The key tip-off, was Cayman Island hedge funds that BSC used as investment vehicles. There was a time when the Cayman Islands were a safe harbor for swindlers and tax dodgers. That “respectable” Wall Street now uses the Cayman's for its vehicles is one circumstance indicating just how bad things are and much worse they will get.

The glory of the US securities market was its regulation and the security [no pun] it provided for investors. The flow of "smart" money to the Cayman's indicates just how greedy and "unsmart" smart money can be.

Anyone who invests in a company that uses off-shore funds to escape regulation and taxation get what they deserve.

johnklotz.blogspot.com

While I understand the despair at the lack of enthusiastic throngs of demonstrators opposed to the war as we had in 2002-2003 and the Vietnam era, I think the battleground has changed. For all the drama and excitement, we didn't stop the war. Now, with Bush being a short-timer President and impervious to any kind of reality, throngs filling eth streets would probably be equally futile.

But what has worked as been the careful, dramatic work in the electoral process. Witness James Webb's victory in Virginia for example.

Did we win enough in 2006. No. But we made a start. HRC has been forced into anti-war grab. The tough bills have been blocked in the Senate because of the narrow Democratic margin. That margin will more than likely increase.

Demonstrations are nice, but the true revolutionary work is being done by MoveOn and the Obama campaign.

Strange as it may seem our often mocked political process, may just be the answer this year, maybe the only answer.

Don’t weep for ineffectual peaceniks. Start ringing some doorbells.

johnklotz.blogspot.com

This is Easter morning and I have finally read this article after avoiding it for two days. I am Catholic by birth but what comes to mind is an old Protestant hymn: "Blessed Assurance."

I have felt what I believe the author felt. I have written about it on my every-so-often blog concerning my mourning for my adult son Michael who died last April 7th after a long struggle with kidney disease. On a very few occasions, I have felt an overwhelming sense of serenity and tranquility that surpasses understanding. Once was at my mother's wake, and I felt guilty about having such a feeling. It was disorienting.

A friend who was self-described who I shared this with, said: 'You were close to your mother, perhaps you were feeling what she was feeling." Whatever the feeling, "blessed assurance" is as good ad definition as any.

I don't have a lot of faith in the Pope anymore, but my faith in love abides. WE are all enrapt in the universal consciousness of love. We can not always feel. Maybe many never do. But it is there awaiting our surrender to its grasp.

It's love. It's Easter morning and I have finished my insomniac’s cup of herbal tea.

Blessed assurance. Happy Easter.

If you wish you might visit my refections on my son’s death: http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

While Wright's remarks were over the top (and not quite as bad when quoted in full context), Obama showed courage, integrity and humanity, by not throwing him "under the bus" and pointing out the origins of Wright's anger in his speech last week. He had compassion for Wright.

Maybe that was stupid or impolitic but it was very right. And his comparison of his white grandmother's racial attitudes was, well, brilliant. The conclusion is that this candidate is something truly special and we desperately need someone truly special if we are to have a future as a nation.

Hillary is no dummy but she's acting dumb and so self-involved, she's losing perspective entirely.

Tides change and winds shift, but there is no way she can win now without destroying the Democratic Party. Desperately clawing at Obama will not stop his nomination and in the end destroy what has been a pretty good career in the Senate – hers. She, and Johns Edwards and Kerry, made one huge mistake on Iraq. But HRC has often shown initiative and a capacity to deal effectively with the other side in the Senate.

But Obama has demonstrated that he really is someone who can inspire and lead. Sometime ago, a historian said a great president was one who “dreamed a great dream for us.” That’s what Obama is doing and it’s time Hillary joined the dream and stopped turning her campaign, and the nation, into a nightmare.

We have lived a nightmare for too long with Bush.

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com

"The very rich are different than you and I," F. Scott Fitzgerald once told Ernest Hemmingway, who gruffly replied, "Yes, they have more money."

Fitzgerald was right. There is something so nineteenth century about these people who seek to black mail Pelosi, and so out of touch with who they really are, that there is only one word: pathetic. They are beyond arrogance.

The Internet has changed the rules and they don't get it. All these people have done is turn themselves into laughingstocks. I wonder how many of them got to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton White house years. I wonder how many of thm got to sleep with [stupid comment self-censored.

Oh well, I expect they will be sleeping with Lincoln, before they sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom again.

johnklotz.blogspot.com