Wikileaks Striking Again?

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks to publish leaked details of 'a big US bank'

Judges Not Even Looking at Foreclosure Cases

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell

LOL

Priceless

Comcast to put Tolls on Netflix

I don't much care for Comcast, but don't have the joy to be a customer. But if we don't get Net Neutrality, we'll putting up with this shit for a long time (til there's a revolt like we got in the phone biz in the 80s). Look at your home phone bill or your mobile bill and ask yourself if you want that kind of nickel and dime shit on a wide variety of the sites you visit.

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I just love the title of this DailyKos post

Daily Kos: Conservative war on twentieth century continues apace

Repugs Block Unemployment Extension

Fuck them all, and the tax cuts they all worship. Unemployment payments are about the most stimulative expenditure the govt makes (food stamps are the most) and tax cuts are the least (see GAO and CBO for data) The Republicans drove us into this ditch and wont get us out by balancing the fucking budget, no matter what their little ignorant pea-brains think.

Scary New Repugs

A couple are well known (Tim Griffin, Allen West), the rest are unknown (at least to me!) They all are scary.

Federal Wage Freeze (How'd that work out the last time?)

This may be the dumbest idea in two years of dumb ideas. One, it is anti-stimulative in an economy that needs more stim not less. Two, it will move the deficit meter about and angstrom closer to balanced, but won't have any real effect at all (except on the government employees it screws.) I guess it was the one of the... few things Obama could just 'do' so he did it, whether it was effective or not; had to get into the optics game, I guess. Where's John Edwards when we need him?

See also Jed @ dKos

Christie is a Moron and a Blowhard

APNewsBreak: NJ must pay $271M for killing tunnel | AP | 11/29/2010

Holder Announces Criminal Investigation of Wall Street

I know it won't amount to much of anything (how can you seriously investigate your 'employers'?), but it's a good sign, on a symbolic level, if nothing else.

Oy! Once more, the Mormon strain goes viral in the body politic.

Meet Our Newest Theocrat: Christian Fundamentalist Senator Mike Lee Goes to Washington

Wikileaks

A variety of links to various impressions on the WikiLeaks dump. The one that strikes me as the most interesting is the near unanimity of Middle East countries that wanted or urged the US to do 'something' about Iran. Wow.

Try not to strangle anything after reading this

The war in Afghanistan enters Joseph Heller territory

Rule #1

Don't get Krugman riled up. Paul Ryan is an idiot, but you knew that already :)

Brilliant!

London defense specialist takes on over-reaction and our current approach to the WoT. Key bit:

The world may be chaotic. But we are part of that chaos. Except in atypical circumstances, the military is not a surgical tool of political engineering, but a bludgeon wielded by specialists in violence. We therefore don't have the power to alter the political condition of others at our own timetable.
If we want to contain own worst enemy, it is time to look in the mirror.

Wish I'd had this for yesterday

Crazy Time!

Matt Taibbi does what he does best- provoke interesting thoughts. Gergen and Hart? Not so much.

US in Afghanistan longer than Soviets

War in Afghanistan destroyed the Soviet Empire and nearly did in the British Empire (we'll leave out the Roman and Persian Empires....) Let's not let it do the same to the American Republic.

Take THAT, Tony Perkins

FRC is now officially a hate group.

Scowcroft Mystified

Well, frustrated is more like. He seems to nail the reason for Repug intransigence pretty well:

"It's not clear to me what it is," said Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush who noted that this START treaty is not very different from previous ones negotiated and ratified under Republican presidents. "I've got to think that it's the increasingly partisan nature and the desire for the president not to have a foreign policy victory."

Sums it up. Fuck the country or, in this case, the world, we want Obama to fail.

Krugman on Instability

For economics geeks, or for people who want to know what went wrong, and more importantly, why. I think his mini-takedown of Krugman at the end is spot on.

Is it Allowed or Not?

TSA's own guidelines allow photographs to be taken

How do they get away with preventing it if it IS allowed? Yeah, yeah, rhetorical question :)

Myopia

Republicans lack vision, per Bob Herbert. Best line:

As Herbert points out, Kennedy aimed for the moon, while Chris Christie is trying to kill a railroad tunnel under the Hudson River. Modern Republicans have myopia, not vision.

Everyone, Repeat After Me.....

...the Catfood Commission sucks!

Onion Scoops Fox Noise

When are they going to make Faux News take the word 'news' out of their name?

Blue Bloods vs White Trash!

Mama Grizzly ain't feelin' the luv.

Steele Out?

AP is reporting the RNC wants to can lil Mikey Steele. Gee, why? He 'led' them to a sweeping victory. You'd think they'd want to keep him. Lord knows, the Dems surely do :)



Love his book at 23 cents.

Dan Savage Speaks.... You Listen! :)

Dan goes off on haters and on (his host) CNN

Alternative View on the Deficit 'Problem'

.. and why it really isn't an issue at all. Clues- we have amongst the lowest rates of taxing and spending of the OECD countries, so there's some room to expand both without worries of our turning into an economc success like oh say Germany :)

The Aggro of Living on the Wrong Side of the Pond

Season of 15 of Top Gear (UK) premiered this week, in tandem with the premiere of the US version (ehh...)

The problem with the US version is the HEART of the UK version. There's just no chemistry between the guys here, whereas the UK crew has the feel of guys that have known each other since public school (private school, for us Americans.) Hopefully, that will improve as time goes by; I'm sure the UK crew came together over time.

The strength of the US version is that it seems to have lifted the TG videographic scheme intact. In a word, brilliant. Some of the best camera/editing work in tv, bar none.

Season 13 is the latest season available on CD. Not as great as season 12, but good, still.

GOP moderates concerned about party's anti-science extremism

Ya think?

Will Democrats heed Krugman's dire warning?

Key graf:

Democrats have suffered for ignoring Krugman these past years. So have the nation and the world. When someone is so consistently accurate, perhaps it's time for people to start listening to him.

This is where you find professional security personnel?!?!?

On Pizza Boxes? At least the CIA is running ads on cable tv! :)

Amen

From the New Yorker:

10 Things You Can Do to Starve the Wall St. Beast and Grab Yourself a Piece of the Pie

Alternet continues to fight.

Packer on Shrub

As an ex-political science major, one of my 'heroes' was George Packer. In the recent New Yorker, he takes Shrub's new (non-coloring) book apart.

In Bush's telling, the non-decision decision is a constant feature of his Presidential policymaking. ...

Here is another feature of the non-decision: once his own belief became known to him, Bush immediately caricatured opposing views and impugned the motives of those who held them. If there was an honest and legitimate argument on the other side, then the President would have to defend his non-decision, taking it out of the redoubt of personal belief and into the messy empirical realm of contingency and uncertainty.

h/t to TPM for the link

ALTERNATE READING for people who don't want their brains to bleed:

Speaking of turkeys......

The foreclosure crisis merges with financial meltdown and who's the one party missing from the talks? It ain't the banks, that's for sure.

All HAMP-ed Up

The basic premise of HAMP was fucked from the start. If you give the banks the option of doing the right thing or maximizing their profit, they will screw their customers EVERY time. Hang somebody... starting with the Reichpublicans and Blue Dogs who watered all the financial legislation down or skewed it to favor the banks and Wall Street! I'll climb down off my soapbox now :)

Elizabeth Warren instrumental in notarization bill veto

I don't think it will happen, but I wish we got to keep her as head of the financial oversight regulators.

“...(W)e’re going to have to deal with it as adults.”

I love the implication that Speaker Boehner thinks the Teapartistas are children. We may be in for hell the next two years, but the optics will be amusing :)

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving Memories

From the Mama Grizzly to you:

Another reason not to elect Repugs.

The history they know is all wrong :)

But how will we know how afraid to be?

Doing away with the Color Codes?!?!?

On a related note, check out the great Lewis Black on the same subject. And get a damned helmet!!!

I love John's conclusion :)

The Revenge of the Palin... Sarah responds to Barbara Bush

Obama 1, Bush -millions

The stimulus generated a lot of jobs in Q3

Cash wouldnt have anything to do with how our security is arranged. Would it?

Cenk Uygur on MSNBC

Ralph Nader is still alive?

Ralph pens a 'letter' from W to Obama. Hilarity ensues.... really :)

Good read, but don't have any weapons within reach while you read. Someone could die :)

Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners

Damned German Socialists!

How dare they have an economy, with unions and healthcare, that works! Don't they know that's the wrong answer!!!!

Why does no one ever mention jailtime for the banksters?

Emptywheel takes on the bank fraud/foreclosure mess.

Salon ranks the ten hackiest pundits.

I might ague the order, but not the list :) At the bottom, click through to number two, etc.

I might have mentioned this before but I like to gloat ;)

Record Profits

Eviscerating the Catfood Commission

Scrolll down the linked article and join in on National Call Congress Day

Magic 8 Ball says the answer is: Most likely

START Treaty: Will GOP ignore the military, the experts, and national security?

Blind leading (well, auditing) the blind?

If I read the numbers right, MPR-Humphrey was closer than Gallup.... shouldn't Frank be having them audit him???

Cooley Concedes

Cooley isnt the worst of the Repugs, but his personality is just goonish.

‎"But the race is telling for one other reason: it starkly demonstrates
the unpopularity of the Republican Party in California. Steve Cooley
won election as the District Attorney in Los Angeles County twice--by
very comfortable margins. But in his race against Kamala Harris, he lost Los Angeles County by over 14 points....

The difference? His two election victories were nonpartisan races with no party affiliation displayed on the ballot. But in his race against Kamala, the word "Republican" sunk him like an anchor."

An Elected Official?!?!

This what you get when you elect Repugs! :)

I Didn't Know Car and Driver Did Smackdowns

Priceless! Take that, Rush!

Who says justice is blind? :)

Tom Delay goes down. Sentence TBD

Robert Scheer is Always Worth Reading

If you don't read the whole thing, read the last paragraph, and tell me how he's wrong.

Reichpublicans loves them some Constitution....

except for all the parts they hate

Nice to See Obama is SOOO Bad for Bidness

Corporate profits hit Record in 3rd Quarter

BACK

I've been very remiss (ya think?) about the blog, but I'll try to do better in the future