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Two more weeks of this no-Congress lack of activity. Then we get back to the important work of chronicles gridlock while the economy sputters.
• Good grief. Leon Panetta presumes to speak for the Iraqi leadership over extending the military presence, which an aide to Nouri al-Maliki sharply denies. Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr reiterates: if the US stays, it’s war. There’s just no reason for the extension…. also note how Panetta phrased this. “My view is that they finally did say yes.” Wait, I thought we were mere bystanders waiting to be asked a question!
• What a genius idea, more business tax cuts! Surely they will work just as well as the other 16 business tax cuts inked during this non-recovery recovery!
• Allen West, who thinks it’s professional to write “Nuts!” on Congressional stationery and mail it as an official response, thinks he’s a modern-day Harriet Tubman and that liberal African-Americans like Maxine Waters are plantation owners. It turns out that West’s brother, who is unemployed, took the Underground Railroad to Maxine and a Congressional Black Caucus job fair in Atlanta, at West’s request. West’s brother criticized the Congressman for being “unproductive.”
• Speaking of unproductive, there’s Tom Coburn on wanting to “pack heat” on the Senate floor, as well as accusing the President of wanting to “create dependency” and deciding that America was better off before Medicare, when people bargained for medical treatment with the promise of chickens.
• Long link-heavy article from Glenn Greenwald on the surveillance state and the Internet. Well worth the read.
• Jon Huntsman is positioning himself well to win the Green Party nomination for President. But I’m happy to have anyone put anti-science conservatives in their place. I feel bad for Texas children, too.
• Mortgage rates are at their lowest in 50 years. I think we’re nearing the point of mandatory refis of all Fannie and Freddie-owned mortgages as a stimulus measure. Then, that cleared, we move to principal.
• Could the post office make up for their shortfall by selling off some of their land?
• Related to Matt Taibbi’s article on the SEC, the National Archives and Records Administration has criticized the SEC for destroying their case files.
• I don’t know if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will crash, but there are a lot of reasons why it might at this point.
• FWIW, the Administration lays out its case on judicial nominations. I don’t see anywhere in there where it discusses unfilled vacancies and the time it’s taking for the White House to act.
• Eric Schneiderman strikes again, this time sending subpoenas to energy companies over gas wells in New York State, and their representations of their potential.
• Mitt Romney’s strategy isn’t to be outrageous or extreme, just to flat-out lie to people at town hall meetings. That’s the more moderate approach.
• Phone hacking comes to America.
• Man, I wish I was doing a documentary of the VP’s Asia tour. Incidentally, China allowed its currency to rise right when he showed up, so one stimulus idea is to just park Biden in China.
• Agreed with TNC – the right is so touchy about the culture wars these days, you’d almost think they lost them.
• One survey shows Republicans positioned to hold the House seat in Nevada, vacated by Dean Heller when he moved up to the Senate. PPP has a poll that will be revealed early next week.
• A wave of coal plant shutdowns? Sign me up! Now if we can only shut down the tar sands pipeline…
• Would have liked to have seen this Michelle Rhee/Diane Ravitch debate. Did Rhee get Rupert Murdoch to sponsor her trip out to Martha’s Vieyard for the debate?
• That hunger strike at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California has led to tangible improvements.
• Texas miracle! The unemployment rate is higher there than at any time since 1987.
• “Bank of America. We’ll help you out.”
• So far, no referendum has been filed for signature gathering in California to challenge Congressional maps, only the state Senate maps.
• This Anna Hazare protest in India is pretty amazing.
• Laurent Gbagbo has been charged in Ivory Coast.
• Oasis’ Liam Gallagher sues his brother so the press will write about it.
• Some of my writing from Wisconsin is part of this self-published book that’s available at the link.
• Best. Correction. Ever. (Corrects paragraph seven to say G.T.L. stands for “gym, tan laundry,” not “gym, tan lunch”)
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About FDL News Desk
About Iraq… No deal yet on US troops staying in Iraq: PM’s aide
The United States and Iraq have not yet agreed to a post-2011 American military training mission, an aide to the Iraqi premier said Friday, after the US defence chief said Baghdad had given the okay.
“We have not yet agreed on the issue of keeping training forces,” Ali Mussawi, media advisor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told AFP.
“The negotiations are ongoing, and these negotiations have not been finalised.”
The Kurds desperately want us to stay… No right to violence if gov’t approves U.S. extension – Kurdish Alliance
California’s unemployment rate was 12% in July, second only to Nevada’s. There’s a neat interactive gizmo link in the article which gives the unemployment rate by state. Interesting how the rate clusters by region.
• Some of my writing from Wisconsin is part of this self-published book
Congrats, Dday…! Quite the distinguished list…! *g*
contributors include Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Van Jones, John Nichols, Medea Benjamin, Mike Elk, Andy Kroll, David Weigel, Tony Schultz, Allison Kilkenny, Billy Wimsatt, Ian Murphy, Chris Bowers, Natasha Chart, Elizabeth DiNovella, Alexander Hanna, Wisconsin state Senator Kathleen Vinehout, and more.
Tis a shame your name wasn’t prominently featured…! You’ve certainly earned it…!
What? From The Telegraph:
US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024
America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose
*heh* Say it Ain’t so Holy Joe…! ;-)
Joe Lieberman Not Attending Glenn Beck Israel Rally…
In yet another example of pro-Israel bias in the U.S. media, news organizations yesterday universally printed the Israeli government story regarding this week’s attack in southern Israel, including the fact that Egyptian soldiers killed two militants. Only Reuters carried what turned out to be the accurate report that several Egyptian soldiers were killed by Israelis.
http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFL5E7JI47T20110818
In fact the U.S. media is still behind the curve because the al-Jazeera says the number of Egyptian troops killed has risen to seven. And of course no one talks about the fact that Egypt is not allowed to place troops in Sinai without Israeli permission–permission that was withheld until just last week.
and yet my name’s on the cover…
So, when the highway is jammed up and its taking 150 minute to get home, the solution is to add more cars to the road, because waiting 300 minutes to get home is better for everyone??
Other than spending a lot more money on investigations and then putting 50-100 more people in nominee limbo for a longer time of months or perhaps years so they with draw their name, why is the 20 too many Republicans in the Senate Obama’s fault?
If you want more positions filled on the Courts and in other offices where Senate approval is required, replace 20 to 30 Senate Republicans with Democrats is the best option. That will require two cycles, so start with making sure all open Senate seats are filled by Democrats in 2012.
“08.16.11: Rep. Maxine Waters on Criticizing Obama, Politics + the Black Community” (video):
Maxine: “When you let us know that it is time to let go, we’ll let go.”
Crowd: Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go!
Which is where it should be. Omitting it in that list you cited, was surely just an oversight due to all the hurly-burly as the publication date drew night.
Bernie Sanders has leaked 2008 oil trading data “that exposed the extensive positions speculators held in the run-up to record prices” that year. How interesting. ‘”The CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years,” he said. “This is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today.”‘
From the Department of Irony: Media face ‘blackout’ on any hacking trials
It’s funny to see Obama loyalists straining to defend Tom Coburn’s racist remarks. The reason of course is that Coburn is Obama’s “particular friend”.
How can you can be friends and brothers in Christ with someone who opposes almost everything you supposedly stand for? Unless politics is just a game to you and you don’t have any deep moral convictions.
“The CRS report also agrees with green groups that the benefits of these new rules shouldn’t be downplayed. Those can be tricky to quantify, however. In one example, the EPA estimates that an air-transport rule to clamp down on smog-causing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide would help prevent 21,000 cases of bronchitis and 23,000 heart attacks, and save 36,000 lives. That’s, at the high end, $290 billion in health benefits, compared with $2.8 billion per year in costs (according to the EPA) by 2014. “In most cases,” CRS concludes, “the benefits are larger.””
I’d bet that neither the EPA nor CRS analyze the health implications of higher energy costs, eg., people not being able to use their air conditioners.
Thanks for the Rhee/Ravitch link.
Ravitch:
“I have been seeing profound demoralization among teachers in America today,” Ravitch said. “It is almost hard to convey. Teachers feel they are being held accountable for social conditions beyond their control. We have to have an ethos in education of encouragement, support, at the same time encourage and respect teachers and stop beating up on them.”
She said the 2002 No Child Left Behind law has narrowed curriculum, placed undue pressure on educators and perverted the proper role of testing.
“We are now as a nation investing billions in testing,” Ravitch said. “If we took all the billions and put it into early childhood education, we would make a difference. We’re using testing as punishment, and [as a result] we’ve got cheating in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Atlanta. [Teachers are told] if you don’t meet an impossible goal, you’re going to be fired and your school is going to be closed. Punishing people, threatening people never works…What people need is an appeal to a sense of purpose, they need autonomy.”
Teachers feel they are being held accountable for social conditions beyond their control.
This goes back to The Coleman Report in 1966.
Considering that this was the case when the Democrats had 60 votes, yes.
We need more like this:
“A former senior analyst at Moody’s has gone public with his story of how one of the country’s most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.
“The analyst, William J. Harrington, worked for Moody’s for 11 years, from 1999 until his resignation last year.
“From 2006 to 2010, Harrington was a Senior Vice President in the derivative products group, which was responsible for producing many of the disastrous ratings Moody’s issued during the housing bubble.
“Harrington has made his story public in the form of a 78-page “comment” to the SEC’s proposed rules about rating agency reform, which he submitted to the agency on August 8th. The comment is a scathing indictment of Moody’s processes, conflicts of interests, and management, and it will likely make Harrington a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/moodys-analyst-conflicts-corruption-and-greed-2011-8#ixzz1Vab8hZE2
Annals of nuclear weirdness:
Everyone’s talking about a top secret project to make nuclear fuel much less expensively. This has had led to bizarre quotes like this:
So you have one of the largest military contractors talking publicly about a top secret project while the federal government denies it. Meanwhile Bradley Manning sits in Leavenworth…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/science/earth/21laser.html
Hope you’ve spread this around a bit, bmull. I guess it’s ok to talk about classified stuff, particularly to an establishment organ like the NYT, so long as you’re a member of the really small DC In-Crowd (Defense contractors).
Sounds like justice is coming to Jawja. Hope so.
“The FBI has assembled a new squad to investigate corruption among judges and legislators in Georgia, though the top federal agent in the state is being tightlipped about what cases are developing.
. . .
“”It impacts the everyday system. It’s not just a dirty law enforcement officer that might be shaking you down,” [Brian Lamkin, head of GA FBI] said. “You’re talking about people that you elect to an office to represent you who try to line their pockets.”
. . .
‘The move was welcomed by government officials, who believed state and local funding cuts over the last few years have eroded other investigations.
. . .
“And the Georgia Ethics Commission, which investigates finance complaints and registers lobbyists, has been rocked by deep funding cuts even as it takes on more duties. The commission’s director resigned after a dispute over the agency’s budget and the status of several cases involving Gov. Nathan Deal. And it went from fielding three investigators in 2008 to none now, said William Perry, the director of Common Cause Georgia.” [emphasis mine]