Free Verse at its Verst...

I’ve been listening to Stephanie Miller for several years now...her program starts here at 9am...I listen via the Internet...sometimes Sirius XM...Steph’s show is light and fast-moving...3 hours of fun and frivolity is how she describes it...a lot of bantering and hijinx with the show's two co-costs, Jim Ward and Chris Levoie...but this morning everything seemed surreal...am I awake? am I asleep? am I dreaming? the loud, obnoxious scream from the telephone blasted me into consciousness...

Steph...we love you! I said with my inside voice...as I struggled my way out of lala land it was well past 11am...I was answering the phone and listening to Steph’s voice...but what was I hearing? itz Steph’s voice but it sounds somewhat subdued....holy s**t! she was coming out!...no, I didn't have a clue so you have to picture me shaking my head to awakedness so I could absorb what she was saying...seems awakedness isn't a word...Itz underlined in red...wait til it sees "itz,"...all I could think of is how Steph could help so many others who are forced to remain shrinking in the background of life and still apprehensive in the closet, afraid what their families will say...afraid of losing their jobs...of course, that is if they are fortunate enuf to have jobs...

I live with MS...itz a phuquen painful disease...I shoot Copaxone every morning to keep the disease at bay...anyway, enuf about me...except to say that I'm an older listener, who apparently has become a flaming liberal out of disgust for the alternative...I’m proud to have made the  transition, even if it was ever so slowly..so there you have it! Steph...I love your show! I don't really care about your sexual preferences...really! I almost never oversleep so waking up this morning to Steph's serious voice was weird...Steph....I’m sorry for the pain you’ve lived with all these years...judging from the callers to the show this morning...they appear to be liberal and open-minded...the conservatives, hopefully, will come around before too long...whether they want to admit it or not there are certainly as many folks on their side dealing with the same issues...it seems to me the pubs ooze hypocrisy which makes them amusing but difficult to sympathize with...remember when one of Cheney’s daughters came out? or Mark Sanford who, while married had a honey in Argentina?

Then, to emphasize the weirdness of those hypocritical Republicans the thrice married Ruddy Giulinani and his side kick, Newt (do as I say not as I do) Gingrich caused a run on marriage licenses...can’t say enuf about these two bastions of righteousness...suffice to say this is hypocrisy in itz most incredible...  things are so scrood-up these daze itz getting hard to keep up...we have major screw-ups like Glenn Beck, who is on the air every day, spewing his special kind of hatred as his rolling, bulging eyes and flailing arms are fixed on the Jews...don’t know what his problem is...he is a young phuque who has no idea what harm he is doing and who has no idea  of the persecution and hatred he spews...glad he’s so freaken ugly...and, of course, we can look at fat, ugly Limbaugh, who makes a pile of money for his hateful daily tirades...

Hey, good for Obama for acknowledging Ramadam today...feel really bad for New Yorkers who are so miserable because of the mosque being built in their territory...hmm, don’t really know how I would feel if I lived through the tragedy of 9/11...but my first inclination is: build an Islamic skating rink...now that would be tres cool...everything seems crazy these daze...a Republican taking Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat...wonder if there is such a thing as turning in one’s grave...if there is, bet he’s spinning like a top...

There is a charity in Minnesota whose sole purpose is collecting millions of dollars in the name of helping veterans...instead, itz a front primarily to collect money for Republicans...it is managed by a Mr. Thompson...don’t have a first name...itz probably prick... who is the sole contributor according to the Minnesota Independent...Norm Coleman was graced with funds in ‘06, ‘07, and ‘08...Michelle (the mouth) Bachman’s victory committee got money, too...hey, guess what? itz the 50th year of etch-a-sketch!...Alan Greenspan, that grate American said today the tax breaks for the wealthy should expire, making him the sharpest knife in the drawer...he feels we need the tax revenue...really? Good boy, Mr. Greenspan, now you’ve got it!

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The Teabaggers claim they’re not racist...

I believe...I believe...NO I DON'T!.
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PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME

By Danny Schechter

    Plunder: The Crime of Our Time is a hard-hitting investigative film by Danny Schechter. The "News Dissector" explores how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity uncovering the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed.

    The film opens with the conviction of Ponzi King Bernie Madoff, whose acknowledged criminality drove a $65 billion dollar pyramid scheme. It argues that the wrong doing committed by a few individuals distracts from the real story, implicating the best-known institutions that financed and profited from fraudulent sub prime lending. This connection is now being investigated by the FBI as part of a probe into what it calls a "fraud epidemic."

    PLUNDER shows how these firms created special securities to repackage and resell these dubious loans after they were re-rated as Triple A. These firms then bet against many of these toxic assets with credit default swaps and other insurance scams. By leveraging these investments, they recklessly put trillions of dollars and the world economy at risk.

    To tell this story Schechter speaks with bankers involved in these activities, respected economists, insider experts, top journalists, including Paul Krugman, and even a convicted white-collar criminal, Sam Antar, who blows the whistle on intentionally dishonest practices.

    The film displays how this pyramid of fraud led to the massive foreclosures affecting 10 million homeowners, rising unemployment, economic collapse and increasing hardships worldwide. It connects the dots identifying who the victims and beneficiaries are in what "may well turn out to be the greatest nonviolent crime against humanity in history," according to an ex investment banker. Graydon Carter, the Editor of Vanity Fair is quoted as saying, "in other words never before have so few done so much to so many." The film details the frustration of homeowners, who have become the hardest hit victims, as they express their anger in protest against the CEOs of these institutions.

    Plunder: the Crime of Our Time looks into how the crisis developed, from the mysterious collapse of Bear Stearns, an 85-year-old investment firm that disappeared in a week to the shadowy world of trillion dollar hedge funds. Insiders who work in the industry, and know it well, tell both of these stories. Plunder also shows how hastily arranged government bailouts did not revive the economy and may have lost billions.

    The film also delves into the complicity of the major media outlets, which failed to sound the alarm or investigate wrong doers. A top financial journalist and media analyst as well as a financier explain how the business media became embedded in the culture it was covering, similar to embedded reporters in Iraq.

    In its conclusion, Plunder offers facts and details about events that have affected billions of people and lost trillions of dollars. The film travels to Paris to examine how this crisis has gone global. Ultimately, it calls for a full investigation and structural reforms of financial institutions to insure accountability by the white-collar perpetrators who profited from the misery of their victims. It's a call to action: if action is not taken real lessons will not be learned or applied and another crisis may be looming as the underlying problems are still there.

    The "News Dissector" spent a year and half on this investigation, following up on his book, "Plunder," that predicted the crisis and an earlier film, "In Debt We Trust," that explored America's rising credit burden at the time. This former CNN and Emmy award winning ABC News producer was labeled an "alarmist" and his initial finding was greeted with denial. This early work is now seen as prophetic despite understating the full impact of an ongoing crisis that has not yet ended.

    "This is a story that must be told if economic justice is to have any meaning," says Schechter, "Plunder demands a full investigation into who is responsible for the crisis and an appropriate punishment - a "jail out" - for the wrongdoers at a time when the debate about the crisis and what to do about it is treated so superficially on every media outlet. This crisis is not about the unintentional mistakes of a greedy few but a crime that effects us all.'

    Plunder is directed by Danny Schechter for Globalvision, Inc., with Ray Nowosielski, as the producer.

I watched this film tonight. I am still curious as to how and why our country collapsed...the whole country...Poof!...The end! Who is responsible? Where did all the money go? Who profited? Who lost? It is a long, complicated story of our descent into a third-world country.