Posts under ‘greed’

Fresh off their victory to funnel unnamed corporate money into misleading, dishonest, deceitful and vile language advertising disguised as political campaign advertising, Citizens United announced the creation of their new spot. Tentatively titled, “Obama wants to fuck your mother“, the spot will feature images of the President of the United States in a gang bang of white women with their horrified children and husbands being forced to watch.

What is money?

Money is imaginary to begin with. It consists of something (credit, paper, gold, a number in a computer, etc.) chosen by a society to represent measured units of value for people to exchange goods & services. It is not only a straight replacement for goods & services, but money itself is a commodity. The particulars of how money works makes for good reading.

Money is in one sense, the confidence we have in this society of ours; in our ability to work together, exist together, live together for the betterment of us as individuals and as a group.

Money is trust. Money is a membership in society. Money is a varying measurement on how we feel we are doing as a group. How this plan of working together is going. Money is a report card and an assertion that we all believe in ourselves as a society.

Money makes it possible for people outside our daily transactions, consumptions and interactions with each other – to contribute to each of those parts of our lives. Money makes it possible for someone to make a shoe in one town for us to buy in another without ever seeing or even knowing that shoemaker or town. It’s not just shoes – it’s everything.

BURBANK: Information is beginning to emerge from the inside the The Walt Disney Company, that the entertainment and media giant is preparing to announce a national health plan for everyone in the U.S.

CEO Robert “Bob” Iger has scheduled a press conference for this Thursday,two hours before President Barack Obama‘s address to the joint chambers of Congress. With rumors swirling of The White House taking up a draft of its own health care plan, this move is clearly designed to beat the President to the punch and gain the initiative.

VAHALLA, NY. Recently, there has been a stream of people quoting Ayn Rand and her novel, Atlas Shrugged as justification for the economic policies that created the current financial crisis. Ms. Rand’s polemic novel which assaulted altruism and government has been quoted and promoted by CEO’s, government officials, lobbyists as well as print, radio and television – and apparently, they’ve all got it wrong.

I am an alcoholic.

I got sober almost 20 years ago. Before that, I abused alcohol, drugs, sex and money in order to ignore the damage I had done to my life, deluding myself . I crawled through life in a cycle of being drunk or not yet drunk, making more mistakes that would need more drinking to erase. I am nobody special. Absolutely nobody. Everyone on this planet has problems and I have mine. I chose to deal with them by ‘feeling better’, one glass at a time. All day. Each and every day…week…month and year – until I turned to someone for help.

She helped me by asking me two questions.

N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
- BOILEAU

Whatever these crazy appointed sages of Greece,
In this world there is no perfect wisdom;
All men are mad, and despite all their care
Differ among themselves as more or less.

So reads the somewhat cynical inscription to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written in 1841 by Charles Mackay. It was a book about bubbles. The first two chapters are about financial bubbles.

There have been a lot of conversations regarding the investigation and prosecution of Bush / Cheney & Co. for their criminal destruction of lives and property in pursuit of wealth for themselves and their friends.  There are also a lot of questions regarding the TARP money like where is it going and why?  Both lines of questioning are vital to our country.  Guaranteed that I myself will be sounding the charge on both of these as well as every progressive blog in the country.

Taking a cue from so many conversations going on across the blogosphere, I am discussing the prosecution of George Bush. 

The world knows what he did.  The American people know what he did.  We have a choice.  We can demand justice.  We can defend ourselves from enemies to The Constitution, both foreign and domestic.  It will not happen if we do not.  The overwhelming call to action at change.gov was for the prosecution of criminal behaviour from the White House. 

George Bush is what we got for pardoning Nixon.  Nixon was a megalomaniac whose paranoia was his undoing.  Bush is much worse: a mouthpiece for the corruption of power amassed in Oil & Defense industry executive suites.  But, the motivations for breaking the law of the land from the highest office are not important.  What is of utmost importance is this: precedent.  In this specific instance, the precedent of breaking the law of the land from the highest office.  It is the path to dictatorship. 

(Image courtesy of Wikileaks)

This bulletin just came in from Wikileaks:

Wikileaks has released over 600 United Nations investigative reports, over 70 of which are classified. The reports expose sensitive matters from allegations of hundreds of European peace-keepers sexually abusing–and impregnating–refugee girls, to generals in Peru using Swiss bank accounts to engage in multi-million dollar procurement fraud.

A number of the reports have not only been marked "Strictly Confidential" but as an additional measure have had selected regions redacted before before internal distribution. Often these redacted regions can be "unredacted" by simply "cut and pasting" the blanked area. On the description page for each report, where possible, Wikileaks has provided a simple text version of the report that includes the redacted portions.

Since the number of reports is subtantial we ask that journalists, bloggers and other investigators take responsibility for those those reports closest to the month and day of their date of birth before considering the material at large.

They are looking for help from journalists and the blogosphere to help pore through this info, to further expose what the UN already knows and is hiding concerning the crimes of its own forces.  Here is a partial list of the items investigated:

• rape
• forced impregnation
• embezzlement
• extortion
• illegal weapons and ammunition dealing
• racketeering
• kickbacks
• fraud
• theft of food rations

Lest we forget that Bush & Cheney are not the only violators of human rights and public trust; there is a whole world of liars, thieves, rapists and murderers operating from the organizations that we ask to protect us from these crimes.  Someone stuck their neck out and did the right thing by exposing this information.  Let’s not waste that good effort.

If you have time and the will to help, you can start here.  The list of information is overwhelming.  Please help.

- gadfly

I read Bob Burnett’s excellent and timely post yesterday over at HuffPo, entitled "Bush’s Day of Reckoning."  I recommend reading it in its entirety.  The topic is whether or not to proceed with criminal investigations of Bush, Cheney & their ilk over torture and any other violations of the Constitution.  Bob does point out that incompetence is not a crime and focuses on things like ordering torture or illegal spying on Americans, which are crimes.