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Tuesday 27 October 2009

Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, Cuba, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.
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Cojimar, Havana: A woman sits under the shade of an umbrella
Photograph: Enrique De La Osa/Reuters

Nothing much today… tho I did read yesterday that the UN is ready to condemn our (Bush’s?  Obama’s?  JFK’s? Too many of “us”?)  blockade, sanctions, whatever the word, against Cuba… We stand quite alone in this.

Everything for us, no matter who is elevated to top dog, is Fail Safe, 7 Days in May, Dr Strangelove, Manchurian Candidate…. on and on it goes.

It never ends.

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1. marisacat - 27 October 2009

Oh too good! This gave me a laugh…. http://www.americablog.com/

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

White House admits still not “actively engaged” in health care fight

by John Aravosis (DC) on 10/27/2009 04:19:00 PM

The bad news:

“I have not heard of any specific calls that the President has made.”

The good news:

The White House will get more actively engaged in the healthcare fight “in due time,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said today.

Maybe they’re too busy working on all those gay rights promises they postponed because they’re too busy working on health care reform.

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2. marisacat - 27 October 2009

Stiglitz on the dollar…. it’s called Death Cometh for the Greenback…so it ain’t too cheery.

But then we have all the Hope we need in Washington, … right? Hellooo? Right?

:lol:

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CSTAR - 27 October 2009

And for much of the period, the dollar was indeed “strong.” But it had little to do with the speeches,.

Aw shucks; we’d could’ve been in megabucks again.

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 October 2009

Lost paper trail allows borrower to ignore $460,000 mortgage debt

In March, PHH Mortgage filed a proof of claim to the debt noting that it was owed $461,263, which included more than $30,000 in past-due payments. The homeowner’s lawyer sought to have the loan modified, but after the bank dragged its feet, as the lawyer described PHH’s actions to the [New York] Times, the lawyer asked PHH to prove its claim.

Unable to do so to his satisfaction, Judge Drain ordered the debt expunged, concluding that PHH had failed to show it had been assigned the mortgage.

The case is being appealed by PHH, but even if the homeowner remains victorious, there remains a problem for her: Without a clear title, the homeowner will likely have difficulty selling her home if she chooses to do so.

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 October 2009
5. marisacat - 27 October 2009

hmm I see our hideous gang rape, over in the East Bay in Richmond, has gone national.

She was enticed to a dark area of the High School campus following a dance on site… drugged raped beaten… multiple rapists, observers. Some observing filmed it on their cell phones… and the way the police heard is the story of “what was going on” began to circulate in private homes and private after the dance parties. It went on long enough to become gossip of an ongoing crime.

Someone at one of the parties called the police.

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6. Madman in the Marketplace - 27 October 2009

Raising up dead horses By Joe Bageant

The national money shamans have danced around the carcass of our dead horse economy, chanted the recovery chant and burned fiat currency like Indian sage, enshrouding the carcass in the sacred smoke of burning cash. And indeed, they have managed to prop up the carcass to appear life-like from a distance, if you squint through the smoke just right. But it still stinks here from the inside. Clearly at some point we must find a new horse to ride, and sure as god made little green apples one is broaching the horizon. And it looks exactly like the old horse.

Then too, what else did we expect? His economic team of free market billionaires and financial hotwires includes most of those who helped Bill Clinton sell the theory that Americans didn’t need jobs. Actual labor, if you will remember, was for Asian sweatshops and Latin maquiladoras. We, as a nation one third of whose population is functionally illiterate, were going to transmute ourselves into an information and transactional economy. Ain’t gonna sweat no mo’ no mo’ — just drink wine and sing about Jesus all day.

Along with these economic hotwires came literally hundreds of K Street and Democratic lobbyists. Supposedly, every president is forced to hire these guys because no one else seems to have the connections or knows how to get a bill through Congress. Consequently, the current regime’s definition of a recovery is more of the same as ever. A return of the mortgage market and credit to its former level — the level that blew us out of the water in the first place. Ah, but we’re gonna manage it better this time. There is no one-trick pony on earth equal to capitalism.

Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren’t allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some “public option” that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel.

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marisacat - 27 October 2009

Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren’t allowed to discuss…

And, amid all that enforced silence, there is a mad frenzy of hula hooping beside the Victory Garden, other hoop games, golf games on military forts and bases, 540 dollar Lanvin shoes worn to soup kitchens, Nobel Prizes which might as well be toe tags in the mortuary… and so on.

Fuck them all.

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7. catnip - 27 October 2009
catnip - 27 October 2009

Grayson has been widely criticized for his comment, as Politico and the Associated Press report. Republican Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Grayson is “out of control,” while Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner asked, “Is this news to you that this guy’s one fry short of a Happy Meal?”

lol…it’s definitely news to the Big Orange ATM Grayson Fan Club.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

:lol:

Feet of clay… to the knees.

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8. marisacat - 28 October 2009

hmmm 12 dead in kabul in a UN house… attack on a market in Peshawar…

And more tomorrow I am sure.

Ob will talk about lightbulbs. Or “clean” coal… or or or.

i see a headline that Clinton is landing in Pakistan and says “we are turnng the page”.

Lordy. Can they sound more detached, more rote, more clueless.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

oh yes and a hotel, housing, what else, foreigners.

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9. marisacat - 28 October 2009

hmmm FWIW:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77858.html

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s preparedness for the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic that’s claimed for more than 1,000 lives nationwide was inadequate and incomplete, a congressional subcommittee said Tuesday.

Both Democratic and Republican members of the subcommittee stopped short of blaming President Barack Obama’s administration, but they made it clear that they expect improved handling of the pandemic in the near future. The House of Representatives panel was the Homeland Security subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity & Science and Technology.

The panel’s hearing came in the wake of Obama declaring last Friday that the swine flu outbreak is a national emergency, a procedural move that allows health care providers to speed treatment.

“Our early warning and detection systems were inadequate,” said Rep. Yvette Clark, D-N.Y., the subcommittee’s chairwoman. “Some key planning activities were incomplete; we didn’t have a good approach to provide health care under pandemic conditions; and levels of preparedness for pandemic influenza were unclear. Unfortunately, our failure to develop these systems, activities and policies cost us during the response.”

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency testified that federal agencies are aggressively monitoring and responding to an illness that’s being heavily reported in 46 states.

However, the agency representatives acknowledged that the federal government had to adjust its response because it had been preparing since 2005 to combat avian, or bird, flu, not the newer H1N1 strain. . . . . . .

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10. catnip - 28 October 2009

US warned on deadly drone attacks

The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft.

He said the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.

Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008.

Mr Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: “My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

“The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”

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11. marisacat - 28 October 2009

Lovely… some series of raids carried out by the FBI in Dearborn and Detroit – on Sunni Islamist enclaves they say – has turned into some shooting war. One dead.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

wow, I completely missed that in the news.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

it is only getting mentioned, at least by time of a brief few words on The News Hour there was no film tape being used… then some at the national evening news, but just a little. Supposedly he refused to give up.

The problem is who really knows. We are so force fed. Slowly.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

you’d think it would be “big win in the war on terrah” 24/7 … hmmmmmmm.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

uh oh.

it was a black separatist islamist convert group. must keep dissidents straight… above all else!

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12. cad - 28 October 2009

I just noticed that Kos endorsed the Republican candidate in the Owens race. Pretty fucking hilarious and typical. The best part was all the orange syncophants rushing in to defend Kos’s bold move who would otherwise tell anybody else to READ THE FAQ!

One thing for certain, if Kos is endorsing somebody, they have a stong chance of losing.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

hey hey cad………. how are you?

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cad - 29 October 2009

Been staying out of the political fray for awhile to keep my sanity.Leave it to that moron republican kos to bring me out of the shadows. what’s hilarious is he doesn’t get called on his CIA bullshit. Cindy Sheehan was booted because they only elect democrats over at DK — unless you’re the proto-reublican smug boy king. I guess all those right-wing blog-ads that Kos has no control over aren’t paying as much — or maybe he wants more of their cash if he starts getting republicans elected.

I predicted a couple years ago that kos would switch back to official Republican when the time/money was right.

And as I know you read this site Kos — fuck off you right-wing tool.

How are y’all?

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13. marisacat - 28 October 2009

snicker snicker… what’s “to know” is that it has to do with untouchables. In my opinion.

October 28, 2009
Categories:

* Blogs

Holder doesn’t know enough about Prop. One to comment

Corey Johnson reports quite an odd dodge from Eric Holder on Maine’s simple, up-or-down referendum on same-sex marriage:

“I don’t really know enough about the referendum over there to comment”, he said.

What’s to know?

Posted by Ben Smith 04:46 PM

* comments (7)
* post a comment
* permalink

luv the “over there” kiss off. Makes Maine sound non-contiguous.

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14. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

A Conversation With Gore Vidal

What is Ted Kennedy’s real legacy?

GV – It’s nothing. But I predicted that at the beginning, when Jack started backing him for his U.S. Senate seat. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who was a loyal Kennedy courtier, agreed. But Jack was funny about it. He never took Arthur seriously. He always called him “the movie critic.” (Imitating JFK’s accent) “What does ‘the movie critic’ have to say about this issue?” He liked to tease Arthur.

What did Schlesinger say about Ted Kennedy?

GV – On his own, he went to Jack and said, “It’s in the papers that you’re working behind the scenes to support Teddy. You can’t do that. You’re making an awful lot of trouble for yourself. You’re going to be accused of nepotism and worse for backing a boy who isn’t considered first-rate.” Teddy had been caught cheating at Harvard – and all the things that Republicans like to write about. I asked Arthur, “What did Jack say to that?” And he answered, (imitating JFK’s accent) “Teddy’s not running against George Washington.”

In your latest book, you claim that Mrs. Roosevelt was suspicious of John F. Kennedy because she thought he was supportive of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

GV – He was. Jack had a nice relationship with McCarthy that I always thought was slightly improper.

So where is President Kennedy’s place in the pantheon of liberalism?

GV – Jack was not a liberal. Why does anyone want to pretend that he was? When it came to matters of race, he behaved pretty well. But he wasn’t terribly interested in it. When he famously rang up Mrs. Martin Luther King after Rev. King had been jailed – well, Harris Wofford thought that one up. It was all the work of others who were liberals.

They were his closest advisors.

GV – I remember when he was putting together his cabinet, he said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Do you know anybody who’s suitable for Secretary of Agriculture?” I said, “No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know anybody who’s suitable for Secretary of Agriculture.” Jack said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Well, that’s my problem. I don’t know any people.”He came up with Dean Rusk. He said (imitating JFK accent), “Who the hell is Dean Rusk?” I said, “Well, he’s your Secretary of State, I’m told.” Jack said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Oh, yeah, that’s right. He is.” When Jack got bored, he would tap his front teeth with his index finger.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

Frankly I don’t think Wofford was much of a liberal… deeper than a few inches. IIRC he punted pretty well right on abortion at some critical point… when the Dems managed to get him into Congress in 91… or whenever that was. BHHM might remember or know more about that.

Screw them all, is my feeling.

Luv the “movie critic” slam at Arthur… I never could stand him. We really ahve shits for publicly anointed caretakers of the holy flame[s]. And seeing Taylor Branch sashay around these days is just plain painful. He looks like a venal bisque baby doll head. Maybe he is… I haven’t checked to see if he blinks.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

hmm reading the whole thing, I must say he sounds a tad bitter.

Gore should buck up… life is not a bowl of cherries. Well I suppose it is, if one thinks of the pits.

His comfort with the Clintons reminds me of Paglia being so hot for Feinstein.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

I find that baffling.

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15. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

The big bay bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down … the big bay bridge is falling down …

sorry, feeling childlike tonight.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

oh it’s a big big mess too…. the very additional unexpected repair that was made in the middle of a big big scheduled repair over Labor Day… has snapped aprt. In a little stiff wind.

And very very quietly a different company and crew is brought in by Cal Trans to do the re re re repair.

Nobody will be trusting this bridge anytime soon.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009

The bad thing about something like a bridge is every repair, every breakdown, every slight change in the structure, can ripple through the whole thing and cause all kinds of unforeseen problems.

Physics is a bitch.

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marisacat - 28 October 2009

As it is, they put in a section for the scheduled repair… a big “S” curve that is causing accidents… every couple of days.. and one three day period 2 big rigs, one a Safeway transport truck coming in from Sacramento. Tied up the bridge for about 7 hours…

AND then this. The very pieces they put in for an “I-bar” repair discovered while doing the other work. And Cal Trans is so screwed up they have made some very odd and revealing admissions.

Right now they are just lucky no one died when the tons of steel fell and a couple of ”rods” that are like big heavy metal cables fell and whipped around like big snakes… during rush hour no less…

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16. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 October 2009
17. marisacat - 28 October 2009

awww. I am guessing the little mongrels over at Orangeland are drooling red white and blooo.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama flew to a U.S. military base on Wednesday night to meet the plane bringing home the bodies of 18 American soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan this week.

The previously unannounced late-night trip comes as Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency that has reached its fiercest level in eight years. This month has been the deadliest for U.S. forces since the start of the war eight years ago.

Obama took off from the south lawn of the White House in his Marine One presidential helicopter shortly before midnight (0400 GMT on Thursday) and was headed to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the United States’ largest military mortuary and main point of entry for U.S. service members killed abroad.

It will be the first time as president he has made the trip to Dover, where as the caskets are unloaded from the transport plane, he will see first hand the human cost of the unpopular war he inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and which analysts say will likely help define his presidency.

Obama traveled with only a small media pool to Dover, and journalists accompanying him were restricted from reporting on the trip until his helicopter had taken off from the White House. . . . . .

I smell private polling showing him and his much lower than the publicly released polling.

Very drippy.

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18. marisacat - 28 October 2009

:lol:

Rope ‘em and brand ‘em:

[S]ingle payer partisans were the first to call it. Back in May Kip Sullivan of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan detailed the differences between the real public option and the one described in glowing terms by progressive legislators. He called it a “bait and switch” job. And when Howard Dean declared on Democracy Now that the public option is best thought of as Medicare, Harvard’s David Himmelstein labeled him a liar. That kind of deception works fine as long as there are multiple versions of the Democratic health care bill, each well over a thousand pages long in dense legalese, studded with hundreds of cryptic references to other legislation. It holds up as long as most people don’t know the effective date at which the uninsured will begin to be covered under the president’s plan is 2013. It’s good enough as corporate media stick to the script and mention few or none of these things, and the day of reckoning is months or years away. Lies are good and useful things, until you get caught. . . . . . .

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19. marisacat - 29 October 2009

hmm I just heard that the gang rape in Richmond CA was a white teenager, as the victim.

It can only descend further……….

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20. marisacat - 29 October 2009

:lol: … :roll: ……………. 8O
I wonder when so called Liberals will get tired of swallowing their teeth, from being kicked in the mouth.

White House refuses to release list of gay invitees at Hate Crimes reception

by John Aravosis (DC) on 10/29/2009 10:39:00 AM

It’s not entirely clearly why, but the White House is refusing to release the list of gay invitees for the hate crimes reception last night. I’ve tried to get it. We know which members of Congress were invited, and which members of the Shepard and Byrd families. But nothing about any gays invited at all. They’re simply refusing to release any of the names. Why the White House would want, today of all days, to feed the story line about transparency and White House invitees is beyond me. This is just dumb.

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21. marisacat - 29 October 2009

neue….

LINK

………………… 8O …………

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