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Is Chris Christie in the race yet? Sarah Palin? Hugh Hewitt? That 13 year-old kid from CPAC? Conservatives need a hero!
• David Axelrod admitted that the President has been “too eager” to reach a compromise with Republicans who want to see his demise. Ya think? Being the most reasonable guy in the room didn’t work, something even David Plouffe is starting to understand.
• Brad Johnson reports that the State Department hearings on the Keystone XL pipeline were run by a contractor for the pipeline company, TransCanada.
• A pretty good rundown of the Senate picture for 2012. Democrats are probably losing at least two seats (Nebraska and North Dakota), and will need pickups in Nevada and Massachusetts, with holds in places like Michigan, Montana, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin, to hold onto the Senate. Five of the seven likely Democratic nominees in the races I just mentioned are women.
• We always knew that big banks would try to make up for lost swipe fee money by adding on fees on routine bank services. That’s why moving your money is so attractive. See Bank Simple.
• Zach Carter has another trade story, this time about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the attempt by the White House (according to Carter, Bill Daley) to create a NAFTA for Asia.
• While Eric Cantor was demanding offsets for disaster relief funding and threatening to shut down the government, he was jawboning FEMA on the status of… disaster relief funding for his district.
• A poll in Pennsylvania shows that residents want to keep their electoral system the way it is. I personally don’t, but I think the whole country has to move together to abolish the Electoral College, rather than a distorting piecemeal approach.
• Syrian protesters could move toward a violent armed uprising after months of largely peaceful protest and repression, according to US Ambassador Robert Ford.
• Matt Yglesias has a Europe crisis FAQ. Quibbles: he calls it a debt crisis when it’s a banking crisis, and he blames government spending for Greece’s troubles, when the main problem in Greece is that nobody pays their taxes.
• The Super Committee had a six-hour closed-door meeting in the Capitol yesterday.
• John Judis on the Palestinian statehood bid and the US reversal from past practice on Arab self-determination.
• The Federal Reserve continues to fail at both of their core missions, on price stability and maximum employment. This has been a pattern of consistent failure for several years.
• Incredible story of a State Department employee investigated for simply linking to a Wikileaks document on his personal blog.
• Romney jumps in front in Florida, which will now be a key GOP state. I wonder if, after he secures the nomination, he’ll revert back to his support of fiscal and monetary stimulus, or if he’ll go with the same warmed-over stew of corporate tax cuts and deregulation. My money’s on the latter.
• Al Qaeda to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: stop being such a truther, you’re ruining our cred.
• The UN reports a 39% jump in attacks in Afghanistan this year. Winning!
• A deal has been reached to move 10 of the 27 pending judicial nominees in the Senate. Not good enough, but something.
• A judge struck down some of the Alabama immigration law, but upheld other portions, particularly a measure requiring public schools to keep a running tally of the immigration status of their students.
• Millions of Americans are doubling up households rather than forming their own, which is crushing housing demand. This is a much bigger deal than the minor improvement in economic statistics today.
• Grover Norquist penned a letter to Warren Buffett with an addressed envelope for him to send additional tax money to the US Treasury. This would be a better country if we could just decide our tax rate for ourselves, right?
• The Government Accountability Board in Wisconsin found wrongdoing by Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus in the state Supreme Court election in April, but said it did not effect the outcome.
• Good to see the White House keep moving on solar energy loan guarantees. That’s because it works.
• I’m torn. I want a Kindle Fire but I really can’t stand Amazon after the whole sales tax hubbub here in California. What to do?
• 17 1/2 years for one of the “Cash for Kids” judges in Pennsylvania who was getting paid to impose stiff sentences on juveniles.
• Google will pay you to put solar panels on your roof. Sort of.
• Turns out that Ali Abdullah Saleh pulled off the “I’m going to the airport for cigarettes” trick on the Saudis.
• So sad that Sly Stone is homeless on the streets of LA.
• Did the New York Times really publish this photo? It reminds me of Bugs Bunny dressing up as a buxom woman to distract his enemies, for some reason.
• Joe Biden figures the Red Sox have to make the playoffs, or he will be felled by an assassin’s bullet.
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About FDL News Desk
There’s video of Sly Stone at Coachella. It was a bad scene. Fortunately his bandmates are trying to help.
Somehow I hadn’t heard about Get Motivated! seminars until they started advertising here in L.A. Why are Laura Bush, Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani and other prominent Republicans involved with this consumer scam? Mind-boggling.
I’m too weary to comment, though so many are in order.
Pentagon launches slick war court web site
“The website went live on Wednesday with old documents in what one observer hailed as a new era of transparency.”
LINK.
Morales has really stepped in it with this. Damn.
Bolivia highway protests spread, paralysing La Paz
“Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Bolivia have brought traffic to a standstill in central La Paz.”
Is this about the Obama WH?
“The Government Accountability Project (GAP) today praised Tuesday’s White House release of the U.S. National Action Plan that emphasizes intensified support for protection of federal employee whistleblowers. The plan is part of a new global transparency initiative by the Obama administration.”
More here.
Diebold voting machines vulnerable to remote tampering via man-in-the-middle attack
“Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated an electronic “man in the middle” attack that allows remote tampering with the Diebold AccuVote voting system. Argonne’s Vulnerability Assessment Team has previously exposed the same sort of vulnerability in Sequoia AVC machines in 2009, and believe the attack could be used against a wide range of voting machines.
“The attack requires tampering with voting machine hardware, and allows for votes to be changed as the voter prepares to commit them. But the devices require no actual changes to the hardware—the hardware required to make the attacks can be attached and removed without leaving any evidence that it had ever been there. The electronics in the demonstrated attack are simply jacked in between two components on the Diebold’s printed circuit board using existing connectors.”
LINK.
In what seems an elaborate understatement by the NYT,
Jeebus.
Heh.
ILWU Sues Longview City and Police For Excessive Force
“They have sued the sheriff of Cowlitz County, the City of Longview police chief, Cowlitz County and the City of Longview, for their roles in beating and assaulting union members’ and their families as they protest the terminal owner’s use of nonunion labor, in violation of previous agreements with the port.
“According to ITFGlobal.org, longshore workers and their supporters can no longer move freely in their own town without fear of being ambushed in front of children and families by an out-of-control police chief and sheriff.
“Earlier this month, police attacked nonviolent demonstrators with batons and pepper spray, including women and children. During this same demonstration, police carried rifles loaded with rubber bullets and authorities threatened to call in the military to suppress the protests. On September 8, they dumped 10,000 tons of grain from the trains.ILWU President Bob McEllrath was arrested during these demonstrations and only released after 500 pissed off union members surrounded the police.”
More here.
“Brad Johnson reports that the State Department hearings on the Keystone XL pipeline were run by a contractor for the pipeline company, TransCanada.”
This simply takes the outsourcing of gubmint to its logical extreme. Or–yeah–one more step to go. . . Will be real good when the Pres, Congress, and military are all run by corporations. Whoops, they already are.
On second thought, the PATINA of separation between all these entities is what’s most useful.
Non-dogmatic Marxists like to point out that there are lots of conflicts between ruling class interests. These days, courtesy of people like the Koch Bros., they’re doing a nice job of coordinating.
There Get Motivated! circus was in Michigan last month. I believe that Lou Holtz and Bill Cosby were on the list of speakers.
In her book Bright-Sided, Barbara Ehrenreich mentioned what the scam is: the organizers rent space to other hawkers of motivational products who, in turn, hawk them to audience members drawn in by the celebrity speakers and cheap tickets to get in.
I hold both motivational speakers and multi-level marketing in very low regard.
His wiki, just in case you suffer from a terminal case of nostalgia.
Ah the NYT photo reminds me of this. Wackiki Wabbit.
from the “Plouffe” link by Dave, a Washington Post article:
It’s interesting isn’t it?
Once you wake up, you don’t have to look very hard to see the inner workings of the system. They are very confident of their control.
Syrian “mob” (sic) pelts U.S. ambassador. Gee, you’d think the U.S. wasn’t uniquely chosen by god to bring democracy to every corner of the globe.
Ya gotta admit, the dude’s smart. He figured this out all by himself. That’s some staggering brilliance, right there…
Any idea what these assholes discussed?
Really good round-up, DDay.
Why is anyone printing Mark Penn’s advice about winning elections? That’s like printing former Detroit Lions president Matt Millen’s advice on building a successful NFL franchise.
The little shit knows not what he’s doing…
Someone needs to slap the snot out of that little prick…
The little shit knows exactly what he’s doing. ‘Jewish Christian’ hits all the right notes for his audience.
Wait until he discovers girls.
Why is Florida usually ignored when talking about the 2012 Senate races? Nelson (who really isn’t much of a Senator) is polling ahead right now but the majority of the state went red in 2010.
As Gomer Pyle would say “surprissse, surprissse”
Or as Claude Rain would say ” I’m shocked “
Pilots Question United Continental Merger Issues in Wall Street Protest
“More than 700 Continental and United Continental pilots took to Wall Street on Tuesday to protest slow contract negotiations and misinformation regarding merger integration.”
More here.
Why not Corporations are people too, though they haven’t been executed like human regularly are.
The rot went up and consumed a majority of our once vaunted Supreme Court .
“Will be real good when the Pres, Congress, and military are all run by corporations.”
Why not Corporations are people too, though they haven’t been executed like human regularly are.
The rot went up and consumed a majority of our once vaunted Supreme Court .
I like the Kindle too but I bummed about the way Amazon treats their warehouse workers. Ugh!!!