It comes from Dana Perino:
We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.
Jeebus, she is being stupid enough to qualify as Sarah Palin’s running mate.
She also did not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
Lou Dobbs is looking to run for office, and he’s selling himself as a friend of illegal aliens:
Lou Dobbs is looking at any number of possibilities for a political career, such as running for Senator from New Jersey, or even the presidency. And he would of course be running on a signature issue of…his great friendship with the Latino community, and support for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a path to citizenship???
H/t Calculated Risk
The lede here is that the corrected numbers for US GDP are out, and it’s way down, to +2.8%, down from the initial estimate of 3.5%.
Even more worrying is that the primary reason for the drop is that that consumer demand is way down, which does not bode well for the holiday season.
Some things to note on this:
GDP is still down year over year, and at this won’t be back to the pre-recession level until sometime in 2011.
Also, the credit card data has more evidence of consumer deleveraging, with late payments on credit cards falling in the 3rd quarter, though delinquencies were up in October.
The Conference Boards Consumer Confidence index roses in November, but still at levels indicating contraction, 49.5, where 90 is more or less neutral.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago also released its National Activity Index, and it fell slightly (PDF), to -1.08, which indicates that things are still moving in a recessionary direction.
In real estate, the 3rd quarter numbers are in, and the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed home prices increasing 3.1%, though it’s still down 9% year over year, and existing home sales rose an astounding 10% in October.
The timing here shows why this housing “recovery” is a mirage. Existing home sales rose in October because these were people scrambling to get in under the wire for the new home tax credit.
Some quick math shows that the median existing home prices in the US is $173,100, and $8000 is 4.62% of that, so the the degree to which the tax credit is driving price deltas is probably pretty significant.
Meanwhile, we are having some significant movement in the bond/central bank world, both nationally and internationally, with Fitch cutting its rating Mexico’s sovereign debt, the Bank of Israel yesterday raising its overnight lending rate by a 25 basis points (¼%), and Colombia’s central bank cutting its rate by 50 basis points (½%), because inflation is below expectations, and they want to give their economy a boost.
My guess is also that Columbia wants to push its currency down to help with its trade balance.
US Treasuries rose in their most recent auction, probably because investors are looking for safe havens following the downward GDP revision.
Certainly the GDP revision pushed oil down, though interestingly enough the dollar fell against both the Yen and Euro.
So, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee’s minutes have been released, and there were concerns that abnormally low interest rates might fuel speculative excesses?
Really? How could could anyone conclude that after all the prosperity that Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan droping rates to unprecedented lows, and then keeping them there in order to keep George W. Bush in office deal with the hangover from the dotcom crash?
Yes, of course it’s a worry:
Federal Reserve officials said record-low interest rates might fuel “excessive” speculation in financial markets and possibly dislodge expectations for low inflation, according to minutes of their meeting released today.
“Members noted the possibility that some negative side effects might result from the maintenance of very low short-term interest rates for an extended period,” minutes of the Nov. 3-4 meeting said, “including the possibility that such a policy stance could lead to excessive risk-taking in financial markets or an unanchoring of inflation expectations.”
While policy makers agreed that the chances of such effects were “relatively low, they would remain alert to these risks,” the minutes showed. Fed officials at their meeting indicated the benchmark lending rate would remain near zero “for an extended period” as long as inflation expectations are stable and unemployment fails to decline.
But it appears that “fed officials” are going to use some more of their “Federal Reserve Fairy Dust”, to prevent this, or at least make sure that the chances of such effects are, “relatively low.”
Audit the Fed, then reform it.
Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf of Time magazine have the full rundown, but the basic thesis is that Dick Cheney started saying bad things about Barack Obama when it started to become obvious that Cheney might be in legal jeopardy if Obama did not go all out to stop all investigations and public disclosures on law breaking by Bush and His Evil Minions™.
At Firedog Lake, Marcy Wheeler hits the nail on the head when she says, “I guess Dick Cheney is right–Obama can’t stand up to terrorists. Terrorists like Dick Cheney.”
(emphasis mine)
Al Gore is hysterically funny.
The apocalypse part is that Matt Taibbi is agreeing with Sarah Palin on whether or not the media is out to get her.
He goes meta, of course, because, he is both a good writer and a smart one, and notes that the media always has its chosen targets, and that this wankitude (Gore, Dean, etc.) is thoroughly bipartisan.:
I would, however, like to point out a few things, none of which really involve taking sides in this particular cat-fight. In no particular order:
1) The political media has always taken it upon itself to make decisions about who is and who is not qualified to be taken seriously as candidates for higher office. Without even talking about whether they do this more or less to Republicans or Democrats, I can testify that I witnessed this phenomenon over and over again in the primary battles within the Democratic Party. It has always been true that the press corps has drawn upon internalized professional biases, high-school-style groupthink and the urging of insider wonks to separate candidates into “serious” and “unserious” groups before the shots even start to be fired.
….
2) When that does happen, when the press corps decides to abandon all restraint and go for the head shot, it usually tells us a lot more about the reporters’ bosses and what they’re thinking than it does about the reporters themselves. Your average political reporter is a spineless dweeb who went to all the best schools and made it to that privileged seat inside the campaign-trail ropeline by being keenly sensitive to the editorial wishes of his social and professional superiors.
…
3) So Sarah Palin is now in that category of politician whom reporters feel safe in attacking.
It’s a good read, and highly accurate.
It appears I was wrong, the death of US Census worker Bill Sparkman, which I, and a number of other people was an act driven by the recent right wing anti-government hysteria.
Well, the Kentucky State Police, along with the FBI, have now ruled it to be suicide.
My condolences to his family.
While I am not a fan of Mary Landrieu, and some days actually hope that the Southern squish Dems lose their battles for reelection so that the Senate is forced to play hardball (i.e. reconciliation).
I am even less enthused about Mary Landrieu’s ongoing act Hamlet act on healthcare reform, which seems to largely involve the desire to increase Medicare subsidies to Louisiana.
That being said, Mark Halperin’s most substantive writing on this issue, and Landrieu’s position on HCR is to post this photoshop job, which has since been removed by a journalist who has secretly infiltrated the corporate offices of Time.
It is, of course a reference to the unfortunate confusion between hair gel and semen made by Carmen Diaz in the movie There’s Something about Mary.
As many of you know, Mark Halperin is this babbling idiot whom Time magazine hired to cobble together this insipid web product called “The Page,” which is designed to scam people looking for trenchant, up-to-the-minute political news into giving Time many, many unnecessary ad impressions as you follow Halperin’s teasing links to his content. That content tends to be a really dumb listicle, or a one sentence piece of pure and unadulterated banality, or, if you are really lucky, a paragraph or two of analysis that’s either so conventional as to appear slam-dunk, or so witless that it’s completely laughable and wrong.
The post about Landrieu was titled, “There’s Still Something About Mary,” for the brain dead readers of “The Page” who would not otherwise get it.
Yes, this should be a firing offense, particularly after both Beck and Limbaugh literally called her a “prostitute,” but since it’s at the expense of a woman, I’m sure that the old boy’s club of journalism will just chuckle
Katie Couric dirty dancing at an after party following her CBS News debut.
This is right up there with her colostomy videos.
Well, I think that it’s becoming clear that the reason that Barack Obama is relying on Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner and Lawrence Summers as the core of his economic team is not an accident.
Not only has his economic team been captured by Wall Street, but Barack Obama has been captured by Wall Street:
If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn’t get Chairman Barney Frank’s approval, said a source familiar with the committee’s deliberations.
Let’s be clear here, this council is supposed to review not just systemic risk, but also the behavior of the regulators:
As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.
But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it’s also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill’s language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system – including inaction and incompetence by regulators.
So, why are Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ so absolutely determined to place the centerpiece of his regulatory reform thoroughly under the branch of the executive designed to be a lapdog for large banking interests?
I do not think that Barack Obama is that stupid, that is clear, though while a candidate, and now President, Barack Obama has always been a bit of a cipher.
The answer, I think, lies in his background.
Barack Obama is literally Chicago School, as in the University of Chicago, where he taught for 12 years, and his first “big name” economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, who is faculty there, and I think that Barack Obama is clearly very devoted to the idea that the government must be held back to prevent it from interfering with economic “innovation”.
Simply put, he is enthralled by the vision of Chicago School economics, as conceived by Milton Friedman and given flesh by Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan, and so he sees his primary role in economic reform to be ensuring that it is toothless and completely controlled by the large Wall Street banks.
When Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that, “The banks own the place,” he was referring to Congress, but it’s true of the White House.
They own Barack Obama too.
H/t Ted Rall.
H/t Wonkette
(on edit)
— Friedrich Nietzsche
H/t Unmutual of the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
And why 193% of Republicans thought that the numbers checked out.
You know, the one that goes, “If you make Dan Quayle your VP, then no one in their right mind will try to remove you from office for your role selling arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to the Contras.”
Come to think of it, Ronald Reagan had a very similar policy…Thanks a lot, little Mikey Dukkakis.
In any case, I heard a leak that I hope is being motivated by the same dynamic.
I don’t know that it is, but I do know that when I heard this, I got that look on my face that my older brother says, “Looks like a cow that just stepped on its own udder.”
The leak is that the Obama administration is looking for a potential replacement for Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner have already begun.
Since the criticism of him is that he’s too close to the big banks and Wall Street, and too lenient on them as a result, the word on the street is that his replacement will be……
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
Wait for it………
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon:
As support for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanes on Capitol Hill amid frustration with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is emerging as a potential replacement.
Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country’s high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government’s mounting deficit.
Great googly moogly.
Richard is a friend of my son, and he was playing with Charlie today, and they wanted to play on the computer.
I was in the middle of doing my Sarah Palin book ad on my blog post, and they were asking why I was doing a screen shot of the image, and I explained how the ads paid me a few bucks, but they did weird stuff like this all the time.
Well, Charlie has been thoroughly indoctrinated by me and Uncle Keith (Olbermann), so he started ragging on Palin and the book, and Richard, who has similarly proper parenting joined in, and then he let fly the best review ever on Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue
The book will probably fall apart, just like the Captain Underpants ones do.
–Richard S. Age 9
While I have no knowledge of the quality of the printing and binding, this is almost certainly accurate about the book so many levels.
I think that I hurt myself laughing.
The kid has a future in stand-up comedy.
The Bishop of Providence Rhode Island has banned Patrick Kennedy from taking communion in his diocese. Suzie Madrak has the scoop at Crooks and Liars (also, you can find it at CNN):
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.
The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.
“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.
(emphasis original)
Seriously, if the Church wants to be this captured by the Republican party, perhaps the IRS should look at improper electioneering.
I would also note that the Republican party has been captured by nativist bigots, people who hate Hispanics, who are now over 2/3 of the Catholic Church, then perhaps Catholics of good conscience should find those few Bishops and Cardinals of good faith who spend their time on serving their flock, and leave those who spend their time on than lobbying on abortion and covering up for pedophile priests to their own devices.
Apologies for the poor audio quality of the vid, it’s from the Christo-Fascist CNSNews.
Yes, once again, the good folks at Google™ Adsense™ are serving up an advertisement for Sarah Palin in response to something that I posted (just the image, no link, not ever).
My disclaimers are below, but in this case, I clicked through, something that Google™ Adsense™ frowns upon if you do it routinely, to see what exactly this offer was.
Well, here is a screen-shot of the page from Newsmax:
There, is, of course, a pattern here. You have people who are rich because of dumb luck in the genetic lottery, people with names like Scaife Olin, Bradley, Coors, and Koch, who are spending huge amounts of money that they inherited from daddy, or grand daddy, or great-grand daddy on the right wing machine.
They subsidize the publisher that prints the Palin book. They subsidize the propaganda sheet that offers the book free with a 1 year subscription, or for $4.95 (plus $5.95 shipping and handling, which means that they must use a unicorn to get the book to you) with a 4 months of Newsmax free.
What does this get?
All of which adds credibility to both the book, and to the magazine, because, much like the late, unlamented New York Sun, their claim to credibility is based on circulation, and their circulation is based on paying people to take their parakeet cage liner.
In any case, back to the ads.
Please note, once again: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers who purchase those ads through Google™ Adsense™.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™, even though it would make me money, and cost them (Palin’s Publishers and Newsmax) money.
