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I hope that tomorrow, I won’t still be writing January on my roundups!
• So Mitt will win Florida tonight. After that, Newt can certainly stay involved in the race, though I don’t know that Sheldon Adelson’s ATM machine will be able to be tapped as much. Gingrich’s continued attacks on Mitt Romney, however, will help Democrats in the general election.
• The Republican bill to modify the DREAM Act so it only benefits those undocumented youth who pursue military service is a particularly sneaky bit of genius. I don’t think it will stop the DREAMers from pursuing accountability, however.
• So much for those celebrated Taliban peace talks: the prisoner swap seen as central to a deal has faltered, while Hamid Karzai fears getting get out of the solution, and therefore wants his own talks.
• Yes, a lot of the inequality in the country comes on a pre-tax basis. But there are ways to deal with that as well, particularly in the corporate governance arena.
• Abigail Field does a deep dive on the Masto letter on the foreclosure fraud settlement. Incidentally, the “insignificant” robo-signing we’d be releasing from liability in a settlement represents the smoking-gun evidence of financial fraud that so many elites want to convince people doesn’t exist. The judicial system is trying real hard to deep-six this evidence, but the foreclosure defense community won’t stop throwing this in the faces of the elites, even with a settlement.
• Eric Schneiderman gets a warning on needing to show results from a Newsday editorial. Meanwhile, Treasury is busy chasing bogus Pro Publica stories.
• Sherrod Brown wants the STOCK Act to go much further, basically forcing all individual stock accounts from members of Congress into blind trusts. That’s the right way to tackle this problem.
• The US does not have nearly the natural gas supply that proponents claim.
• How about if Russia stops defending Syria because they purchase their arms, we stop selling secret arms to Bahrain, another repressive Arab government in the region?
• The fallout from the Haditha massacre, and the light sentence for the perpetrators, continues.
• Surely all of the things we’ve heard about Mitt Romney and Bain Capital will quietly get swept away as the US looks to sell 200,000 foreclosed properties to private equity firms.
• Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is now in New York getting medical treatment.
• The money in the Walker recall in Wisconsin will be absolutely massive. The phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick” applies.
• US home prices were at a post-bubble low in November of 2011.
• You’d think it would be more of a big deal for the future of the F-35 fighter that it doesn’t actually work.
• The conservative New Hampshire legislature wants to repeal the gay marriage law in the state, but Governor John Lynch (D) has vowed to veto any changes.
• I love the idea of a legal challenge to TABOR in Colorado.
• Speaking of states with impossible tax situations, the state Controller in California says that the state will run out of money in March. So that’s $3 billion more of austerity.
• Dan Burton, who survived a large primary in 2010 with a whopping 30% of the vote, won’t try this time. With the whiffs of scandal about to erupt, Burton may soon get joined on the sidelines by Michael Grimm and Buck McKeon.
• Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that work within the system should be part of the strategy to bring down violent extremism.
• The Chevy Volt isn’t all that unsafe; this is more conservative noise machine business.
• How about eBay taking a stand in Utah against LGBT discrimination?
• Here’s a run-of-the-mill servicer fraud operation against a former Bank of America whistleblower.
• After that debacle of a vote count at the Iowa caucuses, the chairman of the state GOP had to resign.
• Actress Cynthia Nixon walked back her controversial comments about bisexuality being a choice.
• Surprise, there aren’t a bunch of dead voters casting ballots in South Carolina.
• Hopefully we’ll be lucky enough to get an anti-Muppet rebuttal from Fox News.
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Yes, that GOP version of DREAM is really weird.
A massive drawdown of personnel is coming in the military which will go on for a long time. In the meantime is the DOD to create slots out of thin air just to provide DREAM opportunities? It’s a dry well.
Bahrain “another oppressive Arab government”? You betcha. Look at this news release:
Bahrain police fire tear gas on hunger strikers: activist
LINK.
Wonder if the additional bad news about the CA budget will lead Jerry to more of this kind of action:
[Gov. Jerry] Brown ordered firing of regulator who took hard line on oil firms
“Although Brown has fought offshore drilling and sued oil companies throughout his career, making him a favorite of environmentalists, he now talks of tossing cumbersome regulations to revive the economy. The oil industry, in particular, employs tens of thousands of Californians, many of them in Kern County, where the jobless rate is 14.5%.
“The governor is also seeking support from corporate interests, which complain that California is over-regulated, for his proposed ballot initiative to raise taxes. This month, Occidental Petroleum Corp., the largest onshore crude producer in the continental U.S., gave $250,000 to the signature-gathering effort.”
LINK.
You, too, can learn how to look forward, not backward:
Please tell me your source for that story is really The Onion.
The Onion would be funny – this is just revolting.
What’s next, an honorary degree for FBI Director Robert Mueller? … Oh, never mind.
I tbink reasonable people can have a debate as to whether bisexuality is a choice. It depends what is meant by “choice.” While we don’t want to give ammunition to anti-gay bigots we also don’t want to get over-invested in labels.
This is awesome and very frightening. Monster graphics in here.
Well, well. What a surprise, reality has struck Gov. Moonbeam.
When someone gets into financial trouble, one sells what one can not what one can do without. For those in Palm Beach that means the only thing California has, that people are willing to pay for, is oil.
I’m thinking he’s looked at the North Dakota boom and got religion.
The appropriate strategy is for the Democrats to introduce a bill for this as a “down payment” on the DREAM Act and see how serious the current GOP Congress is about this ploy. Will the jellyfishes do it?
It does if in doing the math you count all of the square miles of geology marked “shale”.
What proponents don’t realize is that fossil fuels are like an inheritance. Once it’s spent, it’s gone. The US has already hit peak oil; the next benchmark is exhaustion of oil reserves — even expensive to mine and process tar sands. This from the folks who are all the time lecturing about personal responsibility.
And no matter how much natural gas the US has, once it’s burnt, it’s gone.
What would it matter one way or the other, choice or not? I never got why that made any difference. I mean, scientifically, it’s interesting, yes, but as a matter of public policy?
That place is becoming quite the gathering of eagles:
Daley
Paulson
And now Axelrod. In addition to such luminaries with standard faculty tenure as Sunstein, Goolsbee, etc.
Pure power play.
Edit: Oh, and if yo want to know whose power, you’ll find some good hints on campus, but not necessarily in the rosters.
I’d rather get into a discussion of the meaning of “walked back”. I don’t think she “walked back” anything. I think the people who were and are angry at her should get over themselves.
But then again I also think that any arms shipments to Bahrain that dday and the rest of us know about aren’t “secret”, either. They’re just disgusting.
During the Siddiqui proceedings it became apparent that there is what a federal judge in Foley Square believes are adequate medical facilities attached to Brooklyn MDC, for treating everything from critical gunshot wounds to the torso to trauma from torture. Perhaps Mr. Saleh should be availed of them. I’m just recommending them because they come with federally provided room accommodations and the best of security. And should the Yemeni People have a need, they include a district attorney fully equipped for putting people on trial for terrorizing civilians. Furthermore, there isn’t a need for messy hotel check-in, reservations, or even arrest warrants. The FBI can render you pretty much within hours of your last dose of Haldol.
That should become a post.
Thanks for the link.
DDay, I watched the Muppet news conference several times yesterday. Love it.
Not all people are the same. I know, too revolutionary for some. (eye roll)
Interesting article on Anonynous & Occupy.
Great Post DDAY – I do not know how you find the time to find all this stuff, but thanks for doing so.
As to “Sherrod Brown wants the STOCK Act to go much further, basically forcing all individual stock accounts from members of Congress into blind trusts. That’s the right way to tackle this problem.” – MITT in 94 commented on Ted Kennedy’s blind trust as a fiction as to its “blindness” saying Ted knew that he can give changing instructions to his trustee as to where to invest – just not specific stocks.
The rules have not changed since then to my knowledge – you still give the trustee instructions.
But then with a blind trust you can’t really accept IPO’s or run out of committee and short a stock before the market closes, either, so I guess a “blind trust” does serve a public good purpose.
My problem with the STOCK Act is not that it doesn’t cover legislators and staff strongly enough, it’s that it doesn’t cover everyone who has inside information. It doesn’t cover lobbyists, it doesn’t cover quasi-proto-semi-hemi-pseudo lobbyists like Newt or Mrs. Thomas. Plain and simple, if you are involved in a piece of legislation and you bet on an outcome that is not a surety to the public but is to you, you should have broken the law.
Thanks, Interesting read.
‘Gasland’ Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES)
” In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Republicans also denied the entrance of a credentialed ABC News news team that was attempting to film the event.”
LINK.
De nada, klynn. Yes, that was very interesting, wasn’t it–viewed by an anthropologist and connected to the thoughts of a Jesuit priest.