Hey Mr. Dimon, mind if we trouble you for a sec?

Jon Stewart's take on the US Senate's groveling performance before the real boss:

The Daily Show
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The American Class System Revisited

Here Richard Wolff uses the mortgage crisis and the explosion in personal indebtedness here in the US as the vehicle by which a discussion on class may be explored...

A Reasonable Suggestion

After my long hiatus I thought this presentation by Prof. Richard Wolff would serve as a nice segue into at least some semi-regular posting. My thoughts have been consumed by our economic devolution of late here in the US and any suggestion of alternatives will manage to catch my attention. Look for more like this in this space:

Always remember that they hate us for our freedoms

Update: Arthur Silber elaborates further as only he can...

Get your Cry On!

Ok, so I'm bored.

How charming!

And to think, US taxpayers directly subsidize this vicious colonial settler state to the tune of 3 billion dollars per year with no strings attached. Hat tip Jews san frontieres.

Why? Because they can.

PS. Arthur Silber shares a few thoughts on the subject as well...

Some images speak for themselves

Hat tip to Mike Flugennock

They Hate Us Because of Our Freedoms and Wholesome Goodness Damn it! You Got That?

Things to make you go, hmmm...

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation. 

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprising some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times — the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. Marines. 

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Don’t believe him? Then check it out for yourself.

Or... you could simply plug your ears and close your eyes to trifles such as counter narratives grounded in empirical evidence like Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation fame who launched into an ankle-biting tirade at GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul for expressing heretical thoughts about the consequences of American foreign policy...


Glenn Greenwald’s extended comments on this performance by one of our finest stenographers to Power is worth reading in full.

Happy Thanksgiving

I really mean it...

Rise of the Mighty Technocrats

Barring popular resistance this obscenity may be coming to the EU (aka testing grounds for the US) quite soon. Here’s the visual Cliff Notes version:

William K. Black at Occupy LA

Oddly enough this former regulator who gained vast experience in prosecuting the last batch of financial frauds to menace the economy during the S&L crisis of the late 1980's never seems to make any appearances on CNN, MSNBC, et al. Humm, I wonder...

Imagine

Allow me to preempt the simple-minded before viewing: this is not an endorsement of Ron Paul but merely a thought exercise. Major thanks to Jack Crow to whom my lazy ass is increasingly in debt of late...

Soon There Will Only Be One

The following comes courtesy of Lenin's Tomb and helps to graphically illustrate the level of Capital's concentration today.

How may we be of service?

Since the G20 Summit will be coming around these parts soon with plans to hash out the further institutionalization of austerity for the masses, I thought this little ditty would be a nice lullaby for those of us charged with protecting the pampered asses of our guests:

Whew! Thank goodness NATO has saved Libya from itself in the nick of time.

Africa's crown jewel now lays in ruins but then again that's the whole point friends. Now that the most developed nation on the continent with the largest proven oil reserves has been pulled apart someone's got to put it back together again.

Silly Libyans just didn't understand that this sort of shit is for sovereign people... and "we" don't allow that sort of thing bub:


Please don't mistake the posting of this video as an endorsement of Giddafi the man. No, as should be clear to all but the willfully blind, what now awaits the Libyan people left to the tender mercies of NATO and the IMF will be orders of magnitude worse than anything Big G may have dished out.

Blame it on Warren

Billionaire Warren Buffet's modest proposal in a recent New York Times editorial has set off the mouth pieces of plutocracy like you wouldn't believe. Well, actually what's not to believe given the characters in question? In any event I thought Jon Stewart of The Daily Show had a pretty funny take on it:
Part 1:

The Daily Show
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Part 2:

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The Debt Limit "Debate" in Six Panels

Hat tip: Jesse's Cafe

The Naked Face of Plutocracy, Part Duex

It is hard to determine what Obama really is, what he stands for, behind the artfully crafted, histrionic façade. He seems at times to be a sort of Herbert Hoover, or even a Neville Chamberlain, consistently giving ground to the bankers' bully boys. Or is he just another power groupie like so many others these days, without principle or character, wishing to 'get his share,' wishing to be accepted?

I suspect that like most of the politicians and bureacrats he is without a moral compass, rationalizing a grotesque selfishness above honor, oath, and duty, despising the many, worshipping at the altar of greed.-JCA

You think?

The Naked Face of Plutocracy

"A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House’s Blue Room. The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit..."-NYT (aka Stenographers of Record)

Yes, I know you're shocked but here's the rest anyway...