We don't have regulations to prevent this kind of problem.

Wealthy investors at the top of the food chain have historically depended on people who actually work for a living to make them richer.

When it was no longer enough for a male-head-of-household type to work to support a family, it became necessary for the women to work also in order to get ahead, or even just to keep up. This happened starting about 35-40 years ago, about the same time wages stagnated. In constant dollars they've stagnated ever since: real wages peaked in 1973 and have never been as high since.

When it turned out that putting the women to work just wasn't enough, it became necessary to find another way to suck money out of the middle class. A lot of the money the middle class has is in their homes, so the middle class was induced to spend their equity.

You'd think that would be the end of opportunities for the wealthy to enrich themselves through the middle class. After all, what's left? Both spouses are working and they've spent their equity. Time to go into debt.

The financiers wanted to get their hands on the Social Security program but were prevented. But they still want it.

A few tens of billions have been extracted through credit card debt. Which isn't nearly enough to keep up the rate of enrichment of the wealthy. So we've gone into huger amounts of debt through bad residential mortgages.

Borrowing a lot of money and spending it doesn't and spending it doesn't make you richer. It just makes it seem that way.

The response to this is to tighten lending requirements

Well, as you've shown, that won't work.

Let's try the opposite instead. Let's try loosening lending requirements.

Oops. That won't work either. That's what got us into this problem.

There's only one thing to do, which is what has historically happened: the rich get bailed out, and the middle class gets raped twice, once to take the fall for all that debt, and again to bail out the rich.

Isn't right-wing greedhead rapacity wonderful?

Well, the good news is....it is the most liberal of states that will suffer first.

Really? How would you know that? You're not giving away a tidbit on some dastardly plot here, are ya neocon?


What was that poem "When they came for..."?

It probably needs updating:

You came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then you came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then you came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

When you came for the Muslims,
I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim.

Then you came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.


How about those Democrat traitors who are interfering with Bush's defense of the country? Think they ought to be targeted as well? Or would you prefer to keep that a secret for now?


Let's face it, Bushite. You want carte blanche to brutalize Mooslims into submission, so much the better to make good on Bush's armed robbery in Iraq. Having set the precedent you can then pick other groups who might be in your way.

Radical right-wingers aren't Big Tent people, after all. In fact, it's really a wonder you can sleep at night with all those commies, Democrats, Mooslims, gays, trade unionists, civil rights activists, Feminazis, and other assorted terrifying horrors under your bed.

This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

I don't think so.

I think it's an issue for other reasons, like providing a "justification" for brutalizing Mooslim Iraqis into submission - so much the better to make good on Bush's armed robbery.

No doubt there are millions of right-wingers who have been brainwashed into believing that a few thousand Mooslims have some massive conspiracy going on to convert the US into a fundamentalist Islamic state, despite the sheer outlandishness of the idea.

But do not believe that the perpetrators of outlandish ideas like this really believe it. They're not stupid enough. And they are bright enough to see a political tool when they see one. In this case a hammer.

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned.

I've located the information relevant to this situation in the url you posted:

... opinion ...

It appears that one of your radical right-wing buddies simply planted a hate rumor and that this incident never really occurred. It's certainly well outside the usual range of British and British-Muslim political behavior.

Can you show otherwise? Or can we dismiss this as yet another neocon deceit?

Waiting!