 months — 74,700 — than any other state in the nation. And the economists predict that more people in construction, government, manufacturing, financial services, transportation and warehousing will be out of work soon.
''We were No. 1 in jobs created in the entire country,'' said Clyde Diao, one of Gov. Charlie Crist's economists, referring to the booming economy in 2005. ``Now, if you count the District of Columbia, we're 51.''
I can always tell when Florida's economy is in the dumper just by checking out the new students in orientation at my University. Right now nearly half of the new students are in their 30s or above — going back to school, since there is no work for them. My brother is one who started back. He had a choice from his former employer, take early retirement or get laid off pertinently (fired)...
Excerpt: By contrast, in Nordic nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the move toward gender equity (for example, women are 40 percent of national legislators and are frequently heads of state) has gone along with more political and economic democracy. Not only that — and this takes us to how "women's issues" are also key family issues — as the status of women rose so also did funding for activities stereotypically associated with women. These nations have far less stressed families because they support child care, health care, paid parental leave, and other family-friendly policies.
Yet in the United States, many people who consider themselves progressives still view anything to do with women as secondary. They fail to recognize what regressives do: that the ranking of male over female is a basic model children learn early on for equating difference with superiority or inferiority, with dominating or being dominated — a model that can then easily be generalized to different races, religions, ethnicities, and nations.
But the other thing that "progressives" refuse to acknowledge is that this male dominated society comes directly from the evangelical religious right. These are the people who need to be removed from any and all political discourse (and preferably the whole country). One needs only to look who their "leaders" are. All of whom are men - mean, egotistical, self centered and power hungry with a major penis fixation. Until they are kept from calling any of the shots and relegated to the trash heap of society, where they belong - nothing will change for women. And women need to make it clear that the women who follow these jerks are will not be tolerated either.
I had heard of this idea before, the banality of evil, but didn't get the full thing before this:
"It describes the thesis that the great evils in
history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal."
I know that is true because of what I have seen in America since 9/11, and also from watching the slow-motion genocide in Palestine.
We think we are "free" in America, but the truth is we have, mostly, permissions and the strong likelihood of not getting caught at breaking one of the millions of pages of laws.
We aren't even free to say whatever we want, not unless no-one hears what we say. Certain words and phrases are flat-out illegal and/or punishable. Not just in America, but in every country.
Nevertheless, there is a line we must draw between good and bad. There can be NO question that donut-gobbling, coffee-swilling cops must buy their own treats! That point is beyond dispute.
Excerpt: A police lieutenant in Daytona Beach was fired over accusations that he threatened slower emergency response times if he was not given complimentary specialty Starbucks coffee drinks.
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