Free College on Wall Street's Tab? 5 Reasons the Finance Sector Should Pay for Full Tuition at Public Universities

We are the richest country in the world, and we have the means to create employment for the 20 million who are without work.
May 17, 2011 |

"...At the close of WWII...Overall, 7.8 million veterans went to school on the GI Bill...

Was it worth it? In 1988, the Joint Economic Committee analyzed the impact of the GI Bill on the economy. The program cost taxpayers approximately $70 billion (in 2010 dollars). However, the committee estimated that the GI Bill generated an extra $120 billion in federal tax revenues and $350 billion in extra national output. Overall, for every one dollar invested in this massive educational program, $6.90 was returned to the economy..."

Yeah. At that time this country produced and sold more than military material , movies and crops.

It didn't make a sound

Girls? Real SEALs don't brag

SEAL Imposters Sought
Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado says the base gets around three inquiries per week
Thursday, May 12, 2011 | Updated
Source: SEAL Imposters Sought | NBC San Diego

I got my share of idiots 30 freakin years ago who thought I would be impressed by their bullshit stories that they were SEALs. I got news for you boys, the fact is that very few non military women know or care what a SEAL is anyway.

And as long as we're talking about defense:


David Sirota
WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2011 14:50 ET
Osama: Poster boy for defense waste

It cost the U.S. at least $3 trillion to find a poorly guarded man camping out with his VCR in Abbottabad

Update: Walt Disney Company Halts Plans To Trademark ‘SEAL Team 6′
by Jon Bershad | 11:58 am, May 26th, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Faces Rape Charges As Another Woman Comes Forward

Strauss-Ka­hn lawyers see alibi in sex case: report

http://www­.reuters.c­om/article­/2011/05/1­6/us-strau­sskahn-ali­bi-idUSTRE­74F35M2011­0516

PARIS | Mon May 16, 2011 9:05am EDT

(Reuters) - Lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Ka­hn have proof the IMF chief was at a restaurant having lunch with his daughter at the time he was alleged to be sexually assaulting a hotel maid, France's RMC radio reported on Monday.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Deutsche Bank Sues Foreclosure Fraud Expert's Son With No Financial Interest In Her Case

I didn't think I could be any more shocked by the banksters. I was wrong
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Voting Rights Under Attack

I have been following this issue for years now.



So has Greg Palast. "What the heck is vote caging, and why hould we care?"

http://www­.gregpalas­t.com/ragi­ng-caging-­what-the-h­eck-is-vot­e-caging-a­nd-why-sho­uld-we-car­e/
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Time for Financial Regulators to Limit Speculation in Oil Market

"...The modern hedge fund industry was born during the early-nine­ties period of "reflation­ary" policymaki­ng. The Alan Greenspan Fed collapsed interest rates (all the way down to 3%!), while orchestrat­ing a steep yield curve to help recapitali­ze the banking system. Speculator­s made a killing playing yield curve "carry trades" and various "borrow cheap and lend dear" schemes made possible by the Fed. When various bubbles burst along the way, Washington (the Fed and government­-sponsored enterprise­s, in particular­) measures repeatedly backstoppe­d the industry (the 1994 bond bust, Mexico, SE Asia, Long-Term Capital Management­, and the bursting of the tech bubble come to mind). What appeared to be a major industry shakeout in 2008 somehow morphed into the gilded age of speculativ­e trading... "

http://www­.atimes.co­m/atimes/G­lobal_Econ­omy/ME10Dj­01.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Chipotle, Undocumented Workers, And The Trouble With 'Enforcement-Only' Immigration

Big business wants slave labor, big business gets slave labor.

McDonald's invested approximat­ely $360 million into Chipotle, and took out $1.5 billion


Boom,like that Mark Knopfler 2005

In October 2006, McDonald's fully divested from Chipotle”
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Time to Fight Conflicts of Interest on Wall Street

" The cops on the Wall Street beat must take the mandate we gave them in the Dodd-Frank Act seriously and implement it forcefully to end these conflicts of interest."



Yes, and I would bet that those cops are underfunde­d and overworked­.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House Hires Communications Hand To Handle Issa Oversight

Issa is so loathesome­. You don't think the NRA and the profiteers on the board don't have him by the short an curlies?http://eng­lish.aljaz­eera.net/i­ndepth/opi­nion/2011/­02/2011237­5421439250­.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

next investment bubble please

Champagne And Easy Money: The Web's Young Stars Confront Another Bubble
First Posted: 05/10/11 01:32 PM ET

Nathaniel Cahners Hindman

"..Across the globe, more than $5 billion flowed into young web companies in the first four months of 2011, Reuters reported...

...So far in 2011, 16 web firms have filed IPO documents with U.S. securities regulators, seeking to raise proceeds estimated at nearly $4.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. That already tops the full-year totals for every year except 1999, when 52 companies filed to raise $4.2 billion..."

Herd investment behavior by Wall Street speculators and traders who have wayy too much testosterone fueling their outrageously risky behavior and a bunch of kids who haven't lived through bubbles popping in such a way that it actually affected them makes for a cocktail that we should not be drinking.

The Clash - I'm so bored with the U.S.A. (lyrics)

stuck in my head today

Muslims, Christians Clash In Cairo, Egypt After Mob Burns Church

Religious affliation is only an excuse to find a target for the rage, mark my words.

January 31, 2011
Egypt's Rising Food Prices: The Economic Crisis Is Driving Political Protests Sparked In Part By US Financial Speculatio­n

"...Prices in Egypt are up 17% because of a worldwide surge in commodity prices that has many factors but speculatio­n on Wall Street and big banks is a key one...

...Here’s a key fact buried in a CNN Money report—the kind intended for investors, not the public at large: “About 40% of Egypt's citizens live off less than $2 a day, so any price increase hurts..."

http://www­.globalres­earch.ca/i­ndex.php?c­ontext=va&­aid=23019
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Happy Mother's Day

I wish I could say that I am happy, but I'm angry. I have had it with the damn Filipino thuggy thug thug thugsters who rove around here in packs and steal things and intimidate people. My neighbor got her children's Razor scooter stolen (the second one) and she saw and confronted them at 12:30 this morning and they still took it. The security company they employ is here useless and the five little jerkwads got away with it, but I called the cops and at least there will be an incident report. At least the cops bothered to show up, and very quickly I might add. I wonder if they are the same little turd rollers who tag shit around here. I've never seen them pull anything, they wouldn't do that in front of me.

My neighbor is a nice woman and she happens to be raising nice children. I've watched them grow up for the last 5 years and they are certainly more polite and sweet than most boys who are born and raised here, probably because one of them was not born in this country. Hasn't my sweet, good-hearted neighbor been through enough?! And on Mother's Day no less.

While Bahrain demolishes mosques, U.S. stays silent

While Bahrain demolishes mosques, U.S. stays silent
Posted on Sunday, May 8, 2011

By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

"...Authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, detained students and teachers who took part in the protests, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper.

Nothing, however, has struck harder at the fabric of this nation, where Shiites outnumber Sunnis nearly 4 to 1, than the destruction of Shiite worship centers..."

I knew as soon as I read the headline that it was Shiite mosques being destroyed. Are the corrupt Sunni leaders in the Middle East going to be able to keep the emboldened (by Iraqis and Iranians I imagine) Shiites down forever? Yeah, we may have stuck the first stick in the hornet's nest over there, but them hornets aint near finished swarming yet. I hope that Obama has enough gumption to say something.

The News Dissector

CUNY NOW LIKELY TO HONOR TONY KUSHNER AND WITHDRAW SLUR

Danny Schechter always has the best stuff.

have headache, sick of all binLaden all the time

Google search Sat May 7, 2011
About 51,600 results (0.11 seconds)


Custom range...
From:
Mar 1, 2011–Apr 1, 2011
About 6,390 results (0.31 seconds)

Archives
Custom range...
From:
Mar 1, 2005–Apr 1, 2005
About 2,150 results (0.29 seconds)

Tony Blankley is full of shit when he says that the Pakistani ISI cooperated with the US. The binLaden compound was built in 2005, and is not very far from "Pakistan's West Point."

Green Zone

So, I'm getting ready to watch Green Zone and I've got my sense of humor primed and ready because I've already read some of the reviews on Netflix. Soooooooo predictable. Looks like the people who voted R gave the movie bad reviews and went about smashing liberal Hollywood and telling Damon to keep is big mouth shut and just be an actor with no political views. I got news for those people - actors are human beings also and if they choose to use their star power to influence so be it.

I think Rob Lowe is a fine actor and I'll betcha ten bucks that I don't want to know what his politics are. Does that mean I hate movies he's been in?

Nope.

Bruce Willis may be another story, but I imagine that that is because I'm not a huge fan of action pictures, I get bored with action for the sake of action. Neither of these actors is in the movie, mm just sayin.

So, onto the movie, but first -

Remember W joking about there not being any WMD's in Iraq?

I always thought it showed what a cruel asshole he was.

The movie?

Meh, like I said I'm not much of an action movie fan, and that especially includes war movies. This one was marginally better than some. I think that was only because whoever wrote it got some of the major facts right about the Iraq war, even if all the names and some of the circumstances were changed in order to protect the guilty. There was one moment when I sort of had a flashback to 2003 and all that anger came back.

The anger back then was brought on by an e-mail argument with a right wing military blogger where I questioned the war in Iraq, and the asshole intimidated me into silence. Did I shut up? Yeah, my husband was floating around in the Gulf on a deployment of course I shut up. I was terrified by weird people and weird stuff showing up and weird "coincidences" happening. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and nothing since. I can't remember what line in the movie triggered those fun memories.

Speaking of fun, I dunno how Damon kept from laughing when he delivered this line to the character who wrote all the newspaper articles about the intelligence that led us to war in Iraq:

Miller: At least tell me how it happened. How does this happ... how does someone like you write something that's not true? Tell me.

I can tell I've been watching too many movies lately because I found myself thinking "Hey, those dudes are from the UK and their accents are slipping," rather than watching whatever was being blown up or shot at at the moment.

Kudos to the real Iraq vets in the movie.

Rethugs...more balls than brains

Senate Republicans Introduce Bill To Abolish The EPA

Ken Burns' 2000 PBS Jazz Documentary

I've always felt resentful of some scholar or teacher or yeah, some damn expert telling me what is good music. This series isn't helping. I like what I like, I don't give a crap what some university professor, or even another musician tells me is "magic" or "genius," marvelous," "innovative" or what-the-fuck ever. I don't like listening to jazz musicians jam frantically and I don't like this Charlie Parker, and I have a feeling that Miles Davis jamming ain't my thing either. I don't care if I don't have an appreciation of how revolutionary they were, I don't want to watch sausage being made.

So sue me.

I'll leave audience space for those who love to watch musicians in their pissing contests.

I like rollercoasters and I like music, just not at the same time. I'm watching this lengthy documentary for the history, and audio/video of some of my favorites and I am enjoying it for the most part.

I expected the rightwing retards to try to say that torture works after the death of OBL

The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I’m convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse."


I've known forever that torture doesn't work, 5 years ago is just the first time I stated that publicly.

2 more Canandian actresses that I cannot stand

So OK, I've always been good at pegging where someone is from from their accent and mannerisms, but the actresses from other English speaking countries not so much. There is just that feeling I get...hmm what is it? Oh yeah, they irritate the living fuck right out of me and it's not the nauseatingly neurotic or overly aggressive characters that they play. I can't put my finger on it, they just bug the shit out of me, and 9 times out of 10 I find out that they are not American actresses, but the Canadian actresses make me want to give up on whatever it is that I am watching at the time.

Fish stench, bleh

It's 88 degrees outside, I have no breeze through my apartment so I cannot take the fan out of the window because when it's 88 outside it's 98 in here. My neighbors have been cooking what smells like fish heads and ass in garlic oil all fucking day. My stove has cloves simmering to try to cover it, but it's not working at the other end of the house and closer to their stench, where I am. I'm pretty sick of it. It is nauseating. I never thought I would want my rastafarian neighbor back, but I do. At least his stench had some benefits, lol.

The Santa Ana winds dried my clothes on the line quickly, but I hate them.

This is about the only thing that really made me smile today:

Well, and the BorowitzReport tweets.

CSR estimates of War on Terror

The government says this is what it has cost as of March 29, 2011.

Introduction: War Funding to Date
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has initiated three military operations:
• Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) covering primarily Afghanistan and other small Global War on Terror (GWOT) operations ranging from the Philippines to Djibouti that began immediately after the 9/11 attacks and continues;
• Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) providing enhanced security for U.S. military bases and other homeland security that was launched in response to the attacks and continues at a modest level; and
• Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that began in the fall of 2002 with the buildup of troops for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, continued with counter-insurgency and stability operations, and is slated to be renamed Operation New Dawn as U.S. troops focus on an advisory and assistance role.
In the tenth year of operations since the 9/11 attacks while troops are being withdrawn in Iraq and increased in Afghanistan, the cost of war continues to be a major issue including the total amount appropriated, the amount for each operation, average monthly spending rates, and the scope and duration of future costs. Information on costs is useful to Congress to assess the FY2010 Supplemental for war costs for the Department of Defense (DOD) and State/USAID, FY2011 war requests, conduct oversight of past war costs, and consider the longer-term costs implications of the buildup of troops in Afghanistan and potential problems in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. This report analyzes war funding for the Defense Department and tracks funding for USAID and VA Medical funding.

Total War Funding by Operation

Assuming an annual level of the current Continuing Resolution (H.J.Res. 44/P.L. 112-4) and based on DOD, State Department/USAID, and Department of Veterans Administration budget submissions, the cumulative total appropriated from the 9/11 for those war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for Iraq and Afghan war veterans is $1.283 trillion including:

• $806 billion for Iraq; • $444 billion for Afghanistan; • $29 billion for enhanced security; and • $6 billion unallocated (see Table 1).1
Of this total, 63% is for Iraq, 35% for Afghanistan, 2% for enhanced security and 1/2% is unallocated. Almost all of the funding for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is for Afghanistan. This total includes funding provided in all appropriations act including the FY2010 Supplemental (H.R. 4899/P.L. 111-212) enacted July 29, 2010, and the 6th Continuing Resolution for FY2011
1 These totals cover funding provided for DOD, State/USAID and VA Medical through FY2011, assuming the current CR would continue throughout the year.
Congressional Research Service 1

The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11
(H.Res. 48/P.L. 111-6) enacted March 18, 2011 assuming that level continues through the rest of the fiscal year.2

Some 94% of this funding goes to the Department of Defense (DOD) to cover primarily incremental war-related costs, that is, costs that are in addition to DOD’s normal peacetime activities. These costs include: ...

Stiglitz three years ago:

EXCLUSIVE–The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

February 29, 2008

Does anybody know how much the black hole of the 17 intelligence agencies has cost?

The closest I could find comes from an investment research website.

Aerospace & Defense Overview - April 2011

By: Zacks Equity Research
April 26, 2011

Osama binLaden is dead

Big Fucking Deal.

How many other religious extremists will my government allow into positions of power here and blow all kinds of military money trying to kill in some backwater shithole country on the other side of the planet?

No really, are we getting out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, or closing ANY of the over 700 bases that garrison the planet?

Survey says?!

Not a chance Nunya, ya fuggin' dreamin'.


I'm watching the unwitting OBL raid tweet IT guy in Abbottabad Pakistan's twitter followers grow here. Dude is actually pretty funny.

Thank God for Bluegal and Driftglass

Just skip this week's Left, Right, & Center unless you are prepared with Pepto Bismol AND Excedrin.

Birthers and Bernanke; Petraeus and Panetta

Tony Blankley AND Mary Matalin?

Oh God, I just threw up a little in my mouth. I don't know if I'm going to get through the whole 28 minutes. Those 2 have spent waaaaaayyyy too much time inside the DC bubble to have reality intrude. I decided to read Tom Englehardt's book first, so listening to Tony and Mary is especially difficult.

Go listen to the Professional Left podcast, with BlueGal and Driftglass.

Ep 71 An (almost) Birther-Free Podcast (42:15)

new books for me to read

My local Borders is closing so I got $90 worth of books for $45. I don't know whether the store had more right wing bullshit books to start with (SD county is loaded with retired military, military contractors and retards who live in fear of the liberals under the bed and vote R, even if it's against their own best interest) or whether the liberal stuff flew off the shelves once the discounts got deeper, but there was alot of fearmongering/arrogance inc. righty crap left.

Mark Knopfler - Boom Like That

Jeezus Christ, will somebody please re-bury the rotting corpse of that disgusting troll Ayn Rand?

The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand

For all her BS about Social Security and parasites and looters and moochers, she used it, and Medicare .

Anybody who idealizes this revolting human being's life on this planet needs their head examined.

Hilarious review of the sucky new movie Atlas Shrugged.

hat tip to skippy the bush kangaroo.

Afghan Military Pilot Guns Down 8 NATO Troops

VOA atricle.


Meanwhile, Afghan officials say troops have recaptured 71 of the 488 inmates who used a 300-meter-long tunnel to escape from a prison in southern Kandahar province on Sunday.

Nifty.


Navy Ship Attacked by Somali Pirates Returns to San Diego
Last Update: 8:03 am

Hmmm, I wonder how many dingbats in the bars will fall for the "I captured a pirate, 'cause I'm a SEAL story?"