"He [Bush] does not dwell on the newspaper, but he reads the sports page every day," Mr. Card said with a chuckle.

And that was 2002.

"The water won't clear up 'til we get the hogs out of the creek." -- Jim Hightower

Yep. That's the driver for all this mayhem.

5 year olds.

And, pray, how exactly do 5 year old children come wield such vast global power?

Oh, yeah, by means of the same highly concentrated mass media which also convinces them that they must wear cosmetics, diet, compare name brands with their peers to maintain status, and clamor after clothing which should shame a full-grown hooker.

If that doesn't scare ya'll nothing else will.

applied only to 'those states currently in rebellion' against the Union. In other words, only in those places which did not recognize that the federal government had jurisdiction in the first place.

That did not include Delaware, Maryland and a few others.

Enforcement elsewhere was a matter of having the Union Army in possession and, given that the Irish and German immigrants, who had accepted straightforward payment to serve as proxies and made up the bulk of these forces, had zero interest in abolition (competition for jobs by former slaves) it was a pretty uneven process at best.

Slave markets and slavery continued to be operate legally within blocks of the White House itself.

I have no problem excoriating Sen. Biden for his egregious support of the bankruptcy 'reform' bill, but I can't see where beating him up for having a passing acquaintance with the facts of American History 101 is productive.

'Reform is all too often organized vandalism in the name of ideology.' - James Lovelock

Show me the commandment which says, just for one example, 'Thou shall not smoke marijuana'.

Just curious.

I was slogging back from my friend's shop on Dumaine to retrieve my car from the very last non-tourist parking lot over on Elysian Fields behind (that is Riverside) the French Market.

I was making my way down, I think, Chartres ('Charters') and had just crossed Frenchman when I looked up to see a group of about 7 very large black guys making their way towards me on the otherwise utterly deserted sidewalk. I was out of 'Tourist World' for sure.

Worried? Who me?

They were carrying the pieces of a MG chief's costume. This one the headdress, that one the cape.

'Which tribe?', I asked. 'Creole Wild West', they answered, laughing. "And you, "Don't Bow Down'?" "Never."

I laughed and joked ("Which of you is the Spy Boy?" "That would be me, ma'am.") with them and went my merry, white middle-aged woman, way much bouyed by the encounter.

http://businessweek.com/investor/content

/aug2006/pi20060830_967828.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

By Steve Rosenbush

The Rising Tower of Debt

As leveraged buyouts soar, the buyers are borrowing more and more money, raising the risk of default. To some, it's a bubble in the making

"Lenders are allowing private buyout firms that fund transactions with debt, or leverage, to borrow more and more money.

It's difficult to know just how much debt LBOs are taking on, because privately held companies aren't required to file financial reports with the Securities & Exchange Commission, the way companies that issue shares to the public are."

I graduated from college into the '73-74 recession, second only to that '80 -'82 doozie, and double digit inflation.

Stagflation. A decade of it. Bracketed by vast and terrible recessions which toppled whole sections of the country into something more like a neverending depression.

I'd have been quite thrilled to lose 3% over a couple of years as opposed to over a couple of months.