Category: Politics

Making the Teabaggers Look Good

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It turns out that there is a group of people who are less well suited to running government than the Teabaggers, it is the current government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Case in point, some of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s aides have been charged with sorcery:

Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.

This is a level of political dysfunction that just boggles my mind, particularly in the 21st century.

This is why the Neocons are wrong about us taking down Iran.  The only thing that preserve this clown show is an external military threat.

More of This

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In California, Republicans are refusing to even allow tax increases to be voted on, so Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg are suggesting that cuts be targeted in Republican districts:

With no agreement in sight on how to close the state’s remaining $15.4 billion deficit, some Democrats are discussing targeting GOP districts with steeper cuts if legislative Republicans will not vote for a solution that includes taxes.

“You don’t want to pay for government, well then, you get less of it,” Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters Wednesday.

If other options fail, the Sacramento Democrat said he is willing to consider a targeted cuts approach like one laid out by Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who has suggested that an all-cuts state budget should focus on the districts of lawmakers who oppose putting $11 billion in tax extensions before voters.

“When it comes to kids or the vulnerable, I wouldn’t want to make distinctions between who lives in a Democratic district and who lives in a Republican district, but when it comes to sort of basic services, convenience services that affect adults … I have an open mind,” he told reporters after speaking at a Sacramento Press Club luncheon.

What he is referring to here as “convenience services” is (I hope) things like DMV offices, vehicle inspection stations, agricultural extension offices, etc.

Good for him.

One of the reasons that there are so many no taxes ever lunatics out there is because they manage to structure taxation, and benefits, such that other people pay for their services, and this needs to stop.

It Looks Like 6 of 8 ‘Phant Senators Are Up for Recall in Wisconsin

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When one considers that there have been just 4 recall elections in Wisconsin history, this is pretty impressive, there are additionally 3 recall elections against Democratic state senators, but, as anyone who follows Maddow knows, the effort was significantly less grass roots and honest.  (Signatures for shots of booze)

Additionally, there was a special election in a solidly Republican district for the State Assembly, and it flipped to the Democrats for the first time in a rather long time.

The Dems have to win 3 seats to flip the Senate, which is a non-trivial task, but I think that the voters of Wisconsin are feeling a sh%$load of buyers remorse right now.

They Had an Election in the Great White North

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And it was a doozy:

The Conservatives now have an outright majority in Parliament, posting a 24 seat gain to end up with 167 seats, which was not a big surprise, but the rest of the results were a shocker.

The left leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) picked up 66 seats, and now has 102, making it the official opposition for the first time ……… ever, while the Liberals, who have run Canada for most of the past 100 years, lost 43 seats, dropping to 34, and their party leader, the contemptible Iraq war cheerleader Michael Ignatieff, lost his seat.

Even more surprising is that the secessionist Bloc Québécois also lost 43 seats, dropping to just 4 seat, which means that they lost official party status,and their party leader lost his reelection bid too.

Hopefully, this means that the BQ will have to take their time away from genteel ethnic cleansing* to rebuild their party.

Both Lib Leader Michael Ignatieff and BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe resigned their party positions as well.

The Tories did not get anywhere near a majority of the vote, they got less than 40%, but they got them in the right places, and with the NDP surging, largely because the Liberals had been folding like a bunch of broccoli ever since Ignatieff took control, and people choose something, particularly a something which gave them their world class healthcare system, over nothing, they went to the NDP.

The downside is that Conservative leader Stephen Harper, after 2 terms running a minority government, probably feels entitled to do what he really wants, which is tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts in social services, and more prisons and fighter jets.

I fully expect a stealth assault on socialized medicine.

On the bright side (if you are an optimist):

  • The BQ and their nativist bigoted platform were beaten down.
  • The Libs deserved to go down, and the only thing keeping them afloat over the past few years was “the conservatives are scary,” don’t split the vote, but now the NDP can make this argument.
  • Harper is a real honest to God Neocon, and the only thing that has made him look moderate is the fact that he has had minority governments, so hopefully, when the mask is removed, Canadians will recoil from him, and make Mulroney’s drubbing look like a walk in the park.
  • Perhaps the Liberals will learn that folding like overcooked cabbage because an insane right winger said bad things about them.
  • Perhaps the Liberals will learn that appointing an Iraq War supporting moron (Michael Ignatieff) is stupid.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.
  • Michael Ignatieff is done.

Then again, I am a bit of an optimist.

*It’s why the largest Jewish community in Canada is now in Toronto.

If Your Allies are People Who Are Bigots

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And  you engage in neocolonialism masquerading as protecting dark people, in this case, the citizens of Libya, your allies will not support you, because bigots are stupid, so unless you say, “We are bombing Libya to give their oil to our energy conglomerates,” explicitly, they will not support you.

Case in point, Silvio Berlusconi and his racist buddies in the Northern League:

Italy’s belated decision to join the military campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has brought fresh political woes for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with opposition to the bombing threatening to sink his fragile coalition.

Senior figures in the Northern League want an end to Italian air strikes only a week after they began following a personal plea by US President Barack Obama to Mr Berlusconi. Parliament will vote on the Northern League motion to this effect later today.

The xenophobic coalition partner says the bombing will provoke a wave of illegal immigration from Libya to Italy’s southern coast, and is demanding Mr Berlusconi set a date to end the raids. Umberto Bossi, the pugnacious Northern League leader, had threatened to bring down the government if parliament was not allowed to vote on the issue. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, another Northern League figure, predicted the government would fall if the bombing was not stopped.

Considering his road to power, I find that is one of the most schadenfreude rich stories I’ve heard in a while.

The phrase, “Hoist with his own petard,” comes to mind.

You Know That if There is News, Republicans Will Lie About It

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They are now claiming that torture got us Osama bin Laden, but it’s a lie.

The sources in Gitmo gave information after 2006, but they were all tortured before 2005, meaning that the information was obtained through more ethical methods:

From these dates we can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

With al-Libi, the connection between whatever torture he experienced and this intelligence is less clear (since he was first detained in 2005), but even with al-Libi, it appears clear he either never revealed the courier’s real name or only did so after he had been in custody for a year, and almost certainly until after he arrived in Gitmo.

Update: Putting the AP’s reporting here together with the DAB, it seems like al-Libi did give up the name, perhaps earlier than reported. But still not waterboarding.

Expect more lies from Republicans on this, because this is what they do.

Obama Releases “Long Form” Birth Certificate

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I guess this will make the birthers shut up………Not!!!

My thoughts on this are perhaps best expressed by Cthulhu*:

He f%$#ing caved to the GOP thugs, AGAIN. His BC is sufficient for him to get a license, a passport, and for every god-damned govt function we can think of.

I wanted to see Obama do the same as inn the movie “The American President“, where he calls the phonies out, and declares he is the president, and he’s off to take care of business, f%$# you microbrained idiots.

Of course, that was just a movie, reality is a lot more depressing.

*No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
†OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans‡ would seem to mitigate against this.
‡Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.

Who Lent Harry Reid a Pair of Testicles?

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Because he has just announced that he will be forcing a vote on the Senate floor on the Paul Ryan budget, which dismantles Medicare:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it’s definite: He will scheduled a vote on House Republicans’ fiscal 2012 budget plan, which passed the House on a party-line vote earlier this month and includes the proposal to make Medicare a voucher-style health-care program for seniors.

The move could create an awkward situation for some Senate Republicans, who would anger conservative constituents by voting no, but could alienate independents by voting yes. Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist Republican from Maine, said last week she’ll oppose the budget.

Senate Republicans “seem to be in love with the [Rep. Paul] Ryan budget, they’re going to get an opportunity to vote on the Ryan budget,” Mr. Reid said. Asked if he thought the Senate would defeat the House GOP budgetary plan, Mr. Reid said “I hope so.”

An “awkward situation”, yes, I guess it is.

BTW, the Senate rules does not allow a filibuster of the budget.

Because Running the Government By, and For, the Banksters is Depressing

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It’s why Americans are more pessimistic about the economy and their future than they have been in years:

Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.


Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.


Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.


The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.

The Republicans must be high fiving each other in private about this, a bad economy presages a Republican takeover of the Senate, and possibly the White House.

Truth be told, when the good least bad guys Washington, DC think that everything is fine because banksters are doing better, even though unemployment is almost 9% (over 15% for the more accurate U-6), the American public is in the right frame of mind, we are unbelievably screwed.

Koch Whores

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Koch Industries is now explicitly coercing its workers about who they vote for:

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State [1]—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.

“Before Citizens United, federal election law allowed a company like Koch Industries to talk to officers and shareholders about whom to vote for, but not to talk with employees about whom to vote for,” explains Paul M. Secunda, associate professor of law at Marquette University. But according to Secunda, who recently wrote in The Yale Law Journal Online about the effects of Citizens United on political coercion in the workplace, the decision knocked down those regulations. “Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”

This is what happens when people who earned their fortune through the genetic lottery think that they own the people who work for them.

Truly repugnant.

Wisconsin Election(s) Update

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In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, JoAnne Kloppenburg filed a petition with the Government Accountability Board for a recount, which is automatic, and at state expense, because the margin was less than the ½% margin.

She also called for an investigation of the actions of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who has been using odd methods, and generating odd results, for years.

I don’t know how this will turn out, but given that Wisconsin uses paper ballots, my guess is that Ms. Nickolaus will not look good at the end of this, because even if she isn’t shown to have engaged in ballot fraud, her history of incompetence is well documented.

Additionally, it looks like Wisconsin will be more than doubling its recall elections in its history, there have been 4 total in history, but now 5 recall petitions have already been filed against state senators, which means that there should be at least 5 recall elections.

I would expect a lot of money from the Koch brothers to flow in for both the recount and the elections.

It Ain’t Just Krugman Who Gets It at the Times

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Dave Leonhardt, one of their more prominent economics reporters, as well as being one of the more prominent contributors to their Economix blog, notices that most of the deficit gets fixed if you just do nothing and let the Bush tax cuts expire:

A trick question: If Congress takes no action in coming years, what will happen to the budget deficit?

It will shrink — and shrink a lot. This simple fact may offer the best hope for deficit reduction.

As federal law currently stands, some significant tax increases are set to take effect in coming years. The most important is the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012.

Of course, both parties favor the permanent extension of most of those tax cuts — the ones applying to income below $250,000. Both parties also oppose big cuts to the military, Social Security and Medicare, at least in the short term. Unfortunately, the deficit is likely to remain frighteningly large over the next decade without either cuts to those programs or tax increases.

Say what you will about Krugman, and he is a brilliant man who has won the Nobel Prize in Economics, but he does not reflect the conventional thinking at the “Paper of Record.”  He is an outsider.

Mr. Leonhardt, on the other hand, does. He’s been working as a journalist at the Times for about a dozen years, and the fact that he is mentioning this means, at the very least, that the idea that doing nothing will fix the problem is something that is discussed amongst their staff.

So Obama’s Speech Was This Afternoon

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I’ve read it, and it was much better than I expected.

It is not what I would want in a perfect world, it’s pretty much a 3rd way center right prescription, though it was rather stronger that I expected.

He did not sell out Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, and he did not hippie punch, and he framed the Republican plan as a transfer from poor to rich.

The fact that he actually presented a moral argument here stuns me.

My only problem here, and I agree with Paul Krugman:

I should probably say, I could live with this as an end result. If this becomes the left pole, and the center is halfway between this and Ryan, then no — better to pursue the zero option of just doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts as a whole expire.

This is clearly a first shot in the 2012 campaign, though I hope that is more than that.

His statements about needing reforms in the social safety net toward the end of the speech worry me though.

I’ll take what I can from him.

Mortgage Settlement Talks Bifurcate

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The Feds and the state Attorneys General have separated their settlement talks with mortgage servicers and banks:

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the reported side settlement between mortgage servicers and federal regulators will in no way affect the ongoing investigation he is leading along with 49 other state attorneys general.

Several media outlets are reporting that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Reserve are engaging in talks with mortgage servicers and that agreements could be signed as early as next week.

“A separate settlement by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will not affect our investigation,” Miller said in a statement. “The settlement neither preempts, nor impacts our efforts. State attorneys general will continue to work together unabated with a broad coalition of federal partners.”

My guess here is that, notwithstanding AG Miller’s attempt to come up with a weak deal, see Yves Smith’s coverage for more information, is that the OCC’s proposed deal is too weak for even him to follow up on.

Additionally, they may be attempting to distance themselves from the manufactured sh%$ storm about Elizabeth Warren advising them.

Of course, if you are an optimist about this, and I am not, it could be that the AGs realized that the two efforts were incompatible, since a federal settlement is primarily about looking at future behavior, while the Attorneys General are charged with investigating and pursuing prior and ongoing wrongdoing.

My guess is that there is some political heat being generated, both from the teabaggers who are crying, “leave Britney the big banks alone,” and people interested in property rights and the rule of law, who want criminal prosecutions of what is fraud and theft an an almost unimaginable scale.

H/t Yves Smith.

A Party Without a Death Wish Would Beat Them to Death With Their Own Pancreas

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But all we have is the Democratic Party, so now that the Republican Party has formally proposed abolishing Medicare and Replacing it with vouchers, so I expect that they, and Barack Obama in particular, will spend the next few months negotiating with themselves before capitulating.

E.J. Dionne asks a question:

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal?

They will shrink from their responsibility, even though it fighting for Medicare is an unalloyed political winner for them.

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

Speaking of Rat F%$#ing

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Brutal!

This ad is positively brutal.

The thing is, assuming that the facts as stated are true, this is not rat f%$#ing.

If David Prosser, who is running for reelection as a Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice, colluded with the diocese when he was a prosecutor to cover up a priest child predator, and to have him shipped out of his district, this is a legitimate issue.

But the fact that it’s an important issue does not preclude it from being rag f%$#ing.  What makes it not rat f%$#ing is the fact that it’s true, the Bishop’s archives confirm this removes this ad from the realm of rat f%$#ing, even if it is nasty.

Great Googly Moogly

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Understand that February is the shortest month of the year, and understand that new home sales are a lot more volatile than existing home sales, but the fact that sales fell almost 17% to an all time low, or at since records were first kept in 1963, 19,000 homes, giving an annual rate of just ¼ million home sales a year, is pretty stunning.

As the New York Times‘ Floyd Norris notes, this is not just the worst month ever, but it’s also the worst 12 month stretch ever.

We are not in recovery yet, and with the austerity crowd doing the best to trigger a double dip in order to appease the confidence fairy, and very little push back from the sane folks in public policy, it won’t get much better.