Obama and the Banksters

Penny Pritzker:

"Pritzker and her family had acquired the savings and loan with the help of $600 million in tax credits. She became the new bank’s chairwoman and ended up as a director of the holding company that owned it. Under her leadership, Superior specialized in subprime lending, hustling folks with meager means and poor credit into high interest loans that were bundled into the toxic securities that wrecked the U.S. economy."

Robert Scheer, Truthdig 

Jack Lew:

"Lew didn't divest his Cayman Island investment until almost the end of 2010, when he was already working for the administration, and a year after the president publicly railed against such offshore accounts as tax havens."

NBCNEWS.com, Business

George W. Bush and Torture

'What can be done to mitigate the damage and set this country on a better course? First and foremost, Americans need to confront the truth. Let’s stop resorting to euphemisms and call “enhanced interrogation techniques” — including but not limited to waterboarding — what they actually are: torture. Torturing detainees flies in the face of principles and practices established in the founding of our republic, and it violates U.S. law and international treaties to which we are a party. Subjecting detainees to torture, no matter how despicable their alleged crimes, runs counter to the values embodied in the U.S. Constitution.'

Thomas R. Pickering

'...neither the report nor Pickering’s op-ed addressed the significant point that laws against torture and mistreatment of prisoners already existed and that Bush and his team simply had ignored or evaded them. If Bush and Yoo could concoct an excuse giving the President the “plenary” power to do whatever he wants in wartime, why couldn’t some future President and legal adviser do the same?

'What good does it do to tighten “loopholes” if a President and his aides can flout the law and escape accountability? The only rational (and legal) response to Bush’s use of torture is to arrest him and his key advisers and put them on trial.'

Robert Parry

Crowdsourcing

Merriam-Webster definition:  "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers."

USA Today:
Crowdsourced manhunt shows promise, problems

Salah Eddin Barhoum, a 17-year-old track star who was a spectator at Monday's race, had his picture posted all over the Internet and ended up on the cover of the New York Post. He told The Associated Press on Thursday that he is now afraid to leave his house.

 ABC News:
Teen: I Am Not the Boston Marathon Bomber 

Salah Barhoun, 17, said he went to the police yesterday to clear his name after he found himself tagged in pictures online. He had just gone to watch the race, he said, but soon after the explosions, he was singled out by internet sleuths as looking suspicious.

Senator Warren

"The problem is that the 6.5% is not accurate. Your staff admitted to us in a meeting earlier this week that the number is not based on a random sample, not on a review of these cases; it was determined based on whatever files had been reviewed by the time you shut down this process…But the question I have is, what is the right number? Is it six tenths of 1%? Is it 6.5%, 9%, 11%, 20%, 50%, 90%? If you can’t correctly tell how many people were the victims of illegal bank actions, how can you possibly decide how much money is an appropriate amount for settlement?"

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

 



Give Baby Gun

"If babies had guns they wouldn't be aborted."
Rep. Steve Stockman, Texas

Babies would still need sleep time, though, so they'd need to team up somehow. But a comment, over at Raw Story I think it was, suggested, "If babies had guns there wouldn't be twins." In that case, if the baby does shoot his or her twin -- or, if both babies are armed, and they blow each other away -- well, then, if babies had guns, they just might abort each other.

Ann Coulter's Chart

Mad Magazine

Ann Coulter's height, long face, self-righteousness and publicity savvy add up to Sagittarius obviously. I guessed that her moon might be in Aries, as she goes all-out as a virago will do: she makes inflammatory statements in public and then challenges men to defend her (and their own masculinity). Her latest spotlight-grabber is the suggestion that Meghan McCain should be murdered.

The moon is not in Aries, but it is in conjunction with Mars, the ruler of Aries:

Astrotheme

Mad Magazine nailed it in picturing her worst enemy: being ignored. She has done an excellent job of calculating reactions that keep her in the spotlight, sell books, and accord her honors as a weapon of mass destruction.

Phil Donahue

"We are underwater with pretense. We think, if we say it, it's true. ...
"Every major metropolitan newspaper in this country supported the invasion of Iraq."
current.com

"I can't stand there -- 'they fired me, they fired me!'  So many families are going through so much pain. Mothers see the two guys coming up the front walk with the -- you know: uniform, buttons and cap -- and they faint."
Donahue, Body of War