Politics, Business, Culture

President Obama shows he is made of tough stuff, stands up to ACLU on release of photos. Read the story here.

Well, perhaps he does, or perhaps he doesn’t, but at least he seems to agree with us, or maybe we agree with him, on the idea that the Republic can no longer allow companies to get “too big to fail.”  Check out his blog post on the issue here.

President Obama’s valiant attempt to find $100 million dollars in budget cuts (in a $3.5 TRILLION budget) doesn’t look too impressive when visualized this way.

News reports that an Israeli official has stated that the term “swine flu” is offensive to both Jews and Muslims. Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman has proposed renaming it the Mexican Flu. Evan Coyne Maloney at BrainTerminal has a hilarious response to the news.

According to an article by Dru Sefton in the April 13, 2009 issue of Current, the magazine about public TV and radio in the United States, the PBS Board has informed its member stations that allowing religious or “sectarian” programming “would cause the public’s trust in PBS to erode, along with the value of the brand.” The Board appears ready to force stations to choose between PBS membership or sectarian programming. And so the Secular Armies of the Night continue their assault on the religious values of America.

Looks like former Speaker of the House and oft-mentioned future Republican candidate for president, Newt Gingrich may have been reading Red Phone Diaries as of late.  He gave an address at George Mason University on March 6th, 2009, in which echoed our blog post, Too Big to Fail? OK, Then Let’s Dust Off the AntiTrust Laws, dated December 2nd, 2008.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, NJ is today’s winner, pocketing $142,000 from the FY2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill signed by President Obama today. The cash is for the construction of a marine education facility, thanks to James Saxton (R), former U.S. Representative from New Jersey’s 3rd District, from 1993-2008. This information is courtesy of Taxpayers for Common Sense. Unfortunately, you can’t write or call his office to complain about this earmark, because Mr. Saxton doesn’t work there anymore.

We have watched over these last few months as our Masters of the Universe, our Free Market Capitalists, all too happy to be free of government regulation, all too willing to take their subsidiaries off-shore and off-balance sheet, have marched hat-in-hand to the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve for bailouts.  We are told that they are “too big to fail.” And it apparently is true, or so it seems since the great Henry Paulson let the House of Lehman die, and we watched the consequences as the credit markets froze up around the world. So now we must ask the question: How did we let them get “too big to fail?”

Dave Lindorff has the answer, writing for the Baltimore Chronicle.

Yes, indeed writes James Carroll for the International Herald Tribune, the Somali Pirates are nothing less than the honorable vanguard of the revolution against the Global Powers of the West that have been exploiting Africa and the Third World since time immemorial. This new brand of pirate? Simply Jack Sparrow with an RPG launcher.

…said Bill O’Donnell, a strategist at UBS.