Code Rose

Reader Dave writes about the "code noir":

Your post about making DADT more "humane" reminded me of The Code Noir. Back in the day, slavery as practiced in French colonies like New Orleans was considered more humane than that throughout the rest of the South. Slaves were given certain rights and priveleges unheard of in other parts of the South. Some excerpts (per Wikipedia):

- slave husband and wife (and their prepubescent children) under the same master are not to be sold separately (art. 47)
- slave masters 20 years of age (25 years without parental permission) may free their slaves (art. 55)
- slaves who are declared to be sole legatees by their masters, or named as executors of their wills, or tutors of their children, shall be held and considered as freed slaves (art. 56)
- freed slaves are French subjects, even if born elsewhere (art. 57)
- freed slaves have the same rights as French colonial subjects (art. 59)
- masters must give food (quantities specified) and clothes to their slaves, even when they are sick or old (art. 22 - 27)
- (unclear) a master who falsely accuses a slave of a crime and has the slave put to death will be fined (art. 40)
- masters may chain and beat slaves but may not torture nor mutilate them (art. 42)
- masters who kill their slaves will be punished (art. 43)

In the context of slavery, one could certainly argue that some of the rights granted here were exceedingly generous. But that doesn't change the basic fact that they were still practicing slavery plain and simple. No one in their right mind nowadays would argue that this form of slavery is acceptable because it's more "humane." And while I don't mean to compare DADT to slavery, I really am dumbstruck that anyone could think that a more "humane" form of DADT would be similarly acceptable.

Oh Dave, you're such a nuisance. Read the rest of this post...

Who wants to try this?

Gulp. I'm sure it's incredibly safe but yikes, I really can't stand heights. Give me rough seas, bike riding in Paris, eating insects or dodging motorcycles on the streets of Vietnam over this any day.

Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest.

The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's 103rd floor Skydeck. Their transparent walls, floor and ceiling leave visitors with the impression they're floating over the city.

"It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, Calif., who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take — 'am I going down?'"

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VA TV station won't air GOP ad against Dem. Congressman who voted for energy bill

Remember last week how House GOP leader John Boehner had a tantrum during the debate on the energy bill, trying to filibuster the legislation? Well, that bill has sent the GOP over the deep end. The House Republican's political arm planned to run ads against Democrats who voted for the bill (although eight Republicans voted for it, too). But, an ad set to run against freshmen Tom Perriello (D-VA) was refused by a Roanoke, VA TV station:

Congressional Republicans were dealt a setback Thursday in their attempt to punish Democrats in swing districts for voting for climate change legislation in the House last week.

WDBJ-TV, a Roanoke television station, will not air a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad attacking freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), citing factual inaccuracies, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Jen Crider. A source familiar with the station's decision confirmed Crider's account; WDBJ general manager Jeff Marks confirmed that the ad would not run, but declined to say why.

"The ad is not running, be we have not characterized why that is," said Marks. "We don't characterize why an ad is not running. We looked into the complaints [from national Democrats], but other than saying that, you really need to find out from the NRCC."

And, as this Huffington Post article noted,

the nonpartisan organization FactCheck.org called the ad "wrong."

Everything the GOP does these days is wrong. Read the rest of this post...

White Supremacists see conservative Teabagging parties as recruitment opportunity

It ought to give conservatives pause when their only usefulness in politics is serving as a recruiting opportunity for white supremciasts. From the Anti-Defamation League.

White supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups plan to take advantage of the anti-tax “Tea Parties” set to occur in more than 1,000 cities and localities over the July 4 holiday weekend to disseminate racist fliers and other materials and attempt to recruit others to their cause, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

ADL’s Center on Extremism, which monitors extremist groups and provides information to law enforcement and the public, has released information on its Web site describing the attempt by white supremacists to co-opt the anti-tax message of the events as a means to spread racism and anti-Semitism.

On Stormfront, the most popular white supremacist Internet forum, members have discussed becoming local organizers of the “Tea Parties” and finding ways to involve themselves in the events. Many racists have voiced their intent to attend these rallies for the purpose of cultivating an “organized grassroots White mass movement,” with some suggesting that they would do so without openly identifying themselves as racists.

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Dana Milbank's employer, the Washington Post, planned "Salons" (at $25,000 a pop) offering access to high-level officials

The Washington Post has completely jumped the shark and lost any shred of credibility. The Post planned to sell access. DC access. Inside access. Remember how sanctimonious Dana Milbank was last week when Nico Pitney asked a question at the Obama press conference? Remember how Milbank disparaged the idea that any administration would work in synch with the media? On CNN's Reliable Sources, Milbank said, "What I have never done in my life, Howie, is worked in collusion with an administration..." Hmmm. But, this was the latest from Milbank's Washington Post, as reported by Politico this morning:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

That sounds like working in collusion with an administration to me.

Early this afternoon, the Post canceled the Salons. It was all just a big mistake. Read the rest of this post...

New ad targets Senator Mary Landrieu, who has had taxpayer financed health insurance for most of her adult life, on the public option

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Senator Mary Landrieu's history of health insurance. From what I could piece together, the Senator from Louisiana has spent a good part of her life receiving taxpayer financed health care. You know she doesn't spend a lot of time haggling with insurance companies. No, but from all the money Landrieu gets from the health insurance lobby, it's pretty clear she does spend a lot of time talking to insurance company lobbyists at fundraisers.

Landrieu is opposed to including a public option in health care reform legislation. She's siding with her pals in the insurance industry. How would she know what it's like not to have health insurance? Taxpayers have taken care of that for her.

MoveOn is running ads in Louisiana on this very issue with a very compelling constituent of Landrieu doing the talking:


The bill introduced in the Senate HELP Committee by Senators Kennedy and Dodd includes the public option. In a statement applauding that bill, Obama explained why that's important:

Among the choices that would be available in the exchange would be a public health insurance option. The public option would make health care affordable by increasing competition, providing more choices and keeping the insurance companies honest.

More affordable and more choices for consumers. More accountability from insurance companies. And, Mary Landrieu is opposed to the public option.

Just hope Landrieu is listening to her constituents at least as much as she listens to the titans of the insurance companies. Senator Landrieu needs to hear from more of her constituents. In DC, her number is 202-224-5824. But, if you're from Louisiana, call her local offices, too. The numbers are here. Let her know you want the public option in the health care reform package. Read the rest of this post...

Obama deputy campaign manager abandons DOMA & DADT as priorities

The new Obama talking points don't even include DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell as priorities any longer.

President Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, who is himself openly gay, penned a piece for the Huffington Post yesterday that delineates the three "gay" priorities that Congress should focus on: safe schools; hate crimes; and ENDA.

After two weeks of the Obama White House reeling over the gay backlash caused by the anti-gay DOMA brief, which compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, we now have the number two guy on the Obama campaign suddenly writing about what our legislative priorities should be. Don't think for a minute that this essay wasn't either written by the White House, written at their behest, or at the very least cleared with them. This essay is the White House's thinking on gay issues.

And what is that thinking? First, that the burden for doing anything pro-gay in the remaining three and a half years of the Obama administration is now shifted to Congress. Obama has no role whatsoever, and no power to influence anything, even though he's still the leader of the free world. The essay makes clear that the onus is on Congress and no one else.

Second, the three big gay rights priorities that Congress should be focusing on do not even include what have organically become the community's top two priorities: repealing DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell. They're not even mentioned in the Obama deputy's essay.

Politics is, in many ways, the art of reading tea leaves. I think Joe and I have both proven our worth in terms of our ability to read what's going on in Washington behind the scenes, particularly as it concerns issues of importance to the gay community. Never have we received a clearer signal that the Obama administration does not share our priorities than this essay.

Yes, safe schools are great. And the hate crimes bill is important too (even though, oddly, it was able to pass a filibuster in the last congress but can't even get a vote in this one). But Joe and I predicted that Obama and the Democratic Congress would use hate crimes as some be-all and end-all issue, after which they would wash their hands with us - never focusing on the more important issues of marriage and the military. And that appears to be exactly what is happening.

It's not clear if some gay group is giving Obama the behind the scenes permission to abandon his promises to our community on the military ban and on DOMA, but it's increasingly looking that way. And if that's the case, the community's ire will no longer be focused solely on Democrats. It will turn towards any apologist organization that is more interested in attending next-to-meaningless White House ceremonies and cocktail parties instead of defending its own community. Read the rest of this post...

Amazing rescue in Des Moines

You don't find people like Jason Oglesbee every day. There's a video inside the link including a brief interview with the very helpful and very humble Oglesbee who wanted to get back to work after the effort. Des Moines Register:

The boat went over the dam shortly after 4 p.m. and the woman, who was also about 60, became caught in a boil just over the dam. She was wearing a life jacket and was partially clothed when she was pulled from the water by Jason Oglesbee, a construction worker for Cramer & Associates in Grimes.

"They just harnessed me up and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her and the crane drug her to the boat and that's it," Oglesbee said. "What are you going to do if she's like that? It's no big deal. The whole crew did it."

The construction crew rigged Oglesbee to a crane after an initial attempt to rescue her with the crane was unsuccessful. The woman was too weak at that point to hold on to the crane or to life preservers being thrown to her by a fire rescue crew, said Sgt. Joe Gonzalez with the Des Moines Police Department.

Read the rest of this post...

Reuters: Amnesty says Israel "wantonly" destroyed Gaza

Reuters:

Amnesty International said on Thursday Israel inflicted "wanton destruction" in the Gaza Strip in attacks that often targeted Palestinian civilians during an offensive in December and January in the Hamas-run enclave.

The London-based rights group, in a 117-page report on the 22 days of fighting, also criticized the Islamist movement Hamas for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called "war crimes."

Among other conclusions, Amnesty said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza guerrillas deliberately used civilians as "human shields," but it did, however, cite evidence that Israeli troops put children and other civilians in harm's way by forcing them to remain in homes taken over by soldiers.

Read the rest of this post...

SEC staffer raised warnings on Madoff in 2004

There is so much more to the Madoff story that we don't know about yet. The family relations at the SEC are certainly raising eyebrows but so are the stories of 1000% returns. More charges are expected soon. Washington Post:

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case.

Read the rest of this post...

The State: "Sanford's mental state questioned"

The State newspaper, based in Columbia, SC, has had excellent coverage of all things related to Mark Sanford. There are eight new Sanford-related articles and that's not counting the editorials and op-eds. But one headline really caught my eye: Sanford's mental state questioned. You don't see a headline like that about a high-ranking elected official every day. Here's an excerpt:

Gov. Mark Sanford is acting like a love-struck teenager.

Or, maybe he has a deeper personality disorder, some experts speculate.

As the saga of Sanford and his Argentine lover continues, the public, the governor’s political rivals and some allies are speculating about the governor’s mental stability and whether he’s able to lead the state.

While mental health experts are reluctant to pin a diagnosis on the governor, their observations of his behavior suggest a chemical imbalance, narcissism and impulsive behavior.

Sanford has not sought professional mental health treatment, said Joel Sawyer, the governor’s spokesman.

But some fellow politicians are saying the governor needs help.

The governor shold be seeking professional help. Either way, this has been a meteoric fall. A couple weeks ago, Sanford was the rage among conservatives because he wouldn't take the stimulus money. He was a hot GOP prospect for 2012. Now his state's leading paper is wondering about his mental state. Read the rest of this post...

Employment numbers today were a disaster

The nitwits of CNBC strike again with their "recession is over" shtick. That team wouldn't have a feel for the real world if it bit them in the bottom. Actually it did and they still have no idea. A few more tough months still to come, unfortunately. We will get there and turn this around but not overnight.

Employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, the government said on Thursday in a report that showed a labor market continuing to struggle with a deep recession.

The June job losses were more than 100,000 greater than the 363,000 consensus of Wall Street economists polled by Reuters and broke a four-month trend of moderation in job losses.

The Labor Department data showed that in April and May, 8,000 fewer jobs were lost than previously reported. The May job losses were revised downward to 322,000, while the April losses were revised upward to 519,000.

The jobless rate of 9.5 percent compares with 9.4 percent in May and was the highest since a matching unemployment rate in August 1983. Analysts had expected the rate to rise to 9.6 percent.

Read the rest of this post...

Kennedy/Dodd offer cheaper public option health care bill

AP:

Determined to advance President Barack Obama's health care agenda, key Senate Democrats are calling for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans, as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that do not offer coverage to employees.

In a letter outlining the details, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said their revised plan would cost dramatically less than an earlier, incomplete proposal, and help show the way toward coverage for 97 percent of all Americans.

The two senators said the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the proposal at $611.4 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago. The revising also "virtually eliminates" an earlier forecast that the proposal would cause many companies to drop coverage for their workers, they said.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

This afternoon, your president is going to speak about "innovation and jobs." He's holding a meeting at the White House with companies that are still hiring more workers even during the recession. This morning, we'll be getting more info. about job losses and the unemployment rate. A good sign would be that the rate of job losses is slowing. Be great if the unemployment rate stopped increasing too. Those aren't just numbers. They're people.

Still haven't seen the sun up here in Maine. There's a rumor it might, just might, appear today. But, no sign of that yet.

What's the buzz? Read the rest of this post...

Lessons from the credit bubble

Shares in banks may be have been ever so slightly ahead of the norm in this most recent run. The unrealistic expectations both from the banks as well as the buyers fed this distorted growth. The expectations fed the drive to use an increased amount of leverage which as we well know, is great on the way up but costly on the way down. We are on the way to better regulation but that too will take some time and will require constant attention and flexibility to change. The Bank of England and other world financial organizations are dissecting the recent rise and fall and reflecting on what needs to change.

"We should aspire to a financial system where there is greater market and regulatory scrutiny of future such money machines. In achieving this, there is a role for some body – a systemic overseer – which is able to detect incipient bubbles and fads and, as importantly, act to correct them. This role is about removing the punchbowl from future financial sector parties."

He said that in future there would have to be a greater distinction between management skill, which improves return on assets, and luck, when return on equity can be magnified by leverage.

"Good luck and good management need to be better distinguished. Put differently, returns to investors and managers need to be more accurately risk-adjusted if the right balance between risk and return is to be struck for individual firms and for the financial system as a whole."

A second lesson, he added, was that there would have to be much stricter system-wide limits on leverage, particularly among big banks whose stability is crucial to the whole financial system.

Even now I wonder how sustainable the high payouts are for the financial industry. In their rush to hold "talent" they are all trying to out bid each other, apparently in the hope for another quick run. As this market levels out and the big run fails to emerge, big payouts should cut into profit margins. If this happens, will there be more bleeding of workers in this industry? I wouldn't write this industry off but I also question its ability to sustain even the current numbers. Read the rest of this post...

Privatization fails over and over in the UK

The Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair privatization plans all sounded so wonderful. Basic services such as public transportation and the mail could be spun off and the free market would save everyone lots of money! Hooray! Except it didn't quite work out that way. Public transportation privatization has been a fiasco and costs to consumers have hardly decreased. As a regular consumer of public transportation in France I'm horrified with the outrageously high costs when I travel to the UK. It's very expensive and the quality is generally sub-standard.

The rail privatization took a hit as another rail operator notified the government that it has had enough. Like many business ideas from the recent past, what sounded impressive during the credit boom suddenly looks like a very bad idea. Politicians such as Blair and "modern" lefties all bought into the idea that government services could become sexy and profitable if only they had a bit of faux capitalism. Only a politician who spent their life working in government could have viewed this as a good idea.

The DfT's financial constraints were exacerbated as National Express announced it will hand back its £1.4bn east coast contract at the end of the year, the second time in three years that a company has bid more than £1bn for the route and then quit after admitting that it could not afford it. GNER gave up its £1.3bn contract in 2006, only for National Express to place a higher bid less than a year later.

The east coast withdrawal marked a new low in the tense relationship between struggling train operators, who are battling to honour expensive contracts signed before the recession, and the transport secretary, Lord Adonis. He warned that National Express would be barred from the rail market amid uproar that the company was preparing to avoid fulfilling its £1.4bn pledge.

In yet another blow, the UK government is now backing down from its privatization of the post office. The government was becoming addicted to the easy money and ignoring the real world results. The post office privatization is thankfully gone though the UK government is now eying some very steep financial hurdles. All of these programs still require money but there's none left. It was all spent bailing out the banks and covering some of the basics. The UK is in the difficult situation of either requiring a new economic surge (not likely) or raising taxes. The government was drunk on credit and the phony economy that they created and now they have to figure out how to survive without either. The Conservatives may be howling but if anything, they would have gone even deeper into credit and privatization. Their strongest selling point today is that they are not Labour. Read the rest of this post...

Mousavi questions legitimacy of government

Just because Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is certifying the election, it doesn't mean the opposition is accepting those results. Mousavi as well as fellow opposition candidate Mehdi Karoubi are both rejecting the legitimacy of the government and promoting a peaceful transition. The Guardian:

Mousavi's language seemed chosen to suggest that the Islamic regime, which in the last two weeks has seen the worst unrest in 30 years, was betraying the basic principles of the 1979 revolution.

"It is our historical responsibility to continue our protests and not to abandon our efforts to preserve the nation's rights," insisted the former prime minister.

"From now on we will have a government which from the point of view of ties with the public is in the weakest of positions. A majority of society, of which I personally am a member, do not accept the legitimacy of this government."

Mousavi also demanded an end to the regime's "obsession" with security, the reform of electoral laws he believes were abused, the constitutional right to free political assembly, an end to restrictions on the media, and the right to set up independent television stations.

Read the rest of this post...