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PETA Urges Ben & Jerry’s To Use Human Milk

New Fun Flavors

• Angelina Jolie’s Jolly Jug Crunch

• Vanilla Fudge Nipple

anyone else?

Here’s how we know that there is no crisis.

The Three Amigos:  Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

• They’ve been sitting on this plan for months.

Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

• Why $700 billion?   This question was asked repeatedly in the hearing several different ways.  No answer.  Why not $500 or $50?  And why do you need $700 billion all right now?

• The Three Amigos are adamant that a “clean bill” is passed and passed immediately, going so far as to suggest that Congress talk about transparency issues after it’s passed.  (Even though there is only 2 weeks left in session this year.)

• They’ve balked at oversight and accountability, going so far as to draft this language in the bill.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Yes, folks.  That’s a $700,000,000,000.00 blank check.  5% of GDP and 26% of 2008 budget in a day.

• They’ve balked at measures to help out homeowners and other measures to help out on Main Street.

• They’ve balked at taking punitive measures against CEO pay packages.

• They’ve balked at requiring equity compensation (warrants) for any assistance provided by the bailout.  Their excuse?  They fear it would:

… limit participation in the program.  Only failing banks would be willing to give the government stock in exchange for buying up their bad assets.

SO FUCKING WHAT?! If they don’t need a bail out why the fuck should we give them our borrowed taxpayer dollars?!

• They insist on having the authority to purchase assets from institutions that are not in danger of failing, even the authority to help out foreign institutions.  Despite repeated requests to explain why they would bail out banks that are fine they refuse to answer with any substance.

• They admit they will pay above-market rates for these assets.

• Secretary Paulson assumed his post in 2006.  His previous job was CEO of Goldman Sachs, the largest and most prestigious investment bank in the country.  Today he claimed at the hearing that when he took office he was “Shocked!” at the lack of regulations.

Shocked?  You were the CEO of Goldman Sachs and you aren’t aware of the regulations of these major securities that you bought and sold daily?  So “shocked!”, that you did NOTHING in nearly 2 years as Treasury Secretary to create this missing regulation?

• Warren Buffet willing to lay down 5$ billion bet on Goldman Sachs.  You can be sure he thinks Goldman Sachs will be just fine.

So the Three Amigos give a presentation to Congressional leaders Friday evening scaring the hell out of them, the mainstream media, and the public.  They effectively say: “Give us $700 billion on Monday to spend any way we see fit or the economy gets it”.  They want no oversight, no accountability, no explanation as to the size or purpose or a spending plan.

This is nothing but a political ploy.  A grand game of brinkmanship with $700 billion of your money. Republican operatives are already openly talking about it.

God Himself couldn’t have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the administration. … Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend,

Don’t get me wrong, the economy is not healthy.  But if this administration were truly worried and this bailout was truly urgent, they wouldn’t be balking at trifling things like accountability and CEO pay packages.  No, the only urgent danger is that some previously very rich Republican donors are about to lose their shirts.  As for the the rest of us…  without the bailout, we will be as fine tomorrow as we were yesterday.

.

This is not a Crisis.  It’s a Stickup.

This is the Cowboy President that thinks he’s living in the Wild West,

… and we need a new Sheriff.

Take Action. Stop Paulson’s Plunder.
Take Action. Stop the Bush Bailout.
Take Action. No blank check for Wall St.

we’re [not] on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity.

You think I’m joking?
The guy saying it today in the Washington post is Donald L. Luskin chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC.  He says in the op-ed:

Full disclosure: I’m an adviser to John McCain’s campaign,

This is, well, INSANE.

Business Week:  Wall Street’s Perfect Storm

This weekend:

• Lehman Brothers disappears in a poof of smoke.  4th largest investment bank.
• Merrill Lynch is in a forced sale to BofA.
• Wachovia, 3rd largest investment bank, speculated to be next.
• ~1800 of 8500 FDIC insured banks expected to fail in the coming year.  FDIC is underfunded to protect against this many failures.
• AIG in dire straits.  Just as an example of how pessimistic Wall Street is:   Excuse, me: AIG just failed while I was writing this blog entry. Along with National City and Fifth-Third banks.  WAMU is expected to go into receivership before the end of the week.

As of Friday’s close, AIG had a market capitalization of $32.99 billion. AIG generated $33.96 billion in revenue during the first half of 2008, 45 percent less than the $61.8 billion generated during the first half of 2007. [AIG's value is LESS than their revenues for 1/2 a year!]

Last 1-2 weeks:

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accounting for more than 1/2 of ALL mortgages, are insolvent and need bailout.

Last month:

• Indy Mac fails:  3rd largest bank failure in history.  Over a dozen other major bank failures in the last 6 months.
• July inflation rate at 0.8% in one month.
• August unemployment is at 6.1%, the highest since 2002.

Last six months:

• 463,000 jobs lost so far this year (July, Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Countrywide fails and is bought by BofA
• Citibank bailed out by Saudi sheik.
• Bear Stearns, 5th largest investment bank, fails and is bought by J.P. Morgan with assistance from the Fed.
• American Home Mortgage up in smoke.
• Numerous other smaller mortgage companies fail

Last several years:

• Unprecedented deflation of the U.S. dollar
• Unprecedented increases in the cost of commodities.  Copper up ~400%, Aluminum up ~200%, Rice up ~300%

McCain’s advisor is right about one thing.  We’re not on the brink of recession.  We’re on the brink of depression.

John McCain?  He thinks the economy is just fine.

I love that McCain and Palin as the Thénardiers and his wife!

If you know this scene and the story, all the characters are represented..  Marius, Cosette, Eponine, Javert…  They even got folks that “look” like the characters…

…and some more after the break…

Unlike other major cities, the Phoenix downtown area is rather disappointing with not a lot going on.  Several efforts are under way though in the past few years to revitalize the downtown:  light-rail, children’s museums, etc.  The Roosevelt Historic District is a part of those efforts.  It’s a great place for Obama’s office, symbolically.

This was my first campaign event ever (for any campaign).  I tried to get there a little early.  Much to my surprise the traffic was backed up on 6th street and I had to park three blocks away.  When I arrived there were already several hundred folks there.

Nayo Jones

At 4pm, the stunningly beautiful Nayo Jones performed a few songs (and ‘Doc’, her father).  One, a soulful rendition of Gershwin’s Summertime, was out of this world and just [ba]rocked the house!

By now, more folks had filed in and all of local news crews were set up and ready to film.  By my (swag) estimates there are now at least 800 people here.  Maybe a 1,000. Below is a pic (sorry for the quality, I have a really old camera phone).

What you don’t see are a couple hundred folks wrapped around the sides of the stage off to the side.  This is 105 degree heat, folks, at 4:30 in the afternoon in the direct sun!  And after Nayo’s performance we were pretty pumped up (and sweaty).

The first speaker was Don Bivens, our Arizona Democratic Party Chair.

Next up was Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.  There were a couple other speakers but I was not able to write down their names or organizations only that they were affiliated to an AZ Democrat Women’s organization and ASU.

And finally, the coup de grâce…  Janet Napolitano herself!   When Janet showed up the place when pretty wild.  Janet is pretty popular in Arizona even amongst some Republicans.

(The pics of here came out very bad against the glaring sun so I did not include them)

After the event was concluded quite a lot of people hung around and the Obama folks were signing up volunteers like mad.  I, of course, was one of them.  I’ve never worked with a campaign before and I am excited.

Arizona is not a likely win for Obama but I don’t think it’s impossible.  Polls have it at about 10 points right now.  But, a lot of Dems have moved here from neighboring states. AZ Dem registration has outpaced Republican 2-to-1 as well as out fund-raised by 2-to-1.  At any rate, we sure as hell are going to make a go of it!

More pics can be found here.

…  and here we have the MySpace Chronicles of Levi Johnstons..  (the father of Bristol’s child).