Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Junior and the Mittster have something else in common

by digby

He speaks a tiny bit more clearly, but he’s just as big a clod on the international stage as George W. Bush:

The US presidential candidate Mitt Romney has questioned the readiness of London 2012, saying there have been “disconcerting signs” in the buildup to the Games – but said the focus would soon switch to celebrating the athletes.

Before meetings with David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband on Thursday, he told US television: “It is hard to know just how well it will turn out.”

Romney told NBC News: “There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials – that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”

In the interview he also called into question whether the British people were behind the Games.

“Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin,” he said.

What the hell is wrong with him? Does he have such a big ego that he has to put down other Olympic Games because they might interfere with his (largely phony) Olympics reputation? And does he have to do it on his way overseas to meet with foreign dignitaries?

Anyway, it didn’t go unnoticed:

The prime minister has hit back at comments from the US presidential candidate Mitt Romney querying Britain’s readiness for the Olympics, urging the country to “put its best foot forward” and ensure they are remembered as “the friendly Games”.

On a visit to the Olympic Park with the London 2012 organising committee chairman, Lord Coe, before Friday’s opening ceremony, Cameron said the Games were an opportunity to promote Britain despite the gloomy economic backdrop.

“This is a time of some economic difficulty for the nation, everyone knows that. But look at what we’re capable of achieving even at a difficult economic time. Look at this extraordinary Olympic Park, built from nothing in seven years,” he said.
[…]
But Cameron, who was due to meet Romney later on Thursday, said: “In terms of people coming together, the torch relay demonstrated that this is not a London Games, this is not an England Games but this is a United Kingdom Games. We’ll show the world we’ve not only come together as a United Kingdom but are extremely good at welcoming people from across the world.”

Cameron said he was going to make this point to Romney when he met him later on Thursday.

I won’t go into the fact that much of Britain’s current economic problems are the result of Cameron’s policies because Romney is dying to replicate them here in the US. But the fact remains that despite his alleged worldliness as a Master of the Universe, he’s often rude and somewhat ill-mannered. It’s not an attractive quality.

Update:

Bill O’Reilly asks social security recipients if they are “weak”

by David Atkins

Bill O’Reilly, smirking, smarmy and repulsive human being:

Anyone who can stand to watch that smug, self-assured pompous jerk tell the single mothers who work 50 hours a week and struggle to get by, or workers who take low-wage barista jobs after grad school because there are no decent thinking jobs left, or the unfortunate middle-aged Americans who get laid off at 55 years old after 30 years in the same field and can’t get hired again due to age discrimination and inability to completely retrain, or people who grew up in delapidated, unpoliced virtual war zones where joining a gang often seems like the best of way of protecting oneself, to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps despite decades of wage stagnation even as all the productivity gains go to the top–well, much can be said of them but none of it good.

There is a good reason that fewer Americans were on welfare in the 1960s: a single income could support an entire family (which in turn led to fewer child care costs at the expense of women’s freedom), good jobs were available right out of high school, companies tended to provide lifetime careers with job security for workers, the pace of life and work was slower and carried fewer cost expectations (just about any decent job these days expects you to have Internet and a cell phone), etc. Oh, and minorities were treated as less than human and often lived in appalling conditions, too.

If over half of this country is suffering from such Stockholm Syndrome combined with racist animosity that they’re not repulsed by the arguments from this gasbag and those like him, then they deserve the grinding impoverishment they receive at the hands of the moneyed elite.

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Nice little country you have here …

by digby

… be a shame if anything happened to it.

From Reid Cherlin at GQ:

I asked a Democratic legislative staffer for a first-person description of the NRA’s power on the Hill. Here’s the response I got, on the condition that I not provide any further identifying information. It’s pretty breathtaking.

We do absolutely anything they ask and we NEVER cross them—which includes asking permission to cosponsor any bills endorsed by the Humane Society (the answer is usually no) and complying with their demand to oppose the DISCLOSE Act, neither of which have anything to do with guns. They’ve completely shut down the debate over gun control. It’s really incredible. I’m not sure when we decided that a Democrat in a marginal district who loses his A rating from the NRA automatically loses reelection. Because it’s not like we do everything other partisan organizations like the Chamber [of Commerce] or NAM [National Association of Manufacturers] tell us to…

Pandering to the NRA is the probably worst part of my job. I can justify the rest of it—not just to keep the seat, but because I believe most of the positions he takes are consistent with what his constituents want. But sucking up to the NRA when something like Colorado happens is hard to stomach.

I have always understood that Al Gore’s victory in 2000 was the defining moment. Why this was so has never been clear to me, but I expect it was really just the culmination of the decades long quixotic attempt to appeal to rural white males. (Gun culture is pervasive throughout the country, of course, but these are the people for whom this issue is paramount.) I doubt their total and complete capitulation has bought them a single vote they wouldn’t have had anyway, but it’s part of conventional wisdom at this point that any attempt to even discuss guns will result in a GOP sweep so powerful that the Democrats will never again hold a majority.

I have always thought this was nonsense and what this trembling stillness under the NRA’s boot heel showed most Americans was simple cowardice, but I could be wrong. It’s so far gone at this point that lunatics dressed up in Robocop gear can mow down 75 people at a clip with legally purchased firepower that’s only appropriate for a warzone and all anyone can do about it is express sympathy for the victims and “move on.” It’s embarrassing. And sick.

The NRA’s hold over American politics is a perfect symbol of right wing politics in the 21st century. They’re thugs.

Update: Hiyo

Good for the president.

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Showdown over tax cuts

by digby

In case you were wondering if there was something more to the tax cut showdown in the Senate today than a set of competing spin points on the campaign trail, I think this is probably the tactical objective:

Wednesday’s development places the onus of avoiding the full expiration of the Bush tax cuts on House Republicans. They are expected to pass legislation next week to extend all of the Bush tax cuts — but the Senate has already rejected that proposition. That leaves the Senate Democrats’ bill as the only viable vehicle for preventing everyone’s taxes from increasing next year.

Republicans will object to House adoption of the Senate bill on technical grounds. It faces what’s known as a blue-slip problem, because the Constitution requires revenue-raising measures to originate in the House of Representatives. But the blue-slip problem is only an obstacle if House Republicans insist on making it one — and Democrats are confident voters will be receptive to the argument that the GOP is standing in the way of middle-income tax cuts until wealthy Americans get a tax cut too.

To that end, the White House announced President Obama’s strong support for the Senate bill. “All sides agree on the need to extend the tax cuts for the middle class,” reads a statement of administration policy. “[T]his legislation reflects that consensus, and should not be held hostage while debating the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy.”

Now, they will object on technical grounds of course. In fact, they’ll exhume the corpse of Robert Byrd and Henry Clay to prove their point if they have to. But when all is said and done, the Senate vote will stand as the one that passed when we get in to the nitty gritty negotiations of the lame duck session. As everyone faces the possibility of all the tax cuts expiring, this will be hovering out there like an angel of salvation if they want to grab it.

Upshot: don’t get your hopes up. But, as they say, it could happen.

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Glass-Steagall destroyer wants it back

by David Atkins

Via DSWright at Daily Kos, this is interesting:

Former Citigroup Chairman & CEO Sanford I. Weill, the man who invented the financial supermarket, called for the breakup of big banks in an interview on CNBC Wednesday.

“What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail,” Weill told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

He added: “If they want to hedge what they’re doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that’s going to be mark-to-market so they’re never going to be hit.”

He essentially called for the return of the Glass–Steagall Act, which imposed banking reforms that split banks from other financial institutions such as insurance companies.

“I’m suggesting that they be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won’t be at risk, the leverage of the banks will be something reasonable, and the investment banks can do trading, they’re not subject to a Volker rule (the Volcker rule explained), they can make some mistakes, but they’ll have everything that clears with each other every single night so they can be mark-to-market,” Weill said.

He said banks should be split off entirely from investment banks, and they should operate with a leverage ratio of 12 times to 15 times of what they have on their balance sheets. Banks should also be completely transparent, Weill said, with everything on balance sheet. “There should be no such thing as off balance sheet,” he said.

This is the same guy who played a key role in getting rid of the crucial law separating normal banking activities from speculative casino games:

Sitting in his office on the 46th floor of the General Motors building in Manhattan, he is surrounded by reminders of a lifetime on Wall Street. The space is breathtaking with floor-to-ceiling windows and views stretching out over Central Park. One wall is devoted to framed magazine and newspaper articles chronicling his career. A Fortune magazine clipping from 2001 declares Citi one of its “10 Most Admired Companies.”

On another wall hangs a hunk of wood — at least 4 feet wide — etched with his portrait and the words “The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall.” The memento is a reference to the repeal in 1999 of Depression-era legislation; the repeal overturned core financial regulations, allowed for the creation of Citi and helped feed the Wall Street boom.

“Sandy took advantage of changes in the industry to build a financial colossus,” says Michael Holland, founder of Holland & Company, a money management firm. “In the end it didn’t work, and we are now paying for that as taxpayers.”

It’s obvious to any thinking person that we need to bring back a high Chinese wall between regular banking and speculation. Ideally it would have global reach so that bankers couldn’t simply move their dangerous and destabilizing operations to less regulated nations and less regulated markets. But a domestic law would be a good start.

The power of FIRE sector money to buy elections is the only reason it hasn’t already happened.

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Schoolhouse Mock

by digby

Courtesy Mark Fiore, a video well worth sharing:

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They can’t handle the truth

by digby

Tim Murphy at Mother Jones reports that the gun nuts refuse to accept the idea that their insistence on allowing every lunatic in the country to get his hands on automatic weapons and Robocop protective gear has resulted in a massive death toll of innocent people. So, they are creating conspiracy theories to explain away their own responsibility:

Larry Pratt—the president of Gun Owners of America, a far-right Second Amendment group that’s backed by prominent people like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—has a different theory. Pratt believes the timing of Holmes’ rampage, which left 12 people dead and 58 wounded, seemed designed to coincide with the upcoming negotiation of the United Nations Small Arms Treaty. A press release sent out to radio bookers on Tuesday advertising Pratt’s availability noted that, “In an article posted at The New American…one expert even outlined a theory that Holmes didn’t act alone, but was possibly ‘enlisted’ to carry out his violent act.” Pratt, the publicist stated, was free for interviews on Holmes’ “impeccable” timing.

The email sources the claim to a blog post by a writer for the New American, the official publication of the John Birch Society—which, in turn, directs readers further down the rabbit hole to a website called Natural News, which breaks it down:

All this looks like James Holmes completed a “mission” and then calmly ended that mission by surrendering to police and admitting everything. The mission, as we are now learning, was to cause as much terror and mayhem as possible, then to have that multiplied by the national media at exactly the right time leading up the UN vote next week on a global small arms treaty that could result in gun confiscation across America.

…In other words, this has all the signs of Fast & Furious, Episode II. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover someone in Washington was behind it all. After all, there’s no quicker way to disarm a nation and take total control over the population than to stage violence, blame it on firearms, then call for leaders to “do something!” Such calls inevitably end up resulting in gun confiscation, and it’s never too long after that before government genocide really kicks in like we saw with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other tyrants.

You have to give them some credit here. We have a mass murder on our hands, with the blood of innocents splashed all over them. And they are evoking Hitler and Stalin. It would an admirable bit of jiu jitsu if it weren’t so incredibly sick.

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The early Mad Men years

by digby

This excerpt from Fortune Magazine 1955 (via Brad Delong) is instructive:

The executive’s home today is likely to be unpretentious and relatively small–perhaps seven rooms and two and a half baths. (Servants are hard to come by and many a vice president’s wife gets along with part-time help. So many have done so for so long, in fact, that they no longer complain much about it.)
[…]
The large yacht has also foundered in the sea of progressive taxation. In 1930, Fred Fisher (Bodies), Walter Briggs, and Alfred P. Sloan cruised around in vessels 235 feet long; J. P. Morgan had just built his fourth Corsair (343 feet). Today, seventy-five feet is considered a lot of yacht. One of the biggest yachts launched in the past five years is the ninety-six-foot Rhonda III, built and owned by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp., of Birmingham, Alabama. The Rhonda III cost half a million dollars to build, and the annual bill for keeping a crew aboard her, stocking her, and fueling her runs to around $130,000. As Chairman Robert I. Ingalls Jr. says, only corporations today can own even so comparatively modest a craft. The specifications of the boat that interests the great majority of seagoing executives today are “forty feet, four people, $40,000.” In this tidy vessel the businessman of 1955 is quite happily sea-borne.

This was a different psychology, wasn’t it? Certainly, there didn’t seem to be the whining and petulance — and angry demands for obeisance and gratitude — that is so prevalent among the billionaires today. Humility is totally out of fashion in our culture — success means spending more time bragging about your success than actually achieving it. We are a shamelessly self-promoting lot.

But more importantly it proves that this job creator myth is a total crock. As Paul Krugman noted:

According to modern conservative dogma, this kind of punishment of “job creators” should have brought economic progress to a screeching halt. Yet according to Fortune, executives continued to work hard — and the postwar generation was actually a period of economic progress that has never been matched.

Somehow, John Galt never made an appearance.

There was a lot wrong with this era. I have no wish to go back to it. But the hard luck years of the depression and the horrors of WWII and Korea did at least force the business leaders of their day to recognize that they weren’t the modern equivalent of mythic warrior heroes. You’d hope it wouldn’t require living through the worst depression and bloodiest wars in history to prove that, but from where we sit today it appears that’s what it takes.

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At least we won’t have to worry about the best and the brightest

by digby

I’m beginning to think the Romney campaign is extra dangerous and stupid, even by Republican standards:

Shortly after the candidate’s speech in Reno, Nevada, the Romney campaign sent out a press release citing former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, who is listed as an Romney campaign advisor.

“The suggestion by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the White House was behind recent leaks of highly classified secrets, highlights the urgent need for change” Edelman said in the statement.
Edelman, however, was implicated in the country’s last major national security leak investigation — the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame — during his time in the Bush administration.

Edelman served under former Vice President Dick Cheney in the 1990s. From February 2001 to June 2003, he worked as Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, where he served directly under former Cheney aide Scooter Libby. According to the Justice Department, Edelman, identified as “Principal Deputy” in Scooter Libby’s indictment, originally suggested the idea to Libby to start leaking information about Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger.

Do they think people won’t remember? Have they not heard of the internet? What’s the matter with them?

Now, I’d guess that Mitt Romney doesn’t know the details of the Scooter Libby scandal. He doesn’t seem like someone who pays much attention to details. (He’s an “idea man” which is scary.) But surely someone else on his team might have mentioned to Edelman to ixnay on the eaklay stuff seeing as he was at the center of one of the most notorious White House leaking scandals in history.

Imagine if the Republicans had nominated a serious candidate.

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Your daily dose of right-wing misogyny

by David Atkins

Via John Cole at Balloon Juice, a jaw-dropping bit of misogynistic crap from James Taranto, Wall Street Journal columnist and editorial board member.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Taranto:

Disgusting.

The memories of Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn and Alex Teves deserve better than this. Let the editors of the Wall Street Journal know how you feel:

Alan Murray
Executive Editor, WSJ Digital Network
a.murray@wsj.com

Raju Narisetti
Managing Editor, WSJ Digital Network
raju.narisetti@wsj.com

Almar Latour
Editor in Chief, Asia
a.latour@wsj.com

Tracy Corrigan
Editor in Chief, Europe
tracy.corrigan@wsj.com

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