konane's Blog

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/05/17/napolitano_admits_she_hasnt_read_arizona_law_but_says_she_wouldnt_sign_it.html

 "......“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008........" 

"......There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. ......."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html

Saw a tv interview of Rubio and was very impressed.

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"Rubio says country relying too much on government

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Source MyWay

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio told an anti-gay marriage group Saturday the country is relying too much on the government, in part because of a breakdown of family and faith values over the last 50 years.

"You know what the fastest growing religion in America is? Statism. The growing reliance on government," Rubio said. "Every time a problem emerges, increasingly the reaction in American society is 'Well what can government do about it?'"

America became the greatest country because of its strong society where people did not sit back and wait for government to act, he said. "They did it themselves," Rubio said.

Rubio, a lock for the GOP nomination now that Gov. Charlie Crist has decided to run as an independent, spent the day reinforcing conservative values, capped with a speech before the group that led the effort to put a gay marriage ban in the state constitution.

He said the strongest institution in society is the family, and that children raised in stable families are privileged no matter what their income.

"We can not continue to allow this over reliance on government to replace the cornerstone institution that has made the American experience possible," he said. ......"

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100516/D9FNN86O0.html

Some amazing facts and figures about the last election. 

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YouTube - Jerry Day on Ron Paul and the Media   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9nOIusbDwI

Core concept in this video is right-on.  For all who railed against corporate welfare under Bush, how's that working out for you now?????

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    Obama was holding it when it broke.

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"Angry Obama Seeks to Deflect Blame for Gulf Oil Spill Crisis

Posted by Chip Reid

".....He seems deeply upset about the growing calamity in the Gulf, about the environmental damage, about the irresponsibility of the companies involved, and about their efforts to shift the blame. ......" 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20005039-503544.html

Concept has interesting possibilities.  Found on Steve Quayle Q News.

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http://www.disinfo.com/2010/05/can-massive-crowd-sourcing-predict-the-future/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/13/holder-admits-reading-arizonas-immigration-law-despite-slamming/

"The New World Order is Now Complete

15:52 by Administrator. Filed under: Whatever

Source http://johngaltfla.com/blog3 via Steve Quayle Q News

by John Galt
May 10, 2010

"It took them a long time. I was stupid not to realize the obvious fact. Here we are, finally, united in a new world order of happiness and a future so bright that I have to wear shades. For most people much like myself, we always thought it was the United States and the armed citizenry that stalled and prevented the establishment of this new order, both economic and political. Sadly us Americentric types focused on our nation as the center of the universe failed to see the big picture and I did not realize until tonight that it was not Presidents Bush and Obama that prevented the new order from taking hold. It was not the Tea Party, Republican Party or the Libertarian Party which obstructed the globalist regime. It was not Joe Redneck, Joe Six-Pack or Joe the Plumber that intimidated or slowed down the establishment of this order.

It was our friends in Europe.

And last night a shotgun wedding was performed, Miss America, meet your groom, the European Union.

The idea that the European Union needed $1 trillion to bail out Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain is absurd. Even if all of that money was obtainable on the open markets or via fiat creation it does nothing to repair or restore the economic engine of hybrid Corporatist Statism, but does indicate the level of desperation that the powers in the West are willing to resort to in a last ditch effort to insure the expansion of and maintenance of their fortunes and power. Here we are, at the crux of another crisis and a “miracle” cure is found by creating more debt to service, not pay off, existing debt from various member nations who were resistant to the idea of a unified political structure. Ireland and the other PIIGS nations wanted no part of a unified Parliamentary structure for the EU with the ability to dictate law and settle on a series of Constitutionally mandated rights for the member nations. Yet here we are with those very nations who opposed such a regime surrendering their economic freedoms and in turn insuring such an animal will exist, a beast to America’s east.

Despite years of people calling others ‘tinfoil freaks’ of whom I have been guilty of that years and years ago, the conspiracy is not that nor has it been for two years now. The conspiracy has turned into a course of action where people are being deceived into believing that according to the leaders of the West, aka the United States and Europe, that there is no other choice if we wish to survive as a civilization. Common sense tells the informed citizen otherwise but the panic and hysteria created on an almost scheduled, regular basis, be it an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, financial crisis, war, or terrorist act keeps many citizens from understanding or realizing the activities being undertaken behind the scenes. How many people realize that the new financial reform package expands the powers of the Federal Reserve to the point of extra-Constitutional authorities not implied nor given to the Executive Branch as written within that <snip>ed piece of paper? How many people who run a small business now understand that starting in 2012 you have to give a 1099 to every vendor you purchase $600 or more from? How many citizens understand that Homeland Security is working with the Congress to create a standardized National Identification program under the guise of the Health Care legislation to provide the ability to monitor not just the consumption patterns of citizens but the transportation habits, domestic and international, of our citizens to enable further taxation due to the risks created by those who can afford to travel to and fro?

And that’s just the United States side of the equation. Once the European Parliament convenes when the dust settles and the last fire from the riots are extinguished, the Eurosheeple much like the Amerisheeple will begin to understand that gee, we really do have a lot in common and perhaps unifying our financial systems and legal systems would be a logical extension from where we are now. The fact that we just put their precious European Monetary Union into debt to the Federal Reserve via the currency swaps and the International Monetary Fund loan program does sort of entitle those who are in charge to demand concessions of the citizens to insure a guarantee of repayment and streamlining of operations now, doesn’t it?

The next wave of the now completed new order will be to unify financial and corporate regulatory regimes because we “have to” and thus with that logic our sovereign rights along with the individual participants within the EU will agree to do the same. Beyond that, the human rights campaigns masked by their Eurosocialist masters will demand we in turn surrender key freedoms and rights as provided by the Constitution to insure financial and corporate stability, thus leaving the American citizen with no voice because we will have none in this matter.

The end game arrived with little fanfare but as expected a warning shot across the bow of the world economies with the shock of last Thursday. The Untied States has a banking cartel which was already engaged to be married to their Eurosocialist brethren but the right trigger event was never created to insure that the “people” would cooperate in such an event. Americans, due to the demographic shift, will support any and all actions that guarantee their retirement accounts as large numbers of the Baby Boomer generation is more than happy to sell the rest of us out to insure a comfortable period of time from retirement to their death. The Eurosocialist want to protect their 32 hour work week with 12 weeks of vacation so they are willing to accept a more “diversified” society if the United States citizens are willing to pay for it, thus they will accept their new immigrants, their new laws, and their new compliance with a budding world council to manage their affairs because after all the “New World” is going to share in their pain.

Thus the table has been set. Elections are somewhat irrelevant in the United States after the 2010 mid-term election unless upwards of 50% of the incumbents are turned out at every level, be it dog catcher or Congressman. The path has been set upon not by a desperation to insure world peace, as many thought it would in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, but instead a dying desire to make sure they can retire with their surround sound DVD player and golf every Thursday with Bob at the community country club. The Greatest Generation, the ones who fought and died during World War II and endured the pains of the Great Depression of the 1930’s have finally given way. The Sellout Generation, their spawn, will insure world peace and stability for a generation to come.

By enslaving us all to the whims of a cartel of corporatist Marxists hell bent on a twisted Fascist world domination."

http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/2010/05/10/the-new-world-order-is-now-complete-2/

By GARANCE BURKE and CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writers

Source SFGate.com

Tuesday, May 11, 2010"(05-11) 10:50 PDT , (AP) --

"Workers aboard an exploding offshore drilling platform were told to sign statements denying they were hurt or witnessed the blast that rocked the rig, killed 11 and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, their attorneys said Tuesday.

Survivors floated for hours in life boats in the Gulf of Mexico following the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon, and were greeted by company officials onshore asking them to sign statements that they had no "first hand or personal knowledge" of the incident, attorneys said. ......"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/11/national/a104820D60.DTL

Came in email.

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Bank of America, can I help you?   Customer: Yes, I want to cancel my account. I don't want to do business with you any longer.   The Bank: Why?   Customer: You're giving credit to illegal immigrants and I don't think it's right. I'm taking my business elsewhere.   The Bank: Well, Mr. Customer, we don't want to see you do that, but we can't stop you. I'll help you close the account. What is your account number?   Customer: (gives account number)   The Bank: For security purposes and for your protection, can you please give me the last four digits of your social security number?   Customer: No?   The Bank: Mr. Customer, I need to verify your information, but in order to help you, I'll need verification of who you are..   Customer: Why should I give you my social security number? The reason I'm closing my account is that your bank is issuing credit cards to illegal immigrants who don't have social security numbers. You are targeting that audience and want their business. Let's say I'm an illegal immigrant and you've given me a credit card. I have a question about it and call for assistance. You wouldn't be asking me for a Social Security number, would you?   The Bank: No sir, I wouldn't.   Customer: Why not?   The Bank: Because you would have pressed '2' to speak in Spanish. We don't ask for that information when calling in on the Spanish line.   If it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, then forward it to every human in the country including every representative in Washington , DC four times a week for a month.            Provided "snopes" for doubters: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp

May 12, 2010 Posted by Paul at 6:05 PM

Byron York reports on an obscure but potentially embarrassing controversy involving Elena Kagan's days in the Clinton administration:

In 1995 and 1996, future Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was involved in a bizarre controversy in which the Clinton White House was accused of siding with an eco-terrorist group locked in a standoff with federal agents deep in the woods of Oregon. The incident led to an investigation by House Republicans, who concluded that a staffer on the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) tipped off the environmental radicals to impending action by U.S. Forest Service law enforcement agents -- a leak that Forest Service officials believed endangered the lives of their agents on the ground.

Kagan, at the time an associate White House counsel, had no role in leaking the feds' plans to the radicals, but House Committee on Natural Resources investigators concluded she shirked her responsibility by not searching for the source of the leak or pushing for punishment of the leaker.

"Nothing was ever done by Elena Kagan to learn the details about the leaks, or to identify the leaker and ensure that proper punishment occurred," the committee's 1999 report concluded. In fact, investigators found evidence suggesting that Kagan, in internal White House discussions, defended the alleged leaker.

(emphasis added) The suspected leaker was a senior CEQ official Dinah Bear who had wide contacts in the environmental community. Bear wrote in an email that "Elena went out of her way to go to bat for yours truly, which was quite decent of her." When congressional investigators asked the White House for Kagan's notes of her discussions with Dinah Bear, the White House refused to provide them.

It's quite likely that during her confirmation hearings, Kagan will be asked about the Warner Creek incident. It's quite unlikely that the matter will hurt Kagan's chances of being confirmed. But depending on the facts and how she answers questions about the matter, Kagan may come off looking bad. That, in turn, would make President Obama look bad.

The public would probably look askance at a nominee who disses the U.S. military and goes "to bat" for leakers who undermine U.S. law enforcement officials."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/05/026283.php

Denninger is a brilliant analyst ....  this happens to be one of his best about what faction (banksters) the current regime is allowing to run the US into the ground.  For such a symbiotic relationship between the regime and banksters there has to be mutual benefit.  Wonder what that could be?    You decide.

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Posted by Karl Denninger   11:24

Source The Market Ticker

"The Perversity Of Bank-Driven Policy Response

If you're wondering why the big banks have "captured" the political environment in every nation of the world, you need only look at the Goldman results through a somewhat-different lens.

See, it wasn't just Goldman - it was also Bank of America, Citibank and JP Morgan who scored "perfect quarters."

Now if Goldman's record was predicated on the outcome of a game of chance set of odds and had an 8.67 x 10^-19 probability of occurring, for four of these institutions to do so would be that to the 4th power, or something approaching 5.65 x 10^-73.

As pointed out in the forum by Tsberts, there are fewer than this many particles (atoms, etc) in the known universe.

Now it is certainly true that trading activities are not a pure game of chance, and that most of the trading profits are generated from "market making" (that is, earning a spread.)

But that makes the performance even more outrageous, because these "market making" activities are claimed to be something that provides net benefit to market participants and thus the economy as a whole.

That claim looks awfully hard to sustain when the book-maker never loses - not even once on a daily aggregate basis.

Indeed, this puts into stark relief the nature of "banking" these days in the Wall Street context, which is increasingly nothing more than an activity intended and executed to skim off profits for the banksters at the expense of literally everyone else in the economy.

They seem to be doing a good job of it too, if these results are any indication.

Here's the problem with this, assuming you're not a bank executive: The money these people skim off comes from all other economic activity.  That is, every dollar they make through these "activities" is a dollar you lose as a productive member of society.

It cannot be otherwise.  The spread has to come from someone, and the "someone" it comes from ultimately is you!

You pay it at the pump, you pay it in your mortgage, you pay for it at the grocery store, and you pay for it at Home Depot.  In each and every product and service you purchase there is an implicit "Bankster Tax."

Now some of this "bankster tax" is unavoidable.  That is, there indeed is a need for a banking system, despite the claims of some.  We have a penchant in modern society for being able to easily buy things we want, and do to that we need both one or more mediums of exchange but also a clearing mechanism.  Banks provide this.

But what's lost on most people in the current debate is that many of the other things that banks do are actually quite destructive.  Have you noticed that you can only get a CD that pays 1% right now?  Is the cost of living rising at 1% or less?  No, it is not, which means that you are funding the bankster tax if you have your money in the bank.  They're stripping you!

Worse is the game being played between the banks and Treasury.  This is a symbiotic mess and it sucks.  The banks borrow at or near zero from The Fed and then buy Treasuries with the money.  Since Treasuries have a "Zero" risk weighting, they can then pledge those for Repo money in the overnight market (again, at essentially zero) and now they have cash to do it again!  This creates effective infinite leverage and yet this is permitted because these "securities" are sovereign and thus "safe."

This has allowed the Treasury to continue to "borrow" and spend, but the "borrowing" is, to a large degree, false money.  That is, it is nothing other than leverage - it is not actual money being lent. 

This, if it does not stop, is how you get a Ponzi-style collapse!

If you want to know why Greece was bailed out, this is the reason.  Had they not been the banks in Europe who had taken this Greek Debt which was represented as "safe" but in fact was not would have gotten nailed, as their inherent leverage in the transaction would have chewed them to bits.  Indeed, they had mark-to-market losses in the billions when the interest rates on that debt ramped - all not recognized, of course, since sovereign debt has "zero risk."

The error in this process is that sovereign debt does not have zero risk.  Indeed, allowing banks to trade anything creates this sort of hazard, since there is no such thing as a free lunch - claims otherwise are in fact lies.  Yet the claims continue.

Mark Hanson of Hanson Advisors has an interesting report out this morning that underlies much of the trouble, which of course is focused in the housing market.  We have been told repeatedly by administration officials and others that the "worst of the crisis" in mortgages and similar instruments is behind us, and that credit quality is "improving." 

This is a lie.

I have stressed repeatedly that you cannot fix someone who is overlevered by offering them more credit, no matter the terms.  You can only solve their problem by reducing their credit load.  But for most Americans their primary mortgage (which is all that HAMP really addresses, despite the protests of some 'pundits') isn't the half of it.  You also have HELOC debt, and far more importantly all other forms of credit, including credit cards, auto loans and similar.

The Ponziconomy folks are well-aware that without restarting credit creation the attempts to "pump" our claimed "economic recovery" will fail.  More importantly, since we have managed to crank expectations in business so high over the last year, resulting in an 80% ramp in the stock markets, if they fail we won't "muddle along" and work the excesses out - that capability has now disappeared.  What we face is an all-on collapse that will likely destroy 20% or more of the S&P 500 and 50% or more of all small businesses.

The numbers say they're failing:

(Chart)

That's everything but mortgages.  Non-revolving debt has leveled off - but it never went materially below a zero creation rate in the first place.  But revolving debt has not, which belies the claim that "credit quality is stable and improving." 

It most-emphatically is not when one looks at the outstanding credit as represented here:

(Chart)

We nearly doubled non-revolving credit out from 2000-2008 and added about 50% to revolving.  Now non-revolving, despite all the "stimulus" programs and "Free money" deals for cars, has stalled and refuses to resume it's ascent, while revolving continues to contract. On a total basis you have this:

(Chart)

Looks folks, we went from $1.5 trillion outstanding to over $2.5 trillion in ten years.  Now it's contracting and while non-revolving has stabilized, it is not growing materially, and revolving debt continues to contract.  To resume the upward trajectory we had in 2000-2007, we must ramp consumer credit from $2.5 trillion to roughly $4 trillion over the next ten years, and we must also take the $53 trillion in total outstanding debt and ramp it to somewhere around $80 trillion.

But to do that you must have the income to service that debt. 

We do not, and we cannot without radical changes in how we approach trade and employment in this nation.

All we have done thus far is play "extend and pretend" writ large throughout the economy, with a special emphasis in the housing market in all it's forms.  The banks are cheating on asset valuations when it comes to MBS and whole loans of all sorts but so are consumers!  A consumer who has a total debt-service-to-income ratio post modification in the 60s or above is one blown transmission in their car, a leaking water heater or an unexpected medical bill away from bankruptcy.

To get out of this hole we must either truly restructure those debts (which at best means writing down expected interest payment streams in the future, and at worst recognizing the bankruptcy that has already taken place) or we must significantly increase income - not by 5 or 10% but by serious amounts, 20% or more.

The latter is impossible due to global wage arbitrage unless we either force China to revalue their currency or whack them (and other low-cost exporters such as Vietnam and similar) with huge tariffs on everything they export to the United States.

Enjoy the illusion that it has all been fixed.  Everywhere I look, no matter the sector, I see the same game being played. 

Last week showed us a crack in the dam.  The coming weeks may prove that the number of cracks exceed the number of available fingers.

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2307-The-Perversity-Of-Bank-Driven-Policy-Response.html