Thread, sweet thread

When the cat's away...

Signed,
Not Atrios

Evening Thread

Bullets dodged. Crabfest begins.

Evening Thread

by Molly Ivors

Jeez, the gunshots here are just my crazy wingnut neighbor trying to scare the chickens.

Afternoon Thread

Nice day in my urban hellhole, so I'm going to go out and dodge the bullets for a bit.

And On And On

Things don't change much.

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

“We just went right after them,” said Ms. Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank’s top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”

My State Is Stoopid Too

Lovely.

The federal government is offering $273 million in stimulus funding to help more Pennsylvanians qualify for cash unemployment benefits. But four months after the offer was made, the legislature has not taken the money. And there is no certainty it ever will. Republican leaders and business groups - in Pennsylvania and some other states - object that the funding would come with unacceptable strings attached.

Wanker of the Day

Ed Whelan.

Sunday Bobbleheads

Meet the Press has the French Open.

This Week has Secretary of State Clinton.

Face the Nation has President Gingrich and David Axelrod.

Document the atrocities! Or, if CoT is around, wait for him to translate them for you in the comments threads...

Overnight

Rock on.

Headache

Idiot America

Go chat with Charles Pierce.

Even More Thread

Stuff to do.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

These Two Things Can Be True At Once, Yet...

Reader d sent this in:

Economists described the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, released Friday, as an unambiguous sign of improvement, yet also clear evidence of broadening national distress, as millions of households grapple with joblessness and lost working hours.

I'm not so sanguine, but even if we stipulate that things getting worse not quite as fast is "unambiguous sign of improvement" the fact remains that that national distress is still broadening and will almost certainly do so for some time. Unemployment is higher than projections used for the adverse case of the stress tests, and is going to continue to rise, most likely for the next several months if not the rest of the year. States and local governments are cutting spending, hours, and jobs, and another big wave of foreclosures is going to hit the residential market even as commercial real estate is imploding.

So, no, one month of "only" 350K lost jobs is not enough to make me optimistic that everything is going to turn around, even slowly.

Lunch Thread

Because man cannot live on blog alone.

Pooping In The Pool

That's pretty much what the conservative movement, so to speak, is up to these days.

Nobody Could Have Predicted

Except those who did.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - John P. McMurray made it clear to his Countrywide Financial Corp bosses that they were playing a dangerous game with risk. But they didn't listen.

...

Frequently cited in the lawsuit are emails from McMurray warning Mozilo, Sambol and Sieracki about the rapidly increasing risk of the loan portfolio at Countrywide, which by September 2006 estimated it had almost 16 percent of the U.S. home loan market.

He entreated them to follow the company's risk procedures.

Pod People

Every now and then I get people writing in about PRT systems. They're systems supported by people who don't really understand the whole "mass" part of "mass transit," often the kind of people who complain about rail being "19th century technology," you know, unlike the internal combustion engine and automobiles.


(via streetsblog)

Who Counts?

77 members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They support a single payer health care plan. 51 Blue Dogs. They don't. Who is on your teevee? In your news weekly?

"Not on the table."

Program Interruption

I really am Far from the Tubes this week, but I'm just going to break in here suddenly and point out that if you click on all of Gavin's links, you will discover that Tommy Christopher is kind of a dork.

Friday Night

enjoy

EATED

Bank of Lincolnwood, Lincolnwood, IL gets EATED.

Budget Cuts

Let the inmates go!

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Three state prisons will be shut down in coming months and their inmates released or moved elsewhere to save money as Michigan grapples with a budget deficit, officials said Friday.

Happy Hour Thread

It's Friday, it can come a bit early.

The Tan Man

The housing bubble existed because numerous lenders were making loans without any consideration of whether or not people obtaining those loans actually had the ability to repay them. The idea was that perpetual home price increases combined with perpetual opportunities to refinance would just keep the party going forever.

I know that it's fashionable to believe that nobody could've predicted that this would come to a halt at some point, but you don't have to be all that smart to see a little flaw in that model.

UK

I don't have any especially deep thoughts about the current political situation in the UK. Gordon Brown's kind of an odd bird, and I remember when Blair was ascendant the UK press treated him as such. It was then a bit weird that when he was coming to power the press was suddenly much more respectful.

Afternoon Thread

Wonder if the FDIC is hungry this week.

Maybe You Could Have Shared That With Us

It's actually pretty common for major news outlets to not share important facts with readers during a political/policy debate, but instead to wait until the issue is over before putting that information out there. I don't know if this is deliberate and part of the general fear of coming down on one side of an issue over the other or not, but I've seen it many times.

Go Away Norm

And take your damned ethernets with you.

Great Guest

I realize that TV news is a profit-seeking business venture and as part of an international conglomerate MSNBC in particular might have interests other than informing viewers with some sort of ideal form of journalism. But those in the news business wrap themselves in language of Journalistic Standards and Blogger Ethics and blah blah blah. So why is Liz Cheney on the air all the time?

Wanker of the Day

Stuart Taylor.

Unemployment

At the risk of stating the obvious, 9.4% unemployment is really high. I don't really get the sense that media coverage reflects this reality, and most reports on economic news always seem to find the silver lining. The "good news" that job losses were not as high as expected doesn't change the fact that job losses at that level mean continued rising unemployment. A lot of people are out of work and that isn't going to improve any time soon.

Fantasy Accounting

If we pretend everything's ok then it is.

The revival may be short-lived. Analysts who have examined the quarterly profits and government tests say that accounting rule changes and rosy assumptions are making the institutions look healthier than they are.

The government probably wants to win time for the banks, keeping them alive as they struggle to earn their way out of the mess, says economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University in New York. The danger is that weak banks will remain reluctant to lend, hobbling President Barack Obama’s efforts to pull the economy out of recession.

Citigroup’s $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. “The big banks’ profits were totally bogus,” says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial companies. “The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They’re all part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig.”

Monthly Jobs Report

Unders win, "only" 345K jobs lost. Unemployment at 9.4%.

U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, rises from 15.8% to 16.4%.

Average Person

I appreciate that Sotomayor isn't rich and aside from whatever equity she might have in her condo doesn't have much accumulated wealth but I do not like the way the press treats the low end of the upper middle class as "average."

Overnight

Rock on.

We Were Stupid Before We Voted For Him

Without commenting on the broader issues, I remember being entertained in '08 when Naomi Klein, at a pretty non-political Free Press conference, spent her allotted time informing the assembled audience that they were all morons for thinking that things might be better in an Obama administration.

Don't misunderstand. I have nothing against Obama critics. I am one! Just, you know, direct your fire at him not the "stupid" people who support him.

Um

The cops were pursuing this case by, you know, almost immediately (for better or for worse) releasing the name of the "person of interest" who promptly had the shit beaten out of him?

I appreciate that there are times when the wheels of justice fail to turn, but this was not yet one of them. Not even close. Well, until the vigilante justice kicked in, anyway.

And Did I Mention That My Penis Is Tiny And Rarely Functional?

How Stupid Are We?

I know given my background and peer and social group (largely humanities academics) I tend to spend a lot more time talking about this stuff than most people, but I'm still shocked that presumably non-ignorant people might be troubled that the non-majority (in terms of power, not numbers) perspective might be flawed simply because it differs from the majority one.

Never Mind

The cunning plan to buy crap assets at inflated prices seems to be slowly retreating. For like the 5th time.

For Old Time's Sake

Torture Lou Dobbs. Vote in his poll. (Scroll down, right side). And, yes, I know the question's premise is ridiculous.

Genocidal Dictatorship

I do not believe that phrase means what Stuart Taylor thinks it means.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy

Perp Walk For The Tan Man?

Interesting:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is charging Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., and two other company executives with civil fraud.

The case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission also accuses Mozilo of illegal insider trading, according to an agency spokesman.

These Stories Are Rarely Told

Because our abortion "debate" is usually between Will Saletan, Andrew Sullivan, and Chris Matthews.

So go read them.

From The Left

Yglesias:

On issues from climate change to health care to Afghanistan to stimulus to banking regulation there is a critique-from-the-left that doesn’t get heard at all. And even on the issues where I don’t, personally, buy the critique-from-the-left I think it’s regrettable that it’s become so obscured.

This is the key unacknowledged (by journalists) feature of our official political discourse. You get the occasional "liberals fighting each other" piece which might point out that wimmenfolk or gay people or minorities are upset about abortion or gay rights or immigration but actual lefty opinions on those subjects, along with more general economic and policy issues, are almost never allowed to surface.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Shorter Wingnuttia

It's bad for Muslims to like the president and besides they all love George Bush because he liberated them.

Backing Them Forever

I think the real point is that investors believe the federal government will just keep bailing out the big banks forever.


....adding, I think Yves' take is right. Banks are over their temporary liquidity problem, so they'd rather keep their fantasy accounting than not. That is, until the next foreclosure wave and CRE bust comes, at which point we can bail them out again...

Deep Thoughts From Lindsey Graham

Getting his priorities straight.

I'm not doing the country any good looking back playing a game of tit for tat. But I'm not going to put my party at a disadvantage if this is the way the game is played.

Wanker of the Day

Michael Nutter.

Hey, Someone Noticed

EJ Dionne discovers the power of President Gingrich and Chief of Staff Limbaugh.

A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.

Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

...

Her point has broader application. For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media's discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

Not to be confused with the monthly jobs report. This is a flow variable, gross new jobless claims, tomorrow's headline number is a stock variable, total number of jobs.

Still in holy crap territory.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 621,000 in the week ended May 30, the Labor Department said. The week covered the Memorial Day holiday, which could have had an impact on the data.

Morning Thread

Obama speaking in Cairo of tolerance and working together at about 6:05 a.m. eastern.

Right-Wing faux outrages at 6:04 a.m.

Oldie But Goodie

Late Night Thread

I'm really sleepy edition.

Talking Like an Egyptian

The President saying "Thanks." in the local tongue apparently has the nation on tenterhooks.

I hope he never has to say "Please."

SUPERTRAINS

I worry they'll spread this money too thinly and it'll be too easy to fail to follow up with more. But, hey, hope I'm wrong...

Biden met with state governors, including Gov. Rendell, at the White House today to urge them to think boldly in planning for trains that could travel up to 150 m.p.h. He said funding from the federal economic stimulus package could "jump-start" a high-speed rail network to improve the nation's "terrible passenger rail system."

The federal government is to issue detailed guidelines to the states by June 17 on how $8 billion in stimulus funding is to be awarded. Biden said the first payments, "by the end of the summer," would go to improving existing systems where work could begin quickly with measurable impacts. One such system is the Keystone Corridor between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Specific allocations will be made in late summer, apparently.

And New Hampshire

Soon we will all have to marry box turtles.

Afternoon Thread

Tubes are clogged.

Speaking Of Unions

New York Times reporters, of course, have one.

Your Liberal Media

There are plenty of reasons that the whole "liberal media" notion is ridiculous, and basic contempt for blue collar and union workers is one of them. Whether it's Sorkin suggesting that no union companies are successful, or the regular misleading reports exaggerating the incomes of autoworkers, the plutocrats get their message out courtesy of that liberal media.

Permanent Cot In The Green Room

Just which of the bosses at GEMSNBC thinks it's important for Pat Buchanan to have his views aired.

Shorter Megan McArdle

Let the terrorists win!

So Odd

I've never understood why the press is so enamored of these fluff pieces.

City Of Brotherly Love

11 year-old girl gets raped. Police release name of "person of interest." Neighbors proceed to beat him nearly to death.

There's no justification for vigilante justice like this, in large part because of the whole innocent until proven guilty thing, but at the very least I do hope the police fingered the right guy...

Someone could write a dissertation on the comments to that story.

Wanker of the Day

Joe Scarborough.

Big Train

Senator Merkley mentioned this at the conference yesterday. Good that we have a functioning domestic streetcar producer.

An Oregon company marked a major milestone Wednesday, with a $23 million order from the City of Tucson for seven streetcars. Kristian Foden-Vencil reports.


Oregon Iron Works took a gamble that it could be the first U.S. company in 60 years to build a streetcar. That gamble now seems to be paying off.

Hopefully they can become big and powerful enough that they can successfully bribe lobby to build cars for nation's highest restoration priority, the #23 SUPERTROLLEY.

That Time Already?

Monthly government jobs report comes out Friday, and the private ADP guess at that number came out today.

Private sector jobs in the U.S. fell by 532,000 slots in May, according to a national employment report published Wednesday by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers.

The expected loss is less than the 550,000 drop forecast by economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

If the number comes in that low, which is still pretty damn high, I'll take it as a small positive sign.

Condos, Cheap

Developers had crazy ideas about what people would be willing to pay for condos. You can still get a whole house for comparable prices.

Price break on luxury condos in striking glass tower in Center City. Best offers over $250,000 considered.

That's the strategy for moving 40 of the 178 units still unsold at the Murano at 21st and Market Streets, to be sold at auction for sums 50 percent below their original list price later this month.

Take the 1,405-square-foot, 23d-floor unit originally listed at $995,000. It could go for $485,000, less than what it would cost to build today, said Jon Gollinger, president of Accelerated Marketing Partners, of Boston, which is handling the sale for Murano's developer, Thomas Properties Group Inc.

I'll Have a Pint with You, Sir

Also, Chuck Norris.

More Thread

Haven't been around.  Anything happen while I was away?

Tuesday Night Thread

enjoy.

Journamalism

Do any journalists care that Pat Buchanan basically gets to make stuff up? I mean, I know that they aren't all responsible for each other, but plenty of people appear with him on MSNBC giving him validation.

Opportunity Knocks

Mission accomplished.

Declaring that "California's day of reckoning is here," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today the state should turn its dire budget straits into an opportunity to make government more efficient.

Speaking to a rare mid-year joint session of the Legislature and other constitutional officers, Schwarzenegger acknowledged the billions of dollars in spending cuts he has proposed to close a $24.3 billion hole in the budget will be devastating to millions of Californians.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy.

The Full Wingnut

This was my first thought when I heard about Pawlenty not running for re-election and probably running for president. My second thought was that our media, which has basically ignored Coleman's silly attempt to delay Franken being seated, will think that it's perfectly normal.

The Very Liberal MSNBC

Pat Buchanan demonstrated long ago that there's nothing he could say which would cause MSNBC to remove his cot from the green room.

Shorter Richard Cohen

Because some poor people from the Bronx projects have managed to succeed, it's ridiculous to be impressed by any of them.

Not even going to link to it. You can find it on Fred Hiatt's crayon scribble page.

FHLB

As I've written a few times, about a year and a half ago I met someone in the mortgage broker business. He said that all the action had just moved to the FHLBs. As the big financial players started getting spooked and stopped buying up mortgage-backed securities, the FHLBs stepped in...

Not over yet.

Good Luck With That

The genius who runs our local newspapers, last seen trying to expand circulation by hiring John Yoo and Rick Santorum, is going to start charging for online access. I actually mean "good luck" in the sense that if he can make it work I'm all for it, but I bet all the people in online ad sales are ready to kill themselves.

As for this:

Tierney also said he plans to take on Google over the possibly getting money for Philadelphia Media Holdings content that resides on the popular search engine's site.

Uh, good luck with that. Next you can sue Craig Newmark for unfair competition or something.

Wanker of the Day

Lord Saletan.

Good Luck With That

The AP thinks you need to pay them for the privilege of talking or writing about what they report.

"There are commercial websites, not even bloggers, necessarily," Bridis added, "that take some of our best AP stories, and rewrite them with a word or two here, and say 'the Associated Press has reported, the AP said, the AP said.' That's not fair. We pay our reporters. We set up the bureaus that are very expensive to run, and, you know, if they want to report what the AP is reporting they either need to buy the service or they need to staff their own bureaus."


Bridis did acknowledge the importance of fair use. "Because we do it too, necessarily," the AP news editor conceded. "If the New York Times has a story, we may take an element of it and attribute it to the Times and build a story around it."

If you read the whole thing you can tell they're really just confused. They want more people to pay them money and they looking for rationalizations for it. Have fun RIAAing yourself out of existence...

Miranda's Back

The best the GOP has to offer never go away, they just keep coming back...

The Size Of The Problem

NYT getting it

A continuing steep drop in home prices combined with rising unemployment is powering a new wave of foreclosures. Unfortunately, there’s little evidence, so far, that the Obama administration’s anti-foreclosure plan will be able to stop it.

...

One of the biggest problems is that the plan focuses almost entirely on lowering monthly payments. But overly onerous payments are only part of the problem. For 15.4 million “underwater” borrowers — those who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — a lack of home equity puts them at risk of default, even if their monthly payments have been reduced. They have no cushion to fall back on in the event of a setback, like job loss or illness.

The Jonah Goldberg Song

The Jonah Goldberg Song. Lyrics by Thers. Music by the Meow Mix commercial.

Ahem. The Jonah Goldberg Song.

(Clears throat.)

Fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart
Fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart
Fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart
Fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart.

Repeat endlessly. Image of flatulence annoying human nose, forever.

Overnight

enjoy

Gitmo the Video Game...?

Apparently so.

According to Deadline Scotland, Glasgow video game company T-Enterprise has hired Moazzam Begg, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, as a consultant on upcoming video game Rendition: Guantanamo, a title set in the infamous U.S. prison camp.

Begg, a British citizen picked up by the CIA in Pakistan, has been brought on to make sure the camp details are correct and to appear in the game....

Begg, who says he was tortured during his stay in Gitmo, said: “The only thing I am concerned about it making sure the game does not misrepresent the prisoners. This will not demean the reality of Guantanamo but it could bring those issues to people who would not usually think about it.”

Via.

Happy Hour Thread

Spending mine with Kagro, Digby and emptywheel.

America's Most Dangerous Organization

I'm listening to someone who works with ACORN Home Defenders in Queens. Contrary to the delusional ravings of the wingnutosphere, this the kind of stuff ACORN does. Basically they mobilize in groups to make, in various ways, a bunch of noise to try to delay or stop foreclosure proceedings.

Community organizers!

Exciting Forced Birth Situations

Tucker's dream world.

Tucker Is A Very Serious Person

And I look forward to the Washington Post having him back week after week.

Company Towns

Plenty of places have large employers which are important for the local economy, but some places are incredibly dependent on the good fortunes of just one.

SPRING HILL, Tennessee (CNN) -- General Motors idled it Spring Hill, Tennessee, facility as part of its bankruptcy plan Monday, leaving hundreds of employees -- and thousands of residents who rely on the plant's economic thrust -- in limbo.

Spring Hill, about 35 miles south of Nashville, is a town built on the jobs that the plant provides. The town has seen its population jump more than 1,600 percent in the almost 20 years since GM sent the first Saturn down the assembly line in June 1990.

He's A Restaurant Critic Now

But back in 2000, he covered Gore.

Union Fight

I haven't really paid any attention to the ongoing battle between UNITE HERE and SEIU, but as SEIU's Anna Burger is speaking, people representing UNITE HERE are passing out fliers criticizing her and her organization.

Good

People and organizations who provide medical care for women, as well as the women who use those services, need to be protected from intimidation and violence.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered increased security for a host of unnamed individuals and facilities in the wake of the slaying of abortion Dr. George Tiller.

Wanker of the Day

Stuart Taylor.

We're In A Village

As I exited the Dupont Circle metro station, I overheard a young woman behind me telling her friends, upon observing the neighborhood, that it looked like they were in a village, a cute small town. This highlighted something for me, that many people perceive urban spaces as some combination of skyscrapers, monuments, and slums, and have little familiarity with the residential neighborhoods that comprise the better cities. Places like DC, Philly, San Francisco, and Boston do have recognizable central business districts with tall office towers and condos, but they also contain a collection of somewhat self-contained linked residential neighborhoods.

2nd Stimulus

At the America's Future Now conference, Bob Kuttner just said the Obama administration is likely to sponsor a 2nd stimulus package in the Fall. Not sure if this is guessing or knowledge.

DOWing Out

Citigroup and GM are out, Cisco and Travelers are in...

Seoul's Just A Little City

The neoconservative assholes don't really care about protecting innocent lives, and certainly not maintaining peace, they just need to wake up every day and be convinced that America still has the biggest swinging dick in the universe.

But they're very serious!

Inching Downwards

While I wouldn't be surprised if per capita car registrations inch downwards a bit from historic highs, I'm actually much less convinced than some that we will move away from widespread car dependency very quickly. There just aren't that many places with decent transit and economically viable walkable neighborhoods. There are some places with decent transit which could be fairly easily transformed into good walkable neighborhoods. Then there's...everywhere else!

Crazy Talk

As Ezra suggests, lack of availability of comprehensive medical services for women is a tremendous problem. A popular charismatic president could find a way to chaange that.

Maybe

Perhaps. (V. fine snark, vintage even)

We can only hope that from this day forward, climate scientists, erratic British peers, faux-populist Fox News hosts, retired petroleum geologists, and undistinguished economists from conservatarian thinktanks will put aside all the name-calling and conspiracy theories, and meet each other as equals on the field of sober scientific inquiry. What could they possibly have to lose?