From Politics Daily:

The Treasury Department's purchase of nearly $46 billion of Fannie Mae's preferred stock made U.S. taxpayers major owners of the government-sponsored enterprise. This investment so far has not been very profitable for the taxpayer --- Fannie Mae lost just under $40 billion in the first six months of this year. The government has already spent $91 billion propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Not to worry, however, because the Treasury Department North (aka Goldman Sachs) has got its hand out again:

As if $22 billion in bonuses were not enough, Goldman Sachs would now like to obtain another $1 billion in tax benefits from the federal government.

As with the $12.9 billion that Goldman Sachs received from the U.S. Government via payments made to the American International Group, Goldman Sachs would obtain an indirect federal benefit by using tax credits the government provided to Fannie Mae to offset its own profits and thus its federal tax payments. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Goldman Sachs might be purchasing up to $1 billion of Fannie Mae's tax credits.

... or at least that's what Pat Robertson's CBN says I did when I let the little tykes go out Trick-or-Treating:

Decorating buildings with Halloween scenes, dressing up for parties, going door-to-door for candy, standing around bonfires and highlighting pumpkin patches are all acts rooted in entertaining familiar spirits. All these activities are demonic and have occult roots.

The word "occult" means "secret." The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:

Sex with demons

Orgies between animals and humans

Animal and human sacrifices

Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood

Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies

Revel nights

Conjuring of demons and casting of spells

Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

Another abomination that goes on behind the scenes of Halloween is necromancy, or communication with the dead. Séances and contacting spirit guides are very popular on Halloween, so there is a lot of darkness lurking in the air.

I do, however, draw the line at necromancy. [By the way, you moron, necromancy is not "communication with the dead" it is the use of the dead as a source of power for magic. Geez. At least get your f**king heresies straight.]

This page can now only be seen as a cached image, because for some reason Pat Robertson decided to take it down when a few apparent Satan-worshippers started to notice it.

The author and devoted readers of this sort of crap are, I might note, the bulwarks of David Anderson's deeply religious America, and are also the same people sworn to protect us from that evil same-sex marriage if they have to kill off the democratic process to do it.

This is what Senator Barack Obama said of the Bush State Secrets doctrine while running for President in 2008 [and defending his own vote for telecom immunity]:

I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses.

Here, Glenn Greenwald explains, is the stunning reversal in recent Obama Administration DOJ filings on the issue:

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same "state secrets" theories of the Bush administration -- which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned -- and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

The case of Shubert v. Bush is one of several litigations challenging the legality of the NSA program, of which the Electronic Frontier Foundation is lead coordinating counsel. The Shubert plaintiffs are numerous American citizens suing individual Bush officials, alleging that the Bush administration instituted a massive "dragnet" surveillance program whereby "the NSA intercepted (and continues to intercept) millions of phone calls and emails of ordinary Americans, with no connection to Al Qaeda, terrorism, or any foreign government" and that "the program monitors millions of calls and emails . . . entirely in the United States . . . without a warrant" (page 4). The lawsuit's central allegation is that the officials responsible for this program violated the Fourth Amendment and FISA and can be held accountable under the law for those illegal actions.

Rather than respond to the substance of the allegations, the Obama DOJ is instead insisting that courts are barred from considering the claims at all. Why? Because -- it asserted in a Motion to Dismiss it filed on Friday -- to allow the lawsuit to proceed under any circumstances -- no matter the safeguards imposed or specific documents excluded -- "would require the disclosure of highly classified NSA sources and methods about the TSP [Terrorist Surveillance Program] and other NSA activities" (page 8). According to the Obama administration, what were once leading examples of Bush's lawlessness and contempt for the Constitution -- namely, his illegal, warrantless domestic spying programs -- are now vital "state secrets" in America's War on Terror, such that courts are prohibited even from considering whether the Government was engaging in crimes when spying on Americans.

Here's an excerpt from the brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of the plaintiffs:

Defendant's argument is breathtaking. If the Executive successfully uses the state secrets privilege to dismiss this case at the pleading stage, there will be virtually no check left upon the ability of an overly-aggressive Executive to violate the rights of ordinary Americans.

Here is the response from all the folks--both locally and nationally--who were so stridently agonizing over President Bush's destruction of the US Constitution:















[source]

Having remained silent on the continued drift of Delaware Politics toward loonie-land long enough, two recent David Anderson posts simply cannot be ignored.

The mildest is his reportage on the attempt to roll back same-sex marriage in Maine, which is conspicuous by its absence of reporting the tactics being utiized by the proponents of reversing the legislature. Quoth David:

The legislature foisted same sex marriage on the voters of Maine as part of the 6 for 6 campaign. PPP shows a majority of it’s voters are not enthused and the traditional marriage measure may have majority support.

First, I loved the use of the word foisted. The anti-same-sex marriage crowd complains if the institution is supported by the courts [judicial activism], then whines when it is passed by the elected legislators [foisted on the voters], and then suddenly demands an Anschluss-like plebiscite. The Democratic process is only fair when it returns exactly the result they want.

But here's the plank in David's eye: refusing to acknowledge the lengths to which conservative Christians and their leaders are willing to go to subvert the process. From Waldo:

The Catholic Bishop of Portland has been demanding special collections to fund his anti-marriage campaign even as he is closing parish churches for want of money from his million-dollar mansion.

This is David Anderson's America? Where the churches are closing parishes due to lack of money, while demanding extra collections to reverse the legislative process even as some of their own members object?

What about the Bishop of Portland foisting his priorities on the poor people who now won't find food banks or the other traditional Catholic charities available to them because their leaders have decided it's more important to get into politics, and justify their actions by actually asking What Would Jesus Do?

In other news, David has now proudly stooped to Red-baiting other American citizens running for political office, characterizing former the former GOP candidate in New York's 23rd Congressional District as a Commie Lib and opining fatuously:

When you have a card check, gay marriage supporting, tax hiker, big spending, government health care, cap and trade, abortion funding candidate, you have someone that is anathema to the America I love. If you tell me that person is a Republican, you just make me vomit.

Let's check out what makes you anathema to David Anderson's America--stopping first to note the interesting use of that religious reference (Anathema=a formal ecclesiastical curse accompanied by excommunication).

Do you support labor organizing? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Do you believe in same-sex marriage? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Did you agree with the stimulus? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Do you support health insurance reform? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Do you support cap and trade? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Do you support abortion rights? David suggests you are a commie lib and not an American.

Ironically, there are several items on the above list that I do not personally support. But to suggest, as folks on the extremes of the Far Left and Far Right are now doing, that to hold a different political opinion somehow makes you less of an American, is not just to fail to understand the Democratic process, but to be actively attempting to subvert it.

Over the past year I have called out people on the Left who have stepped across that line, and I call out David Anderson now.

You have moved into the same dangerous ground so proudly held by extremists of every philosophy that you are the one endangering that which you say you seek to save.

First, the set-up about Goldman Sachs' potential violations of securities laws via McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

The details are fascinating, and you should read them.

But here's the question:

Since Goldman Sachs is now effectively the US Treasury Department, will it have to waive sovereign immunity for the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute the corporation?

Just asking.

You know the Drug Enforcement Administration has for years interfered in the ability of patients in chronic pain to access medical marijuan, but did you know that our Drug Gestapo also interferes in the delivery of prescription pain medication to your elderly relatives in nursing homes?

WaPo:

Heightened efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on narcotics abuse are producing a troubling side effect by denying some hospice and elderly patients needed pain medication, according to two Senate Democrats and a coalition of pharmacists and geriatric experts....

The DEA has sought to prevent drug theft and abuse by staff members in nursing homes, requiring signatures from doctors and an extra layer of approvals when certain pain drugs are ordered for sick patients.

The law, however, "fails to recognize how prescribing practitioners and the nurses who work for long-term care facilities and hospice programs actually order prescription medications," Kohl and Whitehouse write. They conclude that delays can lead to "adverse health outcomes and unnecessary rehospitalizations, not to mention needless suffering."

Most nursing homes do not have pharmacies or doctors on site, adding to delays for patients who fall ill late at night or in transition from a hospital.

Yeah, I'm glad we spend bazillions of dollars on a Federal agency to prevent the victimless crime of providing Percosett to senior citizens in completely controlled residential medical environments.

The idea that an occasional nurse might steal a bottle of pain meds is obviously far more important than relieving the pain of tens of thousands of old people.

If you don't know who David Drake is, you don't read science fiction. He is a Vietnam vet (with the Blackhorse) whose experiences there caused him literally to recreate military science fiction based on his experiences there. He is the creator of Hammer's Slammers, which is [if its not an oxymoron] some of the most realistic combat writing about wars that never happened that you will ever find.

Recently I have been reading a Baen books reprint of some of Mark Geston's classic SF that has an introduction written a few years back by David Drake. Drake is making the point the he first encountered Geston's work on returning from Vietnam, which causes him to take a four paragraph detour into Vietnam as an American experience.

What strikes me about this piece is what would happen if you changed the names.

Vietnam = Afghanistan
Eisenhower = Bush
Lebanon = Iraq
JFK/LBJ = Obama
McNamara = Gates
Westmoreland = McChrystal

Here's the original; you make the changes yourself:

When I entered college in 1963, the Vietnam War was a squabble in a distant place. There'd been similar squabbles in my memory--rather a bad one in Lebanon, for example--but that had been with Eisenhower as President. Now our president was Kennedy and shortly Johnson; and perhaps more important their Secretary of Defense was Robert S. McNamara, a technocrat and a monster.

By the time I got my undergraduate degree in 1967, Vietnam was a storm that had broken over America and the world, shredding society and bodies. Tens of thousands of Americans had died, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

That war was building without plan or purpose. Each previous failure was used as the reason for a further, greater effort; which would fail in turn, as by then everybody knew it would fail.

General Westmoreland announced light at the end of the tunnel, shortly before the tunnel collapsed on him in the form of the Tet Offensive. Politicians lied--to themselves, first, I believe, but to everyone else as well. And the war went on and would go on, and on. There was no end, and no hope.

What struck me most about this segment was

1) We have not yet withstood the Taliban's version of the Tet Offensive, which was ultimately North Vietnam's greatest military defeat and greatest political victory. We may not see one in that form because the Taliban insurgency is a somewhat different kind of opponent than North Vietnam. But I think it would be foolish to assume that if President Obama decides on a massive escalation of the Afghan War that we will not see some military response designed to kick in before the reinforcements arrive. It may actually have already started, but our media is far worse at war reporting today than it was in 1968. Strange, huh?

2) I think that the defense/industrial establishment learned more lessons from Vietnam than the anti-war movement did. What we see in Afghanistan, and how it is packaged for us in the corporate media is a result of those lessons learned, and intentionally keeps slaughter in that part of the world from becoming as visceral a part of the American consciousness as did Vietnam unwinding on the evening news in 1967-72. When people question why there is no strong anti-war movement today, I think the simple answer is that a strong anti-war movement depends on at least the silent support of a significant portion of our citizenry, which is achieved by constant access to the major media outlets. The new anti-war movement by and large doesn't understand that it was castrated before it began, and seems not to realize that media coverage of demonstrations is more important than the demonstrations themselves [a lesson, ironically, that Tea Partiers understand quite well. How times change.].

Maybe, just maybe, it's because the Obama administration has recently floated the idea of paying off Taliban followers to stop fighiting, that more and more people find plausible the idea that NATO is using its own headquarters to move the insurgents areoundt the country.

The Nation's William Greider pens perhaps one of the more idiotic screed's coming from the fiscally-reckless left, at least this week.

Greider not only advocates MORE MORE MORE spending from the porcine Democrat gluttons running the national government, flying headlong into the historic face of failure after dismal failure of Keynesian voodoo, but he also demands wilful ignorance of the fact that incomprehensible mountains of this disgusting national spending orgy are all BORROWED BORROWED BORROWED.

October 28, 2009

The deficit hawks are flapping their wings and making a
terrible squawk about the government's gusher of red ink. Good grief, a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion! What will become of us?

The gloom chorus includes GOP heavies and right-wing frothers, the editors of the Washington Post and other pinch-penny establishment journals, Blue Dog Democrats and even some of Barack Obama's own advisers.

[Keep going, Billy boy. It's the whoooole world that's all wrong....not you. Also, how convenient he only mentions just this year's federal budget deficit, as if this mind-boggling number exists as the only symptom of criminally-stratosopheric levels of national debt.]

Never mind the bloody mess we're in, they insist. People should hunker down and accept their pain. Suffering is good for the soul.

[A flip straw man statement, exposing typical 1960's-type self-serving, self-indulgent piggery, i.e. ME. NOW. NO LIMITS. NO END. ALL GAIN. NO PAIN.]

This nonsense, grounded in ignorance and discredited nineteenth-century bromides, is a recipe for continuing the economy's downward spiral and could prove poisonous for the country.

[Oh how very clever! Those who choose not to ignore the fiscal insanity Greider advocates are the ignorant ones, uttering "discredited...bromides", of course none as true and noble as the absurd leftist bromides with which Greider's article is utterly suffused.]

The hawks claim self-righteous rectitude in their warnings, but their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens.

[Goddamn right on the former intent to stymie this lunacy. Full of shit as to the latter proclamation about "spending programs". That's exactly and only what they are : programs to SPEND SPEND SPEND, with almost no coherent objective other than to flood borrowed money into the economy. We should all just conveniently disregard the inherent contradiction and ostensible failure of "stimulus", whereby new employment would supposedly come from taxing existing employment now ... and well into the far far far distance future (if the likes of Greider cling to even just the pretense that their deficits will, or should ever, be repaid).

In an October 21 editorial arguing against just such additional spending, the Post warned citizens to disregard progressive commentators (like myself) who offer the example of World War II, when the government ran deficits many times larger than the current one. "In the deficit debates to come," the Post insisted, "Mr. Obama should heed the hawks."

Wrong. The mobilization for World War II produced one of the most remarkable success stories in US economic history. War production not only overcame lingering weaknesses from the Great Depression but transformed the economic system into the modern powerhouse that became the platform for our long-running postwar prosperity. All this was achieved by the government, largely with borrowed money. By war's end Washington had piled up federal debt totaling around 120 percent of annual GDP (nearly double today's debt level).

During the wartime emergency the government took charge of the economy and rapidly shifted the industrial system to armaments while suppressing domestic consumption. Deficit spending force-fed the rapid development of new technologies and new basic industries. In a few short years, economic output expanded by about 75 percent. Despite rationing and wage and price controls, Americans at large were replenished: per capita income rose by almost 70 percent (with industrial jobs opened to women and blacks), and since people could not consume much, the savings rate reached extraordinary levels--23 percent of incomes. The government borrowed these savings and spent them in the national interest. The store of personal savings fueled the pent-up consumer demand driving postwar prosperity.

[Jesus, what a bunch of cobbled together revisionist nonsense, comparing apples to bowling balls. Like all good progressive statists, Greider sees achieving the totality of government control over all aspects of human life and activity as a "war", morally and practically analagous to the 20th century's epic worldwide struggle against the very people who are Greider's ideological predecessors (albeit with genocidal proclivities). It's as though he's saying "But on the flip side of the millions of deaths and mass destruction, the massive government spending it necessitated was just ducky, and we should learn from its benefits."]

The United States needs something similar today--a jump-shift in economic strategy that redirects private capital and incomes into public investment for industrial renewal and for greater social protections, while households are allowed to dig out of their debts and restore personal savings.

In economic terms, the nation is much weaker today than it was in the 1940s--indebted and dependent on foreign creditors. We will not in any case return to the "happy days" prosperity that followed World War II. But the nation needs another dramatic jolt--a strategy that addresses the depth of our predicament and gets serious about the solutions.

[50+ years of welfare statism and national corporatism, now on steroids with the corporate leftists running the show in DC, and Greider wants to answer their imploding failure with an escalation of the same corrosive, destructive policies that led us into this disease of accelerating stagnation inherent when the parasite becomes more robust and voracious than the host on which it feeds.]

To ensure recovery, the Obama administration may need to launch public employment programs--directly creating jobs when the private economy can't seem to. It can beef up environmental construction and jobs like weatherizing buildings for greater energy efficiency. It can pour bigger bucks into building high-speed rail systems. It can finance smaller firms that are innovating with green technologies and create market demand by purchasing their products.

[Totally speculative nonsense. Greider's half-assed wish list for his own utopian ga-ga world, in which economic realities must give way to lefty fantasies, paid for by coercing more and more resources from those of us who must operate in the real world.]

Far from proposing deep restructuring, Obama and his lieutenants are instead predicting prosperity right around the corner. They are going to be disappointed. As the severity of our condition becomes clearer to people, events may drag the president toward considering more drastic actions. Certainly, public support will build for more fundamental solutions. The usual influential voices will insist there's nothing Americans can do but accept our fate. People and politicians must have the nerve to ignore them.

Let's hope President Obama and the political community brush aside the deficit hysteria and do what they need to do to restore the economy: that is, spend more money--a lot more money--and run up even larger deficits for some years to come. The time to pay down the deficit will come only after the economy recovers. If politicians surrender to the budget scolds, the nation will be stuck in this ditch for a long, long time.

Ah yes, Greider. To hell with accountability, responsibility, or even sanity...let's keep digging harder...we'll get out of this ditch your ilk put us in.

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode when Homer runs for garbage commissioner on the slogan "Let someone else do it!!".

The ignorant, reckless left never ever bothers to answer for their pillaging on the backs of generations to come, and they never will. There is no defense. Just their disgusting, self-righteous will to power and quasi-religious authoritarian hubris.

At least Greider is honest about his and the American left's disregard for anything beyond the short-term satiety of their utopian pipe dreams and bloated special interest constituencies.

These people are utterly nauseating beyond belief.

The Nation's William Greider pens perhaps one of the more idiotic screed's coming from the fiscally-reckless left, at least this week.

Greider not only advocates MORE MORE MORE spending from the porcine Democrat gluttons running the national government, flying headlong into the historic face of failure after dismal failure of Keynesian voodoo, but he also demands wilful ignorance of the fact that incomprehensible mountains of this disgusting national spending orgy are all BORROWED BORROWED BORROWED.

October 28, 2009

The deficit hawks are flapping their wings and making a
terrible squawk about the government's gusher of red ink. Good grief, a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion! What will become of us?

The gloom chorus includes GOP heavies and right-wing frothers, the editors of the Washington Post and other pinch-penny establishment journals, Blue Dog Democrats and even some of Barack Obama's own advisers.

[Keep going, Billy boy. It's the whoooole world that's all wrong....not you. Also, how convenient he only mentions just this year's federal budget deficit, as if this mind-boggling number exists as the only symptom of criminally-stratosopheric levels of national debt.]

Never mind the bloody mess we're in, they insist. People should hunker down and accept their pain. Suffering is good for the soul.

[A flip straw man statement, exposing typical 1960's-type self-serving, self-indulgent piggery, i.e. ME. NOW. NO LIMITS. NO END. ALL GAIN. NO PAIN.]

This nonsense, grounded in ignorance and discredited nineteenth-century bromides, is a recipe for continuing the economy's downward spiral and could prove poisonous for the country.

[Oh how very clever! Those who choose not to ignore the fiscal insanity Greider advocates are the ignorant ones, uttering "discredited...bromides", of course none as true and noble as the absurd leftist bromides with which Greider's article is utterly suffused.]

The hawks claim self-righteous rectitude in their warnings, but their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens.

[Goddamn right on the former intent to stymie this lunacy...and, as to the latter proclamation about "spending programs", full of shit, pulled right from his ass. That's exactly and only what they are : programs to SPEND SPEND SPEND. We should all just conveniently disregard the inherent contradiction and ostensible failure of "stimulus", whereby new employment will come from taxing existing employment now, and into the far far far distance future (if the likes of Greider cling to even just the pretense that their deficits will or should ever ever be repaid).

In an October 21 editorial arguing against just such additional spending, the Post warned citizens to disregard progressive commentators (like myself) who offer the example of World War II, when the government ran deficits many times larger than the current one. "In the deficit debates to come," the Post insisted, "Mr. Obama should heed the hawks."

Wrong. The mobilization for World War II produced one of the most remarkable success stories in US economic history. War production not only overcame lingering weaknesses from the Great Depression but transformed the economic system into the modern powerhouse that became the platform for our long-running postwar prosperity. All this was achieved by the government, largely with borrowed money. By war's end Washington had piled up federal debt totaling around 120 percent of annual GDP (nearly double today's debt level).

During the wartime emergency the government took charge of the economy and rapidly shifted the industrial system to armaments while suppressing domestic consumption. Deficit spending force-fed the rapid development of new technologies and new basic industries. In a few short years, economic output expanded by about 75 percent. Despite rationing and wage and price controls, Americans at large were replenished: per capita income rose by almost 70 percent (with industrial jobs opened to women and blacks), and since people could not consume much, the savings rate reached extraordinary levels--23 percent of incomes. The government borrowed these savings and spent them in the national interest. The store of personal savings fueled the pent-up consumer demand driving postwar prosperity.

[Jesus, what a bunch of cobbled together revisionist nonsense, comparing apples to bowling balls. But like all good progressive statists, Greider sees achieving the totality of government control over all aspects of human life and activity as a "war", morally and practically analagous to the 20th century's epic worldwide struggle against the very people who are Greider's ideological predecessors (albeit with genocidal proclivities).]

The United States needs something similar today--a jump-shift in economic strategy that redirects private capital and incomes into public investment for industrial renewal and for greater social protections, while households are allowed to dig out of their debts and restore personal savings.

In economic terms, the nation is much weaker today than it was in the 1940s--indebted and dependent on foreign creditors. We will not in any case return to the "happy days" prosperity that followed World War II. But the nation needs another dramatic jolt--a strategy that addresses the depth of our predicament and gets serious about the solutions.

[50+ years of welfare statism and national corporatism, now on steroids with the corporate leftists running the show in DC, and Greider wants to answer their imploding failure with an escalation of the same corrosive, destructive policies that led us into this disease of accelerating stagnation inherent when the parasite becomes more robust and voracious than the host on which it feeds.]

To ensure recovery, the Obama administration may need to launch public employment programs--directly creating jobs when the private economy can't seem to. It can beef up environmental construction and jobs like weatherizing buildings for greater energy efficiency. It can pour bigger bucks into building high-speed rail systems. It can finance smaller firms that are innovating with green technologies and create market demand by purchasing their products.

[Totally speculative nonsense. Greider's half-assed wish list for his own utopian ga-ga world, in which economic realities must give way to lefty fantasies, paid for by coercing more and more resources from those of us who must operate in the real world.]

Far from proposing deep restructuring, Obama and his lieutenants are instead predicting prosperity right around the corner. They are going to be disappointed. As the severity of our condition becomes clearer to people, events may drag the president toward considering more drastic actions. Certainly, public support will build for more fundamental solutions. The usual influential voices will insist there's nothing Americans can do but accept our fate. People and politicians must have the nerve to ignore them.

Let's hope President Obama and the political community brush aside the deficit hysteria and do what they need to do to restore the economy: that is, spend more money--a lot more money--and run up even larger deficits for some years to come. The time to pay down the deficit will come only after the economy recovers. If politicians surrender to the budget scolds, the nation will be stuck in this ditch for a long, long time.

Ah yes, Greider. To hell with accountability, responsibility, or even sanity...let's keep digging harder...we'll get out of this ditch your ilk put us in.

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode when Homer runs for garbage commissioner on the slogan "Let someone else do it!!".

The ignorant, reckless left never ever bothers to answer for their pillaging on the backs of generations to come, and they never will. There is no defense. Just their disgusting, self-righteous will to power.

At least Greider is honest about his and the American left's disregard for anything beyond the short-term satiety of their utopian pipe dreams and bloated special interest constituencies.

These people are utterly nauseating beyond belief.

I spend a lot of time reading Waldo and have developed such a vicarious appreciation of South Carolina politics that I am currently trying to figure out how to detour around the Palmetto State on my next trip from Delaware to Disney.

What Waldo teaches me (when whatever I am drinking is not spurting out of my nose) is that huge numbers of Americans who are otherwise apparently competent to dress themselves and drive to work every day are not really functioning at an intellectual level necessary to deal with the moral dilemma and cultural nuances of modern life.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett comes closer to explaining this phenomenon in brief academic terms than anyone else I have ever read [once you add one tiny fact to his explanation]:

There's a mismatch between the modern versus ancestral world. Our minds are equipped with programs that were evolved to navigate a small world of relatives, friends, and neighbors, not for cities and nation states of thousands or millions of anonymous people. Certain laws and institutions satisfy the moral intuitions these programs generate. But because these programs are now operating outside the envelope of environments for which they were designed, laws that satisfy the moral intuitions they generate may regularly fail to produce the outcomes we desire and anticipate that have the consequences we wish. ...

Here's the missing fact that associates with this phrase--Our minds are equipped with programs that were evolved to navigate a small world of relatives, friends, and neighbors:

That small world is essentially a tribal world, and recent anthropological studies have shown that, on a percentage basis, warfare in neolithic tribal societies was actually generated far more casualties than modern warfare.

Shorter Dennett: we still have not moved beyond the compelling urge to deal with people with different views by hitting them over the head with large sticks.

I realize that millions of people will see this on AOL Health, so that my recommendation will be statistically meaningless.

But I think Tracey Carpenter's piece is so important--for men and women both--that if even one or two people read it and profit from it via this link then it will have been worth it.

In the piece you will not only meet Tracey, a 26-year-old breast cancer/masectomy survivor, but also her boyfriend Adam who appears as one of the more remarkable human beings about whom I have ever read:

The months after my diagnosis were a painful blur. My boyfriend, Adam, doggedly called me beautiful and made sure that I was able to believe it. He was so caring and supportive when my oncologist said I would likely not have children because of the chemo. Instead of complaining or bolting for the door when my doctor said no sex because of the infection risk, Adam said, "I will wait for years. I don't care about sex; I just want you." I know that if our roles were reversed I would have done the same thing for him, but sometimes it's still surprising to know that a person can love enough to put up with everything that you have to go through. I know he puts on a brave face for me every day -- and I have seen him break down when he didn't know I was looking. My bald head is covered in kisses, pats, rubs and fuzzy hats whenever he comes home or if I look sad or feel ugly. That is commitment. I wish everyone had a relationship like ours. ...

After the surgery I had a village of visitors: Co-workers and family, and Adam was there day and night. He slept in the same hospital bed as me, crammed up against the bars of my bed and my morphine drip. He teased me that if I got lost in the desert I would walk around in clockwise circles because I was lopsided (morphine makes everything funny). When I was home, he emptied the tubes that drained fluid from my body and dressed my wounds. The first time he saw my chest he cried a little. I cried a lot. He kissed my incision and said he "was a butt guy anyway."

Nothing else I will say this month is as important as this column.

... in my alter-ego secret identity as DSU faculty union chair, commenting on the loooooonnnnnggggg wait between the on-campus interviews for new Presidential candidates and action by the Board of Trustees.

Thanks, Rachel.

What a shock : analysts at Edmunds.com report the cost to taxpayers of this fraud of a waste of borrowed federal dollars...

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

Link.

I guess that is on par with the truth about the colossally wasteful spending orgy...err, "stimulus"...when it comes to the taxpayer cost for jobs "created or saved". In a recap of analysis by ProPublica.com :

Assuming the number of created or saved jobs reported by each contract recipient was accurate—which, as we’ve reported before, is still an open question—that breaks down to $533,000 for each job. That’s more than five times the projection of the president’s own Council of Economic Advisers , which estimated in May that every $92,136 in government spending would create one job for one year.

As I heard this morning on the radio, pointing out the dangerous farce that is the ongoing fiscally-reckless leftist chicanery of our ruling DC masters : "Just a spoon full of socialism will make capitalism get better."

I would ask "will they never learn?", but hard statist ideology is not in the business of dealing with reality, it is all about endlessly trying to manipulate it...while charging their gluttonous tab to the rest of us.

This was sent to me. Probably quite a bit embellished, but hilarious nonetheless...

"FROM AN ACTUAL CRAIG'S LIST PERSONALS AD"

To the Guy Who Tried to Mug Me in Downtown Savannah night before last.
Date: 2009-05-27, 1:43 a.m. E.S.T.

I was the guy wearing the black Burberry jacket that you demanded that I hand over, shortly after you pulled the knife on me and my girlfriend, threatening our lives.

You also asked for my girlfriend's purse and earrings. I can only hope that you somehow come across this rather important message.

First, I'd like to apologize for your embarrassment; I didn't expect you to actually crap in your pants when I drew my pistol after you took my jacket.

The evening was not that cold, and I was wearing the jacket for a reason. My girlfriend had just bought me that Kimber Model 1911 .45 ACP pistol for my birthday, and we had picked up a shoulder holster for it that very evening. Obviously you agree that it is a very intimidating weapon when pointed at your head ...isn't it?!

I know it probably wasn't fun walking back to wherever you'd come from with that brown sludge in your pants. I'm sure it was even worse walking bare-footed since I made you leave your shoes, cell phone, and wallet with me. [That prevented you from calling or running to your buddies to come help mug us again].

After I called your mother, or "Momma" as you had her listed in your cell, I explained the entire episode of what you'd done. Then I went and filled up my gas tank as well as those of four other people in the gas station -- on your credit card. The guy with the big motor home took 150 gallons and was extremely grateful!

I gave your shoes to a homeless guy outside Vinnie Van Go Go's, along with all the cash in your wallet. [That made his day!]

I then threw your wallet into the big pink "pimp mobile" that was parked at the curb ...after I broke the windshield and side window and keyed the entire driver's side of the car.

Later, I called a bunch of phone sex numbers from your cell phone. Ma Bell just now shut down the line, although I only used the phone for a little over a day now, so what's going on with that?

Earlier, I managed to get in two threatening phone calls to the DA's office and one to the FBI, while mentioning President Obama as my possible target.

The FBI guy seemed really intense and we had a nice long chat (I guess while he traced your number etc.).

In a way, perhaps I should apologize for not killing you ...but I feel this type of retribution is a far more appropriate punishment for your threatened crime.

I wish you well as you try to sort through some of these rather immediate pressing issues, and can only hope that you have the opportunity to reflect upon, and perhaps reconsider, the career path you've chosen to pursue in life. Remember, next time you might not be so lucky.

Have a good day!

Thoughtfully yours,
Alex

P.S. Remember this motto ...An armed society makes for a more civil society!

Here's the money sentence of his resignation letter, but if there is any justice this entire letter will become an American state paper:

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued US casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.

You owe it to Americans risking their lives to read and heed the words of this Marine veteran.

Even if you disagree with his conclusion, you should have the intellectual honesty to rebut his arguments before you dismiss them.

Or at least this appears to be the logical conclusion to draw from this recent post by Daniel Cassidy:

In light of the tragic passage of hate crimes legislation to include those engaging in sinful behavior as a special and protected class of victims, the following is particularly meaningful.

Big Hat Tip to Abbey-Roads and to the author, Father Dwight Longenecker

The Slippery Slope
Here is how Satan spreads his lies:

1. Natural Law is ignored, undermined or made to look stupid by particular instances where it seems not apply.

2. Subsequently religious and civil authorities have their laws questioned because they are 'too strict' too 'black and white', 'unworkable' or 'lacking in compassion'.

3. Relativism is therefore introduced. An understanding gradually grows that 'there are no objective rule' that apply to all people at all times.

4. Individualism is the next step. 'I guess I have to decide what is right for me in my situation.'

5. Sentimentalism: People who live in a sinful situation demand that they not be judged. They deserve compassion and understanding. They are nice people really...but they have a problem. They're sick. They're wounded. Who are you to judge?

6. Dialogue is demanded. "You need to listen to us and to our stories. Then you will understand we are just like you."

7. Once sympathy is won, the goalposts are moved. Now they are not 'sick' or 'wounded' they're just 'different'. They expect to be accepted despite their 'differences'.

8. Equal rights are expected by those who are acting against God's law. "We are not asking you to approve us. We are simply asking you to tolerate a difference of opinion. Simply allow us to be who we are!"

9. Equal rights are demanded. Legislation and lobbying and protests are now in order. The pressure group for sin starts to get aggressive. They do so out of 'hurt' and 'woundedness.' Once they get their 'rights' (they claim) they will be happy and won't be so aggressive.

10. Tolerance being won, they will not stop. They now demand not only that you tolerate, but that you approve. They've moved from being 'sick' or 'wounded' or 'disabled' by their condition to tolerance, and now they proclaim their condition to be 'good'. As Thomas More was not allowed to remain silent on the King's 'great matter' but had to approve, so the presssure group insists on approval.

11. What was once tolerated now becomes mandatory. Society must integrate the new morality into every level--right down to schools and churches and scout groups. Everyone must adopt the new morality or suffer.

12. Persecution of those who resist.

13. Devil's real happy.

This process happens on an individual level, a family level, a community level and a societal level. The bigger the level the longer it takes, and for it to take effect at the societal, community and family level it must first work on the individual level.

This means you and I must watch for the signs in our own moral life and be alert. Any of us can go down this path, and any of us may be victims of those who are already well down the path of evil and darkness.

I stop in at Mr. Cassidy's website every so often when I feel the need to taste some bile at the back of my throat.

... and that Waldo had unearthed somebody who got taken in by a fake advertisement.

Then, as I read it and explored the website, I realized ... oh shit it is real.

From Christian News Wire:

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid 'Burn in Hell' Video/Protest Competition Opens -- Prizes to be Awarded

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /Christian Newswire/ --See video of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid "Burn in Hell" for putting child-killing in health care, instruction video on how to burn Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid "in hell," and rules for entering video competition of Pelosi and Reid "burning in hell."

I'm all for the separation of Church and State.

This seems to be the separation of Church and Sanity.

Via Alphecca:

Some people are like slinkies…They don’t really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

The current status and legal position of the Diocese of Wilmington, at least in my mind, is ... conflicted.

For those reading outside Delaware, the Diocese sought Chapter 11 protection this week from the 142 child molestation victims in 131 lawsuits, who stand to be conceivably awarded up to $500 million in total damages from a Diocese that has assets of only about $50-100 million.

Of course, the laity might be forgiven (so to speak) for failing to understand that Diocese is a distinct corporate entity from all of its parishes and schools, none of which are parties to these suits. Yet in the strange world of interlocking relationships, the churches and the Diocese split collections, the Diocese provides additional funding to the schools, and--naturally--the Diocese approves and moves around all the priests and other religious folk assigned to each of these completely financially independent organizations.

It's kind of like the case where your doctor also maintains a lab in his building; you usually don't realize that the moment you step across the threshold to meet the smiling woman with the needle that you have stepped into a completely different business, and will receive a completely separate bill.

So I guess it was my naive temperment that did not realize that when Bishop Francis (or, before him, Bishop Saltarelli) visited Resurrection Parish, that we were not only greeting a spiritual leader, but hosting the CEO of another arm of our loosely relation industry sector [the religion industry].

There is something vaguely--no, wait, make that obscenely--wrong about religious entities standing by the Separation of Church and State when it is convenient, but then using every business law they can get their hands on to avoid taxation and individual liability for negligent or criminal acts.

So how am I conflicted?

Resurrection is one of the smaller parishes in the Diocese [we may be the smallest; I have never checked], and yet we provide holiday meals and presents for dozens of families; we run a food bank that doesn't turn anybody away hungry; we sent relief supplies to the Gulf Coast after Katrina; we partner with independent coffee growers in Ecuador or somewhere. At Resurrection it has not been the nuances of Christian theology that my children have learned over the years, but the necessity of giving from their substance to the community; the responsibility of becoming servants as well as entrepreneurs.

There are poor children who would have gone to very good Catholic schools on scholarship that--in another year or so--will not find that money available. There are projects that Catholic Charities will not be able to complete. There are things that will not get done that had been planned to make some folks' lives not just better, but survivable.

And yet...

The evidence suggests that senior officials in the Diocese of Wilmington knew what was going on to defenseless children all those years ago and did worse than nothing. They covered it up. Bishop Saltarelli, whom I have admired on this blog more than once, does not always appear to have operated in the open spirit I would have thought the situation demanded. [Although it is important not to take the accusations of the plaintiffs' counsel as, uh, gospel, because they are being potentially well-paid not for objective statements but to paint their opponents in as poor a light as possible.]

So on the one hand we have the everyday and sometimes astounding good that the assembled entities that think of themselves as part of the Diocese of Wilmington [despite how the auditors draw the lines] have done and need to continue to do....

On the other we have the everyday and far too astounding evil that the entrusted--ordained!--leadership of that Diocese allowed to happen and then failed to deal with as they should have....

On the one hand long-suffering victims of childhood abuse who can never be made whole....

On the other the children, the poor, and the elderly who desperately need that helping hand....

Where do I come down on this?

Here: the balance of God between the Old and New Testaments is often philosophically and/or theologically presented as the balance between Justice and Mercy.

Justice demands that these victim's voices be heard, that their violators [along with their enablers] be called out into the light of day, and that if it takes every last penny belonging to the Diocese of Wilmington they must receive the only redress our courts can give them.

Even if the Diocese had unlimited financial resources, it would not be enough.

The rest of us must avoid the temptation to see these victims as our competitors for the Diocesan resources we would like to use for our children, for the poor. We have to accept that we--in a corporate sense--suffered the leaders who made these poor decisions to remain in positions of power for years. We have to accept that the redemption of our Faith, our Church, and even our Diocese requires us to worry more that those abused children will have their day to face their abusers, than about the financial hardships our churches will face.

We have to admit that what is causing the financial crisis is not anything those children did, but what our leaders did, and that we all share a responsibility to help make those children as whole again as possible.

Then we have to pick up the tools that are left to us, redouble our efforts not to let the good works--at least the most absolutely necessary--go undone. We're going to have to make some hard choices about what would be nice to do and good to do, as opposed to what we need to do. We're going to have to open our hearts and our wallets quite a bit deeper in a tough time to become the Church and the Christians we aspire to be.

We're going to have to be humble and pentitent when people refer to the Church as the Pedophile Protection Society, and recognize that we share in some measure of the human weaknesses that led us to this pass.

But we absolutely have to remember that our first obligation is to those 141 children who were harmed in our Diocese.

If a cathedral has to be sold to pay off that debt ... so be it. There were house-churches in early Christianity, and there can be again.

It is not a lovely position I hold; it is certainly [if the snatches of conversation I heard on Sunday are any indication] not going to be a popular one.

But it is--at least today--the only one that I find consistent with the teachings of the Gospels: we must attend to those who have been hurt before we can go back to attending those who need to be helped.