The World from Berlin: 'The US Is Holding the Whole World Hostage' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

The World from Berlin: 'The US Is Holding the Whole World Hostage' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "The US needs to raise its debt ceiling, currently set at $14.3 trillion (€10.1 trillion), by Aug. 2, otherwise the country will run out of money. But negotiations between President Barack Obama and top Republicans and Democrats have so far failed to make progress.

Obama has now given congressional leaders until Saturday morning to reconsider their positions. 'It's decision time. We need concrete plans to move this forward,' Obama said on Thursday, the fifth day of talks, following an inconclusive negotiating session.

Financial markets, which have previously viewed the negotiations with calm, are beginning to get nervous amid fears that Republicans and Democrats may be unable to reach an agreement by Aug. 2. Any default on the part of the US could have incalculable effects on global financial markets and could hurt the fragile recovery in the US. Moody's and Standard & Poor's have warned they may cut the country's top AAA credit rating if a solution isn't reached.

Republicans want any increase in the debt ceiling to be met by spending cuts equal to the same amount, as well as more serious efforts by the government to address the debt problem. Democrats are open to certain cuts but want tax increases in return. With presidential elections coming up in 2012, neither side wants to be seen as ceding ground.

On Friday, German commentators react with concern to the ongoing stalemate.

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

'The bitter debate in Washington about raising the debt ceiling has largely left the financial markets cold. … The market players apparently expect that an agreement will be reached in time. That's the only possible explanation for their surprisingly calm response.'

'We can only hope that the top politicians in Washington take Moody's warning seriously, despite the relaxed response from the financial markets so far. A US default and a lower credit rating would … send stock prices through the floor and could choke off America's economic recovery -- with global repercussions. The politicians in Washington are playing with fire. A swift compromise is needed. Nobody needs a US default.'

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

'It's actually unimaginable. On August 2, the US could, for the first time in its history, become insolvent because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives refuses to raise the ceiling on the national debt. But until now, everyone is acting as if it will all be OK and the politicians in Washington will come to their senses in time.'

'The Republicans are playing with fire. Nobody can imagine what the repercussions might be if the unthinkable happens and the US is suddenly no longer a safe haven for investors. Anything is possible, from a small, barely perceptible amount of turbulence in the financial markets to a global panic. Congress should think carefully about what it is doing.'

The conservative Die Welt writes:

'In this period of competing debt crises, America and Europe are looking at each other in amazement, with each side understanding less and less about what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. While Europe's chaos is obvious to the Europeans and the rest of the world, there are few signs of self-doubt or self-awareness in the US. In the middle of the poker game between the two political parties to prevent a national default on Aug. 2, polls show that 77 percent of Americans believe that they live in the world's greatest system of government. Just as many are convinced that life is only worth living as an American.'

'Democrats and Republicans are so hopelessly embroiled in a religious war that compromise and pragmatism are just dreams from a far-off era of reason. …

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YouTube - ‪Hey ..... President Obama‬‏

YouTube - ‪Hey ..... President Obama‬‏: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Awwww, that is sweet. Images of Black Love.

Economic Diversity in the Black Community: Is it Allumette? (nah, it's not Allumette)

Photo courtesy of usslave.blogspot.com

I awoke with the thought that the reason the unemployment rate is higher in the black community and among teens is because neither group owns the means of production to anything worthwhile. We should have way more printing presses circulating in the black community because communication at that level is the easiest and most effective thing to own. Newspapers sit around for weeks staring at you begging you to either read it, recycle it or throw it away. Broadcast has to travel by word-of-mouth after its 30 seconds are gone.
Where are our advertising agencies? Where are our television and radio stations? We should have them by the 100s of thousands, constantly telling ourselves what ever it is we want to be reminded of or know. Have you ever noticed that we as a country don't share our local news readily? How would the vast majority of us know whether or not we were all experiencing the same thing if network news did not tell us? It would be back to word-of-mouth and telephones just like the olden days.

The lack of these items in our community relates to a deficiency in jobs or rather viable career paths. Plenty of black folks major in these areas in college (if we are allowed and yeah, I said it) but then we have to go a beggin' to other community groups for the work. Those groups are selective amongst themselves between rich and poor. Blacks deserve the same opportunity to make those decisions but we do not get the chance to do so. We have not given ourselves the right to make these places viable work options.

It is for this reason our communications and news is filtered mostly though sets of eyes and minds that do not work like ours do and do not understand what we know. Gatekeepers of another color, creed, race, religion in some instances a whole 'nother agenda. That is why we do not know every little thing our favorite black celebrity is doing. Now, if given the choice of more privacy and freedom or more money, many of the black glitteratti would choose the latter--bet. And there would be more black glitterati--maybe you or another person you know.

It is for this reason, our nation's first black president has to have his message spun in a million different directions. There are no black news or communication agencies that broadcast nationally. None. Not everyone is on the Web. The bulk of our black wealth is not on the Internet. They look on television broadcasts and newspapers for a reflection of self but all they see is criminality--a concept many cannot relate to as they follow the law and God.

 So let us decided to do this thing for ourselves because from that point, businesses will erupt and create commerce like a seedling in the springtime. We all have to provide food, clothing and shelter for ourselves so we need black farms, black textile factories and black construction companies. Competition in the economic arena in the form of capitalism leads to flourishing advertising and marketing. And there we have our economically viable black community. All we would have to do is to populate it, educate it, guide and direct it.

The black farm needs workers and heavy equipment so let us, like we do in Farmville, create the means of production to do this. We would need a steel foundry--Gary has plenty but not owned by blacks or Americans for that matter however, I'm sure at the right price we would be in business together. The company that creates heavy earth moving equipment gets steel from them and the black farmer buys the tractor. Everybody works and makes money. The few black banks we have would have to finance our endeavors, so on and so forth.

Of course this is a simplistic, Stone Soup way of looking at a very layered and complicated mission but if we were ever in the position to have to do this, we would be able to do so. There would be a group of like minded individuals who would rise about the rest and become the true black bourgeois, keeping us fed, sheltered and clothed because they would not be able to afford selfishness and greed to lead their decisions because that would lead to death very quickly. And there would be jobs aplenty--so much so that black women would go back to the old days and start having babies earlier in life to keep up with the demand our society would place on itself. Those women would be charged with the duty of being a mom and wife and her husband would be able to support his family legally, ethically and morally.

Editor's Note:
I prefer the Stone Soup analogy to the one of Allumette the original. I grew up reading Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales--the American version of Allumette. (Whatever dudes, the girl starved to death outside of the French bakery but she died hallucinating that she had a cornucopia of delicious baked goods.)

Surprise Presidential Check-in During Popular Chicagoland Radio Show - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com

Surprise Presidential Check-in During Popular Chicagoland Radio Show - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

President Obama on the Way Forward in Afghanistan | The White House

President Obama on the Way Forward in Afghanistan | The White House: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Mitch Daniels: Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts - WSJ.com

Mitch Daniels: Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts - WSJ.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Health savings accounts matches by the state is still money and it is apparently money the state of Indiana does not have. If they had money to fully fund this plan, then they would not be unscrupulously kicking people off the plan by stealthy changing the mailing address to where payments are sent and then claiming not to have received payment. I have seen companies do this before to get more money out of the Indiana resident. The state gets to keep 25 percent of the contribution and you get nothing--legally. And on paper it seems as if HSAs are a great deal. Well I guess they are if they aren't being used in a scammy-type way.

That is right people. When people were needed to populate the plan so that it could appear to be a viable way to provide affordable health care insurance, Healthy Indiana Plan went out of it's way to make sure anyone who wanted health care could get health care. Now that the economy has taken a nose dive it is difficult to fund. However when the state wants to make a big show of how well they can balance a budget, cuts are made. This way it looks as if they were correct and had a good plan all along and appear to have a balanced budget. Liars and cheats go to hell. I know if they are doing this across the board they are affecting the elderly and poor. Do not balance the state budget on the backs of the elderly and the poor. I have never seen anything so poorly managed in my life.

So Obamacare in 2014, eh? Long ass wait.

Obamawear2012

Obamawear2012: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Buy a 2012 photo tee today.

NewsDaily: Republicans blast Obama, not each other

NewsDaily: Republicans blast Obama, not each other: "- Sent using Google Toolbar" ~see, I'm not the only one...

My official rant

The Republican campaign theme cannot be "our focus is to get Obama out of the White House."
What has he done that he should be made to leave? Keep his campaign promises? Please.

All republicans right now look like robberbarrons who have ripped off their base for the very last time, last month. Your base is waiting for you neo cons to leave so they can have their party back. So when you get your house together, then get a decent candidate, maybe your base will have you back into the fold.
Your base is just as broke as everyone else. Big business and the corporate right are keeping you afloat and also keeping the jobs away from the American people--to spite us for voting for Obama--a regular person--not an out-of-touch intellectual--and to spite the president himself.
Shame on you. Not everyone knows the top one percent and their corporate girl and boy Friday. Us proletariat usually just call you guys "they."
The invisible they. When blogger start calling you out, things are pretty bad down here where us working folks and poor live.
Food costs are at an all time high and so are fuel costs. We are embroiled in skirmishes across the globe and being asked to enter more wars than we can afford to enter. America as the cash cow has ended because a real person is at the purse strings. President Barack Obama is a normal person who went to law school and got married and had some kids. Only, he took it to the next level and ran successfully for public office. He made serious changes while there and took a shot at the top spot and won.
He and his supporters have been taking some serious stripes for that for three years. He is not a blue-blood, rich guy. Generations and generations of his family don't have silver spoons to pass down the lineage. So that makes Obama a regular guy who had to pay off his student loans and pay utility bills and worry over kids and how they are doing in school and his mom and his grand mom--just like everyone else who can't hop in a spaceship and zoom away if the world explodes or something else as ghastly.
I will not be punished or blamed for using my democratic right to vote for the best candidate. I don't have a job so I read a lot now. And I look at the people in charge. I read faces too. I'm just a pawn on a chess board when I'm not totally invisible or considered unimportant. Myself as a Democrat and my neighbors as Republicans are in the same boat, different ends and we are tired of the unfruitful bull crap that is constantly floated past our noses. Some of these candidates run under the assumption that "the people" will take whatever you have to give and you can say one thing then do another. No more. All presidents will be held to the standard Obama has set because he has raised the bar for elected public officials.

NewsDaily: Obama: If debt limit not raised, financial crisis possible

NewsDaily: Obama: If debt limit not raised, financial crisis possible: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"