Markets in Free Fall Again?

After a week of Obama picking his economic advisors, Monday had the shocking announcement the economy has been in a recession since December 2007. Since investors apparently just got the memo, today had a huge drop in stock prices. Just a side not, if investors are getting their information from a organization that takes a year to decide if a recession happened, investors have a real common sense problem here. I wonder what they will tell us a year from now... Barack Obama was elected president, and Sarah Palin was never qualified to be nominated?

How much worse will this crisis get?
Daily Kos Users polled on Monday night, think the Dow will drop below 6500 [http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/1/193527/513/940/668264].





PS
Today, George Bush in an interview on ABC News said his biggest failure during his presidency was the intelligence failure leading up to Iraq.... You would think he would regret not stopping the 9/11 attacks. No, it was the failure that exposed him for being for being a deceptive fool. Not the inaugural failure of the Bush Administration.

America's Unspoken Dark Side: The CIA Drug Trade

To begin, secret government activities need secret and sometimes illegal source of funds. An illegal trade like drugs has the potential for huge profits. The drug trade also is one of the largest parts of the cash economy, estimated at over 1/5 of all cash transactions. From the High School kid buying a $20 bag of weed to the big city dealer buying $50,000 of coke, these cash transactions help the economy by increasing the transfer of wealth from one person to the next. With the international drug trade, huge exports of drugs from one nation leads to foreign, corporate investment in the nation. If a drug cartel has $100,000,000 in cash from a large deal, they do not put this money in a vault, they invest it by opening a Wal-Mart or Home Depot in their nation.
The CIA has been rumored for years to help facilitate this trade. With the "Big Brother" security abilities our intelligence agencies have today, it would be easy for the drug trade to grind to a stop pretty quickly. From monitoring cell phone calls to tracking known dealers, the ability to end the drug trade would be fairly easy in our modern society. The government has no desire to do this though, because the economy and the CIA funding would dry up.
An ex-acquaintance of mine who was a heavy pot smoker introduced me to his dealer, who was arrested numerous times, yet never spent a day in jail. His father was a top investigator in the local police force. He admitted to me that he works as an informant for the local police department. If someone wants to buy a large amount, he reports it, otherwise, the police do not take further actions. They do track each person who this dealer has dealings with by monitoring his phone, but no criminal action is taken. The most curious part of the story was his source of his marijuana. After buying from shady dealers for years, he was put in touch with a "police approved" supplier. So with the police’s full knowledge, this dealer buys drugs, and sells them to the public, with no action being taken. I have heard similar stories from individuals from across the nation.
I know many will think this is just a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, and I admit, I have no indisputable proof of the government/CIA complicity in the drug trade. There have been numerous known CIA airplanes that have crashed with massive amounts of Cocaine. Past "drug wars" during the 80s never had the effect of lessening the drug usage in America, but eased the flow of drugs in most cases. Many people "in the know" have discussed the secret CIA involvement in the drug trade, but other then the Internet, a great deal hasn’t been discussed or published about it.
Barack Obama appears to have no deep connections to this drug trade or people who have made their livelihoods from it. Will he investigate these covert actions? Will he legalize some drugs while having an actual war on other drugs? With a president who appears to care more about the truth then protecting his buddies, The Obama Administration could be transformative for the Dark Side of America and its secret actions.

Of The Grand Old Party - The Three Types of Republicans

After closely watching the past eight years, I’ve learned a few things about the Republican party. Though much of the past eight years is beyond rational explanation, it can be pieced together to form some sort of irrational logic. First though, the big picture, what makes up the Republican party. It takes a master of marketing to have seamlessly connected corporate America, evangelicals and much of the religious population, and the “patriots” into the same political party. They have done a mighty successful job in creating this “coalition.” If some of the members were aware of the planned deception to create this coalition, it would dissolve rather quickly.
As I see it, there are three types of Republicans. The driving force behind the party are the ones in it for economic reasons, mainly lower taxes. The People in this group can be the top 1%, but can also include anyone who is “well-off” and feel they don’t need the government taking a percent of their money. They feel they do just fine with or without the government. The top 0.1% who are the backbone of the modern Republican party have had great benefits from electing politicians who implement their deceptive economic policies into law. I could go into detail about this, but I’m sure you can think of your own favorite example. These wealthy Republicans fund the majority of the Party’s activities, but don’t care to be the foot-soldiers or get involved in the politics. They want their lower taxes and their “corporate friendly” policies implemented.
Then there are the Religious crowd. To understand this group, you first have to realize that these religious people believe the Bible is factual. They feel their morals and ideas are right, and there is no question in their minds. They feel a need to spread the message of “Jesus” and they are in a “holy war” to do it. Obviously the leaders, Pastors and other Fallwell-likes, realize it’s bullshit, but they are making millions and millions off it, so they just continue to lead the heard and distort the meaning of religion for their own profit. This group is dedicated to their beliefs, so they become very active in the Republican party, they are defending their values after all... Talk radio and Fox News (to some extent) has connected the religious values to the Republican party. In this groups mind, voting for a Democrat is as horrendous as saying Jesus isn’t real. That’s what years of Rush and the Evangelical Church can do to a trusting mind.
Finally there are the “Patriots” who care so deeply about America, they are convinced half of the country is out to destroy it. The Republican party has done an amazing job of dressing themselves up in the flag over the past 60 years, and have sold this group that only the Republican party will make America the best it came be. The motivation for this is to connect a better America with a stronger Military. This plan was devised by the Military Industrial Complex to encourage spending on the Military when none is necessary. The Strongest America would be one where we no longer need a military budget at the levels we have today, but then how would we prove to ourselves we were the strongest?
In future diaries I will explain how events of the past 8 years have fit into each of these three categories. They have started with the Economic reason, and then used the other two to get the ideas implemented. We live in a complex and unclear world today, but it has become that way because the full explanation of events has not been shown to the average citizen. When the scheming nature of it all is laid out, it will hopefully make many on the political-right question their allegiance.... or maybe I’m just a dreamer...