Want to put a face on the people who have for decades robbed you blind, and just happen to be one of the largest contributors to Obama’s campaign? Let Matt Taibbi tell you about Goldman Sachs:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

Watched this amazing and inspiring movie recently - A Man Named Pearl, the story of Pearl Fryar, the South Carolinian who taught himself topiary and shut up those in the community who
worried that “blacks don’t keep up their yards”. He showed them, attracting world-wide acclaim for his living art.

Well worth the time.

The Fourth of July Is a Celebration of Agitation

By Jim Hightower

July 01, 2009 “CS” — Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won’t leave well enough alone, who’s always questioning authority and trying to stir things up.

And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.

Count me in.

Pennsylvania State Senator Refuses To Apologize For His Remarks About Gays: ‘We’re Allowing Them To Exist’

During a June 19 radio debate, Pennsylvania State Sen. John Eichelberger (R) repeatedly asserted that same-sex marriage is wrong, “dysfunctional,” and would lead to “polygamy, marrying younger people.” (Eichelberger is “sponsoring a Constitutional amendment to redefine marriage as between a man and a woman.”) But perhaps his most shocking comments came when fellow lawmaker Sen. Daylin Leach (D) asked him how gay men and women should be treated:

Eichelberger: They’re not being punished. We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation.

Of course, gays aren’t allowed to do “what every American can do”, because other Americans can marry, see their partners medical records, own property together, get insurance, all those things that the majority of the country takes for granted. But this mouthpiece of the State “allows them to exist”. How nice for him.

Moron.

Oklahoma Rep’s ‘proclamation’ blames gays, porn, abortion for economic woes

Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern, probably best known for her comparison of homosexuality to toe cancer, has ignited controversy once again with her “Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality,” a document that blames America’s current economic crisis on “our greater national moral crisis.”

To rectify the problem, it suggests the following solution: “BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.”

From Faith or Delusion? At the Crossroads of Religion and Psychosis

In clinical practice, no clear guidelines exist to distinguish between normal religious beliefs and pathological religious delusions.

…From an individual standpoint, a dimensional approach to delusional thinking (emphasizing conviction, preoccupation, and extension rather than content) may be useful in examining what is and is not pathological. When beliefs are shared by others, the idiosyncratic can become normalized. Therefore, recognition of social dynamics and the possibility of entire delusional subcultures is necessary in the assessment of group beliefs. Religious beliefs and delusions alike can arise from neurologic lesions and anomalous experiences, suggesting that at least some religious beliefs can be pathological.

It is far past time to stop humoring the ill among us. If Sally Kern was standing on a street corner anywhere in world (other than Oklahoma, apparently) and began spouting her line of paranoiac religious gibberish, people would turn their heads and mutter “Poor woman”, and evidentially the police would remove her and order mental health testing. But stick her in a nice pantsuit in front of a microphone in the Oklahoma legislature, and suddenly her madness is patriotic instead of pathological?

No one wants Sally Kern to stop believing whatever she chooses to believe. No one is attempting to outlaw her faith. But faith is defined as a “belief in things unseen”, IE, non-reality. If Sally Kern’s proclamation called upon her toaster- or Santa Claus- to “grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal ” then she would be immediately impeached and sent for evaluation. Even in Oklahoma.

So why is she being taken even remotely seriously here? She is speaking nonsense, and using tax payers money to do so. Her state, like most around the nation, is suffering from a massive deficit, and instead of doing her job this quite literally insane woman is blaming it on gays and porn. Even the sorry state of Oklahoma deserves better than this. This isn’t leadership, or moral strength, it’s a religious delusion. This woman needs treatment, or at least needs to be removed from her position of public trust so she can be replaced by someone who’s mental illness doesn’t keep them from doing their job.

I’m not joking here. You wouldn’t vote for a schizophrenic to represent you in the legislature, so why vote for someone who is crippled by delusions and unable to lead?

ATM Vendor Halts Researcher’s Talk on Vulnerability

An ATM vendor has succeeded in getting a security talk pulled from the upcoming Black Hat conference after a researcher announced he would demonstrate a vulnerability in the system.

In the description of his talk on the conference web site, Jack wrote that, “The most prevalent attacks on Automated Teller Machines typically involve the use of card skimmers, or the physical theft of the machines themselves. Rarely do we see any targeted attacks on the underlying software. This presentation will retrace the steps I took to interface with, analyze, and find a vulnerability in a line of popular new model ATM’s. The presentation will explore both local and remote attack vectors, and finish with a live demonstration of an attack on an unmodified, stock ATM.”

Like we didn’t have enough to worry about…what are the ATM makers hiding?

Privately run checkpoint stops Palestinians with ‘too much food’

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned.

The food quantities allowed by Modi’in Ezrahi do not meet the daily dietary needs of the workers, and they prefer not to buy food at the considerably more expensive Israeli stores.

Barbaric and indefensable.

A Fight For The Amazon That Should Inspire The World

June 28, 2009 “The Independent” — Wednesday, 24 June 2009 — While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block (12A)B, said in 2007: “My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests.” The company denies liability, saying they are “aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts”.

How can the greedy be so stupid? Here’s hoping the Amazon people f them up but good.

Bailout of U.S. Banks Gives British Rum a $2.7 Billion Benefit

June 26 (Bloomberg) — In June 2008, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island — Puerto Rico — to another, namely St. Croix.

The hurried legislation adopted by a Congress voting under the threat of sudden global economic collapse led to hidden tax breaks for firms in dozens of industries. They included builders of Nascar auto-racing tracks, restaurant chains such as Burger King Holdings Inc., movie and television producers — and London’s Diageo.

Yet again we’re forced to determine, as we did on 9/11, is our government corrupt, or merely incompetent? And in the end, does it really make a difference? This sort of shit is outrageous.

If not home, at least out of the cities:

Iraqis jubilantly celebrate U.S. troop withdrawal

U.S. forces handed over formal control of Iraq’s major cities today (it is already Tuesday in Iraq), “a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country.” In celebration, Iraqis launched fireworks and “thousands attended a party in a park [in Baghdad] where singers performed patriotic songs. … Loudspeakers at police stations and military checkpoints played recordings of similar tunes throughout the day, as Iraqi military vehicles decorated with flowers and national flags patrolled the capital.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had called the withdrawal a “great victory,” declared June 30 a public holiday.

Never should have been there to begin with, and until everyone here understands that, we’re gonna keep on killing and electing puppets like Obama.