Fact-esque

Friday Palin: The Magic of Facebook Cuda Is So Bogus It's Awesome! The Talking Cuda Doll, Not So Much

There is no longer any doubt that Sarah Palin comes alive on Facebook, able to express herself so much more better than she can when she rambles on verbally to insufficiently genuflecting liberal weenies and left-wing intellectuals like, say, Katie Couric, or even her own hand-picked, carefully vetted, supporters. The difference between the two is so extreme that there can be only one legitimate explanation: magic Facebook pixie dust.

Remember in last week's episode when Teh Sarah was going to give a secret speech that nobody was going to be allowed to copy down and use against her? Well, some people suggested that somebody would and, actually, somebody did. Politico, that she let them in there because they always been friendly but then they went and stabbed her in the B-A-C-K when she wasn't looking and then printed it in their stoopid little paper or whatever it is, and boy are they in T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

Cause it seems the Cuda had just the teensiest bit of trouble making any, um, sense and going off her speech and talking about stuff being "bogus" and "awesome" and it was just like when that cheerleader who ran for Miss Universe or something was asked what she would do to end hunger and she said the govt should "take all the poor people to McDonald's" only Sarah was all about the trickery about the dollar coin that, like, nobody has even hardly seen yet but it was awesome bogus just the same because they insulted god by not putting him in the top place as we all know he oughta be because god's really the president and the US is, like, the Holy Land only with Dairy Queens.

So Now That They've Saved The Rich, We're Next, Right? Ummm...

There's almost $300M in TARP money that hasn't been disbursed yet. You know, the tiny part that was supposed to go directly to job creation and the business lending Wall Street continues to show no interest in. We've been waiting months, since before Obama was elected, expecting that that mnoney would be released momentarily since it only took a few days for the govt cough up Wall Street's $3T worth. But here we are, a year later, and despite Wall Street's ideal "jobless recovery" hasn't exactly worked, we still haven't seen squat for anybody except bankers.

Now, FDL's David Dayen notes that according to the WSJ, Obama may dump the job-creating thing and use our money to make the bankers happy in a different way - by reducing the debt.

Directed Economies & the Wall Street Shell Game

I don't want to seem too much like a broken record, going over and over the same grooves and playing the same song until My Funny Valentine sounds like Little Lambsy-Divey but I do think we need to understand, deeply and completely, what's happened to our economy and our society over 30 years of uninterrupted conservative rule (yes, I include Clinton for his NAFTA pimping and other pro-business "Third Way" agenda). Knowing what mistakes were made and by whom and why they were allowed by people who should have known better is the only way to know what needs to be done so it won't happen again.

As it happens, today I read two posts by two widely different writers who have been putting the pieces together in an effort to make sense of the puzzle. Between them I think some hard truth is beginning to emerge, and a clearer picture of just how far we've come from what used to be "American business".

US Corpo's to Employees: "You Lose"

We've commented before on the arrogance Corporate America has developed in the 30 years it took to build a fascist, oligarchic US. They can do anything they want and there's no one to stop them. Not even reality stops them. Their near-destruction of the world economy through blind avarice has taught them nothing. Saving their asses has only taught them that they can go right ahead and do what they were doing before. masaccio notes at FDL (via Norwegianity) that their self-righteous pomposity has reached the point where their trade associations - PR and political arms which are supposed, among other things, to guard their industry's public image - felt that it wasn't at all dangerous to take out a full-page ad in the NYT extolling their own virtues and putting employees and workers in their appointed place. Under corporate heels.

Why Does Sen Tom Coburn (R-OK) Hate the Troops?

Tom Coburn, who ran on the platform that there were lesbians in lavatories all over Oklahoma and when asked couldn't explain why that was relevant to the Senate race, turns out to be the one who's been blocking veterans' benefits bills for months. (Via Norwegianity)

One of the Senate’s most vociferous opponents of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who called the stimulus “the worst act of generational theft in our nation’s history.” Today, The Marine Corp Times revealed exactly how far Coburn was willing to go to undermine ARRA. It turns out Coburn has been the senator who has placed holds on several veterans benefits bills because he wanted to divert money from unspent ARRA funds on them.

When one of the several groups of veterans' advocates - the American Legion, fer dawg's sake - finally got a meeting with him to find out why he was blocking the bills and plead with him to stop, they got the expected reaction. Basically, "Fuck off".

Steve Robertson, the legislative director for the veterans advocacy group The American Legion, met with Coburn’s staff about the holds on the bills and came away disappointed with their refusal to budge on the issue. “For a lot of family caregivers, delay is costing them their jobs and their savings. It’s having a big impact,” Robertson told the press. “They made it clear that Sen. Coburn sees this as using his rights as a senator to place a hold on a bill…I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to hold up a bill that would do a lot of good things for veterans that has cleared a committee and is ready for a vote.”

(emphasis added)

No, it doesn't make any sense at all...unless you've been paying attention to the votes of Congressional Pubs all through the Bush Years, votes which consistently cut the budget of the VA, of war supplies (when they didn't come from Cheney's Halliburton, which got paid double for everything), of troop transportation (the Pubs made combat troops pay their own way home from the war zone), etc etc etc. There's been a pattern of Republicans voting to short-change the troops for years. There's nothing new about this except the excuse.

So...why do Republicans hate the troops? And why don't the troops know about it?

Friday Palin: The Secret Speech

With a book tour right around the corner that will open up on the hardly-noticable Oprah, and in the wake of Teh Cuda's major victory in NY, you'd think Our Sar would be lapping up the publicity with a spoon Bush-style - sort of "Bring it on, sucka!" only in Palin-speak. But you would, I'm afraid, be wrong. Apparently Sarah wants to keep the whole thang a deep dark secret.

Former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be speaking at an event hosted by the group Wisconsin Right to Life this evening.

It is a closed event – which generally means no press. Amid apparent worries that the ex-governor's words will be aired publicly despite that restriction, however, Wisconsin Right to Life and/or Palin's handlers are taking the notion of "closed" to a whole new level.

Check out this list of prohibited items at the event, which was spotted by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris. All bags, by the way, "will be searched":

•No cell phones
•No recording devices
•No video or still cameras
•No laptops
•No photos or recording allowed
•No literature distribution
•No posters or banners
•No strollers or car seats
•No carry-in food or beverages

No kidding. I suppose anyone seen carrying a notebook will be shot on sight.

With Obama's Help, the Corpo's Move In On the Internet

Net neutrality is still an issue BUT if the corporations control everything on the net, isn't whether or not you can get to it kind of moot?

The Obama Admin has just completed a TOP SECRET copyright treaty that reeks of fascism - govt making rules based on what's best for their corporate owners. Corey Doctorow at Boing Boing is very concerned. So am I. (Via Avedon Carol)

This Should Be Fun

In the wake of last night's victory in NY, Carly Simon - wait, I mean Carly Fiorina - sees the handwriting on the wall. Clearly taking her cue from Erik Erickson and Sarahcuda, and using the same flawless reasoning and prognosticative genius that brought Hewlett Packard to the brink of bankruptcy when she ran it, Carly has decided that the tide is once more turning toward the GOP and has announced that she plans to run against Barbara Boxer next year, apparently incensed that Boxer wrote a novel while she was Senator.

Former Silicon Valley executive Carly Fiorina announced Wednesday she is running for the chance to seize liberal stalwart Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate seat, depicting the three-term Democrat as a Capitol Hill do-nothing who penned novels while jobs vanished and government spending soared.

The job vanishing and spending-soaring were, of course, not the responsibility of 2-term, 8-year Pres George W Bush. No no. It was Barbara all along. Who knew?

Fiorina described herself Wednesday as a Republican devoted to low taxes and tightfisted budgets and "a political newcomer who actually knows how to get something done."

Yeah - she knows how to get rich by driving her company into the ground. Very attractive talent to voters, right? Boxer's people think, "Not so much".

Mrs. Boxer’s campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynksi, issued a statement saying, “California needs a Senator who will fight to create jobs — not a failed C.E.O. who laid off 28,000 Americans and shipped jobs overseas.”

That would be a problem in the general, perhaps, but she might take the GOP primary because Republicans just looove that sort of behaviour. What with the bunch that isn't Beckian Batshit-insane populists being firmly in the investor class.

I guess Republicans just can't help it.

Cute Corporate Capitalist Cultistry

It's just so adorable the way capitalists and their lackeys manage to think of themselves as brave, risk-taking pioneers, standing alone against the barbarian hordes in the awesomely dangerous jungles of corporate throat-cutting and skinning-alive Big Business behavior when what they really spend their time doing is cutting risk to the minimum and shoving the expense of whatever's left onto someone else. Like taxpayers.

Goldman Lied to Its Customers and Bet on Mortgage Failure

So there's growing evidence that Goldman Sachs, Golden Boy Bank of the last two administrations, recipient of billions in tax money to save its sorry ass, and the previous and likely future home of Obama's heaviest economic advisors, Wall Street Timmy Geithner and Lonesome Larry Summers, lied to their customers when they were hawking mortgage securities as a fine, perhaps brilliant, investment even as they secretly bet their own bucks on the failure of those securities.

Are you following this? Here: (H/T Mark)

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."

Kind of hard to do with the high-level protection Goldman's getting from all those ex-GS employees staffing the White House and Treasury Dept.

This is the height of shady dealing, usually the province of fly-by-night scam artists one short step away from a very long prison term. Think anybody at Timmy & Larry's place with ever wear an orange jumpsuit?

Don't bother to answer. It's too obvious and trite to repeat.

Happy Demons-Take-Your-Soul-and-You Die-in-Hell Day

Never let it be said that we are prejudiced only against white crackers, wingnuts, and right-wing religious crackpots. In a spirit of bipartisanship and equality, we state categorically that we are also prejudiced against black, brown, and/or polka-dot crackers, wingnuts, and religious crackpots. Like, say, Kimberly Daniels. (Via SN) A black "minister", Ms Daniels affects to believe a lot of - I think it's safe to say - odd things about Halloween. Like that it's a holiday (it isn't) and that Halloween candy carries curses.

No. Really.

Friday Palin: The Rouge Rogue Gets Her Gold (Updated)

Some time back I made note of TBogg's reasoning in re Sarahcuda's sudden blasting out of the governorship of Alaska: that it had a lot more to do with raking in mucho wingnut welfare $$$ than a realistic grab at the GOP nomination in '12. Frankly, I didn't see any reason why she shouldn't expect to corral both. At any rate, it seems she has the bucks, The SPI reported this week that Sarah collected a whopping $1.25M advance on her not-so-autobiography - you know, the one Lynn Vincent whipped up in a few short weeks with a massive 4 hours worth of help from the actual 'Cuda. (What does that work out to per hour? $300 and somethin grand, eh? Not bad, Almost what Disney's Michael Eisley used to make. Might help to explain why she looks so...chunky...in the pic at right.)

The final public disclosure filing by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shows a $1.25 million "retainer," obviously the first part of the advance on her memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," which hits book stores on Nov. 17.

The lucrative deal, with a book subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, far outstrips Palin's gubernatorial salary from January 1 to July 26, when she left office: Palin was paid $73,000 in salary and $6,370 in per diem expenses.

(emphasis added)

"Going for the Wingnut Welfare Gold" it is. Still, another poll also hit this week and, like the last one, it isn't good news.

Ford Workers Buck Gettelfinger's Sweetheart Contract

Ron Gettelfinger, UAW's Pres, talked tough last year, banging his fist on the podium at the annual meeting and shouting "No More Concessions!" Almost as soon at that conference was over, Gettelfinger negotiated a series of sweeping concessions at Chrysler and GM which did not prevent the threat of bankruptcy mostly because the amount of workers' wages had nothing whatever to do with the long series of bad management decisions that killed sales along with the worsening economy.

Ford was the only car company that rejected govt help, and it did so in the expectation that it would be able to get major concessions from Gettelfinger. Which it did. That's not the problem. The problem is that Ford is bragging about its sales on the one hand while demanding Gettelfinger's major givebacks on the other, and the union members have had enough bullshit thrown at them from both "sides". They look like they might just turn down Gettelfinger's management-friendly contract.

Union Backtalk at Delphi

Well well well. It seems that after 30 years of abuse it's finally paying off to be the member of a union, and the "I spit on unions - pah! pah! - what have unions ever done except take dues money?" crowd ain't at'all happy about it. To quote chief NYT whiner Bruce Gump, "I’m being thrown out with yesterday’s trash." Mr Gump's complaint? Union members at his company are having their pensions fully paid out while Mr Gump and his fellow non-union members might have theirs cut. Too bad.

Huge Health Insurance Price Hikes for Small Businesses - What a Good Idea!

OK, Quiz Time: If you were a health insurance corpo exec during the first national discussion of healthcare reform since Truman, a time when the public is pressing for a public option on the assumption that it is going to be way cheaper than anything private for-profit investor-driven health insurors have any intention of offering what with the continuous price hikes we've seen for the last 30 years running alongside a deteriorating healthcare system in which everything is a pre-existing condition and it always seems to turn out that nothing is covered and said public already, like, hates your guts, would you: Raise rates on smll businesses, the core of GOP and conservaDem voters, both of which parties are desperately trying to protect your profits in the face of enormous public opposition?

Would I go too far if I assumed your answer to that question is a resounding "Good grief, NO!" If not and that's actually your answer, um, you're wrong. That's precisely what the insurers are doing and promise they will continue to do right up to the point a real public option makes them completely irrelevant.

Saturday Palin: Teh Cuda Endorses Non-Pub in NY

This will not, repeat NOT become a regular deal but this was just too delicious to pass up. Yesterday I passed on some info about the Palin Yes/Palin No/Assholes Disunited controversy at the Conservative Conference. At that point I said I didn't known Sarah was going to be the object of this tug-of-war. Today I tell you something else I didn't know (but probably should have expected): Sarahcuda isn't just the object of the war, she has become an instigator. She has stuck her nose into an election in upstate NY and endorsed the Conservative Party candidate instead of the GOoPer. (Via Norwegianity)

Sarah Palin's decision to endorse the Conservative party candidate over the Republican nominee in a special House election in upstate New York is the latest example that the former Alaska governor's allegiance is to her conservative principles rather than the edicts of the party.

"Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual," wrote Palin on her Facebook page.

She also cited former president Ronald Reagan's belief that "blurring the lines" was not the way to re-build the Republican party and added: "The Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race."

Yah don't fuck wit Teh Cuda, dude. She got teef.

The fact that she has injected herself into a local race is probably faux pas enuff but just in case any of the morans who infest the GOP's MBIW didn't get it, she slapped them upside de haid by endorsing the most extremist batshit insane right wing candidate in the race, telling the MBIW right to their face to, like, stuff it.

Got your popcorn, I hope, cause it's time to melt the butter.

Friday Palin: Inside Gang War

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Sarahcuda was becoming the focus of the GOP split between the batshit insane wing (BIW) and the moderately batshit insane wing (MBIW) of the GOP. That split deepened this week when a war erupted over her at the CPAC meeting in California.

This weekend, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, was confronted by conservative activist and filmmaker John Ziegler over his criticisms of Sarah Palin. Earlier this year, Keene had said Palin spent too much time “whining” about the national media’s criticisms of her, was too “resentful” of the McCain camp, and appeared to be “bitter.”

Keene’s opinions about Palin were simply too much for Ziegler, who is a stalwart Palin fanatic and has previously said that any conservative who criticizes her should be “ostracized and punished.” This weekend, Ziegler tried to live up to his word by unleashing his anger at Keene.

Things got more and more heated until Keene walked off the stage and Ziegler grabbed a mic and started calling him "an asshole". Keene, being a conservative, of course responded in kind.

KEENE: You are a liar! … [grabbing the microphone] I said this is over! You got it? Over! … Get out of my face! … I’m not going to hit you, but I’d like to. … I’m not answering anything to you because you’re a jerk. … You’re a scumbag. … You’re an asshole. Got that on the air? Asshole.

We like this.

The Jobless Recovery Is a Problem for Dems? Oh, Yeah

Having joined Bush Economics by giving away the store to the investor/bankster class in order to buy some time for rich people to get a little richer before the bottom falls out again, the Obama Admin and the Democrats in Congress are now trying to figure out how to cut $Trillions$ from the budget because the GOP/Blue Dog ConservaDem Party won;'t sitr still for a deficit created by money going to people who actually need it rather than their Wall Street bosses.

When economists met privately with Democratic leaders of the House on Wednesday, the topic was how to pump billions more into the economy to stimulate job creation. They left with a homework assignment: How to cut trillions from future federal budget deficits.

That seemingly contradictory mix captures the unusual political and policy tension in the White House and Congress these days as the politicians deal with an economy that has begun a slow but jobless recovery and a public that is increasingly fretful about the accumulating debt.

***

“It is a complicated balance because these imperatives point in different directions,” Lawrence H. Summers, the senior economic adviser to President Obama, said in an interview. “Imagine a business if it were trying to execute a plan of rapid expansion for two years, followed by retrenchment and cost-cutting for the next three. It would be a complicated business strategy to execute.”

Uh-huh. Of course, if the business hadn't broken itself in two fighting a hopeless price war with its competitors and then, near busted, gone even deeper into the red to pay its executives giant bonuses, maybe the expansion would be easier and the cost-cutting unnecessary.

Is Jake Tapper That Stoopid? Nope, Just Unintentionally Honest

Avedon Carol links to a Media Matters post in which Eric Boehlert quotes ABC's Jake Tapper as being "completely baffled by the White House designation of Fox as a non-news propaganda channel. Which, of course, it is and has been for years as we all have reason to know. Avedon's jaw dropped - figuratively, natch.

I can find no better example of how right-wing our "mainstream" media is than the fact that they are so upset that the White House acknowledged that Fox News is Republican propaganda, not news. I mean, just look at Jake Tapper.

Boehlert himself seems confused by Tapper's confusion.

Oh my, Tapper has no idea how Fox News is different than ABC News, and he works there. Tapper can't tell what Fox News does differently that his own network. And Tapper was clearly irked that the White House had offered up an opinion that one of the Village's "sister organizations" wasn't professional. "Why is that appropriate for the White House to say?" Tapper demanded to know. (Hint: As a Beltway rule, Democratic White Houses are forbidden from calling out the press by name.)

Boehlert then in essence puts himself in the position of defending ABC - a daunting task which I personally wouldn't care to take on - by listing a number of the ways by example. They're worth going through with your little clicker for sure, very educational, but doing so doesn't really get at Tapper's point. It's not that Eric is wrong exactly about the superficial differences, it's that he isn't exactly right, either. And he isn't exactly right because he's looking at today instead of next year or the year after. Jake is talking about where "journalism" in the MSM is going, and it ain't toward Robert R Murrow.

Honest Numbers At Last: 16% of Americans in Poverty, 17% Unemployed

After nearly a decade of the Bush Admin playing with statistics to ensure no one would know how bad it was, I give full credit to Obama for allowing his National Academy of Sciences to correct their poverty formula (or at least begin correcting it) so it reflects the real world instead of deliberately violating it.

Having said that, I then have to add that the price for the Bush Economy is turning out to be a lot higher than anyone but pessimists like me thought it was. That's the reason Bush hid it in the first place.