Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Wingnuttery
I was talking with BooMan tonight about how dumb and empty right wing bloggers are these days. I suggested that the equivalent on our side would have been if in 2003 left wing bloggers spent all their time talking about their designs for the giant puppets they were going to bring to the anti-war demonstrations.* After reading this, that characterization seems to be pretty solid.
*To be clear I have nothing against protests or giant puppets.
*To be clear I have nothing against protests or giant puppets.
Articles That Probably Won't Be Written
You may remember all the things written during the Lieberman/Lamont primary about how horrible it was for Democracy and the country to dare to have a contested primary, especially with a candidate who was a complete dirty fucking hippie like Ned Lamont. It was all very entertaining given how few of those types of articles were written when, in 2004, arch-conservative Pat Toomey almost beat Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Senate Primary.
And now that we're having a rematch of that battle I doubt many will be written this time either.
Ned Lamont, artist's conception.
And now that we're having a rematch of that battle I doubt many will be written this time either.
Ned Lamont, artist's conception.
Rebuking George F.
I was also heartened to see WaPo reporters being allowed to gently rebuke the buffoon that's helping to destroy the reputation of their paper.
Looks Kinda Pretty
A not often remarked upon issue in this country is how much newly constructed infrastructure, especially bridges, tend to be really ugly. This design for one carrying supertrains in Portland, at least in the picture, looks pretty! Pretty bridges in urban spaces can really enhance the quality of a place. And, yes, I'm talking about you and those ugly bridges across the Schuylkill, Philadelphia...
Time For Another Blogger Ethics Panel
I suppose there are worse things than this, but it's just another instance of journalistic standards being more about declaring you have standards then living up to them in a meaningful way.
So Awesome
The best use for waterfront property is obviously a giant parking lot.
I have an idea - build the casino by the damn stadiums where there are already acres of parking lots. That football stadium doesn't get used that often.
Steinberg said the SugarHouse developers had taken some of those recommendations to heart but remained wedded to an "auto-centric" project. He said the surface parking for the interim facility, with spots for 1,465 cars, would look like the parking around the stadium district.
I have an idea - build the casino by the damn stadiums where there are already acres of parking lots. That football stadium doesn't get used that often.
Fabulous
This is awesome.
Vermont today became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a Legislature’s vote. The Burlington Free Press reports that Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry was overturned by a 23-5 vote in the state Senate and 100-49 in the House.
Segway The Second
I think a big problem for vehicles like this is that they aren't all that compatible with the existing universe of roads and cars. Happy to be wrong.
Liars for Jesus
Rick Warren edition.
I guess Jesus says it's ok to be a bigot as long as you lie to Larry King about it.
I guess Jesus says it's ok to be a bigot as long as you lie to Larry King about it.
WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
WATB alert:
Reduced regulatory oversight...of banks and big financial institutions. Loans to unqualified borrowers made by... banks.... People took our mortgages and home-equity loans from they couldn't afford from...banks who abandoned underwriting requirements.
The rich assholes who run the world are babies.
HONOLULU - Citigroup Inc.'s new board chairman, Richard Parsons, said financial institutions are being targeted for creating the nation's financial crisis, but they aren't the only ones responsible.
"Everybody participated in pumping up this balloon. Now the balloon has deflated," he said Monday. "Everybody, in reality, has some part of the blame. But it's much more in the culture to find a villain and vilify the villain."
Besides banks, there was reduced regulatory oversight, loans to unqualified borrowers were encouraged and people took out mortgages or home-equity loans they couldn't afford.
Reduced regulatory oversight...of banks and big financial institutions. Loans to unqualified borrowers made by... banks.... People took our mortgages and home-equity loans from they couldn't afford from...banks who abandoned underwriting requirements.
The rich assholes who run the world are babies.
Monsters
I've long been unsure about why the enablers - lawyers, doctors - have bothered me more than the leaders.
WASHINGTON — Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.
Monday, April 06, 2009
The Stupids
When I was growing up what always pissed me off more than anything was when my sense of justice was violated. I'm not claiming that my sense of such things was perfect, and I imagine that such outrages often involved me personally, but nonetheless violations of my sense of justice always drove my crazy. Fortunately zero tolerance policies became commonplace about the time I left high school.
I don't know how anyone gets through adolescence these days.
When a Fairfax County mother got an urgent call from school last month reporting that her teenage daughter was caught popping a pill at lunchtime, she did not panic. "It was probably her birth-control pill," she thought. She was right.
Her heart dropped that afternoon in the assistant principal's office at Oakton High School when she and her daughter heard the mandatory punishment: A two-week suspension and recommendation for expulsion.
I don't know how anyone gets through adolescence these days.
This Is Excellent News For Republicans
I hope John McCain yells at clouds tells David Gregory what it all means soon.
Mr. Obama's overall approval rating, meanwhile, has hit a new high of 66 percent, up from 64 percent last month. His disapproval rating stands at 24 percent. Nearly all Democrats and most independents approve of the way the president is handling his job, while only 31 percent of Republicans approve.
Deep Thought
When my house gets foreclosed I'll probably be pretty happy if there's a reeducation camp I can go to.
Good Luck With That
I have nothing against newspapers trying to charge for online content, but... really, it isn't the way forward.
The Mall Is Flat
Funny. General Growth Properties issues statement which basically says, "We have no idea why anyone would buy our shitty stock."
NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Growth Properties IncGGP.N, which is struggling to avoid filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, on Monday said it could not explain why its stock was up 89 percent.
Misguided Legal Theories
Yeah, good luck with that.
Absurdly, most of the article is about Google which doesn't even have ads on its google news page* and which already has a deal with the AP.
*correction, they do have some ads when you search the news page now.
The Associated Press and its member newspapers will take legal action against Web sites that use their articles without legal permission, the group said on Monday, in a clear shot at aggregators like Google.
In a speech at The A.P.’s annual meeting in San Diego, William Dean Singleton, chairman of the group, said, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”
Absurdly, most of the article is about Google which doesn't even have ads on its google news page* and which already has a deal with the AP.
*correction, they do have some ads when you search the news page now.
Not Dead Yet
Paul Samuelson, who spoke at my department graduation ceremony in 1993, is, in fact, not dead.
Trust Us, We Know What We're Doing
I think the main issue with beat sweeteners is that they're part of a whole host of journalistic practices which aren't especially pretty... and more than that, they're practices that the public is largely ignorant of. There's a lack of transparency in journalism which is often at odds with the great degree of self-righteousness regularly exhibited by some in the profession. You can't simultaenously be a superhuman devotee to truth telling and someone who writes stories deliberately to curry favor with sources. Such practices might at times be, on balance, good for the overall goal of providing information for readers (though frequently they're probably just good for the overall goal of personal career elevation), but they're also a reminder that journalism as practiced is not the pristine objective truth machine that some suggest when writing columns about how bloggers suck.
But You'd Have To Charge Them Even More!
CNN just did a mini-piece on the New York Times Co. threatening to shutter the Boston Globe. They had someone on saying that the problem was that newspapers long ago started distributing their content for free on the internets.
I imagine it's true the industry as a whole didn't spend enough time thinking about their online business model, but simply charging people for online access was never going to be the solution. Revenue from subscriptions and sales never paid the newspaper bills, advertising did. If people paid the equivalent of a print subscription for online access and didn't get a copy of the print edition, that would be a net loss for newspapers because online advertising revenue wouldn't make up for the lost print advertising revenue.
The point is that it's lost advertising revenue, not lost subscription revenue, that's the big problem.
I imagine it's true the industry as a whole didn't spend enough time thinking about their online business model, but simply charging people for online access was never going to be the solution. Revenue from subscriptions and sales never paid the newspaper bills, advertising did. If people paid the equivalent of a print subscription for online access and didn't get a copy of the print edition, that would be a net loss for newspapers because online advertising revenue wouldn't make up for the lost print advertising revenue.
The point is that it's lost advertising revenue, not lost subscription revenue, that's the big problem.
Meanwhile
Over there.
Remember, kids, all the very serious people supported this war. Little Petey Beinart is now a Senior Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations!
Such wise counsel from the very wise council.
BAGHDAD -- A series of six car bombs exploded in or near Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 30 people and wounding scores more, according to witnesses and the police.
Remember, kids, all the very serious people supported this war. Little Petey Beinart is now a Senior Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations!
Such wise counsel from the very wise council.
Just Like The Dixie Chicks
While our discourse is still very stupid, it is better than it used to be. Because I think people often forget just what it was which caused the Diane Sawyer-blessed months-long public flogging of the Dixie Chicks, I think it's useful to provide the occasional reminder.
As conservatives all over the place are calling for revolution, it's worth remembering what got our media all excited in early 2003.
Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.
As conservatives all over the place are calling for revolution, it's worth remembering what got our media all excited in early 2003.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Liquidity
It's frustrating that they keep clinging to the notion that this is largely a liquidity issue. I don't know if they believe it or if it just makes what they're doing sound better.
Mortgage Mods
Existing programs aren't really working as failure rates are going up. The only way to stem the foreclosure tide is to allow bankruptcy judges to modify loan terms, something the Bayh Dogs keep killing.
Have fun destroying your state, Evan! You have a few foreclosure problems there I see... Heckuva job!
Have fun destroying your state, Evan! You have a few foreclosure problems there I see... Heckuva job!
Sunday Bobbleheads
Document the atrocities.
BC's "This Week" — Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
___
CBS' "Face the Nation" — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
___
NBC's "Meet the Press" — Fritz Henderson, chief executive officer of General Motors Corp.; William Rodgers, chief economist at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
___
CNN's "State of the Union" — Henderson; Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Jack Welch, former chief executive of General Electric Co.; David Axelrod, White House senior adviser.
"Fox News Sunday" _ Axelrod; Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
My morning aggravation
I think if corporations want to pretend they have the rights of "persons", they should also have to face the death penalty when they kill people. At the very least, Pfizer is guilty of negligent homicide, aren't they? Can we put them in jail?
Signed,
Not Atrios
Signed,
Not Atrios
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Hope and Glory
Hope. Glory. (Lots of good links in the, uh, links.)
And, via AguaTigre, whatever the hell this is. It appears that perhaps a major corporation has discovered a new way to make money by making women ashamed of their bodies. Ingenious, in a way so stupid it might make you just want to kill yourself. See if you can detect the clever play on words. Gah, humbug.
And, via AguaTigre, whatever the hell this is. It appears that perhaps a major corporation has discovered a new way to make money by making women ashamed of their bodies. Ingenious, in a way so stupid it might make you just want to kill yourself. See if you can detect the clever play on words. Gah, humbug.
Comcast Fail
Their email system, or at least which ever part I'm on, has been down all day...so I can't receive email!
The Bayh Dogs
But of course it's a "a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors." Bayh already announced that he and the rest of the Bayh Dogs have no agenda, which means he gathered a bunch of people together and said, "Here's my plan to make us more powerful and give us more leverage." Maybe they'll figure out an actual agenda eventually, but for the moment the agenda is whatever Bayh says it is. Whether his yapping puppies follow along on a regular basis remains to be seen...
(via my)
(via my)
Beat Sweetener
I recently learned what is apparently a term of art in the world of elite pristine journalism. It describes the standard and accepted - and well understood by all involved except the readers - practice of writing sycophantic source-favoring articles based on the idea that such things will buy you access so that later you might be able to be the one to share actual important information with readers. Never fear, dear readers, no blogger ethics panel is necessary for this journalist-approved practice, even if certain uncomfortable facts never quite make to readers...
(via glennzilla)
(via glennzilla)
Taking The Train To The Beach
Will this actually happen? I don't remember L.A. in detail enough to have an informed opinion about the various alignment possibilities, but Santa Monica/Venice will be much nicer places if the amount of parking/driving is reduced.
Always enjoyed taking the subway home from the beach in Barceloneta when I was staying in Barcelona.
Always enjoyed taking the subway home from the beach in Barceloneta when I was staying in Barcelona.
Hopey Changey
Ah well.
It's the banksters' country. We just live in it.
The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
...
The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.
It's the banksters' country. We just live in it.
Saving Your Local Newspaper
I do wonder where the problem is.
The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut the Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said.
Friday, April 03, 2009
A Cunning Plan
We can solve a problem caused by large financial institutions trading leveraged assets with each other at inflated prices by encouraging them to trade leveraged assets with each other at inflated prices.
Mouse Troubles
And on and on...
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co. said Friday it had cut 1,900 positions at its U.S. theme parks as part of an earlier announced reorganization, representing about 11 percent of salaried employees in the division.
The Absurdity Of Local Transit Governance
I hope the problem is obvious.
The SEPTA board has two representatives from each of the five-county service area plus five others appointed by various Harrisburg politicos.
WATB
What's so amusing about the absurdity that is Evan Byah is that he doesn't realize that it isn't 1994 anymore. While I agree that this doesn't have much to do with pleasing the voters of Indiana, I also think he believes it's a way to increase his relevance and importance.
Emp/Pop
This is pretty stunning.
The emp-pop ratio peaked in 2000 at 64.7.
Over the month, the employment-population ratio slipped to 59.9 percent, 2.8 percentage points lower than at the beginning of the recession and the lowest level since July 1985. Among the employed, the number of persons working part time who would prefer to be working full time increased by 423,000 over the month to 9.0 million. Since December 2007, this measure has risen by 4.4 million.
The emp-pop ratio peaked in 2000 at 64.7.
Not Coming Back
Despite this blog's name, I generally resist the temptation to think in apocalyptic terms or to suddenly decide Everything's Different Now, but I really am seriously worried about the economy going forward. Aside from the lost wealth in housing and elsewhere, we have lots of lost jobs, and it's hard to see a lot of those jobs coming back any time soon. The construction industry is going to be dead for awhile for obvious reasons. A lot of bubble jobs in the mortgage industry aren't coming back any time soon. Not quite sure what's going on with the auto industry, long term.
The worry is that there isn't just some weak demand in certain sectors which a bit of adjustment will sort out eventually, but that instead there's a structural shift which will require a much longer transition period before things get better. I'm worried, anyway.
The worry is that there isn't just some weak demand in certain sectors which a bit of adjustment will sort out eventually, but that instead there's a structural shift which will require a much longer transition period before things get better. I'm worried, anyway.
Fabulous
And Iowa.
DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Iowa Supreme Court announced its ruling in a landmark same-sex marriage case Friday morning.
The court's written ruling was to be issued on the Iowa Supreme Court's Web site , but traffic to the site crashed the server and took down the Web site.
The court ruled in favor of six same-sex couples who sought to get marriage licenses, but were denied. The ruling means same-sex couples in Iowa can now get married under state law.
Holy Crap
Unders win again.
...about half of jobs lost are in construction and manufacturing.
...U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, is up to 15.6%, up from 9.3% a year ago.
The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total of 663,000 jobs.
...about half of jobs lost are in construction and manufacturing.
...U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, is up to 15.6%, up from 9.3% a year ago.
Morning Thread
by Molly Ivors
Am I the only one who thinks that having Andrea Mitchell sit in for Rachel Maddow is a little like having Dick Cheney sit in for Barack Obama?
Am I the only one who thinks that having Andrea Mitchell sit in for Rachel Maddow is a little like having Dick Cheney sit in for Barack Obama?
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Thursday Night Thread
Jobs report comes out tomorrow. Consensus forecast is -650K. I'll take the under, as usual.
Blago
Wee problems.
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, his brother Rob and Christopher Kelly, a former top fundraiser for Blagojevich, were all indicted today on corruption charges, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago announced.
Also charged in the indictment were Lon Monk, a lobbyist and former Blagojevich chief of staff; John Harris, also a former chief of staff to Blagojevich; and William Cellini, a Springfield insider for decades.
Driving Is Dangerous
Just in case you've forgotten.
Highway deaths in Pennsylvania dropped to 1,468 last year, the fewest since 1994, when 1,440 traffic deaths were reported, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said today.
...
PennDot reported 64 fatalities involving 16- or 17-year-old drivers, compared with 101 in 2007. Fatalities involving drivers over 65 dropped to 259 from 268.
TARP Repayment Is Lucy's Football
Last week:
Now:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America CorpChief Executive Kenneth Lewis said the largest U.S. bank wants to start repaying $45 billion of federal bailout money next month, after completing a government stress test, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.
Lewis had previously said he hoped to pay back all of the money Bank of America took from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program as soon as later this year, without saying when repayment would begin.
Now:
Ken Lewis from Bank of America (BAC) doesn’t seem to be able to run away from last month’s promise to repay TARP funds fast enough.
In his latest media appearances, including an interview on CNBC, Lewis said that BofA would repay taxpayers for the $45 billion in TARP proceeds his bank received. Eventually. (Lewis also said he ”regrets” having taken that much, saying the bank took more than it needed, describing the total as ”his mistake.” From this vantage, seems like the government’s … but po-tay-to, po-tah-to, right?)
But he quickly added that the economy will have to rebound. And then several quarters will have to pass.
Interconnected
I fully understand that journalists don't feel responsible for all of the sins in their profession much in the same way that I don't like being held responsible for every diary written on the Great Orange Satan's site. Still, the various parts of the journalism ecosystem are interconnected. Print journalists go on the cable teevee networks, which increases their credibility. Fox personalities are treated with a degree of respect. If Markos turned his site into a lunatic conspiracy theory site I would, at some point, feel inclined to say something about it. And while I don't think they should be spending all of their time swatting down wingnuttery - sometimes it is just best to ignore it - there are times when it is their role to address the horseshit.
Stupid Or Corrupt?
Josh flags this post at Big Picture. A fundamental question is whether all parties knew these transactions weren't real, that the insurance they were buying was fake.
But, to some degree, it doesn't really matter except for those of us who like to get outraged by these things. However this situation came about, the powers that be are most interested in preserving the institutions most responsible for it. Why that is I do not know, but that's where we are.
But, to some degree, it doesn't really matter except for those of us who like to get outraged by these things. However this situation came about, the powers that be are most interested in preserving the institutions most responsible for it. Why that is I do not know, but that's where we are.
Imaginary Etiquette
I haven't been able to figure out what's been more amusing about all of the tut-tutting of the Obama trip to England. Was it the general tendency to just manufacture rules of etiquette? The racism-tinged "of course those people won't know how to behave?" The irony of tea party fetishists caring what the English monarch might think about anything? The general tendency to portray foreigners as alien children?
Our discourse is so stupid.
Our discourse is so stupid.
Thursday Is New Jobless Day
Holy crap.
Jobless Claims Rise by 12,000 to 669,000; Puts Jobless Claims at Highest Level Since October 1982. (story developing)
Thread
You know, I just can't help questioning Eric Holder's priorities.
I'm not saying the prosecution in question wasn't dirty. What I want to know is why it was at the top of the list. As Scott Horton says:
Signed,
Not Atrios
I'm not saying the prosecution in question wasn't dirty. What I want to know is why it was at the top of the list. As Scott Horton says:
The misconduct by prosecutors in the Stevens case, bad as it was, is trivial compared to what went on in a number of other political prosecutions which have been profiled here–the Siegelman case, the prosecutions of Paul Minor and two Mississippi judges, and the prosecution of Cyril Wecht.
Signed,
Not Atrios
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Big Government Conservatives
Yes, it's long been a mystery why conservatives dream of growing the government through tax cuts. Actually the mystery is that this type of nonsense and the people who spout it are given a platform, that these obvious absurdities are given a "fair" hearing.
Wolcott On The Village
An amusing if also somewhat scary read.
Only within the Beltway popcorn popper could Gingrich, whose serpent tongue and ogre ego did so much to polarize discourse in the 1990s and abort reform, be considered a foxy catch. Only in Washington, D.C., could Gingrich, a magpie of futurist jargon and a bumptious opportunist, pass himself off as an iconoclastic force and centrifuge of ideas, a cross between Buckminster Fuller and Che Guevara leading a commando raid on the buffet table. And only within the punditocracy could “hyper-bipartisan” be bandied about as an aphrodisiac.
Funny But Scary Too
Red State comments thread:
The Key Is Not To Fire The First Shot
IJB Wednesday, April 1st at 12:52AM EDT (link)
The Other Side will have to do that.
It probably means a nice family somewhere, or maybe even a whole town, will have to get mowed down by the Obamabots.
But, and this key - if they fire the first shot, we make sure we fire the last shot.
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Tobacco Tax Increase
Somehow I don't remember ever being aware of this.
Smokers are digging deeper for the price of a pack of cigarettes today as the largest increase ever in the federal tobacco excise tax goes into effect.
The new federal tax is $1.01 per pack, up from 39 cents.
We're All Subprime Now
Ah, I do miss those early days when all the very serious people were talking about the "subprime crisis." It was obvious then that aside from being an early warning, it had nothing to do with subprime...
Nobody listens to Atrios...
Nobody listens to Atrios...
Armchair Revolutionaries
I've long rolled my eyes about armchair revolutionaries, the ones who dream of revolution but can't quite manage to get out of their chairs. We do have people on our "side" who express such sentiments, but they're limited to anonymous people in comments sections and not, you know, prominent bloggers and commentators.
Goodbye Pajamas Media
Today is the day that all that wingnut welfare ends. I went to see what's currently at the site, which is now focused on video, and came across what I assume is not an April Fool's joke:
Introducing TCOT on PJTV
Don’t miss the new daily show about top conservatives on Twitter, hosted by Michael Patrick Leahy.
Still Very Bad
The official jobs report comes out Friday, but the private estimate of that number is out today.
Job losses in the U.S. private sector accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services Wednesday.
Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000 in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs, said ADP, which has been carrying out the survey since 2001.
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