Heh.
Month: February 2011
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
I would note that this trend seems to be hewing fairly close to last year’s pattern so far,
- Sunshine State Community Bank, Port Orange, FL
- Peoples State Bank, Hamtramck, MI
- Badger State Bank, Cassville, WI
- Canyon National Bank, Palm Springs, CA
And we have the first credit union closing of the year:
- Oakland Municipal Credit Union, Oakland, CA
So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):
And since it’s early in the year, here is a detail of the first few weeks:
What if HP Lovecraft wrote Dilbert?
I was doing a Google™ search, and found this:
Clearly the British Isles Must Be Invaded For Their Own Protection
Click for full size
Yes, These Are Royal Wedding Commemorative Condoms
I came across a web page titled, “Lie back and think of England,” in which someone is flogging condoms commemorating the royal wedding.
Clearly they have forfeited any right to self governance.
Needless to say, this does not apply to the Republic of Ireland, who do not have the Royals as head of state, though their dealings with their banks does make one wonder about whether they are suited for self government, but that is a post for another day.
Deep Thought
HehThis reminds me of a cartoon of Smokey the Bear shooting the FTD man while shouting, “Remember, only you can prevent florist flyers.”
H/t JR the Stellar Parthenon BBS
Mubarak Flees Cairo, Soon to Go to R’Lyeh* Riyadh
Well, it looks like something between a popular uprising and a military coup just took place in Egypt, as Hosni Mubarak has resigned as President and left the capital:
Egypt erupted in a joyous celebration of the power of a long repressed people on Friday as President Hosni Mubarak resigned his post and ceded control to the military, ending his nearly 30 years of autocratic rule.
Shouts of “God is Great” competed with fireworks and car horns around Cairo after Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced during evening prayers that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders, bowing to a historic popular uprising that has transformed politics in Egypt and around the Arab world.
Protesters hugged and cheered and shouted, “Egypt is free!” and “You’re an Egyptian, lift your head.”
“He’s finally off our throats,” said one protester, Muhammad Insheemy. “Soon, we will bring someone good.”
The departure of the 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak, at least initially to his coastal resort home in Sharm el-Sheik, was a pivotal turn in a nearly three-week revolt that has upended one of the Arab’s world’s most enduring dictatorships. The popular protests — peaceful and resilient despite numerous efforts by Mr. Mubarak’s legendary security apparatus to suppress them — ultimately deposed an ally of the United States who has been instrumental in helping to carry out American policy in the region for decades.
The country is now being run by a “council of military leaders,” but they have made strong assertions that they will return the country to civilian rule, and something resembling a representative democracy, in a timely manner, but, there have been lots of promises throughout the Arab world about reform of governance, and they generally have not panned out.
Time will tell, I guess.
*“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” (In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming) as the fictional “Mad Arab”†, Abdul Alhazred, would say.
†And yes, I appreciate the irony of referring to the “Mad Arab” in the context of the overthrow of an Arab despot.
Truth in CGI
A “deadbeat” home owner and a bankster debate on Xtranormal
H/t Trit at by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Unsurprising News of the Day
In the last election, the City banks, the London equivalent of Wall Street, supplied half the campaign donations for the Tories:
Financiers in the City of London provided more than 50% of the funding for the Tories last year, new research has revealed, prompting claims that the party is in thrall to the banks.
A study by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism has found that the City accounted for £11.4m of Tory funding – 50.79% of its total haul – in 2010, a general election year. This compared with £2.7m, or 25% of its funding, in 2005, when David Cameron became party leader.
The research also shows that nearly 60 donors gave more than £50,000 to the Tories last year, entitling each of them to a face-to-face meeting with leading members of the party up to and including Cameron.
The study shows the impact that Michael Spencer has had on party funding. He was appointed by Cameron as Tory treasurer in an attempt to reduce the influence of Lord Ashcroft, the party’s former deputy chairman. Spencer was asked by Cameron to increase the number of relatively small donations of £50,000 to curb the influence of large donors such as Ashcroft, and for these smaller donations the City was place to look.
Relatively small donations of fifty thousand quid? That’s like eighty thousand US Dollars!
This might explain why their proposals to reign in bankster pay are so toothless.
It’s Jobless Thursday
Well, it’s Jobless Thursday, and the initial unemployment claims numbers are good, they fell to 383,000, a 36,000 drop, with the less volatile 4-week moving average falling to 415,000 from 431,000, and continuing claims fell by 49K to 3.89 million, though extended and emergency claims rose by 84K to 4.64 million.
I hope that this is a part of a trend, but much of this may be driven by the extreme weather that we have seen recently, which has the effect of delaying people trying to get to the unemployment offices.
Of particular concern is the rising emergency and extended claims, because there are large numbers of people, the so-called “99-ers” who have run out of benefits completely, and are so not caught in any of these numbers.
The Football is Pulled Away Again…
Who knew that Lucy Van Pelt was an 82 Year Old Egyptian President?In a move that stunned observers, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, and instead delegated his powers to his VP, Omar Suleiman, who is also doing duty of the state intelligence services, which, unsurprisingly, does not bode well for the prospects of democratic reform.
Note here that he did not “transfer” his authority, he “delegated” it, which means that he can take the powers back whenever he wants:
President Hosni Mubarak told the Egyptian people on Thursday that he would delegate authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman but that he would not resign, enraging hundreds of thousands gathered to hail his departure and setting in motion a volatile new stage in the three-week uprising.
The declaration by Mr. Mubarak that he would remain president appeared to signal a dangerous escalation in one of the largest popular revolts in Egypt’s history, and some protesters warned that weeks of peaceful rallies might give way to violence as early as Friday.
The 17-minute speech itself underlined a seemingly unbridgeable gap between ruler and ruled in Egypt: Mr. Mubarak, in paternalistic tones, talked in great detail about changes he planned to make to Egypt’s autocratic Constitution, while crowds in Tahrir Square, with bewilderment and anger, demanded that he step down.
Mr. Mubarak seemed oblivious. “It’s not about me,” he said in his address. When he was done, crowds in Cairo waved the bottoms of their shoes in the air, a gesture intended to convey disgust, and shouted, “Leave! Leave!”
This is not going to end well.
And Now for Some Non Congressional News…
George W. bush canceled a speaking engagement in Europe because he feared that he would be arrested for torture:
Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.
Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on Feb. 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.
Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.
Human rights groups said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in the Swiss city on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror were interned.
Well, it’s nice to know that there are still a few nations out there that take crimes against humanity seriously.
Unfortunately, I’m not living in one of those nations.
No, This is Not The Onion…
Click for full size
Just Because This Needs to Be Shared, So That His Shame Endures for a Very Long Time
But when a married Congressman trolls Craigslist for female companionship and sends a picture of himself topless, it certainly sounds that way:
Representative Christopher Lee of New York abruptly resigned on Wednesday night after a shirtless photo of himself, which he had e-mailed to a woman, was published on the Internet.Mr. Lee, a two-term Republican from western New York, notified the House speaker, John A. Boehner, of his decision in a letter on Wednesday afternoon, after the scandal had erupted, according to senior Congressional officials.Mr. Lee’s office released a statement in which he asked for forgiveness. “I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents,” he wrote. “I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”The resignation came hours after Gawker, a gossip Web site, published an e-mail exchange that Mr. Lee, who is married and has a son, had with a 34-year-old Maryland woman he had met through Craigslist.
In his response to said woman, he described himself as “classy”.
This must be a meaning of the word “classy” I’ve been previously unaware of.
Jim Webb Not Running for Reelection to US Senate
I am unsurprised by his announcement, he never struck me as someone who enjoyed the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” (Hah!), but it means that it’s highly likely that whoever the ‘Phants nominate in 2012 will take the seat, which means that they will need only 3 more seats to take control of the Senate.
While from a numerical perspective, this is a bit of a bummer, from an ideological perspective, he was always a bit of a DINO, he served in Reagan administration, so I am not sad to seem him go from that perspective.
Republican Fail
I’m not sure how it happened, but the Republicans in the house failed to pass an extension of some of the more contemptible parts of the Patriot Act:
Too clever by half, the House GOP leadership allowed only 40 minutes of debate on the extension of the PATRIOT Act today, and brought the bill up for a vote under a rule allowing no amendments and requiring two-thirds of the body to vote YES.
Well, that didn’t happen. Apparently, the Tea Party Congresscritters discovered their love for the constitution, Amendments One and Four inclusive, while taking the opportunity to stand up to their leadership’s lackadaisical attitude toward the Act’s extension.
I believe that the Republican House leadership may have a much deeper appreciation of just the deeper meaning of the exclamation that Dan Castellaneta created as the voice of Homer Simpson.
Heh.
Good Riddance
Representative Jane Harman (CA-36) is retiring to run the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
My guess is that she realized, after Marcy Winograd lost in the primary with 41.2% of the vote, that with a Republican Congress, and the attendant loss of power (and pork for her district), she would be toast in either the primary or the general election.
So, less than a month into her new term, she’s bailing for a cushy job working in Washington, DC, and saddling the taxpayers with the cost of running another (2 if there is a run off) elections.
Stay classy, Blue Dog.
Some Good News
Representative Gabrielle Giffords is recovering remarkably quickly from her head wound:
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has recovered enough from a bullet to the brain to ask for toast with breakfast.
Few details are available, but Pia Carusone, Giffords’ chief of staff, confirmed that the congresswoman made the verbal request on Monday when hospital workers at TIRR Memorial Hermann brought her a meal.
“Yes, that’s accurate,” Carusone said in an e-mail.
This is really remarkable progress.
AOL Buys HuffPo
For $315 million dollars.
I think that this explains why they have been moving to a paid writing staff lately.
Many of the celebrities who have contributed non-remunerated articles to the Huffington Post may be less inclined to do so now that it is part of the AOL empire, if just because the whole “cool factor” is much diminished. (See the term “AOLamer”)
Ms. Huffington will stay in charge of her web site, as well as taking over supervision AOL’s media operations, things like Techcrunch and its hyper-local news operations.
I think that this will turn out better than the AOL/Times Warner merger, but that’s a very low bar.
Kucinich (D-OH) Demands to Visit Private Bradley Manning
Good for him. He is is clearly using his position as a Representative to shine light on what is clearly an attempt to torture the alleged Wikileaks source into fingering Julian Assange:
Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a visit with an Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks.
Kucinich, a Democrat who is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter Friday to Gates asking for a visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning.
Manning is being held in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.
Kucinich says he is concerned about reports of Manning’s treatment while in custody. Manning’s lawyer has filed a complaint with the Quantico commander about the conditions Manning is being held under.
I’m not a particularly big fan of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, but he’s right here.
The worst thing about this is that it is only his name on this letter.
Where are the other 434 people who have sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” in Congress?
WooHoo!!!! Verizon Has CurrentTV on Their Non Premium Channels
Channel 192 in Baltimore County.
Olbermann will be moving there sometime in the spring:
Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC anchor, will host a prime time program for Current TV, the low-rated cable channel co-founded by Al Gore. The one-hour program will begin sometime in the spring.
Mr. Olbermann will also become the chief news officer for Current, the company said in a news release Tuesday.
“We are delighted to provide Keith with the independent platform and freedom that Current can, and does uniquely offer,” Mr. Gore said in a statement.
It appears that Olbermann will be getting an equity state in the network, which is probably most of his remuneration, it currently only draws about 60,000 viewers nationwide, and would therefore be very hard pressed to pay him a salary commensurate with his media profile.
He will also become “Chief News Officer,” whatever that means.
I kind of hope that it’s not what is normally called a “News Director,” as my sense is that this would not be a good use of his skills. A news director at a cable network is someone who has to manage ……… People like Keith.
Keith is any number of things, but a calming influence he is not.
More Revolving Door Cronyism at the Obama Administration
Robert Fisk of The Independent explains why Frank Wisner, Obama’s envoy to Cairo, told reporters that it was important for Mubarak to remain in power for some time, which surprised the reporters as well as the White House, which said that Mr. Wisner was speaking solely on his own behalf.
That’s not really true though. He was speaking on behalf of his employer, the law firm of Patton Boggs, which happens to represents Hosni Mubarak in the United States:
The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.
Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.
So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner’s current employers?
The only explanation I can see is that rather than “changing the culture of Washington,” it has been subsumed by it.
The Bush and His Evil Minions™ took incompetent self-dealing to new heights, but this appears to be yet ANOTHER area, like torture, illegal wiretaps, etc. where the Obama administration is determined to ape his ape-like predecessor.