They’re just slugging it out… 19 September 2008
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
45 + days to go… Watching them, all four of them, go at it, makes me want to buy gold and dust off the passport. I also saw clips of Nancy P often today – and thru the night…. LOL This is not a winning play…
Just for a shift in horror back drop I stopped in at Anti-war.com which I had not been to in weeks, riding at the top is:
US-Pakistan Ties Deteriorate Over Air Strikes
Gates Defends Right of US to Strike in Pakistan
US Military Advisors May Soon Head to Pakistan
And beneath that blithely rides a headline that Russia, Condi says, is taking a “turn to the dark”. Where are we? In the light?
I heard conjecture yesterday that Putin is, personally, immensely wealthy, no news there, but the pundit conjecture posited that he is “possibly the wealthiest man on earth”. At 60 billion (the number cited) I sort of doubt it. In the past I had heard conjecture that Bloomberg, for one, is worth 100 billion. Not even counting Asian and ME wealth, nor certain royal houses. What a relief, I am sure we’d find a way to go to war to ensure we are wealthiest.
And what is all of this, our wealth, riding on? Shifting sands and sinkholes in my opinion…
Marisacat 
People have been hoping for disasters in Iraq and on Wall Street to provide a “wake up call,” but there aren’t going to be any such crashes; just a slow, painful trashing. Trashing of our military, trashing of our moral authority, trashing of our financial system (never completely fair, but even less so now). Now today we’re due for a “surge” on Wall Street. Yeah, that’s what they’re calling it. A “surge.” LOL.
The revolution will not be televised because people will just slip away from the system in twos and threes. I fully expect there to come a day in American history when CNN’s bubbleheaded bleach blonde smells smoke in the studio and is genuinely surprised the network is being taken over by the Popular Front of Somethingorother, or by the National Guard.
LOL my connection disconnected I had to shut down and reboot, but I had been posting a comment that I just read the Big Bail Out of banking is being called… drum roll:
Cash for Trash.
Which is very accurate.
new Pew poll via McClatchy Campaign Blog. I have no idea how it plays out.
A weak (they limit it to womens’ issues, it is much broader) opinion piece in the NYT from Clinton and Cecile Richards on the leaked dox from HHS to provide for wide refusal to provide care for religious moral and PERSONAL reasons (think the dames managed to leave that out).
From my read of the dox (will try to find a link to the text), they sure could do the above. Plus a health care worker can decline to run the auto clave, that cleans instruments, if they might be used in something she or he is opposed to. Workers can decline to refer patients for appropriate care adn tehy can refuse to give information, base on their personal preference.
Plus I doubt the strength of will on teh part of the Democrats to fight this. I mean, they are the def of self involved and WEAK.
added: full text HTML version of HHS proposed regulations
Added: Christina Page at RH Reality looks at narrowly, in terms of abortion and birth control
WSJ:
LOL a trillion dollar plan, as the rest of us are consigned to the five and ten cents store.
what can you do but laugh.
A few bold ideas we won’t be hearing from the casino-overlords:
Tax the Speculators: A Fair Plan to Pay for Economic Recovery (by Chuck Collins, director of the program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, and coordinator of the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)
Subheads in article:
Obama Faith Tour starts next week… via CBN/Brody (the article says the format wtill highlight the faith of both Biden and ObRama):
Science unveils hidden drivers of stock bubbles and crashes (AFP)
The marines have landed at Galveston.. they found a real littoral!
9
omigod what will we do if the MEN are hormonal TOO!?!
We are finished! We can never recover! This is insurmountable!
8 and 11- Apparently, we’re back to “In Gawd We Trust.”
Let us prey.
Oops! Typo!
Lettuce prey!
As we are busy with Wall Street:
Ten Russian warships have docked at Syrian port
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5591
What a Grand Guignol finish for the Dubya Administration. I do believe they’ve destroyed America’s financial future with their new TARP plan.
Of course, most people are already calling it TRAP, which is what it is.
8 – oh for fuck’s sake. That tears it. I will NEVER vote for Obama, not even if he were running for dogcatcher.
I don’t have any idea who this “Donald Miller” is, or what his views on choice are, so I looked him up. I found this on his blog. Note the sentences I’ve put in boldface:
OK, so it looks to me like he’s yet another one of those “Used to be a Conservative Republican” yahoos who are so busy glomming on to the Democrats and trying to foist their religious-wacko values on all of us.
I am so done with Obama.
LOL I just caught Michelle O and Jill B on GMA, I guess as soft shoe push back to CMcC and SP. I assume there si a vid up at ABC ( yeah there is http://abcnews.go.com/gma )
The two women looked about as happy to be there as if they had been promised all the unstrained carrot juice on earth in return for showing up.
Geesh good luck. And i see they have Nancy P out on cable. Promised all the South Seas Pearls on earth and she still looks … well as stiff as she has looked for over 20 years (I have never known waht to make of the botox stories, one I don’t care, but two, she has always been “stiff”).
The Democrats have at least a 50/50 chance to throw themselves over the finish line. Maybe then they will look less diisagreeable about governing,
16
I ahd never heard of Donald Miller either.. but had no time yet to google… thanks. Roemer of Indiana is VERY conservative, Catholic and pro life, as well. Can’t wait to hear of the SC add on. Should be good… (not)
**
14
Condi was right!!!!!!
I just think Russia is tired of the USA/Israeli war-machine calling all the shots. Giving them a little balance.
9 – wow, great article. I worked on Wall Street, I saw the Masters of the Universe (or Big Swinging Dicks, as depicted in Liars Poker in action, and yes, it’s all true.
There is also a certain kind of cluelessness that goes with the “testosterone/cortisol” effect – these guys are so focused and manic that they see things in bizarre ways. I remember one famous arbitrageur, one of the big moneymakers in the investment bank, was positive that there was algae contaminating his water cooler tank. He was absolutely obsessed with this. When the office-manager guy tried to explain that the water company had just changed over to bottles made of glass with a slightly green tint, he refused to believe this. There were a number of increasingly frenzied confrontations about the “contaminated” spring water – very Captain Queeg-like.
Fun and games!
The way I see it those people are always at “war”.
One good thing Nouriel Roubini has said is that a ton of hedge funds larded with “dull talent” will be going under.
Grace a dieu. Works for me.
20 – More memories, from 2004, come to mind.
The Bushes singing happy birthday to Kenny Boy, via video. I never knew why the Dems and MM did not use that more.
Then again I am hearing John Podesta (Center for American Progress and various funded blogs) stumble and stammer on KGO with Ronn Owen over the history of de-regulation.
hmm Donald Miller’s other web site. Which seems to be the major location. He is basically a pumped up motivational speaker. Whoo Hoo. Ob Rama was a good sign on for him, biz wise, and religion wise.
Wow. A bunch of people — looked like all African American — disrupted Obama’s speech. They were holding up signs saying that he supports gay marriage and there was something about the KKK that i could not read. Several guys were wearing HUGE, blingy crosses.
religion wars. fake religion wars.
Well what did anyone expect. Hug and kiss religion and it will slash you back. Or fake religion will.
11 Well, the difference is, of course, when women are hormonal they’re seen as irrational, out-of-control, and annoying. Hormonal men are the same way but are viewed as powerful, assertive, daring and quick-thinking.
Paging Doctor Sully – I’m sure he has something to say about the beauties of testosterone-stoked manliness. “To dare, to try, to seek, to boldly do stupid mindless things” etc.
8.
Are they kidding?? The country’s in a financial meltdown and that’s their priority? Tone deaf yet again.
Completely OT but amusing. Saw the new Microsoft ad on TV last night (“I’m a PC”), which features quick cuts of various “ordinary people” declaring who they are or what they do with their computers, presumably to lash back at the “elitism” of the Apple ads.
Guess whose face popped up saying “I blog for Obama”? thereisnospoon!
Check it out at 22 seconds into the spot:
I’m a PC.
Calculated Risk has a post on TARP/Troubled Asset Relief Program, down one from the top.
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
LOL If we weren’t screwed last week (and we were) we are now.
29
I had read that commercial spot (or the one with Gates and Seinfeld, if it is the same) is being withdrawn. Blow back.
31 – No, this is the one replacing the Seinfeld debacle.
Deepak Chopra and spoonless – whodathunkit.
LOL Sully will be on Maher tonight.
oh god Deepak. The new age version.
he wrote one book about 25 years ago that was mildly interesting. gah.
25 – On the Obama protesters:Michael Warns
Can’t Obama jsut send Donnie McClurkin (one of three “cure the gays”, gay-cured himself, gospel preachers used by Obama in S Carolina) Kirbyjon Caldwell (Houston faith and finance minsitory, with cure the gays ministries) and Joshua DuBois (Assemblies of God preacher who is Dir of Fiath Outreach for Ob) out to speak to Michael Ware?
Somehow my heart does not bleed for this instance.
Karma’s a butch!
36 – LOL, that would be a veritable Clash of the Titans.
US air raid kills Iraq civilians
“Insurgents”, obviously.
It’s Talk Like a Pirate day. Ironic, since some Wall Street pirates managed to pillage massive amounts of US booty thanks to Bush and congress.
LOL Sully will be on Maher tonight.
All they need is David Byron to complete the panel…
It’s Talk Like a Pirate day.
Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster going to touch us with it’s noodly appendage? 😉
Ramen!
Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a ‘duty to die’
Sheesh.
Christ, that quote alone will set the death with dignity movement back a decade.
41. Sometimes one’s fantasies are best left unsaid, sweetie. 🙂
I almost bought that shirt when I first came across the FSM site…
42 I thought (the now defunct) PFF was the “talk like a pirate blog“.
Oh Bama says this is not a time for panic or fear.
This isn’t exactly the time for Obamalama to be so vague. When he spoke yesterday, he had a simple 3 point plan. Guess that’s changed!
Silber popped me links to a couple of his posts on the economic wipe out http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com (he excerpts av ery interesting email from a reader)…
But also in his piece (one of them) he links to a Mike Whitney article in Counterpunch… which is excellent:
Too true… you know what was set up for desperate people in foreclosure earlier this summer? by congress? In the vague thought that some lenders might you know, CARE? Or wish to negotiate with some of the more financially solvent so they could avoid losing their home?
An 800 number, the last 4 digits which spelled out H O P E… and where, from all reports I read, there was no one, ever, to answer. You were on your own to run down you rlender, if you could even FIND the lender.
This year will be remembered as the one when the words “hope” and “change” came to have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
hmm just saw this as a headline at Democracy Now!
Nader on Ballot in 45 States,
From the Desperate Much? file:
Panhandling to fund the MIC. Pathetic.
52. I saw a poll yesterday, can’t remember which state -maybe Fla -, that showed Nader was taking votes away from the Repubs. Guess he won’t be to blame if the Dems lose there. (They’ll still blame him anyway).
Politico says Bob Barr will also be on the ballot in most states.
3rd party candidates and state ballot tallies in moderation, I think.
lc – Further research has revealed that some cougars like the herb, too!
William Grieder today: Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle.
BTW:
LOOKING AT NEXT WEEK.
*** The first presidential debate takes place Friday, Sept. 26 from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. The 90-minute debate, moderated by PBS’s Jim Lehrer, will focus on foreign policy and will begin at 9:00 p.m. ET
http://www.debates.org/pages/news_111907.html
hmm I have been noticing, especially during parts o fhte convention coverage where it was unscripted and he was not “covered” by propping up other peoples’ conversation with dull questions… he/Lehrer is in … well I would say “compromised” shape following his return after extended time off for illness (can’t wuite remember think it ws surgery for heart valve something or other)..
If the evening gets confusing or hairy at all, he will be lost.
56. some cougars like the herb, too!
Memo to self: stay away from cougars.
57. The politicians would have to literally walk into people’s homes and steal money directly from their wallets/purses before anything nearing some sort of rebellion might actually be pondered. Even then the gov’t has its handy anti-terrorism laws to keep anybody from making any noise.
Too bad we can’t paste that Greider column to the foreheads of both chumps about to screw us over (in addition to congress and the current occupant 1600 Penn Ave). A LOBBYIST sought remedy.
Army Alters Photographs, Issues Them To AP
Moyers Journal tonight will have Kevin Phillips, (latest book BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM), NYT financial writers Gretchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris, and a piece on global reaction to the market meltdown.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
Note to CNBC: Breathe
Burnett suggests shorts are unpatriotic; Cramer says it may be terrorism
You did want to know who to bomb now, mcat. 🙂
ooo I will def catch Moyers.. Have nto seen KP on there for ages and really like Morgenson and Floyd Norris.
well after the last big bubble that ‘dot com dot died’ thing, I thought CNBC should be arrested. Prosecuted, cited – SOEMTHING.
They ran the market up. As egregious was the stock talk on FOX on Saturday am. CRIMINAL.
Amy Goodman: The Wall Street Bailout: Why Politicians Can’t Be Trusted
It’s time for me to start stockpiling cheesecake.
Did Obama author the stimulus package? WaPo gives him 2 Pinocchios.
# 57 Let me repeat the possibility mentioned in the previous thread about some direct action in the “Rumsfeldian stuff happens” style. Little gatherings of disgruntled citizens around Wall-Street and some academic institutions with the intent of causing transfers of physical assets (laptops, mobile phones, small appliances) to counterbalance transfer of financial assets.
4 – the idea is to finish off ALL social connections that happen as part of what anachronistically used the “social compact” into discrete bundles of commercial and demographically-identifiable packages, ideally to individuals or easy-to-manipulate people like people who go to the same church or who curse hippies at the same VFW.
68 – I’m expecting to see a run on battery-powered popcorn poppers and slingshots.
Way under the radar, and FWIW, I can report some anecdotal evidence of increased consumer inquiries regarding personal bankruptcy this very week. I think people are watching the nightly news and saying, If these rich fuckers are doing it, why can’t we? At least we’ll save our home/car/food-and-fuel money this winter.
The credit house of cards has lots and lots of little cards yet to fall.
5 – [T]he domestic agenda of the next president is shrinking.
I know that is how it’s gonna play out, but they managed to find trillions to murder a nation and apparently trillions to bail out the bankers … it seems to me that a way can be found to pay for a domestic agenda.
Not that the party(s) are gonna do it, but theoretically they COULD.
what will we do if the MEN are hormonal TOO!?!
Well, of course we are. I always found it funny that people denied it. Hell, getting thru the teens, 20s and 30s without having nearly every thought highjacked by your eyes following a passing female is damned near impossible. It’s a wonder guys get anything done.
70 – Right. Cue the tape loop of the giant urn(ings) exiting stage left!
One good thing Nouriel Roubini has said is that a ton of hedge funds larded with “dull talent” will be going under.
I think a lot of them will try to launch small-outfit 40 Act mutual funds, then spend tons of time bitching about all the regulations.
Further to 71, and maybe 60 – Politicians, despite their warm homilies about this or that hard-working family in trouble, may be underestimating the size of the “underground” economic class, including plenty of ordinary-looking workers. Lots of people can’t even risk putting money in a bank account, because their wages would be seized for old judgment credit card debt, with piles and piles and piles of lovely interest from the date that default occurred. The Would-Be Seizers? Many of the same big names on Wall Street parade this week.
And don’t think ordinary working people don’t know about their 401ks or life insurance policies. Many have been cashing out bits of their own meager retirement “assets” (with penalties) just to make it through, for years.
73
yeah they never planned to do any of that anyway. One reason ObRama’s speeches which were mostly lists of promises were so painful. It was a mug’s game from the get go. IMO.
ALSO one thing we saw in the West, at least, when 9/11 hit, firms that had been suffering for whatever reason, but loathe to lay off (mostly fro reasons of “face”) immediately used 9/11 and laid off. And some companies that were nto hurting used it to clean out.
So I expect a spike in already high lay offs. They said today our official out of work number here in CA is 7.7. God knows what it really is if one counted those off the unemployment ins lists and those who have given up looking.
77 – They’re gonna need a pithy catchphrase for the inevitable ______ Changed Everything reprise.
Thanks for the Amy Goodman piece, catnip.
I heard somebody the other day on cable or the radio (it all runs together after a while) compare the financial crisis to Katrina.
Only the financial crooks are gonna be saved, of course.
71
untouchable class. Even more than it ever was, codified and protected by federal regs. Acutally HHS refers ti it as proposed law.
A friend I dearly loved at work, he was so wonderful and witty… but he had reconstructive surgery related to the type of sex he engaged in. Well so what, frankly. One more patient needing care. He was lucky, had insurance, and was here in SF.
But just think of people out there in Great America, Disneyland America, Six Flags America – gah gah white family land… here too, Catholic Hospitals West which only uses CHW… geesh. But there you are in Baltimore Catechism land.
***
Listening to Dobb of CT, looking so white potato Irish pol, give cover to Wall St. How impressed he was by the careful language used. WHAT FUCKERS.
77
very true all of that…
NOW on PBS is interesting tonight, too: Women, Power and Politics
Charges Against Journalists at RNC Dropped; Questions Remain
From yesterday’s Daily News Sen. Schumer says banks deserve lifeline from Congress.
Palin4President
From the Albany Times-Union, today State’s fiscal crater grows: New analysis shows cost of Wall Street crisis could exceed earlier estimates.
Obama Vows to Stop Shitty Jobs from Going Overseas
YUM!
I just hear d Ob again… his talk speech thing from a podium today, for the cameras. No crowd for whom he is The One in view.
He says we are “all in this together”.
Oh I so feel the love.
ah, schadenfreud, how I love thee:
And thus we come full circle to men and their hormones!
funny how THIS wasn’t the butt of jokes like Kucinich was: McCain Acknowledges the “Lights Over Arizona” Were UFOs
earrings priced at $4,000
was he wearing them when she picked him up?
He should just be happy that he wasn’t wearing a white gold Prince Albert.
Kevin Phillips is just on fire on Moyers, heaps of scorn on Obama and McCain, both parties, Wall St etc. Morgenson and Norris are pretty sobering.
96 – Phillips absolutely on fire! Loved it. And too many funny lines to count!
Attention baseball fans: Moyers is also doing a baseball piece, re Yankee stadium, for the end of the show.
Phillips on Moyers:
Sample of Phillips snidecracking (on the dilemmas facing an Obama admin if he wins the WH): They’ll be facing choices that will eat the Democratic coalition like a balogna sandwich!
a white gold prince albert…
well forgive my ignorance but is that something that squeezes somwhere tender.. LOL
***
I don’t get Moyers til 10 pm PT I won’t miss it tonight tho……
Ha ha . . .as Smithee used to say at pff, Well smell you, Nancy Drew!
Mr. Speedy Verbatim in the Transcriptsplace.
99
well as Greider pointed out – in the piece you linked and sniped, this may end one or both parties.
Quite a few scenarios shaping up… all of them brutal
Prince Albert
101 – I’m all about the bookmark!
Madman
just moved the Phillips link and snips o the new thread…
103
oh i get it now.
Just hearing a reporter on KQED/PBS say it is one point THREE trillion… and it all may fail.
You gotta love how they bake a cake in Washington and Wall St.
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New Thread:
LINK
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LOL From his Gladiatorial post below Foodie post…