No, This is Not The Onion…

Click for full size

---

Just Because This Needs to Be Shared, So That His Shame Endures for a Very Long Time

But when a married Congressman trolls Craigslist for female companionship and sends a picture of himself topless, it certainly sounds that way:

Representative Christopher Lee of New York abruptly resigned on Wednesday night after a shirtless photo of himself, which he had e-mailed to a woman, was published on the Internet.

Mr. Lee, a two-term Republican from western New York, notified the House speaker, John A. Boehner, of his decision in a letter on Wednesday afternoon, after the scandal had erupted, according to senior Congressional officials.

Mr. Lee’s office released a statement in which he asked for forgiveness. “I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents,” he wrote. “I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”

The resignation came hours after Gawker, a gossip Web site, published an e-mail exchange that Mr. Lee, who is married and has a son, had with a 34-year-old Maryland woman he had met through Craigslist.

In his response to said woman, he described himself as "classy".

This must be a meaning of the word "classy" I've been previously unaware of.

Jim Webb Not Running for Reelection to US Senate

I am unsurprised by his announcement, he never struck me as someone who enjoyed the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body" (Hah!), but it means that it's highly likely that whoever the 'Phants nominate in 2012 will take the seat, which means that they will need only 3 more seats to take control of the Senate.

While from a numerical perspective, this is a bit of a bummer, from an ideological perspective, he was always a bit of a DINO, he served in Reagan administration, so I am not sad to seem him go from that perspective.

Republican Fail

I'm not sure how it happened, but the Republicans in the house failed to pass an extension of some of the more contemptible parts of the Patriot Act:

Too clever by half, the House GOP leadership allowed only 40 minutes of debate on the extension of the PATRIOT Act today, and brought the bill up for a vote under a rule allowing no amendments and requiring two-thirds of the body to vote YES.

Well, that didn’t happen. Apparently, the Tea Party Congresscritters discovered their love for the constitution, Amendments One and Four inclusive, while taking the opportunity to stand up to their leadership’s lackadaisical attitude toward the Act’s extension.

I believe that the Republican House leadership may have a much deeper appreciation of just the deeper meaning of the exclamation that Dan Castellaneta created as the voice of Homer Simpson.

Heh.

Good Riddance

Representative Jane Harman (CA-36) is retiring to run the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

My guess is that she realized, after Marcy Winograd lost in the primary with 41.2% of the vote, that with a Republican Congress, and the attendant loss of power (and pork for her district), she would be toast in either the primary or the general election.

So, less than a month into her new term, she's bailing for a cushy job working in Washington, DC, and saddling the taxpayers with the cost of running another (2 if there is a run off) elections.

Stay classy, Blue Dog.

Some Good News

Representative Gabrielle Giffords is recovering remarkably quickly from her head wound:

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has recovered enough from a bullet to the brain to ask for toast with breakfast.

Few details are available, but Pia Carusone, Giffords' chief of staff, confirmed that the congresswoman made the verbal request on Monday when hospital workers at TIRR Memorial Hermann brought her a meal.

"Yes, that's accurate," Carusone said in an e-mail.

This is really remarkable progress.

AOL Buys HuffPo

For $315 million dollars.

I think that this explains why they have been moving to a paid writing staff lately.

Many of the celebrities who have contributed non-remunerated articles to the Huffington Post may be less inclined to do so now that it is part of the AOL empire, if just because the whole "cool factor" is much diminished. (See the term "AOLamer")

Ms. Huffington will stay in charge of her web site, as well as taking over supervision AOL's media operations, things like Techcrunch and its hyper-local news operations.

I think that this will turn out better than the AOL/Times Warner merger, but that's a very low bar.

Kucinich (D-OH) Demands to Visit Private Bradley Manning

Good for him. He is is clearly using his position as a Representative to shine light on what is clearly an attempt to torture the alleged Wikileaks source into fingering Julian Assange:

Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a visit with an Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks.

Kucinich, a Democrat who is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter Friday to Gates asking for a visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning is being held in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

Kucinich says he is concerned about reports of Manning's treatment while in custody. Manning's lawyer has filed a complaint with the Quantico commander about the conditions Manning is being held under.

I'm not a particularly big fan of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, but he's right here.

The worst thing about this is that it is only his name on this letter.

Where are the other 434 people who have sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" in Congress?

WooHoo!!!! Verizon Has CurrentTV on Their Non Premium Channels

Channel 192 in Baltimore County.

Olbermann will be moving there sometime in the spring:

Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC anchor, will host a prime time program for Current TV, the low-rated cable channel co-founded by Al Gore. The one-hour program will begin sometime in the spring.

Mr. Olbermann will also become the chief news officer for Current, the company said in a news release Tuesday.

“We are delighted to provide Keith with the independent platform and freedom that Current can, and does uniquely offer,” Mr. Gore said in a statement.

It appears that Olbermann will be getting an equity state in the network, which is probably most of his remuneration, it currently only draws about 60,000 viewers nationwide, and would therefore be very hard pressed to pay him a salary commensurate with his media profile.

He will also become "Chief News Officer," whatever that means.

I kind of hope that it's not what is normally called a "News Director," as my sense is that this would not be a good use of his skills. A news director at a cable network is someone who has to manage ……… People like Keith.

Keith is any number of things, but a calming influence he is not.

More Revolving Door Cronyism at the Obama Administration

Robert Fisk of The Independent explains why Frank Wisner, Obama's envoy to Cairo, told reporters that it was important for Mubarak to remain in power for some time, which surprised the reporters as well as the White House, which said that Mr. Wisner was speaking solely on his own behalf.

That's not really true though. He was speaking on behalf of his employer, the law firm of Patton Boggs, which happens to represents Hosni Mubarak in the United States:

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a "personal capacity". But there is nothing "personal" about Mr Wisner's connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises "the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US". Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner's current employers?

The only explanation I can see is that rather than "changing the culture of Washington," it has been subsumed by it.

The Bush and His Evil Minions^™ took incompetent self-dealing to new heights, but this appears to be yet ANOTHER area, like torture, illegal wiretaps, etc. where the Obama administration is determined to ape his ape-like predecessor.

This is What You Get When You Fist F%$# a Cobra …

Click for full size

---

Complete PWN463!

I while back, I mentioned 4Chan, I should add the inventive group of people known as Anonymous who ofttimes frequent 4Chan:

Anonymous, the online collective that launched DDoS attacks on Visa, PayPal and others in support of whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, has brought down the web site of a firm helping the FBI to unmask its members.

Security services firm HBGary Federal had been helping the Feds to track down the individuals behind a number of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on companies including Amazon, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Swiss bank PostFinance and Bank of America, after the firms suspended services to WikiLeaks.

In a sophisticated attack, Anonymous members hacked into HBGary's website and posted an image containing a message explaining their actions. In addition, they downloaded over 60,000 messages from the company's email servers and posted them on The Pirate Bay.

The Twitter account of HBGary's CEO, Aaron Barr, was also compromised and used to tweet a number of offensive messages, as well as his home address, social security number and mobile phone number.

(Link to torrent mine, and I make no claims as to the safety or veracity of the data.  I have not downloaded the data myself)

Yeah, and it has also been reported that they deleted HBGary's backups.

Not only did they pick a fight with Anonymous, but it also appears that they are complete posers as well, who were leaching publicly available names from Facebook and IRC, and trying to sell this to the FBI.

Well, not any more, because, according to the letter that was the HBGary home page (above) they sent the data to the FBI themselves.

What a bunch of complete wankers, Aaron Barr and company that is, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Anonymous.

And so Anonymous is added to my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, and HBGary is added to the likes or Razorfish, to my list of people who I would never trust with anything more complex than a mechanical pencil.

Received Via Email

Dear Egyptian rioters, please don't damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild. Thank you.

--The Jews

I'm not sure if I should be offended or amused.

The Ever Present Football Play Rapist…

Was the quarterback of the team that lost the Superbowl today.

That is all.

How Obama Loses to Sarah Palin in 2012

If there was a Republican who was unelectable in 1967, it was Richard "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" Nixon.

Following his surprise loss to Pat Brown in 1962, he signed off with a level of nastiness that seemed to be the final nail in his political career.

But 2 years later, he was president of the United States.

He was President because Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his Vice President, and designated heir, Hubert Humphrey, were unable to recognize reality with regard to the Vietnam war, at least publicly, because they felt the need to appear hawkish to take away the perennial Republican talking point that Democrats were "soft" on defense.

Well, we are seeing it yet again with Obama, who is poised to let Afghanistan define his presidency.

It's actually worse than Vietnam, because Afghanistan has never been a viable nation state, but rather is a void on the map where neither the Russians nor the British were able to maintain power in their "Great Game" for that part of the world, and we are in there supporting one side.

Additionally, we have the fact that, as mind boggling as it sounds, the regime that we are supporting is even more corrupt and ineffective than any that we ever supported in South Vietnam, and that we also have religious overtones in this conflict that were largely lacking in the 'Nam.

And now we have one of Obama's biggest supporters in the Senate, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is saying that we need to get out now:

One of the Obama administration's key allies in Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), is breaking with the president on Afghanistan and saying the strategy in the war needs to be revised. The development, coming from someone who was once a strong backer of Obama's decision to increase troops in Afghanistan, could deal a significant blow to support for the administration.

"What I don't want is to be party to a policy that continues simply because it is there and in place," said Kerry in an interview with the Boston Globe about his evolving views on the war. "That would be like Vietnam. And that is what I am determined to try to prevent."

Kerry, according to the Globe, is calling for "a more limited focus and fewer American troops than the 155,000 that are in place now." In the coming months, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be holding a series of oversight hearings on the Obama administration's strategy.

Kerry is a creature of the Senate, and so is mild in his disapprobation of the current policy, particularly since he shares a political party with Obama, but this is very clear. He is saying that we need to get the hell out now.

He's right too.  Afghanistan is not called the "Graveyard of Empires" for nothing.

I do not expect that Obama will take this advice to heart though:  He is too concerned with political calculation, where he thinks that being hawkish will take away a Republican talking point (sound familiar?), and is simply unwilling to override the desires of careerist generals in the Pentagon, for whom the war is a path to advancement.

Not Enough Bullets

Here is a guy who is worth more than the GDP of something like 80% of the countries in the world, and he's bitching because people are not as nice to him as he would like:

What's eating Jamie Dimon?

At last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive once again lambasted the media and politicians for portraying all bankers as greedy evil-doers.

It was at least the 12th time since the start of the financial crisis that Dimon has complained about Wall Street critics painting all bankers as cut from the same cloth. But the timing of his latest outburst seemed odd.

In December, as part of President Barack Obama's bid to make nice with U.S. business leaders, Dimon was invited to a private Oval Office one-on-one with the president to discuss the economy. Dimon and his wife Judy were also guests at the state dinner the White House arranged for Chinese President Hu Jintao last month. And one of Dimon's top executives, Bill Daley, was tapped by the president as chief of staff.

BTW, the reason that the media portrays, "all bankers as greedy evil-doers," and critics of our banking system paint, "all bankers as cut from the same cloth," is because it's true.

You are all a bunch of contemptible greed-heads, Mr. "We started shorting Bernie Madoff because we knew he was a fraud, but didn't bother telling anyone."

This is why we need to prosecute every one of these rat-bastards to the fullest extent allowed by law.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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

12. American Trust Bank, Roswell, GA
13. North Georgia Bank, Watkinsville, GA
14. Community First Bank Chicago, Chicago, IL

Full FDIC list

As you can see below, the 2011 and the 2010 lines have finally crossed.  I don't expect 2011 to b e good, but I expect it to be better than 2010.

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:

Still Deep Cleaning My Daughter's Laptop…

The outward effects appear to have gone, but I am running multiple pieces of software at it, just to be sure.

"See" you tomorrow.

Scientists National Enquirer Reporters Discover a Mythical Creature

The creature in question is a straight Republican, one John Boehner, who seems to spend a lot of his time f%$#ing staffers and lobbyists, as well as f%$#ing the country:

New Speaker of the House JOHN BOEHNER is embroiled in a bombshell sex scandal - involving at least two different women, The ENQUIRER has learned!

Capitol Hill insiders and political bloggers have been buzzing about an upcoming New York Times probe - detailing an alleged affair that the 61-year-old married father of two had with pretty Washington lobbyist LISBETH LYONS.

And an ENQUIRER investigation has uncovered a bedroom encounter that Boehner - second in line of succession to the presidency - allegedly had with LEIGH LaMORA, a 46-year-old former press secretary to ex-Colorado Congressman JOEL HEFLEY.

The Ohio native, a congressman for 20 years, and his wife Deborah, 62, have been married for 37 years.

It should be noted that Ms. Lyons has lobbied for industries that have shipped jobs from Boehner's own district overseas.

So while he was f%$#ing her, he was also f%$#ing his constituents.

I know what you are saying, but the Enquirer nailed John Edwards about his nailing Rielle Hunter, so they do have some cred on this, particularly since people have alluded to Boehner's wandering ………… Eye ………<sup>*

*</sup>I bet that you thought that I was going to use a crude term for a body part that is pronounced the way his name is spelled. While the thought did cross my mind, so the the phrase, "fish in a barrel." It would be like Dick Cheney when he shoots a bunch of birds (or a lawyer) released right in front of him.

No Posting Tonight

I'm not sick or anything, it's just that I am up to my elbows in removing a Trojan^* from my daughter's computer, for the 2^nd time in a week.

I do not know what she is accessing, but I am looking up her browser history, and trying to find a possible source, in addition to running multiple virus/spyware scans.

The joys of children are without number.

^*The computer infection, not the condom.  If it were as condom in her computer, my head would have exploded.

Mubarak Announces Retirement at End of Term

The protestors want him to leave both his office, and the country, immediately:

Egyptians wholeheartedly rejected President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement Tuesday evening that he will not run for reelection in September, continuing to demand that he step down immediately.

A roar of anger went up from the thousands of people in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square even before the president had finished his address, offering an immediate answer to an unprecedented offer from an autocrat who has ruled for almost 30 years with few concession to the people. They shook their shoes at a large screen where the president's image was broadcast, screaming “Get out! Get out!”

“I was angry, but now I am enraged,” said Abdullah Rawaq, shouting to be heard amid a crowd chanting: “He must go! We will not go!

Somehow, I do not think that it is likely that Mubarak will get either his 8 months or his wish to stay in Egypt.

A bit of doggerel about this follows the break, apologies to Theodore Geisel and Art Buchwald.

Good for Joe Biden

It seems that the vice President thinks that the parodies of him from The Onion are a hoot:

A mock photo of Vice President Joe Biden washing a Trans-Am shirtless. Strange? Distasteful? Crossing the line?

Not so, Biden says.

"I think it's hilarious," Biden told Yahoo! in a wide-ranging interview Thursday.

Satirical publication The Onion has repeatedly made the Vice President a target for particularly randy news stories and online cartoon spoofs -- and the jokes have been a viral sensation.

Good for him.

What Digby Calls, "Another Isolated Incident"

Nothing to see here, move along:

Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn.

Dearborn police allegedly found Stockham inside his vehicle outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80s in his trunk and other explosives, the Detroit News reported.

If you read the rest of the article, it's pretty clear that this guy is a head case, but even a head case has his actions shaped to a degree by external influences.

Bitch

Evan Bayh, after saying that he would not run for reelection, because it's all gotten too partisan, has joined a K-Street lobbying firm.

Just so you know, he didn't leave because he did not like the partisan atmosphere, it's because he wanted to be President, and realized that the whole party saw him as a smarmy corporatist opportunist.

Well, at least I'm not disappointed by this.

Reagan Appointed Judge Rules Entire Healthcare Law Unconstitutional

It was such a good idea for some moron to leave out a severability clause from the bill, huh?

A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.

But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.

“The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.

The judge declined to immediately enjoin, or suspend, the law pending appeals, a process that could last two years. But he wrote that the federal government should adhere to his declaratory judgment as the functional equivalent of an injunction. That left confusion about how the ruling might be interpreted in the 26 states that are parties to the legal challenge.

And here is the money quote, which has since been removed from the online article:

The Florida plaintiffs ensured they would draw a Republican-appointed judge by filing the lawsuit in Pensacola.

I believe that the operative phrase here is, "Forum shopping for an activist judge."

It's all going to be down to Anthony Kennedy, because the other 4 reactionaries on the court are hyper-politicized assholes who have already made their mind based on partisan considerations.

And in the Annals of Hypocrisy…

We have Ayn "Atlas Shrugged" Rand, who took medicare to pay for her lung cancer surgeries, and Congressman Paul "We will transform our social safety net into a hammock" Ryan, who freely collected social security benefits after his father died.

I don't generally begrudge people accessing social programs, but when you call people who need them "moochers" and the like, you are a hypocrite and a wanker.

Because We Want to Be Just Like Hosni Mubarak's Egypt

Susan Collins and Joseph "The Human Stain" Lieberman, want there to be kill switch for the Internet in the United States that can be invoked at will without judicial review:

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"We're not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone," said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee.

…………

The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government's designation of vital Internet or other computer systems "shall not be subject to judicial review." Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include "provider of information technology," and a third authorized the submission of "classified" reports on security vulnerabilities.

The idea of creating what some critics have called an Internet "kill switch" that the president could flip in an emergency is not exactly new.

Just imagine Dick Cheney's finger on the button.

"Not subject to judicial review," that's a wet dream for the former VP.

Well, This Explains a Lot About Fox

So Bush Invaded Egypt?

Seriously, for how many Millenia has there been a "gift of the Nile" known as Egypt?

I'm beginning to think that their graphics people have just stopped trying, because why bother on a fake news network?

H/t Hedgehog on the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Egypt Is Heading ……… Somewhere

The protests have gotten big enough that the professional, and pampered, state security forces, have run out of resources, and the military has been sent in, but the military is taking a remarkably hands off stance regarding the protesters.

What is going on is that the police, and other civilian state security forces are volunteer, and favored by the current regime, and are invested in it, while the military is largely conscript, all Egyptian males serve, and so they aren't invested in their position in the current regime.

It's a pretty good reason to support a return to the draft in the good old USA, if you ask me.

In any case, the opposition has started to become more organized, and has decided on Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei will head whatever negotiations with the Mubarak government.

Note that this has occurred despite the fact that the regime managed to almost completely shut off Internet access for the country, or maybe it was because the Egyptians are upset about being unable to watch Justin Beiber videos on Youtube, but somehow I think that the Egyptians taking to the street are a bit less shallow than that.

I Just Saw Fight Club For the First Time

The performance and direction were all good, but I do not understand why it is so much of a cult classic.

I felt compelled to watch it because I come across people making movie references on a regular basis.

Big Surprise, the New Black Panther "Voter Intimidation" Was a Manufactured News Event

Listen to GOP Lawyers Manipulating the Video at the Time

What a surprise. One of the things that had the right wing echo chamber, and George W. Bush's corrupted Civil Rights Commission, the allegation that the New Black Panthers were somehow a part of of a Democratic voter intimidation scheme (in the blackest part of Philadelphia?).

Well it's all a fraud, and it has been literally since day 1:

In the extended version of the footage, posted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights this month, a police officer tells Morse to back off. That's when the commotion begins.

The video shows someone off-screen to Morse's left, telling the officer "I got him, I got him." A man who appears to be Chris Hill, a Republican poll watcher who was accused of intimidating voters at the polls by another woman at the location, says "Put it down. You've got enough."

Then Bartle Bull chimes in. "Don't you threaten him with your hands. You're threatening him. Don't you use your hands!"

………

The video shows that the white Republican poll watchers who showed up to the majority African-American precinct knew exactly what kind of media sensation they had on their hands.

"We're on the same team," says another Republican poll watcher off screen.

"You're f%$#ing up the story. Don't f%$# up the story," one unidentified poll watcher tells Morse.

"You guys are lawyers, I'm a videographer," Morse says.

Morse told TPM in an e-mail that he doesn't think it was Hill who was intimidating him, but says someone was.

"A couple of guys wearing SUITS were were actually intimidating ME at this point," Morse told TPM in an e-mail. "It was certainly not Mr. Hill who told me to put the camera down. It was one or two GOP lawyers, whose names I never got and I never saw again."

"I remember a crowd of maybe 10 lawyers (or seemingly lawyers, suits I should say, since Bull isn't a lawyer) standing around -- in the original (more famous) video -- one lawyer makes it into one of the shots, but im pretty sure it was another guy -- not the bald guy in the shot -- who was being a dick to me," Morse told TPM in an e-mail. "At least one person was being a dick, and I was quite angry at this point when they were telling me to shut the camera -- hence the expletive (which i make no apologies for using!)."

(%$# mine)

They didn't just edit the tape, they manipulated the taping on site at time.

The 'Phant lawyers were attempting to edit the event in real time. 

It makes reality difficult to determine, but I always fall back on what work when the USSR was at its zenith: If they accuse you of some sort of skulduggery, it is safe to assume that this is what they are doing themselves.

How Politics Are Supposed to Work

Here's something that I didn't know, that Palm Springs, California, is the gayest city per capita in the United States.

So, when the homophobic police chief and DA decided to run entrap run a sting operation to harass gays, they both get forced out:

The June 2009 gay sex sting netted 19 public indecent exposure arrests, and disbelief and outrage have festered in this desert haven ever since.

This is Palm Springs, "the gayest city in America," a gay tourist destination governed by an openly gay mayor and home to the sexually charged White Party, a dance and music festival that attracts tens of thousands of gay men every year.

………

The controversy reached a boil last June with the revelation that an officer involved in the sting was taped uttering a gay slur. It grew venomous in December when Police Chief David Dominguez, who had disciplined the officer, acknowledged that he too had made an "inappropriate comment" — also caught on tape.

………

It wasn't enough. Dominguez abruptly announced his retirement last week.

………

Former Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco's hard-line prosecution of the Warm Sands cases, which have yet to go to trial, rallied many in the Palm Springs gay community to pour money into his challenger's campaign in the June election. Pacheco lost to Superior Court Judge Paul Zellerbach by 8,400 votes.

"I was told that on election night he was cursing my name," [counsel of many of defendants, Robert] Tansey said.

It should noted that the police and DA claimed that there were extensive complaints, but they have been unable or unwilling to turn over that information to defense attorneys.

Palm Springs has been in decline for decades, with its recent status as a gay vacation destination being the only thing that is not turning it into Inland Empire, but the police, and the Republican (I Wikied it) DA decided that it was time for some gay bashing, and they discovered that the LGBT community has learned to vote.

A Belated Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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

8. The First State Bank, Camargo, OK
9. Evergreen State Bank, Stoughton, WI
10. FirsTier Bank, Lousiville, CO
11. First Community Bank, Taos, NM

Full FDIC List.

As you can see, after a slow start, things seem to be ramping up, and, allowing for the fact that the first Friday of last year was January 1, when they would not be closing banks, the new year looks a lot like the old year.

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:

Comments are Synchronized Again

No comments were harmed in the making of this blog.

Who Knew that Bollywood Could Be So Cool?

I don't know if there is spontaneous singing in the movie, but there are not in this clip:

The 3rd Quarter GDP Numbers are In

Real GDP grew at a 3.2% annual rate in the last 3 months of 2010, which is good news, but still in the "way too damn slow" category, for, as Paul Krugman notes, we are about 7% below trend, which is a 2% growth rate, so this puts on a pace to be back on trend at the end of 2018.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) Report is Out

The FCIC ain't the Pecora Commission, it lacked the authority, budget, and time to do so, so it is at best a half measure, but it is better than I had anticipated.

I am rather surprised that the they did not fall back on the "Hoocoodanode" explanation in the majority report, and actually assigned blame.

They actually assigned blame, with much of that going to Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan and "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke.

The commission also cites compromised federal regulators, particularly the OCC and the OTS, who went out of their way to hamstring state regulators who were far more aware, and more proactive, as well as the SEC's unwillingness to regulate.

I am unsurprised that they determined that Timothy Geithner's tenure as President of the New York Fed, "missed signs of trouble at Citigroup and Lehman," though I am pleased that they stated so explicitly, and it is nice that they called out Larry Summers for his dogged attempts to completely deregulate derivatives.

The ratings agencies get a mention as "cogs in the wheel of financial destruction," but it seems to soft pedal the degree that these folks were both corrupt, incompetent, and essential to both the financial system and the meltdown.

Some of the insiders have leaked that they think that all the reports ignore the fact that the system failed, and instead focus on fitting the events into the philosophical worldview, and I tend to agree:  This is much less of a description of the forest than it is of the trees.

One big surprise is the fact that the FCIC has referred some of its information to the DoJ because it believes that laws have been violated:

The claim of allegedly widespread securities law violations is among the more explosive findings in a sweeping report released Thursday by the Congressionally-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Those details help explain why the panel opted to refer several financial industry figures to state or federal law enforcement agencies for potential prosecution, as The Huffington Post reported Monday.

I don't expect any action from Barack Obama or Eric "Place" Holder on this, after all, when it comes to law breaking by powerful elites, they want to "look forward", rule of law be damned.

As to surprising revelations, the fact that they caught Goldman Sachs in a $2.9 billion lie regarding the Vampire Squid's claim that they got no money for their own investments from the AIG bailout is surprising.

Not the Goldman lying part, that's pretty normal, but the fact that they caught Goldman and then released it, is a surprise for me.

On the depressing side, it appears that the FCIC's pledge to release all the raw documents is not as sweeping as they are claiming:

The FCIC's commissioners, for their part, believe that they've done their best to be transparent. But Phil Angelides, the FCIC's chairman, told Mother Jones in a Thursday conference call that the commission simply couldn't release everything. "In the course of doing this kind of inquiry, you look at many documents that are completely irrelevant," Angelides says. In addition, he says, "there are trade secret laws, other laws, federal law that controls the ability of the commission to release documents... It wouldn't be responsible to do a document dump of documents that weren't relevant to the crisis."

Angelides promised that the "predisposition of the commissioners" would be to have a "fairly short period" before the National Archives and Records Administration releases the FCIC documents that won't be released immediately. In the conference call, Angelides and fellow commissioner Brooksley Born refused to quantify what percentage of the commission's documents will be released at what times, but Born claimed that the commissioners "erred on the side of openness."

Even so, the National Chamber of Commerce is the absurd claim that any release of documents is a job-killing action akin to Wikileaks document dumps:

"The commission's final report and its pledge to post raw materials -- apparently including information obtained from companies as well as other government agencies -- is an astounding abuse of process that would effectively create a government-sanctioned Wikileaks," said Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform.

Considering the fact that these documents will reveal things like the big Wall Street firms knowing selling "a sack of s%$#" to investors, I tend to think that a full and complete release is a good thing, because the tighter the regulations, the more confidence that investors have, and so the more willing that they are to invest.

As to the slightly less absurd, there are the two minority reports from the Republicans.

The first, issued by 3 of the 4 Republicans on the committee, seems to primarily blame, "failures, near-failures, and restructurings of 10 firms triggered a global financial panic," which is kind of silly, because panic is what happens when you realize that your 401K is all smoke and mirrors, because the banksters have been lying to you.

It's really pretty similar to what the majority report says, only they say that it cannot be regulation, because the crisis was worldwide, ignoring the fact that the US and UK have been leading a regulatory race to the bottom for the past 30 years.

The remaining dissent, by Peter J. Wallison, who is co director of the American Enterprise Institute's financial markets deregulation project, basically says that it was attempts by the government to make sure that banks did not discriminate against minorities, or, to put it more bluntly, he said, "this is what happens when you lend money to n*****s."

If You Are Going to Throw a Superbowl Party…

You have to beat this:



The folks at Epic Meal Time beat the "deep fried cheese steak, wrapped in bacon" from the seminal cartoon Megas XLR.

Reality trumps cartoons, this is wicked cool.

In any case, you have just over a week to come up with something even more (dare I say it?) epic for your Superbowl party.

Get to work, and post it on Youtube,  and send me the link.

The Orioles Should Call This Guy Today

Obviously, throwing a needle through plate glass is different from pitching, but considering their performance the past few years, the Orioles should try anything that might work.

He can play, or he can coach, and teach how to wind up and pitch properly, but even as a Red Sox fan, I find the Orioles to be almost unbearably pathetic.

Hire him:

Yes, What is Going On in Egypt is a Big Deal

Received via email

This could just kind of fizzle out, like 1848 did in Europe, but this is a rather graphic illustration of the breadth and scope of the protests.

Note that there are a number of factors that make this much more significant than Tunisia:

• Unlike Tunisia, the population is almost exclusively, and strongly Arab (Tunisia has significant Berber influences).
• Egypt has the largest population of any Arab nation in the world, having almost 30% of the world's Arab population.
• It has been a center of Arab nationalism and Islamic thought for hundreds of years.

Even in the best case, I don't imagine that this will result  in the spontaneous creation of a modern democracy with civil rights, but I do think that any changes would be an improvement over the current corrupt and brutal status quo.

Difference Between an Obama and Romney Presidency

Brad Delong says not much really, Obamacare is Romneycare, Obama's financial reform, except perhaps for Elizabeth Warren, would be what Romney had to do, Bernanke would be reappointed, he would have proposed, and lost on, cap and trade.

The big difference would be DADT and Gabby Giffords being shot.

I agree.

So much for the audacity of hope.

Illinois Supreme Court Puts Rahm Emanuel on the Ballot

Which makes him the front runner.

I'm still rooting for anyone but Rahm, but the real question is whether there will be a runoff.