Month: June 2012

Florida County Clerks to Rick Scott: Drop Dead

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It looks like they are rejecting his plan for a little Jim Crow:

Florida’s noncitizen voter purge looks like it’s all but over.

The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges —are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don’t trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state’s elections office.The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered the state to stop the purge.

“We’re just not going to do this,” said Leon County’s elections supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. “I’ve talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal.”

It is explicitly illegal.

You are not allowed to scrub voter rolls less than 90 days before an election under federal law, and the non-presidential Florida primaries are in August.

Additionally, for Florida, this has to be pre-cleared by the DoJ.

The party of Lincoln is not the party of Jim Crow.

Shop JC Penny

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And I should not that I have received no benefit or promise of benefit from them.

You see, the hate group known as One Million Mom’s was threatening a boycott because they had Ellen DeGeneris as a spokesperson, and JC Penney told those contemptible homopobes to go pound sand by putting two gay fathers in their latest Fathers day ad:

The anti-gay hate group One Million Moms has issued a boycott calling for JC Penney to fire spokeswoman Ellen DeGeneres due to her sexual orientation. JC Penney responded with this fabulous Father’s Day ad — featuring two gay dads for the first time in JC Penney history.

This is absolutely the right response.

When bigots threaten you, your response should be “F%$# You”.

On a deeper note, the fact that a major corporation has decided to do this indicates taht there is a major, and rather rapid, shift in attitude going on.

Yesterday was Busy for the FDIC

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As is shown in this episode of the (routinely late) Bank Failure Friday.

Nothing for 3 weeks, and now 4 banks in a week.

For whatever reason, it appears that we have a sort of a punctuated thing going on.  Nothing for few weeks, and then a big week.

  1. First Capital Bank, Kingfisher, OK
  2. Carolina Federal Savings Bank, Charleston, SC
  3. Farmers’ and Traders’ State Bank, Shabbona, IL
  4. Waccamaw Bank, Whiteville, NC

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Damn

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Click and Clack are retiring:

For years now, after their broadcasts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the hosts of the public-radio hit “Car Talk,” have been ranking the listener calls they receive on a scale from five to one, with five being the most entertaining.

It’s an archival system that will soon be put to use.
After 35 years of weekly broadcasts and some 12,500 calls, the wisecracking brothers announced on Friday that they are retiring. “As of October, we’re not going to be recording any more new shows,” Tom, 74, wrote in a CarTalk.com column written with Ray, 63, who added, “We’ve decided that it’s time to stop and smell the cappuccino.”
NPR, formerly called National Public Radio, will keep the show going by cobbling together the best of the old segments — the “fives,” so to speak. The producers think that most listeners won’t notice or care that the show is dated. Nonetheless, the announcement on Friday saddened fans of the pair, also known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, whose freewheeling chat show — ostensibly about cars — has been a weekend tradition for decades.

I’m bumming.

The Aqua Buddha Running Mate

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I know that my track record sucks, but I am not predicting that Rand Paul will be Mitt Romney’s running mate:

A day after endorsing Mitt Romney, Sen. Rand Paul said it would be an honor to run alongside the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

“A year, year and a half ago, I was a physician in a small town,” Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, told CNN’s Don Lemon. “And it would be a great honor to be considered as a vice president for the Republican Party. I think that would be something that anybody who said otherwise would not be being truthful.”

Paul, who on Thursday came out in support of Romney, said on CNN he had not discussed with the candidate the prospect of joining the GOP ticket.

Paul, a tea party favorite and son of presidential candidate Ron Paul, said his father “has always been my first choice,” but that the nominating process favored Romney.

Rand Paul has said that he would have run this year had his dad, Ron Paul not run, and he is clearly very receptive to the idea of being Mitt’s running mate.

Additionally, he has serious teabagger cred.

I would not call him a slam dunk, but to my mind, he is the most likely selection right now.

Finally

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Harry Reid has explicitly stated that Republicans are sabotaging the economy for political gain:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday accused House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) of deliberately trying to sabotage the U.S. economy.

Republicans immediately fired back, with Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) spokesman using an eight-letter word to rebuke the Senate leader.

“That’s bull—-,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “House Republicans are united in our desire to get a sensible, reform-minded transportation bill done, including job-creating energy initiatives like Keystone.”

Reid has grown frustrated by House Republicans’ reluctance to pass a multiyear transportation authorization bill, which Democrats say would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

House Republicans have threatened to pull out of conference talks with Senate negotiators, according to one media report, which could scuttle any prospects for a deal. A senior House GOP aide, however, disputed the report.

They should have been saying this for at least two years.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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And initial jobless claim have fallen for the first time in over a month, by 12K to a still crappy 377K, but the 4-week moving average rose, as did continuing claims, though extended claims fell.  (It should be noted that extended claims are being impacted by people running out their strings, so the drop is not necessarily good news).

I would note that we also have a slightly wonkish bit data point, where the yield curve has inverted, indicating that the markets think that the markets are expecting a deflationary environment:

One could argue that this is a positive development for the US consumer because it could mean price stability. However this move in TIPS certainly raises the risk of near-term deflation, driven by weak demand growth. And deflation is notoriously difficult to get under control. This feels (though only in the near term) a bit like Japan, a nation quite familiar with zero to negative inflation expectations.

Normally, the longer a bond, the higher the rate, because there is a cost to having your money locked up for long periods, but under certain conditions,  like investors desperate for a safe haven, the rates drop as the term lengthens (up to a point).

In a not entirely not unrelated note, the Chinese central bank has unexpectedly cut its benchmark rate in response to their economy slows.

Not a good economic news day.

Panglossian Bulls%$#

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Notwithstanding the Senate pickup, Tueaday was a loss, but we see the crap like this suggesting that it wasn’t that bad.

No, it was that bad.

There are some lessons to learn, the first is that you need to fight something with something, and Tom Barrett wasn’t something.

He is, by all accounts, a nice guy but that’s all he was.

We waffled on repealing the union busting bill, etc.

Any wonder that he lost?

In any case, if you don’t acknowledge that you have failed, you cannot learn from your failures.

Troof

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Writer Jamie Malanowski gets to the heart of the matter when he says that if Obama loses, his refusal to prosecute the criminals at the big banks will be a major cause of this:

This much is clear: if President Obama loses this election, the failure to hold financial titans legally, financially and morally responsible for this financial meltdown will be the factor that will have cost him re-election.

I would argue that this was is also much of the reason for the 2010 debacle.

Malanowski talks about bravery, and how Obama has the courage to take down bin Laden, but not the courage to face the banksters.

I don’t think that this is a a matter of courage, but a matter of tribalism.

I am not making a Kenyan Muslim reference here, but rather an Ivy League reference.

I think that Barack Obama (Columbia and then Harvard Law) is simply unwilling to confront the old boy network which he joined when he went to college.

How to Write a Sincere Apology

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I’m not sure that I’m particularly good at this sort of thing, but actor Jason Alexander is, and he shows himself to be a mensch in the process:

So, I would like to say – I now get it. And to the extent that these jokes made anyone feel even more isolated or misunderstood or just plain hurt – please know that was not my intention, at all or ever. I hope we will someday live in a society where we are so accepting of each other that we can all laugh at jokes like these and know that there is no malice or diminishment intended.

But we are not there yet.

So, I can only apologize and I do. In comedy, timing is everything. And when a group of people are still fighting so hard for understanding, acceptance, dignity and essential rights – the time for some kinds of laughs has not yet come. I hope my realization brings some comfort.

Go read the rest.

Saroff’s Rule Again

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Click for full size


How they shuffled around funds to create the appearance of liquidity


And this is how they covered up their exposure

Yves Smith is all over the report by the bankruptcy trustee for MF Global.

I suggest that you read it, so I will show you to two graphics from the report, and remind you of “Saroff’s Rule”, “If a financial transaction is complex enough to require that a news organization use a cartoon to explain it, its purpose is to deceive.”

It appears that this applies to bankruptcy trustees as well as news orgs.

Go read, and wonder why John Corzine isn’t being frog marched out of his mansion in hand cuffs.

Mikel Kinzly disseze Ezruh Kleyn Haz It

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Michael Kinsley has made a career of intellectually bankrupt and mindless contrarianism.

Basically, you come up with an indefensible and silly argument, and through rhetorical tricks, you make it sound reasonable. Stupid people read it, and think that you are wise.

Well, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post has signed on to this bit of professional hypocrisy. (No link, he is clearly click whoring, and I won’t reward it)   He is now arguing that the Mitt Romney winning the election might be better for the economy because Republicans won’t try to block everything:

Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney’s policies, there’s a chance he’s still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.

That’s not because he has business experience. For all his bluster about the lessons taught by the private sector, his agenda is indistinguishable from that of career politician Paul Ryan. Nor is it because he’s demonstrated some special knowledge of what it takes to create jobs. Job growth in Massachusetts was notably slow under Romney’s tenure. It’s because if Romney is elected, Republicans won’t choose to crash the economy in 2013.

This ignores the recent history, which is that Republicans crashed the economy through their attempts to implement their ideology from 2001-2007.

Note that the above argument ignores the fact that he is essentially advocating giving into terrorists.

This is pathetic.

H/t Unfogged.

Decisions, Decisions

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You see, there are two events happening right now that are both rare and could be described as being of astronomical importance (albeit in two completely different uses of the word “astronomical), the Venus transit, and the Scott Walker recall.

Seeing as how my son is supposed to be downtown at the Maryland Science Center right now, and he’s planning to record and Youtube the event, I’ll just post his video when he finishes with it.

In either case, safety first: Do not stare at the sun, or at Scott Walker without wearing appropriate eye protection.