Three Questions Trump DIDN’T ask Obama

Donald Trump stirred the pot regarding the Obama "birther" issue and the President reacted quickly, releasing the long sought after "long form" and effectively killing the issue.  Trump opted for prime time over campaigning to be the POTUS; nonetheless, his stunt created a precedent for candidates to call out the president on issues and pressure him to respond.

Unfortunately, the "birther" issue was only relevant for those wishing to occupy the White House. As for the American people and the Republic in general, it would not have resolved any major issue. The best case scenario for the "birthers" would have meant Joe Biden taking over from an impeached Obama, which would  have changed almost nothing except the quality of late night comedy.

There are, however, serious questions that need to be answered which no candidate or the the traditional media goes near less they be accused of treachery by their corporate masters.  It's time that the People created the agenda and demanded thorough and convincing answers.  They have no qualms about using their power, and we shouldn't have any about using ours.  How many candidates have the integrity and stomach to demand answers to these questions?

Ben Bernanke’s Head

Ben Bernanke’s head is resting gently on a block of wood. A large angry man is lifting an axe, and this just maybe the first head to roll in the January Revolution. Who is holding the axe? Well, let’s just say someone who got up after a long slumber. He's not feeling too well. You could call it a hangover from a party that started out promising but turned ugly. The axe is not a designer axe, no brand names, just an old beat up piece of work that has been sitting in the garage for far too long.

Where is this man from? Well, he is NOT from New York, or LA or Chicago. He isn’t a sweet talking southern boy with a nice accent and a cute haircut. He is from a place that is cold, gray, overcast and rusty. He is not some soft, bland dunce dreamed up by Steven Spielberg. He is a real man. He is not in a good mood, and he feels like a jack ass. Why is he holding an axe over this banker’s head? Why does he feel like a jack ass?


What finally woke him up was realizing that his country has been taken over by Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Lloyd Blankfien and this sharp talking Obama is nothing more than a Wall Street pansy. There is a guy calling him three times a day from a bank that got bailed out and just gave $145,000 bonuses for a banner 2009. The guy from the bank is spreading Christian love.

And Rahm Emanuel? He is going to save the house and keep the kids off the street? The guy who made 18 million dollars in 2 years while our friend was making $18 an hour busting his ass building things? What did he do to make 18 million dollars other than talk on the phone and have lunch with people? The guy who went to Israel when for the first Gulf War started? This guy is covering our asses? Our friend thinks not.

What I Learned From Sargent Shriver

By Bono

The Irish saw the Kennedys as our own royal family out on loan to America. A million of them turned out on J.F.K.’s homecoming to see these patrician public servants who, despite their station, had no patience for the status quo. (They also loved that the Kennedys looked more WASP than any “Prod,” our familiar term for Protestant.)

I remember Bobby’s rolled-up sleeves, Jack’s jutted jaw and the message — a call to action — that the world didn’t have to be the way it was. Science and faith had found a perfect rhyme.

In the background, but hardly in the shadows, was Robert Sargent Shriver. A diamond intelligence, too bright to keep in the darkness. He was not Robert or Bob, he was Sarge, and for all the love in him, he knew that love was a tough word. Easy to say, tough to see it through. Love, yes, and peace, too, in no small measure; this was the ’60s but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at him. No long hair in the Shriver house, or rock ’n’ roll. He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship. Love, yes, but love as a brave act, a bold act, requiring toughness and sacrifice.

Do We Need a New World Currency?

For years, people have been calling for the world to forgive third world debt. The amount of effort that poverty stricken countries make just to pay interest on their debt while people are starving and living in misery is shameful. Corrupt governments stole big portions of what was borrowed instead of investing it in infrastructure and now these countries must spend generations of labor to pay off the debt instead of growing and developing.

Imagine if Washington did for the third world what it did for Wall Street, it would actually seem very Christian. Hopefully one day our government we will care about people’s suffering more than it cares about investment bankers, but that day is probably a long way off. Look how the harbinger of hope and change, Mr. Obama, has been enveloped in Wall Street’s orgy of greed. However, there is another debt bomb ticking away and it’s ready to go off in the first world.


By 2010, total debt of the US Federal Government will finally reach one year of GDP, about 15 trillion dollars. Japan is well beyond that ratio already and European countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland and Iceland are close to financial chaos due to overwhelming amounts of debt. I lived in Argentina in 2001, before Argentina defaulted on its debt. It was so obvious that there was no alternative but to pull the plug, but much suffering had to be endured until the obvious was recognized and the default finally occurred.

Total world wealth is somewhere around $160 trillion, and total world debt, public and private, is about the same amount, $150 trillion. Current world GDP is about $60 trillion. More and more, the debt is beginning to drag us down into a dark whole of endless interest payments and more new debt to service old debt.

There are two options. Spend a decade in an austerity program, sacrificing development to pay off most of the debt, while at the same time making big structural changes to our financial system in order to stop the easy flow of credit to people, governments and business. This is a very sound, honest thing to do; hence, it will never happen. No person, government or corporation is willing to succumb to that kind of pain, and for good reason, do we really need to?

Jimmy Carter’s Sins

A remorseful Jimmy Carter finally asked for forgiveness. During this season of candles and mirth, Jimmy Carter finally saw the light and offered an Al Het. Many are skeptical and assume that it’s simply a ploy to aid his grandson’s campaign for a seat in the Georgia Senate, but we, in the spirit of the holiday, should open our hearts and accept Mr. Carter’s confession and plea for forgiveness. We can learn from this man that even those that believe they are on the path of righteousness can err and fall. His sin? He dared break one of America’s sacred taboos.

Jimmy Carter graduated from Annapolis, was a naval officer, successful farmer, Governor of Georgia, President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize winner and self proclaimed 'do gooder'. His fall began in a strange place, in his religious convictions. In The United States of America there are many ‘born again’ Christians who believe in the rapture, the end times, and love Israel. It's okay to be ‘born again’, but if you are ‘born again’ you should join the Republican party and anxiously wait for your savior’s return and love Israel like Mr. Bush, Mrs. Palin, Tom Daley and other fine Americans.

If you are a Catholic, that is okay, just don’t get too worked up about religion. We all love Notre Dame, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and we pander to the Popes, especially when they die. Christianity is very nice, but we have had to tone down the Christmas & Easter zeal and definitely not discuss things like the Sermon on the Mount, the Eye of a needle and other such topics of scripture, because this is America. If you are a Buddhist, Hindu or something of that ilk, as long as you sit on your mat and imagine reality is a dream, you are fine. And all you non-born again, non-Catholic Christians, just keep on saying what you want to say in private, and we won’t bother you.

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

Published on Sunday, February 21, 2010 by Rolling Stone

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash

by Matt Taibbi

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman's role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses - meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a "bailout tax" on banks. Maybe this wasn't the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.
Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. "In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines," he said, "I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative."

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we're so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.


Goldman wasn't alone. The nation's six largest banks - all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry - set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. "What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?" asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.