Bank CEO pay increased 36%

It never stops with this crowd. Enough is never enough and political leaders are afraid of any real change that might protect the rest of the country from these bandits.

Bank chiefs’ average pay in the US and Europe leapt 36 percent last year to $9.7 million, according to data compiled for the Financial Times, despite variable performance across the sector.

Two of the industry’s biggest names – Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive, and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein – were paid more than 15 times their 2009 earnings.

Mr Dimon received nearly $21 million in 2010, topping the FT’s survey of the salary and bonus packages awarded to 15 top bankers. Mr Blankfein earned $14.1 million, including a $5.4 million cash bonus – up from $863,000 in 2009.

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Video: My NN11 panel, "Prez isn’t your boyfriend," or "What to do when the President just isn’t that into you?"

Here's the video of our earlier panel with (Mc)Joan Carter, Dan Choi, Jane Hamsher, Felipe Matos and me.  It was quite a lively discussion, and the audience seemed into it.  (Oh, and I'd have been wearing pants had McJoan not spilled a glass of water all over me during our lunch discussion planning for the panel - but I'm not bitter.)

Watch live streaming video from freespeechtv at livestream.com

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An amazingly racist Herman Cain radio ad

This is not to be believed. As the ad says, "That's cold, bro."



Rings every bell. Army. Mixing with Ho's. Abortion. Even "toot sweet" fits. It's a cartoon world in that man's head. And he's not the star (h/t Sam Seder).

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Romney jokes "I'm unemployed too"

Sure thing Mitt. Because your $200 million net worth that came from companies that you squeezed and who slashed jobs is anything like the unemployed who have been screwed by the GOP recession. What a complete insensitive jerk.

Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own.

“I should tell my story,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m also unemployed.”

He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.

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Live Chat on New York Marriage battle with Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell

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Netroots Panel: What to Do When the President is Just Not that Into You

Joan McCarter moderates the panel with John Aravosis, Felipe Matos, Jane Hamsher and Dan Choi.

Watch live streaming video from freespeechtv at livestream.com

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Weiner announced his resignation

The traditional media is abuzz this afternoon. Rep. Weiner is resigning. It's happening now. If you want to watch live, it's here.

Now that he's quit, what will all the cable news talking heads have to talk about? They surely can't discuss wars and the economy. Read the rest of this post...

Americans worried about another recession

The economy was the issue in 2008 and it's likely to be important in 2012. Unfortunately, Obama has not done much to impress the public on this issue.

The nation’s gloom over economic conditions poses a serious threat to President Obama’s re-election chances, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey shows that nearly half of all Americans, and two-thirds of Republicans, believe the country is headed back into recession. A 54 percent majority disapproves of Obama’s handling of the economy.

“The public is incredibly pessimistic about the future,” said Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster who conducts the NBC/WSJ poll with his Republican counterpart Bill McInturff.

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CIA tried to discredit liberal blogger, at request of Bush White House

This is far more serious than some are intimating. In America you do not sic the CIa on your political opponents. And worse, the CIA should know not to agree to do it. While thhe NYT report says CIA officials caught a document that targeted the blogger, and deleted the reference, the damage and crime was done: the White House had already asked CIA to spy on an American, and CIA did it. It's not enough to delete tbe offending information. This is a crime. And a rather serious one. The President needs to launch a formal investigation now, into what happened here, and whether any other Americans were illegally targeted. I know President Obama isn't a huge fan of accountability. But this goes to the core of who we are. It's beyond wrong.

UPDATE: Juan Cole is calling for a congressional investigation.

I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned.

It's interesting that the CIA is claiming they "search their records" and can't find anything on this. Well duh. Do you really think they were stupid enough to make a record of an obviously illegal request from the White House? And, as noted, the illegal memo on Cole was redacted. Doesn't the CIA have backup servers? This merits an investigation, from Congress and from the Obama White House. This is an incredibly serious allegation. Read the rest of this post...

Live stream of my panel at Netroots Nation - 10am Eastern

My panel is about international blogging, looking at the European Netroots and how it compares to the US. We should also have a number of international bloggers from Africa, the Middle East and Asia joining us in the audience - and we hope and suspect they'll be joining in the discussion as well. If all goes well, you should be able to watch the panel live, below, from 10am - 11:15am Eastern.

Watch live streaming video from fstv1 at livestream.com

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More chaos in Greece leads to vote of confidence

There's really no easy way to get through this situation for Greece. The people have every right to be angry and the government has no chance at all of being able to pay back the loans. Default is the only option at this point and of course, nobody wants to face that problem. Whenever this settles, then all eyes will be back on Ireland and Portugal to see if they can actually repay their loans. Even then, the larger question is how stable are some of the other weaker links in Europe? Interesting times ahead.

Greece's 18-month sovereign debt crisis brought the government to the brink of collapse as public fury over savage austerity measures erupted in pitched battles with riot police on the streets of Athens.

The escalation of the Greek crisis had instant European and global impact, sending world stocks tumbling and exposing European Union paralysis over whether and how to launch a second attempt in a year to save Greece from insolvency.

George Papandreou, the socialist prime minister, announced he would seek a vote of confidence on a new government after offering to resign and broker a new national unity coalition with opposition conservatives.

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UN inching forward with investigation into "crimes" in Syria

If they drag their feet any more, nobody will be left alive. Al Jazeera:

The UN human rights chief has called for a full investigation of alleged abuses carried out by Syrian authorities against anti-government protesters.

Navi Pillay, the high commisioner for human rights, said on Wednesday that her office had received reliable reports that up to 10,000 people have been detained and more than 1,100 killed, most of them unarmed civilians.

Pillay told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that there were "numerous cases emerging of the torture and ill-treatment of detainees".

She said human rights campaigners, political activists and journalists had been particularly targeted among those detained.

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