Tag: ek Politics

DNC Shamed Into Helping Wisconsin Recall, Still Not Committing Funds

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday May 16, 2012 9:35 am

After some controversy, the Democratic National Committee has agreed to help efforts with the Wisconsin recall. However, this will not include any of the DNC’s war chest of funds, which they are husbanding for the general election.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, committed to come to Wisconsin to attend a fundraiser and to recruit volunteers for Tom Barrett’s campaign to recall Scott Walker. In addition, DNC members have been encouraged to contribute to the recall effort. However, the DNC did not pledge funds that they plan to use to support the general election campaign of President Obama and other Democrats in the fall. They certainly have plenty; the President and the DNC just announced that they raised $44 million just in April.

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The question becomes whether a recall failure would have consequences for the fall election. The DNC is clearly making the choice to sit out the recall financially, wait for everything to blow over, and come back in the fall. But there could be a ripple effect here, in a key swing state as well as a state with an open Senate seat and a hot contest there. The failure to keep up the recall energy and dispose of Walker could definitely have repercussions. And there are only three weeks to turn it around.

Electoral victory my ass.  What “Democrats” are really interested in-

The Pete Peterson Fiscal Summit and What It Says About Democrats

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday May 16, 2012 1:03 pm

(I)t’s interesting to me to see who has been seduced by this power. Republicans are basically saying the same things in the era of Peterson that they have been saying for the past thirty years: they want low taxes and less wealth-redistributing programs to the lower classes. Sometimes they say they want “less spending” and a “smaller deficit,” but only when a Democrat is in office, and only in relation to those redistributive policies. The tax cuts blow holes in the deficit, so that’s not a preoccupation for them.

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The only tax cuts they would entertain repealing are the ones that distribute funds to the lower classes. For example, in their budget bill, they replaced defense cuts with, among other things, a rollback of the child tax credit, which goes mostly to lower-class and middle-class families.

By contrast, Democrats have moved over the last several decades, under duress from Peterson on having to “be serious” about deficits. One after another at last night’s event, Democratic politicians took aim at so-called entitlements, which I prefer to describe as the social safety net.

…

I’d like to find the Democrats who are “reluctant to commit to longer-term health-care savings” and who “don’t want to touch Social Security.” Contrary to President Clinton’s remarks, they no longer exist. Even Nancy Pelosi is playing footsie with benefit cuts.

If this doesn’t happen in the near future, it’s because Peterson and his ilk failed to get Republicans to provide cover with any tax increases. But the idea that Democrats are somehow reluctant to get out the budget axe is just wrong. They are far more serious about so-called “fiscal responsibility” than Republicans. In fact, the President on that stage, Clinton, was the one who ended welfare as we know it. We now know, after the Great Recession, the terrible costs to that policy for millions of families. But Democrats haven’t learned from that experience.

So while Republicans are clearly insane about the fiscal future – and impervious to logic, as Tom Coburn showed – the country has drifted to the right because one party has become caught up in pleasing the likes of Pete Peterson rather than their own constituents.

“We have a lot of people in our party who will not be drummed out if they depart from the conventional wisdom,” Clinton said last night. That’s not true. For the conventional wisdom in the Democratic Party is now that “balanced” cuts are needed to the entire budget to move America forward. And if you depart from that… you hear the drums playing, right?

One party.  And it’s not the Republicans, they’ve always been about pleasing the likes of Pete Peterson.

You know, some of us drink because we’re not poets.  I’ve been a writer all my life and it’s as much a part of me as my sexual orientation and skin color (‘tro, male, and white not that it should make a difference).  I don’t pretend to special expertise even in the matter of piloting river boats which is why I’m careful to maintain my anonymity.  Feel free to disagree, you’re probably right.

Yet as a writer it’s gratifying to come across affirmations of sanity, if not an audience, and in that spirit I offer this-

Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: May 15, 5:39 PM ET

“Fuck the compliance area – procedures, schmecedures,” chirps Peter Melz, former president of Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (a.k.a. Merrill Pro), when a subordinate worries about the company failing to comply with the rules governing short sales.

…

A quick primer on what naked short selling is. First of all, short selling, which is a completely legal and often beneficial activity, is when an investor bets that the value of a stock will decline. You do this by first borrowing and then selling the stock at its current price, then returning the stock to your original lender after the price has gone down. You then earn a profit on the difference between the original price and the new, lower price.

What matters here is the technical issue of how you borrow the stock. Typically, if you’re a hedge fund and you want to short a company, you go to some big-shot investment bank like Goldman or Morgan Stanley and place the order. They then go out into the world, find the shares of the stock you want to short, borrow them for you, then physically settle the trade later.

But sometimes it’s not easy to find those shares to borrow. Sometimes the shares are controlled by investors who might have no interest in lending them out. Sometimes there’s such scarcity of borrowable shares that banks/brokers like Goldman have to pay a fee just to borrow the stock.

These hard-to-borrow stocks, stocks that cost money to borrow, are called negative rebate stocks. In some cases, these negative rebate stocks cost so much just to borrow that a short-seller would need to see a real price drop of 35 percent in the stock just to break even. So how do you short a stock when you can’t find shares to borrow? Well, one solution is, you don’t even bother to borrow them. And then, when the trade is done, you don’t bother to deliver them. You just do the trade anyway without physically locating the stock.

Thus in this document we have another former Merrill Pro president, Thomas Tranfaglia, saying in a 2005 email: “We are NOT borrowing negatives… I have made that clear from the beginning. Why would we want to borrow them? We want to fail them.”

Trafaglia, in other words, didn’t want to bother paying the high cost of borrowing “negative rebate” stocks. Instead, he preferred to just sell stock he didn’t actually possess. That is what is meant by, “We want to fail them.” Trafaglia was talking about creating “fails” or “failed trades,” which is what happens when you don’t actually locate and borrow the stock within the time the law allows for trades to be settled.

If this sounds complicated, just focus on this: naked short selling, in essence, is selling stock you do not have. If you don’t have to actually locate and borrow stock before you short it, you’re creating an artificial supply of stock shares.

Magic beans.

Make Banking Boring

By JOE NOCERA, The New York Times

Published: May 14, 2012

Let’s begin by stipulating the obvious: nobody outside of JPMorgan Chase knows for sure what really happened with those trades that have cost it so much money and done such severe damage to its once stellar reputation.

You know Joe, it’s really not very hard to understand at all.

JP Morgan invested a ton of money, and by a ton I mean Trillions of exposure, in an obscure and lightly traded piece of paper labeled CDX NA IG 9 that represents a notional basket of 125 European stocks.

What do I mean by “notional”?  Well, there’s not actually a pile of stock certificates lying around that you can use to wrap fish or wipe your ass or wallpaper your living room, these stocks are “synthetic” meaning that if anyone ever needs to see one you have to go down to the store and buy it at whatever the market price is.

But there is always a price and a market- or is there?

As the Hunt brothers found out in the early ’80s with a far more tangible and useful (you can use it to make photographic film and it has excellent electrical conductivity) asset, you can assemble a position that so dominates a market that you can’t sell without lowering the price which is high because of your artificially created scarcity.

Supply increases in the face of fixed Demand and the price goes down.  Real Economics 101 stuff, not hard to understand at all.

Now the problem with CDX NA IG 9 is you can’t use it to make spoons or candlesticks.  Heck, as I pointed out before you can’t even use it to wipe your ass because it doesn’t exist.

So its value is entirely dependent on finding another sucker investor who’s willing to give you something for nothing.

Good luck with that.

Modern economic philosophy is generally considered to have started with Smith and Hobbes who were reacting against a system of monarchal merchantilism where favored courtiers were rewarded with monopolies in a planned economy enforced by a state claim of exclusive authority on violence.

Read that again because it’s important.

Their groundbreaking contribution was the concept that markets (individuals) could more efficiently allocate resources (capital) than corrupt cronyism.  You know, free market capitalism.

Compare and contrast-

End of the Affair?

The Editors of The New York Times

Published: May 14, 2012

There has been less buying and selling of stock, and there have been huge outflows of investor dollars from domestic stock mutual funds, as detailed recently by The Times’s Nathaniel Popper. If the trend continues, the result could be a less robust market, with fewer companies opting to raise money by issuing shares and fewer investors willing to put their retirement savings into stocks.

…

Policy makers should pay attention. Evidence suggests that investors are not merely reacting to tough conditions, but rather are staying away because they do not trust the market. Restoring trust is crucial to restoring the market.

American stocks have doubled in price since the market hit bottom three years ago. But trading in the United States stock market has not only failed to recover since the 2008 financial crash, it has continued to fall. In April, average daily trades stood at 6.5 billion, about half their peak four years ago. By comparison, after the market busts of 1987 and 2001, trading recovered within two years. In fact, going back to 1960, trading had never declined for three consecutive years, let alone four and counting.

Investors haven’t just hunkered down, they have headed for the exits. Since the start of 2008, domestic stock mutual funds, a common way for individuals to invest, were drained of more than $400 billion, compared with an inflow of $52 billion in the four years before that.

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There is also the feeling that the market has become increasingly unfair to investors. For example, Mr. Popper also reported recently on rebates to brokers from stock exchanges. In general, brokers are required to find the best prices for clients who pay them to buy and sell shares. But with the nation’s 13 exchanges now paying brokers for sending them business, brokers may have an incentive to search for the biggest rebate rather than the best price. A new study has estimated that rebates could be costing mutual funds, pension funds and individual investors as much as $5 billion a year.

Also known as “maker-taker” pricing, the rebates have caught the attention of market researchers and investor advocates, including two former economists for the Securities and Exchange Commission who issued a report in 2010 saying that “in other contexts, these payments would be recognized as illegal kickbacks.”

I realize citation of major media outlets is considered but a quaint remnant of irrelevant reality by sycophants and ‘bots, but I thought I’d draw this to your attention.

Strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a large, unwieldy one. The guerrilla focuses on organising in small units, dependent on the support of the local population. Tactically, the guerrilla army attacks its enemy in small, repetitive attacks from the opponent’s center of gravity with a view to reducing casualties and becoming an intensive, repetitive strain on the enemy’s resources, forcing an over-eager response which will both anger their own supporters and increase support for the guerrilla, thus forcing the enemy to withdraw.

Fourteenth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1929)

This seemed unlike the ritual of war of which Foch had been priest, and so it seemed that there was a difference of kind. Foch called his modern war “absolute.” In it two nations professing incompatible philosophies set out to try them in the light of force. A struggle of two immaterial principles could only end when the supporters of one had no more means of resistance. An opinion can be argued with: a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo the classical textbook-instance. These were the lines of the struggle between France and Germany, but not, perhaps, between Germany and England, for all efforts to make the British soldier hate the enemy simply made him hate war. Thus the “absolute war” seemed only a variety of war; and beside it other sorts could be discerned, as Clausewitz had numbered them, personal wars for dynastic reasons, expulsive wars for party reasons, commercial wars for trading reasons.

Now the Arab aim was unmistakably geographical, to occupy all Arabic-speaking lands in Asia. In the doing of it Turks might be killed, yet “killing Turks” would never be an excuse or aim. If they would go quietly, the war would end. If not, they must be driven out: but at the cheapest possible price, since the Arabs were fighting for freedom, a pleasure only to be tasted by a man alive.

…

In the Arab case the algebraic factor would take first account of the area to be conquered. A casual calculation indicated perhaps 140,000 square miles. How would the Turks defend all that-no doubt by a trench line across the bottom, if the Arabs were an army attacking with banners displayed . . . but suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, and nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour, blowing where they listed.  …  It seemed that the assets in this sphere were with the Arabs, and climate, railways, deserts, technical weapons could also be attached to their interests. The Turk was stupid and would believe that rebellion was absolute, like war, and deal with it on the analogy of absolute warfare.

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The Arab army just then was equally chary of men and materials: of men because they being irregulars were not units, but individuals, and an individual casualty is like a pebble dropped in water: each may make only a brief hole, but rings of sorrow widen out from them. The Arab army could not afford casualties.

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The Arab war should be a war of detachment: to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast unknown desert, not disclosing themselves till the moment of attack. This attack need be only nominal, directed not against his men, but against his materials: so it should not seek for his main strength or his weaknesses, but for his most accessible material.

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The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander, and the commanders of the Arab army being amateurs in the art, began their war in the atmosphere of the 20th century, and thought of their weapons without prejudice, not distinguishing one from another socially. The regular officer has the tradition of 40 generations of serving soldiers behind him, and to him the old weapons are the most honoured. The Arab command had seldom to concern itself with what its men did, but much with what they thought, and to it the diathetic was more than half command. In Europe it was set a little aside and entrusted to men outside the General Staff. But the Arab army was so weak physically that it could not let the metaphysical weapon rust unused. It had won a province when the civilians in it had been taught to die for the ideal of freedom: the presence or absence of the enemy was a secondary matter.

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The Turkish army was an accident, not a target. Our true strategic aim was to seek its weakest link, and bear only on that till time made the mass of it fall. The Arab army must impose the longest possible passive defence on the Turks (this being the most materially expensive form of war) by extending its own front to the maximum.

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The contest was not physical, but moral, and so battles were a mistake. All that could be won in a battle was the ammunition the enemy fired off.  …  Battles are impositions on the side which believes itself weaker, made unavoidable either by lack of land-room, or by the need to defend a material property dearer than the lives of soldiers. The Arabs had nothing material to lose, so they were to defend nothing and to shoot nothing. Their cards were speed and time, not hitting power, and these gave them strategical rather than tactical strength.

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The Desert and the Sea. In character these operations were like naval warfare, in their mobility, their ubiquity, their independence of bases and communications, in their ignoring of ground features, of strategic areas, of fixed directions, of fixed points. “He who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little of the war as he will”  …  The Arab army never tried to maintain or improve an advantage, but to move off and strike again somewhere else. It used the smallest force in the quickest time at the farthest place. To continue the action till the enemy had changed his dispositions to resist it would have been to break the spirit of the fundamental rule of denying him targets.

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An Undisciplined Army. The internal economy of the raiding parties was equally curious. Maximum irregularity and articulation were the aims. Diversity threw the enemy intelligence off the track. By the regular organization in identical battalions and divisions information builds itself up, until the presence of a corps can be inferred on corpses from three companies. The Arabs, again, were serving a common ideal, without tribal emulation, and so could not hope for any esprit de corps. Soldiers are made a caste either by being given great pay and rewards in money, uniform or political privileges; or, as in England, by being made outcasts, cut off from the mass of their fellow-citizens. There have been many armies enlisted voluntarily: there have been few armies serving voluntarily under such trying conditions, for so long a war as the Arab revolt. Any of the Arabs could go home whenever the conviction failed him. Their only contract was honour.

Consequently the Arab army had no discipline, in the sense in which it is restrictive, submergent of individuality, the Lowest Common Denominator of men. In regular armies in peace it means the limit of energy attainable by everybody present: it is the hunt not of an average, but of an absolute, a 100-per-cent standard, in which the 99 stronger men are played down to the level of the worst. The aim is to render the unit a unit, and the man a type, in order that their effort shall be calculable, their collective output even in grain and in bulk. The deeper the discipline, the lower the individual efficiency, and the more sure the performance. It is a deliberate sacrifice of capacity in order to reduce the uncertain element.  …  In irregular war if two men are together one is being wasted. The moral strain of isolated action makes this simple form of war very hard on the individual soldier, and exacts from him special initiative, endurance and enthusiasm. Here the ideal was to make action a series of single combats to make the ranks a happy alliance of commanders-in-chief. The value of the Arab army depended entirely on quality, not on quantity. The members had to keep always cool, for the excitement of a blood-lust would impair their science, and their victory depended on a just use of speed, concealment, accuracy of fire. Guerrilla war is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge.

Here is the thesis:

Rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as the Arab revolt had in the Red Sea ports, the desert, or in the minds of men converted to its creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfill the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.

It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy.

Rebellions can be made by 2% active in a striking force, and 98% passively sympathetic. The few active rebels must have the qualities of speed and endurance, ubiquity and independence of arteries of supply. They must have the technical equipment to destroy or paralyze the enemy’s organized communications, for irregular war is fairly Willisen’s definition of strategy, “the study of communication,” in its extreme degree, of attack where the enemy is not.

In 50 words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.

Chicago cops’ new weapons

By Natasha Lennard, Salon

Monday, May 14, 2012 11:54 AM EDT

“This is simply a risk management tool, as the public will receive clear information regarding public safety messages and any orders provided by police,” Chicago Police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton told the Guardian.

However, during its first outing at a U.S. protest, during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, police blasted non-lethal sound waves from the device as a crowd deterrent. Unlike firing tear gas or swinging batons, deploying the LRAD does not create a dramatic media spectacle; indeed, videos from the Pittsburgh protests capture the LRAD emitting little more than a high-pitched siren. Those within the sound cannon’s range, however, have described immense pain and severe headaches and – in some cases – irreversible hearing damage. LRAD Corp., which produces the weapon for the military and domestic policing, said that anyone within 100m of the device’s directed sound path will experience “extreme pain,” according to Gizmodo (link corrected- ek).

“In Pittsburgh, they directed the LRAD at a crowd coming up the center of a wide street, then sent tear gas canisters down the sides of the street. Tear gas is painful, but everyone ran into the tear gas to get out of the LRAD path,” one protester who attended the Pittsburgh G-20 told me, asking to remain anonymous. Chicago’s Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has recently expressed that he believes tear gas to be an ineffective crowd control device – and based on lessons from Pittsburgh, the LRAD can produce a painful enough effect to force crowd dispersal without the dramatic media impact tear gas creates; it’s certainly a more insidious weapon.

(h/t Chris in Paris)

The Atrios school of blogging.

JPMorgan Unit’s London Staff May Go as Loss Prompts Exits

By Dawn Kopecki, Bloomberg News

May 13, 2012 8:45 PM ET

The entire London staff of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s chief investment office is at risk of dismissal as a $2 billion trading loss prompts the first executive departures as soon as this week, a person familiar with the situation said.

Obama and Clinton Resume Arms Sales to the Torturers of Bahrain

By: Siun, Firedog Lake

Saturday May 12, 2012 1:00 pm

Mai Khalifa is just one of the royal family members who control all major roles in the Bahrain government. Apparently, this anti-democratic arrangement is just fine with the Obama administration. After all, they have now resumed arms shipments to the Bahrain monarchy at the very moment when Al Khalifa announced an even sharper crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.

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The Obama administration had put a hold on arms sales while Bahrain investigated itself on human rights violations. That report included clear accounts of severe torture and brutality including the details of the torture of Human Rights Defender Al Khawaja last summer and fall. Now Obama is approving arms sales even as Al Khawaja is on his death bed as he continues his hunger strike for freedom.

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While the torture and killing of Bahraini protestors continues, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was entertaining Crown Prince Al Khalifa. Some see the arms sale as a gesture of support for the Crown Prince who has consistently been promoted as a more reform minded royal even though, as Foreign Policy reports from an administration conference call briefing on the sale:

On the conference call, administration officials could not name one concession or deliverable the crown prince gave or promised in exchange for the goodies he is bringing home with him.

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This … video is an episode of Julian Assange’s new program in which he interviews Nabeel Rajab & Alaa Abd. Right after the interview was taped, Rajab was arrested on his return to Bahrain for “insulting tweets” and he remains in jail today.

Maybe it’s time to go to another bar.

No more bets for Greek euro exit

Athens News

10 May 2012

Want a flutter on Greece leaving the euro zone? It may already be too late. A surge in bets has forced Britain’s biggest bookmakers William Hill Plc and Ladbrokes Plc to suspend betting on the odds of Greece dropping out.

…

“It is safer for us to suspend betting than to keep cutting the odds,” a spokesman for Ladbrokes said. “We have been slashing the odds repeatedly over the last few days.”

Ladbrokes is still taking bets on the Greek stock market losing more than 25 percent of its value in a single day’s trading by the end of 2012.

And if you fear Greece is just the beginning of the end for the European single currency, Ladbrokes is offering odds on the euro ceasing to exist by the end of 2012, which would make punters 33 times their original stake.

Ladbrokes is offering odds of 5/6 that the euro will cease to exist by the end of 2015 and 4/1 on two or more states to leave the euro by the end of the year.

William Hill, however, has closed betting on the euro still being in existence by the end of 2015 – a possibility it sees as closely linked to what is happening in Greece – with the latest odds before suspension at 4/6 in favour and 11/10 against.

(h/t Calculated Risk)

(h/t Matt Taibbi, 991 views)

Jamie’s Cryin: Dimon, J.P. Morgan Chase Lose $2 Billion

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: May 11, 10:48 AM ET

This incident is certain to reignite the debate about Dodd-Frank and may undermine the broad effort to roll back the bill, which we wrote about in the latest issue of the magazine. Staffers on the Hill started mobilizing the instant the Chase news hit the airwaves yesterday, and you can bet we’ll hear more debate in the next few months about not only the Volcker Rule but the Lincoln Rule, which was designed to wall off risky swaps from the federally-insured side of these banks. I’ve heard from all sides today, with some thinking the Chase trade was Dodd-Frank compliant, and others saying it probably violated both the Volcker and the Lincoln rules.

Either way, the incident underscored the basic problem. If J.P. Morgan Chase wants to act like a crazed cowboy hedge fund and make wild exacta bets on the derivatives market, they should be welcome to do so. But they shouldn’t get to do it with cheap cash from the Fed’s discount window, and they shouldn’t get to do it with money from the federally-insured bank accounts of teachers, firemen and other such real people. It’s a simple concept: you either get to be a bank, or you get to be a casino. But you can’t be both. If we don’t have rules to enforce that concept, we ought to get some.

212 views.

China’s Big Banks Look More Like Paper Tigers

By Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg News

May 10, 2012 7:00 PM ET

After spending time combing through the financial reports of China’s biggest publicly traded, state- owned banks, I now understand what Jim Chanos, the famous short- seller, means when he keeps saying they are “built on quicksand.” He’s definitely on to something.

…

In a Bloomberg Television interview last week, Chanos said “the Chinese banks ought to be sending a thank-you note to Greece and Spain every month for keeping them out of the limelight.” It’s anyone’s guess how long they will stay this way.

What does it say about a president’s policies when he uses a cartoon character, rather than a real person, to justify his record?

Perhaps I don’t point it out often enough but The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma are group blogs and without member contributions they wouldn’t be much.

My activist brother thinks I’m intimidating and perhaps he’s right, however my intention is to be nurturant and encouraging in my internet interactions.

A case in point- seakit posted some interesting links to pet food recall notifications for salmonella contamination in Monday’s On This Day In History which I’ll reproduce for you.

Diamond Pet Foods

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 5, 2012 – Diamond Pet Foods today announced that it is expanding a voluntary recall to include batches of nine brands of dry pet food formulas manufactured between December 9, 2011 and April 7, 2012 due to potential Salmonella contamination.

In April 2012, Diamond Pet Foods initiated three voluntary recalls of Diamond manufactured dry dog food. Although none of the additional products being recalled have tested positive for Salmonella, the company is pulling them from store shelves as a precaution. Diamond Pet Foods is coordinating efforts with federal and state health and regulatory agencies and decided to independently expand the recall to ensure the safety and well-being of customers and their pets.

The company stated: “We have taken corrective actions at our Gaston, S.C., facility and voluntarily expanded the recall out of concern for our customers and their pets.”

Brands included in the recall include:

  Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul

  Country Value

  Diamond

  Diamond Naturals

  Premium Edge

  Professional

  4Health

  Taste of the Wild

FDA

Wellpet

Wellpet LLC Voluntarily Recalls One Recipe Of Dry Dog Food Due To Salmonella At Diamond Pet Foods’ Facility

Contact:

Consumer

877-227-9587

Media

Megan McCutcheon, Hunter PR

212-679-6600

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 4, 2012 – WellPet LLC announced a voluntary recall of one recipe of Wellness® dry dog food after being notified by Diamond Pet Foods regarding the presence of Salmonella in Diamond’s Gaston, South Carolina facility.

All Wellness products are tested for Salmonella and all lots tested negative prior to shipping to customers. The company is voluntarily recalling the select products below. This voluntary recall is being done out of an abundance of caution as these products were produced at the facility that has been linked to recent recalls of Diamond brand foods due to the threat of Salmonella.

Pets with Salmonella infections may have decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.

Individuals handling dry pet food can become infected with Salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to this product. People who believe they may have been exposed to Salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people who are more likely to be affected by Salmonella include infants, children younger than 5 years old, organ transplant patients, people with HIV/AIDS and people receiving treatment for cancer.

FDA

Canidae Pet Foods

Contact:

Consumer Contact: 800-398-1600

Media Contact: Michael Lopes 800-398-1600 ext. 516 [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 5, 2012- Canidae Pet Foods announced today that it is issuing a voluntary recall of certain dry pet food formulas manufactured between December 9, 2011, and January 31, 2012 at the Diamond Pet Food Gaston, South Carolina plant.

Although there have been no animal or human illnesses related to Canidae Pet Food, and the product has not tested positive for Salmonella, the company has voluntarily initiated this recall out of caution to ensure the health and safety of consumers and their pets.

The below list of product with production codes that must have both a number “3” in the 9th position AND an “X” in the 10th or 11th position with best before dates of December 9, 2012, through January 31, 2013 which are being recalled.

  Canidae Dog, All Life Stages

  Canidae Dog, Chicken Meal & Rice

  Canidae Dog, Lamb Meal & Rice

  Canidae Dog, Platinum

FDA

Natural Balance Pet Foods

Natural Balance Pet Foods Initiates Voluntary Recall of Certain Dry Pet Food Due to the Potential for Salmonella Contamination

Contact:

Consumer:

(800) 829-4493

Media:

Daniel Bernstein

(310) 902-2554

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 4, 2012 – Natural Balance Pet Foods announced today that it is issuing a voluntary recall of certain dry pet food formulas manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods at their Gaston, South Carolina facility.

Although there have been no animal illnesses reported and none of the products included in the recall has tested positive for Salmonella, the company has voluntarily initiated this recall as a precautionary measure.

Pets with Salmonella infections may have decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, pets may be lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Infected but otherwise healthy pets can be carriers and infect other animals or humans. If your pet has consumed the recalled product and has these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian. We do not have any confirmed reports of pet illnesses.

Individuals handling dry pet food can become infected with Salmonella, especially if they have not thoroughly washed their hands after having contact with surfaces exposed to a contaminated product. Healthy people who believe they may have been exposed to Salmonella should monitor themselves for some or all of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people who are more likely to be affected by Salmonella include infants, children younger than 5 years old, organ transplant patients, people with HIV/AIDS and people receiving treatment for cancer. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have received a limited number of reports of salmonellosis, the illness caused by Salmonella.

FDA

Now it’s not my point to put seakit or anyone else on the spot, but we are fast approaching June and during that month both TheMomCat and I have other engagements that require a substantial time commitment.

I am hoping our loyal readers will respond by providing the content they’ve come to expect.  It’s not really that hard and while my family and friends are careful to pronounce every emission a ‘gem’ I know that 98% of it is crap.  It’s all part of the ‘Poet’s Pledge’-

The Poet’s Pledge

I, [the Poet’s name], do hereby solemnly pledge:

• To be peculiar in the most unusual way I can cook up
• To write excellently, or more especially to be known to write excellently
• To master bards of old and bards anew, or at least never give on that I haven’t
• To advance in gestures of my own and not in the stirrings of a majority, except where money is at stake
• To be perceived as morally suspect, no matter what the truth
• To sniff at adulation and pooh-pooh honors no matter how much I crave them
• To obey whim and eschew duty, or at least appear to
• To rove ruffian-like across continents of poems with ease, or at least make them think so
• To engage in ridiculous arguments, all hot and sweaty for my own position
• To be judicious only in the judging of my own merits and mean about the others
• To die young, or if I linger, to be ignored and abused well
• To write tons of crap for every good poem I do write, and obfuscate the difference with rhetoric
• To suck up to important editors with honeyed words, and cuff the assistant editors often
• To bemoan the sorry state of poetry in my country and do not one damn thing about it
• To speak so incoherently that everyone thinks I am a genius

It’s really not that hard to be a ‘world famous blogger’.

In Poland.

Look at Amendment 1 in NC!  Obama narrowly won the state in 08, and probably has a narrow edge right now.

Is it worth the risk of losing even (a) few crucial supporters?

Let Obama lose the election on this issue, because Romney would be wonderful for gay rights. That’s totally selling out gay voters.

North Carolina, Uppity Negroes, and Pushy Homosexualists

Posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Emancipation sentiment was ascendant in the South after 1783 though Northern inventions like the cotton gin and mills hungry for raw cotton perpetuated the existence of slave labor on Southern plantations. Fearful of slave revolts as the black population grew, and shaken by the Nat Turner massacre of women and children, Southerners erected anti-emancipation laws to control slave populations. The constant agitation of slave revolt by abolitionist fanatics culminating in John Brown’s crime in Virginia, was an effective means to end even voluntary emancipation in the South. Peaceful emancipation initiatives from the North would have had a better effect and avoided war.

All those complaining about last night’s Amendment One results should take a lesson from Brother Thuersam’s historical account. The good people of North Carolina wouldn’t have passed Amendment One if homosexualists wouldn’t go around demanding basic human rights.

ENDA: That’s the Sound of Jim Messina’s Blood Curdling

By: Jane Hamsher, Firedog Lake

Tuesday May 8, 2012 12:32 pm

Unless I miss my guess, “we have heard from at least half a dozen major gay and progressive donors” is code for what used to be known in donor circles as “the Cabinet” or “the Gay 8.”  The group has grown over the years,  and it includes many of the biggest Democratic Party donors of the past decade.   In addition to Jonathan Lewis, it now includes David Bohnett (Geo-Cities), Jon Stryker (Stryker Corp), Tim Gill (Oracle),  James Hormel (Hormel), Henry van Amerigen (International Flavors & Fragrances), Linda Ketner (Food Lion), Weston Milliken (Milliken & Co.), Esmond Harmsworth (Daily Mail) and Laura Ricketts (Chicago Cubs).

While most in the group have already maxed out to Obama campaign and the DNC, that’s small potatoes.  The Obama campaign has recently been tapping members for multi-million dollar donations to the 527s  – but according to Open Secrets,  all conspicuously missing from the top 2012 election cycle donors.

The White House is pushing back on the Sargent article and telling journalists that there really are no problems.  But if that’s the case, where are the traditional LGBT 527 donors?  They should name the ones that already have, or plan to donate.

The decision of LGBT donors to shut off campaign donations over Obama’s refusal to sign an executive order on ENDA has tremendous downstream implications.  It could have serious consequences for members of congress who rely not only on LGBT donors themselves, but who will need well-funded GOTV support for 2012 as well.

LGBT donors can check to see whether the names of their representatives appear on the naughty or nice lists when it comes to signing the letter to President Obama, asking him to issue an Executive Order on ENDA.

…

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

…

Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

…

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

…

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

…

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

Birmingham City Jail, 16 April 1963