Jaws

Attacking Mitt Romney is like shooting caviar in a barrel. The Obama campaign TV ads chewing him up and spitting him out are a hoot to watch and satisfy our great national craving for plutocratic blood. But let's face it. Picking apart one little rotten fish larva out of the whole slimy pile is not enough, when there are schools and schools of sharks circling in churned-up waters, waiting their voracious turn in the continuing feeding frenzy on what's left of our democracy.


Just because President Obama is going full-bore Captain Ahab on Mitt the Minnow does not mean he intends to harpoon the Moby Dicks of free market global capitalism. To the contrary, he is their keeper and protector. Look no further than his Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, described as "NAFTA on steroids". Actually, you can't look further because the negotiations are being conducted in so much murky secrecy that even United States senators are not allowed access to the details.



Corporate Feeding Frenzy -- Exposed!


But thanks to the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group shining a light into the murky depths, we are learning anew that although President Obama is attacking the offshoring and outsourcing of the man who wants his job, he is not attacking offshoring and outsourcing in general. In fact, he is a champion of sending our jobs overseas. We already got a hint of that when he signed the South Korean trade deal last year. That measure is estimated to cost 159,000 American manufacturing jobs. And the Panama part of the deal actually makes it easier for tax evaders like Romney to hide their millions offshore. And the Colombia part of the package allows us to ignore the worst record of labor and human rights violations on the entire planet. In effect, Obama has helped destroy more American jobs than Romney ever imagined in his most vivid vulture capitalist dreams. As a matter of fact, Obama got so much criticism from his base over his capitulation to transational corporations that he signed the final bill in secret. Only a few applauding oligarchs attended the Oval Office ceremony, as this noir-ish AP photo of the event attests:



Barry and the Barracudas

Ironically, the Obama camp's Mitt attacks are having the unintended consequence of attracting a lot more needed attention to the latest ongoing trade negotiations. There were demonstrations at last week's round of private talks in San Diego, along with petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures and letters of protest from legislators and activist groups in all 50 states. According to Public Citizen's Lori Wallach,

U.S. negotiators have tried to keep TPP negotiations totally below the radar, but even so opposition to the current "NAFTA-on-steroids-with-Asia" approach is escalating, which is good news for the public but a serious complication for the Obama campaign’s attack on Romney as a U.S. job offshorer.... President Obama is facing a growing chorus of opposition to what his trade negotiators are up to on the TPP from his base and from other Democratic elected officials, and given that his campaign seems to be honing in on job offshoring as a winning theme, he needs to redirect his negotiators from their current TPP agenda of NAFTA-on-steroids with all of Asia.

The TPP is a lot more than the usual government give-away to the oligarchs. If passed, it will free the global banking Mafia from even the limited oversight they currently enjoy, severely limit access to medicines by the countries that need them the most, make it easier for unsafe products and chemicals to flood into the United States, and absolve multinationals from adhering to domestic environmental and health policies. Even the legal system will be subverted by star chambers run by corporate judges. According to Public Citizen, it's nothing but a global corporate coup, a power tool for the One Percent. (h/t Kat.)

You obviously won't be seeing any Rombama attack ads about TPP on your TV, from either side. That's because Mitt Romney wants this deal as much as Barack Obama does. It's one more indication of it not really mattering, in the long term, which one of these apparatchiks of the Duopoly wins the election. For another great overview of what TPP means for regular people, do read this Truthout piece by Brian Moench, titled "America the Beautiful: A Fire Sale for Corporations." If this doesn't send a chill right down your spine, nothing will. An excerpt:

TPP is much worse than NAFTA, which eviscerated middle-class jobs and wealth in the US. And this sellout to foreign corporations is not just a rogue brain cramp of President Obama. Mitt Romney demanded this agreement be signed months ago, and the notorious "climate change denying" US Chamber of Commerce can't get it signed fast enough. Romney has called Obama's the most hostile administration to business in recent history. If the TPP trade agreement is "hostile" to business, god help us if we have an administration, presumably Romney's, "friendly" to business.

If you thought that with Citizens United we had hit rock bottom in surrendering our democracy to the power of money, this TPP "trade agreement" would throw our democracy into free fall. Foreign corporations will be allowed to feast like termites upon America's natural resources, trash our environment and public health, violate our rights as American citizens and make us pay them if we try to protect ourselves.

With enough public outcry, maybe we can buy some time. Although TPP had been scheduled to go into effect this year, it looks like it might be delayed until 2013 because of... you guessed it... the feeding frenzy of the presidential campaign. Plus, the Japanese are not yet part of the talks, and the plutocrats want them to get on board the corporate gravy train too. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ever the mega-lobby of unfettered capitalism, is keeping its fingers crossed. The elites are couching their crime against humanity in spin designed to foment fear of Chinese competition, making it easier for the gullible hoi polloi to swallow their poisoned bait -- hook, line and sinker.

The Horse's Ass Race

Mitt can't keep his story straight, and Barry doesn't even have a story to tell. 

And both of them claim to really stink at juggling.

Romney went on a marathon of talk shows Friday to try to untangle his web of deceit, and succeeded only in continuing his exhausting tarantella, trapping himself even further in a snare of his own making. Nixon saved his vice presidential candidacy with his famous Checkers speech. Romney can't even fall back on a Seamus speech, because Seamus outsourced himself to Canada after his car-roof ride from hell. What would Mitt even say? That Ann confines herself to driving two plain Republican Cadillacs with cloth seats instead of Corinthian leather? This is a man who doesn't even try to pretend to be humble. Any speech about his tax returns, tenure at Bain, and offshoring and outsourcing will contain only one phrase, repeated ad infinitum: "I Won't I Won't I Won't I Won't and You Can't Make Meeeeeeeeh." 

To hear Mitt tell it, he had a hard enough time juggling his various duties running the Salt Lake City winter Olympics during his Bain leave of absence to be able to manage juggling the Giant Slalom schedule with the Giant Offshoring schedule at the exact same moment in history. In fact, Mitt was so overwhelmed being Mr. Olympus that it was like jumping into an empty elevator shaft, according to Ann Romney. The guy is way too much of a nebbish to multi-task.

And Obama apparently can't walk and chew gum at the same time, either. In a cringe-worthy clip of a White House interview with Charlie Rose, (to be aired Sunday) he said his main mistake in his first few years was that he didn't spend enough time juggling his bullshit artistry skills with his other fantastic skills. Turns out he's just as lousy at juggling as Mitt:

When I think about what we’ve done well and what we haven’t done well, the mistake of my first term – couple of years – was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.

(snip)

It’s funny – when I ran, everybody said, well he can give a good speech but can he actually manage the job? And in my first two years, I think the notion was, ‘Well, he’s been juggling and managing a lot of stuff, but where’s the story that tells us where he’s going?’ And I think that was a legitimate criticism.

Yeah, Barry. Your policies -- or really the lack of policies -- which resulted in one out of every seven of us without health insurance, one out of seven of us on food stamps, stagnating wages, epidemic unemployment, continued corruption on Wall Street, never-ending wars -- would have been easier to swallow with just that one extra spoonful of your propaganda sugar. You backstabbed us behind closed doors, when you should have bullshat us to our faces. We don't need no food, we don't need no stinking jobs. In your book, we just need a goddamn bedtime story.

Somebody turn out the lights before I get accused of false equivalency.

Bastille Day Open Thread

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet, peasants. Lots to be angry about as usual, so storm away. Marchons, Citoyens!

Discognition Edition

It looks like the headline writers at the New York Times aren't even bothering to read the articles this morning.

In Latest Data on Economy, Experts See Signs of Pick Up: Happy happy joy joy, you think. Usually, the awful truth of continuing misery is buried deep within the article. So at least there is this immediate subhead:

A range of economists expect growth in the United States to increase in coming months, although only to a pace broadly considered sluggish, if not dismal.

A sluggish pick-me-up is better than no pick-me-up at all, I guess. If you feel tired, have a mug of warm milk to perk you up. If your economy is catatonic, at least it's not completely comatose. Glass half full because of Obama re-election. Maybe the economy is tired because it's gorging on too many goodies. So cut the food stamp program. Cut home-heating assistance, because shivering helps sluggish people lose weight. Distended bellies on starving children? Reactionaries say it means they're getting full. Situation hopeless but not serious. Stunted growth is better than no growth at all, say the experts. This was quite a stretch, even by the usual press propaganda standards.

JP Morgan Reports Profit of $5 Billion in Latest Quarter is on the homepage: But when you click on the link to the Dealbook section, the header magically changes to 

JPMorgan Says Trade Loss Tops $5.8 Billion; Quarterly Profit Down 9%

The Times will most likely wash away the first headline, once millions of readers have taken a quick glance at it and assume everything is hunky-dory with the Jamie Dimon economy. Still, the article insists you can have it both ways -- report a profit even though your losses more than erase it. Good. Now I can insist I'm in the black even when I am overdrawn on my checking account. I had the money before I spent it, so it's all good. 

Then, there's this smarmy headline on what Tim Geithner sort of knew about the Libor scandal years ago, and how he passive-aggressively strove to do something:

Geithner Tried to Curb Rate Rigging in 2008

As president of the New York Fed, it was Geithner's job to be a watchdog over the big banks on behalf of the public and not a coddler of banksterism. But all he did was write a CMA email when he suspected that interest rate-fixing was going on. He didn't call in the FBI, or Interpol, since the scam was international. But since it is looking embarrassing for Geithner and his boss, somebody has just hurriedly leaked a batch of exculpatory memos to The Times. He "reached out" and "made suggestions" to his British counterparts, such as maybe increasing the number of banks playing the game, so as to spread out the bad behavior and dilute the damage a bit. Too bad he didn't leak or act the whistleblower to The Times back there in 2008, thus potentially saving billions for bankrupt American cities who lost big-time from artificially low interest rates on investments. But Geithner gave the appearance of "trying", so they figure he's off the hook. Kind of like the Vatican transferring pedophile priests and admonishing them to behave, giving them helpful hints to curb their urges, rather than protecting the child victims. The Geithner response to the Libor crimes is just one more reeking example of people in power doing their utmost to protect corrupt institutions.

A Pipe Dream

Progressive Nirvana: in which both presidential candidates implode and sink into a morass of corruption just in time for the conventions later this summer, just in time for the Republican Party to die of its own self-inflicted wounds, just in time for Russ Feingold to grab the Democratic nomination by default to battle the Green Party's Jill Stein for the highest office in the land. Moderate liberal vs. European-style socialist.

It's looking bad for Mitt. At best, he evaded paying taxes on at least a quarter-billion in offshore accounts, at worst he lied to the SEC about not being in charge of Bain Capital when other documents during the same era listed him as CEO. Even the right-leaning Politico is intimating the Mittster may have broken a federal law or two. Will Mitt open his acceptance speech in Tampa with the words "I am not a crook" or better yet, "I shall not seek, nor will I accept my party's nomination for a first term as president of the United States"?

It's looking kind of bad for Barry, too, now that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is getting caught up in the Libor scandal. It is pretty obvious that Timmy knew that a massively sleazy version of price-fixing was going on under his N.Y. Fed watch, and that he knew it a long time ago. He was either too weak to stop it, too cowardly to report it, or too complicit to give a damn about it. There are an awful lot of municipalities out there, cash-strapped and crumbling, who wouldn't mind getting some of those stolen trillions in pension plans and such back from the banking mafia. The lawyers are salivating.

Of course, what I consider bad, and what the Plutocracy running things considers bad, are two different things. So what if Mitt lied through his teeth? It shows what a great American he is. It is patriotic to be savvy enough to game the system. And do you really expect Eric Holder to convene a grand jury seeking a Mitt-dictment? Remember, the motto of the Obama Administration is "Forward". If they won't prosecute the Bush war criminals or the Wall Street banksters, they are definitely not going after small-potatoes Mitt. To the contrary. In the interest of bipartisanship, Barry would probably offer him a cabinet position, or at least a seat on the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. It specializes in outsourcing and offshoring and regulation-killing, after all.

And Timmy Geithner? He's leaving anyway. The fact that the unindicted Jon Corzine was able to "lose" millions of investor dollars when his scam went bankrupt and yet is still listed as a top Obama bundler shows us that corruption is not only acceptable-- it's desirable. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the unlimited money in politics is corrupting the corruption.  

Like I said -- pipe dream. Just when you think politics can't make you any sicker, you start feeling nauseous all over again.

Strip-Searching the Troops

Apparently, there's a new law on the books that lets military personnel breeze through airport security checkpoints, the better to honor and respect their sacrifice and service to our country. Apparently, they are exempt from the requirement to remove their shoes or boots for inspection prior to boarding a plane. Apparently, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is ignoring the exemption and enforcing the same unlawful searches on the troops as they do on everyone else. (Accepting, of course, VIPs with their own nail ladies who lunch and fly frequently. They've been getting their separate lines for awhile now,because as we all should know, rich people are inherently more trustworthy. Just ask Mitt, who told an audience of NAACP members Wednesday to just trust him because he has their best interests at heart.)

A freshman Republican congressman is livid because only three airports are sort of complying with the law, which just went into effect last week, under some sort of wimpy "pilot program". Which is so ironically unfair, because even pilots have to be screened for weapons, drugs and alcohol. Fumed Rep. Chip Cravaack of Minnesota: "Just last week, I spoke to a service member who was asked to strip down to go through security — to remove boots and his service blouse — and another service member a few weeks before that!"

Okay.... I have got three words for Cravaack: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) It turns out that the brains of soldiers exposed to the shock of roadside bombs and other trauma become physically altered, leading to personality changes -- and sometimes violence, both against themselves and others. We are asking one percent of the population to go on tour after tour, deployment after deployment, sending them into battle when they are battle-fatigued -- and then we grandiosely offer to save them ten minutes at an airport because we love them so damned much.

Easy breezy military screenings seem pretty misguided to me. Wouldn't it be more logical for the TSA perform at least the same stringent pat-downs on soldiers as they do on elderly people suspected of harboring guns in their Depends? Soldiers have access to weapons the rest of us do not. They've had training in weapons use the rest of us did not. And a small percentage of them are mentally unstable.

Between 10 and 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered a TBI. It is believed that the soldier who allegedly murdered 16 people earlier this year had been diagnosed with a brain injury and returned to duty anyway. What if he had gone berserk on a crowded airplane 30,000 feet in the air, and nobody had bothered to check his boots for weapons?

Although an extremely miniscule number of TBI sufferers becomes homicidal, study after study shows a definite correlation between TBI and  violent behavior. One longterm Swedish investigation tracking 20,000 people over three decades revealed that nine percent of the TBI subjects committed violent crimes, as opposed to only three percent of the "normal" participants.

I don't want to malign the troops. This is not meant to imply that all returning soldiers are ticking time bombs who should be strip-searched before boarding an airplane. The whole screening process is just so much political theater anyway, a means to enrich manufacturers of RapiScanner x-ray machines and Homeland Security subcontractors.

But the law exempting service members from the same screening civilians get is just a tacit official admission that the whole process is an onerous, illegal, humiliating and punishing one. It is not meant to keep us safe. It is meant to keep us in line.

Oxymoronics

Wall Street Ethics: In a survey, 500 banksters honestly admit just how dishonest they are. (read the full report here.)Winners always cheat, and cheaters always win. If they're caught, their regulating paramours give them 50 lashes with a wet noodle and life goes on. But on a brighter note, Libor is not going away. Little by little, the fact that the rigged interest rates affect all of us, that the whole world has been literally robbed of trillions of dollars, is sinking into the consciousness of the hoi polloi. It'll be fun watching the politicians on this side of the pond squirm and twist themselves into pretzels in a desperate effort to ignore it and just make it all go away because they're so busy being bribed by banksters at campaign fund-raisers. Which brings us to.....

Liberal Democrats: With more and more people falling into poverty and becoming eligible for food stamps, Democrats are joining their Republican pals in gutting the program. The Senate has already bi-partisanally snatched $4.5 billion in food aid from the mouths of the vulnerable, and some House Democrats seem to be on board with another $16 billion in cuts in food stamps from the Farm Bill. This has some other Democrats "fuming" over the inhumanity. But the top Democrat on the House Committee on Agriculture says making nice with the subsidized farmers is more important than coddling millions of starving people. All this theatrical fume and doom is simply a smokescreen allowing them to cut yet another sleazy deal behind closed doors while publicly posturing so as to be seen "trying." Which brings us to....

Pragmatic Progressives: Chronic capitulators who twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify the Democratic Party's descent into a right wing corporate pit of corruption.

Compassionate Conservatives: Republicans who suddenly pretend to care about the lesser people in the four months preceding the election. See today's column by David Brooks. It's a doozy, even by his standards. Be sure to read the comments too.

You can continue the discussion (or start a new one) from yesterday's forum here as well, since I just closed down that thread.

TARP Terror Tuesday

How's this for irony: although the almighty deficit is running lower this year through a combination of government austerity and modest increases in tax revenue, the gains are being offset by a one percent increase in federal spending. And guess where that one percent increase is going? Toward the continuing bailout of the big banks! Even as Congress cuts programs for the poor, even as cities go bankrupt and schools shut down, even as chronic unemployment is creating a permanent underclass of tens of millions of people, the bankster class is still getting theirs.

The latest report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says federal spending on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) grew by $62 billion through June -- offsetting most of this year's corporate, individual and payroll tax revenue growth. (Contrary to popular belief, the banks have not paid back all the money "lent" to them by taxpayers. ProPublica has the facts and figures, and Zero Hedge further debunks the myth that Main Street made some kind of profit from TARP.)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as the rich get richer, the poor get screwed. Republicans can scream all they want that the Democrats are spending us into a national suicide, and Democrats can promise till the cows come home that if only we all share the sacrifice and the wealthy  pay "just a little more" everything will be hunky-dory in about a century.

Meanwhile, the banksters get their $62 billion welfare check in the form of forgiveness for their late TARP payments, and put it toward their bonuses and salaries and perks and bribes to their political friends in Washington and all 50 states. Congress does its part by cutting $28 billion from Medicaid and saving another $20 billion through ending benefits for the long-term unemployed. The one percent increase in spending this year is being squandered on a subset of the one percent at the very tippy top of the pile. Imagine that.

It's not that we weren't warned. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano spoke about the looming threat of domestic terrorism years ago. She just forgot to mention that the terrorists are elite corporate psychopaths and their political minions. 

Monday Open Forum

Some early links:


Paul Krugman asks what Mitt is hiding besides the gray in his hair. There have been some recent disturbing revelations and allegations about his secret financial history, such as how in the world did he end up with as much as $100 million in his IRA? Why does this potential president not release all his tax returns and why does he have the need to hide money overseas? I rhetorically ask (my comment is number two in "Oldest") why the hell the Obama Justice Department doesn't investigate him if he is as crooked as the campaign is making him sound?


Meanwhile, here's a preview of Biennial Bush Tax Cut Extension Kabuki, in which President Obama pretends to bravely buck his own party by calling right now this very minute for a one-year extension of cuts for poor people earning less than $250,000. It's a theatrically bold slap in the face to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, starring as millionaire Democrats who think that anyone earning $999,999 is just plain struggling folks in the middle class. Barry plays Errol Flynn throwing down the gauntlet to the piratical GOPers, who don't believe gazillionaires should pay a penny more, ever and into perpetuity. Arrrrgh.


The Libor hearings continue in the U.K. I think another reason why this scandal is not getting much attention in the American press is that Barclay's CEO Bob Diamond got his grilling on our national Fourth of July holiday and the merikun pundits were not working to provide it for us on the telly. Plus, the name sounds like one of those British minority parties -- a Cockney cross between liberal and labor. Yawn. I did watch a snippet last week, and the first thing I noticed was what a smarmy arrogant jerk this Diamond was, calling members of Parliament by their first names. Even Jamie Dimon has the good taste to not call his U.S. senator "Chuckie". The Brits sensibly consider Diamond to be a proper annoying twit. Meanwhile, Bank of England honcho Paul Tucker  gets his turn today. What did he pretend not to know and why does he not know it, etc.

Tom Junod scathingly examines The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama in Esquire, concentrating on the murder of a 16-year-old American boy by drone strike. An excerpt from the piece, written in the form of a letter to the president:

This is not to say that the American people don't know about the Lethal Presidency, and that they don't support its aims. They do. They know about the killing because you have celebrated — with appropriate sobriety — the most notable kills, specifically those of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; they support it because you have asked for their trust as a good and honorable man surrounded by good and honorable men and women and they have given it to you. In so doing, you have changed a technological capability into a moral imperative and have convinced your countrymen to see the necessity without seeing the downside. Politically, there is no downside. Historically, there is only the irony of the upside — that you, of all presidents, have become the lethal one; that you, of all people, have turned out to be a man of proven integrity whose foreign and domestic policies are less popular than your proven willingness to kill, in defense of your country, even your own countrymen ... indeed, to kill even a sixteen-year-old American boy accused of no crime at all.

We are a nation of the willfully blind, which is probably why fully two-thirds of Americans polled say they are just fine with the targeted killings of Americans and all manner of unknown victims far, far away. As Chris Hedges points out in his latest essay, we have forgotten how to even think.


And where in the world is Occupy in all this? Alexander Cockburn has a depressing take.


Welcome to the Wonderful World of Monday.

The Mean Season

Wolf Blitzer doth protest too much. The guy is absolutely salivating over the nasty Congressional race between Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh and disabled Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth. Yet he pretends to eschew the nastiness. He wants the duo on his show to have a debate on the "substantive" issues.

"No name calling! No nasty words!" he huffily warns the victim of Joe Walsh's nastiness, then proceeds to litanize every last blasted quote from the politicians, instead of giving us a clue about the so-called important stuff.  Although Walsh is widely viewed as the crazoid instigator, having complained that Duckworth flunks his heroism test by spending too much time talking about herself and other wounded warriors, Blitzer felt it vital to have Duckworth on his show yesterday for a good old-fashioned dose of his stentorious false equivalency. She'd had the chutzpah to correctly call Walsh a belligerent extremist, and Wolf was not about to let such language, especially from the mouth of a woman, pass.


"Do you have a problem?" he asks her at one point during the interview. "Is it appropriate to use that kind of language to a sitting Congressman?" (Duckworth had also quoted Walsh as proudly referring to himself as the poster child for the Tea Party.)

Watch the clip here. It is blessedly short, to jibe with Wolf's attention span.

Wolf Blitzer obviously fancies himself the Cotton Mather of cable news. He's the lord of discipline who made Hilary Rosen apologize (over and over and over again) on the air to Ann Romney for remarking how Mrs. Mitt had never worked a day in her life. But thankfully, Tammy Duckworth did not falter under the scheisse-blitz.

What I would really like to see is Wolf hosting a substantive name-calling debate between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the true American hero who accosted him on the boardwalk the other night, demanding that he show a little respect to the teachers. The more airtime Chris Christie can get, the more the mythical low-info American voter will sit up and take notice of politics, the higher the ratings and revenue of cable snooze shows.

Christie, who truly deserves to be picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, has been looking more than usual like a cardiovascular accident waiting to happen. Watch the Jersey Shore gubernatorial episode here. It, too, is blessedly short. Just like Christie's temper.

Want more? Do you crave some irony to go along with the substance and the nastiness? Well, how about a congress critter named Phil Gingrey complaining that President Obama shows too much gum when he smiles? Gingrey, who along with his gum-flapping compadre Newt Gingrich hails from Georgia, told CNN (surprise!) that Barry is all style and no substance because he smiles and swaggers a lot.

As an M.D. specializing in Ob/Gyn, Gingrey should probably stay away from periodontic diagnoses, despite having a name reminiscent of a gum disease. To his credit, though, he admitted to Stephen Colbert that he is low-hanging fruit. Ain't that just peachy.

Big Banks No Fail, Say Big Banks

No, that's a misleading headline. According to Reuters, the accurate quote is "Top Banks Say They Not Too Big to Fail." Actually, according to FishbowlNY, a Neanderthal headline writer at Reuters misquoted The Big Banks.They never said they not too big to fail. They said that if they do fail, they will not require taxpayer assistance to hasten their own destruction. They can self-immolate all by themselves, thank you very much. Or, if they do decide to live, they can administer their own CPR without government aid. These banksters no longer believe in public-subsidized health care, good little libertarians that they are. Or so they say.

According to an obscure portion of the monstrously defanged and defunded Dodd-Frank Act, bank regulators would supposedly put the failures out of their misery and bill the patient for their services. But if the Jamie Dimon situation is any example, regulators and CEOs are the same animal. There is no murder-suicide pact in Dodd-Frank. (I am of course writing figurately and not suggesting that Jamie should physically harm either of his selves: either the JPMorgan Chase self or the regulator on the New York Fed.)

Here. according to Reuters, is a subtle hint that the banksters' "Living Wills" are not worth the paper they're written on:

But some experts doubt how hard regulators will push the banks for changes or how useful hypothetical resolution plans will be in major financial crisis.

The public portions released on Tuesday and are a few dozen pages per bank summarizing thousands of pages submitted confidentially to regulators.

The banks argued in the public documents that their resolution plans will work, with no cost to taxpayers or great consequence to the financial system. They used technical generalities in their conclusions without specifically addressing the unpredictable and vicious nature of a credit crisis.

Viciously and unspecifically unpredictable. "Big Banks Say They Lie Through Their Predatory Fangs" is the real headline, folks. Just like LIBOR should really be LIE MORE  -- although it's actually a great big bore to the un-outrageable general public.

Premature Ignition

Still trying to get my act together after my big Fourth of July extravaganza, which consisted of watching Twilight Zone reruns with one eye, and simultaneous bursts of natural lightning and cheesy fireworks through my open door with the other eye. Thanks for sharing all your medical and Independence Day adventures on the open thread yesterday. I am keeping it open because, lets face it -- the afterglow of the glorious Fourth is still wafting through the blogosphere.

Anyway, did you hear about the Big Bada Bing Boom in San Diego? For anyone who ever wondered what would happen it they accidentally shot off all the fireworks at once, this is it. Although I have to say the video is less than impressive, probably because it's just a video on my cheap computer screen. It kind of reminds me of that Jean Shepherd story about an old codger so drunk and befuddled that he blew up a whole neighborhood with about a ton of fireworks. Aided and abetted by the kids, of course. The San Diego fiasco will probably go down in the annals of Fourth of July legend, too. 

Here 's the link to the late great Shepherd reading "Ludlow Kissell and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back" on his old radio show. (complete with his mocking of the commercials. At the end of the spiel for the long-defunct Palisades Amusement Park, he says "Have fun, Serfs!")

I know, I know.... I'm a day late and a dollar short as usual. But, as the new T-shirts Barry is peddling on his site to make a buck off ObamaCare tell it: Still a BFD!

So let us therefore go in search of the healing bomb and the true meaning of Independence Day: a national shellshock and celebrated concussion to better honor our glorious American past.





Linkin Lollapalooza

Well, the title sounds better than "Open Thread" which is what this is. The response to the weekend forum was huge by this blog's standards, so feel free to weigh in on whatever. Crooked banks, unaffordable health care, war ships in the Strait of Hormuz, your aches and pains.... the sky's the limit.


Meanwhile, some links: Twitter received more government demands for data during the first half of this year than all of last year. And it's releasing the information on such requests in the name of transparency. And sometimes it's forced to comply with a court order no matter how hard it has refused to cooperate. A federal judge has just ordered Twitter to hand over the Tweets of an Occupier arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall, despite the company's best efforts to resist.


You have a better chance of going to jail if you're an Alabama traffic scofflaw than if you're a millionaire price-fixing fraudster whose last name happens to be Diamond. It seems that debtor prisons are making a comeback.


Alabamans are screwed in more ways than one. A federal bankruptcy judge has ruled in favor of -- you guessed it -- a too big to exist bank over cash-strapped Jefferson County in a case stemming from corruption and Wall Street greed and a sewer system. What a stinkin mess.


On a happier note, Katie flings her ring.


On a sleazier note, sexter Anthony Weiner says Regrets, he has a few.

Cookie Monster Stalkers

We're all accustomed to politicians throwing out pitiful crumbs to the common folk, while they allow the highest corporate bidders to feast and gorge at public expense. And now it turns out they're tossing us fancy cookies, too. It's bad enough that they're constantly projectile-vomiting emails into our overflowing spam buckets. But internet cookies? Say it ain't so!  Barry and Mitt are cyberstalkers!

Um-Num-Num-Num-Num.... Don't Block Me, Bro!

Well, it is so. In case you were wondering how it is, no matter what web page you visit, that the same feel-good cheesy photos keep popping up urging you to "Help the Obamas Stand Up for Working Families" and "Tell Michelle You're IN" or "Grab a Bite with Ann", it's all the fault of cookies. If you have ever clicked on a link to their campaign websites or ads, a little gizmo is activated that will not only follow you wherever you go, but will gather information about you based on where you troll on the Internet. We knew it was happening with the Obama machine months ago, when ProPublica figured out that his campaign nerds customize their money-grubbing email appeals based solely on your browsing history.  

Romney is now playing catch-up. ProPublica reporter Lois Beckett was decidedly creeped out when Mitt started stalking her across cyberspace recently. As a reporter, she spends a "fair amount of time" on his campaign website and as a result, she became fodder for a slew of ads urging her to "learn more" and donate, donate, donate.

 This is the same kind of online targeting  used by sites that sell airline tickets or shoes. If you visit Zappos, advertisements for the sneakers you looked at will sometimes follow you around the web. Romney's campaign was sending me a "donate" button instead.

But the fact that I was being targeted based on my visits to the campaign site wasn't at all clear from the ads themselves.

Each of the ads had a teensy blue triangle in the top right corner. Because I report on online advertising, I know that the triangle means I've been targeted. Many online ad companies have agreed to give consumers a heads-up that they're seeing a message that's been personalized to them. They mark targeted ads with a blue triangle icon or the words "Ad Choices."

When I clicked on the blue triangle on one of the Romney ads, a message popped up saying that a company called ShareThis had "determined that you might be interested in an ad like this." The ad had been "selected for you based on your browsing activity."

If you're interested in more of the technical details of how ShareThis does what it does, do read the whole article. ProPublica also wants to hear from you about your own experiences with political cyberstalkers and asks that you send a screenshot of the ads targeting you to: mailto:targeting2012@Propublica.org.

But if you'd rather not be part of a survey, or if the idea of being stalked by Barry and Mitt makes you queasy, take out a restraining order. No, you don't have to sue or go to the People's Court. You can make all the ads go away, forever and completely, just by downloading an ad-blocking program. I installed AdBlock (the simple version) a few weeks ago and it made every single ad disappear immediately. No more opening an ad strategically placed to be accidentally clicked while I scroll down a page. No more ads that have to be "rolled" off the page before I can read an article. It has been rated completely safe and effective, and I can attest to its sanity-preserving virtues. There are different versions adapted to different browsers, so just Google to find the right one for you.

Of course, advertisers hate it because they're still paying for ads people are not seeing. And some people are ticked because most versions of AdBlock can't always distinguish between good ads and bad ads, annoying ads and helpful ads. It's all or nothing. You can't decide you want to see the Obama ads and block the Mittster. You have no choice between Greater Evil and Lesser Evil. You can't block Walmart ads and allow Bergdorf Goodman ads. Oh, the humanity.

While AdBlock and similar programs prevent the annoying messages from reaching your screen, they do not block tracking cookies. To foil the internet spies, clear out your browser on a regular basis. (I clean mine once or twice a day. This measure has the added perk of allowing you to access sites with paywalls by erasing your "footprint history.")

As far as the annoying emails are concerned, "unsubscribing" may or may not work. You may simply find yourself engaging in a futile game of whack-a-mole. As an experiment to determine the exponential grasp of political email lists, I signed a "thank you" card to President Obama on his gay marriage evolution, sent to me by Nancy Pelosi. Sure nuff, the fund-raising emails came barfing out almost instantaneously. They came from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DNC, congress critters from thousands of miles away that I never even heard of. To make it all stop, I had to unsubscribe from each person individually -- a fraught and time-consuming process. This barely put a dent in the torrent. But I think it's finally starting to dwindle down.

I tried the same experiment with the right-wingers, having signed up for alerts from the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity (a/k/a Rich People for Rich People.) The nefarious koch-heads promptly gave my email address to every right wing nut job in Nutland. Herman Cain writes often, including all those videos of stuffed animal abuse. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer offered to send me an autographed copy of her book "Scorpions for Breakfast" if I sent her 50 bucks first. (I passed). Now, of course, they're going crazy with the Down with Obamacare missives that are truly hilarious in their insistence that government medical care will kill us all. No way am I unsubscribing from that crap. It is way too entertaining.

Update: This just in from Herman Cain. It's a teaser about "Cain TV", supposedly coming soon to a cable channel near you. I can guarantee it will also play in an endless loop on MSNBC, the liberal outrage channel. From the preview, it appears to be a hodge-podge of paranoid apocalyptica coupled with slapstick comedy with a racist-misogynist slant (there's a segment with a black comedian doing a minstrel routine--hard to figure out if it's satire, or the blatant hurling of red meat to bigots and militia groups. For now, I'll choose the latter.)  At the end, Herman himself appears, telling us: "Hello. I'm Herman Cain. They think we're stupid."  And he concludes with "Let's give a lamb a gun. I am Herman Cain. We are not stupid."

This has all the makings of a summer hit.

Remembering Amelia Earhart

Lost and Found

A Poem by Nan Socolow

Rumors that Noonan

and I were buried

on Saipan or Tinian

That we were

spying for America

before Pearl Harbor

beheaded at

Garapan

by the Japanese

False rumors

urban legends

all

Noonan and I

just glided

from the sky

Out of fuel

we dropped

from the clouds

Past Howland

onto a Phoenix isle

in Kiribati

Nikumaroro

known then as

Gardner Island

My Lockheed

Electra

landed hard

On the atoll's

sharp shallow

reef

I was 39

that day

2 July 1937

And I did so radio Itasca!

radioed Itasca

over and over!

They searched

every dot and cranny

for Noonan and me

Except for Gardner

the obvious spot

350 miles from Howland

The day we fell

2 July 1937

I was 39

Five eight tall

fair and freckled

gaptoothed

Small shoe

size 6

Cat's Paw heel

The Press

called me

"Lady Lindy"

But they never

got the story

straight

Noonan and I died

marooned

needles in a haystack

And the story hung

by a thread

the thread just a leaf

overturned

in the island underbrush

by a hermit crab

revealing the

Cat's Paw heel

of my shoe

I would have been lost

gone with the wind

forever

My poor bones

were sent to Fiji

(and "misplaced" there)

Sic transit

Gloria

Mundi

Sic transitted

my Lockheed

10 Electra

My DNA awaits

discovery

on Nikumaroro

Bits of the

Electra's

undercarriage and

My heel

and smashed jar of Dr. Berry's

Freckle Ointment too

I went

the way of all flesh

on 24 July 1937

My 40th birthday

no cake or candles

or balloons

But isn't it swell?

Isn't it neat?

This news

That the seekers

will find me this July!

Or maybe next year?

+ + + +

Nan Socolow

British West Indies

nan@candw.ky

*******************************

Ed. Note: Nan, a frequent contributor to the New York Times readers' comments feature, says she has always been fascinated by the exploits of Amelia Earhart, who "disappeared" 75 years ago today during a round-the-world flight.

Just in time for the anniversary, a jar of the freckle cream that Earhart was fond of using, and other artifacts were discovered recently on a remote South Pacific atoll near the crash site. Experts have also been able to prove that there were several radio transmissions from the immediate area in the days after the plane went down. 

That she and Noonan not only survived the crash, but survived for a substantial period of time, is now morphing from speculation to proven fact. But the absence of any human remains only adds to the continuing mystery of their ultimate fate. An expedition using high tech equipment is being launched this week in an attempt to locate the wreckage of her plane off the coast of Nikumaroro. You can read more details here, here and here.

Amelia Earhart would have reached the ripe old age of 115 later this month. 

Weekend Open Thread

Lots going on, and too many topics to mention and cover all by my lonesome.  Consider this your own have-at-it, no-holds-barred (within my admittedly lax boundaries) space. I will continue to moderate the comments, just to keep the spam and porn links at bay.

Personal anecdotes and book and movie and article reviews and recommendations continue to be welcomed and encouraged!

A Morass of Orwellian Depravity

 Congressman Dennis Kucinich has now joined Nation writer Jeremy Scahill in referring to President Obama's targeted drone attacks as acts of murder. In an exclusive interview with the Britain-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the Ohio Democrat scathingly denounces this open secret of covert war, calling out the President, the Congress and a complicit press for their mutual descent into "a morass of Orwellian depravity." Said Kucinich:

You are looking here at an executive power that is unleashed. Our system of justice, according to the Constitution, is highly structured. There are broad areas of our constitution that have to do with people being investigated, arrested, charged, having a trial, and then if they are convicted being properly sentenced and incarcerated.

What we have done here with the drone programme is to radically alter our system of justice. Because, remember, if the whole idea is that we are exporting American values, those drones represent American values. And now we are telling the world that American values are summary executions, no rights to an accused, no arrest process, no reading of charges, no trial by jury, no judge, only an executioner.

If you have only an executioner that is not justice, that is something else. Not only the United States but the world community should be properly appraised about these so-called targeted killings. And because the emphasis in on killing, this is murder. If someone shot a grocer and his defense was ‘it was a targeted killing’ he would be put on trial for his life. But we are told that these targeted killings are somehow to be considered apart from any legal system.

Kucinich explains that the United States is"getting away" with bombing Pakistan and killing innocent civilians because it is engaged in good old fashioned double-dealing. Our government is able to ignore the Pakistani parliament's demand that the U.S. stop the drone strikes because it is dealing only with the real people in charge: the Pakistani military. We are in a defacto war against one Pakistan while being "friendly" with the other Pakistan. Doublespeaking, double-crossing and Orwellian to a degree than even Orwell might not have envisioned.


The congressman, who is serving his last term after being defeated in the primary, finds it hard to believe that so few are condemning, or even mildly questioning, the new American role of judge, jury and executioner of any person suspected of being a terrorist, suspected of canoodling with terrorists -- and worst and most recently, any male with the poor taste to live in a tribal area and to be of "military" age. He told The Bureau:

I hope it is not going to be too far into the future, somebody is going to look back at this and go ‘oh my God, why was this permitted?’ The US government just goes ‘we spent more money on arms than any other country in the world just because we have the most powerful military.’ We cannot assume for ourselves the right to impose a war anywhere we well please, and yet we have. And there is little accountability, so what I am trying to bring about in the Congress is to force accountability and transparency. Transparency in terms of ‘how are you able, you know, what about this extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions? What is the legal authority for the government to conduct extrajudicial killings, where did this come from?’ Really, where did this come from? Says who?

As far as the stenographic role of the American media is concerned, Kucinich is equally harsh. It is not considered bad form, he says, for a president to kill people. But it is a huge faux pas to dare to talk about it!

Let me say that there has been a tradition of American journalists in modern times to serve as the spear carriers for the government. They may look like pens but these are the spears of supernumeraries who have reporters’ cards. It’s what happens when you have fewer and fewer newspapers, and newspapers that are tied to large corporate interests. And a lack of enough institutions in the major media who are willing to serve as an effective counter-balance.

Look at the New York Times. It bought in wholesale into the war in Iraq, and came back to apologise. But how do you apologise for all of the dead bodies and the dead soldiers? We feel the dead soldiers, but we should also feel the dead civilians… There is a disturbing tendency to ignore civilian casualties, in any conflicts that we’re involved in whether they’re declared or undeclared.

Yes, indeed, look at the New York Times. The paper of record recently used the usual anonymous government sources to smear the same Bureau of Investigative Journalism which today brings us the Kucinich interview as well as exposing the hundreds of civilian deaths and dismemberments resulting from Obama's robotic and open-ended War on Terror. Scott Shane, the same reporter who penned the hagiographic article on the president's secret "Kill List" and Terror Tuesdays, came close to accusing the BIJ of giving aid and comfort to the enemy by having had the chutzpah to talk about American bad behavior:

The bureau’s investigation, which began last year with a detailed study of civilian casualties, involved interviews with villagers who said they saw strikes, wounded people and family members of those killed.

The bureau counted 260 strikes by Predator and Reaper drones since President Obama took office, and it said that 282 to 535 civilians had been “credibly reported” killed in those attacks, including more than 60 children. American officials said that the number was much too high, though they acknowledged that at least several dozen civilians had been killed inadvertently in strikes aimed at militant suspects.

A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report’s findings, saying “targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.” The official added: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”

I am willing to bet that the anonymous official is none other that Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, former Bushie and Islamophobe extraordinaire and an obvious source for Shane's Kill List piece. (he even came out of the closet to be photographed for it.) He has been popping up all over the place lately, coyly bragging about the White House assassination squad even as the White House officially denies it existence and refuses to divulge the secret law it unilaterally enacted to give itself carte blanche for murder. Brennan was also outed by another Times reporter, David Sanger, as the discredited source behind the original botched narrative of the bin Laden assassination. Brennan even came to NYC this spring, just to applaud that city's spy program against Muslim Americans and, while he was at it, to blast the Pulitzer-winning Associated Press for exposing it.

"Freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose." From George Orwell's lips to the American Media-Industrial Complex's plugged-up ears.

Is There an OccuDoc in the House?

Yep, there is. If you want to avoid all the talking heads exploding, and the Democratic email fund-raising frenzies and the Republican bitch-fests in the wake of the Survival of Obamacare, watch this full-length (an hour and fifteen minutes) film, titled American Autumn.

Rumors of the demise of Occupy are severely premature, despite the best efforts of the corporate media and the corporate politicians to convince us otherwise.

Obamacare may have survived, but millions will remain uninsured and three of them are still dying every single hour for lack of basic preventive health care. JP Morgan Chase has suddenly "lost" $8 billion instead of $2 billion but remains profitable at our expense. The Mortgage Fraud Task Force has yet to issue a single subpoena. Privatization of schools, prisons and infrastructure continues apace. Whole cities are declaring bankruptcy. One in four children is officially poor. Something's got to give.

Occupy!

Supreme Court Rulz/Open Thread

Check the SCOTUSblog on Blogroll to your right for live updates and the link to the opinion. Chief Justice Roberts apparently cares about his legacy and the well-being of the private insurance cabal and has thus ruled with the "libs" in upholding the Affordable Care Act.

Here is the continuing New York Times coverage.

Here is the full opinion.

Weigh in, if and when are you able.