Our top story today: Osama bin Laden is still dead.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Nobody Asked Me, But...
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Why?
Most Disturbing
The Treasury estimates that it can avoid a crisis until early August with few if any lasting consequences by spending about $100 billion in cash that it keeps on deposit with the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, and by temporarily suspending $232 billion in special-purpose borrowing programs so it can instead borrow money to finance general operations.
Emphasis added.
That's us. Borrowing, AT INTEREST, money we've lent to American banks, INTEREST-FREE!
Don't they, you know, owe us?
Seriously?
On The One Hand...
I Think We Have A Winner
"We, The People" Abdicate
Haters Be Hatin'
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Ummmm...oops!
The New Corporate Uniform At AT&T Includes Wife-Beater T-Shirts
Republi-douches Double Down
Transparency
Here's Hoping He Takes The Hint
Maybe They Could Pay For It With Oil Revenues
So How Evil Was Bin Laden, Anyway?
Must Be Pretty Lonely, Out There On The Hustings
And Another Thing....
You Can't Spell "Hypocrisy" Without G-O-P
I Never Thought I'd See The Day
Douchebag
Surly, You Jest!
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Ironically, He's Right
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted Facebook, calling it the "most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented," Russia Today reported Tuesday.Assange, who is currently fighting extradition to Sweden from the U.K., claimed on the Russian news channel that the social networking site was used by the U.S. government to spy on its citizens.
"Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people -- their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives -- all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence," he said. "Facebook, Google, Yahoo -- all these major U.S. organizations have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence."
Assange added, "It's not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use."
I say "ironically" because one of the stated aims of Facebook was to create an open flow of information for people, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg fancies himself a hacker. Both seem antithetical to the uses that Facebook has taken on in terms of stalking both by individuals as well as by government. Much sport has been had with married men posting their affairs on Facebook and finding themselves facing (pun intended) the music in divorce court, or the drunk college kid losing her job because her friends posted photos of her drunk and in her panties.
And yet, behind all these sardonic come-uppances is a chilling thought: what information about you does Facebook have that you aren't even aware they're using nearly indiscriminately?
For every crisis when Facebook posts a new privacy policy, forcing you to go and reset your profile settings...which many people can't be bothered with...how many dozens of secret little deals is Facebook cutting with advertisers and governments in order for the bigger picture, Facebook's success, to be realized?
Errrrrrrrrrrrr, Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....
Useful Idiot
Identity Crisis
OMG! Our Corporations Are Overtaxed!
Topping out at 35 percent, America’s official corporate income tax rate trails that of only Japan, at 39.5 percent, which has said it plans to lower its rate. It is nearly triple Ireland’s and 10 percentage points higher than in Denmark, Austria or China. To help companies here stay competitive, many executives say, Congress should lower it.
But by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.
The paradox of the United States tax code — high rates with a bounty of subsidies, shelters and special breaks — has made American multinationals “world leaders in tax avoidance,” according to Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California who was head of the Congressional joint committee on taxes. This has profound implications for businesses, the economy and the federal budget.
The answer is obvious: lower a little, simplify a lot and force US companies to pay taxes here at home and stop expatriating jobs and revenues.
Ain't Got A Problem With It
Killing Two Birds With One Shot
Since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, al Qaeda has spawned affiliated groups in the Middle East and North Africa and inspired attacks by so-called home-grown militants in Europe and the United States.
But White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said bin Laden's death was the latest in a series of U.S. operations that have delivered "severe body blows" to al Qaeda's central network in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past year.
"We're going to try to take advantage of this opportunity we have now with the death of al Qaeda's leader, bin Laden, to ensure that we're able to destroy that organization," Brennan told NBC's Today show. "We're determined to do so and we believe we can."
It's not like this is unexpected. Once the "Global War On Terror" became extant, we all knew this was not going to just be Afghanistan, Iraq, two and done. Sadly, it seems that no matter what, we'll be fighting this war indefinitely. Oceania will no longer be our enemy, East Asia will. Or the other way around. Or not. Maybe. Maybe not.
It is interesting that the two nations most responsible for the terrible attacks on September 11 2001, Pakistan (whose ISI likely funneled money to the attackers and which certainly knew it was harboring bin Laden) and the Sauds (15 of the 19 hijackers, yadayadayada), remained unpunished and indeed, rewarded for their assistance in these attacks, however indirect it may have been.
So likely, our further development of this war on terror will involve at least these two nations, probably Yemen as well as any number of UAE states which seem to provide either funding or havens for Al Qaeda.
And while I can applaud dismantling that which we effectively created in Al Qaeda, I can't help but wonder what pops up in its place. Right now, there doesn't seem to be an organization capable of picking up the slack, employing the resources and manpower that Al Qaeda managed to harness, albeit briefly.
That doesn't mean we're safe. Indeed, small-scale attacks have always been the greater source of danger to the average American because those actually require vigilance on the part of all people, not just law enforcement. This would be fine except Americans have the attention span of a gnat (quick...what was the big story before the birth certificate release last week?) and would insist on the abrogation of the rights of the people they suspect.
The police already effectively have that power and it's already abused regularly nationwide. I'm pretty sure the last thing I want is untrained vigilantes roaming around with that kind of freedom.
There's also the school of thought, as noted yesterday, that home-grown jihadists may take bin Laden's death as a signal to initiate whatever plots they were working on, a sort of "terrorist deadman switch" having been activated. If bin Laden was alive, then bigger plots were in the works, so stay below the radar. Now that he's not, start spraying.
There's yet another possibility: a group or groups we hadn't even considered could have been working with the remnants of Al Qaeda all along, trying to forge an alliance that would pick up where 9/11 left off. These groups could conceivably have the funding and manpower necessary to continue the attacks and so long as Al Qaeda remains in play, we might have a lead on these activities ahead of time. We've spent ten years and who knows how much money to infiltrate Al Qaeda and to provide intel.
We squash Al Qaeda, we squash those efforts.
Still....
Oh. The other bird killing bin Laden kills?
You see, it's forced him out of the brush and as Saturday's Correspondents' Dinner showed, the man does not have the strength to run a campaign.