side note: this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

side note: Another “about friggin time”!! Those repubs for the last 6 years have been chanting “support the troops”, but all along they wouldn’t honor them or their families by showing what it is to sacrifice for your country. I’m feeling a bit on the angry side today folks…..but these fuckin repubs don’t give a shit about our troops or their families, all you have to do is look at Walter Reed, the 4+ tours these brave men and women have had to endur…….not supporting Veteran’s benefits…the list just continues….. Across the board these GOP zombie followers have consistently treated the men and woman in uniform like shit………

CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Pentagon will lift its ban on media coverage of the flag-draped coffins of war victims arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

But the families of the victims will have the final say on whether to allow the coverage, he said.

President Obama asked Gates to review the policy, and Gates said he decided after consulting with the armed services and groups representing military families to apply the same policy that is used at Arlington National Cemetery.

“I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected — the families,” he said at a news conference. Watch Gates announce reversal »

Not long after Gates’ announcement, the political action committee VoteVets.org issued a written statement saying it is “fully supportive” of the decision.

Advocates of opening the base to coverage point out that the unmarked coffins make it impossible to identify specific remains.

Not everyone had a positive reaction.

“Military Families United is disappointed in the president’s decision to overturn the ban that has been in place for over 18 years,” the group said in a release. (more…)

side note: About friggin time! These people don’t deserve to be a private company, especially if we own 40% of the business!

Yahoo News
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc (C.N) is closing in on an agreement to boost the U.S. government’s stake in it to as much as 40 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website, citing people familiar with the situation.
A deal could be announced as soon as Thursday, it said.
But a greater U.S. stake will bring a slew of new complications for executives of the New York company, the report said.
Mexican law bars any institution more than 10 percent-owned by a foreign government from running a bank in that country. Some Citigroup executives are worried that an increased U.S. stake might subject the bank to pressure to relinquish some or all of its ownership of Grupo Financiero Banamex, the No. 2 bank in Mexico by assets, the Journal said.

Though Citigroup is loath to shed Banamex, seen as a crown jewel of the bank’s operations, executives have concluded that the issue will probably have to be resolved through diplomatic channels between the United States and Mexico, people familiar with the matter said, according to the report.
A representative of Citigroup was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Gary Hill)

original article

side note: What a great, on point article. These righties just have no friggin clue what they’re talking about. Use these talking points when someone brings up nationalization. You will crush their argument! Happy Hunting!

By David Sirota
ourfuture.org

Amidst the punditocracy’s handwringing about the supposedly unprecedented possibility of nationalization in America, Paul Krugman [2] this week reminded his New York Times readers that nationalization is “as American as apple pie.” He noted that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been nationalizing about two banks per week, and that the best way to save our financial system is to temporarily nationalize it. But before we get scared about the prospect of nationalization (ie. public/government ownership of major parts of the economy), let’s remember: nationalization already pervades far more than the banking industry – it’s all around us.

For instance, about 45 million Americans rely on public power utilities for their electricity [3]. Those utilities are nationalized – that is, they are owned and operated by government (in this case, municipal governments).

Have you ever taken a subway, a commuter train like New Jersey Transit, a public bus or Amtrak? Have you ever sent a letter through the U.S. Postal Service? Then you’ve benefited from nationalized services – in those cases, mass transit and mail.

Then there’s the health care system, with Medicare creating a quasi-nationalization model, and the Veterans Administration providing a fully nationalized system. And what do you know? Medicare is wildly popular, and the VA system is renowned for its quality [4]. (more…)

side note: Enjoy!

side note: I thought last night’s speech was excellent! I know some people thought it was a bit long, but when you have so many topics to cover, you kind of have no choice. The only part I didn’t like is when he said we no longer torture…..now, I agree we should never torture anyone, but it was recently reported that Obama will continue to utilize the rendition program and will still use foreign countries to interrogate them. Now, the Administration did come out and say that they would take steps to ensure that those countries wouldn’t use torture tactics…..but how can we really be sure?

By Mike Madden
Salon.com

Technically, the speech President Obama gave Tuesday night wasn’t a State of the Union address, even if the networks and cable channels treated it that way. He’s been in office barely a month; by convention, presidents get a full year in power before they have to make the ritual declaration that the state of our union is strong.

And that may be why Obama felt free to dispense with that sort of boilerplate, and instead, direct America’s attention to the ways the state of our union is, in fact, fairly precarious these days — before pivoting to a call to band together, take collective responsibility for various messes in domestic and foreign policy alike, and work hard to make things better than they were before.

“What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more,” Obama said. “[A] day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here. Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.”

Instead of a State of the Union-esque laundry list of micro-policies, the speech looked back over the long Obama administration — you know, all 36 days of it. The stimulus is already keeping cops on the beat in Minneapolis. The housing plan is already lowering interest rates and may have already saved you $2,000 this year. Your paychecks will be bigger on April 1 (if you still have a job by then, he didn’t add). The White House must trust polls showing voters have high hopes for the stimulus plan to work; Obama doubled down on the already heavy political investment he’s put in to back the far heavier financial investment the Treasury has laid down. A sly smile crept onto Obama’s face as he described how the $787 billion stimulus “provides a tax cut — that’s right, a tax cut — for 95 percent of working families.” (more…)

side note: On election night a few months ago, the entire NT crew headed down to Grant Park in Chicago to be a part of history. The buzz down there was indescribable……the only feeling I can compare it to is being at a major sporting playoff event, you can just feel the excitement and anticipation in the air. I took with me my digital camera and snapped some photos that ultimately made it onto my Facebook page, but for the last few months, I’ve been looking for something a bit more, something with a professional touch to it. Amazon, Cafepress…and countless others have their own selection, but I couldn’t find one that brought back that rush of emotions I experienced that night. That search has ended with me stumbling upon a website called Blurb.com. I had never heard of it but I came across a book called “Coolers Allowed” within that site that looks awesome. I’m buying my book today…take a look, hope it can bring back those same good feelings you had on 11/4/08!

Description from Blurb.com:
A journalistic and artistic look into a historic day in Chicago as seen through the eyes and lens of an amateur photographer, Obama supporter, and onlooker. A day when Barack Obama, Chicago’s adopted son, became the 44th President of the United States. Its focus is on the people there and the extraordinary amount of diversity present throughout.
The photos follow the flow of time, capturing the unfolding of day into night. Nearly 100 images plus personal thoughts and writings by the author from that day.

Coolers Allowed
By Joe Fitzsimmons

side note: Nice job folks! We need to let these crusty old men who run these companies know that just b/c you rip a bong once in a while, doesn’t make you a bad, untrusting person. If anything….this incident probably added to Phelp’s marketing ability b/c not only is he one of the greatest athletes of all time, but behind the scenes, he’s just an “average joe”, looking to have some fun once in a while.

BusinessInsider.com
by Nicholas Carlson

When Kellogg announced it would not renew its endorsement contract with Olympic medalist Michael Phelps after a photo of the athelete smoking pot surfaced, it may have cost the food company its sterling reputation, reports company reputation index Vanno.

Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it’s ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company’s reputation. A Vanno representative put together this chart:

original article

side note: Hmmm…..you think we need some more regulation? Ya…I think so. These guys are way too smart to be left to regulate themselves….there’s just too much money and greed involved. I recommend clicking here to be taken to Wired Magazine’s site, there are tons of links within the article that will help you better understand this stuff.

Wired Magazine
By Felix Salmon

A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li’s work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the field. Today, though, as dazed bankers, politicians, regulators, and investors survey the wreckage of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all. Not that his achievement should be dismissed. He took a notoriously tough nut—determining correlation, or how seemingly disparate events are related—and cracked it wide open with a simple and elegant mathematical formula, one that would become ubiquitous in finance worldwide.

For five years, Li’s formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.

His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored.

Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li’s formula hadn’t expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system’s foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril.

David X. Li, it’s safe to say, won’t be getting that Nobel anytime soon. One result of the collapse has been the end of financial economics as something to be celebrated rather than feared. And Li’s Gaussian copula formula will go down in history as instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees. (more…)

side note: Just a reminder it’s at 8pm CST.

I hope the President can articulate his ideas for the Congress and the American people.

side note: I like David Shuster….he has been one of the most straight forward voices on cable news. He is extremely knowledgeable and doesn’t tip toe around any repubs….just ask that tool Joe Scarborough, whom Shuster has torn into on occasion.

side note: what stood out in this article to me was the the individual who is opposed, saying, “If we think the drug cartels are going to tuck their tails between their legs and go home, I think we’re badly mistaken.” what is so disappointing about this is this persons lack of history. When this county made booze illegal, it allowed the mob to go to levels no body thought possible. sure, it will take some time to deplete the drug cartels of their cash, but there is where you start. if they don’t have product to move, where is all their money going to come from?

An Assemblyman from San Francisco argues that it’s time to tax and regulate the state’s biggest cash crop in the same manner as alcohol. Opponents say it would create new costs for society.
By Eric Bailey
http://www.latimes.com

Reporting from Sacramento — Could Cannabis sativa be a salvation for California’s fiscal misfortunes? Can the state get a better budget grip by taxing what some folks toke?

An assemblyman from San Francisco announced legislation Monday to do just that: make California the first state in the nation to tax and regulate recreational marijuana in the same manner as alcohol.

Buoyed by the widely held belief that cannabis is California’s biggest cash crop, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano contends it is time to reap some state revenue from that harvest while putting a damper on drug use by teens, cutting police costs and even helping Mother Nature.

“I know the jokes are going to be coming, but this is not a frivolous issue,” said Ammiano, a Democrat elected in November after more than a dozen years as a San Francisco supervisor. “California always takes the lead — on gay marriage, the sanctuary movement, medical marijuana.”

Anti-drug groups are anything but amused by the idea of California collecting a windfall from the leafy herb that remains illegal under federal law. (more…)

side note: This is why OurFuture.org is one of my favorite resources. They give the novice follower tools to use when confronted by a FOX-follower or a lame Limbaugh listener. A lot of time and money is put into the Right’s marketing campaigns, but after you peel off the top layer, there’s nothing there but buzzwords and bullshit. Read this and then head over to the desk of a righty co-worker……..while this info is still fresh in your mind, use it so when your colleague is driving home listening to Rush or when they get home and are listening to that blowhard Hannity or O’Reilly, they will have a few red flags pop up in their head.

By Sara Robinson
OurFuture

Summary:
The very same conservatives who borrowed-and-spent us into the deepest financial catastrophe in nearly a century are now righteously lecturing the rest of us on the topic of “fiscal responsibility.” As usual, their arguments are encrusted with a thick layer of diversions, misconceptions, factual errors and out-and-out lies. Here are some of the most pungent ones, along with the facts you need to fire back.

Yes, it’s true. The conservatives—that’s right, the very same folks who just dragged us along on an eight-year drunken binge during which they borrowed-and-spent us into the deepest financial catastrophe in nearly a century—are now standing there, faces full of moral rectitude, fingers pointing and shaking in our faces, righteously lecturing the rest of us on the topic of “fiscal responsibility.”

I didn’t think it was possible. I mean, they were mean enough drunk—but hung over, in the clear light of morning, it turns out they’re even worse.

I know. The choice is hard. Laugh? Cry? Scream? All three at once? It would almost be funny, if it weren’t such clear evidence of a complete break with objective reality—and their ideas of what that “fiscal responsibility” means weren’t so dangerous to the future of the country.

The next episode in this surreal moral drama is set to take place next Monday, when President Obama will convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House to discuss the right’s bright new idea for getting us out of this hole: let’s just dismantle Social Security and Medicare.

As usual, this proposal is encrusted with a thick layer of diversions, misconceptions, factual errors and out-and-out lies. Here are some of the most pungent ones, along with the facts you need to fire back.

1. Conservatives are “fiscally responsible.” Progressives just want to spend, spend, spend.

The comeback to the first assertion is easy: Just point and laugh. Any party that thought giving cost-plus, no-bid contracts to Halliburton was fiscally responsible (and let’s not even get started on handing Hank Paulson $700 billion, no questions asked) deserves to be made fun of for using words that are simply beyond its limited comprehension.

And a quick look back at actual history makes them into even bigger fools. For decades now, liberal presidents have been far and away more restrained in their spending, and more likely to turn in balanced budgets. Part of this is that they’ve got a good grasp of Keynes, and know that the best way out of bad financial times is to make some up-front investments in the American people—investments which have almost always, in the end, returned far more than we put in.

Conservatives believe wholeheartedly in investment and wealth-building when individuals, families, and corporations do it. But their faith in the power of money well-spent—and the value of accumulated capital— completely vanishes when it comes to government spending. They think it’s morally wrong for government to ever invest or hold capital—despite the long trail of successes that have enriched us all and transformed the face of the nation.

Under the conservative definition of “fiscal responsibility, ” we’d have never set up the GI Bill and the FHA, which between them launched the post-war middle class (and made possible the consumer culture that generated so much private profit for so many). We wouldn’t have 150 years of investment in public education, which for most of the 20th century gave American business access to the smartest workers in the world; or the interstate highway system, which broadened trade and tourism; or research investment via NASA and DARPA, the defense research agency that gave us the microchip and the Internet and made a whole new world of commerce possible. There wouldn’t be the consumer protection infrastructure that allowed us to accept new products with easy confidence; or building and food inspectors who guarantee that you’re not taking your life in your hands when you flip on a light or sit down to dinner. (more…)

side note: Real Time had its first show of the season on Friday night. Was a good show except for the one nutball he had on via Sattelite, Brigitte Gabriel. I had never heard of her before the show aired, but now after reading a bit about her in an article linked from Crooks and Liars….I’m wondering what the fuck is wrong with Maher? He’s also going to have a “debate” with Ann Coulter. HUH?

I’m not posting the article linked from C&L b/c I couldn’t get myself to learn any more about that hideous woman. However, you can click here and you can learn about her if you’d like.