Month: October 2011

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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The power of wishful thinking

Representative Louise Slaughter has suggested during an interview on Olbermann and she suggested that, because of Clarence Thomas’s repeated violation of conflict of interest statutes that his votes might be subject to retroactive recusal.

Rep. Slughter’s suggestion as a remedy is just wishful thinking.

There is a remedy, and it’s called impeachment, and the idea that Chief Justice Roberts as head of the judicial ethics commission would refer this to the Department of Justice is ludicrous.

More Like George W. Bush Every Day

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Barack Obama is now claiming that the legal opinion granting him the authority to assassinate American citizens is a state secret, and so it is not subject to any sort of public scrutiny.

You know, as scary as George Bush was, he was basically a dunce, Barack Obama is a lot of things, but he is not stupid.

This not a fact that I find particularly reassuring:

Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they’re asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn’t a military secret. It isn’t an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress’ post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”

Obama hasn’t just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set. It’s time for the president who promised to create “a White House that’s more transparent and accountable than anything we’ve seen before” to release the DOJ memo. As David Shipler writes, “The legal questions are far from clearcut, and the country needs to have this difficult discussion.” And then there’s the fact that “a good many Obama supporters thought that secret legal opinions by the Justice Department — rationalizing torture and domestic military arrests, for example — had gone out the door along with the Bush administration,” he adds. “But now comes a momentous change in policy with serious implications for the Constitution’s restraint on executive power, and Obama refuses to allow his lawyers’ arguments to be laid out on the table for the American public to examine.” What doesn’t he want to get out?

Think about it for a second: This ruling just an evaluations of public court rulings and public statutes, but they have buried this from any sort of public scrutiny.

There can’t be any sensitive secrets involved, but they are covering it up.

Something is hinky here.

All Praise Be to God for That Which he Has Granted…

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In this case, it’s the fact that Sarah Palin has declared that she will not run for President in 2012, which means that I can add her to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named:

Sarah Palin said she won’t seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, ending a lengthy and attention-grabbing political flirtation that kept voters and potential rivals guessing while buttressing her public profile.

The former Alaska governor and her party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee — more recently a reality TV star and cable-news commentator — said she opted against a White House run because she believed “that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office — from the nation’s governors, to congressional seats and the presidency.”

Her announcement, in a statement sent to supporters today, removed a major uncertainty surrounding the Republican presidential race while raising questions about how she might use her celebrity and political following to shape the primary.

“I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for president,” Palin’s statement said.

“I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing” President Barack Obama, keeping Republican control of the U.S. House and helping her party win a Senate majority, she said.

This means that I never have to write about her, or read about her, again.

While we are at it, let me add the following people to my list:

  • John and Kate Gosslin.
  • The cast of The Jersey Shore.
  • The “Real Housewives” of anywhere.
  • Nancy Grace.  (If she flips out on national TV, or is tried for a crime, this is suspended for reasons of schadenfreude)

Actually, let’s say that it includes pretty much any reality TV star.

In any case, Sarah is now done.  She’s made her bucks off of her 15 minutes of fame, and she was a springboard for Michelle Bachmann to become a viable (?) presidential candidate.  (The Republican Crazy Bitch Babe is the genre that she created.)

    Don’t Tell Me I Never Gave You Anything

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    Here are my pictures from New York. (Click for big honking images)

    Most notable was a Broadway disaster so bad that Dick Cheney should be the producer:

    And here are the offices of the Gray Lady:

    I remember Times Square before it became a Disneyfied version of Blade Runner:

    Maybe it’s the Eastern European Jewish heritage, Cossacks and all, but I really hate mounted police:

    What the Shrill One Said

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    Yes, Paul Krugman is correct in noting that the US dollar is overvalued, and that the
    Chinese Yuan is undervalued    .

    He only has 800 words, so what should also be noted is that the dollar is not just overvalued versus the Yuan, but versus the whole world, though he does note that the Chinese are deliberately pushing the value of the Yuan in addition.

    Since the undervalued Yuan is, at its core, a tariff on Chinese imports, and a subsidy of their exports, it is clear that the sanctions bill in the Senate is justified.

    That being said, there are also structural issues that overvalue the US dollar, to the advantage of Wall Street and the disadvantage of Main Street (Hence Robert Rubin’s* full throated support of a “strong dollar policy when he was SecTreas), and these need to be addressed as well.

    *Why is this corrupt ratf%$# not under criminal investigation?

    I’m Heading for New York City

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    And then onto Monsey, NY.

    My mother-in-law is moving to Baltimore, but spending the next month or so in Memphis while her apartment comes open, so I am ferrying her car down.

    Against my wife’s better advice, I will be using the “avoid tolls” option on the route on Google Maps, which avoids most but all, of the tolls, and doesn’t have me doing it all on interstates

    Interstate highways are boring.


    View Larger Map

    (On Edit)
    I’m taking Bolt Bus, which has WiFi and power outlets.  Kewl.

    Oh, Now I Get It!!!!!!

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    It seems like ir was just earlier this evening, I was wondering what political calculus could be driving numerous states Attorneys General to walk away from the so-called “50 State Deal” on “Robosigning”.  (Wait, it was just earlier this evening)

    Well, now we know why.  The New York Times just described the recent transition of New York AG Schneiderman from a very (for New York, anyway) low key Attorney General to Political superstar:

    The other day, in his office down on Wall Street, Eric T. Schneiderman owned up to an awkward truth.

    Until fairly recently, he acknowledged, if you had asked the average passer-by to name New York’s attorney general, you might have gotten a mystified “Huh?” or the answer that it was Andrew M. Cuomo (the governor who used to have the job) or Eliot Spitzer (the disgraced former governor who had it before that), rather than the correct response: Mr. Schneiderman.

    In the eight months since he has assumed the office, the emphatically unglamorous Mr. Schneiderman has maintained a low profile for the state’s top law-enforcement officer, charting a busy but anonymous course between Spitzerian aggression and Cuomoesque charm. Even his own press aide, Danny Kanner, recently confessed that, before this summer, his own parents did not know who Mr. Schneiderman was. “And I’m their kid; I work for the guy,” Mr. Kanner said.

    But then came August, when Mr. Schneiderman, 56, rejected a proposed nationwide settlement releasing some of the country’s biggest banks from a lawsuit brought by the states claiming misconduct in the mortgage markets. Almost overnight, he found his own name mentioned in a series of laudatory articles in publications as varied as Rolling Stone, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Web site Gawker.

    Adding fuel to the profile-raising fire were the phone calls Mr. Schneiderman received this summer from officials in the Obama administration who pressured him to smarten up and join his counterparts in other states in settling the case. There were reports that a Federal Reserve official, Kathryn S. Wylde, had harangued him in public for his stubbornness (at the funeral for Hugh L. Carey, the former New York governor, no less). At the end of August, an unrepentant Mr. Schneiderman was kicked off the executive committee of attorneys general in charge of the case by its leader, Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa.

    The cynic in me wonders if perhaps the fact that the flood of adoring correspondence was accompanied by, “Small tsunami of campaign donations,” might have something to do with the increasing numbers of Attorneys General who are balking at signing an agreement exchanging a token payment for immunity for the banksters.

    If Only They Could both Lose………

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    It’s a battle between an insurance company and a pharmaceutical company over a drug that probably doesn’t work but has a lot of fans:

    Blue Shield of California will no longer pay for the use of the drug Avastin to treat breast cancer, a sign that support for the widely debated and expensive treatment may be eroding among health plans.

    Blue Shield, with 3.2 million members, is apparently the first large insurance company to end payments since a federal advisory committee unanimously recommended in June that the Food and Drug Administration rescind Avastin’s approval as a treatment for breast cancer, saying the drug did not really help patients.

    The F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, has not made a final decision, so Avastin retains its approval for now.

    Because it is an emotional and politically contentious issue, with some women saying the drug is keeping them alive, many insurers have said they will wait until a final decision from the F.D.A. before re-evaluating their coverage policies. And Medicare has indicated it will continue paying for the drug even if the F.D.A. revokes the approval.

    Until people realize that there is not a problem with the cost of prescription drugs because the real problem is the price of drugs, and so private solutions to innovation, with the associated exclusivity provisions, are the problem, not the solution.

    The President Murders an American Citizen

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    One of the flat out most disturbing thing that Barack Obama has done is to claim that he has an absolute right to murder anyone, anywhere, any time based on his unilateral declaration that it is in the interest of national security.

    Most recently, this was shown in the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki.

    This was an extrajudicial killing with the only evidence made public being that he “inspired” people to wage war against us.

    I really don’t have the words to describe just how awful this is, but the Rude Pundit does. (and the essay is completely safe for work as well)

    Just go read him.

    I’m just thankful that I live in Maryland, where my vote for President does not matter in 2012, so I won’t.*

    *No, I won’t vote Republican, I just won’t cast a ballot for President, or I’ll write in Howard Dean.

    Pass the Popcorn, Mortgage Fraud Edition

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    And another shoe drops, as California leaving the 50 state mortgage deal, claiming that it’s too bank friendly, joining New York, Delaware, Minnesota, and Massachusetts (link) in objecting to the blanket grants of immunity proposed:

    California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation’s biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

    Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

    The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

    “It has been  a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient,” Harris told The Times in an interview.

    Harris delivered the news in a letter sent Friday to Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who has been leading the 50-state coalition.

    Here are some other interesting bits:

    The removal of California from the discussions is a major blow to fraying efforts by the coalition, which has been trying to strike a settlement deal with the big banks for months. The move by Harris to reject the settlement talks is also a key departure from efforts by the Obama administration, which has been pushing for a fast resolution to the so-called robo-signing scandal that erupted last year.

    Just so you know, “Pushing for a fast resolution,” translates to, “Throwing lawbreakers another get out of jail free card,” because the Banksters are Obama’s real base.

    “This whole concept of a settlement on foreclosure abuse is probably dead,” said Christopher Whalen, the founder of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Nobody in their right mind is going to opt into a settlement right now.”

    So one would hope.  Neither the Obama administration, nor their corrupt lackey Iowa Attorney Gen. Tom Miller have had the slightest interest in pursuing any allegations or real wrongdoing against big banks.

    I’m not sure what is motivating the AGs to bail on what would be a win-win for them, they get to “wave the bloody shirt” of some sort of settlement payments while insuring their own access to Wall Street campaign donations, but it appears that either they think that the political calculus is changing, or they just want to do the right thing.

    Not Enough Bullets…

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    The SEC has ruled that Congressmen, their staffers, and executive branch members are free to commit insider trading with impunity:

    When you buy and sell stocks based on secrets you learned at the office, it could be insider trading.

    But when a United States Senator does it, it’s probably perfectly legal.

    That’s because the SEC has largely determined that trading stocks based on advance knowledge of action in Congress is not insider trading.

    If anything, it’s “outsider” trading — buying and selling shares based on knowledge of an outside force that’s about to hit a company’s share value.

    Think of it like a trader who sees a satellite image of a hurricane bearing down on an oil rig — and shorts the oil company’s stock in expectation of the damage.

    Except in the case of Capitol Hill, the members of Congress can be both the trader and the hurricane — buying and selling shares in expectation of the effect that their own action has on the company’s stock price.

    Some critics say that’s probably going on a lot on Capitol Hill — although they don’t have any direct proof.

    “It’s really quite outrageous,” said Craig Holman, the legislative representative for Public Citizen. “If you just take a look at the statistics, members of Congress are either geniuses when it comes to stock trading or they are in fact trading off of some of this insider information.”

    A pair of recent academic studies found that House members beat the market in their personal stock trading by about 6 percent, and Senators beat the market by about 10 percent.

    Just when you thought that Washington could not get any more corrupt.

    Occupy Wall Street Heats Up

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    First, we are now seeing support from unions and local civil society groups:

    The “Occupy Wall Street” protests, now entering their third week, are poised to get a whole lot bigger than its core of 200 to 300 people, potentially even exceeding the protesters original goals of 20,000 demonstrators, thanks to recent pledges of support from some of New York City’s largest labor unions and community groups.

    On Tuesday, over 700 uniformed pilots, members of the Air Line Pilots Association, took to the streets outside of Wall Street demanding better pay.

    …………

    The other eight organizations expected to join in the October 5 rally, based on its Facebook page, are United NY, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Working Families Party, VOCAL-NY, Community Voices Heard, Alliance for Quality Education, New York Communities for Change, Coalition for the Homeless, which have a collective membership of over 1 million.

    Additionally, since the video of a New York City deputy inspector Anthony Bologna going crazy with pepper spray on protesters went viral, the protesters are actually getting some ink in the American press. (Google news shows more coverage overseas than in the US)

    Additionally, they finally had a mass protest, and related mass arrests, on the Brooklyn Bridge.

    If the protesters, or their new supporters, can manage to get their sh%$ together, and leverage their recent US media coverage, we might actually have a real a voice for stopping the looting and starting prosecuting.

    Like I Said, the Manchurian Democrat

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    Click for full size


    Democrats are not feeling the audacity


    But the Republicans are all fired up

    In 2008, Barack Obama convinced millions of young voters to enthusiastically vote for him.

    Between 2009 and now, he has convinced these same folks that they and their votes do not matter:

    In thinking about the 2012 presidential election, 45% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, while nearly as many, 44%, are less enthusiastic. This is in sharp contrast to 2008 and, to a lesser extent, 2004, when the great majority of Democrats expressed heightened enthusiasm about voting.

    The most depressing thing about all of this that it’s likely that a lot of the new voters who came into the process are now likely to be apathetic for  years.

    We know what happens when the only reason that people are given to vote Democratic is “The Republicans are Scary”.  Just look at John Kerry’s 2004 run, and I think that the Dems are progressively making this their only talking point, particularly if Obama gets his way and manages to gut cut Medicare and Medicaid.

    H/t Americablog.