Awesome, just awesome

Monday November 2, 2009

. . . . .You need to get yourself ready for a week that will be chockful of just absolutely awesome levels of stupid and crazy. Three things are going to happen this week that will change your life forever.

. . . .On a note that I find vital from a pop culture standpoint, this week, ABC Network premieres V, the remake of the specials, miniseries and series from the 80's. Actually, it was a damn good series for the times, and as far as I'm concerned, had some pretty good portents and messages in it. Suffice to say, I've never in my life been someone who anticipated a visit from anyone else from "someplace else", I've always been paranoid of that. Considering what a bad job we've done caretaking this planet, and just what an awesomely shitty job we've done as a species in terms of coexisting and helping one another, anyone with advanced enough technology would wipe us out the second they got here. On top of that, just using some simple math and the realization that our broadcasts; radio, television and such are the very first hint of our society that someone else would get to gain some knowledge about us. Well, the following map, from Strange Maps speaks for itself:

. . . . .Personally, I think it's pretty damn presumptuous and arrogant of us to believe that anyone at all would want to come here. Me, I come from the Independence Day, Predator, Aliens and V crowd, I wouldn't trust 'em.

. . . .So, like I said, 3 things that are just monumentally in-your-face stupid will or are happening this week.

. . . .Item 1, I spent all last week zeroing in on my favorite bloodsucking bastards over at Goldman-Sachs, with plenty of data to back it all up, (read the previous posts below) and, lo and behold, up they crop on a Sunday. Now, let's start with something simple, like the diatribe that I posted up yesterday on Citigroup and Goldman. Well, on Sunday night, the CIT group filed bankruptcy in a Federal Court. The bottom line; The U.S. Taxpayer, you and I, will lose $2.4 billion on this bankruptcy, and Goldman will profit $1 billion on the bankruptcy.From the AP on Sunday night:

WASHINGTON -- Lender CIT Group has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in an effort to restructure its debt while trying to keep loans flowing to the thousands of mid-sized and small businesses.

CIT's move will wipe out current holders of its common and preferred stock, likely meaning the U.S. government and taxpayers will lose the $2.3 billion sunk into CIT last year to prop up the ailing company. Goldman Sachs however, will gain $1 billion because of CIT's bankruptcy, according to a report published Oct. 4 by theFinancial Times:

The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis...

While Goldman is entitled to demand the full amount, it is likely to agree to postpone payment on a part of that sum, these people added. A CIT filing last week said that it was in negotiations with Goldman "concerning an amendment to this facility".

The $2.3 billion lost in taxpayer funds is the largest amount lost since the government began infusing banks with capital, according to the Financial Times.

CIT made the filing in New York bankruptcy court Sunday, after a debt-exchange offer to bondholders failed. CIT said in a statement that its bondholders have overwhelmingly approved a prepackaged reorganization plan which will reduce total debt by $10 billion while allowing the company to continue to do business.

"The decision to proceed with our plan of reorganization will allow CIT to continue to provide funding to our small business and middle market customers, two sectors that remain vitally important to the U.S. economy," said Jeffrey M. Peek, chairman and CEO. Peek has said he plans to step down at the end of the year.

The Chapter 11 filing is one of the biggest in U.S. corporate history. CIT's bankruptcy filing shows $71 billion in finance and leasing assets against total debt of $64.9 billion. Its collapse is the latest in a string of huge cases driven by the financial crisis over the past two years, as bailed out industry heavyweights like General Motors and Chrysler both entered bankruptcy court.

CIT has been trying to fend off disaster for several months and narrowly avoided collapse in July. It has struggled to find funding as sources it previously relied on, such as short-term debt, evaporated during the credit crisis.

It received $4.5 billion in credit from its own lenders and bondholders last week, reportedly made a deal with Goldman Sachs to lower debt payments, and negotiated a $1 billion line of credit from billionaire investor and bondholder Carl Icahn. But the company failed to convince bondholders to support a debt-exchange offer, a step that would have trimmed at least $5.7 billion from its debt burden and given CIT more time to pay off what it owes.

It is unclear what the filing will mean for the nation's small businesses, many of which look to CIT for loans to cover expenses like buying materials at a time when other credit is hard to come by.

Analysts have warned that already ailing sectors, like retailers, could be hit especially hard, since CIT serves as the short-term financier for about 2,000 vendors that supply merchandise to more than 300,000 stores.

. . . .Now, let's contrast this little morsel, released on Sunday night, with what our earnest Treasury Secretary (and Goldman alum) Timothy Geithner (who by the way was the protege of former Treasury Secretary and Goldman alum Hank Paulson) had to say on Sunday morning on NBC's Meet The Press:
"The banking system is dramatically more stable now that it was . . . .a year ago."
"The big risk we face now is big banks are not going to take enough risk"
"Unemployment is worse than anyone expected, but growth is back more quickly and stronger than anyone expected" (WTF??)
On unemployment "It's probably going to rise further before it comes down again" (Unh-huh)
And I've saved the best for last -
"Wall Street has changed"

. . . .Like I said, awesome levels of stupid and crazy.

. . . .Now, I wrote about this earlier last week, but this week marks Item 2 of crap that will change your life forever. Back on Wednesday September 9th (yes, it was the President's health-care speech to the joint session, but that wasn't the headline event that day, in terms of long-term political effect) Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. This is the most important case in ages, and it is flying completely under the radar, with Tuesday Nov. 3 marked out for the decision, which has already been broadcast in that code that Supreme Court Justices have, as being already decided. What it will mean, if the rulings go the way the tea leaves are scrying out, is that essentially, the American citizen will forever be locked out of the American political scene, and it will be a Supreme Court ruling that gives corporations free rein in lobbying money, campaign contributions and outright gifts. From the Washington Post:

The full impact of what the court could do in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has only begun to receive the attention it deserves. Even the word "radical" does not capture the extent to which the justices could turn our political system upside down. Will it use a case originally brought on a narrow issue to bring our politics back to the corruption of the Gilded Age?

Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose who financed the film.

Instead of deciding the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable act of overreach. On June 29, it postponed a decision and called for new briefs and a highly unusual new hearing, which is Wednesday's big event. The court chose to consider an issue only tangentially raised by the case. It threatens to overrule a 1990 decision that upheld the long-standing ban on corporate money in campaigns.

I don't have the space to cite all the precedents, dating to the 1976 Buckley campaign finance ruling, that the court would set aside if it were to throw out the prohibition on corporate money. Suffice it to say that there is one member of the court who has spoken eloquently about the dangers of ignoring precedents.

"I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent," he said. "Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness. It is not enough -- and the court has emphasized this on several occasions -- it is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn't answer the question, it just poses the question."

This careful jurist continued: "And you do look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments." He paraphrased Alexander Hamilton as saying in Federalist 78, "To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents."

Chief Justice John Roberts, the likely swing vote in this case, was exactly right when he said these things during his 2005 confirmation hearings. If he uses his own standards, it is impossible to see how he can justify the use of "arbitrary discretion" to discard a well-established system whose construction began with the Tillman Act of 1907.

Were the courts that set the earlier precedents "legitimate"? This ban was upheld over many years by justices of various philosophical leanings. We are not talking about overturning a single decision by a bunch of activists in robes seizing a temporary court majority.

Are the precedents "workable"? The answer is clearly yes, which is why there is absolutely no popular demand to let corporate cash loose into our politics. Our system would be less "workable" if the court abruptly changed the law.

Has the precedent been "eroded"? Absolutely not. In case after case, no matter where particular court majorities stood on particular campaign finance provisions, the ban on corporate contributions was taken for granted. As the court stated just six years ago, Congress's power to prohibit direct corporate and union contributions "has been firmly embedded in our law." That's what you call "settled expectations."

This case is the clearest test that Roberts has faced so far as to whether he meant what he said to Congress in 2005. I truly hope he passes it. If he doesn't, he will unleash havoc in our political system and greatly undermine the legitimacy of the court he leads.

. . . .This will be the ulimate test for Chief Justice John Roberts. Pay close attention to the ruling this week.

. . . . . Now, on that same subject of lobbying corruption. Let's move on to Net Neutrality. Now, very simply, Net Neutrality is the concept that all content in the United States should move at the same speed, regardless of source, and regardless of the telecom or ISP it's being carried on. In other words, the carriers should care only about the speed of the bits and bytes, and not what is contained within those bits and bytes. Consumer Reports, some of the most trustworthy people around have a very simple explanation for it:

Network neutrality is a fancy way of saying the networks that deliver the Internet should treat all content, sites, and applications equally and shouldn’t discriminate against certain traffic based on its source, destination or message. The basic idea is the Internet should be open so consumers have unrestricted access to lawful Web sites and online businesses can compete freely.

Some Internet service providers want to give preferential treatment to certain network traffic –for example, their own content or that of those willing to pay extra fees. Without network neutrality Internet service providers could block or slow down traffic to any Web sites or services they choose. Services, such as making free or cheap phone calls over the Internet, or streaming video, could be blocked. So could the sharing of lawful media content or access to certain political content.

. . . .Now, here's the rub, and the problem, and item #3 that will change your life forever, and you'll bitch later, but you could have done something now, like contact your legislator. Representative Markey has brought to the floor of the House, H.R. 3458 the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would enforce Net Neutrality. Now, here we go with the normal circus of corruption, graft and greed. The original "maverick", Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has received $1.9 million dollars from telecom lobbyists (courtesy of OpenSecrets) to introduce an amendment to Senate version that would completely eliminate net neutrality. AT&T, Charter, Comcast, BellSouth, Knology et al, through their lobbying group have asked McCain to put the vote through for them that would eliminate net neutrality and allow the telecoms and ISP's to decide which content is delivered at which speeds, if delivered at all. In other words, they'll speed up their own content and slow down anyone who doesn't pay them a fee, and guess where and to whom those increased fees will get passed down to? Hell, we're already 15th in the world in broadband communications, maybe we can get ourselves down to where we are in health care. 37th.

. . . .The best part of it is his blatant, out in the open hypocrisy about things. He's on record as being for Net Neutrality long before his current stance of being against it:

So, John McCain wants the internet to be a terrifying user experience for everybody, and is pimping the ironically named, net neutrality-killing "Internet Freedom Act" as a means of satisfying the telecoms that have so devotedly lobbied him for favor. The thing is, if it seems like not too long ago, McCain was singing an entirely different tune on the issue, well, there's a reason for that: not too long ago, McCain was singing an entirely different tune on the issue. Don't believe me? Well, here's what McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin had to say on the matter when he was interviewed on C-SPAN by Amy Schatz, telecommunications reporter from the Wall Street Journal:

SCHATZ: Let's switch to everyone's favorite telecom topic: net neutrality. Can you explain to us what Senator McCain's position is on net neutrality?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: His position is that aggressive and prescriptive legislation on net neutrality is not desirable at this time. It's premature. There is yet no demonstrable damage from a practice that a net neutrality legislation would solve. His preferred way of addressing issues like this is let the marketplace develop, watch for and be aggressive about monitoring for abuse of practices, for monopoly power, for unfair representation to consumers, and if you find such behavior, apply a remedy and get damages. But that's an approach that doesn't pretend to know in advance what's the business model of tomorrow, what's the product line of tomorrow, and who will be providing that product.

Now of course, McCain has telecom lobbyists telling him that about the damage that a piece of net neutrality legislation could wreak on their ability to accrue wealth, so his tune has changed. But there's another interesting quirk, here: McCain's strange new take on "internet freedom" doesn't square, at all, with another telecommunications issue he's spoken out about -- a la carte cable television packages. In the case of cable television, McCain supports the open-source, pro-consumer model of content packaging that he now wants to destroy on the internet.

. . . .So, we know a couple of things. John McCain hates him some Net Neutrality these days, and if he has his way, well, the good folks over at Gizmodo have put together this sample chart for what the worst-case scenario will probably look like once this legislation with McCain's amendment passes, and if you think it's unlikely, take a look at your cable or satellite tiers, and get ready.

Losing Net Neutrality: The Worst Case Scenario

It's alarmist, over-the-top pro-net-neutrality propaganda, sure, but this chart goes a long way to explaining why the IT dude at the office wears that "All Packets are Created Equal" shirt to work every Thursday: because tiered ISPs are scary.

And before you dismiss the chart outright, check out your cable company's channel packages. Replace content provider fees with new network backbone charges, and cable packages with traffic or website packages, and hey, look, shit—this doesn't seem so crazy, does it? Click here for the full version. [Reddit via Crunchgear]

. . . .I'm telling you, absolutely awesome levels of stupid, crazy and corrupt. I can hardly wait to see what Monday morning brings.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: Gregory, MI 48137]