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Tuesday, January 6
PRUDEN: The dirty joke from Minnesota
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Tue 06 Jan 2009 05:50 PM EST
A lot of the venal sins of Congress could be judged pornographic, both politically and otherwise, but we've never had an Official Senate Pornographer before. Sen. Chuck Schumer says Al Franken will fit right in.
"With the Minnesota recount complete," he says, gleefully, "it is now clear that Al Franken won the election." Actually, it isn't clear at all, as Mr. Schumer well knows, even though the Democrats managing the recount declared Mr. Franken the winner yesterday. The Democrats in the Senate are eager to get Al seated quickly because once he's seated among equals a bum is difficult to throw out. There's honor among senators, similar to the honor among thieves. (The difference is that thieves often hold to higher standards.)
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Bank Of England Policymaker Predicts Unprecedented Dollar Collapse
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Tue 06 Jan 2009 05:29 PM EST
Willem Buiter, who served the BOE from June 1997 to May 2000, has stated that he expects to see the plug pulled from under the dollar as foreign investors turn away from the dollar and other US backed assets including government bonds.
Writing for the Financial Times, Buiter, now a Professor with the London School of Economics European Institute, comments: “There will, before long (my best guess is between two and five years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard. The US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many. But learning takes place.”
Buiter, who has previously advised the World Bank, the IMF and the European Commission, points out that the dollar has managed to stay afloat due to the misguided notion that the US can make more capital on overseas investments and interests than foreign investors can make on US assets - a hypothesis that economists have referred to as “American alpha”.
However, he believes the global financial crisis has exposed the fatal flaws in that assumption....Prof Buiter writes. “Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo Bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the US must recognise that its financial system has collapsed.”
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Monday, January 5
Prez-elect to establish 600,000 new Democrat voters...err...new government employees
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Mon 05 Jan 2009 09:13 AM EST
Thursday, January 1
Americans Closely Divided Over Israel’s Gaza Attacks
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Thu 01 Jan 2009 06:45 PM EST
Americans, while far more sympathetic to Israel than the Palestinians, are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip...Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans back Israel’s decision to take military action against the Palestinians, but only half as many Democrats (31%) agree. A majority of Democrats (55%) say Israel should have tried to find a diplomatic solution first
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Don't Tell Media Attacks On Israel Increased Since Hamas Elected
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Tuesday, December 23
Buchanan: On the Death of Deep Throat
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Tue 23 Dec 2008 10:52 PM EST
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
Of the dead, nothing but good.
So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time.
But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic.
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Saving Capitalism No Sure Thing as Statism Undermines Economy
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Tue 23 Dec 2008 04:56 AM EST
The intervention comes at what may prove to be a steep price. Future investment may be allocated less efficiently as risk-averse politicians make business decisions. Whenever banks decide to lend again, they are likely to find new capital requirements that will curb how freely they can do it. Interest rates may be pushed up by government borrowing to finance trillions of dollars of bailouts.
“We’re seeing a more statist world economy,” says Ken Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s not good for growth in the longer run.
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Sunday, December 21
New Book: General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Sun 21 Dec 2008 06:31 PM EST
From the UK Telegraph: "...military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".
His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.
Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general."
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Sunday, December 14
Fitzgerald Should Keep His Opinions to Himself
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Sun 14 Dec 2008 01:22 PM EST
As he should have done in the Libby case, Fitzy should make his case in a court of law, not in front the microphones.
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Tuesday, December 9
Will Media Cover Obama/Rod Blagojevich Connection?
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Tue 09 Dec 2008 05:28 PM EST
The mainstream media aggressively covered the controversies surrounding Republicans such as Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff and speculated about their connections to President Bush and other high profile members of the GOP. So, it will be interesting to see how tenaciously journalists investigate any linkage between President-elect Barack Obama and scandal ridden Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, now under arrest for allegedly trying to sell the selection of Obama's replacement to the Senate.
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Wednesday, November 26
Prince Accused of Morality
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Wed 26 Nov 2008 07:37 PM EST
When asked about his perspective on social issues — gay marriage, abortion — Prince tapped his Bible and said, "God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.'"
(H/T: Moonbattery)
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Friday, November 21
Habeas corpus hearings could set terrorists free inside the U.S.
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Fri 21 Nov 2008 02:55 PM EST
Last June in Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in our history that aliens captured and held as enemy combatants abroad (in this case, at the Guantanamo Bay military base) had a constitutional right to challenge their detentions by filing petitions for habeas corpus in federal court. The Court recognized that its holding was unprecedented. Yet it said that it was not deciding how such proceedings should be conducted, or even what the government must show to prevail.
Yesterday, the federal district court in Washington concluded the first such habeas proceeding for six detainees. It held that the government had established a basis for holding only one of them as an enemy combatant. The court acknowledged that the evidence the detainees were planning to travel to Afghanistan to join the fight was perfectly appropriate for use as intelligence (the purpose for which it was collected) -- but that such evidence was not sufficient to carry the government's burden of proving in court that the detainees were enemy combatants.
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Thursday, November 20
Reuters and CBS News Report: U.S. Influence Will Fade By 2025
by
Roland, the Gunslinger
on Thu 20 Nov 2008 10:59 PM EST
Analysts gazing into what amounts to an intelligence-based crystal ball see a future world marked by dwindling resources, more people and diminished power for the United States, as CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. The grim assessment, entitled ''Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World'', comes from the National Intelligence Council, an independent government body.
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