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Let’s see…. 14 March 2010

Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Mexico, Viva La Revolucion!.
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This diver stares into the jaws of death as he fends off a Great White shark, pushing its snout, then putting his hand in its mouth. These amazing pictures, taken from a nearby cage, were taken off Guadeloupe Island, Mexico by Don Carpenter

This diver stares into the jaws of death as he fends off a Great White shark, pushing its snout, then putting his hand in its mouth. These amazing pictures, taken from a nearby cage, were taken off Guadeloupe Island, Mexico by Don Carpenter

Picture: DON CARPENTER / NATIONAL at Telegraph Animals of the Week Gallery
 

… a team of nimble, sharp-toothed fish to cut the lines, sink that cage to ocean floor, out wait the air in the tanks… another team of strong fish to bend the bars……….

Fish Food!  Everybody eat!

As an aside, I heard that it took three hours, obviously off camera, to pry open the jaws of poor Tillikun the captive whale… when he offed the “trainer”.

A good picture to post as I listen to the Frost Nixon go round, a PBS station south of here, San Mateo on the Peninsula, is running the whole of it as their tickle for pledge week (which seems to go 4 – 6 weeks n this area).  Beats San Francisco, which is running the umpteenth re-run of that champagne bubbles orchestra man.  Mercifully, I forget his name.

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Comments»

1. marisacat - 15 March 2010

HA! AP is reporting that all special deals are back on! Cornhusker, Louisiana Purchase and the FL deal for a slice, just a slice!, of their elderly… AND the WH is open for more deals to get HC done.

Wave to the Titanic as it goes by, into the dark night………..

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2. NYCO - 15 March 2010

I have received my “the Census is coming” letter. Because this is The Most Important Census of Our Lifetimes. It used to be that every election was The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes, but that has gotten old and no one listens to it any more, because these Important Elections don’t prevent anything bad from happening even if your side wins. So, now it’s the Census that’s critically important. I wonder what becomes Important next once the Census doesn’t help anything either. I’m guessing it will devolve to The Most Important NCAA Bracket of Our Lifetimes, followed closely by The Most Important American Idol Vote of Our Lifetimes. Eventually we will run out of Important Events and will all just turn on each other.

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marisacat - 15 March 2010

HA! Prepare to expect the next step… a card. It advises you of the 800 number to call if you have questions filling out hte census. I got that one a few days ago…. the envelope and letter a few days before that.

I await my census form. My pen is ready!

I feel historic.

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lucid - 16 March 2010

Well… given the fact that my team for once seems poised to maybe make a deep run in the tourney, how is it not the most important NCAA bracket of a lifetime? ;)

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

Absolutely! The most important, historic, unprecedented… ever.

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3. mattes - 15 March 2010

Boy-o-boy, shits really hitting the fan on I/P today. Plenty of burning editorials.

Long time coming. Katrina like.

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NYCO - 15 March 2010

Well, yeah. Daddy gets angry when he’s drank all the money and Junior mouths off to him. There is just so much shit Daddy will take at a time like this.

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BooHooHooMan - 15 March 2010

No wonder why Momma eventually left and nationalized all Daddy and Junior’s shit overseas.

LOL.
I love me some ambiguous Country and Western….collapse.

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 15 March 2010
5. catnip - 15 March 2010
Madman in the Marketplace - 15 March 2010

photographers love those stupid shots. Remember all of the shots of Bush with a halo of lights around his head?

It’s such a stupid visual cliche’.

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6. Madman in the Marketplace - 15 March 2010
catnip - 16 March 2010

haha – perfect :)

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7. Madman in the Marketplace - 15 March 2010

Chris Floyd: Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire’s Dominion

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s proposal to withdraw from Afghanistan was debated, heatedly, for hours in the House of Representatives on Wednesday. After the debate, dozens of Representatives cast their vote to end the war immediately. This was an unprecedented event in the history of the conflict, now in its ninth year.

Think about that for a moment: an unprecedented event, on the floor of the House, going on for hours, involving a question of supreme national importance. Regardless of one’s position on the issue, is this not the very definition of “news”? But on Thursday morning, you could search high and low on the front pages (print and web) of both the New York Times and the Washington Post — our national arbiters of serious newsworthiness — yet find no mention whatsoever of this event. This, even though the web fronts — unlike the paper versions — contain headlines for dozens of stories, including sections devoted entirely to Washington politics.

You would have had to know about the debate already — or else trawl diligently through piles of pixels or print — to reach the small stories that our papers of record deigned to release on the subject. No ordinary newspaper reader — someone who has a more than passing interest in current events but also has a life to live — would even know that such a debate took place, much less learn anything about the powerful arguments against the war delivered on the floor of the national legislature. That is to say, it is entirely possible that a reasonably informed and engaged citizen of the Republic would not even be aware that dozens of elected officials at the highest level of government voiced their support for the most radical position on the war: immediate withdrawal.

But such is the way of our imperial system. Our ruling class does not want the citizenry to know there are any alternatives to the grand bipartisan consensus on the true aims of government: servicing the needs of Militarism and Money. And so what cannot be ignored entirely is buried “certain fathoms in the earth … deeper than did ever plummet sound.”

snip

Today? Dennis Kucinich opposes the corporate-coddling health care boondoggle pushed by the White House — and he is called an accomplice in mass death by progressive paladin Markos Moulitsas. Kos even levelled the most dread epithet in the entire progressive canon at Kucinich’s opposition: “It’s definitely a very Ralph Nader-esque approach .. a very unrealistic and self-defeating approach.”

So this is where we’ve come to. Ralph Nader, who has spent decades fighting corporate power, often successfully (which is more than Kos can say), is now a figure of scorn and derision — his very name a perjorative term — among our leading “progressives.”

And why? Because Nader dared to offer an alternative to the bipartisan consensus of Militarism and Money in the 2000 election. And this, according to the unrealistic and self-defeating mythology of serious progressives, is what threw the Florida vote — and thus the election — to George W. Bush. This fairy tale persists despite the fact that the recounts carried out by the media consortium after the election clearly showed that Al Gore received more votes than Bush in Florida, regardless of Nader’s total. It was Al Gore and his fellow establishment Democrats who “threw” the election to George W. Bush by refusing to challenge the result in Congress, by refusing to confront the transparent fraud and corruption at the very heart of the political process, and to use the tools provided them by the Constitution to uphold the will of the electorate.

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marisacat - 15 March 2010

Sorry you got stuck in Mod Madman…

I jsut now got thru to the backpages of wordpress… gah. What a nightmare! Close to 3 hours.

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mattes - 15 March 2010

Amazing.

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8. mattes - 15 March 2010

I rarely have time or energy to go back through old threads, but tonight I was rummaging and found this old post from 2007:

121. D. Throat – 27 August 2007
Finally someone is “whispering” about Clinton’s Banking Reform failure… “the revocation that dare not speak it’s name”:

________

Fed bends rules to help two big banks

If the Federal Reserve is waiving a fundamental principle in banking regulation, the credit crunch must still be sapping the strength of America’s biggest banks. Fortune’s Peter Eavis documents an unusual Fed move.

FORTUNE Magazine
By Peter Eavis, Fortune writer
August 24 2007: 5:09 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Fortune) — In a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation’s largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed this week to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup (Charts, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (Charts, Fortune 500), according to documents posted Friday on the Fed’s web site. (aka Friends of Bill Clinton)

The Aug. 20 letters from the Fed to Citigroup and Bank of America state that the Fed, which regulates large parts of the U.S. financial system, has agreed to exempt both banks from rules that effectively limit the amount of lending that their federally-insured banks can do with their brokerage affiliates. (Just smell what that Rock is cooking… gee kinda smells like 1929) The exemption, which is temporary, means, for example, that Citigroup’s Citibank entity can substantially increase funding to Citigroup Global Markets, its brokerage subsidiary. Citigroup and Bank of America requested the exemptions, according to the letters, to provide liquidity to those holding mortgage loans, mortgage-backed securities, and other securities.

This unusual move by the Fed shows that the largest Wall Street firms are continuing to have problems funding operations during the current market difficulties, according to banking industry skeptics. The Fed’s move appears to support the view that even the biggest brokerages have been caught off guard by the credit crunch and don’t have financing to deal with the resulting dislocation in the markets. The opposing, less negative view is that the Fed has taken this step merely to increase the speed with which the funds recently borrowed at the Fed’s discount window can flow through to the bond markets, where the mortgage mess has caused a drying up of liquidity.

On Wednesday, Citibank and Bank of America said that they and two other banks accessed $500 million in 30-day financing at the discount window. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment. Bank of America dismissed the notion that Banc of America Securities is not well positioned to fund operations without help from the federally insured bank. “This is just a technicality to allow us to use our regular channels of business with funds from the Fed’s discount window,” says Bob Stickler, spokesperson for Bank of America. “We have no current plans to use the discount window beyond the $500 million announced earlier this week.”

There is a good chance that other large banks, like J.P. Morgan (Charts, Fortune 500), have been granted similar exemptions. The Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan didn’t immediately comment.

(WSWK: Wall Street Welfare Kings… It is sickening to see that the only reason Reagan and Clinton have gotten this far is because the tapped Americans hatred towards poor Black people… Reforming Welfare as we know it…. yeah by give 100 times as much welfare to the rich)

The regulations in question effectively limit a bank’s funding exposure to an affiliate to 10% of the bank’s capital. But the Fed has allowed Citibank and Bank of America to blow through that level. Citigroup and Bank of America are able to lend up to $25 billion apiece under this exemption, according to the Fed. If Citibank used the full amount, “that represents about 30% of Citibank’s total regulatory capital, which is no small exemption,” says Charlie Peabody, banks analyst at Portales Partners.

The Fed says that it made the exemption in the public interest, because it allows Citibank to get liquidity to the brokerage in “the most rapid and cost-effective manner possible.”

SO, HOW SERIOUS IS THIS RULE-BENDING? VERY. ONE OF THE CENTRAL TENETS OF BANKING REGULATION IS THAT BANKS WITH FEDERALLY INSURED DEPOSITS SHOULD NEVER BE OVER-EXPOSED TO BROKERAGE SUBSIDIARIES; INDEED, FOR DECADES FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS WERE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO KEEP THE TWO UNITS COMPLETELY SEPARATE. THIS MOVE BY THE FED EATS AWAY AT THE PRINCIPLE.

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http://marisacat.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/hmmm/

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catnip - 16 March 2010

2007?

But no one could have foreseen the breach of the levees…

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mattes - 16 March 2010

They were rolling the ball down the road, pocketing all they could.

Notice the role the “Fed” took?

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9. catnip - 16 March 2010
marisacat - 16 March 2010

I think that is a scandal. Something that institutes mandates to purchase a product and Ol’ Nan may do it without a Roll Call.

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catnip - 16 March 2010

(You knew this was coming…): if you don’t support the POS bill, you’re racist!.

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10. lucid - 16 March 2010

btw – happy belated birthday Brinn…

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brinn - 16 March 2010

Thanks, lucid! Another year, another….erm, year? :)

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11. marisacat - 16 March 2010

News and news…

I got my census… I hope I am in an historic sstate of grace when i fill it out… HA!

And I went into the Safeway order to finish it up and place an order for delivery Wed… and OVERNIGHT, things went up… a lot. 10 and 20%.

What a scam it all is.

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lucid - 16 March 2010

I’m miffed. Both of my neighbors got their census forms in the mail today, but NO, not me!

I do have jury duty two weeks from now. Lucky me! I just can’t wait to do my civic duty.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

I got mine today and filled it out. In purple ink… the form said blue or black. I struck a blow for freedom…

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12. Madman in the Marketplace - 16 March 2010
13. Madman in the Marketplace - 16 March 2010

Not that it’s a surprise (though I was willing stupidly to hope otherwise), but they’re reporting on Countdown that Kucinich is going to cave tomorrow in a press coverage and announce that he’s going to vote for this insurance company enrichment act.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

aww.. he couldn’t put on elevator shoes and fight… ??? Fight fight fight? [snicker]

So sad, too bad.

Another one, face down in the mud.

In other news, CNN has hired Eric Erickson from Red State. And I must say FAIR is all in a lather. Chill baby. It’s gonna be like this for a lotta years. As I see it.

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lucid - 16 March 2010

Maybe he heard Markos was going to primary his ass. ;0

Ah Dennis… you’ve come a long way from when I was willing to give you money…

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

No I think the caves are planned, just like the “opposition”.

I see that SMBIVA has, rightly I think, fingered Wendell Potter previously with CIGNA, as a shill. He too is exhorting for passage of this bill, as “the best we can do and it will be fixed later”.

Meanwhile I think the bill is a vampyre inside a Trojan Horse. What little is good – “appears” to be good – will be undone and what is bad will get worse.

As I say… all the blacks, white libs and Jews who voted for Ob should get clean with their god and join the mil. Support the Wars.

It would only be right.

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lucid - 16 March 2010

You’re too kind. This bill is one of the worst things that will ever pass congress. And it will permanently fuck the underclass.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

I agree… I think it is designed to break millions of people. Literally, break.

Corps and companies are going to swfitly, over a very few years, dump providing coverage. It was always lunacy that our system was formulated on employer based coverage… now that will end. Mainly becuse the corps have signaled for years they want out… one of the few reasons this was even revisted. It sure was not for the peeeeeeple.

So, employer based coverage will be phased out but with no decent replacement… none at all. Just a mandate to buy insurance… AND this bill knocks out what few states and districts have tried to create, at the least, high risk pools.

Among so much else that it is going to do… the mere fact, rarely repeated and almost never discussed, that the enforcement of the mandate will be run thru the IRS is frightening.

Oh well!!

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14. Madman in the Marketplace - 16 March 2010

Chris Floyd:

Dear New York Times,
OK, OK, we get the picture: you want the United States to attack Iran. Why don’t you go ahead and put a permanent banner across the top of the front page with the Cato-like adjuration: “Iran Must Be Destroyed!” Or maybe you could just tack it on to every single story: “Yankees Trade to Bolster Outfield; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “Mixed Results for Apple I-Pad; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “Markets Anxious Over Health Care Vote; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “New Bistro Revels in Bohemian Ambience; Iran Must Be Destroyed.”

After all, hardly a week goes by now without some big juicy piece of Times scaremongery about Iran’s nuclear program, usually with the same image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lab coat looking blankly at metal tubes. The thrust of these stories is always the same: Iran is galloping toward nuclear weaponhood — a “global threat” that “cannot be allowed to stand.” Last week, it was Bill Broad, goosing the rubes with this little number, a supposed “science” piece: For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier.

For a moment, let’s put aside the fact of Iran’s persistent denials of a desire for nuclear weapons — including the explicit, repeated statements of the theocracy’s supreme religious and political leader that such weapons are anathema. And let’s put aside the fact that despite the most extensive and intrusive inspection regime in the history of atomic energy development, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is not doing exactly what it says it is doing: developing non-weaponized nuclear power for peaceful purposes. These are just facts, after all — and facts, as the sainted Ronald Reagan once told us, are stupid things.

But even if we were to grant the fevered fantasies of our masturbatory militarists the slightest tincture of credibility — or even take their brazen propaganda as gospel truth — they have never yet explained exactly why Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would be a greater “global threat” than, say, the bristling arsenals produced by the illegal, covert, crimeful programs in Israel, India and Pakistan. Nor are we told why an ill-gotten Iranian bomb would be worse than the vast “legal” nuclear arsenals of Russia, China, France, Great Britain and, of course, the only nation in the history of the world that has actually used nuclear weapons to slaughter hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians, the United States of America.

Or to put it another way, in the immortal words of Arthur Silber: “So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?”

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Madman in the Marketplace - 16 March 2010

Floyd links to this:

Reports emerged this weekend from Scotland’s Sunday Herald that the US government has contracted with a Florida company to ship a massive amount of weaponry, including hundreds of bunker buster bombs, to Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean, was depopulated by Britain in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and transferred to the United States as a military base. The island’s proximity to Iran suggests it may be used as a staging ground for US air strikes against the nation.

The proximity is not lost on Iran’s state media, which is reporting that the bunker-busters are a clear move to threaten Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over its civilian nuclear program.

The Sunday Herald report also cites numerous experts as saying that the lack of publicity for the move, just one of several examples of the Obama Administration adding major amounts of weaponry to the area around Iran, suggests they believe a confrontation is more likely. The Pentagon has thus far refused to comment.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

The island’s proximity to Iran suggests it may be used as a staging ground for US air strikes against the nation.

There we go! Get your war on!!

We threatened the people of Diego Garcia with eextermination. When they did not seem to be getting the point, their pet dogs were gassed and shot. So much better. They got the point.

I think all mil age blacks, white libs and jews who voted for Ob need to volunteer for the US mil NOW. (or hey, for the IDF… get dual citiznship, maybe Rahm and Ax can put in a word)

Get right with your god. NOW.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

Not that they will of course. They won’t.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

Why don’t we jsut sanction the Israeli air war agaisnt Iran. Pats on the back, the odd missile or other support (here Jewish State of Israel, have a few F-22s from Daddy) and let them duke it out.

Be cheaper.

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15. catnip - 16 March 2010

Has anyone heard from BHHM since the storms hit the NE?

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lucid - 16 March 2010

Which ones? We’ve had so many this year.

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catnip - 16 March 2010
lucid - 16 March 2010

Ah – that was nasty. They all were really [except the major blizzard that happened in the mid-Atlantic but blessedly only gave NYC 8 inches...]

Didn’t mean to sound flip. Just making a general comment about how shitty the weather has been this winter.

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catnip - 16 March 2010

I didn’t take it that way. I know you guys have had a run of lousy weather. I should have just taken it as sarcasm. ;)

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

earlier they said sometime Tuesday… and that was 4 and 5 days ago…………………..

Good Luck is all I can say!!

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

Think he posted the night before last… I will look…

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

He posted lst night, around 10:30 pm Pacific time… so I think he is OK…

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catnip - 16 March 2010

Good to know. Thanks!

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16. lucid - 16 March 2010

It’s so funny when cats snore. Giz is worse than I am!

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17. catnip - 16 March 2010
marisacat - 16 March 2010

I want free peanuts for the gallery seats! (and better shows, too!)

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catnip - 16 March 2010

I want a holiday – away from so-called “civilization”.

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marisacat - 16 March 2010

Right on schedule, per your comment above linking to Dkos and people called racist for opposing this bill (or ObBaby), KGO is pushing that this night… gah.

Fine, I am a racist. By now who cares? The ONLY racism that matters in the country is what Ob and Obsters label as such. So, who cares?

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18. Madman in the Marketplace - 16 March 2010
marisacat - 16 March 2010

Mr Fish wins again!

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19. marisacat - 16 March 2010

gnu

LINK

…………………………… 8O

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