The Grand Masturbation of the Non-Reformists

"Nothing you do matters! It's all for naught! I am above you because I quit trying! So there! Phbbbt!"

Of course, they throw around their defeatist logic in much more erudite terms, but that's basically the gist of it. I've got no other way to put it but this :

Fucking Cowards.

Sorry. That's you. That's those of you who whine that it doesn't matter. And THEN when we tell you to get off your fucking asses and help do something- you oh-so-smugly "educate" us that it's all some worthless endeavor. "There is nothing you can do to change anything, goddamnit, cuz we-are-Powerless! Don't you see?!" you scream as you pull your asshairs out in clumps-

"Don't you See ?!?!?"

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All I see is a crowd of losers who give up once everything doesn't go exactly their way. The worst of the worst of this ilk- is the Grand Masturbator himself, Ioz. The pseudo-intellectual poobah whom the disenfranchised flock to like a golden Nader idol. "We won't vote- We'll show you!"

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I have never seen such a smug apathy-selling blogger. Wallowing in his own shit, he passes down his judgement on all who would dare attempt to make a difference. Here, again, he restates what passes for his principles:

The Occasional Restatement of Principles

You know, most Americans are imperialists. One of the reasons--the reason--that it so amuses me to find the occasional commenter here ask me why I offer no practical solutions to "our" problems, why the closest I ever come to advocating for direct action is to propose minor acts of cultural vandalism. Being an anti-imperialist in America is like being a Zionist in the Third Reich. I am a fringe radical. If you agree with even a tenth of what you read on this site, you too are a fringe radical. Your beliefs and opinions are not reflective of those of your countrymen. The question, "How do we stop being imperialists?" bears as much practical import as, "How do we live without breathing?" We don't. The United States of America is an empire. Maybe you think it's on the downhill slide? I certainly hope so. But it is what it is, nevertheless. The notions that within the body of empire lurks the heart of an egalitarian, constitutional republic, or a libertarian minarchy, or a parliamentary social democracy are the purest forms of political self-flattery. The subjects here may be largely political, but the program is purely perceptual. I am not a reformist.

He'th Amuthed. Well, shit on me.

Look, you pawn shop Socrates- you can sell fiddles until Rome burns if you like, but don't try to pawn your bullshit on me that you are some kind of radical. "The closest I ever come to adovocating.." Jaysus fucking Christ. Spare me your master plan of breaking windows to stop Imperialism, mkay? "like a Zionist in the Third Reich" ... good fucking grief. While pissants like you were telling your neighbors you can't fight the Third Reich, this Imperialist power did indeed help the Jews win in the end. The Third Reich didn't last, for all the help nihilists like you are. The Neoconservative movement won't last either. Unless a lot of good people stand aside and let them run roughshod because they feel apathetic towards it all. .
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Within the body of THIS Empire, there ARE people like me- and there is the heart of a constitutional republic. We are NOT a minority in this country, although I do surely hope that if you are right about one thing it is that people with your mindset are a tiny, flaccid minority. Everything evolves. And if you haven't noticed, this Empire has actually steadily improved on all fronts- UNTIL the advent of the neoconservative radicals. So don't piss on my head and tell me it's a torrential downpour. There's work to be done. And our actions, and yes, even our votes can be used to shift the direction of this empire.

It's times like this that I actually miss certain things about being part of the Republican sheeple- as stupid as that may sound- I never ran into anyone crying in a corner saying they were ready to give up fighting. We need to rally around the Democratic candidate, whoever that might be- because that's the important battle before us. It isn't proving that some half ass huckster like Nader can make a few votes and pocket some change every four years. It isn't about showing the Dems that they you won't vote because they didn't cater as much to the left as you wanted.

It is about slowing down the Radical neo-conservative ultra Imperalists in our current government. And that battle is won by defeating the Republican party.

It is about winning the class war in America by defeating the Republican party.

It is about defanging the racist, sexist, corrupt Republican party and bringing our soldiers home. PERIOD

I just have ONE Question for you: Of all the legislation that Bush threatened to veto and came out swinging against the Dem party in speech after speech - How much would have passed if there would have been a Democrat, ANY Democrat in the oval office? That, I believe, is a valid question.

So, Ioz, spare some of us who are actually out here trying to improve the country, not help continue the Imperial Corporatocracy- Why don't you focus on something important like this
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And, I'll leave you with one more Warhol quote, useless bastard that he was:
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"I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say "figment." "
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The Iozs of the world might as well have blank epitaths, because no one remembers the crybabies on the sidelines who champion the Imperialists by default. Nothing WILL change, while the country is populated with these impotent self-important folks who think they are above it all.
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They aren't. And by the time these people are forced into activity from their comfort zones- it will be too late. Don't be just another couch potato. Just because Ioz is intelligent, doesn't mean the sum of his inactions make him anything more than just another Homer Simpson, albeit one with a blog.

I shall conclude with a bit from The Sermon To The Hypocrite by Zos, who may be a spiritual ancestor to Ioz:

O, ye whose future is in other hands! This familiarity is permitted not of thy-but of my impotence. Know me as Zos the Goatherd, saviour of myself and of those things I have not yet regretted. Unbidden ye listen'd to my soliloquy. Endure then my Anathema.

Foul feeders! Slipped, are ye, on your own excrement?
Parasites! Having made the world lousy, imagine ye are of significance to Heaven?

Desiring to learn-think ye to escape hurt in the rape of your ignorance? For of what I put in, far more than innocence shall come out! Labouring not the harvest of my weakness, shall I your moral-fed desires satisfy?

I, who enjoy my body with unweary tread, would rather pack with wolves than enter your pest-houses.

Sensation . . Nutrition . . . Mastication . . . . Procreation . . . ! This
is your blind-worm cycle. Ye have made a curiously bloody world for love in desire. Shall nothing change except through your accusing diet?

IN THAT YE ARE CANNIBALS, what meat should I offer?
Having eaten of your dead selves savoured with every filth, ye now raven to glutton of my mind's motion?

In your conflict ye have obtained . . . ? Ye who believe your procreation is ultimate are the sweepings of creation manifest, returning again to early simplicity to hunger, to become, and realise-ye are not yet. Ye have muddled time and ego.

Think ye to curb the semen SENTIMENTALLY? Ye deny sexuality with tinsel ethics, live by slaughter, pray to greater idiots-that all things may be possible to ye WHO ARE IMPOSSIBLE.

For ye desire saviours useless to pleasure.

Verily, far easier for madmen to enter Heaven than moral Lepers. Of what difference is Life or Death? Of what difference is dream or reality? Know ye nothing further than you own stench? Know ye what ye think ye know for certain? Fain would I be silent. Yet too tolerant is this Sun that comethup to behold me, and my weakness comes of my dissatisfaction of you solicit. . . . but be ye damned before obtaining fresh excuses of me!
...
Cursed are the Reformists! Cursed I say!.

UPDATE: Those defending the idea of that nothing Americans can do matters are working pretty hard to convince me. Not exactly the action I was hoping for, but at least they seem to be doing something to change others, even if they don't believe in it...

A final note (from the comments):

Party affiliation isn't the end-all, be-all. It's important to get in the individuals who will support the issues that you want. Yes, it seems hopeless. But what the Deconstructionists don't seem to realize is that you can get mired in your own complexity. I have no doubt that Ioz (and the rest of you guys, for that matter) are more intelligent than those who support the status quo.

HOWEVER, their continuance of power relies upon your "deconstruction". The less you do, the easier it is FOR THEM to maintain control. They may not be brainiacs, but they realize this simple strategy. The subtleties of the political spectrum are NOT Lost on me, I choose to step over them in order to implement a strategy that sets back the status quo elite. Yes, Hillary and Obama are not the candidate I want- but Change is not some Overnight sensation as some of you seem to feel- it is a gradual evolution.

You have to win small battles and get the most progressive choices you have into office over the worst of the worst. Unfortunately, if the "Ioz crowd" decides to sit this one out, in the name of apathy, or Deconstruction, or what have you- it's a win for the worst. There is a reason they (the status quo pimps) are winning. And it's because there are more people willing to sit out Democracy than participate- And whether you claim it's for some Deconstructionist purpose, or whether you are simply one of those people to lazy to vote, the end result is the same.

Defeat.

It's the Status Quo folks that PUT us down, but its the Ioz's who KEEP us down.

The Speech

It takes someone who is both white and black to be 100% credible to Americans when speaking like this. I can't say I've ever heard anything like this from a politician before. It was just ... truth. Unglossed and laid bare- just simple truth about the race divide and how to get past it. I know there are those of you who think he threw his grandma under the bus , and then there are those who think he threw Rev. Wright under the bus. I don't believe in moving towards the right, making concessions with those who have outright ruined so much in the past few years. But, when it comes to race, we can all stand to move a little closer together. This speech did that for me, and apparently quite a few others.

The Speech

Reactions:

at Ice Station Tango

at Crooks and Liars

Ornery Bastard

Yakety Yak

The Poor Man Institute

Morning Martini

It's hard to pick just one piece out of this very important and candid talk about race by Obama. Read the whole thing, please.

EXCERPT:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

Coming out of the woodwork

And I thought I was the only one...

Found through The Alien Trucker

I felt like that little girl in a bee costume

Cept with better Tejas muzak...



More about the - ahem -ever less reclusive Redneck Liberals out there...

I found a book (Liberal Rednecks Read!Yeehaw!)

In it, they describe the Conservative Redneck-

ill-dressed, surly... unintelligent and slinking... the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards. They were undiluted Anglo-Saxons. They were the sovereign voter.

Sounds 'bout right... at first flush. But with a second look, I do take exception at several things-

Making fun of the way rednecks dress is pretty elitist. They were poor and hard working. What little clothing they had was stained with the evidence of their labors. Putting food on the table came in way above "How do I look?" in prioritization. And they were not lackin' in intelligence so much as they were in education. The things that the affluent take for granted often reveal their innate bias. "Just look at them. You can tell they have no breeding." No, what they didn't have, that the "well-bred" did- was bread.

The description in italics above reminds me of how average whites often look down on black folks. The "slinking" bit in itself is particularly damning. Shit, when you are poor, grew up poor, and have been raised busting your ass and having the notion kicked into you every single day that those who had money were better than you- "slinking" sort of came natural. You weren't allowed to look a man with money in the eye. That was arrogance and jealousy, don't you know.

If that description is apt- concerning poor black people and poor white people alike- well, it seems to me that you can take the color description right out of it. Why, to the well-to-do, we are all ni**ers, that is of a certainty.

Another question comes up, in light of this - Why does the racism even get worse, louder, and more obvious, as you go down the financial food chain of white men?

Several reasons. The desire to be one of "You" the affluent- made us disregard what we had in common with the black working class and strive to adopt your own prejudices against them as mimicry. Another- was the fact that our community, within the poorest of the poor, was in direct competition with the black families. If you hired one of us, we tried to get you to hire others in our family, our extended family. Every job, every dollar that a black man got instead of one of us was one we didnt get. And vice versa.

And finally, a big driving factor was shame. We were told that blacks were less than whites. We were told by our "masters" that whites were better. We were told that is why whites ran everything. And deep inside, faced with this line of thought, we asked ourselves- how did we, white that we were, end up poor like just another black man? How worse were we, white people who were no better than our black neighbors? We were told we were innately supposed to be in a higher echelon. Yet here we were- all at the bottom. No matter what our color.

And that just couldn't be right. The rich said so. So We poor whites couldnt be at the same level as the poor blacks. It was impossible! So, armed with the knowledge of our 'betters'- we decided that the blacks must be cheating us, must be stealing from us, must be tricking us, to 'drag us down' to the same level.

And how could we prove that we were above them? The only way we could. We put them in their place. "Shit rolls downhill". We took out our misplaced anger on the black people. We pushed, we insulted, we degraded, we killed. We made sure they understood the "difference" between a poor white man and a poor black man. Which was- that our rich masters exonerated us of our crimes. They used us and rewarded us for our dirty deeds. After all, poor or not, we were still white. But, at the end of the day, our color didn't really matter to the rich, after all. We still were poor dirty white trash- must be because we were lazy and stupid. White or not, we were still subhumans to those "god had rewarded" with the benefit of good birth and good family.

This ain't no excuse for our actions. In fact, it's the opposite. It's a conviction of our ignorance. We WERE ignorant fools and in our ignorance we allowed ourselves to be divided and conquered once again.

But some of us woke up.

Some of us finally figured out we had more in common with the black man than we did the rich man.

And a redneck liberal was born.

"And if that ain't country, I'll kiss your ass"

Okay, that's all I got for now... Thoughts? This is more emotion writing for me than it is conscious thought. But its how I see things. I could be wrong.

Back to the music- On a ZZ Top kick right now...




Love the older bluesy stuff..

My Favorite late-night-hand-me-the-last-beer-and-by-the-way-shut-the-hell-up-so-I-can-hear-the-music song... (Number 136 on the Jukebox at the Sand trap...)



And with that, I think I'll call it a night.

Pollyanna Plague

Nelson Hultberg has a rebuttal for the Pollyannas...

EXCERPT
The Fed is not a "swift and decisive captain at the helm of the good ship Gibraltar." It is a mafia gang of ideological thugs who have been handed a printing press that pours out green pieces of paper because 70 years of sham economics in the school system have bamboozled Americans into believing paper money is wealth if we call it wealth. But as any economist knows, money itself is not wealth. If money was actually wealth, then the government could just print up a million dollars for everyone and wipe poverty off the face of the earth. Money is just a substitute for wealth, a store of value for it. True wealth is the goods and services that we have produced. It can never be created with a printing press.
So are things really that bad?...The Fed has shown that it is willing to act quickly to reverse course and hike interest rates once it is clear that the economy is through this bout of weakness.

Yes, the Fed may be able to whipsaw us again into another bout of "boom times," and then whipsaw us back to higher rates. That's the plan, I'm sure. But I doubt it will work this time around. The mortgage mess, the derivatives overload, the insidious termites of debt, the plague of protracted foreign wars, the cerebral decadence and fraud of our intellectual class all add up to the Lilliputians not just tying Gulliver down, but poisoning him in the process to keep him down for a long time. I would say the Fed is going to be whipsawing us into a long bout of "stagflation" rather than "boom times." And since the Fed will not want to assume responsibility for bringing on such fiscal insanity, it will cover its connection to the bad times with a lot of doubletalk and sophistry. The boys at the Fed are good at sophistry to cover up the ideological criminality that launched their cartel back in 1913 and which is the cause of this long train of monetary debasement promoted as "new economics." Unfortunately our establishment media are very bad at deciphering sophistry.

Here lies the real nature of the Keynesian economic paradigm. It is a grandiose endeavor in SOPHISTRY and IDEOLOGICAL CRIMINALITY. This, in a nutshell, is the economic history of the 20th century. A band of collectivist ideologues (with the philosophical prescience of John Law and the moral compass of a pack of wolves) hijacked Western civilization. They have not guided our airplane bravely through the treacherous storms of reality. They have created the treacherous storms themselves. This is what human beings get when they attempt to extract more from life than they are willing to put in.

One man's recession is another man's goldmine. Invest accordingly. See you at the real bottom.

Self consumption

Arthur Silber is back and with a little help from Matt Taibbi , tells us, again:

Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system.

I love Arthur's writing. I love his passion and his fire. After reading this article, however, I wondered if people sometimes read my rants and have the bitter taste left in their mouth that Arthur's rant left in mine-

Shorter Arthur: The system is fucked. All Progressives are fucked. You are probably a hypocrite for not noticing. But even if you do notice, you will still just eat shit and die.

Arthur's writings have had their own effect on me. I sometimes believe that if just enough people could see the truth or if they only believed what I do, that the country would change overnight. People would suddenly comprehend what Arthur says and what I say and what a thousand others are saying and we would rise up and force the politicians to change as a result.

I don't see Arthur leading a rebellion with his cats, his sickbed mounted on a tank. I don't see myself leading a crowd of veterans to storm the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys, even though I truly believe these lying, self-serving propagandists are destroying all that is truly patriotic in our country. I can't see Keith Olbermann calling Bush a traitor to his face. I cannot see the leader of a superchurch that says "Enough is Enough. Torture and murder is un-christian, we have sinned in this war". I can't see a few good millionaires standing up against the crowd in the whitehouse looting the treasury. I can't see a nation that rises up against a system that is self-destructing in a full rebellion against this 2 party corporatocracy.

That's a lot of pain to inflict upon ourselves for a nation that is still only partially broken. It will get worse before it gets better. It is bad now, but it hasn't quite fallen apart yet. We still do have options, even though they are not as pure, as perfect as we'd like them to be. From this high ground of self-awareness, nothing seems to be a good idea but to completely remove the ranks of politicians and fill it with our clones. Everyone else is just an appeaser to the system that has failed us.

At the end of Arthur's article, I get nothing but a world of eternal shit. It isn't that bad yet. It may get there. Arthur's writing has done me a service, over and over, by helping me understand the everyday hypocrisy that we all have had a hand in, as citizens of a nation that is responsible for a million deaths- and barring protests, have done nothing to stop it. Nothing really. We haven't sacrificed anything to stop it. Nor will we. Until it gets worse. Not for those damn Iraqis, of course, but worse for ourselves.

Arthur believes that Americans are fooling ourselves more than I believe we are. Look, we know the score, and deep inside, as a people, we just don't give a shit about those dead people half a planet away. Even the worst neocon anti-environmentalist understands that the world's resources are limited, and that we all will die, and that in order for some to prosper, others will have to die sooner. There is predator and there is prey. As long as the American people don't feel the full-fledged bite of the predator, then we will remain content. As long as we are the top predator in the food chain, we will not be overly concerned with the plight of the prey. We are animals. We are chattel, too.

If our "hope", in the form of Obama or Clinton, offers nothing in reality, then we will sink further into excrement. We will be one step closer to being prey instead of lead predator as a result of our gross depletion of everything in sight.

There is a place for balance. If we can find that balance, we can be self-sufficient and survive. In order to balance we must sacrifice efficiently and effectively against our consumption.

If not, the shit we eat and die from will be our own.

UPDATE: The link to Taibbi's piece has a lot of interesting comments as well.
UPDATE 2: Winter Patriot has a comprehensive post on Iraq

First Class Migration

But, but the rich people pay all the taxes, right? right? And the rich finance all of America's financial growth, right?

(from C&L)
Bush: If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.

The subprime mess (details below) was enabled by the mythological big taxpayer at the top of the foodchain. The underlying "logic" was that big business, big financials, and the Daddy Warbucks 1%'ers of the American multimillionaires were paying the lion's share, and as such, well, it would be okay to cut them a little slack... Their money went back to America investitures, financing most of the growth of American business. This was true up until a certain point. But as Daniel Gross of Newsweek points out, when the transparency and accountability disappeared, and with it- the profitability, these 1%ers quickly began shifting their money out of the U.S., which had become, largely due to their own machinations, a losing bet.

(from Newsweek)
The latest investment trends similarly lead me to think you may not be acting in the national interest. America's private-equity firms are plowing into India, China, Asia and Latin America, and private bankers are urging clients to drop the home bias (don't think condos in Palm Beach and ski chalets in Aspen; think beachfront property in Thailand and ski resorts in the Alps). A Spectrem Group survey of people with more than $500,000 to invest found that 31 percent are putting more capital to work internationally than in the past. "The rich are investing a larger share of their capital overseas," says "Richistan" author Robert Frank.

Just when the economy has started to take on water—and we don't know if we've just sprung a leak or we've hit an iceberg—it seems like the wealthy are piling into the lifeboats. So consider this a plea not to abandon us. Ski at Sugarbush instead of Gstaad. Invest in P.F. Chang's China Bistro instead of China. It might not be as rewarding, financially or psychologically. But your country needs you now, more than ever. And after all we've done for you, it's the least you can do.

I am afraid that a plea to the rich to help the country surely falls on deaf ears. Patriotism falls a distant second to personal profit. Capitalism trumps National pride. Their sense of duty to the so-called "Free Market" is more powerful than any duty to our country and a real Democracy. It's the poor people's fault they're poor, after all. And as these rats jump from a ship they are helping to sink, they can only blame everyone else.

These multi-millionaires, who are running the country, and lately, running it into the ground, talk a big talk about what this country was built on. Underneath their loud bluster, the truth comes out of the sides of their disingenous mouths... Their constitution is a prospectus, their bible is book of tax exemption codes, and their savior is a savvy investment adviser who raises his hands and exhorts "Buy China!" from the mountaintop. Buying America is as foreign to today's billionaire as the concept that all men are created equal. They can spout the virtue of a Global economy all that they want: Their rush to fill their own pockets at the forefront of whichever economy they talk up only hastens the demise of the American economy.

The thought that they, the self-appointed American aristocracy, knew what was best for the country by simply filling their pockets as fast as they could seems so outlandish that you wonder how these people got rich in the first place. But most of them didn't make this money, they inherited it. Their predecessors (the people who made the bulk of the money for these inheritors of America's riches) seemed to understand the concept of an economy that perpetuated its growth. You gave back and pumped some of your profits into the system, from the bottom up, in order to keep your cash crop coming in. By failing to comprehend this key principle in their gluttony, they are dooming the American economy.

The Subprime situation and Asset Securitization is, as F. William Engdahl puts it- "The Last Tango" of the dance of the American assetmongers on their own graves...

(Excerpts from Financial Sense)
The New Finance was built on an incestuous, interlocking, if informal, cartel of players, all reading from the script written by Alan Greenspan and his friends at J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and the other major financial houses of New York. Securitization was going to secure a “new” American Century and its financial domination, as its creators clearly believed on the eve of the millennium.

Key to the revolution in finance in addition to the unabashed backing of the Greenspan Fed, was the complicity of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the US Government right to the Supreme Court. In addition, to make the game work seamlessly, it required the active complicity of the two leading credit agencies in the world—Moody’s and Standard & Poors.

It required a Congress and Executive branch that would repeatedly reject rational appeals to regulate over-the-counter financial derivatives, bank-owned or financed hedge funds or any of the myriad steps to remove supervision, control, transparency that had been painstakingly built up over the previous century or more. It required that the major government-certified rating agencies give their credit AAA imprimatur to a tiny handful of poorly regulated insurance companies called Monolines, all based in New York. The monolines were another essential part of the New Finance.
...
The Federal Reserve, the world’s largest and most powerful central bank with what was arguably the world’s most liberal market-friendly Chairman, Greenspan, would back its major banks in the bold new securitization undertaking. When Greenspan said risks “which seemingly challenge human understanding,” he signaled that he understood at least in a crude way that this was a whole new domain of financial obfuscation and complication. Central bankers traditionally were known for their pursuit of transparency among banks and conservative lending and risk management practices by member banks.

Not ‘ole Alan Greenspan.

Most significantly, Greenspan reassured his Wall Street securities underwriting friends in the Securities Industry Association audience that November of 1998 that he would do all possible to ensure that in the New Finance, the securitization of assets would remain for the banks alone to self-regulate.

Under the Greenspan Fed, the foxes would be trusted to guard the henhouse.
...
In the United States, between 1980 and 1994 more than 1,600 banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were closed or received FDIC financial assistance. That was far more than in any other period since the advent of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s. It was part of a process of concentration into giant banking groups that would go into the next century.

In 1984 the largest bank insolvency in US history threatened, the failure of Chicago’s Continental Illinois National Bank, the nation’s seventh largest, and one of the world’s largest banks. To prevent that large failure, the Government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation stepped in to bailout Continental Illinois by announcing 100% deposit guarantee instead of the limited guarantee FDIC insurance provided. This came to be called the doctrine of “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF). The argument was that certain very large banks, because they were so large, must not be allowed to fail for fear of the chain-reaction consequences it would have across the economy. It didn’t take long before the large banks realized that the bigger they became through mergers and takeovers, the more sure they were to qualify for TBTF treatment. So-called “Moral Hazard” was becoming a prime feature of US big banks.

That TBTF doctrine was to be extended during Greenspan’s Fed tenure to cover very large hedge funds (LTCM), very large stock markets (NYSE) and virtually every large financial entity in which the US had a strategic stake. Its consequences were to be devastating. Few outside the elite insider circles of the very large institutions of the financial community even realized the doctrine had been established.

Once the TBTF principle was made clear, the biggest banks scrambled to get even bigger. The traditional separation of banking into local S&L mortgage lenders, large international money center banks like Citibank or J.P. Morgan or Bank of America, the prohibition on banking in more than one state, one by one were dismantled. It was a sort of “level playing field” but level for the biggest banks to bulldoze over and swallow up the smaller and create cartels of finance of unprecedented scope.
...
J.P.Morgan thereby paved the way to transform US banking away from traditional commercial lenders to traders of credit, in effect, into securitizers. The new idea was to enable the banks to shift risks off their balance sheets by pooling their loans and remarketing them as securities, while buying default insurance, Credit Default Swaps, after syndicating the loans for their clients. It was to prove a staggering development, soon to hit volumes measured in the trillions for the banks. By the end of 2007 there were an estimated $45,000 billion worth of Credit Default Swap contracts out there, giving bondholders the illusion of security. That illusion, however, was built on bank risk models of default assumptions which are not public and, if like other such risk models, were wildly optimistic. Yet the mere existence of the illusion was sufficient to lead the major banks of the world, lemming-like, into buying mortgage bonds collateralized or backed by streams of mortgage payments from unknown credit quality, and to accept at face value a Moody’s or Standard & Poors AAA rating.
...
Very soon after, the new securitizing banks such as J.P. Morgan began to create portfolios of debt securities, then to package and sell off tranches based on default probabilities. “Slice and dice” was the name of the new game, to generate revenue for the issuing underwriting bank, and to give “customized risk to return” results for investors. Soon Asset Backed Securities, Collateralized Debt Securities, even emerging market debt were being bundled and sold off in tranches.

On November 2, 1999, only ten days before Bill Clinton signed the Act repealing Glass-Steagall, thereby opening the doors for money center banks to acquire brokerage business, investment banks, insurance companies and a variety of other financial institutions without restriction, Alan Greenspan turned his attention to encouraging the process of bank securitization of home mortgages.
...
Former Secretary of Labor, economist Robert Reich, identified a core issue of the raters, their built-in conflict of interest. Reich noted, “Credit-rating agencies are paid by the same institutions that package and sell the securities the agencies are rating. If an investment bank doesn't like the rating, it doesn't have to pay for it. And even if it likes the rating, it pays only after the security is sold. Get it? It's as if movie studios hired film critics to review their movies, and paid them only if the reviews were positive enough to get lots of people to see the movie.”

Reich went on, “Until the collapse, the result was great for credit-rating agencies. Profits at Moody's more than doubled between 2002 and 2006. And it was a great ride for the issuers of mortgage-backed securities. Demand soared because the high ratings had expanded the market. Traders didn't examine anything except the ratings…a multibillion-dollar game of musical chairs. And then the music stopped.”
...
The raters under US law were not liable for their ratings despite the fact that investors worldwide depend often exclusively on the AAA or other rating by Moody’s or S&P as validation of creditworthiness, most especially in securitized assets. The Credit Agency Reform Act of 2006 in no way dealt with liability of the rating agencies. It was in this regard a worthless paper. It was the only law dealing with the raters at all.
Moody’s or S&P could say any damn thing about Enron or Parmalat or sub-prime securities it wanted to. It’s a free country ain’t it? Doesn’t everyone have a right to their opinion?

US courts have ruled in ruling after ruling that financial markets are “efficient” and hence, markets will detect any fraud in a company or security and price it accordingly…eventually. No need to worry about the raters then…

That was the “self-regulation” that Alan Greenspan apparently had in mind when he repeatedly intervened to oppose any regulation of the emerging asset securitization revolution.

The securitization revolution was all underwritten by a kind of “hear no evil, see no evil” US government policy that said, what is “good for the Money Trust is good for the nation.” It was a perverse twist on the already perverse saying from the 1950’s of then General Motors chief, Charles E. Wilson, “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
...
None of that would have been possible without securitization, without the full backing of the Greenspan Fed, without the repeal of Glass-Steagall, without monoline insurance, without the collusion of the major rating agencies, and the selling on of that risk by the mortgage-originating banks to underwriters who bundled them, rated and insured them as all AAA.

In fact the Greenspan New Finance revolution literally opened the floodgates to fraud on every level from home mortgage brokers to lending agencies to Wall Street and London securitization banks to the credit rating agencies. Leaving oversight of the new securitized assets, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of them, to private “self-regulation” between issuing banks like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup and their rating agencies, was tantamount to pouring water on a drowning man.
(full article "The Financial Tsunami Part IV, by F. William Engdahl here

Which leaves us where we are now. And I hope that this will leave you with the FUNDAMENTAL knowledge that:

A "Free Market" does not regulate itself at all.
Greed is not a virtue. It is not a creator of wealth.
Capitalism without proper oversight destroys the many at the benefit of the very few.

Conservatives hold the Economy Hostage

Sad but True over at Unruly Mob has an excellent post up- Conservative Ideology Deconstructed

'We won't help America unless we get our permanent tax cuts, waaa waaaa...'

Go Fuck Yourselves, you uppity rich cocksuckers. You ain't getting your fucking cuts made permanent.

Bush's horseshit has driven our economy into the ground by allowing corporations to do whatever they fucking want to and rip off America, both our government AND our citizens with their risky scams. Now, I know where your tax cuts money has gone... down the damn drain, along with your stock's account value. Damn the luck.

So YOUR money went to make some fat cat running a hedge fund somewhere that much fatter. Sorry 'bout ya. You aren't getting extra tax cuts that you can throw away funding the next Anthony Mozillo so he can exercise some good ole free market ass fucking on the rest of the country.

"Trickle down", my ass. Already the wing nuts are clamoring to blame the Clintons for the mess Bush has carefully crafted as he has funneled trillions into the Middle East.

Motherfucking Brilliant, right? And hey- let's give those freedom loving Saudis some guided missles. They'll NEVER use them against us, right? Goddamnit, is there ANYTHING you morons on the right WON'T let this mental midget do? Some Saudi Royal and an Exxon Mobil Exec now have matching 24k gold plated Rolls Royces. Woo Hoo Free market!

Meanwhile the only benefit you upper middle class brainiacs can understand is a few measely tax cuts, which are far surpassed on the downside by the inflationary costs and the devaluation of the dollar, among a thousand other factors. Take another look into your stock market valuations. Guess what? It's all tied together, brother.

Conservative Ideology Deconstructed
Please, read it all. It's good stuff, not as profanity laced, but no one's perfect.

Why Edwards IS The right person for the job

I believe John Edwards is the best candidate for the Presidency out of all the candidates, on either side. Since before the November elections he's been campaigning for the right things- getting us out of a war that is dragging our country down, fixing the economy for the average American instead of pandering to the superrich, and promoting healthcare for all.

Is it bad for every kid in America to get healthcare? Some hyperventilate as they screech "It's socialism! It's communism!" Who the hell cares what label you put on keeping the youth of your country healthy and intact? Does anyone REALLY think that America cannot afford this? Ridiculous! As Republicans waste a record number of billions starting wars and giving money away to corporations and terrorist rogue nations like Israel, the true strength of our country is being bled out in the heart of every city in America.

Hillary Clinton is not going to work to effect change to our current corporatist system. John Edwards can and will. And he won't be busy making backroom deals with corporations and giving AIPAC whatever they want while he's getting our country back on track.

John Edwards is my choice for President in 2008. And I hope that for the sake of our country that he becomes your choice as well.

Bill Boyarsky of Truthdig gives us more reason to understand what Edwards stands for and what he's actually talking about, while Clinton and Obama simply spit talking points.

Full Truthdig Article

EXCERPTS

John Edwards’ words at the last Iowa Democratic debate sounded so out of tune with this year’s campaign discourse—and so sensible and important—that the man might as well have been campaigning on another planet.

“Somewhere in America tonight,” he said, “a child will go to bed hungry. Somewhere in America tonight, a family will have to go to the emergency room and beg for health care for a sick child. Somewhere in America today a father who has worked for 30 or 40 years to support his family will lose his job.” [To see the December debate, in multiple parts, go to YouTube.com and search on “Iowa Democratic debate."]

His talk of hunger, poor medical care and working people’s fear of sudden middle-age unemployment provided a bracing touch of reality in a campaign where the media are stubbornly occupied with matters irrelevant to American life

...

The real question is why so few reporters were paying attention to what Edwards had to say about the economy, health care and job insecurity in a nation where economic conditions have become a prime concern.

I focused on what Edwards had to say as I prepared to take off for Iowa to cover the campaign. I talked to people who had been observing the campaign coverage to see if they shared my outrage at a media seemingly intent on trivializing the election.

...

But outrage appears to be the wrong tone for the Iowa caucuses, whose main function is to serve as sort of a quarter pole in the presidential campaign horse race and which are held in a state untypical of the highly populated urban and suburban centers where most Americans live.
That impression was reinforced the day before the Democratic debate when moderator Carolyn Washburn opened the Republican debate by announcing: “We’re going to focus on issues Iowans say they want to know more about. We won’t talk a lot about issues like Iraq or immigration. They are important issues no doubt but Iowans say they know where the candidates are coming from on those.”

My first reaction as I watched her on television was to marvel at Washburn’s sense of entitlement. What qualifies her and her colleagues to place Iraq and immigration practically off limits when the candidates have yet to plumb the depths of these two extremely complex subjects?

My reaction was reinforced the next morning when The New York Times’ Monica Davey reported from the small town of Storm Lake, Iowa, where immigrants have found jobs at Tyson Meat Packing and other places. She wrote that almost all of the people she interviewed “said they considered immigration policy at or near the top of their lists of concerns. ...”

Such immigration from Mexico and Central and South America is driven by homeland poverty and lack of opportunity. These are conditions related to the impact of the new and heartless global economy on jobs in places as far apart as Asia, Mexico and Iowa. As Edwards put it earlier this month: “Trade deals can create jobs, but they can also cost us jobs. They can bring down prices, but they can also hold down wages. The question I will ask about each trade deal is simple: All things considered, does it make most regular families better off or not?”

He was speaking about job losses such as the ones Washburn’s own paper, the Des Moines Register, reported on in October when reporter William Ryberg covered the closing of the Maytag appliance plant by the new owner, global power Whirlpool: “Iowa history was written in tears, hugs and goodbyes Thursday as the Maytag washer and dryer factory ended production in Newton. The town of 15,000 was home to the Maytag brand for 114 years.”

I don’t see these tears, hugs and goodbyes in much of the campaign coverage.

...

"reporting about Edwards “also requires reporting about these multidimensional problems” associated with poverty. “Poverty,” she said, is a very difficult thing to report.”

Based on her reading of campaign coverage, Garber sees a strain of cynicism in the way the press corps views Edwards. “The consensus was that he was too rich to be advocating for the poor, a pretty boy. All that attention to his haircut.”

But a cynical press doesn’t dwell on how he got rich. His wealth was earned in courtrooms as a plaintiff’s attorney, fighting for those abused by corporations, insurers, physicians and others.
I wondered what would have happened to Robert F. Kennedy in the hands of today’s reporters. He was rich. He was handsome. His father made the family fortune in a rough and tough way. Bob Kennedy would have been made to look conniving by the irony of 21st-century political journalism.

Instead, the journalists covering Kennedy in 1968 accepted him for what he was—a man shaped by tragedy who had a remarkable empathy with the nation’s downtrodden.
Despite his good haircut, he probably would have been elected president if it hadn’t been for an assassin. If Edwards loses the nomination, I hope it is because he failed to sell his ideas rather than because of damage inflicted by stories about his wealth and haircut.

Vote your conscience and vote for the future of America. Some people out there believe that they are entitled to a better life than most Americans. They believe that the middle and lower classes of America add nothing to our country. They, the true elitists, believe that their money and status make them special and that the rest of us are mere chattel.

The Hillary Clintons of the U.S. will not lift a finger to change this perspective. Our blood, sweat and tears make their easy lives possible. They fail to comprehend that further erosion of the middle class will eventually destroy the country, including their own palatial estates. The doom of the middle class will be a precursor for their own.

The last chance for salvation are those few powerful and influential people who understand this, and are working to change things NOW. John Edwards is one of these people. If our country is to not only survive, but prosper, we need officials that not only can change things, but realize the immediate necessity of such change.

Blue Herald has MORE: http://blueherald.com/2007/12/edwards-barack-and-hillary-in-fantasy-land/
Update: Dodd manages to make it back and block Harry Reid's FISA immunity bill, but Obama and Hillary are still serving themselves instead of doing their jobs as Senators.

Sun, set.

The Futility of Faith

This life so crippled that I can't stand,
And God on High, with no command
Angels futile and Devils impotent as well,
And to think that I was once afraid of Hell...

Seek not your soul, it does not exist-
Meaning and truth are ideas that do not persist
Each moments experience is its only reward-
Let passion be your shield, pleasure be thy sword.

And Love? That lofty goal so pure-
is no more than some charlatan's cure.
I realize now, and understand all too late
Faith in heart will not change your animals fate.

that is it, no moral here,
my search ends as my own worst fear.
I know of nothing more to say or write-
and these words- my life, no matter how slight...
Fade

.

.

"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."

.

"Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism."

(from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

.

It appears the easiest way to destroy a nation of tyrants is to let the tyrants rule... I give "free market capitalism" 15 more years of shelf life at the rate which they are eviscerating the country's resources, manufacturing, and economy. A investment insider, and multi-millionaire entrepenuer told me this today:

.

"It will be like the 1900's. The middle class will be gone, they will all be migrated into the ranks of the poor. The poor won't care. They've never had shit, not having shit then won't be any more painful than it is today. The wealthy will be fine. You want to survive? Get as much money as you possibly can, because you'll need it. Get it now and you can leave the country later."

- a sentiment that I am sure is shared by many of our wealthiest Americans.

.

Hmmm. Maybe if the government collapses and the four horsemen ride on America, all the christians will rush to Israel to beg for Jesus to come save them? We can only hope. Isn't there some passage in the bible that will convince them that salvation lies in the land of Moses?

.

Buy a gun. Buy two. Because with what I know of Christians, the ones who aren't chasing the rapture will be trying to steal what little is left here in America. I could live with a return to a less decadent, less greed-driven society. Maybe once there's nothing left to steal, rape, or destroy, they will move on to the next victim of "Democracy".

.

also from Gibbon's Decline:

"A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism."

.

related links (Updated occasionally):

America in the time of Empire

Amerikan Apathy Conspiracy

The Ants of Gaia

Anyone can be a winner...

The Futility of Faith

This life so crippled that I can't stand,
And God on High, with no command
Angels futile and Devils impotent as well,
And to think that I was once afraid of Hell...

Seek not your soul, it does not exist-
Meaning and truth are ideas that do not persist
Each moments experience is its only reward-
Let passion be your shield, pleasure be thy sword.

And Love? That lofty goal so pure-
is no more than some charlatan's cure.
I realize now, and understand all too late
Faith in heart will not change your animals fate.

that is it, no moral here,
my search ends as my own worst fear.
I know of nothing more to say or write-
and these words- my life, no matter how slight...
Fade

.

.

"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."

.

"Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism."

(from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

.

It appears the easiest way to destroy a nation of tyrants is to let the tyrants rule... I give "free market capitalism" 15 more years of shelf life at the rate which they are eviscerating the country's resources, manufacturing, and economy. A investment insider, and multi-millionaire entrepenuer told me this today:

.

"It will be like the 1900's. The middle class will be gone, they will all be migrated into the ranks of the poor. The poor won't care. They've never had shit, not having shit then won't be any more painful than it is today. The wealthy will be fine. You want to survive? Get as much money as you possibly can, because you'll need it. Get it now and you can leave the country later."

- a sentiment that I am sure is shared by many of our wealthiest Americans.

.

Hmmm. Maybe if the government collapses and the four horsemen ride on America, all the christians will rush to Israel to beg for Jesus to come save them? We can only hope. Isn't there some passage in the bible that will convince them that salvation lies in the land of Moses?

.

Buy a gun. Buy two. Because with what I know of Christians, the ones who aren't chasing the rapture will be trying to steal what little is left here in America. I could live with a return to a less decadent, less greed-driven society. Maybe once there's nothing left to steal, rape, or destroy, they will move on to the next victim of "Democracy".

.

also from Gibbon's Decline:

"A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism."

.

related links (Updated occasionally):

America in the time of Empire

Amerikan Apathy Conspiracy

The Ants of Gaia

Operation Mindcrime

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I Remember Now

Anarchy-X

Revolution Calling

Operation: Mindcrime I. Mindcrime II: Bush-Plame smoking gun?

Speak

Spreading the Disease

The Mission Knowledge Directed Revolution

.

Suite Sister Mary Christianity from people who actually follow the teachings of Jesus

.

The Needle Lies There are anti-liberal bushbots, and there are the Liberal anti-bushbots, and then there are the anti-liberal, anti-bushbot christbots... Ah, sweet diversity. This person tells us why Tucker Carlson is anti-bush. When you catch your breath and stop laughing, feel free to be astounded by the unintentional hilarity of this blog.

Electric Requiem The final word on torture, from a Brigadier General

Breaking the Silence

I Don't Believe In Love :

"I used to think

That only America's way was right

But now the holy dollar rules everybody's lives

Gotta make a million doesn't matter who dies"

My Empty Room The slow strangling of free market "capitalism"

Eyes of a Stranger The high price of American Gullibility

The Destroyers and the Destroyed

This is how America defends itself?

from World can't wait...

Kim, long distance trucker and mom, writes about Marine returned form Fallujah, working at a Denny’s in Rollo MO:

"In Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked. They marked the houses…and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in and open fire and…” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.

“The kids?” asked my co-driver.

“Yes.”

The waiter’s words came a little faster now. “If people knew what was really happening over there, they’d rise up and say, ‘bring our kids home NOW!’ If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.”

Beit- Hanoun : Murder and Terror, IDF Style

More Murder to come... IDF not done yet...

Arming Terrorists : America supplies the world with weapons

Why Americans are clueless to Israeli Aggression: Media Bias

Israeli Atrocities : Nazi Solutions to Jewish Problems

Israelis killing more and more civilians ... Gaza deaths

And at the United Nations, the U.S. continues to Veto measures that would save lives and promote peace- just so Israel can continue their murderous rampages unchecked...

Fuck em they're just Arabs

The weapons that our Government is selling to anybody and everyone end up, time and time again- in the hands of those who would kill Americans. Clusterbombs are dropped hours before a CEASE FIRE in record numbers. Those clusterbombs are still killing Lebanese children TODAY, months after the battle is over. Israel not only kills Palestinians and Lebanese in their lust to blitzkrieg their enemies, but also kills jews among them who want peace. They run over American women with bulldozers, and apparently can do no wrong as far as the media is concerned.

It is well past time to STOP the arrogant racist attacks of the Israelis. Yes, I know, the Palestinians want to destroy them. And why WOULDN'T They after all of the above? There are peace activists on both sides. A big step in getting Israel to behave is cutting off American support for their immoral and murderous actions. Its time to cut terrorism's heart out and stop cutting off one of its arms only to watch it regrow them. And a large piece of the heart of terror is Israel's terrorist acts.

Protect America- It is time to disarm Israel. Let the Jews and the Palestinians enjoy an equal footing for once. Maybe that will teach them the lessons they DID NOT Learn from the actions of the Germans leading up to the holocaust. As much as Israel warmongers might want a Palestinian Holocaust- We SHOULD stop the IDF like we stopped the Nazis.

We are ALL Human. Let's not forget that.

wow, I can breathe now..

Democracy ain't dead yet, praise gods, the founding fathers and liberal bloggers!

It's a grand day for America- that much is sure. But It ain't over!

We have come a long way. I am very glad to have men of vision and moral clarity who have made their dedication to our democracy and constitution their FIRST Priority. Men like John Amato, Glenn Greenwald, Keith Olbermann and the thousands of my fellow C&L'ers and bloggers who have helped expose this band of crooks for what it is.

Accountability starts today. If the Dems who got in today sit back on the laurels in the spirit of bi-partisanship then they will fail us.These Repubs aren't going to roll over. Look at Tom Delay, listen to Rush Limbaugh- Watch Tucker and company spin "bipartisanship" in the hopes that NO Republicans will be Held accountable for their despicable actions.There's a long way to go. But yesterday was helluva big step.

Democrats took the house, the jury is still out on Virginia and Montana for the Senate.
I shudder at how racist/sexist the state of Virginia must be, for so many people to vote for George Allen. I mean, that guy put a horse's head in the mailbox of his black neighbors as a joke, calls people niggers and macacas and spit in his ex wife's face. Classy.

Republicans are going nuts all around me. My boss is particularly upset today, he sent an email of pics of puppies out to "cheer up" his fellow rich republican/libertarian elites... They probably shudder at the fact that minimum wages may finally be raised. Thank god. Only a working man who busts his ass all day and still can't feed his family can properly understand what a charade making $200 / week for 40 hours of work is. Its fucking ridiculous but the Rich Republicans have fought this tooth and nail for the past 12 years.

God bless the working man- Only Democrats support these men. I don't know any Republicans that put in a full day of actual work. God knows that these rich fuckers that come in and out of my financial group all day don't.

The Bush/Rove Cult is irreparably damaged. I can hold my head high again as an American in light of the America's actions yesterday. Hopefully we can get rid of the corrupt closeted self hating fags and corporate sellouts in the Republican party and bring some Accountability back to our government.

The first step is deploying our troops out of Baghdad and into Afghanistan. Hell, there's no reason to LOSE BOTH WARS. Bechtel has given up on Iraq. They made 2.3 billion of American money, FAILED to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq and now are cutting and running. This is a big deal, people. The only thing we are building in Iraq NOW is our multibillion dollar Embassy/Castle/Mansion. And maybe one or two permanent bases...

But the point is- with no reconstruction efforts, our troops are stuck there with no American benefits coming to the Iraqi people. Our occupation becomes even less desirable to Iraqis (is that possible?!)

The Shia have put up with the occupation more or less = give or take a few fiery Al-Sadrs... But the fact is, Shiites Haven't put forth any substantial effort to killing U.S. troops the way the Sunnis are. The Sunnis are responsible for 80% of the U.S. casualties. But Al-Sistani is basically ignored by the Iraqi people in deferment to Al-Sadr nowadays, and Sistani is, in turn avoiding speaking to U.S. officials. Maliki is trying to show that he isn't another Bush poodle. The Shia politicians have pointedly asked the American occupation to end, immediately. Iraqis want us gone, except for the ones who were milking Halliburton and Bechtel- But like I say- that is ending. With the civil war getting more and more intense, the Mahdi army won't avoid open firefights with troops much longer. We need to get our boys and girls out of harm's way, immediately.

I need to check with the Iraqi blogs today, and see how the Iraqis are taking the Anti-Bush statement that was made yesterday. I predict that they will receive this news with welcome. The farther that the American people can push Pres.Bush and his cronies from us, the better the world will receive the United States. But still, welcome news to Iraqis or not- they want us gone from their country. Yesterday. And in that, I am in perfect agreement with them.

Callous as it may sound, Here's what I think needs to be done-

Redeploy our troops to Afghanistan. Crush the Taliban and hold a serious presence there, not the half ass job that is being done right now. Build permanent bases in Afghanistan. Crush the drug trade and build some REAL infrastructure for the Afghani people.

Let the Iraqi civil war begin in earnest. I hope the Shia win. And don't fret about Iranian ties just yet. Remember, as soon as Iraqis control Iraq- they will remember their distate for Iran. And if they don't, I must confess, I don't give a damn. Iran is not a threat. And the more we leave these people alone, the less they will fucking hate us. Got it?

Iraq will rebuild itself. It will be bloody, but its a necessary transformation. And for those of you who are only concerned about the oil: Relax, you immoral greedy bastards! Rest assured, the U.S. will wheel and deal with whoever ends up controlling Iraq. You can bet your last dollar on THAT.

While the rich cavort, regular Americans suffer

Only a few more days until the elections. If you have already voted, Great! I did the early voting myself. If you still haven't- make sure you vote for the candidates that have America's interests at heart, and not their own party's. There are many looming problems in the United States today, but what I feel is the largest is the way the country is being splintered into the haves and have-nots. This is especially disturbing in a time when we have 140,000 troops occupying a foreign, hostile country.

Middle and Lower class Americans have done their part to fight terrorism. They have offered up themselves and their children to the military to protect our country. While the rich and superrich have benefited by stock shopping the military industrial complex and milking the Republican party's penchant for supporting corporations over small and independent American businesses, regular Americans and their children are dying and being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our health care is slashed, our 401ks are dashed against the rocks of a CEOs multimillion dollar bonuses, and our cities' crime rates soar as our police forces are depleted by the National Guard's increasing tours in Iraq.

In the industry I work in, 90% of the people I speak to on a daily basis are in the top 5% of affluent West Texans. They are the superrich of Lubbock. They may not compare to the bigwigs in Dallas, New York, etc= but they have more money, much more money than they know what to do with. Their investments make money hand over fist, and they only lose money in the riskiest of ventures. By and large, these people take every tax advantage possible, they have shelters and advisors like me and others, who they pay exorbitant amounts just to avoid paying taxes. And their greed only makes them hungry for more, in most cases.

They speak of the Republican party with an almost reverential tone. They understand exactly what the Bush administration has done for them - even as they dismiss claims of what the Bush administration has done to everyone else in America as liberal poppycock and socialist drivel. As long as they are making money, to hell with the Republic, and everyone else who was too stupid to have been born a millionaire.

Ben Stein writes a great piece about this entitled You're Rich. Terrific. Now Pay up

He addresses the facts that while taxes for the rich and superrich are lower than they have been in 60 years, our military dies for pennies while our middle class struggles to merely stay afloat. The men who run the country are cavorting in carefree fashion while our country rots from within. It is time, for the rich to ask themselves- what they can do to help our country in a time of war. He writes of a "vision" he had while surrounded by the superrich, enjoying their excess, and ignoring the rest of the country's maladies...

EXCERPT
Suddenly, as the men happily walked away from me, I had a vision. Here we all are under the gorgeous crystal dome of prosperity, drinking, making money, eating swordfish, changing money at the temple, showing off ourselves to others, bragging — and all of it, every bit of it, is made possible by the men and women who wear the uniform.

Every bit of it is done under the protection of the Marines, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard, serving and offering up their lives for pennies. And we're also under the protection of the police and the firefighters and the F.B.I., who offer up their lives for nothing compared with what others make trading money on computer screens.

Something flashed into my mind — something that my late father used to say, quoting loosely from the economist Henry C. Simons, a founder of the Chicago School of economics: that it is "unlovely" to see the extremes of wealth and nonwealth that are evident in contemporary America.

We may be able to live with it. Some of us may even be able to prosper amid it. But it's not pretty. The rich should simply not be that much richer than everyone else — especially those whose lives protect them from terrorism.

(...)

The real problem is the difference between the rich — (...) and the poor. It is up to the government to redress this extraordinary difference in incomes of the rich and the nonrich, even at the margins.

What Congress can do, and should do, is address the stunning underpayment of military men and women and the staggering budget deficits that will be a burden on our posterity for decades, by raising the taxes on the rich. It's fine that there are rich people. It's even fine that there are superrich people.

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.

This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.

America is becoming a nation of many rich people. I recently read that there were close to 10 million millionaire households. I read that there were hundreds of thousands who made more than $1 million a year. Good for them.

But it's unlovely for them to pay as little tax as they now pay. The real problem in this country is only temporarily about oil. That will right itself, or we'll get used to it and adjust.
The real problem is saving a nation that is beset by terrorism, and we cannot do that unless we feel that we are all in the same boat, pulling at the oars together. That includes the rich.
Whatever rationale there may have been in 2001 for lowering their taxes is long gone. It's time for them — us, because it includes me — to pay their (our) share.
It's not about oil. It's about fairness.