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Oh great, prisoners in India will be handling my bank paperwork not taking my phone call, that's a relief.
N
Corruption (Part II)
Here are some additional thoughts on corruption.
Assassination contracts for foreign and domestic citizens whom our government believes should be killed. People with pre-existing health conditions cannot receive health insurance. People who do have health insurance but who suffer a catastrophic illness will be dropped by a health investment company. America does have transparency in her name – The United States of Hell. Hell is the transparent word for our country. We have lunatics running our D.C. asylums. Our politicians are also gay, lesbian, and/or perverted. Copulation and fornication are the acceptable norms. Our politicians and our corporate executives are sociopaths. We can forget due process in the United States of Hell. Our nation is the anti-Christ as the Holy Bible has it recorded. The devil’s disciples have control over our citizens. We have private prisons that are run for a profit. Torture is common practice in our prisons. We in incarcerate more prisoners than any other country. Our defense budget is more than all of the other foreign countries combined.
@ Nels
"Well we inherited this economy from the previous administration." Too bad that then Obama kept Ben Bernanke (who I've unfairly compared to Capt. Hazeltine, he of the Exxon Valdez. I heard a commentator say recently, "we know the cause of the Exxon Valdez, the Capt. was drunk." True the Capt. was drunk, also true is the fact that at the time the tanker was being piloted by a speecial channel master and the much maligned Hazeltine wasn't on the bridge.) Obama has also allowed the billions to funnel to the banks and not the states or domestic infrastrure and social safety nets.
But, my blame goes to DLC democrats as much as anyone. It was Clinton, after all, that built a marble monument to FDR while at the same time destroyed the legacy he left us, "welfare as we know it..."
One great thing about China...they execute some corporate criminals!
@Foodfacist, how 'bout a compromise, and we'll just flag Halliburton as offensive ;-)
N
Pharmaceutical oligarchs spend more on advertising than on research. Much of the research they claim credit for is done in universities with tax support, and then handed over to big pharma.
People just want to believe, and self-delusion is the key to happiness.
I greatly enjoyed Thom's interview with Matt Welch of the poorly named Reason
Magazine and all the first hour. Thank you Thom, for your spirited defense of American workers.
Let me echo the sentiments of the first hour callers, and hopefully add a little
bit more.
H-1B is not a program to meet a national need. It is a program designed to
undercut American wages and replace American workers with indentured servants
(the indentured servitude results from the need for an employer to sponsor
these visas).
Nor does H-1B address a skills or education shortage. This is the one place
where Thom makes the wrong assumption. There are plenty of available (out of
work) educated skilled American IT workers - indeed I was one for recently
for 16 months. It's all about low wages.
(That's why I made this:
http://www.zazzle.com/no_h_1b_bumper_sticker-128206936316151425)
The 85K supply(actually more because educational institutions are exempt from
the cap)is snapped up on the first day because THE VISAS ARE UNDERPRICED.
This is partially a result of the lottery method of distributing visas. An
auction based on employee starting salary would probably accomodate all the
application for visa workers starting at 40K or above.
- Mike.
@Zero G thx! Sounds like we could benefit by going to Icelandic Activist Boot Bankers Out Camp!
Go Thom- put that offensive on the corporations down on paper- that was brilliant- wish I could remember it...dam I could have put that down as a matter of fact...but now that memory bubble has passed.
oohh Maxrot lol - nearly flagged your Halliburton blow out offensive :)
Bankers jailed, sued as Iceland seeks culprits for crisis
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, May 13th, 2010 -- 12:21 am
@Zero G. Though I must say this, it is a minor comfort that I do have confidence in this Presidents' ability to read a map. Not that I want to name any names.... W.
N
@Zero G. I think Obama only looks at weather maps, he seems most concerned about which way the wind blows only.
N
@Zero G. (follow up on my last comment), kinda' strange that Obama can not only look back, but points to everyone who asks, "Well we inherited this economy from the last Administration".
Guess he can turn his neck when he want too. ;-(
Oh well, he's a politician, I guess I can't expect common sense, no matter how much I desire it.
N
As long as we have a system that rewards sociopaths and megalomaniacs, we will continue to see the self-destructive behavior in civilization.
Dr. Robert L. Park (physics) has used an exercise in his classes in which the students calculate the feasibility of migrating to another planet that would support humans. The answer is that there is no "Planet B."
Nels,
Any good map shows where you've been as well as where you're going. Or otherwise said, I could chose a direction and an acceleration, but without knowing a starting point I would be clueless where I'm heading...
@Zero G. re: Obama's looking forward, not backward, makes it impossible to change any sense of direction.
Someone needs to tell Obama about this wonderful device I have in my car, call rear view mirrors, he can continue looking forward and see what's behind him. I guess riding in limo's and planes all the time one kind of forgets these simple navigation aids.
N
Sorry, Thom - Albert Pujols is a freak of nature! There simply ISN'T an American-born player anywhere NEAR as good as he is!
Obama Admin Urges Court to Reject Maher Arar Lawsuit
The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to reject an appeal from the Canadian citizen Maher Arar. In 2002, Arar was seized by US officials at Kennedy Airport in New York and rendered to Syria, where he was tortured, interrogated and detained in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year. He later sued the United States. In court papers filed Wednesday, the Obama administration said that lower courts were right to dismiss Arar’s lawsuit. - Democracy Now! Headline
We are on a permanent war economy, and we have been for all of my 52 years. Obama's looking forward, not backward, makes it impossible to change any sense of direction. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine very well illustrates the role of military repression involved in forcing the Chicago Boy's policies down the throats of populations, from Allende's Chile to, well now look to Greece (not specifically mentioned in Klein's book, of course.)
If we don't look backward, if we don't acknowledge that we took down Mossedeq in Iran for British Petroleum, that we militarily supported United Fruit in South/Latin America, etc., etc., et al., we will never be able to deal with the primary causes of terrorism, we will be on a permanent war economy for the indefinite future and the shock doctrine will continue to manifest itself here at home.
re: Maxrot @#16 I think they are counting all these big bank scams as economic activity so the economy appears to grow in total while the real economy and the middle class have been bled out by globalization and so-called tax cuts that actually raises the amount of taxes paid by workers.
Crickets on the cons line - lol
More Adam Smith: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN4.html#I.10.82
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
This is the only use of the word "conspiracy" in Wealth of Nations, but I rate the concept just as important as any in the book.
Maxnels, re: I still can't understand how more and more wages are being drive down, yet the cost of living keeps going up, and pundits say our economy is gaining strength.
Simple ... as long as the Ultra-rich continue to get Ultra-richer, it doesn't matter to the GDP how many midle-class families are wiped out. This is just another example of the short-sightedness of our so-called "entrepreneur class" - they can't see past the next quarterly report. When they've wiped out enough of us, and there are too few of us left to buy all the crap they advertise on the TV, THEN, maybe, they'll come to their senses.
Of course, by then, it'll probably be too late to do anything about it.
@Foodfacist re: "Maa'm....sorry- Haliburton has a contract to wipe your ass...step away from the toilet paper."
Hope the blow out preventer fails on them for that one. ;-)
N
Our borders maintain a standard of living...
...for the top 2%.
N
'Course I'll have to pay a foreigner to wipe my ass when I get old.
You know the 'they're' doing- per The Captains and the Kings book - 'they' are culling us. They prune us like a landscaper or gardener.