TODAY'S TOPICS: Team of Rivals (not), Mumbai, Olbermann, Moyers, Sirota, Wealth Disparity, Resource Access
TEAM OF RIVALS? REALLY?
I'm not going to hide my deep disappointment so far regarding Obama's choices, be it economic or the coming "national security" team (hint: hawks). It's funny what the corporate media seems to consider "a team of rivals". In fact, its not that different from the kinds of pundits they have on their political round-table shows (good example being the kinds of "opinions given in the run-nup and aftermath to the war in Iraq). What the Matrix considers "many sides" of the issue, really are confined within a small, right of center to far right spectrum.
Now we have Obama's laughable "team of rivals". Here's a question, if this is a team of rivals, then where the F*** are the progressives? Show me just one for christ’s sake!! On the economy, how about a Stiglitz, a Galbraith, a Baker, a Kuttner or a Bair? So far it’s a team that spans from conservative, to moderate conservative. If you don't believe me, why are Republicans so ecstatic? Why are corporations and Wall Street so happy? Why are all the same IDIOT pundits that said A. Saddam was a threat, B. there was no recession, now all saying this is a great team!? Because these people are exactly the type of "yes men" the establishment wants to continue to roam the halls of power (though yes, they OF COURSE are better than the Bush/Reagan era...but is that the benchmark we really want to use?).
VIDEO SECTION
Bill Moyers on the World’s hope for America…based on what I’m seeing from Obama, mine is already dimming...though it sure is nice to listen to a President that speaks in full sentences and knows what the hell he's talking about:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bill-moyers-worlds-hope-america
Deepak Chopra on the Mumbai attacks…and the role of American foreign policy in creating more terrorists than we could ever possibly kill:
http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/mumbai-attacks-al-qaeda-pakistani-proxies-o
Candice Gingrich (yes...sister of Newt) visits Olbermann to discuss Prop 8, and the fact that 8% of voters polled in California now say they would change their support of that abomination to opposition to it after witnessing the protests! While I am still very skeptical of the “established” count, what is undeniable is this kind of hardcore bigotry is on the way out as the current older, more religious generation dies off and the younger one takes over. The bigots and the fundamentalists are grasping and gasping to hold on to the old, “safe”, world they once, sadly, came to embrace and understand.
Who better than Newt’s sister to expose her own brother’s dying orthodoxy:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdown-candice-gingrich-prop-8
Keith Olbermann’s Worst Persons…in particular the myths and lies being pushed about auto workers and their salaries and benefits…as in, they don’t make $70 an hour!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdown-worst-person-taking-70-hour-auto
Walters interviews Obama…he talks a good talk - that remains unquestioned (Yes, I’m bitter):
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/barbara-walters-interviews-barack-ob
ARTICLE SECTION
My man Glenn Greenwald discusses Mumbai and all those lessons we in the US have not learned from our years of global imperialism. I’m especially gratified that he brought up Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and our government’s covert activities there (and our media’s blatant lies about him...truth is he's massively reduced poverty and illiteracy). Regardless of the conflict, or the group or groups responsible, in my mind the key underlying causal factor in so much of what has led our world to such a dismal place is the widening gap between the have’s and the have not’s, and the lack of adequate access to critical resources, be it water, food, medicine or wealth.
Until we as a species transition away from a monetary based system that thrives on the success of some to the detriment of others, we will never truly evolve, nor finally put an end to this rapidly disintegrating paradigm. We must move from a monetary system to a resource based one, in which we judge ourselves not on how much any one person or one country can accumulate, but how well we ensure all people have what they need.
That is my hope…
A few clips:
The Times' propagandistic cheer-leading for the military coup in Venezuela is an important illustrative event which should be regretted, but not erased. There are vital lessons from the last eight years that get obscured when influential outlets such as the Times Editorial Page try to erase their own responsibility for events and heap all blame on "the Bush administration" -- which was able to do what it did only because it enjoyed the acquiescence, complicity and often blind support from so many of our leading political and media institutions.
To this day, Chavez's hostility towards the U.S. Government (just as is true for the hostility of Iranian and Cuban leaders and many others) is depicted as proof of his dangerous extremism and irrationality -- even his mental instability -- as though American attempts to dictate who governs other countries will generate anger and resentment only among the Primitive, the Crazed, and the Evil. More generally, discussions of our own role in spawning anti-American sentiment around the world is still more or less off limits in mainstream discourse, ludicrously demonized as "Blame America First" pathology from anti-American fringes on the radical Left and the isolationist Right. And our political and media elite continue to bastardize language to justify whatever we do, with "democracy" meaning "a government that follows U.S. dictates regardless of how it gained and maintains power," and "dictatorship" meaning "a government not beholden to U.S. dictates even if they were democratically
SNIP
Any decent, civilized person watching scenes in Mumbai of extremists shooting indiscriminate machine gun fire and launching grenades into civilians crowds -- deliberately slaughtering innocent people by the dozens -- is going to feel disgust, fury, and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, regardless of what precipitated it. The temptation is great even among the most rational to empower authority to do anything and everything -- without limits -- to punish those responsible and prevent repeat occurrences. That's a natural, even understandable, response. And it's the response that the attackers hope to provoke.
It's that temptation to which most Americans -- and our leading media institutions -- succumbed in the wake of 9/11, and it's exactly the reaction that's most self-destructive. As documented by this superb Washington Post Op-Ed today from Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, the Indian Government -- in response to prior terrorist attacks -- has been employing tactics all-too-familiar to Americans: "terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights"; "allegations of torture by police are routine"; "suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between"; Muslims and Hindus are subjected to vastly disparate treatment; and much of the most consequential actions take place in secrecy, shielded from public view, debate or accountability.
As Padgaonkar details, many of these measures, particularly in the wake of new terrorist attacks, are emotionally satisfying, yet they do little other than exacerbate the problem, spawn further extremism and resentment, and massively increase the likelihood of further and more reckless attacks -- thereby fueling this cycle endlessly -- all while degrading the very institutions and values that are ostensibly being defended.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/28
More on some of the causal relationships that might have led to the attacks in Mumbai.
A few clips:
Americans are largely shielded from the shocking reality of India. According to the World Bank's own estimates on poverty, almost half of all Indians live below the new international poverty line of $1.25 (PPP) per day.[1] The World Bank further estimates that 33% of the global poor now reside in India. [2] Moreover, India also has 828 million people, or 75.6% of the population living below $2 a day, compared to 72.2% for Sub-Saharan Africa.[3] A quarter of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40/day. Someone should tell the starving masses who have remained largely marginalized and subjugated that India is a "success story" because that's not reflected in most Indian's lives. Income inequality in India, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is increasing at a disturbingly destabilizing rate.[4] In addition, India has a higher rate of malnutrition among children under the age of three than any other country in the world (46% in year 2007).[5],[6]
SNIP
Mahan Abedin, an insurgency analyst, told Al Jazeera after Wednesday nights attacks: "We have seen an increase in recent years in indigenous Indian Muslim organizations beginning to take a violent stance towards the Indian state and sections of the Indian society, particularly the commercial elite of places like Mumbai, in order to highlight, they would say, the sheer inequality of life in India."[10] Abedin continued, "there is a middle class of around 100 million who live very well but 800 million-plus people live in miserable conditions." Even people who commit heinous acts of violence occasionally make a valid point. The latest attacks should not evoke a knee-jerk effort to ratchet up the so-called Global War on Terror but, instead, make us question how to avoid such attacks in the future. By showing genuine concern for the plight of the millions of people who are at risk of death from poverty and by honoring the sanctity of the lives of the most destitute, we have the best chance of defeating the ideologies of hate.[11]
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/27-10
While Obama hasn’t officially announced his national security team, what is apparent is that if anything, it’s even worse than his “team of centrist establishmentarians” named for the economy. Don’t get me wrong, I came into this Administration with my eyes wide open, and have constantly prepared everyone for what I knew was going to be a pretty cautious leader. But, this is getting ridiculous. As I mentioned on the economy, how is it a team of rivals if everyone is right of center? In fact, where is even ONE person who opposed the war? ONE person that believes the defense budget is out of control? One person that thinks we need to find a way out of Afghanistan, not send more troops there?
Let’s remember, Obama won the nomination in large part because HE WAS the one that opposed the war from the beginning! When are we going to start rewarding people who were RIGHT about these issues from the outset?
A few clips on the coming team of imperialists:
The Obama national security "team" -- part of that much-hailed "team of rivals" -- does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as "centrist," but, in a Democratic context, they are distinctly right of center.
SNIP
The Obama transition team's explanation for the remarkably familiar look to its emerging national security line-up, suggested David E. Sanger in a recent front-page think piece in the New York Times, is "that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve. With the country facing a deep recession or worse, global market turmoil, chaos in Pakistan and a worsening war in Afghanistan, 'there's going to be no time for experimentation,' a member of the Obama foreign policy team said." In other words, we need the sort of minds, already imprisoned in Washington's version of "experience," who helped lead us into this mess (long term), to get us out of it. "Experimentation" is obviously for times when it isn't needed. For these custodians of empire, Better a steady hand and the same-old thoughts. No?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/26-4
I’m sorry to be so critical of Obama so early, but I’ve never shied away from speaking my mind, and I’m not going to now just because we have an inspiring Democrat in office. I’m not a water boy for the Democratic Party. And obviously, neither is David Sirota, as demonstrated by some of the frightening details he is noticing so far in Obama’s picks. But let me also be clear, if he starts implementing a progressive agenda, that puts people ahead of corporations (in a serious way), I don't care who's in his cabinet! What matters are the policies Obama pursues, and we just don't know those yet. All I'm saying is signs aren't so good...but if Obama has been anything so far, its someone who can surprise me, and think outside the box. Let us hope...
A few clips:
There's nothing surprising about this - the reason endangered politicians of both parties start airing populist progressive themes around election time is because they know those themes are popular among rank-and-file voters (thus the definition of "populism") - they know, in other words, that this is a decidedly center-left country, and when they have to answer to that country come election day, they go left. But once these politicians get into office and are far away from all of us, the unwashed masses, the pressures of money and media -- ie. the Establishment -- unleashes incredible pressure for them to actually write the details of policy in a way that preserves the conservative status quo. Enter the Obama administration.
SNIP
This gets to the fundamental question about Obama that nobody really knows. Does Obama believe that in order to be a successful president and right the economy, he has to fulfill the decidedly progressive policy promises he made during the campaign? Or does he believe that if he combines his own personal salesmanship talents with a strong political team that is skilled at the language of progressivism, he can sell a right-of-center Establishment agenda as huge "change?"
Nobody knows the answer to this - and those who say they do are arguing with the same ridiculed faith that George W. Bush cited when he said he knew Vladimir Putin was a good guy because he looked into the Russian autocrat's eyes. The truth is, we just don't know what Obama thinks his path should be.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/108538/watch_out_for_obama%27s_team_selling_conservative_policies_as_progressive_politics/
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama's Team, Rubin Disciples, Prop 8 Fraud?, "Non Ideological", Obesity Crisis, Minnesota Count Probs
OBAMA’S ECONOMIC TEAM – CORPORATE INSIDERS, RUBIN DISCIPLES
Before I get to the quote, let me just remind everyone that these kinds of picks shouldn’t be a surprise anyone, Obama IS A CENTRIST, and he is not a serious threat to the corporate status quo…sadly. But, that does not mean that a President Obama does not offer us significant opportunities to begin the process of changing this broken paradigm. There should no longer be in any doubt however, it’s going to take a few Presidents to do this, certainly not one…and certainly not this one. As time goes by, you can be sure I will continue to enumerate all the positive aspects of having a President Obama as well…
Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, smart and experienced veterans of Washington combat. But they represent the Democratic party that mainly sees itself as managerial -- making government work better. The long era of conservative dominance has taught them to keep their distance from big reform ideas that promise fundamental change of the system. Their operating style is incremental and cautiously practical. They conscientiously avoid (or actively block) propositions that sound too liberal or radical. Alas, Obama is coming to power at a critical moment when incrementalism is irrelevant. The system is in collapse. Financial chaos won't wait for patient deliberations.
Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp -- the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protege (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
-- William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism"
VIDEO SECTION
More bad signs from Obama and company, as we find out he doesn’t want to pursue war crimes against any of the torturers and murderers in the Bush administration. Think of the precedent this then sets: Its okay for those in government to kill and torture innocent people…and now that will be enshrined as our nation's policy. Wonderful…
I’m trying as best I can to stay positive…but I’m realizing each day why I was going to vote for John Edwards (his affair aside). I’ll have more on the torture and US terror state when Obama appoints the horrific choice of Janet Napolitano.
We won a small victory in Brennan’s removing himself as a candidate for CIA chief (as he was a supporter of torture too). The progressive blogosphere deserves major props for exposing him. But we should be disturbed that Obama was considering this scum bag.
And don’t even get me started on Gates staying. My head is spinning from all the disappointment.
Watch Turley and Maddow discuss the latest revulsion coming from the Dems and Obama:
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1102276898589&p=oi
Sarah Palin’s greatest hits…thanks Daily Show!!
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/daily-show-sarah-palins-greatest-hit
And the Late Show lists Sarah Palin’s top ten excuses for the now infamous "turkey grinding" incident:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/late-show-top-ten-sarah-palin-excuses
Brave New Films creates another fantastic short film…this time on the need to close Guantanamo, ban torture, and put an end the military commissions act…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/108580/the_road_to_guantanamo%3A_all_the_evidence_you_need_to_support_closing_gitmo_and_banning_torture/
ARTICLE SECTION
Norm Solomon writes another op-ed picked straight from my thoughts! The "ideology of no ideology” is one way to understand one of the latest Matrix narratives being injected into our brains. You’ve heard it, “Obama is picking pragmatists that are non-ideological”. Oh joy! God knows we don’t want people with “an ideology” of economic justice, compassion, peace, and fairness!! Just so everyone knows, yes, that’s my ideology…justice. And we certainly have come to understand, based on what we’re told to think, is that kind of extremism is unacceptable to the Matrix and the corporate overlords.
A few clips:
The ideology of no ideology is nifty. No matter how tilted in favor of powerful interests, it can be a deft way to keep touting policy agendas as common-sense pragmatism -- virtuous enough to draw opposition only from ideologues. Meanwhile, the end of ideology among policymakers is about as imminent as the end of history. But -- in sync with the ideology of no ideology -- deference to corporate power isn't ideological. And belief in the U.S. government's prerogative to use military force anywhere in the world is a matter of credibility, not ideology.
SNIP
As for competence, it seems that claims of non-ideology often go hand-in-hand with overblown claims of economic mastery. "Geithner and Summers are credited with expertise in crisis management," economist Mark Weisbrot pointed out on Monday, "but we better hope they don't manage the current crisis like they did in East Asia, Russia, Argentina or any of the other countries that Treasury was involved in during the 1990s with their help. They helped bring on the East Asian crisis in 1997 by pressuring the governments in the region to de-regulate international financial flows, which was the main cause of the crisis. Then they insisted that all bailout money go through the IMF, and delayed aid until most of the damage was done. Then they attached damaging conditions" to the aid.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/25
And one of my favorite economists (maybe my favorite) Robert Kuttner writes on the Obama economic team in a very balanced way. In my mind that means being honest about what we know, and what we don’t know yet about the coming administration. We know he’s picked a bunch of “centrists” that drink from the corporate trough. But we don’t know yet whether he will lead them to implement a progressive agenda, or whether they will lead him to implement yet another meaningless and status quo (though exponentially better than the Bush fascists) agenda, as Clinton did.
A few clips:
As progressives, we can view President-Elect Obama's emerging economic team in one of two ways. Either he has disappointed us by picking a group of Clinton retreads--the very people who brought us the deregulation that produced the financial collapse; the fiscal conservatives who in the 1990s put budget balance ahead of rebuilding public institutions. Or we can conclude that he has very shrewdly named a team of technically competent centrists so that he can govern as a progressive in pragmatist's clothing--as he moves the political center to the left.
SNIP
What kind of magic does this man Rubin have? He was one of the key Democratic architects of the extreme financial deregulation that brought the economy to this pass. At Citi, he was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans and off-balance-sheet gimmicks that has brought Citi to the edge of bankruptcy. Yet he continues to fall upwards. Surely Barack Obama must have noticed that Rubin is a false prophet. So why is his entire senior economic group a Team of Rubinistas (except Goolsbee)?
SNIP
Obama is intelligent enough to reach his own conclusions, and they are likely to produce far more heartburn for conservative Republicans than for those who worked so hard to elect him. But it would be helpful if his senior economic team included even one person who was not a member of the same centrist club - a Joseph Stiglitz, a Jamie Galbraith, a Jared Bernstein or a Sheila Bair. We shall soon see whether the most interesting team of rivals in the Obama White House will be the president and his own economic advisers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/team-of-rubins_b_145879.html
Exit Poll Shows DEFEAT of Same-Sex Marriage Ban!
I’ve been holding back bringing this possibility up until I got a little more info…and that info is now here. Prop 8 was the one ballot proposition that made no sense, and was the ONLY ONE that drastically conflicted with exit polls (not released to the people of course). All others were nearly dead on. There are many other reasons that led me to believe something was awry, based on my years of number crunching and campaign politics.
But, for now, let me open up this debate, and in particular, Velvet Undergrounds requests for a variety of actions to be taken to ensure this vote count was accurate. There are many reasons to believe it may not have been…all we are asking is for us to make sure. We can thank Sec. of State Bowen for increasing the integrity of our electoral system, but it all goes for not if we aren’t able to utilize the protections she has given us…and to do that, we need to have a partial recount, among other things, of the paper ballots versus the electronic tabulations of those ballots.
All of this should sound familiar to my readers: to truly protect the integrity of the vote and ensure accuracy, we can’t wait for automatic recounts, as they are only triggered by races that are within .5 % of each other. What about races that could have been manipulated and the “winner” won by 1%, or 4%??? We need to verify that paper matches electronic counts to be sure.
I know Jonathan Simon personally (one of the exit pollsters and statisticians with new data on Prop 8) from my Ohio 04’ days and I can assure you the guy is incredible.
Velvet Underground/Brad Blog:
Volunteers Needed NOW to Monitor Post-Election Procedures
The Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) Community and its supporters nationwide are mourning and organizing in the wake of last week's announced 52-48% passage of Proposition 8, which eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. But an accurate count of the votes may not yet have occurred, according to early indications.
The integrity of an election takes time to investigate, and it's far too early to draw conclusions. However, consider the following:
Around the world, exit polls are used to determine the need for investigation of elections. In the U.S., the National Exit Poll (NEP, also known as Edison/Mitofsky) now adjusts results to match vote counts before issuing its final polling numbers. Election Defense Alliance downloaded NEP numbers from the internet on election night, however, before poll results were changed to match the official vote count.
This is the exit poll from early in the evening of election night. There were 2,168 respondents, and they break down as follows (a "yes" vote is a vote against same-sex marriage):
Males:
Yes on Prop 8, 48%
No on Prop 8, 52%
Females:
Yes on Prop 8, 48%
No on Prop 8, 52%
View actual screen capture
This is the exit poll from later in the evening. There were 2,240 respondents -- 72 more respondents than in the earlier poll -- and they break down in a very different way:
Males:
Yes on Prop 8, 53%
No on Prop 8, 47%
Females:
Yes on Prop 8, 52%
No on Prop 8, 48%
View actual screen capture
This discrepancy should be ringing alarm bells. Something doesn't add up.
Because exit polls adjusted to match election results are of limited usefulness, this year independent exit polls were conducted in several states by a group including Ken Warren of the Warren Poll, Jonathan Simon of Election Defense Alliance, and Steve Freeman of Election Integrity. This team is still analyzing results of their exit polls, but Simon told Velvet Revolution that their California exit polls, some of which were conducted by Judy Alter and Protect California Ballots, tend to corroborate the findings of the above exit poll that show a defeat of Prop. 8.
What is proven by discrepancies between exit poll results and official vote counts? That an investigation must be conducted to determine whether the vote count is accurate.
Further indications of problems with the vote count are already coming in from multiple sources, including incident reports from voters and election observers. Among these are indications that disenfranchisement targeting communities likely to have a high proportion of 'no' votes on Proposition 8 led to huge numbers of provisional ballots being cast. Because each provisional ballot must be individually determined to be qualified before counting, hundreds of thousands throughout the state remain uncounted to date.
Hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots also remain uncounted (see above link). When the initial counting is complete, it is certainly possible that the results of Proposition 8 will be reversed. But we can't sit around waiting to find out.
Right now, in election offices in every county, procedures that affect the election results are underway. While the votes are tabulated by computers that have been shown again and again to be riggable and hackable, to drop votes, flip votes, break down and all in all produce untrustworthy election results, some of the election processes can and must be observed by the public. These include:
Mandated 100% manual count of 'paper trails' from DRE/touchscreen voting machines Reconciliation of number of votes with number of voters, and Auditing of other processes to determine accurate counting.
(Can you believe there’s a direct correlation with obesity and deregulation and immoral corporate behavior?!)
But other social forces also promoted the calorie imbalance. The arrival of the Reagan administration in 1980 increased the pace of industry deregulation, removing controls on agricultural production and encouraging farmers to grow more food. Calories available per capita in the national food supply (that produced by American farmers, plus imports, less exports) rose from 3,200 a day in 1980 to 3,900 a day two decades later. This figure is roughly twice the average need of the population.
The early 1980s also marked the advent of the “shareholder value movement” on Wall Street. Stockholder demands for higher short-term returns on investments forced food companies to expand sales in a marketplace that already contained excessive calories. Food companies responded by seeking new sales and marketing opportunities. They encouraged formerly shunned practices that eventually changed social norms, such as frequent between-meal snacking, eating in book and clothing stores, and serving larger portions—all demonstrably effective “eat more” strategies. No wonder personal responsibility doesn’t work to prevent weight gain.
It is not enough to know what you are supposed to eat. You also need a food environment that makes it easier for you to make healthier choices. This means getting involved in political activity to promote a food system that is better for you, the environment, and the community in which you live. As I wrote in the new edition of my book, Food Politics, we are living in the midst of a new social movement based on promoting a food system that is healthier for people, farm animals, and the environment.
-- Dr. Nestle at http://meetthebloggers.org/.
OBAMA’S ECONOMIC TEAM – CORPORATE INSIDERS, RUBIN DISCIPLES
Before I get to the quote, let me just remind everyone that these kinds of picks shouldn’t be a surprise anyone, Obama IS A CENTRIST, and he is not a serious threat to the corporate status quo…sadly. But, that does not mean that a President Obama does not offer us significant opportunities to begin the process of changing this broken paradigm. There should no longer be in any doubt however, it’s going to take a few Presidents to do this, certainly not one…and certainly not this one. As time goes by, you can be sure I will continue to enumerate all the positive aspects of having a President Obama as well…
Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, smart and experienced veterans of Washington combat. But they represent the Democratic party that mainly sees itself as managerial -- making government work better. The long era of conservative dominance has taught them to keep their distance from big reform ideas that promise fundamental change of the system. Their operating style is incremental and cautiously practical. They conscientiously avoid (or actively block) propositions that sound too liberal or radical. Alas, Obama is coming to power at a critical moment when incrementalism is irrelevant. The system is in collapse. Financial chaos won't wait for patient deliberations.
Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp -- the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protege (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.
-- William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism"
VIDEO SECTION
More bad signs from Obama and company, as we find out he doesn’t want to pursue war crimes against any of the torturers and murderers in the Bush administration. Think of the precedent this then sets: Its okay for those in government to kill and torture innocent people…and now that will be enshrined as our nation's policy. Wonderful…
I’m trying as best I can to stay positive…but I’m realizing each day why I was going to vote for John Edwards (his affair aside). I’ll have more on the torture and US terror state when Obama appoints the horrific choice of Janet Napolitano.
We won a small victory in Brennan’s removing himself as a candidate for CIA chief (as he was a supporter of torture too). The progressive blogosphere deserves major props for exposing him. But we should be disturbed that Obama was considering this scum bag.
And don’t even get me started on Gates staying. My head is spinning from all the disappointment.
Watch Turley and Maddow discuss the latest revulsion coming from the Dems and Obama:
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1102276898589&p=oi
Sarah Palin’s greatest hits…thanks Daily Show!!
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/daily-show-sarah-palins-greatest-hit
And the Late Show lists Sarah Palin’s top ten excuses for the now infamous "turkey grinding" incident:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/late-show-top-ten-sarah-palin-excuses
Brave New Films creates another fantastic short film…this time on the need to close Guantanamo, ban torture, and put an end the military commissions act…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/108580/the_road_to_guantanamo%3A_all_the_evidence_you_need_to_support_closing_gitmo_and_banning_torture/
ARTICLE SECTION
Norm Solomon writes another op-ed picked straight from my thoughts! The "ideology of no ideology” is one way to understand one of the latest Matrix narratives being injected into our brains. You’ve heard it, “Obama is picking pragmatists that are non-ideological”. Oh joy! God knows we don’t want people with “an ideology” of economic justice, compassion, peace, and fairness!! Just so everyone knows, yes, that’s my ideology…justice. And we certainly have come to understand, based on what we’re told to think, is that kind of extremism is unacceptable to the Matrix and the corporate overlords.
A few clips:
The ideology of no ideology is nifty. No matter how tilted in favor of powerful interests, it can be a deft way to keep touting policy agendas as common-sense pragmatism -- virtuous enough to draw opposition only from ideologues. Meanwhile, the end of ideology among policymakers is about as imminent as the end of history. But -- in sync with the ideology of no ideology -- deference to corporate power isn't ideological. And belief in the U.S. government's prerogative to use military force anywhere in the world is a matter of credibility, not ideology.
SNIP
As for competence, it seems that claims of non-ideology often go hand-in-hand with overblown claims of economic mastery. "Geithner and Summers are credited with expertise in crisis management," economist Mark Weisbrot pointed out on Monday, "but we better hope they don't manage the current crisis like they did in East Asia, Russia, Argentina or any of the other countries that Treasury was involved in during the 1990s with their help. They helped bring on the East Asian crisis in 1997 by pressuring the governments in the region to de-regulate international financial flows, which was the main cause of the crisis. Then they insisted that all bailout money go through the IMF, and delayed aid until most of the damage was done. Then they attached damaging conditions" to the aid.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/25
And one of my favorite economists (maybe my favorite) Robert Kuttner writes on the Obama economic team in a very balanced way. In my mind that means being honest about what we know, and what we don’t know yet about the coming administration. We know he’s picked a bunch of “centrists” that drink from the corporate trough. But we don’t know yet whether he will lead them to implement a progressive agenda, or whether they will lead him to implement yet another meaningless and status quo (though exponentially better than the Bush fascists) agenda, as Clinton did.
A few clips:
As progressives, we can view President-Elect Obama's emerging economic team in one of two ways. Either he has disappointed us by picking a group of Clinton retreads--the very people who brought us the deregulation that produced the financial collapse; the fiscal conservatives who in the 1990s put budget balance ahead of rebuilding public institutions. Or we can conclude that he has very shrewdly named a team of technically competent centrists so that he can govern as a progressive in pragmatist's clothing--as he moves the political center to the left.
SNIP
What kind of magic does this man Rubin have? He was one of the key Democratic architects of the extreme financial deregulation that brought the economy to this pass. At Citi, he was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans and off-balance-sheet gimmicks that has brought Citi to the edge of bankruptcy. Yet he continues to fall upwards. Surely Barack Obama must have noticed that Rubin is a false prophet. So why is his entire senior economic group a Team of Rubinistas (except Goolsbee)?
SNIP
Obama is intelligent enough to reach his own conclusions, and they are likely to produce far more heartburn for conservative Republicans than for those who worked so hard to elect him. But it would be helpful if his senior economic team included even one person who was not a member of the same centrist club - a Joseph Stiglitz, a Jamie Galbraith, a Jared Bernstein or a Sheila Bair. We shall soon see whether the most interesting team of rivals in the Obama White House will be the president and his own economic advisers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/team-of-rubins_b_145879.html
Exit Poll Shows DEFEAT of Same-Sex Marriage Ban!
I’ve been holding back bringing this possibility up until I got a little more info…and that info is now here. Prop 8 was the one ballot proposition that made no sense, and was the ONLY ONE that drastically conflicted with exit polls (not released to the people of course). All others were nearly dead on. There are many other reasons that led me to believe something was awry, based on my years of number crunching and campaign politics.
But, for now, let me open up this debate, and in particular, Velvet Undergrounds requests for a variety of actions to be taken to ensure this vote count was accurate. There are many reasons to believe it may not have been…all we are asking is for us to make sure. We can thank Sec. of State Bowen for increasing the integrity of our electoral system, but it all goes for not if we aren’t able to utilize the protections she has given us…and to do that, we need to have a partial recount, among other things, of the paper ballots versus the electronic tabulations of those ballots.
All of this should sound familiar to my readers: to truly protect the integrity of the vote and ensure accuracy, we can’t wait for automatic recounts, as they are only triggered by races that are within .5 % of each other. What about races that could have been manipulated and the “winner” won by 1%, or 4%??? We need to verify that paper matches electronic counts to be sure.
I know Jonathan Simon personally (one of the exit pollsters and statisticians with new data on Prop 8) from my Ohio 04’ days and I can assure you the guy is incredible.
Velvet Underground/Brad Blog:
Volunteers Needed NOW to Monitor Post-Election Procedures
The Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) Community and its supporters nationwide are mourning and organizing in the wake of last week's announced 52-48% passage of Proposition 8, which eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. But an accurate count of the votes may not yet have occurred, according to early indications.
The integrity of an election takes time to investigate, and it's far too early to draw conclusions. However, consider the following:
Around the world, exit polls are used to determine the need for investigation of elections. In the U.S., the National Exit Poll (NEP, also known as Edison/Mitofsky) now adjusts results to match vote counts before issuing its final polling numbers. Election Defense Alliance downloaded NEP numbers from the internet on election night, however, before poll results were changed to match the official vote count.
This is the exit poll from early in the evening of election night. There were 2,168 respondents, and they break down as follows (a "yes" vote is a vote against same-sex marriage):
Males:
Yes on Prop 8, 48%
No on Prop 8, 52%
Females:
Yes on Prop 8, 48%
No on Prop 8, 52%
View actual screen capture
This is the exit poll from later in the evening. There were 2,240 respondents -- 72 more respondents than in the earlier poll -- and they break down in a very different way:
Males:
Yes on Prop 8, 53%
No on Prop 8, 47%
Females:
Yes on Prop 8, 52%
No on Prop 8, 48%
View actual screen capture
This discrepancy should be ringing alarm bells. Something doesn't add up.
Because exit polls adjusted to match election results are of limited usefulness, this year independent exit polls were conducted in several states by a group including Ken Warren of the Warren Poll, Jonathan Simon of Election Defense Alliance, and Steve Freeman of Election Integrity. This team is still analyzing results of their exit polls, but Simon told Velvet Revolution that their California exit polls, some of which were conducted by Judy Alter and Protect California Ballots, tend to corroborate the findings of the above exit poll that show a defeat of Prop. 8.
What is proven by discrepancies between exit poll results and official vote counts? That an investigation must be conducted to determine whether the vote count is accurate.
Further indications of problems with the vote count are already coming in from multiple sources, including incident reports from voters and election observers. Among these are indications that disenfranchisement targeting communities likely to have a high proportion of 'no' votes on Proposition 8 led to huge numbers of provisional ballots being cast. Because each provisional ballot must be individually determined to be qualified before counting, hundreds of thousands throughout the state remain uncounted to date.
Hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots also remain uncounted (see above link). When the initial counting is complete, it is certainly possible that the results of Proposition 8 will be reversed. But we can't sit around waiting to find out.
Right now, in election offices in every county, procedures that affect the election results are underway. While the votes are tabulated by computers that have been shown again and again to be riggable and hackable, to drop votes, flip votes, break down and all in all produce untrustworthy election results, some of the election processes can and must be observed by the public. These include:
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/2008/11/velvet_revolution_calls_on_ca.html
Every Vote Matters in MN's U.S. Senate Hand-Count. Every. Single. One.
Missing Ballots, Uncounted Absentees and the GOP PR Battle That May Trump Both...
With math/statistics/poll-wiz Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com predicting the U.S. Senate race between incumbent MN Sen. Norm Coleman (R) and challenger Al Franken (D) could result in a 27 vote win for Franken, every ballot "counts" more than ever.
But while ballots have now turned up "missing", and absentees have been tossed from the hand-count, the GOP seems to be preparing for a FL 2000 PR gambit to "win" at all costs...
FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6698
BUSH PARDON WATCH
I thought these pardons were particularly instructive:
- Leslie Owen Collier of Charleston, Mo., who pleaded guilty in 1995 to unlawfully killing three bald eagles in southeast Missouri. He improperly used pesticide in hamburger meat to kill coyotes, but ended up killing many other animals, including the bald eagles. Collier, who was convicted for unauthorized use of a pesticide and violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, was sentenced Feb. 2, 1996 in the Eastern District of Missouri.
- Milton Kirk Cordes of Rapid City, S.D. Cordes was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act, which prohibits importation into the country of wildlife taken in violation of conservation laws.
- Daniel Figh Pue III of Conroe, Texas, convicted of illegal treatment, storage and disposal of a hazardous waste without a permit.
(Can you believe there’s a direct correlation with obesity and deregulation and immoral corporate behavior?!)
But other social forces also promoted the calorie imbalance. The arrival of the Reagan administration in 1980 increased the pace of industry deregulation, removing controls on agricultural production and encouraging farmers to grow more food. Calories available per capita in the national food supply (that produced by American farmers, plus imports, less exports) rose from 3,200 a day in 1980 to 3,900 a day two decades later. This figure is roughly twice the average need of the population.
The early 1980s also marked the advent of the “shareholder value movement” on Wall Street. Stockholder demands for higher short-term returns on investments forced food companies to expand sales in a marketplace that already contained excessive calories. Food companies responded by seeking new sales and marketing opportunities. They encouraged formerly shunned practices that eventually changed social norms, such as frequent between-meal snacking, eating in book and clothing stores, and serving larger portions—all demonstrably effective “eat more” strategies. No wonder personal responsibility doesn’t work to prevent weight gain.
It is not enough to know what you are supposed to eat. You also need a food environment that makes it easier for you to make healthier choices. This means getting involved in political activity to promote a food system that is better for you, the environment, and the community in which you live. As I wrote in the new edition of my book, Food Politics, we are living in the midst of a new social movement based on promoting a food system that is healthier for people, farm animals, and the environment.
-- Dr. Nestle at http://meetthebloggers.org/.
Monday, November 24, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: New New Deal, Obama's Stimulus!, The Wall Street Syndicate, Stock Market Fundamentalism, Franken Still Gaining
OBAMA STIMULUS: GREAT, OBAMA "TEAM": DISAPPOINTING
I'm including two clips from Obama’s news conference announcing his economic team. Especially important is the questions he answers in the SECOND video.
Clearly, I'm ECSTATIC about his stimulus plan!!! It’s not that far from the NEW NEW DEAL I’ve been advocating here for years (more details on it a bit further down the page)…and especially in recent months. Also important is Obama's continued referencing of the FDR legacy and the New Deal as a term of reverence...also something I've been pleading for the Democrats to do for years! You can't say the word "fascist" before a Republican mentions Reagan for Christ's sake! The least we can do is bring back the memory of an ACTUAL great President from our Party.
His comments on the tax issue and the auto industry are also important…because as I have said, yes LOANS for the the autos are necessary, but only if they include stringent and enforceable conditions. Also needed is a serious articulation of what the industry has been doing wrong (promoting SUVs, denying global warming and subverting innovation), why they have failed, and what they now need to do…and should be forced to do!
But I am not happy with the specifics I have seen so far on the bailout of Citi group as well as the floated possibility (at least a strong hint) that Obama will delay implementing his tax plan until the Bush tax cuts expire (not until 2011!!!)…most important of which is raising taxes on the rich.
This would mean a couple hundred billion dollars in additional revenue lost that he will need for his health care and energy proposals! Progressives should move on this issue when he takes office, because it will hinder everything he tries to do on the spending side of the equation if he doesn't raise those taxes in his first year, not third.
Remember too, its only raising them back to what they were in the Clinton years...in which memory serves me the wealthy did pretty well, as did the economy at large. In fact, that might have been the single GREATEST accomplishment of his administration...raising those taxes on the rich in his first budget.
I’m not all that happy about Geithner or Summers either (though they both are clearly better than Paulson and co.). But what I can say for Summers is that what he does represent is at least that “centrist”, corporate mainstream expert that has moved to the “left” (as in more economic justice) in recent years due to the gargantuan failures of deregulation and the economy (which he was partly responsible for under Clinton). The past couple years he’s been writing very good opinion pieces about what was coming, what needs to be done and why things have gone awry (i.e. economic meltdown, need for more regulation, less deregulation as cause, a big stimulus warranted). And one of the "team" members I like a lot from what I heard him say today is Goldsbee...will do more research on him.
What will be important of course is what Obama will TELL THEM to do…and the stimulus package is the most important sign to date…and it looks excellent:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/24/obama-to-introduce-his-ec_n_145969.html
I should also say, I don't think Obama's Cabinet picks are necessarily signs he will govern from the "center right”, because that would be ignoring history...as well as our current economic reality and public opinion.
Huffington Post summarizes it best: Like Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln all installed people in their cabinets who they believed to be effective managers who could deliver. They all had their share of outsiders and progressives, but many were old Washington hands. Yet all of these Presidents faced historic challenges that demanded and enabled them to make fundamental change. And all of them were guided by progressive values that were sharply different from those of Bush, Cheney, and Delay. Obama shares and articulates those values more than any political leader since Robert Kennedy died forty years ago.
Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are. It once again resides in the traditional progressive center that has defined America's promise since Thomas Jefferson penned its founding document over 200 years ago.
OBAMA STIMULUS: GREAT, OBAMA "TEAM": DISAPPOINTING
I'm including two clips from Obama’s news conference announcing his economic team. Especially important is the questions he answers in the SECOND video.
Clearly, I'm ECSTATIC about his stimulus plan!!! It’s not that far from the NEW NEW DEAL I’ve been advocating here for years (more details on it a bit further down the page)…and especially in recent months. Also important is Obama's continued referencing of the FDR legacy and the New Deal as a term of reverence...also something I've been pleading for the Democrats to do for years! You can't say the word "fascist" before a Republican mentions Reagan for Christ's sake! The least we can do is bring back the memory of an ACTUAL great President from our Party.
His comments on the tax issue and the auto industry are also important…because as I have said, yes LOANS for the the autos are necessary, but only if they include stringent and enforceable conditions. Also needed is a serious articulation of what the industry has been doing wrong (promoting SUVs, denying global warming and subverting innovation), why they have failed, and what they now need to do…and should be forced to do!
But I am not happy with the specifics I have seen so far on the bailout of Citi group as well as the floated possibility (at least a strong hint) that Obama will delay implementing his tax plan until the Bush tax cuts expire (not until 2011!!!)…most important of which is raising taxes on the rich.
This would mean a couple hundred billion dollars in additional revenue lost that he will need for his health care and energy proposals! Progressives should move on this issue when he takes office, because it will hinder everything he tries to do on the spending side of the equation if he doesn't raise those taxes in his first year, not third.
Remember too, its only raising them back to what they were in the Clinton years...in which memory serves me the wealthy did pretty well, as did the economy at large. In fact, that might have been the single GREATEST accomplishment of his administration...raising those taxes on the rich in his first budget.
I’m not all that happy about Geithner or Summers either (though they both are clearly better than Paulson and co.). But what I can say for Summers is that what he does represent is at least that “centrist”, corporate mainstream expert that has moved to the “left” (as in more economic justice) in recent years due to the gargantuan failures of deregulation and the economy (which he was partly responsible for under Clinton). The past couple years he’s been writing very good opinion pieces about what was coming, what needs to be done and why things have gone awry (i.e. economic meltdown, need for more regulation, less deregulation as cause, a big stimulus warranted). And one of the "team" members I like a lot from what I heard him say today is Goldsbee...will do more research on him.
What will be important of course is what Obama will TELL THEM to do…and the stimulus package is the most important sign to date…and it looks excellent:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/24/obama-to-introduce-his-ec_n_145969.html
I should also say, I don't think Obama's Cabinet picks are necessarily signs he will govern from the "center right”, because that would be ignoring history...as well as our current economic reality and public opinion.
Huffington Post summarizes it best: Like Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln all installed people in their cabinets who they believed to be effective managers who could deliver. They all had their share of outsiders and progressives, but many were old Washington hands. Yet all of these Presidents faced historic challenges that demanded and enabled them to make fundamental change. And all of them were guided by progressive values that were sharply different from those of Bush, Cheney, and Delay. Obama shares and articulates those values more than any political leader since Robert Kennedy died forty years ago.
Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are. It once again resides in the traditional progressive center that has defined America's promise since Thomas Jefferson penned its founding document over 200 years ago.
This in no way means I'm saying he's progressive enough (though his stimulus plan is unabashedly progressive...esp. if its more towards $700 billion, not $300 billion)...because the system is so fundamentally crooked and unjust that it needs a complete overahaul in the end, and clearly with Summers and Geithner in there, as well as Obama's past record in mind, this is not going to happen (Emanuel on Trade is a bad sign too).
A New New Deal – the Obama stimulus package
When President-elect Barack Obama officially introduces his economic team today, he is also expected to lay out his vision for a "massive fiscal stimulus program." While estimates of its size vary -- from $300 billion to over $700 billion -- the expected stimulus package is now almost certain to eclipse the $175 billion package that Obama proposed during the election. The need for a stimulus increases with each passing day. Last week, new unemployment claims reached a 16-year high and are expected to increase again this week, while the total number of individuals seeking jobless benefits is now at a 25-year high. More worrisome for the nation's overall economic outlook is the very real threat of deflation. While the current crisis looks to be the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, economist Dean Baker explained recently this crisis needn't be as bad as the Great Depression. Baker wrote bluntly, "There is a simple way to get out of that sort of prolonged downturn: spend money." Despite such a simple prescription for our economic ills, conservatives who enthusiastically embraced President Bush's record deficit spending to fund the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich, are now recklessly opposing a stimulus package that would include necessary and significant spending to jump-start the economy and fund tax-cuts for the middle class.
NEW DEAL MYTH-BUSTING: In the past, rewriting the history of the Great Depression remained the favored pasttime of activists on the radical right: Grover Norquist, Jonah Goldberg, and the Heritage Foundation. In their erroneous view, FDR's New Deal was not only ineffective, but was responsible for "prolonging" the Great Depression. Increasingly, however, this view is breaking into the mainstream. Yesterday, for example, conservative columnist George Will said on ABC's This Week, "Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn't work?" But as new-deal/">Brad DeLong, n.html?hp">Paul Krugman, and others explain, the New Deal did in fact work for Americans. Where the New Deal had shortcomings, they were the result of the initiative not being bold enough in the short-term. DeLong explained recently that after the New Deal policies went into effect, "s-from-th.html">[p]rivate investment recovered in a healthy fashion," but as the economic outlook began to brighten, Roosevelt chose to "adopt more 'orthodox' economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance." Roosevelt's attempt to return to "conservative budget principles" by cutting spending and raising taxes precipitated "an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits." "What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs," Krugman wrote.
THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS: Those on the right arguing against a sufficiently large economic stimulus and in favor of "belt tightening" at the federal level have been aptly labeled _neo_hooverism.php">neo-Hooverists. Like President Hoover before them, such neo-Hooverists fail to grasp that admirable policy goals can become harmful in moments of economic crisis. As Krugman wrote recently, the U.S. economy is "well into the realm of what I call depression economics...a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy -- above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates -- have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly." Indeed, while conservatives argue for reduced spending and balanced budgets, New York University Economics Professor Nouriel Roubini testified before Congress's Joint Economic Committee that failure to enact a fiscal stimulus could actually result in wider deficits as the economy contracts. In his estimate, this would send the U.S. into a "very severe recession."
LARGE ENOUGH TO MATTER: Any fiscal stimulus should be bold. As Krugman wrote recently, "My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent." Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, Michael Ettlinger, explained why such a significant stimulus is needed: "The idea of a stimulus package is that it quickly puts money out into the economy to increase consumption, to increase spending, so that businesses can have confidence that if they make investments, if they hire people, there are consumers for their products which warrant those kinds of expenditures on their part." In order to have any effect at all, Ettlinger argued that such a package must be "large by historical standards": at least $300 billion in 2009. While it is unclear just how large Obama's stimulus plan will ultimately be, it appears that Obama's economic team is on the right track. Close advisers to Obama including Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers both raised the possibility of a $700 billion dollar two-year stimulus plan last week. Failing to pass a plan "big enough to deal with the huge problem we face" risks repeating past errors. Indeed, "only those who learn from history can hope to avoid repeating it.
VIDEO SECTION
Crooks and Liars says it perfectly:
“Lieberman lies and lies again. And when the local Fox Reporter calls him on the lying, Lieberman just lies some more. But it doesn't matter to him, simply because he's never had to pay any real price for the years of lies and the backstabbing. That's just politics to Joe Lieberman. And not surprising in the slightest is the ass-kissing of Barack Obama. Expect his lips to be firmly planted there for the foreseeable future. A horrible, horrible person”.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/joe-paskudnyak
Rachel Maddow on bob jones university…funny:
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/bob-jones-university-apologizes-being-r
Daily show slams the sickening scum bag Joe Lieberman:
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/daily-show-stewart-slams-lieberman-a
BUSH'S LAST MINUTE ASSAULTS ON AMERICA
As the media focuses on President-elect Obama and the transition of power here in Washington, the Bush administration is quietly trying to push through a wide array of federal regulations before President Bush leaves office in January.
Up to ninety proposed regulations could be finalized by the outgoing administration, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment. According to the Washington Post, the new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era. They include rules that could weaken workplace safety protections, allow local police to spy in the so-called “war on terror” and make it easier for federal agencies to ignore the Endangered Species Act.
While it’s nothing new for outgoing administrations to try and enact these so-called “midnight regulations,” the Bush administration has accelerated the process to ensure the changes it wants will be finalized by November 22nd. That’s sixty days before the next administration takes control. Most federal rules go into effect sixty days after they’ve been finalized, and it would be a major bureaucratic undertaking for the Obama administration to reverse federal rules already in effect.
-- Matthew Madia of the watchdog group OMB Watch
ARTICLE SECTION
Dean Baker on the let’s not get carried away with the "what’s best for the stock market is best for the country Matrix concoction” in which it has become somehow the unquestioned measurement of economic success and prosperity (hint: it’s not!!)! Let's remember, it’s not based on anything REAL, and it’s very success – as our current predicament proves – is often based on absolutely nothing resembling what is happening in the average persons life…and god knows what’s actually best for the planet or represents anything close to moral behavior.
Don’t get me wrong, clearly we have become too dependent on the stock market and it DOES affect many peoples’ lives. I just started a 401 k a year ago (what timing!!), so I understand how it even effects me to a degree, but let’s face it, that’s not the overriding concern in my life, or the vast majority of Americans. What affects my life a hell of a lot more is whether I can afford health care, the quality of the air I breathe and the water that I drink, my wage level, the quality of the roads and bridges I drive on, my access to quality public transportation options, how much of my taxes goes towards waste and war, how much college tuition costs, how high the interest rates are on my student loans and credit cards, and on and on…
Yet, the media blathers about the stock market like it’s the end all be all…which of course convinces the public of this sham, making it that much easier to keep doling out money to corporations and allowing them free reign to do as they want to, and to think as they want us.
The good news is Dean Baker, as always, as a host of ALTERNATIVE strategies (esp. to that Bailout Bill: the greatest corporate heist of the public interest in US history) to addressing our current crisis that…hold on to your hat…benefit the vast majority of the people!
A few clips:
The economic data are indeed grim, but the plunge in stock prices need not be a major cause of concern to the bulk of us who have little or no stock. The basic story is that the stock market is paper wealth, just like bonds, dollar bills or other financial assets. The strength of the economy depends on its ability to produce goods and services, not sheets of paper.
SNIP
There can be a substantial indirect impact of the plunge on the economy. People consume based in part on their stock wealth. Close to $10 trillion of stock wealth has been destroyed in the last year. This implies a falloff in annual consumption on the order of $300 to $400 billion. Unless this demand is replaced, it will amplify the drop in consumption resulting from the collapse of the housing bubble.
But, we would be telling a similar story if the FBI had discovered and destroyed 10 trillion dollars worth of counterfeit dollar bills. This would be very bad news for the people who held the counterfeit money. The destruction of these counterfeit bills would also lead to a sharp falloff in demand. The people who had their counterfeit bills seized would suddenly be much poorer, and therefore would cut back their spending.
SNIP
If President Obama commits the government to spending another $500 billion a year, or more if necessary, it can offset the loss in demand created by the fall in stock prices and the collapse of the housing bubble.
Of course there will be other damage created by the loss of this stock wealth. Most importantly, the plunge in stock prices has left many public and private pension funds severely under-funded. The federal government can temporarily allow for somewhat more liberal accounting standards in the case of private funds and provide limited support for state and local governments trying to keep their funds solvent. We can ensure that retirees will receive the pensions they were promised.
http://www.truthout.org/112408A
Now to balance some of that rather exaggerated belief that the fundamental constructs of the Matrix are even near being changed OR seriously challenged by the Obama administration (or likely will be)…particular in the case of the Wall Street Syndicate and the US Debt State. We should also understand that the worst of the recession is still likely to come (maybe even a depression?), Obama administration or no. And this of course, is the important fact to understand: the problems we face are systemic to the immoral and "fake" economic system we've created! And remember too, just one of the many 800 lb gorilla's NOT being addressed by anyone: the consumer debt crisis (not the banks!) and the mortgage crisis (as in what people owe and their rising monthly payments).
A few clips from this Red Pill special from Danny Schecter:
And some are suggesting, not to scare us, that a depression is already here, depressing as that might sound, and hitting some parts of the country hard. Here are twenty indicators that could lead us ever downward, from Paul Ferrell who called the dot com crash that so many experts did not see coming:
1. America's credit rating may soon be downgraded below AAA
2. Fed refusal to disclose $2 trillion loans, now the new "shadow banking system"
3. Congress has no oversight of $700 billion, and Paulson's Wall Street Trojan Horse
4. Henry Paulson flip-flops on plan to buy toxic bank assets, confusing markets
5. Goldman, Morgan lost tens of billions, but planning over $13 billion in bonuses this year
6. AIG bails big banks out of $150 billion in credit swaps, protects shareholders before taxpayers
7. American Express joins Goldman, Morgan as bank holding firms, looking for Fed money
8. Treasury sneaks corporate tax credits into bailout giveaway, shifts costs to states
9. State revenues down, taxes and debt up; hiring, spending, borrowing add even more debt
10. State, municipal, corporate pensions lost hundreds of billions on derivative swaps
11. Hedge funds: 610 in 1990, almost 10,000 now. Returns down 15%, liquidations up
12. Consumer debt way up, now at $2.5 trillion; next area for credit meltdowns
13. Fed also plans to provide billions to $3.6 trillion money-market fund industry
14. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are bleeding cash, want to tap taxpayer dollars
15. Washington manipulating data: War not $600 billion but estimates actually $3 trillion
16. Hidden costs of $700 billion bailout are likely $5 trillion; plus $1 trillion Street write-offs
17. Commodities down, resource exporters and currencies dropping, triggering a global meltdown
18. Big three automakers near bankruptcy; unions, workers, retirees will suffer
19. Corporate bond market, both junk and top-rated, slumps more than 25%
20. Retailers bankrupt: Circuit City, Sharper Image, Mervyns; mall sales in free fall
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/24-4
Franken: Coleman's Lead Is Less Than 100 Votes
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on November 21, 2008 at 2:04 PM.
Aides to Al Franken's campaign said on Friday that the deficit they face against Norm Coleman in their Senate recount is now less than 100 votes.
"It is fair to say that Norm Coleman's lead is now in the double digits," said Marc Elias, a lawyer for the campaign. He added, more optimistically that, "there are more Democratic areas with votes left to be counted than Republican."
The Franken math is not official. They are basing their findings both on the 51.1 percent of the state-wide recount that they have completed, but which is not reported by the Secretary of State, as well as a portion of the 800-or-so contested ballots that they believe will be easily resolved.
The dwindling margin separating the two camps, however, is making for high political drama. If Franken's numbers are to be believed, the Democratic challenger has more than halved his deficit with just over half the recount completed. The election, in short, could be decided by a single digit difference, though there is no telling if the margin will continue to close at the same pace.
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