So, is Obama, or Jack Lew, really looking out for the little guy? When he appoints people like Penny Pritzker and Jack Lew who needs enemies (Republicans)?

Quote truthdig:
“Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency,”

“When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home.”

Pritzker, the billionaire heir to part of the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has long been first off an avaricious capitalist, and if she backed Obama, it wasn’t for his looks. Never one to rest on the laurels of her immense inherited wealth, Pritzker has always wanted more. That’s what drove her to run Superior Bank into the subprime housing swamp that drowned the institution’s homeowners and depositors alike before she emerged richer than before.

Pritzker and her family had acquired the savings and loan with the help of $600 million in tax credits. She became the new bank’s chairwoman and ended up as a director of the holding company that owned it. Under her leadership, Superior specialized in subprime lending, hustling folks with meager means and poor credit into high interest loans that were bundled into the toxic securities that wrecked the U.S. economy.

As federal regulators began to move in on her bank after it had dangerously inflated the value of its toxic assets, Pritzker assured its employees: “Our commitment to subprime has never been stronger.” Two months later, the bank was pronounced insolvent. At the time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s inspector general report concluded, “The failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to the board of directors and executive management ignoring sound risk diversification principles, as evidenced by excessive concentration in residual assets related to subprime lending. ...”

It is deeply revealing that in the midst of the continuing cycle of misery brought on by the chicanery of the financial community two key Cabinet positions dealing with business practices will likely be occupied by people who specialized in those financial rip-offs.

For Pritzker, as with the confirmation of Lew, the fix is in. The Republicans don’t dare push back too hard on shady business practices that their deregulation legislation endorsed, and Democrats will go along with anything the president wants.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_did_it_for_the_money_20130507/

Of Geithner and Lew ...

Quote truthdig:
...Both championed the financial deregulation craze of the Clinton administration, and both are acolytes of Robert Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary who unfettered Wall Street greed and then took his own considerable cut of the action.

When asked by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at a Senate confirmation hearing in 2010, when Lew was nominated to be head of the Office of Management and Budget, whether the deregulation pushed by Rubin and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had “contributed significantly” to the banking crisis, Lew responded:

“Senator, I don’t consider myself an expert in some of these aspects of the financial industry. My experience in the financial industry has been as a manager, not an investment adviser. My sense, as someone who has generally been familiar with these trends, is that the problems in the financial industry preceded deregulation. There was an increasing emphasis on highly abstract leveraged derivative products that got us to the point, that, in the period of time leading up to the financial crisis, risks were taken, they weren’t fully embraced, they weren’t well understood. I don’t personally know the extent to which deregulation drove it, but I don’t think deregulation was the proximate cause.”
(my emphasis)

Really? That is a statement of such deliberate ignorance that one must marvel at Lew’s audacity in uttering it. He was one of the top economic officials in the Clinton administration when the president signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into law that declared all of those “derivative products” exempt from the reach of any existing government regulation or regulatory agency. It was aimed at silencing the warning of Brooksley Born, who, as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, attempted to control the burgeoning market in the toxic assets that have carried such a huge human price in foreclosed homes and lost jobs.

Not only did Lew go along with the Clinton administration’s policy, he continued to endorse a radical deregulatory approach to financial markets as a board member of the Hamilton Project, funded by Rubin at the Brookings Institution. Lew’s myopic view of the origins of the economic meltdown, at odds even with Greenspan’s own admission of culpability, hardly qualifies him for the top economic position in the Obama administration. As Sanders told the Post this week, “In my view, we need a Treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_inconvenient_truth_about_jack_le...

I think that any apparent move on the part of Lew...or the Obama administration...for re-regulating derivatives is merely just smoke and mirrors. They want you to believe that they are looking out for, and fighting for, the little guy but they know full well that the big guys will continue to win because they, themselves, are either too cowardly to push back hard enough, or they are really, knowingly, part of the deception to gain for themselves a part of the capitalist pie...revolving doors to untold riches from their ruling elite bosses.

With a president like obama, who needs republiCONs?

Face it, we have only one party to select from and they are all assholes.

I have to agree, this seems to be a both party problem. Maybe we should vote them all out..but then what??

Ken Ware ~ Sorry I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to respond. Yes, I accept your apology. I too would like to apologize for snapping back. I apologize to you and everyone else for my behavior. A fine example of turning the other cheek that was. You, I and everyone here have strong feelings for our Country and we sometimes vent those feelings on each other. A true waste of energy. Besides, everything I said before was only pure conjecture--not one ounce of concrete evidence. Let's hope I was wrong.

By the way, I also managed to catch that heartfelt and sober rant of yours yesterday about student lunch programs. Bravo, brother! You hit that nail right on the head. When people of means in our society seek to deny a child necessary food it is a sad statement about our society indeed. Education is the number one priority in every species. You must be very proud of you daughter's vocation. You are so right to invoke Karma in this situation because that is exactly the energy field that listens to such ignorant, greedy, and indecent complaints. Like the song says, "I believe that children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way..." Anything less is symptomatic of a species being on the path toward extinction.

PLEASE POST THE NAMES! I agree with the other posters on this blog, Thom. Two dozen Democrats supported this? Outrageous! Please list their names and how they voted.

The problem is not the people be it Republicans or Democrats ,its there world view and cultural story that creates who they are.

Another way of saying this that beliefs create behaviors .So if you desire real change in the system the only way is to alter the belief that sponsored the behavior and this my friend goes way back long long ago .

A great place to start is the book The Storm Before The Calm a must read in understanding why we are where we are and what we can do about creating a world that actually works for the highest good of all and the family called humanity.

namaste.

It's been a several weeks since I last posted on this blog...I find it funny that the usuale suspects are still bantering on about the "do do do the da da da..." i.e. Who shot Kennedy, Who Flew the Planes into the Twin Towers, Who...who...who!?!? Who fucken cares...I am more concerned about the "Why's" and what we need to do to establish true peace...Wrangle, restrain, the Corporations that are writting and pushing hostle policies in Washington that diminish the U.S. Constitution and dismantle We the Peoples Rights, as well as destroy the middle class work force.

Here is my take on "The Big Picture" (not Thom's show).

The United States of Corporations (U.S.C.), aka the United States Government, and all its allies, do not give a crap about "average Jo Blow". Yet average Jo Blow (Left and Right) believes that their party is fighting the good fight and cares about the wellbeing of the average American.
It amazes me the number of Obama supporters that excist; not that I was surprised he was reelected...Americans in general are ignorant and constantly make irrational decissions based on fear, i.e. A few douche lickers commit mass murder and Americans are ready to vote away their Liberties and Rights! Yet on the flip side...For decades Americans have supported a Government that illegally invades and occupies other soverning nations...tourturing and murdering millions of innocent people...Yes all those who have and are currently serving in the U.S. military are guilty of murdering innocent lives...Americans view life as cheap...Disposable!
NO LOGIC...NO CRITICAL THINKING!!! From top to bottom (wealthy to poor) Americans - in general - are greedy, self rightious murderous hipocrits...This is their demise. Americans are their own worse enemy.

OOOhhh, watch out what you say, Nachos. You're gonna get the "Warewolf" down on you....

Of course I agree with what you said, with one caveat: I don't believe all former and current members of the military are "murderers". I do believe that there is an "elite" segment of the military that is trained to do just that, however, and I have a problem with it. I can speak with a little authority on that as I was a cadet at USAFA in the 60's and still remember the brainwashing (even still dream about it at times).

This is a very large and complex country. To make sweeping generalizations is always dangerous. But I think we can agree that the wrong people are now firmly in charge.

Glad you're back, Nachos.

Strange how the U.S. government tags all those who protest corruption, fraud, and murder by the US government as Enemies of the State, aka terrorist, yet the U.S. government deems the Syrian Government a threat to those Syrians who protest their own government for the same crimes.

To put it another way; Why is the U.S. supportive of protesters in Syria, Egypt, etc. but are underminding to Americans expressing their grievences by exercising their Rights?

Add to that Daniel Quinn's novel "Ishmael", a ficticious story using science, religion, and mother culture to tell the plight and demise of man kind; the Leavers and the Takers.
Quinn followed this story up with "The Story of B" and a third book which I don't recall the title.

"With Man gone, will there be hope for Gorilla"?
"With Gorilla gone, will there be hope for Man?"

namasté

Quote MMmmNachos:
I am more concerned about the "Why's" and what we need to do to establish true peace...Wrangle, restrain, the Corporations that are writting and pushing hostle policies in Washington that diminish the U.S. Constitution and dismantle We the Peoples Rights, as well as destroy the middle class work force.

The French had a good idea...guillotines!

First of all Mr Two head Camel...I already know who commited the violent attack on 9/11, though I do not 100% support your views. Yes the U.S. Government was involved, but I do not buy the theory that 4 planes were remote controlled. I support the idea that the U.S. intellagence knew about the plot to attack and allowed the 19 Musslims to play it out. As for the evidence of Therimite(sp?) it makes sense.

Now onto your attacking me...Blah Blah Blah!!!
I do not suffer fools...I did not vote for Obama in '12 or '08, nor did I vote for Bush, Clinton, or Bush. Nor did I vote for the opposing popular party. As you obviously do not recall I am very criticle of Fear Voters and their ignorance. When it comes to voting I subscribe to George Carlins voting practices; I Don't! Well I do, but I have never voted for one of the two corporate parties. I realized early on, (age 16 in the late 80's) that the Corporate Capitalist United States Two Party System does not have the average middle class workers best intrest at heart.

My point to the argument of "Who cares who did it" is more about moving past the endless debates...Sure maybe you did convince Ken Ware with some of your evidence...Now What!?!? Did anything change? No! and hear is why; Just like we will never hear who truely shot Kennedy, we will never know the truth to 9/11. The Companies (your "who") have made sure of that! But what we DO 100% KNOW is that since the mid 50's the United States Government (again "who") has been deeply involved in meddleing with other countries political affairs and policies; this has resulted in what is called Blow Back. In other words if your poke at a Hornets nest your gonna get stung. So instead of getting all high and mighty with your "Theorys" lets work to alter or abolish (here again is your "who") a government whoes practices and policies have become destructive of the principles founded in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the U.S. Constitution; The Equal Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Here and abroad.

Talk is cheap! It's time to take to the streets!!!

MMmmNachos: "Mr. Two Headed Camel"--I like that!
But remember, you set the tone here...

Quote MMmmNachos:
.I find it funny that the usuale suspects are still bantering on about the "do do do the da da da..." i.e. Who shot Kennedy, Who Flew the Planes into the Twin Towers, Who...who...who!?!? Who fucken cares..

Now how am I supposed to take that?
But, I agree with most everything you have said...and you may very well be right about what you believe to be true of what happened on 911. But, I tend to believe it was more than that...that the planes were electronically hijacked and force guided to their targets. The hijackers, although they had a little flight training on small planes would not have been able to fly those big airliners let alone hit their targets. And that circular, descending, and flying that close to the ground to hit the Pentagon, was just not possible..even airline pilots with years experience has said even they would not have been able to do that. And how do you explain WTC7? You can't! Face it, 19 hijackers with inappropriate training and experience on large airlines could not have pulled this off. Everything was done to set them up...from training in flight schools..to their boasting...to living where they did...all designed to convince Americans that they alone did 911. The hijackers may not have been totally innocent of wanting to do something against the US but they sure didn't have the skills to hit their targets.

And if you want to "move past the endless debates" well then the same could be said in the future about what is happening now. It will always be "let's just move on"...just like Obama said!

Palindromedary -- Guillotines did not solve any problems. The 1% came back into power. The only benefit was the storyline for "Les Misrables", which was about the overthrow of this follow-on royalty. It also failed. Infiltrate the democratic party.

Quote chuckle8:
Guillotines did not solve any problems. The 1% came back into power.

Well it was sweet revenge and the powers shifted back and forth like a damped sine wave until a certain amount of stability returned. And, yes, there were still very wealthy people exploiting the poor...but not like before. The wealthy, and those in power, were always ever after a little jittery about ticking off the people. Images of guillotines danced in their heads at night. And yes, Les Miserables was a very entertaining story....yea, Victor Hugo! And the musicals were great..loved the songs! Loved Cats, too!

in the early '70's I worked for Boeing in the flight simulator division of the Commercial Airplane Company as an electronics engineer/programmer. I had also been a licensed private pilot since age 18 and was quite active at the time. The largest simulator we had was a 747 and was probably the most state-of-the-art simulator anywhere, outside of NASA, perhaps.

Part of my responsibilities included updating instruments, programming changes into the computer and then flying the simulator to check out the changes. This gave me ample opportunity to "hotdog" a 747 (certified to within 1% of the performance envelope or the real aircraft) and I used to routinely fly it through the doors of the big hangar at Boeing Field (just showing off!)

But I can tell you that, as an experienced light plane pilot, flying a big aircraft like a 747 (or a 767) was a handful, mainly because of the mass and corresponding inertia. Even after 3 years of flying "Fat Albert" I would occasionally blow a landing. The main issue was always the tendency to overcorrect. Small errors would become greatly magnified. And while the aircraft could be flown by "Knob" letting the auto pilot fly the plane to a dialed in heading, this took some doing to fly with precision.

So the reason I'm saying all of this to state that if there is any doubt as to whether the 911 aircraft were being flown manually (by minimally trained pilots) or on some kind of "remote control", the answer would be instantly obvious to anyone familiar with flight training by examining the flight path of the airplanes that hit the targets. If manual, they would likely have been all over the sky, or at least, making large corrections. If not, then that adds a lot of cred to the conspiracy theories I've heard here. The answer to the question is probably still on record (the ground track and radar data). If it's missing or classified, then, well .... who knows....

Outback: I seem to remember the initial flight paths, as shown on TV, and then they showed a bit of an erratic pattern right after the alleged hijacking, which would "seem" to show that someone inexperienced had indeed hijacked the plane. I don't know how much we can really rely on those displays on TV because they may have just been some sort of artists rendition of what the artist thought might have occurred. But aside from that, after reading all of the quotes from the trainers at the flight schools that these "hijackers" went to...it is just very difficult to believe that they were able to even get the planes back to the areas of the attacks let alone actually pilot them, at those speeds, to hit their targets.

Quotes from flight instructors as reported by SweetLiberty.org

On Atta and Al Shekki:

"The instructor said neither man was able to pass a Stage I rating test to track and intercept. After offering some harsh words, the instructor said, the two moved on .... "We didn't kick them out, but they didn't live up to our standards."

On Alhazmi and AlMidha:

"Last spring, two of the men visited Montgomery Field, a community airport ... and sought flying lessons. They spoke to instructors at Sorbi's Flying Club, which allowed them to take only two lessons before advising them to quit.

"'Their English was horrible, and their mechanical skills were even worse,' said an instructor, who asked not to be named. 'It was like they had hardly even ever driven a car .....'

"'They seemed like nice guys,' the instructor said, 'but in the plane, they were dumb and dumber.'" ("San Diegans See Area as Likely Target," Washington Post, September 24, 2001, pg. A7.)

But the masterminds would not need competent pilots -- if they had Global Hawk technology.

On Hanjour

"Marcel Bernard, the chief flight instructor at the airport, said the man named Hani Hanjour went into the air in a Cessna 172 with instructors from the airport three times beginning the second week of August and had hoped to rent a plane from the airport.

"According to published reports, law enforcement sources say Hanjour, in his mid-twenties, is suspected of crashing the American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

. . . "Hanjour had his pilot's license, said Bernard, but needed what is called a 'check-out' done by the airport to gauge a pilot's skills before he or she is able to rent a plane at Freeway Airport which runs parallel to Route 50.

"Instructors at the school told Bernard that after three times in the air, they still felt he was unable to fly solo and that Hanjour seemed disappointed.

. . . "Published reports said Hanjour obtained his pilot's license in April of 1999, but it expired six months later because he did not complete a required medical exam. He also was trained for a few months at a private school in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1996, but did not finish the course because instructors felt he was not capable.

Yet this is the man the FBI would have us believe flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon "with extraordinary skill." He could not even fly a Cessna 172!

Yes, maneuvering a Boeing 757 into a 270 degree turn under tense conditions (remember, the culprits were outmanned and had crude, non lethal weapons) demanded the skill of a fighter pilot. But why would those bad, bad, Muslims want to do such a thing?

By shifting the plane's position so radically, Flight 77 managed to hit the side of the Pentagon *directly opposite* the side on which the offices of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff were located. (Coincidentally, Flight 77 hit the offices of Army operations (U.S. News an World Report, Sept. 14, 2001, pg. 25).

Recall, it was the Army that warned of the possibility that Israel's Mossad might make a terror attack against the US.) The masterminds of Operation 911 were prepared to sacrifice the rank and file, but carefully avoided touching a hair on the head of the brass.**

It reminds one of Operation Northwoods, doesn't it? Remember the rank and file sailors who were to be sacrificed on a US Naval vessel in Guantanamo Bay, in order to justify war with Cuba? No, neither Hanjour nor any other Muslim suicide pilot was at the controls of this plane. It had been fitted with Global Hawk technology and was being remotely controlled.

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/war/op911.htm

** The Army's School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS ) thinks Israel is capable of doing exactly that. On September 10, 2001, The Washington Times ran a front page story which quoted SAMS officers:

"Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: 'Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.'" ("US troops would enforce peace under Army study," Washington Times, Sept.. 10, 2001, pg. A1, 9.)

Just 24 hours after this story appeared, the Pentagon was hit and the Arabs were being blamed.

Palindromedary has an interesting arguement about 911

Quote Palindromedary: By shifting the plane's position so radically, Flight 77 managed to hit the side of the Pentagon *directly opposite* the side on which the offices of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff were located. (Coincidentally, Flight 77 hit the offices of Army operations (U.S. News an World Report, Sept. 14, 2001, pg. 25).

Palindromedary further says

Quote Palindromedary:Recall, it was the Army that warned of the possibility that Israel's Mossad might make a terror attack against the US.) The masterminds of Operation 911 were prepared to sacrifice the rank and file, but carefully avoided touching a hair on the head of the brass.**

Palindromedary then concludes:

Quote Palindromedary:It reminds one of Operation Northwoods, doesn't it? Remember the rank and file sailors who were to be sacrificed on a US Naval vessel in Guantanamo Bay, in order to justify war with Cuba? No, neither Hanjour nor any other Muslim suicide pilot was at the controls of this plane. It had been fitted with Global Hawk technology and was being remotely controlled.

SAMS The Army School of Advanced Military Studies stated on September 10th

Quote The Army School of Advanced Military Studies:The Army's School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS ) thinks Israel is capable of doing exactly that. On September 10, 2001, The Washington Times ran a front page story which quoted SAMS officers: "Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: 'Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.'" ("US troops would enforce peace under Army study," Washington Times, Sept.. 10, 2001, pg. A1, 9.)

Palindromedary then summerizes

Quote Palindromedary: Just 24 hours after this story appeared, the Pentagon was hit and the Arabs were being blamed.

Wow, dude! What a flawless, airtight argument! Bravo!! Just wanted to make sure our friend Ken got to read it. Can't wait for his take on that one.

Hey!! this quoting tool is fun! I hope I didn't get too carried away. LOL I need the practice.