Day: September 21, 2008

The Real Results Of The Bailout

The immediate line-up of both parties and the media behind the bailout plan for Wall Street stands in the starkest contrast to their indifference and inaction in regard to the plight of millions of American working people, who face a rising tide of home foreclosures, layoffs and sinking living standards. When it comes to the social needs of the people, the universal cry from corporate America and the two parties is, “There is no money,” but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at a moment’s notice.

There was no suggestion in the statements of Bush and Paulson of any relief for the working class—nothing to stop home foreclosures or help those who have already lost their homes. Rather, hundreds of billions—and more likely trillions—of dollars in public funds will be used to prop up the banks.

The resulting bankrupting of the government will be used to justify a brutal assault on what remains of social programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, and demand even greater financial “sacrifices” from workers, whether the next administration is headed by Obama or McCain. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate that behind the façade of American democracy there stands a dictatorship of big business.

Everybody is applauding the swift action on this crisis but there will be a price to pay for the putting of corporations before the people.

An Alternate Government For Afghanistan

Just one year ago, the Taliban insurgency was a furtive, loosely organized guerrilla force that carried out hit-and-run ambushes, burned empty schools, left warning letters at night and concentrated attacks in the southern rural regions of its ethnic and religious heartland.

Today it is a larger, better armed and more confident militia, capable of mounting sustained military assaults. Its forces operate in virtually every province and control many districts in areas ringing the capital. Its fighters have bombed embassies and prisons, nearly assassinated the president, executed foreign aid workers and hanged or beheaded dozens of Afghans.

The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage.

Over the past two years, the Taliban’s revival has been fueled by fast-growing popular dissatisfaction with Karzai’s government, which has failed to bring services and security to much of the country. Deepening public resentment against civilian deaths caused by U.S. and NATO alliance airstrikes is another factor.

One aspect of the game the Taliban now clearly dominates is the propaganda war over battlefield victories, defeats and casualties. Once composed of largely illiterate fighters and clerics who shunned modern technology as un-Islamic, the Taliban now uses a variety of high-tech means to communicate its version of events, often far faster than its adversaries.

This issue has crystallized with the controversy over civilian casualties inflicted by U.S. and NATO airstrikes, especially a village bombing last month near Herat in western Afghanistan. Although civilian deaths have been frequent and real, officials say the Taliban quickly broadcasts exaggerated tolls, stoking public anger, while foreign military officers may take days to respond.

Subprime: And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

If you have been hiding under a rock then you may not be aware of the problems facing the financial markets. The foreclosures, the sub-prime collapse or any of the accompanying tragedies. Goldman-Sachs, Countrywide, Merril Lynch, Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros all are indicators of the collapse of the financial markets.

One subprime industry analyst wrote in 1997: “Due to wide economic swings, massive layoffs and regional recession, as well as increases in the divorce rate and the high number of business failures over the past 10 years, the subprime market has mushroomed.” Furthermore, the analyst continues, approximately 45 percent of second-lien subprime mortgages were used for debt consolidation.

As cited above, and surely many more that the interested reader will find on the Internet, provide empirical evidence that most of the criticisms of subprime mortgages made by politicians and the press today, looking for at least partial answers to the current financial catastrophe, have been around since the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, the origins of subprime mortgages are linked to a rise in poverty, unemployment and a decrease in the quality of life for working-class families. Something that NO politician wants to admit. These reports reveal how subprime mortgages were designed to exploit the most vulnerable sectors of the population.

To summarize: The subprime mortgage originated as an instrument devised by finance capital to replace bad debt with new loans to people who had lost their jobs or had suffered wage cuts and needed cash to continue feeding their families. In exchange, bankers got a security—i.e., guarantee—on the borrowers’ homes. In other words, banks “traded” risky, unsecured debt for a new loan backed by the guarantee that if a borrower failed to pay the mortgage, the bank had the legal means to repossess the family home. Once again, I will say what no one wants to say, it was about the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the middle class. It is all about—GREED!

Now is there a solution? Yes there is, bu there is no silver bullet that can fix it in a short term program. This will take time and effort to repair the damage that greed has done to the economy. The really bad news is that it is gonna hurt.

Put The Limber In Your Winkie

Sex triggered a life-threatening stroke in a healthy 35-year-old Illinois woman, her doctors report.

Sex- and orgasm-triggered strokes in relatively young women and men are rare, but not unheard of. They require a combination of factors and events not unusual in themselves, but which are highly unlikely to occur at the same time.

The 35-year-old woman’s symptoms were typical of this unusual kind of “cryptogenic” stroke, says Jose Biller, MD, professor and chair of the neurology department at Loyola University, Chicago.

“This young woman … while having intercourse had numbness on the left side of her face, slurred speech, and weakness in her left arm,” Biller tells WebMD. “When she was transferred to our care six hours after onset, she was completely unable to move her left arm, her face was paralyzed, her speech was garbled, and she was in a state of panic.”

Why did sex trigger this young woman’s stroke? She shared one thing in common with six other young people who suffered sex-related strokes: a small opening in the wall between the two upper chambers of her heart.

One in four adults has this minor heart defect, called a patent foramen ovale or PFO. A PFO allows some blood to flow from the right side of the heart to the left side. This blood bypasses the lung and goes straight to the brain.

Blood flow through a PFO increases when a person strains, such as bearing down during a bowel movement or breathing out with the mouth closed and nostrils pinched shut.

Just something to think about on this Sunday.

700 Billion And Counting

The Bush administration has asked Congress for the power to buy $700 billion in toxic assets clogging the U.S. financial system and threatening the economy as negotiations began on the largest bailout since the Great Depression.

The rescue plan would give Washington broad authority to purchase bad mortgage-related assets from U.S. financial institutions for the next two years. It does not specify which institutions qualify or what, if anything, the government would get in return for the unprecedented infusion.

In a fact sheet released Saturday night, Treasury said it was seeking latitude for the secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to expand the bailout to non-U.S. companies if they determined it was necessary to stabilize markets, but the original request sent to Congress is limited to firms headquartered in the United States, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Democrats are pressing to require that the plan help more strapped borrowers stay in their homes and to condition the bailout on new limits on executive compensation.

I am sorry guys but this country only has so much money and that is quickly being used up by all these bailouts.  Somewhere if we only want this spiraling situation to slow or stop; we must let someone fail, I mean one of the biggies not some small struggling mom and pop operation.

Another Religious Compound Raided

Federal authorities conducting a child-porn investigation raided the headquarters Saturday of a ministry run by a convicted tax evader once labeled by prosecutors as a polygamist who preys on girls and women.

Social workers interviewed children who live at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries complex, which critics call a cult, to find out whether they were abused. The two-year investigation involves a law that prohibits the transportation of children across state lines for criminal activity, said Tom Browne, who runs the FBI office in Little Rock.

The raid, conducted by state and federal authorities, started an hour before sunset at the complex in tiny Fouke, in southwestern Arkansas. Armed guards regularly patrol the headquarters, but there was no resistance as agents moved in, state police said.

About 100 state and federal law officers raided the 15-acre compound housing the ministry, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Catholicism and the government. The law center monitors hate groups.

In a phone call to The Associated Press from a friend’s house in the Los Angeles area, Tony Alamo — who was once accused of child abuse and has been convicted of tax evasion — denied any involvement in Pornpornography.

“We don’t go into pornography; nobody in the church is into that,” said Alamo, who turns 74 this month. “Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don’t like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity.”