A Nation of Dumbasses
Birthplace of our President. Really, no kidding.
According to a new Public Policy Poll, 10% of Americans either believe Hawaii is not part of the United States or are unsure about it. (See, Q4 on Page 2 of release.) Jesus H. Limping Christ on a Fucking Raft! We deserve whatever awful fate awaits us. Perhaps the swine flus will kill off a lot of stupid people and ultimately save us from ourselves. One can only hope.
“The World is in Trouble” sez German Bank Econ
Weimar Currency.
The top economist at Germany’s D-Bank says the green shoots are about to turn brown.
‘The World Is in Trouble’: Deutsche Bank Chief Economist
The global economy still faces turmoil as governments try to figure out how to move out of fiscal rescue packages, which could lead to another two downturns, Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Norbert Walter said Thursday. In addition, nervousness on the part of major dollar holders could pressure the greenback and lead to a very worrying 2010, Walter said. Norbert said recently in research notes “the world is in trouble.”
“I believe that the rescue packages brought on have been so costly for so many governments that the exit from this fiscal policy will be very painful, very painful indeed,” he said. “Some of us are already talking about a W-shaped recovery. I’d probably talk about a triple-U-shaped recovery because there are so many stumbling blocks here to get out of this.”
This explains it all or Why we spent two trillion dollars we didn’t have
To Battle Gog and Magog.
A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHT
Gog and Magog - what worried Bush the most.
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
This is US in 10 Years
Think of Borat's home town. Yours could look like this sooner than you think.
I heard someone on the radio the other day who had a new definition of a “Gaffe” – you know, those verbalizations politicians make all the time and wish they hadn’t. Vice President Biden owns the Gaffe Factory, for example.
Well, the new definition of a Gaffe is when a politician screws up and accidentally tells the truth. Turns out the Veep’s recent observations on Russian fall squarely into this new view of gaffsterism. Biden got it right. He just regrets saying it out loud.
This is what is in store for the good old USA. Think I’m nuts? Check out Dmitry Orlov’s Blog, Cluborlov. He had a front row seat at Russia’s crack up. He sees one coming for us, too.
Biden had it right: Rural Russia is dying of poverty, neglect
Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: August 05, 2009 04:31:57 PM
KUVSHINOVO, Russia — The government administrator was bursting with optimism: More children are being born, many rubles will be invested in infrastructure and his region is weathering the global economic storm.
“The situation is so good,” said Boris Zaitsev, a broad-shouldered man who spoke in a confident monotone.
Outside his office, some 170 miles northwest of Moscow, the front steps to the Soviet-era government building are falling into a pile of rubble. Deep, spine-rattling potholes that rival sections of Baghdad riddle the town’s streets. The region’s population has plummeted by more than a quarter. Officials here like to point visitors to Kuvshinovo’s new Russian Orthodox church, an elegant wooden structure. Work inside the church hasn’t been finished, because the money ran out. Looters searching for icons and cash previously torched the office of another local church. Twice. A priest in a nearby village, who’d led an anti-alcoholism campaign, was burned to death with his family. The area around this rural enclave is in steep decline; once-thriving fields are empty and the population is in free-fall. Along with many other towns and villages in vast rural Russia, it’s a microcosm for a country that, according to recent studies, is withering away.
Anti-Abortion Extremist Predicts Violence if Abortions are paid for in the Health Bill.
Mr. Terry's sick handiwork.
(My question in all this is why the hell an aide to Nancy Pelsosi ever agreed to meet with these nutbags. And, a great example of right-wing crassness was “Ms. Roe” of Roe vs. Wade fame bringing up the Speaker’s Catholicism.)
By Jonathan Allen | July 28, 2009 4:21 PM
Randall Terry, the controversial former head of Operation Rescue, is predicting that extremists would retaliate with violence if a health care overhaul allows taxpayers to foot the bill for abortions. Terry offered his forecast during an unusual meeting on Tuesday between two dozen or so anti-abortion activists and an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during which Terry spilled hundreds of miniature plastic babies from a small faux casket onto a conference table in a room adjacent to Pelosi’s personal office in the Cannon Building. During the meeting, Terry warned of ominous repercussions from extremists if House provisions that would expand insurance coverage for abortions are made into law.
“If you force people to pay their money” he said afterward, “there are people who will resort to acts of violence.”
Four Yemeni soldiers killed as unrest swells
Violence widens in Yemen.
By Hammoud Mounassar (AFP)
Many of the demonstrators have been protesting against poor living conditions in the region.
SANAA — Four Yemeni soldiers were killed on Tuesday when armed men attacked a checkpoint in the restive south, in the latest in a series of violent incidents rocking the country, a security official said. Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arab world, is an Al-Qaeda target and mired in a rebellion by Shiites in the northern province of Saada as well as an upsurge in violence in the south. The growing strife has led parliament to question the government’s ability to tackle the country’s problems. The security official said it was unclear who was behind Tuesday’s attack, which took place on the road linking the provinces of Abyan and Hadramaut and which also left another soldier wounded. A website linked to the defence ministry reported that 10 armed “saboteurs” ambushed the checkpoint. The army has launched a manhunt for the assailants, it quoted a security official as saying.
Labor Strife Roils South Africa
Cops are shooting protestors with rubber bullets.
(See also the CSM HERE.)
Protesters chant slogans during a strike in Johannesburg July 27, 2009. REUTERS
South Africa’s government faced more violent protests on Tuesday as police fired rubber bullets on marchers as a strike by tens of thousands of municipal workers entered a second day. Police broke up a demonstration in an informal settlement in the Mpumalanga province where some 500 residents angry over a lack of service delivery burned down a clinic, a library and a fire engine. They also stoned police, landing a policeman in hospital.
“We had to use rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, I believe there are some injuries but they have not been reported as yet,” said provincial police spokesman Abie Khoabane.
In Thokoza, a Johannesburg township, police dispersed 200 residents with rubber bullets after they blocked off streets and stoned a police cordon in a protest over the lack of service delivery by the municipality. Thokoza has been a hotspot of rioting as a series of service delivery protests have swept South Africa in recent weeks. Rising discontent over wages and slack service delivery have increased pressure on the new government of President Jacob Zuma in the midst of a recession.
Mob beats Chinese steel factory executive to death
China Unrest: Chinese riot police get into position as Uighur protesters gather during a demonstration in Urumqi, earlier this month.
Thousands of workers had gathered in northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua to protest the takeover of their company and threatened layoffs.
Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.
Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.
The protesters worked at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, which was going to be sold to Chen’s privately owned Jianlong Steel. Chen sparked the riot by announcing 30,000 workers would be laid off, the newspaper said.
They dispersed later only after they were assured by authorities the sale would not go through.
– David Pierson
Huge Regional Thrift Set to Collapse
Guaranty Bank, the second largest in Texas has been ordered to turn itself over to the FDIC.
Pig Flu Pandemic: Blame it on the Kids
It’s all the fault of the little rugrats. They are super-transmitters, apparently.
Democrats cave on card check
I fucking KNEW this would happen – kissing Blanche Lincoln’s and Mary Landrieu’s Confederate asses.
The Unbelieveable Crassness of Republicans
I must admit one thing. I’d miss the Republicans if they all got raptured tomorrow. If anyone had predicted on Sunday night some of the outrageous things that have been said by Republicanist Senators on the Judiciary Committee since Monday morning, when the Sotmayor hearings began, they would be ridiculed as blindly partisan hacks. Consider this:
“Then you would have some ’splaining to do.”
– Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), doing his best Ricky Ricardo impression at Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.
If it were a confirmation for a black judge, would Coburn put on blackface and sing a “mammy” song?
It gets better. Confederate Jefferson Beauregard Sessions chastised Sotomayor for failing to vote the same way as another judge on her circuit, “also of Puerto Rican heritage.”
Smarmy shit Lindsey Graham, as Maureen Dowd noted in the NYT today, read Sotomayor some anonymous comments made by lawyers about her, complaining that she was “temperamental,” “nasty,” “a bit of a bully.” Then he patronizingly lectured her about how this was the moment for “self-reflection.” That nasty little sissy needs to spend some time with his governor helping him to self-reflect.
Pig Flu News
- Argentine fear over flu spreads, as accusations of incompetence and numbers-rigging plague the government.
- The WHO – stop testing for H1N1 – assume it’s pig flu. Great way to fudge the numbers, no?
- Health Officials in the UK expect 100,000 NEW cases PER DAY by August.
- UN says its needs $1 billion to fight flu in poor nations. (Rush Limbaugh will probably advocate NOT fighting it, in order to reduce to surplus population.)
- Boston – swine flu panic led to prison uprising.
- No seasonal respite from this flu apparent.
Bank Failure Friday – Thursday Edition
Back from a holiday hiatus to find 7 (seven) banks failed. Normally, they close them on a Friday, but I guess the holiday gave them the opportunity to put the key in the door on these guys a day early. Interestingly, 6 of the 7 are in my home state of Illinois. Hmmmmmmmmm.
DC awash in the pig flu
Health officials in Washington say the number of cases are comparable with the seasonal flu in fall / winter.
US tips the 1 million mark in pig flu cases; resistance to drug found
So says the CDC.
If the figures are correct, it is reassuring news, because it indicates that the fatality rate from swine flu is even lower than thought, says BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh.
Oh, I am reassured no end. What happens when the damn thing mutates?
Funny thing, I immerse myself in news on a daily basis and heard nothing of this from US outlets. If you want to know what’s going on in your own country, best look to the Brits for the info.
Also, check out: Roche Finds First H1N1 Case With Resistance to Tamiflu.
Bank Failure Friday!!!
A whopping 4 5 (four – FIVE – they slipped another one in on me after I posted) banks bit the big one today! Read ‘em and weep, kids!
Metro Pacific Bank, Irvine, CA
Neighborhood Community Bank, Newnan, GA
Community Bank of West Georgia, Villa Rica, GA
AND
This makes a total of 45 (forty-five) banks closed this year by the FDIC.
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