Adrienne's Corner: Spending bill passed: Would someone please tell me what the hell's going on?...

because I'm totally flummoxed, which is similar to being confused, only worse.

Obama "appeared" to side with the Republicans on the budget bill. Conservatives in the Congress are pissed at the old guard in the GOP. Libtards are mad at Obama. Pelosi is disappointed in Obama, and Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a hero, and a very strong contender to be our next president.

Of course, I don't believe any of this Kabuki theater going on in DC. I don't believe Pelosi is "disappointed" in Obama. I don't believe that Warren, a communist sympathizer to her core, is really pissed at Obama, nor do I believe anything Obama says or does.

Repeat after me: I need to protect myself because no one else is going to do it.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. I have neither the expertise or the arrogance to do such a thing. I do know what our family is going to do to protect ourselves, and that's not for public airing.

Two things in this bill have made me sit back and go, "Whoa."

Courtesy of the Cronybus (sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing, in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. source

and...

A measure that would for the first time allow the benefits of current retirees to be severely cut is set to be attached to a massive spending bill, part of an effort to save some of the nation’s most distressed pension plans.
The rule would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets. source

You realize when the next "too big to fail" bank crisis happens, and, mark my words, it will happen, your 401K, IRA, or pension is going to be confiscated. There is no maybe about this.

Ellen Brown explains what's probably going to happen.

Ellen Hodgson Brown is an American author, political candidate, attorney, public speaker, and advocate of alternative medicine and financial reform, most prominently public banking. Brown is the founder^[1] and president^[2] of the Public Banking Institute, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the creation of publicly run banks.