Atlas Sucked

via Hey Jenny Slater:

So I've been reading at several different blogs how a small but vocal cadre of libertarian right-wing-authoritarian-masquerading-as-libertarian bloggers are threatening to respond to Barack Obama's cruel, Marxist attempts to make us all communist put the highest marginal income-tax rate back where it was in the late 1990s by "going John Galt" -- i.e. quitting work in protest and ceasing to make contributions to a society that supposedly only wants to suck off of them like leeches -- and I was prepared to write a long, withering rant about how stupid that is, but a) DougJ at Balloon Juice has already done a better and more succinct job than I would've done (and is named Doug to boot) and b) there's no empirical proof that anyone's actually done it yet.

So in lieu of that rant, I will simply say this: If you're basing your lifestyle, your belief system, or even the name of one of your pets on Atlas Shrugged or anything else written by Ayn Rand, you are a tool.

This isn't even the cranky asshole left-wing liberal in me telling you this, this is the cranky asshole English-lit minor: Atlas Shrugged sucks. It sucks as both a political allegory and a work of fiction. It sucks hard. Atlas Shrugged is not a novel, it is a pissy, monotonous political treatise disguised as a novel....read more.

driftglass takes on " The Authoritarian Mind"

"They [Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land,
and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights
which they had not conceived and were not using . . . .
What was it that they were fighting for,
when they opposed white men on this continent?
For their wish to continue a primitive existence,
their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched,
unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out
so that you will live practically like an animal,
or a few caves above it.
Any white person who brings the element of civilization
has the right to take over this continent."














-- Wingnut Oligarch Bitch Goddess Ayn Rand,
during the Q&A after her address to West Point, 1974



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March is the 6th Aniversary of the Iraq War...

Think Progress has the sobering timeline.






The badly staged launch... .

look at that ghastly make up.












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Pfc. Jessica Lynch recovered by U.S. forces.

What the Pentagon framed as a heroic rescue was later revealed to have been staged.













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Saddam Statue Toppled...

The Los Angeles Times later reported that the fall was “stage-managed” by the Army.









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Funnys..haha...uhuh...PFfft.

See the whole cartoon here.

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The Ocarina of Rhyme

Interesting...Zelda - Hip Hip Mashup. Uhhh...give the pirate gangstas' a listen first.
(nsfw) I like it all but the last song = Slim Thug & Mike Jones - Still Tippin' (Great Fairy's Fountain) is trippin and my favorite...


OOPS!...almost forgot.

Happy Birfday Barbie!





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How to Blow Your Credit Limit -- Without Spending

If you haven't had the credit limit cut on your credit card recently, count yourself lucky. Risk-averse card issuers are getting slash happy. And while many cardholders gripe that such cuts slice razor-close to their balance amounts, for an unfortunate few the cuts go far deeper: below what they currently owe.

Under different circumstances, David Chaplin-Loebell wouldn't have minded that American Express cut his unlimited credit line to just $5,000. Except that when AmEx reduced his line in October, he had an outstanding balance of $10,000. "I found out by having a business purchase declined," he says. Repeated calls to AmEx failed to yield an answer about why the cut was made. Chaplin-Loebell, who lives in Philadelphia, is now paying the balance under his regular card terms, and presumes the line will free up for new purchases once he's below the limit. "For now, they've essentially frozen the account," he says, leaving him to juggle business expenses on his personal cards. American Express did not respond to requests for comment.

Nasty as it may be, the practice of cutting credit lines below the balance is legal -- at least, for now, says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer advocacy group. Federal Reserve rules requiring lenders to give cardholders 45 days notice before reducing a credit line to the point that it would trigger penalties won't go into effect until July 2010. "[Until] then, there are no federal protections," says Wu.

Congress is also hoping to rein in unscrupulous credit-card practices. In February, Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, reintroduced the Credit CARD Act, which among other things, offers cardholder protections like the ability to pay under the existing terms if an account is closed and requiring issuers to lower penalty rates within six months once a cardholder gets back on track with payments. Earlier this month, the House Committee on Financial Services chairman Barney Frank, announced a series of four hearings that will include discussions about credit card reform.

The motivation among issuers to make such deep cuts that they plunge below a cardholder's balance amount isn't very clear. Usually, issuers cut credit lines to reduce outstanding liabilities -- they sometimes may even chase the balance on riskier accounts with further limit cuts as cardholders pay down debts, explains Bill Carcache, an analyst with investment bank Fox-Pitt Kelton. But cutting below the balance doesn't reduce an issuer's liability: The cardholder still owes the outstanding debt.

One possibility is that this is yet another attempt by card issuers to get consumers to close their accounts (while bringing in a little fee income in the short term), says Dennis Moroney, research director and senior analyst for consulting firm Tower Group. "I can't rationalize in my mind what other motivation there would be," he says.

Paul Pensabene of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., received a statement from HSBC on Dec. 8 that said he had a $359.99 balance and remaining available credit of $8,640. But when he went online to pay the bill several days later, his online account showed that same balance put him over his newly-reduced credit line of $300. And that didn't include the $35 over-limit fee. Pensabene grappled with customer service until they agreed to remove the fee, and then paid the balance in full. "All I could think was, 'Good lord, what if this is happening to someone that couldn't pay their balance off in one shot?'" he says. "They'd end up in default with these fees piling up."

HSBC declined to comment on individual cardholder accounts. Spokeswoman Cindy Savio says the issuer has tightened its credit standards based on the economy. "As we have previously stated, in an effort to reduce credit risk and refine strategies for our card business, we have tightened credit standards, reduced or canceled higher risk credit lines, and closed a number of inactive accounts," she says.

While the fees, frozen accounts and default interest rates resulting from credit-line cuts can sting your finances, they can do some serious long-term damage to your credit score. Your credit utilization ratio -- the total amount of debt you owe in relation to the amount of credit available to you -- accounts for roughly 30% of your score. A credit line cut has the potential to decrease your score by 50 points or more if you don't have much other available credit, says Craig Watts, spokesman for FICO, the company that calculates and issues the credit score that most lenders use.

Even cuts that are close to the balance have the potential to devastate if they're not caught quickly. Luckily for Carol Gressett of Decatur, Miss., she noticed the reduction in her Discover-branded Sam's Club card limit just days after it happened. The limit was cut to within $100 of her $3,000 balance. The official letter notifying her of the reduction arrived three weeks later. "We could easily have gone over if I hadn't been paying attention," she says.

(A Discover spokesperson says GE Money issues the cards, and so is responsible for managing credit lines. GE Money did not respond to requests for comment.)

source


Via Americablog:

You do the Math...


December 23, 2008: American Express Will Get $3.39 Billion in TARP Funds

March 16, 2009: American Express paid CEO $27.3 million in 2008

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Not to be out done by the bloodsucking, thieving credit card companies...

Pennsylvania Banks profit from unemployed customers

With about 434,000 unemployed statewide in December, about 200,000 Pennsylvanians use debit cards. In the seven-county Pittsburgh region, about 35,000 of 76,200 unemployed individuals use debit cards.

The state handed over negotiated with Affiliated Computer various fees attached to transactions. Users withdrawing cash from a PNC or Wachovia ATM get one free withdrawal per deposit. If the deposit is $1,000 or more, the person gets an additional free ATM withdrawal for each $500 deposited. After that, the cost is $1.50 for each successful withdrawal.

Surcharges are attached to most ATMs with the exception of those operated by PNC, Wachovia, credit unions belonging to the Alliance One ATM program and machines at 7 Eleven stores.

ATM balance inquiries cost 40 cents each, while ATM denials, following one free transaction, cost 50 cents apiece.

"We took the ponzi scheme bait negotiated reduced fees compared to what was being charged in other states," Smith said.


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Osama bin Laden aka Dick Cheney's opening act...speaks again.

On Saturday, Al Jazeera TV broadcast Bin Laden’s 29th tape since 9/11, wherein the Al Qaeda chief branded Israel’s Gaza offensive a “holocaust”, condemned moderate Arab leaders and urged his followers to prepare for holy war....and then asked everyone to please give a warm welcome to Dick Cheney:

FREE rim shot!
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Dick Cheney takes the GOP lead to attack Obama


Former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's John King Sunday that he believed President Obama's decision to eliminate the use of many of the most controversial interrogation practices used under the former administration had put the country at risk.




Asked whether he thought those moves had made the United States less safe, Cheney said he did. "I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoy, of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," he said on State of the Union. "I think it's a great success story. It was done legally, it was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles…"

Obama campaigned against those practices, said Cheney, "and now he's making some choices that in my mind will raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

via foxnewslite - CNN
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Alan Grayson Questions AIG Math: Let's Change the Length of Inches So I'm Shorter!

via: Hufpo's Ryan Grim...

Regulator: Before Banks Collapsed, They Pleaded With Feds To Let Them Fudge Their Books





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