Oprah Winfrey &

The Dumbing Down of America

Pension funds, insurance companies, unions and foreign institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs was making secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash, violating securities laws.

Obama's package to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for a new Wall Street boom.

The economic situation in the US reveals a huge, ever-increasing gap in wealth distribution. But don't be naive enough to believe that either of the two capitalist parties intends to do anything about it. 'Democracy' protects those with great wealth.

Hamid Karzai, who was first foisted on the Afghan people as their president in 2002 by the US-NATO war and occupation, has now agreed after heavy pressure from these same imperialist powers to a runoff election in ten days. What’s going on here?

The most-quoted sentence in financial journalism this year, by Matt Taibbi , describes Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Will capitalism adapt? Will it collapse? The lesson of capitalism itself is that nothing is permanent — ”all that is solid melts into air” as Marx put it. There are as many forces that undermine capitalism as there are forces that carry it forward.

The banks are responsible for the collapse of capitalism. The engine driving the US economy will seize up. It's a total disaster, a destiny we created. This has been the largest transfer or wealth to any financial/political elite in global history.

Between 10 and 15 bombings, suicide bombings or insurgent attacks take place each day in Iraq against government officials or security forces. Less spectacular than Sunday’s bombing, they're barely reported by the 'upbeat' western media.

The Goldman bonuses have become a symbol of excessive inequality in American society and a spur to equalizing measures. Their revelation has coincided with high and growing unemployment, underemployment and economic misery and anxiety in general.

There's a difference between class envy and class struggle. The former is rooted in the popular antipathy towards the rich on account of their wealth; the latter targets the capitalist system which makes some people rich by making most of us poor.

Homelessness is a damning indictment of the the American Dream. Poverty and destitution are systemic problems within capitalism. I isn't the result of moral failings. Most Americans are unable to realize that poverty is a result of exploitation.

Above all other criticisms of prostitution, this is the big one. Nothing makes people panic more than the idea that their daughter or sister or wife could be whisked away by masked foreigners and forced to fuck strangers for money in another country.

We are entering a new, more global era of state capture. US government credit has been handed over – rather meekly – over the past 12 months. America has been sold to a rapacious bunch of bankers whose greed may well destroy our social fabric.

Why should reducing social inequality be ruled out as a government goal? The spectacle of wall street speculators raking in incomes greater than those of a 1,000 or even 10,000 workers is a symptom of a deeply diseased and reactionary social order.

There is growing rage against bankers and their outsize bonuses. Far from diminishing with distance from the crash, the rage is becoming more intense, now that the Wall Street train is back on the rails with barely a drop of gravy being spilled.

The "golden" era of imperialism was the point at which the bourgeoisie, in pursuing great wealth, seized political power and made the protection of their interests the policies of the state, What we see today is the absolute triumph of that power. "

The Obama regime doesn't have the balls to go after the most outrageous salaries and bonuses that are about to flow. The bond traders at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley will get fat bonuses that derive from taxpayer welfare.

Unwilling to address the objective basis for the social and economic crisis and broach the only real alternative - socialism, the liberal media commentariat are panicking. They're reduced to making moral appeals to the banks and pleading with Obama.

Payback Time: Obama flew into New York City Tuesday to raise millions of dollars in campaign donations from America’s financial elite. He will probably clear at least $3 million, largely from a Manhattan bash with an entry fee of $30,400 per couple.

Goldman Sachs plans a near-record year for bonuses. A spokesman for the company defended the greed by claiming the spending helped boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,”

We must never again make the mistake of dismissing a dumb president. A stupid POTUS is feared and kept at bay. A smart one is welcomed into the hen house, even though he's really a fox. Obama has the smartness to make us believe the bullshit.

What with record Wall Street profits and the soaring stock market on one hand, and increasing unemployment, falling wages and growing social misery on the other, even got "Obama Progressives" anxious about the social and political implications.

Sarkozy?s bellicose call for action against Iran?s nuclear power installations has been greeted with surprise and satisfaction by the US media. It's part of a broader effort by French imperialism to extend its global military and geopolitical reach.

By next March, we will will hit the $1 trillion mark in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending with untold years of war-making to go. No problem. It's only the proposed nearly $900 billion for a decade of health care that we fear will do us in.

Growing numbers of Americans who lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters. Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless, but over the last year an average of 10% lost homes to foreclosure.