Are We Doomed? Or Just In Need of Repair?

In either case, let's sit down with a cup of soup.

"Franklin Roosevelt had to save capitalism from itself," Los Angeles Times business editor Tom Petruno told me as Washington Mutual and Wachovia became the latest banking dominoes to fall. "Is history repeating?"

Indeed, it is, as one could tell from the repetitive usage of loaded terms and phrases like "Great Depression," "meltdown," "apocalypse," "Armageddon" and more to describe the just-on-time cratering of the American economy. After the strange bedfellows in both parties torpedoed Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's so-called bailout, more than $1 trillion of market value in American equities disappeared in a single day. The Dow Jones average set a record for quickest suicide dive in a single day. Other indexes sunk to multiyear lows, wiping out years of value, and stocks across the board went negative like Ann Coulter. In fact, the only major stock that actually advanced on Monday was Campbell Soup.

Can there be a more fitting metaphor for the American economy stuck beneath the Bush administration's thumb?

Some say, like Michael Murphy on the left, that the "Bailout Plan", without which banks and credit that underpin our economy would cease to function, is a massive "swindle" by the wealthy:

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

Well, he can't then blame the Republicans for saying "no" to the bailout, since they are apparently joining hands with him to "save the country" from this "swindle". And if the country is victimized by a swindle, is it really the solution to "just say no"? Or could it be, as in this scenario, like cutting the heart out of the economy, and, in turn, the country?

Imagine now that that human body, pictured above, in its entirety, is the economy. Different parts of the body represent different sectors of the economy. So maybe an arm is the pharmaceutical sector. And maybe a leg is the IT sector, and another leg the energy sector. But the central system to the human body is the heart. If it doesn't function, all other systems in the body shut down.

Blood that flows to and from the heart is comparable to money that flows through the market. The availability of money to leave the heart and travel to other areas of the body - market sectors - is what drives the overall economy. It touches EVERY area of the economy.

Let's say you own a successful dry cleaners in your town. You're profitable, you manage your expenses well, and you've provided some number of jobs back to the community. All of your financial fundamental are in place for expansion. You've scoped out an area where competition will be minimized and where your proven business model is likely to thrive. You don't personally, however, have the money to take a lease on space and hire enough people to run your second location with all of its equipment requirements and the like. You need to borrow that. In a functioning economy, a lender would be happy to lend you the money to expand. You're a great risk - you have a business model that has proven to be successful. But you can't get the money. And you can't get the money because there IS no money to lend.

OK, so I need another cup of soup.

Bush himself is just another iteration of the infamous "New World Order" instituted by his father while trying to, what else, convince the American public that it needed to go to war against Saddam Hussein. The revisionism is transparent, befitting a government that cares nothing of what its people actually think. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" recently juxtaposed Bush's address on the financial cataclysm with his pre-invasion speech in 2003 and found -- surprise! -- they were exactly the same.

This is a long way of saying that this particularly frightening crux of historical geopolitics, fascism and environmental calamity has been a long time coming. Failing banks? Deregulation. Endless war? Homeland security. Total information awareness? Transparent government. Bankrupt economy? The fundamentals are strong.

Now, Jon Stewart may have been joking in a sense, but there's something rather eerie here, and the stakes are far too high to laugh about. Murphy sees it as a case of blatant theft:

This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

That's a lot of rhetoric - as if we can just go now and pull out, and take those weapons back to the pawn shop... oh, but without a war, there's no market for the weapons, so we'll have to sell them to the Chinese so they can invade ... Tibet?

Talk is cheap. Let's use our minds.
RenaRf, with a degree in economics, recommends the bill as a necessary evil:

I don't think this bill is a solution. I think it is more akin to emergency surgery necessary to keep the patient alive before taking a holistic approach to healing the body.

So even though the "bailout" or "repair job" is theft, we should still go with it? Or what is this really all about? Scott Thill says,

To start with, the bailout was obvious theft, but our situation is more precarious than you think. The hyperreal credit default swap market, which few understand although it is estimated to involve tens if not hundreds of global trillions, is faltering under the weight of its own Ponzi origins.

The scenario significantly worsens once you factor in the given that countries like China and others who have denominated their loans in dollars are shouldering our exploding debt, along with oil-soaked sovereign wealth funds from nations whose civil liberties records suck ass. As I wrote last year on this clusterfuck, if the Chinese call in our debts and oil-producing countries decide to peg their petrodollars to the euro, you can more or less kiss the dollar goodbye. Which means the last thing you'll need to worry about is your stocks, retirement or credit cards. You will instead worry whether or not the cash you have on hand will be worth anything at all.

That is the loaded gun that bankers, brokers and the White House is holding to the public's head, as I write. That trillion erased on Monday, as well as the trillions that have been lost and will be lost in the coming months, was nothing more than a hostage situation engineered by the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and their partners in crime in finance, insurance and real estate business.

But what is the right thing to do at this point?

"I think our economic situation can get much worse," argues Danny Schechter, the veteran producer and author whose 2006 indie documentary "In Debt We Trust" covered this volatile territory long before CNN would. "Jobless claims are already at a seven-year high, but the government is worried about the reaction from Asia. We are living on other countries' money, and when that spigot gets cut off, we will be in deeper doo-doo. Part of the reason for the scale of the bailout is to show Asia and sovereign wealth funds that we will protect their interests."

But for how long? The Bush administration and Congress' disdain for the American people has been painfully obvious, so it's hard to believe they will call from sky-high Dubai to see how we are doing after making off with almost all of our money.

"It's a high-stakes gamble, which is why Paulson tried to do it quickly in a climate of shock and crisis," Shechter says. "He knew that the longer it takes, the more opposition it will attract. This plan, if eventually passed, will pre-empt the next president from doing anything about it, because there will be no money. They are wrecking the government by wrecking the economy first."

More advice to "just say no." It seems that, if you read all this, no matter what we do, we are doomed. Even the repair job or bailout is too late - too much, too late...

"This is the September of surprise," Schechter concluded, "not a war on Iran but on America."

And when he says, "war", he's not joking. This could be the prelude to a police state taking over America.

Like every move the Bush administration has ever made, from the Patriot Act to the occupation of Iraq and down to bankrupting the American economy, this maneuver is a solution in search of a problem that it seems destined to create. Look around you. Housing is over. Stocks are nosediving. The banks are gone. War is ceaseless. Civil liberties are disappearing. Nerds at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are taking hostages. It is madness.

Or maybe it's just a matter of "live free, or die."
What if we just said "no", and the whole economy collapsed, the rich got poorer, and the poorer had to learn to survive in a whole new way... What would happen if the big threat to us from this Wall Street collapse and the collapse of the banks were not made good by taxpayer dollars? It seems to be more of a global issue, of screwing all the people, like Asians, we exported our debts to. And in that case, it's seems wrong to just let it go and collapse. But the fear is real.

And here is what we see today: Crowds protesting in the streets, the people's money wiped out thanks to the Bush administration's latest economic shock and awe. An army brigade matter-of-factly betraying Posse Comitatus for the purpose of crowd control. The public trust and wealth almost robbed cleanly with congressional approval.

In other words, we see another unfolding coup, which is to say, a rerun. And there is no telling what the future may hold, or whether or not we are connecting vectors that should remain solitary. But our math has worked just fine in the past -- better than Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson's math, that's for sure.

And we'd love to be wrong about what's coming. But unfortunately that isn't up to us, and it never has been: It's up to the Bush administration. And it has never failed to let us down.

Is it really a police state? Or is it the tightly-networked global economy to which we have to finally keel? The alternative could be even worse.

Beware 269

What if the country goes ... purple???

President Obama, with Vice President Palin? President Biden? President Pelosi? Call them the "Doomsday" scenarios -- On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks Sen. Barack Obama as president, but the Senate, with former Democrat Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans, deadlocks at 50-50, so Vice President Dick Cheney steps in to break the tie to make Republican Sarah Palin his successor.

"Wow," said longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess. "Wow, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"

"If this scenario ever happened, it would be like a scene from the movie 'Scream' for Democrats," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. "The only thing worse for the Democrats than losing the White House, again, when it had the best chance to win in a generation, but to do so at the hands of Cheney and Lieberman. That would be cruel."

Terrorism Against Muslims Hits Ohio in Ramadan

This disconcerting news about terrorism against Muslims is just in (quoted in full):

Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26, when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing. Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of those in the building, headed for the doors.

"I would stay outside for a minute, then go back in, there were a lot of kids," Njie said. "My throat is still itchy, I need to get some milk."

Njie was one of several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

According to fire dispatch communications, a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window. That child was brought to the supervising firefighter at the scene.

Wiley would not discuss that report, but said the investigation has been turned over to police. Police were not commenting.

The 300 or so inside were celebrating the last 10 days of Ramadan with dinner and a prayer session, but the prayer session was interrupted so those suffering from tearing, coughing and shortness of breath could receive treatment.

Wiley said an adult and juvenile were taken to area hospitals and others had their eyes or faces washed on the scene. He did not know how many people were treated at the scene.

Ismail Gula, ISGD secretary, said people were praying during the weekly service when some in the audience began to cough and experience breathing troubles, then left the building. Once outside, several of them called 911, Gula said.

Tarek Sabagh, a member of the ISGD board, wasn't present when the incident occurred.

He said his daughter called and told him to stay away because of the possibility of remaining fumes. Sabagh arrived shortly after and watched from the mosque's steps as members were allowed back inside about 11 p.m. to collect belongings.

"It's very disturbing," Sabagh said. "Something like this has never happened before."

Sabagh said members moved to a Beavercreek school to finish their prayer session as police continued to investigate.

"I don't know if people will have the feeling of trust to come back tomorrow or next week or next month," Sabagh said. "I don't know how people will feel."

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. During the month, Muslims fast (do not eat) from sunrise to sunset. In the evening and in the morning before the sun comes up, they eat small meals. During this month, they take extra time for family, inner reflection, and spiritual growth.

This shows the anti-Muslim sentiment which is a direct result of the so-called Global War on Terror. You can't have a war based solely on ideology and win. It's always ultimately a lose-lose.

One loss is participation of Muslims in American politics and society, an important way of mitigating terrorism. In fact, it's the only real solution. Yet here's the reaction of one Muslim on dailykos after this incident:

Keep in mind, as many of you know, Muslims in america are well assimilated, mainstream moderate people, often times professionals who contribute greatly to the communities in which they live.

But because of Fox News, because of right wing organizations, like the Clarion FUND and their viscious attacks on islam, because of daniel pipes and ohers like him, Islam has been maligned to the extent thathate crime is an acceptable part of the rights tradition. They believe that Muslims are out to destroy America.

No matter the facts, no matter the reality, all that matters is the propaganda they listen to on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, etc....

Cal Thomas editorials are in my local paper virtually every day. The man rants against muslims all the time. And there are many others like him. Michelle Malkin. This Kathleen Parker who has recenltly called for Palins resignation has viciously attacked muslims in the past.

So many of them. And so, the regular people believe this crap, and they believe it is their duty to defend america against this Mortal enemy.

And when attacks like this happen. Nothing much is done, BECAUSE, muslims are ignored by and large. Their situation their suffering EVEN their votes dont seem to matter much.

Fortunately, a large and sympathetic response from the site assures us that not everyone has that divisive, partisan, emotional, fear-mongering, and unthinking attitude. Now we need more conscientious men and women of conscience in the media reporting an incident like this, and more public outcry.

Will Bush Exploit Crisis to Impose Martial Law?

This article explores the possibility. It's chilling. Sometimes, just bringing out the possibility helps deflate it. The points made here are worth thinking about.

How Did We Miss This? Conservatives Blast Palin!

Yes, it's true! Sarah Palin's obvious incompetence has finally sunk in after the fireworks blew out, and even conservatives like Kathleen Parker admitted that she is not up to the job:

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

And as everyone knows, McCain's 72 years, marked lately by a bout with the deadly cancer melanoma, are right there on the precipice of the grave: the question of the veep having to replace him becomes all the more significant in his case.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

Here's a conservative woman who wanted with all her heart to embrace Palin as part of the McCain team. But she just can't. It's too great a stretch. Palin is not up to the job - she's waayy over her head.

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

I'm not usually a fan of Parker and don't often share her views. But here we can agree...the Palin pick was a total disaster, and who knows how the GOP will crawl out of it? It says a lot about John McCain and his ability to make important executive decisions. That ability looks very politically-motivated, showboating, emotional, and not suitable for the leadership position he seeks. In the meantime, the GOP is stuck with another bomb to bury. They've been awfully busy with their financial landslides, housing market implosion and lie-driven war debacle to have to now deal with the delicate issue of a landmark choice, a suddenly-beloved woman Veep-pick returning gracefully into the Alaskan sunset. Maybe they should find a dentist.

Class Act: Obama Wins Debate

Polls show people believe Obama won. Pundits may cry it's a draw, but the facts say otherwise...

Major Newspapers Delivering Anti-Islam DVD to Voters in Swing States

There's a new propaganda war on Islam in this election season, cooked up by "neocons and ex-Israeli diplomats", according to this article:

A group of hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.
The group, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), is working with another organisation called the Clarion Fund, which produced the 60-minute video and is itself tied closely to an Israeli organisation called Aish Hatorah.

According to this version of the report,

Millions of voters in U.S. states crucial to this fall's presidential election received DVD copies of a controversial documentary film as advertising inserts in their morning newspapers over the past week, with more expected to be sent out over the upcoming weekend.

The 2006 film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, ...was reportedly delivered, or slated for delivery this weekend, into tens of millions of households in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other "swing states" that don't vote consistently for either party and usually decide elections.

And who are these newspapers? Oh, not the NYT... "all the trash that's profitable to send?"...

The New York Times alone distributed some 145,000 copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West to 11 markets.

In these economic hard times, that's a lot of money. Why the need to push Islamophobia now? Is this supposed to be a racist plug for McCain?

Republicans and their candidate, Sen. John McCain, have made battling the threat posed by radical Islamists a central platform of their campaign, while presenting their Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, as being weak on the issue. Obama has also fought off persistent smear campaigns, particularly among Jewish voters, that he is a closet Muslim.

Gregory Ross, the spokesman for the Clarion group, which produced and is distributing the DVD, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that the movie was being delivered to 28 million homes throughout the month of September and that the intention was not to sway voters to either candidate.

Right! Of course, the intention had nothing to do with the election! They just wanted to spend a lot of money in swing states because... because... they're "swingers." And they really, really want to be sure that everybody knows that Muslims are a threat. And we need a Great White Right-Wing Hope to save us from THEM.

Clarion Fund was founded by the writer and executive produce of Obsession, Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore. The group also runs the website Radicalislam.org -- an educational site which implores its readers to "take action against radical Islam" by exploring its resources under four headings: "fueling terror," "Sharia law," "vote 2008," and "radical Islam overview."

Because of Clarion Fund's non-profit, tax-exempt status, it is not permitted to sway voters in a partisan manner. But Radicalislam.org reportedly was, until it was recently pointed out in the media, carrying an article that explicitly endorsed Sen. John McCain.

Ooops. Well, they didn't mean to endorse him. And... are they still granted non-profit status? Or is this another "unregulated" neocon enterprise? Well, as long as they are promoting hate and Islamophobia, I mean, who would want to "regulate" that? Isn't hating Muslims good for security? Well, it seems Clarion, one of the producers of the DVD, is getting some dividends for their efforts,

"We're getting many concerned calls and emails from Muslims around the country who see this as an attempt to not only marginalize and demonize the American Muslim community, but also to sway the election by targeting swing states," Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told IPS. "People are outraged. I haven't seen this kind of outrage in a long time. It's coming to their homes, it's coming to their neighbors and they believe its going to impact their lives and their children's lives negatively."

Hooper also said there had apparently already been an incident of bias against a bus driver for Islamic school children in Ohio. The biased comments were likely inspired by film.

Is that the kind of security they are trying to "promote" in a "non-profit" sort of way? Well, they did put in a substantial investment, so presumably they want a return. A return named McCain.

"I can't imagine that you can produce, package, distribute and advertise this product for less than 50 million dollars," Hooper told IPS.

He also insisted that the substantial financial push may have been intended to sway the election. "Why did they choose to distribute this hate propaganda to millions of homes in swing states in this election?"

Even EMET's spokesman, Ari Morgenstern, admits

"it costs a great deal -- it's a multi-million-dollar effort." Outside experts have estimated the cost of the operation, including reproduction and distribution, at between 15 million dollars and 50 million dollars.

There must be some motivation, and it's obvious what it is.

Not all newspapers were so eager for the advertising dollars that they would distribute this obviously incendiary and prejudicial propaganda, as the IPS reported,

Critics allege that the movie "Obsession" is "hate propaganda" which paints Muslims as violent extremists and, among other things, explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

At least two major metropolitan newspapers solicited to insert the paid advertisement into their product have refused to do so because of a perceived bias in the film.

Too bad the NYT had no such moral qualms. All their markets are now inundated with this hate material. And this hate material is just part of a broader effort.

Two weeks ago, EMET sponsored a seminar series on Capitol Hill named for the controversial multi-billionaire casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to right-wing Zionist organisations in the U.S.; the far-right lobby group, Freedom's Watch; and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), whose efforts to persuade Jewish voters that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is aligned with radical anti-Israel forces in the Islamic world have drawn strong criticism from the mainstream Jewish press here.

Making those newspapers look even worse. Is this the fallout of the economic meltdown? More hate? More racism? Less democracy? Sounds like the Republican agenda melding with the right-wing Zionist extremists. It's a hatefest for idealogues.

Not to mention illegal. It is prohibited by law for non-profits or foreign organizations or agents to try to influence an election in any way. And Clarion is just a front, without even an address, acting for an organization in Israel. So where is the law? Or doesn't it matter if this is legal or illegal, just so McCain gets elected?

No respect for the law. More fear. More walls. More divisions between people. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Cooperation between people of different ethnic and religions backgrounds gets trumped by the desperate fear-driven fantasized "need" to build walls and bariers between them, seeing others always as threats. Why does the GOP keep sticking to these ideologues? All these propagandists do is make life in America less free, less secure, and the election less democratic.

Greenspan-Gramm's $45 trillion Fantasy Scam Becomes Self-Aware

Devilstower's great dkos diary tells the history, and intentions, behind the Wall Street/Financial debacle that has Bushco wants YOU to BAIL OUT NOW for 700 Billion Dollars, putting America in 11.7 Trillion Dollars Debt.

It's best to read the article, but just to get a sense of what's at the heartless heart of it, meet Phil Gramm and "Maestro" Alan Greenspan's financial cyborg: the name's credit default swaps.

As if bent on terminating America and its prosperity and riches altogether, Republican anti-regulationists decided to make greed the ultimate moral determinator: Greed = The American Dream. It is "Our Dream" to "Get Rich, or Die Tryin'", or better yet, let someone else die while the elite don't die, and get rich with a minimum of work (aka, "tryin'"). And John McCain's economic idol, Phil Gramm, helped author this anarchist, regulation-free debacle.

It all started with GOP icon Reagan and his voodoo economics, where the rich bilking the rest of us was supposed to result in some sort of drip-drip-drip down to... the rest of us. They de-regulated - i.e., put out into the Wild West with no laws - the Savings and Loan industry, which more or less exploded with greed and collapsed.

Then, after that debacle, Gramm & friends - notably, Alan Greenspan, American Financial Idol - worked very hard to build a totally lawless world of ever-expanding Finance, where Monsters eat Dogs, and Dogs eat Pipsqueaks, and Pipsqueaks pay taxes. And Monsters eat each other in Carnival Cannibalia, where no monster is too big to become bigger and, of course, bigger means better, right?

And in the middle of this greed, law-bashing fest was good ol' John McCain, basking in Republican elitism: grab the money, say we're defending America and the Individual. While in fact they are doing the exact opposite.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley reversed those rules, allowing not only more bank mergers, but for banks to become directly involved in the stock market, bonds, and insurance. Remember the bit about how S&Ls failed because they didn't have the regulations that protected banks? After Gramm-Leach-Bliley, banks didn't have that protection either.

Gramm wasn't done. The next year he was back with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which was slipped into a "must pass" spending bill on the last day of the 106th Congress. This Act greatly expanded the scope of futures trading, created new vehicles for speculation, and sheltered several investments from regulation.

As with both Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Garn-St. Germain, large parts of this bill were written by industry lobbyists. This famously included the "Enron Loophole" that exempted energy trading from regulation and was written by (big suprise) Enron Lobbyists working with Gramm. Not coincidentally, Senator Gramm, the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, was also key to legislating the deregulation of California's energy commodity trading.

Thanks to this fortunate trifecta of Gramm-crafted legislation, Enron was able to create "EnronOnline" and trade electricity in California with absolutely no oversight or transparency. They quickly worked out how to game the system. Previously, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout in the history of California. Within months, the system had been manipulated by traders to generate 38 such blackouts and wholesale electrical prices had gone up more than 3000%. Despite production capacity equal to four times the demand during winter, energy traders even engineered a blackout in mid-January.

The Enron debacle, the S & L collapse, and now the meltdown of virtually everything on Wall Street - right after Republicans have changed the system to put retirement money for "ordinary Americans" - i.e., non-elite Americans - in Wall Street, all of this was engineered by Republicans Gramm and his senatorial supporters, including John McCain.

Notice that it's always propaganda selling Americans the false and misleading line: the Government is BAD because it wants to REGULATE us free & individualistic all-American Americans and we want America First!

Is that drivel or insanity? Then why do people buy this crap? Did anybody notice that all the meltdowns and disasters occurred from LACK OF REGULATION. They want to OVERREGULATE and SURVEILL YOU, the American People, while they, in their Big Elitist Superrich Protected Corporations and Agencies, go free unregulated, not subject to laws or scrutiny. They peer into your emails and underwear, while they want to fly "under the radar" while screwing you and this whole country for their own personal profit, power and fantasy ideologies.

Of these, the worst are the Credit Default Swaps.

Among those instruments which the CFMA sheltered from regulatory scrutiny was something called the "credit default swap." A kind of insurance one bank could exchange with another, credit default swaps supposedly made it safe for banks to take on ever riskier forms of debt. The Act didn't invent these swaps, though they were relatively new. Instead, by placing them in a state where they were not only unregulated but almost perfectly opaque, credit default swaps were turned into the perfect vehicle to fuel a Wall Street revolution. No one had any idea what these things were actually worth, they were traded "over the counter" without being administered by any exchange, and even the SEC could monitor their existence only indirectly.

So how did the Credit Default Swaps become self-aware???

A secondary market for trading swaps exploded into existence, and swaps were traded with absolutely no consideration for the nature or quality of the underlying investment. Swaps changed hands a dozen or more times, growing in "value" as they went. Worse still, no one regulated who could buy a swap, so it was (and is) perfectly possible for a company to acquire swaps that theoretically cover billions of dollars in loans, even if that company doesn't have a red cent on hand to cover those swaps should the loans default.

How big did this market become? Here's business correspondent Bob Moon and host Kai Ryssdal on American Public Media's Marketplace from back in the spring.

BOB MOON: OK, I'm about to unload some numbers on you here, so I'll speak slowly so you can follow this.

The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion.

The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion.

The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion.

OK, you ready?

The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion.
KAI RYSSDAL: That's a lot of money, Bob.

As in three times the whole US gross domestic product, Bob. And the truth is that Moon probably underestimated. The unregulated and poorly reported credit default swaps may have actually passed $70 trillion last year, or about $5 trillion more than the GDP of the entire world.

Look at what, of all people, Ben Stein said:

The crisis occurred (to greatly oversimplify) because the financial system allowed entities to place bets on whether or not those mortgages would ever be paid. You didn't have to own a mortgage to make the bets. These bets, called Credit Default Swaps, are complex. But in a nutshell, they allow someone to profit immensely - staggeringly - if large numbers of subprime mortgages are not paid off and go into default.

The profit can be wildly out of proportion to the real amount of defaults, because speculators can push down the price of instruments tied to the subprime mortgages far beyond what the real rates of loss have been. As I said, the profits here can be beyond imagining. (In fact, they can be so large that one might well wonder if the whole subprime fiasco was not set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse...)

These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America.

Did you see that???
This is a mainstream financial analyst, Ben Stein.
So what if the whole subprime fiasco was "set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse"?

So the Swaps themselves became real. Somebody has to pay. They got the US government in a back room, and gave them an ultimatum. Pay up, boys, or we take over.
Wonder why the entire government is jittery, paying up $700 Billion and more?
The Credit Default Swaps have become self-aware.
God help us.

Messagee to Congress: Don't Let Bush Get Away With This!

The headline blares from the New York Times:

Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street

What was that again?
Yes, the worst Administration in US history is now asking for 700 BILLION DOLLARS TO BAIL OUT WALL STREET1

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

And by way of excuse, Bush says

“I will tell our citizens and continue to remind them that the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and that, over time, we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”

Yeah, right. I'm sure. And this means we can watch the dollar come tumbling down, not to mention the potential for admission of wrongdoing by greedy speculators, let alone the neocons for pushing rampant speculation as the ultimate moral high ground. Didn't we hear that government was the Great Satan?

So how come we now have to pray to the Great Satan to bail out those Wall Street angels who were there saving us from government and its evil democratic regulations?

Democratic leaders have pledged to approve a bill but say it must also include tangible help for ordinary Americans in the form of an economic stimulus package.

Yes, let's give the taxpayers a rebate too. The winner in all this? The people who profit from materials provided to the US mint? Money engravers? Doesn't this whole thing smack of counterfeiting somehow?

Did somebody say it's because of deregulation? Or maybe because of the trillions going to the War Without End Amen? Whatever it is, it's courtesy of the Grand Ole Party, inherited by the forked-tongue-speaking John McCain.

Best Wrapup of Financial Meltdown Goes to...

Best brief on the financial meltdown of last week by bonddad at dkos, puts it all out in an orderly, easily understood way,

Last week was historic. It is a week that financial and economic people will study for generations. It also marked the end of certain elements of the Republican Party's ideology. Below are statements the Republican party can no longer claim as part of their core ideology.

We are the party of small government
Actually, this week simply added to the the end of this claim. Under Bush II, discretionary spending has increased from $640 billion to $1.040 trillion dollars. Also remember that Bush had a Republican controlled congress for 6 of those years. However, Paulson will send a package to Congress which totals $800 billion. The Treasury will create a new agency to buy bad debt (which the WSJ's Marketbeat blog has called the Treasury Garbage Machine). In short, when the Republicans control all branches of government they spend like drunken sailors.

They are also not the party of fiscal responsibility,

when the going gets tough, the Republicans become socialists:

or the party of free markets or personal responsibility either.
Obama, are you listening?
Read the rest, it's well worth it.

US Dumps Friends, Again: Assassination Plot for Maliki?

Well, if you thought the Bush Administration couldn't do more damage, think again. Now, in the continuing, time-honored tradition of dumping allies - remember our "friend" Saddam Hussein? - a story has now surfaced that the US is planning to dump Iraq's President Maliki - say what??? - yes, Maliki is now a possible target of US assassination plans... for what? First, of course, for his lack of enthusiasm for being under US military occupation and control for the forseeable indefinite future. And, backing that up, for his "leanings" towards that Satan, or possibly anti-Satan, Iran.

Baghdad: Americans, increasingly resenting recent moves by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, could seek to topple or even assassinate him, says a secret report by a Kurdish political party, which is part of the national government.

The report, which Gulf News has seen, says Al Maliki does not want to see any US soldier in Iraq after 2011 and he preferred strong political, economic and military relations with the Americans but not the presence and influence of the US military in his country.

The latest US resentment stem from Al Maliki's strong stance in the current talks to reach a strategic security agreement between the two countries, the report said.

So he's not a US lackey! He's destroying the whole purpose of the invasion, a 3 trillion dollar investment!

"Al Maliki has started to undermine the influence of those in the Iraqi military and security commanders who are classified as proteges of the Americans. This has raised concerns in the US military command in Baghdad. The freezing of the powers of the Iraqi Army's chief of staff, Babakir Zebari, is the first indication of this trend," the report said.

According to the report, the US suspects Al Maliki of getting closer to Iran in order to launch a broad military operation in Basra, Al Sadr City in Baghdad and Maysan province, in preparation for a complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

The report said the statement of Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr about converting most of the Mahdi Army into a social and cultural organisation, named Al Mumahidun, is part of the Iranian game.

Oooh, the Iranians have a game plan, an evil plan to convert a military organization into a "social and cultural organization". Now how evil can you get?

According to the report, the US is weighing three options.

The first is to topple Al Maliki in parliament and bring vice-president and leader of the Islamic Supreme Council, Adel Abdul Mahdi, into power. Mahdi, according to the US, is more pragmatic than Al Maliki. He enjoys the support of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Al Hakim. But this option may not hold as Al Hakim and Mahdi are both considered close to Iran as well.

The second option is to pressure Al Maliki to resign. But this is difficult as he heads an elected government.

The third option is an assassination attempt against Al Maliki with the help of terrorist groups, and to put in place a puppet administration favourable to the Americans.

Oh, so we're going to out-evil 'em! How evil is assassination "with the help of terrorist groups"???? I thought it was a war on terror! But actually it's a war on ... on.... on anybody who disagrees with us, especially who doesn't like to be pushed around, to the tune of Big Guns, by the US.

McCain Speaks With Forked Tongue: One English and Its Opposite Spanish

The Republican Party says, in English:
"We oppose amnesty. The rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity. The American people's rejection of en masse legalizations is especially appropriate given the federal government's past failures to enforce the law."


But in Spanish, they say (translated):

"[Barack] Obama and his congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants. But are they? The press reports their efforts were 'poison pills' that made immigration reform fail. The result: No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform. Is that being on our side? Obama and his congressional allies: Ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to lead."

So which is it?

CNN's Ruben Navarrette Jr. says
the McCain ad "hits the target" while Obama's attempt at courting Hispanic voters "misses". His reasoning is that the above quote from their Spanish ad gives "facts" while the Obama ad, he claims, is more vague and accusatory, stating: "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that lies just to get our vote, and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families."

Well, what's untrue about that? Navarette claims that Obama's ad ties McCain to Rush Limbaugh, but I don't see where it does. On the other hand, Huffpo's Frank Sharry says:

First, Sen. John McCain was for reform - championing a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill with courage and leadership until it collapsed in the summer of 2007. Then, with Republican primary voters in a surly mood toward immigrants, he changed his position, saying that he wouldn't support his own reform bill when competing for the Republican nomination.

Now, the McCain campaign has launched Spanish language attack ads making the outrageous claim that Senator Obama and the Democrats blocked comprehensive immigration reform in 2007.

If you're trying to follow along at home, let's summarize: Senator McCain - in English - is now saying that he wouldn't support the comprehensive immigration bill he once co-authored with Senator Ted Kennedy, a bill that he previously voted for. Senator McCain's campaign - in Spanish -- is now attacking Obama for blocking a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007, a bill that Senator Obama voted for.

As to Navarette's defense of McCain's ad and his attack on Dems for supposedly "killing" the Immigration Bill,

From the English ads, it appears that McCain really does speak with forked tongue: one fork in English to dish up anti-immigration sentiment to the white folks, and one fork serving pro-immigration fare to Latinos. McCain, you can't have it both ways. People have the right to know where the candidates really stand. The only language we want to hear is the truth.

Did John McCain Block Release of POW Documents?

Check this out:

Sydney H. Schanberg, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and Newsday columnist -- and author of "The Killing Fields" -- has written a 9000-word investigative piece on John McCain and his longstanding efforts to, as Schanberg asserts in his lede, "hide from the public stunning information about the live Vietnam prisoners who, unlike him, didn't return home."

Or better yet, check out the whole article in the Nation.

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally produced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate "Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs." The chair was John Kerry, but McCain, as a POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.

It's well worth reading the whole article. This should be a blockbuster, if anybody dares to listen, but the sensitivity of it remains. But if one worries about McCain's sensitivities, maybe we should consider the sensitivities of others.

On November 11, 1992, Dolores Alfond, sister of missing airman Capt. Victor Apodaca and chair of the National Alliance of Families, an organization of relatives of POW/MIAs, testified at one of the Senate committee's public hearings. She asked for information about data the government had gathered from electronic devices used in a classified program known as PAVE SPIKE.

Should be reasonable enough. But catch this:

The devices were primarily motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements. But they also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the ground--a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang--could manually enter data into the sensor, which were regularly collected electronically by US planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge from the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensors--as US pilots had been trained to do--"no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 US POW/MIAs who were lost in Laos." Alfond added, says the transcript: "This PAVE SPIKE intelligence is seamless, but the committee has not discussed it or released what it knows about PAVE SPIKE."

McCain, whose POW status made him the committee's most powerful member, attended that hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel's work. He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of "denigrating" his "patriotism." The bullying had its effect--she began to cry.

After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned and stormed out of the room. The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. We still don't know anything about those 20 POWs.

Sound familiar? That anger thing? And this is the guy we're supposed to elect to be President of the United States? Is anybody listening?

Schumer's Economic "Plan": Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest?

This newly-discovered "bonddad blog" says Schumer's plan to rescue us from the brink of economic meltdown - oh, I thought we already melted down! - is "the dumbest idea yet".

The blog quotes Bloomberg on the plan, under consideration by the Fed and Treasury both:

Schumer advocated a Great Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corp. model, different from the Resolution Trust Corp.- type plan others have floated. Another RTC, which was a 1990s agency that sold devalued assets in the Savings and Loan Crisis, would ``simply transfer excessive risk to the U.S. government without addressing the plight of homeowners,'' he said.

Bonddad's take?

Why is this a dumb idea? Let me count the ways.

1.) Where is the money for this going to come from? I've detailed the proposed spending plans we've seen so far. They total $900 billion. Now we're going to pump more money into the system from some as yet unknown source.

2.) Just what will the government do with these interests? They're going to wind up the majority shareholder in some of these institutions -- and a minor big holder in others. Who will decide the government's policy?

3.) What is the criteria for investing in a company? If ever there was going to be a highly politicized process this is it. I can see it now ... "Senator from big important district gets huge cash infusion not because it's a good investment but because the Senator is in a close reelection bid and needs votes.

4.) Will the government ever get out of these companies? Will there be a time limit?

5.) Will there be a time limit for this entity's duration? Will it go on forever?

6.) Will the government become intimately involved with the company's internal deliberations and policy? Will Congressmen sit on various boards?

I could go on, but you get the idea. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Will Obama endorese this idea, as he has many others? Hopefully not, but... will somebody pass him this message?

GOP Legacy: Financial Meltdown, Not Trickle Down

Years ago I wandered into a Georgia grocery store run by two twin men in their 70's with a fondness for milk - and wisdom. Bush I was president then, and we got to talking politics. He told me that throughout his life, he noticed a clear repeated pattern: whenever the Republicans were in power, they ruined the economy and started wars. Any wars, even little wars (like Reagan's invasion of Grenada), but they had to start wars. He said that's basically what the Republicans were all about.

Now we have the Republican agenda taken to its logical extreme: war without end Amen (the GWOT with its "fronts" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere), and Total Economic Meltdown.

Not only have some of the biggest banks gone bad, oil prices become an issue, and the housing market gone bad, but the stock market made its worst decline in years, and most analysts are saying this is the worst thing to happen since the Great Depression.

Not just "internet rumors", no...everybody who knows. Take Bloomberg, for example:

In the biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression, two of Wall Street's most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., headed toward extinction.

But to most people, what is a "reshaping of the financial industry"? What does it mean that

``The tectonic plates beneath the world financial system are shifting, and there is going to be a new financial world order that will be born of this,'' said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital Group Inc., the Jersey City, New Jersey-based brokerage that handles about $1 trillion worth of stock transactions a quarter. ``It's an ugly and painful process.''

?????

What is this "new financial world order"? Ugly and painful to whom?

Lehman, which employed 25,935 people at the end of August in 61 offices around the world, had a balance sheet totaling $786 billion as recently as February.

What will happen to those 25,935 people? And $786 billion can't just evaporate. Can it?

But where does the pain spread beyond Wall Street hotshots? Main street and the middle class are now in this boat since the Republicans' touted mixing of speculative stock market investments with retirement funds, pictured as a "free-market" bonanza a la Reaganomics gone futuristic, made 401K's a form of universal retirement security. It was the GOP dream of replacing the government with big corporations and Big Business. And it is a total disaster. Witness, oh world, the debacle.

The GOP attacks the US economy on multiple fronts: attempting to gut their sole source of adequate revenue, taxes, from their largest source, the rich and powerful including corporations; spending uncounted - and I mean black budgeted - treasure on wars and war equipment to the point of bankrupting the government; and rampant deregulation, trusting businesses to regulate themselves, pushing it with the glorification of greed and the denigration of compassion.

In short, the GOP
- Guts revenue from the wealthy, called "cutting taxes" (but only for the rich)
- Spends heavily on wars without accountability
- Deregulates all sectors of business and industry, leading to abuse
- Privatizes what should be accountable public services

Note the features of these policies:
- Lack of accountability, especially for the rich/powerful
- Faith-based "belief" in the moral authority of greed and self-serving
- War on compassion as somehow morally objectionable, a "free lunch"

The net result of these policies for the economy?
- Unregulated businesses can't make the hard realistic choices
- The big swallow the small - even in the bailout and aftermath of the debacle
- Smaller investors, small business owners, employees are crushed
- There's a culture of continual increase without balance or realism
- Without balance, there's collapse

The results are in:

The industry convulsions that started last year have already eliminated Bear Stearns Cos., forced into a cut-price sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co. with government support in March. A week ago, the U.S. Treasury placed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, guaranteeing their widely held debt securities while all but erasing their equity value.

American International Group Inc., once the world's largest insurer, is struggling to raise cash to avoid a credit-rating downgrade that could cripple its business. AIG shares fell as much as 52 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today and were down $5.49, or 45 percent, to $6.65 at 10:50 a.m.

The five New York-based securities firms that dominated Wall Street have been reduced to two: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. While both firms are scheduled to report a drop in third-quarter earnings this year, their business has remained profitable throughout 2008 -- unlike Lehman and Merrill. As concerns swirled about their futures, Goldman's stock dropped as much as 7.9 percent and Morgan Stanley's fell as much as 13 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today.

That's the problem with the "free market", and even more so with greed. Values can't just keep rising indefinitely. If this is the ABC of logic, why didn't anyone act on it? Because this is GOP-driven faith-based investing. Housing will always go up, they say. Based on what? That real estate is Jesus. It will wash away our sins.

``I've been on Wall Street for many years, and I've never seen a weekend like this one,'' said Michael Holland, 64, chairman and founder of New York-based Holland & Co. ``We are unwinding what has been years of silliness in the financial markets, and the silliness is being vaporized as we speak, unfortunately with the stock price of a number of companies involved in it.''

But is it just "silliness" being vaporized, or billions of dollars? And whose money is this? Whose property? Am I living in one piece of this debacle? Probably, yes.

In fact, this AP report indicates that the repercussions are much greater than anyone can really grasp:

Banks are not the only ones struggling in the growing financial crisis. The fund established to insure their deposits is also feeling the pinch, and the taxpayer may be the lender of last resort.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., whose insurance fund has slipped below the minimum target level set by Congress, could be forced to tap tax dollars through a Treasury Department loan if Washington Mutual Inc., the nation's largest thrift, or another struggling rival fails, economists and industry analysts said Tuesday.

Treasury has already come to the rescue of several corporate victims of the housing and credit crunches. The government took over mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and helped finance the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Eleven federally insured banks and thrifts have failed this year, including Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bank, by far the largest shut down by regulators.

Additional failures of large banks or savings and loans companies seem likely, and that could overwhelm the FDIC's insurance fund, said Brian Bethune, U.S. economist at consulting firm Global Insight.

"We've got a ... retail bank run forming in this country," said Christopher Whalen, senior vice president and managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics.

Now hold on a second. What does that mean? It means the banks are making a run on the federal government and on the FDIC itself. Yes, it's not people making a run on banks. It's the banks making a run on their sole guarantor, the FDIC. What would America be without the FDIC?

A Washington Mutual failure would dwarf the largest bank collapse in U.S. history — Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984, with $33.6 billion in assets.

By comparison, WaMu and its subsidiaries had assets of $309.73 billion as of June 30 and IndyMac had $32 billion when it shut down.

And where does WaMu go when their assets are deemed "junk"? The Fed.

Arthur Murton, director of the FDIC's insurance and research division, said that when large institutions have failed in recent years, the hit to the fund has been about 5 to 10 percent of the company's assets.

Or, failing that, Daddy Warbucks... I mean, the Department of Treasury.

If the FDIC doesn't have enough cash to cover the initial costs of a bank or thrift failure, one option would be short-term loans from the Treasury. That last happened in 1991-92, during the last part of the savings and loan crisis, when the FDIC borrowed $15.1 billion from the Treasury and repaid it with interest about a year later.

But nobody asks, what if Daddy Warbucks is actually Daddy WarSpender? What if the Treasury Department can't take all the pressure?

Think about it for a second. Greed. Deregulation. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Then the "Supply Side" itself starts to collapse. Who's going to shore them up? The People?? They're the first to go. We always say, "Don't worry. The FDIC guarantees all." It's faith-based Republican economics. The FDIC is now Jesus. The FDIC will save us. But what if the FDIC itself can't save us?

Then we turn, at long last, to the Grandaddy of them all, the GOP's Great Satan: The Federal Government. But the businesses whose taxes were gutted to make way for their greed and profit have no more profits. Without profits, their tax revenues will be even less. And without revenues, the Federal Government will go bankrupt. And if the Federal Government goes bankrupt, we face the following:

We lose the war in Iraq and head home, 'cause we can't afford to be there.
We lose the war in Afghanistan, 'cause we can't afford to be there either.
We lose the war on terror, because we haven't yet figured out what the hell it is, let alone afford it.
We lose our status in the world, because we will have major problems with all the countries financially entangled with our affairs.

Oh, and on the home front? Our "homeland" will have a lot more crime, thanks to poverty, a lot less justice, thanks to "Homeland Security", and a lot more homelessness, thanks to ... "trickle down" housing crisis.

All those things hyped by the GOP will be lost. Because the Great Satan is not government corruption, but corruption itself is the Great Satan, and no corporation or powerful entity or nation, for that matter, is immune. Corruption starts with immunity to compassion. It holds nothing sacred but self-interest. And self-interest, as we are beginning, hopefully, to see, is blind, and ultimately self-defeating.

Or was it only the GOP? The Clinton years saw a lot of the same policies and deregulation. Some say,

This is not about Republican or Democratic policies, but systemic bipartisan deregulation. Only a quick bout of sweeping and decisive regulation can fix what's broken.

The New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act essentially put federal regulation in control of greed, by "saying" to the banking industry:

"If you want to raise capital through speculative investors at home or overseas -- fine. But as an investment bank, you don't get our backing and you don't get to mix it up with citizens' lives or use their capital to fund your trading activities."

McCain is still pandering to the disastrous notion of tax cuts being a panacea for all financial ills. It never worked before, and it will only make things worse. At least Barack Obama is using his mind. And note that the New Deal was a Democratic idea. It basically saved America from the brink. Now we are again on the brink. Why doesn't anybody feel it? Or maybe they will...

And if they don't, and put the GOP back at the helm, it will give a chance for the rest of the world to "inherit the earth." The ultimate GOP legacy seems to be the destruction of all their stated goals.

Mr. Lobbyist, Mr. Feed-the-Rich, Mr. Hypocrite McCain Caught With "Satans"

From the Pensito Review:

What Was John McCain Doing on a Yacht with a Conman, a K Street Lobbyist and a Hollywood Celebrity?

The issue, of course, is McCain's public Angelic anti-lobbyist, anti-pork stand, and his The Real McCain pro-lobbyist, pro Big Corporation, anti-worker/jobs actions and in this case, friends. Not to mention him not being hot about "celebrities." Or, of course, "Satan", as the GOP loves to point out.

On the left, a Satanic (GOP term) criminal,

Italian real estate developer Raffaello Follieri pleaded guilty for his involvement in the so-called Vati-Con scandal, a scheme in which he misappropriated a $50 million investment from California billionaire Ronald Burkle meant to buy up abandoned Roman Catholic properties in the United States.

Beside him, his Satanic (GOP term) celebrity girl-friend

Hollywood star, Ann Hathaway—“Princess Diaries,” “Devil Wears Prada” [and “Brokeback Mountain”].

And don't forget lobbyist Rick Weber who was closest to McCain, shown extending his hand. The above link also has a video of this scene, for those interested.

John McCain, in fact, has a campaign run by one of the biggest names in Washington lobbying, Rick Davis. And Davis has a rolodex full of high powered friends like Raffaello Follieri, the conman, who—“The Nation” reports—hired Rick Davis’ business partner shortly after this photo on the yacht was taken.

And what is the significance of Rick Davis? Don't tell me he, too, is a Satanic (GOP term) lobbyist?

Rick Davis is currently the CEO of the McCain campaign, but his real job is as a lobbyist for the K Street firm, Davis, Manafort & Freedman, which is the current formulation of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which was founded 28 years ago by McCain senior adviser, Charlie Black, one of the originators of Republican the smear and slime attack method of politics that has been so wonderfully successful for the GOP and corporate America but that has driven the country into a ditch. The “Stone” in Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, is Roger Stone, the Southern Florida sleazy GOP operative who, for example, earlier this year launched an anti-Hillary Clinton website, with the acronym C.U.N.T.

So where, may I ask, does Sarah Palin fit in? McCain's keeping her in a glass bubble, to protect her from all those nasty men he hangs with. Ahhh, so he intends to fight the "glass ceiling" with a "glass bubble"?

Yes, women, watch out! McCain is fighting glass with glass!

Undocumented Migrants Don't Evacuate Ike, Fear Ice Prisons

Even though there has been a declared "hurricane amnesty" for undocumented workers in Texas, even though the National Weather Service has issued a "certain death" evacuation order, many migrant workers are afraid to evacuate. ICE, the police arm of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), has been known to deport people even after Michael Chertoff assured people they wouldn't be picked up for evacuating. ICE, as migrants will tell you, has a will of its own, an agenda.

An agenda like all of the DHS, where humanitarian considerations often take last place to the heavy-handed mandate for Security, fanned by "patriotic"-labeled mania and panic. So what's happened to those people?

It's happened before. As reported on Democracy Now!:

"...earlier this summer, despite assurances to the contrary from Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, Border Patrol agents kept open checkpoints and apprehended a van of people trying to evacuate from Hurricane Dolly. Last month, many undocumented immigrants in New Orleans did not evacuate during Hurricane Gustav due to deportation concerns."

As one of the Immigration Rights demonstraters at the DNC in Denver said:

In May of this year, ICE went in and rounded up about 300 to 400 workers, and right now the town has become a virtual prison for the women and the children. They can’t leave, and they can’t work.

So the fear is more than just being deported, which is bad enough, but of having whole families imprisoned as they have done in Texas, or of otherwise having their families broken up or being deprived of freedom or means of making a living.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. When Goodman mentioned the largest immigrant raid in US history just before the Democratic National convention, in which hundreds of people were rounded up, this discussion ensued:

DAVID BACON: That’s right, in Laurel, Mississippi. And then, what got even less coverage was that they took 481 people, and they put them in a detention center in Jena, Louisiana and just sort of left them there— AMY GOODMAN: In Jena.
DAVID BACON: —for two weeks. In Jena, right.
AMY GOODMAN: The Jena Six.
DAVID BACON: Right. In fact, that detention center is probably the biggest single, you know, source of employment for people who live in Jena now. But the problem with those workers is that they were—you know, there was no habeas corpus, there was no bail. There weren’t even any charges against those people for two weeks. It’s kind of like creating, I think, a Guantanamo-style of justice or injustice that’s excused because it’s being directed—you know, ICE mentions the word “illegal,” and then all kinds of things become permissible that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

Bacon later discusses the government's motivation behind these raids, which have created an atmosphere of fear in immigrant communities.

I think the government has an agenda here. In fact, it’s pretty open. Michael Chertoff keeps saying it over and over and over, and that is that he says we’re going to shut the back door and open the front door. And what that means is that ICE is trying to push for the establishment of new guest worker programs, so that people can come here as workers, but only as workers, without rights, without eventually getting political rights, without becoming citizens, certainly without voting, but whose labor is going to be used in the economy. And so, these raids are a way of terrorizing people and saying to people: don’t think that you’re going to be able to come to the United States; don’t think that you’re going to be able to work in any other way other than through these programs.

So it's about more than simply "protecting our borders" or even "protecting our culture". It's about bringing in people not as equals, not as immigrants, but as a "worker class" who cannot have and enjoy the same rights "the rest of us" do. It's not about documentation or even assimilation, but about keeping the slavery-level work force at the same cheap rates but without the legal hassles.

The comprehensive immigration bills that we saw in Congress in a lot of ways were labor supply bills. These were bills that were really intended to supply guest workers to industry and then an enforcement program to kind of drive workers into those programs.

So, the difference of opinion, I think in the Democratic Party, especially, is between people who sponsored those programs and other people like Sheila Jackson-Lee, the congresswoman from Houston, who said instead of having a guest worker program, what we need is people to be able to come here with green cards and with permanent residence visas.

And also, the thing I think that she said that was really a pioneering idea, and that was that we also need a jobs program. We need to couple immigration reform with jobs programs. So she said, let’s take the fees that people pay when they’re normalizing their status and use that to set up job creation and job training programs in communities with high unemployment, so that all communities can have some kind of benefit out of these bills. You know, these labor supply bills, comprehensive immigration reform bills, what they do is they pit communities against each other over jobs, over wages and so forth.

Bacon also takes this observation a step further - blaming it on international trade agreements that screw the people on the non-supply-side, the workers and farmers of the world.

NAFTA allowed big US grain companies to dump corn on the Mexican market, which essentially made it impossible for small Mexican farmers to sell their corn that they were growing for a price that would pay for the cost of growing it. So you can’t farm any longer. What do you do? You have to support your family some way. And so, people become part of this migrant stream coming to the United States.
And it’s not just the US. I mean, these structural adjustment programs, trade agreements, it’s happening all over the world. There are 200 million people in the world who are living outside the countries where they were born.

So, you know, Congress passes these agreements, which sort of push people into migration, and then immigration bills, which are essentially trying to ensure that their labor gets supplied to corporations at the lowest possible price and that people have the fewest possible rights.

Where will this end? It would help if people understood the issues better. But as we've seen with Sarah Palin, wisdom and understanding are often trumped by loud aggressive voices and sound-bites that feed into peoples' prejudices. Ultimately, though, what America stands for, or thinks/hopes it stands for - freedom and justice - requires replacing simplistic "patriotism" with higher values that include giving a damn about what happens to our species, our planet, and who, in fact, we are.

Huge Argument Against Oil Drilling Enters, Fills Gulf of Mexico

It's called "Ike". It's heading for Houston via ... a few oil rigs. OK, like ALL oil rigs. It's literally filling the Gulf of Mexico. And so Big Oil cowers:

ConocoPhilips, Exxon Mobil and other oil companies are shutting down refineries and Gulf of Mexico oil rigs in the storm's path. That could push up oil prices, which were retreating toward $100 per barrel mark.

Planet's Largest Machine Seeks Universe's Smallest Particle

And a few more things, while they're at it.

Yes, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has been switched on, and the first test was a success. For those few who don't even know what a "Hadron" is, such as Everywoman Sarah Palin, your definition is here:

In particle physics, a hadron is a bound state of quarks. Hadrons are held together by The Strong Force, similar to how atoms are held together by the electromagnetic force. The best-known hadrons are protons and neutrons.

So the LHC is the largest place where hadrons collide.

Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model, and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.

Cost: $10 Billion
Builder: CERN aka European Organization for Nuclear Research, who also brought us the World Wide Web, MRI scanning
Funded, Designed, Worked on, etc. by: 8,000 physicists from over 85 countries plus hundreds of universities and laboratories
Claims to Fame: world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, world's largest cryogenic facility, possibly "universe's coldest ring", planet's most humongous machine, aka "Large Helluva Collider"
Possible Side Effects: Black holes, destruction of the world as we know it, destruction of the Standard Model as we know it, or the Revenge of the Higgs Boson, gastric disturbance

The Higgs boson, aka the "God particle", is only predicted to exist, and some believe, such as Higgs, pictured here awaiting his boson, that it gives mass to otherwise massless particles. The LHC also is supposed to make protons travel at nearly the speed of light in a 17-mile tunnel, as well as bring things back to that wonderful time of the Big Bang, so we can know what happened then by making our own little Big Bang. But don't worry, it's actually not a Real big bang, just a little bang, a 10-billion-dollar bang, and any black holes that it might produce will not live long enough to swallow anything other than a couple of protons & quarks, or if it does, we are fully insured.

But many feared it could create micro black holes which would somehow swallow up the world as we know it. In fact, the LHC's first victim has been claimed, in India.

A girl in India has committed suicide after watching TV reports that a physics experiment could bring about the end of the world, her father says.

Sixteen-year-old Chaya poisoned herself at her home in the northern city of Indore, Bihari Lal said.

He said Chaya had asked whether the "world would end" when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched on.

Apparently, his answer was less than convincing. He should have informed her that the "God particle" will save her village.

Chaya's father, Bihari Lal, said his daughter - the eldest of his six children - had been frightened after watching local TV reports that the experiment would cause the "Earth to crack up and everybody in the village would die".

Eight thousand physicists couldn't present their case any better than that? And apparently another LHC side effect is a return to religion.

Many people rushed to temples in various parts of India on Tuesday fearing the "world's end" after watching the reports, reports said.

Meanwhile, Steve Hawking says the boson isn't even all that important. Atheists.

Lawrence of Cyberia: Why Don't Zionists Adopt Gandhi's Methods?

Just discovered this post which makes this astute point:

It takes a special kind of nerve to embark upon a project - Zionism - that can be fulfilled only through the violent destruction of another people, and then criticize the people you are destroying for their failure to adopt non-violence.

Which is followed by this quote from Gandhi, showing his distaste for Zionism:

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. …Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred.

… I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

-- The Jews In Palestine, by Mahatma Gandhi; The Harijan, 26 Nov 1938

According to Gandhi, it was the Zionists, not the Palestinians, who invented terrorism.

Buyers Beware: Taxpayer-Funded US Govt Now Owns Fannie & Freddie

Think about it, folks. We just re-hired, just 4 years ago, a couple of guys to run the "World Superpower" we call home (but they call "Homeland", which is totally different, as we've found out) after they effectively gutted the economy, started War Without End Amen based on patent lies - covering up by betraying the cover of one of their own government's CIA operatives - and institutionalized torture, the abuse of power and human rights, and bled the country's treasury by supersizing the Pentagon while simultaneously outsourcing half of its business to private industry and starting to outsource basic services the same way. All this while these 2 hacks profited big on the misery of the general population in every way imaginable. Oh, I mean them and their cronies.

Now, after allowing some of those cronies to get rich quick by bloating up on houses as if the housing market was based on Perpetual Motion (and in case that was wrong, they stocked up the Plan B Solution Warehouse with snake oil), we are being told - I repeat, just being told (as in "read only memory" - you can only receive, not input) that your government has just decided to suddenly "buy", and in effect, "be", Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of whom have become wildly bankrupt and in hopeless debt.

Where is Lyndon Larouche, Jr., now that we need him?

Right on cue, out of the mouths of ... conspiracy theorists.. sometimes come words to think about:

The government has already spent trillions of dollars in the attempt to save the banks, in schemes ranging from the economic stimulus program to the ongoing and accelerating loan programs to the banks from the Fed. None of this has worked, but rather than realize the folly of their ways, the idiots in Washington and Wall Street are cranking the spigots wide open.

Some estimate that the bailout will cost $20-$30 billion, but these estimates are meaningless, since the government is effectively committing itself to an unlimited bailout. Essentially, the government is bailing out the debt by doubling it, creating a even bigger pile of debt that will have to be bailed out, doubling again in a geometric progression. Since there isn't enough money in the world to make this scheme work, it cannot succeed, and the attempt to do it will trigger a hyperinflationary explosion reminiscent of Weimar Germany, such that the very value of the dollar itself will vaporize.

His solution, however, was unclearly described as "the American system" and I couldn't in my economic ignorance figure out how he determined that "essentially, the government is bailing out the debt by doubling it". However, there's not doubt that something terrible has just happened and nobody really quite grasps what will come of it.

One opinion:

There are voices of reason out there in the what would seem to be a forest of insanity. Jim Rogers argues that we don’t need to bail out Fannie Mae Freddie Mac. I agree with Jim Rogers on this. Let the courts handle it and let the taxpayers move on. This isn’t the end of the world, and if we allow these people to get away with it by bailing them out then we we have learned nothing. It is about time we face the truth and move on, not throw good money after bad.

Again, how would "the courts handle it"?? How does he know for sure that "this isn't the end of the world"? Or at least, the world as we know it?

Besides, the issue may be worse than we think. How come the actual, not simply the promissory, bailout occurred immediately after discovering that the books were cooked?

This is no joke: the NYT headline reads "Mortgage Giant Overstated the Size of Its Capital Base" ...

The government’s planned takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expected to be announced as early as this weekend, came together hurriedly after advisers poring over the companies’ books for the Treasury Department concluded that Freddie’s accounting methods had overstated its capital cushion, according to regulatory officials briefed on the matter.

This is journalistic, safe prose for "cooking the books", fudging the finances, lying, playing with the accounting to look better than reality.

The details of the deal have not fully emerged, but it appears that investors who own the companies’ common stock will be virtually wiped out; preferred shareholders, who have priority over other shareholders, may also wind up with little. Holders of debt, including many foreign central banks, are expected to receive government backing. Top executives at both companies will be pushed out, according to those briefed on the plan.

Taxpayer alert: You're paying to save "many foreign central banks". Does this mean we were holding the purse-strings for unknown Other Countries in our little home-owning dream? The network of the global economy gets weirder by the moment. Now we are the financiers for who knows who? We now are paying to "back" those "many foreign central banks" and we don't even yet know who they are.

While it is not yet possible to calculate the cost of the government’s intervention, it could rise into tens of billions of dollars and will probably be among the most expensive rescues ever financed by taxpayers. The takeover comes on the heels of a rescue of the investment bank Bear Stearns, which was sold to JPMorgan in a deal backed by taxpayer dollars. Already, the housing crisis has cost investors hundreds of billions of dollars.

Will somebody tell us who is being saved and at the expense of whom? Why don't we just send all those foreign banks to court, as suggested above? Well, I don't know what court... maybe ... a military tribunal? After all, aren't we all interrelated? Well, maybe not that interrelated, not just yet...

But would you have thought buying out a companies that are essentially dishonest to be a good idea for the government?

Accusations of improper accounting are not new for either company. Earlier this decade, both companies paid large fines and ousted their top executives after accounting scandals.

One of the odd accounting blips was using "deferred tax assets" as credits, a sort of theoretical asset based on past "successes", to offset present and future losses.

One analyst estimates the companies, in the future, would have to collect roughly double the profits of the past five years for the credits to become usable. Most financial institutions are not allowed to count such credits as assets in the manner used by Fannie and Freddie.

Maybe that's where Mr. Larouche got his "double the debt" thing. And it certainly doesn't seem a good idea for such a gigantic pair of lenders to be allowed to do voodoo accounting while other businesses have to be held accountable for actual profit and loss, the old-fashioned, non-theoretical way.

Whatever the facts are, one fact remains irrefutable. The housing market is plummeting, the greedy have triumphed, the honest are getting screwed, and the taxpayer is paying. So much for Repuglicanomics. So much for taxpayers' rights from the GOP. They've gutted the economy, cleaned up profits at the people's expense, and are draining us in a war based on lies, draped in flags and flag pins, and are on the verge of turning what's left of America into a third world dumpsite.

For all his faults (he supports the bailout), Barack Obama would at least give us a chance to be free of Republican authoritarianism and supply-side unregulated economic catastrophe. To vote for anyone else would give it back to the GOP to finish the job.