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Grayson on Auditing the Fed: We're About to See the Man Behind the Curtain in Emerald City

Heather — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:57:42 +0000

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MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did the right thing. It only took putting this country on the edge of financial ruin that we're not out of yet for the S.O.B. to ever admit he might be wrong about anything.

Ratigan: Alright first big newsmaker of the Meeting, Democratic Alan Grayson, better known for some of his fiery comments on Republicans and health care, now taking aim at the Federal Reserve along with so many others. He says the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA, and his new amendment co-sponsored by Republican Ron Paul would allow the first ever independent audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment edged out a competing proposal from North Carolina Congressman Mel Watt who wants to limit those very audits.

Congressman Grayson now joins the Morning Meeting. Your amendment approved by the House Financial Services Committee—a huge step forward. Where do you go from here and what’s your level of confidence Representative that you can continue to addendum behind this piece of legislation?

Grayson: Where we go is to stop the secret bailouts. There have been hints and hints now for more than two years that the Fed’s been conducting huge bailouts on the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars to favor large failed banks. Now we’re going to find out all about it, and we’re going to decide whether it’s good or bad.

Ratigan: Comments from both the former Fed chief Alan Greenspan and for that matter former Fed chief going back even further Paul Volcker to the House Financial Services Committee. They say we can assure you that this protection of internal deliberations in reaching decisions that will affect market conditions and could expose sensitive information about particular institutions is indispensable to the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy. Basically if you look behind the curtain, you won’t like what you’ll see and it will screw things up worse. How do you respond to that?

Grayson: Well we are in Emerald City right now. We’ve arrived in Emerald City. Toto has just run underneath the curtain…

Ratigan: Excellent…excellent…

Grayson: …and we’re about to see who is that man behind the curtain and what’s he up to.

Ratigan: And they don’t want…and what would…what do you think is behind the curtain?

Grayson: Well what I think is favoritism towards selected big banks that have failed and led us to the brink of national bankruptcy.

Ratigan: What of the fact that lending law…being a bank no longer pays that much money to lend money. Lending because of modern technology is a low profit business so the government legalized much higher ways to do it in secret and basically the Federal Reserve is their back end. Do you…are we on our way to restoring laws for lending in this country?

Grayson: Listen, capitalism requires rewarding success and punishing failure. That’s what Joseph Schumpeter said almost a century ago. So far we’ve seen plenty of reward for success of Wall Street but no punishment for failure—not when the Fed is handing out blank checks.

All-night Campout at Sarah Palin Book Signing

scarce — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:42:18 +0000

Plunderbund takes you to cold and rainy Dublin Ohio at midnight to see the saddest people on planet Earth, those that camp out all-night just to get an autographed copy of Sarah Palin's book. Hilarity ensues.

Warning--video slightly nsfw.

Meanwhile in Noblesville, Indiana fans who waited all day to get their books signed were less than pleased when Palin just left without signing their copies.

Countdown: Palinisms

Heather — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:18:18 +0000

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Countdown's mashup of the late night comedians' reaction to Sarah Palin's book tour. Lawrence O'Donnell promised more to come as long as the tour continues. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel but the Moose Hunter made herself an easy target.

Alan Grayson: "Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy"

scarce — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:00:37 +0000

Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has the details on the intrigue going on in the House yesterday with efforts to finally audit the Federal Reserve and find out where all those trillions of dollars are going.

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed's opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

The amendment expressly blocks Congress from interfering with the independence of monetary policy decision-making, but opponents of the measure said that the political pressure would inevitably follow.

Dr. Nancy Takes Marsha Blackburn to Task for Getting the “Public Health Message Lost in the Politics"

Heather — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:36:24 +0000

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Good for Dr. Nancy for shooting down some of Blackburn's typical partisan hackery here.

From Think Progress:

On MSNBC this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman took Blackburn to task for getting the “public health message lost in the politics.” “Now, there’s nothing that came out of this panel recommending rationing,” said Snyderman. “Just a prudent use of screening tests.” When Blackburn tried to claim that the guidelines meant “bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow,” Snyderman pointed out that Blackburn was acting as a “bureaucrat” standing between patients and “the best possible evidence”. [...]

As the Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis notes, the concern of the congresswomen about rationed mammograms is especially ironic considering that they oppose legislation that “would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.”

Hasselbeck on KSM "They Chucked Some Water on Him"--Hannity "I'm Glad We Waterboarded Him"

Heather — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:00:56 +0000

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Anyone want to take bets on what the collective IQ of this pair is? Sean Hannity brings in The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck to do a bit of concern trolling for Sarah-Barracuda and that mean old "librul" media that just "hates" conservative women and the conversation turns to a bit of fear mongering over the trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed being moved to New York.

Hannity: How do you feel about Barack Obama? Do you think he’s a Socialist? Do you think he’s a radical?

Hasselbeck: You know I think he ran as from the middle of the road, right? But what we’re seeing are some what I think to be near extremist non…lack of decisions I should say. You know, take for instance Khalid Sheikh Muhammed getting a civilian trial here in New York City.

Hannity: Umm hmm.

Hasselbeck: The irony that we now are having this rock star KSM on the biggest Broadway stage of the world to what?—reenact and draw up all that happened on 9-11. Wow! What a chance for al Quada to come in…I mean they should start selling tickets now. This is going to be a circus—an absolute circus and no illegal combatant deserves a civilian trial and I cannot believe that this decision has been made.

Hannity: And that and they still have the investigation into Fort Hood which I can’t believe, but you’re right about Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. Think about this. We will pass on intelligence information…

Hasselbeck: Umm hmm…

Hannity: …to him and his defense team…

Hasselbeck: Of course.

Hannity: When he already admitted guilt and was willing to get the death penalty.

Hasselbeck: Speaking of defense Sean, who’s going to be the defendant here? Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, he’s going to then be “oh, poor guy. What did they chuck some water on him”. And then we have the Bush administration going to be the real defendant and let’s not kid ourselves here…

Hannity: You’ll get in as much trouble as me about chucking water…

Hasselbeck: I will. I’m sure. I’m sure I will.

Hannity: I’m glad we waterboarded him. It kept people safe.

Broadway stage? Really? I want to know when someone’s going to “chuck some water” in one of these two’s faces. Hannity never did respond to Keith’s challenge for him to be waterboarded himself. I await Sean making his Worst Person’s segment after this one.

You gotta' love Hannity's lead in here as well. Barack Obama...Elisabeth is he really a Marxist, Socialist, terrorist or is he just a radical that wants to destroy America? Give me your insightful analysis on this, would you? Because I know there's no one more qualified than a former Survivor contestant turned daytime talk show co-host to weigh in on that.

Not My Waterpark

scarce — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:32:15 +0000

Cartman sings a heartfelt ode about how his waterpark is not how he remembered it. A song for the Republican base.

PARASAILIN' with SARAH PALIN

CSPANJunkie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:30:00 +0000

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November 19, 2009 CURRENT TV SUPER NEWS

Bernard Goldberg Responds to Jon Stewart Slamming Him for Down Syndrome Statement

Heather — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:00:18 +0000

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After Bill O'Reilly only shows the portion of The Daily Show clip where Jon Stewart curses at Bernard Goldberg rather than Stewart's entire response to Goldberg saying that "liberals don't have five kids--one of them has Down Syndrome--liberals certainly don't allow that to happen". Goldberg responded:

Who do you think is more likely to willingly and knowingly have a baby with Down Syndrome, a pro-choice woman or a pro-life woman; a woman for whom religion isn't terribly important or a woman for whom religion is important; a liberal woman or a conservative woman? The odds are that it's the pro-life, religious conservative woman that would make such a compassionate decision and the reason, the reason he's so upset is because he like most liberals think they have a monopoly on compassion and she shows that they don't.

Oh yeah, that’s entirely different Bernie. And nice hatchet job on editing the Daily Show segment O’Reilly or your audience would have known Stewart actually had a substantive response to Goldberg that made what he said tonight look just as stupid--not that it was really any different from what he said in the previous show.

Push-Button War

CSPANJunkie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:30:00 +0000

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November 19, 2009 CNN
Predator Drone airstrikes have increased under President Obama