Senator Claire McCaskill this afternoon proposed a stunning bill that would limit Wall Street Execs who accept TARP funding to not making more than the president of the United States.

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January 30 2009 

Sen. Claire McCaskill has delivered a sharp threat to the wallets of corporate executives who took large compensation packages even as their companies accepted government bailout funds. Things, she warned, are going to change.

"I've been mad for a while," said the Missouri Democrat. "When we passed the initial half of the TARP money, [there were] rumors about bonuses, the fact that too many of these guys were holding onto the jobs even though they were running these companies into the ground. Reality didn't seem to be the order of the day."

So McCaskill took to the Senate floor on Friday to put an end to the surrealism. In a bill that came to the surprise of reporters, her colleagues, and the White House alike -- there was no coordination with the Obama administration, she said -- the Missouri Democrat called for compensation for employees of bailout recipients to be capped at $400,000 a year.

"They don't get it," McCaskill said on the floor. "These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses... What planet are these people on?"

In an interview with the Huffington Post, however, McCaskill didn't just take on corporate CEOs. She criticized some of the spending in the House stimulus package, saying that her fellow Democrats had been "over-anxious."

"Whether it is the National Endowment of the Arts or some of the STD funding or contraceptive funding, all we did was just tee up ammunition for the other side to tear this thing down," she said. "And I would like to think we are smarter than that. I'm hopeful on the Senate side we will be smarter than that."

McCaskill chalked up the mistakes to Democrats only just getting comfortable to life without a Republican president. "There has been such a starvation diet for some of these programs that the appropriators got a little over-anxious in the House. They probably did some things they shouldn't have."

McCaskill also made news predicting that "a few" Republican senators would support the Employee Free Choice Act, a labor community priority that has engendered heated debate between the two political parties. And she called on leadership in her party to vote on the legislation -- which would allow unions to organize more easily -- "sooner rather than later."

The rest of the article can be found at the Huffington Post.

FINALLY a politician with enough chutzpah to call out the execs and their bull and is willing to put those words into action!  Not only did Sen. McCaskill call out the execs but also House Democrats for their handling of the stimulus bill. 

You go girl!

Rush Limbaugh Is Hot Under the Collar

Rush Limbaugh is worried. His anxiety might have something to do with his precipitous weight gain. Also, his speech patterns are showing stress. The normal enthusiastic, even jovial, oom-pa-pa of the instrument has become labored, dogged.

It’s a hinge moment for the Limbaugh career. The advent of the Obama administration and the sweeping gains of the Democratic Party, together with the disorganization and enfeeblement of the Republican Party, could be an incredible opportunity for Rush. He could become the remaining voice of the right. On the other hand, he could be marginalized out of existence. If the economy trumps ideology, if Obama makes progress neutralizing the political wars, that’s bad news for Rush.

Right now Rush is being played. The Obama dinner with conservative columnists, shortly before his inauguration, was as much about excluding Rush as coddling the columnists. Not only did the conservatives fawn, but Rush fumed. It got under his skin. Indeed, the rumor that he might in fact be there (likely coming from the Obama camp), and then his evident lack of an invitation, highlighted the slight. He’s tried to make it out to be a political point ever since, but mostly he sounds like a guy who’s hurt he didn’t get invited to the hot party.

Then, there was the president’s throw-away line suggesting that Republican lawmakers, in the midst of the greatest modern financial crisis, were glued to their radios listening to Rush rather than hard at work. It was deft suggestion, not so much about ideology but about seriousness. Rush isn’t.

He’s out on a limb, Rush. His current themes are about Obama’s radicalism, which, with every day of the new administration, seems a less and less sellable image, and—say-again?—the new president’s racism. Obama’s the racist, you see, in one of those message inversions coded so as to speak to actual racists. (“Racism in  this country is the exclusive province of the left.”)

It’s an unaccustomed verbal flailing: “Most of these guys came alive in the Civil Rights battles of the Sixties…” (When Barack Obama was under seven). Obama is being forced on us by a left-wing, racist, homosexual conspiracy: “We’re being told we have to bend over and grab the ankles.”

The game the president is playing is to make a testy, easy-to-arouse, fun-to-rankle Rush come to stand for an odd-ball, tone-deaf, blowhard far right that the rest of the desperate-to-be-liked Republican Party will eagerly distance itself from (if Rush is trying to capitalize on the panty-waist demeanor of so many of his fellow Republicans, he’s also got to suspect that they’ll sell him out.)

Rush’s game is to try to stay in the game. To find some plausible way to characterize and ridicule the president, which will justify the $400 million what-were-they-thinking contract he signed with Clear Channel over the summer. The pressure is on.

Is Obama is playing Limbaugh?  I don't know but Rush's frustration is very apparent.  The popularity and influence he had during the Bush Administration is waning and he is scared.  To say that he wants Obama to fail is not making his image look any better because it means that he wants America to fail.

Anyway, Rush Limbaugh is all gripe with no solutions, a bottom-feeder digging deep into the well of the dark side of the American psyche, playing the strings of racism, hatred, fear and stupidity of those too ignorant to do their own research. His fans will continue to rally against the person that could possibly make their lives better. Yes, they're more than happy to give the lions share of the tax cuts to the top 1%. And they say liberals are feeding off the teat of the government while these fools sit back and whine and complain, yet offer nothing in the way of solutions. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. The days of such nonsense are gone.

From Think Progress

On Friday, when President Obama met with congressional leaders from both parties to discuss his economic recovery and reinvestment program, he told GOP leaders, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Asked for a response by National Review yesterday, Limbaugh said that Obama’s “plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters.” He added that passage of the stimulus bill would hurt Republicans electorally:

Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward. It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing “eternal” power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy.

Limbaugh’s argument echoes former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s recent claim that Obama’s stimulus plan “could create a major electoral advantage for Democrats at taxpayer expense.” “Creating 600,000 new jobs might help cement Virginia in the Democrat column, making it harder for Republicans to retake the White House,” said Blackwell.

Limbaugh is the type who would rather see the ship sink than see someone else pilot it. His unfair criticism of Obama as a socialist aren't helping confidence in economy, which helps Limbaugh fulfill his own prophecies of economic doom. He doesn't care about America nor does he care about his idiot fans who hang on his every word;  all he cares about is his own financial security and being right.

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

From The Guardian.uk

Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006
Only a couple of years ago the long-serving chairman of the Fed, a committed free marketeer who had steered the US economy through crises ranging from the 1987 stockmarket collapse through to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was lauded with star status, named the "oracle" and "the maestro". Now he is viewed as one of those most culpable for the crisis. He is blamed for allowing the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and lack of regulation in mortgage lending. He backed sub-prime lending and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose.

For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business, which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from $100tn in 2002 to more than $500tn five years later.

Billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffett might have been extremely worried about these complex products - Soros avoided them because he didn't "really understand how they work" and Buffett famously described them as "financial weapons of mass destruction" - but Greenspan did all he could to protect the market from what he believed was unnecessary regulation. In 2003 he told the Senate banking committee: "Derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so".

In recent months, however, he has admitted at least some of his long-held beliefs have turned out to be incorrect - not least that free markets would handle the risks involved, that too much regulation would damage Wall Street and that, ultimately, banks would always put the protection of their shareholders first.

He has described the current financial crisis as "the type ... that comes along only once in a century" and last autumn said the fact that the banks had played fast and loose with shareholders' equity had left him "in a state of shocked disbelief".

Politicians

Bill Clinton, former US president
Clinton shares at least some of the blame for the current financial chaos. He beefed up the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to force mortgage lenders to relax their rules to allow more socially disadvantaged borrowers to qualify for home loans.

In 1999 Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which ensured a complete separation between commercial banks, which accept deposits, and investment banks, which invest and take risks. The move prompted the era of the superbank and primed the sub-prime pump. The year before the repeal sub-prime loans were just 5% of all mortgage lending. By the time the credit crunch blew up it was approaching 30%.

Gordon Brown, prime minister
The British prime minister seems to have been completely dazzled by the movers and shakers in the Square Mile, putting the City's interests ahead of other parts of the economy, such as manufacturers. He backed "light touch" regulation and a low-tax regime for the thousands of non-domiciled foreign bankers working in London and for the private equity business.

George W Bush, former US president
President Clinton might have started the sub-prime ball rolling, but the Bush administration certainly did little to put the brakes on the vast amount of mortgage cash being lent to "Ninja" (No income, no job applicants) borrowers who could not afford them. Neither did he rein back Wall Street with regulation (although the government did pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron scandal).

Senator Phil Gramm
Former US senator from Texas, free market advocate with a PhD in economics who fought long and hard for financial deregulation. His work, encouraged by Bill Clinton's administration, allowed the explosive growth of derivatives, including credit swaps. In 2001 he told a Senate debate: "Some people look at sub-prime lending and see evil," he said. "I look at sub-prime lending and I see the American dream in action."

According to the New York Times, federal records show that from 1989 to 2002 he was the top recipient of campaign contributions from commercial banks and in the top five for donations from Wall Street. At an April 2000 Senate hearing after a visit to New York, he said: "When I am on Wall Street and I realise that that's the very nerve centre of American capitalism and I realise what capitalism has done for the working people of America, to me that's a holy place."

He eventually left Capitol Hill to work for UBS as an investment banker.

Wall Street/Bankers

Abi Cohen, Goldman Sachs chief US strategist
The "perpetual bull". Once rated one of the most powerful women in the US. But so wrong, so often. She failed to see previous share price crashes and was famous for her upwards forecasts. Replaced last March.

"Hank" Greenberg, AIG insurance group
Now aged 83, Hank - AKA Maurice - was the boss of AIG. He built the business into the world's biggest insurer. AIG had a vast business in credit default swaps and therefore a huge exposure to a residential mortgage crisis. When AIG's own credit-rating was cut, it faced a liquidity crisis and needed an $85bn (£47bn then) bail out from the US government to avoid collapse and avert the crisis its collapse would have caused. It later needed many more billions from the US treasury and the Fed, but that did not stop senior AIG executives taking themselves off for a few lavish trips, including a $444,000 golf and spa retreat in California and an $86,000 hunting expedition to England. "Have you heard of anything more outrageous?" said Elijah Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Maryland. "They were getting their manicures, their facials, pedicures, massages while the American people were footing the bill."

Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss
So highly respected, so admired and so clever - top of his 800-strong class at Harvard - but it was his strategy, adopted from the Bank of Scotland when it merged with Halifax, that got HBOS in the trouble it is now. Who would have thought that the mighty Halifax could be brought to its knees and teeter on the verge of nationalisation?

Sir Fred Goodwin, former RBS boss
Once one of Gordon Brown's favourite businessmen, now the prime minister says he is "angry" with the man dubbed "Fred the Shred" for his strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland, which has left the bank staring at a £28bn loss and 70% owned by the government. The losses will reflect vast lending to businesses that cannot repay and write-downs on acquisitions masterminded by Goodwin stretching back years.

Steve Crawshaw, former B&B boss
Once upon a time Bradford & Bingley was a rather boring building society, which used two men in bowler hats to signify their sensible and trustworthy approach. In 2004 the affable Crawshaw took over. He closed down B&B businesses, cut staff numbers by half and turned the B&B into a specialist in buy-to-let loans and self-certified mortgages - also called "liar loans" because applicants did not have to prove a regular income. The business broke down when the wholesale money market collapsed and B&B's borrowers fell quickly into debt. Crawshaw denied a rights issue was on its way weeks before he asked shareholders for £300m. Eventually, B&B had to be nationalised. Crawshaw, however, had left the bridge a few weeks earlier as a result of heart problems. He has a £1.8m pension pot.

Adam Applegarth, former Northern Rock boss
Applegarth had such big ambitions. But the business model just collapsed when the credit crunch hit. Luckily for Applegarth, he walked away with a wheelbarrow of cash to ease the pain of his failure, and spent the summer playing cricket.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin
Cioffi, pictured, and Tanninn were Bear Stearns bankers recently indicted for fraud over the collapse of two hedge funds last year, which was one of the triggers of the credit crunch. They are accused of lying to investors about the amount of money they were putting into sub-prime, and of quietly withdrawing their own funds when times got tough.

Lewis Ranieri
The "godfather" of mortgage finance, who pioneered mortgage-backed bonds in the 1980s and immortalised in Liar's Poker. Famous for saying that "mortgages are math", Ranieri created collateralised pools of mortgages. In 2004 Business Week ranked him alongside names such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as one of the greatest innovators of the past 75 years.

Ranieri did warn in 2006 of the risks from the breakneck growth of mortgage securitisation. Nevertheless, his Texas-based Franklin Bank Corp went bust in November due to the credit crunch.

Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products
Cassano ran the AIG team that sold credit default swaps in London, and in effect bankrupted the world's biggest insurance company, forcing the US government to stump up billions in aid. Cassano, who lives in a townhouse near Harrods in Knightsbridge, earned 30 cents for every dollar of profit his financial products generated - or about £280m. He was fired after the division lost $11bn, but stayed on as a $1m-a-month consultant. "It seems he single-handedly brought AIG to its knees," said John Sarbanes, a Democratic congressman.

Chuck Prince, former Citi boss
A lawyer by training, Prince had built Citi into the biggest bank in the world, with a sprawling structure that covered investment banking, high-street banking and wealthy management for the richest clients. When profits went into reverse in 2007, he insisted it was just a hiccup, but he was forced out after multibillion-dollar losses on sub-prime business started to surface. He received about $140m to ease his pain .

Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial
Known as "the orange one" for his luminous tan, Mozilo was the chairman and chief executive of the biggest American sub-prime mortgage lender, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America. BoA recently paid billions to settle investigations by various attorney generals for Countrywide's mis-selling of risky loans to thousands who could not afford them. The company ran a "VIP programme" that provided loans on favourable terms to influential figures including Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, the heads of the federal-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and former assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke.

Stan O'Neal, former boss of Merrill Lynch
O'Neill became one of the highest-profile casualties of the credit crunch when he lost the confidence of the bank's board in late 2007. When he was appointed to the top job four years earlier, O'Neal, the first African-American to run a Wall Street firm, had pledged to shed the bank's conservative image. Shortly before he quit, the bank admitted to nearly $8bn of exposure to bad debts, as bets in the property and credit markets turned sour. Merrill was forced into the arms of Bank of America less than a year later.

Jimmy Cayne, former Bear Stearns boss
The chairman of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns famously continued to play in a bridge tournament in Detroit even as the firm fell into crisis. Confidence in the bank evaporated after the collapse of two of its hedge funds and massive write-downs from losses related to the home loans industry. It was bought for a knock down price by JP Morgan Chase in March. Cayne sold his stake in the firm after the JP Morgan bid emerged, making $60m. Such was the anger directed towards Cayne that the US media reported that he had been forced to hire a bodyguard. A one-time scrap-iron salesman, Cayne joined Bear Stearns in 1969 and became one of the firm's top brokers, taking over as chief executive in 1993.

Others

Christopher Dodd, chairman, Senate banking committee (Democrat)
Consistently resisted efforts to tighten regulation on the mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He pushed to broaden their role to dodgier mortgages in an effort to help home ownership for the poor. Received $165,000 in donations from Fannie and Freddie from 1989 to 2008, more than anyone else in Congress.

Geir Haarde, Icelandic prime minister
He announced on Friday that he would step down and call an early election in May, after violent anti-government protests fuelled by his handling of the financial crisis. Last October Iceland's three biggest commercial banks collapsed under billions of dollars of debts. The country was forced to borrow $2.1bn from the International Monetary Fund and take loans from several European countries. Announcing his resignation, Haarde said he had throat cancer.

The American public
There's no escaping the fact: politicians might have teed up the financial system and failed to police it properly and Wall Street's greedy bankers might have got carried away with the riches they could generate, but if millions of Americans had just realised they were borrowing more than they could repay then we would not be in this mess. The British public got just as carried away. We are the credit junkies of Europe and many of our problems could easily have been avoided if we had been more sensible and just said no.

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England
When Mervyn King settled his feet under the desk in his Threadneedle Street office, the UK economy was motoring along just nicely: GDP was growing at 3% and inflation was just 1.3%. Chairing his first meeting of the Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC), interest rates were cut to a post-war low of 3.5%. His ambition was that monetary policy decision-making should become "boring".

How we would all like it to become boring now. When the crunch first took hold, the Aston Villa-supporting governor insisted it was not about to become an international crisis. In the first weeks of the crunch he refused to pump cash into the financial system and insisted that "moral hazard" meant that some banks should not be bailed out. The Treasury select committee has said King should have been "more pro-active".

King's MPC should have realised there was a housing bubble developing and taken action to damp it down and, more recently, the committee should have seen the recession coming and cut interest rates far faster than it did.

John Tiner, FSA chief executive, 2003-07
No one can fault 51-year-old Tiner's timing: the financial services expert took over as the City's chief regulator in 2003, just as the bear market which followed the dotcom crash came to an end, and stepped down from the Financial Services Authority in July 2007 - just a few weeks before the credit crunch took hold.

He presided over the FSA when the so-called "light touch" regulation was put in place. It was Tiner who agreed that banks could make up their own minds about how much capital they needed to hoard to cover their risks. And it was on his watch that Northern Rock got so carried away with the wholesale money markets and 130% mortgages. When the FSA finally got around to investigating its own part in the Rock's downfall, it was a catalogue of errors and omissions. In short, the FSA had been asleep at the wheel while Northern Rock racked up ever bigger risks.

An accountant by training, with a penchant for Porsches and proud owner of the personalised number plate T1NER, the former FSA boss has since been recruited by the financial entrepreneur Clive Cowdery to run a newly floated business that aims to buy up financial businesses laid low by the credit crunch. Tiner will be chief executive but, unusually, will not be on the board, so his pay and bonuses will not be made public.

Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers chief executive
The credit crunch had been rumbling on for more than a year but Lehman Brothers' collapse in September was to have a catastrophic impact on confidence. Richard Fuld, chief executive, later told Congress he was bewildered the US government had not saved the bank when it had helped secure Bear Stearns and the insurer AIG. He also blamed short-sellers. Bitter workers at Lehman pointed the finger at Fuld.

A former bond trader known as "the Gorilla", Fuld had been with Lehman for decades and steered it through tough times. But just before the bank went bust he had failed to secure a deal to sell a large stake to the Korea Development Bank and most likely prevent its collapse. Fuld encouraged risk-taking and Lehman was still investing heavily in property at the top of the market. Facing a grilling on Capitol Hill, he was asked whether it was fair that he earned $500m over eight years. He demurred; the figure, he said, was closer to $300m.

... and six more who saw it coming

Andrew Lahde
A hedge fund boss who quit the industry in October thanking "stupid" traders and "idiots" for making him rich. He made millions by betting against sub-prime.

John Paulson, hedge fund boss
He has been described as the "world's biggest winner" from the credit crunch, earning $3.7bn (£1.9bn) in 2007 by "shorting" the US mortgage market - betting that the housing bubble was about to burst. In an apparent response to criticism that he was profiting from misery, Paulson gave $15m to a charity aiding people fighting foreclosure.

Professor Nouriel Roubini
Described by the New York Times as Dr Doom, the economist from New York University was warning that financial crisis was on the way in 2006, when he told economists at the IMF that the US would face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, oil shock and a deep recession.

He remains a pessimist. He predicted last week that losses in the US financial system could hit $3.6tn before the credit crunch ends - which, he said, means the entire US banking system is in effect bankrupt. After last year's bail-outs and nationalisations, he famously described George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke as "a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America".

Warren Buffett, billionaire investor
Dubbed the Sage of Omaha, Buffett had long warned about the dangers of dodgy derivatives that no one understood and said often that Wall Street's finest were grossly overpaid. In his annual letter to shareholders in 2003, he compared complex derivative contracts to hell: "Easy to enter and almost impossible to exit." On an optimistic note, Buffett wrote in October that he had begun buying shares on the US stockmarket again, suggesting the worst of the credit crunch might be over. Now is a great time to "buy a slice of America's future at a marked-down price", he said.

George Soros, speculator
The billionaire financier, philanthropist and backer of the Democrats told an audience in Singapore in January 2006 that stockmarkets were at their peak, and that the US and global economies should brace themselves for a recession and a possible "hard landing". He also warned of "a gigantic real estate bubble" inflated by reckless lenders, encouraging homeowners to remortgage and offering interest-only deals. Earlier this year Soros described a 25-year "super bubble" that is bursting, blaming unfathomable financial instruments, deregulation and globalisation. He has since characterised the financial crisis as the worst since the Great Depression.

Stephen Eismann, hedge fund manager
An analyst and fund manager who tracked the sub-prime market from the early 1990s. "You have to understand," he says, "I did sub-prime first. I lived with the worst first. These guys lied to infinity. What I learned from that experience was that Wall Street didn't give a shit what it sold."

Meredith Whitney, Oppenheimer Securities
On 31 October 2007 the analyst forecast that Citigroup had to slash its dividend or face bankruptcy. A day later $370bn had been wiped off financial stocks on Wall Street. Within days the boss of Citigroup was out and the dividend had been slashed.

Kathleen Corbet, former CEO, Standard & Poor's
The credit-rating agencies were widely attacked for failing to warn of the risks posed by mortgage-backed securities. Kathleen Corbet ran the largest of the big three agencies, Standard & Poor's, and quit in August 2007, amid a hail of criticism. The agencies have been accused of acting as cheerleaders, assigning the top AAA rating to collateralised debt obligations, the often incomprehensible mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic. The industry argues it did its best with the information available.

Corbet said her decision to leave the agency had been "long planned" and denied that she had been put under any pressure to quit. She kept a relatively low profile and had been hired to run S&P in 2004 from the investment firm Alliance Capital Management.

Investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general among others have focused on whether the agencies are compromised by earning fees from the banks that issue the debt they rate. The reputation of the industry was savaged by a blistering report by the SEC that contained dozens of internal emails that suggested they had betrayed investors' trust. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," one unnamed S&P analyst wrote. In another, an S&P employee wrote:

"It could be structured by cows and we would rate it."

• Tomorrow in part three of the Road to Ruin series - The Barons of Bankruptcy - how going bust can be a profitable business

Steve Jobs

For the first time in a decade, I'm getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I've decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause--a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already begun treatment. But, just like I didn't lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple's CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Steve's real problem is that he suffering complications from pancreatic cancer so he is taking medical leave until June. 

Tim Cook

In his second letter, he tells his team that Tim Cook will be taking over until he comes back in June.

It has been rumored that Tim Cook has been quietly running Apple for years and Jobs is only the 'face' of company.  So if, God forbid, something 'permanent' ever happens to Jobs between now and June, Apple has nothing to worry about.

Bankrupt Circuit City Stores Inc., unable to work out a sale of the company, said Friday it will go out of business _ closing its 567 U.S. stores and cutting 30,000 jobs.

The nation's second-biggest consumer electronics retailer is the latest casualty of an unprecedented pullback in consumer spending that has driven other brands such as KB Toys, Mervyns LLC and Linens 'N Things into bankruptcy. Experts believe there will be more to come.

"This is the only possible path for our company," Circuit City's acting Chief Executive James A. Marcum said in a statement. "We are extremely disappointed by this outcome."

The company had been seeking a buyer or a deal to refinance its debt, but the hobbled credit market and consumer worries proved insurmountable. Negotiations for an acquisition went past midnight on Thursday, a Circuit City lawyer said in court.

Two buyers _ Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who controls a chain of electronics stores in Latin America, and the Golden Gate Capital private equity firm _ had been looking to buy the company in a shrunken form, with either 350 stores or as few as 180 stores. But the company couldn't secure the necessary financing or support from vendors.

Employees were being notified Friday that they would lose their jobs and, if a judge gives final approval to the liquidation, stores would begin the closing process as early as Saturday.

"Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders," Marcum said.

Shareholders are likely to receive nothing, as is typical in bankruptcy cases. Circuit City said in court papers it has appointed Great American Group LLC, Hudson Capital Partners LLC, SB Capital Group LLC and Tiger Capital Group LLC as liquidators. They provide for 70.5 percent return on merchandise.

The rest of the article is located at the Huffington Post.

I haven't shopped at Circuit City in years.   I have credit with Best Buy so I get what I need from there. 

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in order to avoid this military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating.

Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the victim. According to the respected Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land, Israel most notably used this policy of "strategic escalation" in 1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to provoke Egypt's President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent attacks that enabled Israel's virtual reoccupation of the West Bank.

Israel's current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of Israel's long history of employing "strategic escalation" to manufacture a major crisis, if not a war.

Making War 'Inevitable'

The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak started planning the current attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff at least six months ago — even as Israel was negotiating the Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas that went into effect on June 19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the report contends, the Israeli security establishment carefully gathered intelligence to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, engaged in operational deception, and spread disinformation to mislead the public about its intentions.

This revelation doesn't confirm that Israel intended to start a war with Hamas in December, but it does shed some light on why Israel continuously took steps that undermined the terms of the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected their side of the agreement.

Indeed, there was a genuine lull in rocket and mortar fire between June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas compliance and only sporadically violated by a small number of launchings carried out by rival Fatah and Islamic Jihad militants, largely in defiance of Hamas. According to the conservative Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center's analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008, there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no Israeli casualties.

Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank, arresting and frequently killing "wanted" Palestinians from June to October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire.

But Israel's most provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the critical turning point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on November 4, when Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by crossing into the Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a tunnel dug by Hamas, killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in the London Review of Books, contends this attack was "no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June."

The Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result, the UN reports that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been "severely reduced to an average of 16 truckloads per day — down from 123 truckloads per day in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 — before the Hamas takeover." These limited shipments provide only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving Palestinians.

In response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the truce and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas gunmen in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with volleys of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks, Israel killed over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli casualties the calm had been shattered.

It was at this time that Israeli officials launched what appears to have been a coordinated media blitz to cultivate public reception for an impending conflict, stressing the theme of the "inevitability" of a coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On November 12, senior IDF officials announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months after the six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if Hamas wasn't interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders to draw up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed at the time. On November 19, according to Raviv's report in Haaretz, the Gaza war plan was brought before Barak for final approval.

While the rhetoric of an "inevitable" war with Hamas may have only been Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the ground in the critical month leading up to the official expiration of the ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence, leaving a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war.

The Rationale for War

If Israel's goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians, it would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed Hamas' longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to rocket-fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling 18-month siege on Gaza.

Instead, the actual targets of its assault on Gaza after December 27, which included police stations, mosques, universities, and Hamas government institutions, clearly reveal that Israel's primary goals go far beyond providing immediate security for its citizens. Israeli spokespersons repeatedly claim that Israel's assault isn't about seeking to effect regime change with Hamas, but rather about creating a "new security reality" in Gaza. But that "new reality" requires Israel to use massive violence to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas, to a point where it agrees to a ceasefire with conditions more congenial to Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation of Gaza, no amount of violence will erase Hamas from the scene.

An Uncertain Ending

As the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it's important to consider Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz's contention that Israel's history of manufacturing wars through "strategic escalation" and using overwhelming force to achieve "deterrence" has never been successful. In fact, it's the primary cause of Israel's insecurity because it deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear.

At the same time, there's no question Hamas continues to callously sacrifice its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli civilians, on the altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance credentials and its myopic preoccupation with revenge, and fell into many self-made traps of its own. There had been growing international pressure on Israel to ease its siege and a major increase in creative and nonviolent strategies drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians such as the arrival of humanitarian relief convoys off of Gaza's coast in the past months, but now Gaza lies in ruins.

the most promising prospect for holding Israel accountable is through the increasing use of universal jurisdiction for prosecuting war crimes, along with the growing transnational movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. In what would be truly be a new style of foreign policy, a transnational network that focuses on Israeli violations of international law, rather than the state itself, could become a counterweight that forces policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Israel to reconsider their political and moral complicity in the current war, in favor of taking real steps towards peace and security in the region for all peoples.

Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israel's military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.

You can read the article in it's entirety at Foreign Policy in Focus.

Congressman Charles Rangel

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Jan 15th, 2009

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has said that he will most likely reintroduce legislation to reinstate the universal military draft this year.

Asked if he plans to introduce the legislation again in 2009, Rangel last week said, “Probably … yes. I don’t want to do anything this early to distract from the issue of the economic stimulus.” according to an article featured in The Hill yesterday.

Rangel will therefore once again push the idea that everyone in America should be forced by law to work for the government for at least two years, either for no pay or for minimal pay.

Rangel last introduced the bill in 2006 immediately after the Democrats won control of Congress. The bill attracted virtually no support and was passed off as merely a “political statement” regarding the Iraq war by leading Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi.

However, Rangel has previously lauded the reality of a military draft, saying that it would bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

Rangel has consistently pushed for legislation on conscription in the past.

In 2003, he proposed a measure covering people age 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42; it went nowhere in the Republican-led Congress.

We have previously pointed out how Rangel’s insistent efforts to keep this issue in the body politic is allied to an underlying framework that provides for a rapid and extensive implementation of conscription, be it on the continent or within the 4th Reich of America in the form of Homeland Security Gestapo squads.

The issue came to the fore recently with newly discovered details regarding Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama’s plans for compulsory community service and a “national civilian security force”.

The NY electorate need to wake up.  Rangel, who represents a predominantly African American district wants to send their children to war. 

Forget about his race, he needs to sent into retirement.

I hope our next president enjoyed his family vacation in Hawaii. I hope he slept in, caught some waves with his daughters, and partied like a rock star with his wife Michelle. Because as soon as this dude lands in Washington, it's ova!

Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet and he's being pushed and pulled in all the different directions everyone else thinks he's supposed to go. Everywhere I look people are trying to steer Obama one-way or the other. Usually, into whatever lane suits them best. And it isn't just the Republicans who are doing the complaining. If anything, they seem the most happy with Obama's decisions - maybe because they didn't expect much. It's his own party that's pulling the guy every which way, like some whacked out back seat driver. "Turn left! No! Go straight ahead! What are you doing?!? You were supposed to make a right! Go back!" Everybody thinks he owes them and they're hell bent on trying to collect.

Gay, black, brown, young, old, white, female, Democrat, Republican - everybody wants to create some traffic, cut him off and force him into their own lane. The feminists are pissed 'cause he didn't appoint more women to his cabinet. (Even though five of the top positions were given to women.) Some members of the civil rights old guard are back with, "Why aren't there more black people up there?" These are the same dudes who were mad he didn't turn his convention speech into a history lesson on Martin Luther King. If Obama had listened to them, he never would've gotten elected in the first place.

Who's next in line to bitch? Will cat lovers complain that the first family is only talking about adopting a dog and discriminating against felines? Will left-handed jugglers be upset that they're not represented? Why not appoint a few little people to the Cabinet while he's at it?

And now gay rights groups are mad because the pastor who's doing the inauguration doesn't support gay marriage.

For real??? The president wants Rick Warren because millions of people love him. He's giving respect to what the majority of the American people are into. Obama doesn't have to agree with everything the guy says just to have him up there on the podium. Why can't Obama have his moment however he wants it and with whoever the hell he chooses? I don't give a fuck if Big Foot swears him in. Y'all should let the man have his day.

We achieved what most people thought was impossible. We elected a young, hip, African-American visionary to be President of the United States. No funny business at the polling booths. No bloodbaths. No recounts. He energized the black community and brought everybody else on board at the same time. He brought out more young voters than anytime in history. He gave America a second chance in the world's eyes as a nation that can recognize its mistakes and make amends. He gave us back our sense of hope.

And Obama got us there HIS way. He created a political campaign like no other. People said what he did couldn't be done, but he kept on going. He didn't change lanes, he just kept it moving in the direction he knew was right.

I made a career out of finding my own lane, and helping artists do the same for themselves. From Kris Kross to Usher to Bow Wow, they became successes when they discovered their own unique style. Musically, our biggest hits came from listening to what everybody else was doin', then steering a lil' to the left or the right and creating our own movement. And the few times I didn't follow my own path; when I paid too much attention to my label bosses, or let anyone else override my best instincts, it jus' didn't work.

Obama's gonna listen to other people's opinions, and he should. But I hope the last voice he hears before he makes a decision is his own. Now, with the economy so messed up and Israel bombing the shit out of the Gaza Strip, and more than ten million people unemployed, the heat is really gonna be on. People change lanes when they get scared and lose direction, but Obama can't afford to do that, ever. He can't cave into the pressure. Not now.

Everyone has their pet projects but what everybody has to realize is that Barack Obama has a job to do that goes beyond the side hustles of the rest of the planet. He isn't going to be president to make one group happy. He's going to the White House to serve his country. And anyone who thought that he was gonna to be an ultra liberal activist president better get over it right now. He said himself he's gonna reach across the aisle and bring us together, not divide us, and that's what he's already doing. He's the bridge we've all been waiting for.

Obama is one slick dude. I'm not saying that in a bad way. I mean it as a compliment. It's what we need. He's a 21st century President. A man for our time. And I'm sure he knows that the world is watching, so whatever he does you can bet that he's doing what he believes in his heart is going to have the best results. He's not here to make you, me, Al Sharpton, or Tavis Smiley, or anybody else happy. He's here to serve our country and be the kind of leader we need in the baddest way.

So please, let Obama continue to stay in his lane. Let the man drive!