Me and my cat named dog
The bipartisan panel created to investigate the roots of the financial crisis voted Wednesday to delay the Dec. 15 publication of their report despite Republican opposition, foreshadowing disagreements that are sure to arise when the commission attempts to reach a consensus on the causes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's 6-to-3 vote came after the panel's four Republicans argued privately against the decision to ignore the statutory deadline set by Congress. One of the Republicans, former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, was unable to participate in the vote, though he made his dissent known. The report will now be released in January.
Supposedly those who delve into conspiracy theories are people who have nothing better to do.
I will never forget the scene in some forgotten seventies film where this young man is explaining the events of November 1963 that took place in Dealey Plaza. During his narration he is drawing the presidential route on a naked woman’s body with lipstick.
By the way, did you know that C S Lewis and Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963?
The crisis commission is also looking into the matter, said Phil Angelides, the panel's Democratic chairman. The Republicans on the panel are resisting further inquiries, according to people familiar with the matter. Angelides said in an interview that "there are very powerful interests" seeking to undermine the panel's investigation.
"People who have trillions of dollars at stake who have been watching our efforts closely," Angelides said. "There have been efforts throughout the year to undermine me and my fellow commissioners." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/fcic-delays-report-angelides-powerful-interests_n_785205.html
The discovery of the use of "robo-signers" -- employees whose sole job was to rubber-stamp documents without actually reading them or verifying their contents -- "may have concealed much deeper problems in the mortgage market," the Congressional Oversight Panel reported Tuesday.
During an April hearing, the panel heard from Richard Bowen, former chief underwriter for Citigroup's consumer-lending unit, who said he discovered in mid-2006 that more than 60 percent of mortgages the bank bought from other firms and sold to investors were "defective." Investors were not informed, however.
The crisis panel isn't the first to unilaterally delay the release of its congressionally-mandated report. The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism blew past its deadline, as did the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare and the Commission on Affordable Housing and Health Care Facility Needs in the 21st Century.
Those panels, however, didn't have subpoena authority. And their reports were largely advisory. The FCIC can make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
Like the FCIC, the 9/11 Commission also had substantial powers, and it, too, extended its own deadline. However, the 9/11 panel got its extension from an act of Congress.
It is kind of like tracing a drop of urine deposited by a doe into a rivulet somewhere in the Upper Midwest that ends up in the Mississippi Delta.
The dems are actually the ones who are attempting to delay the publication of the final report; much to the consternation of four repubs who wish the report to issue December 15th as mandated by Congress; except for the fact that the law establishing the commission specifically grants an extra 60 days for publication if necessary.
Why would the repubs push for an earlier date of publication? Why are the dems on the commission so hot and bothered?
There is something happening here
And you don’t know what it is
Do you Mr. Jones?
Just as an aside….
I really feel that there is a cultural purpose for these commissions. The cultural purpose outweighs any purpose that involves ‘fixing things’ or ‘bringing the perpetrators to proper justice.’
A structural anthropologist might put it this way:
A President has been assassinated. This is the thesis.
One person benefited from this felony far more than any other suspect and he is the President. This is the antithesis.
A commission is formed to synthesize these bipolar opposites.
See:
The King is dead.
Long live the king.
But there has to be a rite of passage to bridge the gap between the dead king and the live king.
And a photograph taken on a plane just does not do the trick.
So a commission is set up to write a complete report concerning the assassination that will put to rest any suspicions that live king had anything to do with the murder of the dead king.
This has nothing to do with the truth of any suspicions concerning links between LBJ and the assassination of Kennedy. That really has nothing to do with nothing in my book.
After all, when the king is dead the tribe needs a new king who is recognized as the new legitimate king.
So too, the Twin Towers went down in flames while the center of our Department of Defense was severely damaged by Saudi Arabians.
That fact alone led us down a road from which there was no return.
Now to me, Saudi Arabia was the logical foe in all of this hub bub. That is, pretend for a second that fifteen of the 19 hijackers had been Russian and two came from the Ukraine.
Now the commission set up to look into all of this took 441 days to issue a report—taking an extra 60 days to complete its investigation.
We had a President who wished to attack and invade Iraq before he was ever elected President.
Saudi Arabia has an oil-based economy with strong government control over major economic activities. Saudi Arabia possesses 25% [3] of the world's proven petroleum reserves, ranks as the largest exporter of petroleum, and plays a leading role in OPEC.
So it was clear that the commission could not find that the Saudis or the UEM for that matter had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11/01.
Our President had to somehow down play the national origins of the hijackers and link them to some demonic cult; a tangible cult led by a Saudi who came from one of the largest and richest families in Saudi Arabia.
We came to know that the leader of the conspirators was a Saudi who had renounced his citizenship and who had moved his residence to one of the biggest hell holes on this planet…Afghanistan.
It was an easy thing after that tale was woven with the cooperation of our press to attack and invade Afghanistan which had been ruled by some organized tribe known as the Taliban; a totally different tribe than the organization known as al Qaeda. All the propaganda network had to do was play a tape of these Taliban satans hitting women with sticks over and over again; on our standard news outlets, on our cable news programs, on our internet…All day and all night for weeks and weeks following the attack.
Okay, so Osama sent video tapes to the news outlets whereby he confessed to the conspiracy against the United States; tapes that were played over and over again for years.
But think of this. What if the hijackers had been Russian and Ukrainian? And further suppose the leader of the conspiracy had absconded from Russia and was hiding in Tibet.
First of all, how quickly would our government be able to prove that the leadership of Russia knew nothing of the attack?
We never even heard of an investigation as to what the Saudi government knew and when they knew it.
The Saudi government is made up of rich blood lines. It is a monarchy with a Consultative Assembly; and all this recent blubber about Sharia Law in the U.S.? Well, Saudi Arabia is a Sharia Law State and its constitution is the Quran.
I have never heard one word from repubs about plans to attack Saudi Arabia. I have never heard on complaint against Saudi Arabia from a repub. The Bush family has had business interests with the Saudi’s forever.
The fact is that Saudi’s attacked our shores on 9/11/01.
The fact is that our most powerful corporations have important economic interests in Saudi Arabia. These corporations had very little economic interests in the countries of Iraq or Afghanistan—hell in Iran for that matter.
These assumptions are polar opposites. Somehow they must be synthesized.
The 9/11 Commission supposedly ‘reviewed’ two and a half million pages of documents in 441 days. My calculator tells me that the commission would have had to review 5600 pages each and every one of those days. No Xmas or turkey day or Sunday excepted.
The 9/11 Commission issued its 571 page report. (By the way The Warren Report was 888 pages)
The Commission also concluded 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks were from Saudi Arabia, but found no evidence the government of Saudi Arabia conspired in the attacks, or that it funded the attackers
There is a pattern here.
When there are theses and antitheses; when there are contradictions that cannot be solved; synthesis must take place one way or another.
One way our culture synthesizes its contradictions is by commission. But there are rules as to who comprises these commissions and how they perform their investigations.
Hold most of the commission’s actions in secret, far away from the prying eyes of the public.
Make sure that that commission at least purports to review millions of documents.
Make sure that members of the commission come from both political parties.
Make sure that the commission issues a report comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of pages that only a relatively few die-hards will ever read. And of course this ensures that those die-hards will publish books comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of pages that only a few die-hards will bother to read.
And make sure that the conclusion of the report is only a few pages and that it easily refutes the most obvious conclusions arising from the incident, emergency or felony.
Now it is true that for 99.9999% of our population, the commission’s report will fade from memory two days after it is published. Actually, well before the report ever issues, most people will forget that there was ever a commission formed in the first place.
Forever after the report issues, anyone who raises a voice challenging the synthesis found in the commission report will be told to read the report along with five or six books reviewing the report.
And we must be honest about all this.
There is no frickin way I am going to review 2 ½ million pages of documents.
And if I did perform such a task, I would most probably pick and choose sentences and paragraphs and pictures that supported my conclusions reached a few days after I began my review.
Getting back to the mortgage bank/security crash of ’08, I know that the commission’s report will be hundreds and hundreds of pages that few people will read thoroughly. I also know that five or more books discussing the report will reach the best sellers list.
This time though I think that a few people are going to have to be thrown under the bus. There will be a few folks from GS and other institutions who will be sitting in some minimum security prison for a couple of years.
The repubs will ban together and fight any new regulations that might be recommended by this commission; most probably because a few repubs on the commission will disown its findings.
The dem leaders will jump up and down and dems like me will yell and scream; we will all be full of sound and fury and signify nothing as far as the voters are concerned.
