Testify, Brother!
Shultz and Katrina Vanden Heuvel open up a can of whup ass on Barack Obama and his “do nothing but sign it” policy on a healthcare bill.
Ed Shultz: Testify, Brother
Testify, Brother!
Month: December 2009
Testify, Brother!
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?? Shy and Unpretentious?
Uh-oh, I dissed the mouse. They will send the snow white commandos to kill me
So, Roy Disney just died, and here is how the Dawn C. Chmielewski and James Bates of LA Times described him?
Despite wealth estimated at $600 million, Disney remained shy and outwardly unpretentious, according to people who knew him. His main indulgences were a castle in Ireland, a jet, sports cars and financing a passion for sailboat racing. In 1999, Disney fulfilled a lifelong dream when he and the 12-member crew of his 74-foot sloop Pyewacket — named for the witch’s cat in the 1958 film “Bell, Book & Candle” — won the 2,225-mile Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, setting a course record.
Let me get this straight, he owned sports cars (plural), owned a 12 crew 74-foot yacht, a private jet, and an Irish Castle, and he’s “unpretentious”?
He might be a nice guy. All I know about him is that he took Michael Eisner down, which is a plus in my book, but when you own sports cars (plural), owned a 12 crew 74-foot yacht, a private jet, and an Irish Castle, unpretentious is the last adjective that should be used.
The guy owned a freaking castle, and probably sharks with frikkin laser beams in the moat.
H/t Radosh.net
Obama Poll Numbers Tank
So, we have a poll out from Wall Street Journal/NBC News, and it shows that Barack Obama’s approval numbers are below 50%:, which makes it the “the steepest first year decline in modern history.
And Henry Blodget, of all people, along with Aaron Task, notes the problem, it’s that the bankers insurance companies, pharma, and the rest of the special interests have a seat at the table, while the taxpayer does not.
Basically, it comes down to cowardice. People expect a president to fight for things, even if he loses, and not to point the finger at Congress, particularly when his own party controls the legislature.
So, we now have a huge give away to the insurance companies and pharma, and the American public realizes that they will be taxed, and that this money will be given to insurance companies, and they wonder who he is really working for.
I wonder too.
I Don’t Get This Whole Santa Thing
Click for full size
H/t The Big Picture
But it seems to me that the juxtaposition of the patron saint of thieves,* well repentant ones anyway, and Goldman Sachs does seem to be apropos.
*Oh for Pete’s Sake, just wiki it.
Porsche, Because You Have a Really Small Penis
Deep Thought
To paraphrase Nietzsche, expecting children to queue up politely for sweets, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.
We were at Hanukkah party for the kids in the Beth Israel religious school…Cookies, doughnut holes, home made Hanukkah gelt, etc.
And people were surprised when the kids did not queue up at the table in an orderly manner.
Economics Update
Click for full size
h/t Calculated Risk
Yea, sure, the recession is over. That’s why initial jobless claims rose again this week, up 7000 to 480,000, and continuing claims rose as well, though the 4-week average fell.
I’m beginning to think that those “stunning” NFP payroll numbers in November were an artifact of a seasonal correction of some kind.
In any case, real estate is not looking so hot, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rising again, and the estimates for the “shadow inventory” in housing , basically homes that are being foreclosed on, or are being held off the market by the foreclosing institutions to keep from depressing prices too much was revised upward:
The number of homes that may be in the pipeline for a sale because of foreclosure and delinquency climbed about 55 percent to 1.7 million at the end of September, according to estimates by First American CoreLogic.
The “shadow inventory” rose from 1.1 million a year earlier. Such properties include those taken over by banks and mortgage companies and those where the loans are at least 90 days delinquent, the Santa Ana, California-based research firm said in a report today. The number of unsold homes listed for sale was 3.8 million in September, down from 4.7 million a year earlier, First American said.
So I think that any claim to a recovery in residential real estate has been, greatly exaggerated.
That being said, the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators, as well as the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s Business Outlook Survey both showed signs of growth, though, as Calculated Risk notes, the recovery is weaker than in earlier months, indicating, perhaps, the start of a “W” downturn.
In either case, the LEI and the Philly Fed report did not seem to have much of an effect on Treasuries, which rose, meaning that the yield dropped, largely on concerns about Greece.
This sentiment also drove the dollar up.
In energy, the strong dollar drove oil down, but natural gas rose, largely on the cold weather and smaller than expected inventory numbers.
MSNBC Live Video Link is Down
I found it only 8 days ago, and now all I’m getting is that test signal with the colored bars with a Telemundo caption.
I blame Comcast.
[on edit]
It came back up a few days later, no clue as to why.
I Love Al Franken*
Al Franken just told Joe Lieberman to STFU when he refused to consent for Lieberman to extend his comments.
And then Holy Joe’s best bud, John “Hey You Kids, Get off My Lawn” McCain got his knickers in a twist:
*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.
20 Years Ago Today
First episode ever!
Stop Ben Bernanke
I know that there are a lot of people who think that Bernanke did the right thing, and I know that I am not one of them.
That being said, the real question is whether or not Bernanke is the right person for the path forward, and it is clear from his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee that he is completely unsuited to the task.
The fact is that it was clear from his earlier testimony, when he endorsed gutting Social Security, which was completely inappropriate for a Fed Chair, that he is a conservative (though not necessarily crazy).
But at the confirmation hearings, he was asked a very good question by, of all people David “Diaperman” Vitter.
Vitter did not come up with the question, Brad Delong came up with the question, and it’s why he’s on my blogroll, but it is a good question, and his response is telling:
Q: Why haven’t you adopted a 3% per year inflation target? [Note, the target is 2%]
Bernanke: The public’s understanding of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to price stability helps to anchor inflation expectations and enhances the effectiveness of monetary policy, thereby contributing to stability in both prices and economic activity. Indeed, the longer-run inflation expectations of households and businesses have remained very stable over recent years. The Federal Reserve has not followed the suggestion of some that it pursue a monetary policy strategy aimed at pushing up longer-run inflation expectations. In theory, such an approach could reduce real interest rates and so stimulate spending and output. However, that theoretical argument ignores the risk that such a policy could cause the public to lose confidence in the central bank’s willingness to resist further upward shifts in inflation, and so undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy going forward. The anchoring of inflation expectations is a hard-won success that has been achieved over the course of three decades, and this stability cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, the Federal Reserve’s policy actions as well as its communications have been aimed at keeping inflation expectations firmly anchored.
(emphasis mine)
When you translate this from Fed Speak, it reads as follows, “If inflation threatens to rise above 2%, I will slap it down, and I don’t care if unemployment remains above 10% for the next decade.”
We are in a liquidity trap, and the only way out of it is to create the expectation of inflation, so people worry about their money losing value and spend it.
That’s Econ 101, and I believe that Ben Bernanke has written things to this effect too.
Senate Banking Committee Passes Bernanke
The vote was 16-7, with 1 Democrat, out of 13 on the committee and 6 Republicans out of 10 on the committee voted against:
| Yes |
No
|
| Christopher Dodd (D) | Jeff Merkley (D) |
| Tim Johnson (D) | Richard Shelby (R) |
| Jack Reed (D) | Jim Bunning (R) |
| Chuck Schumer (D) | Mike Crapo (R) |
| Evan Bayh (D) | Jim DeMint (R) |
| Robert Menendez (D) | David “Diaperman” Vitter (R) |
| Daniel Akaka (D) | Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) |
| Christopher Dodd (D) | |
| Sherrod Brown (D) | |
| Jon Tester (D) | |
| Mark Warner (D) | |
| Herb Kohl (D) | |
| Michael Bennet (D) | |
| Bob Bennett (R) | |
| Bob Corker (R) | |
| Mike Johanns (R) | |
| Judd Gregg (R) |
I’m not sure if the Republican voted against Bernanke because they believe that the economy will suck in 2010, and they want to be able to say that they opposed “helicopter Ben”, or if they are opposing him just because he’s Obama’s nominee, but it’s pretty clear that there will be some number greater than 2 Republicans who will be willing to vote for cloture, so it’s pretty much a done deal.
It sucks, because not only does Bernanke conflate the well being of Wall Street with that of the nation, but he’s also pretty right wing, see his comments earlier on gutting Social security.
Meta
Yeah, I’ve added a donate button. It’s at the bottom of the right column. It’s called Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer Fund and Tip Jar.
Fail
Remember yesterday, when I wrote about the contemptible tax-giveaway that Obama’s Treasury department engineered for Citi?
Basically, it involved allowing Citi to carry forward losses after a change in ownership when Obama’s Treasury department sells out the US stake.
Well, not so fast. It turns out that, not withstanding all manner of subsidies and payoffs to Bob Rubin’s old firm, people still think that the company is crap, and are not willing to pay much for the stock, so in order to Treasury Secretary Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner to sell the US government’s stock now, they would have to take a big loss, which would clearly demonstrate that Timmeh grossly overpaid for the stock when they swapped preferred shares for common stock a few months ago:
Two days after Mr. Pandit trumpeted news that Citigroup would start untangling itself from the federal government, his bank stumbled — this time, on Wall Street. Badly misreading the financial markets, the company struggled on Wednesday to raise the money it needed to repay its bailout funds.
While Citigroup managed to raise $20.5 billion in the stock market and will forge ahead with the repayment, the sale went so poorly that anxious Treasury officials reversed course and delayed their plans to start unwinding the government’s stake in the company immediately, according to people briefed on the matter.
……………
After the close of trading in New York, Citigroup priced its new shares at $3.15 each, below the $3.25 price at which the government assumed its one-third stake in the company. Before the sale, the share price of Citigroup fell 11 cents to $3.45, as investors braced for the new stock.
Rather than suffer a loss for taxpayers, the Treasury Department will now hold on to the $5 billion stake it planned to sell alongside Citigroup’s own $17 billion stock offering. After an initial 90-day delay, the government will try to sell its entire stake — about 7.7 billion shares — over the next six to 12 months.
What this means is that anyone with a pulse………Well, anyone with a pulse whose tongue is not so far up Wall Street’s ass that they taste tonsils (see Geithner, Timothy and Obama, Barack), realizes that Citi is a mess and they won’t pay what the government paid for it.
Missile Defense Agency Looks to Liquid Fuel for Land Based Standard Interceptor
The US Navy forbids hypergolic fuels, liquids where the fuel and oxidizer ignite on contact with each other, for shipboard use, but since the US MDA is looking at ground baseing, they are considering liquid fuels for these interceptors.
Basically, because you can throttle liquid fueled rocket motors, it means that you can, for example, shut down at some point in the intercept, and restart the motor for improved kinematics for the end game, or to extend range, etc.
I still see missile defense as a big hole that people are dumping money into, particularly hit to kill.
Olbermann’s Special Comment on Obama’s Give Away to Insurance Companies
It was good. I heard it on the repeat.
It Coincides With the 2010 Election, Neh?
So, little Timmy Geithner has decided to extend the TARP program from December 31 of this year until the end of next October, which, oddly enough, is just 2 days before the elections.
It’s a neat political move, but it would have been better to not screw the pooch so badly to begin with.
Dump Geithner and Summers, for a start.
NPR Gets ½ a Clue
Well, it took them long enough to realize that by lending her to the partisan political operation known as Fox News, she is creating a credibility problem for the network:
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
Liasson refused, because she has a contract, and because, “she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts,” except, of course that the agendas of these programs is set by those, “commentary programs with conservative hosts.”
See my earlier post, with a spot on Jon Stewart critique of Faux News here.
As to Liasson, she’s not quite as hacktacular as Barbara Bradley Hagerdy, who is literally in the pay of right wing Christo Fascists, but to hear the venom drip when she says the world “liberals,” is enough.
Another reason, in addition to their balls to the wall opposition to low power radio, for me not to give to them at pledge time.
Rep. Capuano Tells Fellow Dems: ‘You’re Screwed’
Bummer of a birth mark, Democratic Party
Representative Michael Capuano (D-MD-8) just finished a losing primary against Martha Coakley, and he when asked to share his experience on the campaign trail, ye was blunt:
You’re screwed
Capuano took to the microphone, looked out at his colleagues and condensed what he’d learned into two words. “You’re screwed,” he told his friends in the House, according to one attendee. The room’s silence was broken only by soft, nervous laughter.
Capuano confirmed the gist of the message — “I’m not sure of the exact wording,” he told HuffPost, chuckling — and said that he doubted his wisdom was anything they didn’t already know.
“I think I was just confirming stuff they already knew,” he said. “I focused on two things: the war in Afghanistan and jobs.”
Everywhere Capuano went in his state, he said, he was bombarded with demands that the government do more to create jobs. He was also greeted by deep skepticism about Obama’s escalation of the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Capuano said he told the caucus that opponents of the war need to be given a chance to vote against funding for it on the House floor.
“If we do anything [on the war], we need to have a separate vote on it. People who can vote for it, can vote for it. But those of us who want to vote against it, [should] be given that opportunity, too,” he said. “But I focused mostly on jobs. People are tired of the promises of jobs. They need them now.”
There are some very real issues here.
The first is that Barack Obama’s “Wall Street before Main Street” policies just aren’t selling.
The second is that Afghanistan is unpopular.
What makes it worse is that the stimulus package will be tied to the Afghan war funding:
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, told reporters Tuesday that short-term extensions of unemployment and COBRA will be attached to the defense bill.
In effect, that requires members of Congress to back a war they oppose in order to get funding for jobs, a bargain many are loath to make, but one they’ve made over and over since Democrats rook control of Congress following the 2006 midterm elections — which were decided largely by voters fed up with the war in Iraq.
Steny Hoyer is optimistic, because, well, he’s a pro-war, pro-bank bailout squish, and he wants the rest of the caucus voting with him.
We are seeing a disaster unwind in slow motion, and the only person who might make it better, Barack Obama, is spending too much time kissing the asses corporate interests that created the NAFTA driven political firestorm in 1994.
Not Like Vietnam At All…………
After all, we aren’t seeing bogus body counts.
In the Vietnam war, there was a statistical anomaly: numbers ending in 5 and 10 were conspicuously absent, to the tune of millions of times beyond what random chance, IIRC, and it was a lecture almost 30 years ago it was greater than 5σ.
Well, we have another magic number in Afghanistan, 30* (also here and here):
Just how often has the U.S. and NATO killed the Taliban in groups of 30 during 2009? The answer may surprise you:
- Adnkronos, 12/07/2009: “Up to 30 suspected militants were killed in a NATO airstrike on a Taliban hideout in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistani border on Monday. The airstrike targeted the village of Sangar Dara in the mountainous Watapur district of Kunar province , the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.”
- SF Chronicle, 12/04/2009: “Air strikes in two areas of the Mohmand border region killed 30 suspected militants, a military statement said. It said the strikes were “highly successful” but provided no further details, including whether any civilians were hurt.”
- Xinhua, 11/04/2009: “The military said that the troops have killed 30 more militants during the last 24 hours, bringing the total fatalities to 400, as the operation in the country’s tribal area steadily progressed towards the Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan.”
- Xinhua, 08/31/2009: “At least 30 bodies of suspected Taliban fighters were recovered in northwest Pakistan’s insurgency-hit Swat valley on Monday, witnesses said. The Pakistani army said they were killed in fighting with the security forces.”
- Calgary Times, 07/04/2009: “The attack included an attempted suicide truck bombing of the base in the Zirok district of southeastern Paktika province, local officials said. As many as 30 Taliban insurgents might have been killed when troops called in air strikes, they said.”
- Khaleej Times, 06/24/2009: “Thirty Taliban militants were killed in clashes with NATO and Afghan forces in separate incidents in southern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.”
- Straits Times, 06/15/2009: “Security officials in the region said that about 30 militants were killed in Mohmand agency, close to the provincial capital Peshawar.”
- Monsters and Critics, 05/28/2009: “In another incident, the Afghan Defence Ministry said Thursday that its troops, backed by international forces, killed 30 suspected militants in neighbouring Khost province Wednesday after the militants attacked their joint base.”
- Monsters and Critics, 05/14/2009: “At least 30 Taliban fighters were killed Thursday when government artillery fire destroyed their hideout in north-west Pakistan, residents and officials said, as concerns about the fate of thousands of refugees in the region grew amid an escalating humanitarian crisis. Up to 30 suspected militants were in the compound when it was hit, and the Taliban have moved the dead and injured to an undisclosed location, he said.”
- Reuters, 01 April 2009: “U.S. and Afghan forces have killed 30 Taliban fighters, including a local commander, in an operation in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.”
- IRNA, 02/17/2009: “Suspected US drone fired missiles on a training camp of Taliban militants in a Pakistani tribal region on Monday, killing around 30 people, witnesses and official sources said.”
- New York Times, 01/01/2009: “On Wednesday, the Taliban came for revenge. A group of about 30 Taliban fighters swooped in on Mullah Salam’s house and opened fire. They killed at least 20 of his bodyguards, Afghan officials said. The Taliban claimed that they killed 32. Two of the attackers died.”
It appears that this is a holdover from Rumsfeld days:
We don’t know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon’s former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, “the magic number was 30.” That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.
We let me quote a decent man who had a complete sh$# for a son, George Romney, Mitt’s dad, who described the misinformation handed to him by the military on Vietnam as “brainwashing.”
He was right, and Obama has allowed himself to buy into this crap.
*Yeah, there is also that whole #3 person on the chain of command of al Qaeda, who has a life span that rivals that of Ensign Liebowitz of star ship security on a landing party with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.