GoogleFail

For those out there wondering what happened yesterday with all things Google, they experienced a system error that caused a bit of pain for around an hour. My wonderful France Telecom/Orange ISP crashed earlier in the day for an hour so I initially thought it was that painful service (thankfully it expires in 2.5 months, hooray!) but no, it was Google, again. (Google crashed a few months ago as well for a few hours.) The difficulty is that when you are such a global company, everyone is looking at every second of the day. Banks and other companies go down (even 99.9% leaves 44 minutes down per month) but unless it happens during key trading hours, they are rarely noticed. Pretty darned good, but not perfect.

Google Inc. is blaming this morning's Google Apps service outage on a system error that caused a major traffic jam.

The company reported that the outage, which started a little before 11 a.m. EDT, caused about 14% of Google users to face slow service or interruptions. The problem affected all Google products, including Google Search, Google News, Gmail, Google Maps and Google Reader.

The outage appeared to start clearing up a little after noon EDT.

Read the rest of this post...

Cat plays joke on cat, keyboard cat enters

I can't watch the keyboard cat episodes where someone gets hurt (not my kind of humor) but this one is pretty funny. I love the dog dreaming episode as well but haven't come around yet to the other keyboard cat tune. Read the rest of this post...

Jack Welch: Be very afraid of the Obama administration

The Republican faithful are changing "9/11 and fear" with "recession and fear" of Democrats. Predictable but it's so tiring to hear this nonsense. Fortunately his wife divulged a few details of his own comfortable retirement plan (that was otherwise going to be secret) during their divorce process a few years ago. Let's see what the humble fellow received in addition to the millions he made while working.

Welch's lifetime benefits, which were first revealed by his soon-to-be ex-wife Jane in divorce filings, include:

* Unlimited access to company jets, which the SEC says amounted to $1.2 million in Welch's first year of retirement.

* Exclusive use of a New York City apartment worth $50,000 a month.

* A chauffeured limousine and a leased Mercedes-Benz.

* Offices in New York and Connecticut.

* Free consultations with estate-planning and tax advisers.

* A personal assistant.

* Television, fax, phone, computer and security systems at his four homes.

* Bodyguards for his speaking engagements and book tours.

The SEC estimated the total package was worth $2.5 million in the first year alone and said GE should have disclosed the details in its annual reports.

Um yeah, that sounds pretty nice. I guess someone like that might be a bit worried about a fair shake for everyone else because how else could he possibly survive? So here's the latest "be terrified of the Democrats" pitch on CNBC today:

"There are so many things that bother me right now. Over the last couple of weeks, things have really gone south in the government relationships," Welch told "Squawk Box."

"These guys, when they came in, said a crisis like this is impossible to waste," he added.

In business, when a crisis hits is the time to attack costs and solve problems, to restructure your company "in a nice way," Welch said.

Restructure in a nice way? What the hell does that even mean, Jack? The "nice" way on Wall Street is to chop tens of thousands of jobs and give an extra bonus to the CEO for a job well done. Yes, the Democrats created this enormous financial disaster. It was their evil plan from the beginning. Oh wait, no, that was led by the Republicans, like Welch. It was the GOP who wanted to make a terrible situation even worse by allowing total collapse of the economy.

The Democrats screwed up by giving away too much and allowing the selfish bastards (Welch types) continue to make huge bonuses despite being wiped out but they did not make a mistake saving the economy from complete failure. The last thing anyone wants is for the government to own any of these companies any longer than necessary but that doesn't fit in neatly with the "Democrats are socialists and want to destroy us all" theme.

When the economy does eventually turn, it would be nice if self centered, greedy people like Welch think about the country and others who don't work in the board room. They weren't the stars they like to think they are or were as we are now discovering. If they didn't screw up so badly and get so consumed with having everything and more we would not be in such bad shape today. The US system requires a certain amount of greed but like everything, there are limits. Not that Welch types know anything about limits though. Read the rest of this post...

2 in 3 Republican Insiders Think Cheney Has Hurt Party Since Leaving Office

From National Journal's poll of DC political insiders:

Q: Has Dick Cheney helped or hurt the Republican Party since leaving office?

Republicans (100 votes)
Helped 33 percent
Hurt 57 percent

Read the rest of this post...

A tale of two Gibbs

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked today about the President's promise to repeal the military's anti-gay Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Watch him attempt to answer the question.



He's completely uncomfortable. It's almost as if he were blindsided by the question, even though he's been asked about it countless times before. Also note that Gibbs is using the "new" White House language on DADT - talking about "changing" the policy, rather than repealing it. And using odd words like "sustainable," which must be code for something we're really not going to like.

Now watch Gibbs answer a similar question about Don't Ask Don't Tell in January.



Notice how in January Gibbs was confident and resolute, compared to his nervous, seemingly unprepared answer today.

I have no idea what's really going on in the White House, but here's my guess. I think some people in the White House legitimately think the President is going to follow through on his promise to lift the ban. Others, closer to the President, think that lifting the ban makes no sense politically, and in any case, where are the gays gonna go? Vote for Palin next time? I think the senior political people (Rahm?), with the help of the national security folks (i.e., Defense), have concocted a cute little scheme whereby the President does "something" on DADT in the next year or so - just enough to claim he didn't break his repeated promises. He will "change" the policy, not repeal it, in some way that cuts the baby of bigotry in half, and gives half to the gays and half to the bigots. And we'll be told, take it or leave it. (And that's when, of course, all hell will break loose.) I fear that this is why Robert Gibbs has lost his voice. Because he secretly knows that we're on the path to getting screwed. What other explanation is there for the ongoing weirdness coming out of a once-resolute White House and its senior representatives on this repeated, and clear, promise by our President? Read the rest of this post...

Big Business lobbyists: Obama is mean to us

Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle. Sounds like some still can't accept their own responsibility for the economic failures that triggered the recession. The business lobbyists are crying "class warfare" so you know we're not far away from hearing about socialism. Oh those crocodile tears.

Some business leaders have focused on the harsh words lately, saying the president is being unduly divisive.

"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."

Bill Miller, political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Obama's remarks "an oversimplification of the real world."

Particularly in the areas of finance and taxation, Obama's language often seems to echo, and perhaps fuel, public anger over matters such as the large bonuses paid to executives of AIG, an insurance giant that was bailed out with public money.

Fueling public anger? Hardly. If anything, Obama is well behind the curve on this. The public is fuming over the continued easy treatment of Wall Street and big business and Obama is playing catch-up. Read the rest of this post...

Media more skeptical of Pelosi than CIA

Greg Sargent notes that the media has been far more critical of Nancy Pelosi's claim that she was never briefed about waterboarding than they have been of the CIA's claim that she was. As Greg notes, it's fair for the media to be skeptical of Pelosi and push her to prove her case - that is their job. But then why isn't the media pushing the CIA, questioning the CIA, just as hard? Read the rest of this post...

Teabagger Rick Perry of Texas apparently can't count

Teabagging Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has worked himself into quite a hysteria of late. First, talking about seceding from the union because, well, because apparently Perry feels he needs to buck up his butch bona fides. And now, suggesting that the solution to the Republican party's woes is to become even more conservative.

“We’ve been watching this liberal love fest that has taken over our country for about a year now,” he said, “and we need to take back our country.”

Both governors stressed that the Republican Party should not become more moderate as a way to regain power in Washington.

“If you look at this notion of what we are really about I would liken the Republican Party to nothing more than a brand in business,” Sanford said.

When great businesses face down times, Sanford explained, “they don’t expand the tent…they go back to what made those companies great.”

“I don’t think it is in the Republican Party’s best interest as some people have said to tack to the center,” Perry said. “I don’t make any apologies to anybody about being a true-blue conservative.”

A few points. First off, I'm not sure how they teach math down in Texas, but in the north we count January to May, the amount of time since a "liberal" took over the White House, as four months, not twelve months. But putting that aside, what we're seeing here is an attempt to by Perry to rejuvenate his conservative credentials. Perry, like Charlie Crist in Florida, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, and Aaron Schock in Illinois, have all been under some pressure to prove their manliness in a party that doesn't like clouds over its future stars. Perry must figure that the more red meat he throws to the party faithful, the less they'll remember those other rumored scandals.

The irony is that Perry is jumping in bed with the wrong wing of the GOP. Moderate Republicans wouldn't care if the rumors about Perry were true, while the conservative base of the GOP would care even if they weren't. Read the rest of this post...

Obama's decision to continue the military tribunals

You may have read yesterday that Obama is going to continue using the military tribunals for a small number of prisoners, but he'll be giving them more legal rights than they had before. Did he just cave? I'm not so sure. While the decision to continue some trials by tribunal would seem to contradict his earlier opposition to the process as "flawed," if in fact the detainees are being given adequate rights - and the question is whether they are - then is there a justification for not simply prosecuting them in the courts? The articles I've read don't make it terribly clear why they can't be prosecuted in the federal court system. Though, perhaps the reason is buried in this NYT article.

And in a clear rebuke to Mr. Obama, Democratic leaders refused to include $80 million the White House had sought for closing Guantánamo. Senate Democrats also said the administration must provide a plan for relocating more than 200 detainees still held at the prison. The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced its version of the military spending bill Thursday with the $80 million but banned the transfer of detainees to the United States.

It appears we're having a case of "terrorist NIMBY." Let's prosecute them all, even if they're just innocent farmers, and lock 'em up forever, damn it! But not in my backyard, thank you very much. It seems Republicans and Democrats in Congress are afraid of having any of these terrah-ists shipped to prisons in their own states. Which means, of course, they'll all be shipped to DC, since we don't have any real representation in Congress. Of course, the joke then would be that every single member of Congress who didn't want these guys in their own backyard would in fact have them in their own backyard, in DC. Read the rest of this post...

Here's an actual news story: Cheney used torture to prove non-existent Al Qaeda/Iraq link

Dick Cheney wanted to got to war against Iraq. He lied about it. Bush lied about it. But, we're supposed to believe that they never lied to Congress about torture. Right. That may work with D.C.'s traditional media, but not anyone who actually remembers 2002.

There is an even more disturbing aspect to this story. It may be too much for the traditional media to handle. We're learning that Cheney used torture to "prove" the links between al Qaeda and Iraq -- because nothing else was finding the information he wanted.

Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson explained his findings at The Washington Note:

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

That same assertion was made by an Army psychiatrist who monitored the torture:

And an Army psychiatrist assigned to support questioning of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba told the service's inspector-general that interrogators there were trying to connect al Qaeda and Iraq.

"This is my opinion," Maj. Paul Burney told the inspector-general's office. "Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

That's the story the traditional media should be covering -- intensely.

Instead, reporters and pundits are agog that Nancy Pelosi would have the audacity to say the Bush administration lied to Congress back in 2002-3. The Bush administration lied to the American people every day. And, torture was the only way they could connect al Qaeda to Iraq. Digby succinctly explained it for us:

By now there is overwhelming evidence that Cheney was desperate to find a connection between Iraq and 9/11. He pressured the CIA. He outed a CIA agent. He went on television and said that it was proven. What we didn't know until recently was the extent to which he was pressuring the CIA to torture false confessions out of prisoners to back up his claims. Much of that still remains cloudy, but it's quite clear to sentient beings that there were people involved in the torture regime who had to know very well that the torture they employed was designed to produce false confessions. The CIA and the top echelons of the Pentagon and the White House simply aren't that dumb.

But, the Bush White House knew it could count on a compliant press corps, which simply was -- and is -- that dumb or dumbstruck.

A lot of people died because of Bush's lies and Cheney's torture. But, you know, the D.C. establishment doesn't like to re-visit the past, especially when it exposes their failures. Read the rest of this post...

Health insurers, hospitals already backing away from commitment to cutting costs and reform

That didn't take long.

On Monday, President Obama had a meeting at the White House with leaders of the the health care industrial complex. The president announced an unprecedented agreement by that crowd to slow the growth of spending by 1.5% a year for the next ten years:

And that's why these groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next 10 years -- from 2010 to 2019 -- they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year -- an amount that's equal to over $2 trillion. Two trillion dollars.

That was Monday. Four days ago.

Today, four days later, the leaders of the health industry are already backing away from that commitment:

Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending...

...The Washington office of the American Hospital Association sent a bulletin to its state and local affiliates to “clarify several points” about the White House meeting.

In the bulletin, Richard J. Pollack, the executive vice president of the hospital association, said: “The A.H.A. did not commit to support the ‘Obama health plan’ or budget. No such reform plan exists at this time.”

Moreover, Mr. Pollack wrote, “The groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually.”

The leader of the health industry's lobbying effort also created some distance:

One of the lobbyists, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said the savings would “ramp up” gradually as the growth of health spending slowed.

Huh. They're acting like the Obama administration just made up the numbers. Funny thing, since earlier this week, Ms. Ignani's group issued this statement:

By reducing the rate of growth in health care spending by 1.5% each year, the nation can achieve a savings of $2 trillion over the next decade. This effort will have a direct effect on the budgets of individuals and families and will also go a long way in ensuring that every American have access to affordable, high-quality health care.(my emphasis)

So, those people stood with the President as he announced the agreement. Those industry people reported the same exact numbers. But, now, they say it's not true. That's it right there: These people can't be trusted. (Of course, anyone who deals with a health insurance company knows that.)

I listened to the conference call on Sunday with "senior administration officials" to preview the agreement. What they said was unequivocal. The health industry had made a commitment to slow spending by 1.5% for ten years, resulting is savings of $2 trillion. I'm sure the health industry knew about that call. They didn't dispute it then. And, the industry used the same exact numbers. So did they just want to stand with Obama for the photo op?

One "senior administration official" on that Sunday call said this agreement was a "game-changer." Now, we know the health industry doesn't really want to change the game. Read the rest of this post...

Orrin Hatch: Obama is permitted to nominate, and Senate confirm, a "liberal" Sup. Ct. justice

Orrin Hatch has been around the Senate for a long time. He's served on the Judiciary Committee in a variety of capacities, including a stint as Chair. In an interview with a conservative website, Hatch spewed the usual right wing rhetoric about "activist judges." But before he got to that, Hatch seemed to dismiss the lobbying efforts of conservatives against the next Supreme Court nominee over an "inappropriate" nominee. Hatch basically said "inappropriate" only applies if the person isn't qualified. But he intimated that as long as the person is "qualified," the person will be confirmed. Hatch then went on to apparently say that a nominee being "liberal" is not a disqualification for confirmation.



Hatch actually gave a very realistic answer about the process: Whoever the president is gets to make the pick. So, as Obama ponders his pick, he should keep in mind that the right wingers will automatically say anyone he chooses is a liberal. But, that's not what matters, according to top Republican Orrin Hatch. Read the rest of this post...

Karl Rove facing prosecutor's questions today over U.S. Attorneys firings scandal

Karl Rove dodged an indictment in the case about the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA status. Today, he's talking to prosecutors again. This one is about the scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys by Bush administration officials:

Karl Rove will be interviewed today as part of a criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys during the presidency of George W. Bush, according to two sources familiar with the appointment.

Rove, a former senior aide to Bush, will be questioned by Connecticut prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who was named in September to examine whether former Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006.

Hopefully, Dannehy has talked to Patrick Fitzgerald about how to question the smarmiest of the Bush team. This was the guy, who along with Dick Cheney, led us into a war over lies.

This is another one of those scandals that the traditional media dismissed. Josh Marshall and his crew at Talking Point Memos put the pieces together and exposed it. For that, they won an award. Meanwhile, many in the traditional media mocked the story -- and just dismissed it:

Still, the image is great. While the mocking reporter, Time magazine’s Washington bureau chief Jay Carney, was busy dumping, via Times Swampland blog, on the story of U.S. Attorneys being fired across the country, Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo, and two of his reporters at his offshoot site, TPMuckracker.com, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, were busy reporting, using a variety of sources that had been largely untapped by the mainstream press.

To be fair, Carney wasn’t dismissing the story out of hand, but his snark hardly masked his belief that Marshall & Co. were out on a partisan limb, hyping a story that just wasn’t there.

Yeah. That's how it was. Karl Rove probably told the inside-the-beltway media types that it wasn't a real story. And, they dutifully believed him. Let's hope the prosecutor isn't so gullible today.

(And, that same Jay Carney now works for Joe Biden.) Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Okay. How idiotic are the people in the traditional media? Speaker Pelosi said quite firmly that the CIA misled her about the Bush administration's torture policy back in 2002. She was adamant. And, yes, it was torture.

Yet, traditional media types can't grasp that concept. Surely, they're breathlessly intimating, Pelosi must be wrong. Do they not remember what really happened back in 2002-2003? I made the mistake of watching the start of the TODAY Show this morning. Matt Lauer and the ever painful Kelly O'Donnell seem shocked, shocked that Pelosi would say someone in the Bush government would have lied back in 2002. For Christ sakes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and their entire administration were flat out lying to the American people back then about terrorism and Iraq. They misled us into a war -- abetted by the traditional media.

Do these idiots in the media not remember that? The likes of Lauer, O'Donnell and their colleague covering the White House, David Gregory, were regurgitating the Bush team's lies -- and echoing the drumbeat for war. It was appalling -- beyond appalling -- that no one challenged the lies back then. Now, they can't grasp that someone in the government was lying about these issues. Idiots.

Here we go... Read the rest of this post...

Treasury to bail out Big Insurance

Sounds like the smaller banks may have to wait a bit longer to see any help from Geithner's Treasury. This is an exclusive club restricted to the biggest of the big only. Small companies need not apply and for individuals? Don't kid yourself. Keep your whinging to yourself and forget about your own personal financial worries because those who profited the most in recent years are at the front of the line to profit even more even though they led the way into this recession. Surely you don't think it's fair to ask them to trim their lifestyle, do you? You selfish, greedy bastards. Shame on you! Think about the needs of our corporate leaders who are suffering out there. It's all about them, again.

The Treasury yesterday granted preliminary approval for some of the nation's largest insurance companies to receive capital infusions under the government's Troubled Assets Relief Program, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.

Recipients are Hartford, Prudential, Allstate, Ameriprise, Lincoln National and Principal Financial Group, he said. The insurers notified yesterday are among hundreds of financial institutions in the pipeline "that are being reviewed and funded as appropriate on a rolling basis," Williams said.

The money could shore up the life insurance industry, which plays a major role in the economy and has been weakened by the financial crisis. In addition to paying death benefits, life insurers deliver retirement income in the form of annuities. They are big investors in corporate bonds and commercial real estate.

Ah, the impending commercial real estate collapse. Get ready to bail out yet another screw up by banksters. Isn't Republican capitalism great? It's even better when Democrats (or whatever Geithner is) join the party. How did these people pervert our economic system like this? We have yet another round of privatized profits and socialized losses about to strike. Read the rest of this post...

British report on banking crisis is brutal

Let's see if they bother to follow up with any of this but wow, they spared no punches here. I hope that the US commission exposes the banking crisis perpetrators like this including those in political power who helped it all happen, Democrats and Republicans alike. Any of them who side with Wall Street over the rest of the country deserve to be humiliated and sent packing. The bus better be large though because there will be plenty of them. The Independent:

In a scathing verdict, the Treasury Select Committee accused Lord Myners, a former chairman of Marks & Spencer appointed by Gordon Brown last October, of "naiveté" in his handling of the former RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin's pension and a failure to exercise tight enough control of the issue.

They also blamed the City bonus culture for creating a "lethal combination of reckless and excessive risk", contributing to the crisis that has tipped the nation into recession.

The MPs were critical of all players in the recent dramas: the RBS board was "incompetent"; former bankers guilty of "self-pity"; the usefulness of audit firms questionable; non-executive directors part of an "incestuous... cosy club"; and the credit ratings agencies "not well equipped" to assess complex financial instruments. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) continues to show "complacency", having been "extremely slow" to act. Only the media emerges with any shred of credit.

The MPs also express concern that the now majority state-owned RBS and Lloyds groups were continuing to award bonuses and salaries that were "too high". They call for the issue to be given a higher priority by the FSA: "The failure to act meaningfully in this area would be viewed with incredulity amongst the general public and further erode trust and confidence in the banking sector."

Self-pitying bankers. There's a lot of that going around in that club, including with their tennis partners. Read the rest of this post...

Aung San Suu Kyi faces new trial in Myanmar

What else would you expect when a strange person slips past a police barricade, swims across a lake and shows up on your property? The military junta remains as corrupt and bizarre as ever. It's hard to believe she won in a landslide election almost 20 years ago. With close friends like China, it's no wonder the junta stays in power despite losing elections and having no legitimacy. The Guardian:

Foreign governments and human rights organisations accused the regime yesterday of planning to put Suu Kyi on trial next week on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest as a pretext for keeping the winner of the last free vote in Burma, 19 years ago, in detention ahead of elections next year.

Suu Kyi, 63, faces up to five years in prison if convicted after John Yettaw swam to the property next to Lake Inya in Rangoon where the 1991 Nobel peace prize winner has been confined for 13 of the last 19 years. The latest house detention order expires in a fortnight and the opposition leader's lawyers intended to go to court to demand her release in time to lead her party in the election.

Read the rest of this post...

Small banks also facing cash issues

Sounds like Geithner was spot on again when he talked about the health of the banks. It's all so dreamy, isn't it? The small bank executives don't play tennis at the same club that Timmy and the big players use so it's easy to forget they even exist. Let them eat cake.

While investors have focused mostly on the nation's largest 19 banks that were the subject of the government stress tests, shares of some smaller banks have been getting pummeled since last week's rollout of the test results.

One of the reasons: the stricter capital requirements for all banks—not just the 19 biggest—may prove too onerous for some of the regional and community institutions, causing some of them to fail.

"Most of these little banks won't be able to do it," said Richard Bove, banking analyst at Rochdale Securities. "We're headed to a situation where the focus is going to be on small banks. The small banks are going to fail in, I think, pretty large numbers. I'm guessing 150."

Read the rest of this post...