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I’ll tell you, there’s less going on than on Christmas week! Nothing really worth a full post comes to mind, so let’s pack up for the day:
• If the health care law gets overturned, some states may implement insurance exchanges anyway. I doubt that any of the states suing over the law will, however, and the part that helps people afford insurance is not the exchanges by themselves (which are just comparison-shopping websites), but the subsidies.
• Polish leaders have begun to tell the truth about the secret CIA prisons in their country.
• The President waded into the health care Supreme Court controversy by cautioning against “judicial activism.” I don’t see that as such a good tactical move.
• Obama will give an address on the Paul Ryan budget tomorrow, which I think is a better move with a better story to tell.
• Americans over age 60 still owe over $36 billion on student loans, a harrowing and depressing statistic that will only get worse, as loan balances have exploded in recent years.
• Maybe it’s faint praise, but there’s no question that the US has managed its recovery better than the Eurozone, which is setting new records for futility in economic policy making.
• Attorneys General may bask in the limelight over the health care proceedings, but I have two words for any of them with aspirations for higher office: foreclosure fraud. That settlement, and the observable ramifications over the next few years, will make it very difficult for any of them to obtain higher office.
• I have a real bad feeling about this run up of home purchases on the cheap by investors. Check back on this in two years for all the scandals of absentee landlords and pervasive bad behavior. It’s not possible, however, to have a worse feeling about that than about AIG returning to the mortgage market.
• When we’re cheerful about a prediction of the third-worst year for housing sales since 1963, and the fourth-worst for new home starts since 1959, we should probably keep the whole thing in a bit more perspective.
• So much for that prediction of uncontrollable violence if the US military left Iraq.
• Somewhere down the line, and perhaps soon, a candidate will have to make a big bet on digital advertising and basically give up on TV ads. The DVR is killing ad strategies.
• Bill Clinton is correct that we should rethink things like the Stand Your Ground law, but that would require an end to the complete timidity of the Democratic Party on gun issues.
• As if we needed other deadlines, by May 15 Congress must come up with some postal service reforms to avert mass closures of post offices. My plan for a public option for simple banking remains on the shelf, Congress!
• What is with the federal raids on medical marijuana facilities?
• Innocent men on Death Row and the state of Texas just go together.
• This is a little old, but Thomas Frank is brilliant on the consistent upward mobility of our wrong-about-everything media stars.
• Among other disputes, Keith Olbermann was mad at Current because the drivers at the car services he used would dare to talk to him. I’d love to hear his explanation for that. I should add that Current doesn’t come off looking great in these emails either, and it matches the fly-by-night quality of the network, which has been confirmed to me by current and former employees.
• I have a feeling that Occupy.com will borrow heavily from the sites already producing great content on the Occupy movement, including this one.
• I thought this Sarah Palin guest-hosting spot on the Today Show was an April Fool’s Day joke when it was announced yesterday, and after seeing it confirmed I STILL think it’s a joke.
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The Thomas Frank piece is a genuine gem, DDay. I hope that others might click the link and take an invigorating stroll down Memory Lane …
Why, this might have even been “useful” at Sunday evening’s Book Salon.
DW
Not just media stars – this is a nation of compradors.
Agreed, even though inexplicably there is no mention of Andrew Sullivan, the World’s Best Blogger™.
Yet, you must admit that “the mainstream Wall Street, academic economists” are just so very USEFUL.
No?
I suspeculate that many, here at FDL, are becoming familiar with the way in which you use and wield THAT term, Ludwig. It IS most appropriate when understood, in the context in which you use it … (and, also, historically) … it is, precisely, what Frank describes as the shilling behavior of the pundits and the professors … and all of the several “professions” in between.
DW
Oh, joy.
US draws up plans for nuclear drones
Technology is designed to increase flying time ‘from days to months’, along with power available for weapons systems
LINK.
Ah, transparency. Seems like promises were made about that during the last presidential election campaign. Hmmm.
Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street’s Secrets? – William D. Cohan
LINK.
insane.
this should cheer you up
So far this year, over three thousand dolphins have been found dead in various parts of the coast of Lambayeque, Peru21 reported.
Heinz Plengue, a representative at the Chaparrí Ecological Reserve, said 481 dolphins had been found on the beaches in the last few days alone.
Carlos Yaipen Llanos, science director at ORCA, said the deaths were the result of a “marine bubble,” an acoustic pocket that forms as a result of using equipment to explore for petroleum below the seabed.
how many dolphins and so on have been killed by off shore wind turbines? any guesses?
http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-1868-Over-3-thousand-dead-dolphins-found-on-beaches-in-northern-Peru/
As an extra special bonus,
if one gets shot down, or otherwise crashes,
it becomes an instant dirty bomb.
Your tax dollars at work.
The law and order crowd has taken over the Democratic Party. The Republicans write the laws and the Democrats order their members to follow them. If they regain power by winning the House in 2012 will anyone notice? The Senate? The Presidency? You’d have better luck hearing a beebee rolling around in a boxcar than that happening.
Over at FDL Movie Night the discussion of the documentary Heist has brought up the issue of time horizons and who has very long ones. When that issue is folded into such matters as mass foreclosure purchases, all sorts of further disquieting thoughts are likely to ensue, as possibilities that had seemed ridiculous suddenly make a kind of sense.
The lure of flipping houses is you don’t have to own them for very long. Owning tens of thousands of homes and renting them out would be a huge logistical task, and certainly wouldn’t deliver the profit margins flippers are accustomed to. I’ll be interested to see how this idea plays out.
US, Mexico leaders trade barbs on drug violence
“The explosion of drug-fueled violence along Mexico’s border with the United States could harm relations between the two nations, President Barack Obama said Monday; Mexico’s leader retorted that much of the problem of drugs and guns begins on the U.S. side of the line.
. . .
“They were cordial and complimentary to one another, but did not hide the degree of worry on both sides about a six-year spasm of violence that has killed more than 47,000 people.”
. . .
“Calderon made a government crackdown on warring drug cartels the hallmark of his six-year term, which expires later this year. His center-right party has seen its election chances fall in the face of a wide perception in Mexico that the crackdown has not worked.”
LINK.
Correction? My calculation, based on the cited WaPo article, says that Americans over 60 would owe “only” 4B$ on their student loans, not 65B$. Whew!
It is a concerted propaganda effort by Team Obama. Just look at the Greg Sargent, WHite House Water Boy extraordinaire, who has assembled a greatests hits of Obot “Opinion Leaders”:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Not a shred of self-respect amongst the group.
Once we admit that we live in The United Scams of America it all makes perfect sense.
Rightly so because the oversight apparatus just isn’t there, a lot of those houses are going to be shoddily refurbished.
On the other hand, smaller investors such as myself have been able to buy a house or two and rent them out to people who really need them; I don’t make any money but I’m able to help out some friends who are enduring hard times.
Yep busy punching hippies
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/federal-raid-oaksterdam-oakland-marijuana
While this was going on not far away.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/02/BABJ1NTM3Q.DTL&tsp=1
Taxes dollars at work.
Drove by secret U.S. site with my distant relative (call him cousin) when we visited about a decade ago (2000). Cousin said: Soviets moved out, U.S. moved in. Didn’t find out it was a secret rendition/torture site until 2007.
Drum, Benen, Sargent — say, didn’t these guys get the Iraq War completely wrong too? No wonder they’ve failed upward. Like Yglesias, and Klein, and — oh pretty much everyone in DC.
Sucking up to corrupt power usually pays well. And the whores who do it are responsible for the consequences whether they like it or not. No excuses. No quarter. No slack.
With Obama set to run against the Court and Congress, it reminds me of the movie title, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World.
Obama vs everybody else. Couple that with still running against ghosts of the past and it looks pretty pathetic.
Good piece by Frank Rich. Confirms my belief the U.S. at every level has been so corrupted by money that it is incapable of meaningful reform. Nothing less than a revolution can right the wrongs of the last 50 years.
“Jonathan Cohn says a decision against Obamacare, particularly the preexisting conditions provision, could galvanize opinion if it’s seen as part of a pattern that includes Bush v. Gore and Citizens United”
It’s complete and total dishonesty by Obama’s minions. It was the Obama administration themselves who said to remove the pre-existing conditions if the mandate is found unconstitutional. SCOTUS had to find someone outside the Obama admin to say that the pre-existing conditions provision could stay. I really hate all this 1984 revisionism – articles citing Fried while criticizing the broccoli comparison (Fried said mandating both gym memberships and vegetable purchases was Constitutional), articles pretending that the Obama administration themselves didn’t just try to kill pre-existing conditions provision at SCOTUS, etc.
It seems stupid for Obama to attack the institution of the Supreme Court itself since being able to put more justices on the court would be an appeal to voting for Obama. Obama is undermining the legitimacy of both his current picks to SCOTUS as well as any future picks he’d have in a second term. Then again Obama has been doing some blatantly bad attacks on SCOTUS, like Mr Constitutional Scholar never heard of Marbury v Madison.
“Bill Clinton is correct that we should rethink things like the Stand Your Ground law…”
I’ll start caring about what Clinton has to say when he apologizes to the nation for NAFTA, financial dereguletion, etc….
Well, though, that’s the point, isn’t it? They are never held responsible. This kind of behavior won’t stop until the risks are properly balanced against the rewards.
Will their be a drinking game involving the words bipartisan and compromise?
:)))))))))))))))
He will – and has – and did – say the problem is Social Security/Medicare/ and Medicaid – and the need for a minor tax increase on the rich – saying not a word about military/intel spending.
The list of ways Obama differs from the GOP is becoming very short.