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Category: Video
The Beer Diet
Kochtopus
The Koch brothers, who have been using their Stalin derived fortunes* to back the teabaggers, have steadfastly denied any involvement in the movement.
Well, let’s role tape:
David Koch told New York Magazine earlier this year, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”
But the Guardian reports that footage has emerged showing David Koch at the podium during an AFP gala receiving direct and detailed reports from his astroturf AFP army on their efforts to organize tea parties around the nation.
It appears that, “Never been to a tea-party event,” means getting reports from the people you are bankrolling on stage in right wing speak.
*Really, patriarch Fred Koch made his fortune setting up refining for Josef Stalin.
Stop Drinking and Watch
Jon Stewart on unforced campaigning errors.
If you drink, you will spew:
Gotta Post This Before the Inevitable DMCA Take-Down
The best Simpsons opening ever, courtesy of graffiti artist great Banksey.
This is BRUTAL, and I understand why Murdoch does not want this to go viral:
The Simpsons – Banksy’s intro (HD) | Flabber
I think that their server is getting hammered, so let it buffer a bit before playing.
Stewart on HR 3808
Seriously. I don’t know why I blog. It takes Jon Stewart 7 minutes and 6 seconds to capture the essence of a problem in a way that is both clearer and more entertaining than anything that I cold ever do.
The Inevitable HR 3808 Veto Downfall Parody
At least until the studio hits YouTube with a takedown notice:
I Gotta Check This Flick Out
I want the torch and pitchfork concession.
It will sell better than popcorn
This looks like a documentary that I want top see.
Somehow I think that it will be difficult for me to convince my kids that we want to see this on movie night though.
There is a Hallmark Card for That
Jon Stewart at his best.
Your Bank Foreclosure Fraud Update
Alan Grayson connects the dots
The lede here has to be that the Ohio Attorney General has sued GMAC mortgage:
This is big news. I just got off a conference call with Richard Cordray, the Attorney General for the state of Ohio. He has filed a lawsuit in Lucas County (Toledo) Common Pleas Court against GMAC Mortgage and their parent company Ally Financial, in a suit which names Jeffrey Stephan, the infamous “robo-signer” who signed off on up to 10,000 foreclosures a month across the country with affidavits, without verifying the information in the foreclosure documents. The lawsuit alleges fraud on the part of GMAC, along with violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act, in filing false affidavits to mislead the courts in what they describe as “hundreds” of Ohio foreclosure cases. And, the Attorney General is treating every single false affidavit filed in an Ohio court as a separate violation, with a fine of up to $25,000, plus additional restitution for the homeowner of an unspecified amount.
This is a major lawsuit, and as Cordray told reporters, “We’re at the beginning of this, not the middle or end, and we’ll see where it leads us.” For context, approximately 450,000 foreclosures have been filed in Ohio since 2005, and potentially all of them used this robo-signing process. At the outer edge of this, if every one of those foreclosure processes is seen as a single case of fraud, the fines for the entire lending industry would add up to $11.25 BILLION dollars, just in the state of Ohio, not including the extra restitution for homeowners.
Cordray is also requesting information from the other major lenders, and has moved for an injunction against GMC, so it looks like this snowball once he gets to discovery.
Additionally, we have more calls for investigations and a moratorium, with both Nancy Pelosi,the Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper raising concerns. (talk about the odd couple)
Congress has weighed in, sort of, with an unexpected vote in the Senate a week ago approving an electronic notary law which, at least according to Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Secretary of State, increases the possibility of fraud by creating a credit card style race to the bottom in terms of legal standards.
This growing furor may explain one of the peculiarities of the property meltdown, why banks seem to favor foreclosures over short sales even when the former generate more money.
I was unaware of the fact, but the standards for titles are much lower in the event of a foreclosure sale:
If you know anyone in real estate, you have bumped into countless frustrated agents who were attempting to complete shortsales for their selller clients only to have the whole thing fall apart at the last moment and then they later see the same property go into foreclosure for LESS than what the pre-approved shortsale buyer had offered just weeks earlier. Why, why, why, they moan. Why would a bank or mortgage servicer take less than what they could have had?
Well, now I wonder if one potential answer doesn’t have something to do with the types of deeds that get conveyed in a foreclosure and the tie to title insurance. In foreclosures in many states the buyer obtains a specialized deed – a special warranty deed, or a bargain and sale deed which make fewer guarantees for the buyer than the general warranty deed which is transferred in a normal sale(which I believe a short sale still falls under)
………
Is it possible that the foreclosers realized it was in their best interest to abort short sales in favor of foreclosures in order to pass the more limited deeds conveyed in a foreclosure? Did that decision come back to haunt them once the entire foreclosure process itself became highly suspect and publicized? (There is already a large title insurer who is denying title insurance on some foreclosures.)
Of course, the real elephant in the room is that anyone who has gotten a mortgage in the past decade* is just as likely to have problems with their title.
Foreclosures do not create title problems, foreclosures merely reveal those problems.
This is going to be uglier than David Boehner in a thong.
*Full disclosure, like me.
What is the Difference Between a Cat and a Croissant?
Damned if I know:
Stewart Spoke on the Firing of Rick Sanchez
And he was really pretty gentle about the whole thing.
It will still leave a mark, but compared to what he did to Jim Cramer, or what he does to Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker’s new show at the end of this clip in under 10 seconds, it’s really gentle.
Henry Rollins’ Is Saying Something About Politics
A metaphor for our times
Yes, it does sound like our body politic, particularly the bit infected with the teabagger manifestation:
I’ll tear (rip) your mind up, I’ll burn your soul
I’ll turn you into me, I’ll turn you into me
’cause I’m a liar, a liar, a liar, a liar…
Then again, the whole element of pathological need of the person to whom he is lying to keep believing reminds me of a wider range of political fanboi out there.
Your Friday of Muppets
Kermit is a better actor than Keanu Reeves, hoodoodanode.
This Is Bloody Amazing
Entwhistle’s bass playing here is completely sick, and Keith Moon is positively insane.
It’s a nice window into the band about a year before they became rock icons with the release of Tommy.
They were playing at the “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” and they so blew away the Stones that Mssr. Jagger and company did not have the stones* to release the film or album for almost 30 years.
Wow, just wow.
And that fringed jacket is so 1960s.
*Pun intended.
Maryland Court Rules that Video Taping a Cop Waving a Gun Around Like a Lunatic is Not a Crime
The Cop is Completely Out of Control
Mr. Graber, was riding a motorcycle had a helmet cam.
He was also speeding and popping wheelies, which attracted the attention of the police, which is unsurprising.
What is a out of the ordinary is a police officer cutting him off in an unmarked car, and jumping out waving a gun and not identifying himself as a member of the police force until he basically had the gun in the guy’s face.
It looks all the world like an attempted motorcycle-jacking.
Well, Anthony Graber had a helmet cam, and posted the footage to Youtube a few days later, which is when things got hinky.
He was arrested, jailed, and charged with violating Maryland’s wiretapping stature, which forbids recording a private conversation without the consent of both parties, and faced 16 years in jail.
Despite the Maryland Attorney General’s advisory opinion that a public arrest is not a private conversation under the statute, the Harford County DA continued to pursue the suit, but the judge, just dismissed the suit:
Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.
Pitt wrote: “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. ‘Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes’ (“Who watches the watchmen?”).”
Of course, that was the purpose of the charges, to intimidate people who would otherwise report on law enforcement misconduct.
The basic purpose of the arrest, and the ransacking of his house, and the felony charges, were retaliation for being a whistle blower.
Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications” — referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state’s argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices.”
A good decision, and perhaps the continued employment of the States Attorney and the police officers involved in this need to end.
This sort of abuse of power is antithetical to the rule of law.
The White House as a Britcom*
I am watching this, and I can just imagine a nearly identical conversation involving
Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama as is going on between Sr. Humphreys and Minister Jim Hacker.
H/t Atrios for the video, but the insight is mine.
We call it diplomacy, Minister.
* British Comedy.
More of This
Alan Grayson accurately calls his opponent Taliban Dan Webster.
This is what Alan Grayson does best: He explains the moral dimensions of Republican beliefs and Republican policy.
As opposed to drinking tea with the pinky extended, and talking about how stupid or lame the voters or your base is, he takes it to them.
If you don’t call out evil and insanity this time around, it becomes normal behavior the next time around.
This is why triangulation is a failure, it serves only to embolden your opponent to move further away from sanity when you extend the boundaries of what is socially acceptable discourse.
It’s why I love* Alan Grayson.
He understands the moral dimension to policy, and he aggressively communicates these dimensions.
Needless to say, the Beltway Kool Kidz club is having the vapors about his ads.
*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.
French Armed Forces Chief of Staff Agrees With Captain Kirk
You can find the full episode, Taste of Armegeddon, on Youtube, but here is Seth MacFarlane doing William Shatner
In a speech, he is suggesting that the extensive use of remotely controlled vehicles in the pursuit of war creates a sanitized war that could become immoral:
Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the French armed forces chief of staff, warned his distinguished audience at the Summer Defense University on September 14 that “there needs to be a fundamental reflection on the idea that there can be zero deaths in war.” Speaking in measured tones Guillaud, who could easily pass for a brilliant university professor, questioned the increasing use of armed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan. “War becomes banal when the aggressor runs no risks,” he said adding that “the growth in technology must slow down because man must be able to master it.” He stressed that this issue of man mastering technology or allowing himself to become a slave to it “is a real question.” He said “this is an ethical question which will eventually lead to some form of legislation.”
It does sound a lot like:
“Death… destruction, disease, horror, that’s what war is all about. That’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you’ve had no reason to stop it. And you’ve had it for over five hundred years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew, and my ship, I’m going to end it for you. One way, or another.”
Obviously, it’s not immoral to make war in a manner that minimizes casualties, but it’s equally obvious that if the technology results in making war that one would not otherwise make, then there needs to be some real discussion of the what the idea of remote control war, run by remote control, makes war too much of a throw away decision.
Stewart on the Republican Pledge
Why do I even bother blogging, when all I need to do is point you to Jon Stewart monologues:
Just to get this straight: Two years ago America broke up with you because you had badly mistreated her. And so you disappear, do some soul searching, get your head together. And you come back rapping on our door, hat in hand, and you say: ‘Baby, I know you left me, but if we get back together, I pledge to you, I promise you, I will still try to f%$#k your sister. Every chance I get. It’s who I am.’