Daniel Cohn-Bendit

He still breathes the fire that inspired me years and years ago

Dany Cohn-Bendit-Investiture de la Commission Barroso II
by EurodeputesEE

How the pharmaceutical lobby bought Bushama

Here it is.

An asshole under a sheet

The difference between a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a porn poser is one's an asshole over a sheet the other one an asshole under a sheet. Mother Jones has a great photo esssay on Ms Ruth, who sews robes for the KKK. They are hand-made, measured, fitted and then blessed. Individually. And they aint cheap

A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140.

Exalted Cyclops, wow that's a scary-sounding name!

Four horsemen of Obama's apocalypse

Excerpts from an article in the Financial Times. Here's the link to Huffington Post. Obama is in big trouble and the Chicago gang seems to be sinking him. The comment, "The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing" can and, unless properly addressed and corrected, will fail his administration.

"At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: "A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again."

"Just over a year into his tenure, America's 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington's ways. What went wrong?

"Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons - from Mr Obama's decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president's inability to convince voters he can "feel their [economic] pain", to the apparent ungovernability of today's Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

"In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington - most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office - each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people - Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

"Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

"With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama's brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans - like the president. And barring Richard Nixon's White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

"It is a very tightly knit group," says a prominent Obama backer who has visited the White House more than 40 times in the past year. "This is a kind of 'we few' group ... that achieved the improbable in the most unlikely election victory anyone can remember and, unsurprisingly, their bond is very deep."

"John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, the most influential think-tank in Mr Obama's Washington, says that while he believes Mr Obama does hear a range of views, including dissenting advice, problems can arise from the narrow composition of the group itself."

Who are they and what was their role in the financial meltdown?

That's the question William D. Cohan asks in The New York Times in reference to well-heeled, high-power Wall Street Barons some of them in key positions in the Bushama administration.

Until people such as Warren Spector, the former co-president and head of the fixed-income division at Bear Stearns, and Dan Jester, a mysterious former Goldman Sachs banker turned Treasury official — among many others — come forward and share with us the roles they played before, during and after the crisis, there is little hope that the members of Congress working on financial reform legislation will be able to craft a bill that will succeed in its mission, and the longer they will spend dithering with the ill-conceived ideas being pushed by the former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

Why is that important the public knows that, asks Mr. Cohan? Because the same people who broke the system are now in charge of repairing it.

between Sept. 14, 2008 and Nov. 26, 2008 — the darkest days of the financial crisis — Tim Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now Treasury Secretary, spoke on the phone with Jester 103 times. Paulson — not Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, or Christopher Cox, the Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission — was the only person to whom Geithner spoke more often.

Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même merde.

Sex for cigarettes exchange

I'm not making this up. Two florida women agreed to barter their bodies for a pack of smokes with a man they'd met on a telephone chat line. But the sex basically sucked so they falsely accused their beau of rape!!!???? WTF???!!

Two Tennessee women who accused a man of rape have admitted to cops that they had consensually agreed to sex with him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. One woman told investigators that the duo filed a phony police report because they "didn't enjoy the sex," according to cops.

The police report did not say whether they smoked the unspecified brand prior or post coitus.

Britain questions Blair on Iraq war (again)

Was the Iraq war justified? Most intelligent people would say no.
Was Saddam Hussein responsible, or linked in any way, the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Most honest people would say no.
Did the Troika Aznar, Bush and Blair, supported in a minor role by Berlusconi, fabricate facts to plunge humanity into one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in history? Most intelligent people would say absolutely.
So why are the culprits of this fiasco still around, fêted, treated as elder statesmen, respected and even listened to? The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind.
As we speak, Tony Blair is facing tough questions in yet another Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The purpose? Nothing. Nada. Rien. Because nothing comes out of these media events. It gives investigators something to investigate, commission panelist a reason to put on pompous panels, reporters something to write about, and bloggers something to blog about. End of day, poppycock.
British newspapers are talking about Blair's vigorous response. They say he stands by his decision, however wrong the facts may have proven. Last I checked, stuborness was a sign of stupidity, not a trait to respect and worthy of emulation. By day's end, Tony Blair will return home to his London luxury loft. He'll enjoy a fine glass of Bordeaux (what else???) with his greasy roast beef. He'll glow with pride at having faced the tough questions and held his ground. What a monstrosity. He'll be beaming.
Iraq, however, will remain plunged into a long journey of human suffering: the dead will remain dead, their families will keep grieving, the demoralizing climate of fear and uncertainty will remain the new reality, courtesy of Mr. Blair and company.