Martin Luther King, Jr. and #OccupyWallStreet

The war in VietNam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. [...] With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profits and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs re-structuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say: "This is not just." It will look upon our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

[...]

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-anti-revolutionaries.

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Who's Watching BP's Bank Accounts?

The wheels turn in my mind. I started thinking today: Is anyone watching British Petroleum's bank accounts CAREFULLY? We wouldn't want them to quietly move $$$ to secret accounts, now would we? Then, when it comes time to pay their V-A-S-T debts to all the creatures of the earth, they would plead ... "gee we're broke."

Don't be silly now and think it's only going to affect the Gulf Region. Come on. You've learned a little something in the past few years on earth, haven't you? Well ... haven't you?

And ... do we really want to trust that Monsanto will not create an equal catastrophe in agriculture? When ... when are we going to stop ruining the only environment we've got? What kind of a future are our children going to have if we keep trusting these GREEDY PEOPLE?

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Politics: Vampire Banks Part 2,000,000

Surprise, surprise. Via Yahoo Finance comes a piece from Rupert Murdick's Wall St. Journal announcing that the same banks that taxpayers generously (albeit unwillingly) bailed out last year at the instigation of the Bushies — will be hitting you with new fees and new "products" in an attempt to suck $50 billion out of your pockets.

What, the first $X billion they sucked out of us wasn't enough? Motherfuckers.

They will institute new checking account and credit card fees for the same old shit we've been robbed for all these years. And, to add insult to injury, they will be trying to slip all kinds of charges into your existing account before they're forced to comply with the Credit Card Act of 2009, which limits interest rate increases and keeps banks from raising your credit card rates until and unless you're more than 60 days late on your payments. And, as if that weren't enough, here's what else they plan to do:

Issuers are closing accounts, switching cards with fixed interest rates to variable rates and introducing cards that have an annual fee.

Check your credit card bills, statements, in fact anything those fucking arse-bandits send you. Jesus! These pigfuckers would screw their own grandmothers without even the courtesy of lube.

If you have a Victoria's Secret credit card, you should know that the issuer Gander Mountain plans to charge you a $1.00 "processing fee" for every transaction in which you use that card. And what is their bollocking excuse for this added fee?

"One requirement of the Credit Card Act of 2009 is that monthly billing statements will now have to include significantly more information pertaining to the cardholder's terms and conditions, thus increasing the amount of paper, production and postal expenses as well as having a greater environmental impact," the company said in a written statement.

You fucking lying sacks of shit. We gave you a shitload of money because you told us the whole fucking international financial market would collapse because you assholes had been taking unseemly risks with our money. You created credit default swaps and sold them to god and China. You created toxic securities. You packaged the shit paper with the triple A paper and created a sliced-and-diced instrument that no one could put a value on, and all throughout the decade or so that you were doing this, you paid yourselves huge bonuses and CEO salaries even as you jerked off in masturbatory frenzies every time working stiffs lost their jobs.

You schlepped around on your private jets and you had the gall to use OUR FUCKING BAILOUT MONEY which was supposed to rescue your flabby pathetic saggy white asses from the fires of hell, to buy brand new jets and award yourselves even bigger bonuses, fueling the whole trip down the tubes to the toilet with hookers, champagne, and lavish spending that hasn't been seen since the days of the robber barons. And throughout this entire fiasco, you stuffed our money up your tight arseholes and shoved redwood trees up there to keep it secure and out of circulation so that small businesses cannot even get a fucking loan — which was the whole idea of handing that money over to you, you greedy fucking bloodthirsty sharks, to keep commercial paper moving.

And now you want us all to bend over and drop trou and hold our breaths in anticipation of your next arse-fucking? I think not, you motherfuckers.

Your not-so-friendly credit card company might well start instituting fees on your inactive accounts, so now would probably be a good time to close those, unless you want to keep paying these vampires to rape you on a regular basis.

On the plus side, the government will crack down on overdraft fees and the like. In the meantime, you might want to pay off as many of your high interest cards as you can, close any account you don't use, and keep a close eye on the industry over at LowCards. Remember that the Federal Reserve has now made it mandatory for banks to ask you before they can charge you an overdraft fee. So if they suddenly start charging you, call them up and give them hell, and don't sign anything until you're clear about what it means. Call your bank and demand to speak to a customer rep and write them a letter (keep a copy on file) memorializing exactly what the customer rep said to you.

It'll be helpful in resolving the inevitable disputes that will arise because these bloodsucking bandits will be trying to gouge you for all they can get. And don't start feeling all good about using debit cards instead of credit cards, unless you have no fiscal discipline whatsoever. Because when you use a credit card to make a purchase, you're essentially taking an interest-free loan, if you pay the card off at the end of the time period. You're using the issuer's money to make your purchase.

When you use a debit card, it's your own money you're using. Banks make a lot more money from debit cards than they do from credit cards. So if you plan to pay off everything when it comes due, use the credit card instead. If you have a low interest rate, figure out how much it'll cost you to pay off the purchase in a reasonable period if you need liquidity for other reasons. In the event, these days, using a credit card, or a bank at all, requires some money smarts and a little work.

In the meantime, if you're sick and tired of being screwed by the banks, here's an idea that's gaining a little momentum: Move Your Money.

The big banks — JP Morgan/Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, BofA — got bailed out. Local community banks are struggling. Well, you can make the difference. Pull your money out of those big banks and put it in your small local bank. Check out the link and decide for yourself. This is something we can do as consumers that will allow us some measure of control over our money and the nation's banking situation. Congress ain't doing shit for us. We have to do it ourselves.

Pass it on. The FDIC insures your money regardless of where it's deposited. So take the step now. Move Your Money has a search function that will let you find the closest community bank to your home/office. If enough of us move our money, we can change the banking industry in this nation to something useful that gives back to the community and encourages growth and development. Instead of this giant parasitic leech that is sucking the fucking life and soul out of us all.

Check out the video on YouTube.
Join the group on Facebook.
Pass the news along.

It's time.

Bonus cute kitteh pitcher:

ICHC

Keeps teh blood pressure down.

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Workers' Rights: Happy Labour Day

The U.S. is the only nation in the world that celebrates Labour Day on a day other than May 1st, which is International Labour Day. There's reasons for that, even if they are pathetic, wimpy reasons. But enough with the quibble.

Today is Labour Day in this fair nation, and let us all take the time to remember that it was the strong hands of working men and women that gave us the blessings we take for granted today. Let us honour those workers, both voluntary and involuntary (although, let's face it, unless you're doing something you really love, all work is involuntary. We work so that we will not starve.), who built the roads, the bridges, the hospitals and schools, who taught our children and nursed our sick and cared for our aged and our poor. Who grew our crops and picked them and trucked them to market so we could enjoy the bounty of the land. Who designed and built and assembled the cars we drove. Who fixed our machines and worked on our railroads.

Remember the slaves of African descent who were forced to give the fruits of their labour to others, who profited greatly from them. Remember the Chinese railroad workers, brought here in their thousands to provide cheap labour while surviving somehow in substandard housing, the victims of hatred. Remember the Japanese truck gardeners and market gardeners, imprisoned in concentration camps and robbed of the fruits of their labour and everything they owned. Remember the Indians who came as farmers and agricultural labourers and were vilified for their ethnicity and religion, prohibited from bringing their wives and families and victims of the same Exclusion Act that was used to discriminate against the Chinese. Remember the Irish, sold into indentured servitude which outlasted their own lifetimes in many cases. Remember those of every ethnicity and colour, the workers who came from all over the world seeking freedom and a better life for themselves or their children.



Without the labour of millions of hard-working people, we would not have the abundance of riches that we enjoy today. Therefore, as we enjoy this public holiday, let us remember those who made today a day off from work for millions of labouring men and women. And let us honour those who suffered in the long struggle for the right of working people everywhere to be treated as human beings, and not chattel.

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The Opposite of Peace Is — War?

Been reading a lot about World War II lately. My father fought in that war. He lost the hearing on one side thanks to shrapnel that perforated his eardrum. He lost many of his friends. He nearly lost his life.

But my reason for reading is both greater and lesser than a desire to know a little piece of my father's history: I am writing a novel set in that period.

And today, I came across something that encapsulates very nicely the malaise that the reading of the past several weeks has engendered in me. FTA:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, War Is A Racket

While Japanese farmers, office workers, and civilians were restricted to the grayest of lives by the sumptuary laws enforced before and during WW II, while Japanese intellectuals trembled under the heavy hand of the thought police and suffered torture by the Kempeitai, while Chinese peasants starved and their children were forcibly inducted into the military to fight against superior armies and lose their lives for a pittance, the wealthy crooks who engineered these wars became wealthier still. Come rain or shine, they continued to find ways to profit from the vast human suffering.

George W. Bush paid for the war in Iraq by borrowing billions of dollars from the Chinese. Now your grandchildren will have to repay that debt. I hear some people say Obama is creating a huge debt by borrowing additional monies to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, the hole that Bush left has to be patched before everything else leaks out of it. And the only way to patch that hole is to stimulate the economy into spending.

People forget that the U.S. economy runs on consumer spending. Before George Dumbya left office, the Iraq war had already cost us three TRILLION dollars. We are bringing our troops back now, but that costs money too. Then there's the issue of reintegrating them into the smashed civilian economy. All the while, the war profiteers like Dick "Dick" Cheney sit back on their seats and bwa-ha-haaa themselves into something like an orgasm. I wish it were an organism. Something intestinal and painful and lengthy.

How many kids have lost their parents in this war? Iraqi kids? Somewhere between one and five million? American kids? Somewhere between three and ten thousand? Nobody really knows. In 2004, when the total casualty figures were around 2,000, Scripps stated that 900 American children had lost a parent to the war. However, the casualty toll has doubled since then, and most of the soldiers in this war have been professional military and reservists, which means they tend to be older, married, and have more children.

How many kids are getting back parents who are not the people they used to be? Broken in body or mind or both? How many kids have to grow up really fast, to become caretakers to their parents instead of being children any more? Smedley Butler was right. War IS a racket.

Blackwater mercenaries made two to three times the salaries of military men for the same work. No-bid government contracts made a lot of people very rich. The wholesale plunder of Iraqi oil made other people (or sometimes the same people) very rich. To us, the taxpayers, is left the broken mess, the debris, the tortured, the cripple, the lame, the halt, the blind, the miserable, people who are still fighting the war in their heads, crying themselves to sleep or drinking or drugging to forget. And they are living among us as are their suffering parents and spouses and children.

The dividends of peace are happy human lives. However, these do not represent adequate profits to those whose greed drives them to profit above all else. And to achieve those profits they will willingly sacrifice every last man, woman, and child of us upon an altar of blood.

Crossposted over at The Peace Tree.

La Casa de Los Gatos apologizes for the dearth of recent posts. A bout of illness laid us low, and having had our first meal today in nearly a week, we can safely say we now have energy to start blogging again. To think that a little food can make so much difference ...

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Politics: Right-wing Terrorists

ICHC

Gee, I guess the whining of rightwingnuttia about that DHS report is starting to sound pretty hollow by now, huh? I mean, you can say the first guy was a "lone wolf." You could even cross your fingers behind your back and claim the second guy was a "lone wolf." But three in a row? That's pushing it, people. For what it's worth, boys and girls, the common factor in these three murderous wingnuts? They're all white-supremacists, racists who believe nonwhite people should be killed.

The first, Richard "Pop-a-cop" Poplawski, decided that President Obama was going to take away his guns and freedom, so he'd better kill some cops. Well, say what you will about the police, and there's plenty to say, one of their functions is, supposedly, to protect the public against people who start shooting murderously at others. End result? He killed three officers, but they got him in the end and took away his guns and his freedom. Way to go, dumbass, you certainly managed to enact that self-fulfilling prophecy.

And then there was the charming James W. von Brunn, member of the white supremacist organization Stormfront (no link, find it yourself) and erstwhile contributor to rightwing sites like Free Republic (more accurately known as Freetardia). Of course, you probably won't find Mr. von Brunn's comments or posts anywhere in wingnuttia now, all the sites which once welcomed him with open arms have scrubbed any trace of his presence. Oh, wait, there's still the Wayback Machine. And Google caches.

Today, it's Jason Eugene Bush, leader of the Minutemen. Bush (geez, is that name synonymous with criminal in some bizarre mystical way?), like the coward that he is, decided to break into someone's house late at night with no warning, with two buddies for backup, all armed to the teeth. Why? Because the guy whose house these idiots broke into was a Latino. Maybe he was an undocumented immigrant. Maybe not. Maybe he was dealing drugs. Maybe he was an innocent. Maybe it was mistaken identity. All of these are reasons you do NOT take this shit into your own hands.

And here's another bigger, better reason: These idiots broke into this house claiming to be police. They shot and killed the guy they claim was a baddie. Then they shot and killed his nine-year-old daughter. Why? Because she saw their faces. Because she might have been a witness against them. That is the worst fucking reason to kill a little kid, you know? Not that there's any good fucking reason, but hey, when they start screeching in E above high C, I'm thinkin' at least you could say you snapped. But this? This is cold-blooded murder of a young and defenseless creature at its worst.

Fortunately, the kid's mom was not so defenseless. She had a gun, and she used it. She shot Jason Bush.

And before y'all get all self-righteous and say, "Well, yaknow, PC, he was trying to put a criminal drug dealer out of business, and all," no. No, no, no. He wasn't. He and his buddies busted into that house to STEAL money and drugs. Not that "stopping a drug dealer" would have been a reason for them to do what they did. That's what we have police for. Gather evidence, if you must, and turn it over to the cops. They're trained on the use of force and can be held accountable.

This shit? This vigilantism? This is what kills innocent bystanders, little girls named Brisenia who might have had a life, dreams, hopes, a bright future, or even a dismal one, not that that's any of our business. I guess to people like (this) Bush, the life of a little brown girl named Brisenia is not as important as the life of a white man like himself, which is why he ran like a chicken when wounded.

The Arizona papers are reporting that all three of the Minutemen involved have been arrested. Will they be tried as terrorists? Or is that distinction reserved only for brown or Muslim people who commit such crimes?

Note: These minutemen, despite their racism in common with other Minutemen, are not the same as the superset of Minutemen from which they splintered at some point. Details at link.

Additional note: SOME PEOPLE might owe Janet Napolitano and the DHS a big fucking honking big-assed APOLOGY! Except they're too busy wringing their hands and opining as how James von Brunn was actually secretly a lefty, like all those evil Democrats who came to power last year, elected by the America-hating Americans who don't believe in guns as a solution and racism as a way of life.

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Labour: Why It's Good

To have a strong labour movement and good labour policies:

From chillycrap, obviously

Yet while Europe may be worse off statistically, most Europeans are not feeling the crisis to the same level as most Americans. Millions of European workers have been spared the full impact because of strict labor laws that make it profoundly difficult for a company, in, say, France, to lay off employees in times good or bad. And those workers who lose their jobs in Europe often receive generous unemployment benefits, covering the lion's share of their lost salaries for many months.

And when those rightwingnuttians start whining about how taxing the rich at a fairer rate will "drive them away," be sure to ask them where the fuck those exploitative bastids will be driven. Because most Third World countries lack the infrastructure to support large-scale business investment, not to mention the stable political climate necessary to doing business. The risk of being kidnapped, murdered, or having one's assets nationalized are far worse than having to pay a couple of percentage points more on the tens of millions or billions those bastards already have.

Those Third World nations that have the required political stability and infrastructure also have strict laws on pollution, stronger labour laws, and high taxation.

Eastern Europe is currently in such a slump that taking one's business there is not a sensible move. Needless to say, the political climate is unstable, and the cost of doing business is NOT minimal. Believe it or don't, employees in Eastern Europe have far more generous vacation and sick-leave and time-off policies than most Americans. In Russia, for example, most people take a good part of the summer off, which can sort of put a crimp in one's deliverables.

So where exactly are the wealthy capitalists going to put their money? The USA is the best bet, for low taxes, lots of tax cheating, a highly industrialized and efficient infrastructure, and truly shitty labour policies. Nowhere else do workers get a lousy 2 weeks in vacation time per year (if that). Nowhere.

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Economy: Imagine

if we'd actually listened to that wealthy and stupid failure, Gee Dumbya, and put Social Security into stocks, like he wanted us to do.

It would have gone the way of the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corporation funds that ex-Lehman Bros. weasel Charles Millard shifted into the market right before it collapsed.

The Bush government — failure, incompetence, greed, corruption, and Teh Stupid in buckets. Can we jail this moron? And force him to cough up everything he owns?

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Politics: From The Department of

fat, babbling, semi-sentient blowhards:



Flush Rimbowl wants New York to drop dead. Tsk, tsk.

It appears that New York wants to return the favour. Just read the comments for a very good laugh-yer-ass-off experience.

Where's the patriotism, lardass? Don't you love your country? Isn't it worth a few bucks to ya? Apparently, Flush's patriotism ends where his wallet begins. Whatevah.

For those out there who might be offended at my use of the word "fat" to describe Flush: consider his nasty remarks about women who might have a little poundage. It's the hypocrisy, not the avoirdupois, people.

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Economy: Git Your Mad On!

Step right up! Git yer Mad on right here, folks, two for a dollar, step right UP!

Yeah, I know. I said I'd chillax. But you know what, the Walking Stupid out there, they just never give a body a minute's rest. C'mon, you know you're tearing your hair out with rage five or ten times a day. I just write about it more.

So, you probably just got laid off, or your partner, parent, kid, neighbour, or friend did, and you're sitting there watching the unemployment numbers climb, listening to the dismal reports on the economy, worrying as you see the big shots in your company meeting behind closed doors and sending out email about meeting the most recent quarterly targets (as in, NOT) and remembering the good old days when ordinary working people got bonuses. And wondering why in the fuckety fucking fuck our Republican Senators have their heads crammed up each others' asses crowing about how they're winning a victory against President Obama's Stimulus bill*. You know, the bill that was going to fund state and county level firefighters, police, food stamps, construction projects, and the like.



And then the paper/TV/radio or media of your choice decides to up and tell you that Wells Fargo, BofA, and Citibank just bought full-page ad space in the Sunday edition of the NYT and the WahPoo!, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars (the last time we looked, after a discount, such space would cost between $75K and $140K or more) just to reassure us dumb customers and taxpayers that those junkets and parties and freebies the banks are giving themselves with our money are

not junkets, but employee recognition events to thank and inspire team members who have worked very hard, like "our terrific mortgage team who helped us originate $230 billion in mortgages in the last year." Stumpf went on to say that the money for the recognition events would have come from company profits and not from the taxpayer financed bailout and he said canceling the events hurt not only his employees, "but the workers who depend on their business, the hospitality industry, hotel housekeepers, restaurant servers, the airlines." The CEO closed by saying "since we aren't thanking our award winners in person this year, we'll have to do it this way."

Now the right wingnut yammerati have been squawking fit to beat hell about how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and housing loans for working class and poor people is what broke the bank, but those of us who actually read occasionally know quite well that the real cause of the problem is toxic securities and financial instruments that you need a PhD to understand, that largely came about as a result of individual private banks deciding to cash in on the housing bubble and the house flippers by giving what they used to call Liar Loans, or NINJAs (No Income, No Job or Assets).

Wouldn't YOU worry if you got this loan?

Those of us who actually bought or refinanced a home within the last ten years remember quite well sitting down with the banks to discuss terms and having them offer to have their appraisers inspect the premises, instead of using third-party independent appraisers; the fudging of the comps they pulled; the rewording of applications to create the illusion of more house for the return of more money; their insistence on HELOCs (Home Equity Line of Credit, for those not in the know); their securing of jumbo loans and wraparounds and how they all but twisted our arms to get us to pull out increasing equity, until it seemed that people were refinancing annually. So Mr. Stumpf (of Wells) and his celebration of the mortgage-floggers seems a mite — discomfiting, in light of the fact that he and his ilk are being hauled before Congress forthwith to answer to Barney Frank exactly what the fuck they thought they were doing with their taxpayer-generated largesse that will bind our children in debt slavery unto the nth generation.

Not that that will stop the dumb motherfuckers. President Obama had to kick a little ass in public to keep one bunch of greedbags from buying themselves a nice expensive 12-seater jet with their ill-gotten gains recently. Ctulhu alone knows what he'll have to do to keep these assholes' fat sweaty fingers out of our pockets this time around. Considering that all these father-raping buttlicks have MBAs or have been in the industry for longer than Methusaleh, you'd think they would have realized by now the REAL problem, i.e., PR.

Anybody with two working neurons knows that the public has, at best, a very limited attention span, which means you can rape their daughters, sodomize their sons, sell off their wives, burn their houses, and steal their cows, so long as you do not APPEAR to be doing any of the above. With a tear in your eye and a piously-clasped Bible and handkerchief, you can personally assault the lot of them, one before the other, so long as you remember to wear a nice black worsted and weep copiously about your trials and sufferings. Even as we speak, the pinhead wingnuts of the rightosphere are sobbing aloud at the terrible injustice that the Democrats are committing upon the uber-wealthy engineers of our current fiscal fiasco, in attempting to limit corporate CEO emoluments to a mere half-a-million in salary and bonuses if they're taking public money.



The fact that none of these ninnyhammers has ever seen half a million dollars in their own lives bothers them not a whit. They will fight for the right of the greedy to plunder us at will before they acknowledge that we, the people, have a right to a return on our investment in bailouts for the bankers.

And while they're doing their Walrus and Carpenter act on behalf of the bankers, they're whooping and cheering about how the defeat of the Stimulus bill really means a revival of the Republican party, and their return to power. Can human beings possibly be so deluded, you ask yourself. Regretfully, they can. Instead of doing their part in jumpstarting the economy, they're doing their best to slice from the bill anything that will support the common people. Schools? Cut. Hospitals? Cut. Food for the hungry? Cut. And they're shamelessly calling it pork, conveniently forgetting the decades of pork and porkers that they have supported at every turn. Think Ted Stevens. Think Tom DeLay. Think Bush tax cuts that hugely increased the income of the top one-half of one per cent of the taxpayers, while giving nothing to the working people.

Meanwhile, working people everywhere, especially those who've been laid off or are getting their guts eaten out from the inside from the stress and worry of coming unemployment, are really really really eager to see the goddamned bill pass. People, what can I tell you? If you elected a Republican to office, or your neighbours did, man, you got screwed! What can you do about it? A hella lot if you got laid off. Go to their offices and sit down there and refuse to leave until they talk to you. Call them on the phone (use THEIR office phone if you need to call Washington, or get THEIR staffers to contact the asshole for you) and tell them you NEED that stimulus. You need those 150,000 jobs in your city or your county or your state. Go to your local library and get on the internet and send them email. Draft your kids into the effort as well. Take their pictures, make a postcard of them, and mail it to your Congresscritter, and let the kids write the message. "My Daddy got laid off, please pass the stimulus." Or whatever.

Because these assholes are all making six-figure salaries, and they have friends who wine them and dine them and fly them around in private jets, yaknow? They have no idea what it's like to not be able to make your car payment. They probably haven't had to make a car payment for over 20 years. The last time they were looking for a car and actually had to fork out money to buy one, cars cost, like $15K or less.



The Republicans will do everything they can to turn this bill into a useless pile of steaming bullcrap. It's up to us to put the heat on all our lawmakers. They can't do this to us. I'm sick of hearing of one person after another out of work, run out of benefits, underemployed, looking for shitwork to stay alive, moving back to Mom and Dad's with the kids. It's so not OK.

Our President is going on the road to talk to the American people, and all over the country, people are so excited that he might show up in their town. Because the people support their President, and he supports us, you know? He's doing his best to make sure we have enough money to keep our police force up to a safe level, to keep our firefighters employed, to keep us safe, and in our homes, and he knows that we really want this stimulus bill.

So let's not let the media lie their asses off as usual about how this is some kind of illusory "battle" between our President and Lush Rimbowl. It's not. The media is doing their song and dance because they think their job is to sell papers or generate hits for their sites, rather than to keep the American people informed. Enough already, you sods. Bugger off. And as for the Republican Party? If you want ANY seats left in Congress, get off your goddamn asses and vote for the Stimulus bill NOW.

*Note: PDF of full text of the Senate Bill, best viewed in Internet Exploiter or Safari.

Bonus gratifying news: It appears that the Powers That Be might be getting their listen on. Timothy Geithner is flying coach to his job, for a change. Let's see when the remaining members of the Congressional Swine do likewise. (Except Nancy Pelosi - she's third in line for the Presidency and has to fly with top security.)

Stumble It!

Economy: Well, That Didn't Take Long

Today's NYT is reporting* that Wall Street brokers are fighting to retain their $18 billion worth of bonuses and, oh yes, they hate President Obama. Srsly.

“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.

[...] however [...] President Obama is substantially less popular on Wall Street this week than he was last week.

No! Really? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked. He must be doing something right.

As one investment banker interviewed for the article said,

“I think there’s a disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.”

No shit, Sherlock. And how did you come to this amazing conclusion exactly? Was it by checking the increasing numbers showing up at soup kitchens? Or did you read about the number of Americans on food stamps increasing? Or the job statistics, which are showing rising unemployment rates coupled with increasing layoffs?

Somehow I suspect these shitheads who yawp about how they're owed their bonuses haven't yet realized that if that money came from taxpayers, then they'd better start suing their employers to get them to disgorge their profits, because they ain't fucking getting it out of us, I can tell you that.

You hear me, motherfuckers? There's only so much blood you can squeeze out of a stone, assholes. You're responsible for creating these toxic securities, these financial instruments that are basically a piece of shit wrapped in gilt paper. You thought if you sold enough of these your employers would reward you and life would be fine? Well, go ask your employers, your corporate CEOs, to fish into their deep pockets to reimburse you, because the rest of us are too busy scraping off our homes and bodies the poisonous mold that you threw at us all.

The utter gall of these people is unimaginable. This reminds me of an old friend's definition of chutzpah: When a man comes to your house, shits on your doorstep, then rings your doorbell and asks you for water to wash his ass.

If I had a pair of uber-longtoed cowboy boots, I'd be sticking the tips up each and every one of your fat asses, you greasy pate-fed champagne-swilling profiteers. Each and every one of you needs to be "employed" by the taxpayers at the noble and necessary task of breaking big rocks into little rocks. Or, better yet, repairing our antiquated sewage systems. Goodness knows you ought to feel right at home doing that. Sure, it might temporarily ruin the $100.00 manicure jobs y'all are used to getting. But a few honest calluses from hard labour never killed anyone.

OTOH, maybe we can send you to Iraq and Afghanistan to take the place of all those poor and working-class kids who've been getting their individual pubes shot off by the victims of our "war on Terra." Surely we can rustle up, I dunno, 65,000 of you? The infuriated Iraqi and Afghani insurgents will be doing the rest of us a great favour if they can fertilize their dry and hungry fields with a few of you. Y'all might just have an opportunity to make the deserts bloom. What a legacy!

In the meantime, assholes, try to find a better line of work. The economy don't look like it can support too many of you for too much longer.

* This link takes you to the New York Times' article. Registration is required, but it's free. Make what you will of that.

Bonus anecdote: While getting the old fangs sharpened and cleaned, I engaged in what is commonly known as "small talk" with teh toof lady. It's not something I have a whole lot of experience with, especially since you can't talk too much with all that metal in the gob. Try boiling down how you feel about the financial situation into a grunted phrase of six words or less. Get my drift?

In any event, she told me a supposedly heartbreaking story about some rich bitch she knows from her church, whose husband is a stockbroker. Apparently, the couple owned a hugely expensive house in a hugely expensive gated community in our very expensive tiny slice of Terra. Which is now being foreclosed on anaconda HubbyPoo lost his lucrative job and can't find another one, and WifeyPoo has never worked a day in her well-manicured life.

Teh Toof Lady was full of sympathy for this unfortunate couple (hah) for whom she claims the whole fucking church is praying. Call me a blackguard, but I couldn't rouse a drop of the required sympathy. All I could think of was, "Hey, the guy is fucking gambling with other people's money for a living, shouldn't he know enough about money to put away a nice comfortable wad? Didn't he see this recession coming?" Whatever. I'm sure the Richie Riches will have parental units to glom on. They'll survive, with a little help from their friends. The rest of us — get used to a diet of rice and beans, kiddies, that's a mighty long tunnel and the light at the end of it is but a faint beam from where I'm standing.



Bonus bonus: A Senator to keep an eye on: Claire McCaskill. How's this for telling it like it is?

Sen. Claire McCaskill — steaming mad and not going to take it anymore — on Friday called Wall Street executives “idiots” and proposed limits on some of their salaries.

Her proposal would force companies taking federal bailout money to limit compensation for any employee to what the president of the United States currently earns: $400,000 a year.

“Is that so unreasonable?” the Democrat from Missouri asked. “It’s eight times the median household income in the United States of America. … I don’t think that sounds like a bad deal.”

[...]

The compensation cap would cover salary, bonuses and stock options.

No foolin', ma'am. Pardon me while I fall in love with you.

Natcherly, to no one's surprise, professional ghoul impersonator and public cross-dresser (honey, no fishnets, please. You just ain't got teh gams for dem.) Rude Ghouliani came to the defense of excessive compensation everywhere with the following statement:

“If you somehow take that bonus out of the economy, it really will create unemployment,” Giuliani said on CNN. “It means less spending in restaurants, less spending in department stores, so everything has an impact.”

Rudi, you dumb fuck, you're really going to try and convince us that these people who make $22 million in bonuses alone do their shopping in Target and Macy's? Give it a rest, you miserable fuckwit, the American public is NOT that dumb. We rejected YOU as potential President, remember?

Sheesh, where does that lying sack of shit get off with lines like this?

Stumble It!

Politics: Satan Indicted

Well, well, well. Strike me down with a feather. Or paint me pink and call me a Cadillac. Or something.



The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Richard "Satan" Bruce Cheney, the current Vice-President of this fine nation, has been indicted by a South Texas grand jury

" ... on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers."

The story goes on to explain on exactly what grounds Satan was indicted. See, apparently Dickie Boy owns a stake in the Vanguard Group

" ... which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and 'at least misdemeanor assaults' on detainees by working through the prison companies."

Remember when we blogged about the prison-industrial complex in this country? This country which has imprisoned approximately one per cent of its total population? How that job of imprisoning the working poor had then been outsourced to private industry which was charging taxpayers a hefty fee for "taking care" of our unfortunate fellow-citizens even as it exploited their labour and used it to drive down the wages of the working poor further?

Well, it looks as if some prosecutor has finally discovered a pair of cojones lying around and clapped them on. Oh, yeah, and we forgot to mention that Alberto Gonezales was also indicted, on the grounds that he had stopped an investigation into the abuses going on in these detention centers.

Hallelujah. Will wonders never cease?

La Casa de Los Gatos recommends a glass or two of the spirits of your choice in celebration. Will Al and Satan's Dick actually make it into a prison? With orange jumpsuits and leg shackles? Will they be making our license plates?


Oh, frabjous day, callooh callay, he chortled in his joy. (Thanks, Lewis Carroll!)

Stumble It!

Politics: As Ye Sow

So shall ye reap. As one Sheldon Adelson is finding out, even as we squeak.

Who, you might ask, is Sheldon Adelson. Well, according to the article linked above, he is a 74-year-old billionaire who was once up there with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the third richest man in the U.S. He was also a dedicated Likudnik hawk who, according to the writer, was very likely to

...capitalize on his ascent to the top of the Republican money elite to try to build opposition in America to any Middle East peace settlement calling for the division of Israel into two states, one Jewish, the other Palestinian.

The two-state solution, as it is popularly termed, has been historically favoured by the majority of people in the affected areas as well as the rest of the world. Apparently, billionaires don't have to respect the will of the people. Apparently.

Because, yaknow, instant karma IS gonna get you. Sooner or later that chair you kicked every time you got mad? It's gonna stub your toe and turn it all purple and maybe even break it. So it is with Mr. Adelson, who has made most of his money in such crime-free enterprises as gambling. Mr. Adelson's holdings in Golden Sands Corp. is what accounts for his phenomenal wealth. And now the company is looking at defaulting on approximately $9 BILLION dollars of debt. Those loans were arranged by such luminaries as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, three of the stars in the recent bailout scandal.

La Casa de Los Gatos wonders if any of the taxpayer dollars involved in the bailout will go into Mr. Adelson's pockets? One hopes not. On the plus side, our new President is going to have a decisive say on the staffing of the bailout plan. We believe that he will not put up with any shenanigans.

And for those who are upset over our President's Chief-of-Staff pick, Rahm Emanuel? We're not wild about Emanuel either, but we'd like to draw your attention to a few things.

• Emanuel is an enormously talented person.
  
  
• Emanuel has worked in a boutique brokerage and knows a lot about finance at a very high level.
  
  
• Emanuel is a very efficient and skillful organizer.
  
  
• Emanuel is a pit bull.
  
  He does not take shit from anyone. He does not take "No" for an answer. He is not a person to mess with because he probably will break your legs off and beat you senseless with them if you try. He's the only Democrat we know off who had the big brass balls to openly confront Dick Cheney.
  
  
• A President must be above the fray.
  
  It is not statesmanlike for the President to take partisan positions. He is the President of the WHOLE nation, not any particular interest group.
  
  
• A President must be capable of making unpopular decisions without seeming to do so.
  
  Rahm Emanuel is a perfect Chief of Staff for President Obama. He will be the lightning rod to deflect popular wrath over unpopular decisions. He's not a quitter and he's not intimidated by anyone.

In this time of economic crisis, Emanuel will understand what goes on in negotiations and he will give good advice. He's shown himself to be capable of making hard decisions when necessary.

None of this makes us like him any better, but he's not the President. He's being hired to do a job, and we suspect he is going to do a helluva job.

Stumble It!

Economy: Milagrito's Analysis

The Miracle of Finance
My friend Icebox brought this quote, attributed to Fraser Tytler, to my attention:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
   
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
   
3. From courage to liberty;
   
4. From liberty to abundance;
   
5. From abundance to complacency;
   
6. From complacency to apathy;
   
7. From apathy to dependence;
   
8. From dependence back into bondage.

This quote is compelling (though it's not clear whether Tytler, an 18th century literary translation theorist, said it) as it seems to provide a clear explanation of why great nations fall: the growth of the welfare state. Of course, not every democracy is a great civilization and not every great civilization is a democracy. You would also need ignore other influences, such as war and natural disaster, as well as the fact that some people remain in poverty throughout the lifespan of a nation.

Nevertheless, you feel intuitively that this guy Tytler is on to something. You've seen this cycle in families, where the grandparents started with nothing, the parents worked hard to secure their place in society, and the kids are spoiled brats. However, the greatest appeal of this quote is to fiscal conservatives, as it seems to prove their point: the government should not help people. Only by letting people — or companies — sink or swim on their own can we avoid the fatal step of dependency, and the subsequent slide into bondage.

I do see our society bouncing around between complacency, apathy and dependence, though we are not quite the lotus eaters that the theory assumes. Society experiences waves of fear and anguish as well, our working class still has a foundation of ambition and determination, compassion and engagement are visible in the political activity of the young. The average person has their greedy, lazy moments, and also their inspired, committed, or just plain dogged years of work.

There are events that shake us out of complacency. Did you notice how patriotic and unselfish we all became after 9/11? Sometimes we want to make sacrifices and contribute to the common good. But in the long run, humans face a dilemma: rational economic behavior is not hard-wired in them. On the contrary, their circuitry induces them to act for short-term gain, which, when they were swinging from the trees, was what kept them alive.

People are stranger than cats. Back in the prehistoric days, they were capable of learning that if they ate the fruit and tossed the pit, they would survive for a day, but if they ate the fruit and planted the seed, they would do well in the future. But they had to learn this, and relearn it every generation; it’s not hard-wired. Achieving preservation and increase of resources requires cultural transmission. Once the hard-wired quick-score instinct gets loose, humans bite the hand that feeds them. Look at how farming turned out — somehow, humans have managed to turn agriculture from an exercise in husbandry to a form of rape.

Greed is a funny thing. It doesn't even work for the rapers half the time, and it surely doesn’t work for the rest of us. It creates structures (such as markets in ephemera like bundled mortgage securities) that any cat with an ounce of sense could tell were unstable and bound to crash. Then when the loud noise happens, everybody runs away at the same time, thereby making sure that the building and the people in it perish completely. Then come the scavengers. In the current scenario, these are the short-sellers, who make money from stocks going down and apparently, through their enthusiastic bets that the market is going down, can actually make the market go down.

So what happened to the idea that you could plant a seed and nurture it? When communities are so large that we cannot influence each other and promote this idea, and when there are a variety of opinions, cultural subgroups and emotional types throughout society, I can only think of one solution, one that causes a lot of pain to my independent and Republicat friends: you need law as the agent of cultural transmission. The only thing large and powerful enough to provide the needed regulation and control is the federal government.

As I get older, I get more frustrated and tired of human mistakes. Since my predecessor, Wilbur, lived in the 70s, there has been a steady decline in wise economic policy and respect for human rights by our government. However, I still think that we can promote a kind of government that provides the cultural transmission of ideas that would happen naturally in small communities. It’s our only alternative, or else we really are at Tytler’s seventh step. The government has to embrace principles that promote stability, different principles than it now represents. The government needs to focus on preserving and nurturing of our economic resources, making slow gains rather than providing scope for people to do anything at all for a short-term profit. The government needs to rein in the exploiters for the benefit of us all.

If this idea sounds like socialism, please refer to the Old Testament and the rules about fallowing land, leaving ears of corn for the gleaners, and not exploiting one’s neighbors economically. (Remember, before I was a presidential candidate, I was the Feline Pope-in-exile, so I’m never wrong about these things.) It would take several books to outline all the steps the government should take, so I’ll just mention a couple of things that I’m doing.

I’m communicating with my government. I meowed at Barney’ Frank’s congressional Banking Services Committee. They are very involved with the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and I feel strongly that these companies should not be targeted for destruction. The notion that you hear over and over, that the taxpayers would be paying the investors, is a false one. All the government needs to do is to lend these companies the money to tide them over, while suspending interest payments to bond holders and dividends to stockholders, and eventually the companies would find their feet.

There’s a reason why I feel the government has a moral obligation to help out Fannie and Freddie. We used to have banking rules created to prevent the kind of get-rich-quick schemes that got the country into so much trouble in 1929. Starting with Ronald Reagan and most prominently under George W. Bush, the government repealed the rules that would have prevented the subprime mortgage crisis. Now, the Bushies want to destroy Fannie and Freddie, not because they are badly managed or bad for the economy, but, I suspect, as a way of transferring wealth to their rich friends. The Bushies say that the private sector can do the job of providing mortgages to the working class better. Hello? It was the private sector, not Fannie and Freddie, that created the subprime mess.

I’m also proposing a rule change in what’s called disclosure law. I got this idea from Hattie, when she asked why anyone would sign up for a loan they could not afford. The answer is, because they didn’t know they couldn’t afford it. Most defaults leading to the current crisis happened because borrowers did not know how high their payments could go. Disclosure laws make banks tell borrowers the truth about their credit terms. You’ve probably sat on top of Visa bills that have all that verbiage on the back. That’s all disclosures.

A terrible gap in the law exists in mortgages. When you get an adjustable rate mortgage, one that can go up and down (mostly up), the bank or mortgage broker doesn’t have to tell you the maximum possible payment, even though they know it, only the initial payment. Lenders always say they can’t tell you what your payment will be after it adjusts, but that's an evasion. They may not know exactly what your payment will be in a year, but they can calculate the maximum payment and any payment in between your initial rate and the maximum, and they can tell you how soon you could be liable for the maximum payment. I saw a letter in the Times today complaining that Americans’ math skills led to the mortgage crisis (the writer was a physicist), but honestly, who can calculate a mortgage payment without special training?

Then I got a brilliant idea (all my ideas are brilliant, that's why you should vote for me) and started working on a modest proposal for Barney's committee. I downloaded a sample loan document from the Fannie Mae site and I'm reworking it so it shows a borrower what their loan payment might go up to. I ran my idea past several humans. I asked, “If you knew your loan could adjust up to $4000 a month, from $2000, would you still want the loan?” Everybody said “NO!” This is the sort of information the banks should have given borrowers in the first place. It would have prevented the mess. I am telling my government that I want a rule that makes the banks tell people honestly what they’re getting into.

I am also investing. Am I rich? Certainly not. I have an investment budget of around $34.17, so my investments are really symbolic, a way to put my money where my mouth is, not to mention doing the opposite of what the headless chickens on Wall Street are doing. I am looking at financial companies that are strong, with reasonable debt, earnings, and less risky positions, but whose stock price went down because of the overall panic.

I bought Goldman Sachs and American Express and Bank of America at sale prices. I'm looking at Wells Fargo. I should have scored with Fannie Mae, too, because they were a well-managed company with zillions of houses for collateral, who actually refused to get deep into the subprime market. But I am not wasting time feeling sorry for myself over that. I'm worrying about all the working people who won't be able to buy houses if the Bushies kill Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.



Note: ThePoliticalCat is currently posting Milagrito's pieces because Milagrito's Opposable-thumbed Slave has not yet had time to activate her keys to La Casa de Los Gatos. All Milagrito's posts are reflective of Milagrito's opinions alone, although these may or may not be shared, in whole or in part, by other residents of La Casa de Los Gatos.

Stumble It!

Politics: Have Something To Say About The Bailout?

Here is a comprehensive list of names, email addresses, and phone numbers for every single one of your Congresscritters in the Senate. Pick up the phone or keyboard and have at it!

Those slimy bastards need an earful from each and every one of us about this ridiculous giveaway of OUR MONEY!!!

Stumble It!

Economy: Baron von Moneypants

Everybody's already written about the current economic meltdown and we're so torn between rage and despair that we really have nothing constructive to add. So we turn to humour and who better than Master o'Satire Jon Stewart to actually let you laugh as the world around us turns to shit:



The CEO president. What a fuckin' joke that worthless proto-hominid is. And he looks like flop sweat right now, don't he?

As for Paulson, isn't it cute that after multi-billion dollar bailouts over the past few months, he has the unmitigated fucking GALL to ask for a blank check WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OVERSIGHT? Neither the representatives of the people designated by the legislative arm nor the protectors of the people's interest designated by the judicial arm have any right to question or review Baron von Moneypants' decisions?

This executive fiat shit has gone far enough. We the People say, "Go fuck yourself, Henry Paulson, and take Goldman Sachs with you."

Incidentally, guess who's at the top of the bailout list to be funded by the taxpayers' blank check? No, really, guess.

Would it help if we whispered the clue "Henry Paulson is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs"?

Stumble It!

2008 Elections: Paranoia Sets In

Yaknow, the Republicans, for the past couple of decades, have shown that they march in lockstep to promote the interests of a small core of wealthy, greedy elite.

Note to "low-information" people: The real elite are the CEOs pulling down salaries of $10m and up per year, with personal fortunes in the hundred millions and billions. Yaknow, people like, oh, Cindy McCain, Dick Cheney, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ken Lay, the Bush family.

We've seen them pander to the Religious Right to pull poor and working-class voters to the polls to vote against their own interest and for the wealthy. We've seen them toss the Religious Right under the bus once they achieved their aim.

Let's face it, the Capital Gains tax benefits only those who have large amounts of capital. If all you have to leave to your kids is the house or the family farm or a couple of million in investments, you don't benefit from repealing the Capital Gains tax. But Cindy McCain benefits a hella lot. And your schools, parks, libraries, roads, bridges, military, hospitals, colleges, dams, levees, and other civil institutions suffer from lack of funding. Which, if your federal, state, and city governments want to keep providing services for you, must be funded somehow. So if Cindy McCain doesn't pay Capital Gains tax, the government cuts the budget for maintenance of, say, the federal highways. Or gives your city or state less money for your 'flu shots. Or your kid, who serves in the military, gets inferior equipment.

It's gotta come from somewhere, right?

So we all know the Republicans have always had this formidable machine, because the Treasury is full of taxpayer dollars and these wealthy, greedy scumballs want to keep siphoning it off. The Dubya years have been the worst illustration of that, as war profiteers and ruthless contractors won no-bid contracts by bribing their friends in the Republican Congress (think Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, people like that). Well, the election's got everyone in a fever, and we're taking our eye off the ball again, people. We're looking at pathetic old John McCain and thinking, "No way in hell is that guy gonna win this thing. Shoot, some days he needs GPS just to find his ass with both hands, a flashlight, and ass-labelled arrows everywhere."

Could be, could be. But what will the immensely powerful and greedy wealthy people do to ensure that our tax dollars keep flowing towards their pockets? Well, one of the remaining candidates has been funded by corporate bigwigs from the charming girlfriend-beater Chris Albrecht (how feminist is that?) to Vinod Gupta, CEO of Info U.S.A. A look at the size of donations handed to Senator Clinton by these hard-headed businessmen tells us a lot right off the bat. People like them are not known for giving money to anybody without expecting something in return. If they done paid for the lady's ticket, she's gonna have to dance with 'em.


Then there's the Other Candidate. Brian told us yesterday that he found Barack Obama before we did. It's true. If not for Bri we'd probably be sitting around going Bar-who? Thanks, Bri.

So there's Barack Obama. He's in the home stretch now, heading for the victory. He has more popular votes than Senator Clinton, more pledged delegates, and more superdelegates. Today a crowd of 75,000 or more turned out to hear him speak in Oregon. He's not beholden to the powerful wealthy and greedy cabal. His fundraising has come from average yobs like us, who send a couple of hundred as they can afford it. 1.5 million small donors funded Obama's campaign.

He's the only candidate of the three in the running who is not owned by the cabal. And he needs every voter, and every vote. Obama and his campaign people have always been pretty respectful of the Clintons, despite Hillary's "kneecapping," "kitchen sink" strategy, and "nuclear strategy." And Obama has told his campaign folks and the world that he is reaching out to Clinton's supporters.

Clinton has displayed no such comity. She is still attempting to delegitimize Obama's success. But what really gets our paranoia chemicals going is, the cabal, with its dirty tricks, its Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves and droves of followers who don't recognize that they are being used and played and tossed aside when the party's over, is undoubtedly planning to use more dirty tricks to hold on to power.

Why not? It's served them well since Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.

So while bumbling around on the InnerTubes today, we found this:

IMPORTANT
This information is not to be posted to any of our usual forums and should be emailed only to people you know personally andcompletely trust.

Here is the updated game plan.

Step one: Register a bunch of user accounts on lefty blogs.

*Create false identities equally divided between Obama and Clinton supporters. Initially play it cool. Don't make more than two accounts per blog one for each candidate. Too many accounts from the same ip and you will be outed as a sock puppet. Dont do anything drastic that would get you banned. Lurk for a while
at first so you can learn how they talk. Liberals are like a different species. Dont start an all out flame war right away begin with small insults.

The idea is to poison the tone of discussion but do it so slowly that they dont realize where its coming from. You want the liberal sheep to get caught up in it and start doing our work for us.

Step three: As the Democ-rat nomination narrows in on a candidate crank up the heat. The loser ident should start calling for a voter boycott on the winner. You may not be able to peal off voters to our side but demotivating them so they stay home is almost as good.

SPREAD THE WARNING

Now, there are several sites (to which we won't link, but you probably know they exist) that claim to be peopled by supporters of Clinton. Most of them don't have many individual posters or commenters. We've been looking at them periodically, just because we're paranoid.

We've noticed a trend: One or two strong posters, more articulate than the rest, start by praising Clinton and downplaying Obama. That's to be expected. Everyone has a candidate they support and it's a bitter disappointment when one's chosen candidate doesn't win.

But these people then go on to suggest various ways in which the disaffected supporters can protest the nomination of the other candidate. And to no one's great surprise, all these different ways redound to the benefit of the Republicans.

Suggestions are made to shower superdelegates with email. Vicious attacks on Democrats and Democratic politicians, and even the small-d democratic process. The disaffected are urged to vote for McCain, harrass Obama supporters, flood their legislators with mail and calls, turn to Faux News for information and shun all other sources.

What do you think? Sounds pretty fishy to me.

So once again, we urge all our friends, Democrat and Republican alike, not to fall for this type of dirty politicking. Fight fair. Examine each candidate's policies. Don't be swayed by Faux Noise or dubious sources like WingNut Daily. Consider carefully what your own interests are and who best represents them. Don't consider not voting. Vote for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or Nader or Barr or Clinton or Obama or McCain, but don't give up your hard-earned right to vote. Don't sit out this election. Your country stands at a crossroads. She needs every single individual to turn out and do something.

Don't consider violence or harrassment. Consider your favoured candidate and your alternative candidate, and vote. And consider this: the economy is in the pits. The dollar is in the pits. The climb out of those pits is going to be long and hard. Set aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and consider the fate of the nation, and your children, and your children's children. We cannot afford another war. We cannot even afford the two we're currently fighting.

Which candidate will give us peace, and help us rebuild the economy, and leave our nation a better place for all of us? We're not urging you to support any particular candidate. We are, however, speaking against John McCain because we do not think he has a grasp of the enormous issues facing us. We do not think, if he is elected, he has the temperament and the capacity to pull the entire nation out of the quagmire. Any of the other candidates would be preferable.

So choose carefully, and wisely, and well. Because your choice will affect not just you, your family, your friends. It will affect your entire nation, and the citizens of many other nations.

Stumble It!

2008 Elections: The Tide is Turning, Alright

Ever since Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primaries by a whole 9.2 points &mdash after being slated to win by over 26 points in that state &mdash La Casa de Los Gatos has been receiving, on average, two or more emails each day from her (her campaign, really) announcing that the tide has turned and would we please give them money.

Our regular readers know she's shit outa luck there, because we have no money. Having been painfully unemployed for close to six months now, with no job offers on the horizon, we don't have a shekel to spare. Not that we'd give her our hard-earned moolah if we had any.

Not because we hate her, or even dislike her, or have animosity of any kind towards her. No, we would not give her a penny because we're fiscal conservatives and we don't like how she's spending her money and how she's accounting for it.

See, we've been following the money information in this campaign fairly closely. The economy is in the crapper, and we want a leader who knows what the economy is about and how to rescue it. Make no mistake, without the money, we don't get no honey. What we mean by that is, the country is at a pivotal point here. The economy is pretty wrecked. We've been losing jobs for eight years. Inflation, rising food prices, peak oil, joblessness, tight credit, a contracting job and housing market, a broken health and welfare system, and a decaying infrastructure must all be dealt with and dealt with immediately.

Failure to deal with these, the nuts and bolts of the nation, will severely restrict our ability to defend ourself, to cope with the threats of an increasingly dangerous world, to negotiate favourable treaties political and economic, to secure our strategic global interests.

Even as we writhe through the throes of finding our next leader, the current gang of thieves, crooks, and liars is planning &mdash and enacting &mdash steps to keep us mired in endless war which drains our resources further while ensuring that whatever we have goes straight into the pockets of profiteers, bypassing broken sewers, bridges, hospitals, and people.

Opening up a new front in an already two-pronged war that we are losing by every imaginable count only guarantees that whoever takes the helm will have to spend more time and resources dealing with the extrication from all three fronts than they can possibly spend on issues domestic, however pressing.

We believe that the Republican Party and the current crooks in power saw the results of the 2006 elections and came to the conclusion that the populace was not going to let them take power again in 2008. In order to guarantee maximum profits for the corporate swine at the top, they worked hard to engineer a situation in which external issues would have a higher priority than domestic issues while simultaneously launching an all-out media blitz on the election process. They selected which candidates they wanted &mdash or tried to, anyway, although the voting public refused to go with Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, their two preferred choices.

Now they're stuck with John McCain, whom they've never really liked, but they think they can control. And there's plenty of baggage there that is being covered up. His foul temper, his public assaults on colleagues, his treatment of his wife, his fondness for the high life, his cooperation with his captors as a PoW, his current psychiatric and medical records, his adulterous behaviour, his shameful treatment of his first wife. And no one's talking about the fact that 25 per cent of Pennsylvania's Republicans voted for two other Republican candidates rather than McCain, the party's nominee.

So, we believe the crooks in charge have made a pact with Hillary Clinton: if she will "bloody up" the candidate who appeared out of nowhere to destroy her shot at the current nomination, they will give her something in return. And they have. To see Richard Mellon Scaife, that hateful, crooked, rotten, nasty man, sit down with a Democratic candidate could only feed our suspicions. He's never, ever had one impartial word for the Democratic party and its candidates. We don't ask for a positive word. Merely an impartial word. His entire life, his fortune, his career have been spent to wreck any hope of social justice, fairness, in short, democracy. If ever a man was dedicated to the concepts of plutocracy and oligarchy, that man would be Richard Mellon Scaife.

For him to be sitting down with Hillary Clinton can only mean that he's buying and she's accepted his offer to buy. She won't win the 2008 elections if she manages to destroy Obama. What she will win, though, is the promise of competing in the 2012 elections, when McCain, already dangerously unstable, will probably have to step down. She might also win sufficient money to pay off her huge campaign debt.

And that's where the fiscal information comes in. Over the past four months, we've seen several reports that Barack Obama is outraising Hillary Clinton by substantial amounts. As recently as April 20th, the NYT carried a piece by Michael Luo outlining the plight of the Clinton campaign as its fabled fundraising juggernaut stumbled in the face of Obama's multitude of small donors. Caveat: Login required.

Now we hear that Hillary Clinton, in the wake of her poor showing in Pennsylvania &mdash winning by 9.x points when you've been predicted to win by 26 for months is a poor showing, and until the day the results were announced every worthless "pundit" who could draw breath was predicting that she would need a double-digit win to have a prayer of viability in the race &mdash has raised $10 million in 24 hours.

We don't care to do the math to verify that claim. We find it suspicious for several reasons, primarily that our visits to her site during that 24-hour period indicated much lower figures. Also, money pledged is not money in hand.

But the main reason we don't find her claims impressive is: according to our calculations, she owes at least $15.3 million in campaign debt. Most of this money is owed to the vendors, usually small businesses, who were kind enough to extend her credit for the staging of her campaign. According to Novakula, Clinton owes unionbuster Mark Penn between $2.5 and $3.1 million. Clinton's total debt includes a personal loan of $5 million that Clinton made to her campaign, that the Boston Globe reports has not been properly declared in her FEC filings.

Clinton claims that the $5 million she loaned to her campaign represents her share of the assets of herself and her husband. However, given that her annual income for the past X years that she has been a Senator is slightly under $170,000, and her book fetched some $9 million, and DC is an expensive place to live (as is New York), we wonder just how she is calculating her share of their combined assets.

What all this boils down to is, Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner a year ago. How she got our email address was, we wrote to her campaign because we were proud of her and confident that she would emerge the nominee. A campaign that boasts of having ten million but owes $15 million is not, by our standards, a successful campaign.

Admittedly, Senator Clinton does not have to pay off her campaign debt until after the campaign is over. However, many small businesses have extended her credit. According to USA Toady, she plans to spend the funds she has raised not to pay down campaign debt but to continue to campaign. That's all well and good for her campaign. It's not so good for the little people who are struggling to stay afloat in an economy circling the toilet bowl.

The best thing she could do for herself, her party, her country, would be to step down now and pay off her campaign debts. After all, back when she pledged not to campaign in Florida and Michigan, she claimed those two states didn't count. Her top advisor, Harold Ickes, voted to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates. A significant proportion of the Democratic voters of Michigan preferred "uncommitted" to Hillary Clinton.

What that says to us is that Clinton is a tough candidate, attractive to many in the Democratic party. But she is not trustworthy or competent on fiscal matters. In the final analysis, we need a leader who can get us out of this mess we're in. All the continuing campaign does is make the voting public really tired. And run up huge campaign debts. And prolong the moment when the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama &mdash because Clinton doesn't have a prayer of getting enough delegates to win the nomination &mdash can concentrate on ensuring that we don't have a doddering hawkish ill-tempered unstable and dangerous fool in the White House. That is, other than the current [string of adjectives] fool.

Even the Wall St. Journal has stated that Obama is the Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, you fought a good fight. It's time to step down now.

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