Treme ought to be interesting

Homicide was a classic and The Wire was even better. There are so many terrible programs out there but The Wire really stood above the rest. Great story, great acting, great writing. (As a native of Baltimore, I always noticed a few strange attempts at doing the Baltimore accent but had no idea many of the actors were actually British.) Now the creator of those stories has a new show about New Orleans but also the failures as a nation that we are still trying to fix. This ought to go down well with Republicans.

He has taken on drugs, crime and corruption in Baltimore; and brutalised young soldiers in Iraq. Now David Simon, the creator of the hit TV series The Wire, is to create a drama that treats Hurricane Katrina as an allegory for the financial, social and cultural disasters that have shaken the US over the past year.

The series, called Treme, after a New Orleans neighbourhood, was commissioned by HBO earlier this month after a successful pilot, and will air in the US in 2010. Filming will start later this year – after the hurricane season abates. The 10- or 12-part drama will be, Simon told the Guardian, "an allegory for the trauma that the country as a whole went through two years later".

"The fact is that the levees on the canals were substandard, and done on the cheap at an immense profit. Ultimately that becomes a metaphor," he said. "New Orleans was relying on things that were believed to be genuine bulwarks against tragedy and disaster. People felt that there were similar bulwarks protecting our financial institutions and foreign policy. Now, two years on, we are all essentially in the same boat as New Orleans. Katrina was an outlyer of where we are today."

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AstraZeneca the latest Big Pharma to promote untested use of products

Big Pharma spends a lot of money to develop a new pharmaceutical product. I get that. Increasingly the industry is struggling to deliver products that deliver substantial differences and that translates into a bad business model because buyers refuse to buy. Much like pricing discussions, this is an industry that detests a real free market or capitalism. Not that it doesn't stop them from pretending as though price negotiations are somehow communist and against capitalist principles. (The bigger the lie, as they say.)

Governments and insurance companies run their own tests and look for some level of increase such as an increase in the lifespan of a patient. All too often in recent years, the industry has not been able to show enough of an increase to justify newer products. The response by the industry has been consistent. Big Pharma has enjoyed a lax regulatory environment in the US so they promote their products for uses outside of the original intent. The Independent:

AstraZeneca launched a public relations push to get doctors to prescribe its best-selling psychiatric drug Seroquel for a string of uses that were not approved by safety regulators, according to a damning internal document released yesterday.

The UK's second biggest drug maker is being sued by 16,000 patients in the US for "spinning, skewing and concealing" information on the drug's potential side-effects, including diabetes and weight gain, and lawyers unearthed emails and strategy documents showing what they say are repeated violations of the law.

The company was forced on to the defensive yesterday after more than 230 internal documents were made public, supporting a legal assault that wil cost it hundreds of millions of dollars if successful.

This is the industry who Obama is going to work with to build a new health care system. Does anyone really think they will join easily? This industry relies on bilking the American system so they will not go down without a fight. Read the rest of this post...

Right whales returning to Greenland

More great news about whales, this time in the north Atlantic as opposed to the encouraging news from Alaska the other day.. Thankfully the Japanese ships don't hunt in the Atlantic though perhaps the Norwegian ships do. Joelle and I kayaked in Walvis Bay, Namibia a few years ago and spent two hours playing with a southern right whale. (Photo above.) The youngster was around 20-some feet long and swam next to us, under us, back and forth. We stayed in a fairly tight area (a few hundred meters in length) and couldn't believe how interactive our whale friend was. Each time we lost track of her, she would pop up again and dive under us, just a couple of feet away from the side of the kayak. They are such incredible animals and the two of us are total suckers for moments like this. Onto the good news up north:

Government scientists believe they have some good news about the endangered right whale, whose population in the Atlantic Ocean is struggling to come back.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday they have found evidence of a significant right whale population in waters off the southern tip of Greenland. The whale was thought to have largely disappeared from that area decades ago. Only two of the whales have been sighted in the area in the last 50 years.

But now scientists, over a yearlong period, recorded 2,000 whale calls from underwater listening devices in the area. No whales were sighted.

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From his lips to the DNC's, DCCC's, DSCC's and White House's ears

If you don't support your writer friends, pretty soon there will be no one left to support you. None of those organizations routinely buy ads on the blogs, or do anything else to support, financially or otherwise, the blogs. None of them. But nary a day goes buy that they don't all ask the blogs for help. A former employee of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is now gone, writes:

As a kind of exorcism, I write this confession: I was in love with journalism, and it was an extremely complicated and torturous love affair that ended with tawdry efforts to please eclipsing the desire to do good. ...

I, like most bloggers and formerly employed journalists, am now writing for free, and that is not a sustainable social model for finding, investigating and sharing information about the powerful, the greedy and the downtrodden.

Unless local users conscientiously seek and support local substantive journalism with money, real local news will continue to be spotty at best, barely afloat in a sea of nearly-naked celebs.

And our non-profit friends, don't think we haven't noticed your absence either. And you wonder why the blogs never seem to help you get your stuff out to the masses, when you never bother to help them in return. Read the rest of this post...

Cheney not only runs the GOP, he's "Obama's top critic"

A screen capture from the front page of Reuters.com. The photo, which captures the essence of Dick Cheney, and the blurb link to this article:



Dick Cheney already destroyed one presidency. Now, he's determined to ruin another one. This time, Cheney is way out of his league. He's going to fail again. Read the rest of this post...

TIME: Pelosi's Probably Right

You mean GOP leader Newt Gingrich was wrong? Read the rest of this post...

GMAC receiving another bailout

The fat lady ain't singing yet. NY Times:

The Treasury Department has decided to bail out GMAC, the former financing arm of General Motors, with $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the discussions, which would bring its total federal assistance to more than $12 billion.

The deal is expected to close on Thursday and comes two weeks after federal regulators concluded from a stress test on GMAC that it needed an additional $11.5 billion in capital to weather a severe downturn in the economy.

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Reagan's son discusses Limbaugh's erectile dysfunction and "man-boobs" (seriously)

Apparently, Limbaugh has been on quite a tear for a while, mocking the way Nancy Pelosi looks. Recently he said that Pelosi was shaking from "botox withdrawal," and back in January, Limbaugh said he could keep the birth rate down by putting pictures of Pelosi in every hotel room. So Ronald Reagan, Jr. struck back. Via Slog:

"Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection—none of that stuff—to me, off limits until! until! Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else—once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too."

Again, putting the sheer comedy of this aside, having Reagan's son enter the fray to attack Limbaugh, which will only incite Limbaugh more, keeps the Republican story line on one of our three favorite Republicans, Limbaugh, Cheney and Gingrich. America can't stand any of the three. So the more the story keeps on them, the more Americans spurn the GOP. Read the rest of this post...

RNC: Constitution was right to count blacks as 3/5ths a man and allow slavery

I wonder whether Michael Steele agrees with his own organization on this one?

Today, Obama gave his national security speech at the National Archives, which houses the U.S. Constitution. Trying to be clever (which they're not), the RNC tweeted an attack on Obama for his belief that slavery was a "fundamental flaw" in our constitution, we learned via the Media Matters Action Network. Apparently the RNC does not believe that the Constitution was wrong to permit slavery:

RNC: as he prepares to deliver remarks in hall that holds the constitution, flashback obama: "constitution flawed" http://bit.ly/tFL7O #RNC [Twitter, 5/21/09]

FACT: Obama Explains The Constitution's "Fundamental Flaw" Was Slavery. The out of context video the RNC links to contains audio from a September 6, 2001 program called "Slavery and the Constitution" on WBEZ Chicago. On the show, Obama explained that the "fundamental flaw" was "Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the framers." In addition, the framers did not "see...it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth." [WBEZ Radio, accessed 5/21/09]

As MMAN notes, George W. Bush, Colin Powell and Condi Rice all said similar things. But, they might not be considered Republicans anymore. It's hard to tell who is and who isn't these days.

To be clear, when it was written, the U.S. Constitution allowed slavery and counted slaves as three-fifths of a person. It took the civil war to remedy that provision. But, in the warped world of the RNC, Obama is wrong to think of slavery as a "fundamental flaw." What would the RNC call it?

I'm willing to wager that even among the 20% of the public left in the Republican party, probably only a third at most might agree with the RNC that the Constitution was right about slavery.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Joe's criticism is really unfair. The RNC considers minorities at least 4/5ths a man nowadays. Read the rest of this post...

Steele apology alert. Next up: Hispanics

Ben Smith at Politico:

Hispanic Republican leaders say they've lost patience with promises from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to hire high-profile Hispanic operatives and launch targeted outreach toward their community.

The complaints began in March, when leaders of key Hispanic GOP organizations wrote Steele in a private letter that they "were extremely disheartened that no Hispanics were considered for the post of Coalitions Director and that, to date, no Hispanics have been appointed to any other high-profile leadership roles within the party," according to a copy of the March 6 letter provided POLITICO by one of its signatories.

The letter came in response to Steele's decision to hire a fellow black Republican, Angela Sailor, to lead the GOP's diversity efforts, a role he elevated within the party structure.

Hmmm... sounds like the Republicans are having an affirmative action problem. You see, when Democrats have these discussions about minority representation, the Republicans always tell us we're talking about quotas. Well, now they're talking about quotas.

Oh, and it's about time Latinos realized that the Republicans don't care about minorities. Read the rest of this post...

Newt Gingrich, GOP leader, ethics maven

From Ruth Marcus in the Wash Post, commenting on Gingrich saying that Pelosi doesn't have the ethics to be Speaker:

[I]’s amazing that Gingrich -- the only House speaker in history to be disciplined for ethics violations -- had the gall to make that claim. Does he think no one remembers?

Let’s review. Gingrich was reprimanded by the House and had to pay a $300,000 penalty for improperly using tax-deductible money for partisan political gain and for submitting false information to the ethics subcommittee investigating his conduct. An investigation by the House Ethics Committee concluded that Gingrich’s conduct represented "intentional or…reckless" disregard of House rules and that there was “reason to believe” that Gingrich knew he was providing false information.

"The violation does not represent only a single instance of reckless conduct," a report by an investigative subcommittee concluded. "Rather, over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities."

To be clear, the ethics case against Gingrich was no partisan witch hunt. The investigative subcommittee that determined he had violated ethics rules was headed by Florida Republican Porter Goss. The vote to reprimand him and impose the penalty was 395 to 28.

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Mockery is all Dick Cheney deserves

As the cable news talking heads foam at the mouth over Dick Cheney's speech this morning, being billed as a response to Obama, Josh Marshall reminds us who Dick Cheney is:

This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean.

So as we see the big reporters trying to put him on some sort of equal footing with President Obama today, let's remember that the great majority of Americans see Dick Cheney, accurately, as a clown. And mockery isn't just the most effective but also the most morally apt response to the man.

Very well said.

One problem is that many of the "big reporters" who will breathlessly report on Cheney today also merrily and dutifully abetted Cheney and Bush as they wreaked havoc on our country, our constitution and our world. Those media types warrant mockery as well.

UPDATE: This guy really is the voice of the GOP. If they want this image front and center, so be it:


Another update: The Chair of the campaign committee for Senate Republicans, John Cornyn from Texas, sees Dick Cheney as a political asset:

Asked if Cheney would be a good surrogate for Senate Republican candidates, Cornyn said: "It think it depends on the circumstance on the race."

But Cornyn said, "I’d be proud to appear with the vice president anywhere, anytime."

He's all yours, Cornyn. Bring Cheney around the country. Put him in ads. Have at it. Read the rest of this post...

Excerpts from Obama's speech on national security: "the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security"

Watching Obama deliver his major address on national security this morning. He's sounding very resolute. And, he's laying plenty of blame on the Bush/Cheney team.

Here are some excerpts as prepared...he's sticking to it pretty closely:

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era – that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent.

In other words, we went off course. And this is not my assessment alone. It was an assessment that was shared by the American people, who nominated candidates for President from both major parties who, despite our many differences, called for a new approach – one that rejected torture, and recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

On torture:

Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability. For reasons that I will explain, the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable – a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass. And that is why I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.

First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

The arguments against these techniques did not originate from my Administration. As Senator McCain once said, torture “serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us.” And even under President Bush, there was recognition among members of his Administration – including a Secretary of State, other senior officials, and many in the military and intelligence community – that those who argued for these tactics were on the wrong side of the debate, and the wrong side of history. We must leave these methods where they belong – in the past. They are not who we are. They are not America.

On closing Guantanamo:

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law – a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That is why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign. And that is why I ordered it closed within one year.

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Jobless numbers drop, near forecast

It's never great news when the jobless numbers are this high but at least they were close to the forecast. It's weak but the numbers also didn't show any unpleasant surprises.

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless aid fell 12,000 last week, Labor Department data showed on Thursday, while so-called continued claims rose to a fresh record as the recession battered employment.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits declined to a seasonally adjusted 631,000 in the week ended May 16 from a revised 643,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. New claims have declined in three of the last four weeks.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 630,000 new claims versus a previously reported count of 637,000 the week before.

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Newsweek: RNC = "(R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney"

Howard Fineman sees the modern-day GOP leaders are the same GOP leader with the same old bag of tricks:

Right now there are two RNCs here in Washington, side by side. The contrast is instructive.

One, the Republican National Committee, is a clueless self-parody. The other, the (R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney tag team, is providing the real muscle as the Republican right begins to build traction in taking on President Obama and the Democrats.

The official RNC just spent the last two days wasting time and inviting ridicule—listening to a listless, empty speech by its chairman, Michael Steele, and debating the grand idea of calling the Democrats "socialists." Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh hammers away at the Democrats and the president on radio every day; Newt Gingrich sarcastically attacks Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show (and gets laughs for doing so); and Dick Cheney continues his high-profile, Iraq-star media tour.

What's old is new for the GOP. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Big speech by Obama today on national security. Creepy speech from Cheney today on national security. Watch how frenzied the cable news talking heads get.

Would that Cheney and Bush paid as much attention to national security and terrorism during the first months of their administration. Instead, Bush and Cheney ignored the threats -- and left us unprepared for the attacks of September 11th.

Okay, a pop culture thing: Adam Lambert got ripped off. He was such a better performer than that kid from Arkansas.

Thread the news... Read the rest of this post...

Will Pope Benedict investigate Catholic Church of Ireland?

Will the European Union? After all, the new report covers widespread abuse though somehow the Catholic Church received a free pass. I remember when the Boston abuse scandal was first exposed, many Catholics in Europe shrugged their shoulders and blamed it on the American culture of lawsuits. Nothing like that was really true but lawyers will be lawyers, especially in America. And then stories began emerging in one country after another.

This report documenting the abuse of over 30,000 children is by far the most damning report to date. Once again, those in power were leading the abuse and covering up abuse. People ought to be shamed and ought to be retiring in prison. The government report avoided naming any individuals within the church but that needs to be addressed urgently by Pope Benedict. The Guardian:

After the revelations of systematic clerical abuse, Pope Benedict was challenged to hold a Vatican inquiry into the role of Catholic religious orders in Ireland's orphanages and industrial schools. Irish Soca said it was now up to the Vatican to investigate the scandal further.

Kelly said: "Now that the Ryan commission is finished we call upon Pope Benedict to convene a special consistory court to fully investigate the activities of Catholic religious orders in Ireland. Among other things, such a court could establish the whereabouts of Irish state assets that were misappropriated over many years by the religious orders and make restitution to the Irish state exchequer."

Kelly said Irish Soca was disappointed that members of the religious orders who abused children, and the government officials who turned a blind eye to abuse in places like the Artane industrial school, would not be prosecuted.

Leadership from the Vatican? I'll believe it when I see it. Read the rest of this post...

Cronyism continues for top ambassador spot - bankster goes to London

For years the UK has been the spot for top financial donors to US Presidents. (France tends to be second.) A keen ability to deliver cash to campaigns has been the deciding factor when doling out ambassador positions. Foreign policy experience has been much less important and generally not relevant at all. What a disappointment that cronyism is continuing like this. And for good measure, the choice is a bankster from Citi because the Obama administration doesn't have enough people from Citi already. Then again after chopping 50,000+ jobs, there are plenty of them on the street without work. Change?

The next ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary will be Louis Susman, a lawyer and financier with little experience of foreign affairs.

The appointment will end months of speculation. Susman's name first surfaced in a diary column in the Washington Post in February, but Caroline Kennedy was also mentioned, as was Oprah Winfrey, another of Obama's Chicago supporters.

There was no official confirmation of Susman's nomination today, but the Guardian has learned that the paperwork has been completed. Buckingham Palace approved the appointment this month and Obama will announce it shortly.

London has become a retirement posting for many backers of US presidents, offering a comfortable home in one of the best mansions in the city, Winfield House in Regent's Park.

Read the rest of this post...

It's so difficult to find good help these days

Especially when you are a multi-millionaire, have made millions upon millions in recent years and have a comfy retirement plan worth millions more. Lifestyles need to be maintained, you know and it's not like he didn't seek a reasonable compromise.

Daniel Bouton, the former head of Societe Generale who was forced out after constant public criticism over the French bank's record trading losses, will be allowed to have a chauffeur for one more year.

As the global financial crisis gathered pace last year, Bouton, a cigar smoker who was appointed SocGen's chairman and chief executive in 1997, became a symbol in the media of France's wealthy banking establishment.

He has been criticized for benefits such as stock options awarded to executives, and has also come under fire for his own generous pension package, worth hundreds of thousands of euros a year.

"He will be allowed to have a chauffeur and private secretary for one more year," new SocGen head Frederic Oudea told the bank's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday.

Stanley O'Neal and Charles Prince must be laughing at this shoddy treatment. They drove their companies (Merrill Lynch and Citi) into the ground yet they still walked away with a few hundred million and then some.

(Soc Gen is the French bank who had the trading scandal last year and blamed billions in losses on a lone young trader.) Read the rest of this post...