...Even worse (click here), rather than focus on an agenda of real ideas that actually addressed the real problems in people's lives (you know, crazy things like healthcare or global warming or poverty or energy independence), Rove helped lead the right-wing Republican cabal in the White House, the House and the Senate on a frenzied power-grab.
During the Bush-Rove years, it was less about the right change and more about changing the country to the right. Only problem was, the country and the electorate are not right-wing. In fact, Rove’s quest for a permanent Republican majority lasted as long as they could use the fear of terrorism to scare people into voting for them — about five years, give or take....
When it comes to Arlen Spector, I think Rick Sanchez has it mostly right. It is interesting, but, since Sanchez has linked with Twitter, Facebook and My Space he has matured as a 'conversationalist journalist.' It has been an interesting transition to observe. I don't always tune in so it makes it easier to 'discover' the difference in his broadcast from week to week. He is a different journalist than he was six months ago because he has finally come to terms with 'where the average American lives.'
Spector is correct, the Republican Right Wing has become estranged from the electorate of the USA because they are still at odds with the fact, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney ran a 'criminal' White House. They see eight years of exploitation of the USA, after the fear of September 11th, as 'the right path' for the country. They actually believe their own rhetoric.
The switch by Senator Spector clearly indicts that he believes the Republican candidate most likely to win the domination will never win the general election. The Republicans completely ignore the fact that many moderates and independants aren't happy with the Republican Platform. They aren't. The party has gotten to be too extreme and they are being forced to the margins by the populous of the USA. They are holding on to 'old ideologies' thinking that Rovian fear mongering over 'Liberals' will actually drive the country back their way.
It won't.
The country voted in a Democratic President that is just as 'fed up' with the politics of the Right as we are and he is attempting to set the USA back on a path of productivity, discovery, invention and 'cutting edge' modalities to an economy that will sustain 'trends.'
President Obama is not an 'ordinary' President.
He is smart for one and that has got to be one of his biggest assets. He doesn't ignore trends in the country that are political and dangerous. He confronts most Americans that are disgruntled with him and that is a very smart thing to do.
Why?
Because it shows he cares about their point of view, it provides insight from him to those most invested in him doing well in his presidency and it opens up discussion with those that descent.
Example: He mentioned 'the folks with tea bags screaming trillion dollar deficits.' By exposing the fact he has knowledge of their point of view, he opens up a dialogue that will focus the issue, preventing lies, deception and futher exploitation of an electorate made ignorant by anger. Hopefully, by exposing the descent for what it is, it will bring reasonable and sincere people 'on board' if they aren't too stubborn to admit they are "W"rong and bitter.
Having ideals is one thing, but, for eight long years we watched complete indulgence of Right Wing ideology and it destroyed every semblance of decency and priority for this country. Right Wing ideology doesn't work, hasn't worked and they pervert every aspect of life to win their point of view. There is nothing the 'teatotalers' have stated that isn't the 'same old junk' that caused the country such dire problems in the first place.
The Right Wing is 'used to' assigning understanding of political issues to an electorate. The Right Wing likes a patriarchal relationship with its electorate and without it there is no political survival.
Those elected, such as Jim DeMint, like to assign understanding with flag waving. In the conversation with Sanchez, DeMint states 'the biggest tent' is 'freedom.' I don't know of an American that doesn't see freedom as a value highly esteemed in this country, yet, DeMint speaks as if 'freedom' is a choice on election day.
I thought we already had a Constitution and Bill of Rights which guarantees freedom and fairness. What the heck is DeMint talking about then? He is trying to say the Constitution will somehow magically change with a Democratic majority and President and the freedoms one enjoys under Republican leadership will disappear.
Isn't that what we want?
Don't we want the 'W'rongful priorities of Republicans that brought us to this juncture to disappear? Yet, DeMint would 'dress up' fear mongering as if the future of our democracy hung in the balance if Republicans weren't returned in majority in 2010.
Now, disregard what I write if I am way off base, but, I know I am not.
The words of DeMint are valueless EXCEPT for the flag waving. And he'll wave that flag to attempt to raise the sympathies of Americans to his point of view, hence his vote.
So, Sanchez got it right. There is a sincere emptiness to the words the Right Wing espouses as a priority. And get this, there is a new initiative by Republicans, lead by the next Presidential hopeful, Jeb Bush to 'reach out' to Americans and find a message to return to the Right Wing leadership now in the House and Senate. Won't it be a hoot when they return with the message, "Return to American values and legality or get out of office."
Of course that won't happen, the Right Wing Republicans will simply come back with a remake of Joe the Plumber into Susie Homemaker, Ken the Candlestick Maker and Buddy the Butcher and Baker. It is so predictable it is hideous.
The Right will never address the issues because they are the issue. They brought a complete disaster to this country, robbed its Treasury, sent the monies and jobs overseas and then turned to the American electorate as if nothing happened at all. As if they aren't responsible for the disaster, but, only the problem solvers.
Amazing.
In 2010, they expect the people of the USA to actually be so scared of the Obama administration that people will nearly apologize for removing them from office, yet a majority. I can't imagine what there is to fear from a President that sincerely loves us, carries through on his promises and upholds the dignity and esteem of the USA. If the promise of trillion dollar deficits are supposed to scare us, that is correct. But. The really scarey part is to come to realize trillion dollar deficits existed before, but, no other President exposed 'the truth' of it.
I found President Obama's willingness to have a press conference in the middle of the media engagement of his '100 Day Analysis' not only brave, but especially endearing. He is so concerned about completing the 'change' the USA needs that he competes for the electorates attention in order to secure any 'misinformation' away from us. He is so visible, so available for comment, so engaged with the people of this nation whether one exercises their right to vote or not that there is NO CHANCE for misinformation to seep into the impetus to abandon 'the truth' for lies that manipulate and deceive. I think he is a very smart man that never fears public engagement, including the media, as it is his strength of character that will protect us all. I admire him. I sincerely hope 'Bo' is a good confidant.
...The Carlyle Group, the politically connected private equity firm, is among the companies whose transactions are being examined. Steven Rattner, just appointed to serve as the Obama administration’s point man in the bailout of the auto industry, has emerged as a significant figure.
And an investment firm that manages money for the Hunts, the prominent Texas oil family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs football team, has already settled with the S.E.C., and one of its former executives has pleaded guilty to a felony and is cooperating with investigators....
Steven Rattner isn't as significant as some would like him to be. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is trying to 'tabloid' the issue, but, it has to admit:
Neither Rattner nor Quadrangle has been accused of any wrongdoing, the Journal reported.(click here)
A representative for Quadrangle declined comment.
Steven Rattner is responsible for following the viability of the auto bailout.
04/27/09 08:49 PM
...This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion....
...“Have you ever had a guest who overstayed his welcome and wondered, ‘why is he still here?’” Democratic National Committee executive director Jen O’Malley Dillon is wondering just that about Dick Cheney.
Cheney has been giving television interviews in the D.C. area that deride the Obama administration. Dillon responded by sending out a mass email asking supporters to donate money for a one-way bus ticket to send the former vice president back to Wyoming. Dillon says in the email a one-way ticket from D.C. to Jackson, Wyo. costs $202 and asks supporters to “chip in” to send Cheney “packing.”...
Why should AIG sell any of its assets if they don't receive fair market value? AIG will never 'bail itself out' if they sell off assets on 'the cheap.' This is the problem when the government gets involved with a bailout; they are taken advantage of with an understanding that it isn't supposed to be 'in the business' forever. AIG is preceived as 'under pressure' to perform, hence, it continues to keep coming up short because the market is taking advantage of the people of this country while trying to profit on taxpayer monies.
Bush's Bailouts are nothing but disasters. He did the same damn thing in Iraq. Once committed there is no way out. So now we have 'the forever bailout' along with 'the forever war.'
The fact of the matter is that AIG is not a 'viable' PRIVATE company. It cannot engage in insuring investment banks when they 'game' the insurance policy in order to bankrupt the economy leaving the government to
'bailout' the jerks. AIG and firms like it, if they is going to exist, have to be federal government. There isn't any private insurance firm that can conduct such insurance. Even flood insurance isn't privatized. If AIG is going to continue to exist, it has to be federalized forever, so why sell anything off?
By Justin Baer and Francesco Guerrera in New York
Published: April 27 2009 00:12 Last updated: April 27 2009 00:12
International Lease Finance Corp has drawn a step closer towards separation from its troubled parent, insurer AIG, with three investment groups submitting bids to acquire the aircraft lessor for less than $5bn.
People close to the situation said one consortium was led by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Carlyle
Group, while Onex and Greenbriar Equity Group headlined a second group. The third bidder’s identity could not be determined.
While the three bids may be considered to be low given ILFC’s book value of $7.6bn, they reflect the industry’s uncertain outlook, tough funding markets and AIG’s need to unload assets to repay $100bn in debt and equity to the US government. Nevertheless, the sale of ILFC, one of the most successful businesses in AIG’s sprawling portfolio, would represent the biggest disposal by the insurer since it was first bailed out by the US government last September.
I love this. First, the equity firms sanction financing (admittedly drunkenly) of high risk mortgages. Then they turn around after the market fails and blames the very investments they made as the problem while holding out their hands for bailouts. Then after receiving bailouts while the government is still listening to their moaning about their poor decisions in lending, they are offered a 'toxic asset' program to reinvest in the same damn commodity they failed at the first time. Is it me or is there something really bizarre about all this?
Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:36pm EDT MIAMI, April 28 (Reuters) - David Rubenstein, co-founder of private equity firm Carlyle Group [CYL.UL], said the U.S. government program to buy toxic bank loans and securities should provide opportunities for good returns, but he needs to see the rules before committing to it.
"We're always interested in looking for opportunities for good returns. I suspect this will bea good opportunity, but we need to know what the rules are. They haven't been formulated yet," Rubenstein said Tuesday on the sidelines of the Super Return private equity conference in Miami.
He said Carlyle would assess whether to make investments under the Public-Private Investment Program....
I think we need more than 'rules' for investors and banks to live by, we need to legislate the ability of the private sector to develop such instruments such as AIG.
Over and over and over again we have witnessed during the last three decades the inability of any Republican economy to buoy their own outrageous investing habits. It is time to stop this hideousness.
There needs to be independant research to determine the benevolence of such firms as AIG and the other investment banks that caused all these issues. Then measure that benevolence against the risk of having generational impact on the future and the need to spend monies completely unexpectedly in order to be sure there is a fiscal future. If the country repeatedly is asked to 'indulge' the private sector at the expense of generations to come then there needs to be legislation that prohibits such needs in the first place.
I find it completely disgusting that millionaires 'play' with money without regard to the people that will inevitably 'bailout' their self indulges while never having received the benefit of enjoying the life of millionaires themselves. Then they have the appauling 'gall' to even think about denying a nation its health care initiative. Amazing and obscene lack of values of human life or even the consideration of decency.
...“Republicans can be assured that the Party is busy rescheduling the event, the details of which will be announced soon,” said Chairman Curry. “While we are working with Mr. Rove for a future date, I hope area Republicans will take advantage of another important Republican event in Clay County featuring Speaker Marco Rubio on May 16th.”...
The disinformation campaign to manipulate public opinion in favor of the invasion, the torture program, and the illegal exposure of a clandestine CIA agent-my wife, Valerie Plame Wilson-were linked events. In their desperate effort to gather material to whip up public support, Cheney and others resorted to torture, well known in the intelligence craft to elicit inherently unreliable information. Cheney & Co. then pressured the CIA to put its stamp of approval on a series of falsehoods-26 of which were inserted into Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations Security Council. At the same time, Cheney was furiously attempting to suppress the true information that Saddam Hussein was not seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger. After I published the facts in an article in The New York Times in July 2003, Cheney tried to punish me and discredit the truth by directing the outing of a CIA operative who happened to be my wife....
...The Federal government set up the committee of security chiefs to unravel names of Nigerians involved in the $180 million Halliburton bribery scandal. The Halliburton case spanned about eleven years from 1994 to 2005 in which many Nigerian public officials belonging to three different administrations and some private individuals involved directly or indirectly in the NLNG project have been fingered....
The government is talking out of both sides of its mouth again. "Yes we recognize the danger...but...we don't agree the danger is really a danger...but...we admit our conclusion is based in inconclusive evidence." They just need to write the checks and save money on court costs.
updated 10:46 p.m. EDT, Tue April 28, 2009
By Adam Levine CNN Pentagon Supervising Producer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A series of civil lawsuits against defense contractors KBR and its former parent company Halliburton claims the companies endangered the health of U.S. troops and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan by unsafely burning massive amounts of garbage on U.S. bases.
Six lawsuits were filed Tuesday and three more are scheduled to be filed Wednesday in state courts on behalf of current and former military personnel, private contractors and families of men who allegedly died because of exposure to the fumes from the burning garbage. Attorneys for the plaintiffs also are seeking to file a class-action suit.
The lawsuits are the first coordinated effort by plaintiffs to extract damages for the claimed health effects from the burn pits. The military has acknowledged the concerns but said its own test of the most notorious case, the Balad Air Force Base burn pit, found there is no prolonged health risk for those who were exposed for a year or less to the fumes.
But the military's report on the fumes also acknowledged it cannot account for all the items burned in the Balad pit. At one point the open pit burned everything from plastics and food to medical waste, with jet fuel used as an accelerant at times....
There was a lot of shady dealing going on behind closed doors when the Republicans decided to manipulate the economic collapse. I don't see how the President can leave Ben Bernanke at The Fed with obvious unethical and potentially illegal activities in the last days of the Bush Presidency. It was more than strange to witness the sedate behavior of legislators after Paulson quarterbacked the biggest haul of cash into the private investment markets since its inception.
...Last week, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis was pressured by senior government officials Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in mid-December to keep quiet about losses at Merrill Lynch ahead of the closing of their merger on January 1.
Cuomo said Lewis testified he was asked to minimize disclosure and that Paulson, then the U.S. Treasury Secretary, wanted the Merrill acquisition to go through "to stem a financial disaster" in the markets. The testimony came as part of Cuomo's probe into the circumstances of $3.6 billion of bonuses to Merrill executives before the buyout went through....
Schapiro declined to comment when asked if the SEC was reviewing Bank of America's disclosures surrounding those discussions. The talks occurred before Schapiro took over as SEC chairman this year.
She said, however, that "there is nothing in TARP nor anywhere else that I know of that overrides corporations' duty under federal securities laws to disclose material to shareholders."...
An Exclusive at the WSJ. Ah, but, would Murdoch approve? Thain is another Goldman Sachs Homeboy, but, he and Geithner ain't alone.
AIG
Hank Paulson installed Goldman vice chairman Ed Liddy as AIG's CEO to protect his old firm's $20 billion derivatives exposure in AIG. Then Hank and his Fed buddy Bernanke gave AIG another $150 billion to keep AIG out of bankruptcy, and to make sure AIG's derivative contracts were paid off, including Goldman's $20 billion.
There needs to be an investigation and Goldman Sachs needs to be divested with their assets, sold to pay off their debts, while a trust fund is set up for the American people after their divestiture.
The global economy immediately needs to examine the fiscal methodologies being implemented to markets and banking currently. This is more than RICO. This is a planned assault against the sovereignty of governments. Why would a company, an investment bank, train its executives to serve in capacity outside its own dealings?
It is so obvious to the intent of Goldman Sachs and its 'internal' priorities and methodologies. Would a solidly established investment bank seek to 'outsource' the best and brightest of its firm? No. When talent exists as it does at Morgan, as it did within the workings of other FORMER investment firms, a prudent company would hoard their 'take' of executives and lavish in their genius. The extent Goldman Sachs trained their executives to be 'farmed out' on a regular basis to external government entities is alarming and far more than suspicious. I guarantee there is no other 'internal executive' program like it anywhere. If there was, the market would be flooded with qualified executives and the positions Goldman Sachs execs hold today would be very diluted with others equally or better quaified.
This is more than conspiracy, its assault for control of governments, which they nearly achieved if it weren't for a new President, EXCEPT, Geithner has been 'afoot' abroad and seeking USA government funding for global priorities BEFORE the problems of the USA are solved.
This isn't coincidence. There are global methodologies at work that aren't solving the problems. We have 'second string' executives pandering to their 'home land insecurity.' Goldman Sachs is no longer a trusted entity.
Racial bias in our courts
Court hears bank lending bias case (click here)Last update: 3:45 p.m. EDT April 28, 2009
WASHINGTON, Apr 28, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- An apparently skeptical U.S. Supreme Court heard argument Tuesday on whether national banks can be investigated by the states for loan discrimination.
The National Bank Act says no national bank can be subjected to "any visitorial powers" unless authorized by federal law or the federal courts, or by either house of Congress.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued an interpretation that says the act pre-empts state enforcement of state laws against national banks.
Then-Attorney General, later Gov. Elliot Spitzer began an investigation of the lending practices of some New York banks, and in 2005, the Federal Reserve released home mortgage data that for the first time contained data on the sex, race and income of applicants, SCOTUSblog.com reported.
Spitzer found the data showed the banks had issued high-interest home loans to minorities in a disproportionate manner.
But the state investigation ran afoul of the lower courts, which ruled that only federal investigators could conduct such an investigation.
Tuesday, several Supreme Court justices expressed concern about exposing national banks to state discrimination investigations, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"How is a bank to function if 50 different attorney generals, plus the federal regulators, all look at the books of the banks," liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said rhetorically from the bench, the Journal reported.
Other skeptics included Chief Justice John Roberts and liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter. The Journal said conservative Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to favor the state's position in his questions from the bench.
But comments from the Supreme Court bench are not always indicators of how a justice will vote in a ruling, which the high court is expected to hand down before retiring for the summer.
(Cuomo vs. Clearing House et al, No. 08-453) The above case has nothing to do with whom sees or doesn't see bank records and whether or not a bank needs a full time clerk to answer the demands of the courts. This is about Civil Rights and equality under The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (click here).
I quote: "An Act To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes....
