But isn't CITIGroup a Financial Institution? If it's a financial institution, don't they have an iron-clad set of balance sheets containing all their assets and liabilities, and massive spreadsheets analyzing, with some modicum of accuracy their future income and and accounts receivable which tell them when they will hit a wall and need additional cash flow to cover necessary payouts?

They're a FINANCIAL INSTITUTION for God's sake! Their own accountants should be able to tell the government exactly how much is likely to be needed and when! What on earth are they doing complaining that the government isn't doing that for them?

Is the situation so completely hopeless that there's no way, even with massive government help, that future liabilities can be met? Or has the entire world of "high finance" come to operate as if it were being run by a bunch of crack heads who are now flailing around trying to figure out what they can beg, borrow or steal in order to buy their next hit, all the while ignoring that they're cleaned out, their friends are done with them, and the cops are knocking at the door?

If this is the way our American Financial Institutions have come to be run in the "anything goes" years of the Buscho, I fear there may be no saving them. They may be so bereft of cash flow and future value that there's nothing left to save!

Perhaps the real question is, how do we clean up the mess and start over again while seizing the assets of those responsible in order to make up some of the missing value, while, at the same time, not allowing the unsuspecting public who were invested in these multi-level Madoff schemes to lose everything?

At it's root, is CITIGroup any different from Madoff's scheme? Are any of our major Financial Institutions? I suspect as the truth is revealed, we'll discover that they're not.

It's possible that common sense, supported by ACTUAL, FACTUAL research (rather than the "Refer Madness," anecdotally-based approach of most law enforcement personnel), might begin to rule our government policies regarding marijuana.

Imagine what we could save if the "war on drugs" went after the actually dangerous drugs and two-thirds of enforcement actions moved to the suburbs where about two-thirds of the use of such drugs actually happens?!

Our darling governor, Tim Pawlenty, current sweetheart of the national Republican Party (although he wasn't "hot" enough to beat out Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate) and beloved of the conservative MSM talk shows, has been working steadfastly to move our state in the direction of South Carolina.

With his "no tax increases" pledge (after large cuts during the prosperous times while he was in the Minnesota legislature) he's locked us into a system where those at the top of the income scale pay a smaller percentage (by about 3%) of the proceeds of each hour of their work than those in the middle and lower classes.

Meanwhile, he's balancing the state budget on the backs of the poorest of the poor, by cutting their health care eligibility, raising fees and sin taxes (under the name of "health impact fees") reducing Local Government Aid, and not funding schools, nursing homes, etc., well enough to keep up with inflation (ongoing for almost a decade).

The richest of the rich get to keep their money, meanwhile, more and more older folks on fixed incomes are being driven out of their homes by the property tax increases necessary to keep local law enforcement, government, and schools alive.

Tim's amazingly good at projecting the face of a "nice man," but there's a death mask hidden beneath that facade. (A bit like Lindsey Graham?)

By the way, all these folks who think they have no responsibility to nor part in the society which surrounds them and nurtures and protects them are examples of a particular kind of socio/economic perversion. The are INVERTS! Don't be afraid to label them as such and call them on it.

INVERTS! (They're actually worse and more damaging to the rest of us than sexual perverts are).

All these INVERTS have been slowly destroying our society since the days of Ronnie. The Republican party is full of them. INVERTS!

It remains to be seen whether being an INVERT is a choice or genetic and whether reparative therapy can correct it and to what extent.

Kindly go get help for your socio/economic disability!

The rest of us are tired of propping up, through our own hard work, a society which has allowed those at the very top, who got there by gaming the system, changing the rules to make such gaming easier, and thereby sucking up an ever-increasing share of everybody else's resources while ensuring themselves massive tax cuts, all the while proclaiming themselves to be "self-made" men who got rich through their own hard work!

INVERTS are a scourge on society, far more damaging that sexual perverts, and need to be counseled (if they even CAN be helped) or controlled.

That this war had no costs and was painless. It was long since time that we were able to view the flag-draped caskets of the men and women who, believe in the war or not, gave their lives for this country.

It was long since time that we looked on those caskets and felt a sense of some of the very personal losses this war has caused.

There are far too many people for whom never seeing the dead meant there really weren't any. There are. It's time to see them... every week in the papers and on the evening news. That, together with President Obama's insistence that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go ON BUDGET will help all of us to realize what the Republican's attempt at infantile schoolyard bullying around the world has really cost us and how much it's going to cost us to clean up the stinking pile of an international political and economic mess they've left behind.