Millions of animals die in Australian fires

It's really heart breaking to see these photos and hear the stories. The longer I am in Europe, the more I appreciate the wildlife that other parts of the world offer. Wildlife in Europe hardly exists and when it does, nitwits in official government jobs kill them as they did with the mountain bear a few years ago. The loss of life - human and animals - has been tragic. From TheDay.com:

Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfire's onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat.

Wildlife rescue officials on Wednesday worked frantically to help the animals that made it through Australia's worst-ever wildfires but they said millions of animals likely perished in the inferno.

Scores of kangaroos have been found around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.

Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet, a result of their territorial behavior. After escaping the initial flames, the creatures - which prefer to stay in one area - likely circled back to their homes, singeing their feet on the smoldering ground.

”It's just horrific,” said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where the raging fires were still burning. “It's disaster all around for humans and animals as well.”

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Lloyds Banking loss doubles in one month

No, it didn't necessarily double in reality but over the course of one month they updated their number to reflect a much deeper loss. This remains the fear with banks around the world. The Wall Street cheerleaders like to say that we've seen the last of the losses and then this happens again and again and again. It has to stop and we need to see a predictable and stable quarter followed by another stable and predictable quarter. After that, repeat and repeat. It will take years for these institutions to bounce back and generate confidence from the market though they have no one to blame but themselves. Well, maybe also their friends in government who gave them what they wanted as well. Banksters strike again.

Lloyds Banking Group said its HBOS unit made a hefty loss last year due to bigger-than-expected bad loans, wiping nearly a third off the group's stock market value.

HBOS had a pretax loss of 8.5 billion pounds ($12.28 billion) for 2008, Lloyds said in a statement on Friday, driven by 7 billion pounds in bad corporate loans and a further 4 billion pounds in asset write-downs.

In November, HBOS had estimated its corporate impairments at just 3.3 billion pounds.

Lloyds Banking Group shares were down 29 percent at 64.8 pence, having earlier fallen as low as 54.9 pence.

"The market doesn't like the fact that in a period of a month the corporate losses (at HBOS) are twice what they had announced," said Mamoun Tazi, analyst at MF Global.

Lloyds said the big rise in bad loans and write downs was driven by falling asset values as markets continued to deteriorate.

It said the increase also reflected the application of Lloyds own "more conservative" accounting methods at HBOS since the two banks joined forces late last year.

Conservative accountants? I didn't know such accountants existed after Enron and the credit crisis. Go figure. Read the rest of this post...

VA GOP chair thinks Darwin is a vewy vewy dangewous man

Conservatives are willing to revisit any history, however well established. It's why they're trying to make Darwin a bad word. Why the religious right has been a tear about Freud for years. Why the Republicans are now trying to claim that the New Deal didn't work. And why the Pope is embracing Holocaust-denying bishops. Conservatives don't learn the lessons of history, they rewrite history. It's what we witness in Congress every day of the week. Obama appoints three Republicans to his cabinet, when everyone else only appoints one opposition party member, and Obama is "too partisan." Or remember Ann Coulter accusing Democrats of being hateful and shrill? They accuse us of what they do. And the best way to rewrite history is to rewrite the present. Read the rest of this post...

"Too big to fail" banks are like "dead men walking"

Sounds like this will become even costlier in the not so distant future. The big problem is that Republicans and too many Democrats live in a Pre-Credit Crisis world. Ehem, folks, things have changed. The bubble burst yet Wall Street has convinced too many in Washington that we need to maintain a business as usual approach. Sure they talk about trimming bonuses but look where that's going now that the friends and apologists of Wall Street have moved in. It's clear the GOP wants to maintain the status quo and even the Obama administration (or shall we simplify that and call it Clinton Lite) has softened its position out of their fear of standing up to bullies and the people from the Clinton years who thought it was possible to be nice with this crowd. Kumbaya, right?

Back in the real world, the GOP is going to continue to coddle Wall Street and as long as Geithner, Summers and friends of Rubin stick around, the economy is not going to progress and be ready for the next round of expansion in a few years. If this pathetic situation wasn't so serious it might be funny to watch this futile attempt to hold the mushy middle. Unfortunately for all of us, it's serious and they're seriously blowing it.

Some of the nation’s large banks, according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking.

A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent.

None of the experts’ research focuses on individual banks, and there are certainly exceptions among the 50 largest banks in the country. Nor do consumers and businesses need to fret about their deposits, which are federally insured. And even banks that might technically be insolvent can continue operating for a long time, and could recover their financial health when the economy improves.

But without a cure for the problem of bad assets, the credit crisis that is dragging down the economy will linger, as banks cannot resume the ample lending needed to restart the wheels of commerce. The answer, say the economists and experts, is a larger, more direct government role than in the Treasury Department’s plan outlined this week.

The Treasury program leans heavily on a sketchy public-private investment fund to buy up the troubled mortgage-backed securities held by the banks. Instead, the experts say, the government needs to plunge in, weed out the weakest banks, pour capital into the surviving banks and sell off the bad assets.

Public-private investment fund? That's so Pre-Credit Crisis. Move on folks. Move on. Read the rest of this post...

Former Bush aide: Dangerous and possibly deadly if we find out all the laws that Bush broke

Dangerous for who?

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News flash: The stimulus bill is "anti-Christian"

Amy Sullivan at TIME, writing about the religious right claiming that the stimulus bill is "anti-Christian":

What's most maddening is that the people getting the mobilization alerts and emails from the Christian Coalitions of the world are getting squeezed under the weight of the collapsing economy.

This is always the conundrum of the Republican party. The Joe-the-Plumbers of the world complain about the Democrats' tax policy when they do better under the Democrats' tax policy (well, that's assuming they actually pay the taxes that they owe). Same story for the unwashed masses of God's bigot brigade. These are the very people who are going to suffer most in this economy, yet they and their leaders are oblivious. Read the rest of this post...

Judd Gregg's Jack Abramoff problem

Another explanation as to why Gregg quit. A far better one than "he just didn't realize Obama was a Democrat and he was a Republican." Read the rest of this post...

Sununu meets Stewart

It's not pretty for Sununu, but it's beautiful.

One more time, Jon Stewart has the best messaging on a key issue. He destroys the GOP's opposition to the stimulus. At the next Democratic retreat, the members should watch Stewart videos and read Krugman columns:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

John Sununu

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

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NBC's political team discovers there really is no bipartisanship

It's like finding out there is no Santa Claus:

Perhaps the biggest fallout from yesterday’s Gregg news is the realization that outside Collins, Snowe, and Specter, Obama isn’t going to receive much support from Republicans, no matter how many of them he tries to appoint to his cabinet, how many times he has them over for drinks at the White House, and how many times he meets with their conference.

This is as much a realization for NBC as it is for Obama.

Perhaps now Chuck Todd can stop asking stupid questions about bipartisanship. One of his first questions as NBC's new White House reporter was whether Obama would veto the stimulus bill if it had no bipartisan support. It was beyond idiotic. Read the rest of this post...

The real reason Judd Gregg dropped out?

Perhaps it's time the media asked outright whether the religious right vetoed Bonnie Newman's appointment to replace Judd Gregg, lest she break one glass ceiling too many. And no, I'm not talking about her being a closet "woman."

UPDATE: Even more suspicion, and BS. Gregg reportedly dropped out after meeting with GOP leaders for the past couple of days. Gee, about what? What suddenly became so important that the GOP leaders needed to implore Gregg to keep his seat? Were they concerned that Bonnie Newman wouldn't be seated, or worse, would be forced to step down and then the Dem governor of NH would say "Hey, I tried, you got your Republican, now you're getting a Democrat?"

And just as good, Gregg is now saying, in the same article, that he suddenly realized that sometimes he'd be on one side of another while Obama's cabinet would be on the other. Gee, you think? Judd Gregg, conservative Republican from NH, never realized that he might have differing views from the Obama administration? Then there's this. Gregg suddenly realized that he won't agree with Obama 100%, and that he doesn't like working in a team, he prefers working as an individual. Again, Judd Gregg, at the age of 61, just realized, a week or so after taking the Commerce job, that he and Obama don't agree on everything, and that he isn't a good team player.

All of this is a ruse, folks. Judd Gregg dropped out for some other reason. Either he never intended to take the job, and was just using it as an opportunity to get the Republicans to woo him back with some big prize, or Bonnie Newman suddenly had to withdraw her name for "personal reasons." Either way, we deserve to know the truth.

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Time's list of 25 People to Blame for Credit Crisis

Only 25? McCain's friend Phil Gramm is not surprisingly at the top of the votes though Bill Clinton makes the cut. What it not easy to understand is the continuing acceptance of the old model even today. Sure this group is now on the outside looking in, but why does Washington continue to believe we only need small changes to this failed and corrupt system? We're well beyond that point and need more than a suggestion of change. We need real change. As Michael Hirsh writes, tear them down. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Last night, on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart kicked around former NH Senator John Sununu. It was hysterical. I just checked the Daily Show website to see if the video has been posted -- it hasn't. I'll check throughout the day.

You can't just clip and post video from the Daily Show or any Comedy Central show. The network's owner, Viacom, freaks out and I've already got one strike at YouTube for posting a clip of Pete Seeger and Bruce singing at Obama's inauguration concert. HBO claimed copyright infringement because they owned that concert for America. I should have posted Obama's speech from the concert. That would've been interesting to see if HBO owned or claimed they owned Obama's words from his inaugural, too. (We were told by Obama staff that HBO was wrong to do pull my video and would fix it. Of course, big surprise, HBO never did.)

I want to watch someone kick around Judd Gregg the way Stewart did it to Sununu. What a backstabbing, double-crossing, no-good, typical Republican. He looks like an idiot, but he's probably used to that.

Okay, let's get started... Read the rest of this post...

Australia charges man with arson that has already claimed 180+ people

The fires are on the decline, fortunately, though the legal battle is only starting. Arsonists always come out everywhere in the world during such hot and dry conditions but the fact that so many people have died and lost everything, this case is going to be different.

Authorities charged a man today with lighting one of the wildfires that killed a total of more than 180 people in Australia, and whisked him into protective custody to guard him from public fury.

Police said the suspect was charged with one count of arson causing death and intentionally lighting a wildfire near the town of Churchill that killed at least 21 people. It was one of hundreds of fires that raged through southeastern Victoria state on 7 February, leaving 7,000 people homeless and razing entire towns.

The suspect also was charged with possessing child pornography.

The disaster's official death toll is 181, but efforts to find and identify victims were continuing and officials expected the final tally to exceed 200. More than 1,800 homes and 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) of forests and farms were burned.

The suspect's identity was being kept secret for his own safety, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Dannye Moloney told a news conference. He was brought to the state capital of Melbourne from Morwell, 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the east and near the the town of Churchill.

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Merrill Lynch pays over $1 Million to 700 people but lose $27 Billion

Sure, that sounds fair. What failing company that needed to be bought out or fail shouldn't reward people so handsomely? Now that the GOP is trashing the stimulus plan after having trashed the economy, there will no doubt be plenty of Americans rolling in such rich rewards. Good work, when you can get it.

For nearly 700 lucky Merrill Lynch employees, 2008 was a million-dollar year, even though the brokerage firm lost $27 billion.

On a day the chief executives of eight large banks were questioned about their industry’s excesses on Capitol Hill, Andrew M. Cuomo, the attorney general of New York State, raised hackles by disclosing how Merrill Lynch distributed its 2008 bonus pool. The payments, made just before Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America in December, have already stirred anger for being paid earlier than usual. And Mr. Cuomo made it clear that the bulk of the bonuses were paid to a small portion of Merrill Lynch’s 39,000 employees.

“Merrill chose to make millionaires out of a select group of 700 employees,” Mr. Cuomo wrote in the letter, which was sent to the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday night.

This is why we need to start asking Wall Street for bonus money already paid out. If they can't act responsibly, someone needs to do it. Read the rest of this post...

Why is Pandit still the CEO of Citi?

Send this bum out to pasture. Today and without a platinum parachute like Chuck Prince. CNBC's Reality Check:

Yesterday I blogged about a comment Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said during his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. He was bemoaning the fact that troubled borrowers don’t attempt to contact their lenders. In fact, he claims that half the foreclosures at Citi were “for people we’ve never talked to.”

Pandit told the panel of lawmakers: “The challenge is when times get tough, people don’t want to own up and say hey I’m going to have an issue, and so people put their heads in the sand and they don’t own up, and that’s really a bad place to be.”

Well I got tremendous reader response to these claims.

I’d crash the system if I posted them all, so here are a representative few. Mr. Pandit, you might want to read them:

Craig in Hawaii: Citi CEO, Vikram Pandit, is the one with his “head in the sand”. I’ve personally been waiting a modification from Citi on my mortgage for 6 Months!!! I was proactive and first contacted them in August 2008, 4 months before my Adjustable Rate Mortgage was due to reset. It’s Feb 11th, 2009 and I’m still awaiting an answer.

Scott: I have been working with Citigroup for 5 months on my loan but have yet to see any results from them on helping out at all get the run around every time.

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Neanderthals were distinct from us

Well, from Democrats at least.

All kidding aside, it's a fascinating article. For one thing, I didn't realize that neanderthals lived alongside modern humans in Europe for thousands of years (well, "modern" is a relative term - neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago). Just a very interesting article. Read the rest of this post...