Liberal In Kentucky

What Wall Street is saying about OWS

2012-02-05T19:49:00.002-05:00

Does anyone really like Pat Robertson?

2012-02-05T19:46:00.001-05:00

Wow are these people out of touch:

Taibbi on the R Primary

2012-02-03T19:13:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

How the GOP race became a showdown between a walking OCD diagnosis and a flatulent serial adulterer

They may be shit for choosing a good candidate for the presidency, but say this for the Republican primaries: They're fast turning into the most luridly entertaining political spectacle of our time. In an inherently conservative, bottomlessly moneyed, scrupulously stage-managed electoral system designed to preclude chance or weirdness from playing any part in determining our political future, the unthinkable is happening: real drama. This isn't part of some clever but inscrutable master plan, put on by the hidden hands who run this country, to fool or distract the masses. This is an unscripted fuck-up of heroic dimensions, radiating downward from the highest levels of our society, playing out in real time for all of us to watch. Our oligarchy has thrown a rod.

If you're not a conservative voter with a dog in this fight, watching Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and whoever else is running for the GOP nomination this week try to hold on to front-runner status has been great slapstick, like watching a cruel experiment involving baboons, laughing gas and a forklift. No matter how many times you ring the bell, those poor animals are never going to figure out how to move that pallet of bananas – yet they keep trying, taking the sorry show from one state to the next, over and over, as if something is going to change.

The latest ape to fall off the heavy machinery is Romney, who in a single week before the South Carolina primary went from near-certain nominee to national punch line, in genuine peril of becoming one of America's all-time electoral catastrophes. The overwhelming expectation was that Romney would roll into South Carolina, kneel on the ball a few times, and run out the clock on the party's yearlong display of manic instability. Heading into South Carolina, he'd raised $32 million; none of his competitors appeared to have enough cash to keep the lights on for more than a few more weeks, let alone a whole campaign. This experienced national politician, who had run a superbly organized campaign for president in 2008, a man whose very trademark is inoffensiveness and caution, and who for the year has appeared dedicated to saying nothing in public more controversial than "God bless America," needed to hang on for only 10 or 11 more days after his decisive win in New Hampshire without completely wetting himself on television, and the nomination was his.

But he couldn't do it. Less than a week after New Hampshire, Romney committed a series of gaffes that revealed his crucial character flaw: He's a hypernervous control freak who flips out if you try digging around below the paper-thin veneer of his schlock patriotic presentation. The robotic Mormon financier looks like a walking OCD diagnosis, a trim coil of tightly wound energy with perfect coif and tie, seemingly living in permanent terror of a single hair falling out of place. For this type of anal-retentive personality, the messy chaos of South Carolina was a phobic horror. Faced with actual opposition, he lost his grip on everything. At a time when a quarter of the population has zero or negative net worth, when outrage against the financial elite is at an all-time high on both sides of the political aisle, Romney, it turns out, is so weirdly tone-deaf about his status as a one-percenter and bloodsucking corporate raider that any question in that direction sends his eyes pinwheeling. As his electably boring-mannequin act began to crumble, his carefully concealed true self – a deluded gazillionaire nitwit – was suddenly thrust naked onstage for all of America to gape at.

First he made the mistake, in explaining his income as a private-equity vampire, of insisting that the money he receives each year in speaking fees is "not very much." Romney's idea of "not very much" turns out to be $374,327.62 – a microscopic portion of his total earnings, but still a number that all by itself put him in the one percent. Then, in the crucial debate in Charleston on January 19th, he seemed to go into a mental tailspin. With both the debate and the primary slipping away from him, Romney reached into his bag of clichés for an "I'm not from Washington, I'm an outsider like you" speech. Only he ballsed it up: "If we want people who spent their life and their career, most of their career in Washington," he said, indicating his opponents, "we have three people on the stage who've..."

But as Romney looked to his left, he spotted long-practicing doctor Ron Paul. "Well, I take that back," he fumbled. "We got a doctor down here who spent most of his time in the, in the surgical suite."

The surgical suite? But wait, Paul was an obstetrician! "Well, not surgery," Romney corrected himself. "The birthing suite."

Then, as he looked pleadingly at CNN moderator John King, it was Dan Rather time. Dead fucking air. Romney's candidacy was literally dying in front of his eyes. He realized that he had forgotten King's original question, which was about why he had called Gingrich an "unreliable leader."

"Now, you asked me an entirely different question," he said to King. "What's..."

The crowd laughed as Romney looked around to the other candidates for help. Gingrich, who despite an utter lack of self-control is a cunning old crook with a keen instinct for combat, moved quickly to drive the knife in. "Beats me. I don't know," he said. "Where are we at, John?" The crowd roared.

Lawrence O'Donnell unloads on Donald Trump

2012-02-03T18:38:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bernie Sanders: End the Corporate Takeover of our Democracy

2012-02-02T19:13:00.001-05:00

Suck it Lonnie Napier, glad to see you go

2012-02-01T19:00:00.001-05:00

Well oh well. Poor hating Lonnie Napier is resigning (Stumbo's redistricting no doubt played a part in this). Lexington being disenfranchised was a thousand times worse, but at least this idiot is out of mix:

Women love Rick Santorum

2012-02-01T18:58:00.001-05:00

Kathy Stein and David Williams in a floor knife fight

2012-01-26T20:43:00.003-05:00

via Barefoot:

You can see the ~~love~~, ~~tolerance~~, between the two of them.

Get him Kathy!

You make defense cuts

2012-01-25T14:31:00.000-05:00

NYT's:

A great interactive piece. Click the link at the top.

The end to the physical occupation of #OccupyLexKY

2012-01-24T15:52:00.001-05:00

And I feel fine. There were those of us in the camp that thought November was the time to disband and turn this into a more traditional movement.

Forever burned into our political vernacular are terms like, "1%", "99%", and "Occupy".

We changed the message, and conversation.

We are the 99%, Occupy your state legislatures, congress members and city halls.

How'd I miss this? 4 companies that own everything:

2012-01-23T17:17:00.001-05:00

Well duh... Look what's at number 6. Our good friends that OccupyLexKY has been camping out on:

6. JP Morgan Chase &; Co

Newscientist:

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

Here's another take by Forbes:

There may be 147 companies in the world that own everything, as colleague Bruce Upbin points out and they are dominated by investment companies asEric Savitz rightly points out. But it’s not you and I who really control those companies, even though much of our money is in them. Given the nature of how money is invested, there are four companies in the shadows that reallycontrol those companies that own everything.

Before I reveal them, some light math:

According to the 2011 annual factbook from the Investment Company Institute, there is $24.7 trillion in all the mutual funds in the world (a little less than half from the US). Based on data from the ICI, $1.24 trillion of this is directly invested in index funds, plus another $992 billion in assets beyond that $24.7 trillion in Exchange Traded Funds, which aren’t mutual funds but are index funds. That means the bulk of that money is in “active” managed funds or fund of funds.

But then consider this: the chief of hedge funds at a very large asset manager told me last week (alas, I cannot identify either) that an internal study his firm recently performed found that the vast majority of mutual funds defined as actively managed see 95% of the assets they hold determined by an index. That means just 5% of actively managed funds really are driven by the active manager’s judgment.

This less-than-active management is for two reasons: one is to maintain the fund in a style box (i.e. large value stock, medium value stocks) and comply with the reality all mutual funds are required to have a benchmark index they compare their relative performance to. The other reason is to adhere to risk metrics to which most of the fund industry is beholden. This second point is partly due to Modern Portfolio Theory (a complex topic we won’t debate here) and to the human nature that active managers tend to build portfolios close to the indexes they benchmark against to avoid really awful downward relative performance years that ends up costing them their jobs.

So of the $25.69 trillion in worldwide assets we’ve identified, $2.23 trillion are directly in indexes (ETFs and index mutual funds) with another $22.3 trillion indirectly beholden to indexes (that 95% of actively managed fund holdings said to be determined by an index).

You can see where I’m headed here. That means the real power to control the world lies with four companies: McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poor’s, Northwestern Mutual, which owns Russell Investments, the index arm of which runs the benchmark Russell 1,000 and Russell 3,000, CME Groupwhich owns 90% of Dow Jones Indexes, and Barclay’s, which took over Lehman Brothers and its Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, the dominant world bond fund index. Together, these four firms dominate the world of indexing. And in turn, that means they hold real sway over the world’s money.

While that may seem benign – they are indexers after all you may say – a financial index isn’t cut and dried like the index of a book. It’s a misperception indexers merely do some simple math like identifying the 500 largest US companies and voila! you have the S&P 500. Every indexer has a fudge factor that allows them to say one company is more “economically significant” for the index at hand than another company. To again take the S&P 500 as an example, the 502-largest company by market cap could get the nod over number 500 by size if S&P decides it wants to.

The power is even more obvious in bonds. The now-Barclays Aggregate Bond Index attempts to mirror volume of bond issuance in a region or the world, but it can’t include even a sizable percentage of all the bonds issued. Essentially, there’s a big judgment call in there in what bonds it adds to its index. A judgment that influences bond fund flows worldwide.

What does all this mean? Researchers at a desk in midtown Manhattan are the butterflies that cause the hurricanes in the markets. For instance, 37% of all index funds in stocks are in a S&P 500 index fund. That’s $370 billion directly buying and selling stocks based on when the S&P analysts decide to drop ITT from the S&P500 and replace it with just one of three ITT spin-off, Xylem, as announced on Monday. Then add on top of that all of the so-called active mutual funds aiming to beat the S&P 500 (but still reflect 95% of the S&P in their funds) who react to the change and then all of the hedge funds who trade ahead of time trying to guess what S&P may drop or add.

I don’t have a grudge against any indexer (and full disclosure, I’ve done work for some of them). And the folks at McGraw-Hill don’t seem to spook people the way George Soros manages to. But when you discuss power in the world markets, the answer isn’t what you think it is.

Kelly Flood's opposition to archaic redistricting

2012-01-22T20:24:00.000-05:00

Not sure who the clown is in the beginning, but he's a real funny guy. Making fun one of the most educated cities in the United States makes you a real comedian.

Dibbs to Barefoot for grabbing this video:

Fear and loathing in Lexington, the sad but true realities of Frankfort

2012-01-21T12:19:00.001-05:00

In regards to this travesty that's left Lexington's 13th district without a Senator, here's the reality of the situation.

Had Beshear vetoed this legislation, this could have gone 1 of 2 sad ways.

1. The Senate Republicans could have mustered an override.

2. The House would have to had made major concessions to the Senate in a deal, and even then it's unclear how this would have washed out. From what I'm hearing/reading the House redistricting was about 5 fold worse for the Republicans.

What an ugly game this is... A culture of destruction. Far easier to break each other strengths down than to build your own strengths up.

"War is the continuation of policy by other means" -Carl von Clausewitz

Protest rally for redistricting, leaving Kentucky without a Senator

2012-01-20T16:18:00.001-05:00

Check it:

Who: You and a bunch of cool people.

What: Protest rally for redistricting, leaving Kentucky without a Senator

Where: Lexington City Government

How: Anyway you can.

Facebook event here:

Beshear signs redistricting law, Lexington left without Senator

2012-01-20T14:52:00.000-05:00

For those of you who did catch this, David Williams the President of the Kentucky Senate rammed through a petty politically motivated redistricting bill that effectively leaves those of us in the 13th without a Senator till 2014, HL:

"[will] move Democratic Sen. Kathy Stein's District 13, which now includes the University of Kentucky and environs, to Mason and Lewis counties in northeastern Kentucky. The Lexington district would become Senate District 4, which is now located in western Kentucky, and for the next two years would be represented by Sen. Dorsey Ridley, a Democrat from Henderson."

And:

"Central Fayette County's 13th Senate District, where Stein lives, will become the 4th Senate District under the new plan. That means Sen. Dorsey Ridley, a Democrat from Henderson, will represent the central portion of Lexington until his term ends in 2014."

And:

"This disenfranchises Kathy Stein, it disenfranchises my district in Western Kentucky, and it accomplishes an end that (Senate President) David Williams was unable to do at the ballot box," Ridley said. "This was thrown upon us. At the end of the day, it's a small group of Republican state Senate leaders who have made this choice, not the 114,000 people that each of us represent."

In the 2011 gubernatorial election, Williams lost Fayette County to Beshear by a 3 to 1 ratio."

Kelly Flood's speech on the House floor before she voted "NO":

"I awoke last night heavy with anger and grief over a redistricting plan that costs Lexington its beloved senator, Kathy Stein.

The Senate redistricting plan would effectively disenfranchise much of Lexington until elections for even-numbered districts in 2014. A large part of Lexington would become part of the 4th District, whose seat is currently held by Sen. Dorsey Ridley (D-Henderson).

While I am certain that Sen. Ridley would do his utmost to represent our views, it is a perversion of democracy to suggest that the people of Lexington not be allowed to vote on and select their own state senator.

That right to vote is perhaps the most fundamental American right, a right that the women and men in U.S. military uniforms are fighting to protect every day.

Stein (D-Lexington) is accountable to the people of Lexington, and only the people of Lexington, not to the Senate leadership or even the General Assembly. She is our senator, and it is our duty to judge her accomplishments and talents against those of her electoral competitors.

The Senate proposal imposes the will of a tiny minority over that of thousands of Lexington voters.

I received an impassioned e-mail from Stephen Fritz, whose grandfather, George Fritz, served the House, first as a doorman and later as sergeant-at-arms. Stephen Fritz wrote, and I agree, that the Senate proposal violates central principles of the Kentucky and Federal constitutions.

In perhaps its most perverse aspect, the legislation posits that the technical definition of a district (by its assigned number) should trump the obvious practical definition of a district as the people who comprise it.

Put another way, Senate leadership could easily have assigned any Senate number to the district they drew for central Lexington. That they chose to remove our elected senator without our consent, is deplorable enough. That they will not even allow us to vote on her replacement for two years is unconscionable and possibly unconstitutional. That they appoint someone who doesn't even reside in the area to represent us is a display of arrogance and bullying.

This plan will raise numerous constitutional issues, costing thousands of dollars in litigation. And as we heard from our good governor two nights ago, that's money we don't have to spare.

I understand that in years past, the House has approved the Senate's proposed boundaries, and vice versa.

I also understand that we recently passed a House redistricting bill that has obvious partisan leanings, in tune with bills passed in previous bouts of redistricting. What I now fully understand is that when we choose to move in such raw, partisan ways we cause lasting damage to ourselves and our ability to govern with integrity and foresight.

When we move with a disregard for the wishes of thousands of voters, we risk further demoralizing the very people we represent.

Even under the most partisan of normal redistricting, the people ultimately retain the right of final decision about whom they wish to represent them. This proposal uses an underhanded, legal technicality to remove our right to vote.

What can the House, and I as a Lexington representative, do? We can play along with these shameful tactics and disenfranchise our fellow Lexingtonians for the next two years. Or we can refuse to play that game and put the people of the commonwealth first.

I chose to vote "no" on House Bill 1. And to further protest this method of redistricting ourselves, I changed my "yes" vote from two days ago for the House redistricting plan to "no."

I wanted to ensure Stephen Fritz, echoing his late grandfather, will be able to say that our commonwealth continues to be served by good men and women who prove worthy of this high honor to serve in the House of Representatives by defending every Kentuckian's fundamental right to vote."

Ron Paul goes on House floor to attempt to repeal law to send Americans to Guantánamo

2012-01-18T18:00:00.005-05:00

We passed Constitutional Amendments to prevent this! The government under the influence of the corporate oligarchy is feeling the heat of some populism obviously. Next thing you know we'll be calling animal rights activists terrorists... Wait...

Can't stand his economic view, but he's spot on with this.

"And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'" Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.)

Anyhow, here's how this shit sandwich of a bill was voted on. Weird to see my favorite senator line up with Rand Paul on this issue. Here's how the house voted as well.

Strange times America. The typical party vote is flying out the window and both sides more or less voted to strip you of your rights. YEAH for the War of Terror! I mean War on Terror and the passage of the NDAA , our "Socialist" President, "Democratic" Senate and "Tea Party" House disposed the Fifth Amendment (right to due process) and the Sixth Amendment (right to trial by jury).

That on top of the POS legislation piece called the "Patriot Act" which violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure). Strange, those of us involved in OWS are finding commonality with those in the Tea Party in some weird ways. Lines are certainly being drawn in a new fashion, I'm losing sight of what's left and right. But with corporations hording the wealth of this country, and my government writing a law (in clear fucking violation of the constitution) that can potentially send me off to Guantánamo what good times to be an American!

To the lefties reading this, here's Maddow's 2 cents on this:

Mitt Romney vs. MLK Jr.

2012-01-17T18:20:00.000-05:00

Good catch via Sonka:

DHS has hired General Dynamics to monitor and summarize reports from numerous media outlets, blogs and social networking sites

2012-01-17T14:56:00.001-05:00

(At a real risk of being put on some watchlist, I repost this)

Computerworld and DemocracyNow:

"Computerworld - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is engaging in media monitoring activity that achieves no public safety goals and will likely have a chilling effect on legitimate criticism of the agency, a leading privacy advocacy group warned Friday.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center's conclusion is based on an analysis of documents it received from the government this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The documents show that DHS has hired General Dynamics to monitor and summarize reports from numerous media outlets, blogs and social networking sites.

Computerworld is one of dozens of news media and blog sites that are being monitored by the DHS under a broad initiative aimed at improving the government's situational awareness. Others on the list include The New York Times, Wired, the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report.

The information gathered from such sites is intended to help the DHS' Office of Operations Coordination and Planning keep on top of potential threats and hazards to public safety, the DHS documents say."

Stewart and Colbert make a mockery of GOP Primary

2012-01-17T14:39:00.001-05:00

The one thing that's going to make this lackluster, Romney race a little funny:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Wall Street strikes back, attempts to crush 99% movement/OWS

2012-01-17T14:23:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Miss representation Trailer

2012-01-15T19:26:00.001-05:00

A powerful documentary about women and the media:

Meet poor hating Rep. Kip Smith of Georgia

2012-01-15T19:11:00.000-05:00

Rep. Kip Smith of Georgia hates poor people and thinks if they test hot on a drug test they and their children don't deserve food and shelter.

Reminds me of our local poor hating legislator here in Kentucky Lonnie Napier.

What's ironic here? He was just busted for a DUI...

A Georgia Republican who wants all welfare reciepients subject to drug tests failed one himself after he ran a red light on Friday morning. The Atlanta Journal Constiution has the story on State Rep. Kip Smith (R):

Smith, whose given name is John Andrew Smith, first told the officer he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages.
“I asked him again, and he stated he had consumed a single beer at Hal’s. I noticed also that Mr. Smith’s eyes were watery, and I asked him to exit the vehicle, which he did,” Kramer said in the report.
Smith told the officer he’d had the beer 45 minutes earlier, and the officer asked him to blow into a hand-held “intoximeter”. The officer said the lawmaker refused, stating he would prefer to go to a clinic or the hospital to get tested.
The officer said Smith finally agreed to blow into the device. The report stated that Smith blew a .091., which is above the legal limit of .08.

Smith is a sponsor of Georgia House Bill 464, which would “require random drug testing” for citizens on public assistance. In response to Smith’s legislation, State Rep. Scott Holcomb introduced a bill last month that would require all state lawmakers to be subject to random drug testing.

Random drug tests for reciepents of public assistance are very likely to be found unconsitutional.

Why I hate Religion, But love Jesus

2012-01-15T14:04:00.000-05:00

Those of us who follow Christ find the religion of Christianity absurd, immoral and inhumane. Jesus is amongst the poor, and suffering, not in a building.

Love Lawrence O'Donnell...

Congressman Yarmuth receives Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Occupy Award

2012-01-14T20:16:00.000-05:00

via Louisville Courant:

Why can't Lexington and the 6th have an awesome congressman like this one?

Cheers Dr. King, we love and miss you, you'll always be remembered

2012-01-14T14:46:00.001-05:00

Cheers America. You're a far better place after the Civil Rights movement.

Proposal to strip U.S. citizens of their... Citizenship...

2012-01-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

Yeah, the ball that the Bush Administration started rolling hasn't stopped...

"New Bill Known As Enemy Expatriation Act Would Allow Government To Strip Citizenship Without Conviction"First, Congress considered the National Defense Authorization Act, sections of which gave the President the authority to use the military to arrest and indefinitely detain Americans without trial or charge. The language was revised because of strong condemnation from the American people. But now a new bill has emerged that poses yet another threat to the American citizenry.

Congress is considering HR 3166 and S. 1698 also known as the Enemy Expatriation Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA). This bill would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being “hostile” against the United States. In other words, you can be stripped of your nationality for “engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.” Legally, the term “hostilities” means any conflict subject to the laws of war but considering the fact that the War on Terror is a little ambiguous and encompassing, any action could be labeled as supporting terrorism. Since the Occupy movement began, conservatives have been trying to paint the protesters as terrorists.

The new law would change a part of US Code 1481 which can be read in full here. Compare 3166 to 1481 and the change is small. The new section makes no reference to being convicted as it does in section (7). So even though the language of the NDAA has been revised to exclude American citizens, the US government merely has to strip Americans of their citizenship and the NDAA will apply. And they will be able to do so without convicting the accused in a court of law.

I hope I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like this is a loophole for indefinitely detaining Americans. Once again, you just have to be accused of supporting hostilities which could be defined any way the government sees fit. Then the government can strip your citizenship and apply the indefinite detention section of the NDAA without the benefit of a trial. This certainly must be questioned by American citizens. The way these defense obsessed Republicans think, our rights are always in danger of being taken away.

To read the full text of the bill, go here.
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But wait you say! That couldn't happen to me! I'm not even associated with OWS or Al Qaeda! :::Vomit:::

Well there's this:

Are Animal Rights Activists Terrorists?

In 2006, Congress quietly passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a sweeping new law that classified many forms of animal rights campaigning as terrorism. Now the law's critics have taken to the courts to try to kill it. In a case filed last week, five activists argue that AETA violates their rights by criminalizing constitutionally protected actions.

AETA, which replaced an earlier, weaker law called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), prohibits anything done "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise" or that "causes the loss of any real or personal property." (The earlier version of the law only covered "physical disruption" to operations.) The law also prohibits "economic damage" to an enterprise, which includes loss of profits and pressure put on any investors or other companies that do business with the animal enterprise. Even the definition of "animal enterprise" is so broad that it could be construed as covering any institution that has a cafeteria selling meat or cheese products, argues Rachel Meeropol, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is backing the plaintiffs in the case filed against Attorney General Eric Holder.
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UPDATE 1:

And then there's this:

“Jihad, Crips, extreme animal-rights activists, it’s all the same,” Says Homeland Security Official

Last week a Philadelphia appellate court announced (after months of silence) that it would not revisit the conviction of animal rights activists on terrorism charges. The SHAC 7were convicted of conspiring to commit animal enterprise terrorism by running a controversial website that posted news of both legal and illegal actions, along with personal information of people connected to the notorious animal testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences. Their campaign had brought the multinational corporation near bankruptcy.

A three-judge panel of the court had previously upheld the conviction, and the defendants had asked that the full court review it. Now, the only option is to request that the Supreme Court of the United States review the case. There has been no official word about this yet, but multiple defendants have expressed their interest and having this landmark First Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the lead prosecutor who helped secure this “victory in the War on Terrorism” has– surprise, surprise– been promoted. Charles McKenna is now the head of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

He was quoted a few days ago about his hopes for using new “anti-terrorism technology” in his new job.

“We are particularly interested in computer profiling, which is much more sophisticated, and quicker, than traditional racial profiling,” he said.

The targets of this new profiling technology?

“Jihad, Crips, extreme animal-rights activists, it’s all the same: people trying damage the system,” added McKenna.“We need every trick in the book to avert disaster.”

As you can see in this photo, the SHAC 7 are quite gangsta. But no reasonable person could argue that they are the “same” as violent street gangs and Islamic terrorists.

Such absurd scare-mongering rhetoric has become normal for corporations, industry groups, and the politicians who represent them. When it is adopted by government officials who are in charge of keeping us safe, though, it has frightening implications.

There are limited anti-terrorism and law enforcement resources. When people like McKenna let shameless political opportunism shape security priorities (and make no mistake, this is nothing but political opportunism–he has already been rewarded for defending the “system” from activists), it puts everyone at risk.
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UPDATE 2:

Follow this monstrosity of legislation here (House version) and here (Senate version).

Jim Pence exclusive, God talks to Pat Robertson, but there's a problem...

2012-01-08T14:01:00.001-05:00

A little scene from #OccupyLexKY

2012-01-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

A few great shots from #OccupyLexKY, 100 days and counting!

Via Kate Folsum.

Cobra Commander is furious when he hears #OccupyLexKY is the longest running Occupation in N. America

2012-01-07T13:53:00.004-05:00

"What do you mean 100 days?!"

#OccupyLexKY gets it's first piece of mail

2012-01-07T12:01:00.002-05:00

Neato!

Matt Taibbi on Iowa, what's really important in American politics, OWS

2012-01-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone:

"In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

Let’s put it this way. What feels more like a real news story – Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a liar for the ten millionth time, or this sizzling item that just hit the wires by way of the Montana Supreme Court:

HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations…
A group seeking to undo the Citizens United decision lauded the Montana high court, with its co-founder saying it was a "huge victory for democracy."
"With this ruling, the Montana Supreme Court now sets up the first test case for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its Citizens United decision, a decision which poses a direct and serious threat to our democracy," John Bonifaz, of Free Speech For People, said in a statement.

Rest is here:

Our friends in Iowa say, hi... Err kind of...

2012-01-03T16:45:00.001-05:00

Meet your local poor hating State Rep Lonnie Napier

2012-01-02T23:06:00.000-05:00

Meet Rep. Lonnie Napier, R-Lancaster (36th District). He's a real piece of work who wants to cut food and medical benefits to those who test positive for drugs (and their children).

This bill is dead on arrival I'm told. Still what a bucket of slime of a person. Take note of this monster's name:

As a person who has had a very successful father who's struggled with addiction this guy is on my radar. How Christ like of him to try and starve people of food and medical care.

CJ:

"That also was the fate of a proposal by Rep. Lonnie Napier, R-Lancaster, to force welfare recipients to undergo random drug testing. Napier is promising to push that initiative again, hoping to revoke benefits of those who test position."

Happy New Years everyone!

2012-01-02T15:13:00.003-05:00

A day late:

Barefootandprogressive shout out:

2012-01-02T13:51:00.001-05:00

Friends over at Barefoot gave Liberal in Kentucky and OccupyLexKY a shout out with the one picture that brought tears to my eyes, cheers guys.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

2011-12-31T19:57:00.001-05:00

Yeah, but where's the profit?!

Atlantic:

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

Gotta make that money! Results be damned!

Rest is here:

Lawrence O'Donnell vs. Ron Paul on the '64 Civil Rights Act

2011-12-30T13:58:00.002-05:00

A OWS Christmas message

2011-12-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

Click here:

Friendlier format:

Holy God, the Communists have a valid point

2011-12-20T00:12:00.002-05:00

Bernie Sanders: Rich, pay your fair share

2011-12-16T19:26:00.000-05:00

University of Kentucky to privatize student housing

2011-12-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

WSJ:

"The University of Kentucky is getting out of the student-housing business and plans to turn over its dormitories to a private company that will upgrade and manage the aging properties.
The university said Monday it's negotiating with Education Realty Trust Inc. to transfer control of nearly 6,000 beds and apartments. The new owner will redevelop much of those rooms and build more than 2,500 beds in the next five to seven years.

While several colleges have entered into public-private partnerships in recent years to replace a portion of their student housing, the University of Kentucky would be among the first major institutions to turn over its entire student housing stock to a private real estate company."

"Partnerships between colleges and private companies can be complicated. Such arrangements require close working relationships with the many entities that make up the campus community.

"It can be a difficult path to go down because no matter what, [companies] are beholding to their investors. So their end goal is different from an institution's end goal," said Michael Coakley, a student housing official at Arizona State University, which has worked with a private developer."

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Gee... I think of about a billion reasons why this is a really bad idea. I'm going to follow up on this post as I dig for a few things I've seen/read.

Occupy Pittsburgh takes it to Target

2011-12-12T19:11:00.002-05:00

According to the protests, Target promised fulltime jobs and didn't deliver:On the description: "Penn Circle Towers, a low-income housing high rise, was demolished in order to build this Target."

In an ultimate irony, #OWS occupies a fake #OWS TV set

2011-12-09T19:46:00.001-05:00

Law and Order SUV made a fake Occupy site, #OWS occupied the TV occupation:

Fox fails yet again (Greece riots, not Russian)

2011-12-09T19:11:00.001-05:00

Covering up for the fact there's unrest here or what Fox?Wrong country, Russia is to the "north", think Baltic Sea, not Mediterranean:

Support the Occupied Amendment!

2011-12-09T18:39:00.001-05:00

People have been asking what this movement transitions into, well here you go:

http://www.theoccupiedamendment.org/

"Jesus" responds to Rick Perry's ad

2011-12-09T15:18:00.001-05:00

Jesus Responds to Rick Perry's "Strong" Ad from DC Pierson

Here's Perry's disgusting ad:

Bernie Sanders introduces constitutional amendment

2011-12-08T18:27:00.001-05:00

Similar legislation introduced into the Republican House, where it immediately died of course:

Rick Perry released incredible hateful anti-gay ad

2011-12-07T19:05:00.001-05:00

Wow... As mad as I get with Obama, here's your alternative people:

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again. I'm Rick Perry and I approve this message."

Winter Occupation with OWS in full swing, looking back months before

2011-12-07T16:25:00.001-05:00

HuffPost, Michael Moore:
---
And now it is winter. Wall Street rejoices, hoping that the change of seasons will mean a change in our spirit, our commitment to stop them.

They couldn't be more wrong. Have they not heard of Washington and the troops at Valley Forge? The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike in the winter of 1936-37? The Michigan Wolverines crushing Ohio State in the 1950 Blizzard Bowl? When it comes to winter, it is the time historically when the people persevere and the forces of evil make their retreat!

We are not even 12 weeks old, yet Occupy Wall Street has grown so fast, so big, none of us can keep up with the hundreds of towns who have joined the movement, or the thousands of actions -- some of them just simple ones in neighborhoods, schools and organizations -- that have happened. The national conversation has been irreversibly changed. Now everyone is talking about how the 1% are getting away with all the money while the 99% struggle to make ends meet. People are no longer paralyzed by despair or apathy. Most know that now is the time to reclaim our country from the bankers, the lobbyists -- and their gofers: the members of the United States Congress and the 50 state legislatures.

And they're crazy if they think that a little climate chaos (otherwise known as winter in the 21st century) that they've helped to bring about is going to stop us.

I would like to propose to my Occupying sisters and brothers that there are many ways to keep Occupy Wall Street going through the winter months. There is perhaps no better time to move the movement indoors for a few months -- and watch it grow even bigger! (For those who have the stamina to maintain the outdoor occupations, by all means, keep it up -- and the rest of us will do our best to help you and keep you warm!)

---

The rest here below the video, and a list of proposals:

---

I posted this video back in March '11.

Oh how highly relevant it still is, especially with #OWS in full swing:

Go to 1:29:00

Huffpost article Continued below:

---

The winter gives us an amazing opportunity to expand our actions against the captains of capitalism who have occupied our homes with their fraudulent mortgage system which has tossed millions of families out onto the curb; a cruel health care system that has told 50 million Americans "if you can't afford a doctor, go F yourself"; a student loan system that sends 22-year-olds into an immediate "debtors' prison" of working lousy jobs for which they didn't go to school but now have to take because they're in hock for tens of thousands of dollars for the next two decades; and a jobs market that keeps 25 million Americans un- or under-employed -- and much of the rest of the workers forced to accept wage cuts, health care reductions and zero job security.

But we in the Occupy Movement reject this version of the "American Dream." Instead, I suggest we shift our focus for this winter to the following actions:

OCCUPY THE WINTER

A proposal to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street from Michael Moore

1. Occupy Our Homes. Sorry, banks, a roof over one's head is a human right, and you will no longer occupy our homes through foreclosure and eviction because well, you see, they are ourhomes, not yours. You may hold the mortgage; you don't hold the right to throw us or our neighbors out into the cold. With almost one in three home mortgages currently in foreclosure, nearing foreclosure or "underwater," the Occupy Movement must form local "Occupy Strike Forces" to create human shields when the banks come to throw people out of their homes. If the foreclosure has already happened, then we must help families move back into their foreclosed homes -- literally (see this clip from my last film to watch how a home re-occupation is accomplished). Beginning today, Take Back the Land, plus many other citizens' organizations nationwide, are kicking off Occupy Our Homes. Numerous actions throughout the day today havealready resulted in many families physically taking back their homes. This will continue every day until the banks are forced to stop their fraudulent practices, until homeowners are allowed to change their mortgage so that it reflects the true value of their homes, and until those who can no longer afford a mortgage are allowed to stay in their homes and pay rent. I beseech the news media to cover these actions -- they are happening everywhere. Evictions, though rarely covered (you need a Kardashian in your home as you're being evicted to qualify for news coverage) are not a new story (see this scene I filmed in 1988). Also, please remember the words of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo (in 'Capitalism: A Love Story'): Do not leave your homes if the bank forecloses on you! Let them take you to court and then YOU ask the judge to make them produce a copy of your mortgage. They can't. It was chopped up a hundred different ways, bundled with a hundred other mortgages, and sold off to the Chinese. If they can't produce the mortgage, they can't evict you.

2. Occupy Your College. In nearly every other democracy on the planet, students go to college for free or almost free. Why do those countries do that? Because they know that for their society to advance, they must have an educated population. Without that, productivity, innovation and an informed electorate is stunted and everyone suffers as a result. Here's how we do it in the U.S.A.: make education one of our lowest priorities, graduate students who know little about the world or their own government or the economy, and then force them into crushing debt before they even have their first job. That way has really worked well for us, hasn't it? It's made us the world leader in … in … well, ok, we're like 27th or 34th in everything now (except war). This has to end.Students should spend this winter doing what they are already doing on dozens of campuses -- holding sit-ins, occupying the student loan office, nonviolently disrupting the university regents meetings, and pitching their tents on the administration's lawn. Young people -- we, the '60s generation, promised to create a better world for you. We got halfway there -- now you have to complete the job. Do not stop until these wars are ended, the Pentagon budget is cut in half, and the rich are forced to pay their taxes. And demand that that money go to your education. We'll be there with you on all of this! And when we get this fixed and you graduate, instead of being $40,000 in debt, go see the friggin' world, or tinker around in your garage a la the two Steves, or start a band. Enjoy life, discover, explore, experiment, find your way. Anything but the assistant manager at Taco Bell.

3. Occupy Your Job. Let's spend the winter organizing workplaces into unions. OR, if you already have a union, demand that your leaders get off their ass and get aggressive like our grandparents did. For chrissakes, surely you know we would not have a middle class if it weren't for the strikes of the 1930s-1950s?! In three weeks we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the workers in my hometown of Flint, Michigan taking over and occupying the General Motors factories for 44 days in the dead of winter. Their actions ignited a labor movement that lifted tens of millions out of poverty and into the middle class. It's time to do it again. (According to the Census Bureau and the New York Times, 100 million Americans either live in or near poverty.Disgraceful. Greed has destroyed the core fabric of our communities. Enough!) Here are two good unions to get your fellow workers to sign up and join: UE and SEIU. The CWA are also good. Here's how to get a quick primer in organizing your place of employment (don't forget to be careful while you do this!). If your company is threatening to close down and move the jobs elsewhere, then it's time to occupy the workplace (again, you can get a lesson in how to successfully occupy your factory from my movie).

4. Occupy Your Bank. This is an easy one. Just leave them. Move your checking and your credit card to a nonprofit credit union. It's safe and the decisions made there aren't based on greed. And if a bank tries to evict your neighbor, Occupy the local branch with 20 other people and call the press. Post it on the internet.

5. Occupy the Insurance Man. It's time to not only stand up for the 50 million without health insurance but to also issue a single, simple demand: The elimination of for-profit, privately-controlled health insurance companies. It is nothing short of barbaric to allow businesses to make a profit off people when they get sick. We don't allow anyone to make a profit when we need the fire department or the police. Until recently we would never allow a company to make a profit by operating in a public school. The same should be true for when you need to see a doctor or stay in the hospital. So I say it's long overdue for us to go and Occupy Humana, United Health, Cigna and even the supposed "nonprofit" Blue Crosses. An action on their lawns, in their lobbies, or at the for-profit hospitals -- this is what is needed.

So -- there are my ideas for the five places we can Occupy this winter. Help the foreclosed-upon to Occupy their homes. Occupy your college campus, especially the student loan office and the regents meetings. Occupy your job by getting everyone to sign a union card -- or by refusing to let the CEO ship your job overseas. Occupy your Chase or Citi or Bank of America branch by closing your account and moving it to a credit union. And Occupy the insurance company offices, the pharmaceutical companies' headquarters and the for-profit hospitals until the White House and Congress pass the true single-payer universal health care bill they failed to pass in 2010.

My friends, the rich are running scared right now. You need no further proof of this than to readthis story from last week. The Republicans' top strategist met privately with them and told them that they had better change their tune or they were going to be crushed by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They didn't have to change their greedy actions, he assured them -- just the way they talk and PR the situation. He told them never to use the word "capitalism" -- it has now been made a dirty word by the Occupy movement, he said. Only say "economic freedom" from now on, he cautioned. And don't criticize the movement -- because the majority of Americans either agree with it or are feeling the same way. Just tell the Occupiers and the distressed Americans: "I get it." Seriously.

Yes, in just 12 short weeks we have killed their most sacred word -- Capitalism -- and we have them on the run, on the defensive. They should be. Millions are coming after them and our only goal is to remove them from power and replace them with a fair system that is controlled by the 99%. The 1% have been able to get both political parties to do their bidding. Why should only 1% of the population get to have two parties -- and the rest of us have none? That, too, is going to change. In my next post, I will suggest what we can do to Occupy the Electoral Process. But first we must start with those who pull the strings of the puppets in the Congress. That's why it's called Occupy Wall Street. Always better to deal with man in charge, don't you think?

Let's Occupy the Winter! An #OWS Winter will certainly lead to a very hopeful American Spring.

A great wrap up of the housing crisis and where we are today

2011-12-07T15:11:00.001-05:00

This American Life:

The day fascism almost came to America (no seriously).

2011-12-04T15:27:00.001-05:00

Keep a close watch on S. 1867, it's going to allow the indefinite detention of American citizens.

The Atlantic:

Is it lawful for the president to order any American held indefinitely as a terrorist, without formal charges, evidence presented in open court, a trial by jury, or a standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? The U.S. Senate had a chance Wednesday to assert that no, a president does not possess that power -- that the United States Constitution guarantees due process.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged her colleagues to seize the opportunity. "We as a Congress are being asked, for the first time certainly since I have been in this body, to affirmatively authorize that an American citizen can be picked up and held indefinitely without being charged or tried. That is a very big deal, because in 1971 we passed a law that said you cannot do this. This was after the internment of Japanese-American citizens in World War II," she said. "What we are talking about here is the right of our government, as specifically authorized in a law by Congress, to say that a citizen of the United States can be arrested and essentially held without trial forever."
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The rest is here:

Those who were opposed to arresting U.S. Citizens indefinitely (who voted for stripping the nutjob anti-American proposal, (shout out to Barack Obama and Rand Paul for opposing this lunacy):

Those idiot war hawk, anti-civil liberty nutjobs who wanted to detain American citizens and put them through military commissions:

Take note of these morons, regardless of their party they should be made to pay during their respective primary.

Rand Paul on the Senate floor:

UPDATE: Rand Paul vs. John McCain:

UPDATE 2 (As of 12/4/11):

Track the bill here:

Status:

	Introduced	Nov 15, 2011
	Referred to Committee	View Committee Assignments
	Reported by Committee	Nov 15, 2011
	Amendments (381 proposed)	View Amendments
	Passed Senate	Dec 1, 2011
	House Vote	...
	Signed by President	...

Richard Becker and the political bug that bit him

2011-12-03T21:45:00.001-05:00

The Recovering Politician:

Richard Becker – How I Got Bit by the Political Bug

I first entered politics in 2004 at the age of 17, going door-to-door in my home county of Hamilton County, Indiana for Gov. Joe Kernan and the Kerry-Edwards campaign. I can recall meeting with an organizer at a coffeeshop with a high school friend of mine and being handed a packet of names, a bundle of brochures, and a Joe Kernan for Governor lapel sticker. Out we went, knocking on door after door in the neighborhoods of Noblesville, the county courthouse’s majestic clock tower looming in the background. Having finally exhausted our packets after several hours, we returned to Democratic headquarters where we were greeted by a bevy of seasoned local Democratic activists (read: cute, earnest, little old ladies).

What ensued was a full twenty minutes of gushing and doting that centered on one theme: how preciousof you two to be volunteering for a political campaign when you can’t even vote yourselves! They were enamored with us, and we with the compliments. That was the day I decided that an activity that felt this good had to be something I pursued in some more substantive way moving forward, which brings us to the University of Kentucky.

In my first semester as a college freshman, I attended a campus event at which student organizations could promote themselves and happened upon the table for the UK College Democrats. Intrigued, I got to talking to several of their members and agreed to attend their first meeting, which, like any well-planned first semester meeting featured free pizza and soda. I became a regular at these meetings over the coming weeks and when a position opened up at the end of the semester for the chapter treasurer, I was nominated and unanimously elected to the position. I served as the treasurer for some three months before our president announced she would not be running. All heads in the room turned to me and I was once again nominated and unanimously elected president of the chapter, the youngest such president in chapter history. While I was president of the UK chapter, we volunteered for John Yarmuth’s winning 2006 congressional campaign as well as for the campaign of Ken Lucas in northern Kentucky’s 4th district. It was while working on the latter campaign that I first met a man who would come to play a pivotal role in my development as a professional political staffer.
His name was Jon Wright, from Paducah, KY and he was a recent law school graduate. I spoke with him on the phone several times leading up to the weekend when about two dozen of our UK members rode with me up to the 4th district to volunteer. Seeing him in person, I realized that Jon was truly a ball of energy, bouncing from person to person, task to task, stopping only long enough to answer a phone or check a call script before resuming his frenzied pace. We kept in touch over the years, which was a good thing, because it would be a call from him in June of 2008 that would change the path of my career forever.

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The rest is here:

Misdirected priorities, Marine Iraq Vet Scott Olsen on militarization of police

2011-12-03T21:12:00.001-05:00

HuffPost:

As cities around the country have swept Occupy Wall Street camps from their plazas and parks in recent weeks, a number of mayors and city officials have argued that by providing shelter to the homeless, the camps are endangering the public and even the homeless themselves.

Yet in many of those cities, services for the homeless are severely underfunded. The cities havespent millions of dollars to police and evict the protesters, but they've been shutting down shelters and enacting laws to prohibit homeless from sleeping overnight in public.

In Oakland, Atlanta, Denver and Portland, Ore., there are at least two homeless people for every open bed in the shelter system, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In Salt Lake City, Utah, and Chapel Hill, N.C. -- two other cities that have evicted protesters from their encampments -- things are better but far from ideal. In Chapel Hill, according to the HUD study, there are 121 beds for 135 homeless people, and in Salt Lake City, 1,627 for 1,968.

Heather Maria Johnson, a civil rights attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, said most cities in the U.S. lack adequate affordable housing, emergency or transitional housing, or other social services for people who are either homeless or are in danger of losing their homes. "This was true before the current economic crisis and remains true today, particularly in areas that have cut social services due to budget concerns," Johnson said.

According to HUD, job losses and foreclosures helped push more than 170,000 families into homeless shelters in 2009, up nearly 30 percent from 2007. Of course, those are some of the same problems that have inspired people to protest.

Scott Olsen on Olbermann:

Establishment scared to death of #OWS, UN says U.S. not protecting civil rights

2011-12-02T17:47:00.001-05:00

A quote then an article:

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Huffpost: U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn't Protecting Occupy Protesters' Rights

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."

"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.

Ann Coulter: Kent State response would take care of #OWS

2011-11-30T15:27:00.001-05:00

You stay classy Ann Coulter:

Occupy economics

2011-11-30T15:23:00.001-05:00

A wonderful message from some economists on The Occupy Wallstreet Movement:

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

Pepperspray creator says use at UC Davis shocking and bewildered by use

2011-11-29T22:33:00.001-05:00

DemocracyNow:

People, police power in this county is out of control, woman strip searched unlawfully

2011-11-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

Older story, trying to dig up the newest details.

British racists remind us idiot bigots are everywhere

2011-11-27T23:10:00.001-05:00

Taibbi on the UC Davis macing:

2011-11-22T16:42:00.001-05:00

Awesome piece, love the wrap up:

Taibbi Blog:

Was absolutely mesmerized last night watching the viral video of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying. It was totally amazing, simultaneously one of depressing and inspiring things I’ve seen in many years.

To recap for those who haven’t seen it: police in paramilitary gear line up in front of a group of Occupy protesters peacefully blocking a road. Completely unprovoked, they decide to douse the whole group of sitting protesters with pepper spray. There is crying and chaos and panic, but the wheezing protesters sit resolutely in place and refuse to move despite the assault.

Finally, in what to me was the most amazing part, the protesters gather together and move forward shouting “Shame On You! Shame On You!” over and over again, and you can literally see the painful truth of those words cutting the resolve of the policemen and forcing them backwards.

Glenn Greenwald’s post at Salon says this far better than I can, but I think there are undeniable conclusions one can draw from this incident. The main thing is that the frenzied dissolution of due process and individual rights that took place under George Bush’s watch, and continued uncorrected even when supposed liberal constitutional lawyer Barack Obama took office, has now come full circle and become an important element to the newer political controversy involving domestic corruption and economic injustice.

As Glenn points out, when we militarized our society in response to the global terrorist threat, we created a new psychological atmosphere in which the use of force and military technology became a favored method for dealing with dissent of any kind. As Glenn writes:

The U.S. Government — in the name of Terrorism — has aggressively para-militarized the nation’s domestic police forces by lavishing them with countless military-style weapons and other war-like technologies, training them in war-zone military tactics, and generally imposing a war mentality on them. Arming domestic police forces with para-military weaponry will ensure their systematic use even in the absence of a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil… It’s a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one’s fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters.

SKIP TO THE BOTTOM, ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:

It was bad enough when we made police defend the use of torture and extrajudicial detention; now they’re being asked to defend mass theft, Lloyd Blankfein’s bailout-paid bonus, the principle of Angelo Mozilo not doing jail time.

How strong can anyone defending those causes be? These people are weak and pathetic, and they’re getting weaker. And boy, are they showing it. Way to gear up with combat helmets and the submachine guns, fellas, to take on a bunch of co-eds sitting Indian-style. Maybe after work you can go break up a game of Duck-Duck-Goose at the local Chuck E Cheese. I’d bring the APC for that one.

Bravo to those kids who hung in there and took it. And bravo for standing up and showing everyone what real strength is. There is no strength without principle. You have it. They lost it. It’s as simple as that.

UC Davis Chancellor Katehi, a walk of silence

2011-11-21T16:01:00.001-05:00

The silence is deafening:Unless you've been living under a rock, this was in response to a horrendous macing done to UC Davis students on Friday November 18th:Keep the faith people:

Drawing lines in the sand and identifying enemies

2011-11-19T21:15:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The memo:

To all 99%er's from Kelly Flood:

2011-11-19T14:13:00.001-05:00

Surprise, Homeland Security Coordinates #OWS Crackdowns

2011-11-16T14:41:00.001-05:00

UPDATE:

This is unverified. From Salon:

~~Well, big surprise kids:~~

~~Wonkette:~~

Remember when people were freaking out over the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and all this other conveniently ready-to-go post-9/11 police state stuff, because it would obviously be just a matter of time before the whole apparatus was turned against non-Muslim Americans when they started getting complain-y about the social injustice and economic injustice and income inequality and endless recession and permanent unemployment? That day is now, and has been for some time. But it’s also now confirmed that it’s now, as some Justice Department official screwed up and admitted that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated the riot-cop raids on a dozen major #Occupy Wall Street demonstration camps nationwide yesterday and today. (Oh, and tonight, too: Seattle is being busted up by the riot copsright now, so be careful out there.)

~~Rick Ellis of the Minneapolis edition of Examiner.com has this, based on a “background conversation” he had with a Justice Department official on Monday night:~~

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.
~~[...]~~
According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

~~Read the rest here:~~

Hitler finds out about Perry fumbling the debate

2011-11-13T15:14:00.001-05:00

lol, these never get old...

Here's Hitler finding out there's no Santa Clause:

Election day, Kentucky

2011-11-08T12:40:00.000-05:00

Get out and vote.

Invest in Kentucky so say #OccupyLexKY Video of the press conference

2011-11-05T19:09:00.000-04:00

Well look at this nifty little website #OccupyLexKY has. Turns out you can sign a petition to pull the Commonwealth's money out of Chase bank and instead have it put into a Kentucky bank, what a neat idea! Keep Kentucky's money in Kentucky!

Anyhow, here's the awesome crowd we drew in:

And here's the statement:

Q and A:

Paul Krugman offers an analysis that ain't peachy

2011-11-05T16:01:00.001-04:00

This blogger has been using the term Oligarchy for quite a while:

NYT:

Oligarchy, American Style

Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!

Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that’s a vision increasingly at odds with reality.

In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we’re still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well.

It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.

Workers with college degrees have indeed, on average, done better than workers without, and the gap has generally widened over time. But highly educated Americans have by no means been immune to income stagnation and growing economic insecurity. Wage gains for most college-educated workers have been unimpressive (and nonexistent since 2000), while even the well-educated can no longer count on getting jobs with good benefits. In particular, these days workers with a college degree but no further degrees are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.

So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority.

The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.

If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent — the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.

Who’s in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they’re corporate executives. Recent research shows that around 60 percent of the top 0.1 percent either are executives in nonfinancial companies or make their money in finance, i.e., Wall Street broadly defined. Add in lawyers and people in real estate, and we’re talking about more than 70 percent of the lucky one-thousandth.

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?
Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.

New video of #OccupyLexKY and some of #OccupyLou

2011-11-05T15:03:00.001-04:00

I've been behind throwing these guys up so here we go:

Occupy Lexington 10/26/11:

Occupy Lexington 10/27/11:

Occupy Lexington 10/27/11:

Occupy Louisville 10/29/11:

Occupy Lexington 10/31/11:

Occupy Lexington 11/01/11:

Occupy Lexington 11/02/11:

MORE VIDEO UPDATE:

Occupy Lexington 11/03/11:

Occupy Lexington 11/04/11:

Wow... Just wow from the Oakland PD

2011-11-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

Open letter to their citizens:

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF OAKLAND FROM THE OAKLAND POLICE OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION

1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

All of these mixed messages are confusing.

We love Oakland and just want to do our jobs to protect Oakland residents. We respectfully ask the citizens of Oakland to join us in demanding that our City officials, including Mayor Quan, make sound decisions and take responsibility for these decisions. Oakland is struggling – we need real leaders NOW who will step up and lead – not send mixed messages. Thank you for listening.

Steve Shaw's latest: Optimistic on ‘Occupy’

2011-11-02T14:29:00.000-04:00

Leo:

“This thing has got more heart and energy than anything I’ve witnessed in my life,” said Stephen Shepard, the Occupy Lexington spitfire who accompanied me to its Louisville counterpart on two sunny, breezy afternoons last weekend.

“It came out of nowhere, and it’s caught on like wildfire. It’s gonna force change — it’s got to — it already has,” he added, citing President Barack Obama’s plan to relieve federal student loan debt, which is fast approaching $1 trillion.

After a month downtown, Occupy Louisville, the local collective of an unprecedented global, grassroots, nonviolent revolution, is thriving. Despite a recent cold snap, the close-knit group of citizens remains committed to its around-the-clock vigil in Jefferson Square Park, a small venue at Sixth and Jefferson between the PNC Bank skyscraper and the Hall of Justice.

The serenity belies a mighty sense of excitement among folks from all walks of life — college students, single mothers, middle-aged men — mostly unemployed or underemployed — struggling and raging against the machine of corporate greed that has dismantled the American Dream.

Their passion was palpable as we strolled past jack-o-lanterns bearing 999 — shorthand for the discredited tax reform policy of GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, no favorite of the occupiers after his infamous quote: “Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”

Beyond the pumpkins and signs, indignation rang: “If you went into medicine to make money, you should not be allowed to fucking touch human beings” … “Access to health care is an issue of human dignity” … “Education is a basic human right.”

The movement is a smorgasbord of issues devoured, like sliders, among a citizenry as diverse as a White Castle. The magic is that there’s no hierarchy — everyone is equal, regardless of socioeconomic status — all opinions are welcome, and consensus is built through painstaking, daily meetings among all who wish to participate.

Karl Zollner, 42, a Bellarmine University graduate who describes himself as unemployable, wants “people to experience what it means to really participate in the decision-making that affects them and to get horribly pissed off when they go back into the real world where they don’t have that voice.”

Absent the tech revolution, it wouldn’t be possible. “What’s happening here is face-to-face — and that’s where it counts,” he said. “But without the Internet — Twitter and Facebook — none of this would have ever happened.”

The web interconnects movements, allowing occupiers nationwide to cooperate, share ideas, resources and collectively experience the history they’re making. Crises such as overzealous police actions in Oakland, Denver or Nashville — where former LEO staff writer Jonathan Meador was arrested while reporting for the Nashville Scene — invigorate and unify occupiers.

Local demonstrators feel solidarity with law enforcers, to whom they report suspicious activity. “The police out here have been great; they’ve beenawesome,” said John Crabtree, 24, who works with an outreach sub-group.

A strict policy against violence and illicit substances reflects a top priority: a safe, sober space. “This a public place, and the courthouse is right there,” said 23-year-old Jax Rhapsody, who works on security. “You don’t wanna see somebody walkin’ around with a 40-ounce in a bag.”

The melting pot continues to provide a roiling course in social work for everyone immersed. Prominent among the lessons: foreclosures and layoffs have given homelessness a more middle-class complexion — and earned its veterans a holy reverence among newcomers.

Occupy is focusing unprecedented national attention on the plight of the homeless and, according to Zollner, “exposing the insane and inane ordinances that have been passed … that criminalize every aspect of being homeless.”

It’s one of the collateral benefits of a movement that originally sought merely to start a conversation.

History has taught us not to underestimate the power of the smart, hopeful, engaged and enraged. History will prove this movement ironically similar to the banks that inspired it: too big to fail.

Meanwhile, Crabtree, a U of L junior who works full time and sleeps too seldom, is energized: “I’m so much more passionate about living — to be a part of something that has such meaning and purpose.”

Nothing to see here people, STOP LOOKING!

2011-10-27T13:41:00.001-04:00

2 more reasons you should totally avoid corporately owned media:

Global warming found to be correct, news media talks about McRib sandwich:

After Oakland cops almost kill Marine Iraq war vet, Washington Post shows cops playing with abandoned kittens (I kid you not):

Wow, this #OWS video is simply incredible...

2011-10-25T16:04:00.001-04:00

So... Lexington Kentucky has a militia, and they're posting on the OWS page

2011-10-24T23:46:00.000-04:00

Interesting, these people seem to be confused as to where they are. Let's go ahead and post their entire friends list:

Their website:

And my opinion on a national/state "militia":

#OccupyLexKY Updates

2011-10-24T15:14:00.000-04:00

10/20/11:

10/22/11:

#Occupy 10/19/11

2011-10-21T00:26:00.001-04:00

I've been running a little behind with editing and piecing these guys together, but here's the footage from 10/29/11:

Awesome "push poll" says Beshear is son of Satan

2011-10-19T15:08:00.000-04:00

Well, maybe not but, Sonka had a good analysis:

Leo Fat Lip:

Republicans send out a fun push poll on Kentucky races

Tom Whalen from Kenton County received this phone call “survey” last night, was able to record a good portion of it, and sent it our way:

Also, Steve Beshear once threw a stick of dynamite into a bus of full of schoolchildren, and David Williams is a World War II vet that killed Adolph Hitler. Does this information make you more likely to vote for Steve Beshear or David Williams?

Yeah… so don’t be surprised if you see a certain campaign release a certain “internal poll” showing a certain candidate jumping back into contention, as opposed to being 31 percent behind.
American Democracy: still awesome.

Good catch, Joe. But I think Beshear would rather burn them to death:

Get ready for another good ol' fashion bailout request people! Europe is burning!

2011-10-19T14:58:00.000-04:00

Maybe this time, those of us on the right and left will finally say NO!

Bloomberg:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by acredit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from itsMerrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits,according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.disagree over the transfers, which are being requested bycounterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymousbecause they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed hassignaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief tothe bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have topay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting,said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval isneeded, said people with knowledge of its position.

Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggestU.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC-insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-bankingoperations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailoutduring the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits asof midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

“The concern is that there is always an enormoustemptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” saidWilliam Black, professor of economics and law at the Universityof Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We shouldhave fairly tight restrictions on that.”

A little bit of non-lefty analysis?

DailyBail:

This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

#OccupyLexKY's sign reaches #OWS

2011-10-19T09:19:00.001-04:00

From Rep. Kelly Flood: "This wonderful woman named Amber is who we handed over the Lex poster to. She's from from MN and had been at OWS for 26 days. She took our Lex poster and said she'd bring it to the larger group later when they met. We caught her as she and others were cleaning up since the next morning there was the news that Zuccotti Square would need to be "cleaned" up... but that decision was changed."

Here are the pictures from the day that Rep. Kelly Flood joined us so we could create a message and sign the board:

Morgan "Wilkins" Hancock was the Worst Person In World to work in progress

2011-10-19T09:07:00.002-04:00

Recovering politician:

“Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day”

“Affirmative Action Bake Sale”

“Fun-with-Guns Day”

These are only three examples of the many controversial events I hosted during my years as a College Republican.

At the time, I was proud of these events. Looking back, however, I realize they were merely embarrassments, inching me closer to rock bottom and my current journey as a Recovering College Republican.

The College Republican National Committee (CRNC) is the largest and longest-running political youth organization in the United States. It has produced many prominent Republicans such as Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Rick Santorum, Jack Abramoff, and − believe it or not− Hillary Clinton, who was president of her College Republican chapter at Wellesley College.

To the outside observer, College Republicans may simply seem like a group of nerdy fuddy-duddies in polos and pearl necklaces. Yet, for those of us who participated in the CRNC, it provided a setting that nurtured our dreams of becoming future governors, senators, or political consultants. While most college kids were out drinking alcohol and making bad decisions, we were refilling our coffee cups and finishing those last few crucial hours of “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV).

It was spring 2006 when I first sighted the online advertisement: “Now accepting applications for fall 2006 College Republican National Committee (CRNC) Field Representatives. Click here for more information.” Without hesitating, I clicked the ad.

From this day forward, I was a self-proclaimed, dyed-in-the-wool Republican; a bona fide gun-toting, flag-waving, God-fearing Conservative who wanted nothing more than for the government to stay out of my business and my pocketbook (and I still do!). I truly believed this Field Representative position would be the perfect opportunity for me to, as the CRNC slogan urges, “make a difference.”

It was only a matter of days after I submitted my application that I was contacted by the CRNC National Field Director. She asked me a couple generic questions, such as, “How do you feel about taxes?” and “What do you think about Saddam Hussein?” I assured her that I wasn’t fond of either and, without further ado, I was hired.

That August, I boarded a plane to Washington, DC, to embark on my training as a CRNC Field Representative. I spent weeks learning how to create a “mass base youth effort,” as Chairman Paul Gourley described it. By the end of my training, I was pumped up and raring to go.

I was deployed to the state of Michigan to spend the fall semester winning the hearts and minds of Michigan 20-somethings over to the Republican cause. During 2006, Michigan was particularly politically vivacious. In addition to the national federal elections, Michigan also had a highly contested gubernatorial race taking place.
I wasted no time getting to work.

My time as a College Republican brought some amazing moments and some shameful ones as well. I got to meet many influential names in politics, including Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Maiden herself.

While working for The Leadership Institute in Washington, DC, I received valuable training from the country’s top conservative activists such as Grover Norquist and Morton Blackwell. I even got to spend several weekends at Russell Kirk’s, the Father of Conservatism, home in Michigan.

Yet, on several occasions, I found myself catering to groups I’m not proud of and saying things I regret. I even secured my spot as Keith Olberman’s “Worst Person in the World.”

The deeper I journeyed into the College Republican world, I found myself losing touch with reality. Upon returning home from my travels, I was appointed Executive Director of Kentucky Federation of College Republicans. I started surrounding myself with people and organizations that only enabled and encouraged my rash behavior. Instead of articulating my conservative beliefs in an intelligent, thoughtful manner, I sought cheap thrills and would say or do things for shock value’s sake – and it worked. I always had a crowd cheering me on. I had a problem, but had not yet reached the first step to recovery: admitting the problem.

I joined the Army in 2007, and my six months in boot camp gave me a chance to clear my head and examine my beliefs. However, upon returning home, I reverted back to the same old crowd and same old habits. After graduating from Indiana University Southeast last spring, I was accepted into the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. My visions of being the next Anne Coulter or Michelle Malkin only became more vivid with that acceptance letter in hand.

Feeling invincible, I upped my game. My political rhetoric became more hateful, more disrespectful, and more off-color and, all the while, my “followers” cheered me on. My discourse concerning illegal immigration, affirmative action, and gay rights turned from rational and thoughtful to mocking, sarcastic, and racist. I was losing sight of why I had become involved in public policy and law in the first place. I was working to gain attention for myself instead of making a positive difference.

I did not realize how bad things had gotten until some old friends intervened. They told me that they love me, and because of that, wanted me to be aware that I was headed down the wrong path, both personally and politically. They told me that my words were hurtful, callous, and consequently, ineffective. They urged me to look deep inside myself and examine the motive behind these words and actions. So I did.

Upon examination, I discovered that I’d become a sensationalist who had replaced true conservative convictions with clichés and hateful sarcasm. This shameful reality was embarrassing. I knew that I had started on this journey with good intentions, but now realized that somewhere along the road, I had lost my way.

Since that intervention and introspection, I now ask myself before I speak: Do I really believe these words? Will they help? Will they make a positive difference? Or is this simply another attempt to gain 50 Facebook “Likes”?

Today, my reasons for being a conservative are well-researched, well-thought-out, and genuine. Thus, I am disheartened when the media, liberals, and uninformed citizens reduce conservatism to greed, racism, and religious fascism. I am even more disheartened to think that I was personally feeding into those stereotypes.

Most Americans are ignorant to what true conservatism is because today’s GOP leaders and pundits have distorted its meaning with their hypocrisy, hateful rhetoric, and the desire to make a point rather than make a difference. True conservatism is rooted in the love and respect of individuality, opportunity, responsibility, and most of all, freedom.

As a law student, mother, wife, and recovering College Republican, I am excited about my future. As I make the transition from College Republican to grown-up Republican, I am determined to stay honest, respectful, thoughtful, and mature. Old habits may be hard to break, but as an alcoholic overcomes alcoholism, I’ll recover from College Republicanism one day at a time.

I have realized that societal change begins with me, the individual. If I hope to see more civility in political discourse today, I must be more civil myself — keeping in mind that respecting others’ opinions doesn’t mean being untrue to my own. I must apply a rigid standard of morality to my life; and if, periodically, I fail, as I surely will, adjust my life, not the standards.

Steve Shaw points out a literary treasure in our sister city, Louisville

2011-10-19T00:05:00.000-04:00

Don't Call Me Surely:

Contest also-ran(t)

I greeted my invitation to the LEO Readers’ Choice party with skepticism. A personalized note said, “All those with whom you’ve been intimate will be there.” I was suspicious until I noticed it would be held at the Ice House, a venue possibly large enough to accommodate my posse.

Two weeks ago, when the winners were published and I was not among them, I might have felt like the personification of America in decline. Last year, I was named second-best feature writer after only one cover story. Naturally, I felt entitled to another undue triumph. But I was nowhere on the radar, not even among the five best local news writers. Not even after I wrote, “Aroused by Jewish New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s sexting boner, Southern Baptist exclusionary guru Al Mohler milked it for all it was worth.”

Even before the big reveal, the contest was controversial. Many groused that it once again allowed competitors, their families, colleagues and Facebook friends to cast a ballot daily.

Imagine their surprise when some of them won.

But, alas, the also-rans shouldn’t feel robbed — it’s no Fourth Estate secret that in at least some cases, this is a popularity contest.

Cheers to the winners, many of whom no doubt campaigned heavily and voted daily. Muchos kudos to the victors who voted once and exhorted none of their allies to vote early and often.

I’m proud to rank among the class of reporters and columnists who didn’t win: Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer Tom Loftus, Deb Yetter, Marcus Green, Ralph Dunlop, Andy Wolfson and Pam Platt — all of The Courier-Journal; Cary Stemle, contributor to Time, Louisville Magazine and this publication; LEO Weekly’s Joe Sonka and Jim Welp, a master columnist who makes us whinny and weep before thoughts and emotions congeal at the end — and beginning — of a perfect, 750-word circle.

The fact that so many of this city’s award-winning icons and institutions never win doesn’t embarrass me. Rather, it defines an embarrassment of riches in a great place to read, feast, frolic — and have emergency bypass surgery.

That’s not to say I didn’t cringe a little at the category of “Best Laid-Off Gannett Employee.” A letter-writer decried it as tasteless. I agreed, so I filed a request to change it to “Best Laid Gannett Employee.” Maybe next year.

Neither that foul nor the larger travesty kept me away from our annual party to celebrate the Readers’ Choice winners and also, this year, to recognize LEO’s 21st birthday. My cardiologist begged me not to go. If the allure of ice cream and cheeses proved irresistible, I explained, I would simply pop an extra Lipitor. “Are you having sexual side effects from your blood pressure meds?” he asked. “Nope, still no libido,” I replied before he released me to re-live my 21st birthday party almost three decades hence.

The 1920s gangster theme would allow me to feel young again. A fedora covered my bald spot, baggy pants and a white coat concealed my diaper — and I packed a .357 magnum in my pocket.

If only I could find my dentures, I might get lucky.

I arrived late and was subjected to indignity of being asked who I am. In defense of the help, I sounded like Tom Waits with a hangover and looked almost as broken.

As I ran a gauntlet of autograph-seekers who mistook me for Andy Rooney, I borrowed his bark, “What kind of idiot wants my signature on a piece of paper?”

I called out the few who recognized me: “I don’t need your sympathy!”

I looked so scary that when Dawne Gee said she couldn’t go to sleep without a horror movie, I thought she was hitting on me. She gave me her autograph on request but, alas, not her number.

As I bellied up to the bar to drown my sorrows, I stepped over that crude Sara “Bar Belle” Havens and said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

The swarm of hungry, horny guests wearing too few or too many clothes reminded me of LEO, its staff and founders: witty, urbane, sophisticated, eccentric, observant and thoughtful.

Cheers to 21 more years of stalwart, spirited writing of, by and for precious community assets who make winners of us all.

Michael Moore-Al Sharpton on OWS

2011-10-18T22:48:00.002-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The latest #OccupyLexington #OccupyLexKy footage

2011-10-18T22:40:00.000-04:00

I've been a couple of day's behind. But here they are with the correct dates:

10/13/11:

10/15/11:

10/18/11:

Paul Krugman: Wallstreet "Losing Their Immunity"

2011-10-17T17:31:00.000-04:00

NYT:

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?

The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.

All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation — and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion.

Then came the crisis, which proved that all those claims about how modern finance had reduced risk and made the system more stable were utter nonsense. Government bailouts were all that saved us from a financial meltdown as bad as or worse than the one that caused the Great Depression.

And what about the current situation? Wall Street pay has rebounded even as ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wages. Yet it’s harder than ever to see what, if anything, financiers are doing to earn that money.

Why, then, does Wall Street expect anyone to take its whining seriously? That money manager claiming that finance is the only thing America does well also complained that New York’s two Democratic senators aren’t on his side, declaring that “They need to understand who their constituency is.” Actually, they surely know very well who their constituency is — and even in New York, 16 out of 17 workers are employed by nonfinancial industries.

But he wasn’t really talking about voters, of course. He was talking about the one thing Wall Street still has plenty of thanks to those bailouts, despite its total loss of credibility: money.

Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.

You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.

Marine to NYPD "No honor in this"

2011-10-17T16:12:00.003-04:00

An incredible moment of truth on MSNBC

2011-10-16T15:00:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman: Panic of the Plutocrats

2011-10-15T15:40:00.000-04:00

Let's pray it sticks...

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“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyes reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” -Theodore Parker, 1853

NYT: Panic of the Plutocrats

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

Another perspective on the Funeral of the American economy/dream

2011-10-15T13:51:00.002-04:00

Hillbilly's coverage of the #Occupy Louisville march

2011-10-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

Great catch by Jim:

Taibbi's advice to OWS:

2011-10-14T11:35:00.001-04:00

Rolling Stone:

I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.

No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant.

I am not moving

2011-10-14T10:41:00.003-04:00

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,” -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Great piece by MoveOn:

Jim Pence... Is in a hell of a bind...

2011-10-11T21:38:00.001-04:00

Picture of the day

2011-10-11T20:57:00.001-04:00

#OccupyLexKY Day 11

2011-10-11T20:50:00.001-04:00