Category: Evil

Just When You Thought that Obama Could Not Get Any Worse………

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He is proposing to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority to Wall Street for some magic beans:

The headline issue, cutting Social Security benefits by changing the measurement of inflation (the “chained CPI”), is something that writers on Naked Capitalism have been predicting for a long time. What has come as a shocking (but not surprising) twist is a bombshell buried in Obama’s budget: the proposed privatization of the Tennessee Valley Association. At this point I think it’s important to quote a part of this section of the budget at length:

TVA is a self-financing Government corporation, funding operations through electricity sales and bond financing. In order to meet its future capacity needs, fulfill its environmental responsibilities, and modernize its aging generation system, TVA’s current capital investment plan includes more than $25 billion of expenditures over the next 10 years. However, TVA’s anticipated capital needs are likely to quickly exceed the agency’s $30 billion statutory cap on indebtedness. Reducing or eliminating the Federal Government’s role in programs such as TVA, which have achieved their original objectives and no longer require Federal participation, can help put the Nation on a sustainable fiscal path. Given TVA’s debt constraints and the impact to the Federal deficit of its increasing capital expenditures, the Administration intends to undertake a strategic review of options for addressing TVA’s financial situation, including the possible divestiture of TVA, in part or as a whole.

Notice how nonsensical the justification for the “divestiture of TVA” is. The authors clearly acknowledge that the Tennessee Valley Authority is a “self-financing Government corporation”. The TVA issues its own debt and also has income from electricity sales. Yet because its capital expenditures are counted as part of the federal deficit for accounting purposes, privatizing the TVA supposedly counts as a “spending cut”. This is the willful blindness of orthodox thought taken to extreme levels. Privatizing the TVA doesn’t shrink the amount of debt in the economy one cent; all it does is bring that debt onto private balance sheets. In fact, private investors will buy the Authority on mainly on credit, increasing the amount of private debt.

Note also whoever buys this will pay far less than market value, because that is how this sh%$ works, and since they get it on the cheap, their goal will be to suck the marrow out of it, and to raise rates on the people it serves as fast as it possibly can.

That’s more than 9 million people he wants to f%$# like a drunk sorority girl.

Thatcher was too smart to privatize Britrail, but John Major was not, and the result was crappy service and fatal accidents.

It is so bad that even the Tories have disavowed selling off rail.

You will see the same from privatizing the TVA.

So, he’s going after two of the remaining jewels in the crown of the New Deal, the TVA, and Social Security.

He’s doing it because he wants to, because, except for the appeals to racial bigotry and abortion criminalization, he’s well to the right of Ronald Reagan, and he hates the liberal wing of the Democrat Party in general, and the New Deal in particular.

I’m beginning to think that I should add the tag “Manchurian Democrat” to posts like this.

If You Claim the Right to Kill Anyone You Want, You Will Kill Anyone You Want

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It turns out that Obama’s claims that drone strikes are exclusively made against senior terrorist figures are a lie:

Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.

The administration has said that strikes by the CIA’s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against “specific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting “imminent” violent attacks on Americans.

“It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,” President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. “It has to be a situation in which we can’t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.”

Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn’t adhere to those standards.

The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn’t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn’t exist at the time of 9/11; and of unidentified individuals described as “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”

In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.

Micah Zenko, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank, who closely follows the target killing program, said McClatchy’s findings indicate that the administration is “misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.”

Gee, you think that they are lying to us?

Hoocoodanode?

You remember what they say about absolute power.

Jeebus

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The Obama administration has revealed what policies it wants changed under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.

What do the Obama administration oppose?

They oppose things like:

  • Requiring that meat packing plants have separate spaces for halal and non halal slaughter.
  • Restrictions on pork and alcohol importation for religious reasons.
  • Better capital requirements for banks.
  • High taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to discourage their use.
  • Personal data privacy protections.
  • Regulatory actions to control pharmaceutical costs.
  • Objecting to a fee (all of $21) to file a copyright complaint.
  • Public ownership of energy resources.
  • Patent policies which prohibit evergreening (renewing patents ad infinitum).
  • Comprehensive food labels.
  • Buy local military procurement. (which the US has)
  • A publicly owned post office.
  • Requiring that cheese be made from milk.

Seriously, this is a neoliberal (free market mousketeer) wet dream.

Yes, Republicans are Classy People

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In a meeting with between Mitch McConnell and campaign aides, they talked about using her religion, and her depression in 6th grade against her in the campaign:

On February 2, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, opened up his 2014 reelection campaign headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and in front of several dozen supporters vowed to “point out” the weaknesses of any opponent fielded by the Democrats. “They want to fight? We’re ready,” he declared. McConnell was serious: Later that day, he was huddling with aides in a private meeting to discuss how to attack his possible Democratic foes, including actor/activist Ashley Judd, who was then contemplating challenging the minority leader. During this strategy session—a recording of which was obtained by Mother Jones—McConnell and his aides considered assaulting Judd for her past struggles with depression and for her religious views.

Read the whole thing, and you will find a fairly repugnant bit of immature locker room talk that sounds like your worst stereotypes of drunk College Republicans.

It gets even better, because McConnell called in the FBI, and accused people of bugging his office, though he has walked it back a bit.

Originally, he accused ProgressKY, and now it’s the nebulous “political left” that he is accusing of wiretapping him.

In any case, calling in the FBI has turned this from being a minor embarrassment into a case of his being a whiny bitch.  Heh.

Here’s a hint mother f%$#er, there is something called a cell phone, and many of them can make audio and video recordings.

Just ask Mitt Rmoney about the 47% video.

Here is hoping that whoever runs against you kicks your butt.

Margaret Thatcher, Dead at 87

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She was 87.

There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but Margaret Thatcher was a public figure, and her supporters are using this as an opportunity to shape her legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for her funeral or wake.

In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about her:
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That is all.

Horny Man Says That He Won’t Cum In Your Mouth

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My bad, it’s actually a German banker saying that Euro Zone deposits are safe:

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said savings accounts in the euro zone are safe, adding that Cyprus is a “special case” and not a template for future rescues.

 In an interview with Bild newspaper published on Saturday, Schaeuble distanced himself from comments on Monday by Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who said the rescue programme agreed for Cyprus – the first to impose a levy on bank deposits – would serve as a model for future crises.

 “Cyprus is and will remain a special one-off case,” Schaeuble said.

 “The savings accounts in Europe are safe.”

If you believe a German Finance minister right now, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell you.

Just a “special case.”  Yeah…Sure.

Henry Ford Knew This 99 Years Ago

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When he doubled the pay of his workers to reduce turnover and increase productivity.

It turns out that Wal-Mart has not realized how this works, and as a result, it is losing customers who are facing empty shelves:

Margaret Hancock has long considered the local Wal-Mart Stores Inc. superstore her one- stop shopping destination. No longer.

 During recent visits, the retired accountant from Newark, Delaware, says she failed to find more than a dozen basic items, including certain types of face cream, cold medicine, bandages, mouthwash, hangers, lamps and fabrics.

 The cosmetics section “looked like someone raided it,” said Hancock, 63.

 Wal-Mart’s loss was a gain for Kohl’s Corp., Safeway Inc., Target Corp., and Walgreen Co. — the chains Hancock hit for the items she couldn’t find at Wal-Mart.

 “If it’s not on the shelf, I can’t buy it,” she said. “You hate to see a company self-destruct, but there are other places to go.”

 It’s not as though the merchandise isn’t there. It’s piling up in aisles and in the back of stores because Wal-Mart doesn’t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, according to interviews with store workers. In the past five years, the world’s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, a 13 percent increase, according to filings and the company’s website. In the same period, its total U.S. workforce, which includes Sam’s Club employees, dropped by about 20,000, or 1.4 percent. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million U.S. workers.

 Disorganized Stores

 A thinly spread workforce has other consequences: Longer check-out lines, less help with electronics and jewelry and more disorganized stores, according to Hancock, other shoppers and store workers. Last month, Wal-Mart placed last among department and discount stores in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the sixth year in a row the company had either tied or taken the last spot. The dwindling level of customer service comes as Wal- Mart has touted its in-store experience to lure shoppers and counter rival Amazon.com Inc.

Yes, they want to tout their in-store experience.

As a part of that experience, they want their customers to deliver their packages for them for free:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc.

Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world’s largest retailer squarely in middle of a new phenomenon sometimes known as “crowd-sourcing,” or the “sharing economy.”

A plethora of start-ups now help people make money by renting out a spare room, a car, or even a cocktail dress, and Wal-Mart would in effect be inviting people to rent out space in their vehicle and their willingness to deliver packages to others.

Such an effort would, however, face numerous legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles, and Wal-Mart executives said it was at an early planning stage.

Wal-Mart is making a big push to ship online orders directly from stores, hoping to cut transportation costs and gain an edge over Amazon and other online retailers, which have no physical store locations. Wal-Mart does this at 25 stores currently, but plans to double that to 50 this year and could expand the program to hundreds of stores in the future.

Wal-Mart currently uses carriers like FedEx Corp for delivery from stores – or, in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five metro areas, its own delivery trucks.

“I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced,” Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

This is brilliant.

Let’s see, we have:

  • Honest, I left the big screen TV at their front door?
  • When I was driving to deliver the box, I was rear-ended, and now I have whiplash.
  • The package was fine when it left the store, the damage isn’t our problem.

And that is what I came up in about 3 minutes.

Why is this group of fools the largest corporation in the world?

It Works, and It Saves the Taxpayer Money, So Let’s Make it Illegal

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I am referring to the state-owned bank of North Dakota, which will be made illegal by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP):

Clearly, from Wall Street’s perspective, the North Dakota bank must go, and all other state efforts to replicate it must be thwarted. Wall Street’s stealth weapon may be lodged within the latest corporate trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which currently is being negotiated in secret. We already know that Wall Street is seeking to remove all tariff restrictions that prevent the U.S. financial services industry from doing business in countries like Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The biggest banks also want the treaty to eliminate “non-tariff” barriers including regulations that create “unfair” competition with state-owned financial enterprises.

 Depending on the final language, it is possible that the activities of the Bank of North Dakota could be ruled illegal because “foreign bankers could claim the BND stops them from lending to commercial banks throughout the state,” according to an analysis by Sam Knight in Truthout. How perfect for Wall Street: a foreign bank can be used as a shill to knock out the BND.

The nickel tour on BND is that it is a state-owned wholesale bank (it only makes loans to other banks), and the state keeps its money in an account there.

It generates significant savings, and significant savings for the taxpayer, and its senior executives are paid less than the President of the United States.  (The most highly paid executive is paid about ½ that of POTUS.)

Also, the bank provides a financing alternative to bond sales managed by Wall Street firms.

Considering the Obama administrations neoliberal philosophies, along with its predilections toward direct and indirect government subsidies for the TBTF banks, I’m inclined to believe it.  Particularly since that is what the Obama Administration’s point person is explicitly saying the trade agreement:

Publicly owned enterprises, for example, are being targeted by negotiators. One such entity in the United States that has been the subject of considerable interest in recent years is the Bank of North Dakota (BND) – the only fully publicly owned financial institution in the country. The BND, which is only allowed to lend wholesale, was a stabilizing force that helped keep the already energy-rich state insulated from the shock of the financial crisis (Alaska, for example, didn’t fare as well). It has also brought a small fortune to the state’s treasury – $340 million in net tax gain between 1997 and 2009. Legislators in at least 13 different states have proposed studying or emulating the North Dakota model – state-owned development of central-bank style institutions guaranteed by tax revenue. But if the TPP is passed, that option might not be available. [Chief TPP Negotiator for the Office of the US Trade Representative Barbara] Weisel said that State Owned Enterprises (SOE) are routinely “competing directly with private enterprises, and often in a way that is considered unfair.”

 “Some of the advantages that can be conferred on State Owned Enterprises are things like preferential financing,” Weisel said. “Those are things that wouldn’t be provided to private companies – preferential provision of goods and services provided by a government.”

 She said that “State Owned Enterprises – which in some cases can comprise a significant percentage of an economy – can be used to undermine what we’re otherwise trying to gain from this free trade agreement.”

What they are “trying to gain” with this agreement is to replace democracy with unregulated markets (aka looting).

Call your Congresscritter and tell him that you are absolutely opposed to the TPP.

A Solution to Our Energy Needs Forever

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Just attach generators to the Obama administration’s revolving door. Problem solved:

Coming off a grueling four-year stint at the Justice Department, Lanny A. Breuer is poised to make a soft landing in the private sector.

Covington & Burling, a prominent law firm, plans to announce on Thursday that Mr. Breuer will be its vice chairman. The firm created the role especially for Mr. Breuer, a Washington insider who most recently led the Justice Department’s investigation into the financial crisis.

For Mr. Breuer, who will now shift to defending large corporations, Covington is familiar turf. He previously spent nearly two decades there.

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“We’re proud to welcome him home,” said Timothy C. Hester, Covington’s chairman.

FWIW, I think that “welcome” is spelled “Ka-Ching.”

He did his job, and now Mr. Breuer is going to be paid for, “not bringing cases against the banks and executives at the center of the crisis.”

Torture, and Get a Promotion

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This is what “Looking forward, not backward,” as Obama says, is such a bad idea.

It means that deeply evil people are given the more power over the rest of us:

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page article on the impending promotion of an official involved in running the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) torture program to head the CIA clandestine service. According to WaPo, the officer

helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

WaPo reports that newly-confirmed CIA director John Brennan (who was also involved in the CIA’s torture program and has since moved on to writing an assassination-without-due-process “playbook”) has tapped three former senior officials to oversee the appointment of the former chief of staff to brazen torture apologist Jose Rodriguez to head the CIA’s clandestine service. The group consists of John McLaughlin (CIA deputy director during the CIA’s torture heyday), Stephen Kappes (another rendition, torture, and interrogation (RDI) supervisor – read about his covering up a prisoner’s death here) and Mary Margaret Graham (whose problematic professional history you can read about in Steve Coll’s recent New Yorker piece on CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou). Does anyone not see the problem with RDI daddy Brennan assigning RDI supervisors to promote the RDI queenpin?

BTW, she is hip deep on the coverup of torture:

When the head of the Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, was promoted to head of the clandestine service in 2004, he took the female officer along as his chief of staff. According to former officials, the two repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied.

In 2005, instructions to get rid of the recordings went out anyway. Former officials said the order carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.

Not only should this woman not be promoted, this woman should never hold a security clearance ever again.

Yes, Virginia, the Trans Pacific Partnership Sucks Wet Farts from Dead Pigeons

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It is a wet dream of Wall Street and IP holders.

The post is too long to summarize, but the Angry Bear goes through and summarizes the low points.

These are things like investors can sue in an extranational and secret courts for losses from:

  • Strikes.
  • Public protest.

The latter is the most serious.  If your protest can result in a multibillion dollar judgement against your county or state,  they will shut you down, constitution or no.

Tell your Congresscritter to vote no.

That Sound You Hear is Millions of Eurozoners Moving Their Money to Swiss Bank Accounts

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Well, we have already seen how the economic crisis is treated around the world.

The tax payers take it on the chin, and the bond holders, who under laws have no claim to payment from bankrupt banks, get all (or nearly all of) their money.

Well, the EU powers that be have taken it a step further, by stealing money from the account holders to pay the bond holders:

European finance ministers have agreed an £8.7bn bailout for Cyprus which includes all Cypriot bank customers handing over up to 10% of their savings.

 Cyprus becomes the fifth country after Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to turn to the eurozone for financial help amid the region’s debt crisis, but also faces a possible run on its banks as depositors try to avoid losing up to 10% of their savings.

 The savers, half of whom are thought to be Russian, will raise almost €6bn. It is the first time a bailout has included such a measure.

 “I wish I was not the minister to do this,” the Cypriot finance minister, Michael Sarris, said after 10 hours of late-night talks in which eurozone finance ministers agreed the package. “Much more money could have been lost in a bankruptcy of the banking system or indeed of the country.”

 Without a rescue, Cyprus would default and threaten to unravel investor confidence in the eurozone, a renewed confidence fostered by the European Central Bank’s promise last year to do whatever it takes to support the euro.

They do not understand what this means.

Something north of 50% of the deposits in Cypriot banks will be gone in the next few months, going to banks in Germany, Switzerland, or into mattresses.

This comment is delusional:

Such levies break the taboo of hitting bank depositors with losses, but [ Dutch finance minister Jeroen] Dijsselbloem said it would not have otherwise been possible to salvage its financial sector, which is around eight times the size of the economy.

They have just destroyed the financial sector in Cyprus, and perhaps through much of the Euro Zone.

Since the 1930s, in the developed world, at least, deposit insurance that makes the the depositors, at least the smaller ones, whole has been the core of our banking system.

This will likely precipitate a return to the days before the FDIC and its brethren around the world, when people stored kept their wealth in safes, or in commodities like gold, and the (temporarily)better off of members of the EU have just made it insane for anyone to ever put more than a few days walking around money in the banks of any Euro Zone nation. (Except perhaps for Germany and the Netherlands, for now.)

H/t Atrios.

OK, Google is Going Full Evil

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The Inevitable Downfall Video (NSFW)

Google is killing its Google Reader RSS Reader:

Google Reader, one of the world’s most popular RSS readers, is shutting down on July 1, 2013, Google announced Wednesday.

 The search giant is pulling the plug on the 7-year old project citing “declining usage.” Google says it is shuttering Reader and deprecating or shutting down a number of other services as part of the company’s “spring cleaning” initiative — one that seeks to help the company focus on the features that need the most use.

Seeing as how this app has been pretty much on autopilot for a while, it’s not like it was sucking up much in the way of resources.

My guess is that Google™ saw it as an alternative to Google+™, they dumped some sharing features from the program a year ago, and this was a large part of the reason to axe the program.

They are terrified of Facebook, and so they push G+.

As an aside, one of the problems with Google+™ is that G+ still sucks.

For example, there is still no way to feed your blog RSS to G+, which you can do in Facebook, Twitter, and even lowly MySpace.  (If someone knows a work around, tell me)

And to go further down the “We Love Evil” path, Google has now banned ad blocking software from its Android Market, the Play Store:

Google has removed all ad blocking apps from Google Play, its online store for Android applications, on the basis that they interfere with other services. Searches for “adblock” and related terms on Wednesday evening no longer returned any references to ad blocking software.

Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus, condemned the decision, calling it a threat to consumer choice. “By unilaterally removing these apps, Google is stepping all over the checks and balances that make the Internet democratic,” he said in a statement, suggesting that Google’s actions threaten Internet freedom in the same way that SOPA and PIPA did.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In its letter to Adblock Plus, Google said the software violates Section 4.4 of the company’s Developer Distribution Agreement.

Section 4.4 states, “You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Market, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator.”

Evil. It’s what’s dinner.

On a related note, my guess is that Feedburner will be done away with in the near to medium term, so if you have an email subscription, you would need to change.

I’m looking at alternatives.

Pernicious Contemptible Ratf%$#s

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Republican Senators, who just included the NRA’s wet dreams in the continuing resolution to keep the government running:

With gun safety measures headed to the Senate floor, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees have quietly made permanent four formerly temporary gun-rights provisions largely favored by Republicans. Those provisions are part of a spending bill that would keep the government running through Sept. 30.

The provisions, which have been renewed separately at various points, would prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories to ensure that they have not lost guns or had them stolen, and would retain a broad definition of “antique” guns that can be imported into the United States outside of normal regulations.

Another amendment would prevent the A.T.F. from refusing to renew a dealer’s license for lack of business; many licensed dealers who are not actively engaged in selling firearms can now obtain a license to sell guns and often fly under the radar of the agency and other law enforcement officials, which gun control advocates argue leads to a freer flow of illegal guns.

A final measure would require the bureau to attach a disclaimer to data about guns to indicate that it “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crimes.”

Officials from the A.T.F. have long complained that quirky laws passed by Congress hamstring their ability to curb gun crimes. For example, under federal laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions, making it hard to track illegal guns.

Many of the provisions have been regularly added to appropriations bills since 2004. But Senate Democrats on the committee — pushed by Republicans and some Democrats who have made gun rights a signature issue — reluctantly agreed to make them permanent to stave off what they saw as an even more far-reaching House version of the bill.

The House offering contained a new rider that would prevent the A.T.F. from requiring gun dealers on the Southwest border to notify the agency when selling two or more long guns — semiautomatic rifles, higher than .22 caliber with detachable magazines — to the same buyer within five days. These firearms are the preferred weapons of Mexican drug cartels, Senate aides said.

The NRA is a toxic institution. It poisons our society.

We need to make it as toxic in politics as it is in society.

So Not Surprised

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Joe Lieberman has taken a job with the Koch suckers at the American Enterprise Institute.

Digby nails the analysis:

This is a common project of the Right these days. They know that no one likes their ideas. Scarred by the experience in Iraq, few want to do it again in Iran. Few want to eliminate Social Security, give tax breaks to rich, loosen gun laws, or do any of the other things on the Right’s agenda.

So one of the Right’s strategies is to go trolling for morally deficient, easily corrupted neoliberal “Democrats” to assist their efforts at creating a “bipartisan consensus” to override popular will and common sense in the service of the conservative agenda.

I don’t know how much he’s being paid for this, but my guess is that it will be a lot more than he made as a Senator, because that’s how back loaded bribery works.

No promises, but if you toe the line, you know that you get a payoff when you retire.

This Must Be the Stupidest Thing Ever Written

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There are any things that can be said about the death of Hugo Chavez, but this takes the cake:

Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.

To be fair, AP business reporter Pamela Sampson may not be a complete moron, she might simply be a sociopath ……… or it could be both.

You choose.

H/t Atrios.

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The Obama administration is now claiming the right to assassinate citizens on US soil:

Yes, the president does have the authority to use military force against American citizens on US soil—but only in “an extraordinary circumstance,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.

 “The US Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening,” Paul said Tuesday. “It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

 Last month, Paul threatened to filibuster the nomination of John Brennan, Obama’s pick to head the CIA, “until he answers the question of whether or not the president can kill American citizens through the drone strike program on US soil.” Tuesday, Brennan told Paul that “the agency I have been nominated to lead does not conduct lethal operations inside the United States—nor does it have any authority to do so.” Brennan said that the Justice Department would answer Paul’s question about whether Americans could be targeted for lethal strikes on US soil.

Worst ……… Constitutional ……… law ……… professor ……… ever.

You really should be horrified by this.

I am.