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.