Hullabaloo

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:30:00 PST

Saturday Night At The Movies

Ay, cabron! The Men Who Stare at Goats

By Dennis Hartley

“These are not the droids you are looking for.”

So what do you get when you cross Ishtar with Catch-22? Perhaps you would get something along the lines of The Men Who Stare at Goats, the first genuine goofball farce that anyone has managed to squeeze out utilizing the generally unfunny Iraq War, Mark II as a backdrop. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste.

Ewan McGregor stars as Bob Wilton, a recently cuckolded Michigan newspaper reporter who, desperate to break out of his self-pitying reverie, decides on a whim to become a freelancing Iraq War journalist (circa 2003). As he tarries in Kuwait City, uncertain about how to actually go about getting himself into Iraq (he hadn’t quite thought that part through before heading overseas) he comes across a mysterious, intriguing fellow named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who “happens” to be heading that way. Initially playing it coy and denying that he is any kind of spook (in spite of veritably oozing Eau de Black Ops), Cassady does a 360 and opens up to Wilton, spinning him quite a wild narrative.

Before he knows it, the reporter is tagging along with Cassady on his nebulous “mission”, too gob smacked by tales of top-secret U.S. military programs involving the development of “psychic warriors” who liken themselves to Jedi knights, devoted to honing their mastery of various psychokinetic arts, to realize that he could be heading into the middle of the Iraqi desert with a man who is completely delusional and dangerously unhinged (it’s sort of like a Hope and Crosby “on the road” flick-except with insurgents and IEDs).

As Cassady recounts the history of his personal involvement with these experiments, we are introduced to two significant characters in his past via flashback sequences (throughout which Clooney, sporting shoulder-length hair and mustache, bears an uncanny resemblance to a White Album-era George Harrison). One is Cassady’s mentor, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, in full Dude mode), a Vietnam vet who has written a bible of sorts, from which springs the concept of the “New Earth Army” (comprised of the aforementioned psychic warriors, with a litany of tenets co-opted from the Human Potential Movement to help guide them…think of it as a kind of a “hug thy enemy” approach-like if Wavy Gravy was the Secretary of Defense). The other is Cassady’s nemesis, Larry Hooper (the perennially hammy Kevin Spacey) a former brother-in-arms who has turned to the Dark Side (Okay, I’ll just say what everyone is thinking right about now-Bridges is Obi-Wan, and Spacey is Darth Vader…happy?). And now, it seems Luke Skywalker, oops, I mean, Lyn Cassady is on a “mission” to get the band back together.

The fact that Ewan McGregor was the young Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels is not lost on the filmmakers, who provide him with opportunity for self-referential spoofing reminiscent of Ryan O’Neal’s classic deadpan in What's Up, Doc? (when he responds to Barbara Streisand’s Love Story quote, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” with “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”). As I inferred earlier, Jeff Bridges seems to be doing a nod or two to the Ghost of Lebowski Past; and Clooney’s character definitely vibes the CIA operative that he played in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

There is some unevenness in the film’s tone, but with a dream cast, who are all obviously having such a great time, it’s pretty easy to enjoy the ride (I mean, c’mon-Bridges, Clooney, Spacey, AND a gifted “fainting goat” who knows how to pick up his cues? It all adds up to black comedy gold, my friend). In fact, the film is kind of a throwback to a certain style of quirky, unfettered, freewheeling satire that pervaded the mid-to-late 60s; totally-blown fare like The Magic Christian, Skidoo, Candy and The Loved One. The film is directed by Grant Heslove (Clooney’s partner in their Smokehouse Pictures production company) and written by Peter Straughn, who adapted from Jon Ronson’s, uh, “non-fiction” book (all you have to do is tell the truth, and no one will believe you).

I have one potential caveat for some viewers. This is a little weird, but I feel that it bears mentioning. The screening I attended was held this past Thursday evening. Right before I left for the theatre, I was watching the network news coverage of the tragic events at Fort Hood that had occurred earlier in the day. There is a scene in the film, where a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg loses his shit and threatens to start shooting fellow soldiers who are all gathered en masse doing PT. In the context of the film, it’s played strictly for laughs (after all, he’s peaking on acid and running around naked waving a loaded .45). But viewing that scene with the footage from the evening news still fresh in my mind was quite eerie. Obviously, the filmmakers could have had no way of predicting this bizarre kismet, but I just thought I’d throw that out there; if you are someone who was deeply or personally affected by this awful incident, you should know there is a scene that could be potentially traumatic for you. On a lighter note, I have one final “FYI”. There are two songs you will not be able to get out of your head for days: Boston’s “More Than a Feeling”, and the theme from Barney the Dinosaur’s TV show. You have been warned!

I’m just sayin’…

Previous posts with related themes:

The Comedies of Terror

Military Intelligence and You!

War, Inc.

Charlie Wilson’s War

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:00:00 PST

Finally Free

by digby

Everyone should watch this video to remind ourselves of where hysterical Keyboard Commando rhetoric leads:

The men in this video were held at Guantánamo for years without charge and denied any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention. But now they are finally free. This is their story.

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:30:00 PST

Fallout

by digby

Reader Sleon wrote to me about Ft Hood massacre and had some provocative thoughts about the potential ramifications:

Because of the way our political and media elites operate, I feel unfortunately secure in predicting that one bit of fallout from this event will be to make itmore difficult, if not impossible for President Obama to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. Not that he seems inclined to make that tough, but oh, so necessary call anyway, but that likelihood is now somewhere near zero. And that will be an even greater tragedy because it can only mean more US casualties, many more Muslim dead, and the irreplaceable loss of treasure and freedom, here and throughout the world and it will accomplish nothing positive in the end.

Glenn Greenwald regularly points out that a state of continual warfare is incompatible with civil liberties. Ironically, it's also incompatible with maintaining political hegemony. From "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000" by Paul Kennedy:

"The triumph of any one Great Power...or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequence of the more or less efficient utilization of the state's economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which the state's economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. For that reason , how a great Power's position steadily alters in peacetime is as important...as how it fights in wartime.

"It sounds crudely mercantilist to express it this way, but wealth is usually needed to underpin military power and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. in the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically - by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars - it runs the risk that the potential benefits...may be outweighed by the great expense of it all-a dilemma that becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.

"Militarily the United States and USSR stayed in the forefront as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, because they both interpreted international problems in bipolar, and often Manichean terms, their rivalry has driven them into an ever escalating arms race which no other Powers feel capable of matching. Over the same few decades, however, the global productive balances have been altering faster than ever before. The Third World's share of total manufacturing output,depressed to an all-time low in the decade after 1945 has, has steadily expanded since that time. The European Economic Community has become the world's largest trading unit. The People's Republic of China is leaping forward at an impressive rate, ...by contrast, both the American and Russian growth rates have become more sluggish, and their shares of global production and wealth have shrunk dramatically since the 1960s."
We really do stand at the edge of an abyss. One of the most salient indictments of the Bush-Cheney regime was that they were stupid enough to fall for the biggest sucker bet in history, a pointless land war in the Middle East. A sane person might wonder how, with the benefit of 500 years of repetitive history to guide us,and the fall of the ancient empires to boot, even they could have been such idiots. But, as Orwell reminds us in "1984", the very purpose of war has changed, with the sole object now being to keep the elites in power perpetually:

"The primary aim of modern warfare...is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living...The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence in the long run too intelligent."

Will the President have the brains and guts to steer us away from this course of self-destruction? Even if he does - and I become lass sanguine about that every day - it's hard to believe the Owners will let him. And yet with their aversion to reform, their short-sighted greed, their celebration of their own ignorance, they are going to end up being failed parasites; because once they kill the host - we, the people - they'll end up on history's trash heap too.

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:30:00 PST

Another Iceberg

by digby

Gosh, I hate to sound like a gloomy gus all day, but I keep reading about this and yet it seems as though it's inevitable:

Banks are in for another ugly year in 2010. But this time the problem will be the big batch of deteriorating commercial real estate loans on their books. That’s because the big banks were operating with the same loose standards—and aggressive behavoir—as the investment banks in order to compete in the real estate market during the boom years. (Read our cover story about why this real estate bust is different.) Commercial real estate loans that banks underwrote and held on their books skyrocketed to approximately $190 billion in 2007, up from $11 billion in a single year, a decade earlier. In all, banks hold some $1.8 trillion of commercial real estate debt on their books.

Trouble is, nobody knows just what the values of the loans on bank books’ are since they are not required to mark them to market prices. Since the stress tests conducted by the Feds never looked far enough into the future, the ability to “fully grapple with the prospect of massive future commercial real estate (CRE) loan defaults is uncertain,” admitted Jon D. Greenlee, associate director at the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation in congressional testimony on July 9 and again on Nov. 2.

Of particular concern, says Greenlee: Almost $500 billion of commercial real estate loans that will mature during each of the next few years. “In addition to losses caused by declining property cash flows and deteriorating conditions for construction loans, losses will also be boosted by the depreciating collateral value underlying those maturing loans. The losses will place continued pressure on banks' earnings, especially those of smaller regional and community banks that have high concentrations of CRE loans,” says Greenlee.

According to the article, the Fed is doing some audits and the TALF is in play, but for the most part, the banks are just doing the Big Ostrich:

In the meantime, many banks have been forestalling the day of reckoning. The latest strategy, called “extend and pretend,” appears to be in full swing—a head-in-the-sand approach that provides temporary extensions to troubled borrowers on maturing commercial loans to give them, and the bank, some breathing room.

But surging delinquencies and defaults will eventually catch up with them. So who is most at risk? The biggest exposures are in the regional banks which have much closer ties with their local communities and developers. Some banks, have concentrations of CRE loans equal to several multiples of their capital; many of those loans are in speculative new properties, the Feds say.

Kamal Mustafa, chairman of Invictus Consulting Group and former head of Citigroup's Global M&A and corporate finance departments, says many of these banks will fail as a result. “Right now there are a lot of banks that are showing no charge offs but when the CRE market dives, we’ll see a lot of banks going down.”

I don't pretend to be an expert, but the "leading indicator" of the equity markets aside, this looks to me like another financial iceberg.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:00:01 PST

Cautionary Tale

by digby

Howie on former netroots candidate, Larry Kissel.

I'm afraid what Kissell has done was confuse himself about what happened in Virginia Tuesday. The conservative Democrat, Creigh Deeds, got up during a debate and said he would opt out of the public option if he were elected. The result wasn't to make Republicans-- the only ones who support that position-- vote for him. They voted for the Republican, of course. But what killed Deeds-- and what will kill Kissell and cowards like him-- is that Democrats get turned off by this kind of bullshit. Bush won NC-08 in 2000 and in 2004. But Obama beat McCain 53-47%-- considerably better than he did statewide. And Kissell beat the incumbent, Robin Hayes, 55-45%.

Next year, Kissell-- who has a reputation as an abysmal fundraiser, and won't get a dime from the netroots ever again-- is being challenged by retired Army Col. Lou Huddleston. Huddleston and GOP front groups will call Kissell a Nancy Pelosi clone no matter how he votes and no matter what he does. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh fans are not going to vote for Larry Kissell. And if he follows through with his threats to vote against health care reform, neither will Democrats, just the way they didn't come out to vote for Deeds in Virginia.

These "moderate" Dems really are so impressed with the Creigh Deeds strategy that they plan to run on it in 2010. Smart as a whip.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:53:47 PST

Crazyland

by digby

In case you were wondering how the Republicans are conducting themselves in the debate, here's a taste:

There's been a lot of that stuff going around.

Update: Think Progress and Media Matters have more on the GOP Gone Wild in the House this morning.

Remember when people used to call them the grown-ups?

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:30:47 PST

Human Sacrifice

by digby

Dday reports:

…Wow, it looks like the Stupak amendment will get a floor vote. The Democratic leadership is making a bet that, if it doesn’t pass, Stupak and his cadres will sign on to the bill (I highly doubt it; most of them are no votes on health care entirely); and if it does pass, pro-choice Democrats won’t sink the bill entirely (also, I highly doubt it). I’m a bit surprised that it’s come to this. Also, Stupak appeared to have lied in the Rules Committee about how the deal “fell apart,” since he got what he wanted.

I'm not surprised. In fact, I've been writing that this was likely to happen for quite some time. I think the amendment will pass and I think liberal, pro-choice Democrats will vote for it in the final bill. This has always been the predictable dynamic on health care. I will not be happy to be right. (And I really, really hope I'm wrong.)

I suspect that the leadership decided that abortion was the least important thing they could throw to the slavering Blue Dogs to take home as a victory over the liberals in this debate. And they had to find a hippie to punch to make the thing acceptable to the villagers, so they decided to punch the desperate pregnant girl. She's used to it.

Since the Republicans have made themselves irrelevant with their obstructionism the Democrats have decided that in order to further the president's edict to change the tone and further bipartisanship they will just have to compromise with themselves.
Democrats everywhere will now be able to brag about furthering the Godly cause of forced pregnancy, while having also voted to pass health care.

If this passes it will have been an historic week for the denial of constitutional rights under our new "liberal" majority. I'm sure conservatives are very impressed and will vote for Democrats forever and ever because of it.

Update: if you want to make a call on this HCAN has an advomatic page for it.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:00:01 PST

Cheney-Rumsfeld Replay

by digby

Edward Harrison at Naked Capitalism offers up a convincing look at the dynamics that led Obama to choose the path he's chosen in dealing with the financial sector. Here's the conclusion:

When historians look back at the Bush 42 presidency, it will be defined by 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While George W. Bush was politically pre-disposed to the Neo-con world view, it was really advice from Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld which made Afghanistan and Iraq possible. George W. Bush was famously not well-versed in foreign affairs, having almost never travelled abroad. He was completely dependent on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to make foreign policy (although he could have listened more to Colin Powell, his actual Secretary of State; again it goes to predisposition).

So, I see George W. Bush’s presidency as having been defined by foreign policy and the War on Terror and, by extension, on Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Fast-forward to Barack Obama’s presidency and you have an almost identical situation, this time with the economy instead of foreign policy and Tim Geithner and Larry Summers instead of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

But, as with George W. Bush, it goes to pre-disposition. Paul Volcker was a critical member of the Obama 2008 campaign. He also was a key member of Obama’s economic policy team. But, he has been speaking a very discordant message that is not in sync with team Obama. So, as with Bush and his marginalization of Powell, one has to believe Barack Obama has chosen to side with Geithner and Summers over Volcker.

I don't know about Volcker, whom I always thought of as a shock doctrine sort of guy, but Obama certainly was predisposed to ignore the Krugman camp, which includes a number of other economists, like Harrison, who argued for bank "nationalization" and other more aggressive methods of containing the damage. As the termperamentally thrill seeking Bush threw in with the nuttiest foreign policy elders of his own party, Obama, being a far more deliberate type, threw in with the most staid and establishmentarian economic elders of his.

It's not all that surprising. When confronted with a crisis, people turn to those with whom they have an instinctive bond. But in both cases, they made the wrong decision for the moment in which they found themselves. It's an interesting problem but I don't have an answer for how to reasonably anticipate such a thing, much less change it.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:36:54 PST

Health Care 911

by digby

Wingnut talk radio is evidently going nuts with the phone calls to members in anticipation of the historic health care vote in the House tomorrow. So, everyone who wants health care reform this year needs to call their congressional Rep today and let him or her know that they expect them to vote for the bill, especially if you live in a district with a pants wetting, short sighted Democratic "moderate" who is planning to run with the highly successful Creigh Deeds strategy in 2010. (You need to tell them that you will absolutely lay out and let the Republican jackals dine on their political carcass next November if they vote against this landmark legislation.)

AFSCME has a handy tool to help you make the call easily. You can click here and just follow the directions.

SEIU has another one.

OFA has a handy twitter gadget, here

Families USA has a video

AFL-CIO here

HCAN here

This is crunch time.

Update: If any of you are constituents of the following and you want the health bill to pass, give them a call.

Kucinich
Nye
Bean
Kaptor
McMahon
Boyd
Donnelly

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:35:25 PST

Change The Rules

by digby

Wow. The banks are trying to create a new oversight board that can change accounting standards whenever they need to hide risk and insolvency from investors and the public. Seriously. And they are doing it in the name of making the economy more stable, if you can believe that. See the real problem comes when people know that banks are failing. So they need to keep that information hidden lest the whole system becomes unstable.

Unsurprisingly, the business community (led by the Chamber of Commerce, even) is a teensy bit upset by this. Ryan Grim has the story:

The mechanism is contained in an amendment set to be introduced in mid-November by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) that would move final authority over the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from the Securities and Exchange Commission to a new body, a so-called "oversight" board, that would include the officials charged with managing systemic risks to the financial markets.

These regulators would have the authority to override FASB's accounting guidelines by taking into account economic conditions.

The move is so radical that it has split corporate America. The bankers and members of Congress who support it have earned themselves an unlikely enemy: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

A typical business or investor, after all, prefers honest, independent accounting, because they buy and sell real things based on real value.

"Washington isn't thinking straight," said Josh Rosner, managing director of Graham, Fischer & Co, a New York-based financial analyst who advises regulators and institutional investors. "Financial statements are for the benefit of investors."

Yes, but when banks are gambling like drunken sailors they are likely to get on a losing streak more often than not. Since they are too big to fail, we need to keep their losses under wraps so they can do some voodoo magic and concoct some spells to make it all go away before anyone notices. This quaint "real things of real value" business is kind of sweet, but it really doesn't apply to the "real world."

Something very, very strange is happening in our financial sector. When even the Chamber of Commerce gets nervous, you know it's bad. The business community and the banks are now on opposite sides of the fence. How's that going to work out?

Asking accountants to change standards based on economic conditions could very well make their heads explode, however. It's not their job, they say, to keep the system from collapsing. It's their job to give honest numbers. If a company is bankrupt, it's bankrupt.

"Accounting standards are not policy," remarked one person involved in the fight.

But they have become policy. In the spring, Kanjorski's subcommittee hauled the head of FASB in for a hearing and demanded the number-crunchers change their mark-to-market standards within three weeks or Congress would do it for them. FASB's head pushed back during the hearing, saying that banks who called him asking for such a change were usually bankrupt fairly quickly.

"They practically dragged him into the hallway and beat him to death," said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), a committee member skeptical of the Perlmutter amendment.

Three weeks later, they eased their accounting rules. But it wasn't simple for the banks. Even with the intense congressional pressure, the change only sneaked by by a single vote and created tension on a board accustomed to a freedom from politics. The Perlmutter amendment would make such a battle unnecessary for the banks.

"There are a lot of banks that are in a lot of trouble and have a lot of exposure to commercial real estate," Miller said. "You can't fix that with accounting."

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) fought a lonely battle last spring to stave off the loosening of the accounting rules and opposes this more dramatic shift, as well. Banks may have good reason to want to overstate the value of their assets, he said, and it may work for a time. But an economy can't be run indefinitely on imaginary numbers. "I enjoy reading fiction, but not in financial statements," he said.

It's not just fiction. It's fantasy.

Back in the day when we all jabbered on about the Reality Based Community, I used to joke about this very thing. I said we should apply these same lies we use in foreign policy to the economy and see what would happen. By God, it looks like they are actually trying to do that.

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:59:36 PST

Satisfied With Bernie

by digby

Where do you suppose Democratic voters got the ridiculous idea that the new administration was going to take on the malefactors of great wealth if they got elected? And why do you suppose they aren't enthusiastic about the Democratic majority right now?

James Lieber in the Village Voice has written a piece that I believe goes some way to explain it, called: "We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?"

When Barack Obama donned the crusader's mantle during the 2008 presidential campaign, his Web-savvy campaign team created KeatingEconomics.com and pushed it on millions of voters. The main video showed the Ichabod Crane–like Charles Keating—the wealthy, politically connected poster child of the '80s savings-and-loan scandal—in handcuffs.

The Obama video portrayed John McCain as Keating's stooge and likened the S&L crash to the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, except that the current crisis is global and its bad guys bigger and badder. Today's corporate villains were flashed on the screen, among them AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. The opening narrator was Bill Black, a Ph.D. criminologist and lead lawyer at the Office of Thrift Supervision, who helped steer the brilliant federal effort that cleaned up the S&L industry and won more than 1,000 felony convictions of senior insiders while recovering millions of their ill-gotten dollars.

Those watching the compelling attack ad (still online) had every reason to believe that Obama's approach would be just as hard-edged, and that felon-busting G-men would rout the crooks and recover our money.

This was not to be.

As it stands now, there is only one federal prosecution related to the credit crash and bailout cycle, and it was begun by the Bush administration's Justice Department in June 2008.

Financial reform was what the Obama campaign ran on during the later part of the campaign. Here's the video, if you have forgotten what they said about McCain and the need for accountability and regulation:

Obama whipped for the TARP before he was elected, and that set off alarm bells. But I think a lot of people assumed that was an emergency measure and that upon his election, he would be listening to people like Bill Black and doing something serious about the reckless, illegal scamming that had gone on on Wall Street and the banks. Obviously, that hasn't happened.

Lieber's article needs to be read in full to understand just how heinous it is that these people aren't even suffering social embarrassment for their crimes. But the political problem is made clear by his conclusion:

Washington's soft-core approach to the epic financial fraud that caused the crash remains hard to understand. As Bill Black says: "When you don't prosecute, things don't get better."

They're not getting better or safer. Credit is tight as a tick—especially for consumers. The financial industry is expanding its use of new and exceedingly complex derivatives. The mortgage market, the source of the raw material for mayhem, remains unchecked. The FBI said this summer that mortgage fraud is "rampant" and growing. Suspicious-activity reports (known as SARS) rose from 47,000 in fiscal 2007 to 63,000 in fiscal 2008, which ended last September at the height of the crisis and its publicity, and now such reports are on schedule to exceed 70,000 for fiscal 2009. A growing source of exploitation involves reverse mortgages marketed to the elderly.

People want justice. They've lost savings, homes (or the value of homes), jobs, and retirements. Foreclosures continue to rise. People can't believe that the mega-grifters who pulled off mortgage, securitization, and derivative frauds walk the streets with lined pockets. And the venal "experts" who issued bogus ratings that deodorized subprime cesspools should be in the dock. But it almost seems as if Bernie Madoff's 150-year sentence for a scheme that had nothing to do with causing Wall Street's meltdown is supposed to cover all the crooks, and that we're supposed to be satisfied.

Having a "D" after your name no longer stands against the charge of working for the benefit of the financial elites. And one great way to change that would be for the administration to hold some of these people accountable. Instead, they and their spokespeople are all bending over backwards to portray most of these scofflaws as the most valuable people in society who can't even be asked to take a cut in their gluttonous bonuses during the crisis.

Don't be surprised to see the Republican presidential candidate of 2012 produce an attack video very much like the one that the Obama administration put together on McCain. And the way things are going, they'll have plenty of material.

Update: A reader sent this along about David Plouffe's new book:

Plouffe writes that he green-lighted a documentary about Senator McCain’s association with Charles Keating during the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. Obama was angry when he learned from watching television that the campaign was releasing the film. Obama took Plouffe and Axelrod aside and asked, “Why wasn’t I consulted?” Plouffe tried to explain, but, as he writes, “Obama cut me off. “This is not a run-of-the-mill ad. This is a big bomb. And I should have made the final decision on whether to use it and when.” He was clearly frustrated”

My reader suggests that Plouffe probably knew that Obama wouldn't give the go-ahead. I suspect that's right.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:03:12 PST

Infiltration

by digby

Some readers are telling me that writing about the right wing is a waste of time and only feeds their need for attention and helps perpetuate the freakshow. Perhaps that's right. But since I've seen the mainstream of the Republican party go from being the party of Eisenhower to the party of Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman in my lifetime, I'm a little bit concerned about what happens if they happen to come back into power with these people in influential, powerful positions. It can happen.

So, here's a little taste of what the freakshow is saying today:

[A] growing number of other Muslim American soldiers as well as civilian contractors have put their religion before their duty. Some like Hasan have killed, or tried to kill, their fellow soldiers. Others have infiltrated the military in order to undermine it and aid and comfort the enemy.

Perhaps that's not worth noting. World Net Daily is a fringe operation that never let a fact stand in the way of its lunacy. But you're hearing the same thing on Fox, the cable network that has been tasked with setting the news agenda by the paper of record:

"Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers, anybody enlisted? Because if I'm gonna be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm gonna be sitting in an outpost, I gotta know the guy next to me is not gonna wanna kill me," Kilmeade said.
(Check out the video here.)

Geraldo Rivera commendably pointed out that there are several million Muslims in America, and that many serve in the military and are highly valued. Another host, Gretchen Carlson, interrupted in order to point the blame at "political correctness."

"Could it be that the military was also exercising political correctness, even though he had a poor performance report and even though he spoke openly about being a radical Muslim and had those supposed postings online?" she asked.

Spencer Ackerman writes that GOP candidates are there already:

The Hill reports that Allen West, a former Army lieutenant colonel promoted by the National Republican Congressional Committee as one of its “young guns,” has come to some conclusions about the meaning of Maj. Hasan’s murders at Ft. Hood:
“This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up,” West said in a statement. “Our soldiers are being brainwashed.”

The release added that West claims “the horrible tragedy at Fort Hood is proof the enemy is infiltrating our military.”

(Read Spencer's whole post. It's quite illuminating about this "young gun.")

I think this is worth writing about. It may not come to anything. Let's hope it doesn't. But this radical right wing movement is violent, xenophobic and authoritarian in nature and that's always worth keeping an eye on.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:43:23 PST

Mainstream

by digby

Speaking about the House health care bill, the "moderate" Olympia Snowe sounds off:

"I do not know what world they live in," Snowe said in an interview. "But all I know is it is totally detached from the average person, the average business owner who is struggling to keep their doors open and to have that level of taxation is breathtaking in its dimensions. I just think it is so out of proportion with reality and with mainstream America that it is hard to believe, frankly."

On a day when the $1 trillion House bill picked up support from key interest groups -- which, in turn, prompted President Barack Obama to make a personal visit to the White House press room to tout the endorsements -- Snowe's words are a reminder of the dissent surrounding the bill.

Are those comments really in touch with mainstream America?

Out of all of the election results from yesterday, the anti-tax ballot measures in Maine and Washington (known as TABOR) provide a better political tea leaf into voter attitudes going into the 2010 election cycle than anything else. The good news is, progressives won big on a topic that will likely define the nature of the midterm election.

A central tenant of the right-wing agenda has been rejected with the defeat of TABOR (known deceptively as the "taxpayer bill of rights") in these two states -- states that are diverse from each other in almost all respects. Maine's measure went down with a resounding defeat, 60% to 40%, while Washington's campaign came from behind with a 55% to 45% rebuff.

A few weeks ago, conservative columnist and tea party champion John Fund wrote in the WSJ that: "If voters in Maine or Washington state pass a taxpayer bill of rights, it will be a clear sign that even in blue states the public is coming to believe that government spending is out of control and that elected officials can no longer be trusted to rein it in. That's a message that will likely reverberate in Congress regardless of who wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races."

I don't think Snowe or the rest of her colleagues are listening. Unless she thinks that her own voters in Maine are outside the mainstream, reflexive tax aversion is not mainstream anymore. People are getting that government without revenue results in falling bridges and lousy schools and crime and bad health care. The anti-tax fervor of the Age of Reagan is ending and the automatic rejection of anything to do with taxes almost seems anachronistic in an era when the least of most workers' problems is taxes and businesses see them as a problem they only wished they had because it would mean they are profitable.

The right may be able to persuade a certain number that their problems are all being caused by government spending. I have no doubt that some people are more than willing to believe that. But the American people are logically far more frustrated that their government isn't doing enough to fix the problems that have put them where they are today, which is insecure in their homes and clinging to their jobs with no ability to bargain because they so desperately need a check and health insurance. And that's if they're lucky enough to have homes and jobs in the first place.

The problem is that conservatives are out of the mainstream and they refuse to accept it.

Update:

Ahem

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

“Many Americans probably have a sense that members of Congress aren’t hurting, even if their government salary alone is in the six figures, much more than most Americans make,” said CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal. “What we see through these figures is that many of them have riches well beyond that salary, supplemented with securities, stock holdings, property and other investments.”

And let's face facts: if you don't have a million while you're in office, there are a boatload of incentives to ensure you're in a position to make that kind of money if you retire. It's an excellent resume builder.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:00:12 PST

First Draft

by digby

First Draft is holding their yearly fundraiser. They've been cranking out the good stuff for five years now and deserve a couple of bucks if you enjoy what they do. We're all trying to get by these days.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:30:00 PST

Cruel And Unusual

by digby

Police officers commonly say that tasers are needed to get people under control for their own and everyone else's safety. And they insist they they don't use it as a form of punishment:

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:00:03 PST

A Little Ray of Sanity

by digby

Dean Baker has been recommending this since the beginning of the housing crisis. How do you deal with all these people who are losing their homes while at the same time dealing with the plummeting property values in places where there are many obvious foreclosures? And how do you deal with the moral hazard of major debt forgiveness? (That question should have been put to the banksters first and foremost, but well ... they are so talented and productive that moral hazards don't apply to such as them.)

Anyway, it looks like Fannie Mae is going to give a shot to letting people stay in their homes as renters rather than forcing eviction. People obviously lose their investment, but they don't lose the roof over their heads. And the banks have people living in their foreclosed homes.

The devil is in the details, of course, but if it works it's a much better outcome for everyone.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:37:06 PST

The Worst There Ever Was

by digby

Chris Matthews just implied that modern warfare is much harder on soldiers than wars have ever been before because they are under so much more stress. He called it a "constant booby-trap" because they might be killed by an IED. Cliff Van Zandt agreed that this is worse than soldiers commonly experience.

I certainly don't disagree that they are under a lot of stress or that these roadside bombs make for a very traumatic experience. And the repeated deployments make for a cumulative effect. But the idea that these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan worse than wars have been in the past is simply mind-boggling.

Has Matthews ever heard of Guadalcanal? Or Verdun?

Does that look stressful at all to you? Those guys were in those trenches and were shelled for months on end. And every once in a while they'd get an order to go up over the top of the trench to be mowed down. It destroyed nearly an entire generation, either by death, injury or shell shock (PTSD)

War is hell and that's no lie. And the wars the military are fighting today have their own special spin on that hell. But the problem with Matthews and other pampered gasbags is that they apparently think war is some sort of a pageant and never fully grasp that war is always about lethal, bloody violence. Which is why we shouldn't do it unless there is absolutely no choice. Using it to "send messages" or "protect the country's prestige" not only kills the other, it kills your own --- and not just on the battlefield. It kills them back home when these men and women and their loved ones have to deal with the destruction this lethal violence wreaks on their minds and spirits.

It's the abstractness of the discussion that drives me crazy. And it's why I do feel that those who want to fight these proxy wars to "project power" should be forced to fight them personally. It is apparently the only way they will ever understand what their support for these abstract policies really mean to the people on both sides who fight them.

Sometimes wars have to be fought. But if you honestly don't understand that every single one of them means there will be grotesque, violent destruction of human life and years of psychological trauma for those who wage the battle, then you really shouldn't have a say in when or why.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:29:38 PST

America The Ugly

by digby

Not only did we have a terrible, violent shooting rampage today in Texas, things in Washington DC took an ugly turn as well. You'll recall recently that the wingnuts had a full blown hissy fit over Alan Grayson using the word "holocaust" in generic terms to describe the preventable deaths of those who don't have healthcare. This was the response:

"Regardless of one’s position on the issue of healthcare reform, comparing the American healthcare system to the systematic murdering of over six million Jews is totally outrageous and unfit for someone holding public office," said Hasner in a statement. "Congressman Grayson should apologize to the Jewish community and the families of those whose loved ones were brutally executed. I’d also encourage Mr. Grayson to take a walk tomorrow afternoon to the U.S. Holocaust Museum so he can witness for himself just how offensive and inappropriate his statement is."

Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks also said the remarks were "outrageous."

"To link health care to the Holocaust is beyond the pale," he said,

What say they to this? (Click on image to see larger version)

The sign reads “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany – 1945”

The picture is a pile of emaciated corpses.

This protest was attended by the entire leadership of the House Republican caucus, all of whom spoke at the dais. As you can see, that sign was very big.

According to Media Matters:

Luke Russert also observed signs reading "Get the Red Out of the White House," "Waterboard Congress," "Ken-Ya Trust Obama?" and "Un-American McCarthyite" (with a picture of Nancy Pelosi)

Unlike other protests, this one was not only attended but also organized by Republican members of Congress. These people came to DC -- signs and all -- at the request of the GOP.

But shortly after addressing the crowd, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) actually blamed Democrats for the hateful images on display. In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Cantor suggested that the signs were the mere result of "frustration" over the democratically elected majority's "extreme policies."

Things are starting to turn very dark.

Update II:

Wow:

One sign in the crowd read: "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds," a reference to theories of Jewish world dominance centered around the prominent Jewish family of Rothschilds.

Picture Via Think Progress

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:09:48 PST

Ft. Hood

by digby

I have no idea what happened at Ft Hood. They've confirmed that the perpetrators were military. They don't know the reason for the killings. CNN's military correspondent Barbara Starr says there an incredible amount of stress and PTSD at the post, the biggest in the Army, although she has no particular information.(And since most soldiers have some level of PTSD after multiple deployments, it's far too broad of a category to mean anything in this context.)

Regardless of motivation one would certainly hope, above all, that this had nothing to do with it. It's pretty awful that one's thoughts would immediately turn in that direction when something like this happens. But after Tim McVeigh, you have to consider it. (If the shooters were civilians, my thoughts would go in a different direction.)

Update: Barbara Starr reports that The Pentagon is begging people not to speculate, that they have no information about motive. That's correct, and as of now there's no reason to assume anything one way or the other. Who knows what this is really about?

Update II (2:35pst): Apparently NBC is reporting that the shooter was a Major with an arabic sounding name. Cliff Van Zandt, the professional "profiler" pretty much called this an al Qaeda plot on MSNBC, although he said nothing about the name. I suppose that would explain the intense involvement that's being reported by the White House and the Pentagon.

ABC reports:

The suspected gunman was identified by ABC News as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

The shooter was killed and two other suspects, who are also soldiers, have been apprehended, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone said.

But again .... this is all rumor and gossip. We really know nothing at this point.

Update III (3:00 pst):

Here's Atlas Shrugged:

MUSLIM TERROR ATTACK: 'NINE shot dead' 12 30 Wounded at Mass Shooting at Fort Hood, US Army Base

UPDATE: Shepard Smith, that silly woman, keeps calling it a tragedy. It is an act of war.

MUSLIM KILLER: The suspected gunman was identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

UPDATE: The coverage is beyond stupid. Three men -- is a conspiracy. Three men is a terror cell. For the FBI to rule out terrorism in an obvious act of terrorism (by whom, we know not yet) indicates were are worse off tha the UK. Three men, synchronized shoting, M16s, maximum kill ............ you won't get the real story from the media..

Keep in mind what Atlas said just two days ago about the sentencing of the DC sniper:

Muslim John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed next Tuesday, November 10, 2009. We can only hope that he is promptly dispatched to meet his 72 virgins. If this attempt to stay the execution of this bloodthirsty jihadi gets traction, we must march on Washington. He must die.
Thirteen people were shot, 10 fatally, when Muhammad and accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a random shooting rampage around the Washington region in 2002.

Muhammad’s lawyers said in a statement they asked Kaine on Thursday to commute Muhammad’s sentence to life in prison. They said Muhammad’s illness is “illustrated by brain damage, brain dysfunction, neurological deficits as well as his psychotic and delusional behavior.” Read Full Article.
He is a Muslim. This was jihad. Is Islam a mental illness? Is that the position of the defense? This was jihad. Kill this depraved jihadi.

Meanwhile, our government continues to be completely disingenuous as to the root cause for his actions. Our “government” continues to assert that the murders were related to an “individual’s” (Mohammad's) aberrant criminal, abnormal behavior… not what it truly is…the fact that he (John AllenMuhammad) is representative of millions who are followers of the tenets of Islam.

I think she's pretty clear about her feelings on this subject.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:30:00 PST

Risk Management

by digby

For some reason people seem to suggest that there's something wrong with the Goldman Sachs executives getting access to the flu vaccine before everyone else. What's the problem?

As everyone knows, the Wall Street Masters of the Universe are the most talented, valuable, productive, superior members of our society despite the fact they almost destroyed the economy and thus cannot be asked to give up their obscenely greedy bonuses even as unemployment is at 10%. So it stands to reason that they should be at the front of the line for the H1N1 vaccines. We simply can't take the chance that the most essential people in our entire nation might get sick.

Sure, they may not technically be in the high risk groups, many of whom are unable to get the vaccines, but we can't afford to take any risks with our most precious national resources: hedge fund managers and investment bankers. Although they took outrageous, irresponsible risks with the world economy, as if they were drunks putting it all on red at a sleazy Las Vegas casino, that's no reason for us to do the same thing with their health. Let's keep our priorities straight here. John Galt always goes first.

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noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:49:53 PST

Put It On A Bumper Sticker

by digby

So Andrea Mitchell again spent the morning spinning the election on Tuesday as a terrible defeat for the Democrats that puts their entire agenda in jeopardy. She even went so far as to ask Jim Clyburn:

Let me ask you about the election, though, because Nancy Pelosi was talking about this as a victory. How can you with a straight face, I've known you for along time, how can you call the NY 23rd a victory compared to losing New Jersey and Virginia?

Andrea Mitchell is a Stepford reporter. Here's what Pelosi said:

"From my perspective, we won last night. We had one race that we were engaged in -- it was in northern New York. It was a race where a Republican has held a seat since the Civil War, and we won that seat. So from our standpoint, no. We had a candidate that was victorious who supports the health-care reform... So from our standpoint, we picked up votes last night, one in California [CA-10] and one in New York."

The last I heard, Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, not the Chair of the Democratic Governors Association. As Clyburn patiently pointed out, she got another vote for health care and a more liberal member in John Garamendi. And this is on top of another off-year seat she retained earlier with Scott Murphy's victory. All three of those seats could have theoretically gone to Republicans and they didn't. (Even the California seat was the one held by DLC darling Ellen Tauscher --- who was replaced by someone far more liberal.) So she's actually three for three in the off year elections, all of whom ran on health care reform. But I guess that's actually a losing record for Pelosi.

The fatuous gasbags have settled on the theme that the Democrats suffered a devastating setback to their agenda on Tuesday. This is despite the fact that as Clyburn pointed out, the only candidates who were actually running on the national agenda were those running for congress --- and the Democrats won. Nonetheless, the election has been decreed to be a precursor to a Democratic rout in 2010 and, more importantly, the reason for that will be because the Democrats have been far, far too liberal for the country. As usual.

I believe this is because they truly think these teabaggers represent a deep discontent with liberalism among all Real Americans. (They are, after all, white, middle aged folks dressed in red, white and blue, waving flags all around. Just like in Mayberry in 1955. ) They cannot shake the idea that these right wing nutballs represent the silent majority. Therefore, it simply isn't possible that the Democrats could be winning and losing on issues unrelated to these particular people's far out, radical ideology. They may think they're weird, but they have actually been persuaded that it's because of their liberal bias that they think that.

The idea that Jon Corzine could lose because he's presided over a great recession and springs from the gilded plutonomy that's widely believed to have precipitated it is unfathomable to them. It simply must be because Barack Obama is too liberal. It's impossible for them to believe that Virginia is a true swing state that has no real ideological center and so elects its leadership on the basis of individual issues and personal appeal. It has to be because the Democrats in congress have pushed the country too far to the left. It is the only plot line they know. (And they have been very successfully mau-maued by Roger Ailes and co. into second guessing themselves if they dream of deviating from that path.)

Mitchell went on to laugh and laugh with her colleague Savannah Guthrie over the absolutely ludicrous administration talking point that yesterday wasn't a total defeat for their agenda.

Guthrie: And every perception I have is that they really believe it! They think that these governors races are off year elections and yes, they lost independents and that has got to be troubling to them, but they say "by the time you get to these off year elections, these are folks that who come out are independents that lean Republican. The independents that lean Democrat by a large margin have become Democrats." So they have an answer for every argument you give and they're really not buying into the premise that they're in trouble here because of the Governor's races.
(laughing again) They really love to talk about NY 23 though, Andrea, because ...
Mitchell: NY 23!
Guthrie (still laughing): Yeah, NY 23 all the way.... because the Democrat won a seat long held by Republicans.
Mitchell: We should bumper sticker it. They probably already are...

This, in case you hadn't noticed, was on the allegedly liberal cable network's primary daytime news . Oddly enough (or not) it's not all that different from what's being said on Fox. Funny how that works.

Update: The Dean still rules.

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:30:01 PST

Remember, Remember The Fifth of November

by digby

Ten years ago today, they repealed Glass Steagel. It was a landmark, bipartisan bill. Here's what the NY Times said about it at the time:

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: Friday, November 5, 1999

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.

Today's action followed a rich Congressional debate about the history of finance in America in this century, the causes of the banking crisis of the 1930's, the globalization of banking and the future of the nation's economy.

Administration officials and many Republicans and Democrats said the measure would save consumers billions of dollars and was necessary to keep up with trends in both domestic and international banking. Some institutions, like Citigroup, already have banking, insurance and securities arms but could have been forced to divest their insurance underwriting under existing law. Many foreign banks already enjoy the ability to enter the securities and insurance industries.

''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

In the House debate, Mr. Leach said, ''This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.''

But consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest financial institutions. They say that it fails to protect the privacy interests of consumers and community lending standards for the disadvantaged and that it will create more problems than it solves.

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

Supporters of the legislation rejected those arguments. They responded that historians and economists have concluded that the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks. The new law, they said, will also give regulators new tools to supervise shaky institutions.

''The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,'' said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.

Others said the legislation was essential for the future leadership of the American banking system.

''If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. ''There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive.''

But other lawmakers criticized the provisions of the legislation aimed at discouraging community groups from pressing banks to make more loans to the disadvantaged. Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said during the House debate that the legislation was ''mean-spirited in the way it had tried to undermine the Community Reinvestment Act.'' And Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said it was ironic that while the legislation was deregulating financial services, it had begun a new system of onerous regulation on community advocates.

Many experts predict that, even though the legislation has been trailing market trends that have begun to see the cross-ownership of banks, securities firms and insurers, the new law is certain to lead to a wave of large financial mergers.

The White House has estimated the legislation could save consumers as much as $18 billion a year as new financial conglomerates gain economies of scale and cut costs.

Other experts have disputed those estimates as overly optimistic, and said that the bulk of any profits seen from the deregulation of financial services would be returned not to customers but to shareholders.

These are some of the key provisions of the legislation:

*Banks will be able to affiliate with insurance companies and securities concerns with far fewer restrictions than in the past.

*The legislation preserves the regulatory structure in Washington and gives the Federal Reserve and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency roles in regulating new financial conglomerates. The Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee securities operations at any bank, and the states will continue to regulate insurance.

*It will be more difficult for industrial companies to control a bank. The measure closes a loophole that had permitted a number of commercial enterprises to open savings associations known as unitary thrifts.

One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone.

In the House, 155 Democrats and 207 Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.

Tucked away in the legislation is a provision that some experts today warned could cost insurance policyholders as much as $50 billion. The provision would allow mutual insurance companies to move to other states to avoid payments they would otherwise owe policyholders as they reorganize their corporate structure. Many states, including New York and New Jersey, do not allow such relocations without the consent of the insurer's domicile state. But the legislation before Congress would pre-empt the states.

Both the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the Prudential Life Insurance Company are in the midst of reorganizing into stock-based corporations that are requiring them to pay billions of dollars to policyholders from years of accumulated surplus. In exchange, the policyholders give up their ownership in the mutual insurance company.

The legislation would permit any mutual insurance company to avoid making surplus payments to policyholders by simply moving to states with more permissive laws and setting up a hybrid corporate structure known as a mutual holding company.

The provision was inserted by Representative Bliley at the urging of a trade association. It attracted little opposition because it was attached to a provision that forbids insurers from discriminating against domestic-violence victims.

In a letter sent to Congress this week, Mr. Summers said that the provision ''could allow insurance companies to avoid state law protecting policyholders, enriching insiders at the expense of consumers.''

So, how did all that bipartisan comity work out for us?

Maybe the Senate ought to stop its business for a couple of minutes today and give a round of slow clapping to the six Senators still in office who had the foresight to vote against that hideous piece of garbage. Not that they would ever do it, of course. If there's one thing that will never be forgiven in Washington is being right about something when almost everyone else was wrong.

Via zerohedge, h/t to js

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:40:47 PST

A Penny For The Guy

by digby

The gasbags are all atwitter about Michelle Bachman's tea party protest in the congress today, clucking about the anger on the right and how they are emboldened. None of them, not the gasbags, the tea partiers or Michelle Bachman herself apparently have a clue about the significance of the date they chose. Steve Benen reminds us:

Bachmann has already referred to anti-reform activists as "insurgents" and "freedom fighters." Last night, she went a little further, encouraging conservatives to try to "scare" federal lawmakers.
In a conference call Wednesday night with bloggers and activists for the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called on protesters to "scare" members of Congress into killing the proposed health care reform bill.
If the protesters succeed in scaring lawmakers, Bachmann said that it could cripple efforts to restructure health care for a decade.

"Nothing scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans," Bachmann said.

Referring to herself in third person, Bachmann added, "It is not Michele Bachmann's fault" if the activists are angry tomorrow -- "it is Speaker Pelosi's."
And when has Bachmann scheduled her Capitol Hill soiree? This afternoon -- November 5 -- a date widely known as Guy Fawkes Night. (You know, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November.") In other words, Bachmann wants to rally right-wing activists, label them an "insurgency," and encourage them to roam the halls of Congress deliberately "scaring" members of Congress, on the infamous date that marks an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

I know that Americans are historically illiterate, but you'd think somebody in Washington would have said something to Michelle about this in our time of terrorism and heightened security.

Like Steve, I can't think of anything the Republicans need more than a bunch of "revolutionaries" running around the halls of congress on Guy Fawkes day at the behest of Michelle Bachman to usher in the resurgence of the Party. Very cunning strategy.

By the way, I heard they teabagged Lieberman's office.

Update: Here's the agenda for the speakers, in case you were wondering:

11:50 AM – Members congregate off the Crypt in the basement of the U.S. Capitol

11:58 AM – Members descend the West Steps of the U.S. Capitol to Stage Area

12:00 PM – RSC Chairman Price (GA) – Welcoming Remarks, Introduces Pastor Paul Clark

12:03 PM – Pastor Paul Clark – Delivers Prayer

12:05 PM – Rep. Aiken (MO) – Remarks, Leads the Pledge of Allegiance

12:08 PM – National Anthem

12:11 PM – Rep. Bachmann (MN) – Remarks, Introduces John Voight (Actor)

12:14 PM – John Voight (Actor) & John Ratzenberger (Actor)

12:19 PM – Conference Chairman Pence (IN)

12:21 PM – Rep. Garrett (NJ)

12:23 PM – Rep. Bachmann (MN) – Introduces Mark Levin (Radio Commentator)

12:24 PM – Mark Levin (Radio Commentator)

12:29 PM – Rep. Blackburn (TN)

12:31 PM – Rep. King (IA)

12:33 PM – Republican Leader Boehner (OH)

12:35 PM – Rep. Shaddegg (AZ)

12:37 PM – Republican Whip Cantor (VA)

12:39 PM – Tony Perkins (Family Research Council)

12:41 PM – Rep. Hoekstra (MI)

12:43 PM – Rep. Burgess (TX)

12:45 PM – Dr. Betsy McCoy (Commentator)

12:47 PM – Rep. Foxx (NC)

12:49 PM – Rep. Gohmert (TX)

12:51 PM – Rep. Scalise (LA)

12:53 PM – Rep. Broun (GA)

12:55 PM – Tim Phillips (Americans for Prosperity)

12:57 PM – Matt Kibbe (FreedomWorks)

12:59 PM – God Bless America

1:02 PM – Open to Members (:30 – 1:00 intervals)

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:00:02 PST

Sorry Charlie

by digby

It would appear that they don't want to get slapped with hot teabags:

On the heels of the NY-23 special House election, in which Conservative Party insurgent Doug Hoffman overtook moderate GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava, only to lose to Democrat Bill Owens, NRSC chairman John Cornyn (R-TX) has announced that the GOP's national Senate committee will not be spending money in contested primaries.

"There's no incentive for us to weigh in," Cornyn told ABC News. "We have to look at our resources."

This could have huge ramifications in the Florida Senate race, where moderate Gov. Charlie Crist has been endorsed by the NRSC, and faces the more conservative former state House Speaker Marco Rubio. Crist has already emerged as a new top target for the same right-wing activists who went after Scozzafava.

Crist may be the officially endorsed candidate of the national GOP, but this official support won't count for much if he doesn't get actual money from the party. At best, he could be able to round up extra fundraising and endorsements, separate from the official party apparatus but thanks to its imprimatur. The campaign of the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Kendrick Meek, sent out the story in a release today, calling the news a "major development."

Eric at Red State sez:

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida

Go team go!

I actually think that's the democratic thing to do. Let the people have their say without the institutions weighing in. And they're going to try. The teabag leaders are all gathering together to plot strategy:

[T]he Courant is reporting that Armey plans to go to Fairfield, CT on November 11th for a “strategy session” with conservative activists and MacGuffie, the original author of the town hall harassment strategy.
An announcement sent out by MacGuffie proclaimed that he, like Armey, has actively supported Doug Hoffman’s bid to rid the NY-23 special election of moderate Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R-NY). Now, both Armey and MacGuffie are planning to purge the Republican Party of more moderate politicians.

MacGuffie has declared that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) are RINOs (Republicans in name only) who “have routinely abandoned or betrayed us.” Similarly, the next step of Armey’s agenda appears to be an intensified crusade to challenge moderate Republicans in primaries. The Politico reports that Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL), former Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) and other Republicans who have strayed from rigid party-line positions face primaries from candidates inspired by the tea parties and town hall disruption type tactics.

The corporate shill Armey, is the tip-off to what's going on here. Why should the NRSC spend money on races that their contributors can finance through the teabaggers?

Recall what Freedomworks is all about and who it actually serves:

In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America merged to form FreedomWorks.
CSE was founded by prominent right-wing funder David Koch in 1984. In the 1990s the group "won plaudits from both the business community and GOP leaders" for its role in mobilizing grassroots opposition against Clinton administration proposals on an energy tax and health care, according to National Journal, which noted that "Even some business lobbyists acknowledged that CSE has at times served as a fig leaf for corporate lobbying efforts." CSE spent $1 million on a 1993 campaign against the proposed energy tax, including advertising and bringing grassroots pressure on Congress; most of the money came from corporations and trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers. CSE spent $5 million against Clinton's health care proposal, dogging the White House's nationwide bus tour with its own bus and rallies. For a 1997 campaign, CSE spent hundreds of thousands of dollars per week running radio ads in 20 markets against proposed new EPA air standards.

An internal CSE document obtained by The Washington Post in 2000 outlined the close correlation between corporate donations and issue advocacy.

Empower America was founded in 1993, after Bill Clinton's election to the presidency, as a kind of "shadow government" of policy advocacy, in the words of co-founder Jack Kemp, a former congressman and Housing secretary and future vice-presidential candidate. Gathering Kemp, Bush "drug czar" William Bennett, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, The Wall Street Journal said the group "illustrates how such tax-exempt nonprofits have become safe harbors for elite figures in the conservative movement." Leading up to Kemp's 1996 bid, the group provided a "base" for him "to make $1 million to $2 million a year" giving speeches, and it played a key role in the Dole-Kemp campaign.

Its early activities included operating "candidate schools" for Republicans in the 1994 elections, running attack ads against Clinton's health plan, and opposing from the right an early Republican plan for welfare reform.

This fluff job from the NY Times magazine about Dick Armey actually tells you everything you need to know about what he's all about:

FreedomWorks and a related organization, the FreedomWorks Foundation, emerged in 2003 from the splintering and merging of several conservative groups and took their names from Armey’s longtime mantra “freedom works.” (The foundation’s board includes Steve Forbes, the former presidential candidate and longtime flat-tax advocate.) The organizations raised about $7 million from donors in 2008, most of it in large donations — including gifts of $1 million and $750,000. The organizations refuse to reveal the sources of their money. They have “not received a dime” from any health insurance or pharmaceutical interests, according to Brandon, but that is impossible to confirm because under I.R.S. rules, while the organizations must list donations of more than $5,000, they are not required to publicly disclose who made those bequests.

As we drove between stops in North Carolina, I asked Armey if it bothered him that he fit the profile of the proverbial Washington fat cat — the pol who steps down from office but stays around to cash in on his connections. “The fact of the matter is when you walk out of Congress, if you’ve been effective and kept your nose clean, you have a market value in D.C. that you don’t have anyplace else,” he said. “You’re a free man on your own hoof, so why not make the best living you can for yourself?”

That's your grassroots teabag movement that allegedly has the Republican establishment running scared. It is the Republican establishment. They and like minded corporate interests like News Corp are wisely infiltrating and investing in this "grassroots" organization. They don't leave anything to chance. If Marco Rubio wins in Florida, he'll know who his daddy is. They all will.

noreply@blogger.com (digby) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:00 PST

Finally

by digby

The House of Lords finally decided to give the rubes a break. They passed the unemployment extension. Huzzah. That 700,000 people who lost their benefits at the end of September and all those since, sure could use a check about now.

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