ZED…Zed is dead…long live Zed and the gullibility of Americans.

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

Asshole Joe is going to have Janet Napolitano on in a bit. Let’s see if he runs his mouth like he did yesterday.

Mornin’, pups -

If shrub’s policies of spying on ‘mericuns weren’t so sad and dangerous, it would warrant a good jolly ROTFLyerAO to watch the reich wing reactions to DHS warnings on home-grown terrrrrists and wiretapping activities.

The really dangerous part may be that, given the ignorance in which faux nuts and wingers own stoopidy have insulated them for eight years, they suddenly awake to the horror all of us have lived with for far too long and blame it all on Obama. Who could have predicted? :-(

OTOH, we have finally found a use for the tired “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” meme and I suggest we use it at every opportunity.

Oh, spit! Do I hav’ta change the channel to that piece of scum just in hopes of hearing a nice little put-down? ;-) It’s days like this I long for high speed to be able to selectively listen to the “good” parts.

How ya doin’, fella? Planting a garden this year?

Good morning, pups. It’s Collins, Cohen and Kristof in the Times today. Ms. Collins, in “Gorging the Beast,” says President Obama seems to be trying to do too much at once, spending too much money without making the tough decisions about how to pay for it all. Mr. Cohen, in “When Nature Calls,” discusses the bizarre case of an air traveler who was refused use of a business-class lavatory on a Delta Air Lines flight and says it offers a morality tale for our age. It is to be hoped that both Ms. Collins and Mr. Cohen read Mr. Kristof today. He writes about “How to Raise Our I.Q.,” and says hile the view that intelligence is overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got banana pancakes this morning. Courtesy of the Savannah Daily Disappointment here is some coverage of the tea bag festivities in Savannah yesterday. Have a grand day.

Anyone who thought any prez would give up unitary powers would have been delusional.

Oh, and if you want your eyes opened up to how bad this is, read the defninitive story in Bamford’s The Shadow Factory.

Intercepting calls from foreign targets keep the administration safe as in the extermination of one Pat Tillman ,a political enemy as evidenced by his phone calls.

Morning all,
It is still early but nice to start the day with the Susan Boyle story
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4769

Been there; done that. :-(((( Had to take it in very small doses because it quite literally made me sick.

Should be required reading for every person who has *any* doubts how truly drastic the problem is.

A bill passed by Congress in July 2008 authorizes U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop without court approval on foreign targets believed to be outside the United States.

thank you pelosi, obama and the democratic congressional leadership.

Citizen Raven:

Please monitor the situation with Joe Shitforbrains as I have the duty here until 0730…but Napolitano is one smart cookie and she is never unprepared, so if the shit head tries ta blindside ‘er he better have it strapped up ‘cuz she WILL bring a load a shit into his wheelhouse.

I happened on an audio copy at the library. If I’d had to read a paper copy, I wouldn’t have been able to get thru it. As it is, I don’t remember most of the details which Bamford goes to so much trouble to reveal, but the general behavior is engraved in my brain.

Napolitano is already in Mexico City to hook up with the pres etc

ecahn, an ot question. iirc, you’ve been saying that no matter how much the gov spends now, they can control inflation later. what are the mechanisms you had in mind? i was thinking interest rate increases, are there others?

Thanks. I needed that. I’d caught a snippet on TV but was nice to watch the entire performance.

From the Department f No One Could Have Predicted, two headlines from the Post:

•Lending by Bailout Recipients Declines Again

•JPMorgan Chase Posts Better-Than-Expected Profit

I seem to recall that the chief banksters testified before Congress
that they had increased lending.

Sternly worded letters …

It’s symmetrical. So you just do the reverse of the monetary & fiscal stim, i.e. monetary & fiscal policy contractionary policies. I think interest rate increases are the more effective of the two.

Inflation, imo, is really easy to nip in the bud. Easy money does not pass thru the economy mysteriously and end up as inflation. Prices are determined by the intersection of supply and demand. So the economy must be functioning at low unemployment and high capacity utilization to make inflation a problem, and even then there are many mitigating factors as we saw in the 1990s and 2000s.

Underlying inflationary factors like the mafia of the intelligentsia (medical, higher ed, legal fees) are primarily microeconomic problems and not very influenced by the economy as a whole.

It was *very* tough slogging.

Oh, and oldgold sez I shouldn’t be so confident in my conclusions because anything can happen.

Yes, I can imagine. I listen to books when I’m doing other things, like outdoor work. So I have a physical release for the emotions that would not be available were I sitting in a quiet room reading.

Getting ready to head back toward the eastern end of the state….. see you guys in a couple of days.

Hey, the bride is the gardener, I’m just logistical support! Spent a week out west so I’m still lagged. How’s U?

thanks for the reply. but i’m not convinced because i think the fed has lost control of the money supply (i’m including credit) and the fed is doing lots of stuff i don’t think will be so easy to reverse

also prices can be affected by speculation when there is easy money sloshing around (we saw very big increases in the prices of commodities like food and fuel last year for example). but that was not my primary question – i am curious about the specific actions the fed might take to reverse the actions they are taking now.

taleb, i think, would agree.

Even Sam Zell’s LATimes can’t stick to the GOP talking points:

Republicans stage ‘tea party’ protests against Obama

In Santa Ana, more than a thousand protesters cheered as speakers called for the Republican governor’s recall.

“The guy’s got to go,” Allan Bartlett, a member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee, told the crowd gathered on a plaza outside the county courthouse.

To dramatize the anger of many conservatives, Colin Gomes of La Mirada brandished a plastic sword piercing a hollow rubber Schwarzenegger head.

off for coffee. later pups….

The only prices subject to speculation are those that have commodities markets, as very small percent of all prices. And the ability to pass along commodities price increases is limited as we saw in this last round. They mainly squeeze profit margins of companies that use commodities as raw materials.

In general, retailers don’t have pricing power because consumers have no spending power. Thus the rise of Wal Mart and the rush to the bottom.

If I am understanding what I am seeing now the problem is deflation which I believe to be worse. I don’t think some inflation would be such a bad thing if it goes to increase incomes for the working class.

deflation certainly.

i’m just trying to play out different hypotheticals as thought experiments.

Tsk, tsk tsk. The Greenspan rule is that as soon as wages start to rise in real terms, it’s time for a new recession to stomp out that invidious form of inflation.

Can’t imagine Bernanke would be more enlightened.

In a serious vein, wage “inflation” lags price inflation, so it is unlikely that a little inflation would do anything other than hurt workers. Although I agree with your general point that deflation is the problem now.

commodity speculation was just one example. inflation does sometimes happen in other weird circumstances, for example, stagflation (just trying for a recent american example).

anyway, it takes a lot to convince me…. will be thinking more on this…

Doin’ well; gotta go tend a cousin for a few days who just had knee surgery and then on to the coast. Everything loaded in the car except the ‘puter so this really is a *poof*.

safe travels

Stagflation was the lag between inflation that got embedded (some external causes but mainly bad policy) in the 1970s and when policy makers finally took action to deal with it.

Out west as in parts near LA where you have family? If so, I wish we could have hooked up.
I thought you went fishing.

How can we possibly think we have a democratic republic when the same people keep getting re-cycled???????

As a democrat all my life, i have serious problems with the fact that Obama sent Henry Kissinger to Russia to represent his new administration, and then this?????????

And we think the new boss is a new boss? oh Please…….the New Boss is just a continuation of the old boss..in fact many of the old bosses..anyone here remember Nixon and his wiretaps??????? and who was the same guy who was re-cycled by Ford, Reagan, GHBush, and GW Bush?????????
Who sat in GWBush’s White House and worked with Bush and Cheney on the War in Iraq?????????

Henry Kissinger..

Yes *that* Henry Kissinger, that has the Nick Name of “THE BUTCHER OF CAMBODIA”…

The wiretapping in Nixon’s White House ..anyone remember it? i wish i could laugh…

And who is now working with the Obama Administration????????

You got it..Henry Kissinger..

and his ties go deep..like with Timothy Geithner..

and don’t miss this dear democrats…..and I say that with all my kindest respect..because I as a lifelong Democrat have a very difficult time staying in my party after the crap i have seen over this past year, and knowing my vote was not counted in my state of Florida in the primaries!
and now you wonder why..wonder no more…..

Remarks by National Security Adviser Jones at 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy

Published February 8, 2009
Speaker: James L. Jones

U.S. National Security Adviser Jones ( edit to add: new USNSA advisor hired by Obama!!!!) gave these remarks at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on February 8, 2009.

“Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.

Source: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18515/remar… …

Seems to me , the new boss is the same as the old boss..or run by the same criminals that have run hot and heavy throughout all the Republican presidencies.

This is supposed to be the change we were all told about?????????

Yeah..and pink pigs fly.