Bank of America tries to take away yet another house

Documents? We don't need no stinkin' documents. Seize the house! Who cares that the problem has happened once or twice or more? Bank of America is above the law. They are the law.

Nancy Willmes paid cash for her Tuolumne home in 2001. So she was quite surprised when Bank of America send her a notice of default on the property in February.

"I honestly felt like Bank of America was trying to steal my property," Willmes said.

She contacted Bank of America to try to find out why the bank believed it could foreclose on property she had purchased outright.

Willmes has chain-of-ownership records, which show Bank of America had sold the property to Fannie Mae years earlier. Fannie Mae foreclosed on the previous owner, and Willmes purchased the property with cash from Fannie Mae.

But Willmes said Bank of America did not care about the documentation.

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Glenn Beck smears Obama's 11 year old daughter

What a complete piece of shit. Media Matters has the entire ugly recording. Read the rest of this post...

When the photos of oil-drenched wildlife start to hit the presses, politicians should become very nervous

Heart wrenching. Read the rest of this post...

BP's effort to plug leak is suspended again

Oh, and here's a surprise. It seems that BP wasn't being totally honest with us. NYT:

BP’s renewed efforts at plugging the flow of oil from its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico stalled again on Friday, as the company suspended pumping operations for the second time in two days before resuming the procedure Friday evening, according to a technician involved with the response effort.

In an operation known as a “junk shot,” BP engineers poured pieces of rubber, golf balls and other materials into the crippled blowout preventer, trying to clog the device that sits atop the wellhead. The maneuver was designed to work in conjunction with the continuing “top kill” operation, in which heavy drilling liquids are pumped into the well to counteract the pressure of the gushing oil.

The company suspended pumping operations at 2:30 a.m. Friday after two junk shot attempts, said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts. They resumed the procedure at about 3:45 local time, after the nearly 12-hour interruption.

The suspension of the effort was not announced, and appeared to again contradict statements by company and government officials that suggested the top kill procedure was progressing Friday.

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My thoughts on the DADT compromise

I've written a rather long piece over at AMERICAblog Gay, explaining why I believe the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise is, on par, a good thing.

We had to pass something this year on DADT or, I think, the fall congressional elections would have precluded action on DADT for years to come. Most observers, all really, think that the Democrats are going to lose seats in November. The question is how many, and whether it will be enough to lose control of at least the House. Some people say it will be enough. If Democrats lose control of the House, you can kiss pro-gay legislation goodbye for years to come (the last time we lost the Congress it took 14 years to get it back). And even if we don't lose the House, but "simply" lose a ton of Democratic seats, we all saw how Democrats flipped out after simply one electoral loss in January (to Scott Brown in Massachusetts). Imagine how they'll react to even larger losses in November. They won't want to touch what they call "controversial legislation" until they rebuild their super-majority, which again could be years.

Simply put, this compromise keeps DADT repeal alive. It permits us a vehicle for seeking full repeal in December of this year, after the Pentagon study is completed, and after the November elections. Had we said "no" to this compromise, I challenge anyone to explain how we could have gotten anything better this year, or for years to come.

Why do I think this compromise protects a future repeal option? Because as weak as this compromise is, most of the media, and a large swath of the American people, think that Congress just voted to repeal DADT. Even the President's own Organizing for America group is calling this a "repeal" vote:

The House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee have already voted in favor of repeal...

And what's more, everyone knows for a fact that the President repeatedly promise during his campaign, and as recently as during this year's State of the Union, to fully repeal DADT. When the Pentagon finishes its study in December as promised, most of the country - and most of the Congress - expects the Pentagon to immediate prepare regulations fully repealing DADT once and for all. If that doesn't happen, the President is going to face a serious political problem just as he launches his re-election campaign.

Whether you agree with my assessment, no one can accuse Joe or me of being soft on this President. We came out swinging for Obama during the primaries, before it was cool, and ended up raising $43,000 for candidate Obama, a sum that usually makes you at the very least a well-respected donor. But when the President went back on his word on health care reform, went soft on the stimulus, and seemed to be backtracking on his gay rights promises, we publicly held him accountable when the easy thing to do would have been to sit back, shut up, and ride his victory to our good fortune. If I thought this compromise were the end of the world, I'd say so. I'm not happy with the compromise, to be sure, and I'm not happy that the President chose half a loaf instead of just lifting the ban now and being done with it. But I do see a path forward under this compromise. And I see no chance whatsoever if we reject it.

That is why I say that, on balance, this compromise does more good than bad, and is certainly better than the alternative - doing nothing.

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Photo blockade helps BP, but what about the environment?

It's pretty clear how blocking access to photographers helps BP from their own Exxon Valdez catastrophe though it's not clear how this helps everyone else appreciate the full extent of the oil leak. Limiting movement in certain areas at certain times makes sense though we're talking about a very large area. Adding a few more boats or planes can surely not be a problem to the relief effort. Providing easy media access is what we do in a democracy. It's also what a transparent relief effort would include. Newsweek:

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

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Breaking the social contract

This is about the homeless. When you break the social contract from above:

it breaks from below as well:

A good-hearted Republican friend of mine recently asked, How can we truly help the homeless? Because I knew he was an engineer, I said it was a manufacturing problem. We have to stop making them.

I don't know what's happened around you, but around me the homeless problem has gotten a lot worse, and the angry nihilism and hopelessness seem to have grown — sort of like an oil well about to blow.


If Pete Peterson gets his way, this could easily turn into a nightmare.

GP

(By the way, the second link above is to an article by William Greider, a good writer to keep on the radar. For an high-energy alternate performance of Street Fighting Man, click here.) Read the rest of this post...

Oil leak may not be limited to only one location

The problem continues to sound much more complicated than we have been hearing. The large plume that has been talked about is probably from somewhere other than the leak that they are attempting to close using the "top kill" method. This is a very interesting exchange with a few oil experts. Read the rest of this post...

In defense of BP's response to the oil spill

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post gives it a try. For those not paying much attention to the crisis, maybe it sounds fine. BP has not "cut and run" but they've hardly been transparent either. ABC News dove into the oil leak which provided us with a good look of what's going on inside the oil being treated with dispersants. BP has been much more reluctant to show anything other than the one underwater view they want people to see. They repeatedly provided a low oil leak count even after experts said otherwise.

As far as financially supporting the disaster recovery, to a degree yes, but why are workers getting sick and why are health clinics not receiving immediate financial assistance from BP? This is yet another good reason why the US government should demand money from BP and take control of payments. How could BP really have the resources that are available from FEMA for such disasters?

Concerning BP being open, pleading the 5th Amendment doesn't sound like "open" to me. BP may have shared some data with a Congressional committee but obviously there's more to tell. BP could have been worse but they're hardly creating a new example for business school MBA crisis management courses either. Then again, maybe they are and that is the problem. Read the rest of this post...

Katla, the other volcano, is rumbling in Iceland

Let's hope it was simply a heavy meal and she will settle down with a bit of warm milk. Here we go again.

An initial research paper by the University College of London Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction said: "Analysis of the seismic energy released around Katla over the last decade or so is interpreted as providing evidence of a rising ... intrusive magma body on the western flank of the volcano."

"Earlier seismic energy release at Katla is associated with the inflation of the volcano, which indicates it is close to failure, although this does not appear to be linked to seismicity around Eyjafjallajökull," it added.

"We conclude that given the high frequency of Katla activity, an eruption in the short term is a strong possibility," the report said. "It is likely to be preceded by new earthquake activity. Presently there is no unusual seismicity under Katla."

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Obama on oil leak: 'I was wrong'

It doesn't make up for the problems to date but it may be a start. The positive side here is that he can actually admit mistakes as opposed to the last government. Now that this has surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst spill in US history, there's no time to waste. We still need to see a more deeply engaged administration though that appears to be doubtful heading into a holiday weekend. Everyone wants to believe that the administration is taking over though time will tell.

He strode into the East Room to mount a robust defense of his handling of the largest oil spill in American history, reassuring the nation that he was in charge and would do “whatever is necessary” to stop and clean up the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But by the time he walked out an hour later, he had balanced that with a fairly unusual presidential self-critique.

He was wrong, he said, to assume that oil companies were prepared for the worst as he tried to expand offshore drilling. His team did not move with “sufficient urgency” to reform regulation of the industry. In dealing with BP, his administration “should have pushed them sooner” to provide images of the leak, and “it took too long for us” to measure the size of the spill.

“In case you’re wondering who’s responsible, I take responsibility,” Mr. Obama said as he concluded the news conference. “It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away or the way I’d like it to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make mistakes. But there shouldn’t be any confusion here. The federal government is fully engaged, and I’m fully engaged.”

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GOP uses public money for Internet site to collect 'new ideas'

What a bunch of complete frauds who insist on sponging off of taxpayer dollars yet again. Doesn't the free market work? Is this really a good use of public money during an economic crisis? Remember this the next time they start crying about the lack of money to fund whatever project they don't like.

Republicans by law cannot use the americaspeakingout.com website for political purposes, since they established it with taxpayer money.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, who is in charge of the effort, said it would not cost much more than an average website for a congressional office.

Using the information gained, Republicans hope to develop legislative priorities for Congress based on their conservative principles by September, two months before the November 2 elections. Boehner said an agenda for congressional candidates is being developed on a separate track.

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Charlie Crist supports compromise DADT language

This is interesting for a variety of reasons, that go beyond the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy itself. Crist, like Lindsey Graham has had to face longtime rumors that he's gay. So, siding with a compromise that is perceived as pro-gay poses either a risk, or an opportunity, for any politician, depending who exactly he's trying to woo. Crist seems to think being pro-gay woos him the votes he needs to win the Senate seat in Florida. So much so, that he's willing to flip-flop on his previous opposition to changing the current policy. Read the rest of this post...

Friday morning open thread

Joe arrived in Paris early this morning for a sneaky birthday getaway that he planned for his boyfriend Carlos. They'll be there till Monday, and plan on having dinner with Chris (in Paris) and his wife Joelle, and the two cats Nasdaq and Sushi, Saturday night.

In the meantime, the big news last night was the passage of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise by Senate Armed Services Committee (the vote was along party lines, except for Jim Webb (D-VA) who sided with the bigots, and Susan Colins (R-ME) who sided with the good guys. The amendment was also successfully added to the House Defense authorization bill. We posted a number of videos of the speeches in the House here and here on AMERICAblog Gay. And you can watch the Republican bigots getting all upset about it here. It's important to remember that the legislation does not repeal DADT. Rather it provides for the future repeal, at an undetermined time, only if the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify a number of things. If that never happens, the law is never repealed. Read the rest of this post...

Girlfriends of priest send letter to Pope

Are they suggesting the rule of celibacy is not as effective as the church believes? This is a shocking revelation. OK, so a few Popes had children - lots of them - but let's not split hairs when rules are there to be enforced. The Guardian:

Dozens of Italian women who have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests or lay monks have endorsed an open letter to the pope that calls for the abolition of the celibacy rule. The letter, thought by one signatory to be unprecedented, argues that a priest "needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved".

It also pleads for understanding of those who "live out in secrecy those few moments the priest manages to grant [us] and experience on a daily basis the doubts, fears and insecurities of our men".

The issue was put back on the Vatican's agenda in March when one of Pope Benedict's senior advisers, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, said the abolition of the celibacy rule might curb sex abuse by priests, a suggestion he hastily withdrew after Benedict spoke up for "the principle of holy celibacy".

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Spain passes austerity budget, barely

There's a lot of this going around these days in Europe. It has to be done to solve the budget crisis that is hitting so many countries. At the same time, by cutting spending, they're also likely to chop any potential for growth in the near term. Every answer at the moment is a bad one and voters are unlikely to respond well to the cuts. At least Germany has finally settled enough to realize that by bashing the rest of Europe, they're only hurting themselves. BBC:

The Spanish parliament has backed a 15bn-euro ($18.4bn; £13bn) austerity package by one vote as the country strives to cut its budget deficit.

The vote saw 169 in favour of the Socialist government's austerity plan and 168 against, with 13 abstentions.

Spain announced the austerity package earlier this month. It includes wage cuts of 5% or more for civil servants and slashes public investment plans.

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