Category — Uncategorized

Given the way things are going, the Shrubbery should be able to deliver the shortest State of the Union address ever on Monday – “Everything sucks – thank you and whatever.”

I would think that any attempts to find any accomplishments is severely limited by the writers’ strike. Maybe he’ll just re-run last year’s address and hope no one notices. I guess we could hope for a State of the Union blooper reel.

Rudy Giuliani was on one of the talking head shows tonight on my Mother’s TV [she’s crocheting a baby afghan for a volunteer group, and turns the TV on when she knits or crochets] spouting the standard Repub mantra about the economic meltdown.

According to Rudy we have to lower taxes to be competitive with other nations. This ignores the reality that the US has had the lowest tax rates of any developed nation for decades – it’s not the taxes.

He also said we have to reduce the regulations on business. The prime reason the banks are in trouble over the sub-prime loans is because no one was enforcing the regulations when it could have been stopped, and Alan Greenspan encouraged people to buy these “creative” mortgages when they should have been locking in low fixed rates. If the Hedgemony had at least attempted to enforce the pitiful regulations that do exist, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

The lesson of the Great Depression was that you can’t trust the banks and businesses to act honestly, you have to regulate them for the survival of society. Reagan took the leash off and we have been paying the price ever since.

CBS News is running a series on retirement: Can Families Trust A Volatile Market?

In this episode you have people who did what the financial planners told them to do for a comfortable early retirement that they keep having to postpone because they can’t afford it. Imagine what life would be like if Congress had gone along with the Shrubbery’s plan to privatize Social Security. Your retirement being managed by the people who created the sub-prime mortgage mess and the market in the toilet.

In other financial news, Fallenmonk wants to know: Is it Negative? If the Federal Reserve’s overnight rate is 3.5% and inflation is 4.5% isn’t that a negative 1%. In multiple places I have seen the opinion that the Fed is, indeed, paying banks a 1% premium to borrow money.

Bob Sullivan, MSNBC Technology correspondent, informs us that “water is wet” in his lengthy article, Most Americans are in cell phone jail, describing the practices of cellular companies in the United States.

We are years behind the rest of the world, have lousy connectivity, can’t buy the latest phones, don’t have the features, and pay outrageous prices while receiving crummy customer service.

People wonder why I still have a pre-paid cell phone. For one thing it was cheaper than the cheapest local cellular provider, and has gotten even cheaper while everyone else’s rates have gone up. I only pay for the calls I actually make or receive and there are no hidden charges. It isn’t a camera, a music player, an e-mail terminal – it just a telephone. That’s all I want.

CNN is running a report on Critical things to know about your cholesterol, which is actually reasonable, and is important to young women, now that medicine has finally recognized that women can have heart attacks.

It is important to note for Huckabee supporters that in addition to harboring the fleas that carry the plague, squirrels are high in cholesterol, even if they are not deep fried in a popcorn popper.

A lot of people have written about Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), on this 35^th anniversary, but don’t misjudge the opposition because that isn’t the real target. You have to understand your opponent to win against him.

Overturning Roe v. Wade is their stated goal, but the real goal is overturning Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), because that’s the case that affirmed a right of privacy and started the eviction of the state from people’s bedrooms. If they can engineer a reversal of Griswold v. Connecticut, the case on which Roe was decided, they can not only eliminate all abortions, but contraception as well.

In the last seven years these people have been rather open about their feeling that people don’t have a right to expect any kind of privacy, which is in line with their thinking that they should be able to legislate how everyone else should live their lives. Their goal is Calvinist Geneva.

In a promo for tomorrow Morning Edition, the speaker on NPR compared watching the stock market to sitting in a slasher movie waiting for the next victim to be attacked. You know it is going to be vicious and bloody, but you feel compelled to watch anyway.

Over at Pensacola Beach Blog there is another version, a kinder, gentler Market Wrap-up from a bygone era, with some footage from Hoovervilles. [I wonder if we’ll start referring to refrigerator boxes as Georgian mansions?]

So I get a call from Common Sense Issues for a few questions. CSI is non-partisan [Republican] interest group that is not associated with any campaign [especially not the campaign of that good Christian, real Republican hero of the voter, Mike Huckabee].

They are doing it wrong. The first question should have been “are you a registered voter”, followed by “are you voting in the Republican primary” and the call terminated if the answer is “no” to either question.

It was a push poll dumping on McCain and Romney over their wealth and support for taxes, or something.

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Rook asks the burning question: Which came first, the chicken or the road?

It makes as much sense as the political talking heads.

The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Sends Wounded Troops Back To Iraq –

(AP) Seventy-nine injured soldiers were pressed into war duty last month as the U.S. Army struggled to fill its ranks, but most were assigned to light-duty jobs within limits set by doctors, two Army leaders said.

The Denver Post, quoting internal Army e-mails and a Fort Carson soldier, reported that troops had been deployed to Kuwait en route to Iraq while they were still receiving medical treatment for various conditions.

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It is nice to see that Federal Reserve Chairman “Gentle Ben” Bernanke realizes that an “economic slowdown” is in progress and wants to do something about it.

CNN Money reports: Bernanke: Juice the economy ‘quickly’

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday that legislators should enact a fiscal stimulus package in order to help beleaguered consumers as recession fears grow.

The comments by Bernanke, who testified before the House Budget Committee, came as a cascade of more bad news about the housing, financial and manufacturing sectors stoked calls for decisive action.

“To be useful, a fiscal stimulus package should be implemented quickly and structured so that its effects on aggregate spending are felt as much as possible within the next twelve months or so,” Bernanke said.
…

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Ashura is the most important holy day for Shi’ia Muslims as it is at the very root of their schism with the Sunni. It commemorates the martyrdom of the third Imam, Hussein, and the battle of Karbala in 680CE.

It has unfortunately also come to mean violent attacks against Shi’ia pilgrims in Iraq, this MSNBC report, Iraq blast kills 10 worshippers on Shiite holiday, is just the first I noticed, but there will be more. There always are.

While I accept the possibility that I’m just weird, I don’t really understand why people seem to cling so tightly to their defeats, and remember so little of their victories.

Sue Sturgis at Facing South notes Kucinich asks for N.H. recount. There have been questions about the vote counting in the New Hampshire primary and Dennis Kucinich is willing to put up the money to find the truth. It can’t be expected to help his chances much, but he wants people to have confidence in the system. Fortunately the Granite State sensibly uses paper ballots, so a hand count is possible.

Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. People need to know the truth about their voting system, and this will ensure they do.

‘Noz at Rubber Hose has concise post about the incident in the Strait of Hormuz. Short version [only because it is too late to attempt the LOLcat version this deserves]: it was a routine identification of vessels in the waterway by the Iranian Coast Guard, as the Iranians said. Pathetic, it wasn’t even a “bump and run”. The agitprop unit in Iraq is really getting carried away, and needs to have its wings clipped before it gets someone killed.

Does someone actually believe that if a Mexican Navy vessel started paralleling the Texas coast in international waters, the US Coast Guard wouldn’t ask for identification? How about a Cuban naval vessel paralleling the Florida coast?

Marine channel 16 is the standard hailing/calling frequency, but it is VHF and short-range, so you have to send a vessel or aircraft out to check. If someone sailed out of a Gulf port to the central Gulf and then returns, the Coast Guard will want to know who they are, especially if radar tracking seems to indicate they met another vessel in international waters. This is normal and expected, not a hostile threatening act.