Cool police dashboard cam shot of meteor of western Canada

It seems like there's a lot of non-political cool news today, such as this meteor that landed in western Canada last night:



Here's another look:

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Friday Orchid Blogging

Paph. Adilene Bobadilla 'Rossilyn' x Honeycomb Creek 'Butterdish' AM/AOS

This little guy is a bit messed up this time around. He's flowered before, quite well in fact, but something happened this time, whether it was a pesticide I used, or changing temperature, or the change in humidity, but the flower got a bit deformed. It's still pretty cool. Now is the season for a lot of paphs (this type of orchid) to bloom, and in fact I have two more that are just starting to grow flower sheaths (and the ones coming are the really cool ones that have multiple flowers at once and look kind of like military gliders crossed with evil bats). Might be a few months until they fully bloom, but stay tuned.

Enjoy. Read More......

Still looking like it's Hill for State

From Greg Sargent:

Ben Smith points out that the statement from Hillary's spokesperson, which says today's reports are "premature," is nonetheless basically confirmation that she and Obama will reach a deal and she'll be his Secretary of State.

In truth, it's hard to read it any other way. Here's the statement from Hillary spokesperson Philippe Reines again:

"We're still in discussions, which are very much on track. Any reports beyond that are premature."

To my knowledge this is the first public statement from Reines or Hillary that directly addresses the actual possibility that she'd take the gig. That makes it significant. And that statement confirms that the talks are "very much on track."

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Tweety groped Ellen?

The things we missed while focusing on the campaign

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Please take our reader survey

By taking our survey, you help us get an overall idea as to who are readers are, and this helps us sell advertising, which helps us eat. So please click here and take the survey. Thanks. (Oh yeah, and it's anonymous.)

And if you've already taken the same survey on another blog, just click our survey link, and it will automatically add you to our results as well (provided you have your cookies enabled). I just did it over at TPM, clicked for Josh's survey and it automatically added me to his since I just took it here.

I'm taking it myself right now. Be forewarned, it gets a bit bitchy if you don't answer EVERY question, and it won't tell you why it's not proceeding to the next page (question 10 comes to mind). Okay, question 46 just gave me pause. Read More......

Dow soars after news that Obama's new Treasury Secretary is Timothy Geithner: “The markets are applauding change."

The wild ride on Wall Street continues. After eight years of the George Bush/GOP economic policy, news of Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary set off a rally. The markets have apparently joined the rest of us by "applauding change":

After two days of punishing losses, Wall Street surged on Friday afternoon after news reports said that President-elect Barack Obama had tapped Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, to be secretary of the Treasury.

Skittish financial markets closed dramatically higher following the reports, recouping some of the slide that brought them to 11-year lows. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 494.13 points or 6.5 percent, closing at 8,046.42. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index swung 6.3 percent higher, or 47.59 points to 800.03. The Nasdaq composite was up 5.2 percent.

“It was almost a Geithner relief rally,” said Steve Neimeth, portfolio manager at AIG SunAmerica Asset Management.

Bits of news have swung financial markets widely in recent weeks, and on Friday afternoon, traders seemed to rally behind unconfirmed reports that the country’s next president had picked his chief financial officer. The markets were not applauding the choice specifically, said Ryan Larson, senior equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management, but any choice at all.

“What you’re seeing is a rally off the headlines,” Mr. Larson said. “The markets are applauding change. It’s a hope that change will bring some sort of effectiveness to these plans and ultimately make a road map to come out of it.”

Did you ever think you'd hear Wall Street people adopting the language of "hope" and "change"? The new administration can't start soon enough.

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Real Estate Downfall

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Bill Richardson may be asked to head Commerce Dept.

From the Wash Post:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has emerged as a "serious contender" to head the Commerce Department under President-elect Barack Obama, according to a Democratic official close to the proceedings.

Richardson was originally in the mix to be the secretary of State but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is now expected be announced for that post after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Commerce was originally rumored to be going to Penny Pritzker, the finance chairwoman of Obama's campaign and a close friend of the Illinois senator, but she removed herself from consideration on Thursday due to an inability to extricate herself from a series of complex business ties.

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Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup

Unbelievable:

November 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.

The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said.

"You may not like our price, but we are not in the business of paying for things. Be happy we are in the mood to offer the shareholders anything," said Ali.

The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities. The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden. Moody's and S&P; have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.

Head pirate, Ubu Kalid Shandu, said: "We need a bank so that we have a place to keep all of our ransom money. Thankfully, the dislocations in the capital markets has allowed us to purchase Citigroup at an attractive valuation and to take advantage of TARP capital to grow the business even faster."

Shandu added, "We don't call ourselves pirates. We are coastguards and this will just allow us to guard our coasts better."

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Saxby Chambliss is starting to lose it

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Pole-dancing Mormons make push for Olympics (seriously)

"No gay marriage, but bring on the strippers!"
AMERICAblog reader Sara

I fear that even I can't do this story sufficient justice. So I'll simply quote the sports blog that posted this originally:

When we last saw the Mormons, they were attempting to murder love. Having succeeded on that, they’ve apparently moved on to more pressing concerns: getting pole dancing into the Olympics.

From CBS 2 in Salt Lake City comes this report of the newest craze to sweep Utah: pole dancing for fitness. If you remember this fad being big a few years ago, you’re right; I like to picture Utah kind of like the Middle East, where it takes about 20 years for pop culture to spread. The new Pat Benatar cassettes are just hitting Tehran now. (Video of Mormon housewives in spandex, at your own risk, after the jump.)

So there you have it: “pole fitness,” as proponents like to call it, if only to separate it from the good kind of pole dancing.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the woman who tries to justify her six-inch stripper heels by saying they’re great for the calf muscles. I’m just [guessing] her husband, and his other wives, wouldn’t really mind if she wore them home.

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Krugman: "The prospects for the economy look much grimmer now than they did as little as a week or two ago"

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist at the New York Times, thinks we're in trouble. And that's, well, troubling. as I've said before, when smart people like Krugman start to get scared, regular folks like us ought to get really scared. My take after this excerpt:

There is, however, another and more disturbing parallel between 2008 and 1932 — namely, the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis. The interregnum of 1932-1933, the long stretch between the election and the actual transfer of power, was disastrous for the U.S. economy, at least in part because the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action. And the same thing is happening now....

How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? The answer, unfortunately, is: a lot. Consider how much darker the economic picture has grown since the failure of Lehman Brothers, which took place just over two months ago. And the pace of deterioration seems to be accelerating.

Most obviously, we’re in the midst of the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression: the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has now fallen more than 50 percent from its peak. Other indicators are arguably even more disturbing: unemployment claims are surging, manufacturing production is plunging, interest rates on corporate bonds — which reflect investor fears of default — are soaring, which will almost surely lead to a sharp fall in business spending. The prospects for the economy look much grimmer now than they did as little as a week or two ago.

Yet economic policy, rather than responding to the threat, seems to have gone on vacation. In particular, panic has returned to the credit markets, yet no new rescue plan is in sight. On the contrary, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, has announced that he won’t even go back to Congress for the second half of the $700 billion already approved for financial bailouts. And financial aid for the beleaguered auto industry is being stalled by a political standoff.

How much should we worry about what looks like two months of policy drift? At minimum, the next two months will inflict serious pain on hundreds of thousands of Americans, who will lose their jobs, their homes, or both. What’s really troubling, however, is the possibility that some of the damage being done right now will be irreversible. I’m concerned, in particular, about the two D’s: deflation and Detroit....

Now, maybe letting the auto companies die is the right decision, even though an auto industry collapse would be a huge blow to an already slumping economy. But it’s a decision that should be taken carefully, with full consideration of the costs and benefits — not a decision taken by default, because of a political standoff between Democrats who want Mr. Paulson to use some of that $700 billion and a lame-duck administration that’s trying to force Congress to divert funds from a fuel-efficiency program instead.

Catch that last line? It's Bush who's pushing to give the auto companies the money with no strings attached. It's Bush who's pushing to gut the fuel efficiency bill we just passed. The man is intent on making his legacy the ruins of our country. Ozymandias, step aside. Read More......

Obama raised $500 million online

This really did change the political game:

Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising.

In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama's online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.

"You looked at the money being raised online in the same way that you looked at the crowds who came to the rallies," Joe Rospars, the 27-year-old director of Obama's new-media department, told The Post. "You were constantly surprised at the number of people who were coming out to see him," and, when it came to online donations, "people exceeded our expectations as to what they were willing to do."

I'll never forget the Sunday morning announcement announcement that Obama had raised $150 million in September. That was truly stunning and had to look like a tidal wave from the perspective of the GOP. Most of it came from small donors, on-line, who kept giving.

And, the Obama campaign has 13 million addresses in its email list.

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MSNBC was having far too much with Palin's turkey fiasco

As you may have read, Sarah Palin yesterday gave a press conference in front of a guy slaughtering turkeys, on camera. It's not clear if Palin totally understood what was taking place behind her, especially since she was the place to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey. But either way, the video is hilarious.

Equally hilarious are the breaking news headlines that MSNBC ran while Palin was speaking. These are for real (click the image to see a larger version). Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

I don't know why I watch the TODAY Show in the morning. It just irritates me. Today, NBC's David Gregory was interviewed by Matt Lauer -- as if David Gregory has anything interesting to say. He's one of the biggest tools in t.v. news. His little piece this morning was about Obama not bringing enough "change" in his appointments. Yes, that's the big scoop David Gregory reported because, get this, that's what the Chair of the Republican National Committee told David Gregory. Wow. What a scoop. It's amazing that these people get paid to pump out the most banal and uninformative "news." David Gregory apparently really wants to be the next Tim Russert. But, he's just so annoying -- and not that good.

Okay, enough early morning ranting. I'm taking the dog for a walk.

Start threading the news... Read More......

BNP Paribas to slash bonuses

BNP has had a very bad patch, no doubt, though not nearly as bad as many on Wall Street. There has been no shortage of tumbling profits though not the same hideously negative earnings as we've become accustomed to seeing in London or New York. While some Wall Street banks are still debating whether or not they deserve bonuses due to negative growth and a lifeline by the government, BNP is cutting bonuses to match the decline in income. What a crazy idea.

French bank BNP Paribas may slash bonuses for employees in its corporate and investment banking unit by more than 70%, according to a Bloomberg report. Jacques d'Estais, head of the division, said in a memo to staff that pretax profit had fallen nearly 73% in the first nine months of the year and the overall bonus pool is likely to show the same decrease compared to the previous year, the report said. It added that the majority of employees will get a smaller bonus and more people than in the past will receive no bonus at all.

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Citigroup to merge?

Wow, that would really add to the already ugly cuts. The stock price of the once-significant Citi has fallen below $5 and now the vultures are circling above. It seemed like only yesterday Citi was asking the Fed to extend the honor of lending them billions to buy Wachovia Bank and then suing Wells Fargo because - gasp! - they had the cash and did not need federal money for the loan. Charles Prince must be happy he was pushed out the door with tens of millions after raking in hundreds of millions based on deals that were later written down for billions.

Senior officials at Citigroup told CNBC that they will have to make a strategic change in the firm's direction, including finding a possible merger partner or raising cash in the coming days to arrest a sharp slide in the firm's stock price.

A Citigroup spokesman had no comment, but investment banking sources say possible partners could include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs or State Street Bank. Both Goldman and Morgan have recently switched over to banking holding companies so they could collect deposits. But finding a possible partner would be difficult in an environment where every major firm is reeling from the credit crunch and has its own set of problems.

Citigroup's stock plunged below $5 a share on Thursday for the first time in 13 years as investors questioned the banks ability to handle potential credit losses and writedowns in 2009. By falling below $5, many mutual funds and institutional investors -- in particular pension funds -- must unload shares of Citigroup to comply with investment guidelines.

The bank also has been reeling on concerns that mounting losses from credit cards, mortgages and toxic debt could overwhelm its efforts to slash costs and add deposits.

If Citi's "efforts to slash costs" are anything like Big Auto's attempts, I think we see where this is all going. How many corporate jets are they flying around the world? Read More......

In honor of Sarah Palin this Thanksgiving

We give you, the WKRP Turkey Drop:

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