Last Call

And Europe seems to have survived another deadline with Belgium agreeing to nationalize and bail out banking giant Dexia and France and Germany pledging to recapitalize the rest of the European major banks.

Dexia agreed to the nationalization of its Belgian retail bank and secured 90 billion euros ($121 billion) in state guarantees, in a rescue that raises pressure on other euro zone countries to strengthen their banks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday they would tackle Greece's woes and agree how to recapitalize the regions' banks by the end of the month, but they declined to reveal details of their plan.

"We expect the EU to come up with a minimum core Tier One (capital) level under certain stress scenarios and a higher one without any stress. Then banks will be asked to reach this level in a short period of time," said a senior banker in Germany.

The question is how much will be needed?  British PM David Cameron wants to take the Hank Paulson approach.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told his euro zone peers to adopt a "big bazooka" solution.

"If capital is to have any chance of stabilizing the banks, it will need to be large: we would start with the IMF's 200 billion euros," said Alastair Ryan, analyst at UBS. This could involve euro zone governments owning 40 percent of the sector if such a sum was to come from the state, he estimated.

That's not chump change, and neither is the EU owning 40% of the European banking sector.  Could this be the EU's move to finally nationalize and unwind the Too Big To Fail banks?  Maybe...but I doubt it.

Joe The Plumber Makes House Calls

Our ol' buddy Samuel "Not actually Joe, Not really a plumber" Wurzelbacher is running for the House in Ohio, taking on Democrat Marcy Kaptur in OH-9.

The man known as “Joe The Plumber” is running for Congress.

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) declaring his intention to seek the congressional seat held by Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th district.

Wurzelbacher rose to fame during the 2008 presidential election, when he asked then-Sen. Barack Obama how his tax policies would affect the American dream and the McCain campaign started using his story on the trail.

Good luck with that, Joe.  Kaptur's won big for 18 years now.   Granted, redistricting may make the 9th competitive, but the GOP is too occupied with getting rid of Dennis Kucinich, and to do that they have to railroad as much of the Lake Erie urban vote into Kaptur's district as possible to make the Toledo-Cleveland suburbs as red as Ohio State's jerseys.

It'll probably work, too.  Joe on the other hand, well he's got about as much chance of winning in Kaptur's district as I do.

Whatever You Want Them To Be

Our old friend Doug "Third Party" Schoen is back in Politico today, screaming that Occupy Together really means America wants a centrist third party candidate who will tame the evil partisans in Congress and bring them together to push his Americans Elect effort to destroy "reform" Medicare and Social Security and save America.

In my recent polling, both parties and the congressional leadership all draw net negative ratings.

So there is good reason to believe that a credible third party may be on the ballot in 2012 — and would garner far more support than most political analysts would expect.

I recently polled for Americans Elect, a nonprofit political organization that is now planning an Internet convention to select a third presidential ticket for the 2012 election. They are in the process of securing ballot access in all 50 states.

This demonstrates that an increasing number of Americans are now searching beyond the two parties for effective leadership. Many now support an alternative 2012 ticket to break the two-party duopoly’s stranglehold.

Amazing.  He's polling for an organization that wants to create a third party ticket and he of course found that Americans really want a third party ticket.  Quelle surprise!

Voters desperately want the opportunity to change the political system. Polling showed they are looking for their voices to be heard by electing a centrist alternative to the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets in 2012. They believe, our results show, that this could force the two parties to work together, bringing logical ideas from both.

I'm having trouble figuring out how this would actually solve the problem, since the problem is Congress (and specifically Republicans in Congress), not the White House.  A centrist candidate would have what leverage exactly over Eric Cantor and John Boehner?  No, nobody expects this third party candidate to win...but it certainly would damage President Obama's re-election chances.  There's no way the Tea Party would support a relentlessly centrist candidate.  They'd line up behind the GOP for sure.

But Americans Elect would effectively split independents and Democrats, which is the point.  If these guys were serious about reforming government, they'd start with Congress, not the White House.  The fact that they exist to make sure the GOP wins in 2012 tells you everything you need to know about Doug Schoen (who has been trying to get rid of President Obama by any means possible) and the people he works for.

Supporters Who Honk Are Fined In Seattle

Police experimented with a new tactic Friday night as they responded to a weeklong Occupy Seattle demonstration at Westlake Park -- ticketing drivers who honked in support of protesters.

Starting at 11 p.m. Friday, police started pulling over and ticketing drivers who honked as they drove past protesters.

When the first car -- a taxi -- was pulled over, the protesters followed and shouted at police who then formed a blockade around the driver's cab.

The cab driver was then given a $144 ticket -- and protesters ended up handing him money afterwards to help pay for his fine.

I guess instead of honking to support a national movement, you could flip off the cops instead. At least it would be quiet.  I gotta say, I think it's awesome that protesters helped him pay for the fine.  It shows who is trying to do the right thing for their fellow man, and who is oppressing those who dare speak out. If I wasn't already on board, I would be now.

Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Rush Limbaugh Style

Just for an extra drop of perspective, this was originally published on "mywesttexas.com" under "funny police news."  I guess I don't see what's funny about it.

Talk about your Monday from hell. Not only did Bridgett Nickerson Boyd's car break down on her way to work, but when she pulled over to the side of the freeway, a sheriff's deputy named Mark Goad pulled behind her, wrote her a ticket for driving on the shoulder, decided to arrest her, followed her to the hospital when her suddenly racing heart prompted a call to paramedics, then took her into custody again after she was treated by doctors and finally drove her to jail.

To make matters worse, Boyd claims in a lawsuit that the handcuffs were put on her wrists painfully tight - she claims she explained to the officer she had just had surgery on her hand - and that she was forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh "make derogatory comments about black people" all the way to the jail. Boyd is African-American.

Because of the incident, which occurred on Oct. 4, 2010, Boyd filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Goad and Harris County alleging defamation, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

''Deputy Goad was aware that Boyd had not committed a crime and her arrest was without probable cause," according to the lawsuit filed in Houston.

The magistrate who saw her while jailed apparently agreed and dismissed all charges.

So, when a woman pulls over with a smoking engine that is enough for one jackass to arrest her for driving on the shoulder.  The stupidity is then further compounded by forcing her to listen to a racist rant by our favorite jackass, Rush Limbaugh.  The only non-jackass (except for Boyd, of course) is the magistrate who had the common sense to see a problem and put a stop to it before it approached white-hot nuclear stupidity.

I have special sympathy for her regarding the handcuffs and her hands.  This woman was far from a hardened criminal, there was no reason to ensure that she would be uncomfortable.  They could have cuffed her lightly, put her in a supervised room, or even used an alternate means of control if they did fear she was a danger to others or herself.  I despise people who abuse their power, and I believe that we should remove power from those who are incapable of wielding it with dignity and fairness.

This is harassment, pure and simple.  From the arrest until the magistrate, that poor woman had suffered unnecessarily.  Whether it was because she is black, female or both isn't relevant.  What matters to me is that she did the right thing and was treated like crap throughout the ordeal.

Jackasses in the highest.

Cain Unable, Part 5

Herman Cain is now saying the fact that he exists means racism isn't holding minorities back.  It's all in your head.

When asked by CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley if he thought African Americans had a level playing field, Cain said he thought most of them did, using his own experience in corporations as an example.

“Many of them do have a level playing field,” Cain said. “I absolutely believe that. Not only because of the businesses that I have run, which has had the combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics - you know, we had a total diversity. But also because of the corporations whose board I've served on for the last 20 years. I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America.”

As for African Americans who remain economically disadvantaged, Cain said they often only had themselves to blame.

“They weren't held back because of racism,” Cain said. “People sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve.”

I didn't honestly think Herman Cain could be any more repugnant, but saying that racism is all in the heads of African-Americans is just ludicrous to the point of self-parody involving what people think about black CEOs running for the GOP White House ticket.

The cognitive dissonance is staggering to me.  Herman Cain was in college during the civil rights era in the 60's.  When federal civil rights laws were codified, Cain benefited from them on the way to his lofty perch as Godfather's Pizza CEO.  At no point have I ever heard of Cain saying he was going to pass up civil rights programs or not take advantage of them because he thought the playing field was level.  He admits in the interview that educational and economic disparity still exists, and then blames poor minorities for it.  How does one escape a hell like that, you wonder?  Through a college scholarship, perhaps?

Hell, look at the racism that spewed out when candidate Obama entered the race in 2007.  It's only gotten worse since then, and Cain honestly believes there's a level playing field?  Is he blind to all the assistance he received?  Did he ever turn down a position because a company had an affirmative action policy in place?  How the hell is he so damn sure that he received zero assistance from any of the civil rights measures that followed on his way to CEO?

Of course, Crowley asked none of that.  But I sure as hell want to know.

Then Cain went on Face The Nation yesterday and said this about Occupy Wall Street:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain claimed Sunday that the Occupy Wall Street protests going on in New York City and across the country were a conspiracy designed to help President Barack Obama.

“The proof is quite simply the bankers and the people on Wall Street didn’t write these failed policies of the Obama administration,” Cain told CBS’ Bob Schieffer. “So it’s a distraction. So many people won’t focus on the failed policies of this administration.”

“You’re saying that these people all got together to draw attention away from Barack Obama?” Schieffer asked.

“We know that the unions and certain union-related organizations have been behind these protests that have gone on, on Wall Street and other parts around the country. It’s coordinated to create a distraction so people won’t focus on the failed policies of this administration,” Cain replied.

“It’s anti-American because to protest Wall Street and the bankers is basically saying you are anti-capitalism. The free market system and capitalism are two of the things that have allowed this nation and this economy to become the biggest in the world.”

Yeah, it's all Obama's fault.  Bankers had nothing to do with the financial crisis, see.  Also, damn dirty effing hippies hate America and it's a conspiracy to make you forget that President Obama destroyed the economy in 2007 with a time machine and an Excel spreadsheet.

Have I mentioned my strong dislike of Herman Cain?

Kings Of Wishful Thinking

Not only does our old friend Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King think it's a bad idea to allow the poor to vote and have a voice in government, his friend New York Republican Rep. Peter King thinks it's a bad idea to allow the poor to have a voice period and has an issue with Occupy Together coverage.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is upset at the growing movement and the media’s coverage of it, hoping that a modern day version of protests from five decades ago isn’t being recaptured now.

“It’s really important for us not to give any legitimacy to these people in the streets,” said King on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Friday evening. “I remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.” 

Let's think about that.  If it were up to Steve King, only property owners would be allowed to vote.  If it were up to Peter King, there would be no coverage of Occupy Wall Street or anywhere else.  Republicans are publicly running on a platform to disenfranchise tens of millions at the voting booth and in the media.  They are absolutely terrified of the common people having a voice.  Everything they are trying to accomplish legislatively is about stifling that voice, about ending the discussion, about rolling back rights, about the most base definition of conservatism:  the unchanging prevention of progress in favor of not the status quo, but the status quo ante.

"We can't allow that to happen," King says.  What, exactly, can he not allow to happen?  Dissent against the Republican agenda?  Minorities voting?  The people taking to the streets to protest against his real employers?  King is begging Americans to be part of his collective "we" here as well.  Who is the "we" here?  The 1% at the top?  Why does King get to make that call?  He certainly seems to think he has that power.

So yes, Occupy Together is now much more than a thorn in the side of the corporate Republicans and their mouthpieces.  It's a legitimate threat to them, and the GOP is treating them as such for a very real reason.

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 41

Another check of the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster finds plant owner TEPCO in serious jeopardy, on the hook for around $50 billion dollars in compensation to people who lived near the plant.  As the first compensation checks go out this week, it's only a matter of time before TEPCO is nationalized by the crushing weight of their own massive failures.

Masato Muto, 40, works for the Tokyo Electric Power Co. in a rented one-story building. Only a clock and a calendar hang on the office walls, and most days, only angry people come through the front door.


The nuclear evacuees who come to this Tepco branch office in Fukushima prefecture are greeted two ways. First, by a letter from the company president — taped to a whiteboard by the entrance — that apologizes for the “great inconvenience” and “anxiety” caused by “the accident.” Next, by an employee like Muto, one of the 1,700 Tepco workers dispatched to centers in Fukushima to help people collect payments for their lost jobs and homes — provided they first fill out the 60-page application form.

Seven months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, Tepco, which operated the facility, owes $50 billion in compensation to the tens of thousands who lived close to the nuclear plant. The payments could send the company into bankruptcy, a government panel recently said. At minimum, they will handcuff the utility giant for years, forcing it to cut jobs, sell its assets, and perhaps raise electricity rates for its 29 million customers. 

I've long said that the total cost of Fukushima Daiichi will top the $1 trillion mark when all is said and done, not to mention untold thousands of lives.   TEPCO is not long for this Earth as a company, and Japan, already mired in a second lost decade economically, may not rise from the ashes of this disaster for a generation.

The prestige of working for Tepco is now gone, and so are many of the perks. It once operated resorts and sponsored clubs for its employees; Muto was once a running back on the American football team. But since the disaster Tepco has booked $23 billion in losses. Economists say the company will either go bankrupt — a likely scenario if its idled nuclear reactors don’t re-start — or carry for years the baggage of debts to evacuees and lenders.

Either way, said Tatsuo Hatta, an economist from Gakushuin University, “it’s a funeral company.”

And sadly, a lot of other funerals will precede TEPCO's demise, as well as follow it.

StupidiNews!

• House Republican Darrell Issa vows that Justice Department subpoenas over Operation Fast and Furious could come as early as this week.
• At least 23 are dead, mostly Coptic Christians, as a crackdown in Cairo by the Egyptian military government continues.
• The list of the most dangerous cities in the US for violent crimes per capita is out, and once again Detroit tops the list.
• Europe's largest hacker group says Germany has issued Trojan spyware to monitor citizens, in violation of the country's constitution.
• Astronomers in Australia have photographed the dust and gases between stars, the interstellar medium, for the first time.

Last Call

I'm from the Midwest, so I know how domestic violence works in the Bible Belt. The reality is, while the law says women should not be beaten, culturally allowed gender bias does turn a blind eye to the problem. In what I consider the information age, a time when bright trumps might, we still find ourselves facing domestic violence with a certain trepidation in this region. The central U.S. is about a decade behind the rest of the nation, both in recognizing and correcting the problem.

But decriminalizing domestic violence? You gotta be freaking kidding me. This isn't a brand new problem, however. The gaps in help for abused women is so poor that the district attorney advises victims not to call in.  Another danger is that domestic violence situations will escalate to regain dominance of the situation. What is often mistaken as retaliation is actually an attempt to assume control over the victim. Not that it matters to the victim. For her, it's just another beating.  She may have to pay for her medical bills, knowing the man who hurt her won't have to pay a dime to her or for his crime.  Could it be that jaywalking or owning dangerous dogs will be a worse crime than beating an adult woman?

We have two problems here. One is that misdemeanor domestic violence may be decriminalized. Second, what they consider misdemeanor is pretty scary, including beating a woman with a crowbar.  The article from ThinkProgress states they are repealing the city code that specifically bans domestic violence.  Sixteen people have been arrested and released with no consequences or charges filed.  To be fair not every victim of domestic violence is a woman but they are certainly the majority.  We have to ask ourselves why this could ever be considered an intelligent move.  Why not cut from programs that do not directly protect victims of violent crime?  The fact that there are too many victims to help should be all we need to step in and protect.  We also need to ask at what point is protecting women going to be cut off?  When a man buys her a drink, or do they have to live together first?  Because if a stranger beats a woman with a crowbar or throws her through a window, that would be assault and battery.  If the city government is going to draw a line, that line had better be clearly defined and justified.  I really want to hear their reasoning when they look at medical costs of abused women.

It seems the people in charge all say it's a damn shame, but nobody has any money to help prosecution. That's no reason to make it legal so they are no longer obligated to do their jobs. What happens when other hate crimes become too numerous to control?

Originally posted at Angry Black Lady's corner.

Spectator Off The Sidelines

And speaking of Occupy Together protests in other cities besides the Big Apple, it seems at least one conservative magazine editor has admitted to joining Occupy DC as a mole with the intent of causing problems...and was at the incident where protesters were pepper-sprayed at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.

An assistant editor with a right-wing magazine admitted in a column Saturday evening to posing as part of the 99 Percent Movement in D.C. “in order to mock and undermine” it. Patrick Howley, an assistant editorfor the American Spectator, was committed enough to his deception to be at the vanguard of a demonstration that saw police firing pepper spray and closing a downtown Washington museum.

In his column, Howley says he took part in the demonstration Saturday at the Smithsonian Institute’s Air and Space Museum reportedly directed at an exhibit about the unmanned drone aircraft used by the U.S. and others for spying and, increasingly, targeted killings in far-flung hotspots.

As between 100 and 200 anti-war demonstrators arrived at the steps of the museum — some of them affiliated with a group organizing the “Occupy DC” spinoff of the Wall Street protests — a few intrepid protesters made a rush for the door despite apparent warnings from security guards. One of them was Howley, who recounts that “as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside the museum.”

Howley's own words are revealing:

[A]s far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story. Under a cloud of pepper spray I forced myself into the doors and sprinted blindly across the floor of the Air and Space Museum…

And of course, he got his story.  Maybe he got swept up in the moment, maybe he actually learned something about the Occupy Together protests, maybe he's an adrenaline junkie, maybe he's just an inveterate liar of the first order.  He admits to joining the protest at the Air and Space Museum under false pretenses and cops to being in the thick of things when the pepper spray started to fly.

So yes, no matter what motive you assign to Howley's actions, the establishment is taking the various Occupy Together protests very, very seriously.  If you're headed out there this week (Occupy Cincy ended up in downtown right on Fountain Square this weekend with peaceful demonstrations) be aware, and be careful.

California DREAM Acting On Such An Autumn's Day

California's Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed into law a number of education bills, including the state's version of the DREAM Act, allowing undocumented immigrants the chance to attend college at in-state rates.

Brown's signature on the bill fulfilled a campaign promise to allow high-achieving students who want to become citizens the opportunity to attend college, regardless of their immigration status.

"Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking," Brown said in a statement. "The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us."

Beginning in 2013, illegal immigrants accepted by state universities may receive assistance from Cal-Grants, a public program that last year provided aid to more than 370,000 low-income students.

The new law also makes students who are not legally in the country eligible for institutional grants while attending the University of California and California State University systems. And it permits them to obtain fee waivers in the community college system.

Students must graduate from a California high school after attending school in the state for at least three years and must affirm that they are in the process of applying to legalize their immigration status. They also must show financial need and meet academic standards.

The bill was by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who praised Brown for showing courage in signing it.

"After having invested 12 years in the high school education of these young men and women, who are here through no fault of their own," Cedillo said, "it's the smartest thing for us to do to permit these students to get scholarships and be treated like every other student."

California Republicans are furious, of course, vowing that "tens of thousands" of new undocumented immigrants will enter the country because of the law at great expense to taxpayers.  The reality is that only a few thousand students per year would qualify under the law, and oh yes, they would have to admit they are undocumented.  Texas Republican Rick Perry signed a similar measure into law in 2001 and stood by it as late as this July:

"To punish these young Texans for their parents' actions is not what America has always been about."

Perry said earlier this year.   Texas has not collapsed under the measure.  In California, Brown hasn't gotten much credit for being better than Ahnold on a number of issues, but between himself and state AG Kamala Harris refusing to let the banks off the hook for Foreclosuregate, California Democrats are leading the way forward for the nation in the country's most populous state.  Good for the both of them...and hey, give Rick Perry some credit for his state's version, too.  Especially now that he's running for President.  Be sure to remind your GOP friends.

This Week's WTH - Wrong Way Edition

AMARILLO, Texas -- A prosecutor says the Colorado state senator involved in a crash that killed a pregnant woman in the Texas Panhandle last year has pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of driving on the wrong side of the road.

Sen. Suzanne Williams paid a $200 fine and $68 in court costs, according to Hartley County Attorney Shane Turner. The Amarillo Globe-News reported Friday that Texas law allowed for the dismissal of two seat-belt citations against Williams.

State police investigators had recommended that Williams be charged with criminally negligent homicide, tampering with physical evidence and injury to a child in a crash that killed a pregnant Amarillo woman, Department of Public Safety records.

But a grand jury declined to charge Williams.

It gets worse. It seems Williams, a loud advocate of child restraints, tampered with evidence when she picked up her grandchild and placed him in a car seat after the accident. In fact, it seems none of the passengers in the car were buckled up.  She lied to the police, but I guess that isn't punishable when you're important.

Investigators said the Honda drifted into the oncoming lane of traffic, colliding with a 2003 GMC Yukon driven by an Amarillo man. The man's wife, Brianna "Brie" Gomez, 30, was a passenger in the SUV.

Gomez was flown to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, where an emergency cesarean section was performed. Gomez was pronounced dead after her baby boy was delivered. The premature infant, Curran Blaec Gomez, weighed just 3 pounds at birth. He survived. He now weighs about 18 pounds.

Williams' son, Todd Williams, and his 3-year-old son were ejected from the vehicle. They were seriously injured.

"While on scene Suzanne (Williams) told me that no one had been ejected from her vehicle and that everyone was extracted from the vehicle by rescue ... Suzanne failed to inform me of the truth of the events that had taken place before anyone arrived on scene," a state trooper said in an offense report obtained by the Amarillo Globe-News newspaper.

A misdemeanor is no longer a misdemeanor when it kills an innocent person. Brianna Gomez did nothing wrong. She was sober, driving on the right side of the road, and because of Williams, will never get to know her child. If there is a good reason to dismiss charges, let's hear it. Because the facts say an innocent woman died and the guilty woman would have paid more for a good pair of shoes.

What. The. HELL.

Sunday Sunshine

Here's something to brighten your day, courtesy of the New Haven Independent:

Stuck inside a subterranean pipe, the kitten howled. But it wouldn’t come out. Lt. Holly Wasilewski knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night if the feline remained there.

So began an hour-plus-long drama in Kimberly Square.

Finally Wasilewski had the cat in her arms. It didn’t fight her.

“I’m coming up!” Wasilewski called as she, slowly, straightened. The cat relaxed. “It knew at that point it was being rescued.”

She handed the grayish tiger kitten to one of the officers above, who placed it in the Corona box. Then Wasilewski called the animal shelter, which didn’t have room. She took the kitten to the veterinary hospital on State Street, which also couldn’t take in the kitten. But the folks there did give the kitten a bath, washing away its fleas.

Wasilewski took the kitten home—just for the night. She said she couldn’t permanently take on a fourth cat. As it was, she had the kitten sleep in her bed, away from Shane, Bella, and Pumpkin. Especially Shane, who’s “kind of a bully.”

An hour in a storm drain, a fellow cop who adopted the kitten for his son despite his allergies, an innocent creature makes it out okay.  Win-win-win.

Happy Sunday!

Repatriation Nation

What I don't get about former CBO head and McCain campaign economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin is that of course he lies and says that President Obama's stimulus plan "failed" America, but then he:

• A) admits that the stimulus worked by CBO standards, that
• B) the "private sector stimulus plan" he's pushing for a repatriated profit tax holiday wouldn't go towards job creation with anywhere near the level of efficiency as the either the ARRA or the proposed new jobs bill, 
• C) that the exact same strategy was tried in 2004 and according to his own criteria that he holds the ARRA to, it too "failed" America as only 23 percent of repatriated tax funds went to job creation, then 
• D) says if we "double down on the same failed strategy" (as he calls the American Jobs Act), and repatriate again it will count as a $1.4 trillion stimulus and create almost 3 million new jobs.

What I don't get is that American corporations have record profits on hand right now in order to create jobs, and are simply choosing to create them overseas because that's where the growing demand for their products and services are.   Repatriation would make sense if the issue was somehow that businesses were strapped for capital to invest in payrolls.  They're not.  They're making record profits quarter after quarter, most sectors.  Not banks, currently.

And banks are suffering all kinds of losses right now and they are shedding jobs by the tens of thousands.  Repatriation wouldn't fix any of that.  They'd just keep the money.  All repatriation would do is give corporations even more profits.  Maybe they would invest them here.  In 2004, when times were good, they only invested 23% in new jobs.  Why would that rate increase?

OK, the Senate McCain-Hagan plan would offer a better tax rate if businesses added to payroll.  But how much do they need to add to get the lower tax rate?  At best that would change that 23% by a few points.  And worst case scenario, those repatriated profits went straight to the bubble economy in Bush's second term.

No matter how you look at it, Holtz-Eakin's own numbers wreck his own theories.  Hell, Eakin's own math cited is that repatriation is $482,000 per job created ($1.4 trillion, 2.9 million jobs.)  Obama's stimulus was a "failure" at $278,000 per job created, remember?  What happened to the efficiency of the free market over government waste?

Sure would be good for CEOs however.

Can You Village Idiots Please Make Up Your Minds?

This week, the President is, let's see...too angry no too nice umm....too coporate...errm...too smart OK I give up, what is it this week?

Beyond the economy, the wars and the polls, President Obama has a problem: people.

This president endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors. His relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill is frosty, to be generous. Personal lobbying on behalf of legislation?

He prefers to leave that to Vice President Biden, an old-school political charmer.

Obama’s circle of close advisers is as small as the cluster of personal friends that predates his presidency. There is no entourage, no Friends of Barack to explain or defend a politician who has confounded many supporters with his cool personality and penchant for compromise.

Obama is, in short, a political loner who prefers policy over the people who make politics in this country work.

“He likes politics,” said a Washington veteran who supports Obama, “but like a campaign manager likes politics, not a candidate.” The former draws energy from science and strategy, the latter from contact with people.

Which raises an odd question: Is it possible to be America’s most popular politician and not be very good at American politics?

Oh I see, we're back to Obama is a bloodless library dweeb with more than a little dash of "You know people like him are so (whispers) above their station" and let's throw in the ol' "affirmative action President/empty suit/not too bright" while we're at it.  Asshole Scott Wilson here can't do any better than comparing him backhandedly to Joe Biden and unsourced quotes from "Washington veterans".

My ass.  Nice hit piece, jagoff.

Last Call

And your next GOP-created hostage situation is this: Orange Julius say he will defund the entire Justice Department unless they start defending DOMA in federal court.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) threatened Friday to withhold funding from the Justice Department unless it agrees to defend a ban on the federal government recognizing same-sex marriages.

“We're going to take the money away from the Justice Department, who's supposed to enforce it, and we'll use it to enforce the law,” Boehner told the conservative Value Voters Summit.

Boehner is engaged in an ongoing dispute with Attorney General Eric Holder over his refusal to defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act. President Obama has taken the stance that the law is unconstitutional. While the Justice Department usually defends laws passed by Congress against legal challenges, the Obama administration has stopped defending DOMA while Democrats work to repeal the law.

You know if Orange Julius had real huevos between his legs, he'd just threaten to defund the entire Executive Branch until all Democrats everywhere hurled themselves off a cliff.   Stop being a pussy dilettante, Johnny.  Demand to defund AMERICA until you get everything you want ever and stop with this nickel and dime crap.

Wanker.

The American Jobs Act, Paid In Full

The Congressional Budget Office does confirm that President Obama's repeated claims that the American Jobs Act is fully paid are very much correct.

The Congressional Budget Office on Friday confirmed that President Obama’s jobs bill would be fully paid for over ten years and also gave its seal of approval to Senate Democrats' version that includes a surtax on millionaires.

The CBO said that the original Obama stimulus bill would involve $447 billion in tax cuts and new spending—the same estimate given by the administration. It said the bill would raise $450 billion over ten years. The result is a $3 billion decrease in deficits over ten years.

The Senate Democrats' bill, which replaces Obama’s taxes on the upper middle class with a 5.6 percent surtax on those with annual incomes above $1 million, raises $453 billion over ten years and reduces deficits by $6 billion. The tax kicks in in 2013.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office highlighted that the CBO affirmed 60 percent of the stimulus comes in the form of tax cuts rather than spending and that most of the tax relief is for workers.

Republicans are now ignoring the bill because it does add to the short-term deficit by $288 billion.  Mitch McConnell says the Senate Dems' millionaire tax is a "deal-killer" and was never going to vote for it anyway, I assume that as his constituent, he's fine with Kentucky's 9.5% unemployment rate and the fact that Kentucky's been above the national unemployment average every month since January 2005.   You'd think Mitch would want to do more.  You'd be wrong, of course.

Deficits only matter when there's a Democrat in the White House.

A Stroke Of Bad Luck

The manager of the U.S. South Pole station wants to be evacuated, saying she suffered a stroke more than a month ago. But U.S. polar officials say she'll have to wait until special ski-equipped airplanes can land at the frozen base several weeks from now.

The dispute between site manager Renee-Nicole Douceur, the National Science Foundation and the operator of the base, Raytheon Polar Services, has been simmering since Douceur said she suffered a stroke on Aug. 27. The physician at the U.S.-run Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station recommended her immediate evacuation. But consulting doctors hired by Raytheon and the NSF disagreed.

So sure, there are two sides of this. One is that this is surely a known risk when you work in such a remote location. This article doesn't give any real weight to that, but we should do good to remember even healthy people can take a sudden turn for the worse, and accidents happen. Though she is holding steady now, one stroke is rare.  It is very possible she can have another, or a chain of them.

On the other hand, it seems likely they could do better than "a few weeks" to help someone who has had a stroke. This isn't migraines or a broken toe, we are talking brain hemorrhage. I wish there were more details available, because I'd love to know what basis Raytheon doctors used when deciding the risk was acceptable.  Was it purely the risk of the people going on the rescue mission?  Or is there something we don't know that makes the wait more logical?

Half And Half Again, Part 2

Yesterday ABL kindly linked to my piece about Laura Ingraham, race and privilege in discussion of one Herman Cain.  I've decided to re-post that here, updated with with observations on Lawrence O' Donnell's interview with Cain that aired Thursday night and the reaction to that interview on Friday.

Right wing radio host Laura Ingraham actually served a useful purpose this week with her charming comments on race, President Obama, Herman Cain, and American history.

And what happened with Obama is that he gets this job that he’s not qualified for… OK, so [Obama is] Constitutionally qualified for but he’s not really qualified for. And guess who pays the price? All of us. Because we had such a yearning for history.
Well I have a question. Herman Cain, if he became president, he would be the first black president, when you measure it by — because he doesn’t — does he have a white mother, white father, grandparents, no, right? So Herman Cain, he could say that he’s — he’s — he’s the first, uh — he could make the claim to be the first — yeah, the first Main Street black Republican to be the president of the United States. Right? He’s historic too.

Now you may be thinking "How is this useful other than as a window into just how awful a person Laura Ingraham is?" I'll be happy to explain my theory. It goes something like this:


Ingraham's comments show the difference between racism and assumption of privilege. They're related, but they're not the same thing. One specifically involves baseless assumptions, negative stereotypes and bigoted behavior specifically involving race, the other involves that a person believes a specific group that they don't belong to should follow behaviors and be assigned criteria that they consider to be societal norms that the group in question should possess.

It's entirely possible to assume privilege about a group, to "take it upon oneself," on issues other than race (gender, sexual identity, religion or lack thereof, etc.) and it's entirely possible to be racist without assuming privilege (propagating negative stereotypes about one's own race, "self-hating" etc.)

What Ingraham is doing is very much in the category of assumption of privilege. She feels that she not only has the right to be the arbiter of the President's racial identity, that she not only has the right to define what that identity means to all other racial identity groups (and that Barack Obama's racial identity is different from Herman Cain's racial identity based solely on her opinion) but given her statements in the past she feels that she knows what is best for the black community as well, even though she's not a part of it. On top of all that, because the President is biracial (like myself) she feels that she can emphasize one race over the other when it suits her argument, and that his identity is mutable based on what she thinks at the time and from which angle she needs to attack him. The assumption that other African-Americans need her guidance and opinion in order to formulate their own perceptions of the President's racial identity is pretty much the height of hubris.

But Ingraham's technically not being racist. She's not actually saying that being black is bad, she's just defining what she thinks being black from a Presidential historical standpoint means and should be defined as. Having said that, her assumption of privilege here is repugnant, ignorant, arrogant, unacceptable and generally makes her a truly rotten human being. I'm pretty sure most of us would find her statements to be breathtakingly terrible and that most people find what she said to be unremittingly foul on pure instinct. Her statements in fact imply a great number of negative things about the President being biracial and that not being good enough to qualify the him for historical status, that somehow it makes Herman Cain "better" in her opinion, but her statements weren't technically racism, only implied. There is a difference, and it's one that has been exploited to great effect in history.

Now here's where it gets fun: Ingraham's defenders will no doubt say that her assumption of privilege is not racism, and that anyone who does attack her as being such is overly sensitive and should be dismissed. But this means that her assumption of privilege is acceptable to society because the racism is merely implied and not overt, and therefore a matter of one's opinion and perspective. Implied attacks on minorities through the language of assumption of privilege have been used throughout American history.

It's readily and painfully recognizable to various minorities, but has over the decades lost stigma and even become acceptable to those who regularly assume the familiar code phrases, tired arguments, and "dog whistle" semantics because they are in the majority and get to define in society what the acceptable norms are. When couched in the haze of opinion and point-of-view, attacks on such language can be easily discounted in order to maintain that majority hold on what is acceptable and what is not, and it's done specifically to blunt criticism from minorities and to perpetuate the power in the majority. At its logical endpoint, it's also designed specifically to anger the minority group in question in order to provoke a reaction by the minority that can be dismissed by the majority in order to establish dominance by being able to control what is acceptable in society.  It's worked for a very, very, very long time. Ingraham is playing a game as old as human interaction itself.

Having said that, Laura Ingraham can kiss my biracial ass.

Madam, you are no more the arbiter of the President's racial identity and what it means to America than the pile of fecal matter inside your cranium, and the poison-saturated sack of hypocrisy that constitutes your soul is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy. I am proud of being biracial. It does not make me any less pure or less worthy or less human than human, and I greatly resent the implication. I am exceedingly proud of my President because he is someone like me, and I live in a country where someone like me can in fact be the leader of the free world and govern a country of 310 million people, all of whom are better people than you are. If you cannot find the singular joy in a society that allows that to happen, your worldview is a hopelessly broken and bleak landscape of endless recriminations that is so exceedingly and perfectly empty that you will seek to fill it with shallow, sneering, venal attacks in order to find some way, any way, to stop the relentless pain that your daily existence must entail.

Now, having said all that about Laura Ingraham, she's not the only media person to ever have assumed privilege over minorities in America.  Lawrence O'Donnell did it Thursday night in an interview with Herman Cain.  Granted, Cain had misrepresented his position about what he was doing during the civil rights movement in his new book and O'Donnell completely called him out on it.  But then O'Donnell goes and says the following (about the 9:10 mark on this video):

Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on.  You could easily as a student at Morehouse between 1963 and 1967 actively have participated in the kinds of protests that got African-Americans the rights they enjoy today.  You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes.  You watched black college students and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered, fighting for the rights of African-Americans.  Do you regret sitting on the sidelines at that time?

To put it bluntly, O'Donnell's position that any African-American could have "easily" participated in the civil rights movement in the mid-60's is the same assumption of privilege, this time over the very real dangers facing the black community in the South in those years.  The situation was far more complex, far more complicated, and far more dangerous than a binary choice that O'Donnell presents.  And yes, I'm saying that he's guilty of the same line of venal sin as Ingraham, his assumption of what it should be like for the black community according to his own perspective, and then he tells Cain exactly how he should have conducted himself during that time.

No offense there, Lawrence, but that's just the same brand of  inane "you know what's best for us" malarkey that Ingraham so moronically peddled to President Obama about his racial identity.  Herman Cain may be generally awful on his positions, he not anyone I ever vote for, he's a liar, he doesn't understand basic principles of macroeconomics despite being a pizza chain magnate and I'm particularly not fond of his complete failure to call out his Republican colleagues on using the same kind of launguaged couched in "he said, she said, we differ" obfuscation in order to provide cover for implied racism.  Cain showed the mirror of Ingraham's implications.

But Lawrence O'Donnell, doesn't get to make that call about what Herman Cain should have done during that period, any more than Laura Ingraham gets to assume she knows how best to define President Obama's racial identity. Herman Cain was in fact right to call O'Donnell out for that aspect of the interview.  Yes, Cain went too far and called him a "plantation master" in response and showed a far more odious level of disregard than was accorded to him by O'Donnell.  That part of Cain's response was indeed foul and insulting as he did everything he could to wreck the racial discourse.

The difference however between Laura Ingraham and Lawrence O'Donnell (and it's a massive, titanic difference) is that Lawrence O'Donnell openly admitted to what he said Thursday and took steps to expand the discourse instead of limit it like both Ingraham and Cain did.  He opened a discussion on it on his show last night with Rev. Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Goldie Taylor of The Grio.  O'Donnell explained that he wasn't trying to Herman Cain what he should have done, that it was a moral choice instead.  (Part 2 of that discussion is here.)  O'Donnell expanded the discourse, and seeing liberals openly discuss not only race and the implications of but the assumption of privilege is something we badly, badly need more of. It's Melissa Harris-Perry who explained it best last night:

That said, and with no support for Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan or anything else on the Cain menu, I was squirming with discomfort  watching this interview, Lawrence, between you and Mr. Cain, and my discomfort came from a couple of sources.  One, just exactly as you said, the menu of choices, I think we have to be so careful.  When we are not facing that imminent violence ourselves, we have to be extremely careful about even the implication that those who did not participate were necessarily cowards.  Not, Mr. Cain may be a coward, I don't know, but it was always simply a minority of African-Americans who were engaged at any point in the civil rights movement because it was a life or death question, and I can't be certain what choices I would have made if I had faced that.

This of course is an excellent point.  Dr. Harris-Perry is absolutely correct when she says all this, and even in 2011 we have a lot of assumptions to address before we can get to the actual discourse, the need for a point of origin on discussions like this usually ends up being 90% of the yelling and screaming without anything civil actually said.  And for his efforts to publically correct that, I applaud Lawrence O'Donnell.  We need more discourse like this, even if and especially because of the rocky road we continually need to travel in order to get there.  Please do yourself a favor and watch both parts of the discussion, it's very instructive, informative, and educational.

My theory ends forthwith.