Night Music

Open Thread, the Cuba edition.

Spyro Gyra, Havana Moonlight

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Michele Bachman uses taxpayer money to move her office 25 feet

From HuffPost Hill.

House staffers this week are enduring the biyearly nail-biter of the office lottery. Given the already cramped quarters of leadership and personal congressional offices, square footage is at a premium. A congressional aide sends word that Michele Bachmann's turn just came up and she opted to move from Cannon 107 to Cannon 103 -- just two doors down to an office suite our staffer source claims has the same amount of space. The aide puts the cost of such move at roughly one to three thousand dollars. Bachmann's office didn't return our call. There's a really great YouCut video in all of this.

Any Americans who want their $.000006 back should call (202) 225-2331.

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UBS profits down as it removes risk

Exactly. Notice as well the JP Morgan Chase analyst who believes that UBS needs to step up the risky deals if the bankers want to continue to rake in the big bonus money. This cuts to the heart of the problem that the industry and the public is facing today. To date, no political leaders have shown any serious interest in reforming an industry that relies on excessive risk. If the bankers were willing to accept the downside of risk, it would be less of an issue, but clearly they're not. Until this changes and they're ready to accept real capitalism, risk-free ought to be the norm.

UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, had the lowest revenue from sales and trading in the first three quarters of this year compared with eight main competitors and was the only one to report a third-quarter pretax loss at its investment bank.

The Zurich-based firm made more from trading stocks and bonds than the average of its competitors in 2005, before more than $57 billion of writedowns and losses from the credit crisis forced it to shrink the investment bank’s risk-weighted assets 44 percent. A lack of client business, combined with the lowest value-at-risk, meant UBS barely made enough in the third quarter to pay the 17,000 bankers in the unit.

“They have to start taking risk again or to pay less,” said JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Kian Abouhossein, whose recommendations on UBS produced the second-highest total returns over the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The question is do you really need the best people in the market if you’re just running a very flow-oriented business? That’s the dilemma that they need to decide.”

Does this industry honestly believe that they have "the best" out there? Yes, they do, despite all evidence to the contrary. That misguided belief is another reason why we're far away from any honest banking reform. Too many political leaders on both sides (and in the White House) actually believe this. Read the rest of this post...

McConnell, Boehner blow off this week's meeting with the President

Just got this statement from the White House:

At the request of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner due to scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses, the President’s meeting with bipartisan leaders will now take place at the White House on Tuesday, November 30th.

Seriously? Talk about chutzpah -- and that excuse is pathetic. Wow. I have to think that this stunt by McConnell and Boehner is unprecedented. It should even make David Broder shudder.

I'm sure McConnell and Boehner's base will love this. It looks like they're pushing Obama around.

The President's base, on the other hand, isn't surprised that GOP leaders are pulling a stunt like this. The GOPers don't want to work with Obama. They want to ruin him.

If the White House doesn't view this as a huge insult and a precursor of what the next two years will be like, they're more hopeless than we think.

I really, really don't want to hear Obama talk about his craving for bipartisanship anymore. Read the rest of this post...

Berlin body scan protesters: 'Be a good citizen — drop your pants'

Leave it to Berliners to come up with a great protest earlier this year. (There is no nudity but you should be cautious opening at work if people in underwear is a problem.) It would be difficult to imagine such a protest in the US or some other countries where arrests would be made for public indecency. It's only OK to see naked bodies if you work for the security team. It's open season for them. Read the rest of this post...

Sen. Levin admits he may remove DADT from Defense Authorization

Unwelcome development on the DADT front today. Posted this at AMERICAblog Gay a short time ago. It's especially problematic because the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, carries significant sway over what happens to the Defense Authorization bill. About 10 days ago, we heard rumblings that Levin was negotiating with McCain about removing the DADT language from the Defense Authorization bill. Today, Levin acknowledged it. So this wasn't background noise after all:

The measure to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military may have to be dropped from the defense authorization bill in order to get the bill passed this year, said Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI).

"I'm trying to get the bill through Congress. I'm the committee chairman for a 900 page bill. ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is two pages of 900 pages. My focus is different from the media focus. I'm just trying to get a bill passed," Levin told reporters at the Capitol building on Tuesday.

While no final decisions have been made, Levin said one option was to separate the language on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" from the rest of the bill, and then making two separate efforts to pass the both pieces of legislation.

"I'm trying to get both done. And if I can't get both done, I want to get one of them done," Levin said.

The one he really wants to get done is the Defense Authorization bill. This is not good. Not good at all. As Senator Udall told Kerry Eleveld:

I do think the best way to move this forward is in the NDAA and I do worry that if we don’t formalize the repeal process in statute now that we may not have this opportunity for a number of years in the future.

Removing the DADT language from the legislation is almost certain to kill it. There's just not enough time left for the Senate to act. And, it probably didn't help that there was an article in today's Washington Post titled, "'Don't ask, don't tell' splitting gay rights groups." Thanks for nothing, Palm Center.

Promises have been made, repeatedly. Promises have not been kept. On October 27th, the President said "there is a strategy" on DADT:

SUDBAY: Is there a strategy for the lame-duck session to --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

SUDBAY: -- and you’re going to be involved?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

SUDBAY: Will Secretary Gates be involved?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not going to tip my hand now. But there is a strategy.

I thought Obama understood that I meant was asking if there is a strategy to pass the DADT language. Because, we haven't seen anything close to that emerging. Time is running out. Earlier today, Atrios tweeted:

DADT has been one of those 'shut up and trust us' issues. so outcome will be revealing

It sure will be. Read the rest of this post...

Wall Street on track for 4th most profitable year

How's everyone doing with their retirement plans? Some economic crisis we have, isn't it? Reuters:

Wall Street may earn $19 billion in 2010, its fourth-most profitable year, even as regulatory changes and a weakened economy limits its ability to generate profit, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

In a report released Tuesday, DiNapoli said profit might decline 69 percent from last year's record $61.4 billion, but may have settled near levels more in line with pre-crisis amounts.

DiNapoli said Wall Street had lost $54 billion in 2007 and 2008, but has benefited from a series of federal bailouts as well as low interest rates.

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Olbermann vs. Koppel on what is 'real news'

When I heard about Ted Koppel's editorial in the Washington Post, entitled "Olbermann, O'Reilly and the Death of Real News", and later that Olbermann would respond — I though "food fight."

The kind of complaining I expected from Koppel is, after all, the faux-adult high ground, the "reasonable" man's meme-du-jour. Jon Stewart put on his "above it all" cloak during the interview with Rachel Maddow and wore it like a flag. And as you many have heard, our own president is doubling-down on the bipartisanship. (Way to keep those check-filled cards and letters coming.) And so I expected counter-complaining. Sigh.

It's true that there is a lot of screaming; it's true that the right-wing guys almost always start it; and it's also true that the rest of us are truly tired of it. Thus the mask of the "reasonable" man, a perfect public face for a public figure. Thus Koppel and his editorial.

But there are two things I didn't count on. One was the sneering tone of Koppel's writing — the man has a serious bone to pick. There's meanness and dig in almost every paragraph. The second was that Olbermann would respond on non-personal grounds — that Koppel was in fact precisely wrong — and that Olbermann would say exactly why.

First, Koppel being precisely wrong (I'll skip the sneer):

a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.

And Olbermann telling him exactly why:



Olbermann is right about Cronkite and Murrow. These juxtaposed thoughts capture the point perfectly:

Most of the highlights of [Cronkite's] career had been those moments when he fearlessly threw off the shackles by saying what was true, not merely what was factual.

[And yet] the deserved and heart-felt sadness at the lost of the journalist and the man turned into a metaphor to the loss of a style of utterly uninvolved neutral "objective" reporting.

And Olbermann is right about Koppel as well. Keith says it differently; I'll speak for myself. Koppel is a closeted rightie, angry with the left for having a winning argument and using it (go back to the sneering), while at the same time revealing his own agenda — as every one of the faux-journalists did — in the run-up to the Iraq war.

I'll say it again. If you are an unreconstructed Bush War apologist, you're at least a right-wing sympathizer, and at most a Movement operative, no matter what comes out of your mouth. No reasonable-man argument for you, sir. Or, to borrow from a currently-raging religious debate, good deeds really do matter; it's not just about the words, or what you imagine is in your heart.

Very good segment from Olbermann. He nails it. Real news, defined.

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100 naked body scan images leaked; Why is scanner picking up people in line?

Fortunately, this was the lesser intrusive scanner, being used at a courthouse, that jumbles up the photo so as to hide your genitals, etc.  But I did notice something weird.  Why does the scanner seem to be scanning people who aren't even in it?  Note how the device is recording the image of people standing in line to get into the scanner in the photos below.  They're not in the scanner, but it's picking them up.   It even picked up the security guy with his wand.

And, as a reader just noted, I'm sure there's no radiation leakage from a device that can pick you up from ten feet away.

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GOP House freshman wants his govt subsidized health insurance NOW

And of course he ran against "Obamacare":

[Republican Andy Harris] A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.

“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.

“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.

Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.

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‘Boy, their political instincts are really stupid’

On the way home from his trip around the world, the President had this exchange with a reporter:

Q Mr. President, you said it right after the election in the news conference that you were going to do some reflecting about what it meant. And now you’ve had this 10 days away, seeing a lot of different people. Can you reflect at all for us about how you might change your agenda, change your style, and how these travels might have affected your thinking?

THE PRESIDENT: As I said in the press conference the day after the election, I spent the first two years trying to get policy right based on my best judgment about how we were going to deal with the short-term crisis and how we were going to retool to compete in this new global economy.

In that obsessive focus on policy, I neglected some things that matter a lot to people, and rightly so: maintaining a bipartisan tone in Washington...

Yes, you read that right. Obama apparently doesn't think he's been bipartisan enough. And, I'd argue he didn't get a lot of the policy right either.

Of course the White House is misreading the results of the election. Of course they are. Their first response is to compromise more (as if that's possible). Their other instinct is to blame the liberal base. For the past two years, it's been pretty clear that the crew at the White House think they are the smartest people in the world. They're not. Not even close:

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and an outspoken critic of the White House, said liberal anger has less to do with fears of a Clintonian move to the middle by Obama and more with a misreading of the election results by the administration.

“It’s less ‘Oh no, they’re triangulating,’ and more ‘Boy, their political instincts are really stupid,’ ” said Green, who along with other liberals has blasted the White House for suggesting it would compromise with Republicans on expiring tax cuts.

The White House “fundamentally” doesn’t get that “the only way to get Republicans to deal in good faith is to fight them, crush them and teach a lesson that if Republicans are on the wrong side of an issue there will be consequences ... so it makes sense to negotiate,” Green said.

“Right now, every time Republicans are on the opposite side of an issue from the public, it’s the Democrats who cave and talk about ‘compromise.’ It’s ridiculous.”

It's completely ridiculous. Read the rest of this post...

TSA founder: 'Nobody likes having their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but the truth of the matter is, we're gonna have to'

Well done by the Redditers who grabbed the clip and tracked down the bio of Morris McGowan who is an assistant administrator for Security Operations at the TSA.

Fivethirtyeight is reviewing public support for the "porno-shot or grope" options and today, support remains high. Those who fly are less in favor of the new procedures. There may be some changes after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season when more people have the pleasure of passing through the system. If the American public can support two unfunded wars and a massive bailout of the bankers with limited complaints, it might be a while until any of this changes. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President has a number of events on his public schedule today, including a meeting with Secretary Gates at 4:30 PM ET. Not sure if the President heard yesterday, and I mean literally heard, the DADT protest on his front gate. Thirteen LGBT activists were handcuffed to the fence to protest DADT and the President's failure to lead. Time is running out for a legislative solution. If Obama and Gates don't speak out forcefully and actually lobby members of the Senate -- it won't happen. When I interviewed the President on October 27th, he told me that the disillusionment in the LGBT community "isn't justified." He may think that, but he's wrong. It's justified and it's real.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate, which has an enormous amount of work to do, isn't in session today. Next week, Senators are taking off for Thanksgiving. They'll be back in on November 29th -- with every indication that they'll be "done" by December 10th. Tough schedule, huh? The Senate has to address the START Treaty, pass a continuing resolution to fund the government, deal with the tax cuts and, maybe, pass the Defense Authorization bill, which includes the DADT language. But, they're off today. And, next week. And, will probably take the two weeks off before Christmas.

It's gray and dismal in DC, figuratively and literally. One bright spot is that Sam Seder is back on the air every day with a "Daily Radio(ish) show" that streams live at 11:30 AM ET on Majority Report Radio. Read the rest of this post...

Singapore jails British author who criticized their courts

This is pathetic.

The case highlighted complaints by critics who claim Singapore uses criminal defamation laws to silence them.

"This sentence is yet another blow against freedom of expression in Singapore," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia. "Sadly, it comes as no surprise, given the long history of the authorities in Singapore using the courts to silence vocal critics of government policies and personnel."

The government says any statement that damages the reputations of its leaders will hinder their ability to rule effectively.

Prosecution lawyer Hema Subramaniam said Shadrake had shown "a complete lack of good faith in making these allegations against the judiciary".

Shadrake was arrested July 18 and freed on bail two days later. A criminal defamation investigation against him is still pending.

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EU tells Ireland to accept bailout

So who still thinks the economic crisis is over? Ireland's woes have been bleeding into Spain and Portugal, threatening to renew the loss of faith in the eurozone. Of course, many believe that the US has managed to avert crisis so far by pushing the federal issues out to the state level. If that's the case, the US has a way to go before even reaching the midway point of this crisis.

With finance ministers from the eurozone due to hold emergency talks tomorrow night, financial markets were expecting Dublin to finalise negotiations with the EU over the terms of a deal to allow Ireland to rescue banks laid low by the collapse of the country's construction boom.

"The Irish problem is spreading, but it could get more volatile," said Ashok Shah, chief investment officer at London Capital, a fund management firm. "They have to get this bailout, they have a period of time before it gets impossible, before nasty things happen. The longer they leave it, the more difficult it will get."

Portugal has seen its borrowing costs rocket along with Ireland's as speculation has grown that it too may have to consider a bailout. Its finance minister, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, told the Wall Street Journal his country had been hit by a contagion effect caused by fears about Ireland's ability to pay its debts.

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Will Abu Dhabi censor its new art museums?

It's hard to believe that the question is being asked. Of course they will. Round up your favorite paintings of pears and dead rabbits and send them over because the shameful human body must be completely covered at all cost. But hey, let Abu Dhabi call itself the art capital of the Middle East and then use that money to fund the collections in Paris and New York.

And there is another worry, little mentioned, but undoubtedly there. Will there be censorship practised over the art that appears, even in world-renowned names like the Louvre and Guggenheim? Representatives of Abu Dhabi denied this, though there were mutterings about the need always to "show respect". But the top New York art dealer David Zwirner, who was at the art fair, was brave enough to reveal that he had been banned from bringing a catalogue of his artist Marlene Dumas, who specialises in painting the physical reality of the human body, sometimes nude. "I think that is a pity, "said Mr Zwirner, "and I hope it is going to change."

How much, or how little, figurative art will be allowed in these new museums? It's a question that will need to be explored and answered by the heads of the Louvre and Guggenheim in Paris and New York, and indeed by Neil MacGregor, head of the British Museum, which is advising the emirate on its Zayed National Museum, undoubtedly for a good fee. Any collusion in censorship would be more than unfortunate.

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