Anyone Watching?

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This is amazing television. Truly amazing.

Though I have it on the SPAN because I get sick of the MSNBC bastards thinking that their comments on what is going on are more important than what is actually being said.

Dammit. Work phone rang when Slaughter was speaking. Louise Slaughter is my hero...I will have to watch her later.

Use the thread to tell me what you think. Are you pissy? Do you think that Obama is losing this debate?

Or, are you keeping an open mind and listening to what the experts are saying?

Let me know.

I believe that real health care reform will be passed. I believe that it will happen because the Dems know that they will lose their shit in November if it doesn't. I just hope that they heed the words of Dr. Dean and make it go into effect now!

President Obama is looking like the adult and the Pukes, of course, look like the tools that they are. Heh.

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YES, It Has Come to This

Will Marry for Health Insurance dot com.

Not a joke. The real deal. Desperate woman with a story that I can very much relate to.

Fuck.

H/T to Thom Hartmann for interviewing her today.

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Nationalize the Banks Already!

We really need to Nationalize the bad banks before we dump anymore money into them. This site explains why. And it makes economics easy to understand.

Now why is nationalization a better use of money? Well first, we are much too far down the road to discuss hands off policies (even though I advocated for this long ago because I knew things like TARP and Ben Bernanke’s nutty work were simply money being flushed down the toilet). First, with nationalization we own the banks flat out. We can then do the following:

-Shareholders get eliminated

-Bondholders get eliminated

-Management gets the boot

-Then and only then, do we separate out the good and bad assets. The good assets we try to sell them off to the market. The bad assets, we assess and slowly process a pricing model and get rid of them. Yet we know since the ownership is now ours that we’ll try to mitigate the loss for taxpayers. Right now with TARP and possibly the bad bank, banks are trying to off load as much of the crap at the highest cost to taxpayers while keeping the caviar assets all for themselves.

-This will get credit moving again because now instead of absurd capital injections, banks will now need to lend money because guess what, we freakin own them and we can decide whether we loan or not!

There is nothing more preposterous than a bad bank...

Amen brothers and sisters!! Can I get a big Amen?

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Irreconcilable Headlines

I find it absolutely incomprehensible that these headlines can coexist:

Flood of Foreclosures: It’s Worse than You Think

Record Number of Families Seek Refuge in Shelters (Note: Link is to the NYT section dedicated to homelessness. YES, there is an entire section.)

The picture at the top of the Truthout article has a caption which reads:

Ezekiel Pierre Sejour stands in front of an empty, foreclosed home that he and his mother Marie Nadine Pierre, were moved into by the Miami group Take Back the Land after she lost her jobs and could no longer pay her loans. Take Back the Land moves homeless families into empty foreclosed homes in Miami and provides legal protection from eviction. (Photo: Getty Images)

This is exactly what should be happening all across the country.

The article says that banks are holding inventory for a number of reasons and this inventory is not being listed on the MLS. The problem with not listing these homes is that not only does it offer us horrible and incomplete data, but it keeps the homes empty, longer. The longer that the homes remain empty, the worse shape that they are in and the more money that it costs to get them to the point where they are saleable.

The banks are holding them because flooding the market with the true numbers will lower home prices substantially, everywhere. Who among us would want to continue to pay our mortgages if the value of our homes were to suddenly drop below the amount that we owe? How many of us would just walk away? That is a problem.

Another reason that the banks are not listing the homes is because they want to sell them in bulk to investors. This will be just grand; we can return to the days of slum-lords and serfdom, where just a few wealthy people own all of the homes and the rest of us lose our power of negotiation.

This is George W. Bush's "Ownership Society." This is exactly what he had in mind.

The rich will really have all of the power, owning all of the properties; the people who have to rent from them will just have to be happy with what they get. AND, we will all be renters. Brown water coming out of kitchen sinks, holes in the walls that rodents use as entry points, bugs and other nasties…get used to it…this will be the country that they are trying to create for us. Still.

Despite the election of Barack Obama and the very loud, unified, cry of “No More” heard across this country – the moneyed interests, the banks and the investments houses still are trying to enact Dickens’s England where the cry heard is “please sir, may I have some more.”

Dammit. Enough.

I believe that the many organizations dedicated to ending homelessness are already on it, that they are already moving towards the solutions necessary.

I hope that the Congress is listening and reconciles these two headlines so that people no longer lose their homes and that the millions already sitting empty become housing for those living in cars and on the streets. A country with this much wealth has no excuse for Tent Cities or too full shelters.

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What do These Senate Republi-con Fools Have in Common?

Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hatch (R-UT) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Wicker (R-MS)

Besides being male, Christian, white (sorry Martinez, you're about as Hispanic as Alberto Gonzales), right wing tools... they all voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

A bill to amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and to modify the operation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, and for other purposes.

May your re-election loss come down to the women you refused to give equal pay too!

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Peace, Love and Understanding Part 2

Dammit. I am so blown away by the kindness of the people in this country. Last week I put up a post about the Obama organization, USA Service.org. I talked about all of the events on the website and all of the millions of people who have signed up to attend those events. I talked about the feel good, warm fuzzies that viewing all of that left me with.

There's more.

Yes, there are more warm fuzzies. Kiddo and I noticed that the event that we signed up for had more people signed up than were necessary. We signed up to help serve lunch at Tent City. Tent City is a homeless encampment in our county; there are actually many of them. It is good that they are available for the people who live on the streets to gather together and look out for each other (there is safety in numbers) but it sucks that they are needed at all. I think that they should be called "Bush-Villes" - regardless of what you call them, homeless people live there.

So, we decided that it might be good if we gathered items together to leave with them that will last a lot longer than the lunch that we have volunteered to help to serve.

We typed up the following and gave it to the people in our cul-de-sac.

*********

Thank You In Advance

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the National Day of Service we are going to tent city in xxxxx on Monday, January 19, 2009 to help to pass out food to the homeless. There are numerous volunteers for this event already so Kiddo and I thought that it might make more sense to use our time gathering up items to leave with the people at tent city; things that they will need long after the lunch is over.

Please donate any of the following (and anything else that you can think of that would come in useful for people trying to live in a tent during a long, cold winter.):

• Coats/Sweatshirts/Warm Sweaters
• Blankets
• Shoes
• Sleeping bags
• Baby Items/Diapers
• Tarps
• Toiletries
• Books
• Non-perishable food items
• Socks
• Flashlights & Batteries


If you have any items that you are able to donate, please gather them together and give us a call. (We are just now digging in our closets. We know that money is tight for everyone; used items are gladly and gratefully accepted.) We will pop over and pick them up. Thank you so much.

Husband, Anjha and Kiddo xxx-xxx-xxxx

To find out more about service events in our area go to www.USAService.org

********

We handed it out to the 8 homes in our cul-de-sac and by 11 AM this morning, my car was full of boxes of items. This is so unbelievable. Seriously. I am blown away by the kindness and generosity of the people in our neighborhood, county and this country.

And honestly, I am not really doing a damn thing but passing information along to people, making a couple of phone calls and dropping off the stuff. Even I can handle this kind of involvement.

I hope that this does keep going. That people continue to participate and that Obama uses the bully pulpit that he has to continue to guide people into service and to paying attention to what is going on in their communities. This is truly a bottom up movement. And it is about friggin' time.

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Hello, Hello, Hello

Is There Anybody Out There?!

I get it, everyone is busy and sick and completely bored by the blogosphere. The fight was won. Bushco and his criminal crew are gone in just a few short days. We are on to a new chapter in this country...a blissful new chapter of Peace and Love. [Pay no attention to the multiple wars and the economy in the crapper.]

There is nothing left to fight for. Right?

Wrong.

Dammit. We have more work to do than we did when we were fighting the criminality of the Bush Administration and the corrupt Republican Congress over these last 8 long fucking years.

Obama needs a movement.

And, the thing is, Obama recognizes this. Obama knows that he will not be able to implement any significant change unless the people are louder than the lobbyists. It is not enough to police the Democratic Congress and then bitch about it when they do wrong. This will not get us anywhere except for providing us a place to come and bitch and agree with each other. This is not what we need.

This is what Change.gov is all about. It is also why Obama continues to send us a zillion emails. It is not about fundraising right now...we won. There will not be an election for President for four years. All of this communication with us is not for show - it is because Obama needs a movement. Without us screaming louder than the frickin' lobbyists the change will not happen.

There is also Change.org which is a division of Democrats.com. This is the people's side of the Change movement. (Don't go to change.com unless you want to jack-off; change.com is the underwear manufacturer.)

The bottom line, even though we are tired and we are bored, we have work to do. I warned about the let-down and people seemed to agree with me that it would happen. I thought that it would have happened earlier and been over by now...but, I am thinking, the Holidays might have postponed it and might have added to it (family really is a pain in the ass.)

Consider this the pep-talk. (I can only give them, I have a hard time actually following them up with action - so I expect you all, my friends, to call me on it when I start whining...) We have work to do people. Our blog should be more active than it was while fighting the GOP. There are hearings to watch and policing of the Congress to do. Phone calls to make and letters to write. Volunteering to participate in. Movements to initiate. Media to watchdog.

Just nod if you can hear me - Is there anyone at home?

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What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?

Every so often there is an occurrence that reminds me that there is more good in this world than bad. Something happens that offers hope and helps me to feel like I really do live in a world community of people who want nothing more than Peace and Joy and Love - and Understanding.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes so much easier to find what is wrong in this world; to see the natural disasters and - worse - the man-made ones. It is easy to see only pain and destruction...but every so often there comes that moment that brings tears to my eyes and reminds me that we really are a Loving people; despite the endless crap, People Really are Good.

I had such a moment this morning.

I received "Obama's Call to Service" invitation. When I punched in my zip code to search for events in my area, I thought to myself, "what if no one signed up?"

Instead this is what popped up. Look at all of these events and read their descriptions. Feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, cleaning up parks...it is endless.

People are searching for direction on what they can do to help. People want to give. Even during this time when so many are suffering and so many do not know where their next rent check or mortgage payment or meal will come from, they are still ready to jump up and give of themselves.

Damn, I love it when my eyes are filled with these kinds of tears...

Find events here.

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Truthout Web-A-Thon

I am a fan of Truthout. I think that independent journalists and websites like Truthout are one of the reasons that we were able to win the 2006 midterms and the 2008 Elections.

For the past several weeks I have been receiving fairly desperate emails asking for donations. Apparently Truthout is in really dire straights and at risk of having to lay people off.

They are a non-profit 501 C3 organization, which means that every penny donated is tax deductible.

If you have a couple of extra bucks, please donate. And, for the cash poor among us, please help to spread the word.

Email from Truthout, below the fold.

Monday 12 January 2009

Like all other organizations, we are challenged by the current economic disaster. We are fighting to save jobs and maintain services. Some readers will have cash to spare, others will not. We understand. If you do have some funding you can contribute, we think this project is worth it. Thank you in advance.

Just click this link for our electronic donation options:
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You can also donate by check, made payable to:
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Truthout is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, independent news source, so your contributions are completely tax deductible.

LOW INCOME READERS: Don't send cash. Just help us by spreading the word!

If you are an active donor, THANK YOU!

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