The State of the Union

The State of the Union

It's fucked. Ha! Just kidding. That's not what Obama said. Though I wish he did. But it's not like anything Obama said came as much of a surprise. You see, much earlier in the day a draft of Barack Obama's state of the union speech was leaked out and I was most excited to hear the reaction to the following proposed idea by our President...

I will impose a 5 year federal spending freeze

A spending freeze.. yeah, let's just turn that knife. Perhaps I just wanted to hear something so out of the norm by Obama. Something like

"We will create a bomb that can destroy the moon by the end of this decade, not because it is easy but because it is hard"

Then I would look at the state of the union and realize that at least things could be a lot worse. As it stand, I'm pretty sure that rising corporate profits will probably not keep millions of Americans from losing their houses. It really makes you just sort of sad to see such a reform president getting totally worked over by corporate interest.

But sure enough, he's going to try to freeze the budget.. You know, exempting military and "security" spending from the freeze, of course all in the name to satisfy the right. At the same time proposing new infrastructure spending in a hapless attempt to satisfy the left. I'm fairly certain that we'll be tired of the term "budget-neutral" by 2012.

I guess we saw it coming though. After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks that the President signed, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have.

All throughout the speech I was waiting for Boehner to start crying. I'm surprised that his fake orange tan doesn't smear when he cries for any little thing. Though the only time it seemed like he was going to tear up was when he got a hand job from Obama at the beginning. So there went my hope that he was going tobe like a blubbering baby throughout the entire thing with tears streaming down his face.

Can I also point out that standing ovations really lose their value if you do them every minute. I'm sure everyone thinks that America should be the best place on earth, even at the expense of raping the workers for profits. CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP

"The entire thing was so full of shit. Why yes, let's encourage innovation.. "

*makes college steadily less affordable*

"We need to invest in research like never before!!"

*cuts funding to all science programs and cancels NASA programs*

And Facebook being mentioned in the state of the union? Really? Is Facebook the great American accomplishment?

Barack Obama > Good speech huh?

_{Joe Biden likes this
John Boehner *sob*}

Yes, clearly the Vodka bottle was not enough to get me through it. I needed more. Oh so much more.

This was all before he went on about ending corporate subsidization of oil. Yeah, that made me laugh. Here I thought all this reaching across party lines was to ensure that he got re-elected. If you're going to go after oil subsidies you're going to face the fact that you'll be a one-term president.



Then Obama got on with what seemed like the subject that took the chunk of attention in the State of the Union - Education. I'm not sure if it was because there was a bunch of school kids in the audience that were invited, but he really hammered home that kids should be encouraged to go to college and that adults who don't have a college degree should go back in order to set a good example.

Who the fuck has the money to get a university degree just to inspire their damn kids? How out of touch is this shit with 10% unemployment going on? To be fair now, America's school system is so terrible these days that finishing high school is arguably a step in the wrong direction.

Obama went so far as to suggest that we should treat science fair winners with the same enthusiasm as the winners of the Super Bowl. Yeah, how convenient that he stopped caring about football once the Chicago Bears got eliminated.

But hey, maybe now I'll be super excited for all the science fair winners to go and meet the president. Because I can tell you as a former winner of a science fair, good luck with getting anyone to give a shit. But I can't believe that he really said Superbowl and science fair in the same sentence. I mean, the only thing that I could think the Superbowl and a science fair have in common is.. The Jets aint shit.

But at what point in all this State of the Union ramblings did he cover how we're going to make jobs for the people unemployed NOW. I mean, forget the kids. The kids could wait. Focus on that 10% unemployment now!

Obama called for more teachers.. Yeah... become a teacher, and enjoy your benefits, salary ...uh... students. I hope you like making no money at all and having constant critiquing of your teaching tactics. Go right ahead and become a teacher and graduate with massive loans, find there are no jobs currently out there and die alone.

I know well enough about teaching that "race to the top" is a pretty terrible program and the applause that came about after it was mentioned was horrible.

I mean, did you hear the response on when he suggested that more people become teachers? There was a massive amount of clapping going on for the call in treating teachers with respect. These same claps are being produced by those who so easily slash education funding.

As if 100,000 new teachers with non-competitive salaries and one year contracts sounds like a good thing. I'm seriously not going to become a teacher when my city is considering cutting 9,600 school positions. But then again, who can turn down being a teacher? You make 1/10 of what you could in the private sector.

But yeah. Obama sure made a poignant statement on unemployment tonight.... oh wait. Yeeeeeaaaaaahhh..... I think the only thing that he even suggested in helping the economy in unemployment was getting China, South Korea and India to export more goods from us.



But I have an important question about that for the President. Why would any corporation hire Americans under any circumstances in a globalized world? And I don't mean set up shop. I understand that. But why would anyone Hire Americans at all?

I think the real entertainment happened after the speech. With both Paul Ryan AND Michelle Bachmann issuing rebuttals to Obama's speech. Yes, you heard that right. The right is doing TWO rebuttals.

Bachmann is doing the tea party rebuttal. As if the republicans aren't pissed enough that they're splitting the party enough. Where is the green party rebuttal or the socialist party rebuttal? How the hell is the tea party legitimate enough to have their own address. It's like congress, except instead of senators it's old fat white people in scooters purchased by medicare (Socialism!)



Apparently Bachmann literally looked at the NBC camera through the entire speech instead of the CNN camera. The NBC camera was set up for the post-speech interview. Brain Williams greeted her after on NBC by saying "Thank you for finding your way to our camera".

If this wasn't proof that Bachmann's just plain crazy and that's really what made this post speech rebuttal entertaining, then you're probably not familiar with her. If you're not familiar with her ramblings, here's Anderson Cooper, tearing her apart on her claim that the Founding Father's eliminated slavery.



I guess the real question I have is how anyone in the right is going to rebute Obama adopting their own policies. But apparently that was some sort of CNN exclusive.

To be honest, I just cannot imagine why anyone would watch CNN or any cable news channel anymore. Even if you're watching it ironically, you're seriously bat shit insane or just really like suffering. If you think MSNBC is better than Fox News you're crazy. CNN has to be arguably the worst because they've managed to convince people that it's the "neutral" station. Neutral in this country is somewhere right of Reagan.

It doesn't change the fact that after watching this spewing of political nonsense I wanted to cut to a picture of Krusty the Clown asking What the Hell was that?! My soul felt empty after dealing with that much crushing reality that the true answer to what the state of our union really is "Completely and utterly fucked"

But hey, let's take a look to what reaction to the speech by Obama was from NPR listeners..



"Optimistic" "inspirin" What the hell? Did they listen to the same speech I did? I do like that Salmon is in large bold letters. I am left with the knowledge now that Salmon in water is monitored by a different government agency than water on my plate. Though I'm still not sure which agency overlooks Smoked Salmon on a cream cheese covered bagel with some sliced red onions.

Congress Put In Surveyor's Marks

Congress Put in Cross Hair Surveyor's Marks

Well, no doubt you're still recovering from the whole Arizona congress shooting. That was some crazy shit. I mean, woah. Though I have to say there was many things about that incident and the few days after that blow my mind..... okay, that was an awful and uncalled for pun that I didn't realize I did till after my fingers left the keyboard to that last part of the sentence.



Anyway, I would like to point out what CNN was reporting shortly after news broke:

CNN reports that al-Qaeda is not a suspect at the moment.

Way to go CNN. I know I make fun of you for being such a shitty news source, but here you are somehow finding a way to show how you're becoming more worthless every year. How exactly do you achieve that with such ease?

Why not just point out that the local ABC affiliate in Tucson is called KGUN. That should show you how much of a nation of laxed gun regulations we really are.

It would also be worth noting, if you are CNN, that there's a certain bit of irony in a shooting happening outside of a SAFEWAY. And in the event that you are wondering what happened with business the rest of the day you only need to look towards the hard hitting online journalist for that.



You know, when they broke with the back story on the guy, I mean, they gave out his name, Jared Laughner of Arizona, and really that's all the internet needed to spark a massive fire that was digging up every bit of information about him that our modern age of computers allowed possible.

And believe me, they found a lot of shit. It's really a sign of how mighty our modern fake journalist in the blogosphere when they're able to dig up shit long before the media news outlets ever catch of a whiff of this. It's really sort of powerful when you think about it.



Within hours they were able to dig up his Youtube channel You have to admit that you can't say you didn't see it coming in this instance. The kid was a nut job. I'm sure if I ever start ranting about stupid shit, you have my permission to call the cops on me. At least I write a blog on a blog and not on a youtube channel. I mean, who would even vote for that? Get with the times kid, you need to put way more ball punching or kitten videos if you want to be taken seriously on the internets.

Sadly though, his Myspace had been taken down. I'm pretty sure that Rupert Murdoch got his money's worth in that 2 billion spent for that company now that he's able to pull up anyone's name and myspace profile at the drop of the hat and hide them from the world.



His videos really are just some bizarre shit about his dreaming and ability to use mind control. I mean, it's pretty clear that any defense attorney is going to have fun with the insanity card on this one. The punk left all the markings behind to prove that he is literally bat shit insane. Just take a look at the shooter's yearbook photo.



You do have to give this kid credit. He sure knows how to fire a bullet. The thing went in her temple and then went straight out side of her head. That's some marksmanship. Wait, he wasn't trying to do that and was hoping for an instant kill ala a video game? Well then. He just found out that video games lied and not all head shots are instant kills.

But we should stop for a moment to point out that this was some miraculous trajectory going on in the bullet. If only the JFK bullet had been fired by someone with a shitty Youtube channel. Then again, he was hiding out in a book storage place. So in a sense, L. Harvey Ozwald is this guy of the past.



But it shouldn't surprise anyone that the internet is much faster at digging up information on a person than the media. The media has always been slow as hell for shit like this. You can tell whenever there's an earthquake in L.A. It's a good 20 minutes of the news casters just sitting in front of a camera pulling shit out of their asses without any clear idea on what they should be saying and without any official word, that's the best they're going to do.

It's really the only time to ever watch the local news. That is to say that it's comedy in itself to look at news casters just winging it clearly showing how little talent they actually have without the words written on a teleprompter spoon feeding them everything they need to sound educated.

It's always up to the video tech guys to pull this shit out into the spot light. Also something else to take notice of -You would think that this sort of news would spark folks to.. you know, not want to own a gun. The opposite is true in fact..

After a Glock-wielding gunman killed six people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8, Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers.

Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14 wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition.

I would have thought that a pistol like that would be more than $499. They're normally more like $900. The funny thing is that they don't have built in safety's. HA! Talk about responsible gun ownership. This is an accidental shooting waiting to happen. But hey, if only the congress woman had a gun, then none of this would have happened.



As for the dude. Worse than being crazy and actually carrying out his plan it looks like he also did this because he hates Jewish people.

THE suspect being held over Saturday's shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords may have links to anti-Semitic race hate group American Renaissance.

An internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo quoted by FOX News Channel revealed the gunman - named by the media as Jared Loughner, 22 - is "possibly linked" to American Renaissance.+

I just have to wonder why isn't the actually dead federal judge getting any amount of television coverage that the congress woman who is actually still alive and showing progress of potentially coming out of this with a big thumbs up. I mean, the dude did actually die.

To sum up all the strange shit that has happened for those of you who decided to get blitzed out of their mind over the weekend and are just waking up in a pile of your own puke, let's do a run down. A dude shoots a congresswoman and it turns out that he's a schizo ron paul gold freak who probably has Alex Jones on speed dial. At the same time Sarah Palin was forced to take down a website where she had a map of congress people from this past election with cross hairs over each one asking the voters to take them out.



Then the local sheriff holds a press conference where he calls out right wing assholes for promoting violence in the way they have. Siting that their encouragement of shit like "Don't retreat, reload!" really sends out the wrong message.

I mean, how can you really say that? It certainly can't be a fair assessment of the republican extreme right, right? Right........

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals, leave enough around so we can have two on every campus; living fossils, so we will never forget what these people stood for."

--Rush Limbaugh

Let's stop for a moment to take a second look at what Glen Beck has been saying... specifically the strange do as I say and not as I show in the picture on the side bar.



I just.. I'm not even sure what the hell to say. The text reads one thing and yet right there an inch away Beck has that 24 inspired image. What was he thinking? Perhaps something along the lines that he was going to look so tough in that picture with his gun pointed down. Just like in Die Hard. Oh how he has no idea how to hold a gun.

This next part is a bit long but I encourage you to at least skim it. I'm not going to bold any of this. Just read it all. It's a fucking good article.

Crazy Talk
We're too quick to use "mental illness" as an explanation for violence.
By Vaughan Bell
Posted Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011, at 12:52 AM ET

Shortly after Jared Lee Loughner had been identified as the alleged shooter of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, online sleuths turned up pages of rambling text and videos he had created. A wave of amateur diagnoses soon followed, most of which concluded that Loughner was not so much a political extremist as a man suffering from "paranoid schizophrenia."

For many, the investigation will stop there. No need to explore personal motives, out-of-control grievances or distorted political anger. The mere mention of mental illness is explanation enough. This presumed link between psychiatric disorders and violence has become so entrenched in the public consciousness that the entire weight of the medical evidence is unable to shift it. Severe mental illness, on its own, is not an explanation for violence, but don't expect to hear that from the media in the coming weeks.

Seena Fazel is an Oxford University psychiatrist who has led the most extensive scientific studies to date of the links between violence and two of the most serious psychiatric diagnoses—schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, either of which can lead to delusions, hallucinations, or some other loss of contact with reality. Rather than looking at individual cases, or even single studies, Fazel's team analyzed all the scientific findings they could find. As a result, they can say with confidence that psychiatric diagnoses tell us next to nothing about someone's propensity or motive for violence.

A 2009 analysis of nearly 20,000 individuals concluded that increased risk of violence was associated with drug and alcohol problems, regardless of whether the person had schizophrenia. Two similar analyses on bipolar patients showed, along similar lines, that the risk of violent crime is fractionally increased by the illness, while it goes up substantially among those who are dependent on intoxicating substances. In other words, it's likely that some of the people in your local bar are at greater risk of committing murder than your average person with mental illness.

Of course, like the rest of the population, some people with mental illness do become violent, and some may be riskier when they're experiencing delusions and hallucinations. But these infrequent cases do not make "schizophrenia" or "bipolar" a helpful general-purpose explanation for criminal behavior. If that doesn't make sense to you, here's an analogy: Soccer hooligans are much more likely to be violent when they attend a match, but if you tell me that your friend has gone to a soccer match, I'll know nothing about how violent a person he is. Similarly, if you tell me your friend punched someone, the fact that he goes to soccer matches tells me nothing about what caused the confrontation. This puts recent speculation about the Arizona suspect in a distinctly different light: If you found evidence on the Web that Jared Lee Loughner or some other suspected killer was obsessed with soccer or football or hockey and suggested it might be an explanation for his crime, you'd be laughed at. But do the same with "schizophrenia" and people nod in solemn agreement. This is despite the fact that your chance of being murdered by a stranger with schizophrenia is so vanishingly small that a recent study of four Western countries put the figure at one in 14.3 million. To put it in perspective, statistics show you are about three times more likely to be killed by a lightning strike.

The fact that mental illness is so often used to explain violent acts despite the evidence to the contrary almost certainly flows from how such cases are handled in the media. Numerous studies show that crimes by people with psychiatric problems are over-reported, usually with gross inaccuracies that give a false impression of risk. With this constant misrepresentation, it's not surprising that the public sees mental illness as an easy explanation for heartbreaking events. We haven't yet learned all the details of the tragic shooting in Arizona, but I suspect mental illness will be falsely accused many times over.

Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
Vaughan Bell is a clinical and neuropsychologist at the Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia, and King's College London.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2280619/

Now I leave you with a great example on how any group will latch on to any aspect of this

The only certain fact about the motivation of Arizona killer Jared Loughner is that, like the lunatic who opened fire on the Pentagon last March, he is a pothead. Several people who knew Loughner say that he was a serious abuser of the drug and “liked to smoke pot.” What’s more, Loughner had been arrested in 2007 for possessing drug paraphernalia.

The use of marijuana has been linked to mental illness, including psychosis, and increases the kind of paranoia exhibited by Loughner in his writings.

Words escape me. I mean... really? You're going to try to blame this one on weed? I mean.. I don't recall weed having the effect of shooting up local elected officials. In fact, it's the opposite. If you're stone then you're not even going to know who your elected officials are. Shit, unless there's a proposition to legalize pot, they're more than likely not even going to vote anyway.



Yup, pot is not what made this dude attempt to kill a congress woman and shoot up others. That was the crazies. The weed, if anything, was something he should have had more of. Then he'd probably still be at home playing Xbox and posting stupid shit on youtube while visiting those crazy conspiracy internet websites.

I mean, does marijuana-induced psychosis have any credibility as a diagnosis?

51st State of Mind - Puerto Rico

51st State of Mind - Puerto Rico

For all of you who are secretly looking to visit all the great states that make up this land of ours, as well as for those of you who own flags.. get ready, you may have to do some adjusting.... Why? Well because Puerto Rico may become our 51st state!

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote tomorrow on The Puerto Rico Democracy Act (HR2499), which includes the holding of a plebiscite in Puerto Rico to decide if it wants statehood. In other words to decide if Puerto Rico wants to be the 51st state of the United States of America.

Reuters reports that it is expected the House will pass the Puerto Rico statehood bill HR2499. However, we don't know what will happen in the Senate. If approved by both the House and the Senate and signed into law by the U.S. President Barack Obama HR2499 will formally consult the citizens of Puerto Rico on their preferred political status if they want a U.S. statehood or continue to maintain their current status.

U.S. is giving parental blessings for the first time in 112 years to Puerto Rico to vote for its future status.

If HR2499 is passed the government of Puerto Rico can amend its constitution and come up with a second constitution with options of U.S. statehood, current status or even an independence.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory since 1898. It is self-governing, but depends on Washington in matters of defense, monetary policy, immigration and customs.

The issue of people's self-determination is on the agenda and of concern to other European countries as well. Consider the frozen conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. One of the recent successful cases in the world is the case of Kosovo. The conducted a referendum and voted for independence from Serbia. Serbia has not recognized it, but the world has. There is peace now in the Balkans.

Next case may be Azerbaijan. Nagorno Karabakh, a majority Armenian populated enclave in Azerbaijan is a de facto independent republic. After seemingly endless negotiations a formula for peace is put forward by the Minsk group mediators. According to the scheme the liberated territories adjacent to Nagorno Karabakh will be returned to Azerbaijan in exchange of the latter's recognition of of Nagorno Karabakh's right to self-determination and referendum. Azerbaijan is afraid that referendum will lead to independence because the Christian Armenian population does not want to leave in the same country with Azerbaijan because of the cultural differences and past oppressions.

The move by the United States to give its paternal blessing with the passage of HR2499 for Puerto Rico status, whether its statehood or independence, may send a peace message to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova to recognize the change in the global dynamics that the 21st century is the end of colonization and beginning of peace.

And there's absolutely no way this will pass the Senate. In fact, I'm taking bets on the losing spread. Just think about it for a second. It passed the house with much controversy. There's literally no way on gods green earth 100 of the world's most selfish assholes would dilute their voting power by 2 for some place that most of them couldn't even point to on a map. I mean, we all know that 100 senators will of course vote for it because the United States is a shining beacon of liberty, right?

"I choose to give more voting power to brown colored people" - No senator ever

I do wonder how many people against PR statehood could actually point it out on a map.

Puerto Whereco??? -Americans

The scary thing is that Puerto Rico, if a state, will likely put Republicans in power. They are highly conservative when it comes to social matters due to tight catholic upbringing but they also have things in there that most liberal would kill for in the states. They have a public health option but it's only given out to the poor, you can scare shitless most establishments that try to fuck with your consumer rights cause they have fully functioning and ruthless consumer rights agency called DACO.



If PR becomes the 51st state, the whole identity of the current parties in there would dissolve since the only thing that separates them from each other is their position on when it comes to statehood/independence/pragmatism.

Puerto Rico being a state and maintaining Spanish as their principle language could also have a real positive effect against "English only" and other anti-brown laws around the country targeting immigrants and Latino citizens.



Though, hasn't Puerto Rico itself voted multiple times not to become a state? Yeah, it's been over 10 years since the last vote and recent polling has been fairly even along the 'eh who cares not like they want us' or 'no fuck em' lines, and if we actually show 'hey why don't you come on in and get actual representation' to them, I'm sure they may be more positive to the idea.

So right now it's looking decent but any poll isn't a good gauge until we can get some US side reaching out to them. Not to mention the American racist. I can't even imagine what people would do if Puerto Rico actually became a state. I'm pretty sure that people in the south are still calling for the deportation of Puertoriquenos. And if they did, just imagine the tea bagger shit storm, a Hispanic state where white people can't try to force the browns out. It's their nightmare come to life.


Oh Glen Beck, you're such a moron...

So how did the voting go down yesterday in allowing Puerto Ricans to decide their own political future and relationship with the United States? The vote was 223 to 169. Rep Louse Slaughter, D-N.Y. voted present. The Republicans attempted to add provisions to the legislation that would have made English the official language of a potential Puerto Rican state.

Yes, that's right. Every Hispanic Republican is human garbage. There is no denying that. they are literally trash.

A Holiday Card To Ben Bernanke From Sen. Jim Bunning

A Holiday Card To Ben Bernanke From Sen. Jim Bunning

I know politics bores everyone, but this is a Holiday card you need to read from Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) to Ben Bernanke. I highlighted some of the keys here in case you start to snooze it half way int this.

To: Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve)
From: Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Event: Senate Banking Committee hearings

Four years ago when you came before the Senate for confirmation to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was the only Senator to vote against you. In fact, I was the only Senator to even raise serious concerns about you. I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right. But I did not know how right I would be and could not begin to imagine how wrong you would be in the following four years.

The Greenspan legacy on monetary policy was breaking from the Taylor Rule to provide easy money, and thus inflate bubbles. Not only did you continue that policy when you took control of the Fed, but you supported every Greenspan rate decision when you were on the Fed earlier this decade. Sometimes you even wanted to go further and provide even more easy money than Chairman Greenspan. As recently as a letter you sent me two weeks ago, you still refuse to admit Fed actions played any role in inflating the housing bubble despite overwhelming evidence and the consensus of economists to the contrary. And in your efforts to keep filling the punch bowl, you cranked up the printing press to buy mortgage securities, Treasury securities, commercial paper, and other assets from Wall Street. Those purchases, by the way, led to some nice profits for the Wall Street banks and dealers who sold them to you, and the G.S.E. purchases seem to be illegal since the Federal Reserve Act only allows the purchase of securities backed by the government.

On consumer protection, the Greenspan policy was don’t do it. You went along with his policy before you were Chairman, and continued it after you were promoted. The most glaring example is it took you two years to finally regulate subprime mortgages after Chairman Greenspan did nothing for 12 years. Even then, you only acted after pressure from Congress and after it was clear subprime mortgages were at the heart of the economic meltdown. On other consumer protection issues you only acted as the time approached for your re-nomination to be Fed Chairman.

Alan Greenspan refused to look for bubbles or try to do anything other than create them. Likewise, it is clear from your statements over the last four years that you failed to spot the housing bubble despite many warnings.

Chairman Greenspan’s attitude toward regulating banks was much like his attitude toward consumer protection. Instead of close supervision of the biggest and most dangerous banks, he ignored the growing balance sheets and increasing risk. You did no better. In fact, under your watch every one of the major banks failed or would have failed if you did not bail them out.

On derivatives, Chairman Greenspan and other Clinton Administration officials attacked Brooksley Born when she dared to raise concerns about the growing risks. They succeeded in changing the law to prevent her or anyone else from effectively regulating derivatives. After taking over the Fed, you did not see any need for more substantial regulation of derivatives until it was clear that we were headed to a financial meltdown thanks in part to those products.

The Greenspan policy on transparency was talk a lot, use plenty of numbers, but say nothing. Things were so bad one TV network even tried to guess his thoughts by looking at the briefcase he carried to work. You promised Congress more transparency when you came to the job, and you promised us more transparency when you came begging for TARP. To be fair, you have published some more information than before, but those efforts are inadequate and you still refuse to provide details on the Fed’s bailouts last year and on all the toxic waste you have bought.

And Chairman Greenspan sold the Fed’s independence to Wall Street through the so-called “Greenspan Put”. Whenever Wall Street needed a boost, Alan was there. But you went far beyond that when you bowed to the political pressures of the Bush and Obama administrations and turned the Fed into an arm of the Treasury. Under your watch, the Bernanke Put became a bailout for all large financial institutions, including many foreign banks. And you put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government’s spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they use to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t even get loans for their everyday needs.

Now, I want to read you a quote: “I believe that the tools available to the banking agencies, including the ability to require adequate capital and an effective bank receivership process are sufficient to allow the agencies to minimize the systemic risks associated with large banks. Moreover, the agencies have made clear that no bank is too-big-too-fail, so that bank management, shareholders, and un-insured debt holders understand that they will not escape the consequences of excessive risk-taking. In short, although vigilance is necessary, I believe the systemic risk inherent in the banking system is well-managed and well-controlled.”

That should sound familiar, since it was part of your response to a question I asked about the systemic risk of large financial institutions at your last confirmation hearing. I’m going to ask that the full question and answer be included in today’s hearing record.

Now, if that statement was true and you had acted according to it, I might be supporting your nomination today. But since then, you have decided that just about every large bank, investment bank, insurance company, and even some industrial companies are too big to fail. Rather than making management, shareholders, and debt holders feel the consequences of their risk-taking, you bailed them out. In short, you are the definition of moral hazard.

Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. Because you bowed to pressure from the banks and refused to resolve them or force them to clean up their balance sheets and clean out the management, you have created zombie banks that are only enriching their traders and executives. You are repeating the mistakes of Japan in the 1990s on a much larger scale, while sowing the seeds for the next bubble. In the same letter where you refused to admit any responsibility for inflating the housing bubble, you also admitted that you do not have an exit strategy for all the money you have printed and securities you have bought. That sounds to me like you intend to keep propping up the banks for as long as they want.

Even if all that were not true, the A.I.G. bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton. First you told us A.I.G. and its creditors had to be bailed out because they posed a systemic risk, largely because of the credit default swaps portfolio. Those credit default swaps, by the way, are over the counter derivatives that the Fed did not want regulated. Well, according to the TARP Inspector General, it turns out the Fed was not concerned about the financial condition of the credit default swaps partners when you decided to pay them off at par. In fact, the Inspector General makes it clear that no serious efforts were made to get the partners to take haircuts, and one bank’s offer to take a haircut was declined. I can only think of two possible reasons you would not make then-New York Fed President Geithner try to save the taxpayers some money by seriously negotiating or at least take up U.B.S. on their offer of a haircut. Sadly, those two reasons are incompetence or a desire to secretly funnel more money to a few select firms, most notably Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and a handful of large European banks. I also cannot understand why you did not seek European government contributions to this bailout of their banking system.

From monetary policy to regulation, consumer protection, transparency, and independence, your time as Fed Chairman has been a failure. You stated time and again during the housing bubble that there was no bubble. After the bubble burst, you repeatedly claimed the fallout would be small. And you clearly did not spot the systemic risks that you claim the Fed was supposed to be looking out for. Where I come from we punish failure, not reward it. That is certainly the way it was when I played baseball, and the way it is all across America. Judging by the current Treasury Secretary, some may think Washington does reward failure, but that should not be the case. I will do everything I can to stop your nomination and drag out the process as long as possible. We must put an end to your and the Fed’s failures, and there is no better time than now.

OK, that was a long thing to read. Maybe we need a sort of half time? Here, enjoy this video of Doom with Megaman in it.



You well rested now? Ok, let's get back to the subject.

This is great. How often does a member of congress not named Kucinich say stuff like this? Much less a Republican senator say things this brutally honest? I realize that Jim Bunning is senile and by 2012 will be giving speeches like this to traffic cones. That doesn't change the fact that he was the one with the balls enough to say these things.

I mean, the only good thing he has done in his political career may be this and he makes a valid point. I was surprised, as should you be that he didn't mind banking regulations, which generally drive conservatives nuts.

Let's face it. The fact that Greenspan has since renounced his ideology after the collapse still doesn't get any media attention and isn't even mentioned in this letter is pretty sad.

ALAN GREENSPAN: I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

CHAIRMAN WAXMAN: In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.

ALAN GREENSPAN: Absolutely, precisely. You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.

Maybe the real problem with Bernanke is that nobody wants to argue about money with a Jew. So they just let him do whatever he wants. Still, Jim Burning did a good thing in this little Hallmark moment.

What's So Wrong With California? I'll Tell You!

What's So Wrong With California? Justice Sucks Part II

It's a simple enough question, what's wrong with California lately. It seems that this cool state has totally become uncool quickly. A lot of shit has and is going down and well, I think you need to be brought up to speed on exactly what is messing up this once great place turning it from a the west where everyone belonged to somewhere that is nice to visit, but they wouldn't want to live here.

We can't go to far without addressing the flamboyant 900 pound gorilla dressed in drag in the room. Gay marriage. Yesterday the supreme court, like I stated the other day, came out and stated that Prop 8 will be upheld. Which brought out all the wackos out of the woodwork.

Jorge Riley, 31, of Sacramento had to get up earlier to make the drive to San Francisco to hoist his sign reading, " 'Gay' = Pervert."

"I don't know how many times it's going to take for the judges to listen to the will of the people," Riley said.

Jorge Riley sounds like a huge faggot. What Jackass Riley and other Pro-Prop 8 douche bags want to preserve is the word "Marriage" and keep it as a protected term.



Except the problems come from the fact that civil unions don't grant the same rights. Apparently, there are well over a thousand rights that heterosexual couples get that homosexual couples don't, such as adoption, joint parental rights, next-of-kin status at hospitals, joint filing of taxes, leave to care for your sick partner, certain types of life insurance, many of the tax credits associated with families, and a bunch of other things.

If you feel that there's no difference between being married in the eyes of the law and just having your common law This (21 page PDF)should be required reading for anyone who believes that it is possible to give someone all the rights and privileges of marriage without calling it marriage. Most of the states that made the leap to marriage equality did so because it was impossible to pull off even after years of trying. Federal recognition would make civil unions less shitty but they will never be equal to marriage.



Mormons first lied about how much they donated to the support of the prop 8 and then yesterday they released this smug comment.

Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court is welcome. The issue the court decided was whether California citizens validly exercised their right to amend their own constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The court has overwhelmingly affirmed their action.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognizes the deeply held feelings on both sides, but strongly affirms its belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The bedrock institution of marriage between a man and a woman has profound implications for our society. These implications range from what our children are taught in schools to individual and collective freedom of religious expression and practice.

Accordingly, the Church stands firmly for what it believes is right for the health and well-being of society as a whole. In doing so, it once again affirms that all of us are children of God, and all deserve to be treated with respect. The Church believes that serious discussion of these issues is not helped when extreme elements on both sides of the debate demonize the other.

What a bunch of bastards. It's a slap to the face since Prop 8 was polling consistently for No until the Yes on 8 campaign was launched. It not only told outright lies about the issue (claiming that churches would be forces to recognize gay marriage) but it also had millions more dollars and an infinitely better outreach program. The reason it passed with that slight win was because the religious communities went full tilt in campaigning for it and what do you have now? The Supreme court stripping away the rights of people all for a majority win.



The problem here is that churches want to operate as private groups, yet want the protections and funding of public institutions. I'm sure it warrants a blog all to itself, but I think that the tax breaks and extra rights for married couples need to just get cut off completely regardless of your orientation. Tax breaks and extra rights for married couples of any orientation should seriously be gone for an equal society.

But that isn't the only thing wrong with California. Not by a long shot. Perhaps a lot of the bigger issues (not saying equality isn't a big issue, by the way) is being overshadowed by these protest. If we actually looked at all the problems that California had and protested, rioted and screamed out to the streets to take down our elected officials, then we'd actually be out just about every day of the week.



It would take a lot to really explain everything that is wrong with this state.

First off we have Prop 13 which requires 2/3 majority to raise taxes in any form, preventing property taxes on property that doesn't change ownership from rising by more than 1% per year. This means that young people buying homes get fucked hard and the rich/old get an amazing deal and don't have to support their portion of the county/city governments. So the state has to bail out local governments repeatedly. All because young people didn't turn out to vote on this shit.

Next up you have the prison system with its incredibly strong guard union and idiotically long 3 strikes sentencing means we're paying soe ridiculously obscene amounts to house a huge number of prisoners and simultaneously triple bunking them in terrible conditions.



It's simple. You take all the money and give it to the cops for "anti-gang" domestic terrorism. Which get a lot of people in jail. Oh wait, now with all those people in jail you have to spend a lot to keep them fed, with power and guarded which adds up. So then you cut money from education and health care to pay for those prisons. Oh wait, shitty school systems and no jobs causes people to commit crime and end up in jail. Now what do we do? We blame welfare and then we privatize prisons.

Then you get into the Republicans. For as much as we claim we're the beacon and progressive trend setter of the nation, we have a lot of fuckin' republicans. We gave the world Reagan and Nixon. The first was responsible for the stupid 2/3 vote shit that has fucked us up. As long as republicans don't allow the democrats to have super majority, they have equal power in crafting the budget. Which is hilarious and means we can never raise taxes. Democrats still have congress so they'll keep rolling out programs expecting the money to come from somwhere that never shows. And of course republicans get just as many new programs and spending because otherwise it wouldn't be FAIR. Apparently bipartisanship means each side gets 50% of the power despite how anyone votes.



Speaking of what Reagan gave us. He sure fucked us with the shitty proposition system which means anyone who is rich enough can pay signature gatherers to put anything on the ballet. Cost for a measure is $1 million and all you need after that is 50%+ of the popular vote to pass anything including CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS THAT CAN ONLY BE OVERTURNED BY 2/3 OF CONGRESS! So we get a bunch more spending on shit we don't need and as abonus our liberal courts get overturned by the writhing masses every time.

The short of it is that there's too many programs to pay for because it's so easy to tack on a program on the ballots and get it passed. Look at Prop 8. While I love high speed trains, who do you think is going to pay for that program? Especially when republicans don't want to raise taxes, democrats don't want to cut programs. So you're stuck with us always going into the red to pay for a lifestyle that is well beyond our means.



So when you're asked who's fault is it that California is shit, you should answer with "Your Mom!" Cause that's who votes for every proposition that sounds like it would benefit someone and honestly believes we can just print more money to pay for it.

As for Arnold. While you can't balance a budget with one-liners, he is doing the best that he can. He's trying his hardest to fix the problems which is kind of cool but his methods apparently involve the state simply not paying public employees or paying them less than minimum wage so soon in addition to not having money we won't have any competent public workers either.

The problem is that California made a shit tons of money in the 90's during the tech boom, squandered it all on tax cuts, tied their entire state's livelihood into real estate and you know how that turned out. Then on ballot initiatives, flawed state politics and had too many people living unsustainable lifestyles.



The worse part is that we can never raise enough money through taxes unless the voters say yes in 2/3rds. Which never happens. So really the fault is the budget is controlled by the voters through various propositions and over time they have guaranteed that California should spend 150% of their tax income. Oh and taxes can never increase.

Oh, and a follow up to last yesterdays blog about the day in court. I got a rather loud pounding on my door today from the DA serving me up a subpoena to be a witness. I was also told that the other douche who held the guy back would be a witness today. So yeah, I follow up his buddy as a witness. Grraaaaaand. Hey, at least it may finally get resolved, right?

Twitter Should Be Nationalized

Twitter Should Be Nationalized

I mean, seriously. It's used by every fucking congress person, senator, president.. every agency uses it. Fuck, the California DMV has its hands in Twitter. You can actually follow the DMV on twitter. Who is oddly enough following Caltrains, The Ca. Sheriffs Dept, etc. The only question is how long do you have to wait in line to read their post?

Obama should just go out and nationalize twitter. Sure, it's just cell phone text messages posted publicly on the internet. But it seems to be the latest craze in this continuing craze to become famous, even if it's just on the internet.


Could someone help these guys out with their excel graphs, they really don't get how to show data in sensible ways

Twitter and Facebook are products of the "look at me! am I famous yet?!?!" generation. I can't say it's the worst generation, but they sure don't have much going for them so far. Do we really need to know that you're just feeeling things right now. How unique you must be because you have feelings and internal dialogue. Most of the time it's completely useless and very much crossing the lines of too much information needed.

Facebook Status: Taking a shit
Facebook Message: New pictures added 04-09-09 Title "My bowel movements"

Comment: Hay GUYZ N GURLZ THOUGHT U MIgHT BE INTEReSTED IN WHAT COMES OUT OF MY BUTT. LOVE AND BLESS ~~~<3

And yet still, I suppose it is all inane shit on the internet. It's like piling a dead skunk into a garbage dump and then complaining about the stink. It's par the course of the internet to contain loads and loads of inane shit. Maybe the fact that senators and other important types can reach a global audience instantaneously far outweighs the tripe of inconsequential teens.


LOOOOOK ATTTTT MMEEEEEEEE!!!

Oh, who am I kidding, it's actually distracting them. Look at Barbara Boxer's twitter to see that she simply spends her time thanking people. A bunch of circle jerking going on there. During a Presidential speech you could find many congressmen and women twittering away. Shouldn't they be paying attention to what is going on instead of commenting on how boring something is or what someone is wearing?

This isn't just me being old. I'm not hating because it's pointless. I'm sure there's some use for it but it comes across as being used for completely pointless purposes currently. Just think of all the exciting new technologies and forms of communication I'll be faced with down the line and able to loathe and misunderstand as I make my way through my 30's, 40's and 50's, until finally I'm too old and holovision makes no fucking sense and why can't these motherfucking kids just go back to regular e-mail like normal people.

More so that I think TWITTER is such a pussy name for a program to use. I would update it a lot more if it had some manly name. Nothing more pansy like than saying you just made a tweet. Something like Dumpster. Oh man, I would so update my DUMPSTER account so much more. Yeah, that'll be a good thing. "Just killed a man cause he looked at me cross ways!"

But hey, there has to be some good out of all of it, isn't there? Sure. Here's some cool/useful twitter accounts going that can give you a chuckle or actually be informative

Follow Shaq

Common Squirrel

Some random Pokemon

The Onion

Fake but funny Obama

Jack in the Box

The Terminator

Food Network

No Reservations w/ Tony Bourdain

You can see the Earth's Vital Signs...

And with that, I'll stop this since I clearly went over the 140 character limit.