Street action… 13 November 2008
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, DC Politics, Democrats, Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Spain, U.S. House, U.S. Senate.trackback
Meanwhile, further north in the town of Gijón, employees of a shipyard took to the streets in protest over threatened job losses [REUTERS]
A few days ago workers in Spain took to the streets to protest job lay-offs, about 1,600 jobs at a Nissan plant and to protest job losses at a shipyard, Gijon… Homemade rockets. Ok! These people do not fool around. The photos from Telegraph UK…
^^^^
This is riding at the top of Clusterstock, from Henry Blodget… the dust bunnies sheltering in place in this house are stiffer, with greater intestinal fortitude, than the Democratic congressional pack.
Weak:
Republicans are putting their feet down and refusing to throw another $50 billion into Detroit’s black hole. Democrats, meanwhile, don’t think they have the votes to ram the bailout home.
Has Bailout Nation finally drawn a line in the sand? We’re on the edge of our seats.
Even I, who thinks the Democrats are still nearly dead (but multiplying, it’s a mutation), did not quite buy it (this is Blodget after all) but then this extract he links to in the WSJ:
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said he knew of no Republicans who would support the Democrats’ $25 billion proposal and said he was disinclined to move a bill without bipartisan support.
“I’d want to be careful about bringing up a proposition that might fail,” given that a rescue plan would likely fare better under a President-elect Barack Obama administration, Sen. Dodd (D., Conn.) told reporters on Capitol Hill. “There’s some political considerations that need to be made over the next few days.”
eh. Things will be better in the 111th no doubt…
…and, frankly, speaking from the peanut gallery, I think Detroit car business, their lending business, all of it, should be forced into business bankruptcy, reorganisation.
I so enjoy reading the news and seeing (hearing, frankly) GE giggling at the sheer cash coming their way.
From today:
Today feels like one of the quieter days in awhile. The market has been trading with in a relatively narrow range, but GE and Citigroup are sticking out like a sore thumb. Citi, which got headlines for breaking $10 yesterday is now struggling to hang on to $9, down about 9% today. And GE, which just last night got some help from the FDIC is off another 8%, falling below $15.
Somehow or other, it gets wearing… and if one wishes to hold on to the morning’s bran flakes, don’t think about Jack Welch. Or his face. He may not be in charge today, but all those years… not worth thinking about — ’til The Bail Outs.
And, I am begging for better spin… I just cannot believe that Ob & co would consider Hillary for State. Please, better spin. I am begging.
There is good news: seems Stevens, Uncle Ted who wore a Hulk Hogan tie, is going down. Hail Senator Begich. With luck, Franken keeps finding votes and Chambliss loses his run off in Georgia.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Control of the US Senate hangs in the balance with three races still too close to call. Democrats picked up six seats on November 4th, building up a commanding advantage to currently control fifty-seven Senate seats to forty for the Republicans. But three key races—in Minnesota, Alaska and Georgia—are still not certain, and they could open the door to a filibuster-proof, sixty-seat “supermajority” for the Democrats.
In Georgia, incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss fell short of winning the 50 percent of the vote required for election under Georgia law. He faces a runoff against former Democratic state legislator Jim Martin on December 2nd.
In Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, leads former Anchorage mayor, Democrat Mark Begich, by just over 3,000 votes, with about 30 percent of the ballots remaining to be counted. Stevens faces potential expulsion proceedings after his conviction last month of seven felonies connected to lies on financial disclosure forms. A final vote count is expected next Wednesday.
And in Minnesota, the race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken is the closest in the country. As of Monday, Coleman leads Franken by a razor-thin 206 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast. When certified, the result will lead to an automatic recount, which state law says is triggered if the margin of victory is less than half of one percent.
Anything to reach the ‘no excuses’ congressional numbers. Then, their only out is to claim to be the Three Blind Mice. And Moe, Curly and whoever the other one was….
**********
UPDATE, 12:24 am Friday…
Tea Fire in Montecito hills: Witnesses watch a home burn burn in the hills above Montecito, Calif. November 13, 2008 [Phil Klein – Assocated Press via LAT]
For a few hours, a couple, they were calling it a brush fire. Not quite. 800 acres as of an hour ago, over a hundred homes or structures… a comment left at a TV news site said the gas lines were exploding… along with other things, the usual, the cars and propane tanks. A hot, fast moving fire, the kind that lashes a range of land to a post and just whips away. We got thru October, thru Hallowe’en, without a fire to mark it.. Some years we seem to be an exploding Jack-o-Lantern.
Several fire departments were battling the flames as thick plumes of smoke hovered overhead.
“It looked like lava coming down a volcano,” Leslie Hollis Lopez told The Associated Press as she gathered belongings from her house in Montecito.
“It’s very tenuous. We’re hoping the winds are favorable.”
The Tea Fire, this one is, in Montecito, San Ysidro Ranch and lapping at the outskirts of Santa Barabara. Tonight, for whatever reason, they are calling the winds driving the fires the Diablo winds… and they will continue thru tomorrow.
Year after year, our cycle of wildfire, leaving the land scraped to the nub, the rains, mudslide and landslide… the fires are always apocalyptic. Grabbing the children, the pets, the photos. Fleeing.
In the hills of Montecito, residents of the darkened streets lighted only by the glow from the burning brush could be seen packing up cars. Horse trailers and Porsches snaked their way down narrow, winding mountain roads.
I think we are afraid the year will come when we grab the precious things and simply turn back and run into the fire.
hmm Don’t strain, what ever you do:
Moe, Curly, & Larry…
Ob’s is beginning to look like another Clinton Admin.
Surprises me as to how many previous Clinton aides etc. are in the transition team, etc. & the possibility of Hill as Sec. of Sate. Yikes!
How much longer does your fire season usually last? I remember the terrible fires you had in early Spring – way too early iirc.
ABC news: Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are asking for a share in the Bail Out. For infrastructure and help wth city contracts, pensions etc.
Yikes.
3
lasts til the rains come. Had we gotten some rain (they say we did, but it was so little) probably this fire would nto have blown so hot so fast.
The big problem is the 7 months wiht little to no rain. When we did get a very little last month it sort of hung in the air, like moisture, then sort of appeared on the ground, for a few minutes. Not enough… and, at least up here, the temp is going up and is supposed to be 80 here today.
SF Chron:
How SF voted on 8:
A report on the cities asking for Bail Out
hmm cant Chicago just skim it off the top… somehow I suspect we do something like that…
There was this interesting tidbit down the page at Clusterstock:
Oh, things are SO different now. Different companies in different industries, that’s all. Clinton 2.0.
What Is NorthCom Up To?
Gideon Levy / Let’s hope Obama won’t be a ‘friend of Israel’
Restoring America’s Rights Record: Memo to the President-Elect
So many hopes and expectations that I feel fairly certain this new bunch will crush.
Bill Ayers on ‘Good Morning America’
Rahm was also at Fannie Mae….
hmmm if anyone can stand it. I suppose Shelby might say something interesting about Big Bloody Bail Out.
Meet the Press: Sens. Levin, Shelby, T. Boone Pickens; roundtable with Friedman, Smiley, Kay, Mitchell
This Week: Gov. Schwarzenegger; roundtable with Krugman, Donaldson, Roberts, Will
Fox News Sunday: Sen. Kyl, Gov. Pawlenty, Michael Steele
Face the Nation: Rep. Frank, Sen. Shelby, Gov. Jindal, Gingrich
Late Edition: Rep. Rangel
I have a vision of President Obama in 2011 saying something like, “Uh, I have been controlled by, uh, events.”
Sadly, again I have to say (looking at the daily cratering and dire economic news) that Obama’s candidacy was a trailing economic indicator. White middle- to upper-class progressives, feeling flush with money and prosperity after ten years of HELOC home ATM spending, felt they could afford a designer candidate. Image more important than substance. (And then of course the people not so well off, many of whom who just wanted a Democrat – any Democrat.)
The great sundering of “progressive” America now begins as the poor become destitute, and half of the middle class becomes “failed middle class” (their children will drink water) and the other half clings to what it has and fiercely protects it (their children will drink wine). All that kumbaya talk is going to just evaporate as the economic screws turn.
But honestly, we really don’t know what or how well Obama will do, so I await his genius to manifest itself. I’m waiting for a glimmer of original thought from him, or anyone. I’ll take it from anyone at this point.
Maybe we’ll have real politics in 2012.
All that kumbaya talk is going to just evaporate as the economic screws turn.
Seems inevitable… interesting to be listening the day it hits..
No kumbayas in some neighborhoods of Chicago, reportedly: Lawsuits Claim Election Night Hate Crimes By Cops
For Catnip: Keith Olbermann in a Minute
Priest Calls Vote for Obama a Mortal Sin
hmm going postal in a tech office out here. Down in Santa Clara… they are not announcing what company or firm.
Well Cisco laid off 6000 this am, in breaking news. Who knows…
New Whistleblower Emerges in Siegelman Case
Not Cisco.. Sun Microsystems. hell I get them all confused. Or what year which wave of lay offs it is. Seems we are in the third in less than 20 years.
ugh.
Cisco is in trouble too, though. There have been a lot of recessions over the last 20 years, a lot of them not recognized officially as such, but real enuff due to the downward pressure on peoples’ earnings and prospects.
oh taht si true.. plenty of lay offs outside of recessions or “down turns”…
Pearlstein (ugh) of the Wapo last night on with Rose said that the world has told America they are tired of being on the edges of our boom and bust system. Jesus! Somebody noticed! Whoever can end it, please do!
College Bans Nietzsche Quote on Prof’s Door
of course, missing from that whole mess is the point of the Parable of the Madman:
The whole point is that God is a public construct, and that the complete disappearance of Him/Her/It from public life as anything more than a convenience rendered Him/Her/It meaningless. EVERYTHING about western society, going back centuries, puts the lie to the idea that people worship or believe in God. He/She/It is a fiction to fall back on when it is helpful to do so, that is all.
Don’t even get me started on how people misrepresent the idea of the ubermensch.
Duckworth Longshot for Senate Thanks to Durbin?
VT and CT have half a brain, at least:
They Got Their No-Joe Working
Bernie Sanders joins Pat Leahy in calling for Joe Lieberman to be stripped of his chairmanship.
–David Kurtz
Border ‘Scarecrows’ Lampoon Immigration Hardliners
Obama to Give Weekly Address To American Public Via YouTube
I hope he puts funny cat videos in his clips.
Roubini: 20 Reasons Why the U.S. Consumer is Capitulating, thus Triggering the Worst U.S. Recession in Decades
The ratchet effect
Yup.
When I saw the yOuTube idea… LOL I wondered if he would even deign to notice radio. But apparently they plan to still run the audio on radio.
AND the hits on the YouTube can be monitored. Or someone will… no doubt.
I still demand a funny cat in his videos.
And this is not a temporary phenomenon as almost all of the fundamentals driving consumption are heading south on a persistent and structural basis.
They took a camera crew thru downtown a few weeks ago, maybe as long as two months. Even I, who takes a dark view of these downturns and esp a Big ONe, was shocked. Chains have shut, windows papered over. Blank store fronts… and now it is hitting the neighborhood streets. Just tonight they showed 3 empty papered over shops in one block on Union Street, one of the more expensive 35, 40 year old shopping streets in the City. At one time it was more service oriented, pharmacies, restaruants, the upscale market in town, and then shifted to more boutiques.
Not a rosy future at the moment.
34 – I’m also noticing it in other ways, former retail manager that I am. There is no help in stores, no cashiers. We’re 6 weeks from Xmas, and there is no visible ramp-up of activity on sales floors. No rush to ring people up, because there is no one to rush up to the counters.
and don’t forget, those “service” jobs are the ones they’ve been touting over the last several years as evidence of job growth.
33
LOL!!
as a family they are allergic.
I laughed pretty hard becuase, quietly it was said, the dog is off loaded til spring. Supposedly they don’t want to housebreak it in winter.
There is a pet detail at the WH… I assume they would know that.
How I Spent Election Night in a Baltimore Jail
My heart breaks for people who don’t realize that nothing has changed, and that things are likely to get worse now that the powers-that-be have a black face on their policies.
hmm from the SMBIVA link:
the Populist upsurge, the Thirties, the Sixties. Man, are we ever overdue for another one.
Well something will hit at some point… ti is just hard to see what it might be, or how fast. And a little hard, or at least for me it is, to say how the Dems do with All Of This Power.
LOL
Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage
Religion mixed with Mormon money and ground numbers was the determinant. No question.
And they have grabbed families, family issues, the old bugaboo of the Gay Agenda in the Schools anew. Districts with over 55% families with children went heavily for the Yes on 8
AND there is now a powerful political, conservative, repressive coalition that has formed. A new one within the old…
Pity the day that White Mormons made common cause with the authoritarian black churches and some of the more whack job evangelicals. AND Rick Warren. That fat faced punk.
from Lenin’s Tomb:
wow… give the sprinkler system a round of applause..
from the les blank film
how can a poor man stand such times and live? – ry cooder
stuck on les blank.
Chulas Fronteras
una polka en youtube
Flaco Jimenez, Santiago Jimenez Sr.
love Les Blank… I had not heard of him in some years… 😉
it is getting close to the holidays. moiv would like this one if she comes around. i know i do.
lydia mendoza Making Tamales
enjoy!
lest we forget
45
well its certainly safe to say he’s most likely a character
😉
ha ha….
“a character”…
he surely is..
this closing line is haunting, marisa
“I think we are afraid the year will come when we grab the precious things and simply turn back and run into the fire.”
in so many ways, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, as a country and a species. self-immolation.
lots of closed store fronts here in taiwan, although things are still doing relatively well, and their real estate bubble doesn’t seem to have crashed quite yet. they’re pretty closely tied to the american economy for the export stuff, but have a strong small business economy that’s locally rooted. i guess we’ll see if that keeps them afloat as this all plays out.
42 – that’s pretty amazing.
good stuff, bay!
I’m moving today! Yay! And ouch. See you soon. A bientot.
Another sign that this is a depression, not merely a recession, is that institutions of higher ed (not just the little liberal arts colleges) are suddenly hurting rather badly (right now, because their endowments have taken hits because of the Wall Street collapse).
Usually higher ed doesn’t start to feel any pain until a few years after everyone else does. But now a lot of universities are having hiring freezes, freezing pay and talking of job cuts. This is all happening faster than anyone thought.
Of course, they spent the last decade spending like drunken sailors just like everyone else, raising tuition and overbuilding, competing for students by constructing bigger dorms with deluxe amenities, etc. thinking the go-go years would just last forever.
I think the general clusterfuck in higher ed will come out as a bigger story next spring as the class sizes are finalized for ’09-’10. The American view of higher education — and the way that this industry is run — is going to come in for severe questioning. People will demand that books be opened. I do not work in an academic department now, but did once (briefly – hated it) and let’s just say the management and accounting practices tend to be sloppy and almost on a whim. Not illegal, but everything is skin-of-the-teeth. And this is fairly common in academia. That particular rock is going to be lifted soon.
Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 – 2007 (2nd Edition)
Bill Donohue cracks me up:
Controversy over Atheist group’s godless holiday campaign
Politico Header was Too Funny for me to read.
Will men dominate Obama administration?
Hillary must be Laughing Her Ass Off.
Another Knee Slapper on HuffPo
Why American Jews Voted for Barack Obama
wu ming
in so many ways, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, as a country and a species. self-immolation.
yes that is what I mean… we are doing it now, the fire is a symbol of what is happening. Always has been. Here we are at Land’s End, afterall.
Aside from the fires being our eternal, cyclical apocalypse.
lots of closed store fronts here in taiwan
Did not realise you were back in Taiwan… is your family with you…?
57, 58
hey hey BHHM…
Lots to laugh over eh? I mean, what is one to do……………..
I dropped in at Chris Floyd last night, Empire Burlesque, and saw he referred to Ob as the most conservative Democrat elected since Woodrow Wilson. LOL….
53
aspirin and Epsom salts… 😉
LOL From one of Tapper’s several entries on Hillary as SoS:
The thinking about a Secretary of State Clinton is simple, I’m told: she’s smart, she’s strong, she’s experienced, she’s a team player, she is usually pretty diplomatic, and she also brings some gender diversity to an Obama Team concerned about such matters.
She brings instant stature to the job, one Democrat told me. Many world leaders have known her for almost two decades.
She’s a BAND-AID!
Obama administration asks for your vision:
http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision
At least you could have your say.
A little Haiku from a rainy East Coast in the Fall…
We wait in the Night
Shells light up the Horizon.
Fires still Visible
Or,
Waiting for Change like
Same As It Ever Was
Same As It Ever
CA looks apocalyptic.
One question, though … why isn’t Big Imaginary Daddy protecting the state after it’s believers saved the country from Teh Gay?!?!
I know, I know,
Missing a “The” in
The Second Line Fucked Up
The 5 7 5 Thing
A Power Duo, Dingells Battle on Two Fronts
I’d like to see Dingell get his Berries in a vise.
Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC
Saturday afternoon painting project – Make your own Jackson Pollock. Draw, drip, and click to change colors.
I’d rather see Waxman get it. The Dingells have [ahem] ruled long enough.
BUT, that is not saying i want more baseball steroid hearings!
neue post…………………….
LINK
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