The 700 (bln) Club

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Monday September 29, 2008 · 1:02 AM PDT

2008/09/29 · 01:02

The Troubled Assets Relief Program, the linchpin of Congress's giveaway, is an opening into a very dark place. It seems this plan will do much of what the original "Paulson Plan" set out to do.

Bush will have his $700 Billion. And without any regulation. Congress has the potential to deny the President $350 bln of the $700 bln; however, this ability to obstruct is not power. 41 Senators can filibuster any denial of those $350 Billion dollars. All Bush needs to do is request the money and if the House and the Senate can't both deny Bush's request, then he will have all the money.

If the plan fails, there is no guarantee taxpayers will be paid back. The only requirement is that in 2013 the President submit a plan to Congress to recoup any projected losses to taxpayers. This language allows for any recovery effort to fail. I hope this won't be necessary.

LeftistDragonfly

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Thursday July 17, 2008 · 1:22 AM PDT

2008/07/17 · 01:22

It's an early morning here at my desk, as I've just finished editing several of my team's articles. They are a team of student journalists, rising high school juniors and seniors, responsible, bright students of color. The children are the future, and many of these students will eventually make their impressions and contributions, with their pens in hand, and their ears tuned in to Hip-Hop music.

Tuesday, the rap legend NaS released his "Nigger" album, I haven't bought it yet, but my (blue, pink, green, red) friends who got it say it rocks, and I will buy it because NaS is my favorite rapper. I ask high schoolers what they think about the title and it doesn't really offend anybody. They don't want a white person calling them by that name, but most of these students call each other that. This is so passe.

It almost seems picture perfect that Reverend Jackson, who has so denounced the use of the so-called "nN" word, would be shown using it himself. And this latest shoe to drop reveals what we young ones have known all along - that objections to the word are more about politics than pain.

LeftistDragonfly

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Tuesday November 13, 2007 · 11:22 AM PST

2007/11/13 · 11:22

Today's Washington Post features an article about the U.S. Sentencing Commission's consideration of reductions in crack-cocaine sentences for Federal inmates. The commission has already reduced crack penalties for future convicts, and is now deliberating whether to make this rule retroactive.

The Bush administration opposes the new plan, arguing that it would overburden federal courts and release potentially dangerous drug offenders.

WTF?! Fair sentences don't burden the courts, it's mandatory minimums and a system in which rural, Republican communities benefit from prison population expansion - in the U.S. census (inmates count in the county they're jailed in, not the county they come from) - by receiving greater political and economic benefits through the imprisonment of poor and overwhelmingly non-white people.

Poll

34 votes Show Results

Should long crack-cocaine sentences be reduced retroactively?

34 votes Vote Now!

Should long crack-cocaine sentences be reduced retroactively?

Yes

13 votes

Keep 'em the same

0 votes

Drug prohibition should be abolished

21 votes

Make sentences for powder LONGER to compensate

0 votes

Blame the Rappers for Your Hate / Ignorance

LeftistDragonfly

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday April 16, 2007 · 1:36 PM PDT

2007/04/16 · 13:36

First off I'd like to say Don Imus is rich, he'll be fine.

This whole Imus ordeal is so chaotic and crazy to me; I don't understand why Reverend Sharpton would call for Imus to be fired after accepting Michael Richards' apology, I mean he didn't even call for a boycott..

Any listener of Imus's program knows he even refers to his wife as a 'ho.' And not even Reverend Sharpton had the balls to ask why discussions on accomplished females tend to focus on their appearance, which was the true crime Imus committed.

And remember Fat Nick Minucci, who was convicted of a hate crime last year after he bludgeoned a black kid while calling him a nigger - his lawyer used the hip-hop defense, claiming that Minucci's use of the word was not racist, but rather a common term expressed by fans of hip-hop as a term of endearment, the jury didn't buy that one.

Between these last few racist uproars I see a pattern - to say that hateful comments aren't so bad because rappers use or have used the same language.

Poll

18 votes Show Results

If racist comments can come from non-racist people, how can we know when a racist speaks?

18 votes Vote Now!

If racist comments can come from non-racist people, how can we know when a racist speaks?

"They" don't want us to know when a racist speaks.

3 votes

Listen to right-wing radio.

8 votes

Racism has been eradicated from society.

1 vote

You can never know, even non-racists spew racist rhetoric.

2 votes

Wait for Kramer to bust into Seinfeld's apartment.

4 votes

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The 700 (bln) Club

Jackson's Language - The Politically Incorrect View

A Dose of Drug War Sanity

Blame the Rappers for Your Hate / Ignorance