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Saturday, September 20, 2008
Shall we talk about "gaming the system", Senator McCain?
How about the way your campaign has insisted on a rule change for the Vice Presidential debate so that the appalling ignorance of your running mate won't be as obvious?
So the McCain campaign insisted that their Vice Presidential candidate not have to actually debate, but instead may be asked a bunch of softball questions like "Piper: cute, really cute, or preposterousy cute".
Aren't lower standards to compensate against the disadvantage of a representative of a particular group something against which Republicans have railed for over a generation? Isn't that called "affirmative action", and don't Republicans always oppose it? Or is that OK too if you are a Republican?
At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.
McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.
So the McCain campaign insisted that their Vice Presidential candidate not have to actually debate, but instead may be asked a bunch of softball questions like "Piper: cute, really cute, or preposterousy cute".
Aren't lower standards to compensate against the disadvantage of a representative of a particular group something against which Republicans have railed for over a generation? Isn't that called "affirmative action", and don't Republicans always oppose it? Or is that OK too if you are a Republican?
Labels: double standards, hypocrisy, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin
Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said
Today's honoree: Kevin Drum, for wondering why it is that we can't afford health care and we can't afford to help people keep their homes, but when executives run corporations into the ground, the taxpayer checkbook is open.
Money quote:
I know! (Raises hand.) It was to sucker people with one hand gripping onto the middle-class ladder into buying houses they couldn't afford so that they would inevitably fall back into poverty; and to make sure that the rest of the middle class would follow shortly thereafter.
Money quote:
So: why are we willing to fund an enormous RTC-like agency to bail out bankers, but not an enormous RTC-like institution to bail out ordinary people? Lack of lobbyists? Republican ideology? A desire to punish irresponsibility regardless of the disastrous sytemic consequences? Or what?
I know! (Raises hand.) It was to sucker people with one hand gripping onto the middle-class ladder into buying houses they couldn't afford so that they would inevitably fall back into poverty; and to make sure that the rest of the middle class would follow shortly thereafter.
Labels: bloggers, economic death watch
Why is Sarah Palin the only candidate who doesn't have to release her tax returns?
Barack and Michelle Obama did. John McCain did (though Cindy McCain gets to censor her own and only release what she wants to, since they file separately and the IOKIYAR rule applies). But Sarah Palin, who thinks she's running for President, has not released hers:
There's just over a month until the election. Does it depend on what the meaning of "well" is?
As election day comes ever nearer, Democrats and open-government advocates are pressing for the GOP vice presidential candidate to release her tax filings, a campaign tradition that extends at least to the post-Watergate era.
Instead, Palin has to date declined to share the documents, becoming part of an ever-more-select historical group of candidates who waited until this late in a campaign year to release their tax filings.
[snip]
A spokesman for Palin Thursday reiterated the campaign's stance on the matter. "We plan to release Governor Palin's tax returns well before the election," said Taylor Griffin.
There's just over a month until the election. Does it depend on what the meaning of "well" is?
Labels: IOKIYAR, Sarah Palin
Friday, September 19, 2008
Oops.
Oh, this is just too good. Paul Krugman found, in this article by John McCain about his health care "plan" in the September/October issue of Contingencies magazine, the following:
Uh, Senator? You want to maybe think about revisiting that idea in light of the events of the last week?
Opening up the health insurance industry to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
Uh, Senator? You want to maybe think about revisiting that idea in light of the events of the last week?
Labels: health care, John McCain, You can't make this shit up
Do Americans understand that WE are going to pay the bill for this?
Imagine getting invited to dinner by someone very wealthy, who selects the nicest, most pricey restaurant in town. You have a delicious, beautifully-prepared and presented dinner, thinking how nice it is that this person chose YOU to invite to dinner. Then, when the check comes, your dining companion pushes the check over to you and says, "You didn't REALLY think I was going to foot the bill for this, did you?" -- and walks out the front door.
That's what's happened to the American taxpayer this week, as the government bails out AIG, and is now preparing to buy up the banking industry's bad debt, along with bailing out the Big Three automakers, whose short-term greed had them cranking out SUVs even as fuel prices rose.
Isn't it funny how Republicans are all about accountability and the notion that actions have consequences -- when the misfortune falls upon the poor and the sick and the middle class? But then when the so-called financial whizzes push their companies to the brink of bankrupcy or the world to the bring of global economic collapse, it's open the wallet and "How much do you want, sir?"
How often have we heard that we can't afford Social Security and Medicare? How often have we heard that we can't afford schools, roads, and investment in research? How often have we heard Republicans screaming that we can't afford universal health care, or that single-payer coverage is "socialized medicine"? Can we please stop the "socialized medicine" meme, now that the government has had to take over companies buffeted by the so-called "free market"? Today in my local newspaper, an ignorant moron had a letter printed bemoaning the tax burden on the middle class that goes to pay for the poor. Has this guy been living on Neptune? Or does he think that the executives from AIG and Merrill Lynch and WaMu and other companies are poor people?
For nearly thirty years, Republicans have equated "government spending" with "welfare." But by "welfare", they mean payments to help poor people keep a roof over their heads and feed their kids. But when it comes to corporate welfare, well, that's a necessary cost. And Americans have bought it, hook, line and sinker. The increasing powerlessness of working people to the benefit of those who run these companies into the ground has us continually looking down the ladder. The question now is whether, now that the layoffs and the foreclosures and the gutting of 401(k) balances and pensions are hitting the middle class, if they're going to wake up, or if they're going to buy this nonsense that John McCain, a man who never met a regulation he didn't want to gut entirely, is somehow an agent of accountability and responsibility in corporate America.
That's what's happened to the American taxpayer this week, as the government bails out AIG, and is now preparing to buy up the banking industry's bad debt, along with bailing out the Big Three automakers, whose short-term greed had them cranking out SUVs even as fuel prices rose.
Isn't it funny how Republicans are all about accountability and the notion that actions have consequences -- when the misfortune falls upon the poor and the sick and the middle class? But then when the so-called financial whizzes push their companies to the brink of bankrupcy or the world to the bring of global economic collapse, it's open the wallet and "How much do you want, sir?"
How often have we heard that we can't afford Social Security and Medicare? How often have we heard that we can't afford schools, roads, and investment in research? How often have we heard Republicans screaming that we can't afford universal health care, or that single-payer coverage is "socialized medicine"? Can we please stop the "socialized medicine" meme, now that the government has had to take over companies buffeted by the so-called "free market"? Today in my local newspaper, an ignorant moron had a letter printed bemoaning the tax burden on the middle class that goes to pay for the poor. Has this guy been living on Neptune? Or does he think that the executives from AIG and Merrill Lynch and WaMu and other companies are poor people?
For nearly thirty years, Republicans have equated "government spending" with "welfare." But by "welfare", they mean payments to help poor people keep a roof over their heads and feed their kids. But when it comes to corporate welfare, well, that's a necessary cost. And Americans have bought it, hook, line and sinker. The increasing powerlessness of working people to the benefit of those who run these companies into the ground has us continually looking down the ladder. The question now is whether, now that the layoffs and the foreclosures and the gutting of 401(k) balances and pensions are hitting the middle class, if they're going to wake up, or if they're going to buy this nonsense that John McCain, a man who never met a regulation he didn't want to gut entirely, is somehow an agent of accountability and responsibility in corporate America.
Labels: economic death watch
Maverick No More
When the Salt Lake City Tribune is willing to print op-eds linking you with your wingnut running mate and calling you both "extreme", you've lost the "maverick" meme:
Examination of Sarah Palin's fitness to run the U.S. government - the only proper test for a vice presidential nominee - is compromised by her continuing negotiation with John McCain about which interviewers are safe for her to talk with, and what she may say to them.
This is no surprise, given Palin's extremist views. While Palin's ascension may delight the fundamentalist right, Republican political operatives seeking to retain power fear the electorate will turn against Palin's sunny brand of extremism if the implications of her views become known. That would sink McCain's bid for the White House, since he selected her.
So the Republican ticket concentrates on myth-building regarding Palin's purported confrontation with the "old boys network" while she served first as a small-town mayor and, recently, as Alaska governor. They couple that effort with staccato distortions of Barack Obama's positions and statements. That "blizzard of lies," as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently noted, foretells the kind of administration McCain and Palin would form, one whose use of dishonesty as a tool to manipulate public opinion would rival that of the Bush White House.
Labels: John McCain, Sarah Palin
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Rain in Mexico Falls Mainly on the Plain
When the morally palsied try to be faith healers.
Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
Yet it's all the same to John McCain. Today, during a Spanish newspaper interview, John McCain was asked in very specific terms if he'd meet with Spain's leader, President Zapatero. Even though the interview was conducted in English, the Spanish translation makes the English give and take sort of unintelligible. So McCain's answer, originally in English, is being translated into Spanish then back into English.
No problem, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and John Aravosis, who's a fluent Spanish speaker, is on the case and is giving us a pretty accurate transcript of McCain's bizarre (the most common word used to describe this interview) comments.
Anyway, the reporter asked McCain if he would meet with President Zapatero. McCain started rambling on about Mexico (???) and Latin America and shakily drawing a very vague line in the sand between us and our enemies.
The reporter kept asking him until there was no possible mistake: "Will you meet with the Spanish president if you get elected?"
Again, McCain says,
"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."
Alright. The real issue here is not whether or not John McCain thinks that Spain is in Latin America and not Europe. We know that, as with economics, he's not that swift when it comes to geography.
I think the real issue here is that McCain is adopting a harder line attitude than even the stiff pricks in the Bush/Cheney administration. True, President Zapatero, widely labeled a "socialist" like Hugo Chavez, created friction by making good on a campaign promise to get his people out of Iraq ASAP. However, he's stayed behind in Afghanistan and has proven to be a valued and steady ally in our so-called war on terror. The Bush administration has mellowed toward Zapatero's administration and for good reason.
McCain, with his "Us vs. Them" mentality, is threatening here to be even more of a hard line stiff prick than even those in the Bush administration. It could be that McCain refusing to say one way or the other whether or not he'd meet with Spain's president could've been what he perceived to be a clever political dodge by pretending to not know the difference between Spain and Mexico, in lumping in with other Latin American bad guys Europe's Zapatero.
It's the saber-rattling that worries me, the Us vs Them, "Bring 'em on!" mindset that's worked so disastrously for us over the last eight years, one coming from a guy who, during an election year, in full view of a nation wearied of war, is irresponsibly cockwanding at Russia and Iran.
Like Bush did with Iraq even during his own first presidential campaign.
John McCain might want to consider hiring a food taster
...since his running mate seems to think SHE's at the top of the ticket:
She really shouldn't be so obvious about it. Maybe she needs to take some lessons from Augustus' wife, Livia:
And spare me your cries of sexism against an ambitious woman. It's unseemly for the #2 on the ticket to so obviously crave the #1 spot, and always has been. It's all part of Sarah Palin's arrogance. If a male #2 behaved like this, I'd have put up a video of Brutus killing Julius Caesar.
She really shouldn't be so obvious about it. Maybe she needs to take some lessons from Augustus' wife, Livia:
And spare me your cries of sexism against an ambitious woman. It's unseemly for the #2 on the ticket to so obviously crave the #1 spot, and always has been. It's all part of Sarah Palin's arrogance. If a male #2 behaved like this, I'd have put up a video of Brutus killing Julius Caesar.
Labels: arrogance, Sarah Palin
Why is John McCain afraid to allow Floridians to vote?
The McCain campaign is caging Florida voters already:
Of course they're going to use it to challenge somebody's right to vote. I don't know about the other counties, but I do know that Collier County is as Republican as it gets.
Our commenter skywind is from Collier County, and she's going to be helping out Election Protection on Election Day down there. She writes:
The only reason for Republicans to do this is that they now fear they can't win this election fairly. Let's not forget that John McCain wrote in his 2002 book Worth the Fighting For:
And he's not going to let a bunch of Florida Democrats stand in his way.
A new pitch for John McCain's presidential campaign aimed at older Democratic voters is causing complaints by Democrats and concern by elections officials.
The piece, paid for by the Republican National Committee and authorized by McCain, tells voters it is seeking to double-check their "unconfirmed" party affiliations while asking for money. A letter signed by McCain tells the Democrats: "We have you registered as a Republican."
"I was a little bit shocked and a little bit surprised," said recipient Bill Smith, 81, of Tampa, who calls himself a lifelong Democrat and has been registered at his current address since 2000. The retired plant engineer is one of about a dozen senior citizens that Democratic Party leaders identified as recipients, all of them longtime Democrats.
The RNC declined to discuss the mailer, which Democrats said has landed in five counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia.
[snip]
Some Democrats suspect a motive beyond raising money. The first-class GOP mailing has a "Do not forward" instruction on the envelope, meaning they will be returned to the GOP if a recipient has had mail forwarded, perhaps to a summer address, or has moved.
Letters returned as undeliverable can be compiled into "challenge lists" of unverifiable addresses and can be used to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting or on Election Day. The vote suppression technique is known as "vote caging."
"That postcard is a little disconcerting," said letter-recipient Steve Hemping of Naples, chairman of the Collier County Democratic Party and a state party official. "You don't know if they're going to use it to challenge somebody's right to vote."
Of course they're going to use it to challenge somebody's right to vote. I don't know about the other counties, but I do know that Collier County is as Republican as it gets.
Our commenter skywind is from Collier County, and she's going to be helping out Election Protection on Election Day down there. She writes:
If anybody’s looking for a worthy cause to donate to, $31.37 will pay for an hour of hotline time. And if anyone knows any lawyers, paralegals or law students, they need volunteers as well.
The only reason for Republicans to do this is that they now fear they can't win this election fairly. Let's not forget that John McCain wrote in his 2002 book Worth the Fighting For:
"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."
And he's not going to let a bunch of Florida Democrats stand in his way.
Labels: 2008 election, John McCain, vote suppression
Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said, special bonus Real Honest-to-God Expert Edition
Today's bonus honoree: Nouriel Roubini (registration may be required and you should definitely do it), for noting how Republican "laissez-faire" economics have now turned this country into a corporatist/socialist state.
Money quote:
Amen to that.
Money quote:
The paradox is that this this whole mess was created by a bunch of zealot fanatics who believed in the laissez faire ideology of free markets unbound by propers rules, regulation and supervision. As I wrote after the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie:
This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history [Fannie and Freddie] comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.
[snip]
Like scores of evangelists and hypocrites and moralists who spew and praise family values and pretend to be holier than thou and are then regularly caught cheating or cross dressing or found to be perverts these Bush hypocrites who spewed for years the glory of unfettered wild west laissez faire jungle capitalism (and never believed in any sensible and appropriate regulation and supervision of financial markets) allowed the biggest debt bubble ever to fester without any control, have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and are now forced to perform the biggest government intervention and nationalizations in the recent history of humanity, all for the benefit of the rich and the well connected. So Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA. Fanatic zealots of any religion are always pests that cause havoc and destruction with their inflexible fanaticism; but they usually don’t run the biggest economy in the world. But these laissez faire voodoo-economics zealots in charge of the USA have now caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the nastiest economic crisis in decades. So let them be shamed in public for their hypocrisy and zealotry that has caused so much financial and economic damage.
Amen to that.
Labels: economic death watch
It's a Rachel Maddow World. How nice that we get to live in it.
Has anyone ever heard of Rachel Maddow? Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, and there are more of us every day.
Labels: Rachel Maddow
Senile dementia is not funny. It is also not trivial
I think it's time that we started demanding not just John McCain's medical records, but a full examination of his cognitive functioning.
Here's why:
When the McCain camp isn't saying that Sarah Palin can learn what she needs on the job, they're saying she's prepared from day one. Unless they regard the job of the President to lie as much as possible, she's not. The issue is not John McCain's age. My father is 83 and he still does the New York Times crossword puzzle every day to stay sharp. He practically lives on the Intart00bz and he has a brand-new iPhone. His brother is 87 and still plays the cello. McCain could be a youngster by comparison. The issue is his not John McCain's age, but his health -- especially his cognitive health. We have a right to know if he's losing his cognitive abilities, because it certainly seems that he is.
You can hear the interview here. It's quite frightening.
Here's why:
Per a post on Josh Marshall's site, I just listened to an interview John McCain did with a Spanish journalist recently. The interview is in English, but there's a Spanish translator translating the tape into Spanish at the same time. So the English part is difficult to hear. I am however fluent in Spanish, and what Josh reports is exactly what the Spanish version shows.
Namely, that John McCain didn't appear to know that Spain was in Europe, or that the leader of Spain was named Zapatero, even after he was told that Zapatero was the leader of Spain.
When asked about Spain and Zapatero, by a Spanish reporter for a Spanish newspaper, McCain responded about Mexico and Latin America. A reader suggested something that Josh had already considered, that perhaps McCain thought the reporter was talking about the Zapatistas in Mexico, the guerilla group. But that's not possible as the reporter clearly said she was talking about Spain and Spain's leader, Zapatero. She told McCain this twice. Let me tell you exactly what she asked McCain (per the translation):"Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain. If you're elected president, would you invite President Zapatero to meet with you in the White House?"McCain then gives this odd answer about America's friends and America's enemies. He also, oddly, talks about Mexico (why Mexico? The question was about Spain) and how he'd invite friendly leaders to the White House. She then asks him again, would that invitation include President Zapatero? He says again that he'd have to review relations first, blah blah. She then says again, "so you'd have to wait to see, so would you meet with him in the White House?" He again repeats his weird statement about friends and enemies. McCain also throws in, oddly, to the Spanish reporter, when she's asking him about meeting the Spanish president, a line about the importance of our relationship with Latin America (this is now the second time he answered a question about meeting the president of Spain with an answer about Latin America). She then says to McCain one last time:"Okay, but I'm talking about Europe - the president of Spain, would you meet with him?"This time, there was no room for confusion. McCain then gives this very bizarre answer:"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."What does concern about human rights, democracy and freedom have to do with a prerequisite for meeting the president of Spain? Especially when you told the same paper 5 months ago that you'd be happy to meet with him.
McCain had no idea what was going on in the interview.
When the McCain camp isn't saying that Sarah Palin can learn what she needs on the job, they're saying she's prepared from day one. Unless they regard the job of the President to lie as much as possible, she's not. The issue is not John McCain's age. My father is 83 and he still does the New York Times crossword puzzle every day to stay sharp. He practically lives on the Intart00bz and he has a brand-new iPhone. His brother is 87 and still plays the cello. McCain could be a youngster by comparison. The issue is his not John McCain's age, but his health -- especially his cognitive health. We have a right to know if he's losing his cognitive abilities, because it certainly seems that he is.
You can hear the interview here. It's quite frightening.
Labels: John McCain
Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said
Today's honoree: Glenn Greenwald, for pointing out the irony of Republicans who have advocated for mass surveillance of everyone else's e-mails clutching their pearls in horror that Sarah Palin's privacy was invaded by hackers who broke into the personal e-mail account she uses to keep her government correspondence away from accountability.
Money quote:
Money quote:
The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin's privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.
And the same Surveillance State Worshipper leading today's screeching -- Michelle Makin -- spent the last several years deriding those who objected to the President's illegal spying program as "privacy crusaders" and "constitutional absolutists" and "civil liberties absolutists".
Shouldn't these same people be standing up today and insisting that if Sarah Palin has done nothing wrong, then she should have nothing to hide? If Sarah Palin isn't committing crimes or consorting with The Terrorists, then why would she care if we can monitor her emails? And if private companies such as Yahoo can access her emails -- as they can -- then she doesn't really have any "privacy" anyway, so what's the big deal if others read through her communications, too? Isn't that the authoritarian idiocy that has been spewed since The Day That 9/11 Changed Everything -- beginning with the Constitution -- to justify vesting secret and unchecked surveillance powers in our Great and Good Leaders?
Rewarding failure
I guess it's no wonder that Sarah Palin thinks "confidence" and arrogance are sufficient preparation for the second-highest office in the country. After all, the people who pay for political campaigns in this country are a perfect example of how competence is regarded as weakness, and failure of the spectacular kind is richly rewarded:
Meanwhile, we haven't written about Washington Mutual yet. WaMu is now up for sale. The linked article says Federal regulators are looking to broker a deal, which means that if a buyer isn't found, we may become owners of a bank in addition to an insurance company -- anything to keep it from bankrupting the FDIC. But Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and HSBC Holdings are said to be interested.
So what kind of reward does WaMu's chief get for running his bank into the ground? Let's take a look, shall we? Check this out, from March of this year:
If any of us had the kind of poor job performance that these executives had, we'd be fired. But these guys get to create their own compensation packages, then amend them based on information that shareholders may not have yet, in order to protect their own multimillions.
Funny how John McCain was utterly silent on this until his poll numbers started to drop.
Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive John Thain and two former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleagues he recruited may reap almost $200 million for their year running Merrill if they leave or are given lesser roles after Bank of America Corp. buys the brokerage.
Thain, who got a $15 million bonus when hired in December, stands to get an additional $11 million in accelerated stock payouts if he doesn't stay after the deal, compensation consultant Graef Crystal said.
Trading chief Thomas Montag, 51, who joined in August, may get $76 million, including bonus and accelerated awards. Strategy head Peter Kraus, 56, was given $95 million, including bonus and stock awards, to replace a Goldman package he had to forfeit, people familiar with the matter said.
Meanwhile, we haven't written about Washington Mutual yet. WaMu is now up for sale. The linked article says Federal regulators are looking to broker a deal, which means that if a buyer isn't found, we may become owners of a bank in addition to an insurance company -- anything to keep it from bankrupting the FDIC. But Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and HSBC Holdings are said to be interested.
So what kind of reward does WaMu's chief get for running his bank into the ground? Let's take a look, shall we? Check this out, from March of this year:
Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM), the nation's largest thrift institution, announced a new compensation plan Wednesday that would protect its top executives' annual bonuses. Specifically, performance targets used to evaluate executives' performance will be calculated without factoring in some of the damage mortgage losses and foreclosures have caused.
Remember all the fuss surrounding the mortgage market in the past year? When calculating the top execs' bonuses, just pretend it didn't happen.
You've got to be kidding me
Wait a minute. Is this the same Washington Mutual that:
- Slid 70% in the past year amid mortgage and foreclosure headaches?
- Canned 3,000 employees and shuttered 190 of its 336 loan centers last year, in the wake of an ugly real estate mess?
- Announced a $1.8 billion quarterly loss related to losses in its loan portfolio?
Yes, it is.
Please, enlighten me
Washington Mutual justified the plan by acknowledging the "challenging business environment and the need to evaluate performance across a wide range of factors." Apparently, that "wide range of factors" doesn't include evaluating management members whose jobs include ensuring the feasibility of the company's loan portfolio in the first place.
If any of us had the kind of poor job performance that these executives had, we'd be fired. But these guys get to create their own compensation packages, then amend them based on information that shareholders may not have yet, in order to protect their own multimillions.
Funny how John McCain was utterly silent on this until his poll numbers started to drop.
Labels: executive compensation, FUBAR
And they claim OBAMA is arrogant?
This kind of cocksure certainty, this -- yes, let's call it what it is, ARROGANCE -- gave us George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And here they are all rolled up into one little package with a perky smile:
You know, I've done a fair number of job interviews over the last few weeks; interviews for jobs that are a lot less important than being one melanoma away from the presidency. And if I had answered questions about my specific skills with the response "I am prepared...I have that confidence, I have that readiness...you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to...but [I] am ready to serve," I would have been laughed right out of every office in which I presented that as my qualification for the job.
It's not that I believe you need every qualification in a laundry list of hard skills in order to be able to do a job. What I ran into while plowing through ads for Web development jobs was lists of 20 or so skills all of which were mandatory and all of which are virtually impossible to find in one person. Many of these jobs, I believe, didn't actually exist but were posted for the sole purpose of not finding anyone qualified so the function could be outsourced. Because very few people are ace C# and J2EE programmers AND have a vast portfolio of creative web and print and logo designs.
But the two highest offices in the country aren't like that. Of course no one has experience in being President, and the "Executive" branch is different from the "executive" experience one has running a corporation, or even as governor.
But what IS required of a President or Vice-President, is the ability to think, to evaluate options and choose the best ones based on the available factual information. The mere fact that Sarah Palin is a Biblical literalist who thinks she knows the mind of God would disqualify her as far as I'm concerned.
But what's coming across the longer she is in the public eye is a ferociously ambitious person who doesn't care who she steps on as long as she gets what she wants. She's prepared to reward richly those who are loyal to her, who defer to her and who help her on that road -- and she's prepared to administer the tortures of the damned to those who don't. She's just like George W. Bush that way. But even more frightening is her casual dismissal of concerns about her ignorance and her incuriosity, so evident in her sneer and sigh when asked about the Bush Doctrine, before biting off the words, "In what respect, Charlie?" -- as if Charlie Gibson were the ignorant student and SHE was the all-wise teacher. It's the arrogance of the entitled -- of the football team captain, the head cheerleader, the beauty queen, the high school Mean Girl Alpha Dogs who believe it their right to torment those less blessed than they.
In the real world, when you're interviewing for a job, you have to provide answers to questions about things you've done, and the interviewers evaluate how well they translate to the position for which they're looking to hire. In the interview for the job I start later this month, I was asked a number of "Have you done...." questions where the true answer is "No." Where there was something I had done that was related, I would say "But in this situation, I did...." That's a far cry from claiming that you're a Russia expert because there are places in your home state where you can see Russia, or that you're prepared to handle Middle East policy becuase you're "confident" and that tough questions are simply an attempt to play "stump the candidate" instead of trying to get a handle on just how qualified the person is for the job.
I'm going to be just one person in a large company. Sarah Palin, if elected, is going to be one melanoma away from being the most powerful person in the world. Isn't she obligated to provide intelligent answers to some questions as she is interviewed for that job?
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took questions with her running mate Wednesday night, offering at one point to play "stump the candidate" with a mostly friendly Michigan crowd.
Asked for "specific skills" she could cite to rebut critics who question her grasp of international affairs, she replied, "I am prepared."
"I have that confidence. I have that readiness," Palin said. "And if you want specifics with specific policies or countries, you can go ahead and ask me. You can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."
GOP presidential nominee John McCain stepped in, pointing out that as governor of a state that is oil and gas plentiful, Palin was familiar with energy. She knows it to be "one of our great national security challenges," he said.
You know, I've done a fair number of job interviews over the last few weeks; interviews for jobs that are a lot less important than being one melanoma away from the presidency. And if I had answered questions about my specific skills with the response "I am prepared...I have that confidence, I have that readiness...you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to...but [I] am ready to serve," I would have been laughed right out of every office in which I presented that as my qualification for the job.
It's not that I believe you need every qualification in a laundry list of hard skills in order to be able to do a job. What I ran into while plowing through ads for Web development jobs was lists of 20 or so skills all of which were mandatory and all of which are virtually impossible to find in one person. Many of these jobs, I believe, didn't actually exist but were posted for the sole purpose of not finding anyone qualified so the function could be outsourced. Because very few people are ace C# and J2EE programmers AND have a vast portfolio of creative web and print and logo designs.
But the two highest offices in the country aren't like that. Of course no one has experience in being President, and the "Executive" branch is different from the "executive" experience one has running a corporation, or even as governor.
But what IS required of a President or Vice-President, is the ability to think, to evaluate options and choose the best ones based on the available factual information. The mere fact that Sarah Palin is a Biblical literalist who thinks she knows the mind of God would disqualify her as far as I'm concerned.
But what's coming across the longer she is in the public eye is a ferociously ambitious person who doesn't care who she steps on as long as she gets what she wants. She's prepared to reward richly those who are loyal to her, who defer to her and who help her on that road -- and she's prepared to administer the tortures of the damned to those who don't. She's just like George W. Bush that way. But even more frightening is her casual dismissal of concerns about her ignorance and her incuriosity, so evident in her sneer and sigh when asked about the Bush Doctrine, before biting off the words, "In what respect, Charlie?" -- as if Charlie Gibson were the ignorant student and SHE was the all-wise teacher. It's the arrogance of the entitled -- of the football team captain, the head cheerleader, the beauty queen, the high school Mean Girl Alpha Dogs who believe it their right to torment those less blessed than they.
In the real world, when you're interviewing for a job, you have to provide answers to questions about things you've done, and the interviewers evaluate how well they translate to the position for which they're looking to hire. In the interview for the job I start later this month, I was asked a number of "Have you done...." questions where the true answer is "No." Where there was something I had done that was related, I would say "But in this situation, I did...." That's a far cry from claiming that you're a Russia expert because there are places in your home state where you can see Russia, or that you're prepared to handle Middle East policy becuase you're "confident" and that tough questions are simply an attempt to play "stump the candidate" instead of trying to get a handle on just how qualified the person is for the job.
I'm going to be just one person in a large company. Sarah Palin, if elected, is going to be one melanoma away from being the most powerful person in the world. Isn't she obligated to provide intelligent answers to some questions as she is interviewed for that job?
Labels: arrogance, Sarah Palin
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
OK, all you Gadget Geeks out there, what's it to be then, eh?
Blackberry Curve or Palm Centro?
Discuss.
I'll be starting a new job (!!!) on the 29th of this month. Yes, fat old Jill managed to find another job before even getting her six weeks of accumulated vacation pay. I'll be working in a place that monitors internet access, so I need a small device with internet connectivity of its own (that is, no glomming onto company wifi, which is still monitored) to catch up with news and perhaps write a blog entry or two when I'm on my own time, such as during lunch. With Verizon's "New Every Two" I can get either of these devices for 49 bucks.
I like the Palm interface and utilities, but the keys on the Centro are kind of cramped. But I'm open to either one.
I know you all have opinions. Post your opinions on these gadgets in the comments.
Discuss.
I'll be starting a new job (!!!) on the 29th of this month. Yes, fat old Jill managed to find another job before even getting her six weeks of accumulated vacation pay. I'll be working in a place that monitors internet access, so I need a small device with internet connectivity of its own (that is, no glomming onto company wifi, which is still monitored) to catch up with news and perhaps write a blog entry or two when I'm on my own time, such as during lunch. With Verizon's "New Every Two" I can get either of these devices for 49 bucks.
I like the Palm interface and utilities, but the keys on the Centro are kind of cramped. But I'm open to either one.
I know you all have opinions. Post your opinions on these gadgets in the comments.
Labels: cool gadgets
John McCain was against regulation before he was for it
Hey, I didn't make the rules that changing your mind based on changing information was "weak" and made you a "flip-flopper", Republicans did. So...sauce for the goose, baby.
John McCain, then:
John McCain, now:
Flip-flop! Flip-flop!
Now, I could be convinced to give McCain credit for adjusting to new information -- if he admitted that he had been wrong. But he hasn't. He's just hoping no one was paying attention, and that the Intart00bz don't exist, and that there isn't a record of his earlier support for regulation:
In 1995, he said that regulation was "destroying the American family, the American dream" and voters "want these regulations stopped."
In March of this year, he said "I'm always for less regulation," and that he's "fundamentally a deregulator. ..."
...unless deregulation stands in the way of him being president, in which case he sings a different tune.
So I wonder what the economic conservatives think of the new, regulation-friendly John McCain?
And I wonder when the media are going to pick up the "flip-flop" meme that they were so willing to use against John Kerry and turn it back on McCain?
I'm not holding my breath.
John McCain, then:
In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.
That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.
John McCain, now:
McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible, saying that "in an endless quest for easy money, they dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand."
He said the misconduct was aided by "casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington," where he said oversight is "scattered, unfocused and ineffective."
"They haven't been doing their job right," McCain said yesterday, "or else we wouldn't have these massive problems on Wall Street, and that's a fact. At their worst, they've been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interest."
Flip-flop! Flip-flop!
Now, I could be convinced to give McCain credit for adjusting to new information -- if he admitted that he had been wrong. But he hasn't. He's just hoping no one was paying attention, and that the Intart00bz don't exist, and that there isn't a record of his earlier support for regulation:
In 1995, he said that regulation was "destroying the American family, the American dream" and voters "want these regulations stopped."
In March of this year, he said "I'm always for less regulation," and that he's "fundamentally a deregulator. ..."
...unless deregulation stands in the way of him being president, in which case he sings a different tune.
So I wonder what the economic conservatives think of the new, regulation-friendly John McCain?
And I wonder when the media are going to pick up the "flip-flop" meme that they were so willing to use against John Kerry and turn it back on McCain?
I'm not holding my breath.
Labels: hypocrisy, John McCain
Note that this is the post-Hays Code "modest" Betty Boop
The "Christianized" Betty Boop, if you like -- the desexualized, modest Betty with the skirt down to her knees and long sleeves, lest she inflame the passions of Bimbo and Ko-Ko the Clown:
Any excuse to post an old cartoon, I say.
(h/t: Skippy. Gee, thanks, Skip...now I'm going to have that damn song going through my head all day.)
Any excuse to post an old cartoon, I say.
(h/t: Skippy. Gee, thanks, Skip...now I'm going to have that damn song going through my head all day.)
Labels: John McCain, movies
Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said
Today's honoree: Maggie Jochild, who explains over at Group News Blog why giving Americans access to John McCain's health records is important.
Money quote:
(More on the Council for National Policy here.
Money quote:
John McCain is, in effect, applying for the job of the most powerful position on the planet. Whether or not he is going to die in office, or have a cancer remission (the treatment for which will render him utterly unable to perform his job duties), is a critical question that must be answered BEFORE we "hire" him by voting him in. As Kathy Geier points out in yesterday's G-Spot article, "For years, releasing a candidate's complete medical records has been standard practice for major party presidential candidates. The way the McCain has dealt with the medical records issue is highly unusual, to say the least...If McCain's medical history was entirely reassuring and he really were in excellent health, I doubt that the campaign would have dealt with his records the way they did. The campaign knows that voters have serious concerns about this issue, and if the medical records really were unproblematic, they wouldn't hesitate to release the whole enchilada to any reporter who asked, with no conditions and no strings attached."
If he is in fact a Dead Man Walking, then the choice of Sarah Palin as Vice President also becomes more than a Hail Mary pass intended to destroy any bounce from the wildly successful Democratic Convention. It becomes reckless in the extreme: Choosing an heir apparent who lies, engages in petty revenge, wants to know how to ban books, faithfully attends a church which believes dinosaurs were around 4000 years ago and Jews are punished by God for not believing in Jesus, has less foreign policy experience than a Delta flight attendant, doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is, and has less than two years experience governing a state with a population less than that of Wichita, Kansas or Raleigh, North Carolina.
We know that the secret cabal, the Council for National Policy, who hopes to replace American democracy with religious rule (THEIR religion, not yours), are the people who investigated Sarah Palin and "chose" her for McCain as his VP. Since he accepted their decision, fundamentalist organizations have thrown themselves behind his campaign in a way they had not before. It raises the question of a deal. What would a dying man have to offer power brokers in order to have their backing for the U.S. Presidency?
(More on the Council for National Policy here.
Labels: bloggers, wingnuttia
I'm sorry, but this is just beyond the pale
OK, so every word out of Sarah Palin's mouth is a lie, including "and" and "the". She preaches abstinence to other people's teenagers but parades her pregnant 17-year-old around as if she's a paragon of Christian Moral Values. She gets outraged when people ask her difficult questions, she names cronies to political positions, she's mean-spirited, vindictive, and utterly ruthless. Any one of these would be bad enough.
But THIS is just too much:
Flocked, red wallpaper? If nothing else disqualifies her, this should.
But THIS is just too much:
Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.
"I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter," said Carney. "It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council's approval."
According to Carney, Palin's office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. "It looked like a bordello."
Flocked, red wallpaper? If nothing else disqualifies her, this should.
Labels: snark
You may be about to own another company. Do you feel rich yet?
Someday, son, all this may be yours.
You already own an insurance company. How about a bank next?
Washington Mutual (WM), a company that once considered itself the Starbucks (SBUX) of banking, now has a stock price lower than that of a latte.
Shares of the Seattle company, the nation's largest savings and loan, fell 27% on Sept. 15, to $2 a share, following news that other struggling financial-services giants Lehman Brothers (LEH) and Merrill Lynch (MER) had succumbed to the mortgage meltdown. WaMu shares rose 16% on Sept. 16 to close at 2.32 as investors responded to rumors that banking giant JPMorgan Chase (JPM) may make an offer for the company.
And if JPMorgan Chase does not? How much worthless cash is Paulson going to print up to prop up this one?
Labels: economic death watch
What's the going rate for destroying a company these days?
The conventional wisdom on corporate boards of directors is that top executives receive such high compensation packages because the competition for them is so fierce.
For a year in the late 1970s, I was a department manager in the women's accessories department at Bambergers, a Newark-based department store owned by Macy's. Those of you who live or lived in New Jersey may remember the people walking around with the fake white chrysanthemum pins -- that was me. The hot "gift item" that year, as it had been the year before, was Dearfoam bootie slippers. The year before, under another manager, my store had been the #1 store in Dearfoam bootie slippers, and I was expected to exceed those numbers. I had an outpost right next to the main door of the store, but only one. My stockroom was in the basement at the opposite end of the store, and the boxes of these things were stacked from the ceiling. I was expected, with almost no extra holiday staffing, to keep this outpost stocked enough with all sizes so that I could beat the prior year's numbers. I failed to do so, and shortly after the January inventory, I was fired. It was the only time in my life that I was ever fired for performance. To this day, I don't know if anyone else could have kept that damned outpost full of ugly bootie slippers. How much difference my failure to "beat the numbers" on five-dollar slippers made to the company's profits that year I have no idea. But the store went on, as did the entire chain, adopting the Macy's name in 1986. Most of the Bamberger's stores live on today as Macy's stores.
Most of the work I've done since then has been difficult to quantify in terms of dollars. I went on to the obligatory secretarial/administrative jobs after my "glamorous retail career" flamed out, and by pure luck ended up in IT. The IT jobs can be quanitified in terms of project completion, but it's difficult to put a dollar figure on what a static/news/information web site, or an intranet, or case report form screens for a contract that's already in, contributes to the health of the organization.
Top executives, like little 25-year-old me running around Bambergers with my flower pin, are supposedly accountable for the bottom line. But you'd never know it from looking at executive compensation in this country. I've written before about these pay packages and the golden parachutes given to ousted executives when they fail, usually spectacularly. But since I, like all of you, are now an owner of AIG, I thought it might be useful to take a look at what AIG has paid its CEO.
The company's current CEO, Robert Willumstad, has held the post only since June after a tenure at Citigroup (another troubled company), so it's difficult to blame him for the mess. But not unlike John McCain, who thinks that the answer to Wall Street's problems is to convene a commission to study them. Willumstad found himself caught short well in advance of his planned September 25 announcement of his plan to restore AIG's financial health. Details of Willumstad's severance package are not yet available, but he's...
I wouldn't sit up nights worrying about the future of Robert Willumstad. When he stepped down from the position of Chief Operating Officer at Citigroup, his severance package consisted of...
That's not a bad package for quitting a job voluntarily. Willumstad joined AIG in January 2006 when he was elected to the Board of Directors and became Board Chairman in November of that year. He assumed the CEO role when former CEO Martin Sullivan was ousted.
Sullivan received a $47 million severance package as reward for bringing AIG -- and the world financial markets -- to the brink of collapse, after receiving compensation worth $22.5 million in 2006 and a paltry $13.3 million in 2007 as the company started to unravel.
This is not a bad haul for being an utter failure. Most workers get fired long before their performance blows so spectacularly, and if we're lucky, we get too weeks' pay as severance.
For a year in the late 1970s, I was a department manager in the women's accessories department at Bambergers, a Newark-based department store owned by Macy's. Those of you who live or lived in New Jersey may remember the people walking around with the fake white chrysanthemum pins -- that was me. The hot "gift item" that year, as it had been the year before, was Dearfoam bootie slippers. The year before, under another manager, my store had been the #1 store in Dearfoam bootie slippers, and I was expected to exceed those numbers. I had an outpost right next to the main door of the store, but only one. My stockroom was in the basement at the opposite end of the store, and the boxes of these things were stacked from the ceiling. I was expected, with almost no extra holiday staffing, to keep this outpost stocked enough with all sizes so that I could beat the prior year's numbers. I failed to do so, and shortly after the January inventory, I was fired. It was the only time in my life that I was ever fired for performance. To this day, I don't know if anyone else could have kept that damned outpost full of ugly bootie slippers. How much difference my failure to "beat the numbers" on five-dollar slippers made to the company's profits that year I have no idea. But the store went on, as did the entire chain, adopting the Macy's name in 1986. Most of the Bamberger's stores live on today as Macy's stores.
Most of the work I've done since then has been difficult to quantify in terms of dollars. I went on to the obligatory secretarial/administrative jobs after my "glamorous retail career" flamed out, and by pure luck ended up in IT. The IT jobs can be quanitified in terms of project completion, but it's difficult to put a dollar figure on what a static/news/information web site, or an intranet, or case report form screens for a contract that's already in, contributes to the health of the organization.
Top executives, like little 25-year-old me running around Bambergers with my flower pin, are supposedly accountable for the bottom line. But you'd never know it from looking at executive compensation in this country. I've written before about these pay packages and the golden parachutes given to ousted executives when they fail, usually spectacularly. But since I, like all of you, are now an owner of AIG, I thought it might be useful to take a look at what AIG has paid its CEO.
The company's current CEO, Robert Willumstad, has held the post only since June after a tenure at Citigroup (another troubled company), so it's difficult to blame him for the mess. But not unlike John McCain, who thinks that the answer to Wall Street's problems is to convene a commission to study them. Willumstad found himself caught short well in advance of his planned September 25 announcement of his plan to restore AIG's financial health. Details of Willumstad's severance package are not yet available, but he's...
...eligible for AIG's executive severance plan, which provided benefits based on salary and bonus levels, and continued vesting of some incentive awards and benefits.
I wouldn't sit up nights worrying about the future of Robert Willumstad. When he stepped down from the position of Chief Operating Officer at Citigroup, his severance package consisted of...
...incentive compensation for the first months of 2005, based on the company's full-year performance. Citigroup also will accelerate the vesting of shares worth about $6 million - 40 percent of a $15 million restricted stock retention award the company gave him in July 2003. He also will receive a car, driver and secretarial services through August 2006, unless he takes a new job before then, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That's not a bad package for quitting a job voluntarily. Willumstad joined AIG in January 2006 when he was elected to the Board of Directors and became Board Chairman in November of that year. He assumed the CEO role when former CEO Martin Sullivan was ousted.
Sullivan received a $47 million severance package as reward for bringing AIG -- and the world financial markets -- to the brink of collapse, after receiving compensation worth $22.5 million in 2006 and a paltry $13.3 million in 2007 as the company started to unravel.
This is not a bad haul for being an utter failure. Most workers get fired long before their performance blows so spectacularly, and if we're lucky, we get too weeks' pay as severance.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
They broke it, you bought it
Congratulations, America! You now own a failed insurance company:
Now perhaps someone with better knowledge of economics than I have can clarify this, but if I read this correctly, the American taxpayer has taken a 79% stake in AIG by loaning it money at usurious interest. The collateral for this loan is the assets of AIG and its subsidiaries. But AIG has lost what, 80% of its value? This sounds to me like we just gave a huge dollar amount mortgage at a really high rate for a house that's depreciated so much it's practically worthless -- and they're telling us that because the loan is backed by this depreciating asset, our money is safe.
Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
In a stunning turn, the Federal Reserve Board is lending as much as $85 billion to rescue crumbling insurer American International Group, officials announced Tuesday evening.
The Fed authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) up to $85 billion. In return, the federal government will receive a 79.9% stake in the company.
Officials decided they must act lest the nation's largest insurer file bankruptcy. Such a move would roil world markets since AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) has $1.1 trillion in assets and 74 million clients in 130 countries.
"[A] disorderly failure of AIG could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said in a statement.
The bailout marks the most dramatic turn yet in an expanding crisis that started more than a year ago in the mortgage meltdown. The resulting credit crunch is now toppling not only mainstay Wall Street players, but others in the wider financial industry .
The line of credit to AIG, which is available for two years, is designed to help the company meet its obligations, the Fed said. Interest will accrue at a steep rate of 3-month Libor plus 8.5%, which totals 11.31% at today's rates. AIG will sell certain of its businesses with "the least possible disruption to the overall economy."
Taxpayers will be protected, the Fed said, because the loan is backed by the assets of AIG and its subsidiaries. The loan is expected to be repaid from the proceeds of the asset sales.
Now perhaps someone with better knowledge of economics than I have can clarify this, but if I read this correctly, the American taxpayer has taken a 79% stake in AIG by loaning it money at usurious interest. The collateral for this loan is the assets of AIG and its subsidiaries. But AIG has lost what, 80% of its value? This sounds to me like we just gave a huge dollar amount mortgage at a really high rate for a house that's depreciated so much it's practically worthless -- and they're telling us that because the loan is backed by this depreciating asset, our money is safe.
Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Labels: economic death watch, FUBAR
You knew someone was going to do it
The Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator.
My Sarah Palin baby name is...are you ready for this? ...
Hose Hotrod Palin.
What's yours?
My Sarah Palin baby name is...are you ready for this? ...
Hose Hotrod Palin.
What's yours?
Labels: humor, Sarah Palin
So when does this start to get the Al Gore treatment?
Remember when Al Gore said that he "took the initiative in creating the internet" and the media proceeded to flog "Al Gore claims he invented the internet" every freaking minute throughout the 2000 campaign?
Here's the context of Gore's statement and what he actually said:
Al Gore will be haunted by his clumsy wording until the end of his days.
Now will the same thing happen to John McCain, now that his campaign is claiming he invented the Blackberry?
Imagine that. Not only did John McCain invent the Blackberry, but he invented telecommunications, which in McCain world, didn't exist until fifteen years ago. I guess all that stuff you learned in elementary school about Alexander Graham Bell was just a multicultural liberal communist plot to smear John McCain.
I worked for a short time in the early 1980's in a place that had a machine called a Qwip. To "send a Qwip" you would wrap a piece of thermal transfer paper around a cylinder in a machine that was connected to an acoustic coupler. You would dial the other party's "Qwip number" and when you heard what we now know as "the fax sound", you'd put the receiver of the phone into the acoustic coupler and push a button. The cylinder would turn, and an arm would etch, line by line, the image being sent over the phone. To "receive a Qwip", you would wait for the phone to ring and then do the same thing.
That was maybe 1981 -- twenty-seven years ago. By the math of the world I live in, 27 is greater than 15. But in John McCain's world, they must use a different method of counting.
UPDATE: AP gets in on the fun as well.
(h/t)
Here's the context of Gore's statement and what he actually said:
BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now. Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
GORE: Well, I will be offering - I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Al Gore will be haunted by his clumsy wording until the end of his days.
Now will the same thing happen to John McCain, now that his campaign is claiming he invented the Blackberry?
Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."
Imagine that. Not only did John McCain invent the Blackberry, but he invented telecommunications, which in McCain world, didn't exist until fifteen years ago. I guess all that stuff you learned in elementary school about Alexander Graham Bell was just a multicultural liberal communist plot to smear John McCain.
I worked for a short time in the early 1980's in a place that had a machine called a Qwip. To "send a Qwip" you would wrap a piece of thermal transfer paper around a cylinder in a machine that was connected to an acoustic coupler. You would dial the other party's "Qwip number" and when you heard what we now know as "the fax sound", you'd put the receiver of the phone into the acoustic coupler and push a button. The cylinder would turn, and an arm would etch, line by line, the image being sent over the phone. To "receive a Qwip", you would wait for the phone to ring and then do the same thing.
That was maybe 1981 -- twenty-seven years ago. By the math of the world I live in, 27 is greater than 15. But in John McCain's world, they must use a different method of counting.
UPDATE: AP gets in on the fun as well.
(h/t)
Labels: John McCain
Slacker Uprising! Michael Moore's New Movie Hopes to Get Out the Youth Vote!...And Offers Itself Up Free!
Michael Moore mailed me this morning (of course, along with his entire mailing list,) to offer up his newest movie, Slacker Uprising, as a free download. He is doing this partly as an anniversary gift to his fans, almost 20 years after his first major hit, Roger and Me, but also in the hopes of getting out the youth vote across America. Its also a good publicity stunt and probably wont eat into whatever profits he was gonna make in the first place via this Brave New Films release. Whoever sees movies in theaters does it at this point for the theater experience, and people who buy DVDs to own a physical representation of whatever it is, are gonna do that regardless of a free download. Who he is reaching with this delivery system is probably a population of kids who would find a way to get it free anyway...or not bother. These kids are a group who has to get out and vote, and they may yet be America's best secret weapon and last chance.
Say what you will about Moore, but he is a real activist and his particular form of agitprop theater teaches and motivates fantastically. Call it Moore's little October surprise or whatever you want...we need all the help we can get at this point and the reality of that is pretty stark considering whats happening under our noses every day. People often give up at this point because of the polls and the nightly news hammering how helpless we all are. Hell, I feel helpless, but I'm not going to give in to the propaganda that would have me paralyzed to the point of inaction, and invite another 4 or 8 years of disaster.
So, go here, sign up, and most importantly, put in some emails of slackers or those who know slackers, so that Moore might contact them himself and offer them this movie, a pack of Hanes or some Ramen noodles, and motivate them to head down to their polling places come election day and let their voices be heard in this mess! Its time to grow up and take responsibility for the future that we wont have if we don't get on this now! For the activism alone, heavy handed as it sometimes is, I've gotta be proud to have Michael Moore out there fighting the good fight for our country.
c/p RIPCoco
Labels: Michael Moore
So, Senator...where were you when all this was going on?
John McCain's answer to the credit crisis on Wall Street? His "bold plan" to "restore transparency and accountability"?
Yup. Form a commission to study it:
So what's he saying, that he's been asleep while Wall Street firms packaged bad debt and sold it as "investment vehicles"?
So, Senator, what do you think of the fact that your own campaign's financial adviser, Phil Gramm, who's up to his eyeballs in this and who lobbied Congress to stop legislation that would have instituted industry regulations that could have PREVENTED this crisis? Do you want your so-called "commission" to take a look at that? Or how about back in March, when you blamed people who bought houses they couldn't afford because they believed shyster mortgage brokers who told them they could -- and at the same time called for even MORE deregulation to "eliminate obstacles to the ability of financial institutions to raise more capital."
McCain invoked the 9/11 Commission as a model. But if that's the case, then why was the roll call on enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission the ONLY vote he missed on March 13, 2007?
.
Yup. Form a commission to study it:
So what's he saying, that he's been asleep while Wall Street firms packaged bad debt and sold it as "investment vehicles"?
So, Senator, what do you think of the fact that your own campaign's financial adviser, Phil Gramm, who's up to his eyeballs in this and who lobbied Congress to stop legislation that would have instituted industry regulations that could have PREVENTED this crisis? Do you want your so-called "commission" to take a look at that? Or how about back in March, when you blamed people who bought houses they couldn't afford because they believed shyster mortgage brokers who told them they could -- and at the same time called for even MORE deregulation to "eliminate obstacles to the ability of financial institutions to raise more capital."
McCain invoked the 9/11 Commission as a model. But if that's the case, then why was the roll call on enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission the ONLY vote he missed on March 13, 2007?
.
Labels: John McCain, Wake Me Up When It's Over, You can't make this shit up
Those John Cusack for President people in 2004 were on to something
Picture the following as a campaign speech:
OK, maybe there are people who just can't wrap their minds around "Lloyd Dobler" as a political candidate. But damn if there isn't a candidate in there screaming to get out.
McCain, who said he knows nothing about economics, will surely hand over the reins to the Friedmanites and neoconservatives who have sent the country on a path to ruin. Anyone looking at his team could tell you that. Palin and the interests she represents are even further to the right.
Now, no one in their right mind -- including reasonable independents and Republicans -- wants to double down on neocon ideology, but here comes the "maverick" and his economic advisers to use the crises we face to implement more "change" and "reform" to the system by privatizing everything in sight. Is this what the American people want? When they are aware of it, the answer is always no. It's the same bullshit re-branded.
It may happen in a shock therapy in the first 100 days, or financial chaos may force them to wait until things stabilize, but sooner or later they will follow their fundamentalist creed. Ruin the government you are purporting to run and turn it over to privatization frenzy, creating a shadow government of private corporate rule. That's the whole idea.
So let's brand bust this maverick gibberish but understand the coded language that belies their true mission... we should take them at the true meaning of their words.
Not just more of the same -- worse than the same. Times of crisis are great opportunities to implement the radical agendas we usually reject.
That's also the idea.
McCain and the neocon ideologues won't "reform" government, they will gut government and privatize everything in sight in the name of responding to the crises they helped engineer through Bush and Cheney. Their view of government is the reverse of the Hippocratic Oath: do harm and then when the patient is sick, give the wrong medicine, watch him die, and sell off the body parts.
They will destroy the Department of Energy, HUD, the list goes on and on. With this crew, all you need to do is destroy government, privatize it and get out of the way, and then a magic utopia appears. Well, actually it doesn't, but a lot of connected people get rich, and in the privatized war business, blood money flows and a fuck of a lot of innocent people die. The legacy of Bush/McCain is a legacy of shame. Any man that stood with this criminal administration should be forced to answer for it.
The Republicans have been ruinous and most of it stems from an ideology that leaves the government in ruins. McCain has been on board hook, line and sinker. He voted with Bush over 90% of the time. End of story.
It is fundamentally corrupt and dishonest to call it reform when leaders want to cripple government, then hand it over to private industry, usually subsidized by taxpayers, but for other people's profits. More like contempt for government.
Red meat for dummies... a horror show for the rest of us.
OK, maybe there are people who just can't wrap their minds around "Lloyd Dobler" as a political candidate. But damn if there isn't a candidate in there screaming to get out.
Labels: John Cusack
This is interesting
Reuters, August 30, 2007:
Lehman Brothers has hired Jeb Bush, brother of the President of the United States, as an advisor to its private equity business, a source familiar with the situation said.
Lehman hired another relative of U.S. President George W. Bush last year--George Walker, a second cousin, who heads up the bank's asset management business.
Jeb Bush is the former governor of Florida.
Lehman Brothers declined to comment.
Labels: economic death watch, Jeb Bush, You can't make this shit up
Joe Biden talks about the Republicans' dirty little secret
About 21 minutes in:
I heard that a Republican County Chairman right here in Michigan said that they're keeping a list of foreclosed homes, suggesting that if you've lost your home, you should also lose your vote. I have a different idea. I think that if you're worried about losing your home, you should vote for the guys who are going to help you keep it!
The story:
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”
The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”
Except that a foreclosure notice doesn't necessarily mean that the person isn't a resident. But go prove that when you show up to vote.
That's just one way the Republicans are trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters all over the country. Brad Friedman has been all over this for years, and if you want to know how they're trying to rig yet another election, make BradBlog a daily stop. Because if you think that elections should reflect the will of the people, and Republicans are doing what they can to make sure that only THEIR people can vote, the time to act is NOW.
Labels: disenfranchisement, Joe Biden, Republicans
The McCain/Palin tax increase on the middle class
You know those friends you have who are thinking they'll vote for John McCain because he's a white guy, or because they're more familiar with him, or because they think Sarah Palin is hot and they want to fantasize about having sex with her, or because they have some idea in their heads that he's the guy he used to be before he became blinded by his lust for the presidency? I wonder what those friends would say if you told them around the watercooler (assuming you still have a watercooler at which to gather) that John McCain wants to raise the taxes the middle class pays in order to finance more tax cuts for the very people who brought down Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and who may very well bring down AIG and Washington Mutual.
They won't believe you because they haven't heard about it on the evening news. But that's exactly what McCain has in mind. But he's no fool; he won't do it by raising the tax rates. He's going to do it by eliminating a tax break that most people who receive health insurance through their employers don't even think about -- if they even know it exists.
Many of us pay the employee share of our medical premiums with pre-tax dollars so that our taxable income is lowered by the amount of our premiums. If McCain wanted to stop this practice alone, that would be bad enough. But it goes beyond that. His "health care plan" would also treat the employer share of your health insurance premium as income on which you would pay taxes.
I just received my COBRA statement from my previous employer. The premium on my health plan from said employer is just over $1100/month for family coverage. When I was employed, I paid about $300 of that per month. Under John McCain's plan, that approximately $13,000 cost of the health insurance plan would become taxable income.
Let's say you are single, and your taxable income after deductions and exemptions is $32,000/year -- not an unreasonable assumption for many working Americans who do not live in major metropolitan areas. Under John McCain's "health plan", your taxable income, if you had this insurance plan, would now be $45,000. So instead of paying about $4400 in Federal income tax in the 15% bracket (10% of the first $8025 and 15% of the rest, so his actual tax percentage is 13.75%), you would now be in the 25% bracket, and your Federal income tax liability would be $7594 (25% of the amount over $32,550 plus $4,481.25).
Now let's take a higher-paid worker with the same plan; say, someone with a taxable income of $150,000/year. He's currently paying $35,978 in Federal income tax (24% as an actual tax percentage. Under John McCain's "health plan", his taxable income is now $163,000. He just manages to squeak in under the $164,550 limit to the 28% bracket, so he isn't bumped into a higher tax bracket. His Federal income tax is now $39,618 -- a jump of $3640.
McCain's "health plan" proposes giving these workers a $2500 tax credit to "help pay for the cost of health care", which drops the tax increase on the $32,000 worker to $694. But that worker is still paying 2.1% more in taxes because the cost of the plan is now counted as part of income. For the $150,000 worker, this credit drops the tax increase to $1140 -- an 0.7% tax increase.
So John McCain's "health plan" is really nothing more than a huge tax increase on the middle class. The higher your income, the less of a tax bite you receive from having your health insurance premiums counted as income.
And that's assuming your employer decides to keep providing health insurance. If your employer does not, since you now have this nice tax credit to help you buy insurance on the open market, then you have $2500 with which to buy a policy -- if you can get one -- that has a GROUP rate of $13,000. Buying a comparable policy as an individual would cost significantly more. Group rates reflect shared risk, while individual policy premiums are based on your own health history. If you smoke, or you are overweight (whether that has adversely affected your health or not), or if you have a family history of heart disease, diabetes or cancer; if you yourself have had a costly illness -- all of this would raise your premiums. So even if you COULD purchase the same policy as you currently receive through your employer, you would pay a great deal more for it out of pocket. And that's assuming you can get a policy at all.
How does spending around $13,000 out of pocket every year (after your "tax credit" from John McCain) for health insurance sound? If you make $150,000/year, perhaps you can afford it. If your taxable income is $32,000/year, what are you going to give up so that you can pay 40% of that income for insurance?
But that is what John McCain hopes to do with the health insurance system in this country.
Bob Herbert:
Nope. Because we're too busy worrying about whether that Uppity Negro (sic) man was "disrespectful" to the Flower of White Wimminhood™ or whether if she's elected what our chances would be to get her in the sack.
They won't believe you because they haven't heard about it on the evening news. But that's exactly what McCain has in mind. But he's no fool; he won't do it by raising the tax rates. He's going to do it by eliminating a tax break that most people who receive health insurance through their employers don't even think about -- if they even know it exists.
Many of us pay the employee share of our medical premiums with pre-tax dollars so that our taxable income is lowered by the amount of our premiums. If McCain wanted to stop this practice alone, that would be bad enough. But it goes beyond that. His "health care plan" would also treat the employer share of your health insurance premium as income on which you would pay taxes.
I just received my COBRA statement from my previous employer. The premium on my health plan from said employer is just over $1100/month for family coverage. When I was employed, I paid about $300 of that per month. Under John McCain's plan, that approximately $13,000 cost of the health insurance plan would become taxable income.
Let's say you are single, and your taxable income after deductions and exemptions is $32,000/year -- not an unreasonable assumption for many working Americans who do not live in major metropolitan areas. Under John McCain's "health plan", your taxable income, if you had this insurance plan, would now be $45,000. So instead of paying about $4400 in Federal income tax in the 15% bracket (10% of the first $8025 and 15% of the rest, so his actual tax percentage is 13.75%), you would now be in the 25% bracket, and your Federal income tax liability would be $7594 (25% of the amount over $32,550 plus $4,481.25).
Now let's take a higher-paid worker with the same plan; say, someone with a taxable income of $150,000/year. He's currently paying $35,978 in Federal income tax (24% as an actual tax percentage. Under John McCain's "health plan", his taxable income is now $163,000. He just manages to squeak in under the $164,550 limit to the 28% bracket, so he isn't bumped into a higher tax bracket. His Federal income tax is now $39,618 -- a jump of $3640.
McCain's "health plan" proposes giving these workers a $2500 tax credit to "help pay for the cost of health care", which drops the tax increase on the $32,000 worker to $694. But that worker is still paying 2.1% more in taxes because the cost of the plan is now counted as part of income. For the $150,000 worker, this credit drops the tax increase to $1140 -- an 0.7% tax increase.
So John McCain's "health plan" is really nothing more than a huge tax increase on the middle class. The higher your income, the less of a tax bite you receive from having your health insurance premiums counted as income.
And that's assuming your employer decides to keep providing health insurance. If your employer does not, since you now have this nice tax credit to help you buy insurance on the open market, then you have $2500 with which to buy a policy -- if you can get one -- that has a GROUP rate of $13,000. Buying a comparable policy as an individual would cost significantly more. Group rates reflect shared risk, while individual policy premiums are based on your own health history. If you smoke, or you are overweight (whether that has adversely affected your health or not), or if you have a family history of heart disease, diabetes or cancer; if you yourself have had a costly illness -- all of this would raise your premiums. So even if you COULD purchase the same policy as you currently receive through your employer, you would pay a great deal more for it out of pocket. And that's assuming you can get a policy at all.
How does spending around $13,000 out of pocket every year (after your "tax credit" from John McCain) for health insurance sound? If you make $150,000/year, perhaps you can afford it. If your taxable income is $32,000/year, what are you going to give up so that you can pay 40% of that income for insurance?
But that is what John McCain hopes to do with the health insurance system in this country.
Bob Herbert:
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.
When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.
That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.
The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”
Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.
In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.
This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.
But we’re not even paying much attention.
Nope. Because we're too busy worrying about whether that Uppity Negro (sic) man was "disrespectful" to the Flower of White Wimminhood™ or whether if she's elected what our chances would be to get her in the sack.
Labels: 2008 election, economic death watch, health care, John McCain
Why on earth would anyone think John McCain will "reform" Wall Street?
Has there ever been a more disingenuous statement than that of John McCain yesterday, promising “major reform” to “replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street.”?
In other words, despite the fact that the greed, incompetence and mismanagement of Wall Street executives as a response to the deregulated environment that resulted from the gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 orchestrated by then-Senator Phil Gramm has brought the global economy to the brink of complete collapse, John McCain still thinks the problem is too much regulation -- and very likely thinks that Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary is just the guy to fix the problem. Fox, henhouse, etc.
I realize that most Americans don't regard themselves as part of the "investor class", and indeed most Americans aren't. But every American who has a 401(k) is going to be affected by this, and every American who has money in a bank that's teetering on the verge of collapse (and Wilbur Ross said yesterday that about 1000 banks may close) is going to be affected. Oh, sure, the FDIC protects your "money", but if Washington Mutual fails (as seems as likely as not), it's going to virtually bankrupt the FDIC. So the only way your money will be "protected" is if the FDIC punishes the healthy banks (like Hudson City Savings here in New Jersey) by increasing the fees they pay to the FDIC or by printing more increasingly worthless money that's backed by nothing.
So if John McCain and Phil Gramm want to even FURTHER deregulate the companies that privatized their profits and now want to socialize the consequences of their mismanagement, just how the heck does McCain plan to bring "transparency and accountability to Wall Street?"
Or is Sarah Palin now an expert in financial markets because she has a Citibank Master Card in her wallet?
In early 1995, after Republicans had taken control of Congress, Mr. McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. He was quoted as saying that excessive regulations were “destroying the American family, the American dream” and voters “want these regulations stopped.” The moratorium measure was unsuccessful.
“I’m always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”
Later that month, he gave a speech on the housing crisis in which he called for less regulation, saying, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”
In other words, despite the fact that the greed, incompetence and mismanagement of Wall Street executives as a response to the deregulated environment that resulted from the gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 orchestrated by then-Senator Phil Gramm has brought the global economy to the brink of complete collapse, John McCain still thinks the problem is too much regulation -- and very likely thinks that Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary is just the guy to fix the problem. Fox, henhouse, etc.
I realize that most Americans don't regard themselves as part of the "investor class", and indeed most Americans aren't. But every American who has a 401(k) is going to be affected by this, and every American who has money in a bank that's teetering on the verge of collapse (and Wilbur Ross said yesterday that about 1000 banks may close) is going to be affected. Oh, sure, the FDIC protects your "money", but if Washington Mutual fails (as seems as likely as not), it's going to virtually bankrupt the FDIC. So the only way your money will be "protected" is if the FDIC punishes the healthy banks (like Hudson City Savings here in New Jersey) by increasing the fees they pay to the FDIC or by printing more increasingly worthless money that's backed by nothing.
So if John McCain and Phil Gramm want to even FURTHER deregulate the companies that privatized their profits and now want to socialize the consequences of their mismanagement, just how the heck does McCain plan to bring "transparency and accountability to Wall Street?"
Or is Sarah Palin now an expert in financial markets because she has a Citibank Master Card in her wallet?
Labels: cluelessness, economic death watch, John McCain
Saturday Night Live Does Hillary V. Palin, and Palin is Apparently Sorta Kinda my Look-alike...
I was out at a wedding and so I missed the beginning of SNL this week (after too many years of watching it, it seems that the beginning skit is the only worthwhile bit anyway)... at which wedding a woman came up to me and...looking at me sideways...maybe she was drunk...(and yes I get Amy Yasbek and a young Diane Keaton sometimes)... told me... that... I... look... like...
Sarah Palin!!!! EEEEKKKK!!!
Which sent me to the bathroom to not only look at myself because I often forget what I look like... but also to take a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror with my cell phone cam, and then email Jill Brill to be sure that this couldn't possibly be true. Ah its true, I was wearing my fashionable glasses in the interest of seeing; something I don't often do because I prefer a little soft blur these days. but this was my friend's daughter and I wanted to be able to report on the ice sculpture and the Chinese tea ceremony and the 6 (yes 6!) courses of food that just kept coming (Will and I slipped out before the Viennese Dolce Table, which was after the wedding cake...which consisted of around 7 layers from straight cheese cake to chocolate cake to some sorta Italiano rum section and maybe a meringue!)
Anyhow, my quick answer was that no I don't get that (perhaps a new problem, but if it continues I may have to color my hair or something drastic like that) but it must be the glasses...and that the real difference is that my IQ is around double hers... (heaven knows, my knowledge of foreign affairs trumps hers, and I'm no Rachel Poli-sci Maddow.) I actually used the silly comparison to make some pretty sober points which made the woman quickly drift towards the raw bar while Will laughed and I doubled over in disgust!
Will found it hysterical that one exchange with a woman who probably only watches Faux News bothered me so much, or maybe it was that she approached with such a fun and peppy attitude and was quite shocked at my reaction... but I guess that the whole Palin thing is in my craw...stuck...and I have trouble making light of how little this county has learned after 8 years of a Bush government begun by the feeling that he was a good old boy who was some sort of renegade that we should have a beer with. Isn't it time to just maybe try out someone who has some ideas and ...um...ideas of diplomacy?...at least maybe someone who isn't a rapture ready snake handler...? Just for a while?
The Palin woman, as my grandpa calls her, has charisma and spunk which sort of distracts from the fact that every other sentence out of her mouth is a lie. I cant even fathom how it is OK for all of them in lockstep, from the lowest coffee boy to the biggest policy maker, to throw it all at the wall and just see what sticks. Its too late in the game for so many to have such wrong information in the face of science and...um...real political science experts. How can they fucking lie so much? How can it be?
So you can see why I havent been writing much the past weeks....I think that others might have somethign more to say than "why, why, why?"...its all so tragic for the people of America who really, really need a little turnaround to start happening soon. Its a crying shame.
So, I guess I'll leave the funny up to the SNL folks...and of course, its the comedians (artists) in any society who mirror back our most glaring faults. I think that's why the Republicans have been so keen on cutting funding to the arts in this country. It is artists who are often the loudest speakers of the truth. It is certainly the artists who have the most guts to make the uncomfortable statements that the rest of us are unable to. And this is why the Republicans are complaining about this skit...to which I say: Boo-fucking-Hoo!
h/t to Sam Seder Be sure to catch the warm-up shows of Seder V. Maron daily here at 3PM eastern. Even in it's rough state, its fantastic!
Sarah Palin!!!! EEEEKKKK!!!
Which sent me to the bathroom to not only look at myself because I often forget what I look like... but also to take a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror with my cell phone cam, and then email Jill Brill to be sure that this couldn't possibly be true. Ah its true, I was wearing my fashionable glasses in the interest of seeing; something I don't often do because I prefer a little soft blur these days. but this was my friend's daughter and I wanted to be able to report on the ice sculpture and the Chinese tea ceremony and the 6 (yes 6!) courses of food that just kept coming (Will and I slipped out before the Viennese Dolce Table, which was after the wedding cake...which consisted of around 7 layers from straight cheese cake to chocolate cake to some sorta Italiano rum section and maybe a meringue!)
Anyhow, my quick answer was that no I don't get that (perhaps a new problem, but if it continues I may have to color my hair or something drastic like that) but it must be the glasses...and that the real difference is that my IQ is around double hers... (heaven knows, my knowledge of foreign affairs trumps hers, and I'm no Rachel Poli-sci Maddow.) I actually used the silly comparison to make some pretty sober points which made the woman quickly drift towards the raw bar while Will laughed and I doubled over in disgust!
Will found it hysterical that one exchange with a woman who probably only watches Faux News bothered me so much, or maybe it was that she approached with such a fun and peppy attitude and was quite shocked at my reaction... but I guess that the whole Palin thing is in my craw...stuck...and I have trouble making light of how little this county has learned after 8 years of a Bush government begun by the feeling that he was a good old boy who was some sort of renegade that we should have a beer with. Isn't it time to just maybe try out someone who has some ideas and ...um...ideas of diplomacy?...at least maybe someone who isn't a rapture ready snake handler...? Just for a while?
The Palin woman, as my grandpa calls her, has charisma and spunk which sort of distracts from the fact that every other sentence out of her mouth is a lie. I cant even fathom how it is OK for all of them in lockstep, from the lowest coffee boy to the biggest policy maker, to throw it all at the wall and just see what sticks. Its too late in the game for so many to have such wrong information in the face of science and...um...real political science experts. How can they fucking lie so much? How can it be?
So you can see why I havent been writing much the past weeks....I think that others might have somethign more to say than "why, why, why?"...its all so tragic for the people of America who really, really need a little turnaround to start happening soon. Its a crying shame.
So, I guess I'll leave the funny up to the SNL folks...and of course, its the comedians (artists) in any society who mirror back our most glaring faults. I think that's why the Republicans have been so keen on cutting funding to the arts in this country. It is artists who are often the loudest speakers of the truth. It is certainly the artists who have the most guts to make the uncomfortable statements that the rest of us are unable to. And this is why the Republicans are complaining about this skit...to which I say: Boo-fucking-Hoo!
h/t to Sam Seder Be sure to catch the warm-up shows of Seder V. Maron daily here at 3PM eastern. Even in it's rough state, its fantastic!
Labels: comedy, Sarah Palin
Again.
Again and again. How many times are Americans going to tolerate a government that does NOTHING for them?
Despite the relative news blackout, Houston is pretty well FUBAR at the moment:
Maggie Jochild has more on the devastation they don't want us to see.
Despite the relative news blackout, Houston is pretty well FUBAR at the moment:
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine BowmanHurricane Ike just about blew away the city of Galveston. Evacuations had been ordered there, and recovery and rebuilding efforts are expected to take months or even years. But rescue and recovery is under way in Galveston.
In contrast, Houston's 4 million people were told to hunker down and stay in place. What now for them?
Millions have no power, going on 3 days later. No food supply. No ice. No water supply, no cell phone service, no land lines. Not many gas stations and grocery stores are up and running. There's no air conditioning. (The scorching summer in Houston lasts well into October). Roofs blew away, trees smashed homes and vehicles, flood waters and leaks have destroyed much.
[snip]Harris County chief executive Judge Ed Emmett (a Republican) and Houston Mayor Bill White (a Democrat) "warned the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday morning that it would be 'held accountable'" if it did not deliver emergency supplies as promised. ... Through gritted teeth, White said: 'We expect FEMA to honor our request and their commitments. ... If all these supplies don't materialize, they'll get low marks.'"
In an interview with Harry Smith, Republican Governor Rick Perry said that FEMA was responsible for distributing aid in Houston, not the state of Texas, which was responding in other areas.
On Sunday the ABC affiliate in Houston reported more confusion among authorities as to who is responsible for helping Houston, FEMA or the state?
It wasn't until Sunday at a news conference with FEMA head Michael Chertoff that we realized FEMA thought the state was going to transport FEMA supplies and distribute them. But the state let them know this morning that they couldn't do the distribution, that they wanted FEMA to do it.
And on Sunday night, we found out that FEMA put the responsibility on the city of Houston and Harris County. The city and county say they're set up to do the distribution, thanks to plenty of employees and volunteers. But the confusion may have led to a delay in getting supplies here and we addressed the delay and confusion with Secretary Chertoff. ...
"We were asked to take on the responsibility of actually getting them to the points of distribution and manning the points of distribution," said Chertoff."Who screwed up?" we asked.
"This is not about a screw-up," said Chertoff. ...
"Did the state tell you guys at some point this morning, 'Hey we can't distribute it by Plan A. We have to go to Plan B?'"
"This morning, the state, where it's slow with its resources and capabilities and capabilities, said 'We'd like you to take over this assignment.' We were happy to do it."
FEMA pointed the finger at the state in an LA Times report:
But federal officials said state authorities suddenly changed plans Sunday morning and asked the federal government take over distribution of supplies after earlier promising to take care of that task themselves.
"An unanticipated glitch" is how Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described it during a news conference in Houston attended by White and Emmett.The bureaucracies had better get themselves organized, and fast. Already, reports indicate that the needs of elderly and disabled citizens have not been met. This writer, with immediate family members and close friends in Houston, can confirm that that is not an isolated incident. Even first responders were going hungry, in the beginning:
Congressman John Culberson complained that 300 first responders were not getting food to eat. He was appearing on local TV, asking Houstonians who could get out to bring supplies to these staging areas. I hope the problem has been solved by now. My question is: Where was FEMA?
Maggie Jochild has more on the devastation they don't want us to see.
Labels: hurricanes
Before they were famous
Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones, on a commercial break during The Rachel Maddow (radio) Show live from Madison, Wisconsin:
Now EVERYONE has heard of Rachel Maddow, Mr. Limbaugh.
Now EVERYONE has heard of Rachel Maddow, Mr. Limbaugh.
Labels: Rachel Maddow
And someone actually PAYS this numbnuts to say stuff like this?
Now where did I put that icepick? There's a nice little target in my own forehead in need of some attention to kill the pain.
Labels: icepick meet forehead, idiocy, wingnuttia
Wow...and they said Obama had a God complex...
Actual ad seen at the Big Blue Smurf:
Granted, this is a poll and not produced by the McCain campaign, but someone out there sure likes this notion.
Granted, this is a poll and not produced by the McCain campaign, but someone out there sure likes this notion.
Labels: Advertising, Sarah Palin
Failing Upwards
It seems the older, the more decrepit, the more delusional John McCain gets, the more and more desirable he gets. The addition to the ticket of a former Alaskan mayor of 7000, someone who promises to be George W. Bush in drag, should've been met with dismissive laughter and universal ridicule. Instead, it's energized his campaign and helped turn Sarah Palin into a self-fulfilling prophecy: An illusion, or delusion, of change.
Yet virtually every major national poll has McCain ahead of Obama by two or more percentage points. I cannot believe this is the result of a massive conspiracy on the part of America's top polling services in order to make the race more competitive than it actually is in order to artificially amp up TV ratings and air time advertising revenue.
However, it does seem odd that Democratic voter registration would be higher than Republican registration while the polls state that Obama is slowly losing his momentum and grip on the race.
One answer to this anomaly, of course, is that more registered Republican voters are being sampled than Democratic voters. Yet, while that wouldn't answer the question as to why these polls are so top-heavy with Republican voters, the bigger question is how this tactic would result in McCain not only establishing a lead but even widening that lead and grabbing ownership of Obama's change mantra that, until recently, he'd ridiculed.
This is a trend that we'd seen before Obama touched American soil after his, by all accounts, successful trip through Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
While that, too, was being ridiculed by the McCain campaign (after ridiculing Sen. Obama for not visiting Iraq), that same campaign is proudly trumpeting Sarah Palin's single, brief trip to Afghanistan as a bullet point in her foreign policy resume.
And the press, the vast left wing conspiracy, was only too glad to resurrect what was once a routine and forgettable photo op with the Alaskan National Guard and to present it as something almost on a historical par with Gen. MacArthur visiting the Philippines.
Certainly, the MSM are complicit in the double standard coverage in looking at everything Obama's ever done or said, everything ever done or said by everyone that's he's ever passed on the street with an electron microscope while looking at both McCain and Palin as through a backwards telescope. They hardly even blinked an eye when McCain spit in CNN's face by canceling a Larry King Live interview because Campbell Brown had the nerve to ask a mild question, namely an example of Palin making an honest-to-God foreign policy decision. McCain's faux outrage was bluster masking what amounts to an inability to come up with such an example.
If they were doing their job, we wouldn't be hearing about how Palin's family is offlimits even after they thrust their five kids into the limelight, including the foul-mouthed hockey player who knocked up the Governor's daughter while proclaiming that he didn't want kids. Where was this respect for family privacy when the actual First Family just a decade ago was slid under that same electron microscope over what should've remained a private family matter?
However complicit as the press is, we as free thinking people, as Americans, may be dependent to a large extent on these media outlets but ought to still remain discriminating and independent-minded enough to be able to form our own conclusions. The media have as much as the government a lot of credibility at stake and credibility begins with being taken seriously and believed.
Over the last eight years, we've paid the price (over 4600 families paying the ultimate price) for unconditionally believing whatever the MSM tell us. It was the mainstream media that told us there were WMDs in Iraq. It was the mainstream media that showed us a ready-made poster of all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, complete with nation of origin, age and underwear size within hours of the attacks and that Mohammed Atta's passport allegedly used to meet with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was found blocks from Ground Zero in pristine condition and without a singe mark on it.
And it's the mainstream media that is telling us even now that the McCain campaign is offering an attractive alternative to a fresh, dynamic new force in Democratic politics who stands a real chance of actually bringing about change.
Yet the media have been complicit in letting John McCain use Obama's own popularity against him as if popularity is something that Obama can fraudulently produce by rubbing on a lamp and not, instead, conferred on him by caucus and primary voters who vaulted him over Hillary Clinton and every other Democrat running for President.
It's McCain who's fraudulently producing his own popularity out of nowhere and it's the media and we the people who are letting him get away with it. You don't believe me? Read any poll taken over the last week.
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