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.