Whiskey Fire

The TPP: Our President Drops The Mask

My last post on the topic. Dean Baker continues to do an excellent job of exposing this shameless sellout.

One Democratic Senator (Tom Carper of Delaware) joined 51 Republicans voting for fast track. Mitch McConnell voted against it when it was clear it would fail so that he can bring it up again. So who will benefit from the TPP?

The People's View:

Big labor unions and liberal members of Congress have picked a fight against the global expansion of the rights of workers by mounting do-or-die opposition against the Trade Promotion bill moving through Congress that will allow the President to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Congress for an up-or-down vote. In doing so, American labor is displaying key symptoms of its self-inflicted collapse.

Rep. Paul Ryan, on CNBC with Joe Kernen shilling for the TPP this morning, does not give a hairy rat's behind about the rights of workers. Neither does the Chamber of Commerce, also shilling for this execrable multinational corporate government deal.

I remember when President Obama's fans explained his Catfood Commission as "eleventy-dimensional chess." It wasn't. He's been working for Wall Street the entire time.

President Gas is tap dancing
For the banker he's a thief
He isn't very honest
But he's obvious at least

P.S. This isn't over. There will be another vote tomorrow, after a couple fig leaves have been added. Our President and the GOP only need 7 or 8 Democrats to switch votes to get this through the Senate. Some who voted against it yesterday are just hoping for token concessions in order to cover their fealty to the richest few.

The people won this round because Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown effectively organized opposition and because voters persistently called their Congresscritters to let them know it's a bad deal. Keep calling!

Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place.
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Only In America

Two more reasons to hate America. No, four.

The two (Yes, it took two.) buffoons who typed this lame something or other explaining the recent Republican shutdown fiasco. Ponnuru & Lowry sat down & "thought" for a while before reaching the radical conclusion that the reactionary elements simply didn't have the votes to do anything*. (No shit?)

And these two examples of where else-ism:

The anti-Obamacare passion we saw in the defunding fight, too, is welcome even if it needs to be better applied. That passion is, indeed, one of the wonders of American politics. Where else would an entitlement promising a kind of free lunch engender such strenuous populist opposition? For that matter, where else would a Tea Party be possible?

The answers:

There is nowhere else on this planet populated w/ so many sheep who are so gullible (& so racist that their concern that non-white others may get affordable care seems to trump any concern for their own well-being). Only in these United Snakes do citizens want to cut off their noses not only to spite their own faces, but to spite others. And not that damn exceptional & special: Children have refused what's best for them throughout human history.

Germany in the late 1920s.

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*They make the big wingnut welfare money because their stark & honest reasoning combined w/ their mad math skillz enabled them (sometime after the facts) to determine that the votes for whatever in hell Ted Cruz et al. were trying to do were not there. So the two of them are smarter than Ted Cruz. Damned again w/ faint praise!

— M. Bouffant

The Dunce Cap

At Tucker Carlson's Daily Teacher-Sex Crime Blotter ("Filthy fifth-grade teacher busted for showing porn to six-year-old boy; This summer’s hottest teachers who allegedly got busy with students; Shock claim: 40,000 public school teachers moonlight on sugar-daddy website") & Parade Magazine of Lame Gotchas:

Eliot Spitzer appears with racist anti-Semite

Final paragraph:

“The campaign did not invite him and Eliot did not know who he was. Eliot disagrees with the comments in question and we repudiate his endorsement,” Spitzer spokeswoman and former Obama campaign staffer Lis Smith said in a statement after the campaign of Spitzer’s rival for comptroller, Scott Stringer, criticized the event.

Just a bit of the intellectual freedom rampant at Tucker's pixel-rag. One could (as an exercise in intellectual freedom, maybe) compare & contrast:

Beyond the obvious, what do a far-right Italian politician, the president of the John Birch Society and former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul have in common?

In early September, the men are all scheduled to speak – along with a lengthy list of archconservative clergy, lawyers and academics – at a conference in Canada sponsored by the Fatima Center, part of the “radical traditionalist Catholic” movement, perhaps the single largest group of hard-core anti-Semites in North America.

Paul, the former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate, is the keynote speaker of the weeklong conference slated for Sept. 8-13 in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Ron Paul Appears W/ Tucker Carlson!!

GOTCHA!

TheDC is what I imagine Playboy for Kids would look like; bikini T&A & humor for witty, urbane eight-yr. olds. (When Tucker follows Rupert Murdoch's lead & goes Page 3 of The Sun is anybody's guess, but he's on a steep slope w/ treacherous footing now; the slightest decrease in viewership could send him sliding.)

What, then is different? What sacred cow of liberalism was so effectively mocked &/or insulted that I was compelled to type?

Columnist Matt K. Lewis seeing parallels between the denizens of Tucker's Frat House of Legacies & the "old" Oakland Raiders is what. The Raiders are the sports entertainment corporation best at marketing itself to would-be trouble-making bad-asses, which Matt may think he is. More like a wanna-be would-be, if he could-be; Matt's the kind of guy who is "fond" of things, not someone who'd get a "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo*. "Quite fond" of some things.

Some of Klosterman’s villains are serious (Hitler and O.J.); others are less serious (The Eagles). But my favorite chapter is on the Oakland Raiders. In reading it, I began to see some parallels with another organization I’m quite fond of.

That was the what, this is the why. (You may not be ready for this; fasten your seat belt or hold on to something.)

My favorite part: “The Raiders were not villains because everyone on the team was a reprobate; the Raiders were villains because everyone on the team was intellectually free.” (bold mine). Maybe this explains why — when it comes to press accounts, at least — we so often wear the black hat?

"Intellectually free" (riotous laughter mine). Yes, look only at giants of the intellect Jim "Sean Medlock" Treacher, Mickey "You know the meme" Kaus or Neil "Hey Boy" Munro to understand why the press is fitting them for a black Stetson: All hat, no cattle.Nothing, & I mean nothing skrees intellectual freedom louder than Carlson's smorgasbord of jagoffs, who vary from conservative through libertarian/libertarian populist (riotous laughter mine again, sorry) Tea Partiers & all the way to the regular Republican jagoffs on the other side of the steam trays, then around again for seconds.

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*Or anything beyond a strenuous objection.

— M. Bouffant

Out of the Barracks

One supposes that certain critics sincerely believe they have a point of some sort as to improprieties regarding "reporters" and "law enforcement" and "double standards" and the Petraeus Affair.

One... supposes.

But such finger and tongue-wagging smuggeries are mere priggish prudery.

So -- General David Petraeus has been "caught" having an affair with someone not his wife.

So -- General David Petraeus has been revealed as possessing an illicit, "dangerous" sexuality.

So -- what?

The cant! The hypocrisy!

Let us all face the truth. Let us stride manly forth into the daylight and say YES! YES! THIS IS WHO I AM!

Let us be bold. Let us be honest. Let us... be true to ourselves.

Admit it:

Who among us, in America, does not want to fuck a General?

Yes, we have all heard the slander, we have endured the pervasive cruelty. We have often been accused of being, as they say, generalosexuals. Or worse! But let us own the epithet. Let us say, loud and proud: I am an American, and I am a General-fucker.

Republican or Democrat, we have all wanted to fuck General Petraeus; we have for years cast him coy glances, batted our eyes, simpered, primped, and preened, flirted shamelessly, desperate for his favor, his manly charms.

Don't deny it!

That dear, dear David has cast his favors upon an unworthy BITCH, excuse me, TROLLOP is the polite term I am informed, must not discourage us.

Someone else will come along just like him soon enough, and since we will be faithful and true and sincere general-fuckers, we'll stay steadfast and unchanging, and be rewarded by getting well and truly fucked in the end.

I mean, not quite as fucked as certain foreigners, sure, but whatever.

Just BELIEVE.

MAS. In an apparent effort to make this all even more inane, were that possible... "Tuesday, the house remained quiet aside from the media circus.  A woman could be seen inside the home's large bay windows, but it was not clear if it was Jill or her twin sister."

Don't you fuckers know there's a war on?

You'll get orbs in the sky when you die

I read it in a book.

 

Double-dipping in Carmi's Past Its Prime theme:

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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Opologists Cheered by Startling Reappearance of Campaign-Mode Obama

President Obama gave a speech yesterday in Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism Address on August 31, 1910. (Full text at the Guardian.)

And now for some shorters.

Bob Reich: The Barack Obama for whom we voted in 2008 IS BACK!!!

The New York Times: Obama promises change if elected President.

The Washington Post: All very well, but let's hear more about cutting Social Security.

Glenn Kessler, Fact Checker at The War Criminal Post: OMG Obama is so mean to rich people!

And now for something completely different: A dose of facts from Yves Smith at naked capitalism:

The misdirection is blindingly obvious. The claim is that the Administration needs new tools to get tough on banks. No, it has plenty of tools, starting with Sarbanes Oxley. As we’ve discussed at length in earlier posts, Sarbox was designed to eliminate the CEO and top brass “know nothing” excuse. And the language for civil and criminal charges is parallel, so a prosecutor could file civil charges, and if successful, could then open up a related criminal case. Sarbox required that top executives (which means at least the CEO and CFO) certify the adequacy of internal controls, and for a big financial firm, that has to include risk controls and position valuation. The fact that the Administration didn’t attempt to go after, for instance, AIG on Sarbox is inexcusable. The “investigation” done by Andrew Ross Sorkin in his Too Big To Fail (Willumstad not having a good handle on the cash bleed, the sudden discovery of a $20 billion hole in the securities lending portfolio, the mysterious “unofficial vault” with billions of dollars of securities in file cabinets) all are proof of an organization with seriously deficient controls.

But more broadly, it’s blindingly obvious this Administration has never had the slightest interest in doing anything more serious than posture.

Finally, a blood pressure-reducing video:

UPDATE: Here's a couple of items I forgot to include yesterday, and one from today.

Tengrain suggests changing your registration to a third party or Independent.

Last, from Micah Sifry's Twitter:

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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Yggy Pop

From my last post:

I was planning to post about Matty Yglesias, using a column Thers referenced and one other. Only just now did I notice that the 'other one' was written by Ezra Klein instead. Go figure!

In my defense, Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein wrote essentially the same post within a half hour of each other. Knowing that Yggy was moving to the Washington Post corporation (albeit Slate), I searched WaPo for the topic. Eventually I noticed the authors were different people, thanks to Pinko's entry in the latest Three Bulls! Header Contest. They don't look the same. In any case the WaPo now owns 100% of the hive mind.

From Ezra:

The question is what, if anything, comes next for Occupy Wall Street. The movement has already scored some big wins. As this graph by Dylan Byers showed, they have changed the national conversation. Income inequality is now a top-tier issue. Before Occupy Wall Street, it wasn’t.

Shorter: "OMG, Bloomberg could have ignored OWS, and then we could have done the same!"

Income inequality has been increasing for some time. It isn't some cat that is alive or dead depending on whether or not the likes of Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, or anyone else in the press is forced by OWS to write about it.

Having said that, I don't think 'income inequality' comes close to describing the issues that have created OWS. All that says is some people get a lot less, others get a lot more. This is true, but it leaves the door open for the counterclaim that the OWS is "just jealous of the job creators." (More discussion of the semantics in this thread.)

For 30 years, people who make money with their money have had the government tilt the table in their favor. Everyone else has gotten the short end of the stick. This has happened through tax policy, deregulation and approval of merger after merger, trade policy, and through chipping away at the the social safety net. And of course, our government comes to the rescue of the Randroid Masters of the Universe when the bets they've made with their too-big-to-fail banks turn out the the wrong way.

And it's also been accompanied by judicial inequality. One law for the plutocrats, and another for everyone else.

DOJ has obtained ten convictions of senior insiders of mortgage lenders (all from one obscure mortgage bank) v. over 1000 felony convictions in the S&L debacle. DOJ has not conducted an investigation worthy of the name of any of the largest accounting control frauds. DOJ is actively opposing investigating the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs).

The elections of 2006 and 2008 did not change this in any way. Banks still own the place, and both parties curry their favor. But we have plenty of law enforcement focused on peaceful members of OWS attempting to exercise their rights to free speech.

I see plenty of skepticism around the innertoobz as to what OWS will eventually accomplish. I have a lot more faith in OWS than I have in Obama and the Democrats.

UPDATE: At Naked Capitalism, Andrew Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England and Vasileios Madouros, Economist in the Financial Stability directorate of the Bank of England:

In fact, high pre-crisis returns to banking had a much more mundane explanation. They reflected simply increased risk-taking across the sector. This was not an outward shift in the portfolio possibility set of finance. Instead, it was a traverse up the high-wire of risk and return. This hire-wire act involved, on the asset side, rapid credit expansion, often through the development of poorly understood financial instruments. On the liability side, this ballooning balance sheet was financed using risky leverage, often at short maturities. 

...

There is a second, equally important, reason why the measured value-added of the financial sector in the national accounts may be seriously over-stated. We now know that the risk being taken by banks was not in fact borne by them, fully or potentially even partially. Instead it has been borne by society. That is why GDP today lies below its pre-crisis level. And it is why government balance sheets, relative to GDP, are set to double as a result of the crisis in many countries.

...

Elsewhere, we have sought to estimate those implicit subsidies to banking arising from its too big-to-fail status. For the largest 25 or so global banks, the average annual subsidy between 2007-2010 was hundreds of billions of dollars; on some estimates it was over $1 trillion (Haldane 2011). This compares with average annual profitability of the largest global banks of about $170 billion per annum in the five years ahead of the crisis.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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Vote Today To Repeal Ohio SB-5

You down with ODP?

Local Color

And now for something completely different.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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The War On Halloween Begins Earlier Every Year

That's a nice, neutral headline isn't it? No surprise coming from The Plain Dealer, which not only endorsed Ohio Governor (and Koch-pawn) John Kasich, but has recommended approval of his union-busting SB-5 in the upcoming referendum.

Joseph Marinucci, president and chief executive of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, said his organization will arrive about 6 a.m. Saturday to begin putting up Christmas lights and other holiday displays around Public Square. The group will need unrestricted access to the decorations until the beginning of the year, he said. Demonstrators are willing to help decorate. "They don't have to pay us," (Erin) McCardle said. Responded Marinucci: "We already use volunteers."

I suppose those merchants need to advertise earlier and earlier for the annual spendathon when most people have less and less cash for presents. In any case, Occupy Cleveland had its day in court and won (note: The Plain Dealer had a far different headline).

Here are some pics from Occupy Columbus on Saturday. No one has threatened their space in front of Capitol Square (home of Ohio's Statehouse) thus far.

In Chicago, Rahmbo is making a name for himself by arresting nurses along with OWS protesters.

Finally, here's video from Occupy Oakland, scene of a police riot on Tuesday:

The War Criminal Post covered this as I've learned to expect (link is not to The War Criminal Post). So give Charles Pierce a read. As for John Kasich and his SB-5, here's a tune.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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Occupy Wall Street - Columbus, Oct. 15

NBC4 was on the scene. It was a clear and sunny Saturday, albeit with cool temperatures and winds gusting over 20 miles per hour.

I continue to be amused by our corporate media's insistent complaint that OWS "lacks a coherent message". Our media can't understand the message because they're paid not to. The contrast to their coverage of the Tea Party couldn't be starker.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

- Upton Sinclair

The signs below were carried by fellow Columbus blogger, Bat Guano.

P.S. Here's a video from Times Square yesterday.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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