This is an anti-Fascist film from 1947 or so produced by the War Department.
The echos are chilling.
It’s well worth the 17:25 to watch it.
Year: 2010
Remember That Alan Simpson Was Always Thus, and Obama Picked Him
So, a few weeks back, Anal Alan Simpson, the co-chair of Barack Obama’s so called “Cat Food Commission,” ostensibly charged with reducing the deficit, but in reality given a mandate to trim Social Security, hence leaving seniors surviving on cat food,* was referring to recipients of the pension program as “Lesser People,” in society.
That was pretty offensive, but Barack Obama knows his way around Washington, and he knows who and what Alan Simpson is, and so I figured that he selected him to co-chair the committee because he wants to cut Social Security.
Today however, I look back at that truly repugnant statement by former Senator Simpson as a high water mark on his civility, because in an email exchange with the president of the Older Woman’s League in which he ridiculed her organization and its membership, and described Social Security as a, “Milk Cow with 310 Million Tits.”
By this, he means that he thinks that every single American who might be eligible for the program is in his mind a moocher.
Of course, we now see the non-apology apology:
I can see that my remarks have caused you anguish, and that was not my intention. I certainly did not intend to diminish your hard work for the Older Women’s League. I know you care deeply about strengthening Social Security, and so do I, just as deeply. I remember your testimony at our public hearing in June about the importance of retirement security for women. Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. To quote my old friend and colleague, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, “It’s a doozy!”
You see, it’s not his fault, it’s her fault for being offended, and Simpson is just a good old boy who sometimes misspeaks.
You now have a number of advocacy groups calling for his resignation, saying, with a lot of justification, that this shows that Simpson has already pre-decided this matter, while the AARP has indirectly done so as well:
The vast majority of the 310 million Americans he insulted – particularly 156 million women and younger Americans for whom the traditional pension will be a relic of history – don’t have access to the type of traditional pension retirement security that Sen. Simpson has from his decades in Congress. Perhaps that’s why his comments demonstrate a woeful disconnect from or disinterest in the challenges facing many American families for whom Social Security is literally a lifeline.
“Sen. Simpson’s most recent departure from reality would be easy to dismiss if not for his position co-leading a Presidential commission that will likely recommend changes to Social Security. Sen. Simpson’s remarks not only cross the line of good judgment, but they undermine the serious work of the commission and give us little confidence the commission can fairly look at important programs such as Social Security.”
I am not going to join into any dead pool on Simpson. He’s going to stay on the board, because Barack Obama wants him on the board, and given his long history on the social safety net, the only reason that Barack Obama wanted him is because he wants to gut the program.
Expect the deficit commission to propose a few token taxes, no defense cuts, and draconian cuts to programs that help the needy, because that’s how the White House rolls.
*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.
So Not a Surprise……
Former Bush (Jr.) Campaign manager and RNC chairman Ken Mehlman has come out of the closet, admitting that he was gay.
While his coming out might be a bit of a surprise, his sexuality has been a matter of discussion for years.
I would note that while he was head of the RNC, they ramped up appeals to homophobic bigotry, and he has not spoken to that.
Appeals Court Denies Federal Reserve Coverup Bid
Bloomberg filed a freedom of information act request to get information on the Fed’s bailout of banks and other financial institutions about 2 years ago, and true to form, their response to a perfectly reasonable request for information has been delay and litigation.
They lost at the circuit level, and they lost at the appeals court level, and now the appeals court has denied them an en banc rehearing, so unless the Supreme court deigns to hear the case, they are going to have to turn over the information:
The Federal Reserve will have to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if it wants to avoid having to disclose details of its emergency lending programs to banks bailed out with taxpayer money during the financial crisis.
The U.S. 2d Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Fed’s motion on Friday to rehear the case in which Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News and News Corp’s Fox News Network sought information on the U.S. central bank’s emergency lending programs that began in late 2007.
The programs, designed to shore up the financial markets, more than doubled the Fed’s balance sheet to well over $2 trillion, especially in the wake of the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I am not sure how much of this is just the fetish that the Federal Reserve has for secrecy, and how much is an attempt to cover up behaviors which might be illegal or otherwise appear corrupt.
My guess is that it is a bit of both.
But in either case, absent the Supreme Court taking this up, it appears that we may have some very dull reading of some rather interesting events over the next few months.
Older posts on this are here.
Just how Broken is Our Government?
Well, how about a lobbying group brazenly using its ability to bribe members of Congress in an attempt to get an industry to target its own customers with onerous positions:
The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that current U.S. copyright law is so broken that it “isn’t working” for content creators any longer.
RIAA President Cary Sherman said the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains loopholes that allow broadband providers and Web companies to turn a blind eye to customers’ unlawful activities without suffering any legal consequences.
…………
This seems like innocuous whine, the sort that we have heard from the RIAA, the MPAA, the BSA for years, but it’s the threat that caught my eye:
In response to a question from CNET, Sherman said it may be necessary for the U.S. Congress to enact a new law formalizing agreements with intermediaries such as broadband providers, Web hosts, payment processors, and search engines.
The RIAA would strongly prefer informal agreements inked with intermediaries, Sherman said: “We’re working on [discussions with broadband providers], and we’d like to extend that kind of relationship–not just to ISPs, but [also to] search engines, payment processors, advertisers.”
But, Sherman said, “if legislation is an appropriate way to facilitate that kind of cooperation, fine.”
The basic attitude here is that they can ask Congress to jump, and the only response will be the query, “how high?”
It is a revolting state of affairs.
It should be noted that RIAA chief Cary Sherman later “clarified”, saying that, “A broader law enacted without their cooperation isn’t what the RIAA wants,” which really more a restatement of the the threat than anything else.
I hope that attitudes toward IP, and IP absolutism, are changing slowly. It seems to me that they are, largely as a result of the Blackberry case, when a patent troll nearly shut down the Blackberries in the US, in fact RIM’s inability to separate commercial users from government users is in large part why the troll finally settled, they realized that judges deprived of their “Crackberries” can get stroppy.
Shirley Sherrod to USDA: Go Pound Sand
So the US Department of Agriculture, after unceremoniously firing her on a trumped up controversy, offered a new job, the “Deputy Director Of Advocacy And Outreach,” but she declined the offer.
I’m sure that Ms Sherrod was polite and gentle in her denial, but she is not an idiot, and I think that anyone with this experience with any organization would be inclined to believe that the political appointees of the USDA are a bunch contemptible weasels who cannot be trusted.
Of course, the civil service staff of the USDA were a bunch of contemptible bigots, in the not too distant past, as Ms. Sherrod is no doubt aware, being one of the recipients of proceeds from the Pigford settlement.
Stephen Colbert on Religious Bigotry
This is the word, and this is brilliant:
Well, Obama Mans Up On Somethng
I have always felt that Obama has been profoundly ambivalent on the matter of abortion rights, so I figured that their response to a judge’s injunction against funding embryonic stem cell research would be to wring their hands, bleat a bit, and suggest that “Congress” do something.
I appear to have been too cynical, because the DoJ has announced that it will appeal this ruling:
The Obama administration said Tuesday that it would appeal a court ruling challenging the legality of President Obama’s rules governing human embryonic stem cell research, as the head of the National Institutes of Health said the decision would most likely force the cancellation of dozens of experiments in diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s.
I am truly shocked. My sense was that Obama would go the way he tried to on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, and punt to Congress.
Fire Him Now
I understand that Marine Corps Commandant is retiring in just a few months, but he needs to be fired right now, and lose his pension:
A senior US general has warned President Barack Obama’s deadline to begin pulling troops out of Afghanistan is encouraging the Taliban.
US General James Conway, head of the US Marine Corps, said the deadline was “giving our enemy sustenance”.
Obviously, unlike McCrystal, this isn’t staffers, or the general, denigrating POTUS, this is something far worse. This is a Douglas McCarthur on Korea moment.
This was not an inadvertent slip, this was a deliberate statement made at a Pentagon press conference.
Actually, I would suggest that a criminal investigation of insubordination is called for.
I don’t expect Obama to man up on this one, but the Pentagon has become increasingly hostile to the concept of civilian authority, and this needs to be ended.
America Best Journalists, perhaps America’s Only Journalists
I am referring, of course to The Daily Show, who follows the advice of Fox News®, and follows the money supporting the 51 Park development in Manhattan, which leads to Alwaleed bin Talal, who is the single largest largest non Murdoch investor in Fox News.
As to the dispute, whether Fox is stupid or evil, I think that evil and stupidity is orthogonal.
I Hate It When a Complete Asshole Agrees with Me
Case in point, House Minority leader John Boehner calling for Tim Geithner to be fired:
U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner called on President Barack Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the other remaining members of the president’s economic team.
In a speech today to the City Club of Cleveland, Boehner said Obama’s stimulus policies are failing to create jobs.
It would make me wonder about whether I was being too tough on Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, but I am reassured by the words of this guy:
[MSNBC Commentator Jim] Cramer during Tuesday’s Stop Trading! took issue with comments from a key House Republican, who called on President Obama to fire his economic team.
Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said during a speech in Cleveland that the president should get rid of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers for starters. But Cramer stepped in to defend Geithner.
Boehner’s comments were “outrageous,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Geithner’s done a remarkable job.”
While I am troubled that I agree with John Boehner on this, I am reassured that I am still on the other side of the issue from Jim Cramer.
Jon Stewart showed just what Cramer’s opinions are worth.
Holy Crap
Click for full size
Scary picture h/t Calculated Risk
They, whoever “they” are, were predicting that existing home sales would be fall post tax credit to an annual rate of something north of 4½ million.
Well, they were wrong. Existing home sales fell to 3.83 million, a 15 year low, and the 27.2% drop was the biggest since they, whoever “they” are, started collecting data.
What’s more, housing inventory has risen from 8.9 months to 12.5 months since May.
The thing is, this was foreseeable. Everything that has been done in terms of real estate has been about extend and pretend.
Whether it’s the fraud perpetrated on desperate people through HAMP, or the ruinously wasteful home buyer tax credits, this has all been about propping up housing prices in the short term in the hope that the banks can nickel and dime small consumers to generate enough profits to dig themselves out of their hole.
They keep pushing the sh%$ up hill, expecting to reach the crest of the hill, and it ain’t happening, and now this pile is collapsing back down on us.
Recovery my ass.
I Cannot Belive that I am Saying this, But
Ron Paul has seized the moral high ground.
He has come out foursquare in favor of the building at 51 park:
Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?
It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”
The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.
Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”
You can go and read the rest, but he’s right, and sticking to his principles, and, for once, refreshingly free of “the crazy”.
In doing so, he is publicly disagreeing with his son, who is in a relatively tight Senate race, and so is showing a lot more guts, with a lot more at stake, than jellyfish like Harry Reid or (to my great sorrow) Howard Dean.
The Anti-Defamation League Had Jumped the Shark
This is one big shark that he jumped.With Frikken Lasers!
Specifically, Abraham Foxman has now vaulted over C. Megalodon*.
There are now credible allegations that Foxman lobbied against an interfaith trip to Auschwitz:
Earlier this month, several imams joined U.S. officials to visit the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps, a trip which resulted in the clerics issuing a statement condemning anti-Semitism and vowing “to make real the commitment of ‘never again.'”
The eight Muslim-American clerics were joined by Hannah Rosenthal, the presidential special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, and a handful of other officials from the Obama, Bush and Reagan administrations.
But according to Politico, “Organizers of the trip say they were dismayed that the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman lobbied U.S. officials against participating.”
I hope the Abraham Foxman has a serious mental or neurological problem, because otherwise, he is just a pathetic bigot, and dementia is preferable to that.
*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.
No, They Are Cruel People*
I enjoy reading Felix Salmon, and I generally agree with him, but a few days ago, he had a high level and sort of (no names) off the record briefing senior Treasury Department officials, including Timmy, and they revealed that the failure that is HAMP is actually a success because by stringing desperate home owners along, they managed to milk a few more mortgage payments, and delay foreclosures for a while:
Treasury told Waldman — and told my group of bloggers, too — that HAMP, even if it was a failure, was a success. It might not have helped much in terms of its ostensible stated aim of permanently modifying millions of home loans. But it did help in at least three other ways: it gave temporary tax and payment relief to millions of homeowners; it massively reduced the rate at which homeowners in default were being foreclosed on; and, in the words of Waldman, “it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock”.
We had to save the banks, so if we destroyed a few lives, it was worth it. This is contemptible.
Maybe Andrew Breitbart should cover this, that would get Geithner fired, because Obama trembles at Breitbart’s fury.
Truth be told though, the definitive account is by Steve Waldman, and his account of this exchange is even more damning:
The conversation next turned to housing and HAMP. On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”. Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they would have preferred if the program had worked out better for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns, and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address those.
(emphasis mine)
I think that he is wrong. They are cruel people, and they are evil people, and they know the evil that they do, but they think that the preservation of Wall Street, and its excessive bonuses to be worth perpetrating a fraud on desperate families grasping at straws.
These people were drowning, and they knowingly threw them anvils.
*That is what Atrios said.
Court Injunction Against Federal Embryonic Stem Cell Research
My non-lawyer opinionThis seems to be a rather strange ruling to me.
Federal Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the plaintiffs had standing because someone else might get grants if studies using embryonic stem cells could get funding, which seems top be a big of a whiskey tango foxtrot moment to me.
The Dickey-Wicker amendment prohibits the NIH from funding the destruction of embryos, and not all research post this act, which makes appear to me that this ruling is rather a bit of overreach by the judge as well.
Aldous Wins
Yeah, Sure, Nothing to See Here
Tell Me That You Do Not Believe That This is a SetupSo, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange goes to Sweden to setup a server, because Swedish laws, and the Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (openness) in the constitution, as well as an offer from the Swedish Pirate Party to host for him.
Wouldn’t you know it, Swedish authorities issued a rape warrant against Mr. Assange, and then withdrew the warrant the next day.
It couldn’t be that the CIA, the Pentagon (DIA), or the DNI were behind these apparently now bogus charges could it?
As Capt Howdy observes, it’s like we are living in that, “horrific thru the looking glass universe where Nixon is serving his 5th term.” (a Watchman reference, and yes, it would now be the 11th term)
As to my legal mind, my guess is that at this moment, some Swedish prosecutor is reviewing the laws on suborning perjury, and hoping that they don’t apply to him.
As a practical matter, I would suggest that the rest of the folks at Wikileaks start dealing with the “Julian Assange commits suicide by shooting himself in the head 3 times and then throws himself off a bridge,” contingency.
Monty Python’s Lying Circus
I love Alan Grayson.*
*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.
Tests Of Alternate JSF Engine Show Higher Thrust
GE’s F-136 has demonstrated a 15% sea level thrust advantage over the Pratt & Whitney F135 at the USAF’s Arnold Engineering Development Center.
Additionally, GE is saying that they are doing this at lower turbine inlet temperatures, which would imply lower maintenance costs as well as greater upgrade capability:
The intense battle over powering the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could be heading to new levels following test results that show the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine has more than 15% thrust margin against specification, significantly exceeding the power of the baseline Pratt & Whitney F135.
The tests at the U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) in Tullahoma, Tenn., are the first to officially calibrate the combat-rated thrust of a production-representative F136 at sea level conditions. Although the test program is only a matter of days old, it already appears to be showing greater performance margin in afterburner than expected, says the General Electric Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team.
I would note that it is likely that, as with the F100/F110 comparison, that the GE engine is somewhat heavier, which would imply that at higher altitudes the P&W engines would provide better performance.