Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.

Monday, January 12, 2009

It Broke Real Good

TocqueDeville notices George Bush's Very Successful Presidency - No, Seriously

[pretty much copied completely here, because the home of the Great Orange Satan is a place where things too correct tend to disappear]



I always like to say our health care system is not broken, it's working perfectly. Just not for us. And it is true. The American health care system is doing exactly what it was designed to do - make a fortune for a few people.

You can apply this same principle to every major part of the American experience - our media is working flawlessly at keeping the vast majority of Americans misinformed. And even our government is working flawlessly at preserving its own power and protecting the interests of those it serves. It is from within this framework that we must assess George Bush's presidency.

I have repeatedly heard people refer to Bush as a failed president. Indeed, that is probably how he will go down in history. But to be accurate, we must separate our failure, and that of our country's, from those of the Bush administration, those who enabled him, and those whose interest he serves.

For it is from their perspective, we must admit, George Bush's presidency was a raging success. With the help of a complicit and feckless Democratic congress, and a compliant media, George Bush got almost everything he wanted.

And while we, both as progressives and Americans, may be choking on the products of his success, for those he represents, the country is now a far more agreeable place then it was eight years ago. Sure, the last few months have seen economic turmoil and insecurity even for the perversely wealthy. But even there things are looking up as Henry Paulson comes to their rescue - with our money.

All in all, from the point of view of the greedy, parasite class who feeds off the commonwealth of our country and its people, the Bush Republicans and the faux opposition we sometimes call the Democrats have worked perfectly.

Here's a very brief and incomplete list of Bushco's successes:

In eight years, almost completely unimpeded by Democrats, and in many cases, he couldn't have done it without them, Bush dramatically changed this country to the benefit of the parasite class. From gutting environmental policy, to ridiculous tax cuts, to numerous bills that only benefited the monied interests, Bush helped corporate America make more profit than in human history. And I'm not even including the oil, gas, and coal industry. From bankruptcy reform, the energy bill, to the the medicare bill, Bush pushed through major legislation that eliminated oversight, hurt consumers, and weakened our democracy. Then, throw in two Supremes who love corporate power and God, and all I can say is, good job George.

Probably his greatest success, however, was letting 911 happen. I don't know how they did it, but, despite a plethora of warnings, they actually managed to let 4 planes get hijacked at once, and fly unimpeded into three major sites including the World Trade Towers. Excellent.

From that single act, Bush was able to conquer two countries, seize about 45 trillion dollars in Iraqi oil, depending on the ppb this week, and turn the country into a war mongering, war profiteering, national security police state. Oh Mr Bush, you will always be VIP at the Petroleum Club.

Yes, Bush's base has made trillions of dollars from his actions and policies. Kudos. A very successful presidency indeed.

Who has failed on the other hand, is us.

We in the progressive netroots, and specifically here at Daily Kos, have failed repeatedly to do much of anything. We raised a bunch of money to elect better Democrats. Most lost, some were good, but others turned out to be no better than the Democrats we were trying to get rid of.

Tried to get rid of Lieberman - failed. Tried to stop Supreme court appointments - failed. Tried to stop numerous, unbelievable bills like the Military Commissions act - failed. Tried to pressure congress to end the Iraq war and prevent the "surge" - failed.

I'm sure many would love to take credit for the victory of the Dems in 2006 and Obama in 2008. But, while we did kick in some needed cash, any honest assessment of the 2006 midterm elections would recognize that the Republicans deserve more credit for losing than the Democrats deserve for winning. Far more.

And while Obama deserves ample credit for kicking John McCain's ass, his campaign pretty much bypassed Daily Kos and the netroots. We did, again, do a good job of raising money here, but I certainly wouldn't try to claim credit for Obama's victory. I have little doubt that Obama would have won regardless of whether Daily Kos existed or not.

Now, I know some will be offended by my dismal assessment of our performance. But I believe it is the hard truth. Sure, there have been mini victories along the way. And there's no doubt we gave the Dems a little boost. But the honest truth is, we have failed to impose our will in any meaningful way on the actors in Washington. That's just a fact. And if Obama turns out to be the progressive we all hoped he would, we should call ourselves lucky.

Right now, in Washington, every major interests group is maneuvering to secure their interests in the new Congress and the Obama administration. They are pressuring, threatening, and bribing politicians with campaign cash to make sure they aren't the big losers in the next 4 years.

But not us. We are merely bystanders. Hooing and hawing at what we see with no real means to affect it. And while a great deal of uncertainty exists over what Obama will actually do, I see no indication that the progressive agenda is driving anything in Washington. In fact, it seems as though we didn't win an election at all. It seems we have been shown the door.

By the most optimistic assessment, it's as though we have only one progressive in Washington. Barack Obama, and he's playing at not letting on that he's a progressive.

This is unfortunate. I believe we not only defeated Republicans this year, but we defeated an idea, an ideology if you will. But in Washington you would never know it. Lost in all the conciliatory language of bipartisanship is the reality that we were right all along, that progressive policies are best, and that we predicted much of what has come to pass.

Lost is any sense of accountability. We have so much work to do. We cannot risk waiting to find out what Obama is really going to do. And we sure can't afford the kind of blind loyalty and sycophantism on display here.

I believe in us. Not Washington or any politician to fight for our rights and needs. All I care about is what maximizes people power, and how we, a bunch of ordinary, yet extraordinarily informed citizens can change our government.

Anything that reduces our power as Americans to force our government to do the right thing and work for us is the enemy. Period. We are fighting for our lives. It is deadly serious. In some countries, the parasite class kills Democrats. And they will not give up their piece of the pie without a fight.

Obama said he needs our help. We need to get serious and give it to him. But when he's wrong, we need to make him fear us. That is political power. And if you don't have the stomach for it, then keep posting cat pictures.

And if you really believe that the powers behind George Bush and Dick Cheney, the oil companies, the defense companies, the bankers, are just going to retire now that his presidency is over, then you need to get out of politics.

I am not a religious person, but the only word I can find to describe these people is evil. And there is no "coming together" or "finding common ground" with evil. They hate us. They wish we were dead. In other countries, people like us, people who just want justice and fairness for everyone, end up dead.

In the US, they don't have to kill us because we have no power.

So as you flood diaries about your favorite songs, or pooties, or why so and so is upset with so and so, remember, George Bush kicked our asses. He got what he wanted. Us, we're just hoping one guy will save us.


Salvation? The kossacks still dream of salvation. Just because you eat the blue pill doesn't mean you're not still falling down the rabbithole.

That's a lesson they're still learning.

Ask a silly question, get a "not serious" answer

The Oborg Prime Unit says he wants to know how anyone could do better than tax cuts to aid the economy, and Dr. Krugman obliges:

...First, Mr. Obama should scrap his proposal for $150 billion in business tax cuts, which would do little to help the economy. Ideally he’d scrap the proposed $150 billion payroll tax cut as well, though I’m aware that it was a campaign promise.

Money not squandered on ineffective tax cuts could be used to provide further relief to Americans in distress — enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more. And why not get an early start on the insurance subsidies — probably running at $100 billion or more per year — that will be essential if we’re going to achieve universal health care?

...The Romer-Bernstein report acknowledges that “a dollar of infrastructure spending is more effective in creating jobs than a dollar of tax cuts.” It argues, however, that “there is a limit on how much government investment can be carried out efficiently in a short time frame.” But why does the time frame have to be short?

As far as I can tell, Mr. Obama’s planners have focused on investment projects that will deliver their main jobs boost over the next two years. But since unemployment is likely to remain high well beyond that two-year window, the plan should also include longer-term investment projects.

And bear in mind that even a project that delivers its main punch in, say, 2011 can provide significant economic support in earlier years. If Mr. Obama drops the “jump-start” metaphor, if he accepts the reality that we need a multi-year program rather than a short burst of activity, he can create a lot more jobs through government investment, even in the near term.

Still, shouldn’t Mr. Obama wait for proof that a bigger, longer-term plan is needed? No. Right now the investment portion of the Obama plan is limited by a shortage of “shovel ready” projects, projects ready to go on short notice. A lot more investment can be under way by late 2010 or 2011 if Mr. Obama gives the go-ahead now — but if he waits too long before deciding, that window of opportunity will be gone.

One more thing: even with the Obama plan, the Romer-Bernstein report predicts an average unemployment rate of 7.3 percent over the next three years. That’s a scary number, big enough to pose a real risk that the U.S. economy will get stuck in a Japan-type deflationary trap.

So my advice to the Obama team is to scrap the business tax cuts, and, more important, to deal with the threat of doing too little by doing more. And the way to do more is to stop talking about jump-starts and look more broadly at the possibilities for government investment.


Frankly, Barry O., you should not be worried about what the Republicans and your University of Chicago buddies think about the economy. Or anything else. Their free market deregulation of securities and derivatives landed us in this mess, and the huge drop in revenue their tax cuts have already caused is keeping us owned by the international banks.

But like so many other things, Barry O. and his owners don't want us to look at the bodies floating in the water under the bridge.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects...

Mr. Obama added that he also had “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

“And part of my job,” he continued, “is to make sure that, for example, at the C.I.A., you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.”

The Bush administration has authorized interrogation tactics like waterboarding that critics say skirted federal laws and international treaties, and domestic wiretapping without warrants. But the details of those programs have never been made public, and administration officials have said their actions were legal under a president’s wartime powers...

The issue will also be an important early test of his relationship with conservatives in Congress and the country’s intelligence agencies; both groups oppose any further review.

On other terrorism issues, Mr. Obama suggested in the interview that his approach might be more measured. He said the closing of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which once seemed to be an early top objective, was not likely to happen during the first 100 days of his administration.

“It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” Mr. Obama said, “and we are going to get it done. But part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication.”

... Lawyers who represented Bush administration officials over the years expressed little surprise that Mr. Obama’s legal and national security team had lost whatever appetite it might have had for delving into alleged misdeeds of the Bush years.

“A new president doesn’t want to look vengeful,” said a former Bush White House lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Mr. Obama and has represented administration figures as a private lawyer, “and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.

“No matter how much the Obama administration’s most extreme supporters may be screaming for blood, the president himself doesn’t seem to share that bloodlust.”

Moreover, any effort to conduct a wider re-examination would almost certainly provoke a backlash at the country’s intelligence agencies.

Mark Lowenthal, who was the assistant director for analysis and production at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2005, said if agents were criminally investigated for doing something that top Bush administration officials asked them to do and that they were assured was legal, intelligence officers would be less willing to take risks to protect the country.

“There are just huge costs to the day-to-day operation of intelligence,” Mr. Lowenthal, now the president of the Intelligence and Security Academy, said of a potential investigation. He added that he saw no benefit to such an effort because, he said, the public was not clamoring for it..."


You know kind of like investigating missiles airplanes that hit the Pentagon. No fan base whatsoever.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Seriously

Greenwald:

...Whatever else one might want to say about this "centrist" approach, the absolute last thing one can say about it is that there's anything "new" or "remarkable" about it. The notion that Democrats must spurn their left-wing base and move to the "non-ideological" center is the most conventional of conventional Beltway wisdom (which is why Ignatius, the most conventional of Beltway pundits, is preaching it). That's how Democrats earn their Seriousness credentials, and it's been that way for decades...

It's all about the rockets

I'm sure:



The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine's gas reserves could be much larger...


[tip o'teh tinfoil to chlamor]

Not Gonna Happen in Ponzi Nation

Frank Rich (reproduced below for Fair Use because these things have a way of disppearing or changing after the fact) says pretty much what ought to be done without addressing why it won't be done:

Eight Years of Madoffs

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.

The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq.

The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math.

What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace.

After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.

Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” Two officials tasked with marketing oil on behalf of American taxpayers got so blotto at a daytime golf event sponsored by Shell that they became too incapacitated to drive and had to be put up by the oil company.

Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bush’s Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom (monogrammed towels included).

It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” That accounting is conservative. There are still too many unanswered questions.

Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan?

And, for extra credit, whatever did happen to Bush’s records from the Texas Air National Guard?

The biggest question hovering over all this history, however, concerns the future more than the past. If we get bogged down in adjudicating every Bush White House wrong, how will we have the energy, time or focus to deal with the all-hands-on-deck crises that this administration’s malfeasance and ineptitude have bequeathed us? The president-elect himself struck this note last spring. “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Barack Obama said. “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

Henry Waxman, the California congressman who has been our most tireless inquisitor into Bush scandals, essentially agreed when I spoke to him last week. Though he remains outraged about both the chicanery used to sell the Iraq war and the administration’s overall abuse of power, he adds: “I don’t see Congress pursuing it. We’ve got to move on to other issues.” He would rather see any prosecutions augmented by an independent investigation that fills in the historical record. “We need to depoliticize it,” he says. “If a Democratic Congress or administration pursues it, it will be seen as partisan.”

We could certainly do worse than another 9/11 Commission. Among those Americans still enraged about the Bush years, there are also calls for truth and reconciliation commissions, war crimes trials and, in a petition movement on Obama’s transition Web site, a special prosecutor in the Patrick Fitzgerald mode. One of the sharpest appointments yet made by the incoming president may support decisive action: Dawn Johnsen, a law professor and former Clinton administration official who last week was chosen to run the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.

This is the same office where the Bush apparatchik John Yoo produced his infamous memos justifying torture. Johnsen is a fierce critic of such constitutional abuses. In articles for Slate last year, she wondered “where is the outrage, the public outcry” over a government that has acted lawlessly and that “does not respect the legal and moral bounds of human decency.” She asked, “How do we save our country’s honor, and our own?”

The last is not a rhetorical question. While our new president indeed must move on and address the urgent crises that cannot wait, Bush administration malfeasance can’t be merely forgotten or finessed. A new Justice Department must enforce the law; Congress must press outstanding subpoenas to smoke out potential criminal activity; every legal effort must be made to stop what seems like a wholesale effort by the outgoing White House to withhold, hide and possibly destroy huge chunks of its electronic and paper trail. As Johnsen wrote last March, we must also “resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists.”

As if to anticipate the current debate, she added that “we must avoid any temptation simply to move on,” because the national honor cannot be restored “without full disclosure.” She was talking about America regaining its international reputation in the aftermath of our government’s descent into the dark side of torture and “extraordinary rendition.” But I would add that we need full disclosure of the more prosaic governmental corruption of the Bush years, too, for pragmatic domestic reasons. To make the policy decisions ahead of us in the economic meltdown, we must know what went wrong along the way in the executive and legislative branches alike.

As the financial historian Ron Chernow wrote in the Times last week, we could desperately use a Ferdinand Pecora, the investigator who illuminated the history of the 1929 meltdown in Senate hearings on the eve of the New Deal. The terrain to be mined would include not just the usual Wall Street suspects and their Congressional and regulatory enablers but also the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a strangely neglected ground zero in the foreclosure meltdown. The department’s secretary, Alphonso Jackson, resigned in March amid still-unresolved investigations over whether he enriched himself and friends with government contracts.

The tentative and amorphous $800 billion stimulus proposed by Obama last week sounds like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket when set against the damage it must help counteract: more than $10 trillion in new debt and new obligations piled up by the Bush administration in eight years, as calculated by the economists Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current Harper’s Magazine.

If Bernie Madoff, at least, can still revive what remains of our deadened capacity for outrage, so can those who pulled off Washington’s Ponzi schemes. The more we learn about where all the bodies and billions were buried on our path to ruin, the easier it may be for our new president to make the case for a bold, whatever-it-takes New Deal.


Let's look at who opened up the graveyard where all the bodies are buried.

Let's repeat this:

...The terrain to be mined would include not just the usual Wall Street suspects and their Congressional and regulatory enablers but also the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a strangely neglected ground zero in the foreclosure meltdown. The department’s secretary, Alphonso Jackson, resigned in March amid still-unresolved investigations over whether he enriched himself and friends with government contracts...


Open up that can of worms and the wigglers will show you, it wasn't just the Rethuglicans plundering the Treasury and whatever nest egg you've managed to scrape together.

The Jolly Roger was first raised under the Clintons and every DINOcrat pol from Reid to Pelosi to the dynamic duo of the Senator from MBNA and his Chicago School Oborg Prime Leader has has been dipping his or her wick in the fat and burning it at both ends.

The Rethuglicans were stupider about it. But consider: were they really stupid collectively? We are a lot further away from being a Constitutional Republic than we were 8 years ago. Yes, there was a paroxysm of revulsion against Bu$hie this year.

But the feeling of learned helplessness is priceless- and particularly so once the most volatile ethnic mix in America, the African Americans, learn the lesson they're about to be taught by what they think is their own on the Unity Pony.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Winning the battle, losing the war

Some say it's lost already.



There's something winning about the use of white phosphorus on civilian populations.

I believe the total score today is 13 Israelis (4 civilians + 9 soldiers), 820 Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Company is pulling out all the stops on their international astroturfers.

Meet the New Boss



Same as the Old Boss

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be “a central part” of his administration’s efforts to contain federal spending...


Friday, January 09, 2009

No Special Interests but His Own

Truthdig:

President-elect Barack Obama has banned corporations and big donors from funding his Jan. 20 inauguration. But 90% of donations received so far have been raised by well-heeled fund-raisers, including Wall Street executives whose companies have received billions of dollars in federal bailout money.

A total of 207 fund-raisers have collected $24.8 million of the $27.3 million in contributions disclosed by Mr. Obama through Thursday, according to an analysis by nonpartisan campaign finance group Public Citizen commissioned by The Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street employees, as a group, have been the biggest single source of these private donations, according to the analysis. Much of their donations—$5.7 million total—has been channeled through financial-services executives who each have bundled together donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars...


It's a great way to keep the competition down, isn't it?

" Change is just a new paint job on the old rustbucket"

"Now Are You Starting To Get It?" Rainbow Demon has.

via Avedon, who has also figured it out- a long time ago- and says:

"I'm really glad Obama is refusing to put lobbyists in his administration, and torturers, except for the ones he's putting into his administration.".

The Chicago School Preznit's Plan

The natives are restless. The ones Goldman-$acks hasn't bought out are uneasy anyway:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan ran into crossfire from his own party in Congress on Thursday, suggesting that quick passage of spending programs and tax cuts could require more time and negotiation than Democrats once hoped.

Senate Democrats complained that major components of his plan were not bold enough and urged more focus on creating jobs and rebuilding the nation’s energy infrastructure rather than cutting taxes.

Just hours earlier, Mr. Obama called for speedy passage of the stimulus measure, warning that the recession “could linger for years” if Congress did not pass his plan within weeks.

Further complicating the picture, Democratic senators said Thursday that they would try to attach legislation to the package that would allow bankruptcy courts to modify home loans, a move Republicans have opposed...


Bu$hie has given close to $400 billion dollars to banks theoretically to serve as capital for business loans, but which bankers have admitted they're using as a war chest for further speculative ventures and takeovers. Oh, yeah, and CEO payrolls.

But keep track of the money? Now, that's funny.


Ca$h'n'carry: "...you mistake me for someone
who gives a shit"


Paul$on's Treasury has given a further $2 trillion dollars in loans over the last 6 months that Congress hasn't had to approve. Same results. The big money just gets bigger.

So now Congress- the Democratic side, some of which is marginally saner- is thinking perhaps they should spend money on, you know, rescuing the economy instead of tax breaks. Because you can't spend that money if there's nothing to spend it on, and middle class American's can't get tax breaks if they don't have jobs.

Krugman:

...To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

Now, fiscal stimulus can sometimes have a “multiplier” effect: In addition to the direct effects of, say, investment in infrastructure on demand, there can be a further indirect effect as higher incomes lead to higher consumer spending. Standard estimates suggest that a dollar of public spending raises G.D.P. by around $1.50.

But only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: “lots of buck, not much bang.”

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is unlikely to close more than half of the looming output gap, and could easily end up doing less than a third of the job...


What's wrong with this economy and the Nation is that the same corporate interests that bought the Republican party also now own about half the Democrats. And they have a lien on the new Hope and Change Preznit, too. But Oprah's okay with this: her sponsors keep it cushy regardless of what's down on the block.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

The Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove

Hope and Change.

Except for, you know, what's important.

Chris Floyd:

If you want a glimpse of the fundamental moral obscenity that underlies our bold new era of hope and change, look no further than Barack Obama's promise this week to "overhaul" Social Security and Medicare. This effort to cut back on support for the sick, the old, the weak, the unfortunate and the abandoned will be a "central part" of the new administration's economic program, a linchpin of its struggle to curb federal spending, Obama declared.

He pointed to a looming federal deficit of $1.2 trillion this year, with more to follow, as urgent reasons to deal with "entitlement spending." Given the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Bush Regime has already given away in its no-strings bailout of selected corporate cronies, and the hundreds of billions that Obama plans to spend on "economic stimulus" (a large portion of which is going to "tax breaks" that will give, at most, a few hundred dollars to people losing their jobs and homes and medical insurance), it is imperative to get government spending under control, said the president-elect. The New York Times described Obama's remarks as an effort to offer "some soothing words to Republicans and the financial markets" – two groups who certainly need special comforting in these trying times.

The Times goes on to tell us helpfully that there is a threat that these "entitlement programs" might "grow so large as to be unsustainable in the long run." This is of course the same argument that George W. Bush made after the 2004 election, when he sought to sell off Social Security to those same "financial markets" that Obama is now trying so assiduously to soothe. No doubt, we will soon see the old scare stories that filled the media then trotted out once again, this time in "progressive" garb. But the truth remains the same: the programs are essentially sound and can be maintained with only relatively small adjustments for many decades, as far as one can reasonably project into the future.

Yet it is here, on "entitlements," that Obama wants to make a "tough stand" on government spending. It will be a "central part" of his entire economic program. Getting "entitlements" under control will be one of the first major campaigns of his administration, he says, promising plans in February, just days after he moves into the White House.

At the same time, he promises to expand – to expand – the multitrillion-dollar war machine that has literally bled the nation dry. He wants to expand a military-industrial-security complex that already devours more money and resources than every other military force on earth combined. He wants more troops, more weapons, an ever-increasing "global strike capability," an escalation of the endless, pointless "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan (for starters). He has never said a single word about "curbing government spending" on this vast conglomerate of death and destruction. He has not said a single word about rolling back even a few of American military outposts that in their several hundreds now cover the entire globe. At every point, it seems, government spending on the war machine – including the tens of billions of dollars spent in secret each year on the various tentacles of the "national security" apparatus – will be increased under the Obama administration.

No "cutbacks" here then. No concerns that spending in this area might "grow so large as to be unsustainable in the long run." Spending on death and domination is sacrosanct, the true "third rail of American politics," and Obama is not going to touch it – except to augment it...

The president-elect has made his fundamental priorities clear – for anyone who wants to see them. The war machine and the financial markets will continue to be gorged and comforted in their wonted manner. Programs to help ordinary citizens, programs to enhance the quality of life for individuals and the well-being of society, will be the first – perhaps the only – areas to feel the budget axe. Whatever you may think of the efficacy of such programs, this ordering of priorities -- war and profits over people -- bespeaks the same depraved sensibility that has prevailed for generations in Washington. It is the same old rancid swill in a stylish new container


Read it all for the links.

Here's what the Oborg Prime Unit said today:

...Throughout America's history, there have been some years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare, and then there are the years that come along once in a generation, the kind that mark a clean break from a troubled past and set a new course for our nation. This is one of those years.

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks. Nearly 2 million jobs have been now lost, and on Friday we're likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a 28-year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.

Now, I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and our standing in the world.

In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse...


Well, so much for the Shock part of the Doctrine. We must act Now! Without further thought!

...this plan begins with -- this plan must begin today, a plan I am confident will save or create at least 3 million jobs over the next few years. It is not just another public-works program; it's a plan that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment -- the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there's so much work to be done. And that's why we'll invest in priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century. That's why the overwhelming majority of the jobs created will be in the private sector...


Well, Dr. Krugman, so much for your public works program focusing on rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. Looks like it's going to go to Kellogg, Brown, and Root & Cheneyburton Affiliates instead.

...To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all of America's medical records are computerized...


Bafflement. Pretty much they already are... oh, you meant for the insurance companies to have a current database, right?

...To get people spending again, 95 percent of working families will receive a thousand-dollar tax cut, the first stage of a middle-class tax cut that I promised during the campaign and will include in our next budget...


Trying to please Joe the Plumber, one supposes. Fuhgeddaboudit. You can not buy his vote.

...the time has come to build a 21st-century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded. That's why I'm asking Congress to work with me and my team day and night, on weekends if necessary, to get the plan passed in the next few weeks. That's why I'm calling on all Americans -- Democrats and Republicans and independents -- to kut -- to put good ideas ahead of the old ideological battles, a sense of common purpose above the same narrow partisanship, and insist that the first question each of us asks isn't "What's good for me?" but "What's good for the country my children will inherit?"


Barry, baby, that's exactly what I'm thinking.

And what do you suppose the "old ideological battles" are about, Barry?

Ideas

If progressives are not entirely on your side, it's because you don't seem entirely on our side.

FDR had good ideas to halt the Great Depression, ideas that were partially implemented, then repealed, prolonging the pain once they were repealed.

What ended the Depression even with Roosevelt being forced to abandon his public works program was a greater public works program known as World War II. This has not been lost upon some. Barry O. has his public service programs planned- and the Company has theirs planned too.

The Legendary Big Time Dick: True as the Northern Star

Cheney: It’s Just An ‘Urban Legend’ That I ‘Exceeded My Authority’ As Vice President

...Here are just some examples of Cheney abusing his vice presidential powers:

– Argued he was not part of the executive branch but instead a “barnacle” hanging between the legislative and executive branch.

– Cheney’s office failed to provide data on its classification and declassification activities as required by Executive Order 12958. “Cheney’s office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped.”

– Top Cheney aide David Addington “typed a substitute signature line” for Alberto Gonzales on a memo re-authorizing Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

– “The Cheney team had…technological supremacy over the National Security Council staff. That is to say, they could read their e-mails,” said former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson.

– Documents prepared for the then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were “routed outside the formal process” to Cheney.

– A Cheney lawyer told the Secret Service in September 2006 “to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence.”

In addition to his well-documented disregard for the rule of law, Cheney admitted last year that he doesn’t care what the public thinks...


The men- if you could call them human- behind the Legend of the Big Time Dick? If he walks, David Addington and countless minions and enablers, private contractors and underworld spooks also walk.

And continue to operate, outside the law.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

The NeoLiberal-In-Chief Prepares to Grasp the Third Rail

Ah, but the Uniborg slips back to his Chicago School roots as he feels the insulation of all that political capital... just like another Dear Leader reached for the Holy Grail of the Party that opposed FDR:

WASHINGTON – Pointing with concern to "red ink as far as the eye can see," President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs — even as he campaigned anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the sinking economy...


Of course, now why didn't Bu$hie think of that! Junk those commie Social Security and Medicare programs! Let the Free Market work. It's done so well over the last 8 years...

While you're at it, Barry O., re-instate a draft for everyone in their early 20s! That'll end unemployment. Tax cuts! That'll pump liquidity into the economy. They've worked so well over the last 8 years. Serious problems require serious solutions!

Why, of course he's a progressive liberal, he's just keeping Robert Gates around because he has a secret plan up his sleeve. You've got to have Hope and Belief and Faith. United We Stand.

Be Serious. Barry O. is. Pity, that.

Trolling Uber Alles



Noah Shachtman says Big Brother is out there commenting, but as usual, the soldiers with the desk jobs all have names like Regent University graduates:

Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don't be surprised. They're just following the service's new "counter-blogging" flow chart. In a twelve-point plan, put together by the emerging technology division of the Air Force's public affairs arm, airmen are given guidance on how to handle "trolls," "ragers" -- and even well-informed online writers, too. It's all part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force," Captain David Faggard says...


Captain Faggard? I'll never tell, and I certainly didn't ask...

Henry the K. just comes out and says it:

via Cryptogon

That's why senior statesmen like Rummy or Big Time Dick or Henry the Killer are so great. They triumphally proclaim what their minions are discreet enough to just dance around.

Speaking of dancing with wolves, how long do you think the Oborg will take to implement their unemployment solution.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Where it becomes obvious the Oborg Prime Unit watches too much TV

Krugman:

...So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN’s Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way...


Gupta is a qualified neurosurgeon. Gupta is a smart hardworking Detroit suburb kid who made very good, and who obviously enjoys the spotlight. Gupta is classic Oborg, "beyond politics", i.e. really very connected with both the Democrat and Republican parties, who plays fast and loose with the facts to advance his own talking points, and whose only real affiliation is with his own bank account.

Hundreds of thousands of physicians in this country, many who are also premier basic scientists, students of the process of disease and healing, and devoted participants in public health administration. So the Uniborg pick a cablevision doctor.

I have to close this by quoting Avedon again:

...This is the thing that always worries me about Obama - he seems very much a part of that subgroup of people in his age group who fell hook, line, and sinker for the "libertarian" excuses to oppose liberalism, because he doesn't know any better. And unlike a lot of other people in that group, he hasn't learned anything from the last eight years. I have a friend who seems convinced that Obama is the Real Deal because he spoke to him back during his Senate race and learned that Obama really doesn't like Bush - but, really, despising Bush is a pretty low threshold. Not many people ever really liked Bush, anyway. What's important is understanding why the policies are bad, and listening to Obama talk about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, I get the feeling he doesn't really know what was wrong with Iraq, either. Same with healthcare.


But if he'd really known he'd never been allowed to be the Figurehead-In-Chief, would he?

If he really understood what the Village and the Company were all about he'd never choose Leon Panetta to head the CIA. The Company is about to do things to Obama that would make what they did to Carter seem mild. Illinois politics is tough, but it's a cakewalk compared to spook central at Langley.

Ball of confusion, baby.

Ball of Confusion



If it were only so simple.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The recent carnage in Gaza has left little doubt that within the tortured dynamic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both the chicken and the egg have completely and utterly lost their minds.

Regardless of who's to blame for the origins of the conflict, shame on both Hamas and Israel for their recent violations of international law that have led to a humanitarian inferno in Gaza and southern Israel.

Hamas is to be blamed for its sophomoric provocation of its neighbor's military wrath by firing missiles into southern Israel. Israel also should be condemned for its disproportionately inhumane onslaught in Gaza, which has currently left 555 people dead and 2,750 injured, according to Palestinian medical sources cited by CNN. The United Nations estimates that at least 25 percent of Palestinians killed have been civilians.

Simply put, both sides have committed acts tantamount to "war crimes," and both continue to violate international law repeatedly in this nightmare.

Under international law, the Geneva Conventions prohibit armed reprisals that intentionally inflict "collective punishment" against civilian populations as well as the targeting of nonmilitary targets.

Both Israel (with its military onslaught in Gaza) and Hamas (with its primitive rocket-firing into southern Israel) violate Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which states: "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited..."


Except the round of Hamas missile firing that started this murder-go-round didn't kill anybody has killed "20 Israelis killed by those rockets since 2005 (four of them in the current violence)"- and lately totally avoided military targets in range in Gaza and Israel, while the latest violence has killed " more than 600 dead and 2,500 wounded" Palestinians in Gaza.

Now Hezbollah is weighing in, shooting rockets at Israel from Lebanon.

This is starting to sound familiar...

...and the band plays on...

All the Right People Seem to Hate Him

That's a strong point in Leon Panetta's favor.

WASHINGTON — Leon E. Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff, has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Central Intelligence Agency. The choice, disclosed Monday by Democratic officials, immediately revealed divisions in the party as two senior lawmakers questioned why Mr. Obama would nominate a candidate with limited experience in intelligence matters.

The job was the last unfilled major post for Mr. Obama, who has criticized the agency for using interrogation methods he characterized as torture. Democratic officials said Mr. Obama had selected Mr. Panetta for his managerial skills, his bipartisan standing, and the foreign policy and budget experience he gained under President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Panetta has himself been a sharp critic of the agency’s interrogation practices. Some Democrats expressed strong support for the choice, with Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, describing him as “one of the finest public servants I have ever served with and dealt with since he left the White House.”


Uh, Harry...

But Madame Military-Industrial Complex and her drinking buddies don't like him:

... Among the lawmakers who expressed skepticism about the choice was Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the new chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Ms. Feinstein, who would oversee any confirmation hearing for Mr. Panetta, issued a statement that signaled clear disapproval and said she had not been notified about the choice.

“My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time,” she said.

A second top Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the departing chairman of the Intelligence Committee, shares Ms. Feinstein’s concerns, Democratic Congressional aides said.

Ms. Feinstein’s Republican counterpart on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, said he would be “looking hard at Panetta’s intelligence expertise and qualifications...”


Doesn't like torture? Or Homeland covert ops? Or listening to everyone and taking names? Or maybe it's because Panetta might not appreciate $600 million dollar contracts handed out to the likes of Richard Blum, Senator Feinstein's husband.

...URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army contract Monday worth up to $600 million.

The award to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism efforts is the latest in a string of plum defense jobs snared by URS. In February, the firm won an army engineering and logistics contract that could bring in $3.1 billion during the next eight years.

Government contracting has come under increasing scrutiny by Congress and citizen groups, with critics decrying the political connections of firms winning lucrative jobs. Richard Blum, Feinstein's husband, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of the firm's stock...


On the Village upside, if Reid says he likes him, it means Panetta's willing to leave the discreet money alone and let the Company work quietly, or at least Reid respects him enough to plant his shiv in his back and not his face.

Monday, January 05, 2009

What is this "End" They Speak Of?



From The End of the Financial World as We Know It
By Michael Lewis and David Einhorn

...Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

To that end consider the strange story of Harry Markopolos. Mr. Markopolos is the former investment officer with Rampart Investment Management in Boston who, for nine years, tried to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard L. Madoff couldn’t be anything other than a fraud. Mr. Madoff’s investment performance, given his stated strategy, was not merely improbable but mathematically impossible. And so, Mr. Markopolos reasoned, Bernard Madoff must be doing something other than what he said he was doing.

In his devastatingly persuasive 17-page letter to the S.E.C., Mr. Markopolos saw two possible scenarios. In the “Unlikely” scenario: Mr. Madoff, who acted as a broker as well as an investor, was “front-running” his brokerage customers. A customer might submit an order to Madoff Securities to buy shares in I.B.M. at a certain price, for example, and Madoff Securities instantly would buy I.B.M. shares for its own portfolio ahead of the customer order. If I.B.M.’s shares rose, Mr. Madoff kept them; if they fell he fobbed them off onto the poor customer.

In the “Highly Likely” scenario, wrote Mr. Markopolos, “Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme.” Which, as we now know, it was.

Harry Markopolos sent his report to the S.E.C. on Nov. 7, 2005 — more than three years before Mr. Madoff was finally exposed — but he had been trying to explain the fraud to them since 1999. He had no direct financial interest in exposing Mr. Madoff — he wasn’t an unhappy investor or a disgruntled employee. There was no way to short shares in Madoff Securities, and so Mr. Markopolos could not have made money directly from Mr. Madoff’s failure. To judge from his letter, Harry Markopolos anticipated mainly downsides for himself: he declined to put his name on it for fear of what might happen to him and his family if anyone found out he had written it. And yet the S.E.C.’s cursory investigation of Mr. Madoff pronounced him free of fraud.

What’s interesting about the Madoff scandal, in retrospect, is how little interest anyone inside the financial system had in exposing it. It wasn’t just Harry Markopolos who smelled a rat. As Mr. Markopolos explained in his letter, Goldman Sachs was refusing to do business with Mr. Madoff; many others doubted Mr. Madoff’s profits or assumed he was front-running his customers and steered clear of him. Between the lines, Mr. Markopolos hinted that even some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have suspected that they were the beneficiaries of a scam. After all, it wasn’t all that hard to see that the profits were too good to be true. Some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have reasoned that the worst that could happen to them, if the authorities put a stop to the front-running, was that a good thing would come to an end.

The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

A lot has been said and written, for instance, about the corrupting effects on Wall Street of gigantic bonuses. What happened inside the major Wall Street firms, though, was more deeply unsettling than greedy people lusting for big checks: leaders of public corporations, especially financial corporations, are as good as required to lead for the short term.

Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, may have paid themselves humongous sums of money at the end of each year, as a result of the bond market bonanza. But if any one of them had set himself up as a whistleblower — had stood up and said “this business is irresponsible and we are not going to participate in it” — he would probably have been fired. Not immediately, perhaps. But a few quarters of earnings that lagged behind those of every other Wall Street firm would invite outrage from subordinates, who would flee for other, less responsible firms, and from shareholders, who would call for his resignation. Eventually he’d be replaced by someone willing to make money from the credit bubble.

OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest...


Military Intelligence. Financial Integrity. Where's George Carlin when we really need him?

Putting Your Money Where Your Putz Is

Avedon (and Joe) got this right again:

We used to tax the hell out these guys and we were the land of opportunity, a rich and prosperous nation full of innovators and entrepreneurial spirit and actually making things that people wanted to buy. Let's do that again!


The New York Pravda et alia are making a big hairy deal about how swell an idea Obama's $300 billion tax cut is.

I think it's idiocy, myself. Use that money instead to create jobs building things that work and last. And if the Republicans don't like it?

Pull out that big Executive Order pen, baby. If Bu$hie could sink a $trillion into Iraq, Obama can sink a $trillion into the recovery on infrastructure and rebuilding and renewable solar energy.

Simple Answers to Difficult Questions

Will we in fact do what’s necessary to prevent Great Depression II?

No.

FUBAR

Beyond all recognition.

So much for the chance that the Oborg term will be anything more than a ball of funky confusion until Jebbie gets $elected in 2012.

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion of tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts -- which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years -- is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated. It may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely more heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

The Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of President George W. Bush's tax cuts did in their first two years. Mr. Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut of 2001, considered the largest in history, contained $174 billion of cuts during its first two full years, according to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. The second-largest tax cut -- the 10-year, $350 billion package engineered by Mr. Bush in 2003 -- contained $231 billion in 2004 and 2005...


Expanding wars, forgetting about rescinding the Bu$hCo tax cuts on the top 5% incomes, no re-regulation of banks and securities, no prosecution for Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton, Faith-based everything.

Bubbles, anyone?

The more things Change, the more they stay the strange.

Lack of Cognitive Dissonance

That's what's screwed up the economy.

On the top three most popular posts in The Wall Street Pravda today:

# 1. Obama, Democrats Eye $300 Billion Tax Cut
# 2. Why We Keep Falling for Financial Scams
# 3. 2009 Could Be Better Than You Think


Could be. But if 1 and 2 don't connect, 3?

I doubt it.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Surgical Strikes

Surgical strikes, like a sawed-off shotgun blast in a crowded room.


(Note: The photo shows Israeli forces dropping white phosphorus shells, which “can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.”)


White phosphorus is legal as a smokescreen source in limited amounts in a controlled ground burn- but as used here a sustantial airburst showers people below with elemental phosphorus, burning flesh, and producing concentrated phosphoric acid as a by-product with water. Which also burns flesh.

Certainly that should sound familiar. After all, white phosphorus is what we used to sterilize Fallujah.

With predictable results:



Apparently the medics are also pulling depleted uranium out of the civilian casualties as well [tip o'teh tinfoil to Peter of Lone Tree and the Dark Wraith].

Now that will certainly buck any deflationary trend!

They Couldn't Fail to Fail



Darth Cheneyburton spews the new Party line for the weak-minded.

The lie quoted chapter and verse from Limbaugh to Hannity and all points in-between: the economic crisis is a progressive liberal Democrat invention to win the election.

This, despite constant warnings from economists like Paul Krugman over the last 10 years about the consequences of economic bubbles with unraveling banking and securities regulations.

The facts: regulators within the government have been trying to get the S.E.C. to deal with the Ponzi scheme that the stock market has become for years.

Susie Madrak quotes The New York Pravda, which is finally noticing something funny has gone on:

...The American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Electric and the municipal bond guarantors Ambac Financial and MBIA all had triple-A ratings. (G.E. still does!) Large investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch all had solid investment grade ratings. It’s almost as if the higher the rating of a financial institution, the more likely it was to contribute to financial catastrophe. But of course all these big financial companies fueled the creation of the credit products that in turn fueled the revenues of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

These oligopolies, which are actually sanctioned by the S.E.C., didn’t merely do their jobs badly. They didn’t simply miss a few calls here and there. In pursuit of their own short-term earnings, they did exactly the opposite of what they were meant to do: rather than expose financial risk they systematically disguised it.


But Pravda would have you believe it's all a result of irrational exuberance.

One knows better. This is Company policy. Chaos is the plan.

Pot Calling the Kettle Black



Thank you very much, Senator from MGM Mirage Casino [and thank you very much, Avedon]:

...Sources say the Senate majority leader pushed against Jackson and Davis — both democratic congressmen from Illinois — and against Jones — the Illinois Senate president who is the political godfather of President-elect Barack Obama — because he did not believe the three men were electable. He feared losing the seat to a Republican in a future election.

Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero confirmed that Reid (D-Nev.) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — the new chief of the Senate Democratic political operation — each called Blagojevich’s campaign office separately Dec. 3. Sources believe that at least portions of the phone conversations are on tape.

Before their contacts, Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called Blagojevich to tell him to expect to hear from Senate leadership because they were pushing against Jackson and others, according to statements the governor made to others...


Back to emptywheel:

...This is certainly a stunningly rich development from about every perspective imaginable. Harry Reid has threatened to use the Capitol Police to forcefully haul Roland Burris off the Senate floor should he try to enter because he feels Burris is tainted by Blagojevich's shady machinations of the open Senate seat. Only it turns out that Reid is the one smack in the middle of Blago's machinations, not Burris. And it would appear he is on Pat Fitzgerald's wiretaps doing so...

... Reid has been steadfastly determined to block the appointment of three black elected politicians - Emil Jones, Danny Davis and Jesse Jackson, Jr. because they are supposedly "not electable"; in favor of a white woman, Tammy Duckworth who has, you know, been previously found unelectable by the voters of Illinois. Or another white woman, Lisa Madigan, who managed to get elected mostly on the coattails of her powerful Chicago machine daddy. Lovely; what a picture that paints.

Oh, and now that nice gentlemanly 71 year old Roland Burris, another black man, who has previously been elected to statewide office in Illinois, can't be permitted in the hallowed Senate doors either. George Wallace must be laughing his butt off at Reid's bad optics and unseemly folly...

Harry Reid will be the featured guest on Meet the Press Sunday morning. Jane Hamsher has already raised the curious difference between how Reid and the Democratic leadership has treated Roland Burris and how they handled and accepted Joe Lieberman, Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Ted Stevens and Larry Craig, or for that matter the evisceration of Habeas Corpus, the Fourth Amendment and the Geneva and UN Conventions against torture. No moral leadership whatsoever was shown on any of those; anybody think it will occur to self aggrandized inquisitor David Gregory to examine Harry Reid over the discrepancy?


Hamsher isn't the only one.

One can only hope the fall of Blago the Rug sucks the Senator from the MGM Mirage Casino and the Son of the Irgun into the vortex as well.

Memos on the Wailing Wall

The Dark Wraith writes letters to a sockpuppet of the Company.

The 30%

Frank Rich deconstructs a preznit who seems smaller than life but notes:

...The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life...


That's about the proportion of the 'Merikan public that's supported him from day 1, aside from the Rovian electoral theft and poll spin.

Rich also marvels:

...You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.


It's quite simple, really. Bu$hie Bunnypants has never been the person in control. He's nothing more than an arrogant child playing cowboy who is all hat and no cattle, while the grown-up Black Hats who present him to the public steal the ranch.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

"...Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution."

Or both, to the chagrin of the Dominion. This is year old news, but a goodie, nonetheless...

2008: Worst UFO Media Year Ever!
By Billy Cox


(actually a similar encounter over Phoenix, 1997 above)


...2008 was shaping up as a garden-variety yawner. Until the drama over Stephenville, Tex., shook down. And as a result of the MSM’s evaporation in the aftermath of this still-unresolved national security fiasco, De Void has proclaimed 2008 as The Media’s Worst UFO Year Ever.

To be sure, there was an initial stampede to the Stephenville region shortly after Empire-Tribune reporter Angelia Joiner’s accounting of the Jan. 8 UFO incident made the wires. TV crews came from as far away as Japan to get the story, and why not? There were plenty of loquacious witnesses to the lit-up, bigger-than-an-aircraft-carrier flying machine that glided silently over the little cow town and reversed its course. Eyewitnesses included cops and a pilot. Better yet, several reported military jet fighters scrambling after it.

An Air Force Base at nearby Fort Worth denied it had planes in the air that night, which was good enough for Newsweek. The emaciated weekly magazine didn’t waste any precious print on the story, but it did run a “Web Exclusive” by a “lecturer in English at Yale University” who attributed the suppertime sighting to sleep deprivation.

But then, not quite two weeks after the incident, as the hoopla subsided, Carswell Field made the surprise announcement that yes, it did indeed have warplanes in the air on the 8th. Not one or two, but 10. Ten F-16s. “Routine training missions.” Its press release said nothing about the UFO. Which raised another question – why bother with issuing a press release at all? Why not just let the event die a natural death? The official statement went against the USAF's own interests. It meant the eyewitnesses were credible.

Carswell’s reversal generated another brief wire-service cycle, but it had nothing to fear from the media.

In May, Dateline NBC promoted a UFO ratings-month special called “Ten Close Encounters Caught on Tape.” Host Hoda Kotb was more into rhymes (“Tonight, an extraterrestrial creature feature!”) and lame cliches (“The experts can argue until they’re as green as the little men whose existence they debate”) as she reviewed UFO cases from as far back as half a century ago. This lady had network resources to work with. And she said nothing about Stephenville. Zilcho.

The reason for Carswell’s embarrassing press release became clear in July when the Mutual UFO Network uncorked an online bombshell – a 77-page evaluation of radar records from 4 to 8 p.m. near Stephenville [.pdf, here].

In response to MUFON’s Freedom of Information Act request, the FAA produced a 139-meg CD tracking 2.8 million radar hits during that time span along the UFO flight corridor on a southeast beeline toward Crawford, site of President Bush’s “Western White House.” The timeline tapered off at 8 o’clock sharp, the end of MUFON’s request window – with the UFO just 10 miles from Bush’s ranch, and six miles from its restricted air space.

Although the F-16s ventured into unauthorized civilian air space and pulled to within a mile of the object, which carried no transponder and flew at speeds between 49 mph and 2,100 mph, they were nowhere near the craft when it reached Crawford. Neither Carswell nor any other Defense Department entity released radar data, but the former turned over its flight logs for that evening, all of which had been redacted.

“Four days after our FOIAs hit the FAA, they (the military) knew we’d show they had planes all over the place that night,” study investigator Glen Schulze told De Void. “They didn’t have much choice. Fort Worth radar data shows the F-16s from takeoff the landing at Carswell Air Force Base.”

This was an incredible story. Especially the non-responses from various military bureaucracies. There was a brief allusion to the MUFON report on Larry “non sequitur” King. But no wire service coverage. Not even The Wall Street Journal. During the first public presentation of the data in San Jose, Calif., in July, the San Francisco Chronicle showed up, but its reporter didn’t have a clue.

“A chart full of purple dots and black arrows that may or may not indicate aliens flew over President Bush’s Texas ranch in January,” wrote Steve Rubenstein. “The dots and arrows on the chart are as plain as day.”

Schulze, a resident of Littleton, Col., couldn’t even draw ink from the hometown media. But he pointed out that the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News managed to cover Denver rez Jeff Peckman’s press conference, which advocated spending municipal funds on an extraterrestrial liaison committeee.

During the September sweeps, ABC Prime Time aired a rehash of Peter Jennings’ “Seeing Is Believing” report from 2005. There was a brief mention of Stephenville, but reporter David Muir didn’t bother to question military authorities about the FAA records. Which appear to have documented a serious breach of national security. Just for the record, when contacted by De Void, Carswell PIO Maj. Karl Lewis says his employer has no comment on what he describes as MUFON “speculation.”

Finally, in November, during the last ratings period of 2008, CNN’s Miles O’Brien filed a week-long UFO series (pre-empted by the terror attacks in Mumbai) without mentioning the Stephenville case once. Internet cassandras charge O’Brien was terminated immediately thereafter because he dared to venture into The Great Taboo. CNN said it canned O’Brien and its entire science staff as a cost-cutting measure, and there’s no reason to doubt that. No sinister government agency could've possibly been threatened by O’Brien’s UFO reporting.



Stephenville was the only UFO story that mattered in 2008, because it was one of those rare instances where federal records supported eyewitness accounts. It showcased a military response to a threat against the home of the United States president. And the Air Force got away with its lack of accountability (again) because the press wasn’t interested.

Which raises another question: If the MSM’s stunning financial collapse hits critical mass this year, will anyone notice?


No, because it's like the private equity boys all say: no body notices you're broke until you tell them.

And to paraphrase Dr. Thompson, nobody notices something weird is going on unless they figure out all the strange agents have gone professional.

Let's end this with an older post from Billy Cox:

...Huyghe favorably compares the MUFON report with the depth of last year’s National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena analysis of a UFO incident over Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in November 2006. NARCAP’s team of scientists concluded the UFO that reportedly ripped a discernible hole through the clouds above a United Airlines gate posed a “definite potential threat to flight operations.”

Initial coverage of that event by The Chicago Tribune triggered an avalanche of international press after it broke on New Year’s Day 2007. Ditto for the initial reports on the Stephenville UFO. But when follow-up research that touts boring stuff like “science” and “data” gets released, the MSM just doesn’t have the chops for it.

But again, this really isn’t about UFOs.

“We’ve not been given a full accounting of national security aerial threats since 9/11,” Huyghe says. “We’ve got a few reports of Cessna overflights into restricted airspace, but that’s about it.

“You’ve got a Homeland Security Department that considers itself above the law; they don’t have to answer to anybody, and the media doesn’t really care. This story’s got no legs at all. It’s not going anywhere.”

Still, the MSM’s corroded attention span doesn’t alter what happened. So the rest of us are left to imagine: a large unidentified aircraft, without a transponder, drawing to within 10 miles of President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, in the new age of terror. With military jets in the area. It’s hard not to speculate.

“You have to wonder,” says Huyghe. “Why no direct confrontation?”

But that’s another riff.



Viborg, 1975


Possibly because the military realizes if they shot at it they might actually hit something packing a bigger sting...

Hey, Big Brother

"They're Baaack..."

William Kristol has the PNAC site up and running and spewing viral meme disinformation for all the "bipartisan" types among the Oborg.

Now the nice thing about William the Bloody is this: go read virtually any PNAC paper to find out what policy idiocy you really need to stand against.

There's nothing like a reliable adversary.

Every Action has Consequences

Dubai goes bust.

(CBS) Over the years, booming oil prices helped turn Dubai into a land of opportunity and playground for the ultra rich.

But that was then and this is now. And as CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports, even Dubai is feeling the pinch of the worldwide economic crisis.

The gulf city state's property prices went up as fast and as high as the towering buildings. But reality has suddenly intruded.

One investor said it was as if someone had thrown a switch, as the global credit crunch slammed a city that was, in effect, the world's biggest construction site

It took just 20 years for Dubai to go from a desert outpost with a handful of office towers to a world metropolis, where one fifth of the world's cranes operate, and property became a very hot commodity, with some people playing real estate the way others play poker...

Banks aren't lending. Projects are shelved. And the normally secretive government has had to acknowledge it has one of the highest levels of per-capita debt in the world -- and not enough oil to pay for it.

"The worst is still yet to come in the sense of people losing properties" Khadri says. "That will happen."

Of course, Dubai will come back eventually, many say, perhaps without the speculators and the insane price increases. So while the fizz might be gone, they insist, the water still sparkles...


The solution? Why, find a way to raise prices without looking like the Bad Guy.

Solution at hand!

...Concerns that the week-old renewal of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could disrupt supplies in the Middle East helped keep prices from falling further earlier this week...


That's what I like to see, Israeli-Arab co-operation.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Not if They can block it

The film adaptation of Alan Moore's The Watchmen has been blocked by Fox.

Aside from the potential for enriching Fox's cash flow- which is substantial- the movie has many elements that any Fox control would completely destroy.

Of course, eliminating these elements would also eliminate any chance this flick would make money.

Geeks like this graphic novel because of what it says, not because of any particular fetish for the protagonists. Of course, the reptiles at Fox would like to rig this so they kill any message that's not Politically Correct from the Fox world view, but also so they don't have to soak up the loss. Remember, Fox has been sitting on this screenplay for almost 20 years now.

You Do Not Fight Fire WIth Fire

What Yglesias says:

This is a few days old and, frankly, a bit obvious but for the record I think I should link to and quote from Human Rights Watch’s most recent statement on Gaza:

Israel and Hamas both must respect the prohibition under the laws of war against deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about Israeli bombings in Gaza that caused civilian deaths and Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas in violation of international law.

Rocket attacks on Israeli towns by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups that do not discriminate between civilians and military targets violate the laws of war, while a rising number of the hundreds of Israeli bombings in Gaza since December 27, 2008, appear to be unlawful attacks causing civilian casualties. Additionally, Israel’s severe limitations on the movement of non-military goods and people into and out of Gaza, including fuel and medical supplies, constitutes collective punishment, also in violation of the laws of war.


Neither the Israeli government nor Hamas is the first outfit to flaunt the laws of war and they obviously won’t be the last. But I think it’s still important to call these things out, and I think it’s a real problem that the fraught nature of these issues seems to have persuaded a lot of bloggers to basically say nothing about the fighting. At a minimum, duly noting that there are human rights abuses being committed by both sides and that human rights abuses are bad isn’t so hard.


Bad is bad, and there are no good guys when both sides are evil.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

The Word

Gonzo, like Big Time Dick, doesn't know what he did that was wrong and why people don't like him.

Krugman remembers Laura's assertion that no one suffers more than her and her beau about the carnage in Iraq, and he is at a loss for words to describe someone who is

...the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people...




Atrios has the word. Monsters.

Follow the money down the rabbit hole

Guess which private equity groups are going to benefit from the wrecking of the global economy?

The usual suspects- with the Carlyle Group leading the way.

Michael Wolff:

Here’s a parlor game, played best by the people who are in it: Which private-equity firm’s going bust first? Carlyle? Fortress? K.K.R.? Cerberus? Apollo? Could it even be mighty Blackstone, with its vast real-estate holdings? Which of these one-word-branded enterprises (the word should emphasize strength, opacity, and preferably be culled from mythology—though no one in private equity, rest assured, reads his Bulfinch’s) that make up what’s been called the world’s “shadow banking system” will collapse and, in the domino pattern of this financial crisis, take the other firms with it?

There’s an urgency to this question because no big firm has actually gone bust—yet. All of the behemoth investment groups that sit on top of trillions of dollars of the largest capital accumulation outside the public markets remain suspended over the global economy like awfully big shoes waiting to drop. The wait increases both the suspense and the bitchiness of the game: somehow every private-equity guy (private-equity guys have been among the most unpopular figures of the great bubble) feels he’s been more prudent and responsible than all the others. Given the credit crunch, no private-equity deals are getting done now—chances are that what you’re doing with your idle hours as a P.E. man is trying to figure out who deserves to crash and burn before you...

...Carlyle Capital Corporation, the arm of the Carlyle Group that invests in mortgage-backed securities, had defaulted last spring on more than $16 billion...

When I was 11, my father, a businessman who, in his day, took a dubious risk or two, gave me a key lesson in finance and life which I knew was meaningful without understanding it. “You’re not bankrupt,” he said, “until people know you’re bankrupt.”

By which he meant, I’ve come to understand, that money is a complicated reality. It’s a master illusionist’s game. The artifice is everything. Transparency is the enemy of making it really big—which is one reason the word “private” got joined to “equity.”

This may have something to do with the message I got when I called up Stephen Schwarzman, the head of the Blackstone Group, and the most successful of all private- equity players. At the top of the market, in June 2007, when Blackstone went public (a top-of-the-market irony was to have firms specializing in taking companies private doing it with public money), he was, briefly, the richest man in New York, stepping over Michael Bloomberg, but now may be down to his last billion.

“Mr. Schwarzman’s office,” said the receptionist, “is no longer taking calls.”

“Ever?”

“Not for the foreseeable future, I’ve been told.”

This might seem to be a sort of going to ground, or holing up in a single room, as you are surrounded by creditors and police, the gun in your hand. Blackstone, which with Fortress Investment Group went public a year and a half ago, is now at a fraction of its former value—whereas K.K.R. has altogether failed in its efforts to go public.

And those other kinds of funds, hedge funds—which make short-term investments in securities rather than, like private-equity funds, long-term investments in companies—are, everywhere, shutting their doors. Investors in those funds are, sensibly, demanding their money back—or what’s left of it.

And yet, even though you might not be able to get through to Mr. Schwarzman, the greater point is that he is still in his office. His thousand or so employees around the world are still there, too. Indeed, few people in private equity—in the middle of the greatest financial crisis of the era, even as everybody in private equity awaits the collapse of everyone else in private equity—have actually lost their jobs. Even with no business to be done, it’s business as usual. This is an extraordinary demonstration of denial, or of a dreamworld, or of an alternative reality—or of my father’s dictum. Nobody knows if the world’s great P.E. firms are out of business—the guys who run these firms may not even know...


Follow the link to read it all.

Griffin Must Go

Michael Griffin is the wrong man to head NASA.

He's developed a new plan for NASA that calls for spending billions on new rockets that may not even work, while closing down the shuttle program completely.

NASA engineers are already walking away:

...Some inside the development program have complained that it is run with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude that stifles dissent and innovation. Jeffrey Finckenor, an engineer who left NASA this year, sent a goodbye letter to colleagues that expressed his frustrations with the program. “At the highest levels of the agency, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality,” he wrote, “followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate.” The letter was posted to the independent NASA Watch Web site...

...in April, Richard Gilbrech, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems at the time, testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics that “we can’t justify, based on laws of physics, the performance” claimed by the plan’s proponents...

Pressure has grown to keep the shuttles flying. In July, former Senator John Glenn of Ohio said in testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee that he favored flying the shuttles until the Constellation craft were ready to fly. “I never thought I would see the day when the world’s richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station,” said Mr. Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

Continuing shuttle flights has also been proposed by the New Democracy Project, a group with strong ties to John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the Obama transition team.

To Mr. Griffin, though, such proposals threaten to scuttle the new space program by hijacking billions of dollars that could go to Constellation development. He also argues that the shuttle’s considerable risks make it unsafe to continue flying it. In an interview in November, Mr. Griffin defended the program he has put in place.

“U.S. civil space policy, in terms of its goals, was headed in the wrong direction after the Nixon administration,” he said. Today, with the nation talking about going back to the Moon, exploring near-Earth asteroids and even going to Mars, “that’s the right path for us to be investing in,” he said...


Griffin's game is the shell game. Manned exploration of the Moon and Mars is held out as a sparkly bangle to amuse the rubes, while billions go to the corporations that are a big part of Bu$hie's Ba$e. Robotic exploration, and scientific exploration are eliminated: except for the spy satellites that monitor an ever smaller, ever more tightly controlled Earth.