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]]> Campaign 2008 http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1711 Thu, 3 Jul 2008 23:52:34 -0600 Mortar Man http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1710
This former student of mine is in the National Guard. He had told me last Spring that stint would be up in early September. He's been working hard to finish his Bachelor's degree and get down to living a good life with the woman he's planning to marry. She's a CPA, and the two of them are quite a sight together: she's just as pretty as a model and so sweet; he's handsome and muscular, with a boyish grin that hasn't disappeared even though he's killed more than his share of people in several tours of duty in Iraq.

So I went into the shoe store looking for him. The manager recognized me and came right over. He's seen me in there a few times; I like to stop in where former students work just to see how they're doing, and this manager got to know me while we all stood around chatting. (A few of my other former students work there, too.)

The manager, John, said, "Looking for Steve?"

"Is he here tonight?"

John had this serious look on his face, almost a frown. "Steve got stop lossed. He's about to be deployed."

For a few seconds, I was dumbfounded.

John stood there, arms folded, looking down. I found my tongue and almost snarled, "Where?"

"Dunno," John answered, "I'd like to say he's heading back to Iraq."

"Iraq? Steve's a glorified cannon cocker. He's good — But short stuff? Now?" I protested.

John shook his head: "Steve's scared."

I leaned a little bit toward John and said, "This is about Iran."

"All I know is, Steve's scared," John insisted.

I sort of turned toward the big front windows of the store and grumbled pretty loudly, "Steve's a mortar specialist. What the Hell, man?"

"Guess they're short on rocket shooters," John snorted.

"Mortars don't go all that far," I said.

John perked up a little: "Hey, I was a grunt. Mortars fly farther than bullets."

"Either way, you're not talking about airstrikes," I grumbled.

"Well, someone's got to do the real fighting once the flyboys have done their show," John added.

After that exchange, we both just stood there looking out those big front windows.

John finally said, "Hey, listen, why don't you look through the clearance shoes back in the back and see if there's anything you like. I'll do you a good deal on 'em."

I thanked him and went back there. Unfortunately, the only pair in my size looked like pimp-daddy specials.

I went back up front and thanked John for the offer. He told me they'd have some more shoes on clearance this weekend.

I walked out through the big front doors and stopped at the sidewalk. I swear, I thought about turning around to see if Steve would be standing in the store with that big, boyish grin he always had when he saw me coming in. He seemed to figure he was getting a chance to give me a deal on shoes to thank me for getting him through all his math classes. He wasn't very good at math, but he never failed a test if I gave him an hour or two of tutoring the day before.

Steve is a loyal fellow: loyal to his friends, loyal to his God, loyal to his President, loyal to his country.

He's about to walk into what might be the jaws of death. Apparently, he knows it; but he's still going to do it.

That makes him a damn fine soldier.


I think I'll keep these shoes I'm wearing for a while longer. Three years ago, Steve gave me a really great deal on them.
Cross-posted from The Dark Wraith Forums

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]]> War http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1710 Tue, 1 Jul 2008 23:39:33 -0600 War Mongers, War Buyers http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1709 Rant & GrowlIn an interview on CNN, investigative journalist Seymour Hersch, who has just exposed an on-going $400 million covert military/intelligence operation being prosecuted by the Bush Administration against Iran, had this to say: "And by the way, it's the Democrats in Congress who basically looked the other way and said, 'Take the money and run'..."

All those who think the Democrats are the "party of change," the Sucker Land Express to Obamaville is now boarding.

God Almighty, people. The Democratic leadership in Congress has authorized the Bush Administration's reassignment of military funds to a program of state-sponsored terrorism against a sovereign nation. The rank-and-file Democrats, now fully aware of this, are not taking even the first step to strip the President of the authority to conduct this project. The putative heir to Empire being anointed by the Democrats has not even so much as hinted at condemnation of this abomination and those who 'looked the other way' after approving it.

What is it going to take to shut down this corrupted government all the way from its unaccountable President to its appeasing Congress to its rubber-stamp judiciary?

Another war? Apparently not: the opposition party is paying the way for that.

Another 9/11? Not likely: the opposition party jumped right on the bandwagon to hand Bush our civil liberties as payment for his last catastrophic failure to protect the homeland from a handful of crazed religious criminals.

Your future? Sure: an addled, corrupted corporate shill versus a vacuous babe-in-the-woods with a cult following that features gyrating sex-pots on YouTube.

There's your future.


The Dark Wraith wonders when, exactly, it was that the term "false hope" replaced "unrelenting fury."

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]]> Politics of War http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1709 Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:22:19 -0600 New Fed Governor: From Way-Off-Broadway Actress to Starring Role Banker http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1708 Elizabeth DukeThe Senate has just confirmed Bush nominee Elizabeth Duke as the newest Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Ms. Duke is a commercial banking insider with massive holdings (which she will have to divest) in Wachovia, the bank that bought out one in which she was a principal.

As far as her education goes, she has an—ahem—MBA, but her Bachelor's degree is in (get this) drama, and before she got into the banking business, she was an actress in a dinner theatre in Norfolk.

That's right: a consummate banking insider who used to be a dinner theatre performer.

Give Mr. Bush and his appeasement crowd in the Senate credit: when they're not being out-and-out mendacious, incompetent, or venal, at least they try to be funny. Unfortunately, they don't know the difference between funny and laughable.

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]]> Finance http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1708 Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:35:30 -0600 Incompetence, Sedition, and a Note on Lousiness http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1707 Reagan in BeirutJohn McCain is calling former President Jimmy Carter a "lousy" commander-in-chief.

That is just plain harsh.

Maybe if Mr. Carter's abortive attempt to rescue the American hostages from the embassy in Iran in October of 1980 had not been disrupted by the back-door dealings of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan and his running mate, former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, history would have worked out a whole lot differently.

At the very least, President Carter never illegally sold the theocratic loons in Tehran weaponry that, to this very day, might be in the Iranian arsenal our current President claims is being handed to insurgents in Iraq to kill U.S. soldiers.

Neither was Mr. Carter in command when 241 U.S. Marines, sequestered in their barracks in Beirut, were slaughtered in 1983 by jihadist suicide bombers.

Talk about a "lousy" commander-in-chief.

Oh, wait a minute. Wasn't George W. Bush the commander-in-chief when a handful of crazed jihadists with nothing more than box cutters managed to circumvent the entirety of our NORAD air defense system with four commercial jetliners and blast two giant skyscrapers and the very nexus of our Department of Defense at the Pentagon?

Mr. McCain, the word "lousy" doesn't even begin to describe Republican commanders-in-chief of recent American history.
Cross-posted from The Dark Wraith Forums

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]]> Politics http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1707 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:42:01 -0600 RIAA and MPAA on the warpath again OR how to shake down folks just like the MAFIA. http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1706 lost their collective mind. From Wired:

The recording industry and U.S. radio companies have squared off for decades about whether AM and FM radio broadcasters should pay royalties to singers, musicians and their labels.

But now the debate is getting meaner; there's more at stake as the recording industry seeks new income avenues in the wake of wanton peer-to-peer piracy and declining CD sales in part due to the iPod and satellite radio. A U.S. House subcommittee could vote as early as Thursday on a royalty measure.

On Monday, the recording industry sent the National Association of Broadcasters -- the trade group representing the $16 billion a year AM-FM broadcasting business -- a can of herring to underscore that it believes its arguments against paying royalties are a red herring. The NAB says its members should not pay royalties because AM-FM radio "promotes" the music industry.

How in the blue hell would anyone know about new artists or new albums from our favorite artists if it wasn't for radio? The radio stations also promote the artists by running ads for their concerts which usually coincide with the release of a new album right? Before the RIAA existed musicians would travel far and wide begging the radio stations to play their music. From the Wired writeup we get to the, cough, bottom line:

The argument boils down to this: Radio is making billions off the backs of recording artists and their labels; and the recording artists gain invaluable exposure because they're on the radio, so royalties should not have to be paid.

The recording industry needs the radio industry and vice versa. Each side in this money-grubbing argument needs the other in order to make any money. This is extortion and it stinks to high heaven. The RIAA is looking for ways to make up for the losses in revenue due to the electronic music industry. People are not buying CD's near as much as they used to and I for one pretty much buy all my music in the form of an electronic download. I only buy a CD when the artist's electronic album is exclusively on ITunes, because I despise ITunes.

In other money-grubbing news, the MPAA has the nads to use the following argument also in a court case of copyright infringement:

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.(emphasis mine)

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

Well gents, if you can't prove anything, where in the hell is your infringement? By using your skewed logic, I could sue my husband for divorce because he has what it takes to cheat on me. I wouldn't have to prove he cheated on me, I would just have to show that because he has a penis, he has the ability to cheat on me. The proof must be on the individual that brought the lawsuit, it has been that way for-freaking-ever, its part and parcel of the Rule of Law for Christs sake.

Greedy bastards..

H/T to Chet at the Vanity Press for this gem.

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]]> Law http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1706 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:24:42 -0600 LMCAO (Laughing My Cynical Ass Off) http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1705 The Road Ahead

The House and Senate are considering a non-binding resolution demanding that President Bush take action on severe sanctions against Iran. This piece of work looks almost identical to a memo that was previously circulated on Capitol Hill by none other than the American-Israeli PAC, and the abomination has language that clearly calls for a naval blockade of Iran. Members of the House and Senate are lining up in droves to support the resolution.

Quite apart from the inconvenience that a unilateral American naval blockade would violate international law, it would be an act of war; and once again, the United States would be the aggressor.

All because our nation's leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, simply cannot refuse to do as they are told by their foreign paymasters. Heck, our leaders can't even write their own legislation.

Actually, it's pretty darned funny. Not the coming war with Iran, mind you; that's going to be awful. The hilarious part is all the Americans who thought a Democratic majority in Congress would somehow be different from the craven, war-mongering, lying Republicans.

Now, that's FUNNY!


The Dark Wraith simply cannot wait for more hope and change.

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]]> War http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1705 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:54:14 -0600 Plain Language http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1704 21st Century Bill of RightsFor many years, American conservatives have criticized judicial activists — judges who read into the United States Constitution that which is not in the plain language of the document. This criticism extends to judicial interpretations of statutory law, as well.

In many ways, condemnation of interpretive rulings is disingenuous and simplistic: the Constitution and laws must be understood in the context of how words, phrases, and sentences were used at the time a law was written; terminology and even word arrangements used in written law are often the product of a highly specialized dialect known only to those with appropriate training; and even the most ardent of strict constructionists cannot ignore the historical legislative, political, and social backdrops against which laws have been written, enacted, and enforced.

Moreover, because the United States legal system is based upon a complex hybrid of statutory law and common law, it is the duty of the judiciary in the United States to ensure the survival of the common law component (established through court precedents) by demanding the privilege of judicial review, as first advanced in the 1803 Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, the practical effect of which was to bind judicial decisions, and subsequent respect by courts for those decisions by stare decisis, to the concept of "constitutional law." It is to the purpose of anchoring court decisions in gravity that, while the Congress may write laws that the President then enforces, the judiciary constructs law as a body through affirmation of its interpretations of the Constitution and the several laws crafted by Congresses from term to term and time to time.

Returning to the matter of simply reading the plain language of the Constitution, this has as much to do with the history of the language as it does with the history of law. The Second Amendment is an excellent case in point:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Late 18th Century writers had the annoying habit of using a comma to separate the subject of a sentence from the predicate, but even setting aside that curious artifact (along with the same penchant as High German for capitalizing nouns), the above sentence is an abomination. It begins with what appears to be the subject:

A well regulated Militia...

Then, a comma shows up, meaning that either the 18th Century scribe is moving on to the predicate, or he is preparing to insert a so-called "non-restrictive" phrase or clause, a string of words modifying the subject but not necessary to the sentence meaning. The second possibility seems to be applicable:

...being necessary to the security of a free State...

Yes, that would modify an immediately preceding subject:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...

Okay, we're in business; here comes the predicate:

...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms...

Oh, my. That looks like a subject; but the sentence already delivered the subject way back there at the beginning! Worse, a comma follows this little phrase, and that could be interpreted in one of at least three ways: it could be a comma splice; it could be one of those abominable commas 18th Century writers used to separate subject from predicate; or (and this one is really maddening), it could mean that the entire phrase from the last comma had been a non-restrictive adjective clause modifying a prior subject!

...shall not be infringed.

Well, thank God for the occasional period to end the suffering of a mangled sentence.

Years ago, when I taught English grammar and paralegal courses, I complained to a historian on the faculty about the Second Amendment. He said that, were I to have confronted Thomas Jefferson, himself, with my fussing, he would have casually and quite absently dismissed me with a slow wave of the hand and something to the effect, "You know what I mean."

Well, yes, I suppose so: revolutionaries can be obtuse.

Moving along, the Constitution has plenty more interesting language in store for the unprepared, but it also has extraordinary context invisible to the unknowing. When I tell my students that the Constitution of the United States is a "treaty between the federal government and the several states that form the union of those states," they are entirely perplexed. They have never before heard the Constitution described as a treaty. A treaty?

From there, the situation deteriorates because they have no idea of what I mean by ius naturalis (or ius naturale to remove the masculine aspect).

I explain by beginning with this declaration: "The Constitution grants you NOTHING!"

That seems to fly in the face of everything they know (what little it is the typical American college student knows) about the Constitution. Surely, the Bill of Rights begins by laying out essential rights we are given.

In fact, it does nothing of the kind, and the framers did not intend to "give" us rights via the Constitution or any other document; but to understand why this is the case, we must go all the way back to ancient Greece and then to the Roman political theorists who picked up and ran with an amazing observation Greek philosophers before them had made.

When Greek armies were rocking the known world, communiques sent back to the homeland included documents of peoples encountered. Translating the laws of foreigners was no easy task, but the fruits of such labors revealed something rather interesting about the laws of various peoples: although great variety and variation could be found in laws from place to place, some laws seemed to be just about everywhere. Although it would be the Romans and later scholars who would put a solid conceptual and political framework around the idea, it was quite apparent that a core of principles, embodied in a set of seemingly universal laws showing up from one place to the next, existed.

The Romans would come to call this ius gentium, the law of nations, or, as constructed in statutes, the law that applies to the people regardless of whether they be citizens of Empire or foreigners. St. Thomas Aquinas would later take it one step further and postulate that ius gentium is, essentially, an addendum to ius naturalis, the "natural law" that transcends the vicissitudes of this society or that tribe, positivistically inhering to the collective of humanity and to each within that body.

Truth be told, much of this apparently universal law that had begun to emerge by the Middle Ages in high-minded, grueling complex thinking had begun with those observations of a seemingly universal set of observed laws from nation to nation, and this observation led to what the Romans would later refer to as lex ratio, or rational law. Unknown to the Greeks and their successors, the Romans, that common set of laws that seemed for all the world to point to something transcendent and universal—a ius naturalis—was actually nothing more than the result of many of the peoples being encountered all being bound historically and linguistically to tribes that had long before lived around the Black Sea whose members, in their waves of migration perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 years previously, had gone in every direction, carrying not just their earlier ways, but also a common root language, what modern linguists refer to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE), a hypothetical language upon which a huge number of later languages came to be built in layers as the Black Sea tribes fanned out. Latin and its derivatives, Germanic tongues, Greek, and even Sanskrit have their common roots in PIE. In fact, a regular set of rules about how sounds in one Indo-European language relate to sounds in another language of the super-family was first discovered by none other than Jacob Grimm of the Grimm Brothers of fairy tale fame.

That's interesting in and of itself, but what is more interesting is that the Black Sea tribes were quite aware of the importance of social bindings, and we know this because a large group of words across PIE languages still carry the fossil root of important words that begin with the letter "l": lock, line, ligature, lokk, loc, uslok, Loche, loquet, lineage, and lygos, for example. That last one, lygos, is Greek and suspiciously conflatable with logos, the "logic" used in forensics, which derives from the Latin forensis, meaning (among other things) "legal." The Greeks dearly loved word play, especially to the effect of connecting concepts through devices of letter replacements and rearrangements (what is called "metathesis") in words, as in "Hercules" deriving from "Heracles," he who is anointed of the goddess Hera.)

Law is a binding of people, and the 18th Century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, consolidating thoughts of some of his contemporaries, went so far as to postulate a "social contract," an implicit instrument that, unlike a common contract binding one person to another, binds a people to their common state. Each performs duties for the other and anticipates reciprocal benefit in return. In more modern legal terminology, each party to this contract suffers "legal detriment" and contractually enjoys "consideration" as a result. Rousseau used the concept of this social contract to replace with somewhat greater substance in codifiable law the less tangible political reliance upon natural law, itself, that was on the mind of John Locke, his predecessor in political philosophy.

The Founding Fathers of this country were well-versed in the thinking of both the ancients and their contemporaries in Europe. They knew very well that ius gentium as nothing more than a class of laws had conceptually evolved, and certainly not coincidentally, with lex ratio into a firm belief in ius naturalis, law that is timeless. St. Thomas Aquinas was certainly favorable to this idea, and several influential thinkers of the 15th and 16th Centuries—among them, Huig de Grotius in Holland and Francisco de Vitoria in Spain—were advancing a "law of reason" inherent in ius naturalis. Vitoria built the case and criteria for what would constitute just war, deeply troubled as he was by the violence being committed by the Conquistadors against natives of the New World. Grotius dismissed the confinement of ius naturalis to trivial, animalistic rules of behavior like producing and caring for the young; if it exists (and these are most decidedly not Grotius' words, but rather my own), then natural law is undoubtedly neither probative in construct nor utilitarian in ontological valence, although by the later part of the 18th Century, it would be about the only deep anchor in law and theoretical reasoning for justifying all-out, separatist rebellion.

The rebels in the British Colonies of North America gladly took hold of natural law: it flows neither from sovereignty nor from its stewards. For purposes of historical, if maybe unconscious, continuity, natural law comported for the restive but intellectual colonists with the earlier rebellion of Protestantism and its predecessors like Lollardism in that the Word and, hence, the will of God may be revealed to the common man without intercession by putative, and necessarily mortal, representatives of God in the stations of the church. To this admittedly speculative argument, it did not hurt one bit that the Founding Fathers were almost to the last man affiliated with Freemasonry, a secretive society in open ideological, religious, and political war with the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

In the Virginia Declaration of Rights dated May 15, 1776, George Mason got quite explicit about ius naturalis with this clause: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights..." [emphasis added].

The Declaration of Independence subsequently riveted the source of rights accorded men not to the state, but to higher authority:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.


There, in the first paragraph, is the invocation of "Nature"; then, in the second paragraph, comes the odd adjective "unalienable" used to describe the rights endowed to men by their Creator: unalienable, not inalienable. The rights accorded men may, indeed, be taken away, but they cannot be extinguished. The extent to which a government separates itself from the recognition of the rights men have by natural law is the equivalence of that government's descent into tyranny, and only the consent of the governed, feeble as that consent might be, serves to promote those unalienable rights owned by the governed.

The Constitution—in its Articles, its Bill of Rights, and its subsequent Amendments—is, then, not a document granting rights because no government, no document, indeed, no person or thing on Earth may grant that which is by natural law unalienable. The state as a rightful and legitimate authority may only circumstantially and parsimoniously circumscribe rights from natural law, and it is to that purpose that the United States Constitution may exist as an express treaty between the several states and the separate and supreme sovereign they form in union. The Constitution, then, expressly defines the circumstances, situations, and extents in which the federal government may arrogate to itself the ability to diminish—not to extinguish, not to repudiate, not to abolish, but only to diminish as necessary for the common good—the rights of the governed as citizens both of their respective states and of their common nation as a federation of those several states.

With all that as backdrop, in some places seemingly disconnected and summary, this article concludes with the full text of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.


The Amendment is clear: the Constitution is recognizing a right, then clearly describing, first, the procedural circumstances ('Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing' what is to be searched and seized and against whom an arrest is to be made) and, second, the substantive reason ('probable cause') by which that right may circumscribed as necessary by the state.

The plain language—capturing as it does phenomenally complex, interwoven threads of history, linguistics, and philosophy—is available for all, even politicians and judges of the 21st Century, to read and understand.

Natural law does not hide from the just; neither does it vanish at the will of tyrants.


The Dark Wraith rests his case against the New American Century.
Cross-posted from The Dark Wraith Forums

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]]> Law http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1704 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:57:17 -0600 Didn't the Fed bail these guys out? http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1703 arrested Thursday. Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi are not happy campers, or happy hedge fund operators. From the Marketwatch link:

They were charged in a nine-count indictment that alleged the two engaged in wire fraud, conspiracy and securities fraud in misleading investors about the rapidly tanking value of the two funds.

Ah, so it was only misleading the investors. No big deal, folks do it all the time right? Only the big guys at the top, ala Enron get busted.

Well the Justice Department is making it a big deal, along with mortgage fraud..arresting hundreds possibly. Four, count em, four hundred of these folks were indicted Thursday. Said Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip about the indictments of all these real estate/securities folks:

“Mortgage fraud and related securities fraud pose a significant threat to our economy, to the stability of our nation’s housing market and to the peace of mind to millions of Americans,”

Mortgage fraud, as you can imagine, is up substantially in the past twelve months. From the MSNBC link:

The most common type of mortgage fraud was misstatement of income or assets, followed by forged documents, inflated appraisals and misrepresentation of a buyer’s intent to occupy a property as a primary residence.

Somehow, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, and yes, it probably will get a whole lot uglier.

H/T to John Amato at C&L for the 411 on this.

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]]> Finance http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1703 Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:06:02 -0600 Bakersfield's first gay marriages! http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1702 woman, who shall remain nameless, tried to keep the gays and lesbians from being married at Bakersfield's government center, it happened anyway ya worthless homophobes!!! Tell all those theocratic nimrods to sit down and shut the hell up...the world did not come to an end.

Several sweet religious folk came downtown this morning bright and early to make sure the happy couples were still married at City Hall, or in this case, County Administration Building. They also DID NOT charge for their services!! Bless them. :) One of our local tv stations was broadcasting the event live, I heart channel 7.

What follows are a few of the lucky couples that took the plunge. I hope they are happy and finally get what they have richly deserved for a hundred or more years, to be just as miserable as the rest of us 'married folks'. ;)

All pictures are filched from Bakersfield.com, the website for our local rag, the Bakersfield Californian.

First Couple to get their license: The lovely Lori Renee and Whitney Weddell. They are all smiles! Bless them for waiting so long.


Next up is Rev. Byrd Tetzlaff, as she officiates the first marriage ceremony between Kathi Gose and Karen Briefer.


next we have Amelia Cravens helping Shelby Himes with her wedding dress train..before they marry each other. :)


Whitney and Lori has they kiss each other for the first time as a married couple..ah the joy, the love, the all is right with the world feel of it!


So there you have it dear readers, Kern 'freaking-out' County did not get swallowed up into the nether world because some gay folks got married on the steps of the County Administration Building. Screw all you homophobic bastards, these folks now enjoy the same rights the rest of us have had for friggin evah!

Congrats to the happy couples..some of which have been together for decades and decades..which, by the way, is longer than I have stuck it out with any male. ;p


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]]> Politics http://uncapitalist.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1702 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:35:40 -0600