Hands on role: An assistant helps Katy Perry adjust her outfit while filming her new video in Los AngelesCurse you Kelsey Grammer!!!
But Senator Ensign (R-NV, and many bedrooms) just keeps on delivering.
So, the New York Times has done some journalism, and discovered that, in addition to boinking his chief of staff’s wife, stalking her, and getting mommy and daddy to pay hush money, reporters Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton have now discovered that Senator Ensign arranged for Douglas Hampton to get a cushy lobbying job, and then had Hampton lobby one…Senator John Ensign, in a direct violation of Senate ethics rules and federal laws, which require a 1 year cooling off period:
Mr. Hampton said he and Mr. Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it. He recounted how the senator helped him find clients and ticked off several steps Mr. Ensign took to assist them with their agendas in Washington, activities confirmed by federal officials and executives with the businesses.
“The only way the clients could get what John was essentially promising them — which was access — was if I still had a way to work with his office,” Mr. Hampton said. “And John knew that.”
Gee….Who’d a thunk it?
Needless to say, the folks at Leno and The Daily Show are chortling about this, though David Letterman might be too busy boinking his staffers on his show.
H/t Oggie of the Shortskoolbus BBS.
My thought for a caption is, “Well, it’s better than what Roman Polanski did to that 8th grader,” but I am a very, very bad person.
So, Merkel will now govern with the Free Democrats, and not in a grand coalition with the SDP.
The reason that this is happening is very simple: The SDP is not running against the CDU, it’s running against the Left Party.
So you have proclamations that there will not be a coalition with the LP under any, because….because…I’m really not sure why, except, perhaps because the SDP sees the LP as drawing in disaffected SDP members, and they see the loss of power within the party as more troubling than the lose of power in the whole country.
Fundamentally, the success of the LP is because the 3rd Way endorsed by Clinton, Blair, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Gerhard Schröder, which supported “Anglo-Saxon” hyper-capitalism, and has failed in its goals to create increased living standards.
The people with the idea that the perhaps a party with founded with the idea that government should take a role in improving a society, like Oskar Lafontaine, now co chair of the LP have been disaffected and dis-empowered, so it’s no wonder that they are looking for somewhere else to go.
There is also the whole, “world wide financial meltdown,” thing which has tarnished the 3rd way’s concept of unfettered competition, which means that the LP is, you know, do the degree that that actually have a philosophy, as, “The Left hasn’t yet adopted its own party program“.
The decline of the SDP, in a bizarre way, mirrors the decline of the Labor Party in Israel, which stopped representing “Labor”, and became the party of, “We’re not as batsh%$ insane as Likud,” and so dropped to a pathetic 4th place in Israeli elections as a result of the “Thatcherite but not as batsh%$ insane as Likud,” Kadima party.
Fall in employment participation at post Great Depression high
U3 to U6
So, we have the numbers for September today, and they really suck.
The non-farm payrolls fell by 263,000 in September, well above the consensus estimate of 175,000, and the unemployment rate (U3) went from 9.7% to 9.8%.
Additionally, the numbers for factory orders fell in August, as did non defense capital goods, durable goods, and manufacturing inventories fell by for the 12th straight month.
Unless you are a banker, or Obama’s economic team, this is not a recovery.
Kevin Drum, citing Brad Delong and Andrew Samwick, note that workforce participation has fallen further than at any time since the Great Depression.
The numbers, peak to trough declines in workforce participation.
This is just really scary stuff, particularly when, like me, you are looking for a job.
By bare of the ShorSkoolbus BBS:
How to piss off a wingnut, Going Rouge
Postby bare on Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:54 pm
Stopped in for a quick one at the tavern last night only to be accosted by my favorite wingnut foil. He was commenting on having ordered Palin’s new book. I said “Oh, going rouge? Why, is she going to get all red-faced and apologize for her actions of late?” “The name of the book is going rogue,” he said pronouncing it roge. Uh-uh sez I, it’s rouge (pronounced rooge). We argued back and forth a bit until I finally called for the dictionary we keep there for settling bar bets. I looked up rouge and showed it to him he took on a rouge tint himself and shut up.Take full advantage of republican’s spelling problems and rename Palin’s book Going Rouge.
Sir/Madame/Elder God/Outer God/Great Old One/Dog (you can never tell, it’s the Internet), I salute you
While his position on Roman Polanski’s fugitive status, and his apprehension in Switzerland, in his condemnation of people who support the incarcerated film director is laudable, just look at who he is condemning, “some of Hollywood’s most prominent luminaries,” who suggest that, “whatever sins Polanski may have committed are outweighed by the brilliance of his art.”
Let’s make it clear, I think that the arguments of his supporters in Hollywood are repulsive, but there are people out there who are suggesting that the, “bitch was asking for it,” like Anne Applebaum and Richard Cohen, who suggest that this was consensual or perhaps even encouraged by the girl.
This is a whole world worse than anything that has come out of Hollywood, or, for that matter, out of France.
Let’s be clear that there are in fact ethical arguments against the imprisonment or trial of Roman Polanski. Jeralyn of TalkLeft, for example, has been making highly cogent arguments about the legal process that deserve serious consideration, and this a valid, and I would argue essential part of the dialogue, but Robinson’s covering up for his colleagues is beneath contempt, particularly when one, Applebaum, explicitly called him out on her page.
Eugene Robinson, you sir, are a coward.
H/t Atrios.
For my neighbor, MSgt Wade. (Note first name, not last, I’m not blogging that out of respect for his privacy)
As with any institution, it is end of life where the where the ritual becomes its most elaborate and intricate, and I think that the sense that it gives the loved ones of their place in the continuum of society and culture is a good thing.
The rigidly at attention honor guard, the flags and their folding, the firing of a salute, and the bugler playing taps all serve to show the loved ones of the deceased that they are a part of something bigger.
That being said, when the honor guard fired their weapons (bolt action Springfields, I think, they were manually working an action), my son, who hates loud noises, he’s an Aspie, and this is symptomatic of being on the spectrum, jumped and covered his ears.
The folks at the Wall Street Journal miss the point, by stressing capacity cuts, but it takes 2-3 years for new cars to become used cars.
I’m not sure whey they do this, except for the fact that the jobs being lost are UAW jobs.
More significant is the fact that anyone who got cash for a clunker under the government program did not have their car work its way down the used car ecology.
Cars traded in under that program had to be rendered undrivable, generally by putting abrasive in the crankcase.
What that means is that there has been a significant reduction in used cars in the pipeline, which is likely going to be boosting used car prices, and possibly new car prices, for the next few years.
The Joint Forces Quarterly, an official military publication reviewed prior to publication by the office of the JCS, has published an article calling for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anti-Gay policy:
The article, which appears in Joint Force Quarterly and was reviewed before publication by the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that “after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.”
Although the article, by an Air Force colonel, Om Prakash, carries no weight as a matter of policy, it may well signal a shift in the official winds. It won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition.
(emphasis mine)
Someone is sending a clear message, and I am not sure whether this is non-bigoted members of the military sending a message to the Obama administration to get the policy repealed, or it’s a message to the minority of officers in the military who use DADT as an excuse to engage in bigoted witch hunts to stop from either the JCS or the SecDef, or it’s a message to Congress to fix this.
In any case, this is a welcome development.
Alan Grayson is talking with the supidest motherf%$#er on CNN, among others, and he is not backing down one step.
He actually used the phrase, “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
I’d say that he called Blitzer a cocks*cker, but that would be an insult to cocks*ckers.
I want him to be President.
H/t AMERICAblog
The larger problem here is not that somehow or other that these feelings are an inaccurate Thing is, these opinions do accurately reflect reality
Ezra Klein nails it with one picture.
You see, the American public, given a few months, and a subject that holds their interest, even tangentially, and they begin to tease truth from fiction, and as a group, come to understand what is going on.
It’s the Delphi Method writ large.
We saw it during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when the public came to realize over a period of months that this was not the end of the world, it was some guy lying about cheating on his wife, and the Republicans attempting a coup as a result.
So, here we are, 8 months into the Obama administration, and a year into the financial crisis, and the American public gets it: No one is the least bit interested in doing anything to help them.
They are bailing out banks and automakers, and CEOs are still getting obscene pay packages, and the, as taxpayers are paying for it.
You see, this is not a problem that can be solved with an Obama speech, because there is nothing to explain here. That great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs, has captured treasury, insurance has captured healthcare, and real-estate has captured….well…Everything.
The Obama administration, and much of the Democratic Party has been captured by the Finance, Insurance, and Real-Estate (FIRE) sectors, and so is attempting to support the phony products of this sector, as opposed to produce something useful.
The Republican party has been captured by FIRE too, but this doesn’t matter, because they are remarkably honest about this, and their platform is not to protect the little guy, but rather to hate those defined as “the other”, so they are neither hypocrites, nor are they likely to lose much support.
That being said, much as in 1994, when people looked at the Democrats in Congress, and said, “If they are both going to f$#@ me over with NAFTA, I might as well vote for someone who hates f*gg*ts and n*gg*rs too,” Obama and the Dems are in real trouble.
As Harry S Truman said, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.
Absent actions that involve most of the senior staffs of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citi, Bank of America (Especially Ken Lewis), and the ratings agencies (S&P, Moody’s, etc) frog marched out of their places of work in handcuffs, this is the reality we have, not the reality we’d like to have.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
Because it appears that Sarah Palin is having problems getting 6 figure speaking gigs, at least getting them in places other than China, because, “The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.”
OK, sometimes the market gets it right.
I have post-posted this, so that it will stay at the top of the page through September 30, so scroll down my other posts.
Some bloke has declared September 30 to be International Blasphemy Day.
While I am generally leery of the many special days that have been announced, except, of course for “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” the basic thesis here is a sound one:
Blaspheming the sacred is an obligation that every logical person must embrace. Like we all learned from Spiderman’s uncle, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and when your mind has evolved to a degree where you are granted an advanced understanding of logic and reason, you realize that the natural laws of the universe have given you a great power.
It is your responsibility as a logical person to shed light on the darkness of ignorance wherever it may be. Nothing must be left in the dark. No corner of this universe can be left alone from wanting to know.
There can be nothing sacred. Because the entire concept behind “sacred ideas” is that they are “off limits”. It is something that you are not allowed to question, or speak out against, or even think. There’s another term that fits this concept perfectly… “thought crime”.
…
I agree, and I agree with his post condemning Ireland’s blasphemy laws.
Going back to the home page of the administrator, this guy is generally anti-religious, as opposed to specifically anti-Islamic.
By the way, were most of the founding fathers, who loathed organized religion, even if they were spiritual.
So, the EU has investigated the Russia-Georgia war, and concluded that Georgia started the war, and that Russia’s reaction was excessive.
The former ruling is much more significant than the latter, since the international community always wants everything to end at the old borders.
Look at the hand wringing over the demise of the Tamil Tigers.
Still, this took them over a year?
I knew this in within 24 hours of the war having started: the Georgians shelled civilians, and the Russians knew what was planned, and when it was coming, and reacted with overwhelming force.
When the Wall Street Journal Describes Finance With Cartoons, it Means that Someone will Get Boned, and it ain’t the “Bankers, Lawyers, and Other Advisers.”When the Wall Street Journal talks about a new financial wonder weapon, like the resecuritization of real-estate mortgage investment conduits (re-remics), and they feel the need to use a cartoon to explain how it works.
Does that cartoon look complex to you? There are a couple of reasons for this:
But the bottom line is this:
The net result is financial firms’ books look better and they need to hold less capital against those assets, even though they are the same assets they held before the transaction.
(emphasis mine)
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it. It’s time to cue Freddie Dalton Thompson from The Hunt for Red October.
So, you have the same amount of risk, but by slicing and dicing securities into new “pools” (a year ago the word was “tranches”, but well, we know how that went.
This is not about managing risk, or understanding risk. This is about concealing risk from the unsophisticated investor and unsophisticated regulators.
This is a perfect example of why investments should be treated like drugs: Forbidden until proven safe and effective.
Financial innovation, my ass.
Because it’s all here, jam packed into 4 minutes: