Japanese 'research' whale meat also being sold in Korea

This story sounds worse by the day and it's only a matter of time before we discover more illegal shipments of whale meat. Why are so many countries ready to make this trade even easier? BBC:

The researchers also visited an unnamed restaurant in the South Korean capital Seoul where they say they purchased 13 whale products on two occasions in June and September 2009.

Four came from an Antarctic minke whale, four from a sei whale, three from a North Pacific minke, one from a fin whale and one was from a Risso's dolphin, the researchers say.

The DNA profile of the fin whale meat genetically matched meat that had been bought in Japanese markets in 2007, they report.

Read the rest of this post...

Mexico to shut down 24 million mobile phones today

Sounds like an expensive day for Carlos Slim but it's good to see the Mexican government getting more serious about the escalating crime. The problem has been that only a bit more than two-thirds of the mobile phones are registered and previous attempts to secure this data have failed. In theory, this will link every phone to an owner and help track down organized crime who are using the phones for kidnapping and other crimes. Whether it will deliver the intended results is another story.

The register was designed to help combat the use of mobiles in crimes such as kidnapping and phone extortions threatening violence unless the victim hands over some cash. But confusion and organisational disarray have marred the plan.

Despite plenty of coverage of the issue in the press in the last few weeks, many Mexicans were unaware of an obligation to submit their data before the deadline of midnight on Saturday, or they simply failed to get around to registering.

Some mobile phone owners also refused to send the required text message with their personal information on the grounds that they saw the register as an affront to their civil liberties.

Read the rest of this post...

Great Barrier Reef ship leaking oil in wildlife sanctuary

Even worse news is that the initial reports of a half mile gash on the reef was updated to be two miles long. Just imagine how many decades or centuries it will take to come back. Two people from the ship have been arrested.

A Chinese ship captain and a chief officer have been arrested and charged with causing damage to the Great Barrier Reef, more than a week after their coal carrier ran aground, leaking oil and tearing a two-mile (three-kilometer) gash in the protected area.

The Australian Federal Police said the master of the vessel and the chief officer on watch during the April 3 grounding would appear in court Thursday.

Read the rest of this post...

McConnell tries to dodge repeated questioning about his Wall Street fundraising

From ThinkProgress:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been blasting the Senate’s financial regulatory reform bill in recent days, falsely arguing that it “institutionalizes” bailouts for Wall Street. As Think Progress reported, McConnell’s reason for opposing financial reform seems disingenuous in the face of reports that he attended a private fundraiser with hedge fund managers and other Wall Street elites last week.

Yesterday, reporters pressed McConnell for details about his meetings on Wall Street. McConnell repeatedly refused to discuss the matter and claimed that he based his opposition to financial reform not on fundraising from Wall Street but rather on concerns from community banks in Kentucky.

Read the rest of this post...

Pope Benedict's birthplace vandalized with graffiti

It's only "petty gossip" though and the Vatican has the full support of everyone. No need to show any remorse for raping children and then hiding the truth. The world loves the pope and fully supports their policies towards this scandal that isn't a scandal. Just because someone painted "f*** yourselves" on the wall of the house doesn't mean people are upset. Bloomberg:

The house in which Pope Benedict XVI was born in the southern Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn was vandalized overnight with an “obscene” phrase spray- painted above the main door, police said.

The blue graffiti was discovered early today, Bavarian police said in a statement on their Web site. Authorities, who estimate the damage at 1,500 euros ($2,040), have painted over the text to cover it up. Police are searching for the person who vandalized the house.

Read the rest of this post...

Americans increasingly cutting cable TV service

And why not? When I travel back to the US I can tolerate about five minutes of TV before I can't stand seeing yet another commercial. We've had TV service with our international (free) phone and high speed internet (100MB FiOS for a few years) included for at least five years with prices being around 1/4 to 1/3 the price of the US offerings. That said, when our last TV died five years ago we never bothered to get another. As this article says, when we want to watch something, we visit iTunes or pick up the DVD. It's easier and we waste less time being distracted by countless programs that offer too little, with too many commercials. Though TV commercials are radically fewer over here.

Make no mistake: The big cable, satellite, and telco carriers are still sitting pretty with more than 100 million TV subscribers. Nevertheless, a new report claims that more and more viewers are "cutting the cord" in favor of watching their favorite shows via over-the-air antennas (remember those?), Netflix, or the Web.

TechCrunch has the scoop on a new report from the Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group, and though the figures may not be a "serious threat" to the big cable and satellite carriers yet, the trend might eventually spell trouble for the like of Cablevision, Comcast, DirecTV, and Time Warner Cable.

To wit: Nearly 800,000 households in the U.S. have "cut the cord," dumping their cable, satellite, or telco TV providers (such as AT&T; U-verse or Verizon FiOS) and turning instead to Web-based videos (like Hulu), downloadable shows (iTunes), by-mail subscription services (Netflix), or even good ol' over-the-air antennas for their favorite shows, according to the report.

Read the rest of this post...

WaMu's former chief risk officer contradicts ex-CEO on warnings

So again, blaming the old boy, 'clubby' attitudes may not have necessarily been completely wrong, but the real problem was bad business practices. The ex-CEO and many others cashed in and never looked back. Getting away with that sounds pretty clubby to me. LA Times:

James G. Vanasek, who was WaMu's chief risk officer from 1999 to 2005, told a Senate committee that "at times borrowers were coached to fill out applications with overstated incomes or net worth adjusted to meet the minimum underwriting policy requirements."

Asked if he ever warned top executives of his concerns, Vanasek replied, "Constantly."

"I stood in front of thousands of senior Washington Mutual managers and executives at an annual management retreat in 2004 and countered the senior-executive speaker ahead of me on the program who was rallying the troops with the company's advertising tag line, 'The Power of Yes,' " he said.

"The implication of this statement was that Washington Mutual would find some way to make a loan. The tag line symbolized the management attitude about mortgage lending more clearly than anything that I can tell you," Vanasek said.

Read the rest of this post...

On behalf of their Wall Street funders, GOPers launch misleading, distorted attack on Wall Street reform

Over the past couple days, GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has appeared on the Senate floor to express his outrage over the pending Wall Street reform legislation. Chris Harris from Media Matters explained succinctly yesterday that McConnell's outrage is tied to financial contributions from those Wall Street bankers. No big surprise:

In return for obstructing Democratic legislation to hold Wall Street CEOs accountable, Republican lawmakers are pressing bankers for financial help heading into the November elections.

FoxBusiness.com reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman John Cornyn (R-TX) had a "private meeting" with "25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers." After listening to "numerous complaints the executives have with the bill," the GOP lawmakers reportedly assured the bankers that Republicans would be their ally in the fight. After discussing likely Republican electoral gains this November, "McConnell and Cornyn made it clear they need Wall Street's help."

A day after the story broke about McConnell's "private meeting" with Wall Street bigwigs, he stormed onto the Senate floor to spout false attacks on Democratic efforts to hold those bankers accountable. The timing was no coincidence.

But, you really don't need to listen to McConnell or any other GOPers rants against the reform bill. All you need to do is read Frank Luntz's memo to GOPers titled, The Language of Financial Reform, which can be found here.

It's uncanny how closely McConnell's latest speeches(here and here) mirror what Luntz suggested. It's like Luntz is the ventriloquist and McConnell is his dummy. I pulled several examples of "words that work" from the Luntz document and compared it to McConnell's speeches from yesterday and today:

Luntz: If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated.

McConnell: But if there’s one thing Americans agree on when it comes to financial reform, it’s this: never again should taxpayers be expected to bail out Wall Street from its own mistakes. We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks.

Luntz: Taxpayer-funded bailouts reward bad behavior. Taxpayers should not be held responsible for the failure of big business any longer. If a business is going to fail, not matter how big, let it fail.

McConnell:The American people have been telling us for nearly two years that any solution must do one thing — it must put an end to taxpayer funded bailouts for Wall Street banks. This bill not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks; it institutionalizes them.

Luntz: “The legislation is filled with lobbyist loopholes that exclude certain wealthy, powerful industries from regulations.”

McConnell: So a new government board based in Washington would determine which institutions would qualify for special treatment — giving unaccountable bureaucrats and self-appointed wisemen in Washington even more power to protect, promote, or punish companies at whim.

“These favored firms would then have a funding advantage over their competitors, leading to outsized profits and the extension of enormous additional bailout risk for taxpayers even beyond the largest banks.

Luntz: Taxpayer-funded bailouts reward bad behavior. Taxpayers should not be held responsible for the failure of big business any longer. If a business is going to fail, not matter how big, let it fail.

McConnell: We need to end the worst abuses on Wall Street without forcing the taxpayer to pick up the tab. That’s what Republicans are fighting for in this debate. The taxpayers have paid a high enough price already. We’re not going to expose them to even more pain down the road. The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”

According to Luntz, these are the "words to use" so expect to hear a lot of them from Republicans as the Senate begins the debate:

ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY & OVERSIGHT, LOBBYIST LOOPHOLES, ENFORCEMENT OF CURRENT LAWS, BUREAUCRATS, WASTEFUL WASHINGTON, SPENDING, NEVER AGAIN, GOVERNMENT FAILURES AND INCOMPETENCE, LET’S HELP SMALL BUSINESSES, BIG BANK BAILOUT, BILL BLOATED BUREACRACY, FINE PRINT, UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, SPECIAL INTERESTS, HARD WORKING TAXPAYERS, ANOTHER WASHINGTON AGENCY, UNLIMITED REGUATORY POWERS, DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, RED TAPE

These are words meant to distort, obfuscate and confuse.

Anyone who thinks this is a "bank bailout bill" should be asking why Wall Street is fighting so hard -- and paying so much -- to defeat it. The Wall Street Bankers are willing to invest so heavily in the GOPers because GOPers will kill reform for them. And, the Wall Street bankers are getting panicky because the it looks like the Senate could pass real reform soon.

Let's not forget, the GOPers and Wall Street teamed up to destroy the economy back in 2007-2008. They're hoping for a repeat. It's a question of whether the American people will be stupid enough to fall for it this time.

Obama and the Senate Democrats need to shut down the Wall Street bankers and the GOPers whose votes they're buying. Read the rest of this post...

China rejects parole for ill civil rights activist

As if it wasn't bad enough that China arrested Hu Jia and charged him with "incitement to subversion" because he dared to speak on behalf of those who were disenfranchised because of the Olympics, he's now possibly dying. The IOC did an incredible job of patting themselves on the back for the Beijing Olympics while ignoring people like this. Hu Jia remains in prison and is subject to labor despite a rapidly deteriorating health condition that may be pointing to cancer. What a great business trading partner for the west. More from Radio Free Asia:

Chinese authorities have denied jailed AIDS and civil rights activist Hu Jia’s request for medical parole, his wife said Monday.

Zeng Jinyan said that she appealed for Hu’s medical parole last Thursday to authorities at the Beijing Municipal Prison after her husband suffered deteriorating health over the course of several months. An initial application for medical parole in May 2009 was also rejected.

“The prison called Hu Jia’s mother on Monday morning, informing her that Hu’s application for medical parole was rejected. The reason was that the current condition of his cirrhosis doesn’t meet the requirement for parole,” Zeng said.

Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin simply must have bendable straws

It's good to be queen.

Sarah Palin will get first-class airfare for two and three rooms at a luxury hotel when she gives a speech in June for a university foundation.

And organizers better not forget to stock her lectern with two water bottles and bendable straws.

The details of Palin's contract with the California State University, Stanislaus Foundation were contained in five pages of the document retrieved from a campus trash bin by students who heard administrators might be shredding documents related to the speech.

Among other perks, Palin will fly first class — if she flies commercial. If not, "the private aircraft MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger ...," the contract specifies. She also must be provided with a suite and two single rooms in a deluxe hotel.

Read the rest of this post...

DOJ says Obama's views on 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' are wrong

This is White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina's portfolio. And it's spinning out of control as if no one is in charge. Is Messina in over his head, is he trying to undercut the President's own promise in the State of the Union to repeal DADT, or is Messina doing the President's bidding, proving that the President has gone back on his word of just two months ago?

Regardless of whether you think the White House should focus on DADT this year, the President promised in his State of the Union that he would get it repealed this year. It's only been two months. How would you feel if only two months after the President made a promise to you, he then broke that promise? It not only creates a problem for the Democrats with a key constituency, it also calls into question the value of the President's word. Read the rest of this post...

WaMu ex-CEO: bank wasn't 'clubby' enough to be saved

To a degree, I hear what he's saying. As I've mentioned before it does seem strange that despite everything we witnessed from the "too big to fail" crowd, they've walked away from the crisis pretty much unscathed. Sure the bonuses were trimmed a little, but hardly back to what their value should be compared to every other industry. If anything, those banks are now even larger, so the "too big to fail" issue is more of a problem today than it was before the crisis.

One of the few targeted companies in the crisis fallout has been run by a brown-skinned CEO who had created his own company that is small compared to the big players. The losses there were in the low tens-of-millions which is a lot until you compare that to the established players on Wall Street and their losses. There's obviously something seriously wrong with the law if the old boy network of Wall Street can protect you from such a global failure. But hey, that's why "respected" politicians retire and become lobbyists. They get to write the law to give their deep pocketed friends a free ride. So as easy as the laws are today, imagine what the former political leaders are doing to the Wall Street reform. Now *that* is clubby.

To that end, the ex-CEO of Washington Mutual may have a point. But then again, I didn't hear him complaining much about the $25 million he made in the final year as the bank fell apart. How "severe" were the feds with the bank in reality? Did he pay back the tens of millions that he made on bad deals that had little hope of ever surviving? He should be kissing the ground and thanking those "clubby" folks for helping to write easy laws that keeps people like him out of prison for running such a mess of a company.

The panel's 18-month investigation found that WaMu's lending operations were rife with fraud and that management failed to stem the deception despite internal probes.

Killinger rejected that conclusion. He argued that even before the crisis struck with force, the government treated WaMu unfairly. He noted it was excluded from a list of large financial firms whose stock couldn't be sold short under a temporary government ban in July 2008.

In short-selling, traders bet a stock price will drop and use borrowed shares to profit from any decline.

"For those that were part of the inner circle and were 'too clubby to fail,' the benefits were obvious," Killinger said. "For those outside of the club, the penalty was severe."

Read the rest of this post...

Top bankers asked to stop lobbying against reform at meeting with Axelrod and Summer, but didn't

The financial services industry is spending millions and millions on lobbying to defeat the financial reform bill, which will be debated soon in the Senate. Last month, Americans for Financial Reform estimated the industry was spending $1.4 million every day on lobbyists and political contributions. Last week, the leaders of that industry, who were saved by U.S. taxpayers, had a meeting with top Obama officials. The Obama team wants them to stop fighting reform. Bloomberg got the scoop on the "private" meeting:

Top White House officials last week pressed the chief executive officers of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to stop lobbying against a financial-regulatory bill advancing in Congress, according to people who attended the meeting.

President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers met with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and about 12 other executives at an April 6 event in Washington hosted by the Financial Services Forum, said the people, who declined to be identified because the meeting was private.

Did anyone think asking the financial guys to stop lobbying would work? I mean, it's not like they've been such responsible citizens for the past couple decades, especially of late. They destroyed our economy and have no compunctions about it.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that some of the big bankers who were at the White House kept lobbying. So far, to no avail on the issue of derivatives:

Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley had been pressing hard in recent days to dilute provisions of the bill that would change the rules for derivatives trading. But the Obama administration, which has made this one of its priorities for the financial-regulatory bill, has pushed back hard and appears to be succeeding.

Keep pushing back because those bankers are going to keep spending millions on lobbyists. The White House and the Senate can't back down on this one. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

I haven't watched the TODAY Show for a long time. Now, I remember why. The first guest this morning was Dick Morris, who can usually be found on FOX News. The next story was on a missing kid. And, there's apparently an extended interview coming up with that annoying reality show Kate, you know, the one who has eight kids. It's just so bad.

The President and the Vice President have a meeting this morning with Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and the Senate and House Minority Leaders: Mitch and John Boehner. They're going to be discussing the legislation to reform Wall Street. Boehner already voted against financial reform in the House. And, McConnell announced this week that he's opposed to reform, too. The GOPers are still trying to protect the big banks. This issue is a no-brainer -- or should be. The Democrats have to push real reform and let the GOPers try to protect Wall Street and the big banks. That should really annoy the GOP's new best friends, the teabaggers.

The First Lady is in Mexico City for the next couple days on her first solo trip abroad.

What do we need to know? Read the rest of this post...

Georgian president details 'foiled plot to see weapons grade uranium'

The amount was quite small, but it's still a major concern.

Georgian sources said the highly-enriched uranium – HEU – was intercepted in a sting operation carried out by the Tbilisi authorities in March without international assistance. They said the uranium was more than 70% enriched. The exact analysis is expected in a few days, but it appears to have been pure enough to use in a crude nuclear weapon.

The amount seized was small, measured in grams, so nowhere near the 25kg minimum needed for a functioning bomb, but Georgian officials said the gang was offering the HEU as a sample of a bigger quantity available for purchase. The officials would not comment on the nationality of the gang.

"The Georgian ministry of interior has foiled eight attempts of illicit trafficking of enriched uranium during the last 10 years, including several cases of weapons-grade enrichment. Criminals associated with these attempts have been detained," the Georgian president told the summit. "The most recent case of illicit trafficking was the attempted sale of highly enriched uranium in March of this year."

Read the rest of this post...

Irish Cardinal who was in meetings where child rape victims were forced to sign vows of secrecy has heart attack

The question remains, why is he still in the church after his admission? The Guardian:

Ireland's embattled Catholic Cardinal Sean Brady was taken to hospital tonight with a suspected heart attack.

The Catholic primate was taken to Craigavon Area hospital in Northern Ireland after being taken ill at a confirmation ceremony in Co Tyrone this evening.

A spokesman for the hospital said the 70-year-old cardinal was in a stable condition.

Brady faces demands from clerical abuse victims to stand down over his role in silencing two young victims of the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth. Smyth was one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles whom the Catholic church continually moved around the country, Northern Ireland, England and the US even after it knew about the allegations against the Norbertine priest.

Read the rest of this post...