Did the WordPress Pharma hack hit you? It hit me on all of my sites and it’s been a nightmare. The clearest and simplest set of directions that I’ve found to fix this is from Pearsonified.

I want to suggest that anyone trying to fight this also install the WordPress “Clean Options” plugin.  I wish I had found it earlier. Using this plugin greatly simplifies recovering from the Pharma Hack.

I hope everyone listened to Harry Markopolos yesterday testify about Madoff before Congress. He was brilliant. He was exactly right about what to do with the SEC. He said put all 3500 employees on the street and let the New York State Attoney General enforce securities law. He said there had been no federal enforcement for the last eight years. He had lots to say and he said it all well. The entire testimony is available on CSPN3.

No one can deny that this was an important bit of history. Markopolos was testifying about the biggest bilking of investors in the history of the world. Every news organization covered it. MSNBC broadcast the event live. Tell me why this event did not exist for CNN. There was no coverage. It’s as if it never happened. I find this very strange and a very disturbing editing of world events.

I hope the next Congress regulates these criminals in every way possible. From the BBC:

Nicola Horlick, boss of Bramdean investments, told the BBC: “I think now it is very difficult for people to invest in things that are meant to be regulated in America, because they have fallen down on the job.”

How did we get here? Who is responsible for the Republican coup that lasted all of these years? The stretegist of our great national nightmare was Lee Atwater. He was a man without morals. He started out with Karl Rove and lost election. He ended his life fearing he was going to hell. If you don’t know about this monster, then you don’t understand how the Republicans have been running their campaigns and the country.

A new movie has been made on this evil man, “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story“.  The movie is reviewed on NPR by John Powers and discussed on Talk of the Nation. You can listen to these pieces here:

A “guitar-picking rascal from South Carolina,” in the words of documentary filmmaker Stefan Forbes, Atwater could seem like a conundrum: He could share a nightclub stage with legendary bluesman B.B. King on the one hand while masterminding “vile and racist” political dirty tricks on the other.

This man did terrible harm to our country. His legacy lived on in John McCain’s campaign.

When Gerald Ford became president and pardoned Tricky Dick Nixon he said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

He was wrong. It was only beginning. The Republicans at that time started to put Richard Nixon’s southern strategy into practice with a vengance. Divide and conquer was their theme. Who do you hate? We’ll hate them with you. Give us your vote. The culmination of this building horror was the Bush presidency. The same creepy crew from from Nixon and Ford’s era were with Bush.

Let’s hope, with Obama, that we are finally waking from our long national nightmare at last.

I saw this in the humor section of the New York Times today. It’s great. It’s like Wizard’s Chess.

Raise your hand if you’ve read any of Ayn Rand’s books? When you read them, did you laugh out loud? If the answer is yes, you may leave the room. You have a brain. If you didn’t, tsk tsk tsk. You must stay and listen to her loyal follower, Alan Greenspan.

Mr. Greenspan is testifying before Congress about our economic meltdown. He said he is in “a state of shocked disbelief.” Poor poor Alan. He read Ayn Rand and sat at her feet like a sweet little puppy. He is stupid.

People who say they are libertarians are actually saying they’re better than everyone else and they should be rewarded for that. I’ve got mine, screw you is the underlying text. Me and people like me are so smart and so clever and so industrious that we should lead without any government restraint on our actions. Dumb d’Dumb Dumb Dumb.

Libertarianism is a religion to Alan Greenspan. There is no logic. There is no data. He had “faith” in his libertarian beliefs. Ooopsie. It’s nonsense! From the New York Times:

Mr. Greenspan said he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions.

Mr. Greenspan said that he had found “a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”

Mr. Greenspan, who headed the nation’s central bank for 18.5 years, said that he and others who believed lending institutions would do a good job of protecting their shareholders are in a “state of shocked disbelief.”

He said that the current crisis had “turned out to be much broader than anything that I could have imagined.”

Guess what, sanctimonious wonder pup, people are people are people and no one is good all the time. In fact, most people are bad most of the time when money is involved. I think the key word in the text above is “believing.” Alan based all of his actions on a belief. Then he jumbled the numbers to fit the belief. That’s not science. That’s nonsense. That’s religion.

I had this friend once upon a time who claimed to be a libertarian. Like most liberatians I’ve known, she was functionally very ordinary. She had degrees all over the place but next to nothing in her bank account. She was basically ineffectual in the workplace. Was she smart? Yes, she was smart with books but hopelessly self obsessed, conceited and an insulting patronizing supervisor. She was doomed to a slow rise to middle management without a single innovative thought. She was a libertarian true believer.

Next time you see a libertarian bumper sticker on a car, take note of the driver and the car. You’re probably looking at the company joke searching for his Swingline stapler.

And, Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Bernanke, next time you decide to play with the world’s money, sit back and imagine what P.T. Barnum would do if he was given a pile of dough and didn’t have to worry about the cops. He’d steal it all. Maybe you should teach that in your econ courses at Princeton.

Good christians translates to bigoted cowards. These people make me gag.

McCain wants Friday’s debate postponed to concentrate on the economic crisis. Give me a break. This really takes the cake. He’s an idiot and a coward.

A few days ago, I linked to an opinion piece in the First Post asking why no one was going to jail over the septic backup of corporate crime we’re witnessing. Finally, it looks like investigations are under way. From the New York Times today:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, under pressure to look at possible criminal activity in the financial markets, is expanding its corporate fraud inquiries in the wake of the tumult in the last 10 days, officials said Tuesday.

The F.B.I. has now opened preliminary investigations into possible fraud involving the four giant corporations at the center of the recent turmoil — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and the American International Group, The Associated Press reported.

Congratulate yourself on witnessing history. I used to marvel at the stories my parents would tell about the ’20s and ’30s. My parents married right before the crash in 1929. Warren Harding’s regime hit them hard. Today, we have Warding Harding on steroids. We have George Bush and Dick Cheney and all of their oil buddies and their Wall Street buddies and their neo-con nonsense. For years, Germany and France have been begging the USofA and the UK to regulate their markets. We wouldn’t hear of it. We were entranced and speaking in neo-con tongues. France doesn’t allow short trading. France is smart. We’re stupid and most of America is going to pay for this stupid with their life savings. Thank you so much for voting for George Bush and his Merry Men, not once, but twice.