The Blame Game

It’s amazing to me that so many people can get so worked up about one mid level bureaucrat in the White House who is a repentant communist and says he accidentally signed a 9-11 truther petition thinking it was just a request for more information on what the White House knew prior to those terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, we have a Secretary Treasury whose taken gifts from banks, underpaid his taxes by more money than I personally see in years, and seems completely captured by Wall Street and unable to draft decent regulation containing their gambling addiction. Then, there is the fact that I continually write about the same people in Wall Street and the Investment Banking community cooking up death derivatives and going about their merry way, subsidized, unpunished, and totally unrepentant over causing the worst financial crisis since 1929.

I just have to scream: WTF is wrong with you people? Why are we punishing some one for his venture into social activism while completely ignoring people that are making off with our national treasure and the lifeblood of our mixed market economy? These are folks that drove your house prices down, ruined your pension plans and your 401k, and are taking bailouts by the billions. Where’s the sense of balance? How does this resemble justice?

Here’s a REALLY good example from today’s NY Times. Written by Gretchen Morgensen, it’s called “Fair Game-They Left Fannie Mae, but we got the Legal Bills.” It’s all about the government having to bail out Fannie Mae because of the extremely bad management practices, and yes, illegal accounting practices that stuck us with a huge mess and an even bigger bill. Morgensen interviews Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, who is one congress critter doing his oversight responsibility while others wallow in the political contributions from their regulatees.

With all the turmoil of the financial crisis, you may have forgotten about the book-cooking that went on at Fannie Mae. Government inquiries found that between 1998 and 2004, senior executives at Fannie manipulated its results to hit earnings targets and generate $115 million in bonus compensation. Fannie had to restate its financial results by $6.3 billion.

Almost two years later, in 2006, Fannie’s regulator concluded an investigation of the accounting with a scathing report. “The conduct of Mr. Raines, chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard, and other members of the inner circle of senior executives at Fannie Mae was inconsistent with the values of responsibility, accountability, and integrity,” it said.

That year, the government sued Mr. Raines, Mr. Howard and Leanne Spencer, Fannie’s former controller, seeking $100 million in fines and $115 million in restitution from bonuses the government contended were not earned. Without admitting wrongdoing, Mr. Raines, Mr. Howard and Ms. Spencer paid $31.4 million in 2008 to settle the litigation.

When these top executives left Fannie, the company was obligated to cover the legal costs associated with shareholder suits brought against them in the wake of the accounting scandal.

Now those costs are ours. Between Sept. 6, 2008, and July 21, we taxpayers spent $2.43 million to defend Mr. Raines, $1.35 million for Mr. Howard, and $2.52 million to defend Ms. Spencer.

“I cannot see the justification of people who led these organizations into insolvency getting a free ride,” Mr. Grayson said. “It goes right to the heart of what people find most disturbing in this situation — the absolute lack of justice.”

What’s the difference between getting justice and getting retribution? Well, in terms of missing it by light years, compare the treatment between social activist Van Jones and practitioners of accounting malpractice like Raines, Howard and Spencer (or tax dodgers who get gifts from Wall Street Bankers like our SOT). It’s the difference between a slap on the wrist and a slap across the face.

It’s just a little bit of Policy Fail Repeating

When you let lobbyists make public policy, failure is an acceptable outcome. That’s because the point of the policy isn’t the public and isn’t necessarily doing what will work. The point of the policy is to enrich and perpetuate the entrenched interests. Every other possible goal becomes expendable including those that have to do with protecting the public purse and welfare.

Imagine my lack of surprise when I saw that the creation of a “bad bank” policy is back in today’s WaPo headlines. Go take a look at “U.S. Considers Remaking Mortgage Giants:’Bad Bank’ Would Wipe the Slate Clean for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac by Taking Their Toxic Loans” and weep. This administration will reward bad players as long as there is a political reason for them to exist. So, instead of real reform of Fannie and Freddie, they’re proposing a solution that sweeps past mistakes under the rug and allows these failed institutions to operate in the same irresponsible way that brought them their current fate. There is no such thing as the discipline of the market or the bankruptcy court when you’re big enough to hire K Street impresarios to keep your show running and the federal government enables you.

The Obama administration is considering an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would strip the mortgage finance giants of hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled loans and create a new structure to support the home-loan market, government officials said.

The bad debts the firms own would be placed in new government-backed financial institutions — so-called bad banks — that would take responsibility for collecting as much of the outstanding balance as possible. What would be left would be two healthy financial companies with a clean slate.

The moves would represent one of the most dramatic reorderings of the badly shattered housing finance system since District-based Fannie Mae was created by Congress to support mortgage lending during the Great Depression. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, based in McLean, have government charters to buy home loans from banks, which they then repackage and sell to investors. The banks can then use the proceeds to offer more loans to home buyers.

The leviathans became emblematic of the financial crisis when they were effectively nationalized in September amid a market meltdown that revealed much of their holdings to be troubled. The government has since pledged more than $1.5 trillion, including $85 billion in direct aid, to keep the mortgage market working through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The proposal, which is preliminary and one of several under discussion, is scheduled to be taken up by the White House’s National Economic Council on Thursday.

What about the Japanese lost decade and all the papers and studies written about the bad bank policy did these folks miss? Well, of course, you do know that the head of the “White House’s National Economic Council ” is La-La Summers, right? Mister, I got mine from Wall Street? Let’s look at the other players who buy into this. I’ll just highlight them so you can see that it’s basically the same players that had some kind of supporting role in the original failure. Why does Washington D.C. continue to reward the very same people and players? It has too be some thing pathological.

News for those not Interested in Death and Sex Watches

or When Will Journalists actually Report Real News?

So for those that don’t want to see the People Magazine section on the front page of every news paper and as the lead in to every TV news item, let’s look at some real news.

Climate Change : The American Clean Energy and Security Act:

Should we be questioning the Climate Change Numbers? Surprise from the WSJ? Not. It’s still an interesting read in light of the Waxman-Markey attempt to push through cap and trade.

The Climate Change Climate Change: The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

Greenpeace opposes Waxman-Markey

“Since the Waxman-Markey bill left the Energy and Commerce committee, yet another fleet of industry lobbysists has weakened the bill even more, and further widened the gap between what Waxman-Markey does and what science demands. As a result, Greenpeace opposes this bill in its current form. We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it. Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation, we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest, and shows the significant limitations of what this Congress believes is possible. “As it comes to the floor, the Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions. To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak.

I would hate to see this piece of legislation move through the House of Representatives with out media coverage and robust discussion. You’ll remember that I explained cap and trade earlier in case you want a review.

Obama and the Enhanced Status Quo

We were promised changed. What we are getting is perpetuation of the status quo. Let’s try this headline at the Guardian on for size “Goldman Sachs to make record bonus payout”.

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company’s prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses if, as predicted, it completed its most profitable year ever. Figures next month detailing the firm’s second-quarter earnings are expected to show a further jump in profits. Warren Buffett, who bought $5bn of the company’s shares in January, has already made a $1bn gain on his investment.

The bold part says it all. There continues to be a systematic elimination of competition from merger mania in the financial sector which has created two classes of too-big-to-fail institutions. We now have those that function completely with government funding and those that function by funding candidates for government. Goldman Sachs is benefiting immensely from both.

One Person One Vote Died a Year Ago today

In an important landmark case Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), the Supreme Court established one of the most significant voting rights rulings impacting our Republic since the enfranchisement of woman and the election of U.S. senators by popular vote. Both of these occurred earlier in the century.  Basically, Reynolds v Sims established the means to ensure  that the United States was a truly representative form of government.  It provided a legal way to enforce the idea that legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly as representatives of the people. Because of this, all elected officials should be elected in a free and unimpaired fashion. One Person one vote is a bedrock of our political system.

That was until one year ago today, when the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee declared the voters of Michigan and Florida to be one half of a person. This decision, done in a closed room behind close doors, was done in the name of party unity and led to the famous “party unity my ass” uttered at The Confluence that led to the PUMA movement. It led to spontaneous outrage across the country.

What began as a Democratic Party initiative to change the caucus and primary schedule to appease some special interest groups, wound up as a means to disenfranchise two states as Florida and Michigan were selectively punished for their decisions to change the dates of their primary caucuses. While other states similarly changed their dates, these two states were singled out for retribution. This was a stinging indictment of our entire political system for those of us that supported Hillary Clinton and were still stinging from the earlier disenfranchisement of Florida under the Bush v. Gore ruling that essentially gave us a President who mostly likely did not win the election. Every one knows how well that worked out.

Here are some reports from the day. This one is from MSNBC’s Chuck Todd called Nothing is fair about Florida and Michigan. Here was his suggestion for the situation at the time.

Why not consider punishing the party leaders and not the voters? Couldn’t the committee take away the states’ superdelegate votes? After all, it wasn’t the voters who demanded the states break party rules, but rather the leaders of the respective state parties.

Of course, this is too logical. The likely ruling on Saturday will probably highlight the party’s inability or reluctance to punish the superdelegates. There is a challenge from a Florida superdelegate claiming the party violated its own charter by stripping the state of both pledged delegates and superdelegates. Most members of the Rules Committee I’ve talked to indicate that he may be right. Keep in mind members of the Rules committee are all superdelegates themselves.

The Golden Rule could apply: Do unto other superdelegates as you would want done unto you.

The second idea the committee should be considering but isn’t reflects everything we’ve learned throughout this long primary season.

As many have noted, census data for each state have been remarkably determinative of results since Super Tuesday. In fact, the support groups for the two candidates have been incredibly stable. Why not apply what we’ve learned about the support groups of both candidates and split the delegates accordingly?

Of course, we found out soon enough that the party leaders did have their agenda and it was to ensure that we had their Candidate. We’re still unraveling the reasons for this travesty. We endured sexism, misogyny, and race-baiting through out the entire election cycle. We will be paying for this most undemocratic of decisions for years to come. We could have had a President that supports Abortion Rights and Universal Health Care. We could have had a President that refused to vote for FISA. We could have had a President that wasn’t controlled by lobbyists, Wall Street Fat Cats, and was a policy wonk extraordinaire. Instead, as Ted Ralls of Common Dreams, puts it, we got this:

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory …From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied …Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now–before he drags us further into the abyss.

I don’t know about you, but I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS DAY OF INFAMY.

PUMA forward

You think it’s too late to plan some kind of commemorative/commiserative event for the 5.31 rules committee meeting that led to the birth of PUMA? Maybe make it net/blog based? Any interest?

Digg!!!! Share!!!!

The Blogzkrieg Bots

Axelrove must’ve sensed a disturbance in the force because I believe the Blogzkrieg Bots are back at work in sites where the Obamessiah’s economic message has been questioned.  Most of the frontpagers and bloggers that I know were chased off various blogs when they harshed the Obama mellow or dared suggest that Hillary’s campaign was better, not racist, and worthy of support. Recently, a set of anonymous email exchanges were released at Liberal Rapture.  One writer of the exchange has self identifed themself (James Kunstler) and verified the authenticity of the exchange.  Those of us who have dealt with the spam filter and comments in moderation can give our take on the Blogzkrieg under taken by the Obama campaign which apparently still is in full force to stop any potential anti-obama Buzzkill.  Here’s the relevant exchange from a former Obama supporter that I’d like to reference.

I can also say how shocked I became at the really dishonest tactics he used, from race-baiting to caucus fraud to paying cyber stalkers to terrorize pro-Clinton writers and website owners.

The cyberstalking continues.  Yesterday, I blogged about CNBC’s Kramer.  I have to say that I’m a value investor, unlike Kramer, and do not follow any of his individual stock picks.  I do think the man has an excellent grasp of and background in market psychology.  I started listening to him more when he came out on Ellen as a  Hillary supporter.  He made it clear he thought she’d be best for the economy. So yesterday, I wrote on his rant on cnbc.  This wasn’t his first rant but one the most eye-popping to date.  All last week he was talking about Obama-proofing your investment portfolio.

Astronauts for a Flat Earth vs. The Barbarian Hordes

There are many things I’ve read in history that show how an unruly mob can change the direction of things.  The blogosphere is watching an unruly mob in action right now as Wonkette is trying to stack the WebBlog awards against all things PUMA.  I’ve started reading some of the threads coming in to The Confluence (example: here) and there’s a sense among some of the other folks in the other categories that they are the innocent victims of an unruly mob.  I’m sure that’s how the other Hun tribes felt when Attila assimilated them.

All you have to do is take a look back at the entire dark ages and the crusades and get a pretty good answer as to how this type of thing gets its start .  It basically starts with some ‘character’ who may or may not exist who gets an incredible amount of buzz placed around them that is clearly not based in history or fact or anything.   Thus, a mythical hero is born.  Some one to rape and pillage for … some one to use to justify an attack on other tribes, other religions, any other. It just builds and builds until you get a Spanish Inquisition or something similar.  

The King Arthur legends come to mind also.  A tribal king who may or may not exist turns into the great fictional hero just because tons of unruly mobs need some kind of  legend to mob around.  All kinds of morality plays develop to show that our legendary hero is just that mythical, legendary, and grounded more in a game of rumor than history and reality.  I know I just gave some examples of things way back when.  Why would I think that in an age of  ‘information’ we could possibly see the same kind of history repeat itself?

While many of the blogs are now upset that they’ve been caught up in the raping and pillaging which was no fault of their own, they too, now have been caught up in the creating the legends that turn the truth into a nice mythical legend that gets WAY out of hand.  In my first case, about 2000 years way out of hand.

MYTH NUMBER ONE:  It’s all about Hillary losing.  PUMAs just won’t get over it.  They are like Astronauts for a Flat Earth or WW2 Japanese Soldiers trapped up in the Hills refusing to believe the Emperor gave in.

While Hillary Clinton eventually wound up to be the candidate of choice for me, one year ago I had no preference.  What really drove me to the PUMA realization wasn’t Hillary loosing, it was HOW she lost or rather HOW the DNC went around constructing an OBAMA win.   If anything PUMA is about holding the DNC accountable for cheating that occurred in caucuses, how the distributions of delegates was determined, how lopsided the punishment of Florida and Michigan was compared to other states that moved their primaries up also against DNC ‘rules’, and the railroading of the democratic convention process.  If you think all of this is just one big conspiracy theory on the part of PUMAS either do some research or take up residency in the bat cave with Cheney.  I’m not certain he’s turning that over to Biden even though I know the Obama administration will want to lock him up there eventually. So that’s it, it’s not about HILLARY losing it’s about HOW Obama  “won”.  Yes, the “win”  (sic) is in quotes.

MYTH NUMBER TWO:  All Pumas are conspiracy theorists.  In every population there’s the average and there’s the extremes and outliers.  Yes, you can find the folks that went searching for that Holy Whitey Tape and the Kenyan Birth certificate, but the majority of the PUMA sites (especially The Confluence)  never jumped on to the wingnut stories. Again, I’ll go back to the basic reason PUMAs exist and that is how positively fucked up the primaries and caucuses were and how they were completely mishandled by the DNC and the DRC.

MYTH NUMBER THREE:  ALL Pumas are Racists and just can’t deal with the idea of a Black Man being president.  I’ll again point to the Bell Curve.  Of course there are Pumas that are racists but the majority are not.  The problems that PUMAs have with Obama has to do with his extremely small level of accomplishments and his overblown and now mythic intelligence and academic records (which by the way, the public has never seen).  It’s been debunked that he was the first black on the Harvard Review by Harvard themselves although mysteriously in Obama’s senate site there was a resume that said that he was.  It was  sitting there for the two years he pretended to be the Senator from Illinois.  The man has never been in an election where extremely weird things haven’t happened–like getting all your opponents thrown out on technicalities, having sealed divorce records of your opponents magically show up in public, or having the delegates to your caucuses in places like Texas leave the process with tons of forms in their arms.  I’ve looked and as far as I can tell, the man has never even had a full time job.  There are PUMAs of color. It’s not his skin color.  It’s his Chicago political career and his appalling lack of experience. For me it was, oh no, not another person who got into Harvard as a legacy.  I’m frankly tired of legacy Ivy Leaguers.  The hardest thing about the Ivy Leagues is getting in there if you’re anything but a legacy.  Getting out is nearly guaranteed.  Think DUBYA.

MYTH NUMBER FOUR:  PUMAS are bitter old white women who find sexism everywhere.  Considering the number of times during 2008 racism was found EVERYWHERE,  I just gasp at the total lack of awareness on the part of people on the obvious sexism.   If some one stood up  in a room and asked Obama if he’d shine their shoes, that would be such obvious racism that I doubt the KKK would rise to debate.  If every where he went there were folks wearing t-shirts with the N word emblazoned across them, there would have been riots.  If effigies of Obama hanging from trees on Halloween or  Little Black Sambo dolls were being manufactured with his face on them, the outrage from every where would have been swift and justified.  These things happened to the two women candidates in the white house races using language from sexist instead of racist tomes.  The outrage was nonexistent.

Side myth to this:  ALL Pumas are uneducated.  Just having spent time on any of the PUMA sites, I have to say this is really not true.  If anything, especially at the Confluence, there are a large number of PUMAS with advanced educations.  Not that this really matters because having worked for universities for years I can attest that there are some miserably stupid people out there with Phds.  I really get tired of the elitist meme.  Believe me, some times I really wish I was kat the plumber instead of kat the economist.  Last week would have been a perfect time for that in my house.

MYTH NUMBER FIVE:  PUMAS voted enthusiastically for Mcain and Palin, were basically Republicans all along and were just spoilers.   All you have to do is go back to The Confluence’s voting strategy series to see that there were very few PUMAS that fell into the enthusiastic Republican voters categories.  Yes, there were folks who eventually decided they felt more at home as Republicans.  Many decided to re-register independent.  But most of the PUMAS I’ve met are still your basic democrat with no party home any more because they feel the party has abandoned its root principles including, most importantly the ONE man ONE vote principle.  Most PUMAs I know disagreed with everything Sarah except for the fact that as a sitting governor, she didn’t deserve to be treated like a bimbo.

Now you can continue to rewrite history out there in the blogosphere, much like Constantine the high priest of the Sun God decided to invent Christianity, create the Jesus myth, and control slaves, women, pagans, children, barbarians and other Roman property or you can sit back and use the Internet to find the facts.  This is after all, the information age or have  you decided to ignore science and just restart the Spanish inquisition?

2. The first Obama appointee to resign after a scandal in 2009 will be:

BILL RICHARDSON

We already have the answer for one of the question’s posed by the Dakini’s office pool.  It’s hard to know what to say other than welcome to Scamalot folks where pay-to-play is the  everyday way!  It certainly says a lot that this is the first answer so early and so BEFORE the swear in. 

This just in from the New York Times.

 Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico confirmed in a statement released Sunday afternoon that he has withdrawn his name as the commerce secretary nominee, citing a pending “investigation of a company that has done business with New Mexico state government …

On Dec. 19, The Times published an article stating that a federal grand jury in New Mexico was looking into accusations that Governor Richardson’s administration gave lucrative contracts to a California financier because he contributed heavily to the governor’s political action committees.

The article, citing a person familiar with the grand jury proceedings, stated that since August, federal investigators have been examining how CDR Financial Products Inc., of Beverly Hills, Calif., got two consulting contracts in 2004 worth about $1.4 million to advise the state on a large bond issue for building infrastructure, one of Mr. Richardson’s initiatives.

The investigation was first reported in The Albuquerque Journal.”

The Times article also references the Richardson press release as well as Obama’s deep regrets.  Of course, this is not the Bill Richardson Obama knew.

The AP (as paraphrased in the NY Tiimes article) has also announced some of the details of the latest pay-to-play Obama buddy caught in an indictment.

According to The Associated Press, a federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Mr. Richardson’s political activities won a lucrative New Mexico state contract:

A person familiar with the proceedings has told The Associated Press that the grand jury is looking into possible “pay-to-play” dealings between CDR Financial Products and someone in a position to push the contract through with the state of New Mexico.

The A.P. also reports that Obama’s transition office said Sunday that the president-elect had accepted Mr. Richardson’s withdrawal.

Bye Bye Judas!!!   This is coincidently the second of Mr. Obama’s primary supporters/turncoats/opponents to have been caught up in scandal.  Did Mr. Axelrove perhaps find out things that both Judas and John Boy didn’t want out in the open during the primary season.  Inquiring minds want to know.

Some Random Thoughts about the Sky Falling …

It’s one of those rare things in New Orleans. It snowed like crazy this morning and I essentially had a blizzard vacation today. My campus had about 7 inches of snow and the power went off  in Hammond. Down here in NOLA, there were these big huge wet flakes that dropped for several hours.  They iced up my hibiscus, my bananas, my avocado tree, and the roads. My 12 year old lab-mix Karma was a pain to try to walk today because she’s not used to snow. Actually, she wouldn’t walk at all. She just stood there wondering why the sky was falling.

Somethings are rare.  For one, the latest government corruption case has nothing to do with any one representing me. I currently have a state senator, several school board members, and a city council man doing time on bribery and corruption cases.  There’s a Louisiana Governor in Jail right now for the same thing.  My current congressman is just waiting for his trial. Frankly, I’d like to think this current IL thing will catch a few big fish but doubt it.  Most every in Illinois knew Governor 1 was being taped, watched, and followed.  Only Candidate 5 appeared dumb or greedy enough to potentially be caught by the Fed Web.   The exciting information will come if any one from this (including Rezko) turn snitch. If you think these guys may just sing like little girls to stay out of prison, just remember that Jimmy Hoffa’s body is still missing.  This guy may have been a close associate of Obama, Rezko, Axelrod, and Emmanuel (and basically all part of the Daley Machine) but I’m thinking  the press will be shy to admit they were wrong and could reconsider their fluffing for Obama during the entire election and now.  Also, I can’t imagine any savvy pol that was not careful about what they said to Governor Number 1 when they spoke to him because it was well known the FBI were after evidence for years. If Blagovich just refuses to go any where and continues to stay on the front page, will it help or hurt Obama?  Does it detract from all the problems confronting him or add to them? 

 In the Disrict, Hell freezes over all the time. We’re watching a Republican (supposedly Reagonomics-loving) administration attempt to nationalize its second industry this year.  Banks of course were first because of the general panic..  Now it appears we’re going to nationalize our barely functional auto industry.  My prostitute-loving radical right and moralist Senator David Vitter is threatening a filibuster once the rescue plan hits the senate floor.  Isn’t it interesting how the most self-righteous Republicans are always the ones that have the weirdest sexual proclivities?  Just google Vitter and diapers and you’ll get the idea.

Meanwhile, after MONTHS of being told we were guilty of using racist, right wing Republican memes if we dared use the one’smiddle name, the ONE has decided that he is going to take the oath of office and ensure all the inaugural fal-de-ral will include the Hussein word.  Does this strike any one but me as the least bit hypocritical?  Look for Left Blogosphere to completely ignore this one so that their computers and synapses don’t blow a fuse.  Frankly, I was thrown off blogs for using the one’s name while including Hussein.  It was considered racist and it implied I was pushing the right wing meme that he was a Muslim.  Has the rule changed now the Obama has embraced it again?  Any one?

Some time it’s the sky falling. Some time’s, it’s just that rare thing like a snowfall in New Orleans. Still other times, hell is freezing over and you want to be there with a camera.

UPDATED: Here’s a shot of the Music Building at South Eastern Louisiana University in Hammond.  Seven Friggin inches!!  Unbelievable!  I never would believe I’d have this kind of a snow day down here in the tropics!  The other pic at the top is of my street from my front porch.  Karma retreated to under the bed at this point.