There's a dandy one going around best illustrated by what followed this question:

I was informed a month or so ago that my mortgage (30 year fixed) was sold to Citigroup. Any idea what this means for me? I can only imagine that it is not good.

A helpful but mistaken reply:

It's unsettling to have your personal loan vanish into the virtual world of equity-backed securities. But Citigroup, or whoever they sold your mortgage to, cannot unilaterally change the terms of your legally binding loan contract. As long as you make your payments on time, nothing changes for you.

Better have a close look at your mortgage contract.  This is usually not the case.

[Hat tip to Cronesense, who inspired me like some loving juggernaut.  Thank you.]

[cross-posted at Docudharma - excerpts from first diary originally published on DKos 11/19/05]

This diary is about war, and what it does to people. Although I write about WWII, which is said to be over, it is just a scream back from the other end of a time warp through that tunnel to hell known as warfare. It is an echo of the present war in Iraq, and the last terrified glint in my dying mother‘s eyes.

Mine is the information soldiers would tell the U.S. if only they would be allowed to return. For the victors can suffer worse fates, in the end, than the vanquished. I know this because Dad brought World War II home with him.

What it will take to be heard on the war/occupation is an international effort, teaming up with citizens of other nations secretly invested in the global war machine.

Now we are learning what really immobilizes Congress - what deafens them to their electorate.  Because finally a recommended diary by a credible source tells the truth:  the US is owned by her creditors.  

So is Congress.  Congress has been "globalized" in their concerns.  They are highlighting the concerns of foreign investors in preference to their own electorate.  This is the gory backside of globalization.

And US war/occupation efforts are now "globalized investment opportunities."  Sometime sooner (or probably later) it will also be well understood:  there is heavy foreign "investment" in the US wars/occupations by numerous foreign governments.  Their citizens will have to speak up together with the US public.

The world is feeling the effects of what has been termed "the American Plague:"  bogus accounting methods widely employed by Wall Street giants.  This video clip titled mark to make believe says it all.

When the whole Ponzi scheme blew apart, suddenly all the misdealing was blown wide open to view.  The finance blogsphere is having a field day exploring white collar crime, but the MSM steadily drums for the blood of the little guy as scapegoat.

Before the kleptocracy formally pillories the US mortgage holder, we must consider an issue of Russ Winter‘s daily blog titled Chorus Against the American Plague which outlines the legal (!!) accounting gimmickry which lies at the heart of the finance meltdown.  

No kidding - what is at the heart of the credit industry meltdown is a story Kurt Vonnegut might have channeled:  literally a game of computerized craps.

While the US homeowner is being impugned and scapegoatedfor the credit meltdown in the MSM, the comely mask was torn off a monster, exposing insider trading at the heart of the fiasco.  While the MSM pillories the US mortgage holders, finance media blogsphere erupts into a field day satirizing "Frankenstein Finance" and computers gone berserk

Time to shred the costumery and parlance adorning hedge funds.  This is too easy to understand.  This credit crash evokes 2001: A Space Odyssey and the treacly voice of Hal, one seemingly omniscient computer.  

Hal, you there?  Hal, can you help us make sense of this mess?

This diary series explores what I call the Montana Index - the rich are leaving the US in record numbers or heading for the hills of places like Montana .  Why?  They saw the credit bubble popping long ago.  Now the little guy - the ultimate bag-holders in a lot of foul play - are but beginning to feel the impact.

In a phenomenon I would call the Montana Index, the US rich (primarily erstwhile GOP Bu$hco supporters) are expatriating the US in record numbers (30,000+/month) for choice locations such as the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, the Virgin Islands, or Paraguay , or... any place but the urban US.  Those who stay behind are heading for the hills of places like Montana .  

When I saw the title of this diary, I thought great, it's going to be about some facts most people don't know in the US.

No, rather the story has not been told by what happens to people on the other side of guns.

Whoever advocates war:  so, have you ever killed anyone?

After reading WaPo's series about the Vice President last week, the absurdity of the US’ failure to plan for security in our own nation while fanatically pursuing torture directives and the destruction of our justice system appears to indicate that the purpose of torture may be to shut mouths, not open them.

and Other Ideas About Peace

The age of big oil would have us think that livestock and agriculture are health hazards within communities or cities.  Funny that Big Oil and auto manufacturers would notice that about horses.  I say manufacturing will never surpass the horse.  Because the horse reproduces itself.  Can your car do that?  

But there are ways to live with superior environmental stewardship and less cost.  More below the fold, after the wake-up call.

First Karl Rove got ugly with Sheryl Crow :

In his attempt to dismiss us [about the environment], Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow?

And the media spin afterward blew up in her face...

Riverbend blogged in February concerning a woman who came forward to say she was raped when US-trained Iraqi forces arrested her.  Sabrine Al Janabe has again been arrested and accused of making it up to undermine security.  Riverbend's take on it:

No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.

I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, "13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces." The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.

They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story.

Yesterday it was said too many times in all kinds of ways...

"the worst shooting in US history..."

But this is not the case.  With saddened respect to all those who are mourning at this time about the Virginia shootings, it may also be a teachable moment for the US about her own history.  For it is an insult to the native people of this hemisphere to overlook their collective slaughter with mass shootings by the US cavalry ending barely 100 years ago.  We had to listen to Bush say how 9/11 was the worst bloodshed of US people in her history since the Civil War.  Which is an outrageous lie, a truncation of history.  And the US’ collective incapacity to understand her own history is then her collective blindness towards her current and future circumstance.

As to seldom learned US history, consider the massacre of Wounded Knee.

Last fall I did a diary on the NAFTA Superhighway (or NASCO Corridor) which is well under construction courtesy of the US taxpayer:

Allyn Hunt of the Guadalajara Reporter writes about the core project of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) between the US, Canada and Mexico in his 10/14 "South of North" column [who are]:

...building a giant limited-access "super highway" that will slice from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, through the heartland of the US, to Canada, just north of Duluth, MN...  Without any discussion or approval from Congress, and no public debate, the Bush administration foresees containers from the Far East - including China - entering the US from the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas aboard Mexican trucks. At Laredo the trucks will pick up what will be America's most modern limited-access "International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor" - described as four football fields wide, sporting ten lanes, as well as passenger and freight rail lines, bordered with gas and oiil lines running along its sides.

I ordinarily would never diary something like this, but the insanity of this high level White House statesman is off the charts, to an extent that more of the public should know.  No, this is not snark (I thought my husband was kidding when he told me this).  More below the fold.

Talk about good news...  An article by Zack Exley on "In These Times" portrays a new Christian movement.

Shane Claiborne, the author a book motivating the movement titled  Irresistable Revolution is

currently living in Iraq to "stand in the way of war," and asks evangelicals why their literal reading of the Bible doesn't lead them to do what Jesus so clearly told wealthy and middle-class people to do in his day: give up everything to help others.

Remember the late Carl Sagan?

Never afraid to venture into global politics, Sagan warns us at one point of the danger that a leader under the sway of religious fundamentalism might not try too hard to avoid nuclear Armageddon, reasoning that it was G-d’s plan.

"He might be interested to see what that would be like," Sagan wrote.  "Why slow it down?"

• From an article by Dennis Overbye printed in the International Edition of the Miami Herald