Every Wednesday noon I go to lunch with a bunch of old friends I call The Curmudgeons.  We are all more than 50, most over 60 and a few of us over 70.  We are all yellow dog Democrats who enjoy sitting around our round table and cursing TGDSOBGWB abd the cowardly Democrats and criminal Republicans in the US Congressw and among the Bush Administrations appointments.

At the same time, we curse with equal passion the criminals who have taken over the control of most of our MSM and major corporate board rooms.

One of the Curmudgeons, an funny IrishAmericanteacher of American  history sent this to all his friends this mrning.

1873 - The first issue of Field and Stream magazine was published.

1888 - Oliver B. Shallenberger of Rochester, PA received a patent (#388,003) for the electric meter. Gaussian Fields, and electron Streams were now subject to electric bills.

COINCIDENCE? I think NOT!

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
-- Benito Mussolini

From the CHurch of Ineffable Stupidity:

The media has an agenda, every time we fail to understand their motives, we hurt the cause and our hope for a better future.  The media stands to lose billions of dollars if we get a decent FCC chair, they WILL lose billions if Obama is elected.

End of story, end of discussion.

Or, at least corporatism, that is.

Last night, after a nice long talk with or neighbor that negated any and all plans for us to go out to a good restaurant, my wife and I decided to go up to TGI Fridays so that we could enjoy a nice drink and celebrate my Birthday.

We're both vets of the restaurant realm. In fact, my wife still bartends on Sundays to keep a nice little pile of cash in the coffee can for the week. Because we've both worked in a variety of restaurant settings from fine dining to short order to diner, we are highly in-tune to all of those stupid things that consultants and management types, who have never served a table in their lives, come up with.

What we witnessed last night at Fridays, however, absolutely took the cake for the worst possible cruelty one can place on an employed server.

Be Careful What You Wish For
By David Glenn Cox

The Peoples Corporate Republic of China, the world's largest slave labor plantation, have sought desperately to showcase to the world their Two Systems -One China policy by hosting the Olympic games.

Today I was thinking about the business impact of recessions. As I flipped through Forbes and Fortune, it seemed to me that, while the headlines weren't trumpeting the news, the sidebars sure seemed to point directly to the great struggle that small business owners are facing.

That leads me to the question: Do recessions actually benefit large corporations?

Activists in Canada have wrung some changes from the government in regard to Bill C51 ithttp://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/07/19/natural-health-advocates-defeat-gove rnment-power-grab.aspx?source=nl

but the bill is so draconian that it stands as a warning to all of us of what corporate/government agencies will do to destroy alternative movements that are growing, whether in health or in food, and the means that they are using.

http://articles.mercola.com/...

Or, most likely, not mentioned at all...

The 199 corpses.

I found the news about IndyMac intriguing this morning.  Mortgage lender IndyMac of Pasadena, California has been diving down the path of illiquid insolvency since this time last year (here's a chart I posted elsewhere showing the skid as a reflection of stock price). The gradual failure prompted a letter from a Senator (Schumer, NY) a few weeks ago, which precipitated a run on this bank. The bank was seized by FDIC regulators yesterday subsequent to the run. This is the second largest bank failure in history.

John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, a chronic Republican community banker who spent twelve years working for Republican Senator Connie Mack's staff, and appointed by President Bush in 2005, blames Schumer for the run on the bank. But looking at the institution's stock price over the past year, one readily sees that investors have known the place was cascading towards Armageddon for the past year.  In fact, it was Reich (BTW, it's pronounced "rich," and isn't that rich?) himself who...

"As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation"
  By David Glenn Cox

"As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation." Such was the conventional wisdom in the 1960’s when GM churned out Chevelles, Camaros, Cutlasses, Catalinas, and Cadillacs by the millions. Maybe the saying "runs like a Cadillac" will outlive the company; maybe "As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation" has never been truer. GM’s future is bleak, analysts predict that GM may soon go broke as new car sales stumble.

As usual, the ever-expanding economic divideremains the most under-considered issue worldwide. Through the prism (pyramid) of its creation, the ways it maintains itself, and its long and short term ramifications, every other major issue of our time is better understood, if not directly tied. This includes war, immigration, education, crime, health care, even climate change and national security. At what point should we (they)be more afraid of our own economically terrorized 90+%than of bands of 'extremists' holed up in caves on the other side of the world, disenfranchised and radicalized by the exact same forces?

The World They’ve Always Wanted
By David Glenn Cox

There is seeing and then there is sight; the things which we have seen help us to bring our sight into sharper focus. As a child I was of the generation whose fathers had fought in the Second World War. It became almost natural, as an adolescent, to ask, "What did you do in the war?" My father was a Navy pilot and one of his best friends was a sergeant in an infantry platoon.

Sorry this is a short diary, but there's not much to add.

The system is broken. Those with the most money can buy our government out from under us. If you didn't know that last week, know it now.

Telecom Donations Tied to FISA Vote

Excerpt after the fold...

So, "they" capitulated on FISA in order to grant telecom companies and corporations immunity from lawsuits for illegally using and providing private information of their consumers to security agencies at the behest of the U.S. government.

Here's a question that has been nagging at me all along with this desire on the part of telecom companies to be granted such immunity: was it really in order to avoid lawsuits?

Re:
US lawmakers pass under-fire spy bill

by Charlotte Raab Fri Jun 20, 5:22 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - In a late-term triumph for US President George W. Bush, the US House of Representatives on Friday approved spy-powers legislation that has drawn heavy fire on civil liberties grounds.

Lawmakers voted 293-129 for a bill that may shield telecommunications firms facing massive lawsuits over their work with Bush's secret, six-year, warrantless wiretapping program, begun after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

And Re:
gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/20/government-rules-its.html [boingboing.net]

news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080620/pl_afp/usintelligencepoliticsbush;_ylt=At5GvZ... [yahoo.com]

With the news that the house leadership has completed a sellout "compromise" demanded by Bush on FISA "reform" legislation, it is fitting to review the letter sent to Nancy Pelosi, earlier this year, signed by Georgia house democrat John Barrow, pushing for the Rockefeller-Cheney FISA/telecomm amnesty bill that was moving through the senate.

I think a strong stand against Steny Hoyer's compromise, announced today, from Obama, cou;d have stopped the negotiations so enthusiatically pursued by Hoyer with Kit Bond in the senate..... instead, Obama endorses John Barrow and does not speak out against Hoyer's "efforts". This is not my kind of "reaching out"....or my notion of a "unity" candidate:

The House Committee on Oversight and Govemment Reform is investigating yet another "Iraq For Sale" oil scandal. This scandal involves awarding contracts to International Oil Trading Company (IOTC), a company that was not the lowest bidder for contracts. IOTC is headed by Harry Sargeant, a McCain campaign "Trailblazer" who has raised at least $100,000 in donations. Sargeant is also finance chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. Contracts awarded to IOTC total more than one billion dollars.

Mark Engler, an analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, and the author of  How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy warns that the "free trade" corporatists are moving quickly to seize control of economic and trade policy in a new Democratic administration:

Rejecting neo-conservative unilateralism, they want to see a renewed focus on American "soft power" and its instruments of economic control, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) - the multilateral institutions that formed what was known in international policy circles as "the Washington Consensus". These corporate globalists are making a bid to control the direction of economic policy under a new Democratic administration.