When he says, “I think Fox News might be the meanest sorority in the world,” you know that he is a genius.
Year: 2010
The Face of the Opposition to Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Former NATO SACEUR, John Sheehan, has mad the claim that The Srebrenica massacre happened because the Dutch allow gays to serve openly to the Senate Armed Services Community:
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende attacked on Friday claims by a retired U.S. general that Dutch forces were overrun in Srebrenica in 1995 because of the presence of gay soldiers.
At a U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday on allowing gay soldiers to serve openly in the military, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan said there was a causal link between having homosexuals in the Dutch forces and the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war.
“The remarks were outrageous, wrong and beneath contempt,” Balkenende told a news conference.
So is retired General John Sheehan.
He apparently cites the general who was fired for the deaths of civilians, something that does not happen in today’s US military.
It should be noted that there was a far simpler reason, that there were only 450 troops, armed with light weapons, deployed to protect the city, and the man he quotes denies every saying this:
Dutch television reported that when he was pressed to name a source in the Dutch military, General Sheehan said that he was basing his remarks on what someone named “Hankman Berman” had told him. The Dutch Defense Ministry guessed that this was a reference to Gen. Henk van den Breemen, the country’s former chief of defense staff. On Friday the ministry issued a statement saying that General van den Breemen, now retired, called this “absolute nonsense,” since he did not believe that the presence of gay troops had anything to do with what happened at Srebrenica and had never said any such thing.
The problem here is that, beginning with Bill Clinton’s capitulation to Colin Powell’s insubordination on gays in the military in 1992 and 1993, Democratic presidents have allowed insubordination, particularly on this issue, from the military, and so now we have an increasingly radicalized culture in the military.
In Case You Were Wondering About the Tea Baggers…
The fact that they were screaming “f****t” at Representative Barney Frank, and screamed, “n***er” at Representative, and civil rights icon, John Lewis:
Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”
………
And that wasn’t an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed “Barney, you faggot”–a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.
They are doing this because they can, and they have wanted to for years, but feel that the level of social disapprobation involved in such an act in different contexts will be too great.
Post racial society my ass.
Noose Tightening on Ensign
Part 1
Part 2
The scandal now has the department issuing subpoenas to, “have been issued to at least six Sas Vegas businesses,” as well as to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSCC).
As to the businesses, we are looking at what may be an actual bribery case:
One of those companies was eCommLink, formerly run by Jack Williams, a man who claimed to have invented the gift card.
Senator Ensign’s then-Chief of Staff John Lopez welcomed the opportunity to help a Nevada company. But sources say Ensign’s office quickly seized on the opportunity to get something in return.
Sources close to the situation say Ensign’s office warned eCommLink and others about pending prepaid card regulation and that donations and support could make those troublesome rules go away.
So, basically the story is as follows: John Ensign sleeps with the wife of a longtime friend and aide, he then gets his parents to pay his friend off, and throws illegal (there is supposed to be a waiting period) lobbying work to his ex-friend in order to keep things quiet, only it appears that there was some more run of the mill corruption, that Ensign, as head of the NRSCC, may have used his position to extort campaign donations.
The mainstream media has studiously avoided covering it, the Washington Post has yet to publish a stand alone story on the scandal yet, for example, but thankfully Rachael Maddow has been all over this, as the two videos (7:33 & 6:35) show.
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far, and these are, of course, in addition to the rather unusual Thursday closing yesterday.
- American National Bank, Parma, Oh
- Century Security Bank, Duluth, GA
- Advanta Bank Corp., Draper, UT
- Appalachian Community Bank, Ellijay, GA
- Bank of Hiawassee, Hiawassee, GA
- First Lowndes Bank, Fort Deposit, AL
- State Bank of Aurora, Aurora, MN
Some notes:
- 7 Banks? Woah….
- It’s been a bad week for Georgia banks (well, duh, 3 got closed).
- There is some sort of joke about the bank closing in Fort Deposit, I’m just saying.
- Advanta is a big fish. It was a major player in small business credit cards, and the parent company had declared bankruptcy (see here and here) after its credit card debt write-offs exceeded 20%
- Note also that the FDIC could not find a buyer for Advanta, so the taxpayer is on the hook for this.
Here is the Full FDIC list
And we also have some credit union closings.
My bad here, I had the wrong link bookmarked, so I missed a few after the 1st of the year:
- Friendship Community Federal Credit Union, Clarksdale, MS on 2/25/10
- Mutual Diversified Employees Federal Credit Union, Santa Ana, CA on 2/26/10
- Lawrence County School Employees Federal Credit Union, New Castle, PA on 3/5/10
So, here is the graph pr0n:
Meta
I have made two minor tweaks to the blogg, I moved up my tip jar so that it is just below the RSS feeds, and I added a Digg button to my posts.
Any feedback, particularly on Digg, which does appear to take a half step off the front page loading time, is appreciated.
This is an open thread.
Economics Update
Well, it appears that central banks are tightening, with the Federal Reserve ending its exemption to so-called”23-A” exemptions that it implemented after Lehman to boost liquidity, and the Reserve Bank of India hiked its benchmark rates unexpectedly.
The rate hike, along with continuing concerns about Greece, drove the dollar up and oil down.
This May Be Jon Stewart’s Best
This time, he takes down Glen Beck.
Yes, I know, it’s fish in a barrel, but he does it with a reverse tuck with a pike and a clean entry.
The Lehman Accounting Fraud Scandal Widens
Because it now appears that J. P. Morgan Chase booked repurchase trades as sales as well:
JPMorgan Chase recorded some repurchase trades as sales, the same accounting gimmick that spawned Lehman Brothers’ now-infamous “Repo 105s”, suggesting that the failed bank was not alone in its interpretation of a new accounting rule.
Unlike Lehman, which never disclosed the effects of its repo deals on the firm’s balance sheet, JPMorgan detailed the year-end values of its repo sales and purchases in annual reports beginning in 2001, after a new accounting rule was introduced.
The practice ended in 2005 when the company merged with Bank One. “The transactions were done in very small amounts and were fully disclosed,” a spokesman said.
Yeah, we believe you.
More seriously, it should be made illegal to engage in activities that have the effect of removing liabilities from the balance sheet a part of their purpose.
Lehman background, I recommend the Stewart video.
Harry Reid Promises a Vote on the Public Option
Well, this is better than a kick in the teeth, though I’m sure that Rahm Emanuel,* will do his best to prevent either a vote, or an actual law for the creation of such an entity.
*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
Alan Greenspan: the ,”I Didn’t Do It,” Kid
Basically, he’s full of it, the Fed pumped up the bubble, and Alan Greenspan was behind it, because he believed that regulation was unnecessary, and because he wanted to be reappointed by George W. Bush.
A good take-down of “Bubbles” at the link.
Appeals Court Tells Fed to Turn Over Records
Well, the Federal Reserve just lost the next step of the court case, with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan siding with the circuit court, and with plaintiff, Bloomberg News, that its records are subject to the freedom of information act:
The Fed had argued that disclosure of the documents threatens to stigmatize borrowers and cause them “severe and irreparable competitive injury,” discouraging banks in distress from seeking help. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected that argument in a unanimous decision.
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, “sets forth no basis for the exemption the Board asks us to read into it,” U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the opinion. “If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute.”
The opinion may not be the final word in the bid for the documents, which was launched by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, with a November 2008 lawsuit. The Fed may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court.
May? May?
Of course they are going to ask for an en banc hearing, and of course they will appeal to the Supreme court.
My guess is that they will also lobby for a legislative exemption while their lawyers move as slowly as possible.
FWIW, I think that the claim that the borrowers would be “stigmatized” is pure bull sh%$.
Who got the money, and how much they got, is common knowledge on Wall Street: Everyone knows who the borrowers are, except for the general public.
What is really going on here is that there is likely evidence of some sort of wrongdoing, at least a lack of due diligence and sloppiness, that the Federal reserve does not want revealed.
Are the Recent Taliban Arrests Another ISI Black Op?
Kai Eide, the former special representative in Afghanistan is saying that the recent spate of arrests by Pakistani security forces was likely a deliberate effort to sabotage ongoing negotiations with the Taliban:
The UN’s former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has strongly criticised Pakistan’s recent arrest of high-ranking Taliban leaders.
Mr Eide told the BBC the arrests had completely stopped a channel of secret communications with the UN.
Pakistani officials insist the arrests were not an attempt to spoil talks.
I don’t believe the denials.
The Pakistani state security apparatus is horrified at the thought of a government in Kabul that is at all friendly to India, and the people that they arrested were the ones who were involved in the negotiations, as Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist with an extensive background in the region notes:
While the Obama administration is watching the battlefield in Afghanistan, hoping for a quick weakening of the Taliban, regional powers are ratcheting up tensions in and outside that country. Pakistan and Iran in particular want to ensure that by the time the United States is ready to talk to the Taliban, the region’s future will already be shaped by local powers, limiting Washington’s options. Afghanistan’s ethnic and sectarian divisions are being exacerbated in the process.
…………
Events are reminiscent of the 1990s, when the bloody Afghan civil war was fueled by an alignment of India, Iran and Russia, which backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
…………
Yet Pakistan’s military clearly wants a role in shaping Afghanistan. Islamabad had given the Taliban leadership sanctuary since 2001, but in recent weeks the military has arrested several key Taliban leaders who went around the generals and the intelligence service and were using Saudi Arabia as an intermediary to talk to Kabul. Still left alone, however, are Taliban hard-liners who could promote Pakistan’s security needs in future dialogues with Kabul.
On a visit to Islamabad last week, Karzai acknowledged that Pakistan has legitimate security concerns in Afghanistan but also demanded that those arrested Taliban members be extradited to Afghanistan. Privately, senior Afghan officials were incensed, claiming that Pakistan was “sabotaging and undermining” their efforts to talk to the Taliban.
Unfortunately, the Pakistani state security apparatus continues to prepare for a cataclysmic confrontation over Kashmir, which will never happen, because India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers, and this world view continues to make them unreliable allies in the region.
Friday Cat Blogging
And now, we use Sarcasm
It’s the music that makes this special.
You Know How You Have a Song that You Can’t Get Out of Your Head for Days?
This is the acoustic version from the 1970 album “Hand Made.” which I prefer.
Sometimes, once in a while, this is actually a good thing, and today is one of those days, becuase for the past 2 days, it’s been Classical Gas going through my head.
For Corporate Stress Relief
Apply to the………
I was in the drug store, and walked by where they have all those odd things that you see on afternoon TV, and saw the Thera Pen Massager.
It’s a pen with a rubber cap on the end, and when pressure is applied, it vibrates, like, you know, a vibrator.
I can see it being used for stress relief, but I kind of figure that the illustrations shown here don’t refer to where it might be more likely used.
BTW, if someone asks to borrow your pen, tell them to wash it before they return it.
Deep Thought
Link
Great News for the Rule of Law!
So I am sure that Holder and Obama will appeal in an attempt to overturn the ruling.
Basically, prosecutors have a blanket immunity regarding whether or not they choose to prosecute someone, but police, and prosecutors and attorneys general, who direct that someone be arrested and detained are subject to the same sort of personal liability as a cop who engages in false arrests, as the 3 judge panel notes:
“Framers of our Constitution would have disapproved of the arrest, detention, and harsh confinement of a United States citizen as a ‘material witness’ under the circumstances, and for the immediate purpose alleged, in al-Kidd’s complaint. Sadly, however, even now, more than 217 years after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing, or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world. We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”
Note that everyone else who was originally sued over this has settled, so here’s hoping that Abdullah al-Kidd, impoverishes John Ashcroft, because, under Obama and Holder, Bush and His Evil Minions™ will never see the inside of a jail cell.
Economics Update
Click for full size
H/t Calculated Risk
It’s Jobless Thursday, and initial jobless claims fell by 5,000 to 457,000, which is less bad, you need to be under 400K for any real job growth, and the less volatile 4 week moving average fell, though continuing claims fell slightly.
Meanwhile, the CPI was flat in February, with a 0.1% increase in the core inflation rate, which omits food and energy.
In real estate, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate is basically unchanged, at 4.96%.
It will start going up once the TALF expires in a few months.
Finally, oil fell and the dollar rose, probably as a correction for the large swings in response to yesterday’s Federal Reserve statement.
Are There Republican Moles in the Lay-Staff of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops?
I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the position of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding healthcare reform and abortion.
Any time that anyone talks about their position, this morning, it was a law professor, the consensus is that the position of the Bishops is coming from somewhere in the Twilight Zone: There is simply no basis in realities of law, precedent, legislation, or the manner in which regulation is derived from statute to suggest the Senate language will allow for federal funding of abortion.
This raises an obvious question: Why does the professional staff of the Conference hold a position at such extreme odds with every lawyer, and almost every other Catholic organization out there, most recently the Catholic Health Association and 59,000 nuns?
The only answer that I can come up with is that the professional staff working in their offices have been captured by partisan Republican operatives.
Either there are Republican operatives working and generating legal and legislative opinions, or the staff has been browbeaten by the loud right wing lay activists, most notably Bill Donohue and his Catholic League, and so the staff is taking its talking points from Republican operatives.
In either case, it is clear that the staff is NOT providing competent or good faith advice.
Perhaps a look at the senior lay staff at the organization, and their backgrounds might be warranted by some news gathering organization. (I sent an earlier version of my theory to Josh Marshall, if you know of any other investigative organizations, please forward this to them.)
Note that I am not suggesting that the Bishops themselves are operating as partisan political operatives, simply that their staff may be operating as such.