Welcome to my own personal hell. Welcome to the new Blogger content management system, created by Google, that is incompatible with iPhones or iPads, and whose iphone app is a complete and utter disaster.
They’ve gotten similar responses about their changes to Gmail (here’s a hint, go with the high contrast theme to make it bearable)
I’m beginning to wonder if they are intentionally screwing the pooch.
Obama announces a DoJ investigative task force to investigate foreclosure fraud, in order to bring the state Attorney Generals, most notably NY’s Eric Schneidermann, and they are not staffing it:
Three months ago, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama announced a new task force to investigate mortgage fraud and bring some measure of relief to the 12 million American families who are either losing their homes or in danger of losing them.
The new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group would be co-chaired by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado and three Washington insiders from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Obama said, “This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”
Whether or not the President, attorney general and others intend to get around to this task someday, “speed” was a terrible word to choose. Because 85 days after that speech, there is no sign of any activity.
………
Yes, for a few days, there seemed to be a renewed sense of purpose and focus from the administration. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held his own news conference and announced that at least 55 Justice Department lawyers, agents, analysts and investigators would be assigned to the effort. A news release promised 30 staffers would be joining efforts “in the coming weeks.”
………
On March 9 — 45 days after the speech and 30 days after the announcement — we met with Schneiderman in New York City and asked him for an update. He had just returned from Washington, where he had been personally looking for office space. As of that date, he had no office, no phones, no staff and no executive director. None of the 55 staff members promised by Holder had materialized. On April 2, we bumped into Schneiderman on a train leaving Washington for New York and learned that the situation was the same.
Tuesday, calls to the Justice Department’s switchboard requesting to be connected with the working group produced the answer, “I really don’t know where to send you.” After being transferred to the attorney general’s office and asking for a phone number for the working group, the answer was, “I’m not aware of one.”
The promises of the President have led to little or no concrete action.
In fact, the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group was the sixth such entity formed since the start of the financial crisis in 2009. The grand total of staff working for all of the previous five groups was one, according to a surprised Schneiderman. In Washington, where staffs grow like cherry blossoms, this is a remarkable occurrence.
I don’t mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.
Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don’t discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it’s a bridge too far:
A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.
The Center for American Progress, which is Obama’s bitch among the think tanks called this “Disappointing”, and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.
It appears that Obama does not remember the, “Don’t ask, Don’t Give,” efforts, but my guess is that he will:
And, just to confirm that it’s not going to go away, we got this via press release;
Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.
Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:
“This isn’t a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”
“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling — more than has been done for any similar executive order — and now the only impediment is President Obama.”
“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”
Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.
Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.
But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.
Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that “more study is needed”. I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.
Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:
Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.
Well, it looks like the Republican primary is well and truly over, and we are into the general election silly season, case in point, he Ann Romney – Hillary Rosen contretemps:
Now, it’s Republicans pretending there’s a big national fight over a subject that most women basically agree on – the decision to work or stay home. Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen unintentionally set off this fake firestorm when she commented on CNN Wednesday night that Ann Romney – whom Mitt Romney has been referring to as his top adviser on women’s issues – has “never worked a day in her life.” Here’s the full quote:
“What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country, saying, ‘Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.’ Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”
The Romney campaign pounced, with Ann Romney putting out her first-ever tweet: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”
So, we have Mitt Romney saying that his wife, who’s never had to worry about providing the necessities to her kids, would be his source for insight into women who have to work in this country, versus Hillary Rosen, who used to be chief counsel for the RIAA, where she viciously opposed fair use, and has spent her life selling her skills to the various corporate faces evil as a lobbyist.
To quote Henry Kissinger, “It’s a pity they can’t both lose.”
One of the most ridiculous names — and there will be a lot of them — in the ongoing GOP veepstakes is Florida congressman, tea partier, and crazy person Allen West. Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, and fellow veepstakes participant Nikki Haley have all endorsed West as Romney’s running mate recently. We suspect, though, that none of them sincerely believe West is a viable option, and are simply currying favor with the tea-party wing of the GOP by flattering one of its champions. Because West is, actually, the exact type of person you don’t want as a running mate: A wildly outspoken, unpredictable loose cannon. His appearance at a town hall last night is just the latest example:
The conservative tea party icon also got in shots at Democrats and President Obama, who spoke Tuesday at Florida Atlantic University. West said Obama was “scared” to have a discussion with him. He later said “he’s heard” up to 80 U.S. House Democrats are Communist Party members, but wouldn’t name names.
Once again, the stupidest journalist in America, Juan Williams is doing what he is bought and paid for, being a tool who alibis for racism, and is claiming, in response to the Trayvon Martin killing, that the black community is ignoring black on black violence.
Retiring moderate Republican senator still prizes “bipartisanship” over actually passing legislation
Retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe has finished grading the president’s report card. President Obama gets an “F” in bipartisanship, where “bipartisanship” is defined as “constantly stroking the fragile egos of self-important Senate moderates.”
Snowe is not seeking reelection because the Republican Party wholly merged with the conservative movement and then began enforcing much stricter party discipline than it had in the past, and she would likely lose a primary election to a more right-wing candidate. But in her high-minded version of what happened, she is leaving because of “partisanship,” an evil spell cast on the formerly fraternal and cooperative United States Senate by comity-hating wizards.
………
So instead of cap-and-trade, we got nothing. Instead of the DREAM Act, we got nothing. If healthcare reform had failed, we’d have nothing. If Snowe’s stated goal was to maintain the status quo, because she doesn’t care about immigration and doesn’t believe in climate change, then she’d be totally doing a very good job. But she claims to care about climate change and want to do something about immigration, which leads me to believe that she’s horrible at being a senator. It is the incompetent political maneuvering of “moderates” like Snowe, and not “partisanship,” that leads directly to Senate inaction. If what she needed, in order to be swayed to the side of passing legislation to address problems, was for the president to make a much bigger public show of courting her, then she’s a bizarre and repulsive specimen. Being against everything because people aren’t paying you enough attention is so much worse than being against everything on principle.
The Senate is not a great deliberative body. It is a support group for narcissistic sociopaths.
Even more than the insane members of the Senate *cough*Jim Demint*cough* *cough*Tom Coburn*cough*, it is those who worship at the alter of bipartisanship, because their efforts are nothing more than preening for an imagined audience when there are real issues that need to be addressed.
The problem is that the Senate is a broken institution, and it has been for some time, because of people like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, etc. who value the appearance of being reasonable over actually being reasonable, and care not a fig for being effective representatives of the citizenry.
Larry Summers wanted to export toxic waste to Africa, helped personal friends loot Russia during its “market reforms”, and has been wrong about everything he’s ever done in real world policy, and so he fails up to head the World Bank.
Well, it is a prime position for someone who thinks that countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted. (Yeah, he claims that it was all a joke ……… now)
Seriously: the is a class of people in the United States, and they fail over, and over again, but they keep falling up.
And people say that the Ivy League schools are over rated.
I can’t speak to the quality of the education, but the value of the connections are priceless.
Last week, several news organizations carried a story about an alleged Occupy PAC that, if true, would have driven another stake of political cynicism in the heart of the fractured movement, built on idealism and opposition to the corruption of American politics.
Paperwork for the PAC was filed with the FEC by 32-year-old John Paul Thornton of Decatur, Alabama, who says he was inspired by Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC. Mother Jones reported that “[u]nlike Colbert’s Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, though, Thornton says in his first interview on the subject that OWS PAC is no joke.” Meanwhile, The Atlantic Wire wrote that the organization was specifically registered as a “SuperPAC” that could raise unlimited amounts of funds that Thornton intended to funnel to “federal candidates pledging to get money out of politics, including Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.”
There’s only one problem: The alleged “Occupy PAC” story isn’t at all what it seems, and had any of the reporters who first “broke” it last week bothered applying a little professional skepticism, the story never would have got off the ground, and never would have created yet another layer of disillusionment and cynicism that Occupy’s enemies have been actively sowing.
There many obvious warning signs about Thornton on the public record. For example, John Thornton admitted to a reporter from Capital New York that he was a Ron Paul supporter. You don’t have to be a veteran journalist to know that a guy who supports a far-right Republican libertarian who wants to abolish financial regulations and laws protecting labor and the environment, and favors Citizens United and unregulated lobbying, isn’t exactly representative of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Being a Ron Paul supporter in Occupy is one thing; it’s another thing altogether when a libertarian sets up a SuperPAC in Occupy’s name.
………
According to newspaper accounts, Thornton lost his defense-contracting job in the summer of 2008, after a violent psychotic episode landed him a criminal conviction and a nearly two-month jail sentence. His parents said that Thornton, who was 28 at the time, started losing his mind after getting out of the National Guard. And after string of run-ins with law, which included the violation of a protection order filed by his ex-wife, a judge sentenced him to 60 days in the tank.
The kicker here is that Breitbart actually scooped the reporters on the fact that this guy is a Paulite nut job, because it makes good copy for him, and it syncs with his goal of sliming the Occupy movement.
The more conspiratorially minded of you might think that this is something from the corporate task-master, but the reporter who broke this was Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, and while Mother Jones may be a number of things (after all, they fired Michael Moore, and had to settle out of court for wrongful termination),. they are not a corporate mouthpiece.
This just a lazy sloppy reporters who saw a story with some pop to it, and decided that it was easier to write the story without doing any leg work.
Unfortunately, this is the rule, rather than the exception.
But it seems that some Republicans think their party has gone too far. Yesterday, Virginia legislators backed away from a “personhood” measure and the state’s conservative governor removed his support for an extreme ultrasound bill. Even Pat Buchanan, a leader on social issues within the party and a former GOP presidential candidate, this morning warned that Republicans like Rick Santorum are overreaching in their opposition to contraception.
On C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Buchanan described the debate over contraception as “beyond the political realm”:
I think if you get down into where [Santorum’s] been discussing it on the merits and demerits of contraception…that’s a moral issue. […] We talked about that in college endlessly, but I think you move into an area where people don’t understand yet and where it’s beyond the political realm. And I think that’s where Santorum has gone and gotten himself. He’s gotten himself tied up in some of these arguments, and I don’t think he’s handled them with clarity.
(emphasis original)
Yes, that is Pat “It probably sounded better in the original German” Buchanan saying that this culture war sh%$ is a bit over the top.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not Thomas Friedman who wrote this, it was David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.
I have to admit that I have not actually read this book, (and now, I never will) I am relying on a review from LizardBreath at Unfogged, and this is what she finds:
But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:
Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages.
I don’t know all that much about the history of Apple or of the computer business generally, but I’m pretty sure that’s as wrong as it could possibly be. Apple was founded by two guys, neither of whom (AFAIK) worked for IBM (maybe for a very short time? But certainly not extendedly). It was notoriously a rigid, top-down hierarchy, it was founded in the ’70s, not the ’80s, and who had a laptop until the very end of the ’80s? That’s a whole lot of wrong for one sentence.
It’s so stupid, that I am amazed that this wasn’t written by Tom Friedman.
So, Mitt Romney won by a couple of hundred votes, and the Maine Republican Party said that this was the end of the matter.
The problem was that there were a number of (Ron Paul trending) town caucuses in Maine that were not counted, as well as all of Washington County, which delayed the vote because of a snow storm.
So, after a rising crescendo of coverage of the irregularities, they are now apparently conducting a recount, as well as allowing Washington County to conduct its vote tomorrow:
The Maine Republican Party has reversed course and will recommend that delayed caucus results from Washington County be included in its final presidential poll tally. The party also is reconfirming results from local caucuses in the wake of the recent controversy over how its presidential caucuses were handled.
“The results of the Washington County caucus will be reviewed at the March 10 Republican State Committee meeting,” Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster said in a prepared statement approved by the state party’s executive committee.
Note that March 10 is after Super Tuesday, so the effect of a Romney “win” turning into a loss won’t hit the media narrative until after he’s probably made his nomination a near mathematical lock.
This has happened twice now, so I think that the tinfoil hat explanation is gaining credence.
We’ve kind of been rolling the trifecta with colds.
Sharon* has been on antibiotics for a cough and sinus for a few days, and after being blown off by our kid’s pediatrician’s replacement doc, so we went to an urgi-care clinic, and we got diagnoses for them, and me as well, since I had a nagging cough, and it had gotten bad enough that I wasn’t waiting until I saw my doctor at my regularly scheduled appointment with my doctor.
Charlie has a sinus infection, Natalie’s sinus infection migrated down to pharyngitis, and mine had migrated down to a full blown bronchitis.
In addition, Marilyn, my mother-in-law is at Sinai Hospital for what appears to be pneumonia.
So, what does this have to do with the drug war?
Well, in addition to antibiotics, both Charlie and I were prescribed decongestants, and both of these medications contained Pseudoephedrine, and so I could not buy both, because federal regulations say that it’s too much, and we might ………… cook meth.
The war on drugs is, to misappropriate the words of Nietzsche, like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
When he says, “If you want to declare that tech stocks are once again a bubble … you’d be dead wrong,” any sane person would start shorting tech.
This is a guy who called short sales the next bubble, and used a song about masturbation to suggest that it was time to reenter the market. (My posts about him can be found at this link.)
In the world of investing advice, it’s hard to find someone who gets it right even half the time, but there lots of people, like Paul, who can be counted on to function reliably as a reverse barometer.
A top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign suggested on Tuesday that the administration was open to working with Catholic hospitals and universities over their objections to providing birth control services to women.
“I’m less concerned about the messaging of this than to find a resolution that makes sense,” David Axelrod said on MSNBC.
“I heard earlier Joe [Scarborough] say, ‘Well, there may be compromises that can be reached.’ We have great respect for the work that these religious institutions do. … We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms, so we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,” he explained.
Jeebus.
It’s like capitulation is so firmly engrained in their DNA that they can’t stand their ground even when it is to their advantage to do so.
These days, the Catholic Bishops is as likely to support Democrats as the Chamber of Commerce, so all you are doing is pissing off your base.
The USAF is determined to avoid having a meaningful close support capability. Case in point, they are cutting 5 to 10 A-10 squadrons:
The A-10 Thunderbolt II provides the type of close-air support that ground-pounders love and the Taliban dread. Although the A-10s are workhorses in the war on terrorism, the Air Force in its new budget request is planning to get rid of five squadrons.
As part of the Defense Department’s efforts to trim close to $500 billion in spending over the next decade, defense officials said Friday that the service intends to cut five A-10 tactical squadrons and two other squadrons as well.
The Thunderbolt squadrons to be stood down encompass one active-duty, one Reserve and three National Guard units. The remaining two squadrons disappearing are a Guard F-16 tactical unit and an F-15 training squadron.
Let’s be clear about this: The F-35 and the F-22 cannot take over this role effectively.
The A-10 can deploy and loiter over the battlefield for hours below 15,000 feet, while the two supersonic stealth jets can loiter for something like 15 minutes before calling bingo fuel.
On NPR this morning, one of their bankster apologists was noting that Romney closed his Swiss bank account because recent US crack-downs on tax evaders using these accounts made them politically suspect.
What fairy tale land have these folks been living in?
I’m 49 years old, and for as long as I can remember, “Swiss Bank Account” has been synonymous with tax evasion and concealing the proceeds of illegal activities.
My conclusion is that these guys must have the political and financial acumen of Little Orphan Annie.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not Thomas Friedman who wrote this, it was David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.