Headlines - Monday July 12

Road trip for a couple of days. You're on your own!

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If you're going to start looking back to past crimes, Mr. President, how about starting with the torturers and traitors in the previous administration right here at home? "Barack Obama described the Srebrenica massacre as "a stain on our collective conscience" as hundreds of victims of the 1995 atrocity were buried. In a statement read for him in the Bosnian town, the US president admitted the failure of the international community to protect the enclave, and said those responsible must be pursued. More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops. The massacre was the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War. Hundreds of victims of the massacre were buried at a ceremony outside the town on Sunday. The 775 coffins with the remains of newly identified victims from mass graves were laid to rest at the Potocari cemetery near Srebrenica. European leaders and the presidents of all former Yugoslav republics who had gathered for the ceremony heard Mr Obama's words that "there can be no lasting peace without justice"."  

 

 

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Great news! We have enough money to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for another decade according to General Casey.

 

It's a good thing we have an anti-war president. Oh wait .....

 

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This week's Green Thing is a shrinking jug that keeps milk fresh for an extra week.

 

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Obama has been cleaning up a giant mess. One example:

Almost nothing had been written about the MMS at all of late, save for its now infamous four-year sex scandal. According to MMS spokesman Nicholas Pardi, there's not a single reporter in the country who covers its activities full time. And yet in the wake of this endless disaster, thanks to the energetic reporting of those institutions that are now on the job, we've learned, for instance, that the Minerals Management Service did not require oil companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency. No enforcement mechanisms existed at all. In recent years, regulators allowed the oil executives to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil, which were then traced over and submitted. Free hunting and fishing trips, tickets to games, expensive meals were the norm at the Lake Charles office, all provided by the oil companies. Taking such gifts "appears to have been a generally accepted practice," according to the department's acting inspector general, Mary L. Kendall. Two years ago, one MMS employee undertook four inspections of platforms while in the process of negotiating the terms of his employment with that same company. Another was suspected of using crystal meth during his inspections. It's no wonder that that the MMS collected only sixteen fines from the more than four hundred investigations of Gulf of Mexico drilling incidents over the past five years. The agency found roughly 200 violations of its regulations, but showed virtually no interest in pursuing any of them.

And tonight on MarketPlace, I heard how BP is considered a good company in Britain and a good protector of the environmental standards of the land. It's only in America where regulations were so lax as to be non-existent that the corporate officers felt no obligation to deliver more than asked for by the country in which it was operating. BP never had to care when operating in the US because the landlords didn't care if the place was trashed as long as they got their cut. That's a clear example of the kleptocracy that ruled too over America and which hasn't released it's strangle hold even now.

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It can always get worse "British scientists warned that the oil spill is increasing the level of arsenic in the ocean, and could further add to the devastating impact on the already sensitive environment. ... Imperial College London researchers warned the effect on the environment could worsen unless clean up efforts were hastened. ... Researchers published a study which found oil stops the ocean's natural filtering process of arsenic. ... They said the arsenic then gets "magnified" up the food chain, as fish eat small amounts of the deadly poison and may eventually impact humans, researchers said. ... Professor Mark Sephton said arsenic, which is found in seawater, was normally filtered out of the ocean when it combined with sediment on the sea floor. ... "But oil spills stop the normal process because the oil combines with sediment and it leads to an accumulation of arsenic in the water over time," he said. ... "Arsenic only needs to be a 10th of a part per billion to cause problems.""

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Environmental news stories.

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Army Corps caught attacking citizens online: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/6121/army-corps-caught-attacking-citizens-online

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BP wasn't alone in this failed process though they may have been leading it. That others are called to answer for their behavior makes sense.

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Being the torturer: http://www.americablog.com/2010/07/weekend-thoughts-being-torturer.html

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Profoundly moving...or profoundly demented? You decide.

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Michele Bachmann, Teabagger Welfare queen We all know that  congresswoman Michele Bachman from Minnesota veritably defines 'batshit crazy' with her every utterance, and we also know that she is quick to denounce virtually all government programs as "socialism!" Someone should ask her if she thinks farm subsidies are "socialist" and press her for a yes or non answer. If she says "no" she should explain why they aren't and if she says "yes" she should be asked to explain why her family farm has applied for and received over $250,000 in farm subsidies over the last decade. I guess Michele is just a typical wingnut hypocrite - "It's cool for me, but an abomination for thee."

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Republican hypoicrisy alert

First he votes against extending unemployment to (formerly) working Americans. Then he pulls this:

Sen. Kyl: $678-billion tax break for rich should not be offset

Sen. Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, believes that any extension to unemployment benefits "ought to be paid for." But when it comes to the $678-billion cost of extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, the senator says no offsetting is necessary.

In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday, Kyl argued that Congress and the Obama administration should extend the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush during his first term.

Extending the entire package of tax cuts would cost the US $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years. The Obama administration has argued in favor of allowing to expire at least the part of the tax cuts that applies to people earning over $250,000 a year. That portion is estimated to cost $678 billion over 10 years.

via Raw Story

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A former contractor has come forward to denounce foreign oil giant BP and the "cutthroat individuals" running the oil disaster response.

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The U.S. Senate's soon-to-be first Daoist monk Alvin Greene has been cleared in the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's (SLED) investigation into his finances, as was his destiny. As we've long suspected, $10,440 simply came into his possession and, with Greene having no need for such worldly things, the money became the first step in the path to Alvin Greene becoming our country's savior. But in a weird way, the SLED investigators said, the government, without realizing it, chose Greene itself. MORE »

 

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Avedon:

You worked hard and played by the rules, and now people in expensive suits who sat in offices recklessly gambling with other people's money want to stop you from being able to retire.

They exported jobs to other countries and made it harder to start new businesses to create new jobs. They slashed government spending to the point where even schools are closing. They failed to honor contracts that said they would put money into your pension fund, and now there is no pension fund. And now they want your unemployment insurance so they can gamble that away, too.

They say you need to tighten your belt to pay for their mistakes.

Well, why should you?

You paid for insurance to protect you from this. Demand what you paid for.

Social Security: You paid for it. We have the money. You earned it. You deserve it. And they don't.

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Remember when?

The health care debate was going on and we heard all the bogus horror stories about the European and Canadian systems?

... To hear some folks tell it, you could imagine every third European dropping dead in the streets on a regular basis and the rest languishing in pain for months at a time.

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And the taxes they pay over there, everybody's broke, right? Not:

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Remember all that right wing trashing of Canada and its health care system during the debate in this country? We were told that the Canadian health care system and their resulting taxation were crushing their economy. Then why is their economy rebounding better than ours and adding jobs that our tax cut dogma hasn't? If Canada can add back all of the jobs they've lost since 2008 and have universal health care at the same time, can we please dispense with the tea party nonsense?

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Whatever tax cuts the middle class got were minimal compared to what the rich (and corporations) walked away with. A sweetener, or shiny shit for us to look at, so we didn't notice the taste. How are ya doing with that ... what was it ... $600 you got back from Bush? How long did that last when you lost your job and your health care? A Canadian or European loses his job, he doesn't have to worry about being able to take his kids to the doctor when they need it.

If you'll notice, the Canadian banks didn't take as bad a hit, and there wasn't a "bailout" north of the border, when our economy tanked. It's because they have real regulation, not whatever you'd call the bullshit system we have here. It's about time for people to realize we've gotten too used to irresponsible government and stop voting against their own interest.

But wait ... this is America.

Update:

And here's something else you're gonna have to pay for:

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They walked away from their massive banking debts and unloaded them on you. They sc-r-ree-eeched about the poor and middle class walking away from the homes. And now they, themselves, are walking away from their even bigger mortgage disasters that they, themselves, built.

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The only thing 'socialist' in this country is that we're all covering the losses of the wealthy.

America: Of, by, and for the rich.

 

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No pain, no-effort deficit cure 
No, really.  Smirky/Darth's catastrophic tax cuts were so off-the-charts ludicrous, that they actually provide an almost too-good-to-be-true, painless way to slash the deficit by three-quarters. Best of all? The Senate doesn't have to vote on it.

Via Zandar:

As Zero Hedge regular madhedgefundtrader points out, all Obama has to do to fix the deficit is...nothing.

Out of a current projected budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, $700 billion, or 54% comes from the Bush era tax cuts, $320 billion (25%) from a tax revenue fall off caused by the Great Recession, $200 billion from the wars in Iran and Iraq (15%),  and $50 billion (4%) is generated by Obama's recovery measures. The TARP and the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so small, they don't even register on the chart. All of the angst, complaining, moaning, blustering, and carping is about the 4%.

You often see this in politics, where the debate gets focused on where the problem isn't, not where it is, and is a big reason why I'm not in that business. Markets have a fascinating way of seeing straight though this impenetrable fog. So while the noise out of Washington is trying to convince us that these deficits are ruinous, the ten year Treasury bond yields we saw yesterday at a stunning 2.97% are telling us that, in fact, they are no problem at all, and that the government can now borrow nearly infinite amounts of money at the lowest interest rates in history.

There are some other really interesting things that this chart and the bond market are telling us. The Bush tax cuts expire next year, and a recovering economy will bring a return of tax revenues, eliminating 79% of the deficit. The scheduled withdrawal from Iraq next year will cut another 7%. This assumes that Obama is unable to get a single additional piece of legislation through the congress, a distinct possibility if he loses control of congress in November.

This is the writing on the wall the bond market is attempting to focus our blinkered eyes on. If anyone else has another set of believable numbers that reaches a different conclusion, I am all ears.

So sure, if Republicans are serious that we have to get rid of deficits, they they will let the Bush tax cuts expire.  And if Obama is serious about it, he won't lift his pen to sign any sort of extension on them.  Bam, we lose a huge chunk of deficit and get back on track.

What's that you say?  There's no way on God's green Earth that Obama will let this happen?  Why not?  According to Republicans, Obama's already doomed as a one term President anyway, and the Republicans will control Congress until the End of Time Itself.

What does he have to lose by letting Bush's tax cuts, the single largest contributor to our deficit, expire?

Oh, Zandar, I wish you hadn't said that. I'm having visions of "Little Timmy" Geithner and "Fat Larry" Summers holding some kind of bogus economic threat to his head. Or maybe just Traitor Joe Lieberman, tears in his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment.

Somebody needs to tell the President that if his mother were still around, she would kick his rich, un-Democratic friends right in the nuts.