Thursday, April 30, 2009

Credit Card Completed, Cramdown Crashes

While the House easily did pass credit card reform legislation, the cramdown bankruptcy foreclosure bill was killed. Not by Republicans, mind you...but by a dozen Democrats.
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Robert Byrd (D-WV)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Arlen Specter (D-PA)
Jon Tester (D-MT)
And Evan Bayh didn't even have to vote against it. The banksters own enough of the Democratic Party to assure that no real reform will happen -- only trillions more in bailouts until America is broke. Remember, no cramdown means more Americans out of their homes, meaning more damage to all sectors of the economy and a longer recovery.

PS, Thanks Arlen!

Dammit Jim, I'm A Blogger, Not A Senator!

Realizing that he has basically zero chance of winning reelection at this point, Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning is throwing in the towel in 2010.
Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning, the most endangered Republican up for reelection in 2010, appears headed for retirement after giving his leading GOP rival the blessing to prepare to run for his seat next year.

Bunning’s retirement would be a huge victory for national Republicans who have grown increasingly nervous that the 77-year-old two-term senator would lose a critical race as the party tries to cling to its diminished minority in the Senate.

On Thursday afternoon, Kentucky GOP Secretary of State Trey Grayson announced that he would form an exploratory committee to run for Bunning’s seat — a move that Kentucky GOP operatives say is a precursor to Bunning's retirement. Grayson's entry will come as a relief to Kentucky Republicans and Senate GOP leaders, who may now have reason to believe their party could hold on to this seat.
And actually I was really, really hoping Jim would stick around. He was terribly unpopular. But this makes it a wide open race, and the fact that as a wide open seat it's still competitive for the Dems in the state that gave McCain his largest victory is really saying something.

The funny part? The last guy to find out Jim Bunning was retiring was apparently Jim Bunning.
Bunning’s spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment, but GOP sources expect Bunning — whose lackluster fundraising and erratic behavior has put his reelection bid in imperil — to eventually make his announcement official.

“He’s either acting in a really odd manner or graciously setting the table for preparing for the strongest candidate to be viable and ready to run as soon as he officially retires,” said a senior GOP aide. "Why would someone anoint the strongest statewide Republican to form a committee to run against him?”

With Bunning in the race, Democrats viewed the Kentucky Senate seat as one of their leading pickup opportunities, given the two-term senator’s tenuous political standing. Two statewide Democratic officials — Attorney General Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo — entered the race in the last several months, and led Bunning in many public polls.

A Public Policy Polling survey conducted earlier this month showed Bunning with just a 28 percent approval rating — exceptionally weak for an incumbent who hasn’t been tainted by scandal. The poll showed every prospective Democratic challenger defeating Bunning.
Having to publicly hand the knife to the guy who is cutting your own throat and having to smile while doing it. It's great being a Republican.

Road Warriors

Bob Reich looks at the Chrysler bankruptcy deal.
GM just announced it was laying of 21,000 more of its workers, as a means of assurring the Treasury Department the company is worthy of more bailout money. A Treasury official was quoted as saying approvingly that the goal is a "slimmed-down" GM.

What? Having General Motors or Chrysler cut tens of thousands of jobs in order to be eligible for a government bailout reminds me of "saving" Vietnam by bombing it to smithereens. Aren't we giving these companies billions of taxpayer dollars to save jobs? If not, we're just transferring money from taxpayers to GM and Chrysler bondholders and shareholders.

I agree with those who say the United States needs an auto industry. But there's no point spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars for an auto industry that's a tiny fragment of what it was before. We could achieve that objective by doing nothing.
Which, if you are paying attention, paying off the shareholders and killing UAW jobs is exactly the point of the exercise.

The only thing the last 100 days has proven is that the UAW has approximately .0001% of the lobbying power among Democrats as the banks do. But hey, it's not like tens of thousands of auto workers and dealers are going to lose their jobs or anything.

After all, tens of thousands of unemployed auto workers will only help the Magical V-Shaped Recovery!

Department Of Sniffles

From HuffPo:
A security aide helping with arrangements during President Barack Obama's recent trip to Mexico became sick with flu-like symptoms and three members of his family later contracted probable swine flu, the White House said Thursday.

The disclosure from press secretary Robert Gibbs comes days after the White House played down risks to the U.S. delegation on the two-day trip that started April 16. Gibbs remained steadfast that the president was never at risk of contracting the flu, which has quickly spread across the globe.

The employee, who was not named by the White House, is an aide to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and helped plan the Mexico trip.

You better not give this flu crap to those little Obama girls, dammit. I mean that.

That Poll Axed Look

Tuesday I remarked that when only 21% of Americans call themselves Republicans in your poll, your party is in deep trouble.

Now a number of polls show that the percentage of Americans identify themselves as Republicans has fallen into the low 20's.
The number of people who self-identify themselves as Republicans continues to shrink, as evidenced by four separate national polls released over the last five days. If this doesn't scare party leaders, they're not paying attention.

The Post/ABC poll found 21% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans. The NYT/CBS poll put the number at 20%. NBC/WSJ also put the GOP number at 20%.

The latest Pew Research Center study has a better take on the GOP's standing, but only slightly.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party on Tuesday highlights what is happening across the nation among Republicans -- they are walking away from the GOP.

The latest survey from the Pew Research Center offers new data on the party's diminishing ranks: just 23% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25% in 2008 and from 30% in 2004.

Republicans have lost about a quarter of its base over the past five years.

Four polls, four results showing that only about a fifth of the population consider themselves Republicans. To put that in perspective, in 1992, Ross Perot and whatever it was his party was called got about 19% of the vote nationwide. Republicans are only slightly stronger now.
That's staggering. And yet, they continue to double down with their mistakes over the last several years.

We really are living in a one party system in 2009, and it's because the second party is rapidly becoming non-viable.

[UPDATE] The best political numbers guy in the business, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com, crunches the digits and comes up with this:
The shifts in the number of Republicans and independents appears to be a somewhat recent phenomenon, dating not from Inauguration Day itself but rather from the past 50 days or so. My guess is that it is related to increasing -- if possibly unwarranted -- optimism about the economy, perhaps coupled with the GOP's lack of focus in articulating an agenda.
Roughly 50 days ago was when Obama signed both the order overturning Bush's stem cell research ban on March 9 and signed the omnibus spending bill into law on March 11, clearly both big accomplishments for the President.

But I'm thinking the events that caused this mass defection to Independent was caused by the following: Republicans called Obama's overturning of Bush's stem cell ban, something approved by a large majority of Americans (including Independents) a "distraction", which may have hurt, but I honestly think the "Which 2012 hopeful can reject the most stimulus money for their state?" story which started ramping up around the same time. Who could forget the rogues' gallery of GOP governors racing to the bottom by rejecting unemployment benefits from the recently signed stimulus bill?

If you're looking for a correpsonding series of events that would cause GOP voters to switch to Independents since Inaguration Day, there you are. The dim realization that the 2012 nominee would be somebody like Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin or Mark Sanford would certainly turn off more moderate GOP voters in droves.

Epic Brand Name Fail

As Steve Benen points out, Republicans are once again Doing It Wrong:
It seems several leading Republicans have effectively given up hope that the GOP is the "party of ideas," and want to start over.

Looking to rebrand a struggling Republican Party, a group of party heavyweights including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) are launching a new group that will hold town halls around the country and look to produce GOP ideas on issues like education and health care.

Republicans will announce today the creation of the "National Council for a New America," a group led by congressional party leaders that includes Bush, McCain, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as its "national panel of experts."

I see. The "rebranding" effort will be led in part by conservative Republicans with the last names Bush and McCain. What could possibly go wrong?

Or, as Josh Marshall put it, "You know things are really humming along when your 'rebranding' effort is led by your recently crushed presidential nominee and your discredited party leader's brother."

And the sad part is that it's not funny in the long run. We need a viable second political party and I swear that the GOP is trying to extinguish themselves in the fires of self-immolation just so the Democrats will start screwing up on purpose to save the Republicans.

He-Man can't be He-Man without Skeletor, you know.

EPIC FAIL.

Stupor Heroes

There are times when I'm actually proud of Cincinnati.

This is not one of them.

CRE Is DOA

I've been warning you guys about the commercial real estate collapse for quite some time now, and we're starting to see that collapse accelerate to the point where the news media is picking it up.
A commercial mortgage meltdown is likely to prolong the nation's economic recovery. The falling prices in commercial real estate will lead to additional bank losses at a time when banks are sapped by home mortgage defaults and soaring credit card defaults. This could lead to future additional taxpayer assistance for the banks.

The reality is already on display. On April 16, the nation's second largest mall developer, General Growth Properties, filed for bankruptcy protection. The Chicago-based company owns more than 200 malls across the U.S., and was unable to renegotiate its debts as they came due.

Six days later, a 40-story office tower on New York's Avenue of the Americas was seized by its creditor, a Canadian-owned pension fund. The tower's owner, Macklowe Properties, couldn't meet loan terms.

"On the street, the rumor is it is coming and it's going to come fast and furious. Some people are predicting September," said Paul Waters, a New York-based executive vice president of brokerage operations in North America for NAI Global, a top-five commercial real estate brokerage with operations across the globe.

Just like the housing meltdown, the commercial real estate crunch is likely to begin as a slow bleed that gains momentum. The coming commercial real-estate crunch is likely to be spread evenly across the nation, in large part because of an outgoing economic tide that's spared few companies anywhere.

"There's going to be a lot of trouble on Main Street with some of these commercial and industrial buildings. The biggest impact will be on some of the smaller owners," Waters said. "The smaller local regional players that are stretched thin may have some great difficulties with their mortgages."

Wheels within wheels, death spirals within death spirals. This will only assure there will be no recovery in 2009 and there may very well be no recovery in 2010 either.

Don't be fooled by the quick recovery happy talk. It's not going to happen. It will continue to get worse. Just because the rate of your fall out of the airplane has hit terminal velocity doesn't mean you stop falling.

Unleash Joe Biden!

It's Joe versus Swine Flu!

Helpful Joe Biden is Helpful. You know, like a 6 year old with paint. That kind of helpful. Honest, in a Freudian slip kinda off-message way, but helpful!

Preventing irrational panic: you're doing it wrong, Joe.

Chrysler And The Great Bankster Wars

Jim Kwak at Baseline Scenario tries his hand at being a war corespondent from Wall Street, where the news that Chrysler's deal has collapsed and bankruptcy is imminent is just one small part of a much larger battle.
I’ve been writing a lot about the game of chicken recently, most often in connection with the GM and Chrysler bailouts. On the Chrysler front, the game is in its last hours. Even after a consortium of large banks agreed to the proposed debt-for-equity swap, some smaller hedge funds are holding out for more money, and even the extra $250 million that Treasury agreed to kick in seems unlikely to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

The problem is that bankruptcy is the only weapon Chrysler and Treasury have in this fight, and it’s a strategic nuclear weapon. Bankruptcy is the only threat that can get the bondholders to agree to a swap; but because a bankruptcy carries some risk of destroying Chrysler (because control will lie in the hands of a bankruptcy judge - not Chrysler, Treasury, the UAW, or Fiat), and taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with it, everyone knows that Treasury would prefer not to use it. The bondholders are betting that they can use Treasury’s fear of a bankruptcy to extract better terms at the last minute. (And it’s even possible that the large banks agreed to the swap knowing they could count on the smaller, less politically exposed hedge funds to veto it.) But Treasury may still press the button, because it needs to make a statement in advance of the bigger GM confrontation scheduled for a month from now.

The Obama administration is in fact now saying this morning that Chrysler will be nuked from orbit. The plan is to join it with Fiat without liquidating it, but still the expectation is that thousands and thousands of Chrysler jobs will have to be shed.

The question is why are we blasting Chrysler's jobs to hell, but refusing to hold insolvent banks to the same kind of deal? In fact, the banks are refusing to accept anything less than the trillions in free money they are getting now and have no intention of doing anything else.

Why are the banks turning their banks on this government largesse? I think there are two reasons.

First, taking capital under the CAP or selling assets into the PPIP involves some hardship, despite the taxpayer subsidies involved. Raising capital dilutes existing shareholders, and selling assets (at prices where someone will buy them) will require writedowns from their current, unrealistic book values. Treasury really wants the banks to participate, because it will increase confidence in the banks, and that’s why Treasury is offering to share the pain, via underpriced capital and low-risk loans.

But even though Treasury is so generously offering to share the pain, what’s the incentive for the banks to suffer any pain at all? We know the government won’t use the strategic nuclear weapon and let them go bankrupt or pull their banking licenses (which amount to the same thing). And Tim Geithner’s request for a battlefield nuclear weapon - resolution authority for systemically important financial institutions, including bank holding companies - seems to be going nowhere in Congress. This is not surprising, since the banks have already demonstrated that they can count on most or all Republicans and at least a few Democrats in the Senate. With the administration’s hands tied and the banks’ political power intact, the banks are in the same position they always were: if things go well, they will make money; if things go badly, the government will always bail them out later, on terms they are willing to accept.

On the one hand, the banks are complaining about unprecedented government interference and pressure, and to some extent that is happening. But on the other hand, the banks are ultimately calling the shots, because they know Tim Geithner can’t use his only real weapon.

Second, the incentives of managers and shareholders are not aligned. A major factor in the banks’ reluctance to participate in their own rescue seems to be fear of government interference, which is code for executive compensation restrictions.

Executives worry that whatever assurances the White House gives them, an angry Congress might impose new rules on banks that participate, particularly on pay. . . . “We’re certainly not going to borrow from the federal government, because we’ve learned our lesson about that,” [Jamie Dimon] said earlier this month in a conference about earnings.

Now, while I think some of the compensation caps discussed in Congress (but not passed by the Senate, as far as I know) were silly, I haven’t heard a lot of shareholders complaining about them; it’s the managers who don’t want them. So the situation is very simple. Participating in PPIP, for example, might be a net positive for shareholders, because even though it forces short-term writedowns, it also reduces the risk of larger writedowns in the future. But if managers think that it will lead to compensation limits, then it is a net negative for managers. I think our readers can fill in the rest of this thought.

In other words, the banksters continue to run the bank bailouts to the tune of trillions of dollars. And Obama and Geithner are going along, because failure to do so means the collpase of the global economy. It's extortion, and the one thing that could end the cycle -- Plan N -- has been killed in Congress by the bank lobbyists.

So we'll continue to be shaken down for big bucks until the free money we print to pay off the extortion breaks the back of the creditor nations that fund our economy. That will eventually happen, but not before the banksters walk off with our economy to another "less restrictive" country.

The banksters have won the war...and the American people have all but lost.

[UPDATE] Glenn Greenwald has more on the bankster lobbyists controlling Congress.

[UPDATE 2] D-day has Obama on Chrysler:

While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you, some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting. I don't stand with them. I stand with Chrysler's employees, its families and communities. I stand with Chrysler's management, its dealers and suppliers. I stand with the millions of Americans who own and want to buy Chrysler cars. I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices.
Really. Well then. You should have a little talk with guys like Dick Durbin and Evan Bayh there, because they do most certainly stand with the banksters.

If It's Thursday...

Y'all get the memo anyway. 631,000 new unemployment claims, and we've officially jumped the 6.3 million mark on continuing claims. Consumer spending and personal income down in March, labor costs decreased as well (that happens when you fire 2 million people in 3 months.)

All in all, bad news. April job numbers will be out soon, expecting another 600,00+ jobs lost.

War Of The Elephants

The Republican civil war continues, spilling over onto the pages of the NY Times.
A fundamental debate broke out among Republicans on Wednesday over how to rebuild the party in the wake of Senator Arlen Specter’s departure: Should it purge moderate voices like Mr. Specter and embrace its conservative roots or seek to broaden its appeal to regain a competitive position against Democrats?

With consensus growing among Republicans that the party is in its worst political position in recent memory, some conservatives applauded Mr. Specter’s departure. They said it cleared the way for the party to distance itself from its record of expanding government during the Bush years and to re-emphasize the calls for tax cuts and reduced federal spending that have dominated Republican thought for more than 30 years.

“We strayed from our principles of limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom,” said Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who is head of Club for Growth, a group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it considers insufficiently conservative. “We have to adhere to those principles to rebuild the party. Those are the brand of the Republican Party, and people feel that we betrayed the brand.”

But Republican leaders in Washington argued that Republicans would be permanently marginalized unless they showed flexibility on social issues as well as economic ones.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he would seek to recruit candidates who he thought could win in Democratic or swing states, even if it meant supporting candidates who might disagree with his own conservative views.

Mr. Cornyn said he was taking a page from Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the last head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who led his party to big gains by embracing candidates who, for example, opposed abortion rights or gun control.

“If you think about it, Schumer has been very good at this; I complimented him this morning in the gym,” Mr. Cornyn said, adding, “Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles.”
As I've said before, the outcome of this is vitally important to the country. If the Republicans go for the Club For Growth "Purity" path, they are doomed as an effective counter to the Democrats and that actually hurts the country as a whole. On the other hand, nobody's going to believe them when they say they are the Big Tent party when they continue to demonize Hispanics, blacks, gays and lesbians, union blue collar workers, the scientific and environmentally minded, and the pro-choice memberships of their party and continue to drive them into the arms of the Democrats. They lost in 2006 and 2008 because they drove far more people away from their party than included people in it. It's that simple.

The GOP still thinks it can be the party of 2010 by pretending to be the party of 1980, when they are really still the party of 1950 and economically the party of 1920. It can't work. America has changed fundamentally from the 20th century and will continue to do so. But the Republicans refuse to recognize it. The Democrats have adapted. They are thriving as a result. The GOP won't evolve and demand the country change back to the way they want things, and are incapable of understanding why this isn't working any longer. They see a landslide in 2010 and 2012 not because the Democrats did something right (that's impossible) but because the GOP controls the political universe and they did something wrong. Even the concept that the Democrats won is incomprehensible to them. Democrats can never win...Republicans just fail to do so by sheer coincidence that will not be repeated. The next election will prove America is conservative. Bush failed conservatism, conservatism itself can never actually fail. The GOP followed the moderates and failed to win. Ergo, the moderates must be jettisoned.

As such, they will continue to fail to win. Lindsey Graham has the best quote in the article:
“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”
Amen to that, brother. And your own party continues to spread the taint of hate, intolerance and bigotry on a daily basis.

StupidiNews!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Last Call

New Hampshire is now well on its way to becoming the 5th state to legalize gay marriage.

Mexican Standoff

MSNBC is reporting Mexico is basically going into shutdown mode to fight the spread of Swine Flu.
Mexico on Wednesday suspended nonessential services at government offices and private businesses in an attempt to fight the widening swine flu epidemic.

The decision came as global health authorities warned Wednesday that swine flu was threatening to bloom into a pandemic, and the virus spread farther in Europe even as the outbreak appeared to stabilize at its epicenter. A toddler who succumbed in Texas became the first death outside Mexico.

Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos announced the move to shut down most of the country’s government and economy shortly after his department reported that confirmed cases of infection with the new strain of influenza had risen. The death toll in Mexico is believed to be 160.

This seems well over the line. If Obama tried this here, the cries of "fascism!" would almost certainly lead to an armed revolt across the country. On the other hand, if people somehow start dying from this in the US, the exact same thing could easily happen.

Imagine Obama getting on TV across the country and closing schools and businesses like this until further notice. You'd have riots within days. Imagine too that people are dying and Obama doesn't close businesses and schools. The riots would come, only it would take longer.

I don't like where this is going. As it is this country is a powderkeg. I'm honestly worried, not about the Swine Flu, but the response to it.

I don't like it at all. Thousands of people die from flu each year. Why is this a global emergency?

OBAMAVISION

So, no border closing with Mexico because of Swine Flu, state secrets are overbroad(!!!), yes, he's read Cheney's documents and doesn't buy the legal argument for torture but doesn't quite call it criminal (and didn't say he was never going to do it again), Iraq's not so bad, Pakistan is very bad, and Arlen Specter's an okay guy.

Something of a tap dance job, but then again he's got a lot of damn stuff to deal with and that's just this week. Still...Obama did give solid answers on a lot of things (just not torture). I do like the reduction of state secrets...especially since the courts are kind of killing him on it.

Also, wash your hands.

(Could Dubya have kept even a quarter of all that straight?)

And what's with nobody asking a question about the economy until the Telemundo and the BET reporter do it?

Why The GOP Keeps Losing


This, and:


This. As Think Progress points out:
Hate crimes laws go after violent crimes, not thoughts. In fact, the law specifically stipulates that "evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense."

Apparently unbeknownst to House Republicans, a federal hate crimes law already exists: Passed in 1968, it allowed federal investigation and prosecution of hate crimes based on race, religion, and national origin. The new law would simply add sexual orientation and gender identity to the protected groups, and allow local governments to get needed resources from the federal government for investigations and prosecutions. The need for such parity was made starkly clear more than a decade ago, in 1998, during the investigations of two different murders:

The Laramie, Wyoming Sheriff’s Office had to furlough five deputies in order to cover the more than $150,000 that it cost to investigate Matthew Shepard’s murder. Yet when Jasper, Texas investigated the lynching of James Byrd, Jr., it received $284,000 in federal funds because Byrd’s murder was motivated by race, rather than sexual orientation.

Since then, members of Congress have sought to pass an expanded hate crimes law. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed both houses in 2007, but was stripped from a larger bill after President Bush vowed to veto it.

More than thirty states already have hate crime legislation that includes anti-gay crimes -- and in none of those states has notorious gay hater Fred Phelps been arrested for his speech. It's clear what the GOP is really concerned about is any perceived infringement on their right to discriminate against gay people.

The bill passed the House easily...18 House Republicans even voted for it.

Head-Scratchingly Racist

That's the only conclusion I can come up with from Byron York's idiotic implication that Obama's positive poll numbers are inflated by African-Americans like myself, thus rendering them somehow meaningless.
On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.
Wait, what?

Excuse me? It sounds like you just said that the political views of African-Americans should not be included in the overall political analysis of an African-American President because those views are not representative of "America" somehow.

Now, I can understand the logic of African-Americans representing about 12% of the US population not being fully representative. But Byron here seems to be suggesting that we should in fact be penalizing the President's approval numbers, if not politically ignoring African-Americans' views of Obama altogether to arrive at some sort of "valid" approval figure.

But why are we breaking this down by race anyway? What exactly does the exercise accomplish other than trying to sweep the political relevance of African-Americans under the rug? Why write an entire article based on this?
In the final count, 62 percent of whites approve of the job Obama is doing as president. Among blacks, the number is 96 percent. Together, the two groups give Obama an overall job approval rating of 68 percent.
So, what are you saying again? That Obama's "real" approval rating should be counted as 62%? That African-American approval of Obama should be 62%? What, exactly?

I'm honestly confused, because not only is my first reaction "What a racist asshole" but on the deeper analysis, it only makes Byron York seem like even more of a racist asshole. Somebody explain to me why he's not. I'd really like to know...and I'd like to know even more what this is doing in a Washington newspaper...even if it is the Examiner.

I mean does this mean it's okay to say that Obama's negative five billion approval rating among racist assholes is lowering what his "real" approval rating should be?

Has somebody told Pat Buchanan this yet?

Epic Come On Get Down With The Sickness Fail

This broke by head. (h/t LG&M)
The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.

Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.

EPIC FAIL.

Close All Shops In The Mall! Cancel The Three Ring Circus!

WHO's Swine Flu Alertcon is now level FIVE!
The World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert for swine flu to the second highest level Wednesday, meaning that it believes a global outbreak of the disease is imminent.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan declared the phase 5 alert after consulting with flu experts from around the world. The decision could lead the global body to recommend additional measures to combat the outbreak, including for vaccine manufacturers to switch production from seasonal flu vaccines to a pandemic vaccine.

"All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans," Chan told reporters in Geneva. "It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic."
Also, relax. Really, there's not a heck of a lot you can do. Wash your hands. Carry Germ-X. Do not pick up your neighbor's snot-ridden babies and cuddle them, that kind of thing.

It's like the flu, only it's more likely you'll get sick from it because it's a new strain. That's all. You've gotten the flu before, people. Deal with it like a grownup. Lie on the couch, watch Mythbusters, and drink Gatorade.

Oh, Well Now Here's The Problem

Current headline on Yahoo Finance: Wall Street up 3 percent on economy bets.

And that pretty much sums up everything.

Republicans At 100 Days


Obama has a long way to go, but keep in mind these guys have been losers since January 21.

[UPDATE] Guess how many House Republicans (desperately trying to shed the "Party of No" label) voted for the President's budget today?

Here's a hint. It's a nice round number, and it also represents the chances the GOP has of taking control of either chamber of Congress in 2010, and is also the number of Republican Senators currently from the state of Pennsylvania.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

The only thing that exceeds the Wingnut hate for Snarlin' Arlen is the Wingnut love for the guy that was going to purge Specter in the primary and will assure that the GOP will lose the seat in the PA general election anyway.

But remember, it's the Democrats who are going to screw this up.

Oh now they will eventually, guaranteed, Democrats are still Democrats. But not before we get some phat Socialist nanny-state lewt, beyotches!

Word.

[UPDATE] Almost forgot, how's that internal party civil war going, boys?

I Dunnae Get It, Lad

GDP in the toilet, multiple banks have failed the stress test, Swine Flu continues to affect the tourism industry, BoA's Ken Lewis about to get fired by pissed shareholders...

Naturally, stocks are up 2 percent.

I give up. At this point investors don't care anymore about bad news and everyone is just looking for any excuse to get back into the market. Dow 15,000 is just around the corner, right?

An Olympian Effort

Maine Republican Olympia Snowe lets the GOP have it in the NY Times op-ed section today.
I could have hardly imagined then that, in 2009, we would fondly reminisce about the time when we were disappointed to fall short of 60 votes in the Senate. Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.

It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.

It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.
I smell another flip coming, frankly. To go public in the "liberal paper of record" to attack the GOP (if she was privately grousing, it would have been in the WSJ's opinion section) to me says she's looking for somebody to try to talk her out of joining Arlen. But I think she's made up her mind. This has all the hallmarks of somebody writing the political version of a jumper note: She's going to take the plunge unless somebody on the right stops her.

And I don't think any of them will.

On the other hand, psychoanalyzing a Republican politician is like herding Jell-O with a tennis racket: it's messy and counterproductive, and in the end who knows what the hell good you're doing even trying. If you're going to switch parties woman, do it already.

The Domestic Product Is Indeed Gross

First quarter GDP numbers will be out today. The target number is a 4.7% rate of contraction, anything smaller then that will make big three digit green numbers on the Dow all day.

We'll see at 8:30 AM EDT.

[UPDATE] And man is it gross. 6.1% drop, well over estimates.
Gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, dropped at a 6.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said, after shrinking 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP falling at a 4.9 percent rate in the January-March quarter. Output has declined for three straight quarters for the first time since 1974-1975.

The advance report from the Commerce Department showed business inventories plummeted by a record $103.7 billion in the first quarter, as firms worked to reduce stocks of unsold goods in their warehouses. That sliced 2.79 percentage points from the overall GDP figure. Excluding inventories, GDP contracted 3.4 percent.

Q1 2009 was just as bad as Q4 2008, and there's a chance it may be revised later to where it may actually end up being worse.

Still no light at the end of the tunnel, folks.

No Limit Poker Time

Over at Big Orange, David Waldman says it's now time to seat Al Franken, and Arlen Specter has just given the Dems the leverage to squeeze the GOP with: Specter's current committee seats.
Seat Al Franken and give him his committee assignments now, or we'll block a new organizing resolution that would let you reassign Specter's previously Republican committee seats to one of your own.

Until a new organizing resolution is adopted, Specter's committee seats (Appropriations, Judiciary, Veterans' Affairs, Environment & Public Works, Special Aging) are locked in. He'll be caucusing and (sometimes, anyway) voting as a Democrat, but will be occupying Republican seats.

Democrats should demand Republican agreement to seat Franken and give him his committee assignments now, or they'll just block a new organizing resolution until he arrives, and change it as they see fit later on. After all, with 60 Democrats (once Franken is finally seated), they can give themselves any ratios they want, whether they opt to remain true to the 60/40 split in the Senate or not, since there won't be enough votes to filibuster an unfair organizing resolution.

But we wouldn't want it to come to that, would we?

Until there's a change, Appropriations goes effectively from 17-13 in favor of Democrats to 18-12. Judiciary to 12-7. Environment to 12-7. Veterans' Affairs to 10-5. Special Aging to 12-7.

Now of course I can totally see Evan Bayh trying to scuttle this, but even he can't complain too much about getting the legitimately elected Franken seated without bringing the hammer down from Rahmbo up top.

Still, it's an effective plan. It's nasty and stooping to the level of the GOP over the last 8 years, and they were made to pay for it (and the Dems must keep that in mind). But it's an option.

Epic Epidemiological Perspective Fail

As Zandarmom (a hospital nurse for 25 plus years) keeps reminding me, regular good ol' seasonal flu has already killed thousands of Americans this year and will continue to do so every year. Influenza kills 36,000 every year just in the US. The trick with Swine Flu (and the pork industry really, really wants people to STOP CALLING THAT ALREADY) is that there's no vaccine for this stuff yet, and it has shown the ability to kill otherwise healthy people in Mexico.

Making an effective vaccine may take until September at the earliest.
Experts say that even if cases of the new swine flu disappear with warm weather, the virus may return — perhaps with a vengeance — next winter.

In light of that threat, the Obama administration appears close to announcing a decision to make a vaccine against swine flu as early as this fall.

Normally it takes six months to make a regular flu vaccine. An effective vaccine protects most people from getting the flu. It would be the primary weapon against a flu pandemic — if it can be made, distributed and gotten into people's arms in time.

Bruce Gellin, the nation's top vaccine official, says the plan is to make enough swine flu vaccine for all 304 million Americans by September — only five months from now. Gellin is deputy assistant secretary for Health and Human Services for vaccinations, immunizations and infectious diseases.

Gellin says the first decision points on whether to go ahead will be in early June. That's when manufacturers would be told to switch over from making regular seasonal flu vaccine to a special swine flu vaccine. Fortunately, he says, the nation's flu vaccine makers will be finished by then with making all the components for next season's regular flu vaccine.

After swine flu vaccine production begins, Gellin says, "as you continue to watch the situation, the question would be whether you tell them to keep going or to turn it off sometime."

"If they kept going, you would expect that vaccine to be available … by early- to mid-September," Gellin predicts. That's when it would be ready to ship to doctors, hospitals and clinics.

So relax...regular flu is 36,000 times more deadly, and you've been living with that for how long now? Best case scenario, this stuff goes dormant as the weather warms up and by the time the next flu season rolls around we'll have a vaccine.

Don't panic...down that road is EPIC FAIL.

StupidiNews!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Last Call

Pat Buchanan on GOP demographics:
"There's a real demographic problem with the Republican Party," Buchanan said. "It is a heavily white party, quite frankly. And as a share of the electorate, that is diminishing and Hispanics are growing very rapidly, Asians are growing rapidly, and by two-thirds they tend to vote Democratic."
You mean the GOP is full of white people?!?

(Woot, Dramatic Prairie Dog!)

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

I'd like to thank Arlen Specter for proving my point from this morning:
The Purge Of The Moderates from the ranks of the GOP is most certainly underway. That hardcore 20% of America that remains proudly Republican are not the Arlen Specters or the Mitt Romneys or the Susan Collinses of the political world. They are the Steve Kings, James Inhofes, and Michele Bachmanns of the fringe, extremist far right, the paranoid few who scream endlessly about Obama's fake birth certificate, fascist re-education camps, the global warming hoax, gays and lesbians destroying the world, the need to provide creationism as an alternative to the "unproven theory of evolution", and how the Swine Flu epidemic is just a ruse to get Kathleen Sebelius a job at HHS.

These are the kind of people who are now left in the GOP at this point. I forsee 2010 and 2012 will purge many of the remaining moderates from Washington as the party becomes not the Mighty Elephant but the Screaming Wingnut, the kind almost begging for another terror attack to hit the US so they can feel vindicated.

The kind of people who are left in the Republican Party are the kind of people who lament Dick Cheney not having run for President in 2008 not because a man with an approval rating even worse than Dubya would have actually won, but because it the campaign season would have purged the weak, useless moderates from the GOP much sooner and the GOP of today would be in better shape to fight Obama now, having already re-emerged from the civil war to reforge itself down to the ashes of Neo-Hoover, Neo-Goldwater conservatism instead of fighting that war now.
That internal GOP struggle is now a full blown civil war thanks to Arlen Specter. The results of that war are just as important to Democrats and Independents as they are Republicans. We must absolutely have a viable alternative to the Democrats when they do stupid things, and right now the Republicans just ain't it, man.

Sebelius Confirmed

The Senate does the right thing and finally confirms Kathleen Sebelius as HHS Secretary.
The Senate confirmed former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services Tuesday on a 65-31 vote.

The timely vote will put Sebelius in office as the Obama administration is up against its first public health outbreak.

She steps into the role as swine flu numbers climb worldwide. As of Tuesday morning, at least 90 cases had been confirmed, including 50 in the United States.

Until her confirmation, the White House, which declared a public health emergency Sunday, was dealing with its first crisis without a secretary. But the administration said it was equipped to handle the situation.

There are still no appointees in place for any of the department's 18 key positions.

In most cases where a position is awaiting Senate confirmation, that job is filled by a career civil servant in an interim capacity. The Obama administration has named five nominees for the open positions.
And it'll take a little while to fill all the positions. Despite all the months of Republican delay, several voted for her anyway. In the end there was no reason to delay her confirmation, but the GOP did it out of spite. The question is how much did this delay cost America in our response to the Swine Flu outbreak?

Your Tears Sustain Zandar, Mitch

Mitch McConnell warns of the death of American freedom thanks to Arlen Specter.
Mitch McConnell, leader of a Republican minority that is now even smaller, suggested Tuesday that Sen. Arlen Specter's defection endangered not just the party, but the entire country.

"I think the threat to the country presented by this defection really relates to the issue of whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority to have whatever it wants without restraint, without a check or a balance," McConnell said Tuesday.

"Obviously, we are not happy that Senator Specter has decided to become a Democrat," McConnell said. "If we are not successful in Minnesota ... Democrats, at least on paper, will have 60 votes. I think the danger of that for the country is that there won't automatically be an ability to restrain the excess that is typically associated with big majorities and single-party rule."

What makes this funny is the guy who engineered Specter's switcheroo? Joe Biden.

What makes this even funnier is the fact that Republicans are complaining about checks and balances after a good 8 years of rubber stamping Bush legislation for his signature...and for Bush's thousands of signing statements when he didn't agree with Congress, he would simply ignore their laws illegally thanks to the "unitary executive".

But we're supposed to be worried about Obama and not the GOP.

Even Worse For Cramdown

Mortgage bankruptcy reform is looking all but dead at this point. Democrats are looking like they just don't have the votes to beat a guaranteed filibuster.
On Tuesday, a key Democrat came out against the compromise bill, which would allow judges in certain circumstances to modify mortgage terms -- a process known as cramdown. Meanwhile, a second crucial Democratic vote said that he doubted the bill had enough support for his vote to decide it one way or the other.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) spoke poorly of Durbin's compromise proposal, which is now being circulated. "I don't think it's much of a compromise," Landrieu told the Huffington Post. "My community bankers are really opposed to it and I think it's important for people to realize there is a big difference right now in the country between the health of these large international financial institutions and our local community banks...I think we gotta be careful about adopting processes and procedures that would really hurt our community banks."

Asked if she was a definite no, Landrieu responded that she was "pretty close to a definite No."

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) wouldn't say whether or not he supported the compromise, but he nevertheless expressed deep skepticism.

"My concern about this is that in our appropriate zeal to help the four or five percent of Americans who might be faced with bankruptcy, we don't unduly raise the costs of homeownership on the 95 percent who never will," Bayh, who supported the legislation last year, told the Huffington Post.

Backers of the bill say that they are close to getting the 60 votes needed; Bayh and Landrieu are key votes needed for passage. Bayh, however, painted a much more pessimistic picture, saying that he was unlikely to be the deciding vote.

Surprise! Evan F'ckin Bayh again and his merry band of Club For Growth backstabbers!

Remember folks, the more foreclosures, the longer it takes for home prices to stabilize, and the worse the economy gets. Bayh's Boys are more worried about hurting the banks' feelings than the American homeowner.

Pearls Before Swine Flu

President Obama is asking for $1.5 billion from Congress for fighting Swine Flu.
In a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the president made the request "at an abundance of caution," and said the funds should be "provided with maximum flexibility to allow us to address this emerging situation."

He also suggested the supplementing of anti-viral stockpiles, and assisting international efforts to stem the outbreak could be good uses of the funds. He added that his administration has "carefully been monitoring the situation, coordinating state and local responses, assessing the risk here in the United States and cooperating with international organizations and health officials around the globe."

Go ahead, GOP. Unanimously vote against that as pork. Filibuster swine flu funds. Watch what happens.

Quote Of The Week

"Today is the best day to watch Fox News since the election -- mass grieving flavored by impotent bitterness." -- Glenn Greenwald on Arlen Specter's party switch

Too Many Secrets

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the Obama administration's "state secrets" legal claim in the Jeppsen case.
Via the blog Legal Pad: A three-member panel of the 9th circuit Court of Appeals ruled this morning on a request from the government that it dismiss the Jeppesen case, which focuses on the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

From the decision:

Acceding to the government's request would require us to ignore well-established principles of civil procedure. At this stage in the litigation, we simply cannot prospectively evaluate hypothetical claims of privilege that the government has not yet raised and the district court has not yet considered."

In other words, asking the court to dismiss the case at this point puts the cart before the horse. The state secrets claim "must be invoked during discovery or at trial," not at the pleadings stage." (court's itals)

The Jeppesen case is one of the three national security cases in which the Obama administration has invoked state secrets (the other two cases involve warrantless wiretapping). This despite the fact that, as a candidate, Obama criticized President Bush for too frequently invoking the privilege.

And hopefully the other two state secrets cases will get tossed out on their asses too. The legal arguments were specious when Bush made them, they are even more specious when Obama expanded upon them.

As expected, the Double G weighs in.
Today's decision is a major defeat for the Obama DOJ's efforts to preserve for itself the radically expanded secrecy powers invented by the Bush DOJ to shield itself from all judicial scrutiny. Given how Obama recently emphasized how committed he is to defending government secrecy powers in court, it it highly likely the Obama DOJ will attempt to appeal this ruling further -- to a full 9th Circuit panel and/or to the Supreme Court -- but in the meantime, the case will return to the District Court for a document-by-document assessment of what is and is not truly "secret" (and the court today held that a mere decision by the President to classify certain documents is insufficient; the court is required to exercise independent judgment as to whether secrecy is truly warranted). Finally, these 5 torture victims will have their day in court.
Still a nation of laws, kids. Still a nation of laws.

And Speaking Of Sixty...

I see Norm Coleman is already preparing to lose by questioning the legitimacy of Franken should Al win.
Norm Coleman is taking an interesting rhetorical tack in the continued spin war among the Minnesota press. Coleman spoke to local newspaper company ECM's editorial board on Friday, and commented that the winner of this Senate race will always face serious questions.

"No matter who wins the race, there's always going to be a cloud hanging over them -- did they really get more votes than the other guy," said Coleman. "That's a reality. And there's nothing you can do to change that."

So yeah, Franken will win but he'll "have a cloud". You know, like Bush did for 8 years.

With Arlen Specter being 59, the Republicans will never allow Franken to be seated as 60 unless the Supreme Court tells them to. They cannot afford to now.

Might As Well, Arlen

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is switching parties from Republican to Democratic.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."

He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Well, this absolutely assures that Norm Coleman will never, ever give up without a Supreme Court decision (nor will Minnesota GOP Governor Mark Pawlenty sign off on Franken) and Republicans will absolutely filibuster any attempt to seat Franken.

Also, it's not like Arlen Specter's going to be much help. He's basically the equivalent of Nebraska's Ben Nelson or Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat that's basically a moderate Republican.

Still. When Franken DOES get seated, it's 60. (Republicans can suck it.) Practical upshot though is I get to use the Democrat Stupidity tag instead of the GOP Stupidity tag for any Arlen Specter based posts from here on out.

[UPDATE] The Wingers are doing the Kubler-Ross stages of grief thing again, but mostly Anger, Bargaining, and Depression.

[UPDATE 2] Puts that poll where only 21% of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans in real perspective, doesn't it?

Somebody Explain This To Me

Why are we having emergency Senate hearings on America's response to Swine Flu when we should be having emergency Senate hearings on confirming the Health and Human Services Secretary and their departmental staff? You know, the ones the GOP continues to block during said emergency?

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Today's "wingnut making a whole hell of a lot on sense for once" contestant is Power Line's John Hindraker, who nails Timmy's ass to the wall as he very astutely dissects the Special Inspector General's report on how the $700 million TARP program became the $3 trillion TARP program. Do read the whole thing, but for the TLDR crowd, his summation:
What conclusions can we draw? 1) The government's $3 trillion and counting TARP program represents the greatest opportunity for sharp operators to profit at taxpayer expense in history. 2) The Obama administration is either in favor of giving Wall Street sharks this opportunity or, at a minimum, doesn't much mind doing so. (If this seems odd, remember where Obama got the biggest chunk of campaign contributions in 2008.) 3) It may be that the TARP complex of programs is the beginning of a national-socialist type takeover of the financial services industry by the federal government. Thus, 4) we can only hope that this turns out not to be the case, and TARP is only the biggest--and perhaps, by the end of the day, the crookedest--waste of taxpayer money in history. Finally, 5) so far the only person or organization who appears to be looking out for the taxpayers is the Special Inspector General. We will be reading his future reports with great interest.
While #3 there is really just kneejerk winger compaints about Plan N/Recievership (which Hindy still sees as THE DREADED SOCIALISM), he's right on the rest. TARP is a hell of a scam, it's costing us trillions, and there's still no accountability.

I continue to have serious doubts about TARP, and you should as well. At the very least the SIGTARP report on the program shows egregious problems and all kinds of opportunity for graft, waste, and corruption, and yet more evidence that Tim Geithner continues to be the wrong man for the job.

Party Planning

Chris Cilizza notes that the latest ABC/WaPo poll shows that while more than one in three Americans consider themselves Democrats (35%) and nearly two in five are Independents like myself (38%), only about one in five Americans now consider themselves Republicans (21%).
These numbers come on the heels of Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential bid, declaring the Republican party a "shrinking entity" last week-- citing the decline of GOP numbers in the west, northeast and mountain west as evidence.

And they show a somewhat significant decline from even last November's election when exit polls showed 32 percent of voters identifying as Republican as compared to 39 percent for Democrats and 29 percent for independents and others. (A caveat: voters tend to see things through a more partisan lens after having just voted in a presidential election than they do in an April poll.)

The Post poll numbers show the challenge for Republicans in stark terms.

The number of people who see themselves as GOPers is on the decline even as those who remain within the party grow more and more conservative.

That means that the loyal base of the party has an even larger voice in terms of the direction it heads even as more and more empirical evidence piles up that the elevation of voices like former vice president Dick Cheney does little to win over wavering Republicans or recruit Independents back to the GOP cause.

The Purge Of The Moderates from the ranks of the GOP is most certainly underway. That hardcore 20% of America that remains proudly Republican are not the Arlen Specters or the Mitt Romneys or the Susan Collinses of the political world. They are the Steve Kings, James Inhofes, and Michele Bachmanns of the fringe, extremist far right, the paranoid few who scream endlessly about Obama's fake birth certificate, fascist re-education camps, the global warming hoax, gays and lesbians destroying the world, the need to provide creationism as an alternative to the "unproven theory of evolution", and how the Swine Flu epidemic is just a ruse to get Kathleen Sebelius a job at HHS.

These are the kind of people who are now left in the GOP at this point. I forsee 2010 and 2012 will purge many of the remaining moderates from Washington as the party becomes not the Mighty Elephant but the Screaming Wingnut, the kind almost begging for another terror attack to hit the US so they can feel vindicated.

The kind of people who are left in the Republican Party are the kind of people who lament Dick Cheney not having run for President in 2008 not because a man with an approval rating even worse than Dubya would have actually won, but because it the campaign season would have purged the weak, useless moderates from the GOP much sooner and the GOP of today would be in better shape to fight Obama now, having already re-emerged from the civil war to reforge itself down to the ashes of Neo-Hoover, Neo-Goldwater conservatism instead of fighting that war now.

When the smoke clears, the GOP will be the party of Malkinvania, Glennsanity, and Bachmanniac.

Get used to that one in five thing, gentlemen.

StupidiNews!

Monday, April 27, 2009

DOOM BUNKER, Swine Flu Edition

Live from the DOOM BUNKER, it's Glennsanity on the Swine Flu gubment conspiracy!
Well, I will tell you this. There's only two ways to look at, and we're going to look at it both ways later on in this broadcast today and also tonight with some of the experts. There's only two ways to look at this. Our government is moving wildly fast. Unlike anything we -- I mean, we did the research last night, and we went back to the AIDS epidemic --all the way back, looking at all the different things. They've never moved this quickly.

So, that could be that because Barack Obama's administration is so incredibly efficient, could be that they know that this is much worse than we think it is. Or, what was it Rahm Emanuel said, Stu? "A crisis is a horrible thing to waste." Do you realize that we don't have any of the Health and Human Services people? Out of the 19 appointments, he has appointed zero.

This could be to move his Health and Human Services person into the office rapidly. She's supposed -- she's supposed to go through more confirmation hearings today, I think. She can be confirmed right out of the gate because of this swine flu. So don't look over here, look at the swine flu, look at the swine flu, look at the swine flu. And she just goes right through the gate.

Three things:

1) Hey Glenn, do you remember who was first President when AIDS was first diagnosed? You remember, the guy that took six years to even make a major address on the global health crisis of HIV/AIDS? The guy who famously said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" A Republican named Ronald Reagan? Maybe you've heard of the guy.

2) You want to know why there's none of the 19 HHS appointments in office yet? REPUBLICANS KEEP BLOCKING THEIR CONFIRMATION, YOU ASSHOLE.

3) Obama has the power to create a global health crisis just to get Kathleen Sebelius a job? Really? I had no idea. Say, you look a little pale, Glenn...perhaps you should go see a doctor. I don't think you're feeling well.

What a crackpot.

High School All Over Again

Hey, Obama administration people:

When you give in to the Village's sense of self-importance and play along with their "First 100 Days" game, don't act surprised when the Villagers suddenly change the rules on you in an effort to make you look stupid.
The Fox television network has refused to air President Barack Obama’s primetime press conference on Wednesday night, scheduled to mark the president’s 100th day in office.

“The address, scheduled for 8 p.m. (ET), could have possibly affected the ‘American Idol’ results show, which begins at 9 p.m., and the network did not want to risk that during the critical sweeps period for ratings, according to sources,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “Fox has historically not registered high ratings for presidential addresses and decided, given the nature of this particular press conference, not to show it, sources said. Fox aired Obama’s two previous primetime addresses.”

They're not refusing to air you because you're preempting American Idol. They're telling you to go to hell to your face because 1) you're making too much of a deal about this 100 days thing and 2) because you might spill over into American Idol an hour later.

Here endeth the lesson.

Fly-By Night Operation

The person reponsible for this? Gone. Fired. Shitcanned. Immediately. As in "No kidding, here's your cardboard box, fill it and get the hell out."
An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had not been told in advance about the flyover.
And we learn that person is Louis Caldera out of the White House Military Office. All I have to say is "Bye."
The mission on Monday, officials said, was set up to create an iconic shot of Air Force One, similar to one that was taken in recent years over the Grand Canyon.

When President Obama learned of the episode on Monday afternoon, aides said, he, too, was furious. Senior administration officials conveyed the president’s anger in a meeting with Mr. Caldera on Monday afternoon.
Moron. A low flying Air Force One lookalike chased by jets over Manhattan as a press-op with no warning to the Mayor or city of New York? What the hell were you thinking, man?

Obama absolutely must kick this stupid jackass to the curb.

Oh, Well Now Here's The Problem

Despite a national health emergency being declared, Republicans say they will continue to filibuster the Secretary of Health and Human Services anyway.
McConnell spokesperson Stewart says that the Senate agreement last week has “locked in” the 60 vote threshold. “She’ll have her confirmation vote tomorrow,” he says, adding that “every single Democrat” agreed to that threshold.

But Jim Manley, a spokesperson for Dem Senate leader Harry Reid, says that Senate GOPers could waive the 60 vote threshold if they wanted to. “With consent it could be changed if they agreed, but as of right now I don’t see any willingness to do so on their part,” he said.

Bottom line: The threat of a filibuster over an abortion controversy is still throwing a hurdle in the way of this nomination, despite the flu epidemic.

You stay classy Republican Party and keep protecting those Americans instead of playing politics!

And they wonder why they keep losing.

Timmy's Sensei

I don't like Tim Geithner. But Tim Geithner learned everything at the feet of the master, Larry Summers. It is important to know this, as while Timmy is the front man, Larry Summers is the power behind the throne printing press.

If you're still wondering where Timmy got his marching orders from, there you are.

Majority Votes Are Bad

Only in America would having legislation pass with a simple majority vote be considered undemocratic fascism.

Only in the Wall Street Journal would a Senator be allowed to dispense such clearly partisan hogwash.

I Give It 24 Hours

24 hours before the Wingnut calls for impeachment of Keith Ellison and Donna Edwards begin.
Eight activists protesting the expulsion of aid groups in Darfur have been arrested in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington.

Humanitarian leaders and U.S. lawmakers, including Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards, were led away from the embassy in handcuffs Monday after crossing a police line.

The activists are urging world leaders to take a stand against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's decision to expel 16 aid agencies from Darfur.

The Winger hatred for Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress, is especially acute. They may not bite on this one, but then again, the GOP is insane.

South Of The Border

Drug cartel violence, Swine Flu, now earthquakes.

If the Gulf of Mexico turns into blood or cherry Jell-O or red tide algae or something, I'm leaving.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

This stupidity right here? (and here and here?)
Action Alert from the Sarah Palin List:
“Rahm Emanuel & Co. seizing an opportunity with the supposed swine flu crisis?”
Called it yesterday.

Of course Secret Muslim President would use Swine Flu on America to seize power!

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Possibly the Village wouldn't have so much influence and ability to distort Obama's message of accomplishment if the administration wasn't so eager to play the Village's made up first 100 days game.

Just sayin'.

Not Now, Jimmy

Jimmy Carter asks where Obama's efforts to restore the assault weapon ban are. I'm thinking that from a political standpoint, that's one fight the President really doesn't want to pick right now. The Wingers are crazy enough already.

Anything Obama does to regulate guns will pretty much assure that's all the GOP fixates on. Once again, let's worry about enforcing weapons laws we already have on the books.

The Geithner Club

Once again, your crack aces at the NY Times have just figured out Timmy miiiight be a little too close to the banks he's supposedly watching over.

Even as banks complain that the government has attached too many intrusive strings to its financial assistance, a range of critics — lawmakers, economists and even former Federal Reserve colleagues — say that the bailout Mr. Geithner has played such a central role in fashioning is overly generous to the financial industry at taxpayer expense.

An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions.

His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.

In a pair of recent interviews and an exchange of e-mail messages, Mr. Geithner defended his record, saying that from very early on, he was “a consistently dark voice about the potential risks ahead, and a principal source of initiatives designed to make the system stronger” before the markets started to collapse.

Mr. Geithner said his actions in the bailout were motivated solely by a desire to help businesses and consumers. But in a financial crisis, he added, “the government has to take risk, and we are going to be doing things which ultimately — in order to get the credit flowing again — are going to benefit the institutions that are at the core of the problem.”

The New York Fed is, by custom and design, clubby and opaque. It is charged with curbing banks’ risky impulses, yet its president is selected by and reports to a board dominated by the chief executives of some of those same banks. Traditionally, the New York Fed president’s intelligence-gathering role has involved routine consultation with financiers, though Mr. Geithner’s recent predecessors generally did not meet with them unless senior aides were also present, according to the bank’s former general counsel.

By those standards, Mr. Geithner’s reliance on bankers, hedge fund managers and others to assess the market’s health — and provide guidance once it faltered — stood out.
Of course I've been saying this for months now that Geithner was the wrong man for the job for a number of reasons.

But at least people are beginning to figure out that the fox is in charge of the foxes already in charge of the henhouse now.

Look At That Ex-Car Go

As expected, GM is announcing the death of Pontiac and 23,000 jobs with it, plus hundreds of dealers.
General Motors announced plans to cut 23,000 U.S. jobs by 2011, drop its storied Pontiac brand and slash 40% of its dealer network in its latest bid to stay out of bankruptcy.

GM also announced an offer to its bondholders to swap $27 billion of the company's unsecured debt for stock. GM is offering bondholders 225 shares of its stock for every $1,000 it owes the bondholders in principal. The move will greatly dilute the value of GM shares held by current stockholders.

Still, shares of GM (GM, Fortune 500), a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, gained nearly 10% in pre-market trading following the announcement due to hopes that the company will now be able to avoid bankruptcy.
Still, 40% of GM dealers will be some serious job losses. We'll see how this shakes out. It's a big step towards solvency.

If only Obama was as tough on the banks.

[UPDATE] Almost overlooked this part.
GM said that it will ask the government to take more than 50 percent of its common stock in exchange for canceling half the government loans to the company as of June 1. The swap would cancel about $10 billion in government debt.

In addition, GM is offering stock to the United Auto Workers for at least 50 percent of the $20 billion the company must pay into a union run trust that will take over retiree health care expenses starting next year.

If both are successful, the government and UAW health care trust would own 89 percent of GM stock, with the government holding more than a 50 percent stake, CEO Fritz Henderson said in a news conference at GM's Detroit headquarters.

Oh sure, we'll Plan N the freakin car companies, but not the banks.