
The Candidates In Tampa: Mitzy (L) Getting SuperPAC Donations;
Little Paul Ryan (R) Looks For Austerity From The American People
[Ryan said to John Huntsman during the GOP prmaries] “This is, by all accounts, an age of austerity for this country. A jobs crisis. Also a pending crisis in Washington. I wonder what specifically you would do to say to Americans, "These are cuts I'm going to make in federal spending that cause pain, that will require sacrifice?"If America elects Mitzy and The Prince Of Pain (or, if the Rethugs pull another Fat Karl's Ohio and steal the election), we deserve everything about the Feudalistic, grey and Oligarch-ridden future we will get.
Later he asked [Huntsman]:
“Governor Huntsman, name three areas where Americans will feel real pain in order to balance the budget?”
He asked a third time:
“Three programs that will make Americans feel pain, sir?”
Later he asked Rick Santorum:
“Senator Santorum, same question: [Name] Three programs that would have to be cut to make Americans feel pain, to sacrifice, if we're going to balance the budget.”
Federal authorities ended two investigations into the actions of Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis, handing a quiet victory to the bank after years of public scrutiny.And what kind of example does this set for the kids?
In a rare statement late Thursday, the Justice Department said there was “not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution” against Goldman or its employees after a Congressional committee asked prosecutors to investigate several mortgage deals at the bank...
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had examined troubled mortgage securities that Goldman sold to investors... (and the Subcommittee) also suggested prosecutors investigate whether the chief executive of the bank, Lloyd Blankfein, had misled lawmakers during public testimony.
Separately, Goldman Sachs announced early Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had ended an investigation into a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage deal, taking no action. The move was an about-face for the commission, which notified the bank in February that it planned to pursue a civil action.
“We are pleased that this matter is behind us,” a bank spokesman said Thursday.
Police in Bucks County say two teens have been cited for doodlingAny Questions?
on the street with chalk.
The Doylestown Intelligencer reports Friday that 18-year-old Connor
Logan and a 17-year-old friend drew a whale and sea turtles in a local
parking lot.
(Via The Great Curmudgeon)
The White House refused to comment Thursday on a bombshell Israeli media report that President Barack Obama recently received an updated intelligence assessment that Iran has made surprising strides towards being able to build a nuclear weapon.
The Haaretz newspaper reported that Obama had received a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)—the consensus assessment of the American intelligence community—that "Iran has made surprising, notable progress in the research and development of key components of its military nuclear program." The daily cited unnamed "Western diplomats and Israeli officials."
..."We are leading an international effort to impose upon Iran what even the Iranian president has identified as the most stringent sanctions ever imposed on any country," [Press Secretary Jay] Carney said. "And that effort is designed of what we believe remains to be a window of opportunity to persuade Iran through these sanctions and through diplomatic efforts to forgo its nuclear weapons ambitions and live to its international obligations." He added that "hardly a week goes by" without the economic vise tightening further.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Radio that there was "apparently a report by American intelligence agencies" that was "making the rounds of high offices" and has heightened American worries about Iran's nuclear program.
"As far as we know, it comes very close to our own estimate, I would say, as opposed to earlier American estimates. It transforms the Iranian situation to an even more urgent one, and it is even less likely that we will know every development in time on the Iranian nuclear program," Barak said, according to a CBS report on the interview.
Israel, widely thought to be an undeclared nuclear power, has warned it cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and reserves the right to use military force to prevent that outcome.
The order said that between 2001 and 2010 Standard Chartered concealed from US authorities about 60,000 transactions for Iranian clients, amounting to about $250bn and generating “hundreds of millions of dollars” in fees for the bank....and in all the scandals and error reported in just the past six months (Peregrine; MF Global; JP Morgan; HSBC; the LIBOR rate-fixing; Knight Financial), no one is really demanding more accountability from the financial and banking sector.
Among the Iranian clients were the Central Bank of Iran and two state-owned institutions, Bank Saderat and Bank Melli.
The department, led by Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of financial services, alleged that Standard Chartered had falsified records and evaded US sanctions. One Standard and Chartered director allegedly told a colleague: “You f---ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?”
In addition to the bank’s “systematic misconduct” with Iran, the Department said it had evidence that Standard Chartered appeared to have conducted “similar schemes” with Libya, Myanmar and Sudan.
The rover, called Curiosity, ushers in a new era of exploration that could turn up evidence that the Red Planet once had the necessary ingredients for life — or might even still harbor life today. NASA and administration officials were also quick to point to the success to counter criticism that the space agency had turned into a creaky bureaucracy incapable of matching its past glory.At present, the idea of a manned mission to Mars is being discussed for the mid 2030's (god willing and the creek, or ocean levels, don't rise). If I live that long, I will be a very old man when it happens -- but some of me is still the boy who watched rockets thunder up into the sky, and wanted to see us take the next step in a larger evolution. The boy still wants them to be American; the man wants them to be human beings.
“If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space,” John P. Holdren, the president’s science adviser, said at a news conference following the landing, “well, there’s a one-ton, automobile-size piece of American ingenuity, and it’s sitting on the surface of Mars right now.”
The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.Strauss' Four Last Songs -- Spring, September; Before Sleeping and At Sunset -- were his Abscheid, a farewell, to the world he had been born into, erased by totalitarianism and allied bombing and aggressive war, by the ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau.