This whole $700 billion thing

Dragon Mood? -- mad, angry, pissed off

Yes, this whole $700 billion bailout has got me pretty steamed! When individuals lose their homes, conservatives are quick to blame and to judge, "Loser! They should have made better choices. Poor decision-making. What were they thinking?" When Wall Street fat cats greedily drive their companies into bankruptcy, conservatives, quickly resort to fear and yell, "We must DO something or the economy will FAIL!"

Here's what Robert Kuttner opines in the Huffington Post (clearly not a non-partisan source):

[Secretary of Treasury Henry] Paulson's bill would give him carte blanche to spend up to $700 billion over the next 24 months to buy toxic securities from financial firms. This presumably would "unclog" capital markets, the financial economy would begin functioning normally again, and then the government would recoup what it could.

The plan is outrageous on several levels. It demands nothing from these firms in return. It holds the Treasury Secretary accountable to no one. And it extends the most generous terms to Wall Street while offering nothing to Main Street.

I hope Nancy Pelosi and company up on the Hill really hold Palson's feet to the fire on this one. I am PISSED!

It's his BIRTHDAY!

Dragon Mood? -- not surprised he's a Leo!

To our next president? ...

Happy Birthday, Barack Obama!

He was born August 4th, 1961 and today is 47 years old. And here's the least surprising thing about learning that today is his birthday: he's a Leo!

He's gotta go

Dragon Mood? -- embarrassed to associate myself with Detroit

Who's gotta go? Why, Kwame Kilpatrick! The mayor of Detroit is under criminal investigation for perjury, obstruction of justice and other serious felony charges. Residents of metro Detroit have become accustomed to one 'Breaking News' story after another about the mayor.

Here's what Nolan Findley of the Detroit News has to say in a Sunday front page editorial:

Enough, already. The escalating disaster that is the Kwame Kilpatrick administration must end now. One more day is one too many.

The Detroit mayor placed what should be the final stamp on his ruinous tenure when he got himself involved in a physical dust-up with a Wayne County Sheriff's detective trying to serve paper on Kilpatrick's favorite city contractor, Bobby Ferguson.

It doesn't matter whether the mayor's belly bumping rises to criminal assault. He had no business interfering with an officer of the law, and his city-paid bodyguards certainly had no justification for screening a county process server.

Kilpatrick acts like a thug, hangs out with convicted thugs like Ferguson and has projected an image of thuggery on the city of Detroit.

Amen to all that! I just fear that Detroit residents don't have the fortitude to throw the thug outta office.

Funny excerpts

Dragon Mood? -- amused

Here are some funny excerpts from the political blog, Daily Kos. They tickled my funny bone so I thought you might find them funny too.

• An Obama surrogate unfairly savaged Hillary Clinton and resigned after apologizing profusely. A Clinton surrogate unfairly savaged Barack Obama and resigned only after vowing to unleash a plague of locusts and Gonorrhea---and gonorrhea-infested locusts---across the United States, while personally supervising the onslaught from her lair. A McCain surrogate had a mild case of constipation which he resolved with All-Bran.


• The traditional media kept shouting at me that it's all Howard Dean's fault that a small group of idiots in Florida and Michigan screwed primary voters by breaking party rules, that Howard Dean should pay for do-overs with his own MasterCard, and that Howard Dean single-handedly caused global warming and AIDS in Africa. I won't believe it until Wikipedia confirms it.


• A phone rang in the White House at 3am. Bush handed it to Laura and told her to take a message.


• Condi Rice fucked up peace talks in the Middle East. Again.


• Ninety six percent of the world's seas became either overfished or polluted. Dolphins began plotting with sea horses to eradicate the human parasites once and for all.


• Iran's president was greeted with sweets and flowers in Iraq.



• Southwest Airlines and managers in the FAA were busted for blowing off safety inspections of their aircraft. (Naturally, no one has actually been fired yet even though 44 planes have since been grounded). Whistleblowers said their first clue was when the airline purchased a hundred thousand rolls of duct tape.



• George W. Bush sang a song containing jokey lyrics about Katrina, Scooter Libby and Iraq at the Gridiron Club dinner. The D.C. press corps found it so funny that cocktail weenies shot out their noses.



• Doctors admitted that all those colonoscopies they've given people over the years have been worthless because they didn't know about the "flat" lesions that actually cause colon cancer. Congress unanimously approved a measure forcing those doctors to drink a quart of that pre-colonoscopy goopshit every day for a year as punishment.



• The price of oil rose to the point where it's now sold exclusively through the Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog.



• Bush vetoed a bill outlawing torture in America, paving the way for Dick Cheney to keep making public statements through the end of his term.


• China announced that it now has enough long-range, nuclear-powered hovercraft to transport its entire one-billion-man army across the Pacific Ocean. In response, the Pentagon immediately requested another trillion dollars for the war in Iraq.


• Cracker Jack announced that the new "toy surprise" they're putting in each box is a home mortgage certificate.


• New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigned for spending up to $5,500 an hour ($92 per minute!) screwing hookers with gold-plated vaginas and diamond-encrusted nipples. Republican Senator David Vitter was taken to the hospital with a life-threatening bout of convulsive laughter.


• One in four teenage girls developed a sexually-transmitted disease. Gay guys issued a brief statement: "Don’t look at us!"


• And Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island was busted when cops found pot in her ride.

realization

Dragon Mood? -- relaxing

Driving home from work, listening to NPR, I realized there's several things going on in our world this week that are once in a lifetime events. Consider this:

• Fidel Castro resigning after 50 years in power in Cuba.
  
  
• Barack Obama securing wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii, reinforcing the perception that he is the peoples' choice and unstoppable in his pursuit of the presidency.
  
  
• A lunar eclipse tonight, predicted to be blood red and possibly visible here in Motown? Be hopeful that we have a clear night, cloudless night.
  

Iraq & Vietnam -- No comparison

Dragon Mood? -- only slightly pissed off

Trying to keep my slightly more positive outlook, but detouring back into some momentary negativity, I heard the Commander-in-Chief-Idiot compare Iraq to Vietnam. And you know what? I don't care. I really don't care about your stupid comparisons.

First of all, I don't believe you. I think you're the ultimate puppet, the talking head -- make that talking EMPTY head -- just parroting what you've been told. Told by the Chief Architect of Lies, Mr. Liar-Himself Rove.

Secondly, if you're a parent who has lost a son or daughter in Iraq, does it comfort you to know that Iraq is like Vietnam? If you're a little kid who's lost his mommy or daddy in Iraq, can that comparison comfort you in the dark of night when you need comforting? I don't think so.

Thirdly, Iraq is engaged in a civil war, a tribal war. We should not be in the middle of a tribal war, between TRIBES, for crying out loud. All they want to do is KILL EACH OTHER!

Take your insipid, smoke-and-mirrors comparisons, Mr. C-I-C-Idiot, and stick them where the sun don't shine!

from whence he came

Dragon Mood? -- oh, but that this could have happened about six years ago!

All I can say is HALLELEUJAH! The Devil's spawn is returning from whence he came. News media are reporting this morning that Karl Rove is resigning at the end of the month and returning to Texas. ArrrghH!

Hasta la vista, Alberto?

Dragon Mood? -- chagrined

George Stephanopolous' show, This Week, on ABC, is on right now and they're talking about Alberto Gonzalez and the furor over his firing of eight federal prosecutors.

And here's an excerpt from an ABC News article:

"The chances of the attorney general surviving this, I think, are slim to none — and slim just left the building," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

Gonzales faces what could be the most challenging week of his career. On Monday, the Department of Justice is expected to release some 200 pages of potentially damaging e-mails to address accusations he fired eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons on behalf of a White House that felt they were not — in the words of Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson — "loyal Bushies."

Sampson lost his job earlier this month. Now it is Gonzales' own job that's on the line.