From Denny: President Clinton is remembering the toxic political rhetoric back when Timothy McVeigh made the decision to become a domestic terrorist 15 years ago. That vile man killed a lot of innocent people, including 19 children. He had no remorse. What kind of unhinged mind targets soft target civilians instead of military installations? Targeting the innocent and unarmed is not protesting the government. It's depraved indifference insanity.
The Republicans are beating the drums to create more domestic terrorism by whipping their base into a lather and a furor. At least the FBI has arrested many of the crazies issuing death threats. Many have cut natural gas lines to the houses of relatives of the politicians of their hate choice of the day.
The insanity won't stop until ALL the persons of conscience in this country stand up to be counted against this violence and domestic terrorism.
Prez Clinton interviews:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Can it be? The Tea Party and Fox News now don't trust each other? Was it a political lovers' spat? :) (Who cares?) Well, Keith Olbermann had some fun with this so-called news story from the no news station, Fox:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
What's Next In The Goldman Sachs Case? (NPR)
the SEC announced on Friday:
The SEC is looking into mortgage deals packaged by other banks, the WSJ reports.
Deutsche Bank, UBS and Merrill Lynch (now owned by B of A) all put together mortgage-based investments that "soon went sour," the Journal says, but it isn't clear which deals the SEC is investigating. Several banks "helped market designed-to-fail investments on behalf of the hedge fund Magnetar, which was betting on that failure," Paul Krugman writes in his NYT column today. Krugman cites the reporting of Planet Money partner ProPublica; ProPublica's Web site has more on which banks were involved in these deals.
The leaders of the U.K. and Germany called for investigations of Goldman.
The biggest loser in the Goldman deal that's the focus of the SEC suit wound up being the Royal Bank of Scotland, which paid out roughly $841 million, according to the SEC's complaint. RBS was bailed out by the British government. The German bank IKB, which also received a bailout, lost nearly $150 million on the deal.
Goldman made several arguments to rebut the SEC charges.
In a statement, Goldman said the investors in the deal, who were "among the most sophisticated mortgage investors in the world," "were provided extensive information about the underlying mortgage securities." That allowed them to assess the risks those securities presented. Goldman denies the SEC's charge that it said Paulson & Co. was going to be a long investor in the deal. (Paulson took the short side of the deal.) And, Goldman says, it lost $90 million of its own money on the deal. Goldman is reporting its quarterly earnings tomorrow, by the way.
Politicians rushed to tie the Goldman case to finance reform.
If you Google "Goldman Sachs SEC," one of the ads that comes up is a headline that says "Help Change Wall Street." Click on it, and you're sent to barackobama.com, where you get a message about "accountability on Wall Street." The site is run by the Democratic National Committee, according to Politico, which wrote about the ad. We'll doubtless hear more about Goldman this week from the Senate, which is scheduled to debate the big finance-reform bill.
I was wondering how this Icelandic volcano was going to start impacting other parts of the world because of spewing so much ash into the air. Eventually, that ash has to land somewhere.
Icelandic Volcano Hurts Kenyan Flower Growers (NPR) Europe's volcano-related flight restrictions will start to ease up tomorrow...
The broader effects should be relatively mild, economists say, provided the slowdown doesn't go on for too long. That's largely due to the fact that almost all exports and imports travel by boat, rail or truck, rather than by air.
But some producers of time-sensitive goods have been hit hard. Take Kenya's horticulture business, which consists largely of selling fresh-cut flowers to European buyers. It's the country's biggest industry, accounting for 20% of exports, and it's been slammed.
More than 3,000 tons of flowers have already been thrown away because of the slowdown, the BBC reports. Exporters of flowers, fruits and vegetables are losing some $3 million per day.
In case you haven't heard already... looks like two more terrorists went to meet their Maker to explain their foolish lifestyle.
U.S. Confirms 2 Al-Qaida In Iraq Leaders Killed (NPR/AP)
The two top al-Qaida in Iraq figures have been killed in a joint operation by American and local forces, Iraq's prime minister and U.S. military officials said Monday.
The deaths were touted by America's top general in Iraq as possibly the most significant blow to the terror group since the beginning of the insurgency and a sign of the growing strength of Iraqi security forces.
But the news, which comes as U.S. forces prepare to end combat operations, belies the resiliency of Sunni terror groups that have shown their ability to change tactics and launch new and deadly attacks despite repeated strikes to their leadership.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the killings of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri at a news conference in Baghdad and showed reporters photographs of their bloody corpses. The deaths were later confirmed by U.S. military officials in a statement.
The U.S. military said they were killed in a nighttime raid on their safe house Sunday near Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. An American helicopter crashed during the assault, killing one U.S. soldier, the military said...
Al-Masri was the shadowy national leader of al-Qaida from Iraq, which he took over after its Jordanian-born founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a June 2006 U.S. airstrike. Al-Masri's real name was Abdul-Monim al-Badawi, according to a 2009 al-Qaida statement describing the makeup of a new "War Cabinet."
Al-Baghdadi is the self-described leader of the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq, identified by U.S. military officials Monday as Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al-Zawi. Past Iraqi claims to have captured or killed al-Baghdadi have turned out to be wrong, and the Islamic State of Iraq has issued at least two denials of his capture.
Al-Baghdadi was so elusive that at times U.S. officials also have questioned whether he was a real person or merely a composite of a terrorist that the ISI invented to bolster its threats. The U.S. military once even asserted that audio recordings in the name of a fictitious al-Baghdadi were in fact read by someone else.
Distrust Of Government Undermines Obama's Support (NPR)
For a Democratic administration that wants to do big things with government, the severe erosion of trust in government is a real problem -- and President Obama knows it.
"We have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now," he said during this year's State of the Union address. "We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years."
What the president calls a deficit of trust has been impossible for him to surmount -- and it's undermining support for him and his policies, says Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center that just completed a big survey looking at Americans' growing distrust of government.
"No other factor loomed as large in preventing Americans from embracing the proposals of the Congress and Barack Obama than views about government," Kohut says. "A president who wants to use government to solve problems when a public says, 'We don't trust the government; we want less government,' is a problem."
In Kohut's poll, 84 percent of those opposed to the president's new health care law said the reason was too much government. In November 2008, 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government with fewer services. That number has now grown to 50 percent...
This is a good story and you may want to click on the title link to see the rest. NPR is going to be running several stories about the history of mistrust of government in America. After all, it's what our country was founded upon: "throw the bums out!" And the British made a hasty exit... :)
*** THANKS for visiting, feel welcome to drop a comment or opinion, enjoy bookmarking this post on your favorite social site, a big shout out to awesome current subscribers – and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email updates!
