Dear Congress,
Seven hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. We, the undersigned, urge Congress to wait at least 72 hours after the publication of the next version of this bill, before moving to a vote. We believe all legislation should be posted online for at least 72 hours before a vote to give lawmakers and citizens sufficient time to review and debate it, and this bill is no exception.
Sign the petition:
bsd.sunlightfoundation.com/page/petition/ReadItFirst
The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”
More on michaelmoore.com
Philip Zimbardo knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares insights and graphic unseen photos from the Abu Ghraib trials. Then he talks about the flip side: how easy it is to be a hero, and how we can rise to the challenge.
Philip Zimbardo was the leader of the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment — After serving as an expert witness during the Abu Ghraib trials, he wrote The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. From Nazi comic books to the tactics of used-car salesmen, he explores a wealth of sources in trying to explain the psychology of evil.
A past president of the American Psychological Association and a professor emeritus at Stanford, Zimbardo retired in 2008 from lecturing, after 50 years of teaching his legendary introductory course in psychology. In addition to his work on evil and heroism, Zimbardo recently published The Time Paradox, exploring different cultural and personal perspectives on time.
Still well-known for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo in his new research looks at the psychology of heroism. He asks, “What pushes some people to become perpetrators of evil, while others act heroically on behalf of those in need?”
The then Sarah Heath finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship and the “Miss Congeniality” award.
I saw something about this on the Gothamist this morning and figured there would probably also be some new stuff on the Candy Factory wall. So I went out in the drizzle to check it out.
gothamist.com/2008/09/27/banksy_mural_going_up_right_now_…
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Michael Natale
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