January 2010 Archives

I am a really popular guy around these parts these days. With my clumsy use of the despicable Mr. Bauer I figured I should parlay this high popularity to put forth the following modest proposal. I want to talk about man loved and adored by all. He is a humanitarian and renaissance man. I am talking about the one and only Richard Cheney. He may have only advanced to the humble position of vice president,...

My good friend, Susan Bankston, fellow founding member of the OFPBAOT (Old Farts Progressive Bloggers Association of Texas) has returned to her roots!  Those of you who are fans of Kiss My Big Blue Butt remember that Susan ran the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon for some time previous, the only sane voice in Tom DeLay Triple ZZZ Crazzzy Country.  She changed it to KMBBB after the '06 election, but we at the Hurricane are...

Putting together different pieces of testimony from yesterday's hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, it's easy to see how the New York Federal Reserve's "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs and other large banks, via insurance giant AIG, became such a convoluted mess---nobody knew anything about it. Least of all the people who were allegedly in charge---Larry, Moe, and Curly former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and then head...

I started this off yesterday with a link to Mr. Bauer's comments. It seems that link brought a lot of people to the blog, but also brought a lot of anger. I love getting comments and seeing things go above 40, but this is too important a discussion to get off on the wrong foot. What was most interesting was to see many of us on the same side of the political fence argue with...

From a press release yesterday by Marcy Winograd, candidate for Congress in the 36th district of California:"If the President wants to appease the neo-conservatives, the deficit hawks, I would encourage him to cut our bloated military budget, which is now paying for multiple perpetual wars that create new enemies."...

Some people never learn:"De facto Republican Centrist Democratic senators have circumvented party leadership to approach Maine GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins about reviving healthcare talks.Democrats such as Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) have approached Snowe within the past week to discuss her potential support for various healthcare proposals....Snowe said Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance panel, approached her in the past week to get her general...

Last night I was watching The Daily Show and saw John Stewart poking fun at the Lieutenant Governor from South Carolina for his comments on welfare. Mr. Bauer apparently compared welfare moms to stray animals by saying if you stop feeding the stray animals then they will die off. The analogy can only be appreciated by watching that clip. John Stewart is obviously not paid to treat every issue with sensitivity and Mr. Bauer obviously did...

Whatever happened to that calm, cool, and collected candidate from the 2008 presidential campaign? This latest move is born out of sheer panic over the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts and, by the way, something for which candidate Obama criticized John McCain for proposing during the campaign:"President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his...

If President Obama thought his pretend battle against the insurance companies on health care reform was tough, he ain't seen nothin' yet:"Banks are mobilizing a smooth-running lobbying machine in Washington to battle Barack Obama's plans to limit the size and scope of Wall Street institutions, as financial services firms gear up to stop a shake-up that could slice away large chunks of their operations.Their influence on Capitol Hill is broad - the top eight US...

Reuters has released some additional information contained in an e-mail correspondence between the New York Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the alleged watchdog) that show the lengths to which they were willing to go to keep secret  this $70 billion "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs, and other big banks, under the guise of saving AIG. Even so far as to have the release of the documents considered a matter of "national security."...