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1. metrognome
   Member Profile

   Eva Cassidy's rendition of 'Stormy Monday'. RIP Eva

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWeK8Vheak

   Posted 9 months ago #         

2. DP
   Member Profile

   

   Wall Street itself is the "engineered debacle" if you ask me. I'd call it a viper's nest, if that weren't such an insult to vipers.

   What does the DJIA represent anyway? There's just 30 stocks in there, including the likes of Walt Disney company, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola.

   See the whole rogue's gallery here:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average

   Know what happens when one of the DJIA stocks goes below a certain point? Ha. They just take it out of the index. Yup.

   So what is this index a measure of, exactly? How much confidence we have in McDonald's hamburgers?

   Answer: None.
   Next question, please.

   Should we be basing our economic policy on this voodoo? Should we be deciding whether to fund Medicare or balance the budget based on the impact it has on the price of Coke shares?

   Fizzy water and sugar; that's all it is.  

    

                     

    

   Posted 9 months ago #         

3. elikapeka
   Member Profile

   I've never heard her before - thanks for sharing. What a voice!

   Posted 9 months ago #         

4. JanS
   Member Profile

   

   She's amazing..well, was amazing...she passed away years ago form cancer when she was just beginning to hit her stride. :(

   Posted 9 months ago #         

5. kootchman
   Member Profile

   Last week it was the Tea Party...this week the GOP... next week? Anyone but the perps... overspending congress. It was a Debt Crisis.. spending more than ya make. What debacle? S&P downgraded the government...not the market. The market will correct it if the equities are undervalued... or if overvalued, they will drop more. Much ado about nothing.

   Posted 9 months ago #         

6. JanS
   Member Profile

   

   ya know what I absolutely love about the GOP and it's supporters? Never take responsibility for anything...it's always someone else's fault...

   Posted 9 months ago #         

7. Smitty
   Member Profile

   It's amazing they don't use the term "inherited" more often.

   Sheesh.

   Posted 9 months ago #         

8. jamminj
   Member Profile

   "It was a Debt Crisis.. spending more than ya make."

   you nailed it kootch.

   71% of national debt happened during GOP presidencies; 28% under Dem presidents

   and

   http://goo.gl/Il3rG

   and what do you do when your bills get to be to much, you increase your revenue, take a second job to meet your requirements. Not threaten to not pay.

   Posted 9 months ago #         

9. metrognome
   Member Profile

   I can still remember the first time I heard Eva, as can most people. I had bought the 'Songbird' CD based on the description. I put it in the player with the stereo fairly loud, the way music should be listened to (no earbuds for me) and was stopped in my tracks by her version of Sting's 'Fields of Gold.' I don't think I took the CD out of the player for months. Hard to believe she passed away 15 years ago this fall. Kinda puts the stock market into perspective.

   Her cousin runs this website; I love to read the guestbook.

   http://evacassidy.org/eva/

   Posted 9 months ago #         

10. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    metrognome. I was driving to Issaquah one Sunday morning way back in about 1999, when 103.7FM played Somewhere Over the Rainbow from Songbird....blew me away...

    Posted 9 months ago #         

11. metrognome
    Member Profile

    her 'unplugged' version of John Lennon's 'Imagine' is sublime; the slide show that someone put together on YT is really cool:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGp0k9asxzo

    It's a good way to start and end one's day.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

12. kootchman
    Member Profile

    Before I look for a new job... I stop spending.

    Then I pay off my creditors

    Then I go look for a new job

    That would be the way most people would do it..

    Posted 9 months ago #         

13. kootchman
    Member Profile

    ahhhh jammij ... Ya keep doin' that ... it makes no difference who left the barn door open... the horses are out. Another variation of the "Bush did it them"?. And how is that supposed to fix it?

    How to get out of debt... stop spending more than you make?

    or

    Make more than you spend... as in "make" not steal or confiscate

    either one works. Someone had to get the message across... and it actually worked.. we ARE talking about debt reduction... not just raising taxes. Some mules you can coax some ya can't... this mule was of the latter type. Call it tough love.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

14. jamminj
    Member Profile

    "we ARE talking about debt reduction..."

    yes we are, by bleeding the middle-class dry... glad you are happy.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

15. JoB
    Member Profile

    kootchman...

    today your bombast makes me very very tired.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

16. kootchman
    Member Profile

    The middle class is over. We have awesome, powerful tools in front of us. We spend billions on tunnels, light rail, trolleys... infrastructure. Yet..in the hand of almost every commuter is computation and collaboration undreamed of. No one even asked or considered... the best thing.. is we build a data transmission system with KD resolution, no one commuted... we live and shopped here in an urban village where transit is rare. Boeing is obsolete... sorry.. any company that needs fuel lines to carry jet fuel direct from the refinery to airports.. is doomed. Now I happen to believe Apple can envision it...and do it...and partner with the most truly "progressive" city and telecommunications companies .... investments.. in new ideas.. not repeated breaths of fresh air to a gaining in obsoleence... I would rather be the first city to find going transitless works ..we left our cars because it was more economical to not commute...not because we were taxed to death..tolled, or levied...into it.... who in government has a vested interest in really allowing or embracing change?

    Posted 9 months ago #         

17. JoB
    Member Profile

    kootchman

    if the middle class is over
    who drives the economic engine of a service economy?

    Posted 9 months ago #         

18. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    kootch: jaysus. what in the hell are you on about now?

    i've never seen an i-phone build a cosco.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

19. kootchman
    Member Profile

    The top ten per cent... earn on average, 9 times the amount of the bottom 20 per cent... and they spend at rate of and they spend proportionaltly 3X more... bad news.. you are right... but then again... why do the rich seem to be doing so well relative to the middle class?

    Quote:

    While richer households have responded to the volatility by saving more of their income, middle- and low-income households have done the opposite. They have borrowed more to enable them to maintain their living standards during bad patches.

    JoB... that is curious...they took on debt to solve their economic condition rather than to stop spending when the obious became apparent. True it was ... re-fiances with equity loans ... were staggering in number... those were MOST of the mortgages written after 2006...middle class America....sure borrowed a lot against its asset base.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

20. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    "they have no bread? they are french! let them eat cake...

    "and pay me 25% interest."

    Posted 9 months ago #         

21. HMC Rich
    Member Profile

    

    Kootch is right. The middle class is a fantasy unless you. Do not have a balance on credit cards, own your house and cars outright. And have a savings.

    The rest of us bought our tv's, iphones, computers, houses, boats, vacations, clothes and food on credit, HELOC's, when we should have waited to pay for it outright.

    It is a house built on credit sand. It is being washed away by reality.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

22. metrognome
    Member Profile

    and by special request for those God-fearing tighty righties like Michelle Bachmann who claim to have made it on their own, all the while cadging government money as fast as they can ...

    Eva Cassidy's solo of 'God Bless The Child':

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8E2gNf7QDE

    Posted 9 months ago #         

23. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    yeah, kootch, and republican banksters made what was once illegal into an investment vehicle.

    and that's pretty much the way america operates: corporations spend trillions on advertising. why? so they can sell shit to people. if they don't sell shit to people, the economy stops.

    so when wages flatten or decrease for the bottom 90%, what do you think your precious investors and captains of industry would prefer that americans do?

    that's right! spend, baby, spend! here's a credit card. and pay me 25% interest. or here's a mortgage, and of course you can borrow against your equity!

    the biggest transfer of wealth in human history is from the bottom 90%, through the upper-middle incomes, to the top 2%. we even pay their taxes for them. we borrow their money and pay usurious interest, but when we save our money, we get .01%.

    had enough?

    i didn't think so.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

24. JoB
    Member Profile

    Kootch...

    so.. you blame the greed of the top 2% on middle class Americans who bought the easy credit that top 2% was selling?

    because if the fools hadn't bought it the cons couldn't have sold it?

    this blaming the victim mentality gets pretty dang old.

    i've been hearing this one since i was a wee young lass... something about the length of my skirt or the readiness of my smile or the fact that i was a "pretty" girl justifying the violence of rape.

    i didn't buy it then and i don't buy it now.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

25. metrognome
    Member Profile

    This shout out goes to Taxes Gov. Rick Perry -- Eva Cassidy singing "Wade In The Water".

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK5XodeQ2tQ

    Gov. Perry is being honored for using his government position to proclaim "... Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas."

    "Then the governor prayed, publicly and often. Alas, a rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history. Day after pitiless day, from Amarillo to Laredo, from Toadsuck to Twitty, folks were greeted by a hot, white bowl overhead, triple-digit temperatures, and a slow death on the land.

    "In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Nearly all of Texas is now in "extreme or exceptional" drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history.

    "Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish. Farmers cannot coax a kernel of grain from ground that looks like the skin of an aging elephant.

    "But Perry’s tendency to use prayer as public policy demonstrates, in the midst of a truly painful, wide-ranging and potentially catastrophic crisis in the nation’s second most-populous state, how he would govern if he became president.

    ""I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, 'God: You’re going to have to fix this,'" he said in a speech in May, explaining how some of the nation’s most serious problems could be solved.

    "That was a warm-up of sorts for his prayer-fest, 30,000 evangelicals in Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Saturday. From this gathering came a very specific prayer for economic recovery. On the following Monday, the first day God could do anything about it, Wall Street suffered its worst one-day collapse since the 2008 crisis. The Dow sunk by 635 points."

    "But Texas is special. By many measures, it is the nation’s most polluted state. Dirty air and water do not seem to bother Perry. He is, however, extremely perturbed by the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement of laws designed to clean the world around him. In a recent interview, he wished for the president to pray away the E.P.A."

    Maybe if Jerry Falwell were still with us, he could explain why god hates the Lone Star State so much.

    btw, "Perry is from Paint Creek, an unincorporated hamlet in the infinity of the northwest Texas plains. I’ve been there. In wet years, it’s pretty, the birds clacking on Lake Stamford, the cotton high. This year, it’s another sad moonscape in the Lone Star State.

    "Over the last 15 years, taxpayers have shelled out $232 million in farm subsidies to Haskell County, which includes Paint Creek — a handout to more than 2,500 recipients, better than one out every three residents. God may not always be reliable, but in Perry’s home county, the federal government certainly is."

    all quotes from this NYT blog post by Timothy Egan:

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/rick-perrys-unanswered-prayers/

    Posted 9 months ago #         

26. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    people need to wake up and pay attention to what these guys running do in their states. Gov. Perry is well hated in Texas. Michelle Bachmann has never had a piece of legislation passed...not even sure if she wrote any. Rick Santorum? Tim Pawlenty? Can't think of anything good to say about them. If they were so successful in their states, why are they not still there, working for their constituents? 2012 is sure gonna be interesting. So...anyone wanna guess when Mrs. Palin is gonna jump in? (She's taking her national "tour" to the Iowa State Fair this weekend, I do believe). Think she can assure us that she won't quit half way through her term if elected?

    Love Timothy Egan...his book, The Good Rain,about the great Pacific Northwest, is excellent

    Posted 9 months ago #         

27. kootchman
    Member Profile

    Now that is an interesting idea... have the prez quit in the middle of his or her term cause' the realize they are doing a crap job? Or for heavens sake... come to office with NO record of any substantive legislation and a miserable attendance record in the senate? No..that couldn't happen. Gov. Perry is so hated..so despised, he has won the general election three times... 02', 06' 10'.... wow that is a lot of hatred Jan.. the longest consecutive serving governor in the history of the state... second in the nation only to Terry Branstad of Iowa...total years served.. Seems like Texas likes that good ole' boy a whole lot!!

    Posted 9 months ago #         

28. kootchman
    Member Profile

    "Obama claimed that veterans committee was 'one of my first priorities.' He said, 'One of my first priorities was obtaining a seat on the Veterans Committee…And the thing that I pledged when I was sworn in as the Senator was that if nothing else in the first couple of years in the Senate, I could make absolutely certain that there would have been a strong advocate in the United States Senate,' at a Veterans Town Hall Meeting, May 23, 2005.

    "Obama has skipped 19 of 37 VA committee meetings in the 109th congress. Obama’s attendance record was the second worst of all Democrats on the committee. He attended just 18 of the committee’s 37 meetings in Washington D.C.," SusanUnPC reported December 20, 2007

    Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/elections/266011-obama-attendance-records-votes-congress-campaign.html#ixzz1VR21wF92

    Not bad pay for a no show job...

    Posted 9 months ago #         

29. JoB
    Member Profile

    kootchman...

    he has a much better record as president..
    better than any other president in recent memory other than Clinton...

    that man should have taken vacations..

    Posted 9 months ago #         

30. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    Kman..the Texans I know can't stand the man...is that better? Not generalizing, but just repeating what I've been told. Perry is a "family values" man...not many people know he made some of his money (quite a bit, actually) with an investment in a porn company.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

31. kootchman
    Member Profile

    Still popular though....it's the Christian thing to forgive the sinner eh? Now, are you repeating that too? or .. should I fact check? Ahhh shucks ... checked anyway.... he invested in a video rental company called..Movie Gallery, which went bankrupt, was bought by Hollywood Video, which became Blockbuster video.... quite the porn empire... I rented 1001 Dalmations and an Inconvenient Truth and Roger and Me. .... a tad strident Jan.... lots of millions and millions he made as Mr. XXX ... eh? You need to talk to more Texans... your inner circle sounds rabid.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_Gallery

    Posted 9 months ago #         

32. JoB
    Member Profile

    kootchman...

    since when does investing in a video rental company preclude investing separately in porn?

    porn is very big business in Texas

    Posted 9 months ago #         

33. kootchman
    Member Profile

    It's big everywhere... one of those universal truths I guess... everyone "hates" it, lots of people watch it, buy it. Well hell. I support the porn biz... if for no other reason that I pay taxes for the public library system..or read The Stranger... however, Gov. Perry is not a scion of the porn industry.... sometimes ludicrous is just funny.

    Posted 9 months ago #         

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