Category: Wanker

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

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Recall time!

So, the Wisconsin State Senate just pulled the anti-union provisions out of the budget bill, and then, since they did not require a quorum, since they were non-budgetary, they passed it with an 18-1 vote.

I will note that the motion appears to be in violation of the state constitution:

The measure approved Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker.

Those savings would appear to be budgetary to me, and hence subject to the state constitution’s quorum requirement.

Firedog Lake’s invaluable David Dayen has some more of the finer points, and it appears that this is definitely headed to court, though the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is heavily Republican.

If you want to donate to the recall efforts, you can go to my Act Blue Page. There is a link there for donations.

Also note that in the middle of the most important fight for ordinary working Americans in decades, the Obama administration has decided that they don’t want to be involved:

Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address, in which he exhorted the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

I guess that someone in the administration finds unions, and ordinary working people to be icky. After all, they expect to spend a billion dollars in 2012 on the Presidential election, and the working man just does not have that kind of money.

Barack Obama is very lucky that the Republicans are as awful as they are, because otherwise, as awful as he is, he’d have a serious primary challenger right now.

What can I say, when Mitt Romney is the class act in the room, you have a very scary political party.

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So, the good algorythms at Google™ Adsense™ are at it again.

Another poll from Newsmax™ and its gaydar tripping* publisher Joseph Farah trying to manufacturing consent.

With his poll numbers in Wisconsin falling faster than Pan Am flight 103, it’s not surprising that they are coming up with internet polls with slanted questions in order to allow them to pretend that Walker is really doing the public’s business.

Well, to the degree that Google™ and I make money off of this, at least there is some poetic justice.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

*Which is kind of surprising, since I did not know that I even had gaydar.

And A Maryland Democrat Joins the Ranks of the Morally Repugnant

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And here he is tweeting his support a month ago

When Maryland Delegate Sam Aora (D-Silver Spring) ran for office, he said that he supported gay marriage.

He’s one of the cosponsors for the bill that provides for recognition of Gay marriage in Maryland.

Well, now that it’s passed the state Senate, and looks like it is going to pass , he says that he is going to vote against it.

This isn’t just about a politician lying. This is about a politician making the issue the core of his campaign, and then betraying the people who supported him because of it.

It was at the core of his campaign.

He campaigned on in, and raised money on it.

Unsurprisingly, there is now a drum beat of people who are asking for their campaign contributions back, particularly since it looks like his vote will kill the bill.

This guy might be the biggest slime ball in Maryland, and that says a lot!

AT&T Has No Right to Privacy

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In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court decided that corporations do not have a right to personal privacy under the Freedom of Information Act statute.

It was not even close.  It was unanimous, and there wasn’t even a separate concurring opinion.

The facts are clear:  AT&T cheated the government when it was wiring up schools and libraries, got caught, and paid a fine.

What happened next was that its competitors made FOIA requests to find out exactly what they did, and AT&T claimed that this would constitute an unwarranted intrusion of the corporation’s personal privacy which might “embarrass” it, which some some federal appellate judge who did too much LDS in the 60s actually bought that crap.

In reviewing the opinion, written by John Roberts (see here)what is exceedinbly clear is that John Roberts thought that this was an opportunity to sound “arch” or “witty”:

We disagree. Adjectives typically reflect the meaning of corresponding nouns, but not always. Sometimes they acquire distinct meanings of their own. The noun “crab” refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective “crabbed” can refer to handwriting that is “difficult to read,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 527 (2002); “corny” can mean “using familiar and stereotyped formulas believed to appeal to the unsophisticated,” id., at 509, which has little to do with “corn,” id., at 507 (“the seeds of any of the cereal grasses used for food”); and while “crank” is “a part of an axis bent at right angles,” “cranky” can mean “given to fretful fussiness,” id., at 530.

Maybe it’s just me, but he sounds neither “arch” nor “witty”, but rather like an 8th grade student who thinks that he is far more clever than he actually is.

It was a good decision, but Roberts’ opinion is just plain lame.

This is Not Going to End Well

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So, the Republicans got a 2 week extension on the debt ceiling, just long enough to make them sound reasonable, and short enough that they can try to destroy the economy for the 2012 elections with stupid budget cuts.

It’s like the Democrats are playing to lose.

If Obama had any guts, he would make sure that it was Republican oxen were gored by a shutdown, canceling things like the farm aid, etc., but since he doesn’t, you can be sure that the cuts when a shutdown occurs, and it is when, not if, will fall disproportionately on the poor and the Democratic base.

Stay Classy David Petraeus

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In response to allegations of civilian casualties in response to military operations in Konar province, America’s favorite showboating general claimed that Afghan parents probably burnt their own children for propaganda purposes:

To the shock of President Hamid Karzai’s aides, Gen. David H. Petraeus suggested Sunday at the presidential palace that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting.

…………

The U.S. military “did have initial reports that the feet and hands of the children appeared to have been burned,” Smith said. “We have observed increased reporting of children being disciplined by having their hands and feet dipped into boiling water. No one is claiming this is the case in this instance, but it may well be.”

Petraeus apparently had suggested something along these lines at the national security council meeting Sunday, remarks that “really bothered everyone,” including Karzai, one participant said.

“He claimed that in the midst of the [operation] some pro-Taliban parents in contact with a government official decided to create a civilian casualty claim to pressure international forces to cease the [operation]. They burned hands and legs of some of their children and sent them to the hospital,” a second participant said.

I know that Petraeus sees his mission as continuing the various “Forever Wars,” because it keeps that old Pentagon gravy train rolling along, but this is beneath contempt.

Maybe, instead of coming up with alibis for civilian casualties, he should try to reduce the number.

Now We Know What Gives Timothy Geithner an Erection

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Noam Scheiber interviewed Geithner, and gave us this gem:

I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape—for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy—and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World War and then remade Europe so that it couldn’t happen again?

Geithner hunched his shoulders, pressed his knees together, and lifted his heels up off the ground—an almost childlike expression of glee. “We’re going, like, existential,” he said. He told me he subscribes to the view that the world is on the cusp of a major “financial deepening”: As developing economies in the most populous countries mature, they will demand more and increasingly sophisticated financial services, the same way they demand cars for their growing middle classes and information technology for their corporations. If that’s true, then we should want U.S. banks positioned to compete abroad.

“I don’t have any enthusiasm for … trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy as a test of reform, because we have to think about the fact that we operate in the broader world,” he said. “It’s the same thing for Microsoft or anything else. We want U.S. firms to benefit from that.” He continued: “Now financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation.” This was the purpose of the recent financial reform, he said. In effect, Geithner was arguing that we should be as comfortable linking the fate of our economy to Wall Street as to automakers or Silicon Valley.

And then he smoked a cigarette, and asked if was good for me.

H/t David Dayen.

Sorry for that image.

Because it Pisses off Democrats. That’s why.

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Medicare fraudster, and Florida governor, Rick Scott has decided to cancel a high speed rail project between Orlando and Tampa Florida:

Florida’s congressional delegation, state officials and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer are pushing back against Gov. Rick Scott’s decision Wednesday to reject $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed train between Orlando and Tampa.

“This is a century-type decision that needs to be vetted,” Dyer said. “I don’t think it was given a fair hearing.”

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood intends to meet either in person or by phone Friday with Florida elected officials, likely including Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Reps. John Mica, R-Winter Park, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, to discuss ways of keeping the project alive even as California, New York and Washington state offered to take some of the money.

And some officials were bitterly critical of Scott for pulling the plug even before bids had gone out to build the 84-mile system. Eight consortia of companies from 11 countries had indicated they would be willing to put up some or all of the state’s $280 million share of the project, while the bid terms would have required them to absorb cost overruns and any operating losses for 20 years.

So, let’s look at this, it would:

  • Cost the state little or no money.
  • Losses and cost overruns are someone else’s problem.
  • Disney wanted it for their Disney World Theme park.
  • It would have created 23,000 construction jobs.

So, why did he cancel it?  Because in so doing, he’s pissing off Democrats and liberals.

When looking at Republican policy making, one needs to realize that there is an imperative, pissing off Democrats, that frequently subordinates good policy, and sometimes even good politics.

Basically, Republicans are dicks.

No, they aren’t dicks, a dick has a head.

Not Enough Bullets

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No, but apparently we look like a bitch


This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter “B”, as in bullet, and banker …

So, Citi’s CEO, the incomparably incompetent Vikram Pandit, is saying that if if regulators reign in debit card fees, they will have to stick it to poor people:

U.S. banks may cut their services to the poorest Americans as a result of new U.S. financial regulations, including federal caps on debit card processing fees, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said Tuesday.

New U.S. laws, including the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act passed last year, “will change banking,” Pandit said in prepared remarks due to be delivered at an investors’ conference in New York Tuesday.

This makes me want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass …… OK, I want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass dressed in an Elmo suit, but that last bit is just me …… Or at least I think (hope) that the last bit is just me.

Let’s be clear here the debit card fees are a fee levied disproportionately on the poor, and he’s saying that if he can’t f%$# the poor like a bitch, then he won’t serve them?

This guy has a job because he f%$#ed so badly no one wants to take his job, because they would have to fix his mess, and so he, and the whole rotten bank, live off of TARP money, back door Treasury Department subsidies, and the largess of “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve, and he has the nerve to suggest that he is anything but a leech at the public tit.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

No, This is Not The Onion…

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Just Because This Needs to Be Shared, So That His Shame Endures for a Very Long Time

But when a married Congressman trolls Craigslist for female companionship and sends a picture of himself topless, it certainly sounds that way:

Representative Christopher Lee of New York abruptly resigned on Wednesday night after a shirtless photo of himself, which he had e-mailed to a woman, was published on the Internet.
Mr. Lee, a two-term Republican from western New York, notified the House speaker, John A. Boehner, of his decision in a letter on Wednesday afternoon, after the scandal had erupted, according to senior Congressional officials.
Mr. Lee’s office released a statement in which he asked for forgiveness. “I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents,” he wrote. “I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”

The resignation came hours after Gawker, a gossip Web site, published an e-mail exchange that Mr. Lee, who is married and has a son, had with a 34-year-old Maryland woman he had met through Craigslist.

In his response to said woman, he described himself as “classy”.

This must be a meaning of the word “classy” I’ve been previously unaware of.

Republican Fail

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I’m not sure how it happened, but the Republicans in the house failed to pass an extension of some of the more contemptible parts of the Patriot Act:

Too clever by half, the House GOP leadership allowed only 40 minutes of debate on the extension of the PATRIOT Act today, and brought the bill up for a vote under a rule allowing no amendments and requiring two-thirds of the body to vote YES.

Well, that didn’t happen. Apparently, the Tea Party Congresscritters discovered their love for the constitution, Amendments One and Four inclusive, while taking the opportunity to stand up to their leadership’s lackadaisical attitude toward the Act’s extension.

I believe that the Republican House leadership may have a much deeper appreciation of just the deeper meaning of the exclamation that Dan Castellaneta created as the voice of Homer Simpson.

Heh.

Good Riddance

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Representative Jane Harman (CA-36) is retiring to run the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

My guess is that she realized, after Marcy Winograd lost in the primary with 41.2% of the vote, that with a Republican Congress, and the attendant loss of power (and pork for her district), she would be toast in either the primary or the general election.

So, less than a month into her new term, she’s bailing for a cushy job working in Washington, DC, and saddling the taxpayers with the cost of running another (2 if there is a run off) elections.

Stay classy, Blue Dog.

This is What You Get When You Fist F%$# a Cobra …

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Complete PWN463!

I while back, I mentioned 4Chan, I should add the inventive group of people known as Anonymous who ofttimes frequent 4Chan:

Anonymous, the online collective that launched DDoS attacks on Visa, PayPal and others in support of whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, has brought down the web site of a firm helping the FBI to unmask its members.

Security services firm HBGary Federal had been helping the Feds to track down the individuals behind a number of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on companies including Amazon, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Swiss bank PostFinance and Bank of America, after the firms suspended services to WikiLeaks.

In a sophisticated attack, Anonymous members hacked into HBGary’s website and posted an image containing a message explaining their actions. In addition, they downloaded over 60,000 messages from the company’s email servers and posted them on The Pirate Bay.

The Twitter account of HBGary’s CEO, Aaron Barr, was also compromised and used to tweet a number of offensive messages, as well as his home address, social security number and mobile phone number.

(Link to torrent mine, and I make no claims as to the safety or veracity of the data.  I have not downloaded the data myself)

Yeah, and it has also been reported that they deleted HBGary’s backups.

Not only did they pick a fight with Anonymous, but it also appears that they are complete posers as well, who were leaching publicly available names from Facebook and IRC, and trying to sell this to the FBI.

Well, not any more, because, according to the letter that was the HBGary home page (above) they sent the data to the FBI themselves.

What a bunch of complete wankers, Aaron Barr and company that is, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Anonymous.

And so Anonymous is added to my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, and HBGary is added to the likes or Razorfish, to my list of people who I would never trust with anything more complex than a mechanical pencil.

Not Enough Bullets

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Here is a guy who is worth more than the GDP of something like 80% of the countries in the world, and he’s bitching because people are not as nice to him as he would like:

What’s eating Jamie Dimon?

At last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive once again lambasted the media and politicians for portraying all bankers as greedy evil-doers.

It was at least the 12th time since the start of the financial crisis that Dimon has complained about Wall Street critics painting all bankers as cut from the same cloth. But the timing of his latest outburst seemed odd.

In December, as part of President Barack Obama’s bid to make nice with U.S. business leaders, Dimon was invited to a private Oval Office one-on-one with the president to discuss the economy. Dimon and his wife Judy were also guests at the state dinner the White House arranged for Chinese President Hu Jintao last month. And one of Dimon’s top executives, Bill Daley, was tapped by the president as chief of staff.

BTW, the reason that the media portrays, “all bankers as greedy evil-doers,” and critics of our banking system paint, “all bankers as cut from the same cloth,” is because it’s true.

You are all a bunch of contemptible greed-heads, Mr. “We started shorting Bernie Madoff because we knew he was a fraud, but didn’t bother telling anyone.”

This is why we need to prosecute every one of these rat-bastards to the fullest extent allowed by law.

Republicans Are So F%$#ing Classy

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Wouldn’t you know it, “Jesse Kelly, the ex-Marine Tea Partyer who challenged Gabrielle Giffords,” is looking into the possibility of gearing up for a special election:

Kelly, if you don’t already know, has been taking heat since Giffords’ shooting for sponsoring a campaign event last year in which supporters joined him in shooting a “fully automatic M-16.” “Get on target for November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” the event’s announcement read.

It’s true that the M-16 event had no direct connection with Giffords’ shooting, and claims that it indirectly helped create a “climate” conducive to the shooting are dubious at best. Still, to many people, Kelly is now best known as the guy who encouraged supporters to shoot M-16s in the name of defeating a member of Congress who was, several months later, nearly shot to death. Politically, the association is toxic, and Kelly faces a formidable — maybe impossible — task in repairing the damage.

Thus, stories about him quietly looking into whether there might soon be a special election for Giffords’ seat are particularly damaging for him. Sure, the inquiry his campaign apparently made wasn’t actually that unreasonable. There were, after all, reports earlier this week that Arizona state law requires that Giffords’ seat be declared vacant if she’s incapacitated for more than 90 days. All Kelly may have done is make a discreet inquiry about whether this is true. (It isn’t; only the House itself can declare a seat vacant.) But, especially in the wake of the M-16 controversy, it looks terrible for Kelly to be seen making political calculations right now.

Actually, it doesn’t look terrible.

It’s par for the course for the ‘Phants.  It took them about 12 hours to politicize 911, after all.

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Cindy Gertz, the US Treasury official responsible for trying to prevent foreclosures, just praised the mortgage servicers for their efforts at preventing forecolsures:

An Obama administration housing official on Wednesday defended mortgage servicing companies, just one day after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the industry needs an overhaul.

Cindy Gertz, director of operations at the Treasury Department’s Homeownership Preservation Office, said mortgage servicers–firms which collect loan payments–have hired tens of thousands of extra staff to work with a crush of struggling borrowers who are trying to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages.

“I think tremendous progress has been made,” Gertz told a group of bankers at a conference organized by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Gertz, a former executive at mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac, did acknowledge that the process is not complete.

This is kind of like saying that IV drug users who share needles have been helpful in the fights against AIDS.

The only explanation for the fact that a Google News search of the name does not reveal the phrase, “Spending more time with her family,” is that this is what her boss, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, and his boss, Barack Obama, actually believe that loan servicers acting in bad faith are a necessary to protect our banking system.