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I think I’m done for the day. More exciting blog fights tomorrow!
• Maybe a partial deal on the Catfood Commission II to wipe out some of the trigger is expected in Washington, but I’m still going with no agreement. It’s been where the smart money is for the last year.
• Matt Taibbi says Occupy Wall Street is a transpartisan movement. Maybe for now, but somehow the tribal tendency will get involved. It did begin as a transnational movement, says Mother Jones. And it has the kind of decentralized structure where ideas can zip 3,000 miles from a blog into the center of Times Square in a matter of hours.
• Nick Kristof calls OWS America’s primal scream. And what we have learned is that primal screams come at a pitch too high for the Wall Street Journal to hear. Despite the silence from that New York-area paper, New York City approves of OWS.
• The CLASS Act’s demise could strengthen the case for the individual mandate, according to Jon Cohn, because it shows that a voluntary program on long-term care insurance wasn’t actuarially sound. That does little for the crisis in long-term care, of course. And if the Prevention Fund is next, that would be a true disaster.
• It’s worth putting the demands of Wall Street financiers on their legislators to “protect” them in some context, but given the destructive capacity of Wall Street, it’s a little like saying Illinois’ Senators should have protected the likes of Al Capone in the 1920s, especially if he paid his proper rate of tax.
• A great piece on what right-wing government is doing in the Midwest, from Mac McClelland.
• Now a House Republican chairman is directing his staff to look into fraud from mortgage bankers. Of course, this has to do with defrauded veterans, the main bright line the banks aren’t allowed to cross without a political reaction.
• Bernie Sanders wants you to boycott the big banks.
• A deep-dive from Michael Hastings into the Administration’s thinking on Libya, one whole humanitarian intervention ago.
• Paul Krugman nailed it, film at 11.
• We may get some kind of compromise to save the postal service, but that doesn’t mean it will be at all optimal for postal carriers or customers.
• Those state’s rights types should welcome the innovative laboratories of democracy in the states tinkering with the health care law. They should want to accelerate the waiver process that would facilitate it.
• Koch Brothers cat’s paw Herman Cain is still in very good position to win the GOP nomination. Imagine there’s no pizza.
• Jim DeMint either will or will not endorse Mitt Romney. That is all.
• Wow, Kinde Durkee got DiFi for $4.7 million, and other California legislators for hundreds of thousands more. Total malpractice by virtually everyone in the California Democratic establishment that this went on for this long.
• Corporate boards of directors pretty much go along with the CEO almost all of the time. I don’t know that you needed a study to figure that out, but now you have one.
• The US may have to pull out of UNESCO thanks to a couple bad laws from Congress and Palestine’s looming inclusion into the world body.
• Interesting that, just after the new trade deals are passed by Congress, the Gap and Banana Republic pick Panama and Colombia for expansion of their stores.
• Only cutting five cabinet-level departments? Ron Paul’s going soft in his old age.
• Great analysis of the end of the Iraq war from Juan Cole. John McCain is angry again about all of this, of course, and for no good reason.
• Prepare for a civil war in Syria, according to one UN official. Meanwhile, the Arab League did not suspend Syria, which was the first step to intervention in Libya.
• Just 13 working days until Thanksgiving for the House of Representatives. Good work if you can fundraise from millionaires to get it!
• The banks are doing fine, or at least a few of them are, if you account for phony accounting. Wait until BofA’s earnings report.
• BP settles with one of its contractors on the Deepwater Horizon well, getting $4 billion out of them.
• Research in Motion offers Blackberry apps for free to those affected by last week’s outages. That’ll do it! Incidentally, my Blackberry never had a problem.
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DAS involved in paramilitary training, attacks on public figures: Semana
“Colombian weekly Semana began publishing evidence Sunday of criminal activities by members of the country’s already severely disgraced intelligence agency DAS, whose almost entire intelligence database was leaked to media and drug trafficking organizations.
“In the first of a series of articles, Semana revealed how DAS agents were involved in the training of paramilitary forces and murder attempts on now-Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras and emerald miner Victor Carranza.
“The DAS is weeks from being dismantled following scandals revealing that the state agency was involved in the murder of unionists and politicians, had been infiltrated by the paramilitary organization AUC, illegally wiretapped Supreme Court judges and opponents of the administration of former President Alvaro Uribe and was involved in drug trafficking.”
LINK.
FBI’s DNA database upgrade plans come under fire
“A major upgrade of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) DNA database system has come under fire from members of the forensic science community.”
More here.
Morales has really stepped in it.
Bolivians rebuke Morales in judicial ballot
LINK.
“Total malpractice by virtually everyone in the California Democratic establishment”; so what’s news about that? /s
FWIW:
LINK
Re: “The CLASS Act’s demise could strengthen the case for the individual mandate. . .”
Which case?
Will that be a continuation of the feckless case boosters and opponents have bandied about ad nauseum since ’09? Or will it be the real case SCOTUS will decide next year? There is a distinction.
There is a God!
Thnx, ubetchaiam. That’s a disturbing report all right. I noticed that “illicit trafficking” is high on the list of causes:
“There is general agreement about the most important causes accounting for the rise of violent behaviour. These include globalization, the rise of illicit trafficking networks, the deep scars left by inequality and relative deprivation, and finally, democratization processes that have prioritized elections and institution-building over the social foundations for democracy.”
Someday, somebody is gonna follow the money on that issue and, if they make it through the process, the results will be most interesting.
this is fun
embarrasing. morans.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/10/17/2011-10-17_cache_of_weapons_stolen_from_lapd_swat_team_training_site_its_embarrassing_deput.html#ixzz1b5JbUpPw
this is (I think) one of the ways of paying politicians, and others for services rendered ; directorship appointments.
I have an idea that huge fees for speeches is another.
dismantled like the school of the Americas.
another reliable trade partner
what happened to this?
Nice NYT editorial:
Elizabeth Warren’s Appeal
“Ms. Warren talks about the nation’s growing income inequality in a way that channels the force of the Occupy Wall Street movement but makes it palatable and understandable to a far wider swath of voters. She is provocative and assertive in her critique of corporate power and the well-paid lobbyists who protect it in Washington, and eloquent in her defense of an eroding middle class.
“It is an informed and measured populism, and it helps explain why she immediately became the leading Democratic contender in the race to challenge Senator Scott Brown, the Republican who is up for re-election next year.”
More here.
Judge Orders Review of Ruling on Polar Bears
State workers decry imported labor for $15 million project benefiting HCMC
“HCMC, one of Minnesota’s leading publicly operated medical centers, in alliance with Illinois-based Medline, maker and distributor of more than 125,000 health-care products, is behind the current construction of a $15 million distribution center in Rogers by a California company using labor from outside of Minnesota.
“Members of the Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council will rally Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. at the 350,000-square-foot construction site at 13115 Brockton Lane N., Rogers. Their message: Minnesota projects need Minnesota workers.
‘“If we don’t look out for each other, nobody will,” said Dan McConnell, business manager for the council, a labor union coalition representing 17,000 members and challenging the choice of California-based Panattoni Construction for the building’s construction.’
More.
Yes, NYC seems to love the OWS. A city that went for Obama in 2008:
Brooklyn 79/20
Manhattan 85/14
Bronx 88/11
As long as the OWS stays relatively localized around Zucotti Park everything will be fine but if it strays and starts messing with shopping, traffic, and commutes, it will be a different story.
Who’s going to find this hard to believe?
Officials complicit in massive land theft: Colombian govt
“The Agriculture Ministry, as well as the Institute for Rural Development (Incoder), the institute in charge of land restitution for Colombia’s displaced, and the Superintendency of the Notary and Registry found 1,600 irregularities in the acquisition of land in the northern Montes de Maria.
“According to the investigation, officials from Incoder, the Notary and the Registry, as well as the mayors of the region were all complicit in the violation of protection standards of land for forced displacement, the failure to ban the sale of land subject to land reform, and frauds in the transfer process of property belonging to the National Land Fund.”
More.
Just what we don’t need: Steven Seagal helping to hunt down illegal immigrants.
McClelland’s personal portraits of Ohio’s class war victims is journalism at its best.
Great roundup as always.
More on Warren: Elizabeth Warren’s Jobs Plan: War with Iran
My bold.
Glaser on new O warz in Africa. Apparently there are only 200 LRA left, but O in announcement mentioned that four countries would be involved in the war: Uganda, S. Sudan, Central African Republic, Congo.
Pretty soon the whole world will be a battlefield.
Was called gunboat diplomacy back in the day.
I have a funny feeling our 100 “advisors” might be drone recon teams and the surrounding countries involved may just be selling air-space.
Thank you for that link, eCAHN.
DW
An endless war MUST have an “everywhere” battlefield, tjbs.
Consider that the gummint (and the “interests” it serves) sees “enemies” everywhere … the world is full of them, even Elizabeth Warren thinks so, and she is only hoping to become a Senator …
And then, consider how threatened the White Shirts are showing that they believe the “heartland” of the “Homeland” is … by “the people” of this nation, itself.
“Enemies” within and without …
DW
It’s not called the Global War on Terrorism for no reason. Only Q is how soon O can get combat troops into all 192 countries.
You hit the nail on the head.
JSOC according to the link.
Not sure what terrain is, i.e. jungle (I think it might be) or more open. In former drones or air strikes don’t work so well. Think VN.
I misread your comment. I interpreted O’s announcement as sending U.S. ground troops to all 4 countries, prolly bc air doesn’t work so well in that terrain.
Now if you divide 100 troops by 4 countries, ahem. Strikes me there just aren’t “enough.”
“Troops” are most certainly not the only American contingent. How many CIA will be there? Contractors? The JSOC guys are usually target identifiers.
I just love the way that Shalit is the only person involved in prisoner swap. Palestinians nowhere in sight on media bc they are unpersons.
That’s a secrud. You surely don’t expect O to tell us that. Suspect there have been plenty of CIA, contractors there for a long time, and bc that’s worked out so well, U.S. now has to send in uniformed troops.
The “terrain” will become a quagmire … and those who say “humanitarian” virtues are worth pursuing will all deny any responsibility for what goes on … and on … and on.
But yes, if my poor memory serves and the link you provided is correct, then the “terrain” is more jungle-like than not, and therefore, not “friendly” to the extensive use of drones … feet on the ground, slogging through a terrain with which they are not familiar, hunting a quarry that looks just like all of the local populations …
Well, I guess, some of this is familiar “territory” … after … all.
Fun daze ahead, eCAHN … soon we will have to out-source more than conscience, reason, and sanity …
However, as we will not have much humanity left, one imagines it can be contracted out on the “cheap”.
DW
Now it could be called The Third-World war
BTW, one of the U.S. objectives in central Africa is to hassle the Chinese who have been running circles around U.S. in resource development there.
But but but, DW, how could we be so quick to condemn what U.S. is doing.
Idiots.
Inscrutable!!!
;~DW
The Everywhere War!!!
Hoo Hah!!
Who is counting, mike?
As long as the money rolls in?
No body counts!!!
Nobody!!
DW
Realpolitik!!!
Ain’t it grand?
DW
Let me quibble for a minute.
Can it be called Third World war if it’s just the U.S. empire throwing shitty little countries against the wall to see if they can be broken up & chaos created? Doesn’t Third World War require more gravitas, like have more big countries fighting each other?
Is anybody else having a “deja vu” moment? I get this way anytime I hear the word “advisors”.
Do they have any “gulfs” down there? ‘Cuz the word “Tonkin” keeps popping into my head too.
Roland was a warrior, from the land of the midnight sun…
It all depends on how you define “troops”.
We may have some “non-troops”, some “almost troops”, how about “non-kinetic military personnel”. Oh, and I almost forgot…….”observers”.
OT–I may have missed this, yet wondering what are the plans for OWS on election day? Are many going now at different times to do early voting? Will many leave at once for a while on election day leaving OWS fewer numbers and vulnerable to android white shirts? Election day may be a day OWS needs more support. Androids may tell them to move for the election process.
The cost of college has been rising faster than health care. This increase in cost has translated into the increased prices charged to students. So far the only “solution” from Reps and Dems is deeper indebtedness for for students. That indebtedness cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
There needs to be an effort made to reduce the cost of college. Things like a reduction in the number of administrators, more on-line classes, and the like need to be explored.
CORRECTION: Anadarko was not a contractor to BP. The were a minority partner in the field although BP had operational control.