What World do They Live In?

These people are very sad, because their taxes are going up so much:

In the nick of time, and amid much political drama, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act on New Year's Day—averting massive tax increases for nearly all earners that were slated to take effect Jan. 1.

Even so, millions of people soon will feel something less than relief from the new law.
Tim Foley

The bill approved in Congress to avert the fiscal cliff would bring the first major tax increase on high earners in 20 years. Laura Saunders breaks down how new tax increases will impact across different tax brackets. Photo: AP.

While the top 1% of taxpayers will bear the biggest burden, many other families, affluent and poor, will pay more as well.

Yes, they all haz a sad, the single mom who makes 5x what the average household in the United States, the Family of 6 that makes 13x what the average household makes, and even the retirees, who pay no extra taxes, and make 3½x what the average household does, they haz a sad.

They all haz a sad.

Seriously, do the writers at the Wall Street Journal have even the vaguest idea of how most Americans actually live?

Charlie Pierce Translate Obama Executive Orders Into Wingnut

I cannot do justice to this, so just go and read it.

The 2016 Coup Attempt Begins

The Republicans are looking to change electoral vote allocation to favor Republicans in 2016:

Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.

On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”

Under this scheme, Obama would have only gotten 7 electoral votes from Pennsylvania.

There would have been similar losses of electoral votes in Ohio, and Wisconsin, Florida, and Virginia.

This is part 94 of why the Electoral College sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

This also explains why Republicans accuse people of acting like Stalin so often, they are projecting:  Because they try to act like Stalin, they think that everyone else does so too.

We Had a Pretty Good Jobless Thursday

335,000 initial claims, the lowest number in 5 years, with the 4 week moving average falling to 359,250, and continued claims fell to 3.21M, though emergency and extended claims rose to 2.06M.

Pretty good numbers.

Added to my They Who Must Not Be Named List

Notre Dame Linebacker Manti Te'o.

Seriously, this is news?

Stewart On Guns

Best news analysis in the media

If you want to get a good background on the whole gun safety issue, you'd may not find a better primer than what Jon Stewart did last night.

He outlines the basics of the debate, and how the NRA has castrated both the ATF and the ability to collect meaningful data about gun violence.

Funny and educational.

This is Not The Onion

Satanists Rally For Florida Governor Rick Scott

When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro.

I Blame the MBA Mentality

The Boeing 787 Dreamliners fleet has been grounded worldwide:

Qatar Airways, Ethiopian Airlines and LOT Polish Airlines have joined the list of 787 operators that have stopped flying the aircraft following a U.S. FAA directive on Jan. 16. All 787 fleets worldwide have now been grounded.

………

The groundings were prompted by an incident on Jan. 16 in Japan, when an ANA 787 on a domestic flight declared an emergency and diverted to another airport. Pilots reported messages on cockpit indicators concerning the battery and other systems, and they also noticed an unusual odor in the cockpit and cabin. Inspections revealed that the main battery in the forward electronic equipment bay was discolored and its electrolysis solution had leaked.

The 787 has a lot of innovations, but one of its feature is a change in management strategy.

Boeing has outsourced much of the design and engineering to "risk sharing partners" (some of whom it was forced to buy to get things made right) .

To an MBA, it's about cutting overhead.  In reality, it's about losing control of the systems, some of which have never flown on a civil aircraft before, and losing the big picture on how that complex jigsaw puzzle all goes together.

Too True

Link

The the current political environment, along with the truly repulsive behavior of the NRA recently, present an opportunity to change its image to something more accurate than "I am the NRA."

The NRA are Contemptible Slime

Yes, I know, and the sky is blue, but the just took out an ad going after Obama's kids. I (for once) agree with WH spokesman Jay Carney:

Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the President’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.

The NRA may be the most repulsive lobby in Washington.

If You Haven't igned the Swartz Petition………

You know, the Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz, you might want to sign it, even though it broke the 25,000 requirement, because the White House is raising the signature threshold to 100,000.

Currently, it's at at about 39,000.

Obama Makes Gun Control Proposal

It is pretty much what I expected, with the high point for me, being the directive to the CDC to resume studies on the public health effects of gun violence:

The 23 executive actions Mr. Obama signed on Wednesday were largely modest initiatives to toughen enforcement of existing laws and to encourage federal agencies and state governments to share more information. Mr. Obama lifted a ban on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on gun violence and directed that a letter be sent to health care providers saying doctors may ask patients about guns in their homes.

This, along with legislative proposals proposing closing the gun show loophole on background checks, and expanding the ability of federal agencies to track guns, are probably going to be the most significant.

By virtue of legislation (literally) written by the NRA over the past few decades, federal agencies have been prohibited from collecting date to examine the problem, or to determine which dealers are knowingly selling to criminals.

It was more than I expected.

Why the Half Measure on the Filibuster?

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall wonders why, even though there appear to be the votes for requiring a full talking filibuster, that Harry Reid seems to be pushing for something weaker.

My take on this is that Reid, and other Senators of long tenure, are doing this because they have drunk the Koolaid^* about the Senate being the, "World's Greatest Deliberative Body."

They want to protect what they see as the "unique character" of the Senate, and so they are leery of making more sweeping changes.

So, to paraphrase Alexei Sayle, they say "Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body", and we say "Petri Dish for Narcissistic Sociopaths."

The Senate ran for decades on tacit agreements that were never a formal part of the rules, and the social contract within the body has broken down, and so the formal rules need to change.

Word now is that the vote on the Senate Rules will be on the 22^nd, and I am not optimistic.

^*It was actually either Wyler's or Flavor Aid at Jonestown, reports differ, not Koolaid.

Why Are We Supplying Arms to Bahrain?

If anything, the crackdown on dissent in Bahrain is worse than in Syria, because of the overtones of ethnic cleansing against the Shia (At least the Syrians oppress everyone equally), and we are arming them:

Despite Bahrain’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. has continued to provide weapons and maintenance to the small Mideast nation.

Defense Department documents released to ProPublica give the fullest picture yet of the arms sales: The list includes ammunition, combat vehicle parts, communications equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, and an unidentified missile system. (Read the documents.)

The documents, which were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and cover a yearlong period ending in February 2012, still leave many questions unanswered. It’s not clear whether in each case the arms listed have been delivered. And some entries that only cite the names of weapons may in fact refer to maintenance or spare parts.

For all the evil that the rulers in Syria have done, they have not arrested doctors for treating protestors that came into their emergency rooms, and they haven't demolished mosques of other sects, as the the Al Khalifa monarchy has done in Bahrain.

Both regimes should be replaced by something that better serves the needs of their citizens, but we are letting the House of Saud dictate our priorities, and surprisingly, they oppose a secular regime run largely by non-Sunnis, and they support a Sunni monarchy like themselves.

The real problem here is that the Arab monarchies will eventually fall, either violently in the manner of the Romanoffs of Russia, or peacefully, in the manner of the House of Windsor in the UK, and the more that we prop them up, the bigger the backlash when they fall.

Iran's transition from US ally to foe, which derived directly from our unqualified support of a despot, would not suit our interests, nor the interests of the people in that part of the world.

My rule of thumb here is that if the House of Saud is for it, I'm against it.

The Fed's Beige Book is Out

Decent, but not great:

The U.S. economy picked up across much of the country last month, boosted by auto and home sales, even as the outlook for unemployment showed few signs of improvement, the Federal Reserve said.

“Economic activity has expanded since the previous Beige Book report, with all 12 districts characterizing the pace of growth as either modest or moderate,” the central bank said today in its Beige Book business survey, which is based on reports from the Fed’s district banks.

Just So You Know

The Petition to Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz passed the 25,000 signature threshold.

I expect to see a non-response response from the White House in the next week or so.

They Want Us Gone, Let's Leave

The Afghans want us gone:

Days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama seemed to agree on the future role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a division has emerged over one of the American military’s most prized defense programs.

Top Afghan officials said Obama’s pledge last week to remove U.S. troops from Afghan villages should apply to Special Operations forces charged with training the Afghan Local Police. But U.S. officials said they assumed that the policy would apply only to traditional military operations and would include an exemption for the police trainers, whose mission they see as critical to security throughout Afghanistan.

The dispute underscored just how difficult negotiations over a long-term security partnership could be during the next year. The disagreement, like others before it, centers on the fundamental question of what will keep Afghans safe: U.S. officials say the local police program thwarts insurgents, but Karzai insists that it invites attacks.

The broader Afghan interpretation of the troop withdrawal, which Afghan officials said they believed would happen within weeks, would derail much of the Special Operations forces’ mission in Afghanistan and halt the expansion of the fastest-
growing Afghan security force, one that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

We've lost the war. Our allies don't want want us there any more. It's just time to go.

What a Surprise

Another Obama administration foreclosure mitigation program has descended into a morass of corruption and self-dealing:

No wonder the Fed and the OCC snubbed a request by Darryl Issa and Elijah Cummings to review the foreclosure fraud settlement before it was finalized early last week. What had leaked out while the Potemkin borrower reviews were underway showed them to be a sham, as we detailed at length in an earlier post. But even so, what actually took place was even worse than hardened cynics had imagined.

………

There are some issues that are highlighted in the piece, others that are implication that get somewhat lost in the considerable detail. The first, as stressed by Sheila Bair and other observers, is that the reviews were never designed to succeed. This is something we and others pointed out; this was all an exercise in show. The OCC had entered into these consent orders in the first place with the aim of derailing the 50 state attorney general settlement negotiations. This was all intended to be diversionary, but to make it look like it had some teeth, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 who thought they were harmed were allowed to request a review. If hard was found, they could get as much as $15,000 plus their home back if they had suffered a wrongful foreclosure, or if they home had already been sold, $125,000 plus any equity in the home. Needless to say, the forms were written at the second grade college level, making them hard to answer. A whistleblower for Wells Fargo reported that of 10,000 letters, harm was found in none because the responses were interpreted in such a way as to deny harm (for instance, if the borrower did not provide dates of certain incidents, those details were omitted from the assessment).

Read the whole thing.

Republicans: Personal Responsibility for Thee, But Not for Mew

A Republican Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer got drunk, and crashed his boat, fracturing the skull of a 5-year old girl.

His excuse was that gay marriage made him do it:

It is not funny that Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer drunkenly crashed his boat last year, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl. But it is funny that he is blaming gay marriage for the alcoholism that made him drunkenly crash his boat last year, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl! Oh, did we say “funny”? Well, seems like everything is funny to us! First, congratulations to Del. Dwyer for sitting down with the Capitol Gazette and making a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself. Second, the opposite of congratulations to Del. Dwyer for coming up with the positively Gingrichian “I was working too hard to protect the sanctity of marriage and that’s why I f%$#ed my aide drunkenly crashed a boat, fracturing the skull of a five-year-old girl.”

(%$# mine)

Seriously, do you have to be a self-involved psychopath to be a Republicans these days?  Because I don't see any Republicans out there who don't appear to have something missing in their basic humanity.

h/t Atrios.

OK, This Might Be Some Obama Eleventy Dimensional Chess

As a result of Obama suggesting that he might issue some executive orders on the enforcement of federal gun control laws, a number of Republicans, including former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, are suggesting that Congress might impeach him for this:

Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a prominent emeritus official at the Heritage Foundation, became the latest conservative to warn that President Obama could risk impeachment if he takes executive action on reducing gun violence in an interview Monday night.

Speaking with Newsmax, Meese said Congress may have to consider impeaching Obama if he were “to try to override the Second Amendment in any way” with an executive order. He did allow that there are some executive actions related to guns that Obama could take wouldn’t be impeachable.

I'm beginning to think that this is a response that Obama is encouraging, because, absent finding him in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, there is no way that the Republicans don't end up with egg on their face if they pursue this.

Impeachment?  Over tighter enforcement of gun laws?  After some deranged lunatic murdered 29 people, including 20 children?

This is a level of stupid that simply boggles the mind.

Obama must be busy trying to stifle an evil overlord laugh.

Not Something I Did Not Expect From Time Magazine

they just did an article about the advantages of state owned banks:

The American Great Plains are known for their expansive farm lands, endless horizons, and — in recent history — staunchly conservative politics. So it may come as a surprise that only state-owned bank in the U.S. (an institution more widely associated with communist China than the Republican Party) can be found in ruby-red, rural North Dakota.

That’s right, The Bank of North Dakota (BND) — the largest bank in the state by deposits — was founded by legislative mandate in 1919, and has been a mainstay of the North Dakotan economy since that time, mostly through partnering with community banks to provide loans for local businesses. And advocates of public banking are holding up the BND as an example of what government-owned banks can do for an economy.

………

Sure, there are many obstacles to launching publicly-owned financial institutions. Pulling state capital out of commercial institutions could prove to be disruptive to the current financial system. And proper controls need to be set up to avoid political considerations overwhelming proper analysis of lending opportunities. But North Dakota has avoided these pitfalls, and the NBD is an institution that has proven its ability to work alongside the private banking industry to help the state’s economy — one of the most successful in the nation in recent times — develop and grow.

The idea that this idea has gained enough currency to appear on the pages of Time Magazine is pretty remarkable. 

Generally, the MSM will view something like North Dakota's as an anachronism, or some sort of upper Midwest peculiarity, like something from the movie Fargo.

They are actually taking this seriously, and that's a change.

What the Hell Is Cameron Doing With the EU?

He is due to give a speech in Brussels demanding that some powers be returned to Britain, most notably those dealing with criminal justice, immigration, and foreign workers.

Truth be told, I think that he is trying to walk a tight rope. A large majority of the Tories, and (if polls are correct) most of the rest of the country, are inclined to favor an exit from the EU, so he's attempting a number of things:

• He wants to take the wind out of the sails the right wing nativist UK Independence Party, which is on a path to reduce the Tories' Liberal Democrat coalition partners to 4^th place and irrelevance.
• He wants to pacify his own right wing.
• He wants to put Labor leader Millibrand in the position of supporting the EU which is an unpopular position.

Truth be told, with what Merkel is looking to do, I would be a Euroskeptic myself:

It is understood that Merkel, the only EU leader who has been calling for a revision of the Lisbon treaty to underpin new governance arrangements for the eurozone, has given up on the idea of a major treaty revision for the moment.

The German chancellor is said to have decided it is fruitless to push for a treaty revision in the face of strong opposition from France and elsewhere. Instead she has decided to try to stabilise the eurozone by setting up what are described as "work streams" in three areas. These cover banking union, the subject of the last EU summit where Cameron won guarantees for Britain; greater fiscal co-ordination among eurozone members; and labour market reform across the EU.

(emphasis mine)

If I lived in the EU, the idea that the Germans, who have no statutory minimum wage,, and a long history of dubious treatment of immigrants, would be driving "labor market reforms" it would fill me with dread.  It translates into f%$#ing the ordinary working bloke.

Of course, David Cameron is a member of the Conservative party, so "f%$#ing the ordinary working bloke", is kind of an article of faith for him.

I still maintain that the real problem with the EU is German hegemony in the EU, because they have much like the Bourbon Kings, "They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

In the lame poodle category, Cameron is saying that the US has given its permission for him to ask for this.

Britain's "special relationship" with the US looks increasingly like a relationship between a prostitute and a pimp.

When Gun Nuts Mention Switzerland, Cite This

Yes, the Swiss do have common posession of military weapons as a part of their armed forces, but the regulatory regime is a gun control advocates wet dream. They literally count the bullets that their citizen soldiers carry (rolling the Wiki):

The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education has approved the carrying of handguns by its custodial staff.

The 5-0 vote of the board Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians to be able to tote weapons at the K-12 campus at the Williams County school came after last month's deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

School officials say that having armed personnel - believed to be the first for any school system in Ohio - is designed to thwart incidents of violence and prevent what happened in Newtown, Conn., from occurring here.

"Sitting back and doing nothing and hoping it doesn't happen to you is just not good policy anymore. There is a need for schools to beef up their security measures," Supertendent Jamie Grime told The Blade today. "Having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect."

Nothing that is proposed even comes close to this.

Welcome To CrazyTown USA: Arming School Janitors | Crooks and Liars

Wasn't  Groundskeeper Willie Armed in an Episode of the Simpsons?

Speaking of the stupid burning, how about that Montpelier Ohio School Board?

They have decided to arm their janitors:

The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education has approved the carrying of handguns by its custodial staff.

The 5-0 vote of the board Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians to be able to tote weapons at the K-12 campus at the Williams County school came after last month's deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

School officials say that having armed personnel - believed to be the first for any school system in Ohio - is designed to thwart incidents of violence and prevent what happened in Newtown, Conn., from occurring here.

"Sitting back and doing nothing and hoping it doesn't happen to you is just not good policy anymore. There is a need for schools to beef up their security measures," Supertendent Jamie Grime told The Blade today. "Having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect."

Seriously, this is so stupid that it beggars belief.

The only people who will benefit from this decisions are the gag writers for Letterman, Leno, and the Daily Show, along, of course with the writing crew of The Simpsons.

If they don't do a show on arming Groundskeeper Willie now, they need to find a new job.

H/t Crooks and Liars

This is One Way to Deal with Proprietorial Overreach

A petition at the White House has Called for the firing of United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz for her wildly disproportionate prosecution of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide while facing decades in prison for downloading public documents.

It is now about 80% of the way to reaching the 25,000 signatures to require a response from the Obama administration.

Needless to say, the administration response will be either to do nothing, or to promote her, because they see "tough on crime" as a political winner.

I called it "Murder by Prosecutor" last night, which is (of course) rhetorical excess, but this was proprietorial excess.

Of course, we don't know why he committed suicide, he did have a history of depression, but it's fairly certain that this did not help.

On the bright side, I think that this is driving a discussion of overzealous prosecutors, and even if Ms. Ortiz keeps her job, her political career beyond this, she is/was seen as a rising star in the Massachusetts Democratic Party Establishment, has been detoured if not ended, which should hopefully make prosecutors think twice when they decide to destroy someone just to make an example.

Over the past 30 years, US laws have been changed to grant enormous power to prosecutors.

Based on how they file, and what they choose to present at sentencing, they now have the ability to dictate sentences to an unprecedented degree.

This has been corrupting the operation of the federal justice system for decades.

Tell That to the People of Nagasaki

 

Seen on Facebook.

Murder by Prosecutor

Aaron Swartz, age 26, suicide.

We cannot know all the reasons behind this, but his harassment by prosecutors was likely a contributing factor.

He was probably targeted because of his high profile opposition to SOPA (see vid). (To its shame, the New York Times does not mention this in the obit)

We have developed a regime where anyone can be harassed, and likely convicted, basically for being "troublesome."

The term I used a while back, "Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen," describes this phenomenon.

Self Entitled, Self Deluded Assholes

Robert Bork, at least later in his life, was a classic example of how the modern Republican Party has deliberately become a manufacturer of narcissistic fantasists:

Even before Robert Bork died last month, he had achieved something close to martyrdom. In the quarter-century since the Senate rejected his Supreme Court nomination, successive generations of conservative lawyers and activists have carried the torch, depicting his defeat as an injustice of historic proportion. Following his death at the age of 85, liberals mostly maintained a respectful silence while conservatives dusted off old complaints about the conduct of the confirmation hearing and the unfairness, in their view, of the "borking" the nominee received. Clearly, the Bork Battle survives Bork.

………

Some time after the Senate vote, I was invited to a conversation with Judge Bork at the offices of The New Republic magazine. He was hurting and angry. When my turn came to ask a question, I asked him whether, at any time during the hearing, he had felt that a member of the Judiciary Committee had met him on his own level in serious constitutional conversation.

"No," he answered.

"Not even Arlen Specter?" I asked.

"Specter had his mind made up from the beginning," he snapped.

I knew that wasn't true, although Judge Bork clearly believed it. Senator Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, had in fact agonized over his vote, as I knew from having talked with him almost daily. A Yale Law School graduate and former prosecutor, the senator went head to head with the nominee through several rounds of questioning, hours of mesmerizing constitutional debate in which he probed for any sign of flexibility in Judge Bork's view that the entire course of modern constitutional law was profoundly mistaken. Finding none, Senator Specter, who had assumed at the start of the hearing that he would vote for confirmation, decided to vote No, fully recognizing the price he would pay within his own party. Five other Republicans followed. (Judge Bork and Senator Specter, whose paths crossed at such a significant moment in their lives, died within months of each other; Arlen Specter, who eventually became a Democrat, died in October at 82.)

………

I should explain this column's title, "Robert Bork's Tragedy." I see him as a tragic figure: not because he was dealt an unjust hand - he wasn't - but because of his inability to understand what happened. He spent his final decades surrounded by acolytes who stoked his sense of victimhood, and there seemed to be no one around him to provide a reality check as his rants about the Supreme Court's depredations and the collapse of Western civilization (he portrayed the two as inextricably linked) became ever more extravagant. (In a symbolic gesture aimed at the Republican base, Mitt Romney named him co-chair of his campaign advisory committee on law.)

What is interesting here is not Robert Bork, but rather how the production and support of this sort of (for lack of a better term) insanity has increasingly become the primary product of the right wing noise machine.

I'm not entirely sure how to fix this rather poisonous and self-reinforcing dynamic.

Truth be told, I'm not sure that would I want to fix this dynamic. 

Maybe I'm an optimist, but seems to me that this dynamic has gotten to the point they are choking on their own bile, and I see that as a good thing.

H/t Brad Delong.

Dean Baker on Timothy Geithner, That's Gonna Leave a Mark

This is positively brutal:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's departure from the Obama administration invites comparisons with Klemens von Metternich. Metternich was the foreign minister of the Austrian empire who engineered the restoration of the old order and the suppression of democracy across Europe after the defeat of Napoleon.

This was an impressive diplomatic feat – given the widespread popular contempt for Europe's monarchical regimes. In the same vein, protecting Wall Street from the financial and economic havoc they brought upon themselves and the country was an enormous accomplishment.

Just go read it.

What a Surprise, Another Cave

Another Cave

Yes, as a final f%$# you to the average American, the White House has ruled out the platinum coin:

The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.

That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.

The inclusion of the Federal Reserve is significant. For the platinum coin idea to work, the Federal Reserve would have to treat it as a legal way for the Treasury Department to create currency. If they don’t believe it’s legal and would not credit the Treasury Department’s deposit, the platinum coin would be worthless.

The idea of minting a platinum coin to invalidate the debt ceiling comes from a few key sentences tacked onto the 1997 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it reads, “the Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue platinum coins in such quantity and of such variety as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.”

Even if you decide that you will not do this, you do not take this off the table without getting something in return.

At best, it's a kind of mania with the Obama, he wants to be seen as the reasonable person in the room, even when in a situation where this does not work, at worst, he's getting everything that he wants, which includes savaging Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

If You Want to Understand the Face of Modern Capitalism

Just read Aviation Week's savaging of Angela Merkel. (Paid Subscription Required)

Seriously, this article makes me feel a modicum of respect for Angela F%$#ing Merkel.

It centers on the role of Merkel of killing the BAE/EADS merger, and Aviation Week, which is at its core a defense industry newsletter, and as suchit does not approve of government "meddling."

The basic premise behind this is that after sucking up billions of government subsidies and contracts, they want to "unleash the free market" (Translation: move factories to China, overpay senior executives, and continue to get government money).

Nixing the terms demanded by BAE may have been the best thing that Merkel has ever done.

If there is any industry that rivals the banksters for socializing risk and privatizing profits, it is the defense industry, and to treat it as anything but a ward of the state is a profound mistake.

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government

So, some wags put out a petition to, "Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016".

Since this bit of comedic gold has gotten more then 25,000 signatures, the white house has issued a response:

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

I am actually a bit surprised by their response.

I would have assumed that the White House would have insisted that "blowing up planets" was a necessary executive prerogative in line with his functions of Commander-in-Chief.

The Bad Day at the Office

H/t Americablog

Awwwww!!!

This is a a huge overdose of cute.



Link

Patient Zero of Michael Kinsley Disease

Really? Like Ken Starr Without the Charm

Is, of course, Michael Kinsley, who has decided that being the most traveled secretary of state in history is just an ego trip, and that it's just playing hell with her looks.

Mindless contrarianism, it's kind of like a prefrontal lobotomy, only the charm.

It's Bank Failure Friday

It's a new year, so the count restarts, and we have the first bank and credit union failures of the year.

For the banks

1. Westside Community Bank, University Place, WA

Full FDIC list

And the credit union closing:

1. New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church Credit Union, Milwaukee, WI

Full NCUA list

Not enough data for the graph yet.

Belated 100th Birthday, Mr. President

Richard Milhaus Nixon was born on January 9, 1913.

I'm not a deep student of history, but I do believe that he was the worst president from the period 1933 through 1973 1974, and that he was the best president from the period of 1969 through 2013. (Would you like that with extrajudicial drone killings, sir?)

We are led by increasingly small and petty men.

He is a F%$#ing Comedian

Blah, blah, blah!

So until the pundits are subjected to some scrutiny for their fact free gaffes, leave Jon Stewart alone. </LeaveBritneyAlone>

You can see the video, and I don't think it's great. It shows off his not-infrequent forays into "a pox on both their houses" land, but there is a difference between saying, "Not up to his normal standards," and:

I won’t say that Stewart has the same obligation to be accurate the journalists have—in fact, if he had brought up the coin only to make a lot of silly jokes about whose face would be on it, that would have been okay. (A missed opportunity, but nothing more.) But instead he grossly misled his audience.

At its best the Daily Show is about satirizing the actual reality of American governance in an honest way. Stewart has built up a lot of credibility over the years. A great many people trust him implicitly, believing that while his main objective is to be funny, he also won’t under any circumstances BS them. Yesterday, he betrayed that trust.

Shame on you, Jon Stewart. You’re better than this.

It's one thing to say, "It's not his best," and it's another to treat it as one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.

Ryan Cooper, please get a life.

Ooh, Baby, You Are So Talented!

And They Are So Dumb!

You remember how Dick "Army of Dicks" Armey spilled the beans on how he and the rest of FreedomWorks was basically grifting?

Well, it appears that he confused the conservative Media Research Center, and the liberal Media Matters when he spilled the beans:

There's been a remarkable amount of drama surrounding Dick Armey's departure from FreedomWorks, culminating Friday with a stunning report from Media Matters, who interviewed the former House Majority Leader directly. Armey had all kinds of interesting insights to share with the progressive group, including tidbits on pay-for-play agreements with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and the FreedomWorks' practice of charging activists to attend free events.

Though many of Armey's revelations should probably be taken with a grain of salt -- the former GOP leader seemed confused about some of the details he shared -- there was a larger question that puzzled nearly everyone: why in the world was Dick Armey dishing dirt to Media Matters?

The Daily Caller, a conservative outlet, tracked down the answer.

Dick Armey had no idea he was speaking to the left-wing Media Matters organization during an interview last week, he told The Daily Caller Tuesday. Instead, Armey thought he was chatting with the conservative Media Research Center. [...]

As for who he thought he was speaking to, Armey asked the Daily Caller, "Who's the guy with the red beard that always does the show where he points out how biased the press is?" Told he seemed to be referring to the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell, who does a weekly "Media Mash" segment on Fox News, Armey said, "Yeah, I thought it was Brent Bozell."

As the saying goes, "ない愚かさはない薬です".^*

If these guys had half a brain, we'd be in trouble.  Of course, if they had half a brain. they would not be movement conservatives.

H/t Crooks and Liars.

^*Pronounced in Japanese, "baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai", which means, "There is no medicine for stupidity." Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Light posting for a while

Let's just say that I am firmly in the "life sucks zone".

Posted via mobile.

Quote of the Day

The only problem is, the suit is being filed by maybe the biggest douchebag of all time, Hank Greenberg (and his company, Starr International), a man who has not only been proven to be corrupt and a fraud, but who perhaps more than anyone else was responsible for the galactic balance-sheet goat-f%$# that caused AIG's implosion in the first place. If there is such a person as an innocent AIG shareholder who was harmed by the government's conduct, it sure as hell isn't Hank Greenberg.

—Matt Taibbi, on Greenberg's suit against the US because he did not get well paid enough for running AIG into the ground.

(%$# mine)

FWIW, In an unexpected outbreak of sanity AIG has decided not to join Greenberg's lawauit.

Still, "Galactic Balance Sheet goat f%$#,"  that is good, even by Matt's high standards.

Go read.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

This is why privacy, and innocent until proved guilty are important.

If your entire life is available to the state security apparatus, they will find something, and so you had better not be inconvenient to said state security apparatus, because they already have the means to destroy you.

You do not want them to be inclined to actually do so.

It is depressing that the truth tellers in our society are cartoonists and comedians.


Link

I am adding cartoonist Zach Weiner to my list of, "People I Do Not Want to Piss Off."

A Big F%$# You to Torture Opponents

After the idea got shot down by opponents of torture in 2009, Obama is nominating highly vocal torture supporter John Brennan:

President Obama plans to nominate top counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan to lead the CIA, a senior administration official said today.

Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the agency, would take the helm of the CIA in the wake of the resignation of former Army Gen. David Petraeus.

I will be calling my Senators (both Democrats) and asking that both of them to filibuster him. (they won't, but I am asking)

It is very likely, though it is not certain given the veil of secrecy surrounding this matter that Brennan was an active participant in torture.

The most depressing commentary on this is Glen Greenwald's observation that there is Obama has succeeded in making opposition to torture a fringe political position:

It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus.

I can only conclude that Barack Obama, aka the Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever^™, is objectively pro torture.

And the morons in Sweden gave him a Nobel Peace Prize.

Just Go Read Matt Taibbi

He is on fire when writing about the nature of the bank bailouts:

………

Through behavior like this, the government has turned the entire financial system into a kind of vast confidence game – a Ponzi-like scam in which the value of just about everything in the system is inflated because of the widespread belief that the government will step in to prevent losses. Clearly, a government that's already in debt over its eyes for the next million years does not have enough capital on hand to rescue every Citigroup or Regions Bank in the land should they all go bust tomorrow. But the market is behaving as if Daddy will step in to once again pay the rent the next time any or all of these kids sets the couch on fire and skips out on his security deposit. Just like an actual Ponzi scheme, it works only as long as they don't have to make good on all the promises they've made. They're building an economy based not on real accounting and real numbers, but on belief. And while the signs of growth and recovery in this new faith-based economy may be fake, one aspect of the bailout has been consistently concrete: the broken promises over executive pay.

………

The implications here go far beyond the question of whether Dimon and Co. committed insider trading by buying and selling stock while they had access to material nonpublic information about the bailouts. The broader and more pressing concern is the clear implication that by failing to act, federal regulators­ have tacitly approved the nondisclosure. Instead of trusting the markets to do the right thing when provided with accurate information, the government has instead channeled Jack Nicholson – and decided that the public just can't handle the truth.

………

So what exactly did the bailout accomplish? It built a banking system that discriminates against community banks, makes Too Big to Fail banks even Too Bigger to Failier, increases risk, discourages sound business lending and punishes savings by making it even easier and more profitable to chase high-yield investments than to compete for small depositors. The bailout has also made lying on behalf of our biggest and most corrupt banks the official policy of the United States government. And if any one of those banks fails, it will cause another financial crisis, meaning we're essentially wedded to that policy for the rest of eternity – or at least until the markets call our bluff, which could happen any minute now.

Other than that, the bailout was a smashing success.

Seriously, just go read, and then scream at your congresscritters.

Maybe Not Unto the 3rd Generation, but More than a Decade

John Aravosis wondered how long the boycott of Domino's Pizza should last beyond Tom Monaghan's sale of the pizza delivery firm:

The thing is, a lot of people are still ticked at Domino’s for the Monaghan years. I know I am. I still avoid Domino’s when possible, even though I “know” Monaghan is gone. (And most of us didn’t even know about the Romney/Bain connection – they owned the company after Monaghan, though they’re now gone too.)

Like Coors, years after it faced a gay backlash, Domino’s was run by a lot of right-wing jerks during much of its existence, and the company is now trying to figure out how to get rid of some serious baggage. And like Coors, Dominos, Cracker Barrel, Chick-fil-A all give me a bad taste in my mouth, even though the first two have gotten rid of their far-right heritage.

Are liberals being unfair to Domino’s, or Coors or Cracker Barrel? Once bad people sell a company, is it time for us to let bygones be bygones? If Monaghan continues being a jerk, is it time to stop holding Domino’s response for his ongoing actions?

It's a legitimate question.

I'm not sure how long a boycott for this sort of sh%$ should last, but it should be at least a decade, and probably at least 2.

This is not about being unwilling to let go, it's about economics:  If a boycott goes away as soon as the right wing ratf%$# sells out, then he can sell out for more money.

Any protest must continue for a long enough time to ensure there is no easy/lucrative escape hatch.

Yes, I know that this is in response from a post made over 2 weeks ago, I came across this when I was doing some house cleaning.

Deep Thought

This is way too true.

I'm beginning to think that the modern officer corps has more in common with peacocks than they do with the soldiers of yore.

Link

I Know That the Devil Exists

Because he took a crap on my tongue while I slept.

It's the morning breath from hell.



Posted via mobile.

Heh.

At the start of a new Congress, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out teabagger membership cards to the Republican Representatives:

As new members of Congress are sworn in on Thursday, Democrats are looking to brand the incoming Republican class early on. The DCCC is sending out the above "Tea Party membership cards" to the offices of 35 freshman Republicans.

Press releases in their individual districts identify each member as "the newest Tea Party House Republican who will put millionaires ahead of the middle class and dysfunction ahead of progress," according to DCCC communications director Jesse Ferguson.

This is really what I call "immature College Republican agitprop," but I still chuckled.

I guess that a lot depends on whose ox is gored.

God Bless America

The US Treasury is now freezing the accounts of cartoonists of mass destruction:

I went to Congo to write a comic book about a terror group — and ended up being labelled a terror supporter myself by the Treasury Department.

The bizarre tale of my graphic novel Army of God, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a window inside a little-known counter-terrorism campaign that captures more than a few innocents in its wide net.

Nearly 12 years since the massive expansion of federal powers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, OFAC’s collateral damage — myself included — is a reminder that defeating terrorists can come at the cost of our freedom.

It began two years ago. In the fall of 2010 I spent a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo reporting on the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal Ugandan rebel group that was chased from its homeland and has spent the last decade hiding out in the forests of eastern Congo. Led by charismatic madman Joseph Kony, the LRA pillages farming villages for supplies, kills or mutilates the adults and enslaves the children.

………

In early December our agent wired [artist Tim] Hamilton his share of the advance, but the money never reached the artist’s account. After a few weeks the agent made some calls. “He was told that the party holding the funds was the federal wire fraud unit which suspected that they were laundering funds for a terrorist organization,” Hamilton says.

On one level, it may seem as if it is not a big deal, but it is.  

Basically, this means that they can take everything you have with out any recourse at any time, and if they are wrong, or if they are malicious, it does not matter, because they are above the law, because if anything goes wrong, all they need to do is go, "Yadda, yadda, terrorism."

We have deliberately created a lawless national security state.

Do Responsible Gun Activists Even Exist?

I'm sure there are a few responsible gun owners out there, but the Gun Nuts With Small Penises^™ crowd seem determined to show that there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner:

A suburban New York newspaper that ignited a furor by publishing the identities of thousands of residents who hold gun licenses has hired armed security to guard its staff after receiving an intimidating e-mail, a police report said.

Among a "large amount of negative correspondence" that White Plains, New York-based Journal News has received since publishing permit holders' names was one e-mail in which the sender "wondered what would get in her mail next," according to a Clarkstown, New York, police report obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

The editor, Caryn McBride, told police the newspaper hired a private security company whose "employees are armed and will be on site during business hours," the report said. The guards are protecting the newspaper's staff and Rockland County offices in West Nyack, New York.

Police told McBride the e-mail did not contain an explicit threat that could compel authorities to take action against the sender. The menacing e-mail was reported to police on December 28.

Let's see what happens here.

You have an argument over gun control.

The people gun control advocates call gun rights advocates dangerous and crazy.

The gun control advocates respond by threatening the lives of gun control advocates.

QED, gun control advocates are dangerous and crazy.

But of Course

The very first person goes to jail over CIA torture, and it's the whistle-blower:

Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

This is about scaring people out of being whistle-blowers.

This is about the "most open administration in history" doing its level best to create a completely secret and unaccountable executive.

This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Richard Nixon was the worst president the US had from 1933 to 1973 1974, and the best president the US had from 1969 through 2013.

If that does not make you depressed, then I want whatever it is that you are smoking.

Crap

Redskins lost to Seattle.

Sad, but not surprised.

More Financial Fraud Enforcement Theater from the Obama Administration

Yesterday, I heard the news that the 271 year old Swiss bank, Weglin, was shut down following a US Department of Justice investigation into their actions supporting tax evasion and money laundering.

It sounded too good to be true, and , as Yves Smith so eloquently points out, it was too good to be true.

The Nickel version is that the bank's asserts were transferred to another entity, Raiffeisen, and the proceeds likely given to the owners in the weeks power to its being shut down.

Finally, the DoJ is saying NOTHING about whether the got information about the accounts, and the people who used them too avoid taxes.

This its a pretty good tell that they hour no data:  If they had, they would be trumpeting it to the heavens, because they would thereby induce people to turn themselves in.

Go read the while thing, including the reader comments.

Posted via mobile.

Meh

U.S. jobs report.

155K jobs created in December, basically running in place, and unemployment stayed at 7.8%

More IP Insanity

In the latest case, we have patent trolls trying to extort money from small businesses for using scanners:

When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture” patents, he didn’t quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay—which is to say, just about any business, period.

If he'd paid up, the IT services provider that Vicinanza founded, BlueWave Computing, would have owed $130,000.

………

"[Hill] was very cordial and very nice," he told Ars. "He said, if you hook up a scanner and e-mail a PDF document—we have a patent that covers that as a process."

t didn’t seem credible that Hill was demanding money for just using basic office equipment exactly the way it was intended to be used. So Vicinanza clarified:

"So you're claiming anyone on a network with a scanner owes you a license?" asked Vicinanza. "He said, 'Yes, that's correct.' And at that point, I just lost it."

The kicker is that the these folks were using newspapers' "best places to work" lists to send out dunning letters.

Seriously, we need to just stop issuing patents until the system is fixed.

H/t Kevin Drum.

This is What Happens When You F%$# With User Interfaces, Just Because

That is what the much loathed ribbon is all about, and now Windows 8, which has managed to underperform Vista's market acceptance:

Final online usage numbers for 2012 released Tuesday confirmed that Windows 8 failed to match Windows Vista's uptake pace during its first two months.

Preliminary numbers from Net Applications last week indicated that Windows 8 would end the month behind Vista's uptake at the same point in its release cycle. Yesterday's data confirmed the earlier projections by Computerworld.

………

Apple gets that while a smart phone and a tablet are similar things, that neither of them are a PC, so for tablets and iPhones, you have IOS, and for the MacIntosh, they still run OSX, which is a conventional keyboard and mouse Operating system.

Windows may be a good tablet/phone OS, but for a conventional PC, it sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.

Seriously, it's worse than Google's light gray on white color scheme that has become their standard.

That's Gonna Leave a Mark

One of the "journalists" at Fox News asked a really stupid question alleging that Hillary Clinton was faking being sick to avoid testifying before Congress, and State Department spokesman Phillippe Raines "apologized" for this:

“Toria, can you expand on why Secretary Clinton can’t testify on Thursday about this? It seems that she has not been available to testify on the Benghazi situation on some very key dates, including the Sunday after 9/11 and now this Thursday.”

I just called them and read them the riot act for putting such misleading, accusatory, and absolutely asinine words in your mouth. Because after what we and her doctors explained over the weekend regarding her health, you couldn’t possibly have been insinuating the ulterior motives that question implies. No way. No credible journalist would do that without any basis whatsoever. But even more so, I really went to bat for you with folks here and told them that while I know the media can often be incredibly self-involved, there is no way you, an informed reporter, would equate one’s testifying before the United States Congress – made up of duly elected Senators and Representatives empowered by Article I of our Constitution – with going on tv. I don’t know Chris Wallace all that well, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t place his television show on par with one of the three branches of our government. And therefore, saying that this has happened on multiple ‘key dates’ is simply a blatant lie and grossly misleading to the public.

Anyway, our sincere apologies. If you send us what you really said, I’ll make sure it’s properly reflected.

This is just a thing of beauty.

Republicans are Such Whiny Bitches

John Boehner has said that that he will no longer negotiation with Barack Obama:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) "is signaling that at least one thing will change about his leadership during the 113th Congress: he's telling Republicans he is done with private, one-on-one negotiations with President Obama," The Hill reports.

"During both 2011 and 2012, the Speaker spent weeks shuttling between the Capitol and the White House for meetings with the president in the hopes of striking a grand bargain on the deficit. Those efforts ended in failure, leaving Boehner feeling burned by Obama and, at times, isolated within his conference."

So, Obama made him his bitch repeatedly, and now he's running back to mommy.

History Repeats Itself………

They're Back!!  Yes, the symbol looks very familiar

The Golden Dawn, the resurgent Greek Fascist party.

Rather surprisingly, their increasing popularity in Greece, along with the increasing violence associated with their actions, along with evidence that Greek police are increasingly directly colluding with them.

When you consider the fact EU measures have produced an economic collapse that has women in labor refused admission to hospital, and a descent to a barter economy, you would think that the Greek ruling elite, as well as the Eurocrats in Brussels, along with the Germans who pull their chain, would be running around like their hair was on fire about this.

It's not happening, because the however uncomfortable the corrupt Greek elites are with Fascists, they hate the Greek left as manifested by SYRIZA, the Greek party of the left, because if they win, they threaten to undermine the kleptocratic duopoly of the PASOK New Democracy party.

On the European Union side, however uncomfortable they are with Fascism, they hate the Greek left as manifested by SYRIZA, and more generally they hate the underlying ideas that the EU bureaucracy should serve the will of the people (witness the gyrations to prevent votes on EU expansion once the referenda started to fail), and that neoliberal bank coddling policies are a bad.

So, why is there the studious ignorance regarding the rise of Fascism in Greece (and in a number of other EU nations)?

Well, when you look at the attitudes of the Eurocrats toward SYRIZA, or the Left Party in Germany, or similar, you see a hell of a lot more alarm at them, but they are not xenophobic violent antidemocratic groups.

I would argue that what we are seeing is a tacit endorsement of the rise in Fascism in Europe, because they are seen as "useful idiots" who can serve to counteract the threat of a resurgent left, either by providing an outlet for nationalist sentiments, or through violence.

Does this sound familiar to you?  It does to me.

In the late 1920s and the early 1930s, industrialists funded Fascists all over Europe, most notably in Germany, because of concerns about potential gains of leftists parties as a result of the economic collapse. (Yes, I know, Godwin's Law)

I'm wondering when we are going to see the blond boy singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

My brother is pessimist.  He expects there to be a collapse the EU and war in the near future.

I am an optimist.  I expect there to be a collapse the EU and cold war in the near future.

Until the Eurocrats are put back under public control, and until Germany realizes that their morality play wet dreams do nothing but kill people, I do not see a better outcome in the next couple of decades.

Stay Classy Scotty Brown

Yep, the last campaign was about Elizabeth Warren's belief (probably accurate) that she had some American Indian ancestry, and this time, he's running again, and he's leading with an attack on Ed Markey's Massachusetts residency:

Senator Scott Brown today took on a possible opponent in a special election to succeed his colleague John F. Kerry, questioning whether US Representative Edward J. Markey is actually a resident of Massachusetts.

Markey later hit back, hinting at a reprise of the political nastiness that permeated Brown’s recent election battle against Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

Brown has suggested he would compete in the special election that will be triggered if Kerry is confirmed as President Obama’s second-term secretary of state, but he has not made a formal commitment to a race. Markey has already said he will run.

“I’ll tell you what; They’re making it awfully tempting. You got Ed Markey: Does he even live here any more?” Brown said with a laugh as he called into the “Jim & Margery Show” on WTKK-FM.

“You’ve got to check the travel records. I’ve come back and forth (from Washington to Boston) every weekend, almost, for three years, and I see, you know, most of the delegation, and I have never seen Ed on the airplane - ever,” Brown added.

Markey, a Democrat born and raised in Malden, long called his childhood bedroom in his parents’ house as his Massachusetts residence, even though his wife, Susan Blumenthal, was a doctor at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington and the couple owns a home in Chevy Chase, Md. Blumenthal is now a health care consultant.

Seriously, another episode of, "Of course she's not Indian, look at her?"

I Really do not get this. His primary asset is his appearance of likability, and he's coming across like an entitled frat boy from the movie Animal House.

This is not just nasty, it's stupid nasty. I do not get it.

H/t TPM.

Boehner told Reid to go Cheney Himself

Republicans, such classy people:

House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.

Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”

Boehner repeated: “Go f— yourself.”

The harsh exchange just a few steps from the Oval Office — which Boehner later bragged about to fellow Republicans — was only one episode in nearly two months of high-stakes negotiations laced with distrust, miscommunication, false starts and yelling matches as Washington struggled to ward off $500 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts.

Seriously, this sort of childish sh%$ is not the mark of someone who you can negotiate with in good faith.

Saying it in the middle of a contentious meeting is one thing, but this was a "drive by" f%$# you, and then he bragged about it to colleagues.

This is College Republican bullsh%$, and it is an indication of just how unserious the Republican leadership is about doing their jobs.

I experienced this when I was in the SGA Senate at UMass, and dealt with people who later figured in the Abramhoff, and they freuently behaved the same way, but they were in their early 20s, and it was the student senate.

That is why this deal is so bad.  Barack Obama just gave the keys to Eddie Haskell, and this does not bode well.

My Heart So Doesn't Break For John Boehner

I understand where he is coming from on Hurricane Sandy.

The Teabagger part of his caucus sees New York as nothing but n***ers, k*kes, and f***ots, and he did not want to try to pass a bill sending New York any money before he is reelected , because he has a whole sh%$-mess of folks who think that aid to a storm ravaged New York is aid to the enemy.

So, he decided not to bring up any sort of aid for the damage Sandy this session.

Bad move, dude.

He ignited a bipartisan sh%$-storm.

Republican stalwart, and supporter of lightly complected terrorists Peter King went on TV and suggested that people from the area should stop making political contributions to Republicans.

And then New Jersey Governor Chris "Does Not Play Well With Others" Christie said that Boehner had lied to him about the bill being on the agenda and that he refused to take his calls, and that Boehner's chief rival, Eric Cantor, had tried to help on this.

So Boehner caved, and there will be a vote on Sandy relief on Friday for $9 billion in relief, and a vote for an additional $51 billion on January 15.

Sucks to be him.

Heh.

I am Going to Miss Spitzer's Show

They just got sold to Al Jazeera, and they will be replacing the lineup with one of their own:

It looks as if Current TV will soon be a thing of the past. Al Jazeera, the Doha, Qatar-based news broadcaster, has agreed to acquire the seven-year-old cable channel from its co-founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.

Hyatt announced the sale in a memo to employees Wednesday evening, confirming reports in The New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter that a deal was in the works.

“When considering the several suitors who were interested in acquiring Current, it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current,” Hyatt wrote. “Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.”

Al Jazeera plans to scrap Current’s programming lineup and brand, which never caught on with a critical mass of viewers, and use the channel’s subscriber base of 60 million households as the basis for a new network. A Current spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the reports.

I understand why the deal was made: Current has access to over 100 million eyes, Al Jazeera just a fraction of that, because of our culture of bigotry and xenophobia adopted following 911.

Time Warner has already canceled their contract on the change of ownership clause, but they already carry Al Jazzera, so it might just be that they don't want to give them two channels.

Best Reason for Britain to Leave the EU

The Banksters are terrified of the idea:

Senior banking and business figures spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph have revealed growing disquiet at Government plans for a referendum where one option could be an exit from the EU.

One senior banking executive said: “The whole issue has the potential to be very destabilising for the City.

“It risks playing with the future of the British economy for the next 30 years.”

We need to understand that big finance is not about what should be its primary function, getting capital to from those who want to invest it to those who need it, but it is about sitting athwart the economy and extracting rents.

Any economy that prioritizes shrinking and stigmatizing the big bankers will do better than one (like ours, see Obama/Geithner) that prioritizes the the "health of the existing financial system."

The banksters are a cancer than need to be excised from our economy.

Krugman is Right

Republicans goal is to force painful decisions, and make the Democrats pay the political price for them:

But it turns out that they didn’t even wait for any actual budget deal. Here’s Marco Rubio yesterday (via Ezra Klein):

The first part is, of course, simply a lie: numerous reports tell us that McConnell did in fact make precisely that demand. And let’s remember this when Rubio makes his run for the White House: we already know that he’s an unprincipled liar. But anyway, you see how it will go — and why the whole notion of settling matters fiscal with a Grand Bargain was always crazy. You can’t make big deals with a totally untrustworthy negotiating partner.

It does not make sense to negotiate with terrorists, but that meant nothing to Democrats, who went 10:1 for the bill, while the Republicans went nearly 2:1 against.

They will be seeing ads from 'Phants about this within weeks.

To paraphrase a Roman general whose name I forget about the Germanic tribes, Republicans are completely trustworthy only for so long as you have your boot on their neck.

Particularly in the House, it should have been made clear that this would only pass if the Republicans delivered at least 150 votes.

You don't just pass the bill, you shame them.

If you want to cut a deal with these folks, you

Why We Need to Kill Big Pharma, Part LVXXI

So, a company buys the rights to a drug for 100 Grand, and takes the price of a vial from $50 to $28,000:

THE doctor was dumbfounded: a drug that used to cost $50 was now selling for $28,000 for a 5-milliliter vial.

The physician, Dr. Ladislas Lazaro IV, remembered occasionally prescribing this anti-inflammatory, named H.P. Acthar Gel, for gout back in the early 1990s. Then the drug seemed to fade from view. Dr. Lazaro had all but forgotten about it, until a sales representative from a company called Questcor Pharmaceuticals appeared at his office and suggested that he try it for various rheumatologic conditions.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Lazaro, a rheumatologist in Lafayette, La., says of the price increase.

How the price of this drug rose so far, so fast is a story for these troubled times in American health care — a tale of aggressive marketing, questionable medicine and, not least, out-of-control costs. At the center of it is Questcor, which turned the once-obscure Acthar into a hugely profitable wonder drug and itself into one of Wall Street’s highest fliers.

At least until recently, that is. Now some doctors, insurance companies and investors are beginning to have doubts about whether the drug is really any better than much cheaper alternatives. Short-sellers have written scathing criticisms of the company, questioning its marketing tactics and predicting that its shareholders are highly vulnerable.

………

But Questcor did almost no research or development to bring Acthar to market, merely buying the rights to the drug from its previous owner for $100,000 in 2001. And while the manufacturing of Acthar is complex, it accounts for only about 1 cent of every dollar that Questcor charges for the drug.

Moreover, the tiny “orphan” market soon became much bigger. Before long, Questcor began marketing the drug for multiple sclerosis, nephrotic syndrome and rheumatologic conditions, even though there is little evidence that Acthar is more effective for those other conditions than alternatives that are far cheaper. And the company did so without being required to prove that the drug actually works. That is because Acthar was approved for use in 1952, before the Food and Drug Administration required clinical trials to show a drug is effective for a particular disease. Acthar is essentially grandfathered in.

How the F%$# does a drug that was approved for use in 1952 remain under IP protection?

I'm increasingly convinced that our current IP regime is an iron triangle between rent-seekers who produce nothing of value, politicians who take their campaign donations, and the the rest of us, who provide the ill-gotten gains that the rent-seekers use to protect their business models.

More Equal than Others

The latest investment dodge, leveraging green cards for investment capital:

At this remote outpost by the Canadian border, Bill Stenger is overseeing what he says is the biggest economic development project that Vermont has ever seen.

He is expanding the Jay Peak ski resort, which he co-owns, but he is also building a biomedical research firm and a window manufacturing plant, extending the runway at the local airport and rehabilitating much of the nearby town of Newport, where he lives. There, he is developing the waterfront, adding the town’s first hotel and a conference center and rebuilding an entire downtown block. He is also creating what he says is the largest indoor mountain bike park in the world and a state-of-the art tennis center.

The price tag for the entire project, which Mr. Stenger says will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs over several years, is $865 million.

But even more unusual than the size of the undertaking is the method by which Mr. Stenger and his business partner, Ariel Quiros, are financing it. They have tapped into a federal program that gives green cards, or permanent residency, to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in an American business — the reward for the investment is a chance at United States citizenship.

(emphasis mine)

It inevitable that any government program that "incentivises" the wealthy is an invitation to corruption and abuse.

Let's be clear here:  People who are investing are not interested in the return that they can get, they are buying a green card.

The whole Calvinist dichotomy that wealth is synonymous with virtue that the Pilgrims brought over is really completely unbounded in reality.