Year: 2011

Not Enough Bullets

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RBS bankers get £950m in bonuses despite £1.1bn loss:

More than 100 bankers at Royal Bank of Scotland were paid more than £1m last year and total bonus payouts reached nearly £1bn – even though the bailed-out bank reported losses of £1.1bn for 2010.

The chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, said the number of millionaires was lower than a year ago and said a quarter of the group’s 18,700 investment bankers would not receive a bonus from the £950m payout pool agreed with UK Financial Investments, which controls the taxpayer’s 83% stake in the bank. Unions were baffled that any bankers were getting bonuses.

The unions are not the only ones who are baffled.

Roger Ailes Suborned Perjury

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Judith Regan, who literally f%$#ed Bernie Kerik at ground zero in Manhattan, settled for a few million dollars after being fired by Rupert Murdoch, and got an apology, in which News Corp formally disavowed the original accusation of anti-Semitism that was the ostensible reasoning for her firing.

Well, now we know why Newscorp caved, because Fox News chief Roger Ailes got caught on tape advising her to lie to federal investigators:

It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie two years earlier to federal investigators who were vetting Bernard B. Kerik for the job of homeland security secretary.

Ms. Regan had once been involved in an affair with Mr. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner whose mentor and supporter, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, was in the nascent stages of a presidential campaign. The News Corporation executive, whom she did not name, wanted to protect Mr. Giuliani and conceal the affair, she said.

Now, court documents filed in a lawsuit make clear whom Ms. Regan was accusing of urging her to lie: Roger E. Ailes, the powerful chairman of Fox News and a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani. What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discussed her relationship with Mr. Kerik.

It is unclear whether the existence of the tape played a role in News Corporation’s decision to move quickly to settle a wrongful termination suit filed by Ms. Regan, paying her $10.75 million in a confidential settlement reached two months after she filed it in 2007.

Yeah, it’s “unclear”.

Would not have come up, except for the fact that Regan fired her lawyers just before the settlement, and they were accusing her of doing so to avoid paying a contingency fee, and in the lawsuit, her lawyers’ affidavits mistakenly became part of the public record:

“In fact,” the complaint said, “a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”

Mr. Redniss, in his affidavit, referred to “a recorded telephone call between Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News (a News Corp. company) and Regan, in which Mr. Ailes discussed with Regan her responses to questions regarding her personal relationship with Bernard Kerik.”

It appears that Fox in general, and Ailes in particular, found supporting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign to be imperative, and so told her to lie in order to keep the dirt off of Rudy.

An interesting side note to all of this:

The court records examined by The New York Times this week, which have subsequently been taken out of the public case file, also reveal another interesting footnote. After Ms. Regan fired her lawyers, a seemingly unlikely figure came forward to help settle the case: Susan Estrich, a law professor and a regular Fox commentator whose book Ms. Regan had published, according to Ms. Regan’s affidavit.

Susan Estrich has been an absolutely useless horror show on the American body politic since she handed the presidency to George H.W. Bush on a silver platter as Michael Dukkakis’ campaign manager.

Boeing Wins Tanker Contract

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Just heard, and I’ll try to tease out more detail for the weekend.

I’m kind of surprised, the Airbus A330 is a better plane, that’s why the 767 is at the end of life, but the A330 is still selling,  but then again, I was kind of surprised when EADS won in the first competition, because of the dynamics of a foreign firm winning such a high stakes competition.

If Boeing had lost, I would have said that a challenge was a dead nuts certainty, but EADS is I think rather less likely to do so, if just because the potential blow-back is bigger.

Scott Walker Started as a Tragedy, and is Finishing as a Comedy

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So, the Republican Party’s next “Great White Hope,” Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s assault on the right to unionize, has gone from the Republican’s best plan for tearing down the base of the Democratic party to a rather unpopular farce.

First, attempts in Indiana Republicans to ape* Wisconsin led to Indiana lawmakers fleeing the state to stop the effort.

I don’t know what this sh%$ is doing for the economies of Wisconsin and Indiana, but it sure is boosting the hospitality industry in Illinois.

Also, it is becoming increasingly apparent that these actions are unpopular, the polls are pretty strongly against it, and Republican notables are backing away from the idea, with Indiana governor Mitch Daniels telling the ‘Phants in his legislature to kill the bill, and Florida governor, and über-Teabagger, Rick Scott coming out against the idea.

So it already looks like this strategy is playing a lot like the 1995 government shutdown, and now Scott Walker got punked by the editor of the Buffalo Beast, who pretended to be David Koch.

The interesting take aways here is that he’s not seeing any need to compromise and is planning to:

  • Dock the state Senator’s pay.
  • Looking at going after them on ethics violations, and a possible felony, if they took food or lodging assistance from unions. (FWIW, he accepted an invite from “David Koch” for a flight out to California and being put up there later in the call)
  • That he’s intending to organize a “summit” of some sort with the Democrats, and use their presence to push the vote through while they are in the room with him (it’s a quorum/recess game).
  • Discussed planting “troublemakers” with the activists to either create bad press, or provide an excuse to crack down.

So, he’s now on tape admitting that he cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith, the quote is:

I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…

So he’s been caught on tape admitting that he would basically launch a sneak attack during peace talks, good luck getting anyone to trust you ever again.

*No offense intended to primates. I’m using the verb form, and I can understand how simians might find comparing them to Republicans to be offensive.

The (legal in Wisconsin) tape of the phone call and the transcript after the break:


Part 1


Part 2

Transcript follows:

Walker: Hi; this is Scott Walker.
Koch: Scott! David Koch. How are you?
Walker: Hey, David! I’m good. And yourself?
Koch: I’m very well. I’m a little disheartened by the situation there, but, uh, what’s the latest?
Walker: Well, we’re actually hanging pretty tough. I mean—you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters—almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up—getting it all the way to the last point it can be at where it’s unamendable. But they’re waiting to pass it until the Senate’s—the Senate Democrats, excuse me, the assembly Democrats have about a hundred amendments they’re going through. The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit…. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning—he told the Senate Democrats about and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day—in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk—it’s a little procedural thing here, but—can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted—
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: —into your checking account and instead—you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them—which we just loved—to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate.
Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?
Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.
Koch: Goddamn right!
Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—
Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.
Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…
Koch: Now who can we get to budge on this collective bargaining?
Walker: …I think the paycheck will have an impact…secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next…we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony.
Koch: Well, they’re probably putting hobos in suits.
Walker: Yeah.
Koch: That’s what we do. Sometimes.
Walker: I mean paying for the senators to be put up. I know they’re paying for these guy—I mean, people can pay for protesters to come in and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators—their food, their lodging, anything like that…[*** Important regarding his later acceptance of a Koch offer to “show him a good time.” ***]
[I was stunned. I am stunned. In the interest of expediting the release of this story, here are the juiciest bits:]
Walker: …I’ve got layoff notices ready…
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. Gotta crush that union.
Walker: [bragging about how he doesn’t budge]…I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…
Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.
Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: [union-bashing…]
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: So this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. [Talks about a “great” NYT piece of “objective journalism.” Talks about how most private blue-collar workers have turned against public, unionized workers.]…So I went through and called a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”
Koch: Goddamn right! We, uh, we sent, uh, Andrew Breitbart down there.
Walker:Yeah.
Koch: Yeah.
Walker: Good stuff.
Koch: He’s our man, you know.
Walker: [blah about his press conferences, attacking Obama, and all the great press he’s getting.] Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said—he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day—John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder—if he got a little more support—probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.
Koch: You’re the first domino.
Walker: Yep. This is our moment.
Koch: Now what else could we do for you down there?
Walker: Well the biggest thing would be—and your guy on the ground [Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips] is probably seeing this [stuff about all the people protesting, and some of them flip him off].
[Abrupt end of first recording, and start of second.]
Walker: [Bullshit about doing the right thing and getting flipped off by “union bulls,” and the decreasing number of protesters. Or some such.]
Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about ’60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.
Koch: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.
Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.
Koch: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.
Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.
Walker: Oh yeah. [story about when he hung out with human pig Jim Sensenbrenner at some D.C. function and he was sitting next to Brzezinski and her father, and their guest was David Axelrod. He introduced himself.]
Koch: That son of a bitch!
Walker: Yeah no kidding huh?…
Koch: Well, good; good. Good catching up with ya’.
Walker: This is an exciting time [blah, blah, blah, Super Bowl reference followed by an odd story of pulling out a picture of Ronald Reagan and explaining to his staff the plan to crush the union the same way Reagan fired the air traffic controllers]…that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall because the Communists then knew Reagan wasn’t a pushover. [Blah, blah, blah. He’s exactly like Reagan. Won’t shut up about how awesome he is.]
Koch: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. [*** Ethical violation much? ***] Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…
Koch: Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. [Laughs]
Walker: [Blah] Thanks a million!
Koch: Bye-bye!

Walker: Bye.

Stay Classy David Petraeus

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In response to allegations of civilian casualties in response to military operations in Konar province, America’s favorite showboating general claimed that Afghan parents probably burnt their own children for propaganda purposes:

To the shock of President Hamid Karzai’s aides, Gen. David H. Petraeus suggested Sunday at the presidential palace that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting.

…………

The U.S. military “did have initial reports that the feet and hands of the children appeared to have been burned,” Smith said. “We have observed increased reporting of children being disciplined by having their hands and feet dipped into boiling water. No one is claiming this is the case in this instance, but it may well be.”

Petraeus apparently had suggested something along these lines at the national security council meeting Sunday, remarks that “really bothered everyone,” including Karzai, one participant said.

“He claimed that in the midst of the [operation] some pro-Taliban parents in contact with a government official decided to create a civilian casualty claim to pressure international forces to cease the [operation]. They burned hands and legs of some of their children and sent them to the hospital,” a second participant said.

I know that Petraeus sees his mission as continuing the various “Forever Wars,” because it keeps that old Pentagon gravy train rolling along, but this is beneath contempt.

Maybe, instead of coming up with alibis for civilian casualties, he should try to reduce the number.

Deep Thought

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Not blogging tonight, because I am dealing with installing Windows 7, SP 1 on this machine, and installing a new printer/scanner/fax (It was as cheap as a flatbed scanner, but came with a document feed, so even though we won’t be using either the fax or printer, it made sense) on the desktop.

At time like this, I think, “F%$# it, I should get myself a Macintosh.”

But then reality hits, and I realize that I’m already way too arrogant and obnoxious, and if I got a Mac, I’d make Muammar Qaddafi look Mahatma Ghandi.

Credit Ain’t Due Here…

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The Obama administration has finally repealed the Bush Administration’s “Conscience Rule,” which allowed healthcare providers to refuse to provide service on moral grounds:

The decision guts one of President George W. Bush’s most controversial legacies: a rule that was widely interpreted as shielding workers who refuse to participate in a range of medical services, such as providing birth control pills, caring for gay men with AIDS and performing in-vitro fertilization for lesbians or single women.

Friday’s move was seen as an important step in countering that trend, which in recent years had led pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, doctors in California to reject a lesbian’s request for infertility treatment, and an ambulance driver in Chicago to turn away a woman who needed transportation for an abortion.

Bush implemented this toward the end of his term, and it took Obama 2 years to repeal it?

Well, it appears that they wanted to split the difference yet again:

Soon after Obama assumed office, administration officials said they agreed the regulation was too broad and announced plans to rescind it. But officials indicated that instead of simply invalidating the rule, they would seek to replace it with a compromise. The announcement triggered more than 300,000 comments, which officials have spent months reviewing. The Federal Register notice announcing the decision cites concerns raised by both sides in the comments but concludes that most of the provisions were unnecessary and potentially problematic.

The rule will retain a provision that empowers the HHS Office of Civil Rights to investigate any complaints by workers who believe their rights under existing federal law were being violated. The office is currently investigating a complaint from a nurse who claims she was forced to perform an abortion in New York.

I think that crap like this comes from the top, and I think that Barack Obama is personally opposed to a woman’s right to choose, but finds the politics unavoidable, so feet are dragged, until the absolute minimum is begrudgingly done.

Very weak tea, and the absolute minimum that Obama could do without engendering a backlash from the base.

Now We Know What Gives Timothy Geithner an Erection

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Noam Scheiber interviewed Geithner, and gave us this gem:

I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape—for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy—and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World War and then remade Europe so that it couldn’t happen again?

Geithner hunched his shoulders, pressed his knees together, and lifted his heels up off the ground—an almost childlike expression of glee. “We’re going, like, existential,” he said. He told me he subscribes to the view that the world is on the cusp of a major “financial deepening”: As developing economies in the most populous countries mature, they will demand more and increasingly sophisticated financial services, the same way they demand cars for their growing middle classes and information technology for their corporations. If that’s true, then we should want U.S. banks positioned to compete abroad.

“I don’t have any enthusiasm for … trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy as a test of reform, because we have to think about the fact that we operate in the broader world,” he said. “It’s the same thing for Microsoft or anything else. We want U.S. firms to benefit from that.” He continued: “Now financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation.” This was the purpose of the recent financial reform, he said. In effect, Geithner was arguing that we should be as comfortable linking the fate of our economy to Wall Street as to automakers or Silicon Valley.

And then he smoked a cigarette, and asked if was good for me.

H/t David Dayen.

Sorry for that image.

He’s Not Just CIA, He’s Blackwater

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And it appears that he was working as a contractor for the CIA, and former, and perhaps currently, worked for Blackwater or Xe.

It should also note that the New York Times has been told by the government that it has permission from the US government to confirm his CIA connections.

Permission from the government? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (Glenn Greenwald is somewhat more articulate on this issue.)

So he’s a contractor, and considering his background, perhaps the appellation “mercenary” would be appropriate, said the contractor (working as an engineer, not a shooter).
In any case, the fact that they are admitting this means that both CIA and the State Department are very worried about this.

Libya is Burning

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I don’t have much to add, so I’ll point you to the Guardian.

It’s clearly an end game:

  • Two pilots were ordered to bomb protesters, and defected to Malta.
  • Border guards are abandoning their posts.
  • Reports of naval fire and aerial bombardment of some neighborhoods in Tripoli.
  • Bizarre statements from Qaddafi and his son(s).

 This is not going to be pretty, but it is completely outside of my intellectual strengths, such as they are.

Unfortunately, unlike Egypt, there are not a lot of press on the ground, so what is coming out is sketchy.

A Non-Surprise About the Most Over Rated Man in America

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When Colin Powell spewed his lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, his staff had already warned him that the information was complete crap.

In one case, he personally made up dialog that did not exist, and in others, he used reports that flagged the data as “Weak” and “not credible”.

Not a surprise.

Here is hoping that at some point in the not-too-distant future, Powell’s reputation experiences the same sort of reevaluation that Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan has.

Mozilo Skates…

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The Department of Justice, no doubt looking forward rather than backward, had dropped its criminal investigation of former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo:

Federal prosecutors have shelved a criminal investigation of Angelo R. Mozilo after determining that his actions in the mortgage meltdown — which led to $67.5-million settlement against him — did not amount to criminal wrongdoing.

As the former chairman of Countrywide Financial Corp., Mozilo helped fuel the boom in risky subprime loans that led to the crippling of the banking industry and the near-collapse of the financial system.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles began probing Mozilo in 2008, and four months ago he agreed to pay a $22.5-million fine and to repay $45 million in what the government said were ill-gotten gains to former Countrywide shareholders. The payments settled a civil action by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As Atrios notes, what this really means is that if you want to run a criminal enterprise, make sure that everyone has a piece of it, because, “If Everybody Is Guilty Then Nobody Is.”

Matt Taibbi is right, our society is now run by people who have declared criminals to be untouchable before the law.

More Adventures of People with Small Penises in the Pentagon

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The USAF is looking for a 2000 lb missile replacement for its 5000+ lb guided free-fall bombs for bunker busting and the like, to quote Shrek, I think that someone is compensating:

Penetrate faster, harder with new AFRL weapon

……………
An Air Force Research Laboratory fact sheet with a 2011 time-stamp for public release approval tells us that a 2,000lb-class weapon with 5,000lb-class penetration capability could be available within three years.
“Future fighters will be able to deliver bunker-busting capabilities currently associated with the bomber fleet,” the fact sheet says.
I found the fact sheet for the High Velocity Penetrating Weapon (HVPW) in the AFRL munitions directorate booth at the Air Warfare Symposium a few days ago. The document reveals the USAF has shifted its focus on next-generation penetrator technology on a couple of different levels.

The folks at the USAF do seem to spend a suspiciously large amount of time talking about “penetrators”, don’t they?

BTW, running the numbers, the kinetic energy of a 2500 kg system at 300 m/s (about 650 mi/h), is 112.5 MJ, so for a 1000 kg system, you would need a velocity of only (475 m/s) 1800 m/s km/h (1080 mi/hr) to get the same kinetic energy.
(added correction in red  D’oh!!!)