So, little Timmy Geithner has decided to extend the TARP program from December 31 of this year until the end of next October, which, oddly enough, is just 2 days before the elections.
It’s a neat political move, but it would have been better to not screw the pooch so badly to begin with.
Dump Geithner and Summers, for a start.
Representative Michael Capuano (D-MD-8) just finished a losing primary against Martha Coakley, and he when asked to share his experience on the campaign trail, ye was blunt:
You’re screwed
Capuano took to the microphone, looked out at his colleagues and condensed what he’d learned into two words. “You’re screwed,” he told his friends in the House, according to one attendee. The room’s silence was broken only by soft, nervous laughter.
Capuano confirmed the gist of the message — “I’m not sure of the exact wording,” he told HuffPost, chuckling — and said that he doubted his wisdom was anything they didn’t already know.
“I think I was just confirming stuff they already knew,” he said. “I focused on two things: the war in Afghanistan and jobs.”
Everywhere Capuano went in his state, he said, he was bombarded with demands that the government do more to create jobs. He was also greeted by deep skepticism about Obama’s escalation of the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Capuano said he told the caucus that opponents of the war need to be given a chance to vote against funding for it on the House floor.
“If we do anything [on the war], we need to have a separate vote on it. People who can vote for it, can vote for it. But those of us who want to vote against it, [should] be given that opportunity, too,” he said. “But I focused mostly on jobs. People are tired of the promises of jobs. They need them now.”
There are some very real issues here.
The first is that Barack Obama’s “Wall Street before Main Street” policies just aren’t selling.
The second is that Afghanistan is unpopular.
What makes it worse is that the stimulus package will be tied to the Afghan war funding:
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, told reporters Tuesday that short-term extensions of unemployment and COBRA will be attached to the defense bill.
In effect, that requires members of Congress to back a war they oppose in order to get funding for jobs, a bargain many are loath to make, but one they’ve made over and over since Democrats rook control of Congress following the 2006 midterm elections — which were decided largely by voters fed up with the war in Iraq.
Steny Hoyer is optimistic, because, well, he’s a pro-war, pro-bank bailout squish, and he wants the rest of the caucus voting with him.
We are seeing a disaster unwind in slow motion, and the only person who might make it better, Barack Obama, is spending too much time kissing the asses corporate interests that created the NAFTA driven political firestorm in 1994.
They paid someone to do this?
So, the Republican Party comes up with a URL shortener, the idea being that they would send people to the site, but put banners top and bottom that would advertise themselves and pranksters use it to link to pr0n:
The Republican party took down its innovative link-shortening tool Tuesday for several hours after pranksters had a field day using the tool to associate the GOP with bondage sites.
Having used Tinyurl and bit.ly for almost a decade, this is “innovative” only in the sense that House Minority John Boehner has a “human” complexion.†
As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It’s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.
This is what happens when people try to be hip and cool when they have not the slightest inkling what it means to be hip and cool.
So quoth the engineer, who has no clue as to what it means to be either hip or cool.
*Owned.
†Truth be told, if I didn’t know that he’s had it for years, I would have tagged it as jaundice.
This is one big shark that he jumped.
With Frikken Lasers!
It appears that the excessive wankerage of Joseph Lieberman on healthcare has even gotten the Villagers, specifically nepotism affirmative action hire Luke Russert (video at link), and wannabe villager Ezra Klein to admit that perhaps, just perhaps, Joseph Lieberman is not acting out of moral conviction, but instead is acting out of a need for revenge.
When you have guys like this calling Joe Lieberman small and petty, and, well basically evil, Holy Joe has done more than jump a shark, he’s jumped the shark, specifically, he’s jumping C. Megalodon*.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Obama and His Stupid Minions™ are getting a clue on this, or that they understand that Joe just wants to turn the knife, and will keep pulling the football away, because his goal is to punish liberals for not recognizing his brilliance and moral superiority over the past 9 years.
Harry Reid, no doubt wanting to avoid Chris Dodd’s fate, where Dodd was hung out to dry by the administration for doing Geithner’s bidding and putting in a loophole on banker salaries, is now leaking like a seive, with sources who are clearly from his office saying that, Rahm Emanuel personally pressured Reid give in to Lieberman’s extortion. (See also here and here here)
As a result of this, 81% Of Dememocrats want Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pulled, which to my mind, would be a good thing, because the Senate Democrats would have to start learning to live with 50+ the Vice President to pass a bill, and people like Lieberman (and Lincoln and Baucus) would be told to go pound sand.
If you want any more evidence of bad faith, Lieberman admits that he’s flipped on the Medicare option because liberals like it:
And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.
(emphasis mine)
You see, it’s all about pissing off liberals. It does not matter if hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of lack of insurance, Lieberman wants to punish liberals.
Joe Lieberman is a venal sociopath.
*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.
And Rachael Maddow, with the aid of a John Waters film, shows how the Teabaggers chose the name because they simply did not do the research on what the term meant in the first place, and not something that Maddow and Ana Marie Cox invented out of thin air, but was actually a cultural/sexual reference of long standing. (or squatting, see pic)
So, Dana Milbank has one of his Washington Sketch columns in the Kaplan Test Prep Company today, and it’s all about how Max Baucus f%$#ing his employee and then recommending that she be made US Attorney isn’t a big deal because he is, “just too much of a nerd for a sex scandal to stick.”
He then goes on to describe why this should the the strategy of other people involved in sex scandals, including a recent scandal involving a sports figure who is on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.
You see, it’s no news when a sitting Senator sexually harasses an underling while still married, and then tries to get her appointed to a position of trust within the Department of Justice, but some sports figure chasing skirts, that’s a big deal.
Needless to say, if it had been a real Dem, instead of Max Baucus, Milbank would have been all over the scandal like US Magazine, but because it’s one of the “Moderates,” everything is just ducky:
Yet his colleagues jumped to his defense when word got out Friday night — in contrast to the initial reaction to other senatorial sex scandals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) immediately announced his “full support” for Baucus.
That’s because he’s not giving blow jobs in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, wearing diapers, or paying hush-money and diverting campaign funds to his mistress’s benefit.
Truth be told, I’m inclined to think that what what John Ensign did was worse: He used both the apparatus of the Senate, and the Apparatus of the Republican Party* to benefit his mistress and her family, while Baucus banged a chippie who worked for him and recommended her for a plum position†.
But as to Larry “Wide Stance” Craig, and David “Diaperman” Vitter, these transgressions did not bear on their official duties beyond the hypocrisy angle.
The reason, of course, that Baucus is getting so much support is because there are other Senators out there doing the same thing: i.e. banging staff, not the US Attorney bit, and so the Senate rallies to him, because too many of them have the same vulnerability.
Wanker supreme Dana Milbank rallies to Baucus’ side because he’s an inside the beltway punk, and because he thinks that he’s being witty.
Wanker.
*It’s wrong. I feel schadenfreude because it happened to Republicans, but it’s still wrong.
†Pun intended.
The Catholic Church is laundering money:
The Vatican Bank is under investigation for alleged involvement in a money-laundering scheme using accounts at one of Italy’s largest banks, according to a weekly investigative magazine.
Panorama reports that officials from the Bank of Italy’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) have identified transactions worth up to €180 million (£160 million) that allegedly violated anti-money-laundering regulations in accounts held at a UniCredit branch in Via della Conciliazione, next to St Peter’s Basilica. Prosecutors in Rome, led by Nello Rossi and Stefano Rocco Fava, are reported to be working with a special unit of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian tax police, to investigate the bank — which is formally known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR).
At this rate, I figure that we will discover that the Catholic Church will be fingered as the malevolent power behind the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rating system that determines bowl games in NCAA football.
So, when Barack Obama gave his speech on Afghanistan, he preempted a showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Mayor of Arlington, Tennessee decided to throw a hissy fit on his Facebook page:
“Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch ‘The Charlie Brown Christmas Special’ and our muslim president is there, what a load…..try to convince me that wasn’t done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it….when the answer should simply be ‘yes’….”
Yes, A Charlie Brown Christmas was on that Tuesday, and yes, it was preempted, and yes, it’s among the most sincere of the Christmas specials out there, but this sort of crap is beneath maturity level of a 9-year old, particularly when it’s showing tomorrow and next Tuesday too.
The gentlemen in question is Nigel Farage, Member of the European Parliament (MEP), and former head of the UK Independence Party, which makes him a very heavy duty wing asshole.
That being said, I’m struck by just how well spoken he is. He’s an asshole, and as the defacto head of the UKIP, he is implacably opposed to the EU doing anything, ever, but he is well spoken and thoughtful in a way that is miles beyond people like Boehner, or McConnell, or Bush, or Dick “the Human Snarl” Cheney.
So, Senator Max Baucus (DINO-MT) submitted the name of his former state office director to be US Attorney in Montana to the President.
That’s not so bad, in fact, that’s what passes for normal.
What doesn’t pass for normal is that they are sleeping together, and have been since before both got divorced from their prior spouses. (see also here):
“Senator Baucus is currently in a mature and happy relationship with Melodee Hanes. They are both divorced, and in no way was their relationship the cause of their respective divorces,” Ty Matsdorf, a spokesperson for Baucus, said in a statement to Main Justice.
Yeah, and Larry Craig has a wide stance.
More significantly, they started “dating” in the summer of 2008, and she was working as Baucus’s state director and counsel until spring of this year, which means that he was Cheneying a subordinate, which is sexual harassment, even if the subordinate is willing, if you are not a Senator anyway.
We have another resignation from the Obama Administration, Phil Carter, and it seems to flow from the same dynamics that had Greg Craig being forced to resign 2 weeks ago.
Mr. Carter was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, which meant that he was in charge of trying detainees, and was a vociferous opponent of both Bush’s kangaroo courts, the use of evidence derived from torture, and has also been very leery of the military commissions, though he does support the use of courts martial through the UCMJ.
Carter is denying that he is leaving for policy differences, but considering the actions of the Obama administration, which has been to use military commissions to ensure convictions when they might be in doubt through tainted (tortured) evidence, I do not take his statement at face value.
It turns out that when General Stanley McChrystal was looking for filling in the dots on his Afghanistan escalation plan, he turned to the think tank Washington, DC, and created a “strategic assessment group”, among the members of that group, Fred Kagan and his wife, Kimberly Kagan.
If there is a bright shining center of intellect in the universe, anyone in the Kagan clan are located in a dank corner where people still believe that leeches cure cancer.
They are always wrong. All you need to look at is their history on Iraq, Saddam, and WMD.
On a more substantive note, this sort of lobbying, because when you look at the names on the group, they are largely idiots who are respected by the “very serious people” inside the Beltway, should be something that members of the military should not be doing.
The group was not about getting answers, it was not aboug evaluating potential options, it was about Beltway street cred.
It turns out that “Going Rogue” is British slang for unprotected anal sex.
Well, that explains a lot.
Charles Johnson of LGF disassociates himself from the raving right, declaring those who support secular fascism*“, those who support Christo-fascism†, those who promote bigotry and white supremacy‡, the anti-science right§, the homophobic rightæ, anti-government looniesß, hateful conspiracy nutsØ, the frothing at the mouth right wing blogosphereÆ, anti-Islamic bigots±, and insane Obama Haters¥.
What is more interesting than this essay, which, after all, is not the first such essay against the insanity of the far right from a member of the not-so-far right, are the comments, which are generally supportive, and rather thoughtful, so the reader of Little Green Footballs deserve some credit here too.
One interesting bit of meta, as Mr. Johnson notes, is that he got a spike in traffic from his post, even though it was something that he, “wrote it in about three minutes last night.”
That’s always the way. The stuff that you feel is pearls of wisdom is largely ignored, and the stuff that you throw away gets the nod….File it under hoocoodanode.
H/t AMERICAblog
Note that the footnotes below are direct quotes, and I spent a lot of time looking up the HTML codes for the footnote symbols.
*Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.
†Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.
‡Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.
§creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.
æSarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.
ßtea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.
ØAlex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.
ÆHot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.
±Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.
¥witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source
Yesterday’s cartoon is brilliant.
Click on the picture for the whole thing.
It’s nice when celebrities can laugh at theselves.
They made a porn movie about Sarah Palin and the same actress, Lisa Ann, played me in the porn version of ’30 Rock.’ Weirdly, of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy.
—Tina Fey
No clue as to the provenance of the image.
It comes from Dana Perino:
We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.
Jeebus, she is being stupid enough to qualify as Sarah Palin’s running mate.
She also did not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
Lou Dobbs is looking to run for office, and he’s selling himself as a friend of illegal aliens:
Lou Dobbs is looking at any number of possibilities for a political career, such as running for Senator from New Jersey, or even the presidency. And he would of course be running on a signature issue of…his great friendship with the Latino community, and support for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a path to citizenship???
Al Gore is hysterically funny.