The First Republican Makes it Official

Tim Pawlenty has formally announced the formation of an exploratory committee for the 2012 Presidential campaign.

Let the games begin.

A Win on Civil Rights

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a consortium of groups including the ACLU have legal standing to sue over the expansion in wiretapping powers passed in 2008.

The Circuit Court had ruled that unless a plaintiff could prove that they had been secretly wiretapped, they had no standing to sue, and the court has said that they do have standing.  It made no ruling on the merits:

A district judge in Manhattan had thrown out the lawsuit because he said that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate they were actually spied upon and did not have legal standing to sue. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, allowing the lawsuit on Monday to move forward.

It found that the groups challenging the wiretapping law, including lawyers and journalists communicating with people overseas who might fall under terrorism investigations, had a reasonable fear that their international calls and e-mails would be monitored by the government.

The district court set up a lovely "Catch-22". You could not challenge the law unless you had proof that you were wiretapped, but the wiretaps are secret, so you couldn't sue, and so could not use the courts to prove that you were wiretapped.

I expect the Obama administration to use everything but the kitchen sink to stop this suit, but sovereign immunity will be their first bite at the apple.

The Tanker Competition is Over

EADS will not challenge the award of the KC-X contract award to Boeing.

I'm kind of surprised.  I expected the USAF to find a way to f%$# this up again, but I guess that they will have to do that during procurement, and I am confident that the good folks at the Pentagon and Boeing will manage to find many ways to do that.

Alan Greenspan, Shut the F%$# Up

Just go read Krugman, and read this by him too.

If there is a bright spot to the financial meltdown, it is that Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan has lived long enough to see his reputation collapse like those Ponzi schemes he thought were impossible in his magical free market.

So Give Bloombert Your Papers, Mr. Bernanke

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the Federal Reserve's appeal of the court order directing them to turn over data on its discount window lending program:

The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.

The justices today left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought by Bloomberg News’s parent company, Bloomberg LP. The Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

“The board will fully comply with the court’s decision and is preparing to make the information available,” said David Skidmore, a spokesman for the Fed.

The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed’s unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic.

“I can’t recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to release information” in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Well, it's about f%$#ing time for the Fed to be sued and forced to release information, Professor Meltzer.

I'm not sure that there will be much in the way of revelations in the documents, this has been proceeding for a well over a year, so by this point, the recipients are pretty well known, but this is an important precedent (or non-precedent, since the Supreme Court declined to rule).

My guess is that there is real law-breaking buried somewhere in these documents, both by the big banks and the Fed, but, we won't see any prosecutions, because in Barack Obama's Justice Department, prosecutions are just for whistle blowers.

Signs of the Apocalypse

When Peggy "Dolphins Saved Elian Gonzalez" Noonan says that she thinks that an American war is stupid:

The biggest takeaway, the biggest foreign-policy fact, of the past decade is this: America has to be very careful where it goes in the world, because the minute it's there -- the minute there are boots on the ground, the minute we leave a footprint -- there will spring up, immediately, 15 reasons America cannot leave. The next day there will be 30 reasons, and the day after that 45. They are often serious and legitimate reasons.

So we wind up in long, drawn-out struggles when we didn't mean to, when it wasn't the plan, or the hope, or the expectation.

We have to keep this phenomenon in mind as we chart our path in the future. It's easy to start a war but hard to end one. It's as simple as that. It's easy to get in but hard to get out. Even today, in Baghdad, you hear that America can't leave Iraq because the government isn't sturdy enough, the army and police aren't strong enough to withstand the winds that will follow America's full departure, that all that has been achieved -- a fragile, incomplete, relative peace -- will be lost. America cannot leave because Iraq will be vulnerable to civil war, not between Sunnis and Shiites, they tell you now, but between Arabs and Kurds, in the north, near the oil fields.

She is, of course, writing about the war du jour, Libya, and she is correct.  It's a bad idea.

What's more, when this operation is well within the capabilities of other countries, either the UK or France could likely do this on their own, and certainly can do this together, so say nothing of the contributions of Italy and Canada (!?!?!?!), there is no need for any contribution to the kinetic portion of the war by the US, though satellite and signals intelligence could certainly make a difference.

A reader of Americablog nailed what is driving the American involvement in this:

The main reason the US seems to want to be involved seems to be to avoid being left out. If the UK and France could take out Libya on their own, people might start asking if the US really needs to have a military an order of magnitude larger than the UK and French forces combined.

Our bloated giant Pentagon cannot allow our allies to engage in a kinetic war (i.e. shooting) without a major involvement, because if they do, it casts doubt on the raison d'être for us to spend more on our defense than the rest of the world combined.

So, not only does the fact that we are a military behemoth make us stay in places that we have never gone, it makes us go places we should never go, because to stay home when others go would put its continued support at risk.

This Is Not Criminalizing Failure

The FDIC is suing 3 former WAMU executives for $900 million, which I call a good start.

Felix Salmon, who I generally find to be pretty good on such things, calls it criminalizing failure:

If the risks they took paid off, they would have been hailed as heroes, and the FDIC would have no problem with their behavior. There certainly wouldn’t have been a lawsuit like this one, since the FDIC has to show that it suffered damages before it can bring it.

I don’t like the idea of criminalizing failure. Banks by their nature are leveraged institutions which are vulnerable to runs and to declines in their asset values. There’s always a natural tension between managers, who are looking to maximize profits, and regulators, who are looking to minimize risks. But in this case there’s no indication that WaMu’s regulators, including the FDIC, expressed any concern about Killinger’s strategy. If they were OK with it, at the time, it’s easy to see how the executives considered that a green light to go ahead and implement it with gusto.

But at the same time, it’s unconscionable that these guys should be able to get away with what they did just because they did it out in the open, in front of supine regulators. They knew that they were too big to fail; they knew that ultimately WaMu’s liabilities (or at least its deposits) were being backstopped by the US government; and they knew that if they wanted to get their total compensation up into the $100 million range they were just going to have to take enormous risks and gamble with the money they had essentially unlimited access to at the Fed’s discount window.

(emphasis mine)

Two points here, the first general, and second specific to this case.

The first is that a doctor who is sued for leaving a surgical instrument inside you, is not a victim of criminalizing failure. In fact, there is nothing criminal at all about the lawsuit. It's not a criminal case, it is a civil tort as the result of negligence, and it is completely reasonable and justified.

The second point here, is that what these guys did, relying on a complacent regulator, the thoroughly captured Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a federal backstop of depositors, a complacent board, and an "I don't give a sh%$ about anything but this year's bonus" attitude to knowingly engage in reckless practices in pursuit of short term gain, should be a criminal matter.

If someone is speeding and driving recklessly, and runs down a crossing guard, they do get charged with a crime, negligent homicide, and these guys were speeding and driving WaMu recklessly, so perhaps, they should be charged with negligent bankicide, because, after all, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court said that that corporations were people.

So, We are Bombing Libya

On our part, just cruise missiles launched at air defense installations, with the British and the French taking the lead, apparently hitting tanks, and perhaps artillery installations, with aid from the Italians and the Canadians. (The Canadians?!?!?! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?)

On interesting thing is that the French may have initiated attacks before the rest of the allies had reached an agreement on plans:

The campaign began with French warplanes, which started their attacks even before the end of an emergency meeting among allied leaders in Paris. The officials, reacting to news that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were attacking the rebel capital, Benghazi, despite international demands for a cease-fire, said they had no choice but to defend Libyan civilians and opposition forces.

But there were signs of disagreement among the allies in Paris. Some diplomats said that French insistence on the meeting had delayed military action against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces before they reached Benghazi, a charge that French officials denied.

This behavior makes me wonder if perhaps the French eagerness for military action may be an attempt by the tremendously unpopular Nicolas Sarkosy to boost his reelections chances, as Margaret Thatcher did in the early 1980s with the Falklands.

This all is further complicated by the fact that Libya is claiming that it is adhering to the UN mandated ceasefire.

No clue as to where the truth on all this is.

Goatse is Everywhere, Part 2*

H/t The Mad Piper at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

^*If you are wondering, "What is goatse, Do Not Google It. If you find out, you will never be the same, and I do not mean that in a good way.

Maryland Lege Kills Gay Marriage Bill

The people who switched their votes on this once they thought that it was going to pass need to be targeted to ensure that they never hold elective office ever again.

I'm with Jonathan Capehart. This reveals the, "cowards and civil rights myopia in the statehouse.

Damn.

Plus ça change

Former Michael Powell to become head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which will make him chief lobbyist for the cable companies.

This is what we got when he was head of the FCC. What we are seeing now is the payment for services rendered.

Don't Send Me Huffington Post Links

They have decided to start publishing essays by serial liar Andrew Breitbart, so, not only won't I link to them, I won't go to the site.

So, There's a No-Fly Zone in Libya

The UN Security Council just passed it.

So it's war, by any other name.

I think that this is a bad idea, and whatever emerges at the other end, and my money is still on Qaddafi, the opposition will now lack legitimacy, as will a successor government.

Kevin Drum has an interesting take on this, which is that administration ambivalence on this actually led to the widespread support necessary for the Security Council resolution.

I'm not sure, but I feel that this won't end well.

When one backs a revolution, one expects some say over the outcome, and looking at the history of that, (*cough* reinstating the Pshaw of Iran, which lead to the current theocracy *cough*) it never ends well.

The Michigan Fascism Bill Passes, and Heads to the Governor's Desk

The legislature has now passed the bill, which would give the governor the power to declare any government or school district in the state and take it over, hand it to a crony, and dismiss elected officials he did not like.

Background here.

CIA Mercenary Released After US Pays Blood Money

And I mean this literally.

Under Pakistani law, if the families of the victim accept payment, the defendant can be acquitted, and this is what happens in Pakistan.

The fact that the US government had to pay several million dollars to the families in order to extract their "diplomat", his status is actually indeterminate, marks a shift in diplomatic immunity.

Scott Horton notes that this is a shift in how governments view diplomatic staff, but I'm not so sure that it's a change in policy as much as it is a recognition by foreign governments in areas of intense US interest that the establishment of sprawling embassies, consulates, and various satellite offices have nothing to do with diplomacy, and everything to do with placing spies in those places.

So Why is the Yen Skyrocketing?

Normally, a disaster has a country's currency falling, but the earthquake, and the nuclear power plant problems have the value of the Yen hitting a post World War II high.

So, why is this happening?

Two words: Carry trade.

You see interest rates in Japan are very low, so some people borrow money in Japan, and invest it elsewhere at higher interest, and thereby pocket the difference in interest rates.

The risk here is that the loans have to be paid back in Yen and if the currency strengthens, then you can end up owing more than you borrowed, a lot more than what you borrowed, and because this is typically very highly leveraged, it means that you lose a lot of money.

What is happening here is the concern that Japan will cash in, or more likely stop buying, US treasuries, because they need to spend the money on reconstruction, which strengthens the yen.

As the ¥ strengthens, the hedgies decide that they need to get their cash back into Yen before it appreciates any more, and so magnifies their losses.

So while normal concerns push the Yen up, you also have panicked (is their any other kind) traders who are desperately trying to buy into a rising market, which pushes up the Yen, which panics the traders more, who try to sell more $AUS or South African Rands to buy Yen, which further pushes it up.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Obama Pulls Another Deepwater Horizon

S%$# Heads!

Yes, in response to the Japanese nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, they are doubkling down on more loan guarantees for US nuclear power:

The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan’s power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

The U.S. Energy Department is seeking to add $36 billion in loan-guarantee authority to the program’s existing $18.5 billion, Chu said today at a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel hearing. President Barack Obama asked lawmakers to expand the program in his February budget request.

An earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11 crippled Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with explosions, fires and radiation leaks. As Japan tries to avert a meltdown at the plant, Obama and his energy advisers have said U.S. nuclear reactors are safe.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

These guys never miss a chance to miss a chance.

Economics Update

Really just a few data points here, with housing starts falling sharply, 22%, in February, and we are seeing uptick on the producer price index.

The former is a mark of sanity, there are still too many homes, new, used, and foreclosures, out there, and if you are building houses without a buyer committed ahead of time, you are nuts in most parts of the country.

As to the PPI, it's all volatility in commodities, so I would not worry right now, which is what the FOMC said yesterday in its statement as well.

Correction on Power Plant

It appears that the any removal of all the workers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant was only temporary:

Correction: March 16, 2011
A news alert associated with an earlier version of this article, relying on an English translation of remarks by Japan's chief cabinet secretary, incorrectly stated that workers had been evacuated from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A core group of workers remained at the plant.
They had a radiation spike, and removed them for the duration.

Additionally, it appears that electric power may be run to the plant shortly, which would allow for the normal coolant pumps to operate.

Why they didn't bring in a boat with a genset and anchor it offshore at the start of this is beyond me.

Oh Crap

In a news conference, the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary said that they were pulling everyone out of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, though it appears that a small number of workers have elected to stay on:

11:13 P.M. |Core Group of Workers Remain at Plant

The Times’s Hiroko Tabuchi reports that a small group of workers remains at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, contrary to what an English translation of the chief cabinet secretary’s remarks had implied.

10:22 P.M. |Chief Cabinet Secretary’s News Conference

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, is holding a news conference that is being broadcast live on Japanese television. Mr. Edano said radiation readings started rising rapidly Wednesday morning outside the front gate of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. “All the workers there have suspended their operations. We have urged them to evacuate, and they have,” he said, according to a translation by NHK television.

This is not good, that if the situation is as reported, those men remaining at the plant have to know that they are at very real risk of death.

We also have a report that a fire has restarted at the power plant, though it is unclear where this fire might be.

If this is the zirconium cladding of the spend fuel rods in the cooling pools, this could get very ugly very quickly.

If interested, you can see satellite and U-2 imagery here.

OK, Libya is Getting Weird

And that whole "no fly zone" thing just got a lot more difficult, because, it is reported that reble jets and helicopters just sank two of Qaddafi's warships, as well as bombing a government controlled airfield.

If this is true, it does not signify a change in the recent reversals that the rebels have experienced, but it may very well make a meaningful no-fly zone impossible to enforce.

Economics Update

The Federal Open Market Committee has released its statement, and its policies of low (basically zero) interest rates and quantitative easing (printing money) remain in effect.

Meanwhile, home builder confidence rose in March, but remains really really low, while the New York Feds Empire State Index Rose.

Full FOMC statement after the break:

And Now the New York Times

Has an editorial condemning the torture of Bradley Manning:

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

They are wrong, of course about how his torture is inexplicable. The Obama administration has aggressively covered up the wrongdoing of their predecessors, and gone after whistle-blowers with an aggressiveness that makes Bush and His Evil Minions^™ look like advocates for open government.

The torture of Manning, as well as the malicious prosecution of whistle-blowers at all levels is clearly a result of a mania in this administration, and considering its aggressiveness, it almost certainly comes straight from the top.

It should be noted though that, true to their mealy mouthed tradition, there no use of the word "Torture" to describe extended solitary confinement, sleep deprivation.

This is rather more significant than the OP/ED in the Baltimore Sun I mentioned yesterday, because, on the villagers inside the Beltway actually read the New York Times, and care what is in those pages.

<Facepalm>

I'm hoping that this is some sort of elaborate hoax, but I fear that it isn't:

Al-Qaeda has launched a magazine for women that not only offers beauty and fashion tips but also gives advice on suicide bombings.

The front cover of the glossy magazine, called 'Jihad Cosmo', features the barrel of a sub-machine gun next to a picture of a woman in a veil, reports the Daily Mail.

There are exclusive interviews with martyrs' wives, who praise their husbands' decisions to die in suicide attacks.

The slick, 31-page Al-Shamikha magazine - meaning The Majestic Woman - has advice for singletons on 'marrying a mujahideen'.

Stop the world, I need to get off.

Nice to See This Getting Some Mainstream Coverage

It's not the Washington Post or the New York Times, but my hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun has an Op/Ed, Why is the United States torturing Private Manning?

It is significant that a regular columnist, WBAL talk jock Ron Smith, both condemned the treatment, and used the word "Torture."

It is also significant that the members of the White House press corps(e) are actually starting question Obama on this

Smith is described as a "Paleoconservative" in Wikipedia, though he had enough integrity to describe Bush, Jr. as "Joe Isuzu", so it is likely that hostility to or distrust of Obama may have something to do with his opinions, but it is still significant that people are starting to use the word "torture" do describe what he calls, " the field-stripping of a young man's mind."

Something Else Obama Lied About

I honestly thought that P.J. had committed bureaucratic Seppuku when he gave an honest opinion about the torture detention conditions of alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning, so on one level, I am not at all surprised that Barack Obama fired him.

But Will Bunch, who was lied to by Obama during the campaign, Barack said that he would prosecute torturers and other administration and official law breakers, nails the dishonesty and hypocrisy involved:

"I don't want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone."
-- Barack Obama, June 18, 2008.

Barack Obama lied.

Again.

He lied because somebody -- a good man, a decent man, and a respected spokesman for the U.S. State Department -- pushed Obama out of his comfort zone this week. And so what happened? -- the Obama administration forced him out of his job. Apparently Obama does just want to have people who agree with him. Imagine that.

I'm not surprised, but I am disgusted.

Oh S%$@!

In Japan, they are pumping seawater through the cores of 2 units at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and plans are being made to distribute iodine pills, which prevent the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine from a radiation leak.

I don't know how bad it is, but lordy, this ain't good.

Deep Thought

I was shoe shopping with the kids, and a clerk noticed me pacing, and asked, "Are you OK?"

"No," I responded, "I'm shopping for shoes with my 13 year old daughter."

Why Some Annoying People Are Not on the List…

Submitted for your approval, Carlos Irwin Estevez

The They Who Must Not Be Named list, of course.

You see, some of the people who appear to be worthless are actually talented.

Charlie Sheen is a really funny guy, as this sketch shows, and I'm not sure if he's crazy or not, because,  unlike Bill Frist and Charles Krauthammer, I don't do diagnoses long distance, but it seems to me that even if he is a bit nuts, he is less nuts than he appears.

In any case, this video is hysterically funny, and the butt of Charlie Sheen's jokes is one Charlie Sheen.

So he has been removed from the list.

Busy Day, But I Am Relieved

That a friend of mine who lives in Japan is fine, as is his wife, and the earthquake did no damage to his home.

A word of note, if this hit anywhere in the US, we would not have the infrastructure of personnel to handle this, and we would already be seeing private profiteers cheating people.

Also note that the Republican budget cuts include cuts to the Tsunami warning system.

Nope, No Corruption Here. None At All

Allegedly Democratic Co-Chair of Obama's deficit reduction (aka cat food) commission, Erskine Bowles, was recommending changes to Social Security that would likely lead to its privatization while on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley:

Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction commission, said his job as a Morgan Stanley (MS) director didn’t influence his work on the panel’s recommendations for balancing U.S. spending, which said taxes are sapping the competitiveness of companies.

He and the commission’s co-chief, Alan Simpson, told an audience of bankers, investors and executives at an Economic Club of New York lunch meeting March 7 that the country may face a crisis if it doesn’t rein in the debt. Bowles, 65, has been a member of the bank’s board since the end of 2005.

“It didn’t have any effect on me at all,” he said in an interview after the lunch, when asked if his work for New York- based Morgan Stanley influenced the commission’s December proposals. “We tried to gore every ox we could.”

He also said that "The check is in the mail, this won't hurt a bit, I'll respect you in the morning, and I won't cum in your mouth."

Note also that Barack Obama was the one what hired these guys.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

24. First National Bank of Davis, Davis, OK
25. Legacy Bank, Milwaukee, WI

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

5. Land of Enchantment Federal Credit Union, Santa Fe, NM

Full NCUA list

I don't have much to add, except that it looks a lot like 2010, and the "Land of Enchantement Federal Credit Union" is a really trippy name. 

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):


And since it's early in the year, here is a detail of the first few weeks:

The Term for this is Bureaucratic Seppuku

It is also courageous and so if anyone knows of a new job for State Department spokesman PJ Crowley, drop him a line.

You see, Crowley called the torture treatment of Private Bradley Manning by our military "Stupid."

If there is anything that pisses off Barack Obama, it's whistle blowers.  His administration has prosecuted them more aggressively than any other administration in  history, and the torture of Manning is delibrate:  They want to extract false testimony from him to implicate assange, and, more importantly, they want to terrify any would-be whistle blowers out of telling the truth:

Mr Crowley made the remarks about Bradley Manning to an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Nonetheless Bradley Manning is in the right place," Mr Crowley said.

Private Manning is being held in solitary confinement at a maximum security US military jail.

He is shackled at all times and has been on suicide watch at the Quantico marine base in Virginia.

Mr Crowley was asked whether his comments were on the record and replied, "sure".

President Barack Obama was questioned about whether he agreed with Mr Crowley's comments at a news conference on Friday.

He responded by saying he had asked the Pentagon directly if the terms of Pte Manning's confinement were "appropriate" and received assurances that they were.

Mr Obama added that some aspects of Pte Manning's treatment "has to do with his safety as well".

Obama's response is pure, unadulterated bullsh%$.  You asked, and were told that they were appropriate, and that "some" aspects have to do with his safety.

So, you just stated that you know, and that you chose to look the other way.

I am so glad that I live in Maryland, and so I never have to vote for this contemptible ratf%$# ever again.

That being said, now that the dirty laundry is out, how much do you want to bet that the treatment gets better?

Shoot Me. I'm Thinking that Ron Paul is Right

The Federal Reserve's Consumer Advisory Council just released a report saying that there have been no wrongful foreclosures by banks:

A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage practices by the Federal Reserve found no wrongful foreclosures, members of the Fed's Consumer Advisory Council said Thursday.

During a public meeting attended by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and other regulators, consumer advocates on the panel criticized federal bank regulators for narrowly defining what constitutes a "wrongful foreclosure." At least one member of the panel voiced concerns that the public would not take the Fed's findings of improper practices seriously, since the wide-ranging review did not find a single homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon.

The Fed's findings seem to support claims from the banking industry, which has admitted to sloppy practices but has maintained that the homeowners whose homes have been repossessed were substantially behind on their payments. The Fed's report has not been released to the public.

This is crap.  Even if you argue that fraudulent statements to the court are not "wrongful foreclosure", you have to note that banks have foreclosed on people who had mortgages with other people, and foreclosed on people who paid cash for their homes.

Well, with regard to the Federal Reserve, I used to take the middle ground, Alan Grayson's position for audits and more transparency, while eschewing Ron Paul's suggestion that we close down the Federal Reserve.

I thought that Paul was loony, and that it was a loony suggestion.

Now I'm beginning to think that the Federal Reserve is so thoroughly captured by the banks, and so thoroughly corrupt, that closing it down might be the only sane option.

The Rude Pundit Asks the Right Question

You should read his whole post about what is going on in Wisconsin, but in the last paragraph, he asks the important question:

Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President?

(%$# mine)

The answer, of course is that the President is busy, "Winning the Future," because pursuing a lame ass slogan in order to be reelected in 2008 is more important than defending the rights of the ordinary working man.

Scott Walker's Kill the Unions Bill Heads for His Desk

The lower house of the legislature passed it today.

There are some real questions as to whether this is is legal, so the Wisconsin Supreme Court, currently 4-3 Republican, may very well have the final word.

The reason that this is important is that Wisconsin elects its supreme court justices in partisan elections, and there is an election on  is April 5 with Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg facing incumbent Republican David Prosser.

Given that this is generally a low turnout sort of election, and that liberal groups are flooding the zone generally right now, the Dem has a real chance of winning, particularly because Prosser was one of the people who chose to ignore the US Supreme Court ruling and let a fellow state Supreme Court judge off for not recusing himself when a major donor to his campaign appeared before him.

Why Yes, Muslim Baiting Congressman Peter King Does Support Terrorism

Only Jon Stewart can make eating cheese this funny

This time, he notes the conflict between Representative Peter King's full throated support for the IRA, and his the New York Congressman's concerns about terrorism when the people blowing up school children and the occasional American are not white.

You know, I can think of no better way to encourage a 15 year old to consider making war against the United States than to have to hear Peter King talk about his religion in this way.

Economics Update (Jobless Thursday Edition)

We have the latest claims, and they are going in the wrong direction again, with unemployment rising by 26K to 397K, worse than forecast, though both continuing and emergency claims both fell.

Additionally, consumer confidence fell, largely on spiking gas prises.

The Bank of England is not too confidence either, so it kept its benchmark rate at effectively zero.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

Recall time!

So, the Wisconsin State Senate just pulled the anti-union provisions out of the budget bill, and then, since they did not require a quorum, since they were non-budgetary, they passed it with an 18-1 vote.

I will note that the motion appears to be in violation of the state constitution:

The measure approved Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker.

Those savings would appear to be budgetary to me, and hence subject to the state constitution's quorum requirement.

Firedog Lake's invaluable David Dayen has some more of the finer points, and it appears that this is definitely headed to court, though the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is heavily Republican.

If you want to donate to the recall efforts, you can go to my Act Blue Page. There is a link there for donations.

Also note that in the middle of the most important fight for ordinary working Americans in decades, the Obama administration has decided that they don't want to be involved:

Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address, in which he exhorted the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

I guess that someone in the administration finds unions, and ordinary working people to be icky. After all, they expect to spend a billion dollars in 2012 on the Presidential election, and the working man just does not have that kind of money.

Barack Obama is very lucky that the Republicans are as awful as they are, because otherwise, as awful as he is, he'd have a serious primary challenger right now.

What can I say, when Mitt Romney is the class act in the room, you have a very scary political party.

No, 11 Year Old Girls Are Not Asking for It!

The New York Times times reported on a horrific rape of an 11 year old girl in Texas, and saw fit to blame the victim for the crime.

Some selected quotes:

The video led the police to an abandoned trailer, more evidence and, eventually, to a roundup over the last month of 18 young men and teenage boys on charges of participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in the abandoned trailer home, the authorities said.

………

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

Drawn into the act?

The alleged Rapists have to live with this for the rest of their life?

But it gets even better:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

You see, she hung out with the wrong crowd, and she wore slutty clothes, so she deserves to be raped.

By comparison, the Houston Chronicle doesn't go out of their way to portray an 11 year old girl as something akin to Jezebel.

Why reporter James C. McKinley Jr. and whoever his editor is are still employed at the Times is completely beyond me.