The Border 16 March 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Border Issues, California / Pacific Coast, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Mexico, WAR!.trackback
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Calexico, California, USA: A border patrol vehicle drags sand to make any new footprints of border crossers more visible, along a recently constructed section of the controversial US-Mexico border fence Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images
I suppose it is the effect of constructing a fence on what is mostly sand… but could it look more other worldly AND more martial, at once?
***
Rogoff (vid embedded, interview with Brancaccio) has some sane and logical takes on the near(ish) future…
* May take 2 years before housing bottoms
* Ditto for equity markets
* Expects 1970s-like inflation when we come out of recession.
* Could have decade of Japanese in-and-out-of-recession if we don’t seriously deal with banking system.
But I say: NO! Remember the Good Times! When Jesus spoke from the retail politics stump (we got schtupped is all I can say!)…
Believe the Belief! Clap! Clap some more! Maybe it works. If not you did not clap hard enough. Remember: peons own their failure!
[A]merica, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people.
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.
This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Xerox it and pray. Pray some more. They say it works.
***
hmm life is hard all over.. I just read at Clusterstock that Mme Madoff was spied faxing. From a deli. Pastrami on rye, to go!
***
UPDATE, 4:29 PM on the Pacific Ocean… (til we fall in)
Oh it is not fair to laugh, really. Then again it is fun… 😉 I was tired, years ago, of people in charge or parsing for those in charge, claiming all they know is from the fucking media. “Again, all I know is what is reported, I am reading the same news reports as you are, yada yada yada”…
And Gibbs does it here.
Tapper:
Today’s Qs for O’s WH – 3/16/2009
March 16, 2009 4:03 PM
TAPPER: You guys first found about these bonuses last week?
GIBBS: I think that’s true, based on what I read in the newspaper.
TAPPER: But you gave money to AIG two or three weeks ago?
GIBBS: Um-hmm.
TAPPER: How could you not know that they have these millions — hundreds of millions dollars…
GIBBS: Well, again, there’s — there’s — according to the news reports, there’s existing contracts, some of which the — or of which the president has asked the secretary to examine going forward. I think you also heard the president speak today about having a resolution authority that gives the government and taxpayers far more flexibility in dealing with the disposition of AIG in a way that gives taxpayers protection and flexibility — disposition that we don’t currently have, but steps that we would like to see taken in order to deal with AIG as a whole.
TAPPER: Why didn’t you attach it to the $30 billion you gave a couple weeks ago?
GIBBS: Again, Jake, the…
TAPPER: You’re looking to retroactively attached it to the new $30 billion.
GIBBS: Well, they’re looking through contracts to see what can be done to wrest these bonuses from their recipients.
TAPPER: I’m sorry, just — I don’t understand, so maybe I’m just not understanding, but President Obama said in early February, right when he gave his speech on executive compensation, “these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis isn’t just bad taste, it’s bad strategy, and I will not tolerate it as president. We’re going to be demanding some restraint in exchange for federal aid.” Since that time, he gave tens of billions of dollars in federal aid to AIG without demanding restraint.
GIBBS: Well again, Jake, we’ve got existing relationships, contracts, as I just mentioned, that were negotiated a year ago, assistance that was granted outside of the legal authority prior to the creation of the troubled asset relief program. The president has asked the administration to go back and look at what remedies are possible to block those bonuses.
TAPPER: But why didn’t he do that before?
GIBBS: Well, again, the excessive compensation rules that you’d noted, and I think somebody asked this at the background briefing that we had, obviously are prospective based on some limitations that we have in looking backwards. The president has asked Secretary Geithner and members of the administration to exhaust all legal remedies in looking backwards to see what steps could be taken to block these bonuses.
TAPPER: No, but since — and I’m sorry to belabor this point — but since President Obama gave the speech, you guys gave more money to AIG. Why wasn’t it attached…
GIBBS: Again, this is…
TAPPER: … to the new money?
GIBBS: Because it’s, again, it’s part of the…
TAPPER: Part of the old contracts.
GIBBS: Right. It’s part of…
TAPPER: But you’re looking to now retroactively see if you can attach something to that old money.
GIBBS: That’s what we’re looking at.
TAPPER: But why didn’t you do it at the time, if you’re looking to retroactively do it.
GIBBS: The administration is taking the steps today to go back and see what can be done…to claw those bonuses back.
— jpt
So reassured. They have it in hand. Whoever ”they” are, whatever ”it” is, it’s all under control.
More Tapper:
Two Weeks Ago: White House Says It’s Confident Obama Administrations Knows How AIG Billions Are Being Spent
March 16, 2009 5:03 PM
From White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ briefing two weeks ago, when $30 billion in additional funds were announced for AIG.
TAPPER: AIG, is the administration confident that it, that it knows what happened to the tens of billions of dollars previously given to AIG?
GIBBS: Is it confident — I’m sorry?
TAPPER: That they know — that you guys know what happened to the previous billions before you hand over this next $30 billion.
GIBBS: Yes — yes, the — I mean, I don’t think it’s a — well, obviously, you’ve got a huge insurance company that is losing money, not the least of which because of its sheer size and sheer size and decrease in the growth in our economy. It experiences a far bigger drop, largely because of its size. But, again, the steps that — that Treasury and — and others took were to ensure a larger systemic problem wasn’t one that we had to deal with here today in letting something just die.
TAPPER: But in terms of specifically the — I guess it’s like $150 billion before, you guys are confident…
GIBBS: Yes.
— jpt
Marisacat 
Brrreaking News on Mother Cheney… she fainted and was immediately taken to Hahnemann Hospital…
[The uninsured come to at home or at work…. A cool wet rag to the forehead and back to the grindstone]
Pray for her!
Run, hamster, run.
Really.
He should have just slit his wrists after today’s press briefing. How humiliating.
He should have just slit his wrists after today’s press briefing. How humiliating.
LOL I know.. when I read it I thought, so………….. size matters? And what might we deduce about the package?
🙄
Rendell’s ally Vince Fumo got convicted today–
the guy who called Rendell in to testify as his top character witness – Whoops! –
Tip of the Iceberg, this shit Fumo got nailed for.
They’ll lawyer the shit out of this as Fumo is one of the most dug-in, corrupt, nationally connected City and Statehouse Dems in the country. Think Shelley Silver in NY. Daley in Chicago.
Fumo’s grandfather started a Bank, one that eventually obtained a Bank Charter and another , shall we say, that continued on without. Fumo is Thoroughly run in with the mob going back 80 years. Same with Rendell and his trust fund from his garment district family in NY.
If this guy Fumo ever flipped on Rendell over the Philly Gas Works Sale, the Municipal Bond Scams in Philly, State Bond issues, Pension fund steerage, slot machines brought to PA via bribing nearly the entire Democratic Caucus…fuuucccckkk ….
Reality, tho- He won’t flip on anybody. One, because his gangster associates would kill him. Secondly, it’s the creampuff nature of what he’s facing.
Looking at 2 years on 10 and minimal give backs on the money?
Too bad he won’t come clean. Fumo is one of those thoroughly corrupt, thoroughly connected insiders who could blow a hole in the whole Two Party illusion.
Granted, it ws a too prescient music pick.
Funes won in El Salvador.
Viva la Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional.!!!
well I am happy to see ARENA fall.. no question.. but listening to Lovato on with Amy… and it makes me a little nervous.
The talking points trail out waaay too much like Obrama.
Citizen! Journalist! Then: RockStar Pol! Won with 46% of the conservative evangelical vote! and last but not least: This IS the end of Reagan!
Be interesting to see what rolls out…
NYT on El Salvadors New Pres
He’d be wise not to get too chummy.
Well Obster had said before election, that he will work ”with anyone” who wins. So funes was not Castro, nor Raul, nor Chavez nor any of the others… yeah more like Lula!
LOL…
Communist-Lite.
Less Filling. ~~But New!
Naked and Guilty by Jeff Sharlet
Loons.
Bu-u-u-t… Jesus.. I mean Obama, said that “God is in the mix” with sex (and marriage too!). Of course he might have meant a threesome. But who knows.
Evangelicals and Pentecostals and their thinking will sadly rise in this country. Ob is one of them. Pity people keep missing he is a “born again”.
600% stronger orgasms? 😆 Maybe God given heart attacks will rise in their ranks.. one can hope!
From the Sharlat article, on the eroticism implicit in the Gibson movie… Maybe Ob is talking abut a threesome.
What’s the Return on Investment for the Born Again Virgin Route?
A Less than 600% mindblower, or a Premium on top of THAT considering humportunity costs?
It all sounds very interesting. LOL
It’s hillarious though, really, because having worked in E.R.’s , they’re the very people who come in and you have to unscrew the most unimaginable objects out of every foreign-object-impacted orifice imaginable. Never the garden variety cucumber or store bought dildo. Extremely creative, talented people. Inspirational even, LOL.
Mcat, I think you may have commented after Chas Freeman went down in flames that Blair would be next … well here is comes:
I read taht frm McCarthy at The Corner….. and I read a very wrongly deduced article thru Tom Dispatch. that tried to say the Jewish Lobby or Avigdor or Likud Lobby or what ever Chas Freeman wants to call it now was running scared and low on options.
Shit! How so? they used what should be a discredited, is an indicted, person, Rosen to go after CF… and IT WORKED! Why wouldn’t they go after Blair?
ESP as the Dispatch article was confused enough to state that the WH had never once said a word about this. No help, no bridge, no attempt to intervene, nada. Just stood aside and let it blow in the wind til the nom broke. But the Lobby is somehow on the run? Out of options?
How so?
And I am glad CF said whatever he wanted to but he did not handle this all that well either. When he son started sounding off to the media, a couple weeks ago I figured it was O V E R.
I think clueless pwogs celebrate the end of the zionist lobby almost every other month. It’s silly.
Future Paris Is Larger, Glowing
ooo thanks for that… I am about to follow the Guardian link at the site… but this was a good comment from Guillaume Helary
very full of informative info.
Sarkozy is just so full of grandiose bravado, as though he’s the only one who’s thought of things and only he could make them happen.
New Mexico Repeals Death Penalty — Kansas and Montana May Follow Suit
Alternative Energy Revolution
AH!
I don’t always mind Grassley. Even if most of it probably a pose (see the “most of them are in NY” part) for the white folks back home… 😯
A reader popped me this.. one of the self described “moderate” evangelicals that voted for Obster, who sold himself as Jesus, with us again, here to do YOUR version of “good works”.. So blessed.
I don’t hear anything moderate about this evangelical, to be frank. Why would there be… any way?
just fine w/ his values and the murder of civilians by us troops and bombs, I see.
Priorities, and all.
Every sperm is sacred!
Well I think Catholic insurers should begin to insure feti. Fetuses.. what ever they are called in the plurality. They are so precious, let’s write policies on the “life”.
Blastocysts, I think… 🙂
To be frank I try not to know these things… When ever along the stages it gets insured it needs to be retroactive to date of specific coitus. That whole life at the moment of conception thing.
PLENTY of Catholic based insurers paid off the victims, quietly and for decades… of priest abuse. So they can pick up this particular Olympic torch.
LOL I doubt any would.
I think miscarriages should be called God Wrought Abortions.
The whole thing is so out of hand.
I think we must begin to worry that Gawd has abandoned Ob. And the Oblings. How did he get the whole AIG shit pile so wrong. It is a dark night of the soul… FOR the soul too. We must cling together, pray for the return of Gawd to Ob… and nto become bitter.
that or Gawwd gives him a sense of smell for future shit piles.
Only Gawd can save us now. Obviously Ob arrived a few decks short for the job.
LOL It’s not like the creeps in DC, both admins, did not have time to figure this out:
I read today that Jos A Banks is adopting ads like the car company.. if you lose your job they BUY BACK a 199.00 suit… ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARS. A suit already on sale.
And I doubt we are at bottom.
Now he says he will ”get the money back”.
he can’t stop it but he will get it back.
😯
Here s a tidbit…
As much as it irks me to say, I actually kind of understand the AIG bailout [not that I’m OK with the ‘bonuses’]. The largest buyers of CDS mortgage backed securities were the EU and China [the governments]. AIG fails, they fail and call in the debt. The US is worthless overnight [not that it already isn’t]. But the wealth itself is not just paper. I’d prefer to find a way for this to be resolved that doesn’t descend several billion people into abject poverty.
Not that the US or the EU or China has offered any insightful ideas out of this mess.
I’m just saying…
… And I’m saying that the way out is to get the people who brought us this mess to pay for it. Tres communiste I know, but honestly, what are you going to do? It was their lobbying internationally, it was their companies, and it is everyone else’s wealth they stole.
Hang ’em High.
hmm CA Democrat Brad Sherman makes some interesting points… (not that it matters, the bonus cheques, or whatever they are, went out Friday. Gone, not in AIG’s hot hands… LOL)
And of course a tricky mess to obscure the other reality, the monies AIG passed along, like the 90+billion to …………….. GS.
🙄
if they want those bonuses back, just set up a few extra income tax brackets, and claw it back once the money’s paid out.
While the wealth of a species
Is derived for the few,
From the Sumerian glyphs
To the Latin Corfu,
Our English derivatives
Parse less meat in the stew.
And when boiled limbs and eyes
Bobble as memories
Atop desperate handfires,
Our ancient Beatitudes
Gather their warmth, and condemn
fiat revolution.
Because we’re bloodless now,
In our sanguine paradise,
Apart.
The madness of suffering,
We quilt into the new.
Sorkin has a defense of the AIG bonuses in the online NYTimes
There are fewer instances that I can think of in recent history where the legal apparatus of contract enforcement has had such a blatant character of class domination.
Anatole France
“worse slippery”? LOL Sorkin wrote that rot under pressure.
How silly.
I REALLY want to see ObRama toss Social Security around after this mess.
I have to say the dog and pony shw today really was bad. It’s not just Milbank being snide. Tho I think snide is appropriate:
Maybe they can call in a Chicago So Side undertaker for proper training for this sort of event. They need help. It’s just a walk on act, but they are not up to it. Not Ob Jesus and not Geithner, billed as the only man in the whole country for that job…
CLUE, they don’t care.
The video is pretty damning …
Good Riddance, Ron Silver
They are pioneers. And historic. (The jokes write themselves.)
It was quite the night, apparently:
hmm.
Interactive map, co by co, of unemployment figures. More interesting that I had thought it would be…
Grassley’s people are walking back the seppuku suggestion.
Meanwhile, Benny’s on the jet to Africa, and helping out already.
IT was silly anyway, and projects an American idea that suicide would be earned punishment. In order for a Japanese to do what Grassley suggests, from my admittedly limited knowledge of Japan, would require that the the execs in question have senses of HONOR and SHAME. Modern western multinational execs have neither. They have powerful attitudes of entitlement and superiority.
That interactive map is very interesting, especially with the overlay filters.
Barclays gags Guardian over tax. Injunction forces news website to remove seven leaked memos showing how bank avoided hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.
the central valley’s fooked. just wait until the alt a and jumbo loans kick in.
O’Bama names Pittsburgh football team owner Rooney ambassador to Emerald Isle, dyes White House fountains green.
(Minty gushers a bit risky for bail-out jokes, no?)
Sarkozy faces no-confidence vote over Nato decision.
The guy who helped finger the Keating Five has a few interesting things to say about AIG… and their “suicide strategy” of holding the government hostage. Well they have Obster by the ears. And whatever else. Biden by his hair plugs.. Summers by his belly.. and Geithner by his nervous system. What schlumpfs.
Won’t be happening. The crowd in charge just wants to get financial boys in to dark closets and kiss them madly. SO obvious.
the Office of Thrift Supervision
You’re kidding, right?
CNN just had breeeaking news about a number of AIG execs who’ve received those retention bonuses leaving the company. I guess they didn’t understand the “retention” part.
ugh I am not a good one to explain this.. but in our system (as I barely understand it).. for at least the past 25 years or so… there is a classification of savings and loan entities called “thrifts”… think it is an overarching description of types of savings institutions that are not classic “banks”.
Various headlines:
AIG Ruins Obama’s St. Patrick’s Day
Washington Post
AIG Bonus Outrage Could Handicap Obama
U.S. News & World Report
AIG and Obama’s political capital
Dallas Morning News
Lawmakers Turn Fire on Obama Administration Over AIG Bonuses
FOXNews
Obama’s populist streak on AIG threatens to undermine his authority
Telegraph.co.uk
This is interesting:
Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel got $200 mil. of AIG’s bailout bucks
Chicago Sun-Times
Yes Virginia, there really is an oligarchy.
Strike the match!
***
Tapper has up his usual go round wtih Gibbs. Maybe Gibbs would like a vaca.
Just a snip:
oh you have to love NY… NYDN just sticks it to the former head of AIGFP… the son of a Brooklyn cop. Talk about naming the names… in a new way.
hmm Maybe Joshua Dubois and the visitors can drop to the floor, roll,drool and jabber in tongues. I assume he preached in tongues at the Pentecostal church he pastored at. Tenet of the faith and all.
via Ioz:
No surprise, the replacement for Kristol at the NYT is a total wanker. The gall to actually publish something like that.
ugh I have been reading Ross Douthat for months, figurng he might be picked up for Higher Office. Also he fucking nuts on abortion. And he and Sully are very cosy as Christian Men who are Very Interested in Abortion.
Gah.
When I first read RD I thought he was around 50.
Then found out, holy shit… he is all of 29. And so calcified.
Sadly a lot of the sloppy visible left seems fine with the pick. Asshole.
****
BTW, God damned fucking mouse (the computer accessorie) is dying. And I did not order a 6 dollr mouse either. A 20.00 mouse, as it happened. Plus tax, plus ship.
So, quickly ordering a replacement, after I shook this one to brief life. No idea how long it will live. Just FYI.
***]
Gah Sorkin on TNH defending the damned bonuses. Consdiering some who get it are gone and some have resigned… how necessary are the shits.
The 4th bail out of AIG really was THE END.
oh I see he is turned off by the pill (followed lucid’s link), but TURNED ON to discuss abortion. And slamming women either way.
What a fukcing shit.
Wiki notes he “converted to Pentecostalism and then Catholicism as an adolescent.”
Too bad they didn’t have The Silver Ring Thing for him, way back when.
oh thanks for that.. I never thought to look him up… ugh I guess digesting his writings was physically overwhelming, as ti was.
Yes he clearly is one who needs to dedicate his physical entity to god.. and leave breathing living flesh ALONE.
Geesh.
btw, the thread at the link is a scream!
Indeed it is…
It so happens that I finally finished watching The White Countess (costarring Ralph Fiennes) on Sunday night (having started the film a week before) and had mailed it back to Netflix just yesterday. A quiet movie, very Merchant/Ivory (Ivory’s last, I think), but Natasha Richardson’s performance was rather wonderful. It was shocking to see the news of her skiing accident when I got up today.
Hope that Fox News and the Telegraph (the latest to claim that she’s brain dead) are wrong, and that she pulls through ok.
I have been sort of avoiding the story, so thanks for the update. I hope she is alright.
BTW, if you like Fiennes (I know I have seen him a couple of times when I did nto care for his acting, but wrote it off to direction or the movie subject or whatever) he and a sister (think she designed the sets) did a verson of Eugene Onegin that I really love. In fact plan to rent it as sooin as new [digital] TV, new DVD player and Netlifx are all acting as ducks in a row.. 😉
Thanks – I’ll have to check it out.
Hope the TV, DVD, etcetera, behave a little better than the mice!
Correction – it was Merchant’s last film.
Ha! They flung shoes in Calgary!
AIG Shows Obama And Congress Who’s The Boss.
by Dont blame me I wanted Kuchinich
LOL.
Reality , mistaken for Sasquatch, Seen in Town Square.
Villagers Flee.
The diarist is right… and LOL I was thinking today that he really is Glib Gibb. As bubbles appear on the surface… and he goes down again and again. Til they pull the plug.
What a joke it all is. Maybe he can find a wife and then go home to her. Some story.. family, obligation, etc.
Canadian shoe-flingers in moderation?
No such thing as excess, where flying footwear is concerned!
Another ”personhood” bill surfaces, in NDakota, this time. The bill’s author claims it has nothing to do wtih abortion.
All menstrual supplies will be issued and carefully monitored by the state. After use, all materials will be disposed of at manned inspection stations!
Think of the employment possibilities for Christian men!
Stanley also pointed to North Dakota law that makes it illegal for two people to ride a bike built for one. If the Personhood bill passed, a pregnant woman could not legally ride a bike.
Careful – don’t give ’em any new reasons to approve!
the country has gone completely nutty on rules.. Of all kinds, harmful, and ones that are just merely TOO expensive for what the transgression is..
It is now 650.00 fine to not poop scoop the pooch. Here, in SF that is.
I was just reading at Volokh Conspiracy a new state legistaltion… think it was Indiana (forget exactly) so punitive of being present while an underage is either served, drinking alcohol or simply tipsy (and nto the doing of the adult present) that the legislators trying to oppose it indicated any sane adult trying to avoid the penalties woould have to leave the teenager unsupervised.
And they already had a statute dealing with “contributing to delinquency of a minor” on the books, that worked just fine.
The country is just fukcing nuts.
Tauscher to be undersec of state for arms control.
Whatev…. 😉
if it gets her the hell out of congress, that’s something.
Canada’s science minister is a creationist
AIG contributions for 2008 (2007 and 2008) top 8 recipients from opensecret.org
Dodd, Chris (D-CT) Senate $103,100
Obama, Barack (D-IL) Senate $101,332
McCain, John (R-AZ) Senate $59,499
Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) Senate $35,965
Baucus, Max (D-MT) Senate $24,750
Romney, Mitt (R) Pres $20,850
Biden, Joseph R Jr (D-DE) Senate $19,975
Larson, John B (D-CT) House $19,75
Lose the Cross: Rabbi Asks Pope to Take Off His Cross When Visiting the Western Wall
Pope asks Rabbii to Wear Foreskin.
Rabbi tells Pope, looking at Gaenswein, “before you tap it, wrap it!”
Gaenswein, noticing lithe Rabbi, Offers “Holy Communion”,
Celebration of “Trinity”
The Pope, noticing the Rabbi poaching on his favorite sacrement, offers to take off his cross and offer to share it with the Rabbi where he’ll feel it.
10 Inch Jesus of The Irony Not Lost 0n His Soon to be EMboweled Predicament, perks up, and miraculously speaks said Crucifix:
“The Fuck you Will, Benny!”
Just then a van pulls up, inexplicable disgorging Brooklyn based musician/poet/writer Lucid.
With his band.
And Middle East Envoy, George Mitchell.
{always gotta have the plot twist}
what a hoot!
gnu thread…
LINK
……………… 🙄 ……………….
loving ‘the rabbi and the pope went to the wall, dragging wee Ganswein behind them’ stories…
😈