Last Call

James Fallows explains precisely why our government doesn't work.

As you may have heard elsewhere, the Obama Administration has been relatively slow in vetting and choosing nominees for many of its important posts -- but then has encountered extreme slowness from the Senate in approving the appointments once they get made. If you go to this White House site, you'll find a searchable, sortable list of all 820+ nominations and appointments made so far in the Administration; about 240 have not even come up for a Senate vote. If you go to this U.S. Senate site and click on the link for "Executive Calendar," you'll get a long PDF showing in its "nominations" section the scores and scores of people who have come through committees but not received a vote on the Senate floor. (Direct link to the PDF here.)

On Thursday afternoon, just before its Memorial Day recess, the Senate had planned to consider about 80 of these nominations as a group. They all had been through financial and security vetting; they had been through committee consideration; they were headed for jobs that in many cases now stood vacant; they were ready to go. Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, moved for approval by unanimous consent, apparently believing that a deal to clear out the huge backlog had been struck. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, begged to differ. He was still sore about the recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Therefore he wouldn't agree to the en-bloc vote. As he put it:

Unfortunately, we are snagged over one particular nomination which has already been defeated by the Senate, and that was the nomination of Craig Becker to be on the NLRB. The President then recessed Mr. Becker and recessed a Democratic nomination to the NLRB but not a Republican nominee to the NLRB. There is a fundamental lack of equity and fairness involved, and that has been a significant hindrance in coming to a consent agreement.

Fundamental lack of equity and fairness, indeed.

It really is that simple, folks.  Republicans right now are pointing at the Gulf of Mexico and screaming that Obama has failed, that the federal government has failed, and that it can never work.  Of course it can never work when the Republican Party does everything it possibly can to make sure it cannot work for anyone but the Republicans themselves.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

In the end, say what you will about Sarah Palin's politics, political acumen, capacity for wonkery or her speeches:  there is one thing that Sarah Palin does better than practically anyone else in America, and that's playing the victim card.

After that happened, McGinniss -- who is hoping to finish his local research for the book by Labor Day -- became the target of fury from Palin fans. After radio host Mark Levin gave out the author's e-mail address, McGinniss got 5000 messages in four hours, eventually shutting down the account. Wasilla police and state troopers are keeping a watchful eye on the place, although McGinniss said no one had come to the house to threaten him on Friday. He simply didn't anticipate the scale of Palin's response.

"I would term this hysterical," said McGinniss. "The mayor said to me, when I chatted with him in his office a couple of days ago, 'You know, if Sarah had the brains that we like to think she has, Todd would have come back and said, do you know who's living next door? This son of a bitch McGinniss who wrote that Portfolio piece. He's writing a book about you. Sarah should have baked a plate of cookies, and come around the fence, and said hi, and laughed about this.' I would have happily accepted a cookie, and then in my book I would have had a lovely scene about how gracious she had been." McGinniss sighed. "She is, in many ways, a very gracious person."

Even Joe McGinniss himself feels like the bad guy here is Joe McGinniss, when it's not.  And there are probably millions out there who would like to take this guy into the Alaskan woods and "finish his book for him".

If this is really what McGinniss thought, he's either very brave, crazy, or incredibly naive.  Either way, I don't expect him to last much longer up there.  He'll be "convinced" to leave somehow.

Top Kill Slays The Drag--OH YOU'RE KIDDING ME!

Top Kill(tm) has now officially failed.  Surprise!

BP's "top kill" attempt to stop the flow of oil from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico failed, the company's chief operating officer said Saturday.


The oil giant has tried for days to stop the the largest oil spill in U.S. history by pumping heavy, mudlike drilling fluid into a ruptured oil well, a method known as "top kill."

The next option is to place a custom-built cap known as the "lower marine riser package" over the leak, the company's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles said. BP crews were working Saturday to ready the materials for that option should it become necessary, he said.

"We've been prepping that all along in case we need to move to that option," he said. "People want to know which technique is going to work, and I don't know."

And if "lower marine riser package" were to fail, he said, BP engineers would try placing a second blowout preventer on top of the first, which failed to cut of the oil flow after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. The failed blowout preventer is a 48-foot-tall, 450-ton apparatus that sits atop the well 5,000 feet underwater.

If these other plans were more likely to work than top kill, wouldn't BP have tried them first?   Everything BP has thrown at this thing has failed miserably.  If we're risking 3-4 months of unrestricted flow putting potentially tens of millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from any one deep water well, then why are any of the hundreds of these wells still being allowed to operate?

The Last Easy Rider

Via the Rumpies, we'll miss you, Dennis Hopper.



Ride on, brother.  Ride on.

Oiling The Wheels Of Justice

Oh hey, looks like there's federal criminal charges on the way for BP.

A team of top federal prosecutors and investigators has taken the first steps toward a formal criminal investigation into oil giant BP's actions before and after the drilling rig disaster off Louisiana.

The investigators, who have been quietly gathering evidence in Louisiana over the last three weeks, are focusing on whether BP skirted federal safety regulations and misled the U.S. government by saying it could quickly clean up an environmental accident.

The team has met with U.S. attorneys and state officials in the Gulf Coast region and has sent letters to executives of BP and Transocean Ltd., the drilling rig owner, warning them against destroying documents or other internal records.

Underscoring the gravity of the inquiry, the team is headed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Ignacia Moreno of the environment and natural resources division and Assistant Atty. Gen. Tony West, who heads the Justice Department's civil division.

The move by federal prosecutors represents an escalation in the government's involvement in the oil spill — from coordinating the environmental cleanup to searching for possible criminal violations.

The Justice Department's inquiry is a standard preliminary step taken to determine whether a formal investigation is warranted. But even in this early stage, it has the earmarks of one of the largest investigative undertakings of the Obama administration.

This is of course all happening because Obama is controlled by BP, right?

Look folks, what happened at Deepwater Horizon was criminal negligence, followed by BP misleading the government, the public, and investors about their ability to solve the problem, capped by mounting evidence that the company was cutting corners to save costs at every opportunity.

Yes.  Some people need to go to jail for a very, very long time...and BP needs to be punished so badly that every oil company that drills off our shores is more afraid of the legal action than the response from the damn stock market.

The Newest Winger Outrage

The White House sent in hundreds of cleanup workers to be photo ops at the President's speech on Thursday!

Only it wasn't the White House...it was BP.

Officials from Jefferson Parish claim BP bused 400 cleanup workers into Grand Isle on Friday in time for a visit from President Barack Obama.

Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young said the workers were brought in to clean oil off Grand Isle's beaches.

The extra workers were brought in for Friday only, at a rate of $12 an hour, officials told WDSU. They were mostly from Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts didn’t buy into the cleanup effort.

"They must think we're all fools," he said.Roberts called BP's efforts "shameful.""The level of cleanup and cooperation from BP in the last week in no way compares to the effort shown on the island today," Roberts said.

"This is a total shame that a mockery has been made of this visit by the executives of BP."

Now, how this ended up being the "White House" doing this I have no idea.   Oh wait, yes I do:  Wingers love their Obama Derangement Syndrome.  When it comes to facts, not so much....

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The death toll in two separate attacks in Pakistan by Taliban targeting a minority religious group has reached 98.
• Volcanic eruptions in Guatemala and Ecuador have left several dead and injured.
• The House voted to extend jobless benefits for Americans out of work, but the Senate won't take action until after the Memorial Day recess.
• North Korea is warning the evidence that they sunk a South Korean frigate in March is false, drummed up by the US "just like in Iraq".
• An overwhelming majority of House Republicans and Democrats now say that only Congress is allowed to regulate net neutrality on the internet.

Last Call

The Big Dog weighs in on Blanche Lincoln vs. Bill Halter, and tells progressives to go Lewinsky themselves.

Using unusually vivid language to describe the threat against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Clinton urged the voters who nurtured his career to resist outside forces bent on making an example out of the two-term Democratic incumbent.

He pounded the podium with Lincoln at his side, warning that national liberal and labor groups wanted to make her a “poster child” in the June 8 Senate run-off to send a message about what happens to Democrats who don’t toe the party line.

“This is about using you and manipulating your votes to terrify members of Congress and members of the Senate,” Clinton said in the gym of a small historically black college here. 

Right.  Voting against Lincoln to send Dems a message is "being used" and "manipulated" by the Left.  I guess that means voting for Blanche Lincoln and her nakedly transparent ploy to win over progressive votes with her little derivatives amendment to the financial reform bill, which will be dropped by the House and Senate in conference the second Lincoln clears the primary runoff on June 8, is not manipulating voters at all.

Hey Big Dog?  Stop crapping on the rug again.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Digby asks, upon remarking that the DoJ is sort of looking into homegrown terror threats now:

Do people believe that Al Qaeda is going to take over the United States? Really?

This one's easy.  Replace "Al Qaeda" with "swarthy gentlemen" and you're a lot closer to the truth.

Something's Wrong, Something's Amiss...

Ask yourself with a 9.7% unemployment rate and tens of millions of Americans out of work why the deficit is now more important than job creation.

A Democratic plan to send $23 billion to the states to save the jobs of 100,000 to 300,000 public school teachers, librarians, counselors and other employees slated for layoffs looks dead for the time being.

Blame it on election-year politics. The anti-Washington, anti-spending mood has become so potent that even Democrats are antsy about helping teachers, one of their most long-standing and generous allies.

"We are in a situation now where a portion of our caucus is rebelling against just about any kind of spending," said Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri.

The layoffs already have begun. Advocates for teachers are calling them catastrophic. Critics of the emergency aid say states need to clean up their fiscal acts and make changes.

In the meantime, large, populous states such as California and Texas, for example, are each expected to absorb the loss of more than 30,000 teachers and other personnel, according to White House estimates.

Schools are cutting staff and programs because the recession has depleted state tax revenues, which pay for public education.

Democrats in the House of Representatives had hoped to pass the $23 billion emergency bailout this week as part of a spending bill for the war in Afghanistan that was slated for passage, but fiscally conservative members from tough districts weren't happy about having to defend another vote that would increase the deficit.

So another 100k-300k lost jobs in a borderline depression economy is a easier thing to defend?  Politically it's poison to save a teacher's job now?  You know what?  We deserve to have the GOP run this country into the ground.  States can't clean up their fiscal acts if they are never, ever allowed to raise taxes.

So all that happens will be cuts, cuts, cuts and cuts by people who say any taxes and any government spending are inherently evil.  Well, all except the military, that is.

If it wasn't going to assure the destruction of the country, I'd tell the Dems to screw it and let the GOP have the country again.

Top Kill Slays The Drag--OH NOW WHAT IS IT?!?

Top Kill(tm).  Still not working.

Warning that "ultimate success is uncertain," BP said Friday it could take all weekend to complete its "top kill" technique aimed at plugging the catastrophic leak in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Good thing it's a long weekend.  Hope you weren't headed for, say, the Gulf Coast for Memorial Day.

Look, in all seriousness I understand the government doesn't have the expertise in plugging massive oil geysers a mile deep.  There's no Department Of Plugging Oil Well Geysers, either.  But since there's not, and since we live in a world where these things fail and will cost us untold billions, you think we could maybe, you know, work how how to fix stuff like this BEFORE IT HAPPENS.

Full Circle (Jerk)

It's our old friend Rep. Steve King of Iowa, and he's got everything figured out...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) issued a press release today that partially blames Muslims for the Department of Justice's attempts to challenge Arizona's controversial new immigration law.

"The ACLU, SEIU and the Muslim American Society are calling the shots at the Justice Department," the press release says, later blaming "the ACLU and their radical affiliates" for "dictating the policy of the White House."

These guys are beyond embarrassing to the point of insanity.  Obama Derangement Syndrome is the only idea the GOP has.

The Pain In Spain

Fitch's just downgraded Spain's credit from AA to AA+.  This is one of those "not good" things.  Dow down 110 or so.  Meanwhile, the only constant in the financial universe is people who will tell you that the best stock market ever is just around the corner.

Nonsense, says James Altucher, president of Formula Capital. The economy and market will continue to surprise, he tells Aaron in this clip. In fact, he's calling for a 'checkmark'-shaped recovery, stronger than the ‘V’ we hear so much about. "The debate is over, it’s already been a V, now the question is, does it continue? I think it does," he says.

Why is he so confident?

• -- The job market is improving. “We've seen temp workers go up for seven months in a row," the fastest pace since 2004. Average pay and hours worked are up and the U.S. added 290,000 jobs last month, the biggest jump in four years. Plus, he notes, “jobs in self-employed positions and start-up businesses have jumped by 1.9 million in the past four months."
• -- Car sales are up by 25% in April compared to a year ago. “How did Toyota have 27% year over year car sales increase?"
• -- Pending home sale are up 21% year over year.

Altucher is confident all this will translate into record profits and an all-time high on the S&P 500 by the end of next year. "I know people are going to laugh," but the proof is in the pudding, he says.

This one goes in the Future Stupidity file dated December 2012. Also, I want what he's smoking.

Low Nooners

Nooners hits a new Village Obama Derangement Syndrome low, and that's really saying something.

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another. 

This goes on for another 1000 words or so, how Obama is just the worst, most incompetent, most aloof, most detached, most wrong President of wrongess that wrongosity has ever spawned in the history of wrongkind, and all of this is just so blindingly obvious after just 18 months that Nooners is just in shock, you see.

Your liberal media is in the tank for Obama, right?  She just completely blows a gasket here and goes full firebagger in the end, declaring the Obama presidency over, and every just really HATES HATES HATES the guy, right?  Best part:

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.  

Damn that government for not stopping earthquakes and oil spills and stuff!  Because the frre market can fix it, right?

I salute you madam.  This column will go down in infamy.  Sully finishes her off:

The premise of Noonan's moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand. And if such a technical issue is not resolved by government immediately, it reveals paralyzing presidential weakness and the failure of an entire branch of political philosophy. Again: seriously? It's Obama's fault that under Bush and Cheney, government regulation of oil exploration was so poor and corrupt, corner cutting appears to have been routine? And this, Peggy, is what governments do, even when run by crazy-ass liberals. Governments do not dig for oil; they merely regulate those who dig for oil. That the government failed to do so under the previous administration does not seem to me to be proof that this administration has failed. 

Too true.  This is Village Idiocy, even for the Village Idiots.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

CalcRisk shows us the money...for homebuilders?

Legislation introduced yesterday by Reps. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) and original co-sponsors Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Joe Baca (D-Calif.) would help alleviate the severe lack of credit for acquisition, development and construction (AD&C) financing that threatens to end the budding housing recovery before it has time to take root, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

“We applaud these lawmakers for taking the lead to address the housing production credit crisis that is jeopardizing the housing and economic recovery now under way,” said NAHB Chairman Bob Jones, a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

H.R. 5409, the Residential Construction Lending Act, would create a new residential construction loan guarantee program within the Department of Treasury to provide loans to builders with viable construction projects. Designed to unfreeze credit for small home building firms, the measure would expand the flow of credit to residential builders on competitive terms.

Umm...guys?  Point of order?  The reason why homebuilders are hurting is because there are millions of unsold homes on the market driving the price of homes down nationwide...exactly what will giving billions of dollars in loans to homebuilders making it easier to build more houses do in order to fix the problem of too many houses on the market?