How about...

"If I were president, I would fix the economy by..."

What would you do?

I surely wouldn't be robbing the poor to pay the rich. There truly had to be a better approach to managing the meltdown that had been waiting to happen for a couple years. Some say they just couldn't keep up the ruse until after the election. Others say some insiders popped the bubble on purpose. Either way, it's crap to say the banks would go down if they pumped the stimulus into the general population. Where does the general population's money go? INTO BANKS. So even if the giants collapse, they or their successors would build right back up to speed if the money and the relief and the jobs, all the public resources were directed at the PUBLIC. The 1% doesn't want to lose their edge, and the jackasses in Congress just queue up to SOUND like they're representing us while they hand over the farm to the fuckers who crashed the economy.

Clearly, the president we have feels the best approach is to leave the Oval Office airing out while he goes off on his own version of the Oprah show at town halls and out on heavily publicized dates with his wife. I mean, obviously, the fate of the nation depends on his popularity, right?

If I were president I'd get a bed set up in the Oval Office for when I dropped from exhaustion from all the work to get done, but I guess just talking about how much work needs done yesterday is good enough to cover it...?

Fuck.

Heh.

Yeah they are protecting the rich, all the time. Makes me sick. Obama's plan isn't going to work. It would have been a bit better if he had just said "screw bipartisanship" from the start. Honestly, you'd think he'd have known better. With his mandate he shouldn't have to take any more GOP crap.

I'm not that mad at Obama for doing some gallivanting around. It's not like he's going to Crawford for months out of the year. I guess I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

I don't know that any plan would actually work to get our economy back. You'd have to spend so much money that they'd have to run the printing presses day and night and then the dollar would drop out of sight.

I think we have to take our lumps in this economy. To me it's the most utterly ridiculous thing in the world to base an economy on spending money we don't have on junk we don't need.

I don't think we'll ever get it back, nor should we. What a revolting waste of resources.

If I ruled the world...

I don't know how to fix it, but we should put the fuckers in jail that lied us into this mess, for starters, and start taxing the hell out of the ultra-rich cats who've been getting a free ride at our expense. I'd start with a simple luxury tax on any item purchased that's worth more than 3 or 4 times the average cost of such an item. Let's close up the abominable loopholes that let us pay more than our fair share while the ultra rich pay less. Then forget free trade agreements. They don't help keep us competitive, they help promote global corporations that essentially run the planet and screw us all. I'd help out small businesses so they can stay open, and punish big businesses that close their doors in some places while still making gigundus profits elsewhere. I would cap the CEO's salaries and I'd make it stick. I wouldn't allow the thieves to strike out the parts of the stimulus plan that help the people. Oh yeah, and there's a war or two out there that's draining our treasury. Nobody says much about that these days, do they? Hello? People are still dying, billions are still being spent, war profiteers are still getting filthy rich, and that helps us---how?

Oh yeah. And I'd make phone call centers illegal (my pet peeve --- I hate those things!!!).

Cenk Uygur is often too conservative for me, but I really like this article.

Some good quotes:

We're wasting our time here. Just nationalize the damn banks already. Almost all of the top economists are now in agreement that we should take this step. The people who put the money in are the people who own the company --- that's how capitalism works.

At the very least, it is unconscionable to get rid of these pay caps. On what grounds do these people think they deserve millions of dollars for bankrupting their companies? How is that capitalism? That's not capitalism, that's cronyism. They pay the politicians, the politicians pay them. They have perverted the whole system.

My favorite joke is when people say if we don't continue to pay these clowns millions of dollars they will take their talent elsewhere. I literally laughed out loud after writing that. Please, have at it hoss. Take your talent wherever the fuck you would like.

I voted for Obama, but I did not loan out my intellect to him. I can still make up my own mind on whether he is right or wrong. And if he is participating in this, he is 100% wrong.

Here we have accidentally put too much into the bankers' accounts. I know it's too much because they took $18 billion of it home in bonuses instead of spending it on the problem at hand. If they spend it after we notify them of the error, they get arrested. They have to give the money back. It's what they do to their customers all the time.

Part of the problem, maybe all of the problem, finance wise, is that the big banks have globalized world economies to such an extent there is now the danger American hegemony in this area will be ripped away. If we don't make good on the shitty assets we peddled to any rube who would buy them, we, the United States, can just be cut out, the dollar no longer the global reserve currency, and We the People left as outright third world citizens. This won't hurt the plutocrats at all... except possibly make them desire to move to Europe, or hire armies to protect their compounds from the starving hordes. I THINK that's the rub.

I've been screaming for a few years that this "globalization" crap is all about corporations being able to exploit the cheapest labor markets at will, and that before we go letting these fuckers engage it in it, we better have mechanisms in place to protect labor, but nobody's been listening to me. Bill Clinton embraced this shit in a very big way. So it is DEFINITELY not ALL the fault of these vampire free marketeer Republicans....

I'm getting a headache from listening to the hearing where Bernanke and Paulson first pitched congress for a bailout, but the problem really does seem to be that we were on the verge of bringing down global finance to such an extent that the rest of the world would have picked themselves up WITHOUT us if we did/do not make these huge infusions into the crippled mess the damn CDO-fuckers created. I think it scared the living crap out of congress, out of everybody involved.

So they seem to have saved the upper middle class from sudden abjection, but they may also have saved some retirement funds from going belly up... or forestalling them going belly up... which, given the completely untenable damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't nature of this critter can't have been completely evil in conception, even if evil in execution....

I don't know. I'm pretty sure the general ignorance of the American public, AND THE GENERAL IGNORANCE OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, has finally caught up with us.

And, sorry, it's precisely because all those people are dying in our wars and our economic chaos that Obummer doesn't get slack from me for fooling around like a damn debutante. He's not a moron. He knows the stakes. He's fucking up.

It occurs to me that he may be spending his time this unwisely while waiting for government departments to be cleared of toxic employees so that he has a hope of implementation of his policies, but that still doesn't excuse it. I think it's outright disgraceful.

I guess I should have made clear that Cenk doesn't seem to understand that those CEOs who would bail, would bail to corporate headquarters in, say, Dubai, and leave no companies, no jobs here behind them... or that is the fear... and not entirely without merit.

It's a hold-up and the politicians are paralyzed by the scope of the loss of stature bucking them would involve.

Huge regulatory changes would have to have been put in place before they could safely have bucked them, and that's STILL the case, and there's an 8X10 color glossy developing of the Obama Administration, or the Democratic Congress, doing what is needed to take the loaded gun away from the plutocrats.

just imagine if the american peoples benefitted from the fractured banking system instead of being enslaved by it?

if we nationalized the banks and the first profits from printing money went to the peops instead of these private corporations before we knew it we would be back in the black

this mess started in 1913 and china entering the wto was the final nail in the coffin

the good jobs r nearly gone,we the american people r no longer credit worthy

when i was lil girl my dad used to say,"remember when it gets as bad as u can imagine and it looks like there is no hope,the fed reserve is the problem,eminent domain isnt about roads or parks,it is about taking anything the american peoples need including taking back our banking system"

just my 2 cents

@1
If I were President...I would get rid of the Federal Reserve and authorize Congress to issue currency. As it is now, every dollar the Federal Reserve issues, must be paid back with interest. IMO, that's the fundamental scam along with the Fractional Reserve System, both of which are explained simply in this video: http://video.google.com/...cid=-9050474362583451279

Second, hopefully before being suicided, heart attacked, or offed in a plane/car crash, I would legalize marijuana and industrial hemp, thereby creating millions of jobs and new tax revenue. If people gave me shit about how only Congress can end the Controlled Substances Act, I would issue blanket pardons for ALL cannabis offenses. Fuck 'em.

Third, back to the Banks, I would ban the Fractional Reserve System and mandate that loans could only be made based on real assets, not debt, and prohibit charging interest over 1% as usury.

That would be a start.

And maybe for shits and giggles I would open up Area 51 as a museum, charging $10 bucks a head for tours, and $20 bucks for a picture of you sitting in the UFO like the KITT Car at Universal Studios. Yup, that would just about do it

Wow, that 99 is tough! I wouldn't wanna have to work with her! ...Oh, wait...

And, btw, NewConstitutionalConvention for President! For the Area 51 part alone!

karen, your two cents are at least ten dollars worth.

And, NCC, you can't do the Area 51 thing because the space lizards you'd have to deport to accomplish your goals in office will have needed their vehicle to get back home, otherwise, good job... assuming you bring the troops home before you get on the pardoning hempsters thing....

Yes, Brad for president! He has the balls to work with me....

Heh, I mean, how much trouble could the military/industrial complex be after that? Right?

I'll shut up now.

Great ideas, folks! It thrills me to see that there are other people doing some thinking out there. And remember,

I don't need to pop reds for a good night in bed
Don't need no Prozac to grin through the day.
Don't need no Viagra for a trip to Niagara.
Just let me step out and spark up a jay!!!

lol - will you marry me some day, 99?

Would Thursday be out of the question?

'99 ... I've been screaming for a few years that this "globalization" crap is all about corporations being able to exploit the cheapest labor markets at will, ...'

IBM is laying off more workers BUT offering some the opportunity to to follow their jobs to India and work for the local wage rate.
http://money.cnn.com/200...news/companies/ibm_jobs/
There's your globalization for ya'.

I've been reading Sci-fi books that cast the worker as virtual slave to global corporations for the last 40 years and that future is now.

"The Space Merchants" and "Gladiator at Law" written in the 50s by Frederik Pohl come to mind as a couple of the first I ever read. "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner is one I have great affection for since I got to watch various of its plot elements unfold in real time and become part of our culture over the next several years after I read it.

Welcome to Dys-f******-topia.

Yep, Lotta, of course it behooves any company to offer their employees this option because what could be better than having a dirt cheap labor market and experienced, reliable, known-quantity employees? The miserable greedhead fucks....

I saw a riveting movie a while back, Code 46, that is set against the background of this shit we are talking about having matured to its natural conclusion. It isn't the subject, it is the characters' milieu, which makes it even creepier.

And, just look at this sad and sort of beautiful pathetic plea from the midst of it.

This shit makes me grouchy as heck.

Well 99, given the milage, bureaucracy, reception arrangements, and so on, Thursday seems a bit soon. And should the ceeremony be here (this might get you EU permanent residency permission) and the honeymoon in Cali, or should the ceremony be there and the moneyhoon here, in my beloved Prague (just do the Google on it, look for pictures - it's magic, and I'm astonished Disney didn't just buy it when they had bucks that meant something!)?

Howdy, all!~ Recovery.gov is up and running:
http://www.recovery.gov/

For whatever (well-founded) doubts some of us may have about the new administration, I for one, am over-the-moon juiced about being able to track the white house's every move on-line. (99--you have to agree this is unprecedented!)

After 8 years of stonewalling, secrecy, lies, treason, torture, conspiracy and espionage - I never thought I'd see anything like this, technology FOR transparency, for years and years.

When "HuffPo" is called at a Press Conference, and asks the President about Sen. Lehey's Truth Commission--something has shifted. That moment made me moist on so many levels.

Well, Bippy, darling, fie on ceremony, I say. We should probably see the nearest licensing clerk to my parents' home so they can die amazed and comforted at last... my mother will avidly pay the fee for us... and then do Prague to bits because, I have been told, it really is fairyland... a place I ought to end up, for sure.

And, ah, yes, Jeannie Dean, so comforting to be able to watch in real time our government ruin everything, free as we are to bitch our heads off to no avail. It's the wave of freedom future!

I'm thinking April might be perfect?

Hey 99! May First, the Finest Day of the Year. every year, is the time to be here. Please see the attached link: http://prague.tv/galleri...p?gallery=chicken-day-10 - see ya there. I'll be the old hippie who makes the finest BBQ in the world...

for new con @ # 9

the mj/hemp thing is the big white elephant no one talks about....yes it would be a huge source of money and products,including ethanol because it takes way less energy to turn it into fuel and can be harvested 3 times a year even in crappy soil(which would leave the good soil for edible plants)

BUT the part that outrages me is,the US has half a million citizens locked up for simple possesion,at 30 grand a yr per thats 15 billion bucks a yr,not to mention what it cost to convict them,the cost of "treatment" programs that r forced on peops to keep them out of prison, its never ending and money down a rat hole as far as i am concerned

in fact 2 of my probs with the new stimulus bill are because of mj

i admit i am ovrly cynical but the more cops money,i dont feel is nessecary,i think we have so many cops now they have to invent "cases" and /or prosecute peops for next to nothing

the 2nd thing i am concerned about in the stim is electronic medical records,while i understand obamas point about them saving time,i am afraid its just one more way to entrap peops so we can be paying for millions of pot smokers sitting in prison

I never can discern which old hippie you might be in that slideshow. Lots of beautiful woman and lots of old hippies!

You'll have to send me airfare....

Say Hay, 99! Try this link:
http://prague.tv/galleri...icken-day-2005%20141.jpg

This May First will be my 19th in a row in that particular cherry grove. My, how they have grown! Enjoy, and OK, I'll split your air fare and cover the rest, but I'd hate to think you were a gold digger

Let's say I send you a ticket to get here, and if you want to leave you buy the ticket?

I'll have you know I've turned down more wealthy men in my life than most people have ever met! I'm just dirt poor.

It's true, if you send me a ticket there, I can run to the embassy and wail if I want to come home....

Which, probably, most probably, unless I really can't get around the language problem, I won't.

99 goes to Prague to meet the BBQ chicken king of the world.

#9: I understand that you aren't being completely serious, but I'd argue with you on the loan rate. I don't think one percent loans are realistic, considering that that's how banks pay interest on deposits. However, I could see limiting fees charged on accounts and perhaps limiting mortgage interest rates to some margin over the rate paid on deposits. I would love to see the return of usury laws to credit card rates; the race to the bottom between the states has not been good for the country as a whole. I'll also put in a plug for my pet peeve on credit cards: due dates that are weekends or holidays, which I would punish by extending the due date by a week for the first infraction, two weeks for the second, etc., with no interest charged for the penalty period. I bet the computers would be reprogrammed within minutes of passage of such a bill.

Would Thursday be out of the question?

Well at least make it at your folks place so I can come for the party!

I think he's just angling to get me to Prague so he can take advantage of me!

Back up your data.
Everything, custom routers, servers, workstations.

This is the season for failures.

I had the electricity intermittent here. Three dead power supplies, many dead 12VDC fans. In general the UPS backups kick in. But it's no excuse for your killer data to be lost. And hey your webhosting could die from any number of reasons. Financial, Hardware, Software..

YOUR DAY COULD BE WORSE

BACK IT ALL UP!!!

BE CAREFUL

This is the season for failures.

About 8 years ago, during a storm, we lost the neutral electrical connection at my work. This caused all items operating at 120 volts to switch from line to neutral (120 Volts) to line to line (240 volts).

The diodes in the surge suppressors were going off like m-80s all through the office. All of the fluorescent light ballasts were screaming. I ran as fast as I could to the main power panel and killed the power to the whole building.

We lost all of our surge suppressors, an electric type writer, a microwave, a fax machine and about a dozen light ballasts.

Thank god for the suppressors - it could have been a lot worse!
.

Phil's right. Back it all up. Electricity may not be the only intermittent thing in the fairly near future. It might not hurt to have back-ups for a lot of things. My husband's buying survival food, he bought a portable camping stove that can burn wood, coal, charcoal, or pellets....and he's doubling the size of his garden this year. Oh yeah he bought a food dehydrator too. For a while I thought he was going off the deep end, but now I'm not so sure. He predicted the bursting of the housing bubble and the stock market crash a year ago October. Can't hurt to be prepared! Water purification is next on my list.

Nationalize everything that's important to living: the banks, energy, health care. Take the profits out of things you need to live. Especially, take the profits out of health care. But heating, too. Also, very important: free college.

Electricity, too, that's a good one. Things you need to live. If you want a Ferrari, that's a different story. And housing. Everyone should get a basic house. If you want something fancy, you pay for it. We can do this, if we stop all the govt thieves. And they send their guys on the radio like Rush Limbaugh, to distract you from their thievery, and tell you this is "socialism" or "communism" (IE: it's bad. It's not bad that they're stealing trillions, though)

I'd take offense at your suspicions, but I'm way too smitten. The proposal stands. Fact is, this evening I prepared a baked potato, salmon filet poached in lemon juice, and steamed broccoli florets with Hollandaise sauce. I had to really make myself do it. I need someone to cook for ...

I'm on the phone, asking after the next flight there!