Bank Reform Bills Headed For Rough Sledding

The Obama banking reform bill is one you would have thought the tea baggers would be for, but Republicans who have looked at the bill don’t like it. They say it will “institutionalize” the notion of the bank bail out and that this bill sets up an apparatus where aid can continue to be given, although the bill espressly states that “Too Big to Fail” will no longer be allowed. There have been various “reforms” talked about in the news but a lot of them are what I’d call frivolous and don’t get to the meat of the problem. The meat of the problem is undoing what President Clinton did in the closing months of his second term, such as wiping out glass-steigel and the allowing of derivatives and turning the banking community into a gambling casino - - and not keeping depositors’ funds safe from that sort of thing. There are things such as margin requirements and the restoration of that stock traders tax we talked about, which would help matters. Of course you know what happened with Goldman Sachs last Friday where employees were betting on their own investments to fail, and some would say “based on a lot more than a hunch”. Some might say the charges are akin to throwing a boxing match. I don’t think it’s quite that clear myself. The news media needs to dedicate a little more time to explain some of these complicated issues to the public.

Now the library of congress or whoever is going to collect every “twitter” that has ever been sent as part of some historic archive. Personally I don’t see why “tweets” are limited to 140 characters. You can’t say very much in that length of time. Why not preserve one of my blogs instead to be looked at a hundred years from now. I delve into areas such as science, religion, and politics in a heck of a lot more detail than you can ever do in 140 characters. Every time I think of doing that period in my life from June of 1985 through the early weeks of 1987 I can’t help but thinking that my life, even the more interesting parts of it- - is boring compared to the lives of others, who have accomplished great things, and often overcoming great odds. How can I compete with that? Also there is the credibility factor where I have already distorted a few “facts” about my life in terms of chronology, and I’d thinking it would in general just be less “confusing” to the reader to let sleeping dogs lie, rather than force them to learn a whole other set of facts, or at best major variations. The Blackberry is behind the times in terms of phones now compared to Android and the I phone and all of them. But if you are addicted to the “crack berry” you don’t want to give it up. Apple still despite all the talk of new software still hasn’t come out with the I phone 4 yet. Everybody is hoping that all the things it lacks such as multi tasking, will be corrected. Some are hoping you’ll be able to use it with carriers other than A T & T. Yet if Apple is anything they are bull headed. They fall behind in the PC race decades ago because they were so “proprietary”.

Former President Clinton issued a statesman like warning against hate speech and hate groups the other day. Back in the nineties he issued a similar warning, only back then I wasn’t listening because I was on the other side of the political fence in those days. But now I see the light. With all these guns people bring to political rallies and all of these gun shows where they don’t do any background checks, you know something dire is going to happen. It’s just a question of time. Rush Limbaugh in a rambling psychotic fit, said that if anything DID happen in terms of an assasenation, that it would all be on President Clinton’s head because he “set it up”. Rush Limbaugh is the ultimate in shooting the bearer of bad news. Rush Limbaugh’s grip on sanity appears non existent these days and with virtually every sentence he says something crazier than the sentence before. I listened to his “Thank you, President Obama” speech. Rush has always used sarcasum, but never has the sarcasum been employed in a more self delusional sense. If I were in an abnormal psyche class and a total stranger was reading the same script Rush used in some sort of a taped interview where you were supposed to identify the mental illness- - I would say the speaker had a profound “disassociation” and also an utter inability to string two sentences together. Rush Limbaugh works himself up into these “fits” and doesn’t know the alarming impression he gives about himself to people whose brain cells still work. Personally I hope President Clinton continues to speak out. The former President is gifted in oratory and he’s known for his straight talking.

Kitty Kelly just released a biography on Oprah Winfrey. She calls it flattering but insightful. But Barbra Walters and Larry King have boycotted her giving in interview and Oprah will not be interviewed about the book. It’s called celebrities closing ranks behind their icon. A sociologist would find this noteworthy. But people are still going to buy the book. The trouble with Oprah is that she underestamates the intelligence of the book buying public. The point was made that Kitty Kelly has never had to retract one word she's ever written about anybody. There is a type of personality out there, that I am going to call the "Faith personality". Pastors and therapists have all of this baggage of dogma they carry with them everywhere, and through which they intemperate the world. If you were to do a biography on Dr. Levy certain things would become apparent. He is incredibly simplistic using logic that would in time come to bore a bright third grader. He's not as bad as Louis Monteith - yet, but give him time. He is also a rather shallow individual. People who refuse to have a back and forth discussion but instead deal in one liners and personal intimidation and vague innuendo and manipulations - don't have much respect from me. He brags how well he’s mapped out every hour in the day. But he won’t respect the fact that perhaps I have more background on a certain news story than he has. He’s one of those people who says “Well I never heard anything about that” and therefore it doesn’t exist. That’s pretty much the logic of this type of personality. This type of personality goes to great lengths to protect him or herself from the unfamiliar. What they basically are are psychic sleep-walkers. He and [two names withheld] praise my intellect to the skies on Christmas and yet Dr. Levy still has not run any of those three articles I sent him when he said he was willing to run anything I wanted to write. I don’t even know whether he has read them because the amount of feedback on all three articles has been zero, shades of Bill Halliday. I expect he’s read them but I might not be correct. I've said it before. If I were as smart as certain people claim I am I would have a six figure salary today. Were you to ask him as Kitty Kelly might “If you’re a Jew how do you deal with the problem that there is absolutely no historical evidence that the Jews were ever in Egypt or in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years, given that these are the foundation stones on which Judaism is built?” For Dr. Levy religion is a generic “Brand X” affair. I suspect he looks on religion much as people look upon their cars which they spend time polishing up and showing off to their friends, who do the same. They say “Look at mine” and you say “Yeah, but look at mine” both with a form of mutual respect knowing they basically are in the same “club”. In this case, it’s a religion club. (Selah)