California EDD Unemployment Division: First Time Claimant? Exhausted Both Extensions? On the Verge of Cataclysmic Financial Collapse? Don't Call Us!

(And We'll Contact You When We're Good and Ready!)

Unemployed Californians who have exhausted both the second and third unemployment extensions are entangled in further debillitating experiences in their attempts to receive the Fed Extension allocated to the state through President Obama's $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

At 11.2%, our state's unemployment numbers are at its highest since the early 80s such that the trigger for the state's eligibility to receive the Federal Extension--fully paid for by the Feds with absolutely no contributions from California businesses--kicked in before the ink was dry on the President's signature.

Can't blame the governor either since he too signed the Assembly bill on March 27, 2009, immediately after its passage in the state legislature. Most claimants on their second extension have already received their last week's check the week ending April 11, 2009.

But we can and should blame the extremely poor service delivery by EDD because, despite the governor's allocation of funds to improve service by hiring new workers, increasing office hours, etc., EDD remains totally unprepared for this extension just as for the first and second extensions. What's more they could care less that many are on the verge--if they haven't already arrived--of having their utilties disconnected, being evicted, and just generally unable to do anything for their families because they don't even know if they're going to receive further meager biweekly checks.

While the number of those who, to quote EDD, "may be eligible" for this third extension "of up to 20 weeks" is said to be anywhere from 75,000 to a half million, as of May 5, 2009, few if any have been notified of their eligibility, let alone received claim forms.

Unfortunately, calling EDD gets destitute claimants absolutely nothing. If you are fortunate enough to get through, unfortunately the chance of getting any information, let alone correct information is virtually null and void. Most of California's long term unemployed have already lost their homes, and their sense of worth is being hammered into the ground by the epic failure of EDD.

No one can tell you a thing. Call EDD Director Patrick Henning's office and they know nothing. Call EDD's Public Affairs office and they know nothing. Call the general EDD number and they know nothing. Sure you can visit their web site, but you can't trust a word printed there. What's more, if and when you get someone on the phone, in a multitude of instances you are treated as if it is your fault that you cannot find work and are collecting UI.

At first, they claimed on their web site that notifications would go out beginning mid-April. Didn't happen so they changed their web site and their phone recording to reflect the beginning of May, with the warning that there was no need to call them as they will not only contact you regarding eligibility, they would also file for you, if you are eligible.

The ambiguity of these flex messages could send anyone who's on the edge clear over it when they hear the canned voice say that the caller may be eligible to receive up to 20 weeks.

See, that is not what the bill says--most of those who exhausted both extensions are probably eligible for the Fed Extension, and will receive 20 weeks, not up to 20 weeks.

Not that EDD is a class act for first time claimants; they labor--if you want to call it that--in epic failure, no matter the circumstances.

California EDD =

The Good, the Bad, the Funny - and the Heinous

The Good: Hilda Solis Sworn in as Secretary of the Department of Labor

Even better that the AFL-CIO used their bargaining power to push for her confirmation, probably well aware that stall tactics (an anonymous Republican senator held up the vote) by the oppositional/obstructionist party was meant to delay Congressional voting on the Employee Free Choice Act. Speaking of EFCA, media toadies should cease and desist from using 'card check' as a discrediting euphemism. These days, oppositional party talking points ain't working at. all.

Now that Secretary Solis has been seated, California District 32 is no longer in limbo, and the district can seek a replacement who will, hopefully, be as successful and competent in representing their district as former Assemblywoman Solis. It's a tall order.

As important is what may very well be the start of a much needed organized labor revival. While it may not be a fortuitous time to invest in the stock market, it is an excellent time for employees to have the unfettered right to form unions, if they choose. Perhaps more importantly, this is also an excellent time to reform existing unions into better 21st century models. It's time for them to clean up their act and move into a more progressive group think.

Reassessment of the labor movement is long over due as well, and union leaders should be taking a good hard look at the way they function - and make pretty big changes - once and for all ridding themselves of many 20th century old school notions on how locals are run.

There is a huge void that organized labor will be called upon to fill in these troublesome economic times. The choice of super Latina Solis for labor secretary is a huge clue that labor is undergoing major changes.

Obama's successful grassroots campaign should demonstrate to labor leaders that winning unions are members-driven; that the movement is only as strong as its members. The time for top down management, rather than bottom up cooperation is pretty much over. Our quasi-apocolyptic financial mess, caused by the shenanigans of banking and Wall Street wheeler dealers, has changed the work dynamic, since management at the highest levels of these institutions proved colossal failures in their fiduciary duties using avaricious and deceptive practices. These guys gambled away the futures of peoples all over the globe, and are still lining their pockets. This is a great opportunity for union management to show other institutions how to achieve ethical success through acting in their members' interests.

The Funny: President Obama, Rio Beaches and Amazon Rain Forests

Obama banters with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva:

Foreign leaders hoping to have good chemistry with U.S. President Barack Obama may want to take a lesson from Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Brazilian president, a charismatic former union leader, hit it off with the former Chicago community organizer at a White House meeting on Saturday with banter about verbosity and, of all things, getting lost in the Amazon.

In his opening remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, Lula said he expressed sympathy to Obama for the many crises the United States faced.

Eliciting laughter from journalists, he said he told Obama what he told Brazilians at rallies back home:

"I'm praying more for him than I pray for myself. Because with just 40 days in office -- to suffer and to face such a terrible crisis the U.S. is facing today, I don't want to be in his position."

Obama, who has been in office 54 days, offered a quick response, "You sound like you've been talking to my wife."

It didn't stop there. After a particularly lengthy response to a question about divisions in the G20 grouping of major developed and emerging economies, Obama apologized for getting wordy -- and found he had a soulmate of sorts.

"Sorry to take so long on the answer," Obama said.

"That's not a problem, Mr. President," Lula replied. "We all talk too much."

Lula smoothed over tensions between the two countries on ethanol tariffs by offering Obama a special ride when he comes for a visit.

"When President Obama comes to visit Brazil, I'm going to ask him to get inside a car that is run by a flex-fuel engine and he will feel very comfortable," Lula said.

Obama, who noted he once had that type of vehicle, said he was looking forward to a trip.

"Because I'm somebody who grew up in Hawaii, I felt it was very important that I at least go to Rio, where I understand the beaches are pretty nice," Obama said.

A Brazilian journalist suggested to the Democratic president that he start a visit in the Amazon forest.

"You know, I would love a trip to the Amazon," Obama said.

"I suspect that the Republican Party would love to see me travel through the Amazon -- and maybe get lost."

The Bad: "I hope the president fails."

He who shall never - ever - be named or linked to on GG continues his treasonous mouthing off.

The Ugly: Bailout #3 for Insurer AIG and Zombie Bank Citigroup

The Obama administration got to shake up Citigroup's Board of Directors, replacing most with more independents not affiliated with Wall Street, as well as getting about 40% of preferred stock into the ownership of US taxpayers.

Some are saying that the multinational AIG, an umbrella company for over 200 global corporate entities, is too big to fail.

AIG recently posted a fourth quarter loss of $60 billion, the biggest quarterly loss in history and the equivalent of about $460,000 a minute.

The U.S. government has already pledged around $150 billion in an effort to save AIG, once the biggest insurer by market value, whose global reach may have made it too big to fail. "The government really does not have the option of letting AIG totally blow up," said Robert Haines, senior insurance analyst at CreditSights. "Hopefully, the third bailout will be the charm," he said. "The counterparties on most of the book are (European) banks that would be hammered if the U.S. walked away."

Now comes word that after receiving over $170 billion - yes, BILLIONS - in taxpayer funded bail out funds, AIG will pay $165 million - yes, MILLIONS - in executive bonuses.

"Big US Banks Insolvent"

The either not so brilliant or accomplished prevaricator, Timothy Geithner, our newly confirmed US Treasury Secretary, unveiled a not terribly detailed new plan for rescuing our banking and financial system that continues Paulson's legacy of throwing good money after bad. In fact, except for the name change - instead of TARP, it is now called the Financial Stability Trust - plans for the next $350 billion do not address the simple fact that our biggest banks - Citigroup, BofA, Wells Fargo, et al. - are insolvent and, perhaps, should either be allowed to go the way of the former Washington Mutual or be nationalized.

Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini: "Time to Nationalize Insolvent Banking Systems" - The very cumbersome U.S. Treasury proposal to dispose of toxic assets - that was presented by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today - can be best understood (subject to the large fog of uncertainty about its many details) as combining taking the toxic asset off the banks’ balance sheet with providing government guarantees to those private investors that will purchase them (and/or public capital provision to fund a public-private bad bank that would purchase such assets). But this plan is so non-transparent and complicated that it received a thumbs down by the markets as soon as it was announced today as all major US equity indices went sharply down.

The main problem with the Treasury plan . . . is the following: . . . since the government knows that no one in the private sector would buy those most toxic assets at 60 cents it may have to promise a guarantee (formally or informally by putting capital into a public-private bad bank that will receive extra lending from the private sector) to limit the downside risk to private investors from purchasing such assets. But that implicit or explicit guarantee would be hugely expensive if you need to induce private folks to buy at 60 what is worth only 20 or even 11. So the new Treasury plan may end up being again a royal rip-off of the taxpayer if the guarantee is excessive given the true value of the underlying assets. And if instead the implicit or explicit guarantee is not excessive (if the public-private bank truly tries to discover the value of such assets as in the formal Treasury proposal) the banks need to sell the toxic assets at their true underlying value that implies massive writedowns that will uncover the insolvency of such banks. i.e. the emperor has no clothes and a true valuation of the bad assets – without a huge taxpayers’ bailout of the shareholders and unsecured creditors of banks – implies that banks are bankrupt and should be taken over by the government.

Thus all the schemes that have been so far proposed to deal with the toxic assets of the banks may be a big fudge that either does not work or works only if the government bails out shareholders and unsecured creditors of the banks.

Dr. James K. Galbraith, Economist: "Big Banks Insolvent" - The Treasury of the United States [should] conduct a meticulous audit of the assets that underlie the securities that they’re expecting to take off the banks’ books, so that we, the taxpayer, can have an idea of what, if anything, these securities are worth[.]

[T]he little bit of checking that has been done appears to reveal that a very large fraction of these securities contain, on the face of it, misrepresentation or fraud in the files. And so, we are looking at an asset which nobody, no outside investor doing due diligence on behalf of a client for whom they have some responsibility, would touch. And that is the issue. That’s the problem.

If that is indeed the case, then I think it’s fair to conclude that the large banks, which the Treasury is trying very hard to protect, cannot in fact be protected, that they are in fact insolvent, and that the proper approach for dealing with them is for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to move in and take the steps that the FDIC normally takes when dealing with insolvent banks.

Martin Wolf, Chief Economic commentator, Financial Times: "Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks" - a sizeable proportion of financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities. The International Monetary Fund argues that potential losses on US-originated credit assets alone are now $2,200bn (€1,700bn, £1,500bn), up from $1,400bn just last October. This is almost identical to the latest estimates from Goldman Sachs. In recent comments to the Financial Times, Nouriel Roubini of RGE Monitor and the Stern School of New York University estimates peak losses on US-generated assets at $3,600bn.

Fortunately for the US, half of these losses will fall abroad. But, the rest of the world will strike back: as the world economy implodes, huge losses abroad – on sovereign, housing and corporate debt – will surely fall on US institutions, with dire effects.
Personally, I have little doubt that the second view is correct and, as the world economy deteriorates, will become ever more so. But this is not the heart of the matter. That is whether, in the presence of such uncertainty, it can be right to base policy on hoping for the best. The answer is clear: rational policymakers must assume the worst. If this proved pessimistic, they would end up with an over-capitalised financial system. If the optimistic choice turned out to be wrong, they would have zombie banks and a discredited government. This choice is surely a “no brainer”.

The new plan seems to make sense if and only if the principal problem is illiquidity. Offering guarantees and buying some portion of the toxic assets, while limiting new capital injections to less than the $350bn left in the Tarp, cannot deal with the insolvency problem identified by informed observers.

The Devil's in the Economic Details ... and in the Treasury and Commerce Departments?

Essentially, I remain President Obama's loyal supporter -- after all, as of today, he's only been president 19 days. Yet I harbor a queasy uneasiness and I'm nursing disturbing thoughts that there seems to have been a complete breakdown in the vetting of cabinet nominees, and that more than a few of his cabinet choices are, well, puzzling as well as troubling. Outwardly, it appears that backroom deals (see Clinton, Hilary), cronyism and nepotism still reign as the norm rather than the exception in the Obama Administration, despite the President's repeated campaign promises of openness and trustworthiness. Admittedly, I'm on the 'what the devil's going on' train regarding certain cabinet appointments:

1. During his confirmation hearings, Geithner further mastered doublespeak when discussing the dollar, which makes him an even more ridiculous choice for Treasury Sec, as were the choices of Rubin and Summers as White House Econ Advisers. Equally ridiculous are the Obama Administration's absurd assertion that his nominees, especially Geithner, are the ONLY folk capable of filling their appointed positions, supremely tainted though they are. Forget the questionable tax stuff and the forced apology about them, the fact that Geithner was NY Federal Reserve president during the years of Wall Street criminality should have disqualified him right there. Maybe what the Administration means is that Geithner and those of his ilk are the only ones capable of continuing the fiscal madness that created the global financial crisis in the first place. Or maybe they mean that they may as well appoint a failed financial head since the previous administration helped Geithner, et al., to create a financial system so bogus and screwed up that it's completely irreparable.

2. Larry Summers, author of deregulatory bills during the Clinton administration that helped create the global financial mess, is also a poor choice to be anywhere near this White House at this juncture in time. Most people forget that, as president of Harvard, he went down in infamy for saying that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Wasn't sexist to me, but it upset one particularly feminist at Harvard. Ezra Klein, our main source for this week's blog entry, is reporting that Summers and Paul Volcker, whom President Obama just chose to head his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, are having tense times.

Volcker "blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers" and is irritated that "Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis."

These guys aren't in any way contrite; they know that their greed and their failed deregulatory policies have already broken the global financial system, with no hope of repairing it, and they have long been desensitized to average Americans' struggles for survival.

3. Judd Gregg at Commerce has clearly shown that he doesn't believe there should be a Commerce since he sponsored a bill in the Senate that would have abolished the department had it not been voted down. Given this, why did President Obama appoint him, even conceding to this man that a republican would take his place in the US Senate? What is this all about?

4. The Blue Dog Democratic Governor Bredesen of Tennessee is rumored to be frontrunner to replace Daschle as the HHS nominee. Why? Bredesen made his money during the managed care revolution as CEO and founder of HealthAmerica, which acquired and ran HMOs. During the late-80s, the good Blue Dog gov made nearly $50 million when he sold HealthAmerica to MaxiCare Health Plans. In the 90s, he teamed up with the former CFO of HealthAmerica to form a company similar to his past HMO management company, Coventry Corporation. CC later merged with Principal Health Care to become Coventry Health Care. Until 2007, CHC was a Fortune 500 managed care provider, although -maybe- Bredesen was no longer involved. Bredesen is also partially responsible for gutting TennCare, the state's low income health care provider. This would be a very strange choice for a president who campaigned on nationalizing health care, particularly since Bresden's nomination carries the same questions vis a vis lobbyists' money and influence as those that ixnayed Daschle, just as Geithner's dubious business acumen should have disqualified him.

5. While there are those who claim he is a nice enough guy, Leon Panetta was never a good choice for CIA director. The proof of my assertion became increasingly evident at his confirmation hearings where he got in some pretty good practice for his future Top Spy deception skills while being questioned by crazy Kit.

As for Geithner, Rubin, and Summers, the New York Times' Frank Rich agrees with me:

Key players in the Obama economic team beyond Geithner are also tied to Rubin or Citigroup or both, from Larry Summers, the administration’s top economic adviser, to Gary Gensler, the newly named nominee to run the Commodity Futures Trading commission and a Treasury undersecretary in the Clinton administration. Back then, Summers and Gensler joined hands with Phil Gramm to ward off regulation of the derivative markets that have since brought the banking system to ruin. We must take it on faith that they have subsequently had judgment transplants.

Obama’s brilliant appointees, we keep being told, are irreplaceable. But as de Gaulle said, “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.” You have to onder if this team is really a meritocracy or merely a stacked deck. Not only did Rubin himself serve on the Obama economic transition team, but two of the transition’s headhunters were Michael Froman, Rubin’s chief of staff at Treasury and later a Citigroup executive, and James S. Rubin, an investor who is Robert Rubin’s son.

A welcome outlier to this club is Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman chosen to direct Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. But Bloomberg reported last week that Summers is already freezing Volcker out of many of his deliberations on economic policy. This sounds like the arrogant Summers who was fired as president of Harvard, not the chastened new Summers advertised at the time of his appointment. A team of rivals is not his thing.

Americans have had enough of such arrogance, whether in the public or private sectors, whether Democrat or Republican. Voters turned on Sarah Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her claims of being a regular hockey mom were contradicted by her Evita shopping sprees. John McCain’s sanctification of Joe the Plumber (himself a tax delinquent) never could be squared with his inability to remember how many houses he owned. A graphic act of entitlement also stripped naked that faux populist John Edwards.

The public’s revulsion isn’t mindless class hatred. As Obama said on Wednesday of his fellow citizens: “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.” But we do know that the system has been fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past decade — the top 1 percent of America’s earners received more than 20 percent of the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, exceptional cabinet picks, such as Labor secretary nominee Representative Hilda Solis, CA-32, are anonymously being held hostage by a cowardly republican or two without, it would seem, a peep from the spineless jellyfish that is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, or even anyone in the White House.

I'm just saying . . . .

Random Thoughts and Swift Kicks

Heh.

Over on Guardian UK, editor Julia Finch gives good read, naming names as she lists the Wall Street crooks, bankers, politicians, etc. who comprise the 25 people at the Heart of the Meltdown, along with "six more who saw it coming" --

Andrew Lahde
A hedge fund boss who quit the industry in October thanking "stupid" traders and "idiots" for making him rich. He made millions by betting against sub-prime.

John Paulson, hedge fund boss
He has been described as the "world's biggest winner" from the credit crunch, earning $3.7bn (£1.9bn) in 2007 by "shorting" the US mortgage market - betting that the housing bubble was about to burst. In an apparent response to criticism that he was profiting from misery, Paulson gave $15m to a charity aiding people fighting foreclosure.

Professor Nouriel Roubini
Described by the New York Times as Dr Doom, the economist from New York university was warning that financial crisis was on the way in 2006, when he told economists at the IMF that the US would face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, oil shock and a deep recession. He remains a pessimist. He predicted last week that losses in the US financial system could hit $3.6tn before the credit crunch ends - which, he said, means the entire US banking system is in effect bankrupt. After last year's bail-outs and nationalisations, he famously described George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke as "a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America".

Warren Buffett, billionaire investor
Dubbed the Sage of Omaha, Buffett had long warned about the dangers of dodgy derivatives that no one understood and said often that Wall Street's finest were grossly overpaid. In his annual letter to shareholders in 2003, he compared complex derivative contracts to hell: "Easy to enter and almost impossible to exit." On an optimistic note, Buffett wrote in October that he had begun buying shares on the US stockmarket again, suggesting the worst of the credit crunch might be over. Now is a great time to "buy a slice of America's future at a marked-down price", he said.

George Soros, speculator
The billionaire financier, philanthropist and backer of the Democrats told an audience in Singapore in January 2006 that stockmarkets were at their peak, and that the US and global economies should brace themselves for a recession and a possible "hard landing". He also warned of "a gigantic real estate bubble" inflated by reckless lenders, encouraging homeowners to remortgage and offering interest-only deals. Earlier this year Soros described a 25-year "super bubble" that is bursting, blaming unfathomable financial instruments, deregulation and globalisation. He has since characterised the financial crisis as the worst since the Great Depression.

Stephen Eismann, hedge fund manager
An analyst and fund manager who tracked the sub-prime market from the early 1990s. "You have to understand," he says, "I did sub-prime first. I lived with the worst first. These guys lied to infinity. What I learned from that experience was that Wall Street didn't give a shit what it sold."

Meredith Whitney, Oppenheimer Securities
On 31 October 2007 the analyst forecast that Citigroup had to slash its dividend or face bankruptcy. A day later $370bn had been wiped off financial stocks on Wall Street. Within days the boss of Citigroup was out and the dividend had been slashed.

I don't understand or like President Obama's Treasury pick, Timothy Geithner, and I don't believe he should be confirmed as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury. My reasons? Although a supposed financial genius, he cheated on his employee payroll taxes, then only paid the principal and not the 4-5 years interest when his duplicity was discovered during vetting, and he was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, as derelict in his duty to prevent Wall Street's rampant greed and fraud as former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. He's just been confirmed and is already making heinous pronouncements. Don't look for much to change -- the banks will continue their shenanigans, stealing TARP money with little, if any, governmental oversight, while more people continue to lose their jobs and their homes. In a nation of 300 million people, how can he be the only one most qualified to help us out of this economic miasma. Something in this milk just ain't clean. I absolutely hate Obama's treasury choice.

There's an anonymous GOP senator holding up the confirmation of President Obama's Labor Secretary nominee, Hilda Solis. Aside from the fact that California's 32nd district assemblywoman is a champion of the people rather than money and corporations, the main reason for the delay is to hold up the vote on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which, once it is passed, will give every employee in the private sector the right to form a union for living wages and benefits. Solis is a huge champion of Organized Labor and the Employee Free Choice Act. On the other hand, Organized Labor leaders continue to be MIA with their support for the Act when they should be launching media events to promote it. But then, I felt that Organized Labor as a whole should have been much more publicly supportive of the auto industry and the UAW.

Although I supported her, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg proved herself not ready for political prime time during media appearances, and handled her bid to be named NY senator very poorly. But then appointed NY Governor Paterson made the whole process a spectacle, and his choice leaves a lot to be desired by this Independent Progressive. As I posted on Daily Kos, if he leans anymore right than he has these last few weeks, he'll be changing parties any day now. Check out his near-draconian neo-conservative budget proposal for New York State.

Al Giordano of The Field also gets it right; without naming names, left wing bloggers were instrumental in scuttling Kennedy-Schlossberg's bid, allowing Paterson to appoint blue dog Dem, Kirsten Gillibrand.

Herrrre's Jay Leno:

“[N]ow that Barack Obama’s president, Michael Jackson said he’s thinking about being black again.”

“While Barack Obama was in the inaugural parade the other day, he was wearing what the Secret Service called a bullet-resistant suit. Did you see that? The suit was made out of what they call ‘bullet resistant material.’ You know, here’s my question, the man’s the president. Spend a couple of bucks, go the extra yard, get the ‘bullet proof’ suit. Okay?”

“He’s really getting tough. Yesterday, President Obama issued an executive order banning gifts from lobbyists, any gifts to anyone serving in his administration. In fact, today they went down and removed the gas pump that Exxon installed in Dick Cheney’s office.”

“The Senate has confirmed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. That means Hillary will be fourth in line for the presidency, after vice president, speaker of the house, and president pro-tem of the Senate, she is next. Which means they’re going to need extra security to protect the vice president, speaker of the house, and senate pro-tem of the Senate.”

“Caroline Kennedy, who was hoping to fill in Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat, has now taken her name out of contention. She’s out of it. New York Times reports that the reason Caroline Kennedy dropped out is because of housekeeper and tax issues. Dropped out ’cause of tax issues. The good news, she’s still eligible to be treasury secretary.”

President Barack Hussein Obama

"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.

Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.

We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.

He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.

Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.

And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.

With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around. . .

(LAUGHTER)

. . . when yellow will be mellow. . .

(LAUGHTER)

when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

AUDIENCE: Amen.

LOWERY: Say Amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen.

LOWERY: And Amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen.

How fitting that the Reverend Joseph Lowery, as he began his benediction at the inauguration, invoked the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land

Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008

It's been a rough weekend. On Friday, ten or fifteen minutes after debarking a bus in West Hollywood, I realized that I'd left my Stone Mountain Cargo purse on the bus. So far, I haven't recovered it, although I am hopeful.

Meanwhile, as you know, there's been a dual celebration happening since the beginning of last week, what with Dr. King's national birthday holiday celebration today, and the inauguration of our first black president, Barack Hussein Obama, tomorrow, January 20, 2009. I will post my thoughts on the moment within the next 24-48 hours, however; as is tradition here on Global Ghetto (check the archives for previous years), I'm posting Foreign Policy's Top 10 Stories Missed in 2008. Enjoy.

1. The Surge in Afghanistan Starts Early

Along with reducing troop levels in Iraq, President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to dramatically increase the U.S. presence in Afghanistan in a strategy similar to the “surge,” which proved so effective in reducing violence in Iraq. Although the wisdom of such an approach will surely be hotly debated in the coming months, the truth is that the Afghanistan surge has, to a certain extent, already begun. In the first half of 2008, the Bush administration boosted U.S. forces in Afghanistan by more than 21,000, or nearly 85 percent, with significant increases in the presence of Air Force and Marine personnel. Even reluctant NATO members have pledged to kick in a few thousand troops.

The United States has also been on a building spree, planning a $100 million airfield expansion in Kandahar and a $50 million prison facility near Bagram Air Base. In requesting supplemental funding from Congress to build a $62 million ammunition storage facility near Bagram, the Army said the base “must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements.”

Of course, counterinsurgency is about more than just boots on the ground and new facilities. In Iraq, efforts to reach out to tribal leaders and nationalist insurgents and turn them against local elements of al Qaeda were crucial. U.S. commanders have shied away from taking similar steps in Afghanistan, but President Hamid Karzai has been pushing for exactly this type of engagement, holding a jirga of tribal leaders in Kabul and even reaching out to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. So, if Obama takes office with a plan to pacify Afghanistan through more troops and reaching out to local leaders, he might well discover that he already has a head start.

2. Colombian Coca Production Increases

Coca is a serious destabilizer—keeping Colombia’s rebels armed and the country’s progress in check. But after almost a decade, U.S.-assisted efforts to reduce the crop’s production in Colombia haven’t just failed; they’ve been downright counterproductive. Plan Colombia was meant to improve security, stamp out drug cultivation, and improve law and order after a decades-long conflict with leftist militants. But coca cultivation rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2006, an October 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found. A separate U.N. study found that in 2007 alone, the area of land hosting coca crops rose 27 percent. To put it mildly, something is not working.

Coca, the base crop for cocaine, has funded the operations of various paramilitaries and the rebel group FARC for decades. Although Colombian military operations have severely hampered FARC’s activities during the last several years, the drug trade continues apace. Aerial spraying and manual eradication have had temporary effects, but coca farmers tend to grow the lucrative crop again because there’s rarely an equally profitable alternative. The GAO reckons that many farmers have moved to more remote areas to avoid the eradication efforts. Meanwhile, the market value of coca rose by roughly $450 per kilogram in 2007 to more than $2,000.

The United States has spent $6 billion on Plan Colombia, but Colombia still supplies 90 percent of U.S. cocaine. Time for a rethink on the drug war?

3. The Next Darfur Heats Up

The conflict in Darfur still may not be getting the attention it deserves, but another crisis in Sudan threatens to become the country’s newest humanitarian catastrophe. The flash point is Southern Kordofan, a state created in 2005 to encompass the Nuba Mountains, just north of the autonomous southern zone. Central government forces, South Sudanese forces, and local groups are all arming and recruiting troops with the hope of securing victory in the upcoming local elections. As the Small Arms Survey, a research organization, documented in August, “[D]iscontent … is turning to anger, and many now view war in the Nuba Mountains as inevitable.”

The storm brewing in Nuba country looks much like the ongoing tempest in Darfur. The Nuba, a tribal group comprising more than 50 indigenous African ethnicities, have long been marginalized under Sudan’s Arab-dominated government, and many took up arms against it during the 1980s civil war. When a peace agreement ended the North-South conflict in 2005, many Nuba felt the Southern Sudanese government sold them out to the North in order to gain oil concessions. Now, their patience is running thin. The International Crisis Group (ICG) reported in October that hundreds have died in disputes over land and grazing rights in recent years. As in Darfur, violence has broken out between Nuba farmers and Arab nomads, both of whom covet the same fertile land.

With national elections scheduled for 2009, forces on all sides are accused of seeking support through intimidation and strategic ethnic cleansing. Government forces in the region have grown dramatically, and Arab supremacy movements, similar to those that spawned the janjaweed militias in Darfur, are springing up.

It all looks ominously familiar. “When you look at what’s failed to happen in Darfur,” warns Mark Schneider of ICG, “you don’t have a lot of confidence that Sudan is going to deal with this any better.”

4. The United States Helps India Build a Missile Shield

The controversy over U.S. missile defense these days tends to focus on Russia’s increasingly strident objections to proposed U.S. installations in Eastern Europe. But a more volatile situation might be brewing farther east. On Feb. 27, 2008, after two days of meetings in New Delhi, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates quietly announced negotiations between the United States and India to develop a missile defense program on Indian soil. Although still in its early stages, a missile shield on the subcontinent could have long-term implications for U.S.-China relations and regional stability.

Just as proposed U.S. rocket interceptors in Poland stoke tension between the United States and Russia, a U.S.-facilitated missile shield in India could become a flash point for great-power struggles for decades to come. The plans are likely to add to fears in Beijing that the United States is attempting to temper China’s growing influence in Asia. Gates’s trip to New Delhi was part of a tour of three of the region’s democracies—India, Australia, and Indonesia—which could be used to counter China’s regional ambitions if relations with the United States turn frosty. Even more troubling, an Indian missile shield risks triggering a crisis in the nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan.

The biggest winner? Probably Lockheed Martin. The defense contractor has already entered into talks with the Indian military about selling the country its Patriot missile defense system. “The US has spent billions of dollars” developing the Patriot system, said Lockheed Martin Vice President Dennis Cavin last January. “We reckon that India need not spend so much money on developing its own system when we can help.”

5. Russia Makes a Play for Africa

China’s recent adventures in Africa have been well-publicized, as have the West’s attempts to keep up. Now add one more player to the mix: Russia is moving into Africa in a big way, snatching up gas and oil deals, with an eye on winning even greater leverage over the global energy market.

In September, Russia’s state-controlled energy monopoly Gazprom obtained gas concessions in Nigeria, which is thought to hold one of the world’s largest natural gas supplies. In addition to offering such development-aid carrots as electricity generation, Gazprom agreed to help the West African country fund a 2,700-mile trans-Saharan pipeline to Europe.

Gazprom, in a joint venture with Italy’s Eni, is also looking to finance a pipeline from Libya that would carry natural gas under the Mediterranean. Russia offered to buy all Libyan gas and some of its oil exports. If the deal goes through, it would give Russia complete control over supply to the European Union. Russia has additional deals in Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and the Ivory Coast worth $3.5 billion and expected to be operational by 2010.

But it’s not just pipelines Russia wants—it’s also hearts and minds. Russia has canceled $20 billion in African debt and recently announced a $500 million aid package for African countries with no strings attached. Russia helped prevent sanctions on Zimbabwe from passing the U.N. Security Council a few months after Zimbabwe was opening a tourism office in Moscow.

All this has Europe very worried. If Russia controls natural gas supplies from the east—through Gazprom’s holdings in Central Asia—as well as the south, that would leave Europe surrounded, with little room to find alternative energy supplies. It was no coincidence that the EU offered $21 billion for the trans-Saharan pipeline just after the Georgia-Russia war. Let the great games begin.

6. Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels

Think switching to solar energy will make you green? Think again. Many of the newest solar panels are manufactured with a gas that is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming.

Nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, is used for cleaning microcircuits during the manufacture of a host of modern electronics, including flat-screen TVs, iPhones, computer chips—and thin-film solar panels, the latest (and cheapest) generation of solar photovoltaics. (Time named the panels one of the best inventions of 2008.) Because industry estimates suggested that only about 2 percent of NF3 ever made it into the atmosphere, the chemical has been marketed as a cleaner alternative to other higher-emitting options. For the past decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has actively encouraged its use. NF3 also wasn’t deemed dangerous enough to be covered by the Kyoto Protocol, making it an attractive substitute for companies and signatory countries eager to lower their emissions footprints.

It turns out that NF3 might not be so green after all. “NF3 has a potential greenhouse impact larger than … even that of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants,” according to a June 2008 study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine. Because NF3 isn’t covered by Kyoto, few attempts have been made to measure it in the atmosphere. But last October, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that four times more NF3 is present in the atmosphere than industry estimates suggest, and its concentration is rising 11 percent a year.

Compared with the damage caused by CO2 emissions, NF3 remains a blip because far less of it is emitted. But Ray Weiss, who led the Scripps team, thinks that, unless regulations require more complete greenhouse gas measurements, more unpleasant surprises will be in store. With NF3, he says, “We’re finding considerably more in the atmosphere than was expected. This [gas] won’t be the only example of that.”

7. Shanghai Steel Fails Basic Safety Tests

Shanghai’s futuristic skyline—the city has more than 900 high-rises, with hundreds more under construction—is one of the most potent symbols of China’s economic rise. But the materials undergirding all that growth might be shakier than anyone can imagine. In March, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported that fully half of the steel sold to construction companies in Shanghai’s wholesale markets failed basic quality tests. Nearly a quarter of the tested samples failed tension tests, meaning structures built with them would not be able to withstand earthquakes and would be more likely to decay over time.

Of the 52 batches of steel tested by the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau, 27 were too light to meet China’s legal standards. Some batches were nearly five times lighter than the legal standard, meaning that they were less than the weight of iron, steel’s primary ingredient. “If your steel is less than the weight of iron, that’s pretty incredible,” says Christopher Earls, professor of civil engineering at Cornell University. “That means you’re replacing the iron with something else, so what you have isn’t really steel at all.”

The bureau ordered construction sites using the inferior steel to halt work, but, troublingly, did not publicly reveal where it was being used. Adam Minter, a Shanghai-based journalist who blogged the story after it broke, asked, “What will happen to twenty-year home mortgages taken out on Shanghai apartments which will only last—structurally—for ten years? At some point, I’m pretty sure this is going to become an issue.” After the collapse of substandard schoolhouses during this year’s Sichuan earthquake, tremors of which were felt in Shanghai, the prospect of something similar happening to an urban high-rise isn’t an issue anyone should take lightly.

8. Aid to Georgia Finances Luxury Hotel in Tbilisi

In September, the United States pledged $1 billion in aid to Georgia to help the country recover from its August war with Russia. The money was intended to “help Georgia sustain itself,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. With several Georgian towns badly damaged by Russian bombing and 20,000 refugees from South Ossetia still unable to return home, there were seemingly many worthy causes for all that cash. So why was $176 million of the aid money earmarked for loans to businesses—including $30 million to a real estate developer for a luxury hotel: the 127,000-square-meter Park Hyatt in downtown Tbilisi, an area that was not at all damaged in the war? The 183-room, five-star hotel will include 70 luxury condominiums, a fine-dining restaurant, conference facilities, and a health spa with juice bar.

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government agency facilitating the loan, is also financing a $40 million office building across the street from the Georgian Parliament building and a $10 million renovation of a historic building into a convention center. The loans, OPIC President Robert Mosbacher told Eurasianet, were “a clear, unequivocal signal about the confidence we [the U.S. government] have in the future of this country.”

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ill-advised military operation in South Ossetia might have been a disaster for many of his people, but thanks to Uncle Sam, it seems to have turned out just fine for Tbilisi’s real estate developers.

9. For the First Time, U.S. Citizen Convicted of Torture Abroad

Since 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice has had the right to prosecute U.S. citizens on U.S. soil for crimes of torture committed abroad. But it wasn’t until a highly unusual case this year that the law saw its first conviction. Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr., son of the former Liberian president, was convicted of torture, conspiracy, and possession of a firearm by a federal grand jury on Oct. 30. War crimes clearly run in the family. His father is currently on trial at The Hague.

The younger Taylor was born in Massachusetts and retained his U.S. citizenship after moving to Liberia when his father took office. He committed his crimes as head of the Anti-Terrorist Unit (known as the “Demon Forces”) of his father’s government from 1999 to 2002. Although his task was officially to protect Liberian officials, in practice, prosecutors said, Taylor tortured opposition members and political opponents using irons, hot wax, knives, electronic shockers, and firearms.

This case is the first application of the U.S. federal extraterritorial torture statute, passed in 1994 following the U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Human rights advocates hope it won’t be the last. Crucially, the law also gives the Justice Department authority to prosecute other countries’ citizens on U.S. soil for torture committed abroad. Several groups are pushing for prosecution of past human rights violators from Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti now residing in the United States.

Some speculate it could even open the door to prosecutions of Bush administration officials for engaging in torture overseas. “You would have to be able to prove that the individual official specifically was doing that,” explains Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group. “Is it possible that law could do that? I think so.”

10. American Company Sells ‘Sonic Blasters’ to China

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the United States took action by imposing a strict arms embargo on China. So how, exactly, was it legal for a U.S. company to sell China a powerful tool to incapacitate and injure protesters in advance of the Olympic Games in Beijing?

Reporting from a Beijing police equipment expo in April, journalist David Hambling noticed a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) produced by California-based American Technology Corporation (ATC) on prominent display. The LRAD works by emitting from a dish high-energy acoustic waves that are said to be, at close proximity, louder than a jet engine. It is capable of reaching 150 decibels, enough to incite panic, inflict pain, and even cause hearing loss among large crowds.

But is it a weapon? ATC euphemistically describes it as a “directed-sounds communications system,” but in a November 2008 article in Maritime Reporter and Engineering News, the company’s vice president boasted of how the U.S. Navy was increasingly using LRAD devices to “prevent terrorist incidents” and repel Somali pirates. When the embargo was enacted, such devices didn’t even exist. It remains to be seen whether nonlethal crowd-control systems will be included in future arms-control agreements.

The Chinese definitely have the LRAD, but as far as anyone knows, they haven’t employed it yet. Nor were there reports of its use during the Summer Olympics. Using dangerous sound weapons on peaceful protesters might seem draconian, but that, too, depends on the alternatives: “I also came across photos of the Chinese police practicing with flamethrowers before the Olympics, so LRAD would have let protesters off lightly,” says Hambling.

"Our Economy is Very Sick; Badly Damaged,"

President-Elect Obama admitted today during a meeting with Republicans and the Obama team of economic advisers on Capitol Hill.

"Americans need action now." - President-Elect Barack Obama, 01/05/2009

The president-elect is meeting on the hill today and tomorrow with Congressional leaders from both parties, to discuss the best and quickest way that Congress can create and pass a $700 billon to $1 trillion dollar economic stimulus bill, including a $300 billion tax cut for the disappearing middle class, the working poor, and small business owners. Obama had hoped the bill would be ready for his signature a day or so after his January 20, 2009 inauguration but, given how slowly the wheels churn on Capitol Hill, chances of the bill being ready so soon was scuttled within weeks of the president-elect's original pronouncement. However, many on Capitol Hill expect to pass the massive stimulus bill, with the President signing it into law, by the middle of February.

Isaac vs. Ishmael in the Gaza Strip

Within days after the 6-month cease-fire agreement expired between Israel (descendants of Isaac) and Palestine (descendants of Ishmael), missiles burst in the twilight glean of the Gaza Strip. As of today, January 5, 2009, Israel has now deployed ground soldiers in Gaza, and reports say that the Strip is now divided into two.

There's lots of fingerpointing on both sides - Israel claims that Hamas constantly launched missiles during the cease-fire, while Hamas is claiming the opposite. As for reaching out to obtain a truce, given the US total lack of moral authority after the dismal foreign policy record of the Bush Administration, what with the Iraq invasion, among other administrative blunders, the world is waiting for the Obama administration to try to smooth things out.

Obama has a lot on his plate.

Last Minute Auto Industry Bailout by Bush Administration

A few days before Christmas, the Bush Administration allocated approximately $17 billion of the Trouble Asset Relief Program's $700 billion Wall Street bailout taxpayer money to the 3 automakers to keep them solvent through February 2009. Just before the New Year, GMAC, the lending arm of General Motors, got a shot in the arm to the tune of $4 billion, in an effort to pump up the lender's credit-granting ability to virtually broke consumers. The auto industry as a whole is down around 30% to 40% in sales since 2007, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop the bleeding. While some people may be able to afford a new automobile, consumer confidence is extremely low, as evidenced by dismal retail sales during the holiday season.

May the New Year be prosperous . . .

Iraqi journalist Muntazer Al-Zeidi chunks shoes at lame duck President G. W. Bush during farewell news conference in Baghdad

"Soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture. After Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in Baghdad in April 2003, many onlookers beat the statue's face with their soles."

The journalist was thrown to the floor as he shouted insults to the president, and later arrested. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," Al-Zeida shouted as he was hustled from the room. Reports say that he is being held by Iraqi police for possible criminal acts, and to determine whether he was paid. Some reports say that Al-Zeida is also being tested for drugs and alcohol.

Hold On to Your Pennies - It's Going to be A Very Long and Bumpy Ride!

Salulations (condolences?) to President-Elect Barack Obama on his historic victory. Bless his heart, he's got quite a mess to straighten out, hasn't he? Best wishes to him, his family - and to us. We're in a quagmire that won't easily be remedied in the next two to four years.


Congressional Refusal to Assist Automotive Industry Equals Union Busting Move?

At first I didn't get the reason that Congress is sweating the Three Blind Mice (TBM) of the US Automobile Industry. I mean, look, what they're asking for is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars of good money that was summarity thrown at the thieves in the temples on Wall Street, at insurance companies (looking at you AIG), and in banking, despite massive taxpayer/voter protests against it. Barney Franks, Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi in essence said that we didn't know what we were doing but they did, and that the massive outlay was a necessity to save the economic union.

And not one Congress Critter, whether democratic or republican, chastised those criminal AIG, banking and investing thugs for rolling up in their individual corporate jets, yet no less than FOUR democrats had the unmitigated gall to throw up this bit of subterfuge when the TBM got their beg on. When the lie was sold and parroted by pundits that the average hourly wage for auto workers is $80 per hour, it became crystal clear to me: Given the great chance that the Employee Free Choice Act guaranteeing that employees in the private sector can organize and form a union will be passed early next year, and given that unions are virtually the only way that the average US workers is guaranteed a living wage, the major objections we're hearing from Congress Critters is clearly a union busting move.

US corporations haven't valued the average worker, and haven't been willing to pay them their comparable worth in years. Corporate management has been top down, over priced and criminally incompetent for at least two decades, yet those who work for us - the Congress Critters - treat them as though they are hallowed angels.

Know this though - If even one of the three US automakers are allowed to go kerplunk, not only will unions be even less prevalent and relevant despite the Employee Free Choice Act, but the US can officially and proudly wear the crown of the greatest empire of consumers and non-producers in the modern era. As it is, China and Japan pretty much own us anyway.

For my money, what's fair for the goose is fair for the gander - no doubt all of the corporate raiders who are begging for taxpayer dough while getting huge bonuses and salaries ought to be fired, and that includes the TBM as well as the banking criminals. Penalizing the blue collar automotive workers for the sins of their corporate execs is as foolish as not holding the banking and investment firm thieves accountable for the greedy, reckless ponzi scheme they ran.

Finally, when monetary sums like $700 billion, $840 billion and a trillion dollars are being thrown around, you gotta wonder why $25-$36 billion divided three ways creates such congressional and national havoc. Often, the obvious isn't the most significant.

The Madness Continues - Eight Years of Sociopathy in the Executive Branch - We're happy to see y'all go!


Two remarkable media events will go down in infamy under the date November 12, 2008.

First was the press conference held this morning by Treasury Secretary King Henry Paulson - he of the "we need $700 billion to prop up Wall Street, and we need it now!" fame from last September. During the conference, an arrogant and borderline beligerent Paulson said with no uncertainty that he was changing the rules of the bail out - our great majority Democratic Congress critters gave him this authority.

Anyway, King Henry said that he would no longer buy up bad mortgage assets which, as John Brinsley and Robert Schmidt wrote on Bloomberg.com:

"[Is] an acknowledgement that the pitch he made to Congress for the bailout hasn't delivered what was promised. Paulson sold the Troubled Asset Relief Program as a way to rid bank balance sheets of illiquid mortgage assets, and he may encounter resistance from Congress for the remaining $350 billion after using most of the first half to buy bank stakes . . .

Lawmakers will "put his feet to the fire,'' said Kevin Petrasic, a former official at the Office of Thrift Supervision, now an attorney with the Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker law firm in Washington. "I'm not sure how you get around dealing with what is clearly the congressional intent."

Charles Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said the shift makes "you wonder if they really know what they're doing." Grassley, in a letter to Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, raised the possibility Congress could block appropriation of the remaining $350 million under the rescue package.

"Congress can act any time to revoke the Treasury's authority," Grassley said. "They will be watched and they will be questioned."

"I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change," [said] Paulson [who] also said [that] the department is also considering having companies that accept new taxpayer funding get matching private capital. Buying "illiquid'' mortgage-related assets -- the reason the program was established a month ago -- is no longer being considered. "We will continue to examine whether targeted forms of asset purchase can play a useful role,'' he said.

My take? Treasonous, sociopathic destructive robber barons that they are, Shrub and Paulson's plan to loot the Treasury, leaving no operating funds for Obama and Congress, is going swimmingly. By his very tone this morning, Paulson almost bumrushes President-Elect Obama into appointing a Treasury Secretary sooner rather than later, if for no other reason than to watch his foolishness.

The other notable sociopath of the day is lame duck President Shrub who, when interviewed by CNN, only snidely mentioned the Mission Accomplished banner on the USS Lincoln back in 2001 (he seems to have forgotten perpetrating a fraud by dressing in full fighter pilot drag, including helmet), only copping to a few public-relations gaffes many years ago. No moral compass, no self-introspection, no inner reflections with this guy. He smirked about standing on "principles" and about his wife telling him that, as president, he needed to watch what he said (yep, his wife, not his chief of staff, or anyone from the White House staff), i.e., "wanted dead or alive" but he had no regrets and, like King Henry, issued no apologies for breaking our economy, ruining our alliances with countries around the globe, GITMO, Abu Gonzalez, Dummy Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, illegal wiretapping Americans, including the intimate calls of our military personnel, let alone anointing himself the decider without a heart or a brain.

"The [Mission Accomplished] sign was hung on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, when Bush landed on the carrier wearing a flight suit to declare that major combat operations in Iraq were over. That speech has since served as a rallying point for critics of Bush's policies in Iraq.

Bush also cited other regrets in the CNN interview, which was conducted aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York after a Veterans Day ceremony.

"I regret saying some things I shouldn't have said,'' Bush said. He cited comments he made after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he said of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden: "I want justice. There's an old poster out West that said, 'Wanted, dead or alive.'''

He also said he regretted telling Iraqi insurgents in 2003: "There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on.''"

Meanwhile, here are a few economical facts that will also go down in history for today's date:

The Dow Jones Industrial closed at 8,282.66, losing 411.30 points.

Nasdaq closed at 1,499.21 down 81.69.

Standard & Poor 500 at market close was 852.30, down 46.65.

But that ain't all. The big 3 U.S. automakers are on the verge of closing, and the lame duck is at odds with Pelosi and Reid on whether to rescue them or not, never mind that NOT rescuing them in some form (I don't agree with a loan or bail out a la AIG - you see where that's gotten us) will create a massive unemployment statistic throwing another 3 million people into the jobless mix.

I'm just saying . . . . We need smarter, more compassionate and better people because they ain't it. Thankfully, help is on the way, and in 68 or so days, things will look better once Obama's holding the reins.

He Talked the Talk and Walked the Walk - How We the People Won the 2008 Election - AND IT AIN'T OVER - WE AIN'T FINISHED YET!

"Barack Obama performed 9 points better than John Kerry among urban whites." ~ Nate Silvers, 538.com

Politico.com:

[Barack Obama] won 43 percent of white voters.

96 percent of black voters supported Obama; [a]s in past years, black women turned out at a higher rate than black men.

50% of [the] suburban vote went to Obama.

54 % of young white voters supported Obama. In the past three decades, no Democratic presidential nominee has won more than 45% of young whites.

Obama performed slightly worse with white women, 39% of voters, than Al Gore did in 2000. Obama compensated for the drop-off in white female support with the strong 41% support from white men. [U]ntil Tuesday’s election, no Democrat since Carter had earned more than 38%of the white male vote.

Hispanics, who as in 2004 were 8% of voters, went for Obama by more than 2-to1, 67% to 30%, marking a roughly 10-point drop-off in Republican Hispanic support, compared to Bush’s performance in 2004.

Obama ... won 84% of those Democrats who backed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the hard-fought presidential primaries.

White independents, a fifth of voters, roughly split between the major party candidates, which has not occurred in a two-man race in three decades.” ... Obama earned the same level of support as John F. Kerry in 2004 — 47%.

Pew Research Center:

We overcame cynicism and the apathy of the masses but, make no mistake - we've can't in no ways get tired because there's a huge amount of work yet to do, and the heavy lifting must be done by We the People.

"I can't do this alone," Obama repeatedly exhorted us over the long, arduous campaign season. At change.gov, the new website established just a day or so after the November 4 election, the Obama Administration has already begun its We the People inclusivity.

"The story of of this campaign is your story. It is about the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose."

Open Government
It’s Your America: Share Your Ideas
The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.

An American Moment: Your Vision
Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?

The Agenda
President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies. The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.

Apply for a Job
This website is designed to provide prospective applicants with information to help them apply for positions in the Obama-Biden Administration. President-Elect Obama will make appointments throughout the federal government. Some positions will require Senate confirmation while others will not. Some appointments will be made during the transition process and others during the early part of the new Administration.

Applicants for any of these non-career positions - whether in the White House or in any Federal Department, Agency or Commission - should use this website, as applying on-line is the fastest and most accurate way to get your information to us. (If you are interested instead in a career, civil service position with the federal government, you should proceed to the Office of Personnel Management website at http://www.usajobs.gov.)/

If you apply for a position now, you will not need to apply again after January 20th. Applications submitted now to the Obama-Biden Transition Project will be retained and considered by the Office of Presidential Personnel after President-Elect Obama takes office.

Application Process:
Please complete and submit the on-line Expression of Interest Form below. Within a few days, you will receive an email with a link to a more complete on-line application.

Upon submitting your full on-line application you will receive an e-mail acknowledgment.

If and when you are considered for a specific position, you will be asked to fill out additional forms, including financial disclosures, and be subject to other reviews which may include FBI background checks.

As a Constitutional Law scholar, Obama seems sincerely interested in restoring our Constitution to

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Get up, stand up - stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up - don't give up the fight!
~ Bob Marley and The Wailers

This is our call, this is our time - no more cynicism, no more apathy, no more 'they' versus 'we.' This is our government - of the people, by the people and for the people. We elect our representatives and by so doing, hire them to work for us. Stay involved. Continue to let our voices be heard. Change truly does begin from the ground up, at the grassroots level, with We the People.

Roll up your sleeves, Americans! Whether we're Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Gay, Straight, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Redneck, Militant, Supremacist, young, old, employed, unemployed - whoever we are and whatever our circumstances, persuasion and beliefs, the time has come to collectively transform our country, to begin anew the building of a more perfect union.

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

~ Langston Hughes, 1902-1967

AN ODE TO THE LEGACY OF GEORGE W. BUSH





He broke the voting and election process two elections in a row.

He broke the Justice Department.

He broke the NATO Agreement.

He broke the Geneva Convention.

He broke the global financial system.

He broke the rules of engagement for war.

He broke the rules of international diplomacy.

He broke the middle class and stomped on the poor.

He broke the banks.

He broke Wall Street.

He broke the Constitution.

He broke the GOP.

He broke the Congress.

He broke American grammar - the nouns, the verbs, the adverbs, the adjectives, the infinitives, the conjunctions, et al.

He broke the trust of the American people.

Today's the day when we take back our country from the brokenness that this man and his fascist regime has wrought.

Today's the Day -

Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

"Economically Distressed"

Regarding the downturn in the economy and the "economically distressed" - a euphemism for the working poor and those who want to work, but are unable to find gainful employment after losing their jobs.

Michael Zweig and Steven Greenhouse on Democracy Now!:

MZ: [N]obody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to be called poor or low-wage. So when we started out talking about the working poor or low-wage workers, we came, in the course of conversations with these workers, to understand that maybe it would be better to find another way to talk about it. So that’s why we came up with this formulation “economically distressed,” which really talks about the content of their lives, rather than something which might get turned into an epithet.

So, these economically distressed workers are people whose incomes are so low that they can’t get out of the bottom of their own housing market in their area for a family of their size without spending more than 30 percent of their income to do that. And the federal standard is 30 percent. You shouldn’t spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing. Otherwise you won’t have enough money for everything else that you need. So that’s how we look at the problem.

And we found that in the United States, it’s almost 21 percent of the labor force are people who are in this economically distressed status, and it varies. In metropolitan areas, it’s higher. Here in New York—I just have the numbers just here—it’s in New York metropolitan area, 29.4 percent of the families and households in the New York metro area are economically distressed. And it goes as high as—in Miami, it’s 32.4 percent. So, in Los Angeles, it’s 31 percent. So we’re talking about really a lot of people who are in a very, very serious situation.

SG: First, the phrase “working class” is kind of forbidden from political talk in the United States, because it’s—people are going to be accused of being class warriors. So, unfortunately, that phrase is rarely used. But I think, you know, the catch phrase is the middle class, and they’re both focusing on the middle class. But we have this ever-expansive definition of what the middle class is: people from $20,000 a year to $200,000 a year.

But I think, you know, the silver lining in the current crisis is that, you know, finally, after years of ignoring what’s happening to the nation’s workers, the candidates are starting to talk to some of these issues: foreclosures, high debt levels, the large number of uninsured. I think Obama, you know, has come up with some plans where he’s really trying to address the freeze on foreclosures to pump billions of dollars into investment and infrastructure into green industries. And McCain, in his own way, is also trying to do it, you know, mainly in the traditional Republican way of tax cuts, tax cuts. And he’s hoping that there’ll be a trickle down from investors and entrepreneurs down to help workers.

We need major change in our nation; it will take a monumental, collective effort to put things on the track again. Next Tuesday's election is extremely important, not only from a presidential standpoint but also to gain majority seats in both the House and the Senate. There's work to be done and everyone must pitch in.

If you haven't already done so, on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, no matter how long the lines,

V O T E !!

Former National Security Adviser Schools Lipless Joe Regarding Retired General Colin Powell's Endorsement of Obama



Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland and advised both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations prior to serving as NSA Adviser to President Jimmy Carter. In some circles, Brzezinski is known as the Democrats' answer to the Republicans' Henry Kissinger.

The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times Break with Tradition to Endorse Obama!

"The Los Angeles Times, breaking a decades-long policy of not endorsing any candidate for president, threw its support behind Barack Obama today. The editorial will appear in print this weekend, but went online this afternoon.

Just minutes later, the Chicago Tribune made an even more historic move, also backing Obama, its home state senator, and explaining: "This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president." It said it was "proud" to make this choice.

E&P had predicted this outcome earlier this week based on the tone of a series of recent Times editorials. The paper, traditionally Republican, had stopped endorsing following the Nixon era.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.

Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them. We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

These are qualities American leadership has sorely lacked for close to a decade. The U.S. Constitution, more than two centuries old, now offers the world one of its more mature and certainly most stable governments, but our political culture is still struggling to shake off a brash and unseemly adolescence. In George W. Bush, the executive branch turned its back on an adult role in the nation and the world and retreated into self-absorbed unilateralism.

John McCain distinguished himself through much of the Bush presidency by speaking out against reckless and self-defeating policies. He earned The Times' respect, and our endorsement in the California Republican primary, for his denunciation of torture, his readiness to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his willingness to buck his party on issues such as immigration reform. But the man known for his sense of honor and consistency has since announced that he wouldn't vote for his own immigration bill, and he redefined "torture" in such a disingenuous way as to nearly embrace what he once abhorred."

Read the rest at the link above.

The Choice: New Yorker Magazine Editors Endorse Obama

During the brouhaha surrounding July's 'satircal' New Yorker article depicting Senator Barack Obama as an Osama-loving, flag-burning Muslim, few people took the time to read the most excellent article inside the magazine, and more's the pity, since the article showed Obama to be a shrewd, politician who keeps his eyes on the prize in every election contest.

Today, though, the editors of the New Yorker published a scathing attack on the Republicans, Bush, McCain, his temperament and his extremely poor judgment in choosing the Governor of Alaska, laying out the reasons why he is unfit to be president, while heartily endorsing Obama.

The New Yorker Endorsement

First, the Editors gutted the Bush Administration like Sarah Palin would skin and gut a caribou or moose:

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

Next, they eviscerate Shrub and McCain on the Wall Street meltdown, the two wars, and the humongous global economic crisis caused by their free market 'triumphalism':

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Now they decimate McCain for his cynicism in choosing the Alaska governor as his running mate while hailing Obama for his fine choice of Senator Joe Biden:

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

Finally, their ringing endorsement of Barack Obama:

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home.

[Obama's] ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks.

At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

The full article is a must-read.

In Memoriam

Paul Leonard Newman,

January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008

U.S. Dollar - 1863 to 2008

THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE

Why the Bush/Paulson/Wall Street bail-out is an extremely bad idea for taxpayers.

• Demands nothing from these firms in return.


• Holds the Treasury Secretary accountable to no one. ( See Section 8 of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's 'idea').


• Extends the most generous terms to Wall Street while offering nothing to Main Street.

How the Bush/Paulson/Wall Street bail-out, though still a bad idea, can be made to be [at least somewhat] beneficial to taxpayers.

What Wall Street Should Do To Get Its Blank Check
By Robert Reich

The frame has been set, the die cast. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, presumably representing the Bush administration but indirectly representing Wall Street, and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, want a blank check rom Congress for $700 billion or possibly a trillion dollars or more to take bad debt off Wall Street's balance sheets. Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for (at least in the first instance) so few.

Put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress, including our two presidential candidates. The Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair have told you this is necessary to save the economy. If you don't agree, you risk a meltdown of the entire global financial system. Your own constituents' savings could go down with it.

An election is six weeks away. Besides, in the last two days of trading, since rumors spread that the Treasury and the Fed were planning something of this sort, stock prices revived.

Now - quick -- what do you do? You have no choice but to say yes.

But you might also set some conditions on Wall Street.

The public doesn't like a blank check. They think this whole bailout idea is nuts. They see fat cats on Wall Street who have raked in zillions for years, now extorting in effect $2,000 to $5,000 from every American family to make up for their own nonfeasance, malfeasance, greed, and just plain stupidity.

Wall Street's request for a blank check comes at the same time most of the public is worried about their jobs and declining wages, and having enough money to pay for gas and food and health insurance, meet their car payments and mortgage payments, and save for their retirement and childrens' college education.

And so the public is asking: Why should Wall Street get bailed out by me when I'm getting screwed?

So if you are a member of Congress, you just might be in a position to demand from Wall Street certain conditions in return for the blank
check.

My five nominees:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year's other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street's outsized political power - especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

Wall Streeters may not like these conditions. Well, you should tell them that the public doesn't like the idea of bailing out Wall Street.

So if Wall Street doesn't accept these conditions, it doesn't get the blank check.

Call the chairmen of the Senate Banking Committee - Senators Chuck Dodd and Richard Shelby - to let them know how you feel. Call your your US Senate and House Representatives and let them know that you do not want Wall Street to be bailed out but if it is a necessary thing, there needs to be regulation - on CEO salaries, on Paulson and, most importantly, tell them that there needs to be a one-year freeze on foreclosures.

Just as importantly, we also need to make certain that Congress isn't bum-rushed into a deal by Shrub, Paulson and their gang of thieves whose sole intent is toward fascism. We must make certain that Congress doesn't rush head-long into an agreement that will leave our treasury coffers pretty bare by the time of the Obama presidency. What Paulson and his corporate bandits have agreed to do is to use the bail-out to prop up the economy until the election. You can guess the rest from there.

CUTTING TO THE CHASE - IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

**STOCK MARKETS TAKE HUGE TUMBLE**

Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 10609.66, down 409.36

NASDAQ 100 closed at 1632.45, down 91.63

Standard & Poor's 500 closed at 1156.39, down 57.21

Markets all over the globe were carnage today.

Bailing out Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now, buying out AIG creates a lot of moral hazard, since the money being used by the Feds is taxpayer money. While any bail-out is troubling, AIG's is doubly so because people are labeling under the misconception that AIG is merely an insurance/indemnity company when, in reality, it is also a foreign-owned international conglomerate with main offices in Manhattan. To quote the Retirement Planning section of their website,

"Many employees invest in employer-sponsored retirement plans. These group plans are tax-advantaged, defined-contribution plans where participants generally contribute pretax through payroll deduction."

If you are gainfully employed, and if you have a 401K or other pension/retirement plan, chances are extremely good that at least a portion is invested in an AIG financial product/subsidiary - equities, annuities, fixed income, foreign exchange, and mutual funds, to name just a few deriviatives, so essentially the feds are throwing in $85 billion of taxpayer money (OUR money) to "buy out" AIG; they are putting us on the hook by "loaning" tax dollars for us to buy at least a portion of our retirement plans. It is called the socialization of risk, and if you ain't concerned, you ought to be. Oh yeah, and yesterday, Washington Mutual Bank's stock was down-rated to junk. We are fast heading for the Great Depression of the 21st Century.

OBAMA RIPS INTO McBUSH'S ECONOMIC POLICIES

For the last few days, Senator Obama has been all up in Senator McCain's grill about our worsening economy and deregulation. Yesterday, in Golden, Colorado, the junior senator from Illinois got really jiggy with it, with a nuanced yet quite loud calling out of the Arizona senator and republican candidate for president for his involvement in the Keating 5 savings and loan scandal of some 20 years ago.

"I cannot understand how Senator McCain is going to get us out of this crisis by doing the same things with the same old players. Make no mistake, my opponent is running on 4 more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq, paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China.

John McCain's new-found support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude toward oversight and enforcement. John McCain can't be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason - he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it. So what has happened these last 8 years is not some historical anomaly; we know what to expect if we try these policies for another 4 - when lobbyists run your campaign, the special interests end up gaming the system. When the White House is hostile to any kind of oversight, corporations cut corners and consumers pay the price. When regulators are chosen for their disdain of regulation, and we gut the ability of regulators to enforce the law, then the interests of the American people are not protected. It's an ideology that intentionally breeds incompetence in Washington and irresponsibility on Wall Street, and it is time to turn the page and put an end to it.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

This morning, instead of offering up concrete plans to solve these issues, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book - you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. Now here's the thing. This isn't 9/11; we know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't and that's the choice for Americans in this election.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

History shows us that there's no substitute for presidential leadership in times of economic crisis. FDR and Harry Truman didn't put their heads in the sand or hand accountability over to a commission. Bill Clinton didn't put off hard choices - they led - and that's what I will do. My priority as president will be the stability of the American economy and the prosperity of the American people. And I will make sure that our response focuses on middle class Americans, not the companies that created the problem. Now to get out of this crisis and ensure that we are not doomed to repeat a cycle of bubble and bust again and again, we must take immediate measures to create jobs and continue to address the housing crisis.

We must build a 21st century regulatory framework, and we must pursue a bold opportunity agenda that creates new jobs and grows the American economy. So to jumpstart job creation, I've proposed a 50 billion dollar emergency economic plan that would save 1 million jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure, repairing our schools and helping our states and local governments avoid damaging budget costs.

I worked with leaders in Congress to create a new FHA housing security program which will help stabilize the housing market and allow Americans facing foreclosure to keep their homes at the rates they can afford. Going forward we need to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as we know them today with a structure that is focused on helping people buy homes, not engaging in market speculation.

We can't have a situation like the old S&L scandal where it's heads the investors win and tails the taxpayers lose, and that's going to require ending the lobbyists-driven dominance of these institutions that we've seen for far too long in Washington. To prevent fraud in the mortgage market, I propose tough penalties on fraudulent lenders and a home store system that will ensure consumers fully understand mortgage offers and whether they will be able to make payments.

To help lower and middle income families, I will ease the burden on struggling homeowners through a universal homeowners tax credit, and this will add up to a 10% break off the mortgage interest rates for 10 million households. That's another $500 each year for many middle class families.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Unlike Senator McCain, I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes. Understand this, right now, if you're a family that owns one house, bankruptcy judges are actually barred from helping you keep a roof over your head by writing down the value of your mortgage. If you own 7 homes, the judge is free to write down any or all of the debt on your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th homes. Now that may be of comfort to Senator McCain but that's the kind of out of touch Washington loophole that makes no sense and when I'm president we'll make our laws work for working people.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

But as we've seen in the last few days, the crisis in our financial markets now reaches well beyond the housing market. That's why it's time to do what I called for last September and again this past March, and it is more overdue today. Our capital markets cannot succeed without the public's trust. It's time to get serious about regulatory oversight, and that's what I will do as president.

That starts with some core principles, some core principles for reform that I discussed in a speech at Cooper Union in New York City several months ago. First, if you're a financial institution that can borrow from the government, you should be subject to government oversight and supervision, it's just that simple. When the Federal Reserve steps in as a lender of last resort, it is providing an insurance policy underwritten by the American taxpayer. In return, taxpayers have every right to expect that financial institutions with access to that credit are not taking excessive risks.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Second - principle number 2 - we must reform requirements on all regulated financial institutions. We must strengthen capital requirements, particularly for complex financial instruments like some of the mortgage securities and other derivatives at the center of our current crisis. We must develop and rigorously manage liquidity risks. We must investigate ratings agencies and potential conflicts of interest with the people they are rating, and we must establish transparency requirements that demand full disclosure by financial institutions to shareholders and counterparts.

Now as we reform our regulatory system at home, we also have to address the same problems abroad so that financial institutions around the world are subject to similar rules of the road because we now have a global capital market.

Third, we need to streamline our regulatory agencies. Our overlapping and competing regulatory agencies cannot oversee the large and complex institutions that dominate the financial landscape. Different institutions compete in multiple markets; Washington should not pretend otherwise. A streamlined system will provide better oversight and reduce costs.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Fourth, we need to regulate institutions for what they do, not for what they are. Over the last few years, commercial banks and thrift institutions were subject to guidelines on subprime mortgages that did not apply to mortgage brokers and companies. This regulatory framework failed to protect homeowners and made no sense for our financial system. When it comes to protecting the American people, it should make no difference what kind of institution they're dealing with.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Fifth, we must crack down on trading activities that crosses the line to market manipulation. Now the last six months have shown that this remains a serious problem in many markets, and becomes especially problematic during moments of great financial turmoil. We cannot embrace the administration's vision of turning over the protection of investors to the industries themselves; we need regulators that actually enforce the rules instead of looking over them.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

The SEC should investigate and punish market manipulation, and report its conclusions to Congress. We also have to establish a process that identifies systemic risks to the financial system - like the crisis that's overtaken our economy - much earlier. Too often, we end up where we are today, dealing with threats to the financial system that weren't anticipated by the financial regulators or weren't made public, weren't made clear. We need a standing financial market advisory group to meet regularly to provide advice to the the president, to Congress and regulators on the state of our financial markets and the risks they face. It's time to anticipate risks before they erupt into full blow crisis, and that's what I will do when I am president of the United States.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

These six principles should guide the legal reforms needed to establish a 21st century regulatory system. But the change we need goes beyond laws and regulation. Financial institutions must do a better job at managing risk. There's something wrong when boards of directors or senior managers don't understand the implications of the risks assumed by their own institutions. It's time to realign incentives and CEO packages so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders.

Finally, the American people must be able to trust that their government is looking out for all of us.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Not the special interests that have set the agenda in Washington for 8 years. Not the lobbyists who run John McCain's campaigns. I've spent my career taking on lobbyists and their money and I've won. If you wanted a special favor in Illinois when I first got to the legislature, there was actually a law that let you give campaign cash to the politicians for their own personal use. In the State House they called it business as usual, I called it legalized bribery, and while it didn't make me the most popular guy in Springfield, Illinois, I put an end to it.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

When I got to Washington - when I got to Washington - we saw some of the worse corruption since Watergate. I led the fight for reform in my party, and let me tell you, not everyone in my party was too happy about it, when I proposed forcing lobbyists to disclose who they were raising money from and who they were funneling the money to in Congress, I had a few choice words directed my way on the floor of the Senate, but we got it done, and we banned gifts from lobbyists and meals from lobbyists and free rides on their fancy jets.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

And I am the only candidate who can say that Washington lobbyists do not fund my campaign, they will not run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of the American People when I'm president of the United States. That's how we're going to end the outrage of special interests who are tipping the scales.

Now the most important thing we must do is restore opportunity for all Americans. To get our economy growing, we need to recapture that fundamental American promise - that if you work hard you can pay your bills, that if you get sick you won't go bankrupt, that your kids can go and get a good education, and that we can leave a legacy of greater opportunity to future generations. That's the change the American people need, that's the change the American people need.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

I notice Senator McCain likes to talk about change these days. (LAUGHTER) Yeah, he's been stealing some of our lines, he even had an ad with change we need in it. But while he likes to talk about change, he thinks it's a slogan, his economic program offers nothing but more of the same. The American people need more than change as a slogan, we need change that makes a real difference in your life.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyist who wrote it but the Americna workers and small businesses who deserve it.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs to companies here in America. . . ."

IT'S GOOD BEING QUEEN OF ALASKA, USA

Several sites have posted the essay below; it is so timely that I am posting it here. It is indeed good to be queen (with sincere apologies to the late Catherine the Great of Russia).

"This is Your Nation on White Privilege"

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.


And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale and Columbia, and has spoken to community groups around the nation.

Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White.

"But it's not looking as easy as it once did!"

Perhaps that is the biggest misunderstanding of this campaign year. Or perhaps some of us have lived the lie so long that we've convinced ourselves that life is easy, and winning - at anything - is incredibly simple. Maybe it is the cheating that goes on in sports these days that has us fooled. Maybe even the fact that life is so hard, we want the people we perceive as good to win easily.

It wasn't easy for Obama to win the primary; it wasn't at all easy to defeat the Clinton machine, so why would anyone think it will be easy to defeat the 2008 version of the lying, cheating, thieving opposition party that stole TWO presidential elections in a row right from under our noses?

They stole our votes, they lied to us and deceived us into the Iraqi invasion, committing myriad war crimes and shredding our Constitution in the name of We the People along the way. They preyed on our confusion, our losses, our fears and our grief after September 11, 2001, betraying us at every turn. They used our patriotism and us to propragate their illicit war, their greed, their quest for absolute power. We ought to be constructively angry about it.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"



We seem to think that because we have a much stronger candidate, the backing of Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and maybe Billy Jeff Clinton, a much stronger campaign strategy that is working the wonderful 50-state strategy in combination with the exceptional community activism skills of Obama and his staff, and many more young people involved such that they are energizing the election process for the first time in 30 or 40 years, that is enough to win.

We seem to think that because Shrub can't run again, and his approval ratings are in the tank, and Darth Cheney has no interest in running for a third term because he's used up all his presidential powers in the secretly formed fourth branch of government, that this campaign ought to be a cakewalk.

We seem to feel that, because we know we're right and the economy is fast heading toward the first Great Depression of this 21st Century, and jobs are getting fewer and fewer, and the cost-of-living is rising higher and higher, this ought to be an easy win.

While, combined, all of the above gives us a great chance to take back our government from the mattoids, the operative word missing from the phrase 'great chance' is 'fighting' - we have a great FIGHTING chance of winning this election and getting our guys in the Oval Office but, make no mistake, we will have to put up a brutal, bloody fight. DAILY. With only 53 days left until Election Day, we've got a lot of FIGHTING to do.



The only change in the 2008 opposition party is the physical appearance of the opponents - and the fact that we now recognize that we are battling against more than just the opposition party opponents in our bare knuckles fight to the finish. We are fighting corporate media, McCaint and his VP, the neo-conservative religious right and, sometimes, fighting among ourselves and that ain't good. Yes, sometimes we on the same side are fighting each other, maybe because we realize that so very much is at stake - not just the country we love and our children and grandchildren's future, but also the world at large. That's a lot on us and it is often daunting and sometimes family lashes out at family.

Yet bruisingly fight we must, although not so much and so openly with each other on strategy and campaign tactics because we are worried and upset that corporate media refuses to act with integrity. We need to gird our loins and get out there and fight with whatever weapons we have at our disposal, and our weapons are mighty to the pulling down of strongholds because our weapons are truth and right and powerful numbers of people all thinking in unison. Yet while we are on the right side of this fight, that ain't enough.

We shouldn't expect Obama and Biden to cover all the bases - they need us as desperately as we need them. Obama is not going to fight dirty - it'll take us to do that. He is what he is, and we are who we are; he's our candidate and we've got his back. We've got his back!

We've got to get out there and denigrate the right as hard and as much as they are denigrating our candidates; the difference will be that we will decimate them with the truth. Understand that WE'VE got to do it - We the Progressive Electorate.

We've got to be willing to go into enemy territory - in every state, every hamlet, every city, every household, even McCaint's many households when we have to, and fight the bruising fight. What's wrong with calling the McCaint campaign to let them know how sleazy they are, and what no account lowlifes they are, and how poorly they are running their campaign with racism, bullying and nontroversies? Nothing at all, and we should be doing it regularly. Instead of getting angry with Obama/Biden and posting attack diaries and nasty profanity laced comments against the Obama/Biden campaign and/or turning on each other, get on the phone or on the Mac or on the laptop or whatever you connect to the Internet with and fire off a letter or a comment to the McCaint campaign and his main base, corporate media.

At every turn, we should be flooding corporate media and their talking heads' email boxes and the phones of broadcast and print media expressing our outrage and chastising them for their poor coverage of the race.

But even that won't be enough.

We should be canvassing for ALL Democratic/Progressive candidates as much as we can, even if it is only a couple of houses or a couple of streets in our immediate neighborhoods. We should be keeping abreast of the down ticket races for Congress, and supporting our state and local candidates, and talking them up to our family, friends and, where possible, our co-workers.

We should be participating in phone banks for the Obama campaign as well as congressional campaigns with regularity.

We should be donating money to Obama/Biden, to the DNC, to the 527s, to any progressive cause that furthers our goals as they assemble ad attacks against the opposition while promoting the positive stance that our candidates have taken on the issues of most concern to us - poverty, the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, jobs, health care - and winning the election on November 4 for ALL of our candidates. Don't tell me you ain't got no money to donate because Obama accepts $5.00 donations.

We need to hunker down and get busy - it's winning time.

In the film The American President, Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd, did Aaron Sorkin's wonderful script an excellent turn in his monologue against Richard Dreyfuss' Republican Bob Rumson.

Everybody knows America isn't easy.
America is advanced citizenship.
You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's
gonna put up a fight. It's gonna
say, "You want free speech? Let's
see you acknowledge a man whose words
make your blood boil, who's standing
center stage and advocating, at the
top of his lungs, that which you
would spend a lifetime opposing at the
top of yours.

Then there was the seminal 1976 movie Network starring William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, and Faye Dunaway. Finch as fired network anchor Howard Beale marched to the studio in the rain to whip American television viewers into palpable anger in a memorable rousing rallying cry before the cameras about the betrayal and failures of elected leaders, the decline of integrity in the Fourth Estate, and broadcast media's manipulation for financial and ratings gain of We the People's right to know the truth (sounds familiar, doesn't it?).

All I know is first you got to get
mad. You've got to say: "I'm
mad as hell and I'm not going
to take this any more. I'm a
human being, goddammit. My life
has value." So I want you to
get up now. I want you to get
out of your chairs and go to
the window. Right now. I want
you to go to the window, open
it, and stick your head out
and yell. I want you to yell:
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not
going to take this any more!"

We need to be shouting "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore" every single day - and don't take it anymore. Do whatever you can to debunk the lies and ensure defeat of the opposition party's candidates on November 4.

Like Barack Obama, my favorite Republican president is Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the US. Roosevelt was the definitive reformation president - something Obama is well aware that he will have to be once he attains the office of the presidency.

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Winning is definitely DOABLE but it ain't a given, and it ain't going to be easy.

Get real and get mad, people.

Get mad and get busy.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"There is nothing more powerful than a made up mind."

YES WE CAN!

"Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future." ~ Denis Waitley

Talk to your neighbors, phone bank, canvass in your neighborhood, donate, register yourself and others and VOTE on November 4, 2008. Your country -- the world -- is depending on you to change the geo-political direction in which we are now traveling.

Believe You Can And You're Halfway There. ~ Teddy Roosevelt, 26th US President

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

It is ironic that the above quotes were made by a Republican president rated one of the best ever, yet the words are quite appropriate for the Obama/Biden campaign. Talk to your neighbors, phone bank, canvass in your neighborhood, donate, register yourself and others and VOTE on November 4, 2008. Your country -- the world -- is depending on you to change the geo-political direction in which we are now traveling.

Land That I Love!

What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see?
A certain word - democracy?
What is America to me?

Presidential candidate Barack Obama's historical speech was the most powerful political oration I've heard in years.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Senator Hillary Clinton D-NY, made me respect her again; her speeches before the Emily's List group and the New York delegation began to dissolve my animosity toward her, and I thought her speech on Tuesday night was the best she's ever made. But when she made the acclamation on the convention floor yesterday, her words brought me to tears.

It was as moving a moment as when, first Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg then Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, appeared on stage on Monday. As moving as Gov. Schweitzer and Rep. Kucinich's speeches on Tuesday night.

You see, I was born late in 1954, six months after Brown v. Board of Education when, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional - just one day after my mother's 20th birthday. I was born on a Congressional election day on Tuesday, November 2, when the Democrats won a majority in the mid-term elections and controlled Congress. I was born in the heart of dixie, in the cradle of the civil rights movement, in the bosom of Jim Crow - Birmingham, Alabama.

I am 10-12 days older than Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice; we were both most likely born in the then-segregated Jefferson County/Hillman Hospital, now the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital. My official birth certificate states that my mother and father - who was away fighting in the Korean Conflict at the time of my birth - were "colored."

I was a neonate of the mid-50s, and a child of the 60s, born near the end of the first official year of the civil rights timeline. 1965's Black Sunday aka the Selma to Montgomery March and the '67 riots in Newark and Detroit are indelibly imprinted on my memory. To this day, I can recall the assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK Jr., and RFK - I know where I was and what I was doing at the occurrence of each murder. I can vividly remember the individual community celebrations when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, perhaps the most underrated, under-celebrated president in American history.

I have personal stories of Jim Crow, discrimination, segregation and desegregation in Alabama and in the South. I vividly recall the colored and white fountains, swimming pools, and department store entrances, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and, at 5 years old, being snatched up and pulled to a rear seat of the bus by my maternal great grandmother as I attempted to sit next to a white woman on public transit. I was the first to attend college in my immediate family and, after returning to Birmingham in the 90s, I briefly worked for the public relations firm that handled the premiere of Spike Lee's "Four Little Girls".

I could go on about my unpleasant memories of last century, whether it's segregated schools or freedom of choice or busing or German shepherds or fire hoses or Bull Connor or Dr. King in the Birmingham jail.

Still, from a small child, I was taught all 66 books of the Bible - and loyalty and patriotism to both my fellow American citizens and my America, despite the degradations suffered by my people for hundreds of years. Thoughout high school, I was chosen to lead each of my homeroom classes in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In my over half-century existence, it never occurred to me - I never even considered - that we would have a viable black US presidential candidate in my lifetime. Even as a writer with an active imagination, I could never fathom nor ever fantasize about this, perhaps because the wounds of racism still remain unhealed in my life and in my country.

Yet, I have to say, I've never loved my country as much as I do now, no matter what happens in November.



What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see?
A certain word - democracy?
What is America to me?

The house I live in,
A plot of earth, a street,
The grocer and the butcher,
And the people that I meet.

The children in the playground,
The faces that I see.
All races and religions,
That's America to me!

The place I work in,
The worker by my side,
The little town, the city,
Where my people lived and died.

The howdy and the handshake,
The air a'feeling free,
And the right to speak your mind out -
That's America to me!

The things I see about me,
The big things and the small.
The little corner newsstand,
Or the house a mile tall.

The wedding and the churchyard,
The laughter and the tears,
And the dream that's been a'growing,
For about two hundred years.

The place I live in,
The street, the house, the room.
The pavement of the city,
Or a garden all in bloom.

The church, the school, the clubhouse -
The millions lights I see!
But especially the people - yes, especially the people
That's America to me!

To quote Governor Schweitzer of Montana, "That's it, baby! Let's go win the election!"

The Dumbing Down of America OR Why the US Badly Needs A Better Educational System and Smarter Presidential Leaders

Even using a foreign language doesn't get that spelling and pronunciation AND he has the audacity to tell others to get some gray matter.

I'm just saying. . . .

The General Election campaign officially begins this week, and I have only one piece of advice - no matter your political party persuasion, for the next two weeks watch 24-hour C-Span conventions coverage rather than cable or network news.

May the best candidates win. . . .

OR

Friday Funnies: Court Is Now In Session!

felicitydon.com

THE JUDGE OF THE COURT: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any.

Q: What is your brother-in-law's name?
A: Borofkin.
Q: What's his first name?
A: I can't remember.
Q: He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name?
A: No. I tell you I'm too excited. (Rising from the witness chair and pointing to Mr. Borofkin.) Nathan, for God's sake, tell them your first name!

Q: Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?
A: I refuse to answer that question.
Q: Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?
A: I refuse to answer that question.
Q: Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?
A: No.

Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?
A: No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region.

Q: What is your name?
A: Ernestine McDowell.
Q: And what is your marital status?
A: Fair.

Q: Are you married?
A: No, I'm divorced.
Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
A: A lot of things I didn't know about.

Q: And who is this person you are speaking of?
A: My ex-widow said it.

Q: How did you happen to go to Dr. Cherney?
A: Well, a gal down the road had had several of her children by Dr. Cherney, and said he was really good.

Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
A: I will be three months November 8th.
Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?

Q: Mrs. Smith, do you believe that you are emotionally unstable?
A: I should be.
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?
A: Four times.

Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you peformed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
Q: Were you aquainted with the deceased?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Before or after he died?

Q: Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?
A: Because he was argumentary and he couldn't pronunciate his words.
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me."
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.

Q: Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No. This is how I dress when I go to work.

Q: And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. O.K.? What school do you go to?
A: Oral.
Q: How old are you?
A: Oral.

Hat Tip to The Funny Pages. . . .

New York Times Columnist Frank Rich Calls Out the Press, John McCain and His Supporters

"The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November.

But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party’s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room at the Twin Cities airport.

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct. McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own enate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” — as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election. Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week.

Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me.

“If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”"

The Saga of the Ugly American/Drunken Bum In the Bleachers

There are no words . . .

Who Can You Trust - The 'We The People' Edition: Depends On Your Definition Of Crime . . .

Merriam-Webster - breaks down the word 'crime:'

Pronunciation: \ˈkrīm\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin crimen accusation, reproach, crime; probably akin to Latin cernere to sift, determine
Date: 14th century

1: an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law; especially : a gross violation of law

2: a grave offense especially against morality

3: criminal activity

4: something reprehensible, foolish, or disgraceful

synonyms see offense

Nevertheless, while speaking to members of the American Bar Association a day or so ago about the Justice Department's scandalous hiring practices under disgraced, mendacious former U.S. Attorney General Abu Alberto Gonzalez, the current Bush/Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY-appointed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey disputed/corrected/redefined Merriam-Webster's definition of 'crime' when he said,

"But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

Now I ask you - Who are these immoral, conscienceless people with no integrity who are now entrusted to lead the government for We the People, and from whence did they come?

Who do can you trust?

The Content of His Character

The mistake that Billy Jeff Clinton and other whites, as well as black progressives, make is that they forget that Democratic presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama was born to a white mother, and raised in Honolulu on the Hawaii island of Oahu, United States of America by Midwestern white grandparents.

He looks black, walks black, and has a black accent, yet he's the white guy who, when applying to Harvard Law, didn't list his race, and was accepted WITHOUT affirmative action, unlike Hatrold "Dark Sith" Ford, Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary Condoleeza Rice or any of the 9K+ black elected officials. He's the white guy who looks black who became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

He's the genuine black candidate that Billy Jeff always thought he was, though he wasn't and, because Obama looks black and married black, people make the mistake of dealing with him strictly as a black man; hence Billy Jeff's Jesse Jackson comment in South Carolina during the primaries. McCain't and his peeps also make the same mistake. Believe it or not, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove came closer to analyzing Obama correctly than anyone else - he just used the wrong analogy with the country club stuff.

Barack's political opponents deal with him as if he isn't their equal because he looks black; black folk deal with him as if he'll be president of a non-existent Black America, rather than the USA, and will thusly solve most of the chronic ills within the black community, all of which took generations to become so acute. Ironically, Obama's years of community activism in the poorest black neighborhoods of Chicago helped reinforce his identity both ways.

All who go there are making a HUGE mistake, one that Obama will continue to make useful throughout the second term of his moderate, progressive presidency. Make no mistake - Obama isn't -and won't be - left-leaning; in fact, he's nearly as centrist as Billy Jeff.

Unfortunately, it is to their detriment that people still judge folk by their skin color.

I'm just saying . . . .

Obama Is Right - In the Total Scheme of Things, Reparations Are Meaningless

"I have said in the past — and I'll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed," [Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama] said recently.

"There is a class of colored black people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to
get well." - Booker T. Washington, 1911

During this election season, American voters intending to cast their ballots for Barack Obama - especially black voters - need to understand that there will be a lot of divide and conquer strategies used against us. While McCain't knows that he won't get a large share of the black and Latino vote, the object of his game is to decrease black support while creating schisms between White, Latino and Black voters. Ergo, the sudden appearance of slavery apologies, hecklers and such.

Black people are easily distracted by bull feathers, and we're always so ready to mistrust our own, especially those of us who, as Miranda posted on JackandJillPolitics.com, don't pass the Authentically Black Test for which most of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are models. I see it happening already - we're not ready to give Obama the benefit of the doubt despite the constant and obvious dirty pool played against us by Caucasians.

We're ready to sacrifice the brother when white folks stir up bull feathers, and we never, ever hold whites to the same excessively high standards that we hold other blacks, especially high-achieving blacks like Barack Obama. It is a pity and a shame, really.

Obama is the best politician this country's seen in decades, yet we're ready to rend him asunder because he so eloquently expressed his disagreement with a pie-in-the-sky handout that will never, ever happen, as long as the earth is round.

We're always up for the feces that the white boy smears on and against black men like Obama; we're always down for telling the Clintons and McCain to sit down, we got this, 'this' being the dissecting, parsing, and weighing of Obama's every word, paragraph, phrase, promise.

Because he's not running for President of the United States of America; he's running for President of the United States of Black America and, you know, we're so special, although Obama really isn't like us.

Newsflash - ain't no such place called the United States of Black America. In fact, most of the time, we don't even like each other enough to stand together as a community, let alone as a nation.

I strongly doubt if either Jimmy Carter, the B-Actor Reagan, Pappy Bush, Billy Jeff Clinton or the 43rd Emperor Dim Son received even one letter or phone call from black folk demanding reparations and/or special treatment. With Billy Jeff, most of us were too busy designating him first black US president and extolling his most excellent virtues of liking peach cobbler, collard greens and corn bread, and operating on CP time, thus proving how authentically black he really is. I have been guilty of joking about him in this manner myself, so I know all about it.

Now that we have a chance to have a genuine black president of the WHOLE United States of America, we're falling into the usual crabs in a barrel trap of nitpicking Obama like the white folks are doing, just like they planned, because we deserve reparations for picking that cotton, feeling the hot licks of the seer's whip, and toting that barge, despite the fact that very few if any of us living in post-millennial America ever met a black ancestor who sharecropped, let alone was sold as a slave on the auction block at Maspero's.

For myself, I learned my lesson about Billy Jeff in 1996, and I already knew Shrub to be a sociopath who will sentence black folks to death in a heartbeat; his record as Texas governor speaks for itself.

So I ain't about to get on the 'Obama doesn't identify with black folks because he doesn't agree with reparations train,' and I'm not about to play into the white boys' hands - again - and betray Obama's trust by looking cock-eyed at him because he doesn't believe in reparations for black slavery.

See, I don't believe in reparations either - though the American Indian definitely deserves their land returned - and I was, frankly, suspicious of the suddenness of the slavery apology, instantly comprehending that it isn't worth the air it took to say it.

Seems to me that we're often seeking something for nothing, despite the proven fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Consequently, we frequently fall into the white man's trap set to betray our own because of our victim's mentality, among other dangerous notions and neuroses.

Yesterday on TMZ, one of the camera guys asked white actor Harry Dean Stanton what he thought of McCain. Old Man Stanton replied, "He's old and he's ill." We should remember that as it will stand us in good stead when Chicken Little-itis or the let's not trust Obama malady descends.

We need to keep our eyes on the prize, refusing to be distracted by the dumb junk thrown our way because a group of white folks see their chances to keep/take the White House slipping away.

Take your ADD/ADHD meds, if you must, because you need to remain focused. We should not be so easily distracted by the bullfeathers that's going to heavily rain om us as Obama continues his strong march toward the presidency while smoothly demonstrating how shoddy and cranky and evil and incompetent and unfit the opposition candidate is for the job. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted, not even by those who look like us.

Hold tight to the reins of your mules - it's going to be a bumpy ride.

WANTED: Stalwart Obama Supporters; Weak-Kneed Queasy Pie-backs Need Not Apply! You Will Be Tested.

"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." ~ First Corinthians 16:13

I have an affinity for political blogs and read at least four or five per day. But that may be changing since I notice that, on the more popular progressive blogs, fretful scaredy-cats are running almost 2-1 in their negative diaries/posts about Obama's chances, especially when the opposition pulls a dirty political ploy, as desperate nominees who are also mean-spirited are wont to do.

I am also sick and tired of the 'me is scared of she-whose-name-I-refuse-to-mention and her alleged 18 million rabid feminist supporters, bloggers, etc.' who, the talking heads say, won't vote for Obama, despite polling numbers - and campaign audiences - to the contrary. For instance, on one of my favorite political blogs, I found the following:

...with the Clinton’s out front for Obama, McCain would have to slime them as well, which would only make him look more desperate and foolish.

But if Bill and Hillary are holding back because they are still waiting for Obama to offer the VP slot to Hillary, and if the Democrats think that they can wait until sometime closer to their convention to organize and execute a coherent counter-strategy to McCain’s Rovian attack campaign—well, the Democrats just might find a way to piss away a victory in November.

To that I say, "Bull feathers." This thing about the Democrats - and Obama - needing the Clintons has gone far enough and needs to stop now, since it hasn't been a truism since Wednesday, February 6, 2008, the day after Super Tuesday, when Obama pulled ahead in delegates and in votes and never looked back, despite the rabidity of white feminists and the forked tongues of media pundits.

After the terrible campaign she-whose-name-I-still-can't-bring-myself-to-mention ran where she not only showed herself to be a poor manager, but she and her husband 'played the race card' more than a few times, and also attempted to use code words to call for Obama's assassination, there was no way she would have been chosen. Refusing to concede the night Obama became the presumptive nominee put that coffin six feet under.

Because of their feelings of entitlement, and given their attempts - under the auspices of the DLC - to split the Democratic Party, I never believed that they would EVER campaign for or with Obama and, thus far, I've been proven correct. I've said so since March, when even the junior senator knew that Obama would be the presumptive nominee, yet she continued racking up millions in debt, including loaning her campaign millions from the $100+ million family till.

Yet Obama didn't need the Clintons to win the primary - and he has never needed them to win an election. Against all odds (after all, as early as late 2005, she-who-shall-not-be-named was designated the presumptive nominee by virtually all of cable news' talking heads) and the obstacles they set for him, he won, in spite of them. In fact, the shoes are on the other feet and they need him, now that they have been effectively vanquished. Let's not forget too that Billy Jeff will never allow himself to be vetted - his post-presidential career has proved too lucrative. That too is a safe indication that she was never to be considered for vice president.

The destruction of Obama’s character will be complete

Another point on which I disagree because, as Al Giordano posted on The Field, "We Are the War Room We've Been Waiting For,"

You - and any neighbors, co-workers or relatives are walking around with false impressions in [your] heads . . .

The Howard Dean campaign showed in 2004 that the Internet could be utilized to raise millions of dollars in small donations, ending dependence on the "influence donors" that so destroyed the Democratic Party in recent decades. In 2008, the Obama campaign mastered that technique, and now pioneers its use as a messaging sword for those small donors and grassroots volunteers to make false rumors die the death of a thousand cuts.

Politics has . . . evolved from the centralized "war room" of the 1990s to a decentralized one that exists in a million or two homes right now, of which bloggers and independent media are a new kind of precinct captain that needs no orders from headquarters nor permission to take initiative. We saw that at work last weekend in the rapid response from the bottom up to the McCain campaign's false claims in a television ad about Obama's European trip. Only four days later, the McCain camp has backed down.

And that's a large reason why the Chicken Little proclamations that we so often read and hear elsewhere - the petulant demands from armchair campaign managers that the Obama campaign fight back in specific ways - are so silly: Surrogates almost always make the better counterpunchers and anybody with a modem or a network of friends or neighbors is now as much of a surrogate as the big names that can garner mass media attention. When you can do something yourself, it's just plain infantile to call upon daddy or mommy - or the presidential candidate or political leader upon which you project that role - to do it for you.

If progressives act as if McCain is a wizard who only needs to wave his POW/BBQ wand to win, as if he only needs to put on his tinfoil crown to be ordained president, they not only give him much more power than he has, they demonstrate pie-backed, lily-livered support for Obama, and he'd be better off without them. As a nation, we're in a pretty desperate fight for survival; it is the kind of brutal battle for which Chicken Littles need not apply, lest we have the same sort of morbidity exhibited during last century's Great Depression.

The evil that is McSame triumphs only if good people do nothing, except to cower and whimper as they write epitaphs for Obama based on the illusory power of McCain't - and his corporate media base. Obama will lose only if his weak-kneed supporters continue extolling the virtues of the monster that scares them, instead of doing what they can - and must do - to counter the lies and distortions themselves.

Like Al Giordano, I will not bow down, I will not go quietly. Like Al Giordano, I understand that, for the first time in our history, corporate media are not designing the political landscape or driving the political narrative.

Rather, the new media - the Netroots Nation - are setting the tone and, rather than crying and whining and diarying and blogging about every little dirty trick and every prevarication that desperate little century citizen pulls, we'll be burying his lies with truth.

People are acting all brand new, as if they expected McCentury to go quietly into that good night. He won't and I won't and neither should other Obama supporters.

Besides, if these guys can be Obama and proud, I can.

Pop Culture Pause - Nippy Houston's Back!

But first - push the button.

Go ahead - push the button.

PUSH THE [EXPLETIVE DELETED] BUTTON!!!



Now don't you feel better, and wasn't that good?

. . . About Whitney 'Nippy' Houston: Her single, "I Look to You," with Akon, is purportedly very good, and reports are that she's (almost?) back to her old singing self as the video below of her performance in Morroco attests. Her voice is relatively strong thus allowing you to tune out the audience sing-a-long.


That said, and the old adage "birds of a feather flock together" notwithstanding, I don't understand her penchant for hanging out with young hood rats. Reports are that last weekend, she and her squeegy, Ray J (Brandy's younger brother), were out and about, hitting the clubs, I guess. Photos below from Rhymes with Snitch.

Now find the ashy elbow.

Debts That Can Never Be Repaid: The American Indian - Part One

Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."
~ Song of Hiawatha: Introduction, Henry W. Longfellow

President Senator Barack Obama today discussed the plight of the Native American during the Q and A session at the UNITY Journalists of Color Convention:

“I think that there’s no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans . . . we’ve got some very sad and difficult things to account for.”

And then some. From broken treaties to broken promises for curing social ills, the US has denigrated and dessicrated the American Indian community.

There are 500 American Indian tribes, with the largest concentration of American Indians spread throughout the boroughs of New York City, according to the 2000 census.

Just after September 11, 2001, I began research on a potential book project honoring the Mohawk Skywalkers, the ironworkers who helped build the former World Trade Center. As my research progressed, I found information on first responders at Ground Zero, who also happened to be the Mohawks.

"There were about one hundred Mohawk men from the Ironworkers Union working at construction sites in NYC and New Jersey that morning and those who could headed directly to ground zero.

Some of these men had worked on the WTC from the beginning; they knew their way around the buildings and they hoped they could help save some lives.

Grave danger and pressure are a daily way of life for these men who toil high above the ground. They showed no fear; they knew the Great Spirit and the Spirits of their Forefathers were with them. They were some of the first rescuers on the scene, helping stunned and injured people out of the buildings. After the buildings collapsed they immediately began searching for survivors.

Meanwhile Michael Swamp had called the sister locals in Utica, Albany and Syracuse and coordinated recruitment of union members to relieve the hard-pressed workers.
They would spend days, weeks, and months clearing up the rubble. These brave and courageous Mohawk men followed a path that was walked before them by several generations of Mohawks from New York State, Quebec and Ontario. It was a path well worn, evolving out of necessity, courage, and pride."

Even so, now these brave ironworkers whose ancestors shed more blood and built more history in this country, on this continent, than any others, face tremendous health hazards resulting from their rescue/clearing efforts at Ground Zero.

More on debts owed to the American Indian in a subsequent post. . . .

"It's the Economy, Stupid."

I've always wondered why we really invaded Iraq and, after a bit of research, I believe I've found the answer.

The Invasion of Iraq: Dollar vs Euro -

"One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing."

This however would be a disaster for the US. Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the US would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards.

As countries and businesses converted their dollar assets into euro assets, the US property and stock market bubbles would, without doubt, burst. The Federal Reserve would no longer be able to print more money to reflate the bubble, as it is currently openly considering doing, because, without lots of eager foreigners prepared to mop them up, a serious inflation would result which, in turn, would make foreigners even more reluctant to hold the US currency and thus heighten the crisis.

"There is though one major obstacle to this happening: oil. Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally, it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialised economies. If you don't have oil, you have to buy it. And if you want to buy oil on the international markets, you usually have to have dollars. Until recently all OPEC countries agreed to sell their oil for dollars only.

So long as this remained the case, the euro was unlikely to become the major reserve currency: there is not a lot of point in stockpiling euros if every time you need to buy oil you have to change them into dollars. This arrangement also meant that the US effectively part-controlled the entire world oil market: you could only buy oil if you had dollars, and only one country had the right to print dollars -- the US.

Explains a lot, doesn't it? Including the reason that our fearless leaders didn't care that we were alienating most of the rest of the world by invading Iraq while ignoring Osama bin Laden (OBL), the alleged mastermind behind September 11, 2001.

Including the reason that 99% of our Congress initially voted for invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Candidly stated, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. puppet in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.

FYI, we're now in the time of Peak Oil.

Which leads us to the why of the sabre-rattling vis a vis Iran, and why our media tried so hard to talk up a pre-emptive strike:

The Iranians [have committed] an "offense" far greater than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro of Iraq’s oil exports in the fall of 2000. Numerous articles have revealed Pentagon planning for operations against Iran as early as 2005. While the publicly stated reasons will be over Iran's nuclear ambitions, there are unspoken macroeconomic drivers explaining the Real Reasons regarding the 2nd stage of petrodollar warfare - Iran's upcoming euro-based oil Bourse.

In 2005-2006, The Tehran government [developed] a plan to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades - using a euro-denominated international oil-trading mechanism. This means that without some form of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project for U.S. global domination, Tehran's objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on U.S. dollar supremacy in the international oil market.

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam’s long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintaining the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

Back on US soil, though the dollar has gained a bit today in the market, our economy remains steeped in a deep recession, with no end in sight, not even after the November General Election. Jobs are exceedingly hard to come by, shrinkage of the middle class continues, and banks continue to perform poorly.

Wachovia lost $8.9 billion in the 2nd quarter, cuts jobs and exits wholesale mortgage lending business.

The bank slashed its dividend and will cut 10,750 jobs as part of a turnaround plan. The job cuts are part of an expense-initiative launched in June. The Charlotte-based Wachovia (NYSE:WB) will eliminate 6,350 active jobs and 4,400 open positions and contractors as it works to find $1.5 billion in cost savings by 2009. About 40 percent of that will come from personnel.

Most of the job losses will come from the company's mortgage business. Wachovia expects to cut 4,400 mortgage employees over the next 12 months and announced it is exiting the wholesale mortgage lending business, meaning it will no longer offer home loans through brokers. Through June the company had eliminated 2,000 mortgage jobs.

Expect to see more shenanigans of this sort, and don't be fooled by the drop in cost of a barrell of oil.

Currency Converter by OANDA.com, The Currency Site.

(Semi-) Quick Hits, Caveats

Waves at Dr. Phil Gramm, Chief Economic Adviser and McCain Campaign Co-Chair, "Bye-bye...for now. Oh, and, stop yer whining:"

"It is clear that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Sen. McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Gramm said.

"Eh hee," laughs me.

Da furor over Der Spiegel's interview of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is stirring up the US Presidential Campaign as much as presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama's Middle East/European tour:

In the interview, Maliki expressed support of Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. "That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of changes."

Maliki was quick to back away from an outright endorsement of Obama, saying "who they choose as their president is the Americans' business." But he then went on to say: "But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that's where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited."

Though the US media's playing down the story as if they've been snake bitten by it (only the Los Angeles Times deigned to cover it front page above the fold, while network and cable news broadcasts are reportedly doing everything in their power to turn it into a positive for Senator John McCain), and though the Pentagon's US Central Command ('Cent Com') is now claiming that it was them who "misunderstood, misinterpreted, maybe even misunderestimated al-Maliki's statements, Der Spiegel's still owning their story that al-Maliki punked Bush and McCain.

Speaking of corporate media, Obama is traveling with all three network anchors - Couric, Gibson and Williams - pretty much ensuring that his fact-finding mission abroad will dominate the news. Not that corporate media's toadies are happy about it.

More media news as major city newspapers continue bleeding staff and buying up smaller publications, etc.: Orlando Sentinel Newsroom Cuts; Sacramento Bee Taking Over Printing Of Modesto Sibling; The Baltimore Sun Cuts 55 Newsroom Jobs; Palm Beach Post Buyout Program Over-Subscribed, But Layoffs Still Coming.

Since it's release on Friday, The Dark Knight has a domestic gross of $155,340,000, and a foreign gross of $40,000,000, according to Box Office Mojo. Told you it will be the biggest movie of the year. Here's another prediction - this superhero movie will be the first to get Oscar nominations, and not just a posthumous BSA for Heath Ledger. . . .

As for the Tom Cruise vehicle, Valkyrie, I predict it'll never get out of the can.

If you like baseball, or even if you don't, you still ought to watch this month's Costas Now with baseball's kings of swing and pitching - Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, 'Santa Anita' Pete Rose, Jim Palmer, Dave Winfield, Bob Gibson - along with other old school baseball heroes all on stage discussing what it was like to play against and with each other back in the day. Must see TV, in fact, and watch it with your young'uns, so that they get to see some of the greatest players of the game who set the records now being broken without cheating being juiced.

Are all Le Tour de France cyclists ridin' dirty?

IMF Gloomy on Growth, Sees Rising Inflation Threat - They also said last Thursday that "the Global economy is in a tough spot, and the "U.S. economy has 'nearly stalled but hasn't stalled.'" Repeat after me - "We are in a deep recession, headed for a depression, which may be the only way to get an economic correction." There now, don't you feel better now that you've admitted it?

Meanwhile, the job picture remains bleak as jobless claims rise 18,000 - "Although claims were below expectations for the second week in a row, we note that the four-week average in claims remains above the 375,000 level that we associate with borderline recession conditions in the economy," according to John Ryding and Conrad DeQuadros of RDQ Economics.

AP Appoints New National Race and Ethnicity Writer

After reviewing 449 candidates for the position, The Associated Press has appointed Jesse Washington, AP's entertainment editor, its new "race and ethnicity" writer. He succeeds Erin Teixeira.

According to Mike Oreskes, AP's managing editor for U.S. news, "Jesse brings to this new assignment more than just a resume of achievements. He has lived the subject of race and ethnicity every day of his 39 years."

The son of an interracial marriage, Washington is, as he puts it, "a kid from the projects who went to Yale and married a doctor. I’m a person who fits in everywhere and nowhere."

Paul Krugman Tells 'Net' Activists: Obama Will Win -- But Then Press Will [Continue to] Slam Him

Speaking at an afternoon panel at the enormous Netroots Nation (formerly known as Yearly Kos) convention in Austin, Texas, on Friday, Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, predicted, with seeming confidence, an Obama victory in November -- but added that "within three months of taking office, no, less than three months" the media would be out to get him, as much as they had at the high point of
anti-Bill Clinton bashing.

Krugman was responding to a questioner who had stated that the media was "in the pocket" of the "government." Krugman pointed out that this was hardly the case when Clinton was in the White House and would be proven again when Obama took over. "Get ready for it," he warned.

Obama To Speak At Unity '08 Week (July 27) After All

Unity: Journalists of Color Inc. said Obama will speak to the convention Sunday morning July 27 in what is expected to be his first national appearance after returning from his travel to Europe and the Middle East.Unity said it had also invited the presumptive Republican candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, to speak at the quadrennial convention as well. It had not able to secure his commitment as of late Saturday, Unity added.

Unity said Obama's appearance will be broadcast live on CNN, and will involve journalists of color from CNN, Time Magazine and the four journalists associations.

"We are pleased that our Unity colleagues will have the chance to hear from Sen. Obama and be among the first to question him upon his return from his overseas trip," Unity President Karen Lincoln Michel said. "We hope that in this historic campaign, Sen. McCain, whose presence is equally important, will also address our audience -- the kind of audience that reflects the growing diversity in America."

Finally, this is the inauguration of my weekly BAP (Black American Progressive) Award. The award is non-partisan in every aspect, and will be awarded across all media. Blogs, blog commenters, journalists, musicians, actors, athletes, men, women, children, events, recipes - well, you get the picture. In other words, anyone and anything can win, depending on my whim.

This week's winner is poster Dennis - SGMM on John Cole's Balloon Juice.

"The candidate who "knows how to win wars" doesn’t seem to know that running your mouth about movements is a sure-fire way to lose. No wonder he got shot down: he probably told every hooker in the Philippine Islands exactly when and where he’d be heroically dropping bombs.

So Phil Gramm steps down. No one could have anticipated that the McCain campaign would have room for only one flannel-mouthed old a**hole."

QUICK HITS -- AND ONE LONG CAVEAT

Bernie Mac is only a Barack Obama campaign issue if he didn't bring the funny to the fundraising attendees, most of whom paid a pretty penny to be present.

The Obama Family made a great appearance on Access Hollywood and the girls' most excellent interview with Maria Menounos is not a campaign issue.

Dear Phil Gramm: I don't whine. Sincerely....

Polls don't mean diddly until after the conventions.

FISA ain't the real issue -- we've been illegally wiretapped since the 1960s when ATT ruled all telecommunications. But the Patriot Act and crimes committed by a certain administration, including treason with the outting of Valerie Plame, are issues that we ought to be up in arms about instead.

Repeat after me - "We are in a recession; we are in a deep recession; we are headed for a serious depression."

Ben Bernanke inherited the mess that Alan Greenspan made.

Per their bosses, broadcast media will continue their tabloid news coverage, and will continue to hype McCain while ignoring Obama. The only way they will change is if the masses stop watching their shows. Any of their shows.

Dark Knight will garner the largest summer box office, possibly even 2008's box office winner.

The Statement of Forces Act (SOFA) that the US has been attempting to negotiate with Iraq is effectively dead. There will be an interim plan, but Iraq continues to insist that they want our troops out of their country sooner rather than later. This does not bode well for McCain.

According to today's Los Angeles Times, Obama, McCain agree on many once-divisive issues. Now had I written that headline, it would have more accurately read "After appropriating Obama's logo, slogan, McCain now mimics Obama on immigration, stem cell, nuclear proliferation, faith-based social services, expanded government wiretapping, global warming and most other issues. Hey, but at least the Associated Press is trying to get it right.

Oil prices will rise to $150 per barrel by the end of August, if not before, and will hit $200 per barrel by the end of the year. This is based on the fact that, as of today, the price per barrel rose to $147.

The surviving King siblings are the perfect example that battles over inherited money more often than not destroy close family relationships. Need more anecdotal evidence? Siblings fight over Jimi Hendrix Estate; Hunt (ketchup, tomato paste) trust fund battle gets personal.

The Governator has volunteered to serve as Energy Czar in the Obama Administration. First, he'll have to run that by his wife and daughter.

Remember the civil war in Sri Lanka? Well, it's still raging.

Analysts say more U.S. banks will fail:

As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, U.S. regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year.

But after a large mortgage lender in California collapsed late Friday, Wall Street analysts began posing two crucial questions: Just how many banks might falter? And, more urgently, which one could be next?

The nation's banks are in far less danger than they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when more than 1,000 federally insured institutions went under during the savings-and-loan crisis. The debacle, the greatest collapse of American financial institutions since the Depression, prompted a government bailout that cost taxpayers about $125 billion.

But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers.

"Everybody is drawing up lists, trying to figure out who the next bank is, No. 1, and No. 2, how many of them are there," said Richard Bove, the banking analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann, who released a list of troubled banks over the weekend. "And No. 3, from the standpoint of Washington, how badly is it going to affect the economy?"

Many investors are on edge after federal regulators seized the California lender, IndyMac Bank, one of the nation's largest savings and loans, last week. With $32 billion in assets, IndyMac, a spinoff of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, was the biggest American lender to fail in more than two decades.

Now, as the Bush administration grapples with the crisis at the nation's two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a rush of earnings reports in the coming days and weeks from some of the nation's largest financial companies are likely to provide more gloomy reminders about the sorry state of the industry.

The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is vital to the banks, savings and loans and credit unions, which own $1.3 trillion of securities issued or guaranteed by the two mortgage companies. If the mortgage giants ever defaulted on those obligations, banks might be forced to raise billions of dollars in additional capital.

The large institutions set to report results this week, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, are in no danger of failing, but some are expected to report more multibillion-dollar write-offs.

Finally, with all it's failures, faults and foibles, I love America, I absolutely love it.



PS - Jesse's afro was pamoja, wasn't it? Check him out with the black power sign. Eh hee.

Update on Yesterday's Web Security Report

PC Magazine has an update on yesterday's report of the DNS security flaw.

Internet Bug Fix Spawns Backlash From Hackers

Dan Kaminsky, who got a lot of flack from his colleagues in the security research community after claiming to have discovered a critical bug in the Internet's infrastructure.

Kaminsky made headlines on Tuesday by talking about a major flaw in the DNS (Domain Name System), used to connect computers to each other on the Internet. In late March he grouped together 16 companies that make DNS software -- companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Sun Microsystems -- and talked them into fixing the problem and jointly releasing patches for it.

But some of Kaminsky's peers were unimpressed. That's because he violated one of the cardinal rules of disclosure: publicizing a flaw without providing the technical details to verify his finding. On Wednesday he took things a step further on his blog, asking hackers to avoid researching the problem until next month, when he plans to release more information about it at the Black Hat security conference.

The flaw appears to be a serious one that could be exploited in what's called a "cache poisoning attack." These attacks hack the DNS system, using it to redirect victims to malicious Web sites without their knowledge. They have been known about for years but can be hard to pull off. But Kaminsky claims to have found a very effective way of launching such an attack, thanks to a vulnerability in the design of the DNS protocol itself.

On Tuesday, however, Kaminsky held back from disclosing the technical details of his finding.

He said he wanted to go public with the issue to put pressure on corporate IT staff and Internet service providers to update their DNS software, while at the same time keeping the bad guys in the dark about the precise nature of the problem. A full public disclosure of the technical details would make the Internet unsafe, he said in an interview Wednesday. "Right now, none of this stuff needs to go public."

He quickly received a skeptical reaction from Matasano Security researcher Thomas Ptacek, who blogged that Kaminsky's cache poisoning attack is merely one of many disclosures underlining the same well-known problem with DNS -- that it does not do a good enough job in creating random numbers to create unique "session ID" strings when communicating with other computers on the Internet.

From the Better Late than Never Forewarned is Forearmed File: DNS Web Security Flaw Uncovered

Buried on page C3 of the Los Angeles Times' Business section is an alert that affects the integrity of the Web and email. In an article by Times staff writer Joseph Menn, a security expert acknowledged the bug, yet failed to discuss its ramifications in depth.

Security researchers on Tuesday said they had discovered an enormous flaw that could let hackers steer most people using corporate computer networks to malicious websites of their own devising.

System administrators will have 30 days to apply a patch issued by virtually every major software company affected - from the likes of Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Red Hat Inc, and others before the details of the flaw are disclosed at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

According to security expert Stuart Kaminsky of the security firm IOActive, Inc., who discovered the flaw, security experts hope that the patches are broad enough that evil types won't be able to reverse-engineer them to exploit the vulnerablity.

"We got lucky in this particular bug, because it's a design flaw," Kaminsky said in an interview. "It shows up in everyone's network, but the fix is a design fix that doesn't point directly at what we're improving."

US CERT, the Computer Emergency Readiness Team at the Department of Homeland Security, issued an alert Tuesday on the scope of the problem. CERT made the initial discovery seem like child's play.

"It took a couple of hours to fiind the bug," said Kaminsky, "and a couple of months to fix it." He said that he'd "stumbled" across the hole in the so-called DNS system for steering people to the websites they are seeking "by complete and total accident." Smaller DNS flaws have been used before to "poison" the servers that send people to the numerical address of the website name they enter.

However, this bug is at least one order of magnitude bigger, and may even be more than one bug.

"This is about the integrity of the Web, this is about the integrity of email," Kaminsky said. "It's more, but I can't talk about how much more."

In other Web news, Electronic Arts Inc., developers of the popular word board game Scrabble, has developed an 'authorized' version of the game to compete with the unauthorized Scrabulous game so popular on social network Facebook. Facebook's Scrabulous currently has nearly half a million daily users.

Barclay's, Royal Bank of Scotland Warn - Global Crash Coming Soon

Warnings of a financial storm as Federal Reserve's credibility crumbles

US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shock that will rock financial markets, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero".

"We're in a nasty environment," said Tim Bond, the bank's chief equity strategist. "There is an inflation shock underway. This is going to be very negative for financial assets. We are going into tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth." Barclays Capital said in its closely-watched Global Outlook that US headline inflation would hit 5.5pc by August and the Fed will have to raise interest rates six times by the end of next year to prevent a wage-spiral. If it hesitates, the bond markets will take matters into their own hands.

"This is the first test for central banks in 30 years and they have fluffed it. They have zero credibility, and the Fed is negative if that's possible. It has lost all credibility," said Mr Bond.

The grim verdict on Ben Bernanke's Fed was underscored by the markets yesterday as the dollar fell against the euro following the bank's dovish policy statement on Wednesday.

Traders said the Fed seemed to be rowing back from rate rises. The effect was to propel oil to $138 a barrel, confirming its role as a sort of "anti-dollar" and as a market reproach to Washington's easy-money policies.

The Fed's stimulus is being transmitted to the 45-odd countries linked to the dollar around world. The result is surging commodity prices. Global inflation has jumped from 3.2pc to 5pc over the last year.

The bank said the full damage from the global banking crisis would take another year to unfold.

Rob McAdie, Barclays' credit strategist, said: "The core issues have not been addressed. We're still in a very large deleveraging cycle and we're seeing losses continue to mount. We think smaller banks will struggle to raise capital. We're very bearish - in the long-term - on high-yield debt. The default rate will reach 8pc to 9pc next year."

He said investors had taken their eye off the slow-motion disaster engulfing the US bond insurers or "monolines". Together these firms guarantee $170bn of structured credit and $1,000bn of US municipal bonds.

He said it would be madness to throw millions out of work by deflating part of the economy to offset a rise in imported fuel and food prices. Real wages are being squeezed by oil, come what may. It may be healthier for society to let it happen gently.

And The Royal Bank Of Scotland

has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.
"A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared," said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist.

A report by the bank's research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as "all the chickens come home to roost" from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.

On the global economy:

Our macro economic road map is playing out - slow growth for longer, deep into 2009, with the pain spreading globally, gradually. People are beginning to wake up to the view that 2009 growth will be stagnant and weaker than 2008.

The twist however is inflation, and in particular how central bankers deal with this stubborn problem. The worry is that the ECB raises [interests] rates even as growth falters, leading to bigger cuts in 2009.

In the US, policy paralysis is possible, whatever the Fed jaw-boning. And in Asia, uncertainty reigns. All in all, a poor backdrop for risk assets and a sure fire recipe for higher volatility.

On stocks and credit:

For risk assets, that downward revision to growth forecasts was something we expected to be translated into lower earnings estimates and higher forecasts of corporate defaults.

We have repeatedly argued against getting bullish risk assets until this re-assessment has happened. The run-up in oil prices, and the policy response to that, adds a few twists.

Thereafter I expect markets to attempt to go a little better over the very end of June and into July, but this will, I think, be a pretty feeble rally both in terms of size (50/70 S&P points) and time (2 to 4 weeks).

What it will do however is set up what I think will be THE SIGNIFICANT opportunity this year to get short stocks and/or credit (credit will react to, and 'relatively' outperform stocks).

Though times are already terribly tough in nearly every aspect of life, from global natural disasters to the high cost of living even in the most remote and rural areas of the US and the world, believe it or not, things will get worse. Those who don't have an 'invisible means of support' will be soon seeking it.

Both banks also advise those who have jobs to do everything you can to keep them, and use less or even no credit - only cash.

Batten down your hatches - we're in for a bumpy ride all over the globe.

Watching the World Go By - Random Thoughts

People, Places and Things I like:

Reading,
Writing, Cooking,
Eating, My Blackberry Pearl,
Family Radio, Dressing well,

Larchmont Place,
Melrose Avenue,
The Grove,
Good movies,
My apartment,
Melodious music,
Collecting books,
Surprise checks in the mail,
Most every job I've ever held for six months or more,
Los Angeles,
Santa Monica,
New Orleans,
San Francisco,
Paris, France,
Florence, Italy,
Istanbul, Turkey,

Pete's Bar & Grill in Downtown LA,
King Taco,
Hunan Taste,

Senator Barack Obama,
Michelle Obama,
C-Span,
Horses,

Dobermans,

Keith Olbermann,

Jonathan Alter,
My 'gator sandals,
Jeans that fit well,
Moroccan Brick Chicken that I make myself,
Chicken Tikka Masala,
Parmesan Chicken,
Indulge Cafe's Burgers and Fries,
Johnny Rocket's Chocolate Shakes,
Dreyers Neapolitan Ice Cream,
Having a passport, thus giving me the illusion that I can fly away anytime I want,
Del.icio.us.com,
Entertainment Lawyer's Blog,
Esquire and Town and Country magazines,
Walking on the beach,
Riding Amtrak,
Catalina Island,
Boston Proper catalog shopping,
Cookbooks,
Lorna Doones,
Cheez-Its,

Alligator pastry,
Jamba Juice,
Beringer White Zinfandel,

Korbel Champagne.......

Turd Blossom Fertilizing Air with Foolishness

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

Of course, few neoconservatives either take or offer good advice, and Shrub's former brain is no different. Not even when the advice is given by the most famous republican of the 19th Century, Abraham Lincoln.

Still, when you're spouting ignorant junk like this, you need to take any good advice thrown at you.

ABC News' Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as "coolly arrogant."

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Talk about slaves to the rhythm. Yeah, in honor of Grace Jones, I went there and I'm glad to have a chance to sneak in a fresh Grace Jones photo because she is cool, because there's a rumor afoot that she's attempting a comeback, and because she has the perfect expression for this particular post.

"Say what?"

James Dobson and Democratic Presumptive Nominee Barack Obama Distort Discuss the Bible

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.
"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said."

... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

You decide.

Los Angeles Times: McCain's gamble on offshore drilling = California concession?


Schwarzenegger, who endorses McCain, forcefully brushed aside the
unofficial GOP presidential nominee's position last week."We made a decision a while back to say no drilling off our shores in California, and we are serious about that and we're not going to change that, no matter who is recommending other things," Schwarzenegger said, pressing for alternative fuel solutions.California has much more virulently opposed offshore drilling than have other states. Political analysts, including Republicans, said McCain's stance suggested a trade-off -- winning votes in key Midwest states on the issue at the cost of losing them in California."McCain is essentially conceding what would have been an uphill fight in California in order to strengthen his opportunities in states like Michigan and Ohio," said Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who worked for McCain in 2000.

Not that there was even a slim chance that the repug would carry California in the General Election anyway....

Obama's 50-state strategy will continue to put McMorton's campaign in dire financial straits, decisively decreasing McMorton's ability to compete in so-called battleground states.

There's a new sheriff in town; his name is Barack Obama.


Assistant says Billy Jeff 'committed' to Obama

Former US President Bill Clinton has announced for the first time that he is backing fellow Democrat Barack Obama to win the US presidential election. Mr Clinton's wife Hillary was Mr Obama's biggest rival for the party nomination, and he was often critical of Mr Obama on the campaign trail.

Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are set to hold a joint rally on Friday. Mr Clinton will be in Europe to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and will not attend the rally.
The Obama campaign welcomed Mr Clinton's declaration of support, saying: "A unified Democratic Party is going to be a powerful force for change this year and we're confident President Clinton will play a big role in that."

Relations between Mr Clinton and Mr Obama have been "frosty" since Mrs Clinton suspended her campaign, and the two men have not spoken, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The Clintons are exceptionally poor losers, and are still smarting about Obama's audacious win. After all, they firmly believed in the dynastic plans they'd hatched years ago and fully expected to follow in line with their good friends, the Bushes. Two things to watch closely - whether she actually campaigns for Obama in key 'battleground' states, and when/if she comes out swinging hard on her good friend,McMorton, whom she so proudly vetted during her bitter campaign against Obama, at her fellow Democratic opponent's expense. Now, she could have done the latter at her semi-concession speech a few Saturdays ago, but she didn't, so we shall see.

About Clinton's $10 million campaign debt that some white folk like MSNBC broadcaster Andrea Mitchell Greenspan seem to feel is Obama's duty to settle. By the end of March, Clinton knew she'd lost the nomination, yet continued her Quixotic run just to decimate Obama's reputation while giving her friend, McMorton ammunition, albeit weak, with which to shoot at Obama. Ergo, settling her debt to 'small business vendors' shouldn't be an Obama campaign problem. Case study: Former astronaut and US senator from Ohio, John Glenn struggled took 20 years to pay off the debt he accumulated when he ran for president in 1984.

Senator John Glenn of Ohio ended his 1984 Democratic presidential bid with nearly $3 million in debt. He struggled for more than 20 years to pay it off until the Federal Election Commission issued him a reprieve.

What makes Mrs. Clinton’s situation unusual is the combination of unpaid bills and her own personal loan. Records show that other unsuccessful candidates owed less than half to their vendors than what she owes to businesses. “It’s unprecedented,” said Jan Baran, a campaign finance lawyer with Wiley Rein.

Mrs. Clinton’s options for retiring her debt are limited. On the positive side, she has raised about $1 million online and by mail since polls closed in Montana and South Dakota ... to end the primary season, her campaign said. The continued flow of
donations, even after Senator Barack Obama had crossed the threshold of delegates he needed to claim the nomination, may indicate that some of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters may be devoted enough to pitch in to help with her debt.

Obama Mania

Senator Barack Obama has angered many progressive democrats and independents with his support of the new FISA bill. Commenters on progressive blogs have denounced and rejected the Senator from Illinois, stating that they will not only withdraw their support, they will vote for the repug Senator from Arizona, John "Salty Drama Queen" McCain in the General Election.

This is wrong-headed, short-term, immature, fair weather, knee jerk thinking, not because the bill isn't a travesty - it is - not because it tramples the rights of all US citizens while not advancing the so-called War on Terror - it does. But withdrawing support from Obama, calling him a liar and a coward smacks of hero disillusionment rather than practical politics.

Perhaps Senator Obama will do as it is said he promised earlier this year and promised just days ago - filibuster and/or fight to have the telecom immunity clause removed from what former Special Counsel to President Nixon, John Dean, calls, "a poorly drafted bill." Or perhaps not. Either way, this bill should not be the defining moment as to whether one will support Obama or not, and there are many more reasons to trust and vote for Obama, than there are to vote for Senator McMorton.

On his blog, The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan posted the following from a couple of readers:

"This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside. I never doubted his cunning or his charisma. It's the combo that's so lethal. Are the Republicans awake yet? The Clintons weren't."

"As a Chicagoan who has watched Obama emerge on the national scene, I couldn't agree with you more about his cunning and charisma. Before things really started ramping up, people asked me whether he had a chance against the Clinton attack machine and I said "I look at all his opponents on both sides of the aisle and think, you poor, sad fools. You don't even know what you are getting into."

Sullivan then went on to say:

Every time I read articles about this I think about Herndon's statement about Lincoln: "That man who thinks Lincoln sat down calmly and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln. He was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." That describes Barack Obama to a tee which is precisely why he is such an incredibly deadly politician.

I have to agree with Sullivan and the people he quotes. This FISA fight ain't over, and Obama's not so unsubtle as to react in such a way as to offend his enemies on both sides of the aisle. His fellow Congresscritters - those Democrats who voted for and will vote for this bill in both Houses - put him in a horrendous position from which he has to, at least politically, carefully extricate himself.

If he can.

Meanwhile, we continue to fight the fight we're fighting - to elect a moderate pol into the White House, someone who has a good grasp and a healthy respect for the Constitution, and a seemingly fair sense of decency.

Foreign Policy: The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2007

10. Armed Robots Take the Field in Iraq

Americans let robots vacuum their floors, mow their lawns, and build their cars. Now, they’re even letting them fight their wars. In June, with little fanfare, the U.S. Army deployed the first armed robots to Iraq, marking a new era in modern warfare.

Although militaries have used robots for everything from minesweeping to defusing bombs, the new “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system”—or SWORDS—is different. For one, it’s packing heat: an M249 machine gun, to be exact. It can fire on a target from more than 3,000 feet away. So far, three of these $250,000 robots have been deployed to Iraq to conduct dangerous ground operations that would otherwise put soldiers’ lives at risk. And reinforcements are coming: More than 100 SWORDS robots have either been built or requested, and the U.S. government has budgeted about $1.7 billion on ground-based military robots between 2006 and 2012.

However, the military isn’t quite ready to shelve their human counterparts just yet. The SWORDS robots now seeing action in Iraq are manned by soldiers who remotely control their every move. But this new development does raise serious ethical and technological issues about the future of intelligent machines in war. As Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, says, “If something goes wrong—and it always will—who is responsible? It’s a classic question from science fiction, and yet our laws are so far silent on it.”

Perhaps, though, after seeing more than 4,000 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is ready to try something different. Even if that means writing a new chapter in the story of man vs. machine.

9. American Jews Turn away from Israel

In the first week of September, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s controversial book, The Israel Lobby, hit bookstores. In it, the authors argue that Israel supporters have excessive influence on U.S. foreign policy and consistently skew U.S. policies in favor of Israel. Coincidentally, in the same week, a little-noticed study found that young American Jews are less likely to support Israel than ever before. “Feelings of attachment may well be changing, as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference may even give way to downright alienation,” the study’s coauthors, Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Y. Kelman of the University of California, Davis, wrote in their introduction.

Based on a written survey of 1,704 non-Orthodox American Jews, just 48 percent of respondents under the age of 35 would consider the destruction of Israel a “personal tragedy,” as opposed to 77 percent of those 65 and older. Only 54 percent of the younger group said they were even “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish State,” compared to 81 percent of the elderly respondents.

Political ideology has nothing to do with the lack of concern, according to the authors; intermarriage among faiths and the decline of a “collective view of being Jewish” explain the shift. For those who believe that U.S. foreign policy suffers for its pro-Israel positions, a wave of apathy may be on the way.

8. Dengue Fever Runs High

We all know that climate change can lead to unexpected hazards. Add one more to the list: the spread of dengue fever. Warmer climates may be putting millions of people around the world at risk for the disease, a virus that causes excruciating pain in people’s joints. This year is on track to be the worst year in nearly a decade for the mosquito-borne virus, also known as “bone-breaker disease.” In its milder form, dengue causes flu-like symptoms that last about a week. But about 5 percent of all cases develop into a potentially fatal form that can cause internal and external bleeding.

Trends in Latin America and Southeast Asia have epidemiologists especially worried. The number of dengue cases in Latin America exploded to an estimated 1 million in 2007, twice the amount in 2006. Paraguay declared a state of emergency in March, and even Puerto Rico was logging 500 cases a week at the height of its outbreak. By October, 183 people had died in the region. Southeast Asia was also hit hard. Indonesia clocked 123,500 cases by October, with more than 1,250 people dead. Significant outbreaks have flared up in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Although there is no vaccine, it doesn’t have to be this way. Singapore got its dengue problem largely under control by running the world’s toughest war on mosquitoes. Others should follow its lead.

7. Thai Junta Gives Itself a Raise

After taking power in a bloodless coup in September 2006, Thailand’s generals understood their top priority: giving themselves a fat raise. The military budget has increased 66 percent since the overthrow of the civilian government, and it is expected to grow to nearly $5 billion in 2008. The junta’s leaders claim they’re simply replacing much-needed weaponry and invigorating the fight against Muslim separatists in the south. But the spending spree includes a Russian submarine, Chinese surface-to-surface missiles, and $1 billion for a dozen Swedish-made jet fighters—hardly the tools for quelling a domestic insurgency, say military analysts. And in a July editorial, the Bangkok Post noted “strong suspicion across the country that the generals are padding the military budget for no other reason than because they can.”

Although Thailand has long been an important U.S. ally, the Thai military brass are apparently happy to listen to anyone who will write a check. China was the first country to recognize the new post-coup government, and it quickly provided $40 million in military aid and training for Thai officers in China. Relations between Bangkok and Beijing have rarely been more cozy. And though the Thai generals said they were only taking over to safeguard democracy, their biggest accomplishment so far seems to be padding their own wallets.

6. The American Heartland Grows Crops—with Human Proteins

Farmers have long experimented with crops bred to produce better yields, with few ill effects. But with little public debate, something entirely new—rice engineered to produce human proteins—is coming to a grocery store near you. In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorized Ventria Bioscience to grow as many as 3,200 acres of special rice that produces proteins normally found in breast milk.

The California-based company hopes to market its rice as the key ingredient in a cheap formula to treat diarrhea, a condition that kills 3 million children worldwide each year. The company believes its special brand of rice may be of particular appeal to aid organizations. Yet Ventria maintains that pharmaceutical rice doesn't need the clinical testing required of new drugs because it's a food, not a drug. U.S. rice growers, however, fear a backlash from customers in Europe and Asia if medicine gets accidentally mixed in with the food supply. Anheuser-Busch, the largest rice buyer in the United States, used its considerable clout to keep Ventria's "pharming" techniques out of Missouri--and out of its beer. Mere paranoia? Only two months before it gave Ventria the green light, the USDA banned another company's variety of long-grain rice that may have been contaminated by mysterious genetic material.

Undeterred, Ventria is plowing ahead. This fall, the first batch of its breast-milk rice was harvested outside Junction City, Kansas. Ventria's rice is supposed to hit markets in 2008, and it will likely be just the first of many pharmaceutical crops. Aspirin corn, anyone?

5. The Cubans Are Coming

Most recent media attention on Cuba has focused on the health of long-time leader Fidel Castro. But while everyone has been reading the tea leaves in Havana, more Cubans have been quietly fleeing to the United States than ever before. According to a report by the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, nearly 77,000 Cubans crossed into the United States in 2006 and 2007. That’s more than twice the number of refugees who arrived on Florida’s shores during the summer of 1994, when more than 38,000 Cubans fled the island after Castro opened the ports to all who wished to leave. If the current trend holds, the United States will have received 267,000 Cuban immigrants this decade. That’s more than any other decade since Castro took power in 1959.

The current flow from Cuba is not due to political persecution, as in years past. Surprisingly, it’s the country’s surging economy. Although the country’s GDP grew at an impressive 11.1 percent last year, the boom hasn’t translated into real employment opportunities on the ground. Younger Cubans, in particular, are disillusioned by the prospect of economic change under Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother and heir apparent. “These are, in many cases, professional Cubans—teachers, doctors, or young people who see no future on the island, and don’t see Raul Castro being able to deliver soon enough,” says Hans de Salas-del Valle, author of the report. Today, there are no television images of refugees desperately clinging to rafts in the Florida straits. Instead, refugees are paying thousands of dollars to smugglers who will get them out, a few people at a time.

4. Waiting on the Iraqi Navy

U.S. presidential candidates spent much of 2007 denouncing the prospect of any permanent American presence inside Iraq. But, in some respects, the question is moot. Because, whatever the politicians may say, the Pentagon is committing itself to guarding the country’s oil supply indefinitely.

In November, the U.S. Navy held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a military installation on top of Iraq’s Khor al Amaya oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf. Along with its neighboring Basra terminal, the platform is crucial to the global economy; together, the two terminals are theoretically capable of holding nearly 10 percent of the world’s daily oil demand.

Pentagon officials insist that those fearing a permanent U.S. military presence needn’t worry. Not only will the facility house British and Australian sailors as well as Americans but the U.S. military will hand the base over to the marines of the Iraqi Navy as soon as they are ready. Nevermind that, as the Wall Street Journal reported, their patrol boats today consist of “rusting hulks,” and the Iraqis currently stationed on the terminal only recently trained with live ammunition for the first time. If a U.S. military withdrawal must wait for a seaworthy Iraqi Navy, the United States may be in Iraq longer than anyone has guessed.

3. Dear Osama: We’re Breaking Up

In the fall of 2004, just before U.S. Marines led a final assault on the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Falluja, 26 top Saudi clerics issued a fatwa inciting attacks on U.S. troops as a “lawful duty.” Chief among them was Salman al-Awdah, a popular renegade cleric who once mentored Osama bin Laden.

In September, Awdah turned his back on his former pupil. Speaking on Saudi television to a large Ramadan audience, the cleric harshly rebuked bin Laden, asking, “How many innocents, old men, children are killed in the name of al Qaeda? . . . What have we gained from the destruction of a whole country such as Iraq and Afghanistan?” Arab News hailed the move as a “major blow to the ideology of Osama Bin Laden and his followers in the Kingdom.” Awdah’s apparent change of heart set off a furious debate in the Arab world over whether his message was long overdue or a betrayal of the Islamist cause.

Mainstream Muslims have been denouncing al Qaeda for years. Awdah’s turnaround suggests that even the most radical corners of Islam have their differences, too. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly taken their toll on all sides. But if more extremists begin losing faith in the jihad, we may come to see Sheikh Salman’s breakup with Osama as a defining moment.

2. U.S.-Mexico Border Fence Gets Cut in Half

In the run-up to the 2006 U.S. midterm elections, conservative lawmakers—desperate to show supporters they were making progress on immigration and border security—easily passed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing the construction of 700 miles of double-layered, reinforced fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that Congress had only earmarked enough money to build 370 miles’ worth of wall. Give it another budget year, the barrier’s strongest backers said, and the rest of the cash would surely make its way south.

But they might want to check with the chief of U.S. Border Patrol, David Aguilar. The military industry’s National Defense magazine reported that at an April press conference, Aguilar suggested that the physical fence will indeed stop at the 370-mile mark. Making up the remaining 330 miles will be a “virtual” wall of surveillance and radar equipment, hardly the kind of compromise that will satisfy those who, like Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, want the entire 1,933-mile border double-fenced and topped with razor wire. A spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency says that hundreds of miles of vehicle barriers—concrete tubes set in the ground to prevent cars from crossing the border—are also due to be built by the end of 2008. But those who wanted a Fortress America are finding that Washington’s plan for their beloved fence is full of holes.

1. The Cyberwars Begin

The year 2007 will be remembered as the beginning of the cyberwars. In late April, Western experts were caught off guard when a barrage of cyberattacks emanating from Russia crippled the banking, police, and government offices of Estonia. Many called it the world’s first full-scale cyberinvasion. Then in June, Pentagon officials accused the Chinese military of hacking into a computer network used by top aides to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Near the end of the year, Britain’s MI5 intelligence service sent a confidential letter to the CEOs of major multinationals warning them that the Chinese army was probing the cyberdefenses of their companies.

This emerging threat may explain why in September the U.S. Air Force quietly decided to form a Cyberspace Command. The new Cyberspace Command, due to become fully operational by October 2009, will be charged with helping to guard against such threats. But officials are quick to point out that merely playing defense against hackers and hucksters will not be enough. Instead, the 500 or so cyberwarriors who will be assigned to the command will train for full-scale cyberwar against a host of potential enemies. (Read: China and Russia). This month, top-ranking U.S. military officers began work on a Cyberspace Warfare Doctrine. The Air Force has also just graduated its first class of cyberfighters, trained in network warfare. More than 20 years after the founding of the Internet, the next “revolution in military affairs” may be online.

Eulogy for the Godfather of Soul

It was 1973 when I went off to school at Knoxville College, an historically black higher learning institution, just over the hill from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In that era, there were no black radio stations in areas like Knoxville; we had to listen to country, pop country (i.e., the Carpenters), or rock.

Especially during that time of the dawning of the black power movement, just 8 years after the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when we proudly wore afros that were pamoja, when Earth, Wind and Fire and Marvin Gaye were just hitting their strides in music, for young people like us, who were usually the first in the history of our entire family to attend a college or univesity, it was important that we have music with which we could identify. Music positively shaped the black movement, shaped black consciousness during that time.

Recognizing this, not only did James Brown bring the first black radio station to Knoxville and other southern towns with black colleges located in Hicksville USA, but he donated at least $100K (a significant amount of money at that time) to our schools' music departments AND he was the homecoming entertainment at KC for that, my freshman year. Yep, it was one of the best concerts I've ever attended.

I have no way of knowing how despicable he was as a human being but, based on the same info about him that others possess, in comparison to Elvis, who wasn't the greatest human being either, or to Jerry Lee Lewis, or to any of the other white and black superstars of music, I'd say James Brown was no more despicable than any of them. Perhaps some would judge that Soul Brother Number One was a better human being than many of today's crop of black musicians, along with the self-described "African-American" leaders of our day, or the ministers and preachers, or the current president and his VP, or even Condoleeza Rice.

In fact, ALL human beings have interpersonal faults and failings, including those who cast aspersions on the Godfather of Soul because he had an imperfect character. Piety and self-righteousness make it easy to castigate other folk rather than examine our own lives which, if we took all the time it takes for constant critical self-examination, gives us absolutely zero time to judge others.

I wonder if the people who will cast self-righteous judgment on the late great James Brown's personal life will judge themselves as harshly?

I've never liked it when people run down the Godfather of Soul, especially now that he's dead. He truly was the "real superbad and ain't nobody out there good enough to take the things he had." The hideous mugshot in which his hair was uncombed and his upper dentures were missing, always, always riles me, even as, I admit, it often amuses. But it didn't and won't ever diminish my admiration for his music and his contributions to the black power movement.

James Brown was at the forefront of the movement and, as a child/teen of the 60s-70s, I remember that every week he had a hit that we could dance to -- from Cold Sweat to Talking Loud and Sayin' Nothin' to Payback -- definitely better music than most of the raunchy schlock now being recorded and sold. He was the first rapper, one of the first to inspire us to proudly assert our blackness, the first, in fact to be copied by the self-described "original" remixxers.

Most blacks of the last two generations have no idea what it was like being black in the south during James Brown's era, nor growing up black during the Jim Crow era, like those of my generation who grew up poor, southern and denigrated because of the color of our skin. Even with young blacks, empathy isn't their strongest suit and isn't a term most can feel just from reading a book about the struggles and triumphs of the movement's era. The degradation and ugliness of those times undoubtedly shaped our character and personalities, often scarring many of us, especially blacks like James Brown, who would be pioneers.

"There was a time," to use a line from a James Brown tune, when JB was out of favor, especially during the 80s and 90s, what with the IRS haunting him and other more personal problems, even after he made I'm Real with one of the first successful rap groups, Full Force. In line with JB's this brief, troubling, if routine, decline, one reviewer wrote about JB/Full Force's I'm Real CD on their website:

I don't know why critics are so dismissive of the Full Force work: this is a pretty decent effort. "Can't Git Enuf" is a clever collage of James-sounding riffs and a spare, crackling percussion track; "She Looks All Types A' Good" and "Keep Keepin'" are so-so dance tracks lifted into the stratosphere by the return of Maceo Parker: the minimal arrangement gives Maceo maximal blowing room. He's also enjoyable on the otherwise mawkish ballad "You And Me." The weak link in the chain is the Godfather himself: his vocals are remarkably uninspired, as if he was on the clock; the title track, which he co-wrote, is a lame attack on rappers using his approach; the interview that opens side two is a self-serving commercial for the album you've already bought. That said, if you see this on cassette for 99 cents, snap it up.

I recall during the late 80s winning tickets to an Isley Brothers/Angela Winbush concert on a now-defunct Los Angeles R&B radio station, KACE. When I went down to visit the station, the DJ, the late Steve Wood, had me on the air. Henry Tillman, another casualty of the then-mighty powerful Mike Tyson was also in the studio that day. I got quite a bit of air time and when, at the end of my segment, I was asked if there was anything else, I asked, "Why don't y'all play more James Brown music?"

Soulful renditions, heartfelt lyrics inspiring independence and self-determination. That was the Godfather of Soul, AKA, Soul Brother Number One.

I don't want nobody
to give me nothing,
open up the door, I'll get it myself.

Do you hear me

I don't want nobody
to give me nothing,
open up the door, I'll get it myself.

Don't give me denigration
Give me true communication
Don't give me sorrow
I want equal opportunity
To live tomorrow

Give me schools
And give me better books
So I can read about myself
And gaugh how I truly look

I don't want nobody
to give me nothing,
open up the door, I'll get it myself.

Some of us try
As hard as we can
We don't want no sympathy
We just wanna to be a better man

I don't want nobody
to give me nothing,
open up the door, I'll get it myself.

We got talents we can use
On our side of town
Let's get our heads together
And get it up from the ground

When some of us make money
We forget about our people

Kids get that education
And don't you take no more
Cause we gonna get
This thing together
You got to carry the bell

I don't want nobody
To give me nothing
Open up the door
Open up the door
Open up the door
Open up the door
Open up the door, I'll get it myself...
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Can you dig the groove
Can you make the move....

Papa don't take no mess,
Papa don't take no mess...
Papa didn't cuss,
Didn't raise a whole lot of fuss
But when we did wrong,
Papa beat the hell out of us...

Got to get back, need some get back,
Payback, here it is, revenge, I'm mad....
Sold me out for chicken change,
Told me my bay-bee had it all arranged,
Had me down, that's a fact
But now, you punk, you got to get ready
for the Big Payback...

da dee dah dah, dah dee dah dah... The Big Payback!

...You're more than alright,
You know you're out of sight....

Please, please, please, please
don't go, don't go, please, please, please
don't go, don't go, calling please
don't, don't, don't go oh, I love you so....

Que pasa, people, que pasa, hit me!
Get on down, got to get on the good foot....

...I got a funky job and I'm paying my dues
on the good foot, doing it on my good foot...

...A whole lot of bills and my money spent,
and that's on my bad foot...



We're gonna have a funky good time,
we're gonna have a funky good time,
we wanna take you highhhhh-er...

Foreign Policy's top 10 stories we missed is an end of the year don't miss:

10. Hackable Passports

In October, the U.S. State Department began issuing biometric “ePassports” that contain a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag under the back cover. The tiny chip holds the usual passport data, including a digital photo. The motive behind adding the chips is ostensibly good: to combat counterfeiting and illegal immigration.

But a German hacker quickly found a vulnerability. With a laptop and a chip reader he bought for $200, he was able to steal data from an encrypted RFID tag, potentially allowing him to clone an ePassport. And it’s not just Americans who are at risk. Twenty-seven countries (mostly in Europe) that participate in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program are required by U.S. law to issue the new electronic passports to their citizens. The Dutch and British media have already reported major security flaws in the new IDs.

So, what’s a security conscious citizen to do? Again, the answer may come out of Germany. A group of hackers there recommends that people microwave the new passports to destroy the chips. The State Department may want to go back to relying on a paper trail.

9. What’s Worse Than Bird Flu? The Cure.

In 2006, bird flu didn’t become the killer pandemic everyone feared. In fact, there were no confirmed deaths in developed countries from bird flu. But the alarm, stoked by Western media reports, led to an unexpected—and unfortunate—outcome: A rash of abnormal behavior, hallucinations, and even deaths attributed to Tamiflu, the medicine marketed as a key drug capable of fighting the disease. In November, the Canadian health ministry issued a warning on Tamiflu after 10 Canadians taking the drug had died suspiciously. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received more than 100 reports of injury and delirium among Tamiflu takers for a 10-month period in 2005 and 2006. That’s nearly as many cases as were logged over the drug’s five-year trial period. For now, the cure seems worse than the disease.

8. Petro Powers Drop the Dollar

If you thought record oil prices this year were a pain in your wallet, there’s more bad news on the horizon. The latest Bank for International Settlements quarterly report, which tracks the investment trends of oil-producing countries, indicates that Russia and OPEC countries are moving their holdings out of dollars and into euros and yen. OPEC cut its holdings in the dollar by more than $5 billion during the first and second quarter of 2006. And Russia now keeps most of its new deposits in euros instead of dollars.

That decrease is swift and significant—and helps to explain why the dollar recently fell to a 20-month low against the euro and a 14-year low against the British pound. Holding dollars while other currencies gain strength means less profit for oil producers. But if they rapidly divest themselves of dollars, it may weaken the currency and push up inflation in the United States. “This new trend may be bigger trouble for the United States than high oil prices and surging Chinese exports,” says Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. If this year’s move away from the dollar is a sign of future thinking by oil producers, the pain felt at the pump may soon be the least of our worries.

7. The Gender Gap Gets Smaller

It was a good year for women in politics. Female heads of state took office in Chile and Liberia, and Hillary Clinton and Ségolène Royal set tongues wagging
in Washington and Paris over their own presidential prospects. But it was also a great year for future female leaders, especially those in poor countries.

A report released in February by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau found that the gender gap in secondary education is closing or has closed in most developing countries. Particularly in Latin America and Asia, girls are attending school at the same rate—or higher—than boys. In 1990 in China, for example, 75 girls attended secondary school for every 100 boys. Today, that figure is 97. In India, girls’ enrollment shot up from 60 percent to 81 percent.
Though sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind the rest of the world, it too saw more girls in the classroom. The shift isn’t due to an unexpected worldwide surge in favor of gender equality. The more likely explanation is that urbanization and economic development has boosted girls’ likelihood of attending school, as has a number of innovative government and private-sector programs. In India, for example, UNICEF credits basic sanitation and hygiene education programs in Alwar with increasing girls’ enrollment by 78 percent over a five-year period. Given the clear link between girls’ education and a society’s economic success, it’s good news everyone can celebrate.

6. Iran and Israel Hold Secret Talks

While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spent the better part of 2006 denying the Holocaust and threatening to destroy Israel, his country was sitting down with Israeli representatives to settle old debts. The clandestine talks, first reported by Israeli daily Haaretz this month, concern hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly owed to Iran for oil it supplied to Israel before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Iran severed the two countries’ economic ties dating back to the 1950s. According to the report, negotiations over the debt have been on-again and off-again for nearly two decades, and the two sides met recently in Geneva in an attempt to reach an agreement. It’s unclear why Israeli and Swiss officials are now willing to confirm that the talks are taking place.

However, there is one leading theory: The leak was timed to embarrass Iran by publicizing its cooperation with a country it refuses to recognize. And the strategy may have worked. Iran swiftly and vehemently denied it’s secretly talking to the Jewish state. It just goes to show, money talks.

5. United States Funds the Taliban

The Taliban’s resurgence brought the ongoing war in Afghanistan back onto the front pages in 2006. From record opium production to suicide bombings, the outlook has only grown dimmer in the past 12 months. What you probably didn’t hear is that some of the money the United States is spending to combat the resurgence of the Taliban is winding up in the hands of . . . the Taliban.

As recently as November, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting revealed that villagers in Afghanistan’s war-torn south were handing over U.S. cash meant for reconstruction projects to Taliban fighters,
who then use the money to purchase weapons, cell phones, and explosives.

As part of an effort to stimulate economic development in the country, the United States had committed $43.5 million for reconstruction as of September. One Canadian officer charged with helping to distribute cash said that “millions” has already gone missing in the five years since coalition troops arrived. Why?

According to the report, local mullahs have urged residents to fight the foreign occupation and hand over the money in the hopes of gaining back the security they’ve lost. Others say it’s simple extortion from Taliban thugs.

Either way, the United States may inadvertently be aiding the enemy in a fight that will almost certainly become more costly in the year ahead.

4. Russia Fuels Latin American Arms Race

When Costa Rican President Oscar Arias spoke at a September conference sponsored by the Miami Herald, one sentence stood out: “Latin America has begun a new arms race.” He was referring to the sudden uptick in major arms deals in the region, largely between Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and their newest patron, Russia. The deals have left the region flush with shiny new tanks, fighter jets, and custom-built presidential helicopters. The Latin arms trade is as much about politics as it is weapons. Not long after Brazil announced a deal to purchase roughly $300 million in Russian military equipment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he would back Brazil’s bid for a seat in the U.N. Security Council. It’s not just Brazil’s military that has a hard time saying nyet to Russian firms. Venezuela inked a more than $1 billion deal in July for Russian jets and helicopters.

There’s even talk of Moscow relocating Kalashnikov gun and ammo factories to Venezuela, next door to Colombia’s ammunition-strapped FARC rebels. With Venezuela’s populist anti-American president Hugo Chávez seeking to dominate Latin American politics, U.S. officials are concerned, especially given the United States’ sliding popularity in the region. More dangerous, though, is Latin America’s militarization. More guns and less butter is the last thing the troubled region needs.

3. Bush’s Post-Katrina Power Grab

When U.S. President George W. Bush signed the $532 billion federal defense spending bill in October, there were the usual budgetary turf battles on Capitol Hill. But largely overlooked was a revision of a nearly 200-year-old law to restrict the president’s power during major crises. In December, Congressional Quarterly examined the changes, saying that the new law “takes the cuffs off” federal restraint during emergencies. Rather than limiting the circumstances under which a president may deploy troops to “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy,” the 2006 revision expands them to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident.” In other words, it’s now easier for the federal government to send in troops without a governor’s invitation. Ostensibly, the move aims to streamline bureaucratic inefficiencies that left thousands of New Orleanians stranded last summer.

Yet the Insurrection Act that existed when Katrina struck didn’t actually hinder the president’s ability to send federal troops. He simply chose not to.Critics have called the changes an opening for martial law. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, one of the few to raise the issue in congress, says that “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Is martial law more likely than before? Perhaps not. But the fact that the revisions were slipped into a defense bill without a national debate gives ammunition to those who argue the administration is still trampling on civil liberties five years after 9/11.

2. China Runs up African Debt

The debt relief deal struck at last year’s Group of Eight (G8) summit, where rich countries promised to forgive about $40 billion in debts owed by poor countries, was supposed to be a turning point in Africa’s development, a chance to wipe its economic slate clean. Then came China. The rapidly industrializing country has emerged as a top lender to poor African countries, and that has many international development organizations worried that years of campaigning for debt relief will be set back by a new wave of bad loans. The World Bank estimates that Chinese loans for African infrastructure already total more than $12.5 billion. In November, Chinese President Hu Jintao promised to provide another $5 billion in loans to Africa by 2009. Many of these deals are believed to be similar to commercial loans rather than the low-interest, long-term credits extended by multilateral development banks. It’s hard to know the full extent of the risk because China usually refuses to divulge the terms of the deals. Development experts now fear that aggressive lending by Chinese banks will land Africa back where it started—in the red.

1. India Helps Iran Build the Bomb, While the White House Looks the Other Way

The U.S. government usually takes a hard line against countries that assist Iran with its nuclear program. In 2006 alone, Washington sanctioned firms in Cuba, North Korea, and Russia for making it a little easier for Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction. But, when the proliferator is a close American ally, the United States seems to take a different approach. Just after the U.S. House of Representatives voted in July to support a plan to provide India with nuclear technology, the Bush administration quietly imposed sanctions on two Indian firms for supplying Tehran with missile parts. Nor was the White House forthcoming with congress about other blots on India’s proliferation record: In the past two years, two other Indian companies have been penalized for allegedly passing chemical weapons information to Iran, and two Indian scientists who ran the state-run nuclear utility were barred from doing business with the U.S. government after they allegedly passed heavy-water nuclear technology to Tehran. Far from scuttling India’s nuclear deal, the United States seems to have rewarded the country by overturning 30 years of nonproliferation policy in its favor.