Brown Shirts Unite!

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“Last week, a protester hanged an effigy of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., Democrat of Maryland, at a rally opposing health care change. This week, Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, said he had received a death threat about his support.” - Health Debate Turns Hostile at Town Hall Meetings by Ian Urbina

Fascism, historically, is a conservative, backwards looking world view that eschews dialogue, preferring a more force oriented means to ends methodology.

As relates to the linked article this begs the question: which group is really acting like Nazis?

The Brownian Motion of Tadpoles

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The Narrow Mouth Toad does have a fairly small mouth, but is not in fact a toad.  Small and terribly shy, they come out in the rain to mate sounding like a flock of ailing lambs calling desperately for their mothers.  Tracking the furtive, imperfect bleats to their source can be impossible at times, but that just increases the joy of actually finding one.

The Best Justice Money Can Buy

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“The Justice Department said a 1976 law on sovereign immunity protected the Saudis from liability and noted that “potentially significant foreign relations consequences” would arise if such suits were allowed to proceed.“ - Eric Lichtblau, Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists

Odd how we have this 1976 law which provides protection from legal action in the face of presentable if sometimes tenuous evidence, but there seems to have been no law against fabricating information in order to invade Iraq.

I also note the mention on yesterdays Democracy Now! that the Supreme Court has chosen not to hear Valerie Plame’s case against the Bush administration for illegally outing her as an undercover CIA agent.

I need to find out where the Texas Mafia gets those wonderful teflon suits.

More On Bair The Bear From The NY Times

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At a public meeting three weeks ago, John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, blasted a proposal to impose stiff new insurance fees on banks as unfair to the largest banks, which he regulates. The financial crisis stemmed in part from problems at small banks, he insisted. Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the regulator for many smaller, community banks, could barely hide her contempt. The large banks, she said, had wreaked havoc on the system, only to be bailed out by “hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in government assistance.” She added, “Fairness is always an issue.”

- Stephen Labaton and Edmund L. Andrews, Regulators Feud as Banking System Overhauled

Change We Can Put On A Pike

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“You probably don’t know much about Sheila Bair, but she is looking out for you, and that is why the big guys on Wall Street and their allies in the Obama administration are out to get her.”- Robert Scheer, A Republican to Save Us

I thought early on that Bair should have been made Secretary of the Treasury, and bank shill Larry Sommers and his crew, including Timothy Geithner, should have been left out in the cold economic winter they worked so hard to help create.

Instead we have a consumer minded Republican fighting tooth and nail against a predominantly pro-bank Democratic administration, and the status quo, regardless of how underhanded and dehumanizing it is, will reassert itself.

What was it Obama wanted us to believe in again?