Re the delay in the Chrysler sale, the Blue Indiana site provides further insights into the Indiana state treasurer behind this move:
“Most people probably didn’t — and still don’t — have any idea that Richard Mourdock is our state treasurer. But with the guy running around the cable television circuit spewing fire and brimstone, it’s become difficult to ignore the geologist-by-trade’s evolution from wallflower to partisan flamethrower.
And with an estimated $2 million being spent by Mourdock in his legal battle against the Chrysler deal, Hoosier taxpayers should definitely start paying attention to a public official who appears to be more interested in his own political crusades than the people who he has pledged to protect.
An appeals court in New York approved the sale Friday but gave objectors until this afternoon to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Chrysler LLC wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat Group SpA as part of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection.
The emergency requests went first to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who handles such matters from New York. She can act on her own or refer it to the entire court.
The Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher’s Retirement Fund and the state’s Major Moves Construction Fund claim the deal unfairly favors the interests of Chrysler’s unsecured stakeholders ahead of those of secured debtholders such as the funds.
Two things of note here: (1) If Mourdock actually won, tens of thousands of families could see their jobs or pensions thrown into uncertainty, which last time I checked, was not a good thing for a state already reeling from job losses. (2) The story being lost amidst the grandstanding here is that Mourdock himself was and is responsible for making safe investments on behalf of these funds. And if that’s the case, our state treasurer is probably deserving of more than a few questions as to why he was still investing in such risky bonds late last year.”

Posted by: Maxcrat | Jun 9 2009 10:33 utc | 4

The world’s biggest military spenders by population
GLOBAL military expenditure rose by 4% in 2008 to a record $1.46 trillion, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israel spends most on defence relative to its population, shelling out over $2,300 a person, over $300 more than America. Small and rich countries, and notably Gulf states, feature prominently by this measure. Saudi Arabia ranks ninth in absolute spending, but sixth by population. China has increased spending by 10% to $85 billion to become the world’s second largest spender. But it is still dwarfed by America, whose outlay of $607 billion is higher than that of the next 14 biggest spenders combined.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13808801
emphasis added

Posted by: crone | Jun 9 2009 13:42 utc | 6

Whenever I hear Obama refer to AfPak as the “good war,” I’m quickly reminded of the fact that there’s nothing good, as in just, about this war. From what I can tell, there are only one to two reasons we are in AfPak: 1) to feed the military-industrial complex and/or 2) to secure one leg of the Caspian oil/gas pipeline. But because using military force is a very cost-ineffective way to gain a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to both black and blue gold, and because our military is more of a drain than a gain on our economy, as Mikhail Gorbachev wisely points out in his most recent piece in the Washington Post, we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by throwing lots of blood, limb, and treasure down this rat hole of a war. So the sooner Obama realizes this, the sooner he can prevent turning AfPak into his Vietnam, and, more importantly, the sooner we’ll stop digging our graves in the graveyard of empires!

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 15:02 utc | 8

@matter @7 – thanks, corrected
@dh – I agree

Posted by: b | Jun 9 2009 16:42 utc | 10

@11, that’s weird. In those denominations they can’t be bearer bonds, can they? They must be individually registered somewhere. It ought to be short work to authenticate them.

Posted by: …—… | Jun 9 2009 17:56 utc | 12

Yes, the Finance police…
But, what about the cop inside our heads?
The Corporate Media’s War On Craigslist

Mr. Newmark is a dangerous man. Not only is he singlehandedly sucking the revenue out of the newspaper business’s primary cash cow, classified advertising, but he represents the antithesis of the three tenants of the corporatist philosophy: greed, greed and more greed. He must be stopped. Capitalism cannot survive someone like Newmark cornering such a huge market share. “What’s the point of having more?” Just asking that question will get you expelled from the Brook Club.
So now it’s war. Just last week at the private executives meeting of the American Press Institute, the theme was “get craigslist”. Here’s the roundup from Poynter’s Rick Edmonds in an article titled, “API to Summit: Newspapers Should Mount a Unified Challenge to Craigslist”:

The main event at the private executives’ meeting a week ago in Chicago was discussion of paid online content, and the American Press Institute contributed a white paper strongly endorsing several versions of that strategy. API also offered a second recommendation and a second white paper, arguing that the industry should mobilize “to prevent further revenue erosion” of classifieds.
The target of the effort would be Craigslist, whose mostly free listings have contributed to the disastrous dive of what used to be the industry’s most lucrative revenue source. The white paper suggests that with “a powerful unified national brand” on a common platform, newspapers could take back some of that business.

This is just one example of evidence that the PTMB (POWERS THAT MAKE BELIEVE) want us in their ever loving panoply, if we even think of breaking out of there induced ‘Total Institution’, out comes the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). I have stated before, it seems as if we are covertly and not so covertly, but, indeed, methodically being herded into a mental plantation, by a system that has gladly inherited the worst of both the Soviet and Nazi Germany type authoritarian means of control and governship.
A “quasi-Soviet/facist/totalitarian system.” A “Kafkaesque” bureaucratic i.e. State induced non- static labyrinth. Whose rules change only for the elite and not the governed.
Does anyone else feel creepy by the use of the coloqualism, “lockdown” when used for universities and other mediums? In light of the school shootings etc..? Isn’t ‘lockdown’ used mostly from such things as prison riots? But I digress, recent links I’ve posted of the military literally taking over our public schools, But, what about, ‘the cop in our heads’, in other words, the internalized conditioning? Rgiap has mentioned and I concur, the American people who are scared shirtless and shitless & largely they will not complain because on one side they benefit from this ventures & on the other side because they fear the very real repressive state apparatus that has as its guiding jurisprudential light – the patriot acts & a completely corrupt judiciary. You don’t even have to put your boot on my neck anymore, I’m just going grovel here in the dirt, grateful for the scraps. Worse, I might even sing your praise and fight your war. Beat me and make me write bad checks. The major effect of the panopticon of the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) is to induce a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
The inmate,(you), must never be able to be to see his/her surveillance but always be aware that the possibility of being seen is constant. This is the history of the disastrous attempt of the bourgeois to control insanity.
By cruel and inhumane means.
These means did not reduce or control insanity, on the contrary it increased it.
Hence,this camera obscura, the eye of the Magus, manifests itself so deeply within us, internalized to the point where and average man or woman on the street when assailed by an average police man defaults to guilt. For example, all an authority figure has to do is shout “you there” and 9 out of 10 of us will confirm.
Thereby, extending our guilt.
Bottom line…
Gog, wants inside your head.
Just an observation.
Tones of Article 58? the Russian SFSR Penal Code?
*Here I have in mind Colin Wilson’s work entitled: ‘The Outsiders’

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 9 2009 20:01 utc | 14

Max Blumenthal has brilliantly captured the sights and sounds of Zionist skinheads dunking tea bags and downing brew during their dying days in Rome.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 22:49 utc | 16

Cynthia,
Holocaust® is a registered trademark exclusively applying to European Jews.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 10 2009 0:05 utc | 18

re #11 – I don’t think there can be bearer bonds in those denominations – this report is probably for entertainment purposes only.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Jun 10 2009 4:40 utc | 20

uncle scam I wrote this before your post appeared being these days slow …and was happy to see it…anyway here is what i wrote yesterday but didn ‘t finish check etc:
Gazans have been written out of the human family, from the article posted by b, at Mondoweiss.
That is exactly right.
The stigmatization, control, disenfranchisement, rounding up, forced to work, and ultimate killing of Jews in ww2 was part of getting rid of the ‘poisonous’ elements of society, aimed at a general purification; let’s not forget the homosexuals, Gipsies, Communists, varied political opponents, and remember what the never-mentioned mentally handicapped suffered … in short an elimination of various socially, financially, morally, intellectually bankrupt individuals / groups, as well as Jews, many of whom were well integrated, established professionally, comfortable, even rich…despoiling them was financially rewarding (in a way, for a time.) Envy and jealousy could be invoked for this group, not the others.
Gypsies are still very badly treated, homosexuals – depends very much on the place – Communists as individuals are still frowned upon but socialist/communist states can expect a heap of trouble (Yugoslavia, Cuba, etc.). The handicapped however are far better treated – their affliction is not ethnic, nor of opinion/lifestyle etc. and it is understood that they are not at fault, it is fate, bad luck.
The Jews, more numerous, more powerful, and with the backing of Various Powers, have locked themselves into a new ghetto, – their very own Homeland, Israel. To achieve an ethnic (for lack of a better word, as many different dimensions are involved) state, it is by definition necessary to ‘purify’ it and ‘expand’ it in a way somewhat similar to Germany. (Different epoch, geo-politics, etc.)
The ghetto has to expel foreign, impure elements, by any means possible, and has to expand – that is a characteristic of fascism, it must move forward, convince, exhibit ‘growth’, conquer – it can’t stand still.
So some group (/s) is going to get it in the neck, and must be dehumanized, seen as vermin, non-human.
For obvious reasons, the other groups mentioned never wanted, or could get, their own shaky ‘statelet’.

Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 10 2009 17:14 utc | 22