Jsmog

Meet Your Hedge Fund Landlord How subprime player...

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:03:41 -0800

Meet Your Hedge Fund Landlord

How subprime player Carrington Investments is milking a housing crisis it helped create.

Back before the housing bubble burst, sending America’s economy into a tailspin, hedge fund manager and former CitiGroup banker Bruce Rose was marketing himself as the guy who single-handedly invented subprime mortgage-backed securities. Indeed, Carrington Investment Partners, part of a cluster of related companies founded by Rose, competed with the big investment banks to package and sell mortgage debt to investors. Now Rose and his companies are positioning themselves to feed off the tail end of the meltdown their business practices helped create, joining a foreclosure-to-rental trend that experts say could hurt homeowners even more.

Romney stands by himself, re: Reverend Wright attacks. Sometimes...

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:49:24 -0800

Romney stands by himself, re: Reverend Wright attacks.

Sometimes RMoney makes such little sense that, out of compassion, you hope he’s lying.

The video on how the middle class, not the rich, create jobs...

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:45:26 -0800

The video on how the middle class, not the rich, create jobs that TED Talks didn’t want you to see.

Here’s the proof that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s...

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:43:46 -0800

Here’s the proof that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest video on “voter fraud” is a fraud itself.

This is the naturalization certificate of one of two men he accused of voting as a “non citizen,” who are actually citizens.

Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional? The Constitution prescribed...

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:27:20 -0800

Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional?

The Constitution prescribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties and amending the Constitution. And as Bondurant writes, “The Framers were aware of the established rule of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and that by adopting these six exceptions to the principle of majority rule, they were excluding all other exceptions.” By contrast, in the Bill of Rights, the Founders were careful to state that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

That majority vote played into another principle, as well: the “finely wrought” compromise over proper representation. At the time of the country’s founding, seven of the 13 states, representing 27 percent of the population, could command a majority in the Senate. Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate. “The supermajority vote requirement,” Bondurant argues, thus “upsets the Great Compromise’s carefully crafted balance between the large states and the small states.”

In 1892, in United States v. Ballin, the Court held that while “the Constitution empowers each house to determine its rules of proceedings,” it “may not by its rules ignore constitutional restraints or violate fundamental rights.” And while some may argue that the filibuster has, at this point, been around for well over a century, the Supreme Court has previously held that the fact that “an unconstitutional action has been taken before surely does not render that same action any less unconstitutional at a later date.”

azspot: Clay Bennett: Deregulation Deregulation? Nonesense....

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:58:32 -0800

azspot:

Clay Bennett: Deregulation

Deregulation? Nonesense. That’s the Freedom Man in his Freedom Truck. That stop sign isn’t the boss of me. I don’t need some bureaucrat deciding for me whether the bridge is out. I make my own choices.

barackobama: All the cool kids are doing it.

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:50:55 -0800

barackobama:

All the cool kids are doing it.

"The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:46:56 -0800

“

The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, who turns 80 next week, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing, and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.

And he would learn later that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

”

- The New York Times, “Leading Psychiatrist Apologizes for Study Supporting Gay ‘Cure’” (via inothernews)

One Chart That Shows How the Great Recession Totally Whacked the...

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:37:38 -0800

One Chart That Shows How the Great Recession Totally Whacked the Young

The economy is missing between 5 million and 6 million workers. That’s how much bigger our labor force would be if there had been no Great Recession, per the Congressional Budget Office.

So, who are the missing five million? That’s the question Greg Ip of The Economist recently asked. The above chart from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) gives us a hint of at least part of the answer: the young.

Read more. [Image: Economic Policy Institute]

"I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. But I do know this, that..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 22:16:51 -0800

“I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.””

- Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado), speaking to supporters. Coffman later said he “misspoke.” (via officialssay)

"This was not a loss to the taxpayers of America; this was a loss to shareholders and owners of..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:25:11 -0800

“This was not a loss to the taxpayers of America; this was a loss to shareholders and owners of JPMorgan and that’s the way America works. The $2 billion JPMorgan lost, someone else gained.”

- Mitt Romney defends JP Morgan’s $3 billion loss (number revised from $2 billion). (via think-progress)

Photo

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:20:29 -0800

Taking credit for what RMoney said NOT to do.

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:43:13 -0800

Taking credit for what RMoney said NOT to do.

Mitt Romney would increase military spending by $2.1 trillion...

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:00:52 -0800

Mitt Romney would increase military spending by $2.1 trillion with no plan to pay for it.

Current TV’s Jennifer Granholm: Hey Mitt, the door’s always...

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:55:10 -0800

Current TV’s Jennifer Granholm: Hey Mitt, the door’s always open!

On Fox News, Neil Cavuto asked Mitt Romney about Granholm’s accusation that Romney is taking credit for the auto bailout where exactly zero credit is due. Granholm tweeted that Mittens is welcome to come answer her in person. She’s encouraging fans to retweet her invitation for Romney to come on The War Room and explain exactly how telling Detroit to go bankrupt constitutes “a lot of credit” for the success of the bailout.

In what might be one of the tea party’s greatest unintended...

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:29:01 -0800

In what might be one of the tea party’s greatest unintended victories, treading on the snake depicted on the protest movement’s ubiquitous “Don’t Tread On Me” flags could soon become illegal.

How a Grassroots Rebellion Won the Nation’s Biggest Climate...

Thu, 10 May 2012 10:01:15 -0800

How a Grassroots Rebellion Won the Nation’s Biggest Climate Victory

Activists have imposed a de facto moratorium on new coal—and beat the Obama EPA to the punch.

By Mark Hertsgaard

"Back in high school I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by that I..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:57:51 -0800

““Back in high school I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by that I apologize,” he told reporters. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.””

- Mitt Romney, apologizing for leading his prep school classmates in an assault on a student they thought was gay. Did we say “apologizing”? Maybe that’s not the right word. (via motherjones)

Yet, nobody can produce examples of Romney’s good deeds from that time? When he actually helped someone? Hmmm….

"My religion compels me to be against discrimination of every kind."

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:51:41 -0800

“My religion compels me to be against discrimination of every kind.”

- Nancy Pelosi on marriage equality (via think-progress)

President Obama’s support for marriage equality comes at a...

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:49:39 -0800

President Obama’s support for marriage equality comes at a time when a majority of Americans now support the freedom to marry.