DebateGate

I forget which thread it was where you corrected me on the use of chickenshit for chickenfeed, but you were absolutely right and I forgot to thank you for it.

Thanks.

from today's www.antiwar.com

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CNN Poll Shows Overwhelming US Opposition to Afghan War
Majority See Afghanistan as the Next Vietnam
by Jason Ditz, October 28, 2011

A new CNN/ORC International Poll shows that the opposition to the US occupation of Afghanistan has grown to a record high, with 63 percent of the American public now firmly opposed to the conflict and only 34 percent still supportive.

CNN was quick to point out that the poll did not indicate regret for the 2001 invasion, saying the survey still showed a small majority believing it was “not a mistake” to invade in the wake of 9/11.

But the open-ended nature of the war and its repeated escalation has destroyed public opinion, and another question showed a solid majority of 58 percent of Americans believe Afghanistan has turned into another Vietnam.

The latest poll shows opposition that tops the previous record, in December 2010. Early in 2011 US officials began claiming major progress was being made in the war, and while those claims of progress are still coming in it is clear that people no longer believe the claims.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/24/totally-corrupt-america/

The article "Totally Corrupt America" by a former high-ranking Reagan Administration Treasury official, Paul Craig Roberts, is essentially a review of a new book (Reckless Endangerment, by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner) exposing the corruption and fraud that led to the financial collapse of 2008, dealing specifically with the fraudulent issue of mortgage-backed securities (the securitization of bundled sub-prime mortgage loans) by a desperate financial institution on the verge of collapse (Long-Term Capital Holdings) and the amazingly lucrative marketing of them by about 15 major Wall Street financial institutions, acting in concert with corrupt bond-rating agencies (primarily Standard & Poor) who assigned a triple-A rating to what were effectively shit bonds. 

The essential criminality at the heart of American capitalism is so pervasive that Roberts, in his article, didn't even bother to mention the criminality and fraud at the point-of-origin of the shit bonds, where the primary lenders had figured out how to make a profit (by bundled re-sales) of the piles of worthless debt they were accumulating and were paying up-front commissions to any mortgage broker able to bring a warm body into their office to sign a mortgage loan agreement that they had obviously no hope in hell of every repaying.

What was particularly egregious about the whole racket was that the Wall Street institutions were selling what they knew to be shit to their own investor clients while betting against them through the novel financial instruments known as  credit default swaps ("CDS.")   CDS were invented by Wall Street and the insurance industry to create an insurance policy that avoided all the rules and regulations covering the issuance of insurance policies at the time - - effectively, a CDS was a bet against  a mortgage backed security, which Wall Street knew for sure, despite its "triple-A" rating, was bound to fail because the mortgages making it up would never be repaid by the poor dumb schmucks who had signed them.  The CDS, which were made available by insurance giants like AIG International for a ridiculously low price, could then be traded themselves in a secondary "over the counter" or "OTC" market.

The above part of the story was already fairly well known from other sources before the publication of Reckless Endangerment.  It certainly renders laughable the conservative claim that the whole crisis was caused by the easing of lending restrictions on home mortgages (portrayed by conservatives as more "interference" in private business, rather than less) and ignoring completely the criminality and fraud of the point-of-origin lenders making loans they knew would never be repaid, the mortgage brokers who brought the deadbeats to the point-of-origin lenders, the Wall Street hucksters who bundled and sold the shit as triple-A to their own investor clients, the rating agencies who rated them and of the insurance industry which issued what were effectively policies of insurance against their default, known as CDS.

Where Reckless Endangerment breaks new ground is in the story of how Wall Street and its corrupted politicians and political appointees were able to sabotage whatever legislative or administrative attempts were made to stop what were obvious frauds and abusive practices. 

The article illustrates how Standard & Poor (a rating agency) was able to block the State of Georgia from legislating an end to predatory home mortgage lending by killing an Act (the Georgia Fair Lending Act) which could have served as a model for other state legislation. 

It further indicates how Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both Secretaries of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, together with the SEC and the head of the Federal Reserve, were able to block the efforts of Brooksley Born, head of the CFTC (the Federal Commodities and Futures Trading Commission) to regulate the over the counter ("OTC") trade in mortgage-backed securities, which was then virtually unregulated.   Roberts doesn't devote much space to the Brooksley Born story, and I recommend further reference to her biography in Wikipedia, which gives a pretty good account of her struggles with Rubin, Summers and other powerful Wall Streeters embedded in the Clinton administration and her eventual defeat at their hands.  In fact, without the Wikipedia article, Roberts references to her in his article are basically meaningless.

http://original.antiwar.com/bphillips/2011/10/23/welcome-to-the-new-america/

WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA

Very good article by Dr. Brian Phillips.  The open defiance of the Constitution in regard to the power of Congress to declare war was a long-standing open sore on the body of the Republic.  The article goes into the Patriot Act powers to obtain warrantless searches of the records of US citizens in which it is a crime to even report to the citizen of the government's invasion of his privacy.  But the line was really passed with the executive branch's murder of American citizens without bringing any charges against them, let alone trying and convicting them in a proper court of law.  The article goes on to describe the level of public support that these unconstitutional actions have received from the public and it's absolutely astonishing.  That the executive and legislative branches have shat all over the Constitution is more or less to be expected - - the lack of public outcry (IMHO, solely the result of media consolidation under corporate control) is the real death-knell.

That was the gist of the article, but I think everyone should read it.  It's really the end of an era.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/18/out-to-dinner-us-assassination-in-yemen-killed-teens/

don't even know why I bother to post it. 

the comments in this group will range from Fuck the whole God-damn bunch a them! to He was probably a terrorist too! to That's war!

It's tough to be an atheist in a world like this.  Because a religious man could at least take comfort in the thought that there will be payback but an atheist just has to come to grips with the idea that "The bastards will get away with it - - again!"

what a sad world

letters to the author from readers . . .

from Cindy (last name withheld)

<<“I voted two times for Ralph Nader during W’s reign. I did so because all my life I had voted for the “lesser of two” candidates. For the first time I found myself voting for someone I absolutely believed in, a true friend and representative of the citizen….

<<I have since come to realize that the answer no longer lies with politicians. The future lies with citizen movements like Occupy Wall Street and active involvement in maintaining democracy. Politicians, with very few exceptions, are a lying breed, telling whatever you want to hear to get elected, then spending the first half of their term patronizing you … and then spending the second half of the term whoring for more money…. The system is wrong, from top down….”>>

I get a sense that this is what is motivating the Occupy! crowd.  If this mood holds till Nov. 2012, Obama will be finished and good riddance to him.  He took his base for granted and now they just might be walking out on him.

Let me know what you think about it, please.