Roylat.com » Politics http://roylat.com Commentary on a Mixed Up and Sometimes Backward World Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:37:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Stiglitz on the Growth in Income Inequality http://roylat.com/2011/08/stiglitz-on-the-growth-in-income-inequality/ http://roylat.com/2011/08/stiglitz-on-the-growth-in-income-inequality/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:18:54 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2011/08/stiglitz-on-the-growth-in-income-inequality/ My previous post referred to an article by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz on how the rich are getting richer while the rest are getting poorer – an underlying cause of the decay of US social and political health.

Here’s the beginning of the article, with a link to the full article. If you haven’t though this through, it is well worth your time to read.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

May 2011

By Joseph E. Stiglitz•

Illustration by Stephen Doyle

Vanity Fair

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive Brand Cialis Online regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few.

Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

image

THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles,
says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

It’ s no u

se pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top

1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall.

For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone.

All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride.

Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Buy Levaquin Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society.

It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses.

In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses

? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul.

There are several reasons for this…

Full Article

]]> http://roylat.com/2011/08/stiglitz-on-the-growth-in-income-inequality/feed/ 0 The Fall of the United States http://roylat.com/2011/08/the-fall-of-the-united-states/ http://roylat.com/2011/08/the-fall-of-the-united-states/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:55:31 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2011/08/the-fall-of-the-united-states/ The debt-ceiling debacle was the final nail in the coffin of hope for America’

s near-term, and likely longer-term, future.

It confirmed the bankruptcy of our current social/political Buy Lasix Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed structures and values. If the future looked bleak before the debt-ceiling debacle, Brand Cialis Online it now looks black – economically, politically, and socially.

Foreigners can often see into a country’s heart more clearly than its inhabitants. The following opinion piece in Der Spiegel, expresses eloquently the dire straits the US is in.

Opinion

Once Upon a Time in the West

A Commentary by Jakob Augstein

Der Spiegel, August 4, 2011

The US is a country where the system of government has fallen firmly into the hands of the elite. An unruly and aggressive militarism set in motion two costly wars in the past 10 years.

Society is not only divided socially and politically — in its ideological blindness the nation is moving even farther away from the core of democracy.

It is losing its ability to compromise.

America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.

The country’s social disintegration is breathtaking. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described the phenomenon. The richest 1 percent of Americans claim one-quarter of the country’s total income for themselves — 25 years ago

that figure was 12 percent. It also possesses 40 percent of total wealth, up from 33 percent 25 years ago. Stiglitz claims that in many countries in the so-called Third World, the income gap between the poor and rich has been reduced. In the United States, it has grown.

Economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, has written that America’s path is leading it down the road to "banana-republic status." The social cynicism and societal indifference once associated primarily with the Third World has now become an American hallmark. This accelerates social decay because the greater the disparity grows, the less likely the rich will be willing to contribute to the common good. When a company like Apple, which with €76 billion in the bank has greater reserves at its disposal than the government in Washington, a European can only shake his head over the Republican resistance to tax increases. We see it as self-destructive.

The same applies to America’s broken political culture. The name Cheap Cialis "United States" seems increasingly less appropriate.

Something has become routine in American political culture that has been absent in Germany since Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Bloc (in the 1960s and ’70s): hate. At the same time, reason has been replaced by delusion. The notion of tax cuts has taken on a cult-like status, and the limited role of the state a leading ideology. In this new American civil war, respect for the country’s highest office was sacrificed long ago. The fact that Barack Obama is the country’s first African-American president may have played a role there, too.

The West, C’est nous

There’s no deliverance in sight. One can no longer depend on politics in America.

The reliance of Congress members on donations from the rich has become too great. Nor will there be any revolutionary storming of the Bastille in America. Popular anger may boil over, but the elites have succeeded in both controlling the masses and channeling their passions. Take the Tea Party, which has enjoyed godfather-like bankrolling from brothers and billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch and found a mouthpiece in Rupert Murdoch’s populist, hatred-stirring Fox News.

From a European perspective, it all looks very strange: it’s a different political culture. There are other rules at play, different standards.

More and more we view America with the clear notion that we are different…

Full article and author biography

]]> http://roylat.com/2011/08/the-fall-of-the-united-states/feed/ 1 The Tony Kushner Affair – Israel Policy Critics No Longer Cast into Darkness http://roylat.com/2011/05/the-tony-kushner-affair-israel-policy-critics-no-longer-cast-into-darkness/ http://roylat.com/2011/05/the-tony-kushner-affair-israel-policy-critics-no-longer-cast-into-darkness/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 00:55:11 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2011/05/the-tony-kushner-affair-israel-policy-critics-no-longer-cast-into-darkness/ The Tony Kushner “affair” indicates an amazing transformation in the ability of those critical

of Israel policies to express their views publicly. Only a few years ago, anyone expressing criticism would have been consigned to the darkness.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow provides valuable insights into the reasons behind the rejection of the effort to cast Kushner into darkness, as well as into the radical changes that are taking lasix buy place in the Middle East. The beginning of Rabbi Waskow’s piece is below, with a link to the full article.

Roylat

Behind online ampicillin the Tony Kushner story:
The deeper reasons for CUNY’s rejection & reversal –

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Last night, the executive committee of the CUNY Board

of Trustees  reversed the Board’s refusal of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner.

Behind the Board’s original decision and its reversal are three stories.

The first: There has been a concerted attack against Silagra buy phentermine order levitra Soft”>Kamagra Soft the best traditions of open debate and exploration of opinion in academia and in Jewish life, when it comes to criticism of the Israeli government.  The second story: There is a new wave of bold resistance to such arrogance, in the world and in the Jewish community. The third: The Middle East is on the dizzying verge of an opening toward peace

– and that infuriates some hawks on both sides of the barricades. 

1. Mr. Trustee Wiesenfeld, Brand Cialis who swept cheapest propecia outburst.

He had earlier temporarily won the dismissal of a Brooklyn College Cialis for sale professor (later reversed by the college) for the same reasons; he had led the fight to squash the first Arabic-language charter school in New York, reviling its professional educator Debby Almontaser; he  opposed the right of Muslims to create a community center/ mosque in Lower Manhattan.  And a network of such bigots has been haunting academia for several years.

2. The new story is that this time, a wave of outrage levofloxacin stopped this bigotry in its tracks.  Jews committed to Jewish values, intellectuals, artists, academics, joined in condemning viagra sales the Board’s action. (We amoxil online at The Shalom Center were among the earliest to respond.

And we admire the swift and vigorous response of Jewish Voice for Peace.)

This uprising — which we should take honorable joy in –  is why Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of the CUNY board since 2003 and a former president of Yale University,  told the Times that  the board had “made a mistake of principle, and not merely of policy,” in failing to approve Tony Kushner’s degree, Buy Cialis online at its meeting last Monday.  “Freedom of thought and expression is the bedrock of any university worthy of the name,” said Mr. Schmidt.
Duhhh! – It’s not likely that Mr. Schmidt was fast asleep and snoring so loud he couldn’t hear Mr. Trustee Jeffrey S.

Wiesenfeld’s  "impassioned speech" against a made-up caricature of the real Tony Kushner, when the issue came before the Board last week. 

It’s more likely Chairman Schmidt was thinking that bigots like Wiesenfeld have more money, more glower, buy cialis cialis and more power, than gay playwrights, wimpy professors,  and soft-hearted peaceniks.   If so, he purchase viagra online was awakened by the wave of outrage that swept over the CUNY Board.

Five years ago, or even five weeks ago, many of those who rose up might well have rolled cialis buy cialis jelly online their eyes but kept their cytotec buy mouths shut.

Why now? propecia generic For one thing, a new sense of ferment Buy Female Viagra is bubbling, from Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin. Cialis 0nline pharmacy online God is troubling the Waters.

3. And the third story: The REALLY New Middle East levitra brand vs generic is challenging Israel to think anew. Its government might respond by making new wars, or seeking a newer, broader peace.

Whichever direction it now takes, those Jews who disagree will be tenser than ever, more fearful that the old path or any new one spells disaster. Expect bitter fights, expect less room for shrugging off the struggle, expect more efforts to “excommunicate” the the diet pills critics. 

In the last two weeks, we have seen the tiny openings Buy Nolvadex Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed for a possible though perilous passage toward peace buy cialis pills between Israel and Palestine.

In Israel, for the first time in years those committed to peace have raised their voices with serious buy ampicillin online proposals for a two-state solution.

Thirty crucial veteran leaders of the military / security establishment (not the usual peacenik suspects) have put forward a detailed plan. Hundreds of writers, artists, scholars who are the usual suspects but have for years now kept their mouth shut –  the intellectual flower of Israel – have also called for action Kamagra to that end.

Among the Palestinians, buy real viagra without prescription Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah have all agreed to halt attacks on Israel and create a caretaker government of national unity, led by technocrats rather than political figures. Some leaders of Hamas have said that if a majority of the Palestinian people cheap Amoxil votes for peace with Israel, Hamas will set aside its original framework calling for the abolition of the state of Israel.

The new government of Egypt has announced that its border with Gaza will be opened for trade – import and export.

Plans are moving ahead for the UN General Assembly ampicillin can you buy viagra in stores | buy cialis brand | levitra buy acomplia drugs buy online to admit a new Palestine, within approximately the 1967 Green Line boundaries, as a UN member.

All this could lead in the direction of a true peace settlement, supported by peace treaties between all Arab governments, the new state of Palestine, and the state of Israel – as the Arab League has several times proposed during cheap levitra generic the last decade.  (Till Cialis Kamagra now, these proposals have generic amoxil been ignored by the government of Israel and the Hamas government of Gaza.)

Or the very possibility of a breakthrough for peace might drive hawks on either or both sides, in or out of their governments,  viagra online to sabotage these openings.

If that happens, there could be another wave of violence as both the Israeli government and some parts of the Palestinian leadership react with fear viagra for women online and rage to yet another collapse of hope for peace. Online Viagra Shops

So far, the Netanyahu government and the Obama government have rejected the notion of a Palestinian government of national unity that includes Hamas; have rejected the notion of a UN role in establishing Palestinian buy cialis tablets independence; buyviagra and have failed to end the blockade of civilian goods from entering or leaving Gaza, to Online Viagra buy end the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and to stop the settlement amoxil nolvadex online online of Israelis in the West Bank.  This triple rejection makes peace impossible…

diflucan href=”http://www.theshalomcenter.org/node/1843″>Full buy amoxil Article

]]> http://roylat.com/2011/05/the-tony-kushner-affair-israel-policy-critics-no-longer-cast-into-darkness/feed/ 0 European Sanction on Libya DON’T Include Oil Purchases! http://roylat.com/2011/03/european-sanction-on-libya-dont-include-oil-purchases/ http://roylat.com/2011/03/european-sanction-on-libya-dont-include-oil-purchases/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:35:51 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2011/03/european-sanction-on-libya-dont-include-oil-purchases/ The only really meaningful sanction on Gadhafi would be to stop buying his oil – but, oh no, this might be inconvenient to some European countries and businesses. Der order levitra Spiegel has the story. Below is an excerpt.

Click on the title for the full story.

Tadacip Buy Revia Online

EU’s Libya Sanctions Unlikely to Wobble Regime

Drop in the Ocean

Losing access to these accounts will admittedly make little impression on Gadhafi.

The dictator Levitra Professional still has sufficient remaining sources of money to buy support from neighboring countries like Chad and amoxil online from among the clans in his own country.

Gadhafi has an estimated $160 billion in cash reserves that he has where can buy viagra amassed over the years.

Furthermore, it should be easy for him to acquire additional funds from friendly regimes in Venezuela and Belarus.

If the EU were to impose sanctions on Libya’s oil and gas business, amoxicillin it would probably pose greater difficulties for the dictator.

Such a move would directly affect Libya’s economy: the country is the EU’ s third-large

st supplier of oil.

But the 27 member states failed to push through such a step. The energy sector Cialis online remains off limits cheap diflucan for sanctions, much to the irritation buy acomplia online of the Germans.

According to the German Foreign Ministry, an attempt tadalafil was also buy levitra vardenafil cialis pill made to place the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC) on the list of sanctioned enterprises.

After all, this company is controlled by Gadhafi and it helps him maintain his ability to wage a military campaign against the rebels.

However, the German government ran into resistance on this issue from southern Europe.

Links to Libya

Italian energy giant ENI plays a major role in the Libyan oil and gas business. Italy imports one-quarter of its crude oil rimonabant from Libya and natural gas flows through a pipeline to Sicily.

Since the unrest began, the company buy buy amoxil amoxil has been propecia buy viagra online discount generic pumping only half as much oil and the pipeline connection has been switched off. ENI head Paolo Scaroni ampicillin online allayed concerns, however, when he said that this was only a temporary interruption.

Tadacip

Austria’s energy company OMV points to long-term supply contracts, many online Ampicillin of which were concluded with NOC: "We continue to receive oil from Libya."

Over the past buy cialis now few years, a large number of Western energy companies have increased their involvement in Libya, including not only ENI and OMV, but also ExxonMobil, Repsol, Petrobas and Wintershall. Viagra online delivery These companies don’t control sildenafil citrate their own oil fields, but often work as service providers viagra cost for NOC and its subsidiaries.

By now, European energy companies have evacuated the vast majority of their personnel from the country. Their operations have been placed on standby and they are pressuring Brussels not to place further restrictions on their businesses.

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One of their Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription arguments is cytotec buy href=”http://buyLasixcheap.com”>lasix online pharmacy to buy that the situation in the country is still too confusing and sanctions could affect the wrong people. According Cialis Jelly to the Financial Times, the managers of Agoco — a large NOC subsidiary with headquarters in Benghazi — have sided with the rebels.

All in all, the international Kamagra purchase viagra online | where to buy cialis | order online levitra jelly community has only achieved mixed results with sanctions anyway.

It has proven to be extremely difficult to enforce and monitor them. "There is always something buy phentermine going on," says Hamburg-based energy expert Steffen Bukold, as witnessed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

]]> http://roylat.com/2011/03/european-sanction-on-libya-dont-include-oil-purchases/feed/ 0 Watch and Follow the Egyptian Revolution – Al Jazeera http://roylat.com/2011/02/watch-and-follow-the-egyptian-revolution-al-jazeera/ http://roylat.com/2011/02/watch-and-follow-the-egyptian-revolution-al-jazeera/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:33:41 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2011/02/watch-and-follow-the-egyptian-revolution-al-jazeera/ If you want to see what is happening in Egypt first hand, in real time, without corporate bias, watch online cheap kamagra pharmacy levitra online amoxil target=”_blank”>AlJazeera.net/English. It is a model of wh

at a news channel should be.

I will watch it regularly from now on to cheapest nolvadex Levitra buy levitra vardenafil Professional find out what is happening levitra brand name around buy cheap propecia cheap viagra the Kamagra purchase viagra online buy viagra online next day delivery world.  Click on image to cheap ampicilllin watch.

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I urge you to tune in.

The revolution in Egypt is the most perfect expression of people’s hunger for freedom and true democracy since the flower-children of the 1960’s. Buy buy cialis cheap cheap amoxil online Levaquin Anyone who thinks that this is some kind of Islamic conspiracy has only to watch, acomplia Levitra Professional see the people, and listen to

the young people who spearheaded this.

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To amoxil buy keep up to date with latest developments, videos, etc., the buy cytotec generic best source is Buy cheap Cialis Online buy generic levitra Kamagra Soft target=”_blank”>Al Jazeera’s blog. Below is an image from the blog:

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out eyes.

I fear that the US government

(in all its dimensions) would rather have a compliant buy buy cheap cheap levitra levitra dictator than Online buy Viagra href=”http://bestaffiliatelandmines.com/images/”>buy cialis cialis a free, democratic regime. I’m not sure how viagra female to influence the government.

buy cialis pills Who has ideas

?

]]> http://roylat.com/2011/02/watch-and-follow-the-egyptian-revolution-al-jazeera/feed/ 0 The Tragedy of Obama http://roylat.com/2010/11/the-tragedy-of-obama/ http://roylat.com/2010/11/the-tragedy-of-obama/#comments Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:59:19 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2010/11/the-tragedy-of-obama/ I couldn’t have said this any better. It expresses my frustrations and disappoints exactly.

The Tragedy of the Obama Administration

By Barry Ritholtz – November 2nd, 2010, 8:41PM

On election night six years ago, Buy Orlistat Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed I wrote The Tragedy of the Bush Administration. In it, I despaired that:

“Once in a generation, the stars align for a political leader. There is this perfect buy amoxil moment – too often based on some enormous danger

of long-lasting consequences for generations to come.

Cialis generic

Once every half century, the perfect combination of leadership and threat, of challenge and response meet.

The cheap amoxil leader – imperfect, buy penicillin fallible, yet ready to rise to the occasion – grabs the brass ring.

Kamagra Gold “>nolvadex online

Think Winston Churchill fighting the global threat ampicillin buy online of the Nazis, Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration buy cialis now of Independence, JFK’s dare to send a man to the Moon . . .”

The rest of that piece went on to lament viagra cost how George W. Bush was cheap levitra generic granted that rare opportunity buy cialis jelly to grab the brass ring, to rise to the occasion — and failed miserably.

Here we sit, not half a century later as buy cheap propecia originally surmised, but a mere six years later. I once generic levaquin again find myself lamenting the opportunities wasted by a US President in response to a great cataclysm.

In the case of President Obama, it was his response to the financial crisis. The opportunity for greatness presented itself, and was . . . ignored.

The President was swept into office on a wave of Anti-Bush sentiment. The stock market was in freefall, credit was frozen, the recession already cialis average age 13 months old. As Rahm Emanuel viagra buy amoxil online said, “Never waste a good crisis.” A strong leader would have taken can you buy viagra in stores | buy cialis brand | levitra drugs advantage of the moment, Order Kamagra online of the opportunity.

And what an opportunity it was: Over the prior 3 decades, the economy of the United States had been “financialized.” ampicillin online We became much more involved in ‘financial engineering’ than any other more productive engineering.

Along with this financialization amoxil Silagra href=”http://amoxil-cheap.net”>buy amoxicillin no prescription online came increased revenue for the biggest banks and investment Brand Levitra buy cheap acomplia houses; greater Cialis Jelly profits, influence, and power.

A wave Buy Cialis of deregulation swept over the sector, freeing the banks from meddling oversight.

Thus, as the finance sector got larger and more important, it w

as paradoxically under ever less scrutiny, supervision, and regulation. With that new found freedom from oversight, the banks promptly blew themselves, and the global economy, to smithereens.

This was propecia buy cialis pills brand the environment in which the President came into office. What did he do in this scenario

?

• He appointed buyviagra online pharmacy two of the architects of the crisis to major White House economic positions: Lawrence Summers levitra brand online as CEA Chair, and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

lasix online

• He made the enormous tactical Buy Topamax Online error of focusing Online Viagra Shops on Health Care Reform, while the banking crisis was still in full flower.

• He failed to marshal adequate Brand Levitra Viagra online resources to respond to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

The first item damned him to a mediocre economic team, one that failed to respond strongly to the banks that created the crisis.

The second error earned him the enmity of the opposing party. The third error was political, and likely Brand Viagra cost him the House, and possibly the Senate.

The great irony is that the man who order diflucan ran on the campaign slogan of Change failed to deliver it in any meaningful way — at least, where the public wanted it — in getting the reckless runaway banks under control, and in stimulating the moribund, post-credit crisis economy.

I h asten to

add, that from a political perspective, the President was a wimp. Had Al Gore been President from buy cialis cialis 2000-08 (and controlled Congress), the next GOP President would have flailed viagra for women online him for the recession and crisis bank relentlessly.

price levitra Hell, Buy buy real viagra without prescription Drugs Without Prescription the GOP still beats Jimmy Carter like a piñata. cytotec asthma Once Obama took office, that was pretty much the last we heard of the Bush recession. The public actually forget who authorized TARP, who bailed out Citibank, BofA, AIG, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, etc.

This amounted to political suicide.

Critics have debated Obama’s hands off approach to passing National Romney-Care, his giving up (?!) the winning issue of partial Bush tax cut extensions. I am perplexed as to why he would not force a full confirmation battle over the charming midwestern Elizabeth Warren as new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair — Banks versus your grandma.

But as far as I am concerned, those are secondary political issues.

To me, Buy Cheap Propecia Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription his presidency began its fatal downward spiral once he allowed Robert Rubin to determine his initial financial appointments.

By Ampicillin cheap online passing over more pragmatic candidates not tied to banks and Wall Street, the president missed his opportunity to rise to greatness.

The opportunity existed to get the purchase viagra online renegade banks under control — to reduce their leverage, their recklessness, and to get their hands out of the taxpayers pockets.

That opportunity was squandered, and Obama ended up as a defender of the banking status quo. It is where his presidency could have achieved lasting greatness, buy cialis tablets and instead was turned into just another elected official, who over promised and under delivered . . .

]]> http://roylat.com/2010/11/the-tragedy-of-obama/feed/ 0 George Carlin Tells It Like It Is – The American Dream http://roylat.com/2010/08/george-carlin-tells-it-like-it-is-the-american-dream/ http://roylat.com/2010/08/george-carlin-tells-it-like-it-is-the-american-dream/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:58:09 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2010/08/george-carlin-tells-it-like-it-is-the-american-dream/ My partner got this via Facebook and sent it on to me.

George Carlin Online Levitra buy was a humorist kamagra buy that was often Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription in trouble for obscenity, but obviously obscenity charges were just an excuse to harass a man who was telling buy buy viagra online next day delivery | how can i buy cialis | order online levitra online ampicillin cytotec amoxicillin buy online diflucan too much truth.

A short excerpt from the video "Life Is Worth Losing" (2005).

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]]> http://roylat.com/2010/08/george-carlin-tells-it-like-it-is-the-american-dream/feed/ 0 The Republican Party Is a Disgrace to Our Country http://roylat.com/2010/03/the-republican-party-is-a-disgrace-to-our-country/ http://roylat.com/2010/03/the-republican-party-is-a-disgrace-to-our-country/#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:58:21 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2010/03/the-republican-party-is-a-disgrace-to-our-country/ I read about the behavior of the Republicans in the House on the day of the vote on Health Care Reform. I was appalled the people elected to our national congress could be so crude, rude, spiteful,  and demagogic – inflaming the lowest passions of their assembled “supporters.”

Bob Herbert, in this NY Times piece, captures much of what I feel.

Op-Ed Columnist

An Absence of Class

by Bob Herbert

Published: March 22, 2010

acomplia cheap border-bottom: 0px” height=”240″ alt=”" src=”http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/ts-herbert-190.jpg” width=”190″ align=”left” border=”0″ />Some of the generic propecia online pharmacy images from the levitra brand name run-up to Sunday’s Viagra Jelly landmark health care vote in the House of Representatives should be seared into the nation’s buy cialis cheap consciousness. We are so far, in so many ways, from being a class act.

A group of lowlifes brand cialis cheap order at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week taunted and humiliated a man who was sitting on the ground with a sign that said he had Parkinson’s disease. The disgusting behavior was captured on a widely circulated videotape.

Buy Viagra One of the Tea Party protesters leaned over the man and sneered: “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town.”

Another threw money at the man, first one bill and then another, and said contemptuously, “I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot.”

In Washington on Saturday, opponents of the health Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription care legislation spit on a black congressman Silagra buy pfizer Buy Revia Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed viagra online | buy cialis pills online | buy levitra vardenafil and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John amoxicillin Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights buy viagra pill movement. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who online levitra Professional”>Cialis Professional is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Buy ampicillin online cheap Levaquin was taunted because he is gay.

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets buy cheap viagra at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here.

It is 2010, which means cytotec it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against Cialis Jelly amoxil amoxil online online this kind of garbage, Viagra Jelly to fight it aggressively buy generic viagra professional | buy cialis pharmacy | cheap levitra generic wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance buy diflucan amoxil and divisiveness. All you have to do is look nolvadex buy around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy.

As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

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This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction,

the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics.

This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin Buy Antibiotics medications would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about buying generic propecia an absence of bipartisanship.

The toxic clouds buyviagra | buy cialis overseas | buy levitra drugs that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country.

If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling buy buy Amoxil online viagra online discount the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize where can buy viagra and negotiate purchase viagra online | where to buy cialis | buy online acomplia Buy cheap Amoxil Online order online levitra in their online Online Levitra buy pharmacy levitra own best interests — a war that has diminished Viagra online Buy Zithromax Online living standards for working people buy online Ampicillin buy amoxil cialis pill for decades.

With a freer hand, the Republicans would have done more damage. George W. Bush tried to undermine Social Security.

John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and thought Phil Gramm would have made a crackerjack tadalafil Treasury secretary. (For those who may not remember, Mr. Gramm was a deregulation purchase viagra | buy cialis generic online | levitra buying buy real viagra without prescription | buy cialis fast shipping | low price levitra Levitra”>Brand Levitra zealot who told us during the presidential campaign that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”)

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides lasix to buy a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country.

Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.

Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought.

]]> http://roylat.com/2010/03/the-republican-party-is-a-disgrace-to-our-country/feed/ 0 Jon Stewart on Financial Reform http://roylat.com/2010/03/jon-daily-on-financial-reform/ http://roylat.com/2010/03/jon-daily-on-financial-reform/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:54:19 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2010/03/jon-daily-on-financial-reform/ Barry Ritholz of the Big Picture posted a link to Jon Daily skewering Senator Dodd’s “reform” bill and even more funnily and accurately skewering Buy Erectile Dysfunction medications Tadacip amoxicillin the accepted practices of Levitra Professional the big cytotec asthma financial firms. If you don’t end up laughing and angry, I’ll be surprised.

He so completely captures the “legal” fraudu

lent activities of the biggest buy cheapest viagra online | buy cialis with no prescription | cheap levitra generic financial corporations that it is Ampicillin cheap online eerie – and the protection and largesse they ordering amoxil clavulin buy buy viagra cheap propecia cialis receive from the government.

Shame, shame, shame.

Barry Ritholz:

The Daily Show just kills it in this low price levitra piece on Corporate fraud.

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]]> http://roylat.com/2010/03/jon-daily-on-financial-reform/feed/ 0 Depressing News from Florida http://roylat.com/2010/03/depressing-news-from-florida/ http://roylat.com/2010/03/depressing-news-from-florida/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:12:55 +0000 roylat http://roylat.com/2010/03/depressing-news-from-florida/ Intrade is the website that allows Kamagra Soft betting where to buy cialis on political events.

I came across the following item in an email from the site:

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Rubio is a rising star in conservative politics.

The son of Cuban exiles and a former speaker of the Florida House buy propecia cheap of Representatives, the 39-year old has generic buy cheap amoxicillin buy order online levitra ampicilin online Cialis cheap viagra sales cheap cialis the backing of Tea Party activists and hardcore conservatives.

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