Ship of State or Ship of Fools

[autorank]

The Money Party at Work

We keep doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.

Michael Collins

Who are the officers guiding our ship of state, steering us through the troubled waters of a failed economy and two tragic and costly wars?

Do we have bold leaders ready to move us away from the failed policies that generated a free market kleptocracy for insiders and their masters, the ultra wealthy?

Are they brilliant tacticians who can think far enough outside of the box to get us out of calamitous foreign adventures that generate nothing but death, destruction, and ill will on the part of those we seek to "help"?

Snip

We can tell by the key players in domestic and foreign policy.

[cali]

1. key players? where's Clinton. Holbrooke is subservient to her.

How about Gates who's over Petraeus? This is kind of selective.

[autorank]

5. Clinton told a big truth to Congress

Which I think is outstanding.

"Pakistani fundamentalists in the volatile northwestern provinces gained strength during the 1980's due to their utility in fighting the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained this to Congress on April 25, 2009, "Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union." http://inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10646/2009-05-09.html

These are the implementers.

[Me.]

2. Thought Provoking!

K & R

[autorank]

13. I have one every now and then.

...a thought, that is.

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr....

FWIW the people pictured supposedly attended a conference from May 14-17.

:shrug:

[Boomerang Diddle]

4. You missed one of the "key players in domestic and foreign policy:

THAT ONE:

[Me.]

6. You Need A Kick Here

[autorank]

8. I get a kick out of "Me"

:)

[Me.]

10. I Get A Kick Out Of You Too

[glitch]

20. Lol! Thanks for the first laugh of the day. K & R nt

[DemReadingDU]

7. afternoon kick

[autorank]

17. Early a.m. is hell when you're finished with a great book.

:hi:

[omega minimo]

9. How did they get away with "revaluing" the Magical Nonexistant Toxic Credit Default Swaps and

keeping the economic plates spinning without CORRECTING that cancerous aspect of the game?

[autorank]

12. Dead cat bounce or Trend reversal?

A dead cat bounce is a figurative term used by traders in the finance industry to describe a pattern wherein a spectacular decline in the price of a stock is immediately followed by a moderate and temporary rise before resuming its downward movement, with the connotation that the rise was not an indication of improving circumstances in the fundamentals of the stock. It is derived from the notion that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height".

A market rise after a sharp fall can only really be seen to be a "dead cat bounce" with the benefit of hindsight. If the stock starts to fall again in the following days and weeks, then it was a true dead cat bounce. If the market starts to climb again after the first short bounce, then the continued rise in price action would be considered a trend reversal and not a dead cat bounce. Since this distinction only becomes obvious in hindsight, the evaluation may vary depending upon the initial and final points of reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce

[slipslidingaway]

14. Wish I knew for sure :)) n/t

[omega minimo]

15. Dead Cheshire Cat Bounce.

There's nothing there but thin air and a smile.

[autorank]

16. OK, how about some major inflation with rising wages;)

[maryf]

11. K&R nt

[Octafish]

18. The Monied Class doesn't like democracy. That's why they bought it.

Sorry. No breaks for you kick!

From the article:

But there were no breaks for us. Our so-called credit card bill of rights lacks the one right that would have helped -- a ban on usurious fees from the failed banks. We don't get any special tax code changes from Treasury staffers but the banks get $140 billion that simply stays in place because no one in power seems to care. This makes it clear to us who really counts.

[BeFree]

19. Us Peons?

No breaks for us? Shouldn't we just be happy they let us live amongst them, so that they can trickle down on us and call it rain? And why does all this remind me of the days when kings and queens ruled?

[glitch]

21. Which kings and queens?

These guys?

[Octafish]

22. Excactamundo.

[glitch]

24. aaargh visual memory burn!

The Mad Monkey King is hilarious, the Dick Antoinette I may never recover from!

[Octafish]

25. Partial Antidote

President Kill by Carl Oxley III.



See how friendly he is?

I am so sorry I failed to post a warning, glitch!

Sorry there's no antidote for Sneer. That image is from the Bartcop Collection.

[glitch]

27. That did help ease the pain a little bit, thanks for the smile. :)

Perhaps this guy will be our antidote to sneer:

[Octafish]

23. Essentially, peons were slaves.

We the Peed-on.

Absolute Astronomy does an excellent job of explaining the Spanish roots of the term and its applications in the U.S. South.

peón . It has a range of meanings but its primary usage is to describe labourers with little control over their employment conditions.

I am one pissed peon.

[omega minimo]

26. Wonder if the origin goes back to Cortez

[autorank]

28. Maybe there will be an Aztec revival;)

[autorank]

30. We're just not "special" enough for those benefits

We are nothing to them.

[Octafish]

33. $182 billion for AIG and $16 billion for GM.

AIG connects Big Money to CIA connected friends of the BFEE. GM employs hundreds of thousands of skilled Union workers.
Which deserves help, really?

Yes, my Friend. We are less than cannon fodder, slaves and mopes -- to these devils, we are below cattle.

Well, at least there's one big diff: Obama didn't actually drown Detroit.

Wall Street throws General Motors into bankruptcy

Jerry White
World Socialist Web Site
29 May 2009

The events of the past few days have demonstrated the naked class interests behind the Obama administration’s “restructuring” of the auto industry and its plan to throw General Motors into bankruptcy.

SNIP...

From the beginning, the Obama administration’s intervention in the auto crisis has amounted to another plundering of public assets and assault on the working class. In a watershed event, it is carrying out the quasi-nationalization of the auto industry—taking control of 72.5 percent of GM—in order to protect the interests, not of the workers or society at large, but of the most powerful sections of the financial elite at the expense of the working class.

The achievements won by auto workers over decades of struggle—living wages, medical care, retirement benefits, college education for their children—have long been seen by America’s financial elite as an obstacle to its profits. The Obama administration is seeking to use its assault on auto workers to set the stage for a sweeping attack on the jobs and living standards of every section of the working class and thereby organize a “recovery” of the US economy based on austerity and poverty for working people and vastly increased profits for the wealthy.

The filthy character of this entire process is underscored by the role of Steven Rattner, the head of Obama’s auto task force, who profited from his investments in Chrysler and GMAC, the lending arm of General Motors. Rattner, a private equity manager whose net worth is estimated to be at least $608 million, held a million dollars in shares of Cerberus Capital Management, which bought Chrysler and GMAC, according to a federal financial disclosure. The Treasury Department claims Rattner has sold any investments that represented a “conflict of interest.”

As head of the task force, Rattner—who owns a Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, an airplane and a horse farm—has demanded auto workers accept a massive and permanent reduction in their living standards, including, for example, the immediate elimination of dental and optical care for hundreds of thousands of retired workers and their dependents.

The ruthlessness with which the Wall Street investors defend their interests stands in stark contrast to the manner in which the United Auto Workers has willingly accepted the destruction of GM workers’ jobs, living standards and working conditions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m29.shtml

What a world. What a world.

[Karenina]

29. Marking...

:kick:

[maryf]

31. kick the rogue's gallery...nt

[autorank]

32. Bank friendly credit card bill of rights - Tim likes it

"The Senate passage of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, led by Senators Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby, is an important step forward in consumer protection and will help create a more fair, transparent, and simple consumer credit market."

http://www.enewspf.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7645:statement-from-secretary-geithner-praising-senate-passage-of-credit-cardholders-bill-of-rights&catid=88888983:latest-national-news&Itemid=88889930

Of course he likes it. There's just one incredibly important thing missing - a cap on usurious interest rates.

Thanks Tim

[autorank]

34. kick

:kick:

[puebloknot]

35. Kick into Sunday! Are they? No. Do we? No. No. No. No. No. No.

[autorank]

36. Pleasant surprise

Upon finishing my first cup of coffee.

:hi:

[Karenina]

37. Time for a beer. Prosit!

:toast:

[autorank]

38. :)

:toast:

[puebloknot]

39. Time for a margarita and a taco. Let me count the ways ...

... that such an indulgence helps (temporarily) to forget how screwed we are.

[autorank]

40. We're so screwed, we've got metal fatigue

That's the nature of it and things are just heating up. This 'optimism' is celebrating a dead cat bounce, a
fake recovery. it may last a few months but we'll have to pay our dues pretty soon. Actually, we're not paying
our dues, we're paying the bankers dues. What a privilege, not!

[autorank]

41. KICK

:kick: