Oh gosh, lookee there. . . .

Thursday November 5, 2009

. . . . ."I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies" Thomas Jefferson

. . . .Before we get into the hot and pertinent topics of the day, first up, the best program on television, Sons of Anarchy, was on with this week's episode on Tuesday night and delivered hot and strong. Consistently, week after week, Kurt Sutter and the cast deliver the best program since Deadwood. If you don't watch it, you're missing a reason to set 1 hour aside a week for yourself. For those of you who do watch (a) Bobby has figured everything out (b) Tig is nervous, and rightfully so, that he's being replaced (c) Chips' brother, Jimmy O, on the scene next week will change everything (d) Darby lived, and that's not good news for Zoebel (e) the pin is absolutely pulled on the two human fragmentation grenades that go by the names of Jax and Hale and finally (f) Gemma will have to tell them all, the final scene in the church was positively moving. The overarching theme this season is about family, and how we have to make our family where it is and with those we've been gifted to have around us, and accept them as they are, and ourselves as we are.

. . . . .As always, what I care about most and first is the group of bastards that are really running the country, and who have screwed it all up, and remain it's biggest threat, and no Righties, it's not Barack Obama and the Left, and no, Progressives, it's not the GOP. Both parties are actually one and the same, and neither side has it right anyhow, as Tuesday's elections and the incredibly inane, banal and completely whacked-out wrong coverage proved, but more on that later on in the post.

. . . . .I can't go too much longer without mentioning this one, JP Morgan Chase, David Rockefeller's baby and Goldman's partner in crime is busy bankrupting the country as well. As this report from the AP shows, JP Morgan went under the table to cut deals in Alabama, and as a result bankrupted Jefferson County:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $75 million in fines and forfeit $647 million in fees to settle federal regulators' charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday announced the settlement with JPMorgan.

The SEC had alleged that JPMorgan and former managing directors Charles LeCroy and Douglas MacFaddin made about $8.2 million in undisclosed payments in 2002 and 2003 to close friends of several Jefferson County commissioners. The money went to local brokerage firms whose principals or employees were friends of the county officials, the SEC said. Starting in July 2002, LeCroy and MacFaddin solicited the county for a $1.4 billion sewer bond deal.

Swayed by the payments, the county commissioners voted to select JPMorgan's securities division as managing underwriter of the bond offerings and its affiliated bank as swap provider for the transactions, the SEC said. The $5 billion in municipal bond business and interest-rate swap agreements awarded to JPMorgan was the largest such deal in its securities division's history, according to the SEC.

JPMorgan failed to disclose any of the unlawful payments or conflicts of interest in the bond offering documents, but passed on the cost of the payments by charging the county higher interest rates on the swap transactions, the SEC said.

"The transactions were complex but the scheme was simple," SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement. "Senior JPMorgan bankers made unlawful payments to win business and earn fees."

Under terms of the settlement, the Wall Street bank did not admit or deny the SEC allegations in agreeing to pay a $25 million civil fine and make a $50 million payment to the county, and to forfeit $647 million in termination fees it claims the county owes on the canceled interest-rate swap contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

JPMorgan also was censured and agreed to refrain from future violations of the securities laws.

Regulators have issued warnings for years over so-called "pay-to-play" relationships between investment firms and government officials in the $2.7 trillion municipal bond market, tapped by state and local governments around the country to finance schools, roads, hospitals and public works projects. The Jefferson County scandal has roiled Alabama's most populous county and last week brought the federal bribery conviction and ouster of Birmingham's mayor.

The move lowers Jefferson County's bond debt to about $3.2 billion from $3.9 billion, but officials had no immediate comment on whether that was enough to help the county avoid filing what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy ever.

. . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .Dylan Ratigan, with some solutions for what we can do, right now, to not necessarily fix anything, but at least begin to get some idea about, and transparency around just how bad it all really is right now:

1. Inject transparency, primarily to bring almost $600 trillion of crooked insurance scams to the forefront. Force almost all swaps onto exchanges, not just the 20% as current proposed reform does.

Secretary Geithner, Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd are protecting the last of the Wall Street secret money-making schemes. They don't want to force transparency on this market because it would disclose the fraud this massive bank scheme is -- a taxpayer subsidized secret insurance market which sells cheap insurance to hedge funds, power and food and energy companies, and makes for huge profits at banks and insurance companies. Insurance and idle speculation in secret is a brilliant way for banks and other financial services companies to make money (who doesn't want to collect insurance premiums every month for something you'll never have to pay for?!) And a great way to make oil, food and electricity company CEOs richer as they pay less for their insurance. One problem -- they are all surfing on the taxpayers back to the tune of $24 trillion at risk last I checked -- and the U.S. government is the one letting them do it. Still. Now bigger than ever.

2. Demand capital to back Wall Street's gambling. As Tyler Durden at Zerohedge.com said about this clip from the show, do this and it is a guarantee that very few firms will have Goldman's trading pattern each and every quarter.

In Vegas, you need to have actual money to gamble. Your own money. It's crazy, but true. Even today, in many cases more than ever, U.S. banks use America's FDIC insured safe deposits to fund their own mad bonus-seeking speculation. Once the banks blow through that -- they borrow from the biggest money printing house in the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve to do the same thing. This is truly insane. The banks and their traders keep the upside. You, the taxpayer, keep the downside. No one else in the world can pay themselves billions to take infinite risk with little or no money down, except a big bank CEO. And we thought they were good at their jobs making all that money, when all they did was rig the game using our government to do it.

3. Enact a tax-code to encourage long-term investment and discourage short-term profit. Fortunes should not be made in minutes but over years through the creation of value to society.

As long as the easiest way for a man or woman to make money is to spend their day clicking for dollars, why would they bother doing all the work of investing in the long-term economic development of private business in America? Tax code in general should encourage investment, jobs, and innovation in America and discourage idle speculation as the easiest way for a college kid to get rich. There are sensible ways to use tax policy to encourage this that do not hamper liquidity.

4. Break up the Too Big To Fail banking institutions. Start with Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Right Now.

How do you expect any other business to compete with the chosen few who are guaranteed profits? The more risk they take, the more they make. Why do you think they invented a fake $600 Trillion secret derivative market in the first place? Bigger bonuses baby. All upside. No downside. Thank you Uncle Sam. Thank you Secretary Geithner.

. . . . .If you're not at least catching on to the fact that these financial institutions, the select few, namely two of them; Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are the biggest long-term threats to this country and it's middle class, and long term real prosperity, I don't know what else to tell you.

. . . .Yet another one from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, on how Wall Street is stealing any wealth in this country

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

At the close of business that afternoon, Bear Stearns was trading at $62.97. At that point, whoever made the gamble owned the right to sell huge bundles of Bear stock, at $30 and $25, on or before March 20th. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history.

The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money to marry its hunchbacked new bride) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…

. . . . .

The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players — "300 white guys in Manhattan," as a former high-placed executive puts it. But over the course of the past year, that group of insiders has also proved itself brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of the state to help along the process of concentrating economic might — making it less and less likely that the financial markets will ever be policed, since the state is increasingly the captive of these interests.

The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote "serious financial reform," his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

The nation's largest financial players are able to write the rules for own their businesses and brazenly steal billions under the noses of regulators, and nothing is done about it. A thing so fundamental to civilized society as the integrity of a stock, or a mortgage note, or even a U.S. Treasury bond, can no longer be protected, not even in a crisis, and a crime as vulgar and conspicuous as counterfeiting can take place on a systematic level for years without being stopped, even after it begins to affect the modern-day equivalents of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. What 10 years ago was a cheap stock-fraud scheme for second-rate grifters in Brooklyn has become a major profit center for Wall Street. Our burglar class now rules the national economy. And no one is trying to stop them.

. . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .How deep does this shit go?
- From the Wall Street Journal -

One of Russia's most powerful tycoons -- barred entry to the U.S. for years due to U.S. government concerns about possible ties to organized crime -- visited the country twice this year under secret arrangements made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned.

Mr. Deripaska used the opportunity of his recent U.S. visits to meet with top executives of U.S. investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The aluminum giant he controls, UC Rusal, is preparing for an initial public offering, a vital part of Mr. Deripaska's efforts to save his debt-burdened business.

. . . .That's how deep this shit goes. And you spend all your time worrying that somehow the guy in the White House, who is the ultimate capitalist, the man who received the largest campaign contribution in the history of U.S. politics from Goldman-Sachs is a "socialist". . . . sometimes I am completely astounded as to how stupid people can be.

. . . .Now, on Tuesday's elections and the incredibly mundane, banal, inane amount of analysis, punditry and airtime spent on them. It's not nearly as complex as anyone wants to make it, it's not nearly the signal or the stirring of the tea leaves that anyone wants it to be, and it sure as hell better not be a "portent" to any politician for next year.

. . . .Unfortunately, it will be, and here's how it will play out. Democrats are, for the most part, spineless pussies, who, most likely have spent all day today wetting their finger and putting it up to see which way the wind is blowing, so they know which way they should face. Republicans automatically assume that they are right, have always been right and cannot possibly be wrong, since by genetic heritage and birthright, they're born to rule and sure as hell wish that we could get back to that two class system in the country so they can have servants again, and will charge off half-cocked, headlong, continuing to lead their party over the edge, into the maw of destruction that it's now headed into.

. . . It played out very simply. The vast majority of voters in this country, in the space of less than 2 years, have dropped their party identification, since neither party is worth hyena crap anymore, and are no registered independents. In an economy this bad, with more and more people waking up to the fact that "their" politician, regardless of party, is a bought and paid for dancing monkey for their campaign contributors and lobbyists, are getting into the habit of voting out the incumbent. In the cases of the governors of Virginia and New Jersey, it was simple, in both cases, it was a case of the people electing the guy they disliked less. In Upstate New York 23, where the Republican Party went on it's ideological purge and ate it's own young, the Conservative teabagger from out-of-district who was so breathlessly endorsed by the Republican Party's de facto leader Rush Limbaugh and his floozy Sarah, got trounced by a Democrat. Now think on that and let it sink in. A district that hadn't elected a Democrat since 1852, when faced with a choice between a teabagger and a Dem, elected a Dem.

. . .That's the portent that's being missed, and it's being missed big. Instead of taking a step back to realize just how badly the extremists have marginalized their party, have made it now an ideology, a dogma, a religion; the teabaggers, who live backwards anyhow, are rushing to challenge all over as of today, in what apparently is an effort to drive that party's bus right off the cliff.

. . . And if the remaining members of the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Goldwater allow it and want it to go that way, I say good riddance.

. . . .Why do I hate teabaggers, wingnuts and extremists? These very same people criticized, and called un-American, and unpatriotic anyone who criticized George W. Bush while he was in office and while troops were in harm's way during two wars, the same two wars that continue today.

"Today, thousands will pour into Washington to tell Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel..." —Wingnut stereotype Erick Erickson

Sending the president to a death panel, eh? So much for not undermining the commander in chief while the troops are in harm's way.

. . . .Let me be the first to say it, Erick Erickson isn't a patriot, I doubt he's an American, and he is a traitor, sowing treason and sedition. Ditto that for Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Anoka, Minnesota.

. . . At least one member of that party grew a set on Wednesday. RNC chairman Michael Steele:
Rogue warfare, perhaps? RNC Chairman Michael Steele issued a stern rebuke to conservatives like Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, who immersed themselves in Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s losing House campaign. “If you don't live in the district, you don't vote there, your opinion doesn't matter very much,” Steele said. "It serves as an important lesson on how we manage an opportunity to win a seat. And how not to mismanage by putting in a botched process.” Steele went on, “I don't see a victory in losing seats.
- Rush will probably call him out on the radio on Thursday, and Steele will have to tuck his tail between his legs, take his punishment and cave in to the Repubs real leader.

. . . .Damn those pesky homemade sex tapes! The Right wing bimbo-of-the-moment from a few months ago, Carrie Prejean, who was being sued the Miss Universe California pageant for the cost of her plastic surgery (it was either that or they wanted their tits back) had countersued the pageant. Seems they let her know they had a copy of a tape that she'd made a while back that had found it's way onto the Internet, yes, those amateur sites. She dropped her suit rather quickly.

. . .Absolutely great article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek that I highly recommend for anyone, no matter your political stripe or leaning.

From time to time the American people participate in a mass delusion about how their government works. Such a delusion took place exactly a year ago, when a 47-year-old African-American who had once been accorded little chance of prevailing was elected president of the United States.

History will judge Barack Obama over the long haul. But we've learned something in the short term that is simple, obvious, and has less to do with him than with the Founding Fathers. This is a country that often has transformational ambitions but is saddled with an incremental system, a nation built on revolution, then engineered so the revolutionary can rarely take hold.

Checks and balances: that's how we learn about it in social-studies class, and in theory it is meant to guard against a despotic executive, a wild-eyed legislature, an overweening judiciary. And it's also meant to safeguard the rights of the individual; as James Madison, president and father of the Constitution, once said, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." But what our system has meant during the poisonous partisan civil war that has paralyzed Washington in recent years is that very little of the big stuff gets done. It simply can't.

That's really how our government works, by inches. In our long history it seems that the decision to wage war is the most sweeping act of the executive and legislative branches, although the British would likely argue that Franklin Roosevelt even brought an incremental approach to that in the run-up to World War II. In modern times, most true transformation has come through the judiciary: Brown, Roe, Miranda. Perhaps that is because consensus on the court is manageable, with only five of nine required, or because justices have life tenure, and need not spend their days looking to the next election, the focus group, the polls. Although we view the past through a lens of misty historical romanticism, there's no question that the calculus of elected office at the moment is startlingly cynical. Henry Paulson, the last Treasury secretary in the last Bush administration, told Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair that he was most shocked by the perfidy of official Washington, in which members of Congress would tell him privately that they supported policies that they would oppose, even vigorously trash, in public. "I didn't understand the system," Paulson concluded, the system in which men and women have their consciences excised in the course of government service. The small steps an incremental system guarantees become even smaller in the face of pitched partisan rancor, until eventually nothing moves at all.

. . . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .Now, very seriously, I recommend reading the entire piece, balanced, well-thought out and the very least a cool breath of rationality and sense, and an excellent treatise on how government really works.

. . .That said, I absolutely fell over myself laughing at the painful truths exposed in this one, which is a perfect storm of Bob Cesca and Matt Taibbi, melded together:

While the leftnutbaggers devour Barack Obama for not firing an organic utopia of free marijuana and health care out of his armpits on Day 1, they should be aware that the moron bullet the nation dodged in 2008 is waiting in the wings for a presidential run. Of course, any sane person would assume quitting her gubernatorial position to cash in on book deals would've doomed Sarah Palin's political career, but never underestimate the American propensity for dumb. Via Matt Taibbi:

Palin’s paranoid ramblings and self-pitying tantrums on the way out of office not only didn’t injure her chances for national office, they actually appeared to help, as polls taken in the week after her resignation showed that 71% of Republicans were now prepared to vote for her for president in 2012. Just as she had during the campaign last fall, Palin defied rational analysis by making a primal connection with the subterranean resentments of white middle America, which is apparently so pissed off now at the rest of the planet for not coddling its hurt feelings in the multicultural age that it is willing to embrace any politician who validates its insane sense of fucked-overness.

Granted, this is from an unpublished piece just after her resignation it still rings true among the xenophobic, crazier-by-the-minute GOP base. Also, Shannyn Moore points out that Sarah Palin is out there robocalling and waiting to take credit for any teabagger wins today like some sort of undying, lowest common denominator Terminator.

Could a divided Democratic Party and an increasing testicle-themed grip on the GOP be the perfect storm for a Palin presidency? It's hard to say until today's election results are in, but should Obama continue to be attacked for not being the Ultra-Progressive John Rambo he never promised to be, we might be looking at a "Battle of the Fringes" come 2012 which could easily digress into a coin-toss for the White House. That said, let me know how health care reform thrives under an administration who thinks the King James and a Tylenol should replace Medicare.

[Redmond's Note: This post is not meant as a tacit Obama love-fest - I've got my pet causes, too *cough*Geithner*cough*. It's more of a reminder that a ticking timebomb of winking jingoism is primed to detonate our asses back into the Dark Ages at a moment's notice. An FYI if you will.]

Adding... You could also file this post under "Why Voting for Kucinich in 2012 is a HORRIBLE Idea." Don't get me wrong, I agree with the guy on a majority of issues but realistically he's just not electable and I prefer casting votes that won't land the GOP back in the White House.

. . . . .And this last one, by Chez Pazienza, over at Deus ExMalcontent, snarky, smart-ass and dead-on, and why I fear the current incarnation of the Republican Party and the religious whackos and wingnuts that have taken it over:

One of the most pervasive themes in right-wing discourse throughout the years has been a fear of infestation -- the notion that non-whites, gays, immigrants, godless humanists, basically anyone deemed "not us" are replicating like the vermin they are and, if left unchecked, will eventually eviscerate the values of "traditional America" via their sheer unholy numbers. It's this amusingly irrational brand of paranoia that haunts the dreams of not only your average semi-literate, Keystone Light-drinking lummox, but equally scares the hell out of ostensibly educated folk who you'd think would know better.

People like Pat Boone.

Sure, Boone's little more than an irrelevant caricature -- admittedly the biggest WASP who's ever walked the face of the earth and Anita Bryant's only slightly more masculine counterpart in espousing the Gospel of Whitey -- but it's still tough to imagine him dabbling in eliminationist fantasies aimed at, of all places, the White House. And yet that's exactly what he's now doing. In a move that's even more painfully embarrassing than that ridiculous metal album he recorded back in the early 90s, Boone's penned a column for Newsmax in which he claims that the home of the president of the United States needs to be tented and fumigated to kill off the "social and political voracious varmints" who've overrun it.

Boone writes, "Experts come in, actually envelope the whole dwelling in a giant tent -- and send a very powerful fumigant, lethal to the varmints and unwelcome creatures, into every nook and cranny of the house. Done thoroughly, every last destructive insect or rodent is sent to varmint hell -- and in a day or two, the grand house is habitable again."

And no doubt Pat's willing to donate his own personal supply of Zyklon B gas to the proceedings. Either way, feel free to take a minute to stop laughing.

Yes, of course this is (no pun intended) the most rat-shit absurd thing you've ever heard, dreamed up by a guy who likely longs for the good old days when "coloreds" couldn't use the same bathroom as him, much less occupy the highest office in his beloved country. But this kind of horseshit is just the latest example of something I've mentioned a couple of times here before: the utter dehumanization of Barack Obama by his political adversaries.

Back in September, I wrote this:

"That's really what it's all about, though -- the fact that Barack Obama's political enemies don't actually accept him as president. They consider him an illegitimate -- his presidency some kind of sham, regardless of the overwhelming majority he won back in November of 2008. They've demonized and marginalized him -- called him a foreigner, a socialist, a threat to the American way of life, a cult leader intent on indoctrinating and enslaving our children through sheer force of personality. They bring guns to places he's speaking; they have so little respect for the man or the fact that he won the office he now holds that they intimate that they're willing to cause physical harm to him and his supporters."

And now, not surprisingly, they refer to him and his family as insects -- "unwelcome creatures" infesting the White House that require quick and absolute extermination so that the natural order of things can be restored.

Newsmax should be wary of printing this kind of crap right now, given that just a few weeks ago they rushed, uncharacteristically red-faced, to take down a post which seemed to advocate a military coup against the president of the United States. I'd have to assume its only Pat Boone's status as a walking punchline that's leading them to leave his own bit of eliminationist wishful thinking up on their site for the moment. Regardless of who says it, though, it's wrong to beat the drum this loudly against a sitting president, to show the office -- not simply the man and his family, but the office -- so little respect.

Not only is it wrong -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- it's flat-out dangerous given the current political climate.

All the way back in August of last year -- long before the Tea Baggers, the Birthers, the death panel rumors, fears of the encroaching socialist menace, conspiracist lunacy about the indoctrination of our children, even the presidential election itself -- I wrote this in response to the rise in right-wing, eliminationist rhetoric and violence:

"It's an agenda which has, admittedly, been proclaimed and perpetuated -- whether in jest or not -- by people like Limbaugh, Coulter and Savage for some time. These three and others like them have honed their talk of zero-tolerance for the people across the aisle to a knife's edge. For years, they've blanketed the airwaves, bookshelves and internet with ultra-nationalist agitprop which asserts that those who don't think like them are not simply to be argued with and voted down, they must be utterly crushed underfoot by any means necessary -- even if it involves, as Coulter once said, taking a baseball bat to them -- because they are nothing less than the enemy of the United States of America. In the words, if not actually the minds, of these seemingly fascist demagogues, liberals are as dangerous and absolute a threat to our way of life as the terrorists they supposedly coddle.

...Whether they mean it to or not, the invective of clowns like Limbaugh does have an impact. Listen long enough to right-wing propaganda and your eyes eventually glaze over, your brain shuts down and you begin to subscribe completely to the alternate reality that it's constructed out of thin air: an America where your new non-white neighbors are terrorists, immigrants are stealing your job, homosexuals want to lure your children into a life of sodomy, and treasonous liberals are plotting against you and your god at every turn. Believe this paranoid fantasy completely and who knows what you'll be capable of doing to defend your way of life."

I have no doubt that Boone's piece is supposed to be a joke -- but it's one that, in context, isn't all that funny.

Which is surprising given that Pat Boone's entire existence is one of the funniest fucking things imaginable.

. . . .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]