The people in power are either nitwits or manipulating an opportunity to profit further

My money, such as it is, isn't on them being nitwits.

clipped from www.counterpunch.com Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector.

"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school... A lot of that is gone."

clipped from finance.yahoo.com But "the worst is yet to come," according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, who believes American's standard of living is undergoing a "permanent change" - and not for the better as a result of: An $8 trillion negative wealth effect from declining home values. A $10 trillion negative wealth effect from weakened capital markets. A $14 trillion consumer debt load amid "exploding unemployment", leading to "exploding bankruptcies." "The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school [and] buy a car," Davidowitz says. "A lot of that is gone." Going forward, the veteran retail industry consultant foresees higher savings rate and people trading down in both the goods and services they buy - as well as their aspirations. The end of rampant consumerism is ultimately a good thing, he says, but the unraveling of an economy built on debt-fueled spending will be painful for years to come.

Olympian toker's gold medals dispel drug war mythology

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com “If 14 gold medals aren’t enough to prove that marijuana users can achieve success and shouldn't be scrutinized, what will it take to break the stigma?” “The situation reeks of hypocrisy,” the petition states. “More than one hundred million Americans have smoked marijuana at least once in their lives (including the president, former presidents, members of Congress and justices on the Supreme Court). Smoking marijuana is not unusual behavior and you shouldn't hold Phelps to a higher standard.”

Bingo!

Obama's no-brainer: Reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy

Let people making more than a quarter of a million dollars pay their fair share.

clipped from www.washingtonmonthly.com Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, mainly by making good on his promise to eliminate some of the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. While the budget would keep the breaks that benefit middle-income families, it would eliminate them for wealthy taxpayers, defined as families earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule in 2011. That means the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the tax on capital gains would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent for wealthy filers and the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million would be maintained at the current rate of 45 percent.

The big question: What will the near future look like, and what will be its impact on the long-term viability of H. sapiens?

clipped from keyecommentary.blogspot.com Ultimately, it is a question of whether the great depth of our Madness will carry us into a final conflict with biophysical reality – a madman flaying at imaginary demons while being tormented by a disinterested reality to which he is blind – or will we come again into the wind and the rain, into the seasons, cycles and other realities of earthly existence?  My sensible reason answers that the Madness will dominate the final days of this iteration of my species, that over the next 30 to 80 years we will cling to the most misguided and defeating self-referenced notions of reality until an enraged environment indiscriminately smites the living world – and we will still behave badly even in the ruins of our world.  But my capacity of imagination and wonder believes, in the way that the consciousness order designs impossible ‘possibilities,’ that we can come to see the madness and demand its retreat; the way that smokers now have to hide next to the dumpster in the back of the building.

Disarm the police, not the citizens

clipped from www.counterpunch.org Police seldom, if ever, prevent a crime.  Their job is to appear after a crime is committed and to investigate with a view to identifying the perpetrator.  A large number of careful studies show that private gun ownership prevents far more crimes than police ever solve.  Criminals are routinely deterred, apprehended, and sometimes killed, by armed private citizens. In contrast, police, especially the notorious SWAT teams, accidentally kill more law abiding citizens than they do criminals.  If anyone should be disarmed, it is the police. When police become militarized, as they increasingly are in the US, their attitude toward the public changes from protective to hostile. Militarized SWAT teams have established a record of showing up at the wrong address.

Associating a chimp with a black man isn't racist, and only a nigger would think so

Of course this cartoon has no racist overtones. And neither did this one. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

clipped from image.examiner.com