Nationwide, Fox Business Newtork pulls less than a well-attended college football game, so now they are hiring Don Imus.
Imus and a financial cable network go together like herring and a strawberry milkshake.
I kind of wish that Howard Stern was still doing broadcast. I used to listen to him now and again, and whenever he teed off on Imus, it was hysterical.
Barack Obama has called just about everyone in Washington, DC for a meeting at the White House, insurance companies, doctors, Republicans, Blue Dogs, etc., but he hasn’t called in the progressives.
While members of his staff are making it clear that they intend to Sistah Soulja the liberals, the Liberals, or more accurately the Progressive Caucus in the House, are hitting back:
In a letter delivered to the White House moments ago, the two leaders of the bloc of House progressives bluntly told President Obama that they will not support any health care plan without a public option in it — and demanded a meeting to inform him face to face.
The bullet points of the letter are that in order to have them support the plan, there must be a public option, built on Medicare providers and using Medicare rates.
Note that there three things that can happen:
The only way that these guys lose is if they blink…..Then again, never underestimate the capability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Needless to say, the argument that is apparently being fronted by Rahm and His Evil Minions™:
Should Obama jettison the public option, progressives will come under tremendous pressure to back the plan anyway. White House advisers will likely insist that liberals mustn’t deny the president a historic victory and enable a defeat that could cripple the first African-American presidency.
Is one of the most repellent things that I’ve read…well this week….It’s a bull market for repellent these days.
I would also add that the only person crippling Barack Obama, whether its on marriage equality, DADT, banking reform, healthcare, torture, accountability, etc. is Barack Hussein Obama.
Letter from Congressional liberals below:
Dear President Obama:
Thank you for continuing to work with Members of Congress to draft a health reform bill that will provide the real health care reform this country needs.
We look forward to meeting with you regarding retaining a robust public option in any final health reform bill and request that that meeting take place as soon as possible.
Public opinion polls continue to show that a majority of Americans want the choice of a robust public plan and we stand in solidarity with them. We continue to support the robust public option that was reported out of the Committees on Ways and Means and Education and Labor and will not vote for a weakened bill on the House Floor or returning from a Conference with the Senate.
Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates-not negotiated rates-is unacceptable. A plan with negotiated rates would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal ofproviding choice and competition to keep rates down. The public plan with set rates saves $75 billion, which could be lost if rates are negotiated with providers. Further, this public option must be available immediately and must not be contingent upon any trigger.
Mr. President, the need for reform is urgent. Every day, 14,000 Americans lose their health care coverage. We must have health care reform that will effectively bring down costs and significantly expand access. A health reform bill without a robust public option will not achieve the health reform this country so desperately needs. We cannot vote for anything less.
We look forward to meeting with you to discuss the importance of your support for a robust public plan, which we encourage you to reiterate in your address to the Joint Session of Congress on Wednesday.
Lynn Woolsey
Raul Grijalva
Image Courtesy Calculated RiskWe have the new unemployment claims numbers, and according to USA Today and Reuters, the numbers are down, though as Bloomberg notes, the numbers are still 570K, more than the 564K expected.
Only, in a bit of flagrant journamalism, they ignore the fact that, the initial numbers for last week were 570K, and this week’s numbers are 570K, but since last week’s numbers have been revised up to 574K, they claim a small drop in initial Filings. (H/t Dean Baker, as well as CNN, normally the Cheer-leaders News Network, out there, for the catch)
Note that if the number is much above 400K, we are still losing jobs, that the 4 week moving average rose to 571,250, and that continuing claims rose by 92K to 6.23m.
The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) is at 48.4%, indicating further contraction, but this is an improvement.
As Atrios puts it, “Hurray, the 2nd derivative is positive.”
In retail, same store sales fell 2.9% year over year in August, the back to school season, so the consumer is not yet ready to put the economy back on their shoulders.
In central bank news from across the pond, the European Central Bankleft its benchmark interest rate at 1%, and issued a statement that it sees no prospect of either rate hikes or its unwinding its support for their banks in the near future.
In the world of credit rating, Moody’s raised Ford’s debt rating to Caa1 from Caa3, but according to S&P, the default rate for junk bonds rose to 10.2% in August, up from July’s 9.4%, which does not bode well for the ability of companies to raise capital.
BTW, remember last week when I said that insider selling was beating insider buying by 30.6:1? Well, it’s up to 61.8:1.
The sucker’s rally is coming to an end.
Finally, something I generally pay very little attention to, but gold is getting awfully close to $1000.00/oz. (Troy)
The gold bugs will tell you that now is the time to buy gold, but I’ll say that gold approaching the 4 digit line means that it is time to dump gold and get the f%$# out of dodge.
In currency, the dollar was a bit stronger, largely on concern for Japan’s new government, and the statement by the ECB.
In energy, oil fell slightly, largely on the unemployment numbers.
Outsourced to Brad Delong, who notes that not only is David Broder a deeply immoral man, he suggests in that prosecution of crimes by his cocktail party friends is simply unAmerican, but that he is also lying through his teeth.
You see Broder says (not linking, friends don’t link friends to Broder) in the first substantive paragraph of his OP/ED (the first 2 ‘graphs are calling out Eugene Robinson for supporting the investigation):
First, let me stipulate that I agree on the importance of accountability for illegal acts and for serious breaches of trust by government officials — even at the highest levels. I had no problem with the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, and I called for Bill Clinton to resign when he lied to his Cabinet colleagues and to the country during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Actually, this is a flat out lie. While he did call for Clinton to resign over a blowjob, he strongly argued against impeaching Nixon at the time, when he wrote, “that he hoped it would fail–and that Richard M. Nixon would have his revenge.”
In the world of sociopaths like David Broder, Bill Clinton gets a blow job, so he must therefore resign.
Richard Nixon, on the other hand, uses the IRS, and the FBI, to pursue his political opponents, authorizes crimes against them, including attempted blackmail and robbery, and then is actively involved in covering up those crimes, and it’s “no harm, no foul.”
I think that David Broder is angry with Democrats, because somehow or other, he missed all the “free love” in the 1960s, and he blames the Democrats, for reasons that are unclear to me.
There was a scuffle at a healthcare reform rally, and someone’s finger was bitten off.
*Admiral Josh Painter, The Hunt for Red October.
The reason that Godwin’s law does not apply here is because we are talking about Patrick Buchanan, and, on the 60th anniversary of the start of WWII, he’s writing about how the war really wasn’t Hitler’s fault at all, but the fault of those meddling English.
OK, we know that he is a pro-Nazi kook, and we know that his Dad was involved in the German American Bund, so we can only imagine what little Patty’s dinner table discussions were like, but why does this man have a soap box at MSNBC and other networks?
The issue is not that he is an anti-Semitic and racist kook, it is that mainstream media outlets still feel compelled to give him access?
To quote the late, great Molly Ivins, “The speech was so much better in the original German.”
[on edit] I did not link directly to Pat Buchanan’s article, though I read it, because I did not want to drive page views.
*Which states that, “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1,” with a corollary that, “the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.”†
†It should be noted that this law has not been considered to apply exclusively to Usenet discussions for at least a decade, and is applied generally to all forms of electronic text based communications.
It’s a Batman reference, BTW.
*I claim no credit for either the photo or the bon mot. The photo is from Wall Street Jackass, and the funny line is from Cthulhu.†
†No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Shortskoolbus BBS.‡
‡OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans§ would seem to mitigate against this.
§
Well, the first set of numbers for August job losses have come out, and ADP forecasts a drop of 298K non-farm payroll jobs, the lowest number since last September, and the Dickensian-named Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, has reported that there were 76,456 jobs cut, well down from July, but about 2K more than June. (Note: these are apples and oranges. The 1st is the total delta in employment, and the 2nd is total layoffs.)=
These numbers are not good, they are still on the minus side, but they are better, as is the revised BLS numbers for productivity, which show a 6.6% annual rate of increase.
Still, we saw consumer bankruptcies up 24% YoY, and they are on a pace to hit 1.4 million this year.
In finance, Treasuries were up, and yields down, on the release of the Federal Reserve Board’s minutes, which show a bit more concern about the recovery, and the VIX (Volatility IndeX) is up, which would tend to indicate that the current rally is on its last legs.
In real estate, mortgage applications fell, even though rates were down.
ADP’s job loss numbers pushed both the dollar and crude oil down, largely because even though they were an improvement over the prior month, they were worse than forecast.
So, it appears that the Stalinesque recantations among Republicans who have mistakenly told the truth continues, with Tom Ridge now completely denying that there were any political considerations in the terror alerts.
He correctly points out that Fox News is the most vociferously liberal news network out there….By the standards of….Fox News….
Except for the dog part…I’m a cat person, and have had a cat attack during the act.
Thankfully, it was her foot, and not my dangly bits.
The mortgage bankers association is looking to get explicit federal insurance for their mortgage backed securities, so that they can fob off the downside of their bad judgment on the taxpayer.
They can camouflage it in all they want with statements about, “The government has an important, limited role to play to ensure a stable flow of funds for mortgages,” but this is about a hand out, not a hand up.
Seriously, it actually made me feel a bit weepy.
Maria Bartiromo asks 454 year old Congressman Anthony Weiner if why he is not on Medicare (1:37 in vid).
Umm…You have to be 65 to qualify.
Jeebus, is she anything but a life support system for a pair of tits.*
*Yes, legs too, she has nice gams. The point is that she is a profoundly stupid woman who has her job because she is eye candy.
Upon his indictment about 7 years ago
Leaving Prison with hair in a pony tail.
Corrupt Congressman James Traficant has been released from prison after serving 7 years.
Normally, I would not note this, but when I first found the web, I decided that it was impossible for me to create a particularly useful web page, so instead I attempted create the most useless page.
It was dedicated bad hair days, and it’s been kind of moribund for years, but Mr. Traficant is there front and center.
This makes perfect sense because his problem is that he’s been kow-towing to the left so much that he’s lost the country, what with all the war crimes investigations, the tax hikes for the rich, the crackdown on the banks, the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” and the thumbing of his nose at the Republicans every chance he gets. Not to mention the plans for full withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012 and his full blown assault on the health care industry and insistence on a Canadian style health care system. You’d think Obama would have been far, far more cautious so as not to give the Republican freakshow any possible path to demonize them as “far left.” It’s not like they could just make stuff up and a lot of people in America would believe it, right?
(emphasis mine)
At least, that’s what an anonymous “top official” (**cough** Rahm **cough**) says.
The California brush fires on time lapse:
Auto Sales Graph Pr0n Courtesy Calculated Risk
Construction Spending Pron Also Courtesy of Calculated Risk
As is noted by Calculated Risk, light vehicle sales hit a 1¼ year high in August, but that was with the Cash for Clunkers program, which is now over, which begs the question, “What happens in September?”
I think that the trend is generally up, because the sales were so low that the fleet replacement time (fleet size/sales) was approaching 30 years, which is simply unsustainable. (click images for full size)
It should also be noted that for all the claims of recovery, both residential and non-residential construction spending continues to decline.
Additionally, notwithstanding the “green shoots”, the bond market is pricing in some very hard times ahead, with US Treasuries rising in price, which drops their yield.
This sentiment is also serving to drive the Yen and the dollar higher, and crude oil lower, as people look for a safe haven.
Which may make Richard Cohen the stupidest motherf$#%er on the face of the earth, beating out Douglas Feith.
You see, he wants to wring his hands, and say that there should be no prosecutions for torture, because it might work, once.
This ignores the fact that it does not work most of the time, in fact it makes things much worse, because not only does it make potential allies into opponents, but it does not extract reliable information.
Notwithstanding Mr. Cohen’s self-professed, “abhorrence of torture,” this is really about the fact that inside the Washington, DC Beltway, the idea for accountability for crimes is an anathema to the “very serious people.”
He coaches this moral capitulation as his desire for the impossible, “absolute security,” which does not exist sitting in one’s home, or driving on a street, but this is thrown in because it sounds reasonable, and justifies the most heinous of acts.
The reality is that they are completely bereft of morality, and so attached to Sally Quinn’s damn cocktail parties and their access to the politically powerful in the nation, that they endorse criminality and moral indecency on a scale that boggles the mind.
That being said, cheer-leading crimes against humanity and endorsing the idea that there should never be any accountability does not make Richard Cohen a stupid man, it just makes him a war criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity like Julius Streicher or Hassan Ngeze, what makes him the stupidest man in the world is this:
Attorney General Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to see whether any of the CIA’s interrogators broke the law. Special prosecutors are often themselves like interrogators — they don’t know when to stop. They go on and on because, well, they can go on and on. One of them managed to put Judith Miller of The New York Times in jail — a wee bit of torture right there. No CIA interrogator can feel safe. The interrogators are about to be interrogated.
(emphasis mine)
While Judith “EC” Miller’s incarceration on contempt of court charges is undoubtedly coercive, and openly so, the intent of the contempt citation and jailing was to extract information about her sources, it was by no means torture.
Anyone conflating incarceration with torture is really, really, mind bogglingly stupid.
Te stoopid….It burns us!!1
So, a band came up with T-shirt, “Brass Evolutions, 2009,” but some creationist whack job parents objected so the assistant superintendent confiscated the shirts, because some parents, “don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”
Since when did stupid people get the right to make the rest of us stupid?
What the administration should have done was contact the alma mater of said parents, and suggest that their diplomas be revoked.