Bits & Pieces 3

Holy War: Should Americans Fear Muslims?

I have just watched Christiane Amanpour moderate a madhouse catfight on “HolyWar: Should Americans Fear Muslims.” It had a full compliment of nuts featuring; Franklyn Graham, Robert Spenser and Gary Bauer on the anti-Muslim team and Anjem Chodry and Ian Ali on the pro-Muslim team, all proving that crazy people will always act like crazy people. There was also Peter Gaddiel, Donna Marsh O’Connor, Daisy Kahn, Azar Nafisi and Reza Aslan trying to make some kind of sensible argument for each side.

It made me realize that Osama bin Laden has been almost completely successful. With a handful of fanatics and a couple of hundred thousand bucks he has turned America into Nazi Germany in 1939.

I guess my biggest argument was with Franklyn Graham. Robert Spenser is a fanatic and can’t be taken seriously. Gary Bauer is a stone bigot and a disgrace to everything American and Anjem Chodry is crazy as a loon. If he carried on the way he does any place but in England he probably would have been killed by now by some anti-Muslim fanatic.

So of the nuts, that leaves Graham, who I assume is the son of Billy Graham (he looks just like him). He kept carrying on about how the Muslims wouldn’t let people do things in their countries that they were allowed to do in the west. What he fails to understand is that this makes the Muslims just like any other religion because all religions want to make everybody do things their way. The difference isn’t in the religions, it’s in the nations. You can’t get away with that religious bullying in a democracy, at least not in this one. That’s what keeps all religions in America free to practice their magic.

The answer to the debate is simple. No we shouldn’t fear Muslims. we should fear terrorists who happen to be Muslim or any other religion. But if we continue to carry on about this we will have proved Bin Laden’s point for him and he will have won.

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The Real Cost of Tarp:

With all the carrying on the Republicans have done about the fact that TARP and the Stimulus are bankrupting the country, it’s about time that some real figures surfaced. The Times this Sunday came out with the projected numbers on TARP. TARP, which had allocated $700B, actually spent only $475B. This is because in the middle of the program congress voted to cut off spending.

Now that the projections are in, the worst-case scenario is that TARP will actually cost the taxpayers $130B and the best-case projection is that there will actually be a $10.2B profit. And what did it do? Well, along with the Stimulus is stopped the recession from being a 1929 style depression. Only a Republican desperate to get back in office or a Teabagger looking to do away with government would think this wasn’t money well spent.

Dumb is still Dumb:

People keep getting bent out of shape because I identify certain segments of the population as dumb. All I’m doing is calling it the way I see it. A non-partisan poll just found out that, depending on ethnicity, between 42% & 29% of the population didn’t know which party had a majority in the House or who the Vice President was. I’m sorry, no matter how you slice it, that’s dumb. And some of these people actually vote. That’s worse than dumb. That’s scary.

Why the Banks need Even More Regulation:

Federal authorities have finally, after five months, figured out what made the market drop more than six hundred points and quickly recover in May. They now know, it was caused by a relatively small mid-western broker making a significant selloff, at too great a speed. This triggered other mechanisms, which triggered other mechanisms, etc. They may know what caused it but they still don’t know why it happened or how to keep it from happening again. The geniuses who let this happen seem to agree that it has something to do with the speed at which, transactions now happen. It appears that because of computers, one can now make hundreds of thousands of transactions in a mini-second.

This is good for brokers because the more trades they make the more commissions they charge. It doesn’t matter whether or not the trade makes the investor money. The fact of it being made, makes the broker money. The broker doesn’t have to trade accurately or successfully to make money, he just has to trade and trade and keep trading. Hence they don’t want any regulations on the speed of the trades, which because they happen so fast, leave the trader with almost no control over the computer programs that keep them moving.

This is what happens when you put high-powered tools in the hands of greedy fools.

Okay, If it Makes them Happy We’ll Call It Obamacare:

Republican Minority leader Boehner was on the tube last week raving about how Obamacare was already costing people money on their health care bills. This is supposedly because the Insurance Company’s were upping their healthcare rates in anticipation of what the new regulations will cost them. I’m glad he told me this cause I would never have figured it out on my own. Now all I have to find out is why the insurance companies have been consistently raising their rates every year before Obamacare came along. Could it be because they are greedy pigs? Oh dear, perish the thought.

The rate raise this year, Boehner contends, despite the fact that they have raised them every prior year, is a direct result of Obamacare being passed. Does that mean they weren’t going to raise the rates if we didn’t pass Obamacare? Please! Talk about twisted logic.  Either this guy is stone stupid or he is so twisted he wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the ass.

Look, Obamacare, and I call it that as a peace offering to the Right, just took effect this week so it hasn’t cost anyone anything yet. Yes, the insurance companies are raising their rates, just like they have every year in memory. THAT’S WHY OBABAMCARE IS NECESSARY. TO STOP THAT! When it all gets in place by 2014, and who knows why it’s taking so long other than as a sop to the insurance companies, it will help to hold those costs down. Until then it will keep greedy insurance companies from raising rates on  sick people or dropping those people because they got sick, it will make sure all children are insured and it will supply a whole host of other benefits that I and practically every other logical human thinks are good for the country.

It has already been established by every sentient writer and commentator that we could not continue the way we were. It would have bankrupted the system. So if you were anything but a Right wing fanatic there was no choice but to try something new. Maybe this won’t work but we have to try something and so far the Right has contributed nothing but the failures of the Bush administration and a resounding NO! Those that are too stupid or too cowardly to try to succeed are doomed to perpetual failure. Only those in the pockets of the insurance companies should be willing to accept that.