Category: Stupid

And Cue the Republicans Accusing Obama of Throwing Grandma Out on the Streets in 3 … 2 … 1 …

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Because offering cuts that Republicans are afraid to mention in public work so well

Well, right now:

Appearing on CNN, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman accused Obama of “trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors” and signaled Republicans may try to use the changes against Democrats in the coming election.

 Walden’s comments come even as key Republicans have embraced Obama’s “chained CPI” proposal to cut Social Security benefits.

 “I thought it’s very intriguing in that his budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors, if you will,” Walden (Ore.) said. “We haven’t seen all the detail yet, so we’ll look at it. But I’ll tell you, when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare, and now coming back at seniors again — I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care…”

Not only is this mind-blowingly bad policy, it is mind-blowingly bad politics.

And let us remember something important:  Social Security contributes nothing to the deficit, and it will not for decades.

Once again, we have Obama playing the Manchurian Democrat.

Obama is Not On Our Side

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After increasing signs that even rank and file Republicans oppose to cutting Social Security, but Barack Obama is determined to throw mama from the train:

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

 Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

 Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

Yeah, and who is going to take the blame for gutting Social Security?

Seriously, when I have referred to him as the Manchurian Democrat, I was being prophetic.

He just flushed Democratic protection of Social Security down the f%$#ing toilet.

This is so contemptible MoveOn has gotten its hipster head out of its hipster ass and condemned his move without taking the time to set it up as a lame video contest:

“President Obama’s plan to cut Social Security would harm seniors who worked hard all their lives. Under this plan, a typical 80-year-old woman would lose the equivalent of three months worth of food every year. That’s unconscionable.

 It’s even more outrageous given that Republicans in Congress aren’t even asking for this Social Security cut. This time, the drive to cut Social Security is being led by President Obama and Democrats.

 Millions of MoveOn members did not work night and day to put President Obama into office so that he could propose policies that would hurt some of our most vulnerable people. Just as we fought and defeated President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, we will mobilize and stop this attempt to diminish the vital guarantee of Social Security. MoveOn’s 8 million members will not stand by and watch a Democratic President chip away at one of the most successful government programs of all time. Every member of Congress — Democrat or Republican — who votes for this proposal should expect to be held accountable.”

Call your Congresscritter, and tell them that you will do your best to have them primaried if they vote to support this.

Yeah, the Sequester is Benign………

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That’s why cancer clinics are unable to treat thousands of patients:

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

………

The care will likely be more expensive: One study from actuarial firm Milliman found that chemotherapy delivered in a hospital setting costs the federal government an average of $6,500 more annually than care delivered in a community clinic.

Those costs can trickle down to patients, who are responsible for picking up a certain amount of the medical bills. Milliman found that Medicare patients ended up with an average of $650 more in out-of-pocket costs when they were seen only in a hospital setting.

So, not only are we going to kill grandma, it’s going to cost us more money to do so.

Well, anything to make Grover Norquist happy, I guess.

Misplaced Priorities

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H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I understand that they have problems getting their games out on time, and getting them out finished, they buy up companies and destroy their ideas, and they routinely treat their employers like galley slaves, but considering the excesses of they banksters, or the the slapdash contracting at KBR (which literally electrocuted soldiers in the shower), it is a bit much for a poll to vote computer gaming company Electronic Arts the “Worst Company in America”:

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has a new feather in its cap: It has won The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award.

 The tournament rookie beat out America’s other most-hated companies by a landslide 64 percent vote. Rival honorees included Walmart, PayPal, Bank of America, and even fellow game industry villain, Gamestop.

 A statement from The Consumerist, part of the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports, noted that “while both Bank of America and EA drew consumer ire for their poorly-received practices of swallowing up smaller competitors and nickel-and-diming customers with up-charges and fees, EA’s success in this year’s tournament shines a spotlight on an industry that is often considered ignored by regulators, courts, and the mainstream media.”

 “Some may look down their noses at the idea of voters picking a video game publisher as the Worst Company In America, but that is the exact kind of attitude that has allowed EA and its ilk to nickel and dime devoted customers for a decade,” said Chris Morran, Deputy Editor of Consumerist.com. “This is not just a few people complaining about bad games; this vote represents a large group of consumers who have grown sick and tired of being ignored and taken advantage of.”

There are plenty of companies that abuse and nickel and dime their customers, but the banksters blew up the world, and companies like Blackwater XE Academi murder brown people with impunity.

From all reports, and I know people in the game publishing business, EA is one of those companies that seems to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that successful companies deliver good products that satisfy their customer needs.

But the worst company in America?

Puh-leeze!

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?

Another Triumph of Defense Procurement

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The Litoral Combat Ship may lack sufficient firepower to do its job:

The U.S. Navy’s troubled Littoral Combat Ship, a vessel intended to be small and speedy for use in shallow waters close to shore, lacks the firepower it needs, a top U.S. navy commander said in a classified memo.

Vice Admiral Tom Copeman, the commander of naval surface forces, called on the Navy to consider a ship with more offensive capability after the first 24 vessels are built, according to a Navy official who asked not to be identified discussing the confidential document.

………

Producing a ship that can accommodate larger guns or Harpoon anti-ship missiles “would be a major redesign,” Polmar said in an interview. “It will be real work to put major weapons on the ship.”

Replacing the 57mm popgun with something larger might not even possible for the Independence class trimaran, because of the extremely narrow forward central hull.

The ship is a failure.

The modular nature of the ship does not work, because you have to return the ship to a US base, or you need to fly a  team out to a foreign port in order to swap out the modules, and the modular nature of the ship results in a hull that is much larger for a set of capabilities.

The savings in crewing has proved to be illusory, the current crew levels result in an overworked and ineffective crew, so they are adding berths.

The primary offensive system, the NLOS-LS, was canceled, and replaced with a system which has about 80% less range and a smaller warhead.

And that’s ignoring the (probably fixable) facts that there are issues with hull cracks, corrosion, and leaking.

It’s dead, Jim.

The entire concept was flawed.

This is Free Market Mousketeer Bullsh%$

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Bolivia President Evo Morales is looking about setting up a state owned concern to refine his country’s huge lithium deposits:

Is Bolivia poised to become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” the vital ingredient in batteries for smartphones and electric cars?

The Uyuni salt flats, stretching across a remote Andean plateau in the southwest of the country, are easily the world’s largest reserve of the soft, light, whitish metal coveted by high-tech firms from Silicon Valley to Tokyo.

This year, President Evo Morales has moved swiftly ahead with plans to finally begin reaping a potential lithium windfall of billions of dollars for the impoverished South American nation.

In January, Bolivia opened its first trial plant. It will produce 40 tons of lithium carbonate a year. Over time, the government wants to ramp production up to 30,000 tons — roughly a fifth of current global demand.

Of course there are some potential difficulties, the salt flats are both moist, and contain a fair amount of magnesium, which makes extraction more difficult.

But here is the assumption that seems to be everywhere these days that just pisses me off:

Meanwhile, Morales’ socialist administration’s go-it-alone attitude — including recent nationalizations of everything from utilities to airports — may mean it will have problems accessing the foreign technology needed to process the lithium.

This is bullsh%$.

If they want the technology, they will get it the same way that multinational megacorporations do today: they buy the f%$#ing technology.

Exxon, BP, and all the rest don’t know how to do difficult drilling, they hire companies like Halliburton or Slumberger for their expertise in deep water drilling, they hire companies like Transocean for its expertise in building deep water rigs.

I’m not talking about industrial espionage here, it’s that companies have increasingly outsourced core competencies in the name of cost savings, and these are now available freely for sale.

You hire a company to do the design, you hire another to do the construction, and if you have any sense, you structure it so as to ensure that the local folks get at least a general understanding of the process when you do this.

Ain’t capitalism grand?

There is No Medicine for Stupidity

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Click for full size


Much better than the Euro Zone

Because their currency floated

Paul Krugman has noted that Poland has done remarkably well by retaining its own currency and allowing it to float, (see chart pr0n).

Of course, the response of the Polish leaders is to try to join the Euro:

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, took a big political gamble on Tuesday when he opened the door to a referendum on joining the euro, in the face of strong public opposition to the common currency.

The move is part of a campaign to prepared Poland to begin the final stages of accession to the single currency by 2015. Mr Tusk had previously opposed a public vote, arguing that Poles had already bound themselves to the euro when they voted in 2003 to join the EU.

The crisis in the eurozone has hit support for the euro – the latest opinion survey shows 62 per cent of Poles are opposed to joining, with scepticism increasing markedly since the financial and debt crises hit Europe five years ago.

But now Mr Tusk has publicly raised the possibility of allowing a referendum – demanded by rightwing opposition parties opposed to euro membership – in return for an agreement with the opposition to push through the necessary constitutional changes.

Seriously, they want a piece of this?

You see, what happened was that instead of creating inflation, the wild capital flows caused the Zloty to appreciate, and when those flows reversed, the currency depreciated.

In the Euro zone, what happens is inflation, and then the need for depression to contract the economy. Wanting to be a part of this is stupid and insane.

Seriously, we need higher quality elites running the world.

Oh Ho!

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The lawyer at the core of the whole “bribing prostitutes to lie about f%$#ing Senator Bob Menendez” is now saying that the Daily Caller was the one paying him to do this:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

The lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.

The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted in the fall on the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”

In its statement Friday, the Daily Caller said: “At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation, nor did anyone named Carlos travel to the Dominican Republic on behalf of The Daily Caller. As recently as two weeks ago, Figueroa was on record with another news outlet as saying the women he represented were telling the truth about their initial allegations against Senator Menendez.”

Tucker Carlson, who runs the Web site, said in a statement provided through his spokesman that the Daily Caller “never paid anyone, was never asked to pay anyone and of course never would pay anyone for this story.”

Yeah, sure. They somehow just got prostitutes to talk, on camera, ratting out an (as we now know falsely) alleged John out of the goodness of their hearts.

Please, don’t insult our intelligence, Tucker.

New Zealand Decides Looks at the Mess that is Cyprus, and Decides that it Has a Purty Mouth

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When Troika (really, the Germans) decided that the solution to Cyprus’ problem with its banks was to take money from insured accounts, they had no idea the firestorm that it would unleash.

It appears that the Troika (really, the Germans) have found the limits of the authority, and hence the misery, that they can inflict, and so the Cypriot Parliament voted down the proposal to take money from depositor accounts:

The Cypriot parliament has thrown out a controversial plan to skim €5.8bn (£5bn) from savers’ bank accounts, in a move that risks plunging the eurozone into a fresh crisis and heightens expectations that the cash-strapped country will seek a funding lifeline from Russia.

Cyprus has just 24 hours to find a solution to its funding gap before its banks are due to reopen following the dramatic no vote on Tuesday night, which failed to support a hastily renegotiated change to the original deal.

Late on Tuesday night the eurozone governments said that despite the vote Cyprus would still need to raise the €5.8 bn – a third of the €17bn bailout.

There are limits to bailing out hedge funds and large European banks, I guess.

Unfortunately, the good folks in New Zealand, which, as Yves Smith observes is already a haven for fraudulent corporations, had decided to abandon the whole concept of insuring bank deposit:

Picture this: you check your bank balance and see that your $1000 lies safely in your savings account.

That night you switch on the evening news and find to your horror that your bank has failed.

It turns out that the Government has had to move quickly, and has placed your bank in statutory management.

The next day you check your bank balance and you find that you have taken what is referred to in the banking industry as a “haircut”.

In other words, part of your savings remain, let’s say 80 per cent, but 20 per cent of it has been frozen – perhaps forever – while the statutory manager sorts out the mess.

You have just entered the world of Open Bank Resolution (OBR).

It may come as a surprise that the Reserve Bank already has the power to freeze bank deposits. The problem for the central bank has been a lack of technical infrastructure to implement the policy, should the need arise. The bank said last week that it was in discussion with the banks on “pre-positioning” their systems for OBR.

Un f%$#ing believable

A press release from the a New Zealand Green Party MP follows after the break:

National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand

Tuesday, 19 Mar 2013 | Press Release
Contact: Russel Norman MP
Tags: Banking & Finance, Smart Economics, Economics

The National Government is pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.

“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.

“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.

“Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.

“If he insists on pushing through this unfair scheme, small depositors can be protected ahead of time with a notified savings threshold below which their savings will be safe from any interference.”

Dr Norman questioned the Government’s insistence on pursuing Open Bank Resolution when virtually no other OECD country uses it.

“Open Bank Resolution is unprecedented in the world. Most OECD countries run deposit insurance schemes which protect people’s deposits up to a maximum ranging from $100,000 – $250,000,” Dr Norman said.

“OBR is not in line with Australia, which protects bank deposits up to $250,000.

“A deposit insurance scheme is a much simpler, well-tested alternative to Open Bank Resolution. It rewards safe banks with lower premiums and limits the cost to taxpayers of a bank failure.

“Deposit insurance will, however, require the Reserve Bank to oversee and regulate our banks more closely – a measure which is ultimately the best protection against bank failure.”

“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.

“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.

“Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.

“If he insists on pushing through this unfair scheme, small depositors can be protected ahead of time with a notified savings threshold below which their savings will be safe from any interference.”

Dr Norman questioned the Government’s insistence on pursuing Open Bank Resolution when virtually no other OECD country uses it.

“Open Bank Resolution is unprecedented in the world. Most OECD countries run deposit insurance schemes which protect people’s deposits up to a maximum ranging from $100,000 – $250,000,” Dr Norman said.

“OBR is not in line with Australia, which protects bank deposits up to $250,000.

“A deposit insurance scheme is a much simpler, well-tested alternative to Open Bank Resolution. It rewards safe banks with lower premiums and limits the cost to taxpayers of a bank failure.

“Deposit insurance will, however, require the Reserve Bank to oversee and regulate our banks more closely – a measure which is ultimately the best protection against bank failure.”

It’s Our War in Syria Now

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We may not be supplying arms directly, but United States has just plucked someone no one has heard of in order to have “their man” in charge of the insurgency:

Syria’s main exile opposition coalition elected a naturalized Syrian-born American citizen early Tuesday to be the first prime minister of an interim Syrian government, charged with funneling aid to rebels inside Syria and offering an alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

By choosing Ghassan Hitto, 50, an information technology executive who lived in Texas until recently, the Syrian opposition coalition concluded months of contentious efforts to unite behind a leader, under pressure from the United States and its allies, which demanded that the opposition set up clear chains of command as a condition of increasing aid to the rebels.

Mr. Hitto, a relative unknown in opposition politics who rose to prominence recently through efforts to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid, was far from a unanimous choice. After a day of maneuvering and voting on Monday that lasted into early Tuesday, he won 35 votes, just three more than Assad Mustafa, a former agricultural minister under Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.

Mr. Hitto faces formidable challenges in his quest to to establish administrative authority over areas of northern Syria that have been secured by the rebels.

(emphasis mine)

If you don’t think that this guy was hand picked by the US State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you.

BTW, when you look at the history of exiles chosen by the US to rule, Achmed Chalabi and Hamid Karzai come to mind, the history is not pretty.

As the saying goes, “ない愚かさはない薬です”.*

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Still Looking for Senator Menendez’ Birth Certificate

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Yes, the folks at the clown show known as The Daily Caller have decided, notwithstanding sworn statements from prostitutes that they were paid to lie, their fearless journamalists, they are still looking for the real killer:

Responding to reports that Dominican Republic police have concluded that three women were paid to make false claims that they had sex with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) for money, The Daily Caller, which published a report in November 2012 detailing similar allegations, says it is still investigating the story.

Seriously, the first rule here is that when you are in a hole, stop digging.

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.

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.

We Have A New Best Definition for Chutzpah

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For those of you who are not aware of the classic definition, “That quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan,”

Well, Mark “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford has come up with a new and improved definition:

But Mark wanted more than just his ex-wife’s disavowal of interest. When he first ran for Congress in 1994, he installed Jenny as his campaign manager. He did this for reasons of economy—“You’re free,” he told her at the time—but she proved a natural at the job. She blossomed into a shrewd political strategist, running Mark’s subsequent campaigns and becoming his top adviser. Will Folks, a former Sanford press secretary, says, “There’s absolutely no way he would have ever won the congressional seat or been governor without her.”

According to Jenny, she had already told Mark she would be taking a pass on the race the day before, at the funeral of a mutual friend. So when Mark came to visit her, he arrived with a proposal. “Since you’re not running, I want to know if you’ll run my campaign,” he said. “We could put the team back together.”

Jenny told him, in so many words, that wasn’t going to happen. Mark made one last appeal.

“I could pay you this time,” he said.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

You leave her, you publicly humiliate her, and you want her to run her campaign?

If I were Mark Sanford’s parents, I’d worry.

H/t Talking Points Memo.

Obamacare Fail

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Employers are required to cover children, but not spouses, and they are looking at canceling coverage on spouses to save money:

By denying coverage to spouses, employers not only save the annual premiums, but also the new fees that went into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. This year, companies have to pay $1 or $2 “per life” covered on their plans, a sum that jumps to $65 in 2014. And health law guidelines proposed recently mandate coverage of employees’ dependent children (up to age 26), but husbands and wives are optional. “The question about whether it’s obligatory to cover the family of the employee is being thought through more than ever before,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

While surcharges for spousal coverage are more common, last year, 6% of large employers excluded spouses, up from 5% in 2010, as did 4% of huge companies with at least 20,000 employees, twice as many as in 2010, according to human resources firm Mercer. These “spousal carve-outs,” or “working spouse provisions,” generally prohibit only people who could get coverage through their own job from enrolling in their spouse’s plan.

Such exclusions barely existed three years ago, but experts expect an increasing number of employers to adopt them: “That’s the next step,” Darling says. HMS, a company that audits plans for employers, estimates that nearly a third of companies might have such policies now. Holdouts say they feel under pressure to follow suit. “We’re the last domino,” says Duke Bennett, mayor of Terre Haute, Ind., which is instituting a spousal carve-out for the city’s health plan, effective July 2013, after nearly all major employers in the area dropped spouses.

But when employers drop spouses, they often lose more than just the one individual, when couples choose instead to seek coverage together under the other partner’s employer. Terre Haute, which pays $6 million annually to insure nearly 1,200 people including employees and their family members, received more than 20 new plan members when a local university, bank and county government stopped insuring spouses, according to Bennett. “We have a great plan, so they want to be on ours. All we’re trying to do is level the playing field here,” he says.

It’s a race to the bottom. Whee!

This was foreseeable.  

Adverse selection/the race to the bottom are the most salient feature of our current healthcare clusterf%$#.  To assume that insurance providers would not avail themselves of every opportunity to benefit from this is policy malpractice.

When Charles F%$#ing Krauthammer is the Voice of Reason, You Have Jumped the Shark

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Jumping C. Megalodon*


This is one big shark that he jumped.
With Frikken Lasers!

The White House press corps(e) is mad as hell and they are not going to take it any more.

They have been stonewalled by the Obama administration for the last time?

What was it? The secret kill list? The use of the CIA and the NSA to spy on US citizens? The secret negotiations for the the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Nope. The press is livid that they did not get a press availability when Obama played a round of golf with Tiger Woods:

The White House pushed back Tuesday against complaints from the press corps that the administration was too restrictive last weekend in denying reporters and photographers a glimpse of President Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods during his vacation in Florida.

 Press secretary Jay Carney said he sympathizes with the press corps’ bid for greater access, but he disputed suggestions that Obama has been more off-limits than his recent predecessors.

 Carney said Obama has held 35 news conferences in which reporters were permitted to ask questions, compared to 19 by George W. Bush to this point in his presidency. And Obama has granted 591 interviews, including 104 with television networks, Carney added.

 ………

 Later that afternoon, the White House confirmed that Woods was among Obama’s foursome after a reporter for Golf World Magazine and the Golf Channel had published the news on his Twitter feed hours earlier.

 After several reporters, including Fox News correspondent Ed Henry, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, complained about the lack of access, Obama spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday evening on the way back to Washington. But that conversation was off the record.

Do you know how stupid this is?

It’s so stupid and over the top that lunatic and long distance psychotherapist Charles Krauthammer thinks that this is whiny inconsequential bullsh%$:

Charles Krauthammer is blasting the media for complaining about a lack of access to President Barack Obama over the weekend while he golfed with Tiger Woods, calling it “the biggest non-story” since the Kardashian weddings.

 “If the guy wants to play golf, the guy deserves a couple of days off. He wants privacy — big deal. This is the biggest non-story that the media have created since the Kardashian weddings,” Krauthammer said on Fox News on Monday. “I don’t understand what the story is and what the outrage is.”

Seriously, Charles Krauthammer is correct.

I cannot f%$#ing believe that I f%$#ing just f%$#ing said f%$#ing that.

*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). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Un-Dirtyword Believable

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OK, I get the fact that the military needs for some sort of citation for excellence in playing video games operating drones, but the idea that such a citation would outrank a bronze star, which is awarded for personal courage on the battlefield, is beyond stupid:

The Pentagon is creating a new high-level military medal that will recognize drone pilots and, in a controversial twist, giving it added clout by placing it above some traditional combat valor medals in the military’s “order of precedence.”

The Distinguished Warfare Medal will be awarded to pilots of unmanned aircraft, offensive cyber war experts or others who are directly involved in combat operations but who are not physically in theater and facing the physical risks that warfare historically entails.

The new medal will rank just below the Distinguished Flying Cross. It will have precedence over — and be worn on a uniform above — the Bronze Star with Valor device, a medal awarded to troops for specific heroic acts performed under fire in combat.

………

The new medal will be awarded for specific acts, such as the successful targeting of a particular individual at a critical time.

“Our military reserves its highest decorations obviously for those who display gallantry and valor in actions when their lives are on the line and we will continue to do so,” Panetta said.

This is screamingly stupid.

It speaks to a culture in the Pentagon that sees itself as an officer corps that increasingly resembles strutting peacocks.