What Price a Nation?

American Democracy sold out for "30 pieces of silver"; from the NY Times:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY
TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

Section 1. Short Title.
This Act may be cited as ____________________.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Authority to Purchase.--The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(4) establishing vehicles that are authorized, subject to supervision by the Secretary, to purchase mortgage-related assets and issue obligations; and

(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities of this Act.

...Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

(emphasis mine)

Go to the link and see how easily and cheaply we can sell our national soul. It's only $2,333 per man, woman and child.

As long as we no longer need our Constitution or Bill of Rights, why not get rid of that pesky Judiciary?

And Congress? Traitors and capitulators all! String 'em up.

The NeoCon (emphasis on the "con") wet dream come true.

Call and Email your representatives at once and demand Congressional debate and oversight, as well as judicial review. This is BushCo's final assault on America and it must be stopped.

Catch you later.....

(Image courtesy of AntiWarPosters.com)

Update: Email response from Rep. Darrell Issa...

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I am honored to serve you in Congress and take my obligation to you seriously. Your thoughts and concerns are always important to me and do make a difference. Please know that I will respond to your message as soon as possible.

If your message requires immediate attention, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at 202-225-3906 and speak to a memberof my staff. You may also contact my Vista, California office at760-599-5000.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be of service.

Oh, you can be sure to hear from me, Congressman, but will you be listening?

Thanks, Georgie, you're doin' a heck of a job!

Retail gasoline price hits record: AAA - Yahoo! News

Remember when the war in Iraq was going to pay for itself?

TOM TOMORROW:

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/10/tomo/

One extremely gratifying aspect of the Web is the ease with which one can go back and look anew at the lunacy of the Neocons and their demon-partners, the "religious" right.

Together, I think with malicious intent, these marginally aware, minimally conscious groups have brought us to the brink of the destruction of the American Dream. Out of pure avarice. Greed. The lust for power.

And in John McLame they offer us 4 more years of this mindless crap, with the added attraction of an anger management problem.

Meanwhile, democrats, progressives, liberals, whatever are fighting among themselves like a bunch of jealous sisters around prom time. Jeebus people, look at the stakes, grow a spine and get down to the dirty work that lies ahead.

Impeach Already! Protect the Constitution!

I've been looking hard at this on-line, learn Chinese at home deal, 'cause it looks like it'll be more important here in So-Cal than even Spanish before long. We're giving the store away!

The inter-personal, intra-party B.S. going on in the Netroots, cable news, and elsewhere is, frankly, disgusting, especially given the long term stakes.

Supreme Court, anyone?

Admiral Fallon's departure today does not bode well for the near term future. Think Bush will go for a hat-trick? Three wars in one Administration! War with Iran! Because Iraq was a typo?!

Our culture, history, current level of education, awareness does not bode well for taking the long view. Something that opposing entities (nations, philosophies, religions, whatever) seem to do easily.

Enlightened Self-Interest Anyone?

Catch you later.....

The Looming Banking Collapse

Mon Feb 18, 9:09 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing "massive amounts" from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.

The newspaper said the use of the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of their assets, saw borrowing of nearly $50 billion of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.

The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks' growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.

(Reporting by Mark McSherry; Editing by Valerie Lee)

From Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation,

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/02/shoes-dropping.html

.... And after another while, the nature of money became so detached from anything real, so abstract, that its very existence became hypothetical. Even this "worked" for a while, in terms of the managers of this money being able to "cream" substantial amounts of this hypothetical money off the top of their notional operations and translate that hypothetical cream into Tribeca lofts, Gulfstream jets, and other real luxuries. The rest of the economic food chain -- and the social order that represented it -- got stripped of remaining asset value (and social value) until they had nothing left to trade with except debt, in one form or another, and this phase of the game turned out to have a short lifetime when the the only debts remaining to be monetized were the contracts on houses occupied by people with no hope of ever meeting their obligations -- and then the whole sorry racket started to go up in a vapor. This is roughly where we are, and where the banks stand today. They are pretending to have money and desperately cadging loans from all comers to keep appearances up, but the loans can't come in fast enough. The appearance of confidence is crucial (as it is, of course, in any "con" game) to keep the investors (depositors) at bay. If a bunch of investors (depositors) all got nervous about the solvency of a given bank, they might try to slip in there during business hours and withdraw or redeem their "money" and perhaps translate it into items of value like gold coins, bottles of vodka, or cases of 9 millimeter pistol ammunition. And if enough of this bunch showed up at the same time, we would see a phenomenon called a "run" on a bank. And after that started at one bank, the thing Franklin Roosevelt called "fear itself" could easily spread to depositers in other banks pretending to be OK... and that would be the magic moment that the USA discovered it was no longer a rich nation."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole house of cards is poised to come down around our ears. McCain might get his hundred years war. Over food, fuel, shrinking land masses, religious fanatacism... the list grows and grows. Who in their right mind would want to be President?

Sweet dreams, catch you later.....

Jim Hightower | CASHING IN ON AMERICA’S VETERANS

This sort of crap should be vigorously prosecuted as a felony:

Jim Hightower CASHING IN ON AMERICA’S VETERANS

And here in San Diego where so many service members, vets and their families live.

Catch you later.....

NEW BUSH COINS...funny

It's funny. Scary but funny.

_: NEW BUSH COINS

Catch you later.....