"Reality has entered the house of America without knocking."

clipped from www.counterpunch.org FDR got his pressure from the left; Obama gets his from the right thanks to the unwillingness of progressives to push him. FDR could take action without a gang of media manipulators telling him to be careful. There wasn't an inordinate pyramid of bureaucracy chipping away at every decision before it went into action. Liberals had more passion than status and really cared about those at the bottom of the American heap. Are we trapped forever in this contemporary paradigm? Or can we face what has happened to us and start to change it? Can liberals once again represent the ordinary American or can such Americans only expect a few nods in their direction? Can we condemn a whole class of citizens because of what we fear some rightwing Republicans will say if we do something real to help them? This is a time when status, style and semantics won't save us. Reality has entered the house of America without knocking. It can't be spun away. And time is running out.

Judges who imprison kids for kickbacks deserve a shivving in the pokey

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It's the lack of jobs, not the lack of lending

clipped from www.counterpunch.org What is needed to fix this crisis is job security, and the only way to create that is by creating jobs. If the president really wanted to kick-start the economy, he would have announced a government program to directly hire the unemployed, by both the federal government and state and local governments (through block grants to the states), which would put people to work right now as teachers’ aides, park workers, school crossing guards, library assistants, companions for the elderly, city and rural clean-up crews, housing renovation project workers, mural painters, etc. Millions of out-of-work people could be put productively to work with far fewer dollars than what is about to be shoveled out to contractors to construct or repair bridges and highways a year or more from now.

Clean coal harnesses the awesome power of the word "clean"

Thanks to the Coen Brothers for harnessing their awesome powers for good.

Popular explosions are inevitable

clipped from www.commondreams.org Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable.

"What has Wall Street given up?"

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, MI, deserves every working person's support and kudos for calling it like it is on national television. On Faux "News" even!

When asked another loaded question about what unions are willing to give up, Mr. Bernero "snaps" and calls the interviewer out on the assumptions built into his question. "Why do working Americans always have to be the ones who make concessions?" he asks. "What has Wall Street given up?" Indeed.

Send him a note of support here: http://www.lansingmi.gov/mayor/contact_us.jsp

clipped from redstaterebels.org

The bloated, Blagojevich-esque Faux "newsman" tries to maintain "decorum" (the same decorum that cringes when the word "fuck" is painted on the napalm we plan to drop on women and kids) by steering the mayor back to his loaded question about salaries, and the mayor will have none of it. Good for him.

No more playing nice guys, folks. The people on Wall Street need to feel the extent of our pain. I suggest we help them come to an understanding by eating their livers with a nice chianti.

Welcome to the Casino at the End of the World

This is the best explanation for all the quasi-magical economic terminology that's been flying around for the last couple of years. Too bad it all boils down to bad gambling debts that we get to pay off.

clipped from dandelionsalad.wordpress.com So welcome to the Casino at the End of the World. Where you’re now backing every remaining wager and paying off the winners. In bailout bucks. Why, instead of doling out trillions of taxpayer dollars through the Fed and Treasury Department, didn’t our government simply nullify these crazy bets that never should have been made — thereby averting the present crisis? It can’t be that contracts are really all that sacrosanct. Credit card companies change terms on us all the time.