This video speaks for itself and makes me proud to be an American.

I rarely agree with Robert Reich on anything, so i found myself shocked to be in complete agreement with this post regarding the long, slow climb we face in resurrecting the US economy,  Reich says

In a recession this deep, recovery doesn’t depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery…

Problem is, consumers won’t start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don’t have the money, and it’s hard to see where it will come from. They can’t borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water — owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can’t are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can’t be built on replacements. Don’t expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don’t rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.

Lots of articles commenting on the One and his socialist buddies, but the Michael Ramirez cartoon above sums it up succinctly.  Other commentary on the “coup” that wasn’t (Zelaya arrest by Honduran military) and the coup that almost was (Zelaya illegal referendum) includes:

Investors Business Daily – Banana Democrats

Wall Street Journal – Honduras Defends Its Democracy

The Enterprise Blog – Honduran Cowboy Falls Out of Saddle

Please excuse our temporary dishevelment while we are refreshing the site design, which includes working out a few kinks.

Looks like this will be Obama’s first play during his opening possession.  Damn this is gonna be a long painful four years, watching OPR (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) wreck our economy for the next 20 – 30 years.  It just sucks.

The Belmont Club describes how the WSJ  and the Washington Post, while searching for the culprit in the financial crisis, pass one another like ships in the night, yet both arrive at the conclusion that more regulation could have prevented this mess.  The author, Richard Fernandez, then goes on to wonder whether any regulator could have stopped the gravy train that was sloshing so much gravy.  He then posits an alternative suggested by “ponerology”, which defines itself as the science of evil.  A basic tenet of ponerology holds that approximately 5% of the population is psychopathic, and that over time, they accumulate in the upper echelons of organizations (due to their ruthlessness?) and are well positioned to breed corruption within and without their organization and those related to it.  His closing and provocative thought:

It’s amusing until one realizes how often we discover, at intervals of 50 or so years, how a cohort of people more or less simultaneously learn to game a system until it crashes.

This Fortune/CNNMoney article sums up concisely how Wall Street arrived at its logical end – it’s what happens when the Masters of the Universe play the “game” with other peoples’ money instead of their own.

This creative gentleman converts the concepts of SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing) into catchy rap lyrics.  I think he should consider entering the employee training or seminar business – it would sure make some of this stuff easier to learn!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c96LTLlaXew[/youtube]