Julian Assange is being held without bail.  He has pissed off some Serious People, and there have been a lot of attempts to prevent Wikileaks from posting what he says is killer information on Bank of America (it’s assumed), Guantanamo Bay (Prison, it’s assumed), and more.

We’ve been discussing the President a lot lately, making attempts to define him as to style, political ideology, and his place along a liberal-conservative continuum.  We’ve taken various positions partially based on issues we care about and have watched closely since the campaign; we argue about what he supported, what we ‘imagined he supported’.  This is Obama on NATFA  and his opposition to the South Korean Free Trade Agreement on 11/13/07:

There are several things Murdoch is good at: making boatloads of money, influencing politics beneficial to his financial empire, and influencing thought and beliefs and artificial facts and directing them into less-than-diligent thinkers’ minds through various media.  In other words, Murdoch has an agenda, and he’s highly successful at fulfilling it.

The object of this diary is twofold:  a) to show that Dylan Ratigan at MSNBC does in fact cover the issues of the banking and fraudclosure  travesty; and b) to simplify some of this for financial neophytes like myself.  It’s increasingly important that more of us learn what’s going on, and what’s at stake as these issues are either papered over or systemically made right for people, not for banks.  I’m sure that the things I have gotten wrong here, you will let me hear about.  ;o)

Economist James Kwak who writes at Baseline Scenario with Simon Johnson, explains why the House should allow them to die with no action.  I would offer that the members should pepper the media with his explanations and math; they could reduce the arguments to a paragraph.  And they should.  Dems need to draw some clear lines between the parties, and mean them.

A report from CNBC yesterday, November. 2010, announced that the Obama Administration and Congress are working on, and ‘may consider’ a bill for the Lame Duck session to ratify MERS as a legally credible entity and limit its liability in major parts of the foreclosure fraud debacle.

Unsurprising news comes that Obama is about to start running back his targeted date for beginning to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.  He is, also unsurprisingly, going with a 2014 date to assess things…again.  Seems Petraeus was right all along, and I am shocked to discover what power he wields for the MICC.

Wikileaks documents released Friday evening to The Guardian, UK, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde are full of revelations that are being underplayed by MSM as ‘not revelatory’.  Don’t be fooled.  They include documents showing that the DoD had previously lied, but actually was keeping track of civilian deaths after a fashion; that there were far more killings of civilians by Blackwater employees and US soldiers than reported; that Iran was funding Shiite combatants (known already), and reports of death squads operating under Nouri Al-Mali

When I listen to Martin Luther King, Jr. speak, I can believe in God.  There may be other times I have, but I can’t remember them.  In discussions about belief or not, I’ve heard people say that their personal stories have been determinant.  A lot of them include hitting some emotional or spiritual bottom, and hearing a message from God, then being reborn in some state that exemplifies grace, along with which comes both a knowledge of, and a belief in, God; sort of a personal relationship.

The New York Times Magazine published this interview of Barack Obama on October 12, 2010.  Entitled The Education of a President, Peter Baker speaks with the President, whose first chapter of his Presidency has ended.  He and Obama take an afternoon to reflect on the first two years, and wander into the plans for the next two.