October 2008 archive
Oct 21 2008
Overnight Caption Contest
Oct 21 2008
Alan Greenspan – Legacy of Mr. Bubbles
Peter Goodman of The New York Times examined the role of Alan Greenspan in the financial collapse in The Reckoning: Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy.
The article has been sitting open in my web browser now for almost two weeks wondering when I was going to write about it. Since I’ve not see this article covered, I want to make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed. Unfortunately, I do not find Greenspan very inspiring, so the best I can do at this time is a Lazy Quote Diary™. It begins with a quote from Greenspan.
“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” – Alan Greenspan in 2004
Oct 21 2008
Vampire Kisses: Did Abramoff and Wilson Bleed Romero in NM Election?
Crossposted from ePluribus Media
Dennis Greenia, Vampire Slayer
I first learned about Jack Abramoff’s successful plot to help Heather Wilson ambush and bleed dry my good friend, Richard Romero, in two separate New Mexico congressional elections while strolling with dengre down K Street. Both times, Abramoff employed a stealth PAC purportedly championing health care reform. By 2004, New Mexico’s political aquifer flowed red.
I’m not the first person to learn about Abramoff from dengre. He’s one of the brave few whose nocturnal obsession with vampires unearthed Washington’s Empire of the Undead for the slumbering masses.
Dengre, aka Dennis Greenia, reminds me of Van Helsing. He wears rumpled plaid shirts and seems to sport a permanent case of bedhead. He talks about Abramoff all the time. I’m not sure if he sleeps.
Oct 21 2008
Never interrupt an enemy making a mistake
It is amazing. John McCain mocking Barack Obama for saying he wants to spread the wealth around.
cross-posted at The Wild Wild Left and at daily kos
Oct 21 2008
FIFTEEN DAYS!
“FIFTEEN DAYS is an eternity in politics. Anything can happen. So, you’d better stay watching our riveting, moment to moment analysis, because, considering the fact that all of human evolution occurred in under fifteen days (see scientifically vetted chart to the right) it is absolutely possible for John McCain, even with a huge financial disadvantage, to flip Democratic leads in Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina while simultaneously finding ways to salvage Nevada, Ohio, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota.
Hey, hey. What are you doing? Don’t flip to Cinemax…”
Oct 21 2008
Kucinich calls for investigation of Wall Street bonuses
Last Friday, I wrote about how 10% of $700 billion bailout is to cover Wall Street banker pay and bonuses.
At least one member of Congress is awake. None other than Rep. Dennis Kucinich has called for an investigation. According to The Guardian —
Kucinich, an outspoken Democratic opponent of the US taxpayer’s $700bn bank bail-out, said his staff would immediately begin asking Wall Street firms set to benefit what plans they had to distribute bonuses.
“When Congress placed restrictions on excessive executive pay, it had no intention of permitting business as usual with respect to bonus structures,” he said. “It would add insult to injury to ask taxpayers not only to bail out a firm, but to pay for bonuses as well. The Guardian’s report necessitates an immediate inquiry.”
Why in a time when banks are being bailed out by the American taxpayers, do they still believe they should award bonuses to their executives and other employees?
Oct 21 2008
Open Thread
From one of my favorite NOLA bloggers, adrastos, a Bob Grant rant:
All the nuts in the US and A seem to be commenting on the 2008 election and some of them have talk radio shows. My new favorite winger weirdness comes from veteran yakker Bob Grant:
“[W]hat is that flag that Obama’s been standing in front of that looks like an American flag, but instead of having the field of 50 stars representing the 50 states, there’s a circle?” He then said: “Is the circle the ‘O’ for Obama? Is that what it is?” Grant later said: “[D]id you notice Obama is not content with just having several American flags, plain old American flags with the 50 states represented by 50 stars? He has the ‘O’ flag. And that’s what that ‘O’ is. That’s what that ‘O’ is. Just like he did with the plane he was using. He had the flag painted over, and the ‘O’ for Obama. Now, these are symptom — these things are symptomatic of a person who would like to be a potentate — a dictator.” ‘
Check out the flag and the rest of the post; I don’t want to spoil this.
Open thread is now … OPEN!
Oct 21 2008
Green Works!
[OAKLAND, Calif. – California’s energy-efficiency policies created nearly 1.5 million jobs from 1977 to 2007, while eliminating fewer than 25,000, according to a study to be released Monday.The study, conducted by David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, found that while the state’s policies lowered employee compensation in the electric power industry by an estimated $1.6 billion over that period, it improved compensation in the state over all by $44.6 billion.
Built into that figure were increases of $1.2 billion in the light industrial sector, $11.2 billion in wholesale and retail trade, $7.3 billion in the financial and insurance sectors and $17.8 billion in the service sector.
“Consumers were able to reduce energy spending,” the study said, adding that “these savings were diverted to other demand.”
“When consumers shift one dollar of demand from electricity to groceries,” the report said, they create jobs among retailers, wholesalers, food processors and other businesses.
The study, which examined household spending, comes as state and regional initiatives on climate-change policies have been gathering momentum. At the same time, arguments have sharpened over how much it will cost the economy to cut the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, which are linked to climate change.
Roughly half the country’s electric power is generated by burning coal, the fuel that produces among the highest greenhouse-gas emissions of any in widespread use.
Oct 20 2008
Chomsky: Vote against McCain and for Obama – but without illusions
I know there are some who don’t like Chomsky. I don’t agree with all he says, but he’s an anti-imperialist and is good on many labor/class issues.
Here, he endorses Obama, sort of. 🙂
Chomsky says while it’s true that the two parties are essentially like factions of one party – the party of business – the differences do matter to ordinary people. If you are living in a swing state, there is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils.
http://therealnews.com/t/index…
I thought some folks here would both understand and appreciate this.
Oct 20 2008
Four at Four
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The Washington Post wonders As fuel prices fall, will the push for alternatives lose steam? Of course. I think most Americans have a very short term memory. Energy alternatives were all about maintaining the status quo, rather than about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Bill Reinert, one of the Toyota Prius designers… cautioned that designing and ramping up production of a new car takes five years.
“If oil goes down to $60 or $70 a barrel and gasoline gets back to $2.50 a gallon, and that very possibly could happen,” he said, “will that demand stay the same or will we shift back up?”
As quickly as the price of oil per barrel has fallen it can rise just as quickly again.
“Declining oil prices can give us an artificial and temporary sense that reducing oil consumption and energy consumption is an issue we can put off,” said Greg Kats, a managing director of Good Energies, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm that invests in global clean energy.
The NY Times reports that people are Challenging the car culture on campus with free bikes.
“We’re seeing an explosion in bike activity,” said Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities. “It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”
But I wonder, if such free bike programs will still be around next fall? Somehow, I doubt it.
Four at Four continues with the U.S. economy, stimulus, and national debt, campaign news, and NATO in Afghanistan.
Oct 20 2008
Credit Where Credit is Due
I was happy to see this over at Huffington Post:
At a John McCain rally in Woodbridge, Virginia, three people handed out “Obama for Change” bumper stickers with the Communist sickle and hammer and the Islamic crescent, saying Obama was a socialist with ties to radical Islam. Several moderate McCain supporters, Muslim and Christian alike, struck back – relentlessly bombarding the group distributing the flyers until they left the premises.
I will never understand how these rational folks could want to vote for McCain, but I applaud their action. This is beyond electoral politics, I think. The kind of hate speech and activity we’ve been seeing crawl out of the woodwork since the McCain/Palin campaign has decided to go negative isn’t good for anyone, right or left.
Here’s the video:
Oct 20 2008
The Politics of Fear
Ok I finally figured out why the McCain campaign has failed so badly. They have pandered to the lowest common denominator of America: Fear. Without realizing that Americans are no longer afraid of what they think they are afraid of.
2002 and 2004 proved that fear works, as if they didn’t know it already. The story of the McCain campaign has been one of casting about to find the right fear to exploit. They haven’t been able to find it. They haven’t been able to find it because they don’t realize that the fears of their base are no longer the fears of the majority of Americans. If they ever were.
They mistakenly thought that social fear, the fear of immigrants, the fear of gays, the fear of minorities, the fear of other was what won them those elections. They forgot 2006, when after NOT being attacked by terrorists. They forgot or ignored that the societal fear that fuels their base is NOT shared by most Americans. That the reason Americans joined their base was out of fear of attack from without, not attack from within. Without another terrorist attack in the intervening years, (no thanks to them btw, the fear had always been vastly overinflated) America is rejecting the fears of their base, the fears of the lowest common denominator. They have seen through the politics of hate, at least to the extent where it does not dominate their list of fears. The base is still there, the rest of America though, is not joining them this time. They have their solid 25% of Americans who fear and hate other Americans for their skin color or sexual orientation. But they have lost the rest of America.
Heck, it is even possible that after eight years Americans are just plain tired of living in fear!
(Unless the fear of Socialism, a Socialism that the Republicans (despite their bleating) are forcing on America, works.)