As a child, I always thought to myself that adults must have more things to do in their list of resolutions than a child like myself. This was because I normally saw loads of faults in the adult behaviour and way of life. It was kind of difficult to understand why contrary to my self hypothesis as a child, that they actually either had just a couple of mere things on the list or non at all. Asking them about it and being confronted with the afore said reality was one of the mysteries of adult-life that I was not empathizing with at all. I just could not get how they could start off a completely New Year with not even one single thing to change in their lifestyle or in their character.
However, now that I am an adult myself their attitude towards resolutions and list is hitting me hard. It is the first year that I would too have an empty list. It is just that I find nothing in my life or character that requires amending in any way. In fact, I am happy and quite thankful for the way I am as an adult and an individual in the society. In no regard, am I even by a millimeter hesitant about myself in the eyes of the rest of the world. So I am the perfect adult figure that we all try to become from child-hood!
As a consequence, of having touched both lands of childhood and adulthood I can draw a very hypothetical conclusion from both my experiences. Well as a child one sees a much more clearer picture of oneself, that is how a child improves and becomes better and better on a daily basis.
But, childhood is just like sand-papering the handles of the most extravagant and exquisite piece of wooden furniture. One uses the sand-paper on the handles till the perfect look and soft touch is achieved. Since adulthood is the result of this entire time consuming act of removing the unwanted rough patches on the furniture and the dust accumulated as a result of the procedure is the experience treasured then obviously its hard to see much fault. Unless the unfortunate furniture has a broken leg or a spillage of some sort on its beautifully tailored and comfortably cushioned material there is hardly a naive chance to realize its misplacement in the new dinning room which is now serving as its new community.
Only the wise do have a look at themselves from the eyes of an onlooker in comparison to the rest of the furnitures present. Judgment and self doubt turn out to become harder as we age while an immediate judgment of even a passer by is one of the simplest things in our adult lives.
Thus, no matter how perfect you are as an adult, do step back today and look at your life from a totally different angle and give yourself the gift in this New Year to reflect upon what you have done so far in your life as a person rather than just being a beautifully, decorated and well taken cared of piece of furniture.
Once in a while even furnitures need a bit of fixing and cleaning so do we as humans on Mother Earth! Hence, I shall make my list today too for probably there is loads of space for improvement in my personality as well!
Nobody talks, nobody moves, but for hands on pencils on papers.
Intimidating peace. Warm isolation, but cold company.
Me? I’m done. My miserable comrades still toil away at their pages and pages. What are we doing? Taking the SAT. Basically, trying to get into college. It’s near the end, and the last section in the test is the math, before the final test break. So I know that’s what everyone else around me is doing. Ha-ha, suckers. I’m done fast. I’m a speedy math test taker. Math is my best subject. It’s the subject about which I’m most proud.
I clink the clay slabs together in my pocket. My older brother, Farrah, who took this test five years ago, gave me these soon afterwards, when I turned 13. They seem to have given me luck on anything I’ve taken/accomplished so far. I’ve never questioned their power.
Father gave these to me at my barmitzvah. They were passed down to him from his father, who got it from his older brother, who got it from his father… And so on down the male line of Kusroviches. He instructed me not to decipher their meaning until the worst of youth is over, because before then I won’t understand what it means.
But now I understand their meaning. Now, I get it. Anaeb Marcel Kusrovich, it’s your turn. Do not decipher these until the worst of your own youth is over.
I remember seeing them once, twice, maybe even a few other times. I knew not to decipher it but I couldn’t help but think sometimes. The words were in Russian, yes, but their meaning so garbled and nonsensical that I just stopped trying.
When the worst of my youth is over. I’ll turn 18 in a few short weeks. My youth is coming to an end.
I could look at them and not tell my brother or my father…
A proctor zooms by my desk, whispering.
Is that a clacking noise coming from your pocket? I’d prefer that clacking be a little quieter, if not completely gone. Okay?
Her voice is soothing, and sweet, even in whisper form, and her request is highly ironic since her heels make a clicking sound as she scoots through the aisles of test-taking kids. She’s obviously a new teacher in this school because I’d never seen her, other than being my proctor, and almost none of The Hebrew Academy’s teachers have changed in the past 25 or so years, so the school says. Not to mention, she was speaking clear and fluid English, when most of the time you got yelled at if you spoke English. You were supposed to speak either Hebrew or Russian while in school, even though the big tests were in English.
She goes. Her heels click louder than my clay slabs, so I don’t know who the hell she thought she was kidding.
Waiting.
All I’m doing. Waiting.
My hands furtively fiddle with the clay in my pocket. The slabs are so old that I feel like I’m getting clay dust on my fingers.
Okay. The Mathematics section of the SAT is now completed. You may take a 5 minute test break in which you may talk or use the restrooms, but do not talk about the test.
Relief! I stand. My arms are raised above me, reaching towards the heavens that brought me power through my shards.
I sauntered over to my proctor.
May I open the clay shards I have in my pocket that were making the clacking noise from before? I asked in perfect Russian.
No, she replies, also in Russian. Then she switches to English. I know you wouldn’t, but for all any administrator walking around here knows, you could have written some helpful test material on the slabs. Maybe after the test?
Are you a new teacher here? I ask, puzzled. You aren’t supposed to speak English in this school…
She laughs.
I’m not a teacher here at all. I’m actually a college kid who just needed a weekend job, and they had a proctoring position here open, so here I am. I know Russian, but it’s really rusty so I figured it’d be easier for you if I spoke English.
This explains why she looks so young. There are no teachers in The Hebrew Academy who are younger than 40, right now.
You should meet my brother. He’s at the Community College around here. He loves teaching people new things, especially languages, I say.
You have an older brother at the Community College? Oh, I go there too! Her cry is incredulous. What’s his name?
Farrah. Farrah Kusrovich. You know him? I ask hopefully. I love meeting people who know Farrah. It’s always fun, because they all say I look exactly like him and have many of his mannerisms in common.
Farrah? For real? You’re Farrah’s younger brother? I was wondering why you looked so familiar! My God, I love that guy! Around campus, everyone knows Farrah. He’s silly, but he’s also the person on campus that you really don’t want to mess with because his vocabulary is enough to shoot down anybody. Not to mention, he’s sharp as a tack and witty, too. He doesn’t need a gun to protect himself, you know?
I nod, and I’m grinning. Everyone who knows Farrah loves him. He’s clever, and he’s hilarious, and he’s really got it all together. He might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, hence his going to community college, but he’s pretty awesome, his own SAT scores notwithstanding.
Oh, the time, the time! I better start the test again… She raps a hand on her desk until all is quiet, and turns away from me. Okay, it’s time for you to begin your tests again. Please sit down and turn to the next section of the test, the Reading.
Without another word, I sit down and open my test again.
Man. What’s Farrah going to say about this? I have to get her name.
~
Okay, guys! Please close your test booklets and put your pencils down. The SAT 2009 has been concluded! You may be released.
After a brief cheering period, my peers stand and leave, chattering hurriedly in Russian, some slipping in a few words of English. They’ll get it later…
The young proctor appears again by my desk.
Pull out those slabs of yours. I want to see them.
I hastily withdraw them from my pockets, clay dust clouding my hands, spotting my jacket, and ending up on the floor.
Farrah gave these to me at my barmitzvah. He told me not to decipher them until the worst of my youth is over, I explained.
Well, the SAT is a pretty damn big deal, she replies. Perhaps you could put them together now and see what happens.
The room is empty.
I go over to the teacher’s desk and put the slabs on the table. Everything on the desk is written in Spanish, so this must be a Spanish room.
Clink, clink, pic, pic.
Constantly rearranging the 5 slabs until they are in an order which makes sense.
The tablets themselves are pretty bland in color, clay-colored, but then again, their color must have worn off with the generations.
Read the Russian, she implores. I certainly can’t.
Frankly, neither can I. Of course, the text is faded away from all the generations of fingers creasing its surfaces.
I drop my head on the desk.
Never fear, never fear. Just get a piece of paper–here you go. Copy what you think you see so you can keep track of where you are.
It would be so helpful if she too knew how to read Russian.
Without another word I grab a pen and squint at the cyrillic script before me.
Man, and man.
Falling through, but rising up.
Thoughts are but words unspoken.
Feelings are but shouts unheard.
Knowledge comes from the soul and not from the ear.
Ah, oh holy love, the productive cooperation, the partnership and co-work.
What the hell…? I ask.
Having trouble reading? she says.
I ignore her and continue copying.
Put the pieces together.
Soul and worth, strength, oh holy love, are partners.
Stay by me, friend.
But stop me, too.
Keep me bound.
Set me free.
The missions of the eyes are the ambitions of the hands and feet.
Go, sons, brothers.
Go, for I have finished.
We have only just begun.
I put the pen down.
That’s it? she asks.
Yes, that’s it, I reply.
Read it to me, she says. I listen to her, and read.
These are all of the world’s little ironies put together on clay slabs, she says. What do you think? “Soul and worth, strength, oh holy love, are partners?” “The missions of the eyes”–hmm, goals you can see–”are the ambitions of the hands and feet…” But you normally associate ambition with the heart, or even the mind. Why the hands?
I stop.
What’s your name? I ask her.
Nataly. Nataly Colton, she says.
Thank you, Nataly, for everything. You’ve given me the keys to this puzzle. I understand the message my brother and my bloodline are trying to send me.
What does it say? she asks.
I ignore her and keep going.
I promise to pass this to my sons, too. In these tablets seem to be the key of wisdom for a man’s sight. But I am a man. I now have this sight and I can pass it on.
I’m going to go home now, Nataly. Nice meeting you, and I’ll tell Farrah when he comes home that I met you, and that you helped me decipher the slabs. Farewell. I collect my clay slabs, jumbling their order once again.
But, Anaeb… she calls after me. What did it say?
You heard the inscription, Nataly. Knowledge comes from the soul–here I wink–and not from the ear.
I turned around, put the clay back in my pockets, and through The Hebrew Academy’s ancient, now-empty hallways, I left.
Greetings! Thanks for visiting my blog. I decided to start this blog so I can share some erotic foot fetish stories I’ve written. I hope you like them! Here is the first:
Finally I was going to be able put my lips around those sweet toes. She’s been coming into my store weekly for a month now. Her perfect feet were the first thing that caught my eye. That’s probably because my eyes are drawn to the sound of anything that suggests a visible bare foot, and her light beige heeled sandals alerted me as they smacked her heels with alternating steps. These were a pair of feet to behold if there ever were one. Her petite, perfectly formed, perfectly pedicured feet were so delectable, any man, fetishist or not, would be happy to kiss them. As my eyes examined the rest of her I was not disappointed; gorgeous lightly tanned, smooth, fit legs were visible up to the knee, where her skirt forced my imagination to do the rest (for the moment). What a cute little tight bum! I drifted into a daydream where I was behind her, placing my hand on the inside of her thigh, running it up her cheeks, lightly stroking her spine on the small of her back, giving her goose bumps— my fantasy was interrupted as she turned around and I could see her face. She wasn’t supermodel hot, but as pretty as real girls come. She had dark blonde hair that hung down to her perky chest. Her nose and chin were slightly pointy, but not at all unappealing. Hell, with feet like hers, I didn’t much care what her face looked like. But she was blessed with heavenly feet to support the rest of her, which was also angelic. I couldn’t stop myself from stealing glances, trying to do so with my peripheral, but unable to keep myself from the pleasures of a direct stare, which I didn’t mind doing when she wasn’t facing me. I savoured every angle I could view them from. I still have the images in my head.
These staring sessions continued every time I was graced with her presence, to the detriment of my attention to other customers. Always the same sandals and same French pedicure. Same basic outfit, one skirt or another, with a light coloured short-sleeved shirt.
This time I decided I’d done enough looking. It was time to get her attention. It was early afternoon when she came in and there wasn’t another soul in the store. I asked her if I could help her find anything. Her eyes met mine and we shared a moment smiling at each other. She thanked me and said she was just looking. I made small talk about the events going on in town. There’d been a charity run recently and she said she had partaken. The route went right by the shop window. I wish I’d known and seen her. If only I could have enjoyed her naked sweaty body after she’d done the run — give her a full body massage to help her relax and finish her off with a body quivering orgasm to put her in a state of ecstasy… I missed out on that, but I’d have another chance.
“Do you like to do any other types of exercise?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. I love exercising. Especially hiking and swimming.” She answered. Excellent, I thought. I like hiking and swimming means beautiful bare feet. I asked her about the hiking, where she goes and so on. I could tell by the way she was looking at me and the way she was laughing at any lame thing I said that she was interested. We made plans to go hiking together, to show each other our favourite routes.
I wanted to have her experience something new and exciting so I took her to one of my favourite hikes first. It’s not well known and the lack of many hikers means you’re more likely to get a glimpse at some of the local fauna. As we hiked we flirted and got to know one another. She came wearing hiking boots, beige shorts and a white t-shirt. It was a fantastic day, but it was hot out. After two and a half hours of hiking we reached a summit with a great view where I decided we’d stop for lunch. When she sat down and took off her pack she commented on the heat and was pulling at the neck of her shirt for some airflow.
“Take off your boots, your feet will help let out the heat from the rest of your body.” I suggested.
“Yeah, my feet could use some air.” She agreed.
As I unpacked the food I had brought I was glancing occasionally over at her, watching her unlace her boots, take them off, and then remove her socks. What a sight. I couldn’t wait to get close and maybe get a little whiff of her sweaty feet. We sat together, ate and joked and her bare feet were there right in front of me on the grass. I couldn’t smell them but I certainly enjoyed looking. In the grass they looked especially beautiful. Her French pedicure was still visible, but it was obvious that it hadn’t been done for a few days. She started rubbing one of her feet while we were talking.
“Are you sore?” I asked.
“No not really. It just feels good and I want to avoid them hurting later.” She answered. I was even more turned on now.
“That makes sense. I’m told I’m pretty good with my hands. Would you like me to give you a little massage?” I asked, doing my best to hide my excitement.
“I’m not going to turn down a foot rub!” She said as she extended a beautiful foot to me. She lay down now as I kneeled before her. I took her foot in my hands and gently caressed it all over. Then I rotated her toes one at a time in little circles. I spent some time firmly rubbing her arches, followed by the ball of her foot, then her heel, then the points where her toes join her foot. She was smiling and clearly enjoying herself. “Mmmm, that feels so nice.” I smiled at her and said “Good”. As I started on the space between her ankle and her heel with my thumb and index finger, her face flushed “Wow. I can feel that in my knees and the pit of my stomach.” I knew she was feeling it elsewhere too. I brought her foot to my mouth and gently kissed the ball of her foot and she giggled. I got a faint smell of sweat. I wanted to run my tongue all over her foot right then, followed by other parts of her, but I thought I should build her up a bit more and at least give the other foot equal treatment.
I gave the other foot the same routine and she continued to smile and make little noises making her pleasure known. But this time, I held the kiss upon the ball of her foot a little longer. Then I kissed each toe. Then I took her big toe in my mouth and she gasped, a bit surprised, but she quickly gave in to the delight she was feeling. I could do anything I wanted with her now and I knew it. Her toes were so sexy and felt so good in my mouth. They were slightly salty. I sucked each toe, one at a time, running my tongue between them as I switched from one to the other. I noticed her hands moving around her crouch as I was doing this, but not quite touching her lady parts. I leaned forward and undid the buttons of her shorts. “Don’t be shy.” I said and took one of her hands and put a couple of fingers in my mouth to lube them for her. She took the cue and put her hand down her light pink panties as I continued to work her feet. I could hear as her fingers worked inside her wet pussy. The sloshing sound was music to my ears. I was fully hard now. I licked her feet like an animal, running my tongue from heel to toes and rubbing her feet on my face, placing random kisses.
I put her legs straight up in the air and removed her shorts. As I did this, she took off her top and bra. Rock hard nipples greeted me, both pierced with barbells. I knelt at her side, putting one hand to work on her wet slit and the other fondling her breast while our tongues wrestled. She was rubbing my dick through my shorts. It wasn’t long before she took out my cock and started sucking me. I kept fingering her pussy and I pulled up a foot to enjoy while her mouth was busy engulfing my cock. Her mouth was so hot and it seemed like she appreciated sucking my cock like I appreciated sucking her toes. I had to get inside her. I took off the rest of my clothes while she played with herself. She could reach her nipples to her mouth and seemed to enjoy sucking them quite hard as she diddled her clit. I gave her pussy some tongue work before the sex. My tongue moved easily into her sopping wet hole and she pushed my head towards her and bucked her hips, wanting my tongue deep inside her. I teasingly pulled her labia with my lips and ran my tongue up them to her clit. She was in ecstasy. I could tell she was close. I gave her clit a brief kiss and then slid my penis into her hot pussy. It went in so easily and felt so good. Everything felt perfect. We kissed as we made love.
“Kiss my feet.” She whispered to me. I knelt in front of her, staying close enough to remain inside her. She put her feet in front of my face and I put my mouth and tongue to work as he humped each other vigorously. I gently bit her big toe before sucking on it, still thrusting away. As my tongue ran across her toes her breathing quickened and moans got louder. Her excitement was too much. I was going to cum and I was hoping she would to. I started moaning louder to let her know, and she did the same. I came hard and she did too. I kissed her arches, then her lips and her neck. We lay together and caught our breath, both feeling amazing.
We were sweaty and glowing for the rest of our hike. The fun continued afterwards when we went back to her place. And we enjoyed many hikes together after that.
The annual celebration of lights was set at 7pm in downtown Phoenix. Our Saturday night meeting let out at seven but a group of us decided to run up to the 7th and Indian School to catch the end of the Parade. Along with our four women, the little girls exited about a parade, were three children; Jacob, Skyler and Jacob’s little sister.
All packed up and ready to roll I was captivated by Skyler’s mom, Kathy. She spoke to her daughter about the greatest word; Love.
”What’s the greatest word Sky baby? Love! Can you say love?” Skyler wasn’t in a speaking mood due to new people in the environment but I got the impression that this conversation was had regularly.
We set down the road two cars and five adults and three children with high spirits. The 202 dropped into the ten, we opted for the 51 that dropped us two miles from our destination. Parked about a mile down from Indian School we set out stroller in tow towards crowd gathered. I stopped at a local coffee shop for some hot chocolate for me and Jacob. The rest of the party continued up near the Jack in the Box.
The people were lined up the street, bunched at the four corners and standing on trucks in the gas station parking lot. Vendor walked up and down selling their parade wares. Neon ropes for a dollar were the most popular. Pam purchased two bubble guns that not only spit out streams of bubble bullets but also lit up in a myriad of colors.
I headed into Jack in the Box to bring out some dollar burgers hoping the line was moving quickly. Jacob’s mom was standing in the bathroom line, ironically it ran through the restaurant and blocked the cash registers. That line was only two people deep. I returned out front burgers and curly fries in tow. Pam and Jacob had settled at a nearby table with his little sister. His mom was now at the ten minute mark for the bathroom.
It was a cold evening as people were dressed in their Arizona winter wear. One man shared our table drinking two tall cans of Bud light. An old friend that used to stay with my ex showed up. After initial hello’s she launched into a list of complaints and accomplishments.
I have a girlfriend. I want to strangle her kids. We live together. I did my jail time. I have a job. Oh and How are you?
Thus furthering my belief that lesbians initially only have one thing in common; other women. That is a whole other subject for a blog. Hell it could even be its own page.
Jacob’s mom appeared retrieving her infant daughter and preparing the children to move to parade watching spot. Jacob wasn’t interested in waiting as the floats were coming ever closer. I watched him walk into the crowd near the street. I decided to follow, thinking at least he wouldn’t get lost.
Kids have amazing navigation skills. In less that a minute he was at the front just in time to catch the first float; a big rig carrying Santa’s Sleigh.
Rooted to the spot, one hand clutching the bubble gun and the other holding both a half-eaten hamburger and now cold, hot chocolate, Jacob stared in wonder. The half-dozen kids to the left and right of him mirrored his same look of awe.
In ten minutes I received a phone call asking if I had Jacob with me and where were we. Could I bring him to where they were standing. Naturally the wonder of cellphones are overlooked except in these moments. Jacob on the other hand refused to move. He had the spot, the parade was going and he was determined not to miss it. Clearly only a mother’s touch and word would get this kid to break from the never ending stream of lights, baton twirlers and clown procession.
Right now, as you are reading this one of two things is running through your mind. If you are a parent its, “Who is the adult here, pick the kid up and move him to the rest of the group.” If you are open to the awareness of allowing children to think for themselves without forcing them to conform to your idea of right its, “Nice job, the kid knows a good spot.”
Logically I understood his mother’s request. At the same time I understood Jacob’s request which originated from his soul. Often as adults we make choices from our minds using logic, intuition, and emotion. Only children possess the courage to lead with their heart. Such a remembrance we all need, especially at this time in our lives.
A marching band paraded past with a hip drum line. The next float was a Humvee, it rolled past slowly, carrying none other than the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio.
I had personal interest in Sheriff Joe, having followed the New Times paper’s story; “Are your Papers in order?” The front cover depicted a blue-eyed white male in all black, including a ski mask pointing a nine millimeter Glock. I found it equally interesting that Sheriff Joe chose to ride on a military issue Humvee which looked more like a tank. The crowd began its jeers, boos, and taunts while the Sheriff sat atop his military vehicle waving. I was contemplating the symbolism of his float and the obvious military justice he dispensed in the town of Guadalupe.
My thoughts were interrupted by Jacob’s question, which crested above the boos and straight into my heart.
“Why are they booing him? Who is he?” He looked at me with a complete innocence. This was a moment that I would call a God Shot. As adults, parents, guardians and the like we have a responsibility to answer questions the young pose. Even more pressing is how we answer them. Do we superimpose our own ideals and beliefs? Or do we encourage them to make their own decisions based on facts?
Growing up I was given this opportunity except on certain issues. Those of race-mixing, prejudice, government, homosexuality and religion often carried with them a ‘its this way because I said so’ teaching. Then reinforced by the fear of ridicule or interrogation if I did happen to disagree.
I leaned down to Jacob’s level and said. “That is Joe Arpaio, the Sheriff of Maricopa County. People are booing him because they don’t like his immigration platform.” confident I had relayed facts and not my own personal belief I stood back up and watched Joe’s Humvee rolling past. Jacob looked back at me as the rear wheels faded from his view and asked, “What does that mean?” I smiled realizing that I had spoken in way that he didn’t understand. I leaned forward again, “He treats people of a different color differently.” again the facts and nonjudgmental. I stood back allowing Jacob to make up his own mind about the issue. A minute later he asked me a curious question.
”Is that really him or someone else?” the question shocked me that I answered immediately. “Its really Joe.” I was wondering what would make him ask such a question when Jacob said to me, “I would have booed him too.”
Out of the mouth of babes, and a child shall lead them. There are many sayings relating to the innocence of children. I find that the word ‘innocence’ is misleading. Implying a need for protecting. Children really possess the quality we look for in leaders, friends, family and lovers. They possess the courage to speak the truth.
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Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people – For the People. Yeah, this fucking asshole’s facade of standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers with the bullshit of "…at the expense of hardworking Americans."
Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like we saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, and for lack of a better or more specific term — changing.
Then he got elected. Yes, Obama a dime a dozen as far as the legions of Chicago shenanigans and shanksters are concerned. Fuck you Obama!
Oh, a warning: This is a magazine and these articles can be long. So, if you have Adult-Attention Deficit Disorder Syndrome (AADDS) please by all means; Fuck you!
Fore everyone else…
What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency and duped the very folks he was “running for” and “defending for. Yeah, Mr. President, fuck you!
He has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history out doing Woodrow Wilson easily who in the historic sense, started the “Great American Sell-Out.”
Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. Yeah what this corrupted politician did is nothing more was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias – To the Gulags. Obama, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place – Good job, you fucking sell-out!
Obama ushers in a new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out by instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside – Oh, If Ronny Regan was only alive, he would wring his hands together and gloat right along with the other greedy political whores and has-beens with Obama.
How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?
He is a marionette for the very corporations, industries, and two-bit bitches out to ruin the country and take all that we, as in “We the People” have to offer. Ask not what you can do for the country, instead, take the fucking wealth and leave them [the people] holding the fucking check!
Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial "reforms" that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good – You think?
In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on sheer insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. This of course, is completely “ass-backwards.”
At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals – Now that’s a goddamned bargain. It’s like you own a car, five years old, great condition and you go and trade it in as soon as you paid off completely for it, and the salesperson says, “Sure, we’ll take the car as a trade in and add $5,000.00 to the bill. How’s that Mr. Taylor, will that work for you?”
I would be driving home in my old five year old car with the salesman bleeding, gagged, and yet alive before I take the shovel to his throat and burry him under the dog house.
There’s my fucking answer, bitch!
How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed. Man, that is what get’s me, but then again, hind-sight is 20-20 and mine is sometimes a bit fuzzy.
Come the fuck on, it’s not that big of a stretch, and I know that I am an Author armed with a dynamic and bitching sense of imagination, but please, fuck and all.
Let’s look at the goddamned timeline of the Citigroup deal. It’s fucking amazing. Amazing! And nobody said a thing about it.
Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama’s election.
That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.
The list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Take for instance, Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama’s chief advisers during the campaign, he didn’t make the fucking cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama’s policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party’s platform.
Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive "a Nobel Prize — for evil."
Hey were is my “Nobel Prize?” I should get one too, and Ozzy Osborne, isn’t he the real devil?
In the least, how about a blowjob and some cash?
No?
Assholes!
Nevertheless, November 5th, both were banished from Obama’s inner sanctum and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers. Leading the search for the president’s new economic thieving big guns were his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters. Chief among them all, his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.
Oh the fucking plot thickens if you can keep the fuck up, folks!
Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup, a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself.
Insatiably, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. Now, isn’t that fucking rich!
Oh, and check this shit out — to help him pick Obama’s economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, who happens to be Bob Rubin’s son!
At the time, Jamie’s dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting…
It’s three weeks after the election. You have a lame-duck president in George W. Bush — still nominally in charge, but in reality already halfway to the golf-and-O’Doul’s portion of his career and more than happy to vacate the scene. Left to deal with the still-reeling economy are lame-duck Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs, and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, who served under Bob Rubin in the Clinton White House. Running Obama’s economic team are a still-employed Citigroup executive and the son of another Citigroup executive, who himself joined Obama’s transition team that same month.
So on November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin’s messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees. It is a terrible deal for the government, almost universally panned by all serious economists, an outrage to anyone who pays taxes. Under the deal, the bank gets $20 billion in cash, on top of the $25 billion it had already received just weeks before as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
That’s just the appetizer…
The government also agrees to charge taxpayers for up to $277 billion in losses on troubled Citi assets, many of them those toxic CDOs that Rubin had pushed Citi to invest in. No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It’s the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin’s fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. "If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street," former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, "…your doubts should be laid to rest."
Geithner, in other words, is hired to head the U.S. Treasury by an executive from Citigroup — Michael Froman — before the ink is even dry on a massive government giveaway to Citigroup that Geithner himself was instrumental in delivering. In the annals of brazen political swindles, this one has to go in the all-time Fuck-the-Optics Hall of Fame.
Wall Street loved the Citi bailout and the Geithner nomination so much that the Dow immediately posted its biggest two-day jump since 1987, rising 11.8 percent. Citi shares jumped 58 percent in a single day, and JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley soared more than 20 percent, as Wall Street embraced the news that the government’s bailout generosity would not die with George W. Bush and Hank Paulson.
"Geithner assures a smooth transition between the Bush administration and that of Obama, because he’s already co-managing what’s happening now," observed Stephen Leeb, president of Leeb Capital Management.
Left unnoticed, however, was the fact that Geithner had been hired by a sitting Citigroup executive who still had a big bonus coming despite his proximity to Obama. In January 2009, just over a month after the bailout, Citigroup paid Froman a year-end bonus of $2.25 million. But as outrageous as it was, that payoff would prove to be chump change for the banker crowd, who were about to get everything they wanted — and more — from the new president.
The irony of Bob Rubin: He’s an unapologetic arch-capitalist demagogue whose very career is proof that a free-market meritocracy is a myth. Much like Alan Greenspan, a staggeringly incompetent economic forecaster who was worshipped by four decades of politicians because he once dated Barbara Walters, Rubin has been held in awe by the American political elite for nearly 20 years despite having fucked up virtually every project he ever got his hands on. He went from running Goldman Sachs (1990-1992) to the Clinton White House (1993-1999) to Citigroup (1999-2009), leaving behind a trail of historic gaffes that somehow boosted his stature every step of the way.
As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed specifically to legalize the Citigroup megamerger) and the deregulation of the derivatives market. Having set that time bomb, Rubin left government to join Citi, which promptly expressed its gratitude by giving him $126 million in compensation over the next eight years (they don’t call it bribery in this country when they give you the money post factum). After urging management to amp up its risky investments in toxic vehicles, a strategy that very nearly destroyed the company, Rubin blamed Citi’s board for his screw-ups and complained that he had been underpaid to boot. "I bet there’s not a single year where I couldn’t have gone somewhere else and made more," he said.
Despite being perhaps more responsible for last year’s crash than any other single living person — his colossally stupid decisions at both the highest levels of government and the management of a private financial superpower make him unique — Rubin was the man Barack Obama chose to build his White House around.
There are four main ways to be connected to Bob Rubin: through Goldman Sachs, the Clinton administration, Citigroup and, finally, the Hamilton Project, a think tank Rubin spearheaded under the auspices of the Brookings Institute to promote his philosophy of balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation. The team Obama put in place to run his economic policy after his inauguration was dominated by people who boasted connections to at least one of these four institutions — so much so that the White House now looks like a backstage party for an episode of Bob Rubin, This Is Your Life!
At Treasury, there is Geithner, who worked under Rubin in the Clinton years. Serving as Geithner’s "counselor" — a made-up post not subject to Senate confirmation — is Lewis Alexander, the former chief economist of Citigroup, who advised Citi back in 2007 that the upcoming housing crash was nothing to worry about. Two other top Geithner "counselors" — Gene Sperling and Lael Brainard — worked under Rubin at the National Economic Council, the key group that coordinates all economic policymaking for the White House.
The announcement was not so surprising, given who Obama hired to serve alongside Furman at the NEC: management consultant Diana Farrell, who worked under Rubin at Goldman Sachs. In 2003, Farrell was the author of an infamous paper in which she argued that sending American jobs overseas might be "as beneficial to the U.S. as to the destination country, probably more so."
Joining Summers, Furman and Farrell at the NEC is Froman, who by then had been formally appointed to a unique position: He is not only Obama’s international finance adviser at the National Economic Council, he simultaneously serves as deputy national security adviser at the National Security Council. The twin posts give Froman a direct line to the president, putting him in a position to coordinate Obama’s international economic policy during a crisis. He’ll have help from David Lipton, another joint appointee to the economics and security councils who worked with Rubin at Treasury and Citigroup, and from Jacob Lew, a former Citi colleague of Rubin’s whom Obama named as deputy director at the State Department to focus on international finance.
Over at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is supposed to regulate derivatives trading, Obama appointed Gary Gensler, a former Goldman banker who worked under Rubin in the Clinton White House. Gensler had been instrumental in helping to pass the infamous Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which prevented regulation of derivative instruments like CDOs and credit-default swaps that played such a big role in cratering the economy last year. And as head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, Obama named Peter Orszag, who served as the first director of Rubin’s Hamilton Project. Orszag once succinctly summed up the project’s ideology as a sort of liberal spin on trickle-down Reaganomics: "Market competition and globalization generate significant economic benefits."
Taken together, the rash of appointments with ties to Bob Rubin may well represent the most sweeping influence by a single Wall Street insider in the history of government. "Rather than having a team of rivals, they’ve got a team of Rubins," says Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "You see that in policy choices that have resuscitated — but not reformed; Wall Street."
While Rubin’s allies and acolytes got all the important jobs in the Obama administration, the academics and progressives got banished to semi-meaningless, even comical roles. Kornbluh was rewarded for being the chief policy architect of Obama’s meteoric rise by being outfitted with a pith helmet and booted across the ocean to Paris, where she now serves as America’s never-again-to-be-seen-on-TV ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Goolsbee, meanwhile, was appointed as staff director of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a kind of dumping ground for Wall Street critics who had assisted Obama during the campaign; one top Democrat calls the panel "Siberia."
Joining Goolsbee as chairman of the PERAB gulag is former Fed chief Paul Volcker, who back in March 2008 helped candidate Obama write a speech declaring that the deregulatory efforts of the Eighties and Nineties had "excused and even embraced an ethic of greed, corner-cutting, insider dealing, things that have always threatened the long-term stability of our economic system." That speech met with rapturous applause, but the commission Obama gave Volcker to manage is so toothless that it didn’t even meet for the first time until last May. The lone progressive in the White House, economist Jared Bernstein, holds the impressive-sounding title of chief economist and national policy adviser — except that the man he is advising is Joe Biden, who seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform.
The significance of all of these appointments isn’t that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It’s that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. "Bob Rubin, these guys, they’re classic limousine liberals," says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. "These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they’re willing to give a little more to the poor. That’s the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else."
Even the members of Obama’s economic team who have spent most of their lives in public office have managed to make small fortunes on Wall Street. The president’s economic czar, Larry Summers, was paid more than $5.2 million in 2008 alone as a managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and pocketed an additional $2.7 million in speaking fees from a smorgasbord of future bailout recipients, including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. At Treasury, Geithner’s aide Gene Sperling earned a staggering $887,727 from Goldman Sachs last year for performing the punch-line-worthy service of "advice on charitable giving." Sperling’s fellow Treasury appointee, Mark Patterson, received $637,492 as a full-time lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, and another top Geithner aide, Lee Sachs, made more than $3 million working for a New York hedge fund called Mariner Investment Group. The list goes on and on. Even Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has been out of government for only 30 months of his adult life, managed to collect $18 million during his private-sector stint with a Wall Street firm called Wasserstein-Perella.
The point is that an economic team made up exclusively of callous millionaire-assholes has absolutely zero interest in reforming the gamed system that made them rich in the first place. "You can’t expect these people to do anything other than protect Wall Street," says Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida. That thinking was clear from Obama’s first address to Congress, when he stressed the importance of getting Americans to borrow like crazy again. "Credit is the lifeblood of the economy," he declared, pledging "the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money." A president elected on a platform of change was announcing, in so many words, that he planned to change nothing fundamental when it came to the economy. Rather than doing what FDR had done during the Great Depression and institute stringent new rules to curb financial abuses, Obama planned to institutionalize the policy, firmly established during the Bush years, of keeping a few mega-firms rich at the expense of everyone else.
Obama hasn’t always toed the Rubin line when it comes to economic policy. Despite being surrounded by a team that is powerfully opposed to deficit spending — balanced budgets and deficit reduction have always been central to the Rubin way of thinking. Obama came out of the gate with a huge stimulus plan designed to kick-start the economy.
Oh, and not to forget a little “something” “something” here; Address the job losses brought on by the 2008 crisis. "You have to give him credit there," says Sen. Bernie Sanders, an advocate of using government resources to address unemployment. "It’s a very significant piece of legislation, and $787 billion is a lot of money." Yes, a lot of fucking goddamned money. Way more than any one normal living human being can imagine, and trust me, I can imagine a lot.
Fucking clowns…
Nonetheless, whatever jobs the stimulus has created or preserved so far — 640,329, according to an absurdly precise and already debunked calculation by the White House — the aid that Obama has provided to real people has been dwarfed in size and scope by the hard-earned taxpayer money that has been handed easily over to America’s financial giants without even so much as a reach-around first. These aid, where in the fuck did the Obama Administration get these guys and gals from?
Somehow, it becomes a wee-bit too transparent…
"They spent $75 billion on mortgage relief, but come on — look at how much they gave Wall Street," says a leading Democratic strategist. Neil Barofsky, the inspector general charged with overseeing TARP, estimates that the total cost of the Wall Street bailouts could eventually reach $23.7 trillion. While the government continues to dole out big money to big banks, Obama and his team of Rubinites have done almost nothing to reform the warped financial system responsible for imploding the global economy in the first goddamned place.
Think about that for just only a moment…
The push for reform seemed to get off to a promising start. In the House, the charge was led by Rep. Barney Frank, the outspoken chair of the House Financial Services Committee, who emerged during last year’s Bush bailouts as a sharp-tongued critic of Wall Street.
Now back when Obama was still a senator, he and Frank even worked together to introduce a populist bill targeting executive compensation and I can’t help but to wonder if they slept the same girls together.
Nevertheless, wonderment aside; Last spring, with the economy shattered, Frank began to hold hearings on a host of reforms, crafted with significant input from the White House that initially contained some very good elements. I swear to God, this aught to be a goddamned movie in the least. Nonetheless, you and I have the best seats in the house as this thing is unraveling and playing out before our very eyes!
There were measures to curb abusive credit-card lending, prevent banks from charging excessive fees, force publicly traded firms to conduct meaningful risk assessment and allow shareholders to vote on executive compensation. There were even measures to crack down on risky derivatives and to bar firms like AIG from picking their own regulators.
Then the committee went to work — and the loopholes started to appear — Imagine that!
The most notable of these came in the proposal to regulate derivatives like credit-default swaps – Enter China’s financial sharks smelling fresh blood. Yes, even Gary Gensler, the former Goldmanite whom Obama put in charge of commodities regulation was pushing to make these normally obscure investments more transparent, enabling regulators and investors to identify speculative bubbles much sooner.
In as soon as August, a month after Gensler came out in favor of reform, Geithner slapped him down by issuing a 115-page paper called "Improvements to Regulation of Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets" that called for a series of exemptions for "end users" — i.e., almost all of the clients who buy derivatives from banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Even more outstandingly stunning, Frank’s bill included a blanket exception to the rules for currency swaps traded on foreign exchanges with such financial hoodlums as those in China to list a few few — the very instruments that had triggered the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown in the late 1990s.
Given that derivatives were at the heart of the financial meltdown last year, the decision to gut derivatives reform sent some legislators howling with absolute disgust. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, who estimates that as much as 90 percent of all derivatives could remain unregulated under the new rules, went so far as to say the new laws would make things worse. "Current law with its loopholes might actually be better than these loopholes," she said.
Look folks, I can’t make this shit up. I know that some of you live outside the United States and may not follow this shit, you should – You fucking should because the financial world is a global world and we can see what did happen in Iceland. Spare no expense!
An even bigger loophole could do far worse damage to the economy. Under the original bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were granted the power to ban any credit swaps deemed to be "detrimental to the stability of a financial market or of participants in a financial market." By the time Frank’s committee was done with the bill, however, the SEC and the CFTC were left with no authority to do anything about abusive derivatives other than to send a report to Congress. The move, in effect, would leave the kind of credit-default swaps that brought down AIG largely unregulated.
Why would leading congressional Democrats, working closely with the Obama administration, agree to leave one of the riskiest of all financial instruments unregulated, even before the issue could be debated by the U.S. House? "There was concern that a broad grant to ban abusive swaps would be unsettling," Frank explained.
Yeah, you know in hindsight, I should have ran for U.S. Senate, or in the least, U.S. Congress. Least I would give you a fucking wet kiss when I ripped you off!
Now, the question arises, right? “Unsettling to whom?”
Certainly not to you and me — but then again, actual people are not really part of the calculus when it comes to finance reform evidently. Now According to those close to the markup process, Frank’s committee inserted loopholes under pressure from "constituents" — by which they mean practically anyone "who can afford a lobbyist," says Michael Greenberger, the former head of trading at the CFTC under Clinton.
This pattern would repeat itself over and over again throughout the fall. Take the centerpiece of Obama’s reform proposal: the much-ballyhooed creation of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency to protect the little guy from abusive bank practices. Like the derivatives bill, the debate over the CFPA ended up being dominated by horse-trading for loopholes. In the end, Frank not only agreed to exempt some 8,000 of the nation’s 8,200 banks from oversight by the castrated-in-advance agency, leaving most consumers unprotected, he allowed the committee to pass the exemption by voice vote, meaning that congressmen could side with the banks without actually attaching their name to their "Aye."
To win the support of conservative Democrats, Frank also backed down on another issue that seemed like a slam-dunk: a requirement that all banks offer so-called "plain vanilla" products, such as no-frills mortgages, to give consumers an alternative to deceptive, "fully loaded" deals like adjustable-rate loans.
Frank’s last-minute reversal — made in consultation with Geithner – was such a transparent giveaway to the banks that even an economics writer for Reuters, hardly a far-left source, called it "the beginning of the end of meaningful regulatory reform."
But the real kicker came when Frank’s committee took up what is known as "resolution authority" — government-speak for "Who the hell is in charge the next time somebody at AIG or Lehman Brothers decides to vaporize the economy?" What the committee initially introduced bore a striking resemblance to a proposal written by Geithner earlier in the summer. A masterpiece of legislative chicanery, the measure would have given the White House permanent and unlimited authority to execute future bailouts of mega-conglomerates like Citigroup and Bear Stearns.
Democrats pushed the move as politically uncontroversial, claiming that the bill will force Wall Street to pay for any future bailouts and "doesn’t use taxpayer money." In reality, that was complete bullshit. The way the bill was written, the FDIC would basically borrow money from the Treasury — i.e., from ordinary taxpayers — to bail out any of the nation’s two dozen or so largest financial companies that the president deems in need of government assistance. After the bailout is executed, the president would then levy a tax on financial firms with assets of more than $10 billion to repay the Treasury within 60 months — unless, that is, the president decides he doesn’t want to! "They can wait indefinitely to repay," says Rep. Brad Sherman of California, who dubbed the early version of the bill "TARP on steroids."
The new bailout authority also mandated that future bailouts would not include an exchange of equity "in any form" — meaning that taxpayers would get nothing in return for underwriting Wall Street’s mistakes. Even more outrageous, it specifically prohibited Congress from rejecting tax giveaways to Wall Street, as it did last year, by removing all congressional oversight of future bailouts. In fact, the resolution authority proposed by Frank was such a slurpingly obvious blow job, cock-to-cum type of hummer there I may add to that of Wall Street.
Yes indeed kiddies, in that it provoked a revolt among his own committee members, with junior Democrats waging a spirited fight that restored congressional oversight to future bailouts, requires equity for taxpayer money and caps assistance to troubled firms at $150 billion. Just another amendment to force companies with more than $50 billion in assets to pay into a rainy-day fund for bailouts passed by a resounding vote of 52 to 17 — with the "Nays" all coming from Frank and other senior Democrats loyal to the administration.
Even as amended, however, resolution authority still has the potential to be truly revolutionary legislation. The Senate version still grants the president unlimited power over equity-free bailouts, and the amended House bill still institutionalizes a system of taxpayer support for the 20 to 25 biggest banks in the country. It would essentially grant economic immortality to those top few mega-firms, who will continually gobble up greater and greater slices of market share as money becomes cheaper and cheaper for them to borrow. After all, who wouldn’t lend to a company permanently backstopped by the federal government?
It would also formalize the government’s role in the global economy and turn the presidential-appointment process into an important part of every big firm’s business strategy. "If this passes, the very first thing these companies are going to do in the future is ask themselves, ‘How do we make sure that one of our executives becomes assistant Treasury secretary?’" says Sherman.
On the Senate side, finance reform has yet to make it through the markup process, but there’s every reason to believe that its final bill will be as watered down as the House version by the time it comes to a vote. The original measure, drafted by chairman Christopher Dodd of the Senate Banking Committee, is surprisingly tough on Wall Street. An apparent fact that almost everyone in town chalks up to Dodd’s desperation to shake the bad publicity he incurred by accepting a sweetheart mortgage from the notorious lender Countrywide. "He’s got to do the shake-his-fist-at-Wall Street thing because of his, you know, problems," says a Democratic Senate aide. "So that’s why the bill is starting out kind of tough."
The aide pauses. "The question is, though, what will it end up looking like?"
I swear to you all reading this, I didn’t make this shit up!
Okay, he’s right — that is the question.
Because the way it works is that all of these great-sounding reforms get whittled down bit by bit as they move through the committee markup process, until finally there’s nothing left but the exceptions. In one example, a measure that would have forced financial companies to be more accountable to shareholders by holding elections for their entire boards every year has already been watered down to preserve the current system of staggered votes. In other cases, this being the Senate, loopholes were inserted before the debate even began: The Dodd bill included the exemption for foreign-currency swaps — a gift to Wall Street that only appeared in the Frank bill during the course of hearings — from the very outset.
The White House’s refusal to push for real reform stands in stark contrast to what it should be doing. It was left to Rep. Paul Kanjorski in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate to propose bills to break up the so-called "too big to fail" banks. Both measures would give Congress the power to dismantle those pseudo-monopolies controlling almost the entire derivatives market (Goldman, Citi, Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America control 95 percent of the $290 trillion over-the-counter market) and the consumer-lending market (Citi, Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo issue one of every two mortgages, and two of every three credit cards).
On November 18th, in a move that demonstrates just how nervous Democrats are getting about the growing outrage over taxpayer giveaways, Barney Frank’s committee actually passed Kanjorski’s measure. "It’s a beginning," Kanjorski says hopefully. "We’re on our way."
Kiss my white freshly shave and oiled ass!
Grab a goddamned knee!
Oh the hits keep coming and even if the Senate follows suit, big banks could well survive — depending on whom the president appoints to sit on the new regulatory board mandated by the measure. An oversight body filled with executives of the type Obama has favored to date from Citi and Goldman Sachs hardly seems like a strong bet to start taking an ax to concentrated wealth. And given the new bailout provisions that provide these megafirms a market advantage over smaller banks (those Paul Volcker calls "too small to save"), the failure to break them up qualifies as a major policy decision with potentially disastrous consequences.
"They should be doing what Teddy Roosevelt did," says Sanders. "They should be busting the trusts."
No shit, but those days are as gone as the bitch’s innocence above as she performs her wares for the big round-eyed businessmen of Wall Street.
However, at a minimum, Obama should start on the road back to sanity by making a long-overdue move: firing Geithner. Not only are the mop-headed weenie of a Treasury secretary’s fingerprints on virtually all the gross giveaways in the new reform legislation, he’s a living symbol of the Rubinite gangrene crawling up the leg of this administration.
Putting Geithner against the wall and replacing him with an actual human being not recently employed by a Wall Street megabank would do a lot to prove that Obama was listening this past Election Day. And while there are some who think Geithner is about to go — "he almost has to," says one Democratic strategist — at the moment, the president is still letting Wall Street do his talking.
It’s morning, the National Mall, November 5th. A year to the day after Obama named Michael Froman to his transition team, his political "opposition" has descended upon the city. Republican teabaggers – and don’t get me started on these waste-oids from all 50 states have showed up, a vast horde of frowning, pissed-off middle-aged white people with their idiot placards in hand ready to do cultural battle.
Reminds me, these fucking poser “teabaggers” of bringing a broken knife to a nuclear holocaust in the first goddamned place. Nevertheless, they are here to protest Obama’s "socialist" health care bill — you know, the one that even a bloodsucking capitalist interest group like Big Pharma spent $150 million to get passed.
These teabaggers don’t know that, however. All they know is that a big government program might end up using tax dollars to pay the medical bills of rapidly breeding Dominican immigrants. So they fucking hate it, I mean the loath it immensely.
They’re also in a groove, knowing that at the polls a few days earlier, people like themselves had a big hand in ousting several Obama-allied Democrats, including a governor of New Jersey who just happened, and check this, to be the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. A sign held up by New Jersey protesters bears the warning, "If You Vote For Obamacare, We Will Corzine You."
Fucking please, oh, fucking please…
Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.
"The investment community feels very put-upon," Fass explained. "They feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don’t want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."
Which makes sense. Shit, who could blame the investment community for the meltdown? What kind of assholes are we to put any of this on them?
This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we’re getting no real reform of the finance industry. There’s no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America’s racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.
Yeah, drink deep the fucking cool-aid and when your finished, you can come the fuck over here and drop a knee for me too. I won’t kill you, take off your dress Miss America, and I promise it won’t be a sweet tasting spray coming out on the end of this hard-pressed pipe and you may chip a tooth if you bite down hard enough. But trust me, it won’t kill you like the cool-aid.
Back on track, and only the head, Honey, wouldn’t want you to stretch out your cute mouth in the least. "The obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted," Volcker told Congress in September, expressing concerns about all the regulatory loopholes in Frank’s bill. "Ultimately, the possibility of further crises — even greater crises — will increase."
Am I the only mother-fucker incensed here?
What’s most troubling is that we don’t know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.
Door number 16: …Because eggs can be for Christmas too
Sometimes you just need quickie sex, it’s all you need and all you want, well pleasuring yourself is no different and no luxurious rabbit vibrator or designer glass dildo will do. When you need to give yourself a quickie orgasm something cheap and cheerful has always been the way.
So today’s treat is the Tracey Cox Supersex Vibrating Love Egg quick easy waterproof means you can get yourself anywhere anytime. Keep it in the bedside draw for a pick me up in the morning or use it in the shower or bath. versatile, small quiet and cheap this little thing has seen me through lots of sleepy mornings and other times!
Today it is the deal of the day so either visit Lovehoney or click on the picture. It’s really good value for one day only! To see if you can match it with any other of Lovehoneys current offers click on our ‘Sexy Moneysaving’ page.
Alright, adult life; I’m about ready to engage with you again, but like I’ve said before; I need HELP.
I’m about to embark into that crazy realm of path-seeking, soul-searching, heart-achin, love-makin…
No wait! Just the path-seeking part.
I’m going to ask for assistance. I’m going to NEED assistance. This old lady is out of practice for the real process of job-searches. I haven’t sought a ‘real job’ since the days of co-op placement! Mayhaps I will write about this adultified journey, but likely it will just mean that the kinds of things I notice and remark upon here will be less often in the fields of bars and restaurants, and more often in the field of libraries and employment resource centres.
First observation; I’m in the most beautiful library ever and I haven’t read a real-live-book all day. I’m going to take a break from this free internet and browse the titles in the adult fiction section.
Former Gold Medal Olympian Calvin Harrison...currently homeless
Calvin Harrison (born January 20, 1974) was a former Olympic gold medalist, famously winning the 4×400 relay with his twin brother Alvin, and legendary sprinter Michael Johnson, at the 2000 Summer Olympic games that were held in Sydney,Australia. At the 2000 Olympics, Alvin Harrison and Calvin Harrison made history by becoming the first twins ever to compete and win Olympic gold medals together on the same relay team since the inception of the modern Olympic Games.
In fact ,Calvin Harrison ran the third leg of the 4×400 meter relay, eventually handing the baton off to Michael Johnson for the gold.
Calvin stood right next to Johnson on the podium when they were presented with their gold medal.
After those great Olympics, Calvin and Alvin were the toast of the town, as they were celebrated for being the champions that they are. America consistently loves our gold medal winners, and all the riches that go along with that prestigious title, were bestowed upon them.
The brothers, who had been homeless for a time while growing up, as well as when they attended college, had a compelling story to tell about believing in yourself, and overcoming insurmountable odds to achieve success.
They wrote a book entitled ”Go to Your Destiny”, which debuted on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001, and is a very inspirational tome that is designed to motivate people to achieve their success, even if the current situation appears to be impossible to overcome. http://www.amazon.com/Go-Your-Destiny-Alvin-Harrison/dp/0786867884
I read it, and I can attest to the fact that it is an awesome story that is the hallmark of American success.
This is why the news concerning Calvin’s current homelessness is distressing.
Local San Diego news is reporting that Calvin Harrison is broke and homeless living on the streets of San Diego with his wife and 5 children. To be accurate, they are currently living in a homeless shelter, after being on the streets.
Luckily for them, after sleeping on the streets, they were able to get accepted into a homeless shelter that allows families to stay together,which many do not. Calvin’s youngest child is just 5 months old.
Calvin’s current dilemma started with him testing positive for a banned stimulant in 2004, which got him a two-year suspension from track and field events, and he also had to return all of his medals and prize money he won from the events that he tested positive in.
He also was stripped of the Olympic gold medal from the Sydney Olympic, when it was discovered that a team-mate on the relay team, Antonio Pettigrew, admitted to taking banned steroids to assist him in the competition. The whole team was asked to return the medals, but Calvin gave his to his father.All of the other members of that relay team returned their medals, even though none of them had taken steroids.
Calvin subsequently spent his whole life’s savings on a failed legal battle to clear his name, which he lost. He was not allowed to compete in the 2004 Olympic games in Athens, Greece due to the suspension, and in turn, lost the ability to make a living doing what he knows best, and that is track and field.
Ironically, the substance that he was banned for taking, is no longer on the illegal substance list, since it is a common ingredient in over the counter cough medications.
Calvin, faced with mounting bills, a wife, and children to support, did what men do, and that is going to work.
He traveled the country working in construction jobs, and eventually landed a steady job as a personal trainer at a gym in Arizona, that supported him at the level to pay his rent and to feed his family.
Due to the recession, he was laid off from that job,…and like many Americans today, he was unable to pay his rent, and soon found his family evicted and on the street.
They moved to San Diego in the hopes of finding steady employment, but soon found out that it is as bad in California as it is in Arizona.
With no income or job,they are currently homeless, and in need of assistance. He has said that in the past, he was too proud to ask anyone for help, but seeing his family in this position has made him desperate.
Calvin made the following statement to NBC San Diego…”I’m in a position now where I do need to ask, and I’m not afraid of the pride being in the way,” Harrison said. “Before I was. I didn’t want to ask, wanted to do it on my own, but I’m in a position now where I do need some help.”
To read the full story about Calvin’s dilemma, click on this link to NBC San Diego… http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/sports/Gold-Medal-Olympian-Now-Homeless-79007597.html
This is a hard story to report on, because there are so many people who are in this position because of the recession that never had the opportunities that Calvin had, even though he had a challenging time to get there, but I do not have all the facts about his case, and it is not my place to judge his actions.
I am certain that Calvin would make different choices in retrospect, we all could say that, but now he has to deal with the future.The future for his wife and minor children rest on what he is able to do next.
His wife Charlotte made this statement in reference to their future…”I’m just hoping for an awesome job and to be able to get a house,” Charlotte said. “I know it’s big hopes, but we’re just dreaming of a house and a place for our kids to grow up in.”
I do not know what type of marketable skills the two of them have outside of the track and field game, but if they do get assistance, hopefully they will get help with some job training so they can develop some marketable skills that will support their family in the long run.
If you are able to help, and want to help Calvin and his family, they are currently living at the YWCA Cortez Hill shelter in San Diego. The contact information for the shelter is:
Cortez Hill Family Center
1449 9th Avenue, San Diego, CA
(619) 531-8937
…I bet the shelter could use a donation as well, and that would also be a way to assist Calvin out, and other families that are in that same position.
I hope it all works out for Calvin and his family, as well as all the other Americans that find themselves in need of assistance from their fellow-man.
Happy Holidays…
For more information on Calvin and this story, click on these sources…
Ok, the internet is still working so I’m adding another post, hurrah! First let me address a comment on the last post:
Kazmalaskree asked why there were no faces on my pictures. The reason is, as discussed here, to protect my and his identities. For starters, noone will steal my photos if they have a blurred out face, and most importantly, it could impact on jobs, etc.
I’m finishing the story of my first cuckold experience which started in this post and progressed with each post after it.
So last I left you I was pregnant to my teacher, and my man was extremely cuckolded. Teacher loved the fact that I was pregnant and treated me like a goddess, I later found out he was even planning to propose to me!
However, he wasn’t everything he seemed to be and things got too freaky so I broke it off with him. I wasn’t keen on having his baby, I would have wanted to have a baby with my cuck instead, and my cuck was half half about it. He loved being cucked, but it wasn’t the right man to cuckold him with, so we both made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.
I realised after I saw who teacher really was(a nutcase, NO exaggeration!) that I did not love HIM but what he offered and how he treated me. I have ended and blocked all contact with him and hope to never hear from him again.
So now I am wary of starting into the cuckold lifestyle as the first experience for me was not a very good one. However there are different approaches, if I have a regular bull I intend to only ‘hang out’ with him when we decide to play and fuck. I do not wish to form a secondary relationship at this point nor can I see wanting to in the future.
My cuck and I did discuss another possibility to cuckold him without those issues. Basically since I’m a model and have done nude work for adult magazines, I could do some porn work with men for magazines and websites as well as some porn videos if I wish. That way I don’t have to be attached, just go and fuck a bunch of hot men with great cocks and he still gets cuckolded. I’ll let you know what we decide.
Sometimes you just need quickie sex, it’s all you need and all you want, well pleasuring yourself is no different and no luxurious rabbit vibrator or designer glass dildo will do. When you need to give yourself a quickie orgasm something cheap and cheerful has always been the way.
Calvin stood right next to Johnson on the podium when they were presented with their gold medal.
With no income or job,they are currently homeless, and in need of assistance. He has said that in the past, he was too proud to ask anyone for help, but seeing his family in this position has made him desperate.
