Japanese whale hunters to face Godzilla this season

It will be good to see fewer whales slaughtered this year.

Gojira, which can easily out-run the larger Japanese vessels, will be used to help locate the factory ship, which processes whales killed by crews aboard harpoon boats; to try to thwart harpooning, and to prevent delivery of harpooned whales to the factory ship.

"The factory ship is the one we're after and if we can find it, we can shut down whaling," Sea Shepherd spokesman Jeff Hansen told reporters in Australia. "We can save 10 to 12 whales a day by blocking the slipway on the factory ship, so really this vessel is going to play a huge part in shutting down the Japanese whaling fleet for the entire summer."

This will be Sea Shepherd's seventh campaign against Japanese whaling in the Antarctic during the Southern Hemisphere summer, and the fourth season with an Animal Planet crew aboard, filming for its popular "Whale Wars" series.

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Bush says WikiLeaks 'damaging'

Just to be clear, would that be more or less damaging than the US spying on its own citizens? Or leaking the Valerie Plame details? It's not immediately clear why one is protecting America and the other is damaging so some helpful clarification would be great. CNN:

Former President George W. Bush joined a chorus of U.S. officials calling leaks of sensitive government information "very damaging," telling a forum at Facebook headquarters that Wikileaks' recent release of 250,000 documents may significantly hurt Washington's image abroad.

"It's going to be very hard to keep the trust of foreign leaders," the nation's 43rd president said of the documents on issues ranging from Iran to Honduras to Turkey. "If you have a conversation with a foreign leader and it ends up in a newspaper, you don't like it. I didn't like it."

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A very bad Christmas decorating idea

The backstory is even funnier. Read More......

Obama appoints Geithner and Lew to find tax deal with GOP

Oh. My. God.

However, in one sign of action, Obama said he appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and budget director Jack Lew to work with congressional Republicans and Democrats to come up with a deal on taxes in the next couple of days.

If no agreement is reached before Congress breaks for the holidays, taxes on all Americans would increase, a new year shocker that would increase pressure on Washington to act.

Immediately following the meeting, congressional Republicans said the discussion with President Barack Obama was a positive one in which both sides agreed to spend more time working together and finding common ground on tax and other tough issues.

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Florida judge: We don't look at the mortgage foreclosure paperwork we process

Thanks to Matt Taibbi, who's been all over the foreclosure crisis, including what's been happening in the courtroom, comes this, from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

Judges do not question the documents unless homeowners question them first, so they continue to rule in favor of lenders. Twelfth Circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth said judges must remain neutral in court, and cannot raise possible defenses -- such as bad paperwork -- on behalf of homeowners who choose not to fight, or don't know how to fight, their foreclosure.

"The judges will accept, as they do in every case, pleadings that are represented by counsel as legitimate," said Haworth. "It's the defendant's case. ... If they don't want to hire an attorney, that's their business."

Before that starts to sound reasonable to you, consider this. Taibbi:

[T]he idea that it is beyond a judge to open a file and simply check to make sure the names and dates are right -- particularly given the widespread coverage of this phenomenon, when we know that virtually 100% of these securitized mortgages lack proper paperwork and will inevitably involve fraudulent or doctored filings upon foreclosure -- that is appalling.

This just gives judges a way to be complicit.

Why would they want to do that? you ask. It's the Judge Judy–Jerry Springer effect. Taibbi says it his way (my emphasis):

Judges I think are long used to the idea that individual people are deadbeats and don't pay bills -- they've seen enough lying-ass individual debtors stand in their courts with their faces unshaven and their shirts untucked, trying to sell them excuses and stories -- but they haven't quite made it to a place where they can accept the idea that the nation's top 10-20 banks could be engaged in ongoing criminal conspiracies. I think it blows their minds and they don't believe it.

My answer: Ignore the rest and look just at the bolded part above. We're carefully conditioned by Judge Judy and Cops on Parade (all politically slanted "culture" shows) to think of low-wage-earners-facing-The-Law as automatically wrong — and automatically disgusting.

Judges swim in that cultural pool as well; they drink the same tainted water you do. That thirty-year war against the poor — you could almost think it was planned by someone with something to gain, and someone to manipulate.

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WikiLeaks to publish leaked details of 'a big US bank'

This should be enlightening. Read the entire interview with Julian Assange here. He has been demonized by many but you might feel differently after reading what he has to say. Here's what he had to say to Forbes about the bank story that is due to be published in early 2011.

Usually when you get leaks at this level, it’s about one particular case or one particular violation. For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails. Why were these so valuable? When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.

This will be like that. Yes, there will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war.

You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.

(Some are now suggesting that the bank may be Bank of America, though this is based in a previous interview with Assange. We will know for sure soon enough.) Read More......

Obama to GOP leaders: I need to be better at bipartisanship

More bipartisan. Seriously? How?:

President Barack Obama told GOP leaders behind closed doors Tuesday that he had failed to reach across party lines enough during his first two years in office, a senior administration official told CNN.

He promised to do a better job of bipartisan outreach in the days ahead, the official added.

"The president said he had to do better, and the president is ready to do his part," the official said.

That surely inspired the Republican leaders to want to work with the President. I'm sure they think he's really got a spine of steel now. Read More......

Sam Stein: Dems to hold 'symbolic vote' on tax cuts before 'compromise'

Sam Stein in the Huffington Post (my emphasis):

With just weeks remaining before tax rates revert back to pre-Bush levels, Senate Democrats have come to the fragile conclusion that they should and will hold a solitary vote to extend rates for the middle class while letting those for the wealthy expire. ...

"A lot of people want to have that contrast vote, to make it clear what we stand for," said one Senior Democratic aide. "So we take that middle-class vote first, then we look to a compromise and see what's in the grab bag."

What's in the grab bag could end up being the key towards passage. Democrats may be willing to give in to Republican demands that the rates for the wealthy be extended (at least temporarily) but not without getting some legislative goodies in return. ... [Yet] the prevailing belief is that GOP lawmakers would be willing to scuttle the whole tax cut package. "I don't see the Republicans going for anything this administration has proposed," the aide said.

Talking with Rachel Maddow (see below), Stein calls that first vote "symbolic."

This whole Maddow segment is rich. The graphs at 5:54 in the clip are worth the price alone (the first is the clip's preview image). The discussion of the Democrats and the Stein interview starts at 8:35. The phrase "that first symbolic vote" turns up starting at 10:20.



Linger on this for a moment: The Senate aide says "a lot of people" want to take a symbolic vote "to make it clear what we stand for."

Good, and thank you for being clear. Here's what it looks like Dems stand for — symbols for those easily fooled by PR, followed by deeds that say just the opposite. You stand for fooling people with PR. Again, thanks for being clear.

So there's this modern novelist who was asked by members of her family, Why do you write such bad things about us? Why don't you write better things? She always answers, Well, I'd write better things if you did better things.

Just sayin'.

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Joe will be live-blogging the Pentagon DADT press conference at 2pm Eastern

Over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Why the porno-scanners are not the answer

Talk about a bad return on investment for taxpayers. Read More......

Pentagon DADT study finds lifting DADT not a problem

Surprise. Read More......

Chinese officials were 'scared to death' by Pelosi, but will love Boehner.

This is one of the best tidbits I've seen from Wikileaks.

I doubt there are many American politicians who could frighten China, but Nancy Pelosi did:

A top diplomat at the US embassy in Beijing said he asked China to consider letting Pelosi go to Tibet during her May 2009 visit to China, according to a cable obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei responded that China could not arrange the trip due to Pelosi's "tight schedule," according to the cable reprinted by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The Chinese ambassador in Kazakhstan was blunter, telling his US counterpart over an expansive dinner that Beijing was "fearful" over Pelosi's visit.

"She had the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) scared to death on the eve of her visit," Ambassador Cheng Guoping was quoted as saying in the classified memo by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland.

Pelosi is one of the few American politicos who actually stands for something and is willing to fight for what she believes in.

China will have a welcoming parade for John Boehner. He's not going to challenge that country on anything. That would upset his corporate puppet-masters. In fact, on September 29th, when the House passed legislation "to punish China for policies that unfairly favor its exports at the expense of the United States and other countries," by a 348 - 79 margin (one of the few truly bipartisan votes in this Congress), Boehner sided with the communist regime in China. Read More......

GOP not satisfied with Obama's federal worker pay freeze plan

Who ever would have guessed? So once again, Obama has proposed a Republican idea but suddenly, the GOP wants him to push more to the right. Meanwhile, liberals again are angry with yet another failed sell out. What a brilliant 2012 strategy.

Republicans were pleased, but they didn't want to sound too happy with something their arch-rival proposed. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the freeze "is both necessary and, quite frankly, long over-due."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the ranking Republican on the committee's federal workforce panel, called it "a step in the right direction. However, the proposal does not appear to curb step increases. If that is the case, this announcement is nothing more than a hollow press release. At the end of the day, this policy will serve only to frustrate current employees while doing nothing to curb our debts."

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Big news day.

The President is hosting Congressional leaders at the White House this morning at 10:30 AM ET. The President is still seeking for bipartisanship. GOP leaders expect complete capitulation. McConnell and Boehner have an op-ed in today's Washington Post claiming that Obama and the Democrats must heed the message from the elections (or their interpretation of the message from the elections.) Funny how that wasn't the standard in 2008 when Obama won and Democrats secured huge margins in both houses of Congress. The GOP basically ignored any message from that election and set out to thwart progress -- and they did. After the meeting, there will be a mad rush to the microphones to get the spin war going.

Also, today, we'll finally see the Pentagon's DADT report. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen are holding a press conference on the report at 2:00 PM ET. So many members of Congress said they couldn't vote to end DADT until they saw the report. Now, they'll see the report and come up with new excuses. Time is running out. I am feeling like everyone is doing just enough to avoid blame if the DADT language doesn't pass. That includes the Obama administration, the Pentagon, Democratic Senate leaders and Senate GOP repeal supporters. The pressure is on to make this happen. Call your Senators: 202-224-3121. Two other things to note: Lady Gaga has re-engaged. Some may laugh at that, but she has over 7.2 million followers on twitter and almost 24 million fans on Facebook. And, we keep hearing that time is the biggest problem in the Senate. Yet, the Senate is probably going to spend three days next week debating the impeachment of a federal judge. Seriously.

That should keep us busy today. Read More......

Millions of Americans no longer using credit cards

It would be a good thing if this wasn't a result of the credit crisis, but it is.

An analysis by credit reporting agency TransUnion found that use of general purpose credit cards bearing MasterCard or Visa logos, or issued by Discover or American Express, fell more than 11 percent in the third quarter, compared with the July to September period last year.

About 62 million people now have an active card, compared with 70 million a year ago.

The Chicago company found that consumers in the subprime category, or those with low credit ratings, were believed to be without cards mostly because they were shut down by banks after payments fell behind or balances were written off.

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Opposition in Ireland still unsure if they will agree to bailout terms

They are certainly raising some interesting questions. With the cost of borrowing so low, the rates from the EU do sound high. Arguing against raiding the national pension plan is another concern. The Guardian:

Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Michael Noonan, denounced the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank on Sunday. Noonan was particularly angry over the IMF/EU insistence that Ireland pay €17bn out of its national pension fund to shore up the country's banks and drive down its national debt.

"I believe that the negotiators on the Irish side were soft," he told the Irish Times. "They have given up €17.5bn of our own resources in sacrificing all of the national pension reserve fund. The fund has been cleaned out.

"The interest rate is extremely high. If the IMF part is just over 3% as reported, it must mean that the average EU interest rate must be very high, well over 5.8%."

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