back to the future  

Are we still waiting for Barney Frank to have his day with DADT before pushing for the very  legislation that serves as the essence of who we are ? The critical repeal of Defense of Marriage Act? (DOMA;) the  legislation that denies our relationships, with the one that calls for its RESPECT- which defines who we are?  I believe that Hate Crimes, ENDA, DADT, UAFA, CIR would be a relative breeze if the psycho-politico-socio recognition of our most basic civil right- the de jure recognition of our de facto relationships was at the helm of our struggle!

Liberty, Senator Gillibrand’s alert – PASSING Immigration Reform.. Poltical Hot Potato, Dec 2009

You should read the whole article. why? because i wrote it

If this measure doesn’t concern you, then you just don’t see what’s happening. Our federal government since Obama took office is taking over everything from Banking,insurance companies, the auto industry and maybe soon the health insurance business. To add to that they’re being given the power to split up “healthy” companies that “appear” to be a risk of getting to big to fail. Yes you heard me right! I don’t think most people understand when your federal government is picking who succeeds and who fails that is a fascist economy plain and simple.

House Panel Approves Systemic-Risk Measure, Advancing Overhaul

A House panel approved legislation strengthening U.S. authority to police large, complex firms that pose risks to the economy, advancing the Obama administration’s effort to overhaul U.S. financial rules.

The House Financial Services Committee voted 31-27 today for a bill creating a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk, shifting the cost of a failure to the financial industry and giving regulators the power to break up healthy firms.

The legislation would give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. the authority to dismantle systemically risky firms and merge two bank regulators, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The legislation was amended by Representative Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, to let regulators dismantle healthy, well-capitalized financial firms whose size would threaten the economy.

The measure removes a three-decade ban on congressional audits of Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, an amendment offered by Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas who has called for the abolition of the central bank.

Another amendment creates a fund to cover the government’s costs for unwinding a failed firm. The measure puts the FDIC in charge of the fund, to be supported by fees from companies with more than $50 billion in assets that would generate as much as $150 billion.

The legislation is part of the Obama administration’s plan to overhaul U.S. rules governing Wall Street to prevent a repeat of last year’s financial market collapse, leading to more than $1 trillion in taxpayer bailout programs.(Which the government shouldn’t have done in the first place.)

The committee today began debating legislation to create a national insurance regulator, the last piece of House Financial Service Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s overhaul package. Insurers are regulated by states.

“A federal insurance office will provide national policy makers with access to the information and resources needed to respond to crises, mitigate systemic risk and help ensure a well-functioning financial system,” said Kanjorski, sponsor of the legislation.

Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the panel would vote on the insurance legislation later today, and the full House would begin debate on the regulatory legislation on Dec. 9.

Business Week.com

The new ruling class.

We seem to be edging into a new form of aristocracy, with the noble egalitarian liberals leading the way. A shadow aristocracy, lacking many of the hereditary and legal aspects of the European variety, but an aristocracy all the same: a limited-entry oligarchy with privileges denied the rest of the populace. If we look around at the third millennial world, it is hard to deny this as the default state of human society. Russia, China, Latin America, Central Africa — a society that fails to adapt a civilized system of governing devolves to some form of aristocratic rule. Europe too appears to be going in that direction, with a privileged bureaucratic class holding unlimited power over the countries comprising the European Union. Will the United States be far behind?

American Thinker: The new ruling class

This is an outstanding read.  Not overly long but the author packs a lot of history  in to back his point that today’s new ruling class is much like the one that caused the first American Revolution.  He points out that these classes arise over time if criminals are not checked.   Our American Revolution sparked a back lash against tyranny abroad.  Now the corruption abroad  and the day-to-day dealings of politicians abroad has encouraged those with criminal intent here in the United States.  Perhaps it is time We the People spark another revolution.  Not in blood and guns this time but in forcing compliance with the laws of our land already established but which are disregarded by a select group.

For those of you who do not make the commentaries of American Thinker  part of your daily reading, then you really should.  These are some of the best  minds in the country from all walks of life and not necessarily the time-worn and often inaccurate “expert in the field”.  I have a real problem with “experts” who have usually been self-named “expert” or have gotten that title from other  university-bred self-named “experts”.  Real “experts” don’t mention the fact as it generally doesn’t need mentioning.  BB

The Climategate scandal has the world in an uproar as the believers battle the skeptics on the existence and effect of anthropomorphic global warming. You see, the data is all based on the IPCC and now some of the people who generated that data were found to have massaged information and then destroyed some of the underlying data.  We simply do not know now how serious this breach of scientific ethics is yet. What is more bothersome is the completely dismissive attitude of the key players.

Climatology and meteorology are two of the most difficult of sciences. The number of factors affecting macro and microclimates is almost infinite, and the database requirements are massive. One of the things bothering me is that before we can even deliver an accurate weather report in Boston or New York or Johannesburg, scientists are staking their careers on the differential outcome of CO2 that measures in the hundredths of a percentage. If a meteorologist cannot accurately predict what is right outside his window, how can we play such a high stakes game with trillions upon trillions of dollars and the future of the planet at stake?

And we now find that some of the most active and noted proponents of anthropogenic global warming are also some of those most active in benefiting financially from the adoption of the proposed limits. One can make the argument of doing good by doing well, but when you find that much of the research has been funded by people such as Jeremy Grantham, who started the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Mr. Gore, the subject’s greatest polemicist and that they have the chance to reap billions in profits while gaining political control, one must ask very serious questions.

Some of the facts we know to be true are:

1 – In the 1970’s a number of climatologists warned of the dire consequences of global cooling.

2 – Solar activity is at a historic low and the planet has experienced cooler overall temperatures for at least 10 years.

3 – The Cap & Trade bill now before Congress does nothing to actually reduce carbon emissions for at least 20 years.

4 – There is now a question of the relative benefits of reducing the hole in the ozone layer, which will apparently trap more carbon. 10 years ago, the cry was over the hole in the ozone    layer.

5 – Patrick Birley, the CEO of the European Climate Exchange, which trades carbon credits to the tune of $126 Billion/year, admits that this exchange and the one in Chicago have not actually reduced carbon emissions by a single kg since 2001. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others are apparently making a killing because it is such an esoteric market. Remember the Wall Street debacle? Is this the new tulip mania? Cui bono?

6 – Cost/benefit studies of the implementation of various green technologies have been very flimsy.

In other words, there is a tremendous amount of information we don’t know while there are unacceptable conflicts of interest.

What we do know for certain is that the current structure of what is proposed is a Ponzi scheme of unprecedented proportions.

The climate is changing around the planet. There is enough evidence of droughts in Australia and change elsewhere that there is reason to be concerned. But the first politicians to blow up at the CRU scandal were, oddly, the Australians. If you’ve ever spent time on the Eastern Seaboard of China, where the sun is a small, blood-red ball through the murk on a cloudless day, you know how bad the pollution problems are. We have pollution problems to deal with on all 7 continents but we must prioritize them and get the science right first.

The urgency to do something immediately strikes me as a bum’s rush to get legislation through before all the facts are known. With the money at stake and the questions raised, we must ask the hard questions and gain a better consensus before proceeding further.

It’s a festive time of year! If big messy gobs of financial regulation are what you hope to hang on your tree that is…either way you look at it, the week ahead promises the kind of Hill lineup that C-SPAN lives for.

Treas Sec Geithner arrives on the Hill Wednesday to testify before the Senate Agriculture Committee on regulation of OTC derivatives. According to reports in The Hill today, chairwoman Sen. Blanch Lincoln (D-Ark) is the real one to keep an eye on, as she will be calling the shots on new reforms for derivatives.

Ben Bernanke appears before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday for a long-awaited hearing to approve Bernanke’s second term as Fed Chairman. Despite recent skewering in Congress, Bernanke is expected to be re-confirmed, though the highly visibile opportunity for committee members to play populist politics and roast Bernanke should make for some good television.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is expected to finalize work on a wide-ranging committee bill proposing new regulatory procedures for financial institutions considered to pose systemic risk – yes, this means those considered “too big to fail” (but who is a little sick of that term by now?) Reports are out that Frank wants to have this bill before the House for a vote by mid-December, and a close on the systemic risk piece would put him on track.

Of course, what would this pretty picture be without the lobbies? The Hill’s Silla Brush reports tonight that The Financial Services Roundtable, which acts on behalf of 100 large financial firms, is calling for more hearings on financial regulatory reforms. Are they looking to stall Frank’s bill? Of course, but are they also, perhaps understandably, hoping to stave off some near-sighted political fumbling on the matter? Brush quotes the group’s president, Steve Bartlett, as saying:

“We agree that financial regulatory reform must happen sooner rather than later – but we are concerned with the speed of the committee to push this legislation forward without conducting a hearing regarding all of issues raised by the various amendments…without such a hearing, the Committee will not be able to fully contemplate the effect such amendments will have on the industry.”

Bartlett’s interests are clear, nevertheless, it is a little hard to disagree with him.

So, fire up the C-SPAN! And here we go…

Will Obama stab US Troops and Generals in the back to help appease the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

This character, this un-decider is a bigger danger to our troops than the Taliban, Al Qaeda or the enemies they are facing. He is the enemy within, the enemy behind their backs. He is our Republic’s biggest danger, that includes his administration and most of Congress. When will America wake up.

The second episode of Max Keiser’s new show on Russia Today: “‘Keiser Report’ is a no holds barred look at the shocking scandals behind the global financial headlines. From the collusion between Wall Street and Capitol Hill to the latest banking crime wave, from bogus government economic statistics to rigged stock markets, nothing escapes the eye of Max Keiser, a former stockbroker, inventor of the virtual specialist technology and co-founder of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. With the help of Keiser’s co-host, Stacy Herbert, and guests from around the world, ‘Keiser Report’ tells you what is really going on in the global economy.” – 26 Nov 09 (26:19):

In this episode:

• Goldman Sachs’ extraordinary bailout to lending ratio and their going to bat against the ‘populist outrage’ against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
• Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake on H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson ‘Audit the Fed’ bill
• The war profiteers of the corrupt U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan occupations with ‘zero oversight’ of the military industrial complex’ and the Obama Administration’s planned escalation in Afghanistan to ‘handle the money laundering’
• Ullrich Fichtner of Der Spiegel on Iraq, Afghanistan and A.I.G.

Credit card companies received new dates to resturcture their lending plans. Congressman Barney Frank led the debate on the House floor. The story, on New Bedford Standard-Times.

By Andre Damon
26 November 2009

One year after the near-collapse of the US financial sector, the Democratic-controlled Congress continues to strip away even the minimal regulations to the financial system that existed prior to the 2008 meltdown. This is going on behind the scenes of a largely pro-forma debate over the number of regulatory bodies required to police the financial system, and over the role of the Federal Reserve in regulation.

Earlier this month, the House Financial Services committee voted to largely neuter the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal, requires companies to have independent auditors evaluate their internal protections against fraud. The vote would allow companies worth less than $75 million to be exempt from this requirement and sets the stage for even larger companies to follow suit.

The measure was so brazen that even the New York Times felt compelled to protest. In a November 6 editorial, the newspaper wrote that the measure “would make it all too easy for thousands of publicly traded companies to cook their books.” Arthur Levitt, the former chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission under Bill Clinton, also denounced the measure, saying it is “deeply disturbing” that the Democrats have overturned “the most pro-investor legislation in the past 25 years.”

Around the same time, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank sent a letter to the country’s top regulatory authorities, urging them to relax their enforcement standards. Frank went so far as to claim that regulators were leading banks to accept “artificially low prices” for the securities on their books by applying mark-to-market rules. He said that if regulators continue to pursue stringent policies, banks will further constrict lending and exacerbate the downturn.

Frank and his fellow committee members are fully aware that relaxing financial regulation will allow the banks to cheat and swindle at will. Members of the Financial Services Committee receive more in Wall Street campaign contributions than any other section of the House of Representatives. Frank, for instance, has received more than $3 million in donations from the financial sector.

Congress and the White House have ignored all calls to tighten regulation. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, has made calls for a reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that separated and commercial and investment banking. The law was passed in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and was repealed in 1999.

The White House is largely staffed by people who spent the last two decades gutting regulation. Lawrence Summers, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, for example, supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall when he was treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, declaring that it would “better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.” (what economy? If people weren’t compelled to go Christmas shopping, the economy would reflect what it is… stagnated!)

As financial regulation is weakened piece by piece, legislators are debating how best to prepare for the next financial crisis that will inevitably follow. The debate takes the form of competing proposals for regulatory overhaul proposed by the House Financial Services Committee and, most recently, by the Senate Finance Committee.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Christopher Dodd unveiled a proposal earlier this month to overhaul the US financial regulatory system. The proposal is essentially similar to that developed jointly by the White House and House Financial Services Committee, but goes further in limiting the powers of the Federal Reserve. The proposal would also more sharply restructure the present financial regulatory system, bringing it closer in line with that of the United Kingdom.

Dodd’s proposal would convert the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—smaller bodies that oversee different parts of the banking system—into one body. The Federal Reserve would cease to exist in its present form, and would instead be divided between the new, large regulator and a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency.”

The White House and Federal Reserve have come out explicitly against moves to limit the regulatory power of the Fed, and it is generally considered unlikely that most of Dodd’s suggestions will become law.

The proposal largely has the air of a publicity stunt. David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal said in an interview November 4, “It’s very unlikely that what Chris Dodd is proposing will actually become law.… Because he wants to be seen as a populist, he’s running for reelection, and he’s using this as an opportunity to put forward ideas that are deliberately different from those of the Fed.”

Dodd has reason to try to cosmetically distance himself from Wall Street. Over the last five years, he received nearly $4 million from the financial industry, more than twice the amount he received from the next-largest contributing sector. His largest contributor over that time was Citigroup.

The favored plan of the White House, Federal Reserve and House Financial Services Committee consists of three main parts: phony derivatives regulation, a “consumer protection agency” that would have no power over most banks, and additional emergency powers for the Federal Reserve.

The White House proposal would also expand the authority of the Federal Reserve, giving it power to “unwind” banks that are too big to fail. This would be, ultimately, a standardization of the semi-legal methods used by the Fed to bail out Bear Stearns and AIG last year. The reforms aim explicitly to make it easier for the Fed to intervene the next time a credit bubble bursts and the banks are to be bailed out at taxpayer expense.

The House Financial Services Committee’s proposal also includes a Consumer Financial Protection agency, ostensibly to defend consumers against bank fraud. But the agency exempts 98 percent of banks from oversight, making it largely meaningless.

In mid-October, the House Financial Services Committee passed a bill that would ostensibly regulate derivatives, the complex, hard-to-value securities that played a large role in the financial crisis. But the bill passed by the committee is so full of loopholes as to be nearly meaningless. Any firm that claims to be an “end user” of the securities is exempt from regulation, and the values of particularly obscure “customized” derivatives are free from scrutiny.

Both the White House and the Dodd plans are intended as cosmetic overhauls. The financial crisis was the outcome of deliberate policies implemented under the Clinton and Bush Administrations in tandem with regulators and the Federal Reserve; they are by no means simply products of the peculiar financial regulatory structure in the United States.

Numerous commentators have pointed out that the UK already has a system similar to the one Dodd is proposing, with a single regulator, the Financial Services Authority, controlling all sections of the financial services industry. This did not prevent the country from experiencing a financial bubble and consequent economic crash similar to that of the US.

One year after the worst financial crisis in postwar history, nothing has been done to rein in the banks. Quite the opposite: The government has handed trillions to the banks while the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates at extremely low levels. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is busy stripping away whatever is left of corporate and banking regulation.

As a direct result of these policies, Wall Street is set to reap the largest profits on record this year, with record-breaking year-end bonuses likely to follow.

How to Make a Butt Bomb: Al Qaeda Training Video (Rated X)

On the heels of a half-assed attempt at assassination of a Saudi official by an al-Qaeda operative who had a pound of explosives stuck up his rectum, comes this latest al-Qaeda training video: GET LUCKY WITH A BOMB UP YOUR BUTT

Full transcript at http://www.thepeoplescube.com.

More fact than fiction?? These Islamic nutjobs are as resourceful as Wiley Coyote chasing Roadrunner. Just more despicable because there are no bounds as to where they will sink to terrorize, destroy and murder. Obumble and his crowd act like it’s a board game and want to make up rules to give them an equal advantage therefore limiting our ability to defend ourselves. WTF.

The London Times today reports that the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia discarded the raw data that went back 150 years  on which their climate models have been based. Now, there is no easy way to reconstruct the basic research on anthropogenic global warming. There may be no way to confirm the results and conclusions upon which the U.N. and every major government in the world have based many trillions of dollars in planning.

Gordon Brown has said nothing, Barack Obama has said nothing, Angela Merkel has said nothing. When asked the other day about the scandal, Carol Browner, the Director of the White House Office on Energy and Climate Change Policy, another of Obama’s czars, was dismissive. If you scan the New York Times or Washington Post or ABC News or the Chicago Tribune or AP or Reuters, there is nary a word even after this latest news. Greenpeace is headlining “12 Days to Save the Climate”. No editorials. No opinion pieces. No discussion of what may be the largest scandal of the century. No one seems to have bothered to call Al Gore up and asked his opinion. There is a studied lack of curiosity.

So if the underlying data was destroyed in the 1980’s, does that mean that no one is able to confirm the methodology and conclusions reached by the CRU?  Did someone confirm the data before it was destroyed? If not, this would go against everything science stands for if true. Replication of the experiment and confirmation of the results is always, always required. Peer review means nothing if no one reviewed the complete file and correlated the data. The data at that point is simply fish wrap.

Half the disaster movies of the past 20 years have a brilliant but misunderstood scientist  rushing to the White House to warn the president of impending disaster.  This time, when potentially damning e mails are released wholesale and the underlying data has conveniently disappeared and it’s on the front pages of the Times and Telegraph, two of the most respected newspapers in the world, it’s as if the information has disappeared into a wormhole in officialdom and the American media.

There have been no cries for confirmation. There have been no statements from government saying “This is a serious matter and we will investigate it fully”. Nothing from the Obama Administration or the Government in the UK. Instead, we are led to believe that they will traipse off to Copenhagen without a care and burden society with additional trillions in debt on what is perhaps deeply flawed evidence.

What happened to the grown ups? The guys with the pocket protectors and slide rules? Climategate is becoming an insult to science. It will damage the environmental movement for decades if not fully addressed. The problem is that Earth Science is one of the newest of sciences.  Trying to understand something so vast and complex is truly daunting. But from the outset, it has not been held to the expectations of other scientific disciplines. Research has often ruled by the heart, not the mind. And now one its central tenets has fallen under a cloud of suspicion.

Our planet has a number of pressing problems that must be dealt with on a global scale. There is no margin for error. The climate scandal could do irreparable damage to the credibility of scientists and governments throughout the world.  This scandal can only be dealt with through a full and fair accounting. Politicization is not the answer, but without a thorough analysis and investigation, Copenhagen is nothing more than a sick joke.

We Have Ourselves to Blame

Sunday, November 29, 2009. ONE.SIX keeps tabs on stories that pull in good readership and lots of reader comments. Stories that are politically charged, for instance, gain good and quick traction. Stories about the economy, on the other hand, although they do draw a decent readership, elicit significantly fewer comments.

With “official” U.S. unemployment at 10.2 percent, and almost every business sector down markedly over the past two years, you’d think people would  cling to every news and opinion piece like barnacles to a ship. However, as I’ve observed the general media coverage of the economy, and have talked to lots of people about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that Americans are in denial about how precarious our collective financial situation has become. Rather than dig for answers and solutions, Americans say things like, “Oh, this is the United States—things will turn around—they always do.” The media, from CNN to NBC to Fox News say things like, “We’re at the bottom of a V-shaped recovery and 2010 looks to be a better year than 2008 and 2009,” or, “Black Friday may very well turn the tide on sales figures.”

What the American media and the people who listen to them fail to recognize is that during past economic falls, there was always a solid bedrock somewhere underfoot. We may have had to dig pretty deep to find it, but we eventually struck something hard and sturdy upon which to build and ascend our way back above ground. In our current economic state, what firm foundation we have is miles deeper than ever before, heaped upon with the sands of debt, debt, and more debt.

Economic prognosticator Gerald Celente, founder of the Kingston, New York-based Trends Research Institute, used to be regularly featured for years on CNN. He has mysteriously disappeared from the newsrooms of even Fox (where he was seen often early in 2009). He told me CNN won’t have him these days because his dour predictions are “anti-American.”  According to Celente, leading into, and to a lesser extent, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States was not a debtor nation, but rather, a surplus nation. Americans, even their political leaders, were wise enough to spend only money they had earned and carried in hand. There was no such thing as credit card debt, and the majority of Americans did not own a home (that didn’t come about until after World War II), which meant the citizens, for the most part, did not have debt.

America has entered this recession in the worst possible condition: no savings, and massive debt, both for citizens, and the government.

We may very well be in a depression, but in our denial, we don’t recognize it. In our minds’ eyes, a depression involves men in battered clothing, hunkering against the wind in employment lines. The world is a grainy black and white. Scratchy music about sparing a dime is broadcasted on a torpedo-shaped radio in the family “parlor,” followed by a kindly “fireside chat” from the President himself. Forlorn children with dirty faces wait for a bowl of watery soup.

But hey, we don’t have any of that now! We have iPods and You Tube and hybrid cars and hordes of great technology, and everything is in High Definition color.  Depression? Yeah, right.

The signs are everywhere for those willing to look. But will Americans look?

I’m currently finishing up a book called Isaac’s Storm (1999), by Erik Larson, a look at the monster hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas in 1900. As I’ve read, I’ve seen a lot of eerie similarities to our economy. Isaac Cline was the head of the Galveston U.S. Weather Bureau station, at a time when Galveston was bustling enough to be one of only a few areas with an official weather center. You see, Galveston was Houston’s equal, and both towns were competing for recognition, to be the biggest port in the South. Galveston was winning the battle.

However, Washington was playing politics, and banned information from Cuba’s weather bureau from being telegraphed to the States. Cuba had a more cautious regard for any signs of a hurricane, and Cuba had more experience in recognizing them. But the United States was too good for the provincial island. Too advanced. So when the storm passed through Cuba with only moderate winds and lots of rain, the Cubans recognized elements as the storm entered the Gulf of Mexico that made them realize this would indeed become a full-fledged hurricane. But their warnings, much as other countries have become gravely concerned for the U.S. economy, bounced right back to the Caribbean.

In fact, the Weather Bureau discouraged the usage of terms like hurricane because it caused people to “panic.” That’s like Washington and the media’s persistence in calling this economic episode a recession, not a depression, because, “perception is everything.”

There were plenty of other signs that Cline in Texas and U.S. Weather Bureau heads in Washington saw, such as sky color, barometric readings, and the lifting sea, but because Cline had lectured previously to the effect that Galveston’s geography precluded them from ever being struck head on by a cyclone, they were ignored. On Saturday, September 8, 1900, children played in the flooding streets, unaware, as were their parents, that a storm was about to annihilate. By midday, it was apparent a hurricane might be approaching, and by evening, the floods were up to the second floor of houses, and wind gusts approaching 200 mph were ripping Galveston to shreds. Killed were anywhere between 8,000-12,000 humans in a city of 40,000. The greatest natural disaster in U.S. history. Galveston never recovered.

The signs were there—but were blatantly ignored, as with our economic plight. The U.S. no longer produces as it used to. We just spend. We have borrowed massive cash from China and Japan. Instead of using it to grow food, manufacturing, commerce, as we did in the 1870s when we borrowed from foreign investors, we have used the money to buy nicer homes and cars and clothes and gadgets. We have done nothing to increase our standing in the world, but rather have worked up a debt that we cannot, without a drastic paradigm shift, pay off. The nations we’ve borrowed from, who are not doing too well themselves for similar reasons, will not keep funding our indulgences.

Washington is clearly clueless about what’s going on. So-called leaders like President Barack Obama believe we can continue to spend until somehow, we are out of debt. This cannot work. We must stop spending and start producing.

“We, the People,” must wake up and see the signs of this economic hurricane. We can’t do it with closed eyes. This is one problem that, while Washington has been complicit, we’ve brought on ourselves. We perhaps don’t like these stories about the economy because we realize we have to blame ourselves, and we don’t like it.

We can’t blame Democrats or Republicans for this financial mess. Sure, we can say Democrats’ spending over the past few decades has escalated to astounding levels, to the point at which the U.S. is already in semi-socialist mode. We can say that we have a Democratic president who is hell-bent on expanding it to full mode. However, Obama wasn’t in any sort of political office when lots of our spending frenzy began. In fact, he wasn’t even born when the seeds of socialistic thought were sown in this country during the early Twentieth Century Progressive movement.

And let’s not forget who elected him.

We can say the Republicans, in their mad zeal to not let Dems corner the market on “kind and gentleness,” and to pander for more votes, and especially to not be left out on their fair share of earmarks, moved into an only slightly more conservative spending frenzy. We can say that under key players like former President George W. Bush, and Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), and many others, that banks were encouraged, even pressured, to relax lending standards in an asking-for-trouble setting.

But the fact remains that we cannot truthfully blame anyone but ourselves for what is happening to our economy and our country.  It wasn’t politicians or a slanted media that played the roles of thousands of mortgage brokers who with a wink and chuckle informed home-buying applicants that if they were making $75,000 a year that they should really say $105,000. After all, you’ll get a bigger house, and hey, nobody’s going to verify. It wasn’t the politicians who told us to go ahead and tell a few white lies on the applications. So, when we started losing our homes, and we wanted to blame someone, we should’ve blamed ourselves because when the subprime rates reset after the initial low mortgage payments, we were screwed—not by Congress, but by ourselves. We laid that final straw on the camel and he fell right on top of our heads.

Let’s take the blame.

“We, the People” are the basis for our whole society—not Congress. They just do what we ask them to do. If we become too sex crazy to say no, and too dopey and lazy to put on a condom, we ask them to legalize abortion. The “woman’s body rights” issue is just a ruse. We really just don’t want to take responsibility for our actions.

If we get lax in our belief of God and instead create what we think are easier paths to happiness and salvation by inventing false idols like the “green movement,” we ask our politicians to create green policies. It doesn’t matter what it costs—we’re buying the stairway to heaven. We’ll keep constructing that modern Tower of Babel until it topples over halfway to the moon, or until our next religious fad comes around.

If we don’t want to be reminded of the God we’ve forgotten, we ask them to eliminate references to God, such as the Ten Commandments, from public facilities. The church versus state or offending atheists angle is just a way to justify the deeper issue.

When we blame others for our problems, we disempower ourselves to make positive changes, because it means we have to somehow change others, something nearly impossible. When we accept blame, we empower ourselves, because we can change ourselves.

Our politicians congregate and slurp at the same watering hole as we do. They hear what we tell them, and they make it happen. When we change, and there are signs that we’re finally waking up and realizing what we’ve done, then, and only then, will we see positive results. Then and only then will we elect and have noble leadership again in the United States. It comes from within.

–CB

A sexy new music video from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

The song is called ‘Video Phone’.

I love how provocative the outfits are….this is Beyoncé on fire…and we already know Lady Gaga likes to literally set the stage on fire.

BHussein: “Let MY People Go”

Lieberman: Barghouti Will Not be Released
Article: Israel National News

Speaking Thursday morning, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he could “guarantee” that arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti would not be released from prison in any deal to exchange terrorists for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. “We have no intention to free the head of the murderers, a person who has been sentenced to four life terms in prison. There are red lines, and this is one of them,” Lieberman said.

In response to U.S. demands that Israel free an additional 1,000-some terrorists as a “gesture” to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas, Lieberman said that previous releases of Fatah terrorists “have not proven themselves. The Olmert administration did this several times and it did not work, and we do not plan to allow it to happen,” Lieberman said.

Why can’t BHussein be smart enough to know that freeing RADICAL TERRORISTS does NOT PRODUCE POSITIVE RESULTS?! Oh. I guess “brotherhood” has a lot to do with it.

BHussein with Palestinian President Abu Mazen as he demands that Israel releases an additional 1,000 terrorists as a “gesture”to “moderate” “Palestinians”.

So; even the terrorists who are holding the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit captive demand only 450 Palestinian terrorist prisoners that are being held in Israeli jails be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

A big thank you to our friend DangerB for posting this, please visit and read the rest of his take on it.

WTF is it with B. Hussein and Islamist terrorists? WTF is it with all of his actions since being “elected”? He is systematically destroying our Republic, stripping us of our freedoms. He needs to be gone along with all of his cohorts. WAKE UP AMERICA.

I have not verified the accuracy of this, nonetheless Obama must go.

WASHINGTON – US FEDERAL Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday congressional proposals to audit the Fed and strip it of regulatory powers as part of post-crisis reforms could damage prospects for economic and financial health in the future.

‘These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States,’ Mr Bernanke wrote in a column posted on the Washington Post’s website.

The rare newspaper column by a Fed chairman comes shortly before Mr Bernanke testifies before a Senate panel on his renomination to serve a second four-year term at the helm of the central bank and answers a series of steps on Capitol Hill that could diminish the central bank’s role.

Lawmakers are angry with the Fed over its emergency bailouts of major financial firms and its failure to prevent the contagion of mortgage delinquencies that crashed the financial system. A proposal to audit the Fed’s monetary policy deliberations won a committee vote recently over the objections of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. Frank’s Senate counterpart, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, is himself the author of a proposal to consign the Fed solely to making decisions about setting benchmark interest rates.

Mr Bernanke, in his column, conceded the Fed had missed some of the riskiest behavior in the lead up to the crisis. But he said the Fed had helped avoid an even more damaging economic meltdown and has stepped up its policing of the financial system.

‘The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis, and we should be seeking to preserve, not degrade, the institution’s ability to foster financial stability and to promote economic recovery without inflation,’ he said. — THOMSON REUTERS

Source: Straits Times, 2009

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Dinner dates, a night at the town, private massage service or whatever else you fancy.

Metro Touch Singapore Escort Companionship

(+65) 90973455 ( 24 hours )

www.metro-touch.com ( visit us )

Rep. Barney Frank talks on the floor of the House about discrimination against our LGBT community. Politics is supposed to be about policy, and is supposed to be a coat-check platform, where emotion and personal ties are left at the door. But I honestly don’t believe we live in that reality any longer.

He tried, but his true self showed through. And, according to me, good on him.

What’s left of The Advocate is at it again:

Would you support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act if gender identity protections were again taken out of the bill?

In the comments section to that ‘poll’, Jill Weiss asks some salient questions:

Why is the Advocate suggesting that such a thing is even being considered? LGBT leaders in both the House and Senate have assured us that no such idea would be considered. The main objections to the bill have nothing to do with gender identity, but are focused on concerns about protecting pedophiles and other sexual deviants, and religious freedom. What is with this poll? Do you think this is up for a vote?

The reality, of course, is that it is.

No, Jill is right in that none of it is officially on the table….

Yet.

But its always actually on the table – because the people who are (allegedly) on our side who actually drive ‘the agenda’ have no more use for the concept of the indignity of being nationally equal to trans people than they did two years ago…or four years ago…or ten years ago…yadda, yadda, yadda….

All of this kum ba yah crap we’ve been hearing from St. Barney?  Did anyone actually believe it?  Did anyone actually believe that the hiring of a trans man meant that a transphobic gay leopard had changed his transphobic gay spots?  (You notice he didn’t hire a trans woman?  Besides, despite the appalling apartheid-esque dearth of trans women holding positions of gainful employment from our ‘friends’, what the entire process needed far more than a yet another trans man being hired for a policy position was the excision of one particular trans St. woman from the process – but I digress.)

Another comment to the likely-soon-to-be-late Advocate ‘poll’, this one from Tobi Hill-Meyer:

The Advocate should be boycotted for suggesting this. Additionally, why do folks always assume that leaving trans folks behind would help? In this case, it would cause huge infighting, and split our legislative support. The chances of anything getting passed would plummet.

All one needs to do is look at the discord that has already erupted on a thread discussing this ‘poll’ over at Pam’s House Blend.

That’s what they want even more than enactment of a gay-only bill.

Infighting.

With enough infighing, nothing will happen – and that way, the permanent activist class of Hilary Rosen acolytes and Joe Solmonese wannabees will maintain their undeserved current positions, undeserved current and future paychecks and undeserved future positions in academia…

and Joe Solmonese’s wet dream of nothing substantive happening before 2017 will come to fruition – meaning that the Repub-to-Dem merry-go-round will begin anew on Jan. 20, 2017, and the current Hilary Rosen acolytes and Joe Solmonese wannabees, and a new generation thereof, will be able to continue to bleed the LGBT working classes dry by plying them with Jim Bakker-esque dreams of a fake future of an LGBT equality that the permanently-employed acolytes and wannabees don’t really want because (cue up the Ferengi voice) its not profitable. (Back to Kat voice.)

A comment from Kris to the soon-to-be-late Advocate:

I think it’s horribly transphobic that you even thought to ask this.

But horribly typical…

at least since 1974.

Per Betsy Billet:

Once again, The Advocate demonstrates that it centers the interests of upper class white gender-normative heaumeausexuals at heart by even making this a polling question. Trickle-down social justice doesn’t work. Incrementalism doesn’t work. Period.

But, you see, it does work.  The problem is that, just as the Bush junta always spoke of ’spreading democracy,’ they never said – because the mainstream media never asked – what their definition of ‘democracy’ actually was.  If its what most people think of as the definition of that word – men and women being avble to vote for their leaders – then, of course, the Bush junta’s policies were abject failures.  But, by using what the Bush junta’s definition actually was – corporations controlling people and government – then it was a smashing success.

Same for American LGB(T) politics.

Trickle-down social justice does work – for those who get to do the trickling down…

and the tinkling on.

From the David Goodstein era forward, The Advocate has been a tool of the tinkle-on-ers among the LG(BT)s.

Anger at The Advocate for this ‘poll’?

Fine.

Surprise?

You’ve got to be kidding.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act has been delayed six months from December 1st 2009 until June 2010 and Repulican Representative Barney Frank is expected to make an announcement to this effect today (Friday).

The impending UIEGA is the main reason why many US players are no longer welcome to play on the majority of online gambling sites as it has become a legal mine field. With the proceedings now delayed until next year, there is a realistic chance of the bill being over turned. 

Frank is trying to push through a new bill, entitled HR 2267, supported by 63 other congressmen and women, which gives the US Government a complete framework to fully licence and regulate the internet gambling industry. If successful, it should finally allow American players the freedom to play where they wish.

Mr. Sowell does an excellent job of explaining the why politicians do what they do.

Politicians think we are all too stupid to connect the dots.  We are not stupid, but we have been asleep while they pillaged.

We must prove these power hungry usurpers wrong in the days to come.  We must expose them for who they really are and for what they have done.

Solving Whose Problem?

By Thomas Sowell
November 24, 2009

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems– of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians’ money, and in most cases was not even the government’s money. Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians’ jobs– and jobs in the government’s bureaucracies are increasing.

No one pushed these reckless mortgage lending policies more than Congressman Barney Frank, who brushed aside warnings about risk, and said in 2003 that he wanted to “roll the dice” even more in the housing markets. But it would very rash to bet against Congressman Frank’s getting re-elected in 2010.

After the cascade of economic disasters that began in the housing markets in 2006 and spread into the financial markets in Wall Street and even overseas, people in the private sector pulled back. Banks stopped making so many risky loans. Home buyers began buying homes they could afford, instead of going out on a limb with “creative”– and risky– financing schemes to buy homes that were beyond their means.

But politicians went directly in the opposite direction. In the name of “rescuing” the housing market, Congress passed laws enabling the Federal Housing Administration to insure more and bigger risky loans– loans where there is less than a 4 percent down payment.

A recent news story told of three young men who chipped in a total of $33,000 to buy a home in San Francisco that cost nearly a million dollars. Why would a bank lend that kind of money to them on such a small down payment? Because the loan was insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bank wasn’t taking any risk. If the three guys defaulted, the bank could always collect the money from the Federal Housing Administration. The only risk was to the taxpayers.

Does the Federal Housing Administration have unlimited money to bail out bad loans? Actually there have been so many defaults that the FHA’s own reserves have dropped below where they are supposed to be. But not to worry. There will always be taxpayers, not to mention future generations to pay off the national debt.

Very few people are likely to connect the dots back to those members of Congress who voted for bigger mortgage guarantees and bailouts by the FHA. So the Congressmen’s and the bureaucrats’ jobs are safe, even if millions of other people’s jobs are not.

Congressman Barney Frank is not about to cut back on risky mortgage loan guarantees by the FHA. He recently announced that he plans to introduce legislation to raise the limit on FHA loan guarantees even more.

Congressman Frank will make himself popular with people who get those loans and with banks that make these high-risk loans where they can pocket the profits and pass the risk on to the FHA.

So long as the taxpayers don’t understand that all this political generosity and compassion are at their expense, Barney Frank is an odds-on favorite to get re-elected. The man is not stupid.

What is stupid is believing that politicians are trying to solve our problems, instead of theirs.

As for the FHA running low on money, that is not about to stop the gravy train, certainly not with an election coming up in 2010.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is also running low on money. But that is not going to stop them from insuring bank accounts up to a quarter of a million dollars. It would be stupid for them to stop with an election coming up in 2010.

—

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
+

I was obsessed with the Real World. Even my first boy crush came from the series - Real World: New Orleans’s Danny Roberts.

While I have since weened myself off the reality program where seven – now eight – strangers stop being nice and start getting real – I was excited to see the commercial for the upcoming season in Washington D.C.

Making a cameo in the trailer is Representative Jared Polis. Polis is one of the few openly gay members of Congress.

While certainly some have enjoyed a little same-sex loving – talking to you Mark Foley and Larry Craig –  the only other openly gay Congress persons are Tammy Baldwin, and the institution that is Barney Frank.

Polis makes an appearance alongside housemate Mike. Mike is the token gay of this season. His twist is that he comes from a conservative Christian household, and no one expected the popular star athlete and prom king could actually be – - dun, dun, dun – - gay. Okay – it’s not really a twist, they’ve had this kind of character on before.

According to MTV, “He dates guys and girls, and is still questioning whether he’s bi-sexual or gay. Mike comes to DC to be an environmentalist, but unexpectedly finds the inspiration to help advance marriage rights for gay and lesbian Americans. His sexuality has caused some tension back home, and it’s his time in D.C. that will prove to be the turning point for him and his family in terms of accepting him for who he is.”

Mike eventually meets Polis and says, “You are the person I want to be in 10 years.”

Watch the trailer here.

I wish I was sharing a “positive” example of servant leadership today – but we can also learn from those who exhibit absolutely no servanthood whatsoever.  To be specific, let’s look at the worst case of  leadership on the planet – that monstrosity  we call the U.S. Congress.  With last week’s public approval rating of 14%, they officially became the lowest-rated congress in history.  What’s interesting is that, at 14%, it’s evident that every political segment of the voting population (republicans, democrats, independents, illegals, Islamic terrorists in our military, even dead voters from Chicago) believes that our congress has reached an all-time low.

But they have reached all-time HIGHS in several areas: arrogance, personal wealth, wasteful spending, tax evasion,  ignoring the people they’re supposed to be serving,  really bad hair, cosmetic surgery, etc.   If you got a 14% rating at your performance review, would your employer keep you?  No, you’d be shown the door.

Many remedies come to mind: perhaps first and foremost the option of voting ALL of them out of office.  This has a lot of merit, with very few negatives.   86% of voters seem to agree that this congress would be better off doing NOTHING – vs. what they’re doing now.  I’m willing to sacrifice the 2-3 good congresspeople for the good of the whole.

Of course cutting their pay and work hours would help.  How about we go to a part-time legislature, as a few states do?  They can work for 4 months only – so we can cut their pay and benefits by 66%.  That OK with you?  They’ll do a lot less harm this way.  Isn’t it interesting that our nation’s first congressmen were part-timers; they were “citizen congressmen” – who went back to their farms and stores when their term was up.  They didn’t view it as a profession – they viewed it as their patriotic duty.   The idea of leaching off the public for decades was something foreign to them.

Don’t forget: we employ these people.  They’re supposed to be working for us.  Never have so many got paid so much for doing so much – harm.