Bachmann has made it official:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) said Monday that she had formally become a Republican candidate for president.
Ms. Bachmann’s announcement had been expected, though the forum was not. It came while she was participating in a CNN-televised debate for Republicans seeking to challenge President Barack Obama.
Somewhere, Jon Stewart is rejoicing, and Stephen Colbert is beside himself with glee.
She lost her cell phone again, and found it a week later, in exactly the same place she found it last time.
Great googly moogly!
This has probably been the worst kept secret in Asia, but the head of the Chinese General Staff has admitted that they are refitting the former Soviet carrier Varyag as an operational aircraft carrier:
The head of China’s General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has confirmed that China’s first aircraft carrier is under construction.
Gen Chen Bingde refused to say when the carrier – a remodelled Soviet-era vessel, the Varyag – would be ready.
I don’t think that this ship will have any real military significance, but neither did the USS Langley.
This is not the development of a significant military capability, but rather like the Langley, it represents the ability to develop procedures and doctrine for later, and one would assume more capable, ships.
So a NATO Spokesman has just admitted that NATO is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi:
A U.N. resolution justifies the targeting of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a senior NATO military official with operational knowledge of the Libya mission told CNN Thursday.
Asked by CNN whether Gadhafi was being targeted, the NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The resolution applies to Gadhafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said.
NATO has been ramping up pressure on the regime, employing helicopters last weekend for the first time against Gadhafi’s forces. Explosions are heard often in Tripoli, evidence of allied air strikes.
NATO began bombing Libya on March 31, under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians who have been targeted by Gadhafi’s military.
Unsurprising. Since Gadhafi’s forces are not folding up under the air assault, the French and the British are desperate to avoid defeat, or worse, the need to send in ground troops, either of which will sink both UK PM Cameron and French President Sarkosy.
This was intended to be a neat neo-colonial adventure with the attendant electoral boost, killing a few “wogs” for a few votes, but now its looking like a complete clusterf%$#.
Michael “Heck of a Job, Brownie” Brown, the FEMA chair who botched the Hurricane Katrina disaster, just called George W. Bush an inattentive fratboy.
Heh.
So, the US Treasury is finally taking action against banks who have not engaged in HAMP in good faith:
As the nation’s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation’s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners.
As part of a new assessment of mortgage servicers, Treasury officials said they would withhold incentive payments for the three banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — until the problems are resolved. At that point, those payments would be made, a Treasury spokeswoman said.
In May, the three banks received $24 million in incentives as part of the modification program.
The Treasury Department has previously withheld payments from mortgage servicers, but Thursday’s action focused on some of the biggest players in the program. Called the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, it is voluntary for mortgage servicers. Nearly all of the nation’s largest banks have signed contracts to participate.
Only, as Yves Smith observes, this is not accountability, it’s accountability theater, from the folks who so f%$#ed up HANP so badly that, “HAMP was so clearly a disaster that Treasury Department officials didn’t try very hard to defend it in a meeting with bloggers that I [Yves Smith] participated in last August. The best they could do was claim that it helped the housing market by spreading out foreclosures over a long time period,” so in this bit of atmospherics, the banks still get their money, they just won’t get it today.
Someone must have informed Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner that even if Barack Obama would never fire him,* if the voters fire Obama, he’s still out of job.
*This fact that Geithner is unfirable makes a pretty argument against a 2nd Obama term.†
†We now have revelations that Larry Summers was more on the ball than he.
Paul Krugman offers a data point that shows that default and devaluation works better than austerity and debt peonage.
The spread on an Icelandic CDS is now about a third that of the Irish CDS, which means that their borrowing costs are lower, as is the confidence of the market in their credit.
Rolling the Nobel Laureate:
Why, it’s almost as if defaulting on debts run up by runaway bankers and letting your currency depreciate works better — even from the point of view of investors — than socializing private-sector losses and grimly sticking with a fixed exchange rate.
Or to put this in earthier terms, if you want to survive this sort of financial meltdown, f%$# the banks, not the average citizen.
As a result of the train wreck that is Newt Gingrich, his entire campaign staff resigned.
The proximate cause was his decision to go on a cruise ship vacation while everyone else in the race is hitting places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
I’m beginning to think that this is all just a variation of his “Gingrich, Inc.” scam which Rachel Maddow had detailed, and he’s doing this because his little money making operation pretty much demands that he eventually run.
It raises a kind of a meta-media question: The standard narrative for the Washington Press whores corps about Gingrich is that he an intellectual colossus of the conservative movement, a meme which the beltway bozos continue to push, but we are seeing increasing evidence that he’s just a self serving clown.
In any case, I find the clown show, and the contortions of his fans in the media, an amusing show.
And once again, the initial claims numbers suck wet farts from dead pigeons, rising by 1000 to 427,000, as opposed to falling to 419,000 as forecast, though the 4-week moving average, the continuing, and extended claims all fell slightly.
This is not a glass half full, or too big a glass, this just sucks.
While Washington, DC is obsessing on making things good for the banks, which is what all this deficit cutting/austerity is really all about, this economy remains in the dump.
My wife has spent much of today finding who we need to call in order to get a certificate of what is called “creditable coverage,” which we need to get or pre existing conditions covered.
I am seriously considering moving to Vermont when their single-payer plan becomes operational.
Posted via mobile.
Because when some narcissistic sociopath gets a bee in his bonnet and blocks a Nobel prize winner in economics from a seat on the Federal Reserve:
The decision by a noted economist Monday to end a 14-month wait for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is renewing concerns among some Democrats about the fighting spirit of the Obama administration.
The candidate, Peter A. Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize laureate for his work on labor markets, cited Republican opposition in asking the White House to withdraw his nomination.
But Democratic leadership did not press for a vote on the nomination, and Congressional aides said that the White House invested relatively little energy in fighting for Mr. Diamond. Moreover, they said that the administration had not submitted nominations for vacancies atop several of the federal agencies charged with overhauling and improving financial regulation in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
“There’s a deep feeling of frustration,” said one Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “No one wants to insult the administration or put them in a position that’s uncomfortable for them or worse for them. So you’re just sitting around waiting for them to take the lead.”
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said on Monday that the White House did everything it could to push the nomination, and he lamented the “partisan obstructionism” that had prevented approval of Mr. Diamond.
(emphasis mine)
Yes, “partisan obstructionism”, and the fact that your boss is a hopeless clueless chump.
Or maybe he really does not want meaningful regulation, and so he’s leaving seats empty, so that Geithner can continue to run things for the benefit of the banksters.
Your call, but I am leaning toward door number 2.
Giving into hostage takers just encourages more hostage taking.
BTW, you can read Diamond’s take on all of this here.
First Weiner, and now in response to Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere gaffe, her Evil Minions™ are attempting to edit Wikipedia to make it agree with her.
Well, this answers an important question: Just how brain damaged a Republican fanboi has to be in order to have Little Green Footballs mock them.
Pass the popcornOn the recall front in Wisconsin, Judge John Markson ruled that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) can have an extension to review irregularities in the petition process against the Democratic senators.
What this means is that the allegations of fraud by Rebublicans have enough merit to warrant an investigation, while the allegations of irregularities by Democrats do not:
A Dane County judge has granted the Government Accountability Board’s request for additional time to finish its review of the recall petitions filed against Dems Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch.
The GAB now has until June 10 — next Friday — to certify those elections and has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to review the petitions.
Judge John Markson denied a request from Republicans to delay the recall elections of Republican senators that have already been certified until the Dem reviews are completed.
Markson also specified that today’s original deadline for the GAB to certify those recalls remains in effect, setting up recall elections for six GOP senators for July 12.
If approved and certified next week, the three Dem recalls would take place July 19.
Markson said the GAB had shown good cause to extend the deadline, noting the unprecedented level of recall activity along with the passage of voter ID legislation and completing a statewide Supreme Court recount.
Part of the reason for the need for additional time is that the Republicans did not get half again as many signatures as was necessary.
The Republicans are desperate to have all the elections at once, because they want to make sure that the Dem get out the vote is diluted across additional districts.
I am amused, but I figure that the reactionary corrupt f%$#s on the Wisconsin Supreme Court who hold a 4-3 majority will find a way to mess with this.
So, Anthony Weiner fessed up to sexting. That sucks a little bit, but the fact that (for once) Andrew Breitbart was telling the truth really sucks.
Nothing to add, but I am So watching Stewart tonight to see what he wants to say.
(on edit)
Offline, I’ll be spending the evening making “Weiner” puns.
Revere’s official response
So, because she is in New England, she makes reference to Paul Revere, only she gets it really wrong, “He who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.“
The fact that anyone listens to Sarah Palin or takes her seriously says worse things about the USA than anything that Osama could have dreamed.
I pray for the day that her 15 minutes of fame is done.
H/t UM at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for catching the story, and finding the Revere pic.
Well, it looks like we now have a chronology, methodology, and the perps in l’affaire Weiner.
It’s a pretty good layout of how a not-so vast right wing conspiracy fabricated all this.
The frightening thing, is that it looks to be somewhere around 1 or 2 dozen people who did all this, and they did it in a particularly ham-handed way, and still you had CNN bringing admitted liar, and un-admitted drunk, Andrew Breitbart on to discuss it.
You can click on the link, and click through to the the links beyond the link, or not:
You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Yesterday, we were driving to a distant SCA (medieval recreation group) event, about 200 km (120 miles), and my almost-14 year old and my 11 year old were being annoying, both to each other as well as to Sharon* and me.
I finally told them that they were acting like the 3 Stooges, without the Stooges level of maturity.
The scary thing is that it’s true.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Stephen Trimble found this video of an Iranian Il-76 MD AWACS crash.
They had an engine fire, declared an inflight emergency, and the radome came off, and took off the tail.
Woah.
So, Lockheed-Martin, on a plane that is not really in production yet, and one for whom the cost numbers are very fluid, decided to call out the McDonnell Douglas Boeing F/A-18 E/F by name on operating costs, and Boeing’s response was, “Oh no you didn’t bitch!”.
We now have a contractor cat fight:
Lockheed Martin is peddling untruths about the relative cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Super Hornet, according to Boeing Military Aircraft president Chris Chadwick.
In a Tuesday morning teleconference, Chadwick not only called Lockheed Martin’s claims “fundamentally untrue” but named business development vice-president Steve O’Bryan as the source, and the fact that the claims were denied formally also points to a developing war between the two programs.
The offending statement, quoted in Air Force Magazine’s Daily Report last week (here, search for May 26), claimed that a fully operational F-16E or F/A-18E would be “the same cost” as an F-35 at maturity, around $65 million in 2010 dollars. Not so, Chadwick says, claiming a comparable (recurring flyaway) cost of $53 million for a Super Hornet — including a set of external tanks, an ATFLIR targeting pod and “working” helmet mounted displays.
Any F-35 cost figure, Chadwick pointed out, “is an estimate based on numbers of unsold aircraft.”
Moreover, Chadwick added, current figures show that the JSF — even in its F-35A variant — will cost more to operate than the Super Hornet. Citing a $16,400 cost-per-hour F-35A estimate (in 2002 dollars) in the latest Selected Acquisition Report, Chadwick says that a comparable number for the Super Hornet is $12,200 — less than either the F/A-18C/D or the F-16C/D.
Cat fight!
Though I would note that the F-16, should be cheaper than both to operate, and it should get you there quicker than both too, at least until calling bingo fuel.
So John Edwards has been indicted for potential misuse of campaign funds to hide his affair, but the Department of Justice, despite the the fact that the normally weaselly Senate Ethics Committee was seriously considering expulsion, and referred their files to the DoJ for a criminal investigation, appears to be doing nothing:
“There is no question that I have done wrong,” John Edwards said Friday in front of the North Carolina courtroom where he pleaded not guilty to six counts of violating federal campaign laws. “I take full responsibility for having done wrong.”
But, Edwards said, he did not violate federal law.
“I will regret for the rest of my life the pain and the harm that I have done,” the former Democratic presidential candidate said, “but I did not break the law and I never, ever thought I was breaking the law.
Compare that to the web of conspiracy and money laundering that Senators Ensign and Coburn engaged in, and one begins to wonder why the DoJ is so hands off on that.
My only answer is that Reagan, Bush, and Bush spend an awful lot of time politicizing the Justice Department, and we are now harvesting the fruits of this.
*It’s OK If You Are A Republican.