1/ Excellent article from Robert Reich, which says the Supreme Court is fulfilling the wish lists of the oligarchy with their recent decisions....hard to argue against this conclusion.....
In order to fully understand what the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court have been up to when they make decisions that affect our democracy, as they did last week on voting rights, you need to understand what the Republican Party has been up to.
The modern GOP is based on an unlikely coalition of wealthy business executives, small business owners, and struggling whites. Its durability depends on the latter two categories believing that the economic stresses they’ve experienced for decades have a lot to do with the government taking their money and giving it to the poor, who are disproportionately black and Latino.
The real reason small business owners and struggling whites haven’t done better is the same most of the rest of America hasn’t done better: Although the output of Americans has continued to rise, almost all the gains have gone to the very top.
Government is implicated, but not in the way wealthy Republicans want the other members of their coalition to believe. Laws that the GOP itself championed (too often with the complicity of some Democrats) have trammeled unions, invited outsourcing abroad, slashed taxes on the rich, encouraged takeovers, allowed monopolization, reduced the real median wage, and deregulated Wall Street. Four decades ago, the typical household’s income rose in tandem with output. But since the late 1970s, as these laws took hold, most Americans’ incomes have flattened. Had the real median household income continued to keep pace with economic growth it would now be almost $92,000 instead of $50,000.
Obviously, wealthy Republicans would rather other members of their coalition not know any of this — including, especially, their role in making it happen. Their nightmare is small-business owners and struggling whites joining with the poor and the rest of the middle class to wrest economic power away. So they’ve created a convenient scapegoat in America’s minority underclass, along with a government that supposedly taxes hardworking whites to support them.
This is where the five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have played, and continue to play, such an important role.
2/ And continuing the theme of the Supreme Court, it's very clear Chief Justice John Roberts is a complete snake, fully committed to the extreme right wing agenda. Here is a prime example - he is solely responsible for appointing members of the FISA courts, which have never turned down an NSA or other agencies requests for surveillance.
The oligarchy has all of the branches of gumment sewn up......starting with Roberts.....
Chief Justice Roberts Is Awesome Power Behind FISA Court
By Ezra Klein Jul 2, 2013 2:23 PM ET
Oh, and one more thing: You have exclusive, unaccountable, lifetime power to shape the surveillance state.
To use its surveillance powers -- tapping phones or reading e-mails -- the federal government must ask permission of the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A FISA judge can deny the request or force the government to limit the scope of its investigation. It’s the only plausible check in the system. Whether it actually checks government surveillance power or acts as a rubber stamp is up to whichever FISA judge presides that day.
The 11 FISA judges, chosen from throughout the federal bench for seven-year terms, are all appointed by the chief justice. In fact, every FISA judge currently serving was appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts, who will continue making such appointments until he retires or dies. FISA judges don’t need confirmation -- by Congress or anyone else.
No other part of U.S. law works this way. The chief justice can’t choose the judges who rule on health law, or preside over labor cases, or decide software patents. But when it comes to surveillance, the composition of the bench is entirely in his hands and so, as a result, is the extent to which the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can spy on citizens.
“It really is up to these FISA judges to decide what the law means and what the NSA and FBI gets to do,” said Julian Sanchez, a privacy scholar at the Cato Institute. “So Roberts is single handedly choosing the people who get to decide how much surveillance we’re subject to.”
3/ Ladies - do NOT allow your husbands to watch this three minute video.....just sayin'......
4/ A most interesting article from the London Review of Books - the financial crash and it's aftermath from the British side, which encompasses many of the same bank names we see in the Matt Taibbi articles. If you like his reporting, you will appreciate this essay on how the banks, globally, are out of anyone's control.....
A long article, but if you have been following the bank scandals it's a must read....
Are we having fun yet?
John Lanchester on the banks’ barely believable behaviour
As anyone who’s been there recently can testify, the blame in Spain falls mainly on the banks – as it does in Ireland, in Greece, in the US, and pretty much everywhere else too. Here in the UK, feelings were nicely summed up by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which reported on 19 June that ‘the public have a sense that advantage has been taken of them, that bankers have received huge rewards, that some of those rewards have not been properly earned, and in some cases have been obtained through dishonesty, and that these huge rewards are excessive, bearing little or no relation to the work done.’ The report eye-catchingly called for senior bankers to face jail.1 In the midst of this cacophony of largely justified accusations, the banks have had a strange kind of good fortune: the noise is now so loud that it’s become hard to hear specific complaints of wrongdoing. That’s lucky for them, because there’s one particular scandal which really deserves to stand out. The scandal I have in mind is that of mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI). The banks are additionally lucky in that there’s something inherently unsexy about the whole idea of PPI, from the numbing acronym to the fact that the whole idea of a scandal about insurance payments seems dreary and low-scale. But if there hadn’t been so much other lurid wrongdoing in the world of finance, and if mis-sold payment protection insurance had a sexier name, PPI would stand out as the biggest scandal in the history of British banking.
This is a big claim to make: an especially big claim to make at the moment, when bank scandals come around with a regularity which in almost any other context would be soothing. Here’s a short recap of some of the greatest hits of the noughties. Just to keep things simple, I’m going to leave out the biggest of them all, the grotesque toxic-asset and derivative spree which took the global financial system to the edge of the abyss. That was the precursor and proximate cause of the difficulties which are affecting the entire Western world at the moment, but the causal mechanisms connecting the initial crisis and our current predicament are a separate subject. The crisis and its consequences are too big to count as a scandal: they’re more like a climate. We can all agree that we’d prefer a different climate. We can all agree that we have no idea when this one will change.
5/ A wonderful, beautiful little film called "The Beauty Of Pollination".....with bees, hummingbirds, bats and butterflies all caught in the most incredible slow motion.......just a fabulous four minutes.....
A nice video......
6/ Nicholas Kristof from the Times has just returned from a sabbatical writing a book, and welcome back - keep nailing it with columns like this. He points out the facts, which is to protect Americans from terrorists we have spent trillions on an apparatus that will bankrupt this country. The irony is we are totally unable to deal with gun violence which kills untold more of us than terrorists.
Osama Bin Laden's aim wasn't to kill Americans, it was economic war. He knew we would overreact, and frankly 12 years later - he achieved his aim. The military-industrial complex is unstoppable and will eventually consume us all....
How Could We Blow This One?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 3, 2013
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I just finished a five-month leave from this column, writing a book with my wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and what struck me while away from the daily fray is a paradox that doesn’t seem quite patriotic enough for July Fourth.
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But I’ll share it anyway: On security issues, we Americans need a rebalancing. We appear willing to bear any burden, pay any price, to confound the kind of terrorists who shout “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and plant bombs, while unwilling to take the slightest step to curb a different kind of terrorism — mundane gun violence in classrooms, cinemas and inner cities that claims 1,200 times as many American lives.
When I began my book leave, it seemed likely that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut would impel Congress to approve universal background checks for gun purchases. It looked as if we might follow Australia, which responded to a 1996 gun massacre by imposing restrictions that have resulted in not a single mass shooting there since.
Alas, I was naïve. Despite 91 percent support from voters polled in late March and early April, Congress rejected background checks. Political momentum to reduce gun killings has now faded — until the next such slaughter.
Meanwhile, our national leaders have been in a tizzy over Edward Snowden and his leaks about National Security Agency surveillance of — of, well, just about everything. The public reaction has been a shrug: Most people don’t like surveillance, but they seem willing to accept it and much more as the price of suppressing terrorism.
Our response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and international terrorism has been remarkable, including an intelligence apparatus in which some 1.4 million people (including, until recently, Snowden) hold “top secret” clearances.
That’s more than twice the population of the District of Columbia. The Washington Post has reported that since 9/11, the United States has built new intelligence complexes equivalent in office space to 22 United States Capitol buildings.
All told, since 9/11, the United States has spent $8 trillion on the military and homeland security, according to the National Priorities Project, a research group that works for budget transparency. That’s nearly $70,000 per American household.
7/ Clever little 90 second video - to describe it would spoil the fun, but here's a clue - begins with flash.....German made......
8/ Housing recovery? Nah.....it's all driven by vulture investors and large corporations buying up distressed inventory from the banks.....
Behind the Rise in House Prices, Wall Street Buyers
BY NATHANIEL POPPER
Emily Berl for The New York TimesJoe Cusumano, a real estate agent, outside a home in Riverside, Calif. He said much of his business came from large investors.
The last time the housing market was this hot in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the buyers pushing up prices were mostly small time. Nowadays, they are big time — Wall Street big.
Large investment firms have spent billions of dollars over the last year buying homes in some of the nation’s most depressed markets. The influx has been so great, and the resulting price gains so big, that ordinary buyers are feeling squeezed out. Some are already wondering if prices will slump anew if the big money stops flowing.
“The growth is being propelled by institutional money,” said Suzanne Mistretta, an analyst atFitch Ratings. “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple years.”
Wall Street played a central role in the last housing boom by supplying easy — and, in retrospect, risky — mortgage financing. Now, investment companies like the Blackstone Group have swooped in, buying thousands of houses in the same areas where the financial crisis hit hardest.
Blackstone, which helped define a period of Wall Street hyperwealth, has bought some 26,000 homes in nine states. Colony Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, is spending $250 million each month and already owns 10,000 properties. With little fanfare, these and other financial companies have become significant landlords on Main Street. Most of the firms are renting out the homes, with the possibility of unloading them at a profit when prices rise far enough.
9/ Remember the movie "Titanic" from 1987? Of course you do.....
Here is an "Honest Trailer" for the 3D version, which came out last year.....funny.....2 minutes....
10/ More on house prices - I found this article a little incoherent, but some of his points are quite valid, such as the "rent or buy" financials.
This is a story for skimming the high points.....
10 Reasons It's A Terrible Time To Buy An Expensive House
By Patrick Killelea, Jul 08, 2013Please link to this page from your own website!
- Because house prices are in expensive areas still dangerously high compared to incomes and rents. Banks say a safe mortgage is a maximum of 3 times the buyer's annual income with a 20% downpayment. Landlords say a safe price is set by the rental market; annual rent should be at least 9% of the purchase price, or else the price is just too high. Yet in affluent areas, both those safety rules are still being violated. Buyers are still borrowing 6 times their income with tiny downpayments, and gross rents are still only 3% of purchase price. Renting is a cash business that proves what people can really pay based on their salary, not how much they can borrow. Salaries and rents prove that affluent neighborhoods are still in a huge housing bubble, and that bubble seems to be getting more dangerous by the day. On the other hand, in some poor neighborhoods, prices are now so low that gross rents may exceed 10% of price. Housing is a bargain for buyers there. Prices there could still fall yet more if unemployment rises or interest rates go up, but those neighborhoods have no bubble anymore.
- Because it's usually still much cheaper to rent than to own the same size and quality house, in the same school district. In rich neighborhoods, annual rents are typically only 3% of purchase price while mortgage rates are 4% with fees, so it costs more to borrow the money as it does to borrow the house. Renters win and owners lose! Worse, total owner costs including taxes, maintenance, and insurance come to about 8% of purchase price, which is more than twice the cost of renting and wipes out any income tax benefit.The only true sign of a bottom is a price low enough so that you could rent out the house and make a profit. Then you'll know it's pretty safe to buy for yourself because then rent could cover the mortgage and ownership expenses if necessary, eliminating most of your risk. The basic buying safety rule is to divide annual rent by the purchase price for the house:
annual rent / purchase price = 3% means do not buy, prices are too high
annual rent / purchase price = 6% means borderline
annual rent / purchase price = 9% means ok to buy, prices are reasonable
So for example, it's borderline to pay $200,000 for a house that would cost you $1,000 per month to rent. That's $12,000 per year in rent. If you buy it with a 6% mortgage, that's $12,000 per year in interest instead, so it works out about the same. Owners can pay interest with pre-tax money, but that benefit gets wiped out by the eternal debts of repairs and property tax, equalizing things. It is foolish to pay $400,000 for that same house, because renting it would cost only half as much per year, and renters are completely safe from falling housing prices. Subtract HOA from rent before doing the calculation for condos.
Although there is no way to be sure that rents won't fall, comparing the local employment rate (demand) to the current local supply of available homes for rent or sale (supply) should help you figure out whether a big fall in rents could happen. Checking these factors minimizizes your risk.
11/ "Lets Dance", a fabulous compilation of dance scenes from movies and concerts.......professionally done, very enjoyable.......Mary and I between us named all of the movies!!!
Five minutes of charm.....a nice video.......
12/ I haven't been back to Las Vegas for four years, so per this story in the Times it appears the seedy downtown area is due for a renaissance, thanks to a billonaire.....
CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Latest Vision for Las Vegas: A Downtown Vibe
Isaac Brekken for The New York Times
Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos, in Henderson, Nev. Mr. Hsieh is determined to revitalize downtown Las Vegas.
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: July 4, 2013
But the flamboyant Siegel changed this city for good when he built the Flamingo Hotel, the first luxury casino on the Strip. Now Mr. Hsieh, a soft-spoken 39-year-old Internet billionaire who runs Zappos, the online clothing store, plans to do something as transformative. It’s a classic American dream: a Western-scale roll of the dice in a city that suddenly conjured up Belle Époque Paris and ancient Rome out of the desert. The idea this time is to build a version of the Mission district in San Francisco or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in downtown Vegas.
Mr. Hsieh (pronounced shay) is relocating Zappos headquarters from Henderson, Nev., about 16 miles away, and investing hundreds of millions of his own dollars to retrofit downtown with, well, a downtown, in line with the latest trends.
I came to check out the progress. There’s not much to see yet, but his $350 million Downtown Project — a mix of investments, acquisitions and loans — envisions blocks and blocks of community-based, pedestrian-friendly, small-business-oriented, high-density, high-tech urbanism in long-depressed and troubled neighborhoods. Zappos will take over the decrepit old City Hall. That gesture alone, salvaging a local landmark, has endeared Mr. Hsieh to many in Las Vegas.
13/ It always struck me "You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel" was one of the best hook lyrics to come out of the 90's......so here are the Bloodhound Gang with "The Bad Touch" again.....just the goofiest video ever.......
14/ I like these articles - the best TV episodes from some of the best series.......I have seen the "Sopranos" and "The Wire", but not the others.....
The 10 Most Essential TV Episodes From ‘Sopranos,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ and More
Jun 30, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
Todays video - "Thelma and Louise" trucker revenge scene.......definitely one for the ladies.....
Todays Welsh joke
At the National Art Gallery in
The painting depicted three black men totally naked sitting on a park bench. Two of the figures had black willies, but the one in the middle had a pink one.
The curator of the gallery realised that they were having trouble interpreting the painting and offered his assessment.
He went on for over half an hour explaining how it depicted the sexual emasculation of black men in a predominately white, patriarchal society. "In fact," he pointed out, "some serious critics believe that the pink willie also reflects the cultural and sociological oppression experienced by gay men in contemporary Society."
After the curator left, a Welshman, approached the couple and said, "Would you like to know what the painting is really about?""Now why would you claim to be more of an expert than the curator of the Gallery?" asked the couple."Because I'm the boyo who painted it!" he replied. "In fact, there are no black men depicted at all. They're just three Welsh miners. Him in the middle went home for lunch."
Todays husband joke
A Husband is Down in Aisle 5!!!!
A husband and wife are shopping in their local supermarket.The husband picks up a case of Budweiser and puts it in their cart."What do you think you're doing?" asks the wife."They're on sale, only $10 for 24 cans" he replies."Put them back, we can't afford them" demands the wife, and they carry on shopping.
A few aisles farther on, the woman picks up a $20 jar of face creamand puts it in the basket."What do you think you're doing?" asks the husband."It's my face cream. It makes me look beautiful," replies the wife.Her husband says: "So does 24 cans of Budweiser and it's half the price."
That's him on Aisle 5.
Todays ladies joke
He grasped me firmly, but gently, just above my elbow and guided me into a room, his room.
Then he quietly shut the door and we were alone. He approached me soundlessly, from behind, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice close to my ear. "Just relax." Without warning, he reached down and I felt his strong, calloused hands start at my ankles, gently probing, and moving upward along my calves, slowly but steadily. My breath caught in my throat.
I knew I should be afraid, but somehow I didn't care. His touch was so experienced, so sure. When his hands moved up onto my thighs, I gave a slight shudder, and partly closed my eyes. My pulse was pounding. I felt his knowing fingers caress my abdomen, my ribcage.
And then, as he cupped my firm, full breasts in his hands, I inhaled sharply.
Probing, searching, knowing what he wanted, he brought his hands to my shoulders, slid them down my tingling spine and into my panties. Although I knew nothing about this man, I felt oddly trusting and expectant. This is a man, I thought...a man used to taking charge. A man not used to taking 'No' for an answer. A man who would tell me what he wanted. A man who would look into my soul and say.......
Probing, searching, knowing what he wanted, he brought his hands to my shoulders, slid them down my tingling spine and into my panties. Although I knew nothing about this man, I felt oddly trusting and expectant. This is a man, I thought...a man used to taking charge. A man not used to taking 'No' for an answer. A man who would tell me what he wanted. A man who would look into my soul and say.......
"Okay ma'am, you can board your flight now."
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