What actually happened on ABC’s This Week? Did Stephanopoulos decide that he needed more face time on an important show or did Christiane Amanpour decide that she needed to get back in the field, a place where she is the complete package, reporting on events that are actually happening instead of sitting behind a desk talking about them. The money guess is that the suits at ABC decided that they needed a more genial and charming host instead of the serious, Amanpour who maybe took too many shots at the greedy parts of the business community, of which ABC is an integral part.
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Michelle Bachman sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Is that a problem or a punch line?
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The battle over abortion goes on but the solution to a great deal of this problem still seems to elude the religious right. Led by the Catholic Church the rejection of contraception as a solution is actually a crime against humanity.
The religious twits don’t seem to understand that the use of contraceptives, while not necessarily increasing copulation, will most certainly reduce population. Nick Kristoff, one of my favorite writers came up with a great line this week, “Umbrellas don’t cause rain.” Think about it.
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Bank of America just moved trillions of dollars of risky derivatives off Merrill Lynch’s (a subsidiary of B of A) books. They were moved too B of A, so that the losses would be covered by the FDIC. That means that us as taxpayers are now covering B of A’s bet up to as much as $53 trillion. This has happened because commercial and investment banks can now, thanks to the trashing of the Glass/Steagall Act, be the same bank and thereby get the FDIC to cover the toxic assets that they couldn’t if a bank was just an investment bank.
FDIC insurance was set up to protect commercial bank investments from the bank collapsing. It was never meant to cover the gamble that investment banks live on. It didn’t have to until the two merged after the removal of Glass/Steagall. We need Glass/Steagall back so that these investment bank crooks, the ones who like to shoot crap with their investors money aren’t doing the same thing with the money that depositors put in commercial banks.
Commercial Bank= a place to put money where it is relatively safe
Investment Bank= a place to gamble with your money. Not even close.
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Did you know that 64% of voters blame the government for he economic crisis while only 34% blame the financial sector. That’s as it should be only the government they should be blaming is the Bush government that relaxed all controls over the financial sector and allowed it to run amok and crash the economy.
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During the Bush administration Republicans passed and signed a $286 billion infrastructure bill for bridges, roads and mass transit. Today, they violently oppose it. Why, because it is proposed by Obama. They don’t care about what happens to this country or its people a long as they get rid of that black guy in the White House. And Herman Cain thought he had a chance?
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The Boston Globe ran a chart a couple of weeks ago that the Presidents election committee should post on every billboard in the country. It showed how many trillions every president has added to the national debt. The debt was $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office. Since then it has run like this: In trillions;
Reagan- $1.9
George HW Bush -$1.5
Bill Clinton – $1.4
Obama- $2.4
And oh yeah
George Bush -$6.4
How the hell did that happen? Maybe two wars, massive tax cuts, etc. Even the allegedly socialist Obama doesn’t compare with the out of control Bush who, accompanied by many of the same Republicans who are now screaming to reduce the debt, ran up nearly half of it in only eight of the past thirty years.
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In the land of the fantasy we find they have their own TV network. It’s called Fox News who this year came out with an attack on SpongeBobSquarePants. Yeah, that’s right, folks. Fox is at war with a drawing. Gretchen Carlson claims that the dastardly cartoon character is teaching kids that man is the cause of global warming. This is because the Department of Education handed out a book featuring SpongeBob and blaming man for global warming.
What’s her beef? She claims that man causing global warming is a disputed fact. Sure it is Gretchen. It’s frantically disputed by the companies currently creating pollution and by the brain dead sycophants who are dumb enough to believe their propaganda.
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House Speaker Boehner thinks $166 in payroll tax savings s a measly amount of money and not worth bothering about. That’s because the vainglorious clown spends more than that on sun tan oil per month. Hundreds of working people responded to the Speaker’s idiotic remark, all allowing that it was the difference between making it that month and not making it. Of course Boehner and the greedy rich slugs he represents wouldn’t understand that. Maybe if we equated it with not having enough cash to gas up their yachts they’d get the point.
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Why has the Army denied access to all but 20 public and reporters at the Bradley Manning trial? Why aren’t computers and recording devices allowed in the courtroom and why does an Army public affairs officer who refuses to give his name tell reporters that there will be no transcript of the trial available for three or four months? I’ll tell you why. It’s because the army knows it has no legitimate case against Manning. None of the documents released have led to any kind of action against the US or it’s personnel. No one ha been killed because of them and the only thing the army has to hang its hat on it that many people who should not have been putting their thoughts and comments into a computer have been embarrassed. Oh yeah, there’s also the point that security was so lax at the base at which, Manning was stationed that I could have broken the code and I can barely turn my computer on. Manning saw some pretty serious shit on the tapes that he uncovered, including the murders of women and children by US troops. This is stuff that should be brought to light and the crimes depicted solved. Manning is a hero for revealing this tripe to the open air and the degenerates at army command who are trying to convict him to cover up their own inadequacies should all be brought to trail.
I really don’t understand the army, point in this trail. Every day it goes on it makes them look like bigger, more incompetent fools. Even if they get their revenge on Manning and he goes to jail the army looks, more and more like a bunch of petulant children getting even with another kid they don’t like. The military’s disgracing itself just at a time when an important bill has been passed giving them authority over American citizens on American soil. If this is an example of Military justice than the passing of that bill is a cause for armed revolution because the army has shown absolutely no affinity for any type of justice and no grasp of the principles they have been selected to defend.
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Since 2009, according to the Center for Public Integrity, the Chamber of Commerce’s more than 850 business and trade groups have spent $1.3 billion to fight financial reform. In case you don’t understand what that means, let me phrase it a different way. Big business is looking to screw you. Right now the Consumer Financial Index Board created by Elizabeth Warren and headed by Richard Cordray is the only thing that stands between you and the financial screwing you deserve if you don’t vote Democratic in the next election. I say that with all sincerity because if the Republicans get into both houses they will surely tear all consumer protection apart and completely dismantle all business regulations, leaving the American public at the mercy of a voracious business community that is smart enough to make money when it completely lacks regulation but not smart enough to realize that if they destroy their own labor pool they will also be destroying their consumer base and damning the country to a generation long recession.