That’s what the caption should be:
Seen on Facebook.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
This Ain’t Good
The Egyptian Army has blockaded parliament:
Egypt’s military rulers moved to consolidate power Friday on the eve of the presidential runoff election, shutting down the Islamist-led Parliament, locking out lawmakers and seizing the sole right to issue laws even after a new head of state takes office.The generals effectively abandoned their previous pledge to cede power to a civilian government by the end of the month, prolonging the increasingly tortuous political transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. The power play has also darkened the prospects that Egypt, the most populous Arab state and one that historically has had tremendous influence on the direction of the region, might quickly emerge as a model of democracy for the Middle East.Their moves, predicated on a court ruling on Thursday and announced with little fanfare by the state news media, make it likely that whoever wins the presidential race will — at least at first — compete with the generals for power and influence. The military counsel also indicated through the official news media that it planned to issue a new interim constitution and potentially select its own panel to write a permanent charter. The generals have already sought permanent protections for their autonomy and political power.
Additionally, there are indications that the military is preparing to engage in massive voter fraud on behalf of the Mubarak hack running for President:
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy is tempering forecasts of victory in Egypt’s presidential election with a warning that vote rigging typical of the Hosni Mubarak era may hand victory to Ahmed Shafik, the deposed leader’s last prime minister.
On the eve of the run-off, Morsy, 60, hopes a big turnout of voters worried about a revival of the old regime will prevent that outcome and make him Egypt’s first Islamist president.
But after a court ruling by judges appointed under Mubarak dissolved a new parliament in which the Brotherhood was the main force, momentum appears to have ebbed away from Morsy, reflecting a broader sense that a political transition which had brought his movement dramatic gains is no longer going its way.
What a surprise, the generals like running things.
With a real civilian government, their control of much of the economy would be at risk, and the the gravy train would end.
So, When Do They Convict a White Guy?
Still no big name white guys caught
So, Rajat Gupta has been convicted of insider trading:
Rajat K. Gupta, the retired head of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and a former Goldman Sachs board member, was found guilty on Friday of conspiracy and securities fraud. He is the most prominent business executive convicted in a wave of prosecutions that followed the government’s sweeping investigation into insider trading on Wall Street.
After a monthlong trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, a jury took only two days to deliberate before reaching a verdict. It found Mr. Gupta guilty of leaking confidential information about Goldman to his former friend and business associate, the fallen hedge fund titan Raj Rajaratnam, on three different occasions in 2008. He was also convicted of conspiring in an insider trading scheme with Mr. Rajaratnam.
Mr. Gupta was found not guilty of two instances of tipping Mr. Rajaratnam, including an allegation that he divulged secret news about Procter & Gamble, where he also served on the board.
“Having fallen from respected insider to convicted inside trader, Mr. Gupta has now exchanged the lofty board room for the prospect of a lowly jail cell,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan said in a statement.
“Almost two years ago, we said that insider trading is rampant, and today’s conviction puts that claim into stark relief, ” he said.
I’ll believe that this is real when a Caucasian is put in the dock.
Until we start seeing pale people frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs, this isn’t real.
Brutal
Jon Stewart on the how the Senators (with 2 exceptions) sucked up to Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase when they were supposed to be grilling him.
I was going to write about it, but there weren’t enough obscenities in my vocabulary to do it justice, and Jon Stewart nails it with a PG rating.
Go figure.
There’s Going to Be a Recount in Wisconsin Senate Race
This is no surprise:
A Republican Wisconsin state senator asked Friday for a recount in the election that could hand Democrats their only victory in this month’s six recalls, and at least a temporary majority in the state Senate.
An official canvass this week showed incumbent Racine Republican Van Wanggaard trailing Democratic challenger John Lehman by 834 votes, or 1.2 percent of the nearly 72,000 votes cast.
Democrats had called on Wanggaard to concede, saying a recount would only waste taxpayer money and delay the inevitable. But Wanggaard’s campaign said it was concerned about reports of voting irregularities and wanted to ensure the outcome was accurate.
The state Senate currently has 16 Democrats and 16 Republicans, meaning the winner of the Wanggaard-Lehman race will give his party majority control. The victory, however, could be largely symbolic. The Legislature isn’t expected to convene again until January, and the November elections could cause the balance of political power to shift once again.
Of course he’s asking for a recount.
800 votes objectively does not seem like many, but it’s 1.2%, which is well nigh insurmountable.
It’s (mostly) about being a dick, and perhaps about delaying control of the professional staff in the Senate by the Democrats.
Announcement
I really could not give less of a shit about the Daily Caller reporter heckling Barack Obama this afternoon.
I’m sure that there will be a bloggasm over this, but I won’t be participating.
It’s Jobless Thursday!
And the numbers are not good, with initial claims rising 6K to 386000, the 4-week moving average rising to 382,000, though both continuing and extended claims were down.
It’s a crappy report, and it’s been the trending this way for a while.
Not good.
Gee, We’re Caught Lying About Syria
It turns out that the allegation that Russians were selling attack helos to Syria made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were false.
Syria has owned the copters in question for years:
When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Russia on Tuesday of shipping attack helicopters to Syria that would “escalate the conflict quite dramatically,” it was the Obama administration’s sharpest criticism yet of Russia’s support for the Syrian government.
What Mrs. Clinton did not say, however, was whether the aircraft were new shipments or, as administration officials say is more likely, helicopters that Syria had sent to Russia a few months ago for routine repairs and refurbishing, and which were now about to be returned.
“She put a little spin on it to put the Russians in a difficult position,” said one senior Defense Department official.
This is called lying like a rug.
We are going to bomb Syria. This is exactly the same sort of crap what we saw with build up Iraq, Libya, etc.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Shorter Sally Quinn
Sally Quinn’s writes an article complaining about how she can no longer throw, or go to, dinner parties with the movers and shakers in Washington, DC.
Fortunately, Jonathan Chait read the article so you don’t have to, and reaponds with “Sally Quinn Forced to Dine With Non-Fake Friends.”
While the title is good, the last ‘graph is even better:
Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist. Sadly, it has all been ruined by Kim Kardashian and Ezra Klein.
This is a classic example of the snark genre.
Go read.
The USA Is Going to Invade Norway
The Chairman of the JCS has said that if the automatic budget cuts kick in for the pentagon, we will see more war:
The nation’s top military officer warned Wednesday that automatic defense cuts agreed to in last year’s bipartisan debt limit deal could lead to more war.
At a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has gone along with recent targeted cuts to limited targeted cuts, but argued that the the sweeping across-the-board cuts in the so-called sequestration would weaken the country’s ability to deter adversaries and therefore lead to more war.
“Sequestration is absolutely certain to upend this balance. It would lead to further end-strength reductions, the potential cancellation of major weapons systems and the disruption of global operations,” Dempsey said. “We can’t yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation. We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visible globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus, and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict.”
Who the hell are we going to war with?
We have troops and/or mercenaries in:
- Afghanistan.
- Iraq.
- Iran (if it’s Thursday, but it’s a secret)
- Bosnia
- Kosovo
- Germany
- The UK
- Poland
- Korea
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Pakistan
- Belgium
- Italy
- Panama
- Kuwait
- Saudi Arabia
- Bahrain
- San Diego
- etc.
Seriously, there isn’t anyone left for us to invade who has any oil but the Norwegians.
What Needs to be Said
A democracy and anti al Queda activist from Yemen has published an OP/ED in the New York Times saying that our drone war in Yemen is bolstering the terrorist organization:
“DEAR OBAMA, when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda,” a Yemeni lawyer warned on Twitter last month. President Obama should keep this message in mind before ordering more drone strikes like Wednesday’s, which local officials say killed 27 people, or the May 15 strike that killed at least eight Yemeni civilians.
Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair. Robert Grenier, the former head of the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, has warned that the American drone program in Yemen risks turning the country into a safe haven for Al Qaeda like the tribal areas of Pakistan — “the Arabian equivalent of Waziristan.”
Anti-Americanism is far less prevalent in Yemen than in Pakistan. But rather than winning the hearts and minds of Yemeni civilians, America is alienating them by killing their relatives and friends. Indeed, the drone program is leading to the Talibanization of vast tribal areas and the radicalization of people who could otherwise be America’s allies in the fight against terrorism in Yemen.
The first known drone strike in Yemen to be authorized by Mr. Obama, in late 2009, left 14 women and 21 children dead in the southern town of al-Majala, according to a parliamentary report. Only one of the dozens killed was identified as having strong Qaeda connections.
…………
This is why A.Q.A.P. is much stronger in Yemen today than it was a few years ago. In 2009, A.Q.A.P. had only a few hundred members and controlled no territory; today it has, along with Ansar al-Sharia, at least 1,000 members and controls substantial amounts of territory.
His entreaties will likely fall on deaf ears, because Obama has been thoroughly captured by the high-tech remote violence crowd in the state security security apparatus.
What a Whiny Bitch, Part MMMMMMMDCCXXXIV
John McCain says that the real problem with Barack Obama is that he snubbed him after the election:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this week that President Obama never made a sincere effort to reach out to him after the 2008 election.
McCain was once seen as a potential ally of Obama. But far from becoming a partner — as the left hoped for and the right feared — McCain has turned into one of Obama’s thorniest adversaries.
“Let’s get real here,” McCain told The Hill. “There was never any outreach from President Obama or anyone in his administration to me.”
McCain disputes the notion that he has rejected entreaties to cooperate with the White House because he is bitter from his defeat four years ago.
Of course he does, but he did exactly the same thing when George W. bush kicked his ass in the 2000 Republican primaries.
This is a guy whose parents had to put him in a tub of ice cold water when he was a kid to stop his tantrums.
Juvenile tantrums and petulance are an integral part of who he is.
Well, He Does Look Kind of Dead
Brains … Brains … Brains!!!!!
Florida Governor Rick Scott had to cast a provisional ballot in 2006 because the voter records said that he was dead:
Six years before he made national headlines, Gov. Rick Scott found himself being purged from voter rolls after local election officials thought he was dead.
Collier County election officials on Thursday confirmed that the governor was required to vote with a provisional ballot for the 2006 primary and general election after county officials mistook him for Richard E. Scott, who died in January 2006 and had the exact same birthday — 12/1/1952 — as Florida’s 45th governor.
Election officials said the governor was required to vote provisionally because local election officials had received a Social Security Death Index Death Record showing that Richard E. Scott died on Jan. 27, 2006.
The governor, whose full name is Richard Lynn Scott, recounted his voting difficulties in radio interviews on Thursday as the state tangles with the federal government over just that – how likely is it that elections officials might make a mistake and purge the wrong person from the voter rolls?
I’m not sure I believe him.
It’s very convenient for this story to come out now.
I’m just sayin’.
Jeebus
Some of the provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been leaked, and this is absolutely awful:
- limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
- extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
- establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and
- allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.
Just in case you are wondering, there are proposal to make the agreement more people friendly, and less corporation friendly, but it appears that the Obama administration is opposing this at every level.
Note that this is not atypical of US foreign policy, though it it is in direct contravention of of what he promised during the 2008 campaign.
I guess that Austan Goolsbee was told the truth when he was said to representatives of the Canadian government that Obama’s populist statements regarding free trade agreements were lies.
About F%$#ing Time
The AFL-CIO is going to fight voter suppression laws being enacted by Republicans:
The nation’s largest labor federation plans to mount an aggressive campaign against voter identification laws in a half-dozen battleground states that will be key in the presidential election.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told reporters on Tuesday that the labor federation will have boots on the ground registering and helping voters in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in coordination with the group’s political program.
Labor is pushing back against voter ID laws, which they say suppress voting by minorities, the elderly, the poor and students. Supporters of the measures say showing identification to vote is needed to crack down on fraud and protect the integrity of elections.
They should have started this a year ago.
Consumer Protection Theater
The DoJ is investigating to see if cable companies blocking videos from competitors is illegal anti-competitive behavior.
Of course it is. Their goal is to keep raping their customers:
The Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into whether cable companies are acting improperly to quash nascent competition from online video, according to people familiar with the matter.
Justice Department officials have spoken to several online video providers, including Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, those people said. Investigators have also questioned Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and other cable companies about issues such as setting data caps, limits to the amount of data a subscriber can download each month, these people said.
Representatives of all those companies and the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation.
Cable companies provide both television channels and high-speed Internet access for many consumers in the U.S. With broadband Internet, consumers can watch individual programs or channels through online video services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, bypassing the cable company’s traditional bundles of channels.
Having invested billions of dollars building their networks, some pay-TV companies have shown little inclination to get out of the business of packaging television channels and become mere conduits for other companies’ data. Some major entertainment companies also have an interest in preserving the current model of television viewing because they want cable companies to take bundles of their channels, rather than just cherry-picking the most popular ones.
It’s an election year, and so nothing is going to come of this.
It’s just political posturing from an administration that sees corrupt incumbents as partners in the process.
Edwards Charges Dismissed
I am not surprised.
Not a surprise. The case basically consisted of showing that Edwards was a philandering jerk, and since the US Attorney has already accomplished his goal, which is to get on the ballot for higher office, there is no purpose served in continuing the proceedings.
Dems Hold Giffords’ Old Seat
I’m unsure of the significance, Ron Barber was a former Giffords aide, and he was shot when Giffords was, so there is the whole sympathy issue.
Additionally, his opponent, Jesse Kelly, is a major teabagger, and the movement is clearly not as strong as it was in 2010.
As to my feelings about this, it’s, “Meh.”
Giffords was a Blue Dog in Congress, and Barber seems to be cut from the same mold, waffling on voting for Pelosi in the caucus, and for Obama in the general election
He Would Have Liked to Help, But He Had to Wash His Hair
That’s the reason that Obama gave for doing absolutely nothing with regard with the Scot Walker recall:
President Obama suggested Monday that he was too busy to campaign in Wisconsin ahead of the recall election that targeted Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose victory last week has raised questions about whether there are broader implications for the president in the fall.
In his first public comments about the election, Obama responded to a question about his decision not to appear in the state to support the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by explaining that he has “a lot of responsibilities” as president.
Obama had limited himself to sending a message on his Twitter account expressing support for Barrett on June 4, a day before voters went to the polls.
“I was supportive of Tom and have been supportive of Tom. Obviously, I would have loved to see a different result,” the president said in an interview with WBAY, an ABC TV affiliate in Green Bay, Wis.
Some political analysts concluded that Obama was hesitant to spend time in Wisconsin because he wanted to avoid being tainted by an embarrassing defeat if Barrett lost.
Seriously, does anyone in the Obama administration besides Hillary have any balls at all?
He’ll ask for a recount
The count is now official, and Democrat John Lehman had defeated Van Wanggaard in the race for Wisconsin state senate, flipping the chamber to the Democrats:
Wisconsin Democrats moved a step closer to winning a recall challenge in the state Senate on Tuesday after a vote canvass in Racine County padded their candidate’s lead over state Sen. Van Wanggaard by 55 votes.
If the state elections board certifies the results, Democrats will have salvaged a single win after suffering bruising losses in the other five recall elections last week.
The canvass found that Democrat John Lehman had 36,351 votes, or 50.6 percent, while Wanggaard received 35,517 votes, or 49.4 percent. The margin of victory was 834 votes, surpassing the 779-vote difference that stood before the canvass was conducted.
Lehman’s victory isn’t official until the state Government Accountability Board certifies the results. That’s expected to happen next week.
800 votes might not sound like a not, but it’s more than 1% which means that there is not an automatic recount, but I’m sure that Wanggaard will ask for one.
It’s a long shot, but it also serves to forestall the Dems taking control of the Senate.
Think Norm Coleman/Al Franken writ small.
I’m sure that Wanggaard will be well rewarded for his efforts by the Koch brothers.