Joe Lieberman; Liar for the Ages, Speaks on Single Payer Health Care....

Why oh why did I let myself start this? It was only a matter of time, if I sat here long enough that something about Joementum Lieberman was gonna come flying at me in such an infuriating manner as to shut down all other activity and force me to...rant!
Here ya go: I was innocently on Talking Points Memo lifting the picture in the post below, of Al Franken's senate plaque, (which will become, I'm sure, a tourist attraction immediately, Just like the Ethics Office plaque!) when I saw this little bit of film from my Jr senator, Joe:



Isn't he brave to stand against the public option, alone in the wind? Isn't he a real mensch?
Well, considering that old Joe is only in office due to a platform of lies and a twisting of the ticket, which should be made illegal if it isn't already (they were working on it last I heard,) CT was the capital of insurance in the country, and it used to be that you couldn't spit an miss an insurance agent willing to sell you some great low cost health insurance.

Then somehow, a couple of huge corporations began gobbling up the small private insurance agencies, and then suddenly they all decided in lockstep, not to write any policies at all for individuals. The next step was to create the Husky program for children in the state; a program that Joe and his buddy in war, Chris Shays, took great pride in...except that...oohh...there are very, very few providers in the southern half of the state. Reimbursement is so low, and oversight and paperwork are so overbearing, that there are very few providers for children here. Of course, the hospitals have deals with Husky and they also have the infrastructure to handle the billing, so, many low income people were forced into emergency rooms and clinics.

At a certain point, recently, actually, a company named Charter Oak came into the picture as an entity created by the state to oversee providers of a Husky like program for adults who are also unable to get health insurance. The problem there is that not only has Charter Oak taken over Husky, (it was previously outsourced, of course, with many problems,) There are no providers who will take this insurance; even the hospitals are wary.

There is a law on the books that doesn't allow any insurance company to deny private insurance to any individual due to preexisting conditions, and I realized that at a point that private insurance had crept back into Connecticut, so maybe I should check it out. But, here's the rub, they can legally deny you insurance if there is a state run plan available to you, regardless of if the plan has any doctors that take it. So the creation of the Charter Oak entity ensured that none of us could actually get insurance written for us by an agency that has providers!

The Governor has taken some flak for this, of course, and its a work in progress. If they just took the Medicare reimbursement model, but made different levels of payment depending on your income, it could be a viable option. But they won't do that it because they want to make deals with large insurance companies and drug companies themselves! When Joe Lieberman opens his mouth to say anything about insurance, he is likely to start patting his own back for being the first state to offer health insurance to all of its children.

The truth of that is pretty disgusting; a middle class income means that each child's insurance costs $195 per month. There are two huge practices with long waits and waiting rooms full of children of color, that accept the Husky program. Husky A is for the very poor, and Husky B is for the middle class and up. The closest heart specialist who takes Husky is 2+ hours away by car (if you have a car and money for gas.) A surgery on my son's legs took 1.5 years to have approved, and then was canceled on the evening before surgery when they realized that only the surgeon was approved but not the operating room!

My family pays cash for 90% of our health care, and around here if you don't have someone helping you out, or unlimited funds in the face of medical problems, you can just kiss your health or the rest of what you've built all these years, goodbye.
If we were to get someone like our long term child psychologist involved, he would have to accept payment of $15 per session. He has been down that path and would prefer to see a few patients pro bono than to deal with this bureaucracy!

A pediatrician gets $19 per visit and for they they are accountable for every drug, and liable if anything goes wrong. And on top of that they are overseen by boards of nurses and "experts." The insurance companies, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, create arms specifically for this program, so we had Blue Care Family Plan, which was Blue Cross and Blue Shield of CT, but with no providers and totally different standards for us as opposed to their corporate clients. This is how bad it's gotten: Blue Care Family Plan jumped ship because Charter Oak took over and they felt like the oversight of Charter Oak would limit them in some way. There is a profit to turn here, because Atena just created an arm for this program and signed on.


But that's not even what sprung to mind when Joementum, all wind-blown and handsome, jumped off the screen at me with his wisdom! No, its his wife, Hadassah, who is a well known big pharma lobbyist, and more recently was a consultant to Hill and Knowlton , PR firm to the unlovable and questionable, with clients such as the big tobacco firms , among others, who hired H&K to counteract the fact that smoking is hazardous to your health! These are bad people, and as much as Joe has been slaving away for the big payoff job that he should be getting from friends of Bush when he is voted out, (and he will go bye-bye, considering that he hardly has a supporter left in this state after what he did,) Hadassah has been slaving harder. Lets just say that I wouldn't worry about their retirement nest egg.

Can you say conflict of interest? Joe Lieberman should recuse himself from any talk of health care or drug coverage, and yet, he jumps right in the middle of it. And why does Joe do anything? Well, because HE knows whats best for the people of CT, and the people of America, experts and consultants be damned...he knows. Who does that sound like to you? Oh yes, George Bush, our previous president and idiot in chief!

So, If Joe Lieberman is talking about Medicare part D being a great blueprint for anything besides toilet paper, ask your local pharmacist how old or lower income people with catastrophic illness pay for their drugs when they hit the donut hole suddenly? Why is it that the most needy people in this country, with catastrophic illness requiring sometimes thousands of dollars of medications per month, are the ones suddenly hit with a bill for the pills that could mean the difference for them between life and death? Ask the pharmacist what happens, especially now that the credit card companies have turned on the people, and cut down everyone's credit limits and raised their minimum payments and interest rates?

He is worried that we are not going to have fair competition between insurance companies? That's what hes worried about? There is no competition at all. Not only can the government no negotiate with big pharma on the large amounts of drugs that they are buying but the general reimbursement prices are fixed anyway, and the insurance companies are paying their CEO's record bonuses, as they rake in dollars earned by scrambling their own drug lists and insisting that patients take older drugs that are...oh, let me see...recently I heard a referral to something that was actually speed. Its cheap and it kills!...but just so long as the CEO gets his payout!

That's what Joe is about when he speaks out as Representative of the minority of Americans who don't want a single payer health plan. He is for corporations that have more money than they know what to do with; He is for the big consulting fees that his wife gets from those very companies (and strangely, its hard to figure out where shes working these days,)
and he is really about who owes him what, and when the payoff comes; because heaven knows, Joe has been bought and sold so many times, they cant even scrape the price tags off his back!
Remember, this was one of the only few guys next to Bush himself and Barney the dog who thought that Iraq was going great and that we had to stay there till victory or bust!



This is disgusting, and all i can say as a resident of this state is that I wish Joe would shut the fuck up until we can vote him out!

Welcome Senator Franken!

He may be an Israel-loving Nazi (if that's even possible,) but hes our Israel-loving Nazi. Buy him for the humor and his lefty vote, and keep him because he is actually a guy who cares about the country!!
If we threw out every politician on our side that was not about to bash Israel, we'd have a pretty empty side of the chamber. Yes, to me personally, its a problem that deserves another discussion. But to hold Franken to a higher standard is a little like throwing the vote out with the kool-aid...or something like that.

h/t Joe Conason via facebook

c/p RIP Coco

Norm Coleman Finally Concedes....Finally!! Congratulations Senator Franken!

...And congratulations to all of us for the majority and for the end of this circle jerk. Of course, Coleman felt like he had to do this for the people...just like my own Joementum Lieberman! Sometimes the people don't want your idea of justice!



c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Michael Jackson Dies of Cardiac Arrest

TMZ was the first to break the story; Michael Jackson had a heart attack today while preparing for a comeback tour. What an eccentric, brilliant, and troubled life!...I'm thinking of the Jackson 5 Cartoon, and the Grammy's performances; the first extended length video, and the dancing! The childhood forever, and the children that he sucked into his own madness. And his children with various mothers...the mothers of those children surrendering them to him...the veils and disguises and toys...and Neverland Ranch, forever blemished by the pedophilia charges....
His music wasn't much my thing, but it was on my periphery for as long as I can remember....and I think that we all can say that to one extent or another.



He was just a kid when I first saw him, half crouching on the edge of the balcony of Studio 54 watching the choreography of the theater lights being raised and lowered by techies pulling ropes; the snow machine and the half moon prop swinging out from stage left to meet the coke spoon swinging out stage right. There was this little black kid with a 'fro, doing what I liked to do, which was to watch the specter of it all, and how it all came off every night like a Broadway show. And for those of us that worked there, it was a Broadway show, and 4AM brought the cleaning crew and another day of preparing for the next show.



I loved those catwalks and how I knew by heart the height of the tunnels in the basement so I could get anywhere quickly, and the smells and lights and craziness that you could creep around the edges of and try not to get caught up in. Later we had dinners with a military garbed Michael arriving with Brooke Shields on his arm, looking frail always and very sweet and private. By the time we brought in a huge screen to watch him perform at the Grammys from theater seating, he was a huge star already and as when I was little, watching the Jacksons on TV, his dancing was breathtaking.

I didn't know him besides to just say hi on the phone when he called the boss of that club, and he came in alot, hiding in the shadows for the most part; appearing only for charity or big deal events. I don't now really know what to think of him, but he was a big piece of my pop culture childhood, and man, what a talent he was!

Among my son's crowd, his name is synonymous with pedophilia and crude jokes, and who knows whatever happened with him; he was definitely inappropriate and confused. He was looking for love and seemingly had weak boundaries and too much money.
His kids?....well, what a mess that is.

So, the couple of police cars at the hospital with a straggler or two, have mushroomed into a huge, huge crowd....and this is apparently pretty big. I dont know if its Princess Diana big, but its pretty big. What a day!

RIP Michael Jackson and RIP Farrah Fawcett, both groudbreaking culture changers in different ways, but they both will be missed...for the drama if for nothing else!



Brilliant at Breakfast

Sarkozy Says No To Burqa Wearing in France

In a show of real balls, French President Nikolas Sarkozy told the French Parliament that the wearing of burqas represents an unacceptable form of "enslavement."
The New York Times reports today that Sarkozy is drawing a line when it comes to something that he finds unacceptable in French society.

The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue, it is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a sober address in which he frequently looked at his notes. “The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.”

“I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory,” he said to enthusiastic applause.

Sarkozy's unusual appearance before Parliament was the result of changes brought about by his party, allowing the President to speak directly to Parliment, and his speech was mainly concerning the economic crisis. The issue of the spread of burqa wearing is a hot button issue in France, and there has been much debate about how to deal with it. The French Muslim Council expressed relief that the tone of the President's speech was respectful of Islam, but firm on the point that burqa wearing is not welcomed in France. The Muslim Council urges a less conservative form of Muslim practice and does not encourage the wearing of the burqa.

This issue is important as a woman's rights issue, of course, but its also a huge social statement by a pretty liberal society that might just as easily try to take the politically correct way out, as America tends to do. The fact is that not only does the hard line conservative Islam create a difficult life for women, but it creates an unintegrated society in which there is a subclass of people who are unable to live full, safe lives. The burqa also creates a huge responsibility for the men in the society because along with it comes all the rules for how a woman moves around, often requiring men to accompany them and watch over them, creating another layer of responsibility for already overburdened families.

Say what you will about the French, but in a world where the line between the extremists who would go and blow themselves up over an issue like this, and the political correctness of trying to allow for religious freedom, grows ever finer, Sarkozy kicked some ass and made a strong statement about what is expected of those who wish to live in France. This is not a free speech/personal choice/religious issue, but an issue of ingrained abuse of women that is making a comeback in certain areas, and which is disruptive to the entire society. The women may say that they want to wear these garments, but this is beyond what any one person wants; its what is demanded by a free and fair society that is taking into account all of it's citizens.





Brilliant at Breakfast

Kodak Takes Our Kodachrome Away

The Kodak Co. announced today that they will be discontinuing production of Kodachrome film. This marks the end of an era for not only many of us who lived in the innocent days of being able to think that all the world could be a sunny day, but the end of an art form that deserves to be preserved somehow. There is nothing like film photography, and doing away with the tools involved in that is akin to getting rid of paint brushes. Still, you cant keep a company from discontinuing a product that doesn't sell well; I just hope that a specialty market will emerge for this vital medium; and there will still be other types of film available. Its just that Kodak was the ground breaker in this, and the quality has been unsurpassed in history.

Check out some of the pictures here from the 1940's if you want an example of how well this stuff holds up. There are endless examples out there on the Google machine.....and here's a big hat tip to Rhymin'Simon, who sure did his part to add to sales of what has become a true American icon. For more information on this check out the Kodachrome Project Forums, which covers just about every aspect this film.

Goldman Sachs Again; Worse, Worser, Worst, and Proud of Themselves!

I try to get out and they pull me right back in again.
Its really the fault of my Google Reader, which used to start with the tech blogs, but for some reason turned itself around and is feeding me the dreaded news instead of restaurant reviews round my town, or chicken keeping, or the new liver in Steve Jobs (medical meets tech!) I'm trying to get off of this thing, really I am, but here I am again at Goldman Sachs via Taibbi from the end of last week. This is just more that you gotta know, because the truth about Goldman Sachs is gonna come out...or maybe not in any way that people will actually take it in....but you still need to know. So, Taibblog pointed me to an article in the NY Times Business section this past week, and then Matt explained it to me like this:

Apparently Goldman is repaying it's 10 bil in bailout money (does that include, by the way, the money funneled to it by AIG?) and the Chief Executive, Lloyd Blankfein, felt that he should say a few words to "leading Congressional lawmakers."

Honestly, Some people just don't know when to just shut up and accept their biggest bonus in the history of time! Here is the beef of what Blankfein said:

Goldman had “an explicit contract with our shareholders to be responsible stewards of their capital.”

“While we regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice, we are proud of the way our firm managed the risk it assumed on behalf of our clients before and during the financial crisis,” ....

To which Taibbi replies:

Really, Lloyd? You “participated” in the market euphoria? You didn’t, I don’t know, cause the market euphoria? By almost any measurement, Goldman was a central, leading player in the subprime housing bubble story.

-snip- in which its clear that Goldman dealt in and encouraged every bit as much of the same shit as AIG and the rest...

Let’s be clear about what that meant. These crap/sham mortgages, a lot of them adjustable-rate deals with teaser rates that featured sudden rate hikes two or three years after closing, they would never have been possible had not someone devised a method for selling them off to secondary buyers. No local bank is going to keep millions of dollars worth of Alt-A mortgages on its books, because no sensible company lends out money to very risky customers and actually keeps those loans on its balance sheet.

So this system depended almost entirely on banks like Goldman finding ways to securitize these instruments, ie chop the mortgages up into little bits, repackage them as mortgage-backed securities like CDOs and CMOs, and sell them to unsuspecting customers on the secondary market, most of them large institutional buyers like pensions and insurance companies and workers’ unions, many of them foreigners. Most of those customers were snookered into buying this stuff because they had no idea what it was: in the case of pensions and unions particularly, a lot of these customers only bought this crap because the peculiar alchemy banks like Goldman used in devising their mortgage-backed securities made radioactive mortgages look like AAA-rated investments.

So, they created, pumped up and sold the same bundled bad debts as the others did, and on the name of Goldman, but there is a difference that Taibbi points out about the part where Blankfein is proud of how the firm handled it's customer's investments:

...what is particularly obnoxious about this phrase is that Goldman is bragging about the fact that it actually made money while it was pumping the economy full of explosive leverage. While companies like Lehman and Bear were dumb enough to actually eat their own rat meat, Goldman knew what it was doing and was careful to bet against the same stuff it was selling, which makes its behavior many times worse than that of other banks, not better.

He then goes on to let slip that he goes into this more in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. I don't have to say here that I will be waiting for that one in my mailbox and that I know what I'm gonna be reading 2 or 3 times in the upcoming weeks! Thanks Matt!

Brilliant at Breakfast

Iran; Fighting for Truth

Today, as in the past few days, freedom is happening, or trying to happen, in an unfolding outpouring of historic proportions in the streets of Iran. The brave people out there risking life and limb are trying to get a fair election and the leaders that they wanted. Heaven knows that Americans lacked the balls or focus to do the same after not only one, but two stolen elections.

You could say, in fact, that if the Iranian election was stolen, as seems to be the case, the techs who engineered the heist probably learned a thing or two from America's 2000 and 2004 elections. You don't have to go further than our friend Brad's blog to get the lowdown on the fraud in Iran, (and be sure to catch Brad subbing for Mike Malloy this week 6-22 to 6-26, 6PM to 9 PM PT, stations listed here.)Brad is the man when it comes to voting rights and voting fraud, and his piece lays it out very simply; there is no way to trust this result. There was no oversight and there were no checks and balances; paper ballots were taken to be counted in secret by the incumbents staff, with no witnesses from outside....? come on!

So, of course, there is not going to be any winning in this situation. The Ayatollah has told the people to accept it and move on, but how far this thing will go before the uprisings are put down, is anyone's guess. The problem is that unless the government decides to have another vote, this result will never be accepted. Another election will surely prove to be against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is much less popular and very much more like the old time, hard line, conservative voice of the leadership. The people want change and the government does not want to give it to them. This fraud runs deep, because the numbers are so skewed as to be impossible.

America wrote the book on pretending to be a free and open, vote-counting, society; Iran never promised anything of the sort really, and its unlikely that what is happening now will do much more than strengthen the underground movement that will continue boiling along. This is an example of people who feel the urgency of history in their hearts and who are willing to die for the freedom of generations to come. The beauty of this uprising is not only that we are seeing a natural push towards freedom, but it's that we didn't have to bomb them to bring freedom, or any one of a thousand reasons that certain entities, (OK, McCain and his ilk,)gives for wanting to destabilize, install bases, grab oil, and generally mess with the tinderbox that is the Middle East.

President Obama, much to the chagrin of the morning bobble-heads today, isn't getting involved besides a couple of benign statements. People fight for freedom because its part of who they are, not because another regime imposes it on them. We can't tell them to fight on because we are sending in the cavalry, because we aren't. We can be there in spirit with them, but interfering would be another disaster on an already full dance card. Again, I find myself thankful to have Obama as president and not McCain, because I can only just imagine what he would do in this situation!

In Iraq, the "freedom" that we imposed looks pretty much like an ongoing dangerous occupation/war, and when we pull out they can expect some more chaos. I can still hear Rumsfeld's condescension as he told us how messy freedom is. I doubt he'd know, because what they were doing was not spreading the freedom; it was more like a war crime! (...and for some real fun of the vomitous type, check out Rummy in Time. Can someone tell me why these criminals are not being actively investigated right now?)

It occurred to me today that a civilization is truly ready for the revolution when it has embraced some form of Twitter or some level of a face book like popular platform in order to keep people in touch and organized. Even with a government shut down of communications, many Tweeters were changing their time stamps to confuse an already confused government and allow information to be passed around. When movements like this become global projects then anything is possible. The technology isn't the only necessity either; there has to be a movement by the people, not hoisted onto them like an antiquity stolen in all that messy looting.

When Joementum Lieberman looked up at the satellite dishes on the buildings in Iraq's green Zone and declared mission accomplished, his reasoning was that people could talk once again on their cell phones. I believe that it was war correspondent,Mick Ware, who mentioned that they were, in fact, now more fully able to organize to kill us. But regardless of what planet Joementum was on, (soon to be the planet of the unemployed, until the cushy payoff job sets in, I suppose,) those neocons never got the fact that you can't push democracy on a society where the hunger for it has not reached its own crescendo. Hell, it became apparent during that same time that Americans were not even that hungry for all of that freedom and rights crap; not enough to get off the couch and change the channel from the Fox Terra Network, anyway; not enough to have to reason and think about things.

Americans have been the lucky recipients of the sweat and blood of forefathers more high minded than we turned out to be. Their legacy might be that we all got to have a Jennifer Convertible and a flat screen TV for just 1000 easy payments, but somehow I don't think so. They have the record of their intentions set down in history but What they forgot to pass along to us was the lesson about what the first pilgrims fled when they started this crazy experiment. The truth was that the underclass was permanent and that there were no rights. The landed gentry were the elites and there was no way to better your life, much less pick your representation. The American dream was not one of having riches and status, but about having a voice and the ability to do well by your family. That didn't mean to do well at the expense of your countrymen, either, and it also didn't mean to do well outside of your own means gained through hard work and a strong community that cared for every member.

My point is not that what is going on in Iran is not important; It is damned important and its complex, and its also going to lose the attention of the American people as quickly as you can say "Jon and Kate Plus 8 Separate," because its a tiny step in a long process; a process that Bush-Cheney thought they could bulldoze through in some half thunk out disaster that looked good on that Teevee while it was going on, and now, all these years later looks like pathetic liars posturing. Power and oil look pretty sad in the face of just wanting a voice; and whats really sad is the continuing lie that we were trying to help Iraq achieve that voice.

Whats happening in Iran right now is the real thing, and there is much to report, as you can see from HuffPo's great coverage here and it should give us all hope that things like this can happen, and that we don't have to bomb the place to encourage instability and then somehow force our version of elections on them. Its just that the neocons would want to be there to take control from the ashes of this thing, or at least keep a foot in the door, just in case there are weapons of mass destruction or anything. I'm watching with bated breath like the rest of the world, but this is not a cartoon, and those are people with families and full lives who are sacrificing everything just for the chance to have their votes counted.

When you think of how we sat through 8 years of Bush and Cheney lying and cheating, and setting us up to lose everything we've worked for, in a stupor of fast food and reality TV, so long as our kid wasn't the one over there, its pretty eye opening to watch the real thing unfolding. When you think of how easy it seems to be for some people, our President included, to move forward and not look at the mistakes of the past, thereby letting criminals go unpunished, its a little embarrassing in the face of what is real bravery by people who are not only going against their government but also in many cases against their God, who supposedly speaks through the Ayatollah.
Its bravery, plain and simple. The world needs to watch what the government, such as it is, will do with those in custody.

With much of the media banned or shut down, the unfolding story is being told largely by citizen journalists at YouTube.




Brilliant at Breakfast

Goldman Sachs Best Quarter Ever Means its now time for The Biggest Bonuses Ever!!

For those of you that were losing sleep worrying about the top earners at Goldman Sachs, you can relax your little minds. According to the Guardian, Goldman will be handing out record bonuses; the largest bonuses in its 140 year history! And you know why?

Well apparently Goldman has done really, really well in it's first half, and that's due to...are you ready?..."lack of competition!" Oh, there is a surge of trading foreign bonds, and whatever else they've decided to package and trade back and forth to each other in a continuation of the most deceptive ponzi scheme ever. And then, of course, the bonus structure was changed at the end of last year which made it look like they saved money; but, what they really did was to stop allowing their "talent" to take the money and run at bonus time. In other words, the stock and cash bonuses that used to be liquidly available at bonus time, now take time to ...er..."vest." So, if I'm reading http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&refer=home&sid=ao5_D4S6Zgdw correctly, the 2008 awards don't really become fully available until the end of 2009, thus creating a bullshit scenario where everything is rosy, and so we can do it again, but this time bigger!! You get that? This is when you need Taibbi to 'splain things ( especially because I haven't mentioned his fantabulous Rolling Stone article that barely scratches the surface of this mess, in a long time. And you know what? It holds up well to a couple of months of more ponzi, if you want a window into the foundational non-rules of this game.)

When last we saw Goldman Sachs and their Chiefs, it was Christmas time 2008, and they were giving up their bonuses as some attempt to distinguish themselves from their brethren (what I envision as tentacles,) in just about every area of the financial world. The big question back then was would the rest of the big financial firms follow suit, and also could top "talent" be retained without huge bonuses?


The Wall Street Journal explained it thusly:

The decision at Goldman doesn't mean everyone at the firm will go home empty-handed. The firm still has to reward its roughly 30,000 employees. Distinctions are being made between the highest-ranking executives and lower-level traders and investment bankers, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of these employees performed well in 2008 despite the market turmoil, these people say, but could get plucked away by rival firms if compensation practices are significantly altered.

and

The move on the part of Goldman's top executives is expected to set the tone for the rest of Wall Street, where bonuses are typically many times bigger than base salaries. At many financial firms, about half of all revenue is allocated to compensation, and multimillion-dollar bonuses are routinely paid out to ensure the best talent stays put. Top traders and bankers on Wall Street typically make a base salary of about $250,000, with the rest coming as a bonus. Employees tend to get their bonus numbers in the first two weeks of December -- with the cash coming early in the New Year.

And isn't it a kick that the huge fight over the roll back in Bush's tax cuts for this top tier of earners was about what turns out to be just their base salaries?! I don't know why that strikes me as disgusting, but back then, those who earned over a quarter mil were willing to go to the mat to save a few thousand dollars of that at the expense of their fellow Americans whose houses were/are being foreclosed upon, and people who's lives were basically in the toilet, largely because of the ponzi schemes that these very characters cooked up! And, yes, the salaries that these folks make are contracted with the bonuses in mind, so I suppose you cant just tear away a percentage of what they expected to earn. Its just that all of this talk of contracts and retention of employees makes me think of the fact that every time any American puts a deposit into their 401.k or even their bank account, (remember the super money market with the .02% interest,) they have a contract with those "talents" who move this paper around the globe with the promise of a tiny percentage getting shaken down to the savers. Isn't the deal that they get to use our money, even overnight, to make a huge profit putting it somewhere, and so we get a penny in our own tin cup, or cat-food can, as the case may be?

So, while Goldman is patting itself on the back for this rock and roll first half, and making sure that no real laws were broken and that everyone gets their cut of the profits, I wonder if someone might look at the contract that the entire industry might have had with us. That really should go even beyond the little loans that we floated to keep these fuckers alive. Maybe somebody could look at how it's possible for the top chiefs and the "retained talents" to walk away with the biggest fucking bonuses in 140 years while everyone I know has lost their retirement savings! Oh, its because that other guy did it, right? Like AIG? Was it bad old AIG? How come they passed most of their bailout money directly to Goldman? How did that work?

Hey, that's capitalism and the free market for ya! I may not know much about the ins and outs of this shit, but I know when I've been railroaded. These top financial institutions took our trust and in a global way raped the system. They threw back some crumbs last Christmas to try to look all sorry like, and now they are back at it.

If these firms are all in bed with each other and banks are insurance co's are brokerages, then no one should be paying huge bonuses until the entire thing is regulated fairly. President Obama just can't make new laws that fast, and the quarter mil club has too strong a lobby...and, honestly, I don't know if Obama really wants to completely overhaul this anyway, because that would amount to the S-word....and we all know that if we go down that path we may end up with single payer health care and the whole package! What would that be like?

So, all you independent and free Americans out there, be happy that the government isn't allowed to put its hand in your pocket and its rules in your bedrooms, (some of the time,) its cameras on your street corners and its taps on your phone lines, (some of the time,) because these guys removed your pocket stitching while you were busy being all free out there on the range with Bush, and the money already poured out the other end.

Brilliant at Breakfast

He's Barack Obama, and You're Not!

Tonight at the 65th Annual Television and Radio Correspondent's Dinner, we were treated again, for a few moments, to a POTUS with a real sense of humor. I find him quite witty, and even though he does have writers, (he's not a professional comedian, after all,) its all in the delivery; he is one cool character.

At the same event Jib Jab debuted their new video about President Obama in front of the man himself. From the video I've seen of his reaction, he liked it:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Here is some of his speech:



Brilliant at Breakfast

The Revenge of the Fly!

I don't make the news, I merely report it....


PETA apparently is upset that Obama killed that fly. They wish he hadn't. They think he's a bad example of how we should act towards other living beings. So they've sent him a humane fly trap, which allows the trapper to release the live fly outside, where it can fly off and find some shit to lay a kajillion eggs in and then go off and annoyingly spread shit germs!

Worse, there is a certain amount of capitalizing on the back on that dead fly on PETA's part. They sell the Katcha Bug humane fly trap and think that they can sell more by making a certain amount of stink about this poor dead fly. PETA claims that its the news outlets that are making them out to be some sort of fly lovers...uh-huh...

PETA has gone over the edge this time. Whats next, mosquitoes? How about the rights of germs? Isn't it also unfair to kill pneumonia germs in the prime of their lives?

Attention PETA: You are doing more harm to any animals that you might have helped by going to bat for flies!
I just ordered a mess of beneficial nematodes that eat fly eggs...and I'm also not beyond spraying yard guard around the edges of things if I'm gonna be outside. I'm a DEET gal, and besides the usual swatters, we also have a GUN swatter that Will uses to murder flies every day!
President Obama is my hero! Look at those reflexes! Down with Flies!! Long live Obama!

OK, I'm done....



Brilliant at Breakfast