i voted for cate

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She may be better at Dylan than Dylan is, and, I can't help it, she's just always world's apart. Riveting. Tasteful. Intense. Effortless. Real. As you can see, I'm either as rare as they say, or not with the program.



OH, OH, OH, AND, WELL, I FORGOT TO REPORT BACK AFTER MY BIG SCIENTIFIC FIELD EXPERIMENT OF EARLIER TODAY. I DO NOW FOR SURE AND FOR REAL WEAR SIZE SIX JEANS... EASILY, ACTUALLY. I HAVEN'T BEEN SIZE SIX IN AT LEAST TEN YEARS, AND, WOW, NO KIDDING, THIS IS VERY, VERY ODD....

just now getting around to fact checking

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FACT CHECK: Do smokers cost society money?
By ERICA WERNER – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Smoking takes years off your life and adds dollars to the cost of health care. Yet nonsmokers cost society money, too — by living longer.

It's an element of the debate over tobacco that some economists and officials find distasteful.

House members described huge health care costs associated with smoking as they approved landmark legislation last week giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products. No one mentioned the additional costs to society of caring for a nonsmoking population that lives longer.

Supporters of the FDA bill cited figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that smokers cost the country $96 billion a year in direct health care costs, and an additional $97 billion a year in lost productivity.

A White House statement supporting the bill, which awaits action in the Senate, echoed the argument by contending that tobacco use "accounts for over a $100 billion annually in financial costs to the economy."

However, smokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.

Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.

"It looks unpleasant or ghoulish to look at the cost savings as well as the cost increases and it's not a good thing that smoking kills people," Viscusi said in an interview. "But if you're going to follow this health-cost train all the way, you have to take into account all the effects, not just the ones you like in terms of getting your bill passed."

Viscusi worked as a litigation expert for the tobacco industry in lawsuits by states but said that his research, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals, has never been funded by industry.

Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

A Dutch study published last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal said that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age 20 on, compared to about $417,000 for thin and healthy people.

The reason: The thin, healthy people lived much longer.

Willard Manning, a professor of health economics and policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies, was lead author on a paper published two decades ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that, taking into account tobacco taxes in effect at the time, smokers were not a financial burden to society.

"We were actually quite surprised by the finding because we were pretty sure that smokers were getting cross-subsidized by everybody else," said Manning, who suspects the findings would be similar today. "But it was only when we put all the pieces together that we found it was pretty much a wash."

Such conclusions are controversial since they assign an economic benefit to premature death. U.S. government agencies shy away from the calculations.

The goal of the U.S. health care system is "prolonging disability-free life," states the 2004 Surgeon General's report on the health consequences of smoking. "Thus any negative economic impacts from gains in longevity with smoking reduction should not be emphasized in public health decisions."

Dr. Terry Pechacek, the CDC associate director for science in the office on smoking and health, said that data seeking to quantify economic benefits of smoking couldn't capture all the benefits associated with longevity, like a grandparent's contribution to a family. Because of such uncertainties the CDC won't put a price tag on savings from smoking.

"The natural train of logic that follows from that is that then anybody that's admitted around age 65 or older that's showing any signs of sickness should be denied treatment," Pechacek said. "That's the cheapest thing to do."

Guess I'll go out on my porch and smoke in my size six jeans....

another friendly overture to smirk off

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I distinctly remember Obama making glib about a meeting with Chavez, and now he's got a chance to make up for it. I doubt very seriously he will perform any better than he has with Russia, but, well, who knows? Maybe some fairy dust will land on him, snap him out of this cocky and ruinous start.

fidel on the visiting u.s. delegation

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better justice system in peru than the united states

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Though it is hard to see little old men receiving prison sentences... even for slaughter.

good grief, i actually like this get up

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It struck me this morning to try on my size sixes and, whoa, I just poured myself and not very uncomfortably into some ratty old size six peggers... er... uh... I think they're called "skinny jeans" now... anyway, tight, meant to fit tightly, pants.

I assure you, I weigh radically more than anyone else who fits in size six jeans.

This is SO weird.

Are my bones made of lead? I'm serious. I'm always some thirty pounds heavier than others my same size. What in the hell is that about? Does Earth's gravity work differently on woman from Planet X, or whut?

No, it isn't my boobs. That could only be maybe ten pounds of it.

I'm completely stranged-out over this again right now... so... who in the heck knows what I'm going to do about it.... You know... I think I'm going to the store to make sure the strategic part of the number 8 didn't wear off the size tag here and I just think it says 6... that my memory for purchases made over ten years ago is just playing a trick on me here. So if I can confirm after this scientific expedition that I am actually, verifiably back in a size six pants, then I'm going to have to reässess my whole weight loss scheme... start concentrating more on the fitness part of this operation.... Oh. My. Gawd.

Six?

Maybe I can get a job modeling in a codger babe catalog.... :-P

take me to spain

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first off: it's not a "heroin" crop

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It's an opium crop. Then there is the tiny matter of how these people are supposed to make a living. Then there is the tiny matter of how badly they want to kill you when you ruin their livelihood. Despite all the billions made by others, including Denny Hastert, according to Sibel Edmunds, off the heroin that gets made from it, the locals need to eat.

Legalize drugs. End of hatefulness in Afghanistan. End of the filthy War on Drugs. End of all the other crimes, thefts and murders, that orbit the drug trade.

But, no, that would be LUCID.

i can never be too rich or too thin

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My diet is continuing apace. I lost 30 pounds with astonishing ease, but then seemed to hit a plateau for a couple weeks that was starting to get me depressed. So I went out to dinner two nights in a row, had a bowl of ice cream for dessert one night. That sort of kick-started the weight loss again... after a day of gaining back three pounds. Then just this last weekend I ate half a loaf of roasted garlic sourdough toast with whipped cream cheese instead of butter, but applied thickly, on Saturday. I did the exact same thing on Sunday. Mystically, today I weigh three pounds less than I did on Friday. Very weird. Anyway, I am now exactly 35 pounds lighter than I was when I finally snapped, when the mere cute excess of pulchritude was going radically too much further into almost outright fat.

It has not been harsh. It has majorly to do with not eating chemicals and staying away from sugar and salt. I know it is hard and time and brain and eyeball consuming work, but if you settle only for actual food, you are going to lose a lot of weight without it being anything as epic as on America's Biggest Loser.

I decided not to stop at size eight. I'm going down to size six and for the rest of my life whenever I have to switch back to eights to breathe, I'm going right back on a diet. I get too damn unhealthy and lethargic when I get bigger than that. My foot is down.

i'm really tired of the bogus stats they use

[click image for a bunch of hooey]

They've been doing it for a long time, before * even. They stop counting people who are still unemployed after their benefits give out. I don't know who could stand up and tell me that's a lucid measurement. There seem to be some statisticians, though, who are attempting to adjust for this egregious state of affairs:



I still think that's low, but getting on toward more believable, given the evidence all around us.

dopers rejoice

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too early for a transcript yet i spoze

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I mean, using the translator can put a girl over the edge....

So. I wait.

[Of course, Aljazeera at least puts out something semi-lucid on the matter, but I can't find anything else so far that's not from the facist media or the fringe anti-Putin and pro-Western factions, neither of which are close to trustworthy on any subject involving his performance. So I'm hoping to find a translated transcript of his speech so I can try to discern for myself.]

Moscow Times

can't leave his house

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The other end of the court had *'s face on the backboard....

More

our government is broken and will not fix itself

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THE INFLUENCE GAME: Payday lenders thwart limits
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The payday loan industry, threatened by Congress with extinction, has deployed well-connected lobbyists and hefty sums of campaign cash to key lawmakers to save itself.

The strategy has paid off.

Now a top Democrat who once tried to ban the practice is instead pushing to regulate it — a result, he says, of the industry's lobbying clout.

The lawmaker, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says his bill does have crucial protections for borrowers and represents the best deal he can manage in the face of the industry's aggressive lobbying. Consumer groups are condemning the bill as a loophole-riddled gift to the industry.

"While they may not be JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America, they're very powerful. Their influence should not be underestimated," Gutierrez, the top Democrat on the Financial Services subcommittee in charge of consumer credit issues, said in an interview this week.

Payday loans are small, very short-term loans with extremely high interest rates that are effectively advances on a borrower's next paycheck. They're typically obtained when a borrower goes to a check-cashing outlet or an online equivalent, pays a fee and writes a postdated check that the company agrees not to cash until the customer's payday. Finance charges typically amount to annual interest rates in the triple digits, around 400 percent, and can go as high as double that.

The loans are controversial, with advocates, including many black and Hispanic lawmakers and interest groups, arguing they are the only quick credit option for millions of low- and moderate-income people. Critics contend they are inherently abusive products that trap borrowers in a devastating debt cycle.

Congress moved in 2006 to effectively ban payday lending for military personnel by imposing a 36 percent interest-rate cap for such borrowers, and 15 states either prohibit it outright or have similar caps. But the loans are virtually unregulated in two dozen other states, a situation that Gutierrez said is intolerable.

"Doing nothing is being on the side of the industry. We are reining in their fees and their most onerous ability to cause pain on consumers," Gutierrez said.

Indeed, the payday lending industry is strenuously resisting Gutierrez's measure, which it says would devastate its business. The measure would cap the annual interest rate for a payday loan at 391 percent, ban so-called "rollovers" — where a borrower who can't afford to pay off the loan essentially renews it and pays large fees — and prevent lenders from suing borrowers or docking their wages to collect the debt.

But consumer groups say the legislation would do little to crack down on the most egregious payday lending practices. They argue it would for the first time lend federal legitimacy to usurious loans and undermine successful efforts under way in several states to slap tougher limits on it.

"We don't believe that this is going to protect consumers. It would in fact condone the payday lending that can be extremely harmful to the people who can least afford it," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America.

She testified Thursday before Gutierrez's subcommittee on behalf of seven consumer groups that are outraged about the measure. They're pushing to cap all lending interest rates at 36 percent annually.

The payday lending industry's trade association has spent more than $1 million annually for each of the last four years lobbying Congress, including $1.4 million last year, according to disclosures filed with Congress. It has beefed up its team of Washington hired guns to a dozen, including well-connected financial services lobbyists Tim Rupli and Wright Andrews, who each have firms bearing their names.

It also has stepped up its campaign giving in recent years, forming a political action committee that contributed more than $200,000 in 2007 and 2008, much of that to lawmakers who serve on the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees, according to Federal Election Commission filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Those committees have jurisdiction over the industry.

Individual payday lending companies including Cash America Inc. and Advance America Cash Advance, have also stepped up their political activities.

"As the Hill has become more interested in our industry, we have stepped up our efforts," in Washington said Steven Schlein of the Community Financial Services Association, the trade group for payday lenders.

"Congress is beginning to realize that there aren't other alternatives," to payday lending, Schlein said.

A newer player representing Internet payday lenders — a growing segment of the market — also ramped up its lobbying and political giving efforts. The Online Lenders Alliance, formed in 2005, nearly quintupled, to $480,000, its lobbying expenditures from 2007 and 2008. It contributed $108,400 to candidates in advance of the 2008 elections compared to about $2,000 in the 2006 contests. Gutierrez was among the top House recipients, getting $4,600, while the top Senate recipient was Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., a Banking Committee member who got $6,900.

The group has also helped host several fundraisers for lawmakers with say over what happens to the industry, according to invitations collected by the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political parties. Those included a fundraiser last year for Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., a Financial Services committee member. Dinner and a reception at the fundraiser at a Capitol Hill townhouse cost at least $1,000.

Baca on Wednesday introduced his own version of payday lending legislation that has gotten a warmer reception from the industry. It would allow some rollovers and pre-empt state laws, which would effectively pave the way for payday lending in states whose laws currently make it difficult or impossible. And it allows online lenders to charge higher fees than their bricks-and-mortar brethren.

Baca said he was unaware of any financial support he has received from the payday industry, adding, "Whether they do (give money) or not has nothing to do with the merits of needing this legislation. People still do need emergency loans and this is the only way they have to get them."

BOINGBOING

best news i've heard in i don't know how long

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identical

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Could somebody tell me what belief has to do with actuality?

simple as that

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the longer our judiciary/justice system is broken the worse this gets

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Extra Credit

Bonus Points for legalists, PDF

About Prague's Tepid Reception of the Son of Heaven Bullshitting on Nukes

this is not america

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consolation prize

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a completely anonymous comment i just read

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It's truly amazing -- and a little bit amusing -- to see some overeducated schmuck from the NYT blowing all that real estate explaining why Americans aren't out pitching a bitch in the streets when that question can be answered in three words:

AMERICANS. ARE. PUSSIES.

Aside from the Steelworkers' and anarchists' contingents at the '99 Seattle/WTO mobe and a few scattered Black Blocs at a few subsequent antiglobe mobes, Americans have become a bunch of Twittering, blogging, YouTubing, TV-watching, pasty, fat-assed, molding-themselves-to-their-Barcoloungers-until-they-resemble-Soyuz-custom-molded-seat-liners, waiting-for-someone-else-to-do-their-job, mealy-mouthed, milquetoast namby-pambies. We've gone from a generation unafraid to -- horrors -- march and rally without permits and fight the cops in the streets and destroy draft-board offices to a bunch of cowed, intimidated, permit-negotiating-with-the-cops, pointless-symbolic-CD-staging, Gandhi-worshipping, sweetness-and-light, kumbayah-singing pussies who think that "taking action" involves slapping a "Free Tibet" sticker on our cars, screwing in a few "green" light bulbs, mailing checks to PBS, and reading The Nation while taking a dump. And, more's the pity.

It's gotten so I'm embarassed to be a member of The Movement™ in this goddamn' country. (Yeah, I know -- what Movement?)

obama didn't start it

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But he's going to finish it for sure. Beyond my lowest expectations, he is completely a creature of the people who have perpetrated this disaster and intend to see it through. I am beginning to finally understand how * could possibly have been so sure that "history would vindicate" him. He meant that someday people would realize that he didn't do any of it, but was forced to by the unelected elect. Well, guess what? I don't believe in capital punishment, but TREASON is a capital crime. So history better string them up before this is 1984.

even in a total collapse they will keep operating

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are they going to torture his daughters, or whut?

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In case you come late to this post....

[Bullshitting the Czechs in Prague about nukes... which I wonder if he'd even have done if the rest of his trip weren't so unsuccessful [for the people of the world]... riddled with praise for the NATO Alliance and crap about helping Afghanistan through bombing the snot out them... using allusions to JFK with Jackie... the whole Yes We Can shtick... The Full Monte... "change"... "hope"... "the promise of a new day"... and he even threw in "velvet revolution"... the works... utterly shameless. And don't miss the background for this. Well, and... who needs nukes anymore anyway?]

SO MAYBE YOU ARE READY TO WATCH THIS MOSTLY-TRUE TWO-HOUR DOCUMENTARY BY MANIAC PATRIOT, ALEX JONES? It is definitely worth your attention, notwithstanding his paranoia about global warming being the excuse for more taxes that comes in toward the end. There is a solid basis in fact for the first eighty percent of it, except I can't find evidence that Kissenger gave Obama his first job, and so this stuff is really important for you to attend, especially if you're from group-think and feel you're too level-headed to pay attention to these "nut job conspiracy theorists". You're an idiot. They may be maniacs but they're not idiots.

tim dechristopher

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you must remember this

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I could die watching this program and dreaming of that relationship....

shhhhhhhhhhhhh

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i was way so radically wrong

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Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police.

now i lay me down to sleep

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They mean, of course, beside it making you feel like a psychotic cascade of electrified gummy bears melting under the hot breath of Satan...

Revealed: why we need a good night's sleep
Scientists warn of the dangers of sleepless nights after discovering how brain clears out day's mental rubbish

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 3 April 2009

To sleep, perchance to dream, said Hamlet. Now scientists have shown that sleep is more about getting rid of the previous day's mental rubbish than it is about dreaming.

A study into slumber has found that the nerve connections built up in the brain during a busy day are pruned back during the night in an attempt to keep the mind from overloading on junk information.

The findings lend support to the idea that a good night's sleep is essential for consolidating important memories of the previous day and getting rid of things that would otherwise clog up the system.

The researchers behind the study said the results showed how important it was for people to get a good night's sleep to be on top form the next day.

"Right now, a lot of people are worried about their jobs and the economy, and some are no doubt losing sleep over these concerns," said one of the authors, Paul Shaw, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.

"But these data suggest the best thing you can do to make sure you stay sharp and increase your chances of keeping your job is to make getting enough sleep a top priority."

The research was based on analysis of fruit flies. The scientists believe that these simple creatures are a good model of sleep in humans because, like people, flies need between six and eight hours a night and show physical and mental signs of deprivation if they fail to get enough.

Like humans, fruit flies exposed to a busy day's activities need more sleep. Those raised in crowded conditions sleep two or three hours longer than those kept in solitary confinement and flies that are kept active with "mental workouts" sleep longer than those that are not.

Previous studies had shown that sleep promotes learning and memory in animals. The latest research went further by showing that the connections (synapses) between nerve cells in the brain are built up during the day and are pruned after a good night's sleep, Professor Shaw said.

"There are a number of reasons why the brain can't indefinitely add synapses, including the finite spatial constraints of the skull. We were able to track the creation of new synapses in fruit flies during learning experiences, and to show that sleep pushed that number back down," he said.

The scientists kept the fruit flies in a specially designed "fly agitator" with a robot arm that occasionally shook the resting platforms for the flies to prevent them from sleeping. The scientists found physical changes in the brains of these sleep-deprived flies – specifically, a build-up of the proteins that connect one nerve cell to another.

When the scientists analysed the brains of the flies after they had slept, the level of these proteins had dropped, indicating that the nerve connections themselves had become weaker or even eliminated during the night.

"At the end of sleep, the strongest synapses shrink, while the weakest synapses may even disappear," said Chiara Cirelli, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, another author of the study, published in Science.

"Much of what we learn in a day, we don't really need to remember," she said. "If you have used up all the space, you can't learn more before you clean out the junk that is filling up your brain."

I feel like a sleep-deprived fly after that last one, thank you very much. The end is still so nigh.

oh ~ my ~ god

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what the heck

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...nothing but a buncha incompetent pansies making resolutions against it anyway....

wealthy socialist gentleman, wherever you are, please take note

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be ye reminded

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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

apropos only of my astonishment

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Here,

here,

here,

and here...

... all the same woman....

western press seriously downplaying the level of protest

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not exactly wowing them at the strasbourg-kehl summit either

[click image of real protest going on right now in France]

Do note the hugely misleading headline from our fascist press:

Obama hails 5,000 more NATO forces for Afghanistan
By TOM RAUM – 2 hours ago

STRASBOURG, France (AP) — President Barack Obama hailed "strong and unanimous support" from NATO allies on Saturday for his stepped-up anti-terror strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and welcomed their "down payment" promises of 5,000 fresh forces.

The allies rebuffed U.S. appeals for more combat forces to join the war, but the backing Obama did gain at a European summit allowed him to claim an early victory on the world's foreign policy stage.

NATO allies agreed to send up to 5,000 more military trainers and police to Afghanistan, including forces to help protect candidates and voters at upcoming elections.

Obama called that "a strong down payment" on both Afghanistan and NATO itself at the end of a gathering celebrating the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

He waved off questions on whether the size and makeup of the commitments were disappointing in light of an anti-terrorism struggle he himself portrayed as daunting. Since becoming president, Obama has begun switching America's anti-terror emphasis to fighting al-Qaida in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area as the war in Iraq winds down.

The new president insisted that "terrorists threaten every member of NATO," but he also said he had no intention of trying to dictate to European countries the scope of their contributions.

"This was not a pledging conference," he told a wrap-up news briefing packed with both American and foreign journalists. "We came expecting consensus and we're gratified getting that consensus."

He said more help of all kinds will be needed. But he also said, "I am pleased that our NATO allies pledged their strong and unanimous support for our new strategy."

Among countries resisting U.S. appeals for more combat troops were France, which on Saturday rejoined the alliance as a full military partner after decades of being a nonmilitary member, and Germany.

Obama weighed in on a controversial new law in Afghanistan, his remarks underscoring his administration's shift away from a U.S. focus on building democracy in the country.

Asked about the law, which a United Nations agency says makes it legal for men to rape their wives, Obama called it "abhorrent." He also noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said the law will be studied and possibly sent back to parliament for review — and that the NATO conference's closing statement specifically states that human rights should be respected.

But Obama said pointedly that, while improving conditions in Afghanistan is a commendable goal, people need to remember that the primary reason U.S. troops are fighting there is to protect Americans at home from terrorist attacks.

As for new troops, the White House said NATO countries agreed to send more personnel, including about 3,000 on short-term deployments, to help stabilize Afghanistan before elections in August. An additional 1,400 to 2,000 will provide training for Afghanistan's national army.

Obama said those figures should not be considered a ceiling, suggesting more could be sought and offered at some point to confront a threat that he emphasized endangers Europe as well as the U.S.

"We'll need more resources and a sustained effort to achieve our ultimate goals," he said.

His concluding news conference was dominated by foreign policy questions, mostly about the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a change of pace given the severity of the global economic downturn that world leaders focused on in London earlier in the week. More than 5 million Americans have lost their jobs in the recession, and the downturn has spread throughout much of the globe.

Obama conceded that the dire economies of European and other world powers made it even harder for them to come up with more help for NATO conflicts. He said he appreciated the strides the allies were making.

During the Bush administration, U.S. military leaders repeatedly pressed for more troops and funds for Afghanistan training from NATO and European allies. Even before Saturday's commitments, senior U.S. commanders were pegging future strategy to the assumption that NATO's contributions would be minimal.

Last week, Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command and architect of the new military strategy, told Congress that the White House will soon be mulling a request for 10,000 more American troops to be deployed in Afghanistan next year — a blunt acknowledgment that the U.S. will continue to take the brunt of the fighting and casualties.

Still, Petraeus carefully acknowledged that more civilian aid — along the lines of NATO's new commitment emerging from the summit — was also critical.

Along with the divide over troops and money, the Europeans have also long been reluctant to accept the U.S. view that al-Qaida and, to a lesser extent, the Taliban, remain a threat to the existence of democratic societies.

The war in Afghanistan more and more is looking like an American war, and the U.S. will continue to do the bulk of the heavy lifting even with the new NATO pledges. Since Obama took office in January, the United States has committed to sending 21,000 additional troops as part of his new strategy.

Obama left the summit for Prague, where he will meet with Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, and give a speech expected to focus on weapons proliferation. Then he visits Turkey, his first Muslim country as president, with stops in both the capital of Ankara and Istanbul before returning to Washington next Tuesday.

no, really, this is completely unaccepatable

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of course, that would be revealing the fascists' changes to our laws

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no change at all

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I submit they're having so much trouble filling posts at Treasury, despite a huge pool of talent from which to draw, because no one who is not dirty will touch this action with a ten-foot pole.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, financial disclosure forms released by the White House showed on Friday.

Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president, also was paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies, including several troubled Wall Street financial firms, they showed.

The disclosure documents on Summers and other White House officials advising Obama on the global financial crisis covered 2008 and the first few months of this year. Summers became an official adviser on January 20 when Obama took office.

Summers, who was a part-time managing director of D.E. Shaw after stepping down as Harvard president, had speaking fees of $67,500 from JP Morgan, $45,000 from Citigroup, $135,000 from Goldman Sachs and $67,500 from Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in the mortgage crisis last year.

He also had significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the forms showed.

As chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Summers is a leading voice in Obama's policies to reverse the recession in the United States, rebuild the financial industry and help to end the global crisis.

Just in case you aren't able to watch the video of Moyers with Black last night, I've added the transcript for you. It is absolutely must-see tv, but if you can't, then read it. Please read it.

No kidding, guys, this is COMPLETELY out of hand.

active thermitic material -- peer reviewed, published -- in WTC dust

[click image, and then download PDF, NOW THAT I'VE FIXED THE DAMN LINK]

The World Trade Center was blown up with the help of military grade, not available to the general public, nano-thermite, and for all of you who refuse to believe your eyes and have been howling for peer reviewed scientific proof of this, download that PDF.

And don't forget Building Seven....

you know it's true

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Remember?

[Okay, well, that's a couple hours of listening to Fisk rant in 2006, and the pertinent to this part doesn't come until the seventh video in the playlist, but, bottom line, hell yes, we've got spies and hit teams and shit disturbers all over the damn place... and I wonder really if anyone we even know is in charge of them....]

PRECISELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Precisely.

Here's the transcript, just in case you have trouble with the video:

April 3, 2009

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud.

BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, "How do they get away with it?" Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black.

The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course.

Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

Bill Black, welcome to the Journal.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Thank you.

BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we're going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you're saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you're suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: How do they get away with it? I mean, what about their own checks and balances in the company? What about their accounting divisions?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: All of those checks and balances report to the CEO, so if the CEO goes bad, all of the checks and balances are easily overcome. And the art form is not simply to defeat those internal controls, but to suborn them, to turn them into your greatest allies. And the bonus programs are exactly how you do that.

BILL MOYERS: If I wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? The Bush Administration essentially got rid of regulation, so if nobody was looking, you were able to do this with impunity and that's exactly what happened. Where would you look? You'd look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and what's called Alt-A, liars' loans.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Liars' loans--

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Liars' loans.

BILL MOYERS: Why did they call them liars' loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they were liars' loans.

BILL MOYERS: And they knew it?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They knew it. They knew that they were frauds.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Liars' loans mean that we don't check. You tell us what your income is. You tell us what your job is. You tell us what your assets are, and we agree to believe you. We won't check on any of those things. And by the way, you get a better deal if you inflate your income and your job history and your assets.

BILL MOYERS: You think they really said that to borrowers?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: We know that they said that to borrowers. In fact, they were also called, in the trade, ninja loans.

BILL MOYERS: Ninja?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yeah, because no income verification, no job verification, no asset verification.

BILL MOYERS: You're talking about significant American companies.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Huge! One company produced as many losses as the entire Savings and Loan debacle.

BILL MOYERS: Which company?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: IndyMac specialized in making liars' loans. In 2006 alone, it sold $80 billion dollars of liars' loans to other companies. $80 billion.

BILL MOYERS: And was this happening exclusively in this sub-prime mortgage business?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: No, and that's a big part of the story as well. Even prime loans began to have non-verification. Even Ronald Reagan, you know, said, "Trust, but verify." They just gutted the verification process. We know that will produce enormous fraud, under economic theory, criminology theory, and two thousand years of life experience.

BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."

BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste.

BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme...

BILL MOYERS: But you're saying our system became a Ponzi scheme.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Our system...

BILL MOYERS: Our financial system...

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke. But they were buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A."

BILL MOYERS: Is there a law against liars' loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not directly, but there, of course, many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent.

BILL MOYERS: Because...

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they're not going to be repaid and because they had false representations. They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud.

BILL MOYERS: Why is it so hard to prosecute? Why hasn't anyone been brought to justice over this?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they didn't even begin to investigate the major lenders until the market had actually collapsed, which is completely contrary to what we did successfully in the Savings and Loan crisis, right? Even while the institutions were reporting they were the most profitable savings and loan in America, we knew they were frauds. And we were moving to close them down. Here, the Justice Department, even though it very appropriately warned, in 2004, that there was an epidemic...

BILL MOYERS: Who did?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: The FBI publicly warned, in September 2004 that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, that if it was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle. And that they were going to make sure that they didn't let that happen. So what goes wrong? After 9/11, the attacks, the Justice Department transfers 500 white-collar specialists in the FBI to national terrorism. Well, we can all understand that. But then, the Bush administration refused to replace the missing 500 agents. So even today, again, as you say, this crisis is 1000 times worse, perhaps, certainly 100 times worse, than the Savings and Loan crisis. There are one-fifth as many FBI agents as worked the Savings and Loan crisis.

BILL MOYERS: You talk about the Bush administration. Of course, there's that famous photograph of some of the regulators in 2003, who come to a press conference with a chainsaw suggesting that they're going to slash, cut business loose from regulation, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, they succeeded. And in that picture, by the way, the other — three of the other guys with pruning shears are the...

BILL MOYERS: That's right.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They're the trade representatives. They're the lobbyists for the bankers. And everybody's grinning. The government's working together with the industry to destroy regulation. Well, we now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80.

BILL MOYERS: But I can point you to statements by Larry Summers, who was then Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, or the other Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, Rubin. I can point you to suspects in both parties, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There were two really big things, under the Clinton administration. One, they got rid of the law that came out of the real-world disasters of the Great Depression. We learned a lot of things in the Great Depression. And one is we had to separate what's called commercial banking from investment banking. That's the Glass-Steagall law. But we thought we were much smarter, supposedly. So we got rid of that law, and that was bipartisan. And the other thing is we passed a law, because there was a very good regulator, Brooksley Born, that everybody should know about and probably doesn't. She tried to do the right thing to regulate one of these exotic derivatives that you're talking about. We call them C.D.F.S. And Summers, Rubin, and Phil Gramm came together to say not only will we block this particular regulation. We will pass a law that says you can't regulate. And it's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG all by itself, cost the same as the entire Savings and Loan debacle.

BILL MOYERS: What did AIG contribute? What did they do wrong?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They made bad loans. Their type of loan was to sell a guarantee, right? And they charged a lot of fees up front. So, they booked a lot of income. Paid enormous bonuses. The bonuses we're thinking about now, they're much smaller than these bonuses that were also the product of accounting fraud. And they got very, very rich. But, of course, then they had guaranteed this toxic waste. These liars' loans. Well, we've just gone through why those toxic waste, those liars' loans, are going to have enormous losses. And so, you have to pay the guarantee on those enormous losses. And you go bankrupt. Except that you don't in the modern world, because you've come to the United States, and the taxpayers play the fool. Under Secretary Geithner and under Secretary Paulson before him... we took $5 billion dollars, for example, in U.S. taxpayer money. And sent it to a huge Swiss Bank called UBS. At the same time that that bank was defrauding the taxpayers of America. And we were bringing a criminal case against them. We eventually get them to pay a $780 million fine, but wait, we gave them $5 billion. So, the taxpayers of America paid the fine of a Swiss Bank. And why are we bailing out somebody who that is defrauding us?

BILL MOYERS: And why...

WILLIAM K. BLACK: How mad is this?

BILL MOYERS: What is your explanation for why the bankers who created this mess are still calling the shots?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that, especially after what's just happened at G.M., that's... it's scandalous.

BILL MOYERS: Why are they firing the president of G.M. and not firing the head of all these banks that are involved?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There are two reasons. One, they're much closer to the bankers. These are people from the banking industry. And they have a lot more sympathy. In fact, they're outright hostile to autoworkers, as you can see. They want to bash all of their contracts. But when they get to banking, they say, ‘contracts, sacred.' But the other element of your question is we don't want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn't cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up.

BILL MOYERS: The cover up?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Sure. The cover up.

BILL MOYERS: That's a serious charge.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: Who's covering up?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.

These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.

BILL MOYERS: But he denies that he was a regulator. Let me show you some of his testimony before Congress. Take a look at this.

TIMOTHY GEITHNER:I've never been a regulator, for better or worse. And I think you're right to say that we have to be very skeptical that regulation can solve all of these problems. We have parts of our system that are overwhelmed by regulation.

Overwhelmed by regulation! It wasn't the absence of regulation that was the problem, it was despite the presence of regulation you've got huge risks that build up.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, he may be right that he never regulated, but his job was to regulate. That was his mission statement.

BILL MOYERS: As?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is responsible for regulating most of the largest bank holding companies in America. And he's completely wrong that we had too much regulation in some of these areas. I mean, he gives no details, obviously. But that's just plain wrong.

BILL MOYERS: How is this happening? I mean why is it happening?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Until you get the facts, it's harder to blow all this up. And, of course, the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts.

BILL MOYERS: What facts?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: The facts about how bad the condition of the banks is. So, as long as I keep the old CEO who caused the problems, is he going to go vigorously around finding the problems? Finding the frauds?

BILL MOYERS: You--

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Taking away people's bonuses?

BILL MOYERS: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.

BILL MOYERS: In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization.

BILL MOYERS: And that's a law?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's the law.

BILL MOYERS: So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not could. Was mandated--

BILL MOYERS: By the law.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: By the law.

BILL MOYERS: This law, you're talking about.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: What the reason they give for not doing it?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They ignore it. And nobody calls them on it.

BILL MOYERS: Well, where's Congress? Where's the press? Where--

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, where's the Pecora investigation?

BILL MOYERS: The what?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: The Pecora investigation. The Great Depression, we said, "Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?" Where's our investigation?

What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, "Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don't want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. And here, we've got a double tragedy. It isn't just that we are failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. We're failing to learn from the successes of the past.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: In the Savings and Loan debacle, we developed excellent ways for dealing with the frauds, and for dealing with the failed institutions. And for 15 years after the Savings and Loan crisis, didn't matter which party was in power, the U.S. Treasury Secretary would fly over to Tokyo and tell the Japanese, "You ought to do things the way we did in the Savings and Loan crisis, because it worked really well. Instead you're covering up the bank losses, because you know, you say you need confidence. And so, we have to lie to the people to create confidence. And it doesn't work. You will cause your recession to continue and continue." And the Japanese call it the lost decade. That was the result. So, now we get in trouble, and what do we do? We adopt the Japanese approach of lying about the assets. And you know what? It's working just as well as it did in Japan.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: You are.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.

BILL MOYERS: But what might happen, at this point, if in fact they keep from us the true health of the banks?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, then the banks will, as they did in Japan, either stay enormously weak, or Treasury will be forced to increasingly absurd giveaways of taxpayer money. We've seen how horrific AIG -- and remember, they kept secrets from everyone.

BILL MOYERS: A.I.G. did?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: What we're doing with -- no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson's firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn't want us to know that. And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG.

Where Congress said, "We will not give you a single penny more unless we know who received the money." And, you know, when he was Treasury Secretary, Paulson created a recommendation group to tell Treasury what they ought to do with AIG. And he put Goldman Sachs on it.

BILL MOYERS: Even though Goldman Sachs had a big vested stake.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive stake. And even though he had just been CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary. Now, in most stages in American history, that would be a scandal of such proportions that he wouldn't be allowed in civilized society.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, like a conflict of interest, it seems.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive conflict of interests.

BILL MOYERS: So, how did he get away with it?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: I don't know whether we've lost our capability of outrage. Or whether the cover up has been so successful that people just don't have the facts to react to it.

BILL MOYERS: Who's going to get the facts?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: We need some chairmen or chairwomen--

BILL MOYERS: In Congress.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: --in Congress, to hold the necessary hearings. And we can blast this out. But if you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn't just that they're terrible business people, though they are. It isn't just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds. But they're not going to disclose the truth about the assets.

BILL MOYERS: And we have to know that, in order to know what?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: To know everything. To know who committed the frauds. Whose bonuses we should recover. How much the assets are worth. How much they should be sold for. Is the bank insolvent, such that we should resolve it in this way? It's the predicate, right? You need to know the facts to make intelligent decisions. And they're deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don't want the facts. And this is not new. The Reagan Administration's central priority, at all times, during the Savings and Loan crisis, was covering up the losses.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the ringer, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's right. And it's particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, "You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they'll run for the exits."

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, and this week in New York, at this conference, you described this as more than a financial crisis. You called it a moral crisis.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because it is a fundamental lack of integrity. But also because, if you look back at crises, an economist who is also a presidential appointee, as a regulator in the Savings and Loan industry, right here in New York, Larry White, wrote a book about the Savings and Loan crisis. And he said, you know, one of the most interesting questions is why so few people engaged in fraud? Because objectively, you could have gotten away with it. But only about ten percent of the CEOs, engaged in fraud. So, 90 percent of them were restrained by ethics and integrity. So, far more than law or by F.B.I. agents, it's our integrity that often prevents the greatest abuses. And what we had in this crisis, instead of the Savings and Loan, is the most elite institutions in America engaging or facilitating fraud.

BILL MOYERS: This wound that you say has been inflicted on American life. The loss of worker's income. And security and pensions and future happened, because of the misconduct of a relatively few, very well-heeled people, in very well-decorated corporate suites, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right.

BILL MOYERS: It was relatively a handful of people.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: And their ideologies, which swept away regulation. So, in the example, regulation means that cheaters don't prosper. So, instead of being bad for capitalism, it's what saves capitalism. "Honest purveyors prosper" is what we want. And you need regulation and law enforcement to be able to do this. The tragedy of this crisis is it didn't need to happen at all.

BILL MOYERS: When you wake in the middle of the night, thinking about your work, what do you make of that? What do you tell yourself?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There's a saying that we took great comfort in. It's actually by the Dutch, who were fighting this impossible war for independence against what was then the most powerful nation in the world, Spain. And their motto was, "It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere."

Now, going forward, get rid of the people that have caused the problems. That's a pretty straightforward thing, as well. Why would we keep CEOs and CFOs and other senior officers, that caused the problems? That's facially nuts. That's our current system.

So stop that current system. We're hiding the losses, instead of trying to find out the real losses. Stop that, because you need good information to make good decisions, right? Follow what works instead of what's failed. Start appointing people who have records of success, instead of records of failure. That would be another nice place to start. There are lots of things we can do. Even today, as late as it is. Even though they've had a terrible start to the administration. They could change, and they could change within weeks. And by the way, the folks who are the better regulators, they paid their taxes. So, you can get them through the vetting process a lot quicker.

BILL MOYERS: William Black, thank you very much for being with me on the Journal.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Thank you so much.

phuture phud phailure

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OMG. Vandana Shiva is so beautiful. She makes me cry and yell and pound my desk and cry and cheer and slap the air. I love her. I would die for her.

what? what? what?

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Will somebody explain to me what is the holdup on mitigations for this? An aggravatingly incomplete account over at TPM doesn't explain it to me at all. And, another pressing question, why is Al Gore bashed so mercilessly by so many on the matter of climate change? Are there real grounds for it? What is the basis for this thrashing he gets? I asked Rivero once and he shot back with some psychedelic blather about technicians he worked with on a tv commercial shoot telling him the real story... which is... well... that's just weird. I want somebody to tell me what in the heck Gore ever did that could form a basis for the unrelenting abuse of him... a cogent argument... even an almost cogent one would help.

detailed account

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...published in conjunction with WAPO and you can get even more detailed there, if you're still conscious.

ward churchill won

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Earlier today, Ward Churchill won his case for wrongful termination. That very totally rocks.

He is a good teacher, and I hope for all our kids he gets his job back.

what's the world coming to?

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i'm gonna have to go with o.d.

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... barring any better information... maybe a diabetic coma....