Joseph Cassano, former head of A.I.G.'s Financial Products unit, at London's High Street Kensington subway station in June. From Bauer-Griffin.
The Man Who Crashed the World
Almost a year after A.I.G.'s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908
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Story here.
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Bill Maher: Not everything in America has to make a profit: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/24-8
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The Saddest Show on Earth: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/24-4
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This is not going to end well for CBS: http://mediamatters.org/blog/200907230014
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Tomorrow, Saturday July 25, demonstrations will be held in over 105 cities, from six continents, to protest the Iranian government's brutal crackdown, in the aftermath of the recent election. This is a cause that should unite us all, including our Republican lurkers. It is not about lobbying various governments, and it is not about lobbying our own government. It is a statement by people for the people of Iran. More: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/014307.php
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that Orrin Hatch came out against the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the US Supreme Court today:
Hatch, along with many Republican senators, was critical of some of Sotomayor's past statements that they say indicate a willingness to judge cases in part on her personal views and experiences.
Yet Hatch wasn't bothered about Sam Alito, who as Glenn Greenwald reported was only too happy to admit that he took his life experiences into account when ruling on a case.
Please, let's cut to the chase: The GOP has no problem with a male conservative, whether they be black, latino, or Italian, using their background and family experiences as a guide when ruling on cases. But if you are a woman with a strange sounding name, who admits to doing the same thing as Sam Alito, then hacks like Hatch disapprove.
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Alaska prepares to party
Bad news for Sarah Palin, just as Alaska prepares to celebrate its pending independence from Gov. Beauty Queen, who, after Sunday, will be Ex-Gov. Beauty Queen. "Screen door" parties begin as soon as today, with microbrewed "Bailin' Palin Fail Ale" on tap. As our colleagues at Mudflats promise, the celebration won't stop there.
If you're in Anchorage, or within driving distance, the downtown Park Strip is the place to be on Saturday!
There's something for everyone!
The Governor's Picnic!
Yes, this is it. Anchorage's "Screen Door" Celebration (as in, "Don't let the screen door hit you on the way out!") to bid adieu to the soon-to-be-ex governor and usher out the end of a very strange era that has been anything but beneficial to our state.
It hasn't even been one term, or even one year since her nomination as VP candidate, but we've packed in more than our share of nail biting, head banging, belly laughing, chin stroking, face palming, head scratching, and typing our little fingers to the bone.
And this is it. Finally. The last full day of the Palin administration.
Makes you wish you were there, doesn't it? Unless you're Sarah Palin, of course. So on to that bad news…
…a new national poll indicates that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the outgoing Alaska governor. But the ABC News/Washington Post survey released Friday also suggests that seven out of 10 Republican voters maintain a positive opinion of last year's GOP Vice Presidential nominee.
Fifty-three percent of those questioned in the poll view Palin negatively, with four in 10 holding a positive view of her. The survey is the second this week, following a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released Thursday, to find more than half of all Americans viewing Palin in an unfavorable light.
The ABC News/Washington Post survey suggests that there is doubt about Palin's leadership skills and her understanding of intricate issues. Fifty-seven percent say they don't think Palin understands complex issues, and 54 percent do not feel she is a strong leader…
Seventy percent of Republicans questioned view Palin favorably, with just one in four holding a negative opinion. The favorable view drops to 51 percent among independent voters and to 20 percent among Democrats.
The bluefin tuna is being grossly overfished, and is on its way to extinction. The reason? Fishermen can sell a single bluefin for $173,000. At first thought, you might feel like blaming the greedy fishermen (and I think there is some fault there), but here's an article that assigns the blame more appropriately: fault the rich assholes who regard paying an obscene price for a small bite to be part of the cachet of the fish.
"People believe in their hearts that a piece of raw fish is worth $600. And one of the main reasons that it's worth $600 is because you can't afford it and I can't, but they can. That makes it very special, and it makes people who eat it special.
"Any kind of luxury goods largely come from that sort of statement: I can afford it, and you can't. I'll drive a Maserati, even if I can't drive it faster than 65 miles per hour in most of the United States. I can afford a $280,000 car, and you're stuck with a Dodge Neon. I can fly private jet, drive a Maserati, do anything I bloody well please, including having a $600 piece of fish. And you can't."
And this is the brutal truth: bluefin, which beyond their intrinsic value as living creatures happen to be one of the universe's more majestic species, a Platonic ideal of oceanic speed and grace, aren't being extinguished by our greed. They're being sacrificed to our vanity, pretension, and ostentation — the most pathetic of our vices.
Keep that in mind, rich assholes of the world. When you throw down huge amounts of cash for luxury items, the rest of us aren't watching you admiringly. We think you're vain and pretentious and, well, revolting, in the most pathetic sense of the word.
Once upon a time, fascism was exciting. You had your shiny jackboots and colorful flags with cryptic mystic symbols on them: http://blog.badtux.net/2009/07/modern-fascism-is-boring.html
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It's long been fascinating to me how utter, pants-crapping, complete and total fear became somehow synonymous with toughness after the September 11 attacks. The more afraid you were, the more you bought a Hummer and duct tape and plastic sheeting, the more of a patriot and a tough guy you were. I'm still not sure how that equation works.
And no one was more of a frightened, craven, small man about Al Qaeda than Dick Cheney. Huddled for possibly years in his underground bunker where the boogeyman wouldn't get him at the same time as New Yorkers who fled that city on foot on that day returned to work BECAUSE THEY HAD TO; because they didn't have the luxury of fear, it's ironic and mysterious that this chickenshit asshole is still being touted by his daughter on national television as being The Guy To Defend America™.
When you look at all the faux-macho posturing of the Bush years from even the small amount of distance we have now, it's difficult to believe how a country could be so taken in my what would have been called hysteria if perpetrated by a woman instead of a dour man with a perpetual snarl who could shoot a friend in the face and then get the friend to apologize.
But now, as many of us suspected at the time, Dick Cheney was perfectly willing to send the military into the streets of America, knocking on suburban doors in search of terrorists:
Keep reading: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/07/pathetic-frightened-little-man-that.html
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If God wanted black people to... uhhh, OK, wait a sec....
Pat 'pride and prejudice' Buchanan points out that white men - by 100% - were the ones who signed the Declaration of Independence. Hmmmm. Wonder what all them black and brown folk were doing back then that could've possibly prevented them from participating…
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Change I can't believe in
"Pursuant to the agreement, in 2011, the military presence of the Americans will take end in Iraq," Maliki told a US think-tank.
"Nevertheless, if the Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this then at that time based on the needs of Iraq.
"I am sure that the prospects… and the desire of such cooperation is found among both parties," Maliki added in Arabic at the US Institute of Peace, according to a translation of his remarks by an interpreter.
His comments, which came less than a month after US troops pulled out of Iraqi cities and towns, signaled a shift, as Iraqi and US officials have insisted the December 31, 2011 deadline is a firm one.
Speaking with Maliki by his side at the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Obama again insisted that the United States would fulfill its commitment to remove all of its troops from Iraq by 2011.
The Iraqi leader has declared June 30 a national holiday to mark the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq's urban areas on that day, marking a key milestone in the Iraqi government's attempts to assert its authority throughout the country despite simmering ethnic tensions.
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Obama has also vowed to remove all US combat troops from the country by August 2010, leaving only a residual force of trainers and other military personnel largely fulfilling a support role.
Although the 130,000 US troops remaining in Iraq have largely left Iraq's urban areas, Maliki said last month that American air capacity would be crucial to support local forces in ensuring security.
Maliki on Thursday also paid symbolic tribute to US soldiers killed in Iraq, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery.
Oh, and the military has stopped releasing figures showing how many militants have been killed in fighting with US-led forces in the "other war."
"Militants." Uh huh.
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Secessionist Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry takes his buffoon rube act on the road yet again. This time, he threatened to invoke the 10th Amendment, pertaining to states' rights, to keep any national health care plan that might emerge from the Obama administration out of Texas.
You know the good old conservative/libertarian ideology: It's better to starve, fester and die homeless on your feet, than to get any sort of relief check and thank God and Congress on your knees.
Being interviewed Thursday by right-wing talk show host Mark Davis of WBAP-AM Radio in Dallas, Perry said the president's health care plan would be "disastrous" for Texas. By the way, Texas has a frightening number of uninsured residents, many of whom are children and women of child-bearing age. The taxpayers end up paying for their ER bills anyway, as they generally end up in charity hospitals supported with public funds.
So, Governor Goodhair is going to defend us Texans against those godless socialists with their health care plans, the same way he's been defending thousands of jobless Texans from getting extensions on their unemployment benefits with federal money. (He's been refusing it.)
It's so good to know that the governor is so concerned about the long-term interests of Texans, even as so many face foreclosures from being jobless and/or unable to afford mounting medical bills. Changes in the law during the Bush era have made bankruptcy a very unattractive proposition, but many people now have no choice but to limp down that road.
By the way, here's a link to the story about Perry's latest redneck grandstanding.
There are some people who would perversely describe Perry's recent rhetoric as "populist." That would describe it accurately if "populism" is the art of putting it to the people in the posterior and then distracting them such that they don't know where the reaming is coming from.
Texas has a long and sad history of this sort of "populism," which is ultimately a manipulative, chauvinistic anti-populism. Our officeholders have typically been servile to the rich, especially oil and gas money, while our poor have had to endure all manner of regressive taxation, such as sales taxes, and various user fees. We've rarely had real populists in control, even when our "Blue-Dog Democrats" have been in power.
Perry himself isn't shocking, because as long as I can remember, we've mostly seen the likes of him in high office in these parts. It's just disappointing that, after all these years, ol' Bubba out there still hasn't quite figured out who made his butt feel so sore the next morning. A hint: It wasn't Barack Obama.
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Swine flu could hit 40% of Americans: CDC says unless effective vaccine in place, hundreds of thousands could die.
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Sexual harassment claim being leveled against the best journalist covering our Kangaroo Courts in Guantanamo: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/25/sexual-harassment-claim-or-attempt-to-silence/
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