Wall Street Falls and our empire days are over

Fellow despairers of Bush/Palin/et.al. They are merely spokespeople of our chaotic times-- do not heap too much blame or time on them. Our true rulers are the Wall Street crowd. "Let the market rip," was their creed. And it did, for a while."Markets work; government don't," was another of their slogans.

The true villains of Wall Street's rise and fall are the Ponzi scheme alchemists who turned toxic junk mortgages into AAA rated securities. The rogues then leveraged each dollar of junk into 40-50 dollars of gold and along the way divvied up amongst themselves 50% of the profits (aside from their rather large salaries) their firms made. The leading rogues are the titans of Goldman-Sachs(Paulson, Corzine, Blankfein, Rubin, Thain), not to mention the hedge fund folks or the former masters of the universe at Lehman Bros, Merrill /Lynch, Fannie and Freddie, etc. These folks go back and forth into government and run the Treasury Department for Clinton or Bush or whoever happens to be president.

I think their freewheeling days are over for a while—our 2^nd Gilded Age (1980-2008) has just ended. Our only hope is to become a caring Scandinavian type country—our empire days are over.

Will anybody condemn Cheney's saber-rattling in the Caucasus?

Will anybody condemn Cheney's saber-rattling in the Caucasus? Both Clinton and Bush enraged Russia with NATO expansion into their back yard. Re-arming Georgia and placing our fleet in the Black Sea will hurt us more than them. Obama and McCain, please take note.

We need to cooperate with these guys over energy, terror, and a lot more. Are we ready to go down in flames because we only want things our way? ("full spectrum dominance") I hope not.

Dems lose it!

Obama starts to fade... Pulls a Kerry, even a Gore. Liberal activists lose interest in a party of the rich run by Wall Street and oil pipeline interventionists.

2008--end of Democratic Party as we know it.

2009 new party forms to take on Republicans.

From the looks of it the new party, as yet unnamed, will not be another party of the rich. Rule of Rich begins to fade in US as the truly rich move to China.

US in 2010 become a second tier power--emerges as happy and content Scandinavian country.

US and Russia tussle overr the Caucasus

Ah yes, the Great Game is up and running again.

Recall that the Brits and Russians fought over resources for many years. The Brits dropped out and now we have the US ogling Russia over oil and gas in the Caucasus. Hence the big dust up over the Russian Invasion to get the Invading Georgians out of majority Russian autonomous region in Georgia.

We already have wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention CIA insurgencies in Iran, Muslim China, The Philippines--and now it's back to the good ole USSR-- er, I mean Russia.

We also know that 2 out of 3 corporations don't pay income taxes, and the rest of the rich refuse to serve in the military and hardly pay their share of taxes...

In other words, we are stretched beyond our means but our incorrigible leaders, Pentagon people and future leaders want us to soldier on.

What's on our horizon? Decline, of course. It's happened to the best of empires, even many of the worst. Read the tea leaves fans--we're heading for a fall, er, decline.

And, Mr. Obama, drop your plans to reinvade Afghanistan again.

And, Mr. Obama, drop your plans to reinvade Afghanistan again. We've done it once, the British tried it as did the Russians. It's a lose-lose situation.

Work on building a more perfect union in the US. Forget about "helping" other countries under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

Simply put, Mr. Obama, there must be better ways to get oil and gas than through invading countries.

Big oil is back in Iraq, but trouble still brews for the empire

It was the oil, all along. The Times finally admits as 5 oil companies divide up Iraq's oil. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq.

The dimshits that run/ruin our country were hoping to increase Iraq's oil production from 2.5 billion barrels to 6.5.(with the help of Exxon,BP, etc.) If that happened we'd be good oilwise/empire wise for another 30 -40 years.

But-surprise, surprise-Iraq oil production is still at 2.5 billion barrels and will be for quite a while with all the turmoil we created.

So, the best laid pipe dreams of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, assorted neo-cons are like the mythical Ozymandis--nothing, nada, gornicht...

Why we have no "public intellectuals."

The many public dunces (GW Bush,R Murdoch,J McCain, B O'Reilly, W Kristol,etc.) in our country soak up all the thinking oxygen and leave no breathing space for our public intellectuals.

We are a country where the rich and dim rule. "Money talks, BS walks," as the saying goes.