I would just like to report that Obama, meaning his staff, inserted a re-authorization of the Patriot Act in the new jobs bill he is pushing through Congress.

I am disappointed that he does not have the courage to have a vote on the re-authorization in a stand alone bill. I thought we put this stand up guy (he is a stand up guy) in office because we were over this sort of BS the last administration did with almost every bill. The Bush admin just threw shit like this in tax cut bills, now Obama is sneaking it into the jobs bill. Come on man!

And here we go again...

Well it appears Geithner is not happy with Paul Volcker's ideas of how to rein in our banking industry. We know from the way he has advised Obama the last 12 months he is against any real meaningful reform of Wall Street and more broadly our financial institutions.

I mean how can you fault a guy who's whole life has been wheeling and dealing with these fat cats.

Let's see how Obama decides to handle the insurrection from his Treasury Secretary.

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve has told Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other banks to keep mum on the results of "stress tests" that will gauge their ability to weather the recession, people familiar with the matter said.

The Fed wants to ensure that the report cards don’t leak during earnings conference calls scheduled for this month. Such a scenario might push stock prices lower for banks perceived as weak and interfere with the government’s plan to release the results in an orderly fashion later this month.

There are a few helicopters overhead my place right now and the sounds of police sirens are prevalent.

Here is the report from the San Francisco Chronicle.

A protest over the fatal shooting by a BART police officer of an unarmed man mushroomed into a violent confrontation tonight, as a faction of protesters smashed a police car and storefronts, set a car on fire and blocked streets in downtown Oakland.

The protest started peacefully shortly after 3 p.m. at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland, where BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward to death early New Year's Day. BART shut down the station well into the evening commute, although the demonstration there was peaceful.

However, shortly after nightfall, a group of roughly 200 protesters split off and head toward downtown Oakland, prompting the transit agency to close the Lake Merritt station.

I, like many here on DailyKos, the country, and the world, have been watching with mouth agape while the US Treasury and FED promises trillions and trillions of dollars to unsound banking institutions and other shady entities (AIG).

I decided to crunch some numbers tonight cause I have nothing better to do between tours and came up with a surprising number.

If the current pledge bailout numbers were equally distributed to every single US citizen age 18 or older it would come to $37590.12 !

In SusanG's recent discussion with AIG's media relations guy I came across several disturbing discrepancies as to what I believed to be the "truth" on their humiliating bailout in September of this year.

The glaring one is when Peter Tulupman  answered the very first question.

At what point will you consider yourselves "whole," and will you repay us with interest?  I would like 18%.

No offense but 18% is laughable, however Peter's answer should be immediately forwarded to the Justice department:

We have a new credit facility from the Federal Reserve – our interest rate is LIBOR + 3%, which comes to about $3.6 billion a year in interest on this facility.

We’re also paying a fee of .75% on the undrawn portion of the facility.

Sept 14th, 2008 will go down as a monumental economic event in Unites States history, having massive global implications.

In the last few hours 2 of the remaining 4 investment banks (Bear Sterns would have been the 5th) have essentially failed.

Lehman Brothers founded in 1850, is one of the few currently important companies that is older than McCain, just filed for Bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch, another American icon was forced to be acquired by Bank of America to avoid a certain global economic collapse.

From the pages of The Consumerist

Well there you go.

8  months or so of constant media babble, dozens of misstatements, and what is that...a lapel pin or is that a red tie you are wearing...?

I got my ballot in the mail yesterday from the state of Oregon asking me to fill in the empty little white bubbles next to all these names I have almost no knowledge about, expect of course Hillary and Obama.

In one of the most beautifully written lawsuits in the last 231 years  state Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers has decided to sue God!

Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is "Omnipresent".

Also known as DailyKos cause we don't want to offend people.

Why do Americans say something is ok when it is truly not?

Why can't I call someone a retard but bring up the fact that you are smart enough to know you are not a retard cause a true retard is a retard because they don't know better? But I am an asshole cause a retard will never be offended by me calling them a retard, but the progressive community is offended by someone pointing out a FOX News supporter is a retard.

Ohh snap did I cross a line?

I have been struggling with a reason to live lately. I love my mom and dad, and my brother, who is married. But I am feeling very alone and lost at the moment.

I am 29. I have played with Sheryl Crow, Pearl Jam, The Tragical Hip, and have even worked with Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. Paul saw me play a show in Santa Fe New Mexico 4 years ago and thought I was the best drummer he has ever seen. So he had his people contact me and fly me up to Seattle and record drum tracks for him. I was told the tracks I recorded would be preserved for eternity because Paul Allen owns a mountain outside Seattle in which he stores all of his stuff in case there is ever a Nuclear attack.

That's right iliketodrum is leaving Daily Kos.

You guys rock and you also suck at the same time. But all in all you guys are sweet.

I guess I have been overly infatuated with this site for the past year because I have not been on tour. Last year I was in 17 countries and 40 states (I think it is probably more) and this year I am sitting here in my apartment in SF thinking I am wasting my time.

Ok this is a question for an openthread, but there is not one currently.

Yesterday, and just a few moments ago on Lou Dobbs, John R. Bolten, Our UN rep, said that Hugo Chavez's statement that Bush was the "Devil" was absurd, but that he could walk to central Park and say that freely, but people in Venezuela did not have the same protections.

Well while the Republican majority continue to ignore the constant stream of news reports from scientists that insist the planet is warming at an alarming rate and that the polar ice caps are actually melting faster than they ever thought, we have a report today from NOAA that states that the period from January to August of 2006 is the warmest since we have been keeping records.

The persistence of the anomalous warmth in 2006 made this January-August period the warmest on record, eclipsing the previous record of 1934. Six individual months were much warmer than average (within their top 10 warmest on record), with only February and March near average.

If I am going to continue here as an active member to this community I will need an apology from Markos for his callous and unfortunate statement that Steve Irwin was irresponsible for being the man he was and as a result was selfish and irresponsible to his responsibilities to his family.

Jon Tester has a new radio ad he put out within the last day. You can listen to it here.

This is a strong message to those who say that Democrats are week on security, and I think Matt Stoller over at MyDD should add this to his Adwatch series. Matt has been critical of two ads so far because they have not mentioned Iraq. This ad is a very strong stance on Iraq, national security, and our lack of port and border security.

Montana and Canada share a 545-mile border which is one of the world's longest undefended borders. The state borders the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, more provinces than any other state.

Darcy Burner, WA-08 Democratic challenger is currently in the top ten on our Netroots challengers list over at Act Blue, and I wanted to write a little about her and hopefully help her effort to raise $75,000 by the end of this month.

I know there has been some controversy over at MyDD in regards to her first television ad, which was produced by Steve McMahon, and was viewed as light on Iraq. But I am just going to make this a simple introduction of Darcy Burner, for those who are not familiar with her.

Darcy is the daughter of an Air force veteran and a public school teacher, and because of her fathers involvement with the Air force she grew up in military towns and attended public schools in Alaska, Montana, and Nebraska. Darcy attended Harvard on a National Merit Scholarship in which she majored in computer science and economics. She put herself through school by working for high-tech firms in the Boston area.