Gladys Knight and the Pips
I’ve Got to Use My Imagination

The Young Turks play video of Jack Cafferty on Alberto Gonzales

AP) Stocks plunged Tuesday, driving the Dow Jones industrials down more than 240 points in their second-biggest drop of the year as troubles piled up for subprime lenders.

Investors, bracing for a wilting economy, fled the already deflated subprime mortgage sector while problems increased for lenders such as New Century Financial Corp., Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. and General Motors Acceptance Corp.’s residential unit. Bolstering the belief that the problems are widespread, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that new foreclosures surged to an all-time high in the last quarter of 2006.

The subprime lending worries, coupled with anxiety over the Commerce Department’s report Tuesday that U.S. retailers eked out a meager 0.1 percent rise in sales last month, knocked down all three major stock indexes about 2 percent.

“The market’s still jittery, and they’re starting to get full-blown concerns over a bleed in the larger subprime mortgage market,” said Matt Kelmon, portfolio manager of the Kelmoore Strategy Funds.

The subprime market is a relatively small sector of the U.S. economy, Kelmon noted. But Tuesday’s selling was accentuated by options expiring soon and by volatility that has increased since the market’s big plunge two weeks ago - a 416-point drop in the Dow that was caused partially by the problems of subprime lenders, who loan to people with poor credit.

The Dow fell 242.66, or 1.97 percent, to 12,075.96. The index is now down more than 710 points, or 5 percent, from its record close reached Feb. 20.

Read more at CBSNews

For the first time ever, Alberto Gonzales spoke and answered questions without that smirk on his face. He’s a liar and he needs to go. He claims responsibility for whatever went wrong, yet blamed the whole thing on Kyle Sampson. But this press conference was great. The man was squirming in his lies. It was quite apparent that he’s in deep shit and he knows it. I can’t tell you how good it felt to see that weasel squirm and to have that evil smirk wiped right off his face. I’ve been waiting a long time for that! Now let’s get rid of him all together.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly canceled travel plans Tuesday amid growing calls for his ouster over the firings of eight federal prosecutors during a White House-directed housecleaning of U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his top aide, Kyle Sampson, who authorities said failed to brief other senior Justice Department officials of his discussions about the firings with then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Miers resigned in January.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who is leading a Senate investigation of the firings, called for the second time in three days for Gonzales to step down. (Watch how a senator says Gonzales has more allegiance to President Bush than Americans’ legal rights )

Additionally, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Gonzales “ought to be shown the door — he ought not to be in this administration. We have got to end corruption in our government. It is not OK to be corrupt.”

Gonzales was expected to respond to the criticism as early as Tuesday afternoon. Sampson declined comment.

More on CNN.com

This realllllllly makes me mad. I’m so sick of our congress being run by Israel. Obviously it makes no difference, Republican or Democrat…….. AIPAC rules them. So let’s not worry about our OWN country and the damage Bush could do by warring with Iran…..let’s not guide foreign policy that way. Noooooo……let’s worry about what Israel wants. WTF

WASHINGTON - Democratic leaders are stripping from a military spending bill for the war in Iraq a requirement that President Bush gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and other leaders agreed to remove the requirement concerning Iran after conservative Democrats as well as other lawmakers worried about its possible impact on Israel, officials said Monday.

The overall bill - which requires that the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, if not earlier - remained on schedule for an initial test vote Thursday in the House Appropriations Committee.

Read more at YahooNews

Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Max Cleland about Dick Cheney’s remarks on the Democrats wanting a deadline

“I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.” -Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace

Then it must be a real bitch to have to serve under the Bush administration, huh?!

Jackson News-Tribune:

WASHINGTON - A gay advocacy group Tuesday demanded an apology from the Pentagon A-s top general for calling homosexuality immoral.

“General PaceA-s comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,” the advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web site.

Pace, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, made his remarks in an interview Monday with the Chicago Tribune. He was responding to a question about the “donA-t ask, donA-t tell” policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and donA-t engage in homosexual acts.

Pace said he supports the policy, which prohibits commanders from asking about a personA-s sexual orientation. Over the years thousands have been dismissed under this policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994.

Good luck with that…

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

(Welcome to the second installment of The Chart Project!)

I-m hardly the first person to observe the ironies surrounding intolerant, hate-filled people. Typically, they scream at relatively moderate people, then when they-re challenged, they scream about their intolerance not being tolerated.

(Needless to say, in the context of this discussion, “tolerance” refers to social tolerance of differences of culture, ethnicity, politics, ideology, religion, gender, sexuality… or anything else I-ve missed. It does not refer to permissiveness toward clearly criminal and destructive acts such as murder, corruption, etc.)

The easiest examples of intolerance are the religious right and other social conservatives, who constantly offer false equivalencies and traffic in hypocrisies. Let’s take Focus on the Family, for example. They insist that other people, not in their group, must live their lives the way Focus on the Family says they must live. Meanwhile, most of the people Focus on the Family target are not trying to get Focus on the Family to change the way they live, apart from wanting them to chill out and leave everybody else alone.

This is, of course, because authoritarians and zealots not only believe in one absolute truth, but they believe that they possess it and others do not. They view the world in highly hierarchical terms, which places them at the top of the hierarchy due to their superiority. For them, free will and choice are inconveniences or irrelevant - people cannot be trusted to choose anything for themselves, because then they might choose something the intolerant group doesn-t want. For the intolerant group, how you want to live your life and how they want you to live your life should carry equal weight, and if you don-t feel that way, you-re “intolerant” of them. Actually, that’s too generous, because they actually believe that how you want to live your life is much less important than how you they want you to live your life. This is the heart of the false equivalency and hypocrisy they practice, even if they-ve not consciously aware of it. They want control of your bodies, your behavior, your thoughts, your very beings. The tolerant people say, “You live your life the way you want, and we-ll live ours the way we want.” The intolerant people say, “We-ll live our lives the way we want, but you must also live your lives the way we want.”

This is why, legally, socially and morally, we need a tolerant society. If we look at this graphically, we might get something like this:
(more…)

March 13 (Bloomberg) — Americans’ support for President George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq continues to erode, producing a pervasive pessimism about the direction of the country, according to a new Bloomberg poll.

The survey also shows a plurality of Americans still approves of the new Democratic-led Congress while giving mixed signals about what to do about Iraq. A majority backs Democrats’ proposals to withdraw troops by a set time next year while opposing congressional meddling in the conduct of the war.

There was little encouraging news for Bush in the poll of 2,269 adults taken from March 3 to March 11. The president’s overall job rating was 38 percent, he got negative reviews on the economy and, by better than 2-to-1, people gave thumbs down to his Iraq policy. Seven in 10 Americans said the country is seriously off track.

“Everything is piling on and there’s nothing that’s getting him out,” said Susan Pinkus, poll director at the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg’s polling partner.

More at YahooNews

WASHINGTON Mar 13, 2007 (AP)- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

“I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way,” Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.

Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing.

He said he supports the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” in which gay men and women are allowed in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private. The policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, prohibits commanders from asking about a person’s sexual orientation.

“I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said.

More at ABCNews