Still Crazy After All These Weeks

Mark Sanford: not subscribing to the Sarah Palin School Of Gubernatorial Management.

After spending the holiday weekend with his family in Florida, Mark Sanford is apparently intent on fighting off calls for his resignation and staying in office, according to one South Carolina Republican who spoke with the governor on Monday.

Richard Yow, a member of the South Carolina Republican Party executive committee from Chesterfield County, received a phone call from Sanford on Monday afternoon. Yow said he spoke to the embattled governor for ten minutes, during which Sanford asked Yow for his forgiveness.

Yow said he told Sanford he could forgive him, but he told the governor that he should resign for the sake of the state and his family. Sanford, he said, rejected the idea.

"He said resigning would be the easy way out," Yow told CNN.

"He told me just like he told everybody else, that he didn't think resigning was the thing was to do," Yow said. "He did a lot of listening, and saying a lot of, 'I know you how you feel.' He hated that he has caused so much trouble for his family and friends and the state. I told him, it's not just trouble, it's a tragedy."

Palin's a winner for quitting, and Sanford's a winner for toughing it out. Republicans clearly cannot fail.

Except when they fail.

The Sacramento BBB's

Via CalcRisk, Fitch has downgraded California's bond rating to two steps above junk status at BBB.

The downgrade to 'BBB' is based on the state's continued inability to achieve timely agreement on budgetary and cash flow solutions to its severe fiscal crisis. Since no agreement was reached by the June 30, 2009 fiscal year (FY) end, the state's controller has now begun issuing registered warrants (IOUs) for certain non-priority payments to preserve cash, and the budget gap to be addressed has increased to $26.3 billion from $24.3 billion. The use of IOUs for non-priority payments would offset cash shortfalls into September 2009 as now currently projected.

The Rating Watch Negative reflects the short-term risk, in Fitch's view, that institutional gridlock could persist, further aggravating the state's already severe economic, revenue and liquidity challenges and weighing on the state's credit. Resolution of the Negative Watch will depend on actions taken to address the cash flow imbalance. The 'BBB' rating indicates that expectations of default risk remain low, although the rating is well below that of most other tax supported issuers. GO debt in California has a constitutional prior claim on revenues, although after education; appropriation debt has a lesser legal claim, but the controller prioritizes payment directly after GO debt service, ahead of other mandatory payments.

With issuance of IOUs for non-priority payments, margins for meeting constitutional and court-required contractual commitments are narrowing. After September 2009, absent any proposed budget and payment adjustments, cash deficits will expand dramatically. Cash flow solutions, including the ability to access short-term borrowing, are inextricably tied to reaching timely agreement on effective and credible budget solutions.

In other words, California's screwed.

They have maybe 3 months to fix the problem before they end up in junk bond status, and that would almost certainly mean that California would require a federal bailout as the state would be unable to get funding, because nobody would buy California's bonds. We're already in uncharted territory here with California's dismal bond rating.

Does anyone honestly expect California to get its act together anytime soon? Will it reach junk bond status? What will Obama do?

Mining The Data On Cap And Trade

Nate Silver crunches the numbers on climate change legislation in the Senate and finds 51 votes is easily done, plus the two Republicans from Maine (for 53) but 60 will be a definite problem due to the following red state Democratic Senators:

North Dakota, West Virginia and Louisiana rank 2nd through 4th in per-capita carbon emissions. Five of their six senators also happen to be Democrats. If the Democrats could swap, say, Rockefeller and Byrd for two seats in Arizona, the going would be significantly easier on this issue. Byrd in particular: let's face it -- it's not clear how many more votes Robert Byrd is going to cast in the Senate period, and at the end of the day, I don't see one of his final ones being something that could significantly impair the coal industry in West Virginia. The path of least resistance to 60 votes probably lies elsewhere. Rockefeller, though, voted aye on cloture on last year's bill and is probably attainable.

Mary Landireu and Byron Dorgan, on the other hand, voted 'no' on cloture last year. Dorgan chairs the Democratic Policy Committee and could perhaps be more vulnerable to peer pressure than certain other senators, but I don't know what you do with the more conservative Landireu, unless you can spin some offshore drilling compromise to her liking or persuade her of the linkage between global warming and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Then there's Ben Nelson, who's a problem for the Democrats on nearly everything, plus Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, who can probably expect a few late-night phone calls from Rahm Emanuel.

Seeing that Evan F'ckin Bayh actually has the most chance of voting yes on the bill by Nate's reckoning, that should disturb the hell out of you. Here's the thing though. Should Republicans try to filibuster the bill, it will have to be joined by the Democrats to actually prevent cloture, which means it will be the Dems that will kill cap and trade, not the Republicans.

If the modus operandi of the ConservaDems holds, they will threaten to kill the bill with a filibuster unless they get every single one of the concessions they want, ala the stimulus package in February, resulting in a crap bill.

When you see Republicans accuse the stimulus package of not working fast enough, remember when the largest concessions were made, and to whom they were made.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

We're going to have to bail out California, because if we don't, the rest of the states won't get another bailout. America will suffer as a result, the recession will drag on for months, if not years longer, and it's the right thing to do. This is why we have a federal government. They need it.

We can't bail out California because the state is a mess. Both sides increased spending on their favorite projects but nobody came up with a way to pay for any of it, because it's literally impossible to raise taxes in the state. It's their fault, and the rest of us all have our own problems to fix. Screw 'em.

Both arguments are not only valid but correct, in my view.

That's how much trouble we're in right now.

Clearly Time Is Up

GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor has grown bored with the whole waiting five months for the stimulus to work thing and instead has gone straight to offering ideas now that the stimulus has so clearly and completely failed:

Americans now agree that the stimulus package signed into law earlier this year has not achieved its intended effects, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) claimed Monday.

Pushing back against a possible second stimulus bill, Cantor asserted that the Obama administration-backed first $787 billion stimulus has not worked, and insisted that characterization has now become consensus.

"I think we all need to recognize that the first attempt of the stimulus bill did not stimulate the economy," Cantor said in a conference call sponsored by the Republican National Committee (RNC). "I think we all agree on that now."

Thoughts:

1) How quickly forgotten has Bush's stimulus package in 2008 become? Remember your tax refund this time last year, and how Bush said it would fix everything because Americans would then spend it on plasma TVs and cappuccino makers and power tools and trips to Vegas? Didn't that stimulus fail too by Cantor's logic?

2) Have the Republicans been right on anything economically in the last thirty years? Reaganomics? The cost of the various wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Tax cuts for the rich? The need to eliminate as much regulation as possible so that the free market would flourish and grow? The Greenspan Bubble? Anything at all?

3) Guess what Eric Cantor wants to do now?

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that Republicans would work with President Obama on a second stimulus bill, as long as it's like the tax cut-heavy package the GOP proposed earlier.

TAXEN CUTTEN UBER ALLES!

4) Nobody takes House Republicans seriously anymore for a reason. That reason is they honestly believe America still thinks they should be in charge despite the fact that America overwhelmingly put the Democrats in charge less than a year ago.

There's no reason for the Democrats to bother with them anymore. They are irrelevant, and it's high time the Dems treated them as such.

Frankenstein's Tea Party

TPM's Eric Kleefield posits that like Frankenstein's monster turning upon its creator, the GOP has lost control of the Teabaggers, at least in the Lone Star State.

Thousands of right-wing activists across this country rang in the Independence Day holiday with yet another round of tea-party protests against President Obama, inadvertently highlighting an interesting divide in the Republican Party. On the one hand are the hard-line activists who attend these things, versus the more mainstream politicians who want to win elections and are looking for their votes -- and are running into all manner of conflicts as a result, or finding themselves taking on some rather interesting policy stances along the way.

Most notably, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was booed at the event in Austin -- on the grounds that he's part of the problem in Washington, having voted for the Wall St. bailout last fall. "I'm not part of Washington," Cornyn said in his own defense. "I happen to work there, but on behalf of Texas, and I can vote 'no' on these reckless spending bills, on the refusal to cut taxes."

Gov. Rick Perry -- who famously seemed to raise the specter of Texas seceding from the union during the April Tax Day protests -- was also booed at the same Austin event as Cornyn. Attendees saw him as yet another tax-hiking tyrant, because he supports toll roads in order to relieve traffic congestion.

Quelle surprise! You fuel a movement that's dedicated to exposing the evils of the excesses of state and federal governments, and they start booing the Senator and Governor.

I've got news for the GOP. When you preach the the government is the enemy for 30 years, don't be surprised if people think your national political party is part of the problem. Just because the Teabaggers hate Obama doesn't mean they like you. You've convinced them that government is the problem...but you're part of that government and want to lead it?

They don't trust you either. Nor should they.

Remembering Michael Jackson

NY Republican Peter King recalls his memories of the King Of Pop, the same way you recall your memories of a root canal. Look, I plan to not watch TV at all tomorrow due to the wall-to-wall Village tearjerker coverage of MJ's memorial, but at least I'm not an elected official arguably committing slander of a dead guy on national TV.

Stay classy, Republicans!

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

George Carlin once said "Think of how stupid the average American is...now think about the fact that 50% of the country is dumber than that poor bastard."

This pretty much sums up Ross "0-for however many NY Times columns he's written" Douthat again today.

If Palin were exactly what her critics believe she is — the distillation of every right-wing pathology, from anti-intellectualism to apocalyptic Christianity — then she wouldn’t be a terribly interesting figure. But this caricature has always missed the point of the Alaska governor’s appeal — one that extends well outside the Republican Party’s shrinking base.

In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

Somehow, I'm thinking Douthat should re-think his definition of "success".

Al Franken, Bad Photoshopping, And Cincinnati

If you ever want to really know what's going on in Cincinnati, be sure to read the Cincinnati Beacon's website. Today, they catch Cincinnati Enquirer loudmouth Peter Bronson failing Source Checking 101.

Peter Bronson, the self-published vanity author and columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer, has his very own blog entitled “Bronson is always right.” On July 1st, however, his political hackery reached a new low when he used a doctored photo—apparently without knowing the image had been thoroughly debunked—in an attempt to make a hit on Al Franken, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota. The piece includes the picture to your right, with the phrase “Is this who you want making decisions about your health care?” But the photo is a verified fake!

Several years ago, ThinkProgress published this item, showing the origins of this doctored fake:

The news release was accompanied by this photograph, showing Franken dressed up like a baby bunny, wearing adult diapers and clutching a fluffy white teddy bear.

Andy Barr, director of Franken’s Midwest Values PAC, confirmed, “The picture is a fake.” The Ohio Republican Party used a 2004 AP photo of Franken for the doctored image:

Interestingly, the quote includes two links to none other than the Enquirer’s Politics Extra blog—apparently showing how the picture is a fake—but the links are from their old blog and no longer redirect properly. However, you can find the original item in the Internet Archive here, signed by Jon Craig.

Apparently, Peter Bronson doesn’t even follow his own paper’s political coverage.

Which, if you've read Peter Bronson, that makes perfect sense. He's basically Cincy's version of MoDo the Red...without the charm.

[UPDATE 12:27 PM] I see Bronson's EPIC FAIL made him Atrios's Wanker of the Day, and rightfully so.

Sleight Of Hand, Blows Up In Face

Over the weekend a Russian immigrant named Sergei Aleynikov was arrested for allegedly stealing the computer trading codes to the automated trading software of one of America's largest megabanks: Goldman Sachs.

The allegations, if true, are big news because the codes the accused man, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal is the secret code to unlocking Goldman’s automated stocks and commodities trading businesses. Federal authorities allege the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major “financial institution” generate millions of dollars in profits each year.

The platform is one of the things that apparently gives Goldman a leg-up over the competition when it comes to rapid-fire trading of stocks and commodities. Federal authorities say the platform quickly processes rapid developments in the markets and uses top secret mathematical formulas to allow the firm to make highly-profitable automated trades.

The criminal case has the potential to shed a light on the inner workings of an important profit center for Goldman and other Wall Street firms. The federal charges also raise serious questions about the safeguards Wall Street firms deploy to protect their proprietary trading systems.

The criminal case began to unfold on the evening of July 3 when Aleynikov was arrested by FBI agents at Newark Liberty Airport, after returning from Chicago. Aleynikov had just started a job with another firm in Chicago, after leaving the big firm in NY in early June. It appears the financial institution allegedly victimized by Aleynikov had alerted federal authorities that its former employee might be up to no good.

On July 4, Aleynikov was processed on a “theft of trade secrets” charge in a criminal complaint that was filed in federal court in Manhattan. As of this afternoon, he was still being held in federal custody pending posting of bail.

A Goldman spokesman declined to comment on the incident. A spokeswoman for the US Attorney in the Southern District of New York didn’t comment. Authorities reportedly took all the computers from Aleynikov’s home in New Jersey.

If Goldman's automated trading system was compromised by a former employee like this, who knows how safe those automated trades were. I'm thinking the last thing Goldman Sachs wants to see is the naked corpse of their automated trading code stripped out in federal court, especially given the sheer volume that these automated programs process in a day. Literally billions of dollars change hands daily through these programs, and opening the hood is not something Goldman Sachs is going to want.

I'm also thinking that given the banking regulatory climate, I don't think they have much choice. This case could get very, very interesting.

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge has the goods:

Back-up: This week's NYSE Program Trading report was very odd: not only because program trading hit 48.6% of all NYSE trading, a record high at least since the NYSE keep tabs of this data, and a data point which in itself was startling enough to cause some serious red flags as I jaunt from village to village in what little is left of Europe's bison country, but what was shocking was the disappearance of the #1 mainstay of complete trading domination (i.e., Goldman Sachs) from not just the aforementioned #1 spot, but the entire complete list. In other words: Goldman went from 1st to N/A in one week.

Even more odd, this "disappearance" comes hot on the heels of what Zero Hedge reported could be potentially a major change to the way the NYSE provides its weekly program trading report. Of course, Ray over at the NYSE immediately replied to Zero Hedge that all was going to be same as always ... Odd, maybe he meant that all is back to normal except the reporting of Goldman's trades. Either way, it might very well be time for proactive readers to again contact the two employees publicly disclosed by the NYSE as lead-contacts on the issue. Readers will recall that it was these same two who were previously steadfastly assuring anyone who would listen that there would be no change at all in data reporting.

Robert Airo, Senior Vice President, NYSE Euronext at (212) 656-5663 or
Aleksandra Radakovic, Vice President, NYSE Regulation at (212) 656-4144

Alas, the just released weekly data proves that either theirs was a material misrepresentation of facts, or Goldman simply suddenly decided to stop transacting with the NYSE, or, what would be even more sinister, Goldman notified the NYSE to scrap all their trading data from the prior week. Why would they do that?

Considering Goldman Sachs is already under the press microscope thanks to Matt Taibbi's excellent reporting, things just got a whole hell of a lot worse for the banks. If this blows up into a major scandal involving program trading being used to manipulate the markets, this could be the extinction-level event for the dinosaur megabanks.

You'd better believe I'll be keeping a close eye on this one. You should too.

[UPDATE 12:01 PM] Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism notes that Goldman Sachs is back to playing three-card monte with its toxic assets again. Just how much damage is this company doing to the global economy on a daily basis?

Architect Of Chaos

Vietnam War-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died this morning at the age of 93.

McNamara was secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. In that capacity he directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder.

Before taking office as secretary of defense in 1961, McNamara was president of Ford Motor Co. For 13 years after he left the Pentagon in 1968, he was president of the World Bank. He was a brilliant student, a compulsive worker and a skillful planner and organizer, whose manifest talents carried him from modest circumstances in California to the highest levels of the Washington power structure. He was said to have built a record of achievement and dedication in business, government and public service that few of his generation could match.

After his retirement from the bank in 1981, he maintained an exhausting schedule as director or consultant to scores of public and private organizations and was a virtual one-man think tank on nuclear arms issues.

But more than 40 years after the fact, he was remembered almost exclusively for his orchestration of U.S. prosecution of the war in Vietnam, a failed effort by the world's greatest superpower to prevent a communist takeover of a weak and corrupt ally. For his role in the war, McNamara was vilified by harsh and unforgiving critics, and his entire record was unalterably clouded. For the rest of his life, he would be haunted by the Vietnam ghosts.

And for more than 40 years, America has been haunted by the ghosts of McNamara's war. Seemingly, we have another set of wars to be haunted by now. One has to wonder what ghosts we're creating today with our military strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

How long will these wars haunt America and the world?

The Odubya Factor

As President Obama goes to Moscow this week to try to repair the disastrous relationship with the Russians that Bush all but wrecked completely, the Double G talks with NY Times reporter Charlie Savage about the other messes Bush left behind, the civil liberties problems that Obama refuses to correct. As BooMan notes, there are disturbing precedents for an incoming President of a differing party to refuse to correct the mistakes of his predecessor.

Here is the part I want to discuss.

CHARLIE SAVAGE:...You know, I had this interesting conversation when I was working on this article that came out this morning with Jack Balkin at Yale Law School, and he compares this moment to when Dwight Eisenhower took over, in 1953, and after FDR and then Truman had built up the New Deal administrative state, which Republicans hated, but then Eisenhower, instead of dismantling it, just sort of adjusted it with his own policies a little bit, and kept it going. And at that point, there was no longer any sort of partisan controversy about the fact that we were going to have this massive administrative state; it just sort of became a permanent part of the governing structure of the country.

And in the same way he said in 1969 when Richard Nixon took over from LBJ, he did some adjustments to the great society welfare state that LBJ had built up, but he didn't scrap it. And at that point, Republicans and Democrats had both presided over the welfare state and the welfare state became part of just how government worked.

That in the same way, Obama now, by continuing the broad outlines of the various surveillance and detention and counter-terrorism programs, is draining them of plausible partisan controversy, and so they are going to become entrenched and consolidated as permanent features of American government as well, going forward.

It's an astute observation, and one I have warned about myself. Some things concern me more than others. At the top of my list is a concern about governmental electronic surveillance. I feel like we are entering a phase where we might lose any realistic legal expectation of privacy in our phone and computer correspondence. I see Obama's policies in those areas as a real threat.

I'm also concerned about indefinite detentions. You can question my libertarian credentials, but I am more willing than Greenwald to allow a degree of wiggle-room in cleaning up Bush's mess in regard to some of the high-value detainees we have in custody. For example, I am not in favor of releasing any of the detainees that were directly implicated in the 9/11 plot, so long as the government is willing to explain how the evidence was spoiled and to hold people accountable (by prosecuting them) for spoiling it. But I have two major reservations. First, I have not been convinced that the 9/11 detainees cannot be prosecuted in a normal court of law. Second, the plurality of detainees seem to have been improperly detained, and I don't want the government to engage in a cover-up of that fact or to create any new classes of people who are denied basic rights. I am sympathetic to the difficulties Obama inherited, but I can't forgive a perpetuation of the same mistakes.

And while I completely agree with BooMan and Greenwald on this point, I have to add that it's much less of Obama perpetuating the same mistakes as much as the Democrats not seeing as what Bush did as a mistake at all.

Look folks, Obama taught Constitutional Law as a professor. He knows the basic arguments behind habeas corpus, indefinite detainment, and rule of law. He's still abandoning basic legal principles, telling us to trust him, and not giving us any logical legal reason why. Bush did the same thing. As a result, these violations will become enshrined practice in America, and there's no reason they should be.

But the real threat isn't from cleaning up Bush's mess. The real threat is the broad anti-terror program of the United States and how it has the potential to undermine basic civil rights and the rule of law. And, here, any instances of the Obama administration examining the facts and coming to conclusions similar to the Bush administration are instructive. Put bluntly, I stopped believing the Bush administration very early on and they lost their credibility with me completely. When a Democratic administration looks at the same set of facts and comes to a similar conclusion, that does make me willing to step back with an open mind and reassess my assumptions. I haven't started defending that which I previously criticized, but I have, in some instances, decided to wait and listen.

But an open mind only goes so far. I may be newly willing to listen, but so far I haven't been convinced to think differently on these issues at all. While I am willing to allow for a grace period and to potentially reassess some of my assumptions, my basic disposition is that the Obama administration is embracing an Establishmentarian mindset that favors unconstitutional invasions of privacy and that sacrifices core human and civil rights needlessly.

In other words, there is no question that the Obama administration is an improvement of enormous magnitude, but they still must be opposed on many core issues or we will simply cede our rights to the interests of a surveillance state.

I tend to believe Double G on this. BooMan's willing to give Obama some benefit of the doubt. I'm not, because I know Obama is aware of the constitutionality of these Bush procedures, campaigned against them, and is making the decision to continue and even expand them. It's the expansion of these policies that go above and beyond even what Bush did that removes the doubt for me, coupled with the same refusal to explain why these policies are needed, that causes me to refer to Obama in this situation as President Odubya.

Still, BooMan is correct on his last point there: citizens of all political stripes should be opposing Obama on these violations of core contitutional issues, or we will be ceding our rights. In many ways, I fear we already have.

The Failure Of Too Big To Fail

Long-time readers know that I've said multiple times in both the Global No-Confidence Vote series of posts and in general posts dealing with the financial crisis that the largest single problem the Obama administration has right now economically is the lack of political will to break up the banks that are "Too Big To Fail".

Without breaking up these banks, anything the Obama administration does to try to fix the economy will be for naught, because eventually we will be right back in this situation again. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act legalized the Megabank and broke down the protections between bank, investment house, and insurance company, allowing behemoths like today's Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, AIG, and Goldman Sachs to exist. Any company with counter-party obligations large enough to bring down an entire country's economy is a danger. With these companies, it became obligations large enough and inter-connected enough to bring down the global economy. They cannot be allowed to continue to exist, or we will continue to face the specter of systemic risk destroying everything.

But now, there's a glimmer of hope, anyway. The Obama administration may indeed be finally ready to take on "Too Big To Fail".

Under the administration's proposal, companies such as Citi, Goldman Sachs and others in a broad top tier engaged in complex transactions would face stricter scrutiny and have to hold more assets and more cash as cushions against a downturn.

They also would have to anticipate their own demise, drafting detailed descriptions of how they could be dismantled quickly without causing damaging repercussions. Think of it as planning their own funerals — and burials.

Obama's plan, in short, aims to make it far less appealing to be so big. That was the middle ground the administration sought, a step short of an outright ban on systemically risky companies.

"Without banning them we're providing some pretty heavy penalties for entering" the top group of institutions that could pose a risk to the entire financial system, said Diana Farrell, deputy director of the White House's National Economic Council.

"The regulator might say to a large institution, 'Make sure there is very good reason to allow yourself to get that big, or that interconnected, or that complex because the penalties will wipe out any advantages, such as lower cost of capital, you might have.'"

Some companies, such as Citi and Goldman Sachs, might bite the bullet and take on the added burden; in global capital markets some firms need to be large.

Others might choose to reduce their financial footprint.

"It's a very sophisticated and very effective way to force institutions to deconsolidate," said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a consulting firm that advises financial institutions.

If this is true, if the Obama administration really is going to make the regulatory environment on the TBTF megabanks so costly and onerous that they shrink themselves, or else have to submit to not being allowed to leverage as much (and making less profit) as well has having a safe "self-destruction" plan in place, then this just may accomplish what is needed.

Making it preferable to be a smaller bank instead of a larger one is certainly the way to go, but only if the regulations are strictly enforced.

Me, I see a whole lot of loopholes in this coming large enough that will allow you to drive, well, a megabank through.

We'll see. But it least it's a start.

StupidiNews!

• Ex-NFL quarterback Steve "Air" McNair has been found dead along with the body of his 20-year old mistress.
• Colin Powell has become the latest political figure to say that the military's policy on gays needs to be reviewed.
• President Obama is in Moscow for a summit with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.
• Three major Chinese companies have started signing international contracts in yuan in an effort to get away from the slumping dollar.
• A federal judge has thrown out the conviction of "My Space hoax mom" Lori Drew, saying violating a web site's terms of use is not a federal crime.

Last Call

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya tried to land in the capital of Tegucigalpa this afternoon, and found his jet greeted by armed troops. The BBC is reporting clashes at the airport and two dead, and Zelaya's jet diverted to El Salvador.

After several failed attempts to land at Tegucigalpa airport, the plane diverted and eventually touched down at Managua airport.

"Faced with this situation, we have to go on with what we had planned, which is a meeting with the other presidents in the region," Mr Zelaya told the Caracas-based Telesur news channel from the plane.

The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay and the head of the Organization of American States (OAS) are due to meet him in El Salvador.

The new government, which said it came to power through due legal process, is offering to negotiate with the international community, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs reports from Tegucigalpa.

But it says one thing is not negotiable and that is the return of Mr Zelaya to the presidency, our correspondent says.

Zelaya's not-so triumphant return has been delayed, most likely for a long, long time. As I've said before, Zelaya is a powermongering dirtball who illegally tried to extend his own presidency Hugo Chavez-style, but the other side are clearly powermongering dirtballs too if they are resorting to a violent military crackdown...they just have more weapons and control of home field advantage. Obama has thrown in with Zelaya however, and I have to say if the current Honduran government was interested in the rule of law as they say they are, they would have let Zelaya in to face the people in a democratic way.

I'm not losing any sleep over Zelaya being ousted, but the new boss is looking an awful lot like the old boss. Obama has decided "better the devil you know" for continuity's sake.

The Right however seems to think this is a video game or a war movie...and let's not forget their record on "regime change" over the last 8 years.

WOLVEREEEEEEEEEEEEEENS!

Joe Opens His Mouth On Israel

And then we go to this disturbing news that both Saudi Arabia and the United States would both basically turn a blind eye to Israel should they decide to attack Iran.

A report in the Jerusalem Post cites an article in the UK’s Sunday Times that “the head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper is reporting that the Israeli prime minister’s office denies the allegation.

Ahh, but it gets worse:

Vice-President Joe Biden told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that the US wouldn’t stand in the way of Israel if they decided Iran was an existential threat.

Speaking to host George Stephanopoulos from Camp Victory in Iraq, Biden told ABC that “we cannot dictate to another soveriegn nation … if they make the decision they are existentially threatened.”

Asked by Stephanopoulos about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that he will give international peace efforts with Iran only until the end of the year to work, Biden insisted the US would not second-guess any decisions Israel makes regarding Iran.

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest, and what they do with Iran or anything else,” said Biden.

Asked if the US would stand in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Biden evaded the question.

If this is a threat couched in diplo-speak, it's moronic. If it's an example of Obama's "smart power" it's even more moronic. Biden's performance was on par with Dick Cheney, and if you ask me with Iran in chaos like this, it's only a matter of time before somebody says "They're weak and in disarray, the time to attack is now."

The question is will Israel actually do it, knowing what the consequences will be?

Epic Wimbledon Finish

Well, if you didn't see the awe-inspiring win of Roger Federer over Andy Roddick, 16-14 in the 5th set(!!!), you missed the best men's tennis match in decades. Hats off to Roger and his record 15th Grand Slam win, cementing his status as the best men's tennis player and arguably now the best in history.

It really was a final for the ages. And there's no way Federer is through winning Slams. He may accumulate 20 Grand Slam wins, maybe more. Hell, he may have those by 2011. I haven't enjoyed a Slam final this much since I watched Michael Chang beat Stephan Edberg at the French Open in '89.

I remember watching that one with my dad. Hopefully, a lot of other familes made memories today watching Roger and Andy's truly epic battle.

Tehran Calling: Part 4

Been several days since I've reviewed the situation in Tehran, but the NY Times has a solid report from Tehran today.

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.

The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.

Clearly we're heading towards some sort of major confrontation here. The crackdowns over the last two weeks have not in fact gotten the rest of the Iranian clerics behind the Supreme Leader Khamenei, and they are in fact openly questioning his authority. The declaration that Moussavi and Khatami are "foreign agents" has upped the ante considerably. The Iranian regime clearly is threatened by Moussavi, and playing the traitor card now after the clerics have declared the election to be a fraud may break the country.

It was bad before in Iran. It's about to get much worse.

[UPDATE 1:39 PM] BooMan has more analysis.

This is a true ideological crisis for the Revolution. The government can crack down on dissenters of all stripes, but they can't very well declare that a government based on the Guardianship of the Clergy can crack down on the most esteemed clergy in the country. They can't issue some edict that will change the very nature of Shi'a Islam so that the people no longer show deference to their own Grand Ayatollahs.

Yet, the government still maintains all the levers of coercion. The question is: will the rank-and-file members of the armed services, Revolutionary Guard, and Intelligence Services obey the Supreme Leader when he is opposed by a religious establishment that has much greater religious legitimacy?

And that's the question.

Going Along To Get Along On Obamacare

WaPo's Ceci Connolly drops a stern warning from the White House Village Sensible Democratic Party Centrists that "liberal advocacy groups" (a.k.a. Those Dirty F'ckin Hippies at MoveOn.org) are not helping, and should really just shut the hell up and go away.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

In the call, leaders of both chambers expressed optimism that they will hold floor votes on legislation to overhaul the $2.2 trillion health system before Congress breaks in early August.

For his part, the president vowed to use his strong approval rating with voters to continue making the case for sweeping reform, according to one congressional staffer with knowledge of the conversation. Obama also hinted that efforts are under way to discourage allies from future attacks on Democrats, according to the source, who did not have permission to speak on the record about the discussion.

The White House had no comment on the president's call.

In recent weeks, liberal bloggers and grass-roots groups such as MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Service Employees International Union and Progressive Change Campaign Committee have targeted Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

A fundraising video produced by Democracy for America suggests Landrieu is a "sellout" because she has received $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the health-care industry and has yet to endorse the concept of a government-run health insurance plan to compete against the private companies. The public-option concept, which Obama supports, has become a litmus test for many pro-reform activists who accuse the insurance industry of failing to deliver affordable, accessible care.

Needless to say, What Digby Said:

All you have to do is read the paper to know that the people standing in the way of any workable health care reform are mushy, centrist robots and insurance company whores in the Democratic Party. We have the majority, the Republicans are imploding, there is no debate at the moment among anyone but Democrats. In the middle of this hot negotiation, putting ads on the air that say "let's get some health care!" is a joke.

I suspect that the truth is that he thinks he's clumsily triangulating. But the groups that he's criticizing are actually trying to support his position on the public plan and attacking them undermines the public plan as well. (Of course, it's always possible that's the intention, but I hope not.)

The problem is that triangulation is for the purpose of positioning the president between two poles in the debate. He's just set one of the poles as the public plan, which says to certain wobbly Senators that it's negotiable. I would have thought the better way to deal with this is to assure these congressional twits (who gladly ate tremendous amounts of shit from right wingers for years, but get livid at the tiniest criticism from the left) that he isn't endorsing any of these attacks, but that there's not much he can do about it. It's a free country. These waverers might just realize that he's serious about getting a public plan without him having to explicitly tell them so.

By now it's obvious that dismissing and humiliating the base is a conscious White House strategy and I'm sure it's sometimes quite useful, even though it's a distinctly unsavory political tactic (and one that erodes support over time.) But in this case, if they really want health reform, it's counterproductive. He needs the outside groups to play this role and by publicly reprimanding them he's undermining these groups with their already skittish donors --- and the cause itself.

I'm sure Obama has several people telling him "Look, the liberals are going to support you anyway, so screw them. Go ahead, attack them. It makes you look like a centrist. People will respect you."

The real problem is the people aren't overly concerned with how centrist Obama looks. They want affordable health care coverage with a public option because they are tired of getting reamed by insurance companies. The blockade is not being manned by Republicans. It's being manned by Senate Dems who are in the pocket of the health insurance companies, period.

The Centrists are telling him "The liberals are the enemy. Listen to us. If you listen to them, well, you won't get health care reform." The liberals are telling him the opposite, that it's the Centrists who are trying to sink this.

72% of Americans are on the side of the liberals here. The Obama administration has made it quite clear however that the progressives that helped him get into the White House are no longer necessary or even welcome.

Should Obamacare fall apart, remember that.

Tea Partied Out

Looks like the GOP left the Teabaggers out to dry yesterday.

Preliminary news reports from Saturday’s Tea Parties suggest public participation fell far short of the April protests. In Morristown, NJ, attendance was down by a third compared to this spring’s event. In Fort Lauderdale, FL, the Sun-Sentinel reports a crowd of “hundreds,” compared to an estimated 5,000 in April.

And in Syracuse, NY — where protesters waved the American flag upside-down — organizers had expected 1,000 people to show, but only 200 did.

Yet warm weather and patio parties may only be a part of the explanation. Unlike with the April protests, the Republican party’s establishment didn’t throw its weight behind this latest round of rallies.

“The collaboration between the official Republican establishment and the Tea Parties has not lasted into June,” writes the Washington Independent. “The RNC has no plans to get involved with any Tea Parties. A spokesman for [House minority leader] John Boehner (R-OH) … said that [Boehner's] holiday plans were private but would probably not include Tea Parties. [Newt] Gingrich will not attend any of the Tea Parties, although he recorded video messages for events in Birmingham and Nashville “at the request of the respective organizers’.”

Part of the reason for the more subdued atmosphere this time around may have had to do with the negative coverage the Tea Parties received in the media — Fox News excepted.

“There was a novelty last time that isn’t there now,” media analyst Seton Motley told the Independent. “Also, if you’re talking about the networks that made light of the Tea Parties back in April, they might have realized that opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.”

But it may be Fox News’ muted coverage this time around that may explain much of disparity between April’s protests and Saturday’s. The Independent notes that, in April, Fox sent five of its highest-profile anchors and correspondents on the road to cover the protests, but this time around, “sources at Fox … confirmed that no anchors would be attending and that the attendance and news value of the events looked to be lower than that of the April rallies.”

There are a number of reasons why the Teabaggers got dunked yesterday. The novelty factor, sure, but I think a lot of people at the last tea party protests in April really were surprised to see just how far over the edge some of the protesters were. That scared them off, as it should. Some of these protests were expected to turn into recruitment rallies for white supremacists.

That's what scared off both FOX News and the GOP. Nobody's going to risk their career when they would be the big draw at a tea party as a FOX News celebrity or GOP luminary and find out that neo-nazis have the place staked out. That'll look good on the resume, yes?

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are GOP luminaries and talking heads who like hanging out with racists jagoffs, but not the ones seriously considering a run at Obama's job in 2012, (well, those that are left, that number is dwindling weekly it seems.)

So yes, the Teabaggers went down in flames again. Honest dissent against the government is one thing, in a healthy democracy it will always exist. But the Tea Parties were manufactured astro-turf, not a grassroots movement. Americans figured that out too, and this time they stayed away.

The party, it seems, is over.