Category: Hypocrisy

Roger Ailes as a Bed-Wetting Coward

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The New York Times has a profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes.

I glanced at it, and was not particularly impressed, but Jonathan Chait teases what I think is a nugget of truth about the media mogul:

Second, Ailes comes through in the article as paranoid (quite possibly in the clinical sense) regarding his own personal vulnerability to terrorism:

National security had long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the interview that the 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.

On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air. The answer: 42. “I am one of them,” he said. “I’ve got a bad leg, I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.

“We had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any communications company could be a target.”

His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporate-provided security. He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the blinds drawn.

I appreciate Mr. Chait’s eye for detail, but I disagree with his diagnosis, with the obvious caveat that neither he nor I are mental health professionals.

This is not paranoia. This is hysterical unreasoning terror, and, as strange as it souncs, it actually decreases the level of contempt that I feel for him.

I used to think that Fox News was the We’re all gonna die!!!!!!! network (it’s on one of the screens when I ride the exercise bike) because Ailes was trying to score partisan political points, but I was wrong.

He’s not being a hypocrite, he just is a sniveling coward.

H/t Paul Krugman.

Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson

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Hey, hey, hey…hey, hey, hey

No, really. In this case however, the Mrs. Robinson in question is Iris Robinson, wife of Peter Robinson, the head of the, “conservative Northern Ireland Unionist party.”

She has spent much of her public life campaigning against gays, implying that they will molest children and young adults.

Well, now, this 60 something paragon of morality has been caught having an affair, and, I almost forgot to mention this, she was screwing a 19-year old boy.

Lovely people, wot?

H/t Americablog and The Stranger.

Unsurprising Lesson

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When the modern version conservatives talk about anything, they define reality to fit their preconceived notions, much in the tradition of their Trotskyite progenitors, and you cannot believe a word they say.

Case in point, James Manzi, who, as Paul Krugman notes, talks about the GDP of Europe, and completely fudges the data:

But as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out, Manzi’s definition of Europe included the Soviet bloc (!), so that he was attributing to social democracy an economic decline that was mainly about the collapse of communism. Chait also suggested that Manzi wasn’t comparing the same dates for America and Europe; and most importantly, Chait pointed out that to the extent there has been a growth divergence, it’s almost entirely because America has faster population growth; since 1980, real GDP per capita in Western Europe and the US have grown at almost the same rate.

But I went back to Manzi’s source of data, and it turns out that it’s even worse than that. If you use the broad definition of Europe, which includes the USSR, it did indeed have 40 percent of world output in the early 1970s. But that share has not fallen to 25 percent — it’s still above 30 percent.

The only thing I can think is that Manzi compared Europe including the eastern bloc in 1970 with Europe not including the east today.

It’s probably not a deliberate case of data falsification. Instead, like so many conservatives, Manzi just knew that Europe is an economic disaster, glanced at some numbers, thought he saw his assumptions confirmed, and never checked.

I think that Krugman is being too charitable. Manzi lied, and had to have knowingly lied in order to cook the books this way.

What Dan Said

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Dan Froomkin, that is, about the bogus numbers that the Pentagon keeps feeding the media regarding Guantanamo detainees who have returned to the fight:

Denbeaux calls this week’s outrageous Pentagon assertions the latest example of what he calls “numbers without names and trends without numbers.” He told me he’s outraged it’s been so widely picked up — including by the Times.

“I don’t see what the point is of a public editor criticizing a story for the New York Times if they’re going to republish it a year later,” he told me.

Gullible, amnesiac journalists are a dangerous thing. Is our profession really incapable of learning anything from its mistakes?

Yes, journalists are so tied to their sources that they will repeat the same lie, even if it it’s known to be a lie, over, and over, and over, and over again.

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

More Ass Covering by the Fed

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We are now getting whispers that the Federal Reserve is planning to get tough with the banks:

If the Fed chairman’s speech didn’t worry investors, his timing is interesting. Ben Bernanake now flies to Switzerland for a meeting with the world’s other central bankers.

Saturday’s invitation from the Bank of International Settlements specifically questions whether banks—using cheap money—are returning to the aggressive behavior that prevailed during the pre-crisis period.

What we will see is a lot of fake toughness, because Bernanke is trying to do everything that he can to kill the Fed audit bill.

Icelandic President Vetoes Bailout to British Investors

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Click for full size


The Icelandic people literally came out with torches

After receiving a petition containing signatures from almost ¼ of the registered voters in Iceland, Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson vetoed the bailout bill. It appears that the original version, which would saddle every man, woman, and child in Iceland with a debt of €12,000, about $17,000.

The original bill which passed contained a provision allowing for renegotiation on any unpaid amount after 2024, but the British and Dutch threw a fit over that, so, like the debt slaves that they are on the way to becoming, the government promptly caved, and the Althingi passed a bill without any real prospect of ever getting the bankers’ boots off of their necks.

It has the effect of requiring the bill to be passed by referendum, which is an uphill road, when you consider the fact that 62,000 people out of a population of about 320,000 just signed a petition asking for a veto.

The President notes in his official statement, (PDF) that he believes that it is the right of the people to make such a decision:

It is the cornerstone of the constitutional structure of the Republic of Iceland that the people are the supreme judge of the validity of the law. Under the Constitution, which was passed on the foundation of the Republic in 1944, and which over 90% of the nation approved in a referendum, the power which formerly rested with the Althingi and the King was transferred to the people. It is then the responsibility of the President of the Republic to ensure that the nation can exercise this right.

In the comments of Calculated Risk.s post on the matter, a commenter nailed the absurdity of the deal for the Icelandic people:

They lose their IMF bailout money I think.

Am I right that the proposed IMF bailout is about $6 billion? And the bill from Britain is apparently for 3.4 billion pounds, or about $5.5 billion?

Funny coincidence, that.

Yes, funny that: Because a bunch of people invested in the Internet branches of a local bank, accounts that had were never guaranteed by the Icelandic government, because of the high amount of interest paid, the Icelandic people are supposed to take a loan from the IMF to pay off the people who made risky investments to get high returns.

High returns=high risk. This is not even investing 101, it’s investing, “remedial classes, because you spent high school stoned.”

The investors knew what they were getting into.

Basically, this is the US paying AIG counterparties, but in an amount that comes to ½ of GDP.

Basically, the deal with Iceland was as follows: put your population in debt slavery, and in return, you get, an IMF loan to pay the morons who invested in a dodgy bank.

Then, the IMF will demand that Iceland:

  • Dismantle its social safety net
  • Sell off its fishing rights, which is the major productive industry in Iceland, to foreigners who will rape the fisheries.
  • Fire public employees.
  • Privatize energy, water, and other utilities, so that foreigners can buy it and rape the citizenry.

In return, Iceland’s debt might not get downgraded to junk status.

I’m with Felix Salmon on standing up to bullies:

I’m quite ashamed of the bullying tactics being used here by the UK government. What happened was that an Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, started attracting UK depositors through its Icesave brand. When Landsbanki failed, the UK government bailed out those depositors in full. And now it wants that money back from the Icelandic government, which never guaranteed the Icesave deposits. If you thought the cod wars were bad, this is much worse.

(emphasis mine)

One of the flaws in the current finance system is that requirement that people be made whole when they chase high returns. It creates moral hazard, which leads to more stupidity.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Not Enough Bullets

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AIG general counsel Anastasia Kelly is to receive millions in dollars in severance after her pay was cut by Obama’s “pay Czar”.

I would note that she is the only one of the AIG executives to go through with their threat to leave, which implies that she might have been pushed, and as general counsel, she doubtless played a central role in the creation of these severance deals.

Sorry, but I think that it is time for the DoJ and SEC to see if she was doing something illegal in the way of self dealing.

Considering her background, she was also general counsel at the MCI/Worldcom, perhaps the bar association should investigate her too, since they can take action against incompetent lawyers.

Someone Else Who Tries to F%$# Us Like a Bitch

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I’m not kind of bummed that I riffed on that scene in Pulp Fiction yesterday, because there are so many people who want to f%$# us all like a bitch.

Case in point, Verizon, who is claiming to the FCC that charging exorbitant cancellation fees should be supported because it helps the poor:

Verizon defended its early termination charges for cellphone contracts Friday, telling federal regulators that the high fees help the poor by making it more affordable for them to access the mobile internet.

The Federal Communications Commission asked the nation’s largest wireless carrier earlier this month to explain why it had raised the fees for breaking a mobile phone service contract to $350 for its smartphones. In a response that gave no ground to an increasingly active FCC, Verizon said the fees were a necessary and good way to subsidize expensive smartphones so that users don’t have to pay for the hardware up front, so long as they sign a two-year contract.

That arrangement “enables many more consumers, including those of more limited means, access to a range of exciting, state of the art broadband services and capabilities (.pdf),” Verizon VP Kathleen Grillo wrote. “The company’s pricing structure therefore promotes the national goal of fostering the greater adoption and use of mobile broadband services.”

Verizon raised the fees in November, with a $10 discount for each month of the service contract fulfilled for smartphones. Even so, if a customer cancels on the last day of their 2-year contract, they’d have to pay Verizon $120 for early termination.

It appears that in Verizon’s eyes, we all look like bitches that they really really want to f%$#………Without Lube.

What John Said

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John Aravosis, that is:

President Obama doesn’t seem to lack the will to fight on matters of principle, rather, he seems to lack the will to fight on anything.……

…

…We know that when you fight for something in politics, you can very often win. But if you don’t fight, you’ll never win. We are upset at the President and the Congress because no one fought for the public option, for the President’s own campaign promise. (As David Gregory rightly noted to David Axelrod during the same broadcast.)

(emphasis mine)

We are not angry because he refused to fight for our own values, we are angry because he has refused to fight, period, full stop.

It’s not the morals, or lack thereof. It’s the cowardice.

60……Until Leiberman Knifes Everyone Again……

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We now have reports that Reid and Obama have managed to cajole Senator Ben Nelson into not filibustering the helathcare bill:

Senate Democratic leaders achieved a breakthrough Saturday in the drive for health overhaul legislation, securing the 60 votes needed to ensure passage after a late-night deal on abortion coverage locked in the support of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson.

The bill is at best marginally better than what we have now, it might be a bit worse, since the mandate in a monopoly situation is a disaster, and the abortion language allows states to forbid insurance companies to cover abortions.

Let’s be clear, insurance companies don’t customize their plans unless forced to, and over the next few years, this will have the effect of eliminating abortion from insurance coverage, as NOW notes:

Statement of Terry O’Neill, NOW President

December 19, 2009

The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Manager’s Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a sweeping anti-abortion law for the rest of us. And by the way, it’s the rest of us who voted the current leadership into both houses of Congress.

The National Organization for Women is outraged that Senate leadership would cave in to Sen. Ben Nelson, offering a compromise that amounts to a Stupak-like ban on insurance coverage for abortion care. Right-wing ideologues like Nelson and the Catholic Bishops may not understand this, but abortion is health care. And health care reform is not true reform if it denies women coverage for the full range of reproductive health services.

We call on all senators who consider themselves friends of women’s rights to reject the Manager’s Amendment, and if it remains, to defeat this cruelly over-compromised legislation.

###

I’ll still be calling my Senators, and asking them to vote against the bill and against cloture.

NPR Gets ½ a Clue

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Well, it took them long enough to realize that by lending her to the partisan political operation known as Fox News, she is creating a credibility problem for the network:

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

Liasson refused, because she has a contract, and because, “she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts,” except, of course that the agendas of these programs is set by those, “commentary programs with conservative hosts.”

See my earlier post, with a spot on Jon Stewart critique of Faux News here.

As to Liasson, she’s not quite as hacktacular as Barbara Bradley Hagerdy, who is literally in the pay of right wing Christo Fascists, but to hear the venom drip when she says the world “liberals,” is enough.

Another reason, in addition to their balls to the wall opposition to low power radio, for me not to give to them at pledge time.

The Senate Healthcare Bill Is Worse Than You Thought

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If you follow the news, you are no doubt aware that the Senate proposed a medicare buy-in for people between 55 and 65 as an alternative to the public option.

As I noted at the time, it was very restrictive, the people had to be without insurance already, and they had to be near poverty.

Well, it just gets worse: It turns out that this is not an buy-in to actual medicare, because the program, which could likely cover fewer than 1½ million nation wide, would not be able to use the rates that Medicare has negotiated, instead, it would have to negotiate it on their own, and with those numbers, they won’t get anything close to the cost savings that Medicare has generated.

So the fob the program off on the poor, meaning that it will suck, and the strip it of the 40+ years of cost containment, and they call it “Medicare”.

Harry Reid, tell Senators Baucus, Lieberman, and Lincoln to go Cheney themselves, and pass it with the budget.

The Kaplan Test Prep Company,* Yet Again

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So, the Washington Post put Sarah Palin on their their OP/ED pages yesterday, for what seems like the gazillionth time, but is most likely 2nd or 3rd time, and once again they show why all editorial pages, most particularly that of the Washington Post, really need to fact check their OP/Ed Pages. (No link, they don’t deserve it)

Of course, if they started fact checking OP/EDs, then Krauthammer and George Will would have nothing left after the editors got through with them.

Tim Lambert notes that the article is full of lies which can be verified via 10 minutes on “The Google”, while Media Matters goes a bit further in their research and notes that the lies are contradicted in articles published by……… wait for it ……… the Washington Post.

In fact, the links in Palins article actually contradict what she is writing.

While I like Matthew Yglesias’s snark that the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, Fred Hiatt, “wants the Washington Post to go out of business, I think that Atrios has what is the final word on this:

I can never quite get a handle on just what the Washington Post people – its publishers, Fred Hiatt, etc… – think that it’s for? Is it about providing a product people want to buy/advertisers want to advertise in? It is about informing readers, giving them factual information and analysis they want? Are these missions in conflict or do they coincide?

And why does it take bloggers to point out how absurd they are? Where are all the journalists who spend their days bitching about bloggers? Don’t they care that the product they’re defending is basically sh@#?”

(@# mine)

I would be remiss in not pointing the reader to Marc Ambinder’s point by point takedown.

*The Washington Post owns, and generates the vast bulk of its revenue, by owning and operating Kaplan, Inc., a company best known for selling courses to help teenagers game the standardized test process.

Republican Family Values

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Former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton*, a Republican who fought to keep a law criminalizing gay sex in that state, has been charged with felony assault for beating and choking his girlfriend during a sexual encounter.

His defense, it appears is that, “she did not use the agreed on ‘safe word’ to end the activities”, but she is accusing him of having drugged her.

You can find excerpts of the police report here.

*Sounds like a pr0n star name.

Why is He Acting Like Bush?

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So the Grauniad* is covering Obama’s picking up his Nobel Peace Prize, and their title says it all, Nobel peace prize: Norwegians incensed over Barack Obama’s snubs:

Barack Obama’s trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s be clear: He’s president of the United States of the America, and he’s a busy guy, so some of the stuff should fall by the wayside, but ditching a lunch with the King of Norway?

I’m not sure what’s behind this, but it seems to be nothing more than an outbreak or gratuitousl rudeness because they can.

Sounds like Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, and how they treated “old Europe”.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

I Am Glad that I Pulled My Email(s) from the OFA Mailing List

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Because I don’t get the sort of blatantly dishonest fundraising pitches that Kos gets:

We will not back down

From: President Barack Obama to Markos

Markos —

As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.

So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.

But do not doubt — the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you to fight alongside me.

We must continue to build out our campaign — to spread the facts on the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep this 50-state movement for reform going strong.

Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today:

http://my.democrats.org/…

Let’s win this together,

President Barack Obama

I agree with Markos Moulitsas:

This is so freakin‘ obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a “reform” package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of sh$% to raise money?

($% mine)

I can think of no better way to demoralize the base than for Obama and His Stupid Minions™ to keep acting this way.

It’s enough to make me wonder if he is a Manchurian candidate, only it’s not bin Laden who’s backing him, it’s Dick Cheney….

And then the drugs kick in, and I feel much better…

Its a Death Trap, It’s a Suicide Rap*

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Ah, yes, the “centrists” in the Senate. They are what Obi Wan Kenobi was speaking of when he said, “Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”‡

Their latest “gift” to the rest of us? They are proposing a commission in order to create a back door way to defund Social Security and Medicare.

In this case, it’s Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, (DINO-ND) along with Senatior Judd Gregg (R-NH):

The commission’s main goal would be to figure out what the country needs to do to get its budget back on a more balanced track.

Specifically, the commission would suggest ways to curb spending growth — especially in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and to boost tax revenue.

There is a simple solution: You just raise the maximum income taken for social security, and let it cover everything that is remuneration, and it’s solvent forever.

In fact, it’s solvent enough that it can fix the medicare funding issue too.

Of note is how this committee is structured, with 18 members, 8 of each party appointed by Congress, and 2 appointed by the White House, and that it would require that at least 14 of the 18 members approve any report, which would be submitted to Congress for an up or down vote.

So, for any tax increase, you would need at least ½ of the Republicans to approve, and you won’t get one.

It’s a Trojan horse, and should be left outside the gates.

It fills the gap, and then some, while

*Apologies to the Boss. It’s a line from Born to Run†
†That’s Bruce Springsteen to those of you who are musically illiterate.
‡Star Wars, you remember that? It was a minor film released in 1977 by the director of THX-1138.

What a Whiny Bitch

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So it appears that Barack “Panders to Wingnuts” Obama, took it upon himself to call call Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers to ask him to stop “demeaning” him publicly disagreeing with him on issues like healthcare and Afghanistan:

President Barack Obama recently called Rep. John Conyers Jr. to express his frustrations with the Judiciary Committee chairman’s criticism.

In an interview with The Hill, Conyers said his opinions of Obama’s policies on healthcare reform and the war in Afghanistan have not sat well with the president.

According to the lawmaker, the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to find out why Conyers was “demeaning” him.

Obama’s decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left. Conyers’s critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor.

Conyers, the second-longest-serving member of the House, said, “[Obama] called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’”

Note that Conyers was the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse Obama, and spent much of 2007 and 2008 campaigning for him, but he is now saying things like, “Calling in generals and admirals to discuss troop strength is like me taking my youngest to McDonald’s to ask if he likes french fries,” which is pretty funny, when you think of it.