'Pensacola Jeff': One brave soul speaks the truth, and is greeted by boos, at teabagging party in Pensacola, FL

from http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/649

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkOwsIIIe5I

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Chad Rubel

You may have thought everything that was said at the teabagging parties on Wednesday was right-wing drivel designed to mislead and inflame the masses.

Well, there was at least one brave soul in Pensacola, Florida.

"Pensacola Jeff" is what we'll call him because, well, his name is Jeff and he spoke in Pensacola.

He weaves in and out throughout his speech, using talking points designed to get cheers from the crowd, and sneaking in the truth like vegetables to a picky eater.

Pensacola Jeff starts out with a big shout-out to the troops and veterans. That line gets huge applause, as it should. Then he gives us a history lesson.

"Back in 2000, there was a budget surplus in the country."

After Pensacola Jeff mentions the budget surplus, some guy in the crowd yells out, "What happened?"

Well, let's find out.

"And during the next seven years, it was destroyed by the profligate spending of the Bush Administration. And here we are today, here we are today in a situation."

At this point, he sees the crowd isn't really following along, so he goes for the easy line.

"Let me ask you this: Cheer if you make less than $250,000 a year. Just cheer." The crowd cheers: they are back on his side. "Your taxes are going to be cut under the current budget. Congratulations."

Pensacola Jeff then talks about being laid-off by his employer back in September due to budget cuts, pointing out that this was before the election. Then he goes in for the close.

"So let's remember that if you're going to argue about more taxes and less spending, to place the blame where the blame belongs, and that's squarely in the hands of the Republican Congress until 2006 and the Bush Administration."

Pensacola Jeff walks off the stage, arms raised up to a cascade of boos from the crowd.

When confronted with the truth, the real truth, not the made up baloney being peddled by the right-wing radio and TV, the crowd turns to boo the one person brave enough to stand up for the truth.

Keith Olbermann on Countdown last night played the Pensacola Jeff video, and he and his guest, Janeane Garofalo, discussed it afterwards. Garofalo's initial reaction:

"There is nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what's he saying. It sounds right to them and then it doesn't make sense."

Olbermann put it well later in the segment: "Our friend in Pensacola there who played them like a 3-dollar fiddle, and led them right down the garden path with nothing but facts and then they went, 'wait a minute, that doesn't sound like Rush Limbaugh.' "

It was the truth, but it wasn't the "truth" they've been hearing from Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, et al. And it certainly wasn't facts as presented by much of the MSM from 2001-2007.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

How Goldman Sachs Turns Real Conflict of Interest into Fake Conspiracy as the Rumpelstiltskin of Wall Street

from http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/718

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,
The day after that the queen's child comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"
     ^{-- "Rumpelstiltskin" from Household Tales from the Grimm Brothers}

All this time I thought it was the Illuminati or Exxon Mobil running the world. Turns out it's really just Goldman Sachs.

Financial publications and blogs are rife with derisive references to those crazy "Goldman Sachs conspiracy theorists" these days. Usually, Jon Stewart uses his post at The Daily Show desk to mock the paranoid sector of society. Not this time, to the dismay of financial journalists. Watch his take on the tangle of Goldman Sachs and the government:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=224259&title=clusterfu#@k-to-the-poor-house

If you're interested in a more detailed look at the Goldman Sachs web, Portfolio magazine manages to point out nearly every conflict of interest, while at the same time calling anyone a nutcase who might see the chain as linked.

Many point to Goldman's impeccable pedigree as the reason so many of its board members and CEOs go onto government work from that high perch. David Viniar, Goldman's CFO, sniffled in a New York Times article yesterday that he felt those who write articles about "Government Sachs" should be ashamed, and that he thought public service should be encouraged, not berated.

Government work should be praised, indeed. But so too should conflicts of interest be pointed out, and not dismissed as the ravings of the jealous and mad.

Way back in October 2008, one editor at The New York Times was laughing his head off at the idea that Goldman Sachs was "pulling strings in the market meltdown and bailout. And afterward, we can all have Kool-Aid!"

This week, that same paper of record published an op-ed by William D. Cohan, a contributing editor at Fortune and author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. Cohan basically affirmed what the paper wouldn't even entertain as an idea last year. At the same time, of course, he still managed to poke fun at those crazy conspiracy theorists (emphasis mine):

How can one ignore, the conspiracy-minded say, the crucial role that Henry Paulson, who followed Mr. Rubin to the top at both Goldman and Treasury, played in the decisions to shutter Bear Stearns, to force Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy and to insist that Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch at an inflated price? David Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer, acknowledged in a conference call yesterday the important role the changed competitive landscape had on Goldman's unexpected first-quarter profit of $1.8 billion: "Many of our traditional competitors have retreated from the marketplace, either due to financial distress, mergers or shift in strategic priorities."

But he was largely mum on American International Group, which, Goldman's critics insist, is the canvas upon which the bank and its alumni have painted their great masterpiece of self-interest. A few days after Mr. Paulson refused to save Lehman Brothers last September -- at a cost of a mere $45 billion or so -- he came to AIG's rescue, to the tune of $170 billion and rising. Then he decided to install Edward Liddy -- a former Goldman Sachs board member -- as AIG's chief executive. Goldman has since received some $13 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts from AIG -- that is, from taxpayers.

Why kill Lehman and save AIG? The theory, we now know, was that the government felt it needed to save the firms, including Goldman Sachs, that had insured many of their risky ventures through the insurer. Indeed, had Mr. Paulson decided not to save AIG, its counterparties would have suffered serious losses. Lehman's creditors will be lucky to get back pennies on the dollar.

Cohan concludes that "the real reason Goldman has cleaned up this year [is] the huge misfortunes of its major competitors."

Cohan is not the only reputable writer tracing the edges of this story. London's Independent details how Goldman has insinuated itself into just about every country in the world. Bloomberg called Goldman out as one of the main beneficiaries of the bailout plan way back in September 2008. Howard Rodman quips at Huffington Post that "when the dust clears from WWIII, the only things left standing will be Keith Richards, cockroaches and the investment bank of Goldman Sachs."

Goldman officials just shrug their shoulders and say "Who, me? Why, that's just crazy!" and the mainstream media just nods. But it seems the mega-bank is flustered by at least one online "conspiracy theorist."

Goldman's reaction to a financial consultant's observations on the company's connections is revealing. Instead of dismissing Mike Morgan's Web site, GoldmanSachs666.com as laughable conspiracy, the bank sent him a cease and desist letter within a week of his first posting.

The Telegraph reports that Goldman hired a lawyer to pursue Morgan on the grounds that the site violates intellectual property rights and could be construed to be associated with the bank. Goldman makes that argument in spite of the fact that each page on GoldmanSachs666.com contains this disclaimer in the header:

This website has NOT been approved by Goldman Sachs, nor does this website have any affiliation with Goldman Sachs. This website was designed to provide information about Goldman Sachs direct from the public, and NOT from Goldman Sachs's marketing and public relations departments. You may find the official Goldman Sachs website at http://www.goldmansachs.com.

Morgan filed a lawsuit against Goldman to protect his site, a redesign of which he says will be launched by the end of next week.

"We haven't heard a peep from Goldman Sachs since we filed our case. They won't respond," Morgan said in response to a question posed by BuzzFlash via conference call. "But that's Goldman Sachs."

Yet the snickering from mainstream financial journalists continues to the present moment, with writers rolling their eyes over "theories about Goldman Sachs running a shadow government."

I wouldn't be surprised if someone left a similar comment on this story. But the truth is, there is no dramatic conspiracy here, because it's all out in the open.

Due to the nature of the corporatist society we live in today, it was a given that some private entity (and probably a bank) would profit from the financial crisis. Why not Goldman Sachs? That's just the vagaries of modern capitalism.

The New York Times revealed yesterday that the AIG "CEO" newly installed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has something in his back pocket to make up for his $1 a year salary. That's right, Edward Liddy has a $3 million stake in Goldman Sachs.

One financial blogger said the news "will delight and pique the Goldman Sachs conspiracy theorists out there, for better or worse." This was just after the writer noted the huge conflict of interest caused by Liddy's Goldman investments.

Still, are we surprised at this? Liddy "earned" these investments fair and square when he was on the board at Goldman. Aren't conspiracy theories supposed to be shocking and hard to believe?

The bottom line is as long as these facts are relegated to the conspiracy bin, teabaggers and other malcontents will be free to rail against imaginary socialism, foreclosure prevention plans, and other clearly demarcated social pariahs as the bane of their collective existence.

Much like the poor miller's daughter in the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, we don't care to know the name of our tormentor until he comes for our firstborn child. Until then, may they continue to turn straw into gold with impunity.

A Scandal Steven Rattner Couldn't Hide from Barack Obama [Crime] from Gawker

from http://gawker.com/5215802/a-scandal-steven-rattner-couldnt-hide-from-barack-obama

He could blame his investment firm's failures on the economy. His wife's DWI could be covered up by media pals. But the Obama Administration's auto-bailout adviser can't hide a bribery investigation.

Steven Rattner, the former New York Times reporter and Quadrangle Group co-founder, is believed by federal investigators to have directed Quadrangle to pay more than $1 million in kickbacks to obtain business from the New York State pension, the Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting.

The Times didn't mention Rattner's connection to the paper in its front-page story, even though it did tout the connection in February, when Rattner was appointed bailout adviser.

Perhaps the paper is a bit embarrassed at how tawdry the whole scheme sounds: Rattner's firm, through an affiliate, paid $90,000 to the brother of the state's deputy controller for rights to his low-budget film "Chooch," according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. It then got a $100 million investment from the state pension fund and subsequently paid an additional $1.1 million to a political consultant.

The Treasury Department said Rattner notified it about the investigation "during the transition." How much did Rattner tell the administration? It's hard to fathom why the president would want a public-funds-disbursement adviser who is under investigation for improperly obtaining the disbursement of public funds.

But Rattner can be convincing when he wants to be. He was behind a campaign to raise $1 million for Barack Obama after betting twice on the wrong horse, i.e., Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

And the media-mogul-friendly financier seems to have contained the damage from the present scandal as well as one might reasonably expect. Both the Times and the Journal attributed their stories to a single, anonymous source — and both are careful to note there is no hint of criminal charges against Rattner.

A Generation of New York City's Corrupt Pols Laid Low [Scandal] from Gawker

from http://gawker.com/5216453/a-generation-of-new-york-citys-corrupt-pols-laid-low

Steven Rattner, former New York Times reporter, failed media investment firm founder, friend of Bloomberg and Sulzberger, and Car Czar, is one more former political star caught up in the New York pension fund scandal.

As the Times and Journal report today, the SEC is investigating Quandrangle Group founder and crazy social climber Rattner for paying $1 million to play with the state's massive pension fund.

The state pension fund was just a hilarious morass of corruption, mostly revolving around former comptroller Alan Hevesi, who was the sole trustee of the whole system. Charges have been filed against former deputy comptroller David Loglisci and Hevesi pal (in Post parlance) Hank Morris. Morris, a Democratic political consultant who ran Chuck Schumer's '98 and '04 campaigns, was the man to send your massively inflated "finders' fees" to in exchange for pension business. Morris and Lovlisci made tens of millions in kickbacks, because they directed the "alternative investments" wing of the $122 billion fund.

And just this week former Liberal Party chair Ray Harding was charged with accepting $800,000 in reward money (from the Morris kickback pool) for some favors he did for Hevesi. Is anyone else growing to like this Andrew Cuomo kid?

So! Quadrangle—meaning Rattner—paid $90k to acquire a shitty movie Loglisci produced, and three weeks later they were doing $100 million worth of business with the pension fund. Shortly after that, Quadrangle paid $1.1 million in fees to Hank Morris.

Here is the film, Chooch, that actual legitimate investment firms invested in, in order to get that sweet pension business. Let's just quote the entire plot summary:

The life of Queens resident Dino Condito is about to take a surprising turn. After letting down his softball team by striking out in the bottom of the ninth against Hoboken, his crew brands him the chooch. Trying to cheer up his cousin Dino, Jubilene Condito cashes in his savings from his first holy communion and springs for a vacation to Cancun. You mean leave Queens? asks Dino, as if the thought had never occurred to him. But there's a mix-up on the way to the airport involving a mysterious bag of money. As soon as Dino and Jube land in Mexico, they're abducted by a pair of thugs and left in the desert at the mercy of a trio of soldiers. It takes reuniting Dino's old Queens crew, including Dino's beloved pet dachsund, to save the two cousins. Only after a jail bust, donkey ride, chicken coop explosion, and a life-changing love affair at the local bordello does the crew finally arrive to save the day. Returning home in triumphant glory with his reunited crew and newfound love Ladonna, Dino discovers the meaning of family, friendship and neighborhood.

Oh man. Rattner paid almost six figures for the rights to distribute the DVD of this heartwarming action-comedy. The only user comment is a 2-star pan from someone who knows an actress with a bit part in the movie from back home in Denver. Hah. Chooch: the shitty low-budget mob mix-up comedy that brought down a large segment of the early-2000s New York political establishment.

And now Rattner will save the auto industry for Barack Obama, who hired him because Rattner millions in donations to get himself out of the investment business and into Democratic politics.

Pastor Says Border Patrol Worked Him Over from Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

from http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090417_border_patrol_assaults_pastor/

Pastor Steven Anderson of Tempe, Ariz., says he was Tasered, assaulted and denied medical treatment after he refused to submit to a search by Border Patrol officers at an immigration checkpoint east of San Diego. The ACLU has called the area a "Constitution-free zone" where such abuse has become commonplace.

For related stories, check out an amazing Twitter feed by "Injust_Seattle," which collects reports of alleged police and Border Patrol abuses across the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUzd7G875Hc

The Examiner:

The pastor of a Baptist church in the Phoenix area says he was stopped at an internal Border Patrol checkpoint, Tasered and beaten. Steven L. Anderson, of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, was returning from San Diego on Interstate 8 when he was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint—a common but controversial feature of what the ACLU calls the "Constitution-free zone" within 100 miles of the U.S. border, where law-enforcement authorities conduct suspicion-less searches in defiance of traditional protections for individual rights.

Anderson says that, after he stood on his constitutional rights and declined to answer questions at the checkpoint, Border Patrol agents brought over a dog and claimed the animal had sniffed out either drugs or a human body in his trunk. Anderson refused to permit a search, at which time DPS (highway patrol) officers were summoned. The officers broke out his car windows and the pastor was Tasered and beaten before being arrested.

Injuries are plainly visible on Anderson's face in a video he made after the incident.

Anderson identifies three of the Border Patrol agents as C. Diaz, B. Griffiths and E. Gomez. He is due in court today, where he plans to plead "not guilty" to all charges.

Read more

CBO: Income inequality gap hit record high in 2006. from Think Progress

from http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/17/cbo-income-inequality/

Arloc Sherman of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities writes today that "new data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that in 2006, the top 1 percent of households had a larger share of the nation's after-tax income, and the middle and bottom fifths of households had smaller shares, than in any year since 1979, the first year the CBO data cover." According to Sherman, this means that "the gaps in after-tax incomes between households in the top 1 percent and those in the middle and bottom fifths were the widest on record":

Top incomes continued climbing in the 1990s, to 20.6 times higher than the middle fifth of households in 2000 and 21.3 times higher in 2005. By 2006, top incomes were 23.0 times higher than those of the middle fifth — nearly tripling the income gap between the top 1 percent and those in the middle since 1979.

The gap between the top 1 percent and the poorest fifth of Americans widened even more dramatically over this same period. In 1979, the incomes of the top 1 percent were 22.6 times higher than those of the bottom fifth. Top incomes continued climbing to 63.1 times higher in 2000 and 72.7 times higher by 2006 — more than tripling the rich-poor gap in 27 years.

Sherman adds that "taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929."

Did Auto Czar Steve Rattner Help Scam New York Pensioners? from TPMmuckraker

from http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/did_auto_czar_steve_rattner_help_scam_new_york_pen.php

Steve Rattner, the money manager who is Obama's top adviser on bailing out the auto industry, is uncomfortably close to a criminal investigation into the New York state pension fund, newspapers reported today.

In October 2004 Rattner, the private equity investor and former New York Times reporter who is leading (if not quite the "czar" of) the Obama administration's task force to save the auto industry, met with David Loglisci, the recently-indicted chief investment officer of the New York General Pension Fund to solicit an investment in his private equity fund Quandrangle, according to news reports in today's New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. By January Rattner's fund had allegedly signed a written agreement to give a 1.1% cut of whatever investment Quadrangle received from the fund to Henry Morris, the (also recently indicted) former aide to the disgraced former state comptroller Alan Hevesi. A few days later, as if to sweeten the deal, Rattner agreed to meet with Loglisci's brother and wound up investing $88,841 for the DVD distribution rights to a movie that had grossed barely a third of that during its brief release in theaters through a Quadrangle affiliate called GT Brands. (The brother produced the movie, Chooch.) Three weeks later, Loglisci the CIO "personally informed" Rattner that Quadrangle would be getting a $100 million investment from the pension fund -- and over the next two and a half years Morris would in turn collect over a million dollars in "finders fees" for the transactions.

Those, at least, are the allegations of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the SEC against Morris, Loglisci and two of their associates in the latest development in the protracted pay-to-play probe of New York state pension funds. The lawsuit only makes reference to a "Quadrangle executive" but the Times and the Journal quote sources confirming the executive is Rattner. Both papers also specify that Rattner is not himself a target of the probe, and that he told the administration about the investigation when he took the job.

The scheme was so brazen -- and so unsophisticated when measured against, say, the convoluted schemes whereby Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich funneled public funds into personal coffers -- that it's hard to imagine Rattner, a billionaire sixteen times over with lifelong political ambitions and more connections than any one person could ever legitimately milk for profits, would go along with it in "good faith." There's also some careful wording to the suit that suggests Rattner was acting with some element of deliberation.

When the Chooch DVD distribution deal was agreed upon, the Quadrangle executive immediately notified Morris of that fact and the connection to Loglisci.

The complaint leaves the impression that Rattner might have been cooperating in the investigation, though that is as yet unconfirmed. If so, what's the backstory on how he came to cooperate? And was the pension-plundering probe -- which bears close resemblance to the one that sunk Bill Richardson's cabinet nomination -- thoroughly vetted by the White House in advance?

Developing, as they say...

Income Gaps Hit Record Levels In 2006, New Data Show Rich-Poor Gap Tripled Between 1979 and 2006

By Arloc Sherman

"New data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that in 2006, the top 1 percent of households had a larger share of the nation's after-tax income, and the middle and bottom fifths of households had smaller shares, than in any year since 1979, the first year the CBO data cover.  As a result, the gaps in after-tax incomes between households in the top 1 percent and those in the middle and bottom fifths were the widest on record."

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2789
http://www.cbpp.org/files/4-17-09inc.pdf (6pp.)

Anti-corruption is vital for prosperity in the Americas from Transparency International press releases

from http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2009/2009_04_16_oas_report

As the world faces a prolonged economic crisis the 34 heads of state meeting this week at the Summit of the Americas must ensure that transparency and accountability are an integral part of future actions to ensure prosperity in the hemisphere, according to Transparency International (TI).

Recent research conducted by TI shows that states' promises to fight corruption are not being effectively translated into action. States do not report sufficiently on actions taken to implement mandates and as there is no standard reporting format, monitoring anti-corruption progress makes for a daunting task. Furthermore, civil society participation is not integrated into implementation reviews and is even dependent on domestic legislation in some countries, severely limiting independent and critical monitoring.

The TI analysis found serious gaps in the implementation of anti-corruption commitments, particularly as there is a lack of coordination among regional and national authorities responsible for the follow-up of Summit mandates and the implementation of the Inter-American Convention.

Nine countries were evaluated (Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago) on actions taken to fulfil goals set out during the previous four summits of the Americas. The report looks at varying indicators; from a country's status on ratifying anti-corruption conventions to the level of implementation of recommendations put forward by the committee of experts within the OAS responsible for reviewing implementation.

Since the first Summit of the Americas fifteen years ago, heads of state have recognised corruption as a key challenge and made it an official priority in their plans of action. States that have signed on to the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (ICAC), and which have pledged to act in previous summits, have an obligation to report their advances on anti-corruption.

Additional report findings:

• On the implementation of Inter-American Convention recommendations: the nine countries assessed received a total of 249 recommendations, from which only 59 per cent (148) were acted upon, yet of these only 20 per cent were considered sufficient.

• Most of the recommendations implemented were related to whistleblower protection, oversight bodies and international cooperation, whereas those that were least implemented dealt with opening consultation with civil society.

• The number of recommendations adopted into national law has improved but these have not been fed into national policy and practice
• Country visits, one of the criteria in the rules for follow-up on implementation, are not being carried out

Corruption is inextricably linked to persistent high levels of inequality across the region despite robust economic growth in the last few years. Today nearly 200 million people, a third of the population of the hemisphere, live in poverty with 13 per cent of them surviving amidst extreme poverty, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. Weak institutions, low levels of governance and the influence of personal gain undermine efforts to promote economic equality and sustainable development. These issues must be addressed and change must be implemented if countries in the region are to have a realistic chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals and improving citizens' quality of living.

The study presented by TI at the Summit of the Americas Civil Society Forum was carried out by TI chapters in the nine countries under the auspices of the American Bar Association's World Social Justice Program (WSJ).

###

Transparency International is the civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption.

Media Contacts:

Berlin
Gypsy Guillén Kaiser
Tel. +49 30 343820662
ggkaiser@transparency.org

Trinidad and Tobago
Victor Hart
Chairman,Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute
Mobile: +868 6323368

Neo-Nazis: 'Tea Parties' Are "the White Revolution We've Been Waiting For" [Teabagging] from Gawker

from http://gawker.com/5211747/neo+nazis-tea-parties-are-the-white-revolution-weve-been-waiting-for

Hah, it's fun to marginalize a protest movement by selectively focusing on its craziest fringes, but the "Tea Party" movement is all fringe and no legitimate grievance. Look, the white supremacists are psyched!

The users of a certain neo-Nazi message board that will soon invade this site with a flood of nutty racist comments have been debating these recent "Tea Party" protests, and at least one user likes what he sees.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think every WN needs to not only attend the April 15th Tea Party nearest you (I'm going to the Alamo in San Antonio) but then stay involved and help provide leadership to this movement.

I believe that this is the white revolution we've been waiting for.

It doesn't look what we expected but this is it.

I've seen probably 50 videos on TV showing previous marches and what strikes me is that the participants are all WHITE. It stands to reason . . . we're the ones being taxed to support Affirmative Action, Welfare and other worthless social programs. It's our tax dollars going to ACORN and supporting the 12 million illegals swarming into our neighborhoods.

For the first time, white people (a.k.a. the lemmings) are finally awake and taking to the streets.

The rest of the thread is various excited white supremacists excitedly volunteering to bring all their white supremacist buddies to the Tax Day Tea Party protest nearest them. Let's see how many of them end up on Fox's all-day intensive coverage of this grass-roots populist nationwide protest!

In addition to the White Supremacists, the Tax Day Tea Parties will be full of discord between the crazy Paultards who've been doing this sort of thing for years and the Johnnies-come-lately who just got involved once GOP leadership, Fox, and various corporate think tanks co-opted the whole nutty libertarian thing to make it a generalized protest against everything Obama.

And all the teabags you keep mailing are causing Capitol office evacuations. Whee! This is going to be a hilarious shitshow, right?

Cramer continues complaining about Stewart: ‘It was a complete and utter ambush.’ from Think Progress

from http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/14/cramer-stewart-ambush/

After CNBC's Jim Cramer sat down for a brutal confrontation with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart in March, he originally replied to criticism by saying that he was glad his head "was still attached" after the interview and that he was "thrilled to have been in the tourney." But Cramer soon took a more aggressive tone towards Stewart, calling his criticism "naive and misleading." Apparently, Cramer hasn't let go of his frustration over the interview. In an interview Ohio State's The Lantern last week, Cramer said that Stewart "came on strictly to try to humiliate me":

"It was a complete and utter ambush," Cramer said in an interview with The Lantern. "He told my staff that it was going to be fun, convivial, no clips, but [it] doesn't matter, he's a comedian, he can do whatever he wants." […]

"Was it a fair fight? No, it wasn't even a fight. I came on with the idea of taking a high road approach and discussing the issues, obviously [Stewart] came on strictly to try to humiliate me," Cramer said. "It was brutal. Was he stand-up? Absolutely not. Did he comport himself as a gentleman? Hardly. It was a deposition; he wants to be a prosecutor."

In the interview with The Lantern, Cramer also claimed that he believed Stewart's goal was to get him fired: "His goal was just to humiliate and destroy me and probably get me fired, and last I looked, I still have a show." (HT: Howard Kurtz)

StreetWise Homeless? from Chicagoist

from http://chicagoist.com/2009/04/14/streetwise_homeless.php

We've just heard that StreetWise, the venerated Chicago publication that provides jobs for many of the city's homeless people, may be going under. The publication, which has been around in Chicago for the past 17 years, depends on an unusual mixture of advertising, grants and vendor fees to support itself. We talked to the magazine's executive director Bruce Crane who said his magazine has been hit in every single revenue stream. "We're receiving lovely letters from organizations that usually fund us," he said. "All of them say 'due to the changes in the financial market...'"

"It's been a perfect storm, and we're in a dire financial situation," Crane continued. "The loss of grants, the advertisers cutting budget, the vendors having a hard time selling the magazines, and the increase in vendors asking for papers to sell."

The group collects content from a mixture of editorial staff, college journalism programs and regular contributors into a magazine that is sold by vendors on street corners throughout the city. According to their Web site, the not-for-profit group has helped more than 8,000 people who were homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless, to earn money from their sidewalk sales of the magazine, while learning to manage the money that comes in. "Many of the people who've sold the magazine have used it to supplement their income," Crane said. "They attend school while they're selling it, and eventually they make it off of the streets."

Crane said one of the common misconceptions that has been hurting his circulation, and therefore his advertising revenue, is that just giving the vendor the $2 for the magazine - and then leaving it wit the vendor is better for all involved. "The goal is to provide a sense of entrepreneurship," said Crane. "And if circulation's up... ultimately we can help more people."

Asked whether or not he thought the advent of internet journalism was having a significant impact on circulation, Crane said his magazine has no internet version - and that online journalism was probably hurting his organization just as much as anyone else's. Crane said the organization is dependent on the vendors' revenue (they pay 75 cents per issue and sell the magazine for $2 on the street) for about 50 percent of their costs. The rest of their funding, Crane said, comes from a mixture of grants and donations (about 40 percent) and advertising (10 percent).

Ald. Manny Flores (1st) told us the magazine is a vital option for the city's homeless population. "It's something that's been designed to help the homeless get a job, and get out of poverty," he said. "People have come to count on the employment that StreetWise provides." Flores has called for a hearing at the City Council tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. to address the magazine's "dire financial straits."

"It's always good to have another voice active in the community," said Flores. "We're calling on the public to help support it, as independent community journalism, and as a good idea."

Gorging on Movies from Chicagoist by Rob Christopher

from http://chicagoist.com/2009/04/14/gorging_on_movies.php

It's really no wonder that movie receipts are up 17.5% over last year. Movies are a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment, and going to the movies is a social activity, as well as a welcome distraction and escape from all the down news as of late. Aside from the usual multiplex options there's a whole boatload of film festivals on the horizon:

• The Chicago Latino Film Festival launches its 25th edition this Friday, featuring over 100 films. And lest you be hesitant to attend, keep in mind that the vast majority are subtitled. Among the selections is hands down the best-titled movie of the year, The Pope's Toilet, which "cloaks religious critique in the scrappy tempo of irremediable poverty and irrepressible enterprise" (New York Times). The festival runs through April 29 at Facets and the Landmark Century.
• With today's soggy weather it's pretty easy to start daydreaming ahead to summer. You can fuel those daydreams by contemplating the lineup for this year's Outdoor Film Festival, which runs Tuesday evenings from July 14 (Sunset Blvd.) through August 25 (Tootsie) at dusk in Grant Park. The other films are Duck Soup, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Born Yesterday, Psycho, and Young Mr. Lincoln. It's free. Alcohol is forbidden, although ...
• Fight the power and check out the 9th Annual Chicago Anarchist Film Festival, April 24-26 at Jane Addams Hull House on the UIC Campus. The selection of films and videos for "anarchists, anti-authoritarians, the anarcho-friendly and the anarcho-curious" includes the documentary Infiltrating the Underground, which examines how anti-corporate culture has been hijacked, and the radical queer agit-comedy Homotopia. Admission is a requested donation of $5-10 per festival day but, in true egalitarian fashion, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
• Evanston gets its first proper film festival this spring. Talking Pictures Festival runs May 1-3, showcasing over a dozen new independent films from around the world. Among the highlights are Treeless Mountain, a delicate naturalistic film from South Korea that's gotten rave reviews elsewhere, and the documentary 1000 Journals, about San Francisco artist Someguy and his blank journals project. Check out the full schedule here. The main venues will be Northwestern University's Block Cinema and Evanston's Boocoo Cultural Center and Café.

Federal Tax Burdens For Most Near Their Lowest Levels In Decades

By Gillian Brunet and Kris Cox

"With April 15 approaching and many people focusing on what they owe in taxes, Americans may be surprised to learn that federal tax burdens for most income groups, particularly middle-income households, are near their lowest levels in decades — and were low by historical standards even before the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts."

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=139
http://www.cbpp.org/files/4-10-07tax.pdf  3pp.
 

Related background:

Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
http://www.cbpp.org/files/4-14-08tax.pdf  4pp.

Where Do Our State Tax Dollars Go?
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2783
http://www.cbpp.org/files/policybasics-statetaxdollars.pdf  3pp.

Sarah Palin's new disaster

from http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/04/sarah-palins-new-disaster.html

I've put up a few revelatory posts about Sarah Palin's horrendous pick for Alaska attorney general, Wayne Anthony Ross. [Please follow those links if you haven't been following the story.] Well, today, Mark Karlin over at BuzzFlash e-mailed me this little Max Blumenthal gem of a follow-up. Sparky McBackfire may dump W.A.R. to save her own skin:

According to two sources close to the confirmation hearings, Palin may ask Ross to withdraw before his appointment comes to a vote. [...]

But as pro-Palin forces attempted to push back against Ross's critics, dozens of op-eds Ross authored during the 1980s and 1990s surfaced as key exhibits in the case against his confirmation. Among them is a 1993 piece entitled, "KKK 'art' project gets 'A' for courage," in which Ross cheered on a local college student who had offended an African-American classmate by creating a statue of a Klansman with a cross in one hand and a flag in the other. "It might have been fun to see [the African-American student] try to remove the display," Ross wrote. "Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings."

During the early 1980s, while Anchorage residents grappled over renaming the city's 15th Street as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and state legislators mulled establishing a state holiday honoring the assassinated civil-rights leader, Ross wrote several manifestoes attacking King as a communist subversive, according to University of Alaska-Anchorage music professor and local progressive activist Phil Munger. Munger also told me Ross has routinely appeared at public events beside his friend, Don Tanner, a white nationalist who moved to South Africa for a period during the 1980s to support its apartheid government, and who reveled crowds of conservatives with anti-black "South African jokes" upon his return to Alaska.

A glance at Ross's published archive shows he never limited his resentment to minorities. He taunted environmentalists ("It is time we quit crying over the oil spill" was the title of an editorial he wrote in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster); he denounced homosexuals as "degenerates" during a 1993 legal fight over a local gay-rights ordinance; and announced that his final wish before dying was to overturn Roe v. Wade. While rising through the ranks of the NRA's national leadership in the 1980s, Ross published a piece in the mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune, defending the right to form antigovernment militias.

"Ross's profile fits where Palin wants to go after the current legislative session ends," Munger remarked to me. "She seems to be planning some behind-the-scenes movement to stir up the crazies, especially by convincing them the federal government is going take their guns away. So nobody here is surprised by this selection."

While Ross sustained withering criticism for his views on social issues, Native American tribes denounced his vociferous opposition to their subsistence rights. The tribes were especially disturbed by his vow during a 2002 gubernatorial debate to "hire a band of junkyard dog" attorneys to gut federal laws guaranteeing natives subsistence preferences. "It almost looked like she was rubbing our face in Anthony Ross's appointment," said Tim Towarak, co-chairman of the Alaska Federation of Natives, told The Bristol Bay Times. "Like rubbing our face on the ground, saying 'Here, take this.'" With increasingly powerful tribal groups mobilizing a united front against Ross, Palin was compelled to defend her own record, pleading, "Obviously I am not anti-Native and would never appoint anyone who is."

If Palin withdraws Ross's nomination, she could end another embarrassing political spectacle before it registers on the national press corps' radar. Alternatively, if she manages to ram his appointment through, Palin can begin implementing a hard-right legal agenda that will appeal to the elements she is cultivating as the base of her likely 2012 presidential campaign. However Palin decides to proceed with W.A.R., by nominating him, she has staked out the culture war as the fuel for her national ambitions.

Sparky McBackfire really picked a winner, didn't she? Oh, whoops, my bad, I shouldn't use that term. "Winner" and "Palin" should never be juxtaposed. That would be inappropriate and bad form.

Sparky McBackfire really picked a bigoted, mean-spirited, bottom-feeding boor, didn't she? There. That's better.

OpenSecrets.org Goes OpenData

from http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/04/opensecretsorg-goes-opendata.html

WASHINGTON -- Politicians, prepare yourselves. Lobbyists, look out. Today the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is putting 200 million data records from the watchdog group's archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics.

For the first time in CRP's 26-year history, the nonprofit research group's most popular data archives are fully and freely downloadable for non-commercial purposes from the Center's website, OpenSecrets.org--a four-time Webby winner for best politics site online. OpenSecrets.org will remain the go-to independent source for most users interested in tracking money's political influence and, in fact, the site has some new general-interest features as of today. (More on those below.)

With today's announcement, skilled data-divers can explore the information that's already aggregated on OpenSecrets.org to its full depth. Web developers and database experts can grab federal money-in-politics data that CRP's researchers have standardized and coded, and mash it up with other data sets. Timelines, charts, maps, other graphics and mobile applications are just some of the projects that could result--all powered by CRP's unparalleled data.

"Putting our data into more hands will put more eyes on Washington and, we hope, engage more Americans in their government," CRP Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. "We hope that more people counting cash will lead to more people making change."

The OpenSecrets OpenData initiative is being generously underwritten by a three-year $1.2 million grant from Sunlight Foundation, which supports uses of the Internet to promote greater transparency of government and the interplay in Washington between money and public policy.

"Building on its outstanding and long-earned reputation for accuracy and integrity, CRP is giving the public the keys to take government transparency to the next level," said Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation's executive director and co-founder. "This will have a long-term impact, undoubtedly inspiring many effective and creative uses of the data by civic hackers, journalists and bloggers."

Center's Researchers Clean Up, Categorize Government Data

The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:
  

• CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.

• LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.

• PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.

• 527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
  

To download bulk data from OpenSecrets.org, users must register on the site and agree to prominently credit the Center for Responsive Politics, along with other terms of service. CRP is making its data available through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which allows users to remix, tweak, build upon and share the Center's work non-commercially. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a negotiable fee.

The Rotting Racist Underbelly of the Tea Party Protests

from http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/04/the-rotting-racist-underbelly-of-the-tea-party-protests/

Were you wondering what happened to all the rabid, wild-eyed bigots yelling, "Kill him!" and "Terrorist" and "Socialist" carrying stuffed monkey plush dolls at the McCain-Palin rallies? It's easy in our jubilation over Obama's victory to forget the many people in America who were deeply fearful and hate-oriented towards an Obama presidency. Those people didn't just shrug their shoulders at the Democratic victory in Nov 2008. No, they've re-organized. Largely abandoned by the Republican party who tapped cynically into their ignorance, fear and hatred and whipped these folks into a racist lather as a Get Out The Vote strategy, the Tax Day Tea Party people have used the internet to find each other and organize.

They're getting plenty of news coverage. And don't get me wrong: the teabaggers (heh) have expressed some legitimate concerns about the impact of the economic stimulus on the ballooning deficit and the evolving structure of the financial bailout strategy. Concerns some progressives and many Americans share actually. Yet Obama's kept his promise to lower taxes for most Americans except the very wealthy - I don't know about you but I definitely am getting more back than I expected personally on my own taxes. So…whassup, really? Are these folks really concerned about their taxes going up or is it about what they perceive their taxes to be funding? Here's an image from the Michelle Malkin blog that sums up their real concerns, IMHO - note the bloody imagery, btw.

I've been parsing the words and the racists have been very careful to cover their tracks and fury that a black man is President. But not well enough. I'm starting to become pretty convinced at this point that "socialist" is a some kind of code word for "nigger". Here's an example of some of the subtle language the Tea Party people are using to describe their own movement (emphasis mine) from the Michelle Malkin blog, a central hive for the poorly informed, wild-eyed, bigoted, Fox News/wingnut blog-driven lynch, ahem I mean Tea Partiers:

As you're probably aware, Michelle's been a huge supporter of the "tea parties," as has been Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush and countless others. The phenomenon is spreading, and more will be held on Tax Day — April 15 (a map of all the locations is here).

In late February, I attended a tea party in Lansing, Michigan, and will be there again next Wednesday. While there, I spoke with several people, and, while everybody attended for the same "big picture" reason, many had their own reason to be there.

For some it was wildly excessive and confusing tax laws. Others were there out of concern for their children and grandchildren. Some were there because they're maddened that the same glorious policies that have made Detroit look like Bangladesh after a garbage haulers strike are being introduced on a national level, a few were upset because the same people who created these massive problems are charged with fixing them, others don't want their country sold out to some global entity, and one man I saw had a sign that said "'Government job' is a contradiction in terms." Many were there for the reason of "all of the above."

Huh? What does Detroit or Bangladesh have to do with Barack Obama?

rest at http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/04/the-rotting-racist-underbelly-of-the-tea-party-protests/

Taliban execute couple for eloping from Raw Story Breaking News

Taliban execute couple for eloping

KABUL - Taliban gunmen executed a young couple in southern Afghanistan for trying to elope, shooting them with rifles in front of a crowd in a lawless, militant-controlled region, officials said Tuesday.

The woman, 19, and the man, 21, were accused by the militants of immoral acts, and a council of conservative clerics decided that the two should be killed, said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, the governor of the southwestern province of Nimroz.

Riflemen in the remote district of Khash Rod shot the man and woman with AK-47s Monday during a public execution, said Sadiq Chakhansori, the chief of Nimroz' provincial council.

rest http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30205074/

GOP lawmaker challenged to prove his 'red scare' from Raw Story Breaking News

GOP lawmaker challenged to prove his 'red scare'

An Alabama Republican lawmaker who declared last week that a gang of socialists are stalking the halls of Congress is apparently taking the Fifth.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) told a gathering in Trussville, Ala. on Apr. 9 that there were 17 socialists in Congress. "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," said Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee.

But pressed to name the 17, he's only been able to come up with one. And that senator, self-professed "Democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders (D-VT) wants to know the rest.

Sanders joined the chorus of reporters and lawmakers Tuesday pushing Bachus to make good on his claim that 17 socialists reside in Congress.

"Has Spencer released his list yet?" Sanders asked Politico. "Everybody's waiting with bated breath."

"I think at the very least he has to tell people what his definition of socialism is," he added. "And I think he should tell us who he was referring to, who's on the list."

Bachus has so far has decided to keep "the list" a secret, which he first referred to in his hometown newspaper. The same day, Bachus had praised President Barack Obama. "He's a better listener than George W. Bush," Bachus said. "He tries to get ideas from people."

Now Bachus finds that others are listening to him. His office has made no official comment on his charge and hasn't responded to repeated requests for comment.

So far, groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, Socialist Party USA and the Socialist Party Republicans have made little of Bachus' comments.

Bachus' comments remind some of those made by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the freshman representative, who during her 2008 campaign called for an investigation of Congress "to find out if they are pro-American or anti-American," during comments made on Hardball.

Cantor’s cartoonish ‘Solutions Center’ website recycles stale GOP ideas. from Think Progress

from http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/14/cantor-cartoons/

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is launching a "Solutions Center" to "address simple questions Americans are asking themselves in the face of economic calamity." Cantor told Politico that his goal is to "answer the questions with Republican proposals that contrast starkly with legislation offered by President Barack Obama and his congressional allies." With the help of a number of different cartoon characters, Cantor's "Solutions Center," answers just four questions. The answer to every question — some form of cut taxes, cut spending, or both — is presented in the form of GOP talking points with a link to a briefing document rehashing already proposed and rejected GOP alternatives. This is Cantor's solutions site:

Notably, the site doesn't direct visitors to the many government resources that already exist to help Americans stay in their homes, save for higher education and retirement, or deal with unemployment.

Nurse Laid Off In The Middle Of Surgery [Downsizing] from Consumerist

from http://consumerist.com/5211516/nurse-laid-off-in-the-middle-of-surgery

When Dean Health System in Madison, Wisconsin announced last week that it "planned to 'immediately' lay off 90 employees," it wasn't kidding around. One of them was a nurse who was pulled out of surgery to be told the news.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel doesn't say if she then returned to finish attending the surgery, but Dean Health admitted to the paper that interrupting her during her job just to give her the news "violated medical protocol." We guess her manager had a long list to get through.

"Nurse called out of surgery and laid off " [JSOnline] (Thanks to Erik!)

Palin MIA During Critical Alaska Stimulus Vote from Pensito Review

from http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/04/14/palin-mia-during-critical-alaska-stimulus-vote/

Where's Sarah?

Sarah Palin plans to be out of the room — in fact, out of the state — when the Alaska legislature decides how much federal stimulus money to accept and what to do with it. The governor will be at an Indiana right-to-life dinner instead. But why would Alaska law-makers object to Palin missing the last three days of the session for such an important event? Go figure.

Palin herself will be leaving Alaska this week to attend the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner in Evansville, Ind. on Thursday, as well as an event for special-needs children. Fairbanks Republican Rep. Jay Ramras questioned her leaving town right at the end of the session, when critical decisions are being made.

"There are some concerns (in the Capitol) about the focus of our chief executive because she's taken a speaking engagement in Indiana for a 36-hour period with only 72 hours left in the legislative session," Ramras said.

Palin is handling the criticism in her usual arrogant, George W. Bush, victimized style.

The last thing Repubican governors with aspirations for greater office want is for Obama to succeed

"I'll be gone for one day. I already have been on record with lawmakers on this. I told lawmakers, you know what, 'Please, don't make me feel that I have to ask you permission, lawmakers, to leave the capital city,' " Palin said.

Palin, in a throw-back to last year's presidential campaign, has tried to paint herself as refusing federal money. She plans to use stimulus package funding to replace state funds. In other words, if the federal government gives Alaska $93 million here, she will cut $93 million from the state budget there. Besides being legally questionable, the Palin plan would increase Alaska's dependence on the federal government while circumventing the intended stimulus effect.

Anchorage Democratic Rep. Mike Doogan said using the dollars just to replace state spending goes against the purpose of Congress.

"The idea is putting more money into the economy," Doogan said.

But doing so could work, and the last thing Repubican governors with aspirations for greater office want is for Obama to succeed. Expect Palin to actively undermine the president and to plead later that she wasn't even around when her state voted to accept the money.

2 x 300 = History from White Sox Cards by White Sox Cards

from http://whitesoxcards.blogspot.com/2009/04/2-x-300-history.html













History was made in Detroit, Michigan today. For the first time in Major League history, two players hit a century milestone in the same game.

Jermaine Dye hit his 300th home run and Paul Konerko hit his 300th home run. What makes this feat even more remarkable is that they are on the same team. What makes this feat improbable id that they hit them back to back.

Jermaine Dye led off the second inning with his blast. Dye was congratulated by the next batter, Paul Konerko, who quickly followed with his own home run milestone. Carlos Quentin had two home runs of his own, which nearly took away the limelight of Dye and Konerko's special achievement. Just when I thought I heard and seen it all in baseball, up pops this.

Stealing the thunder from the home runs was DeWayne Wise. He made a spectacular diving catch in the bottom of the fifth inning, but had to leave the game because of a separated shoulder. After rolling over and throwing the ball in to hold the runners, Wise was slow to get up. You could see him grimacing in pain.

Congratulations to Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko! Neighbors, golfing buddies, and now milestone teammate achievers!

Fatuous Money Clown Won't Shut Up About Jon Stewart [Feuds] from Gawker

http://gawker.com/5210514/fatuous-money-clown-wont-shut-up-about-jon-stewart

Jim Cramer can't stop talking about Jon Stewart, and this week he told a college newspaper that Stewart "ambushed" him and that the show lured him into the mauling with lies.

Cramer's self-pitying tirade to Ohio State University's The Lantern reads like a tour through the stages of grief as he mourns the man he used to be before Stewart pantsed him in front of the world, and it bears quoting at length:

1. Anger: Jon Stewart doesn't fight fair. He used Facts and Logic because he hates me.

"It was a complete and utter ambush," Cramer said in an interview with The Lantern. "He told my staff that it was going to be fun, convivial, no clips, but [it] doesn't matter, he's a comedian, he can do whatever he wants."

[snip]

"Was it a fair fight? No, it wasn't even a fight. I came on with the idea of taking a high road approach and discussing the issues, obviously [Stewart] came on strictly to try to humiliate me," Cramer said. "It was brutal. Was he stand-up? Absolutely not. Did he comport himself as a gentleman? Hardly. It was a deposition; he wants to be a prosecutor."

"He had an animus toward me. At the conclusion of the interview, not on the mic, he said, 'I picked the wrong guy, I'm sorry,' but that's not gonna get out there," Cramer said. "He just said it to me as just a throwaway. His goal was just to humiliate and destroy me and probably get me fired, and last I looked, I still have a show."

2. Delusions: Jon Stewart doesn't know the real me, who is not an asshole and is always right. All the people who watched the whole thing could see that.

"I think that people who watch ["Mad Money"] know that the show that I do is very different from the show that the critics say it is," he said. "I think that Jon Stewart has never seen my show, ever."

Cramer said that while "you can pick any single clip to make people fib," Stewart could have also shown clips of some of Cramer's correct predictions.

"Those are the calls that I care about, but they're not gonna mention those calls - that would make me look good. It's nobody's interest to make me look good," he said.

[snip]

"It was a 20 minute interview, he picked the worst eight minutes to make me look as horrible as possible. It's his show, he can do whatever he wants. If he comes on my show, it'll be a fair discussion, but he's not gonna come on my show, because he's all about his [ratings] numbers," he said.

3. Acceptance: But let me be clear, I am one huge asshole. I know this because I am still rich.

"I am a highly controversial figure [on "Mad Money"]. I was not a controversial figure when it came to making money. And I can tell that guy, when he's made his first 100 million in the market, I will respect his judgment about the market."

Extra points for being willing to admit that his correct predictions are the only ones he cares about. Except we knew that already.

This is just the latest stop on Cramer's hapless tour to recover from the evisceration. Previously he has made a big joke of it, called Stewart "naive and misleading" for attacking the media, and said he was just taking the "high road."

Fatuous Money Clown Won't Shut Up About Jon Stewart [Feuds] from Gawker

http://gawker.com/5210514/fatuous-money-clown-wont-shut-up-about-jon-stewart

Jim Cramer can't stop talking about Jon Stewart, and this week he told a college newspaper that Stewart "ambushed" him and that the show lured him into the mauling with lies.

Cramer's self-pitying tirade to Ohio State University's The Lantern reads like a tour through the stages of grief as he mourns the man he used to be before Stewart pantsed him in front of the world, and it bears quoting at length:

1. Anger: Jon Stewart doesn't fight fair. He used Facts and Logic because he hates me.

"It was a complete and utter ambush," Cramer said in an interview with The Lantern. "He told my staff that it was going to be fun, convivial, no clips, but [it] doesn't matter, he's a comedian, he can do whatever he wants."

[snip]

"Was it a fair fight? No, it wasn't even a fight. I came on with the idea of taking a high road approach and discussing the issues, obviously [Stewart] came on strictly to try to humiliate me," Cramer said. "It was brutal. Was he stand-up? Absolutely not. Did he comport himself as a gentleman? Hardly. It was a deposition; he wants to be a prosecutor."

"He had an animus toward me. At the conclusion of the interview, not on the mic, he said, 'I picked the wrong guy, I'm sorry,' but that's not gonna get out there," Cramer said. "He just said it to me as just a throwaway. His goal was just to humiliate and destroy me and probably get me fired, and last I looked, I still have a show."

2. Delusions: Jon Stewart doesn't know the real me, who is not an asshole and is always right. All the people who watched the whole thing could see that.

"I think that people who watch ["Mad Money"] know that the show that I do is very different from the show that the critics say it is," he said. "I think that Jon Stewart has never seen my show, ever."

Cramer said that while "you can pick any single clip to make people fib," Stewart could have also shown clips of some of Cramer's correct predictions.

"Those are the calls that I care about, but they're not gonna mention those calls - that would make me look good. It's nobody's interest to make me look good," he said.

[snip]

"It was a 20 minute interview, he picked the worst eight minutes to make me look as horrible as possible. It's his show, he can do whatever he wants. If he comes on my show, it'll be a fair discussion, but he's not gonna come on my show, because he's all about his [ratings] numbers," he said.

3. Acceptance: But let me be clear, I am one huge asshole. I know this because I am still rich.

"I am a highly controversial figure [on "Mad Money"]. I was not a controversial figure when it came to making money. And I can tell that guy, when he's made his first 100 million in the market, I will respect his judgment about the market."

Extra points for being willing to admit that his correct predictions are the only ones he cares about. Except we knew that already.

This is just the latest stop on Cramer's hapless tour to recover from the evisceration. Previously he has made a big joke of it, called Stewart "naive and misleading" for attacking the media, and said he was just taking the "high road."

Fox host: ‘It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!’ from Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/13/varney-promote-tea-parties/

Fox News host Neil Cavuto regularly claims that when he aggressively advocates for the anti-Obama "tea party" protests on air, he is simply covering them as a journalist. But Stuart Varney, Cavuto's fill-in host, admitted this afternoon that the the network is actually promoting the right-wing protests. After telling a guest that the tea parties were in protest to President Obama's policies, Varney closed a segment by saying, "It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!" Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBpy0Bv2HNc

In a Washington Post online chat today, media critic Howard Kurtz said that "it makes me a bit uncomfortable the way the channel has turned these April 15 protests into something of a crusade, complete with the drumbeat of advance publicity and the above-named hosts planning to attend various tea parties. But it's not fair to say that Fox's reporters are jumping on this bandwagon." Fox News bills Varney as a "business journalist."

Update On CNN today, Kurtz critiqued Fox's tea party promotion. Watch the video here.

Elizabeth Warren, TARP Oversight Chair, Denied Results of Stress Tests; Calls on Americans to Get Involved from Firedoglake

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4725

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bRerUGAOAw

The Boston Globe has posted an interview with Elizabeth Warren (chair of TARP Congressional Oversight Panel).

In the interview she describes what the TARP plan is supposed to accomplish, "Treasury has given us multiple contradictory explanations for what it's trying to accomplish," the difficulty in getting any information from Treasury, "I've spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good" and lots more.

The interview is short and ends with this question:

Q: Is there anything else that you would want people to understand?

A: I don't have a badge and a gun. The power of this panel is derived entirely from the voice of the American people. If they stay out of the policy debates, then Treasury can spend at will and reshape the American economy with no one in the room but insiders. If they are involved, the policies will look different.

It's the design of the rules going forward that will tell us or that will determine whether we are moving to a cyclical economy with high wealth, high risk, and crashes every 10 to 15 years. Or whether we will emerge, as we did following the new regulatory reforms in the Great Depression, with a more stable economic system that benefits people across the economic spectrum. It's an amazing moment in history.

For anyone wanting to know more about Warren, I highly recommend her 2007 interview with Harry Kreisler, The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class: Higher Risks, Lower Rewards, and a Shrinking Safety Net.

Ari Fleischer, Nobody Cares What You Think [Flackery] from Gawker

http://gawker.com/5210112/ari-fleischer-nobody-cares-what-you-think

Is there any more irrelevant talking head in America than Ari Fleischer, Bush's former roboflack? His only skill was obfuscating on behalf of important people. Now he doesn't work for anyone important. Except himself!

Ari is in PR. So he should really, you know, be great at tapping into the public consciousness, right? And what issue will resonate with the broke, unemployed citizens of our recession-wracked nation now more than this: Poor people should pay more taxes!

If you thought Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme was bad, wait until you hear about the inverted pyramid scheme the federal government is working on. While Mr. Madoff preyed on people who trusted him with their money, the federal government has everyone's money, and the implications of its actions are worse.

This dreadful pyramid scheme: progressive taxation. The rich are paying most of the taxes—meanwhile, the poor get off scott free! Ari Fleischer has a plan to end this outrage and he tells you all about it in his op-ed, but he forgot that nobody gives a fuck what he thinks since he's just an eloquent blank wall and the only reason people listened to him before is because they were obligated to because he spoke for the president, and he also forgot he's an asshole and everybody's poor now so maybe he should just shut his mouth for once. [WSJ]

Lowe's Ignores Your Mom Until She Gives Up [Sad Stories] from Consumerist

FROM http://consumerist.com/5210208/lowes-ignores-your-mom-until-she-gives-up

Here's a story that made us sad. Reader Mary's mom went to Lowe's to buy a mailbox, and was ignored until she finally got so frustrated that she gave up and just left, in tears. Don't cry, Mary's mom. We will not ignore you.

Mary says:

Apparently the door on her mailbox had rusted off and needed replacing. She tried removing the mailbox from the wooden post it sits on, but alas, the screws attaching it were too rusted for a screwdriver to bite on. Aesthetically it seemed time for a whole new post and mailbox. My mother drove up to her local Lowe's in Avondale, PA. She went right up to the customer service area and said she needed help selecting and buying a new mailbox and post, and wanted advice on how to put it up properly. She was directed to a specific aisle and told that someone would meet her over there. She waited for 15-20 minutes for someone to meet her there.

All the while she waited, my mom said that "employees wandering around, doing nothing, just sort of spacing out and wandering by me. There were several other women by themselves picking out light fixtures and things, and no one was helping them. I stepped away from the aisle to see if anyone was coming to help me and no one was. The only people I saw being helped were couples, and couples who were buying a whole new set of kitchen cabinets and appliances. I even noticed that the employee was only talking to the man in one couple." My mom felt so embarrassed and obviously ignored that she just walked out, went out to the car and started crying. She told me "I know I should have gone up to the counter and told them they had just lost themselves at least $150 in sales and that I was going to tell my friends about it. But I just felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. I guess I'll go to the Home Depot and try and do this tomorrow."

I think that in hardware and home improvement stores women often get shafted as customers because they are women. I don't expect Lowe's to know that my mother is a widow who now takes care of repairs that my Dad used to around the house and that she needed some help. But I do expect that a middle aged woman who specifically indicated she was planning to buy a fairly big ticket item, and wanted advice is not ignored because she isn't with a man. "Let's build something together" indeed.

This is awful. We hope your mom had a better time at Home Depot. Good luck to Lowe's if they think they can ignore potential customers in this economy.

Let's all send Mary's mom our best wishes. We think it's awesome that she is a mailbox fixing SuperMom.

GOP descends further into sick cynicism from Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/13/719528/-GOP-descends-further-into-sick-cynicism

This is maybe the most disgusting display of conservative mental illness and anti-Americanism I've seen to date.

While all of these pampered fops were sitting, doughy asses-in-chair and having their pusses painted up in TeeVee make-up, so that they could come on the air and go all in against America, actual heroes were at that very moment doing the real dirty work of executing that rescue.

So says CNN:

The military had orders from President Obama authorizing lethal force if there was imminent danger.

"At one point, as uncomfortable as the pirates were, they exposed themselves where there was an opportunity," Gortney said.

He gave details of that "exposure" at a news conference Sunday. He said two of the pirates had their heads and shoulders exposed, while the third was visible in the boat's pilot house, through a window.

"The on-scene commander saw that one of the pirates still held that AK-47, was very, very concerned for the captain's life -- and he ordered the shots to be taken," Gortney told CNN on Monday.

Even with the small boat "moving up and down a couple of feet," the SEALs hit their targets. "Remarkable marksmanship," Gortney said.

The moment came at 7:19 p.m. (12:19 p.m. ET) Sunday -- after sundown, military officials say.

12:19 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Where, exactly, do you think each of these tough-talking blowhards were at 12:19 p.m. ET on Sunday?

I'll tell you where they weren't. They weren't parachuting -- parachuting! -- onto the the deck of the U.S.S. Bainbridge and rescuing Captain Phillips.

Now, look. We can't all be heroes. I wasn't there, either, I can tell you that.

But I certainly wasn't oozing my way into a TV studio, trying to break Bobby Jindal's land speed record for being proven a sick, partisan asshat in near real time, that's for sure.

Almost every clip in this video was being taped or going to air at the very time that U.S. Navy SEALs were executing this mission.

They'll all no doubt be offering mealy-mouthed congratulations today, and insisting that they were really just rooting for this outcome in their own special ways, but I've got two eyes, and I can spot a smarmy opportunist when I see one.

Especially when they trample everyone in their path to get to a TV camera to gleefully predict doom.

Disgusting. America is rightly sickened by these disaster porn perverts.

Bailed-Out Banks to be Investigated Over Fee Hikes

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bailed-out-banks-be-investigated-over

Oddly enough, banks that didn't receive TARP funds are charging less than they used to for these exact same services. Very strange, don't you think?

The committee overseeing federal banking-bailout programs is investigating the lending practices of institutions that received public funds, following a rash of complaints about increases in interest rates and fees.

Since the Troubled Asset Relief Program was launched last October, banks bolstered by capital infusions have boosted charges on a wide range of routine transactions, hiked rates on credit cards and continued making loans criticized as predatory by consumer advocates. The TARP funds are intended to open lending spigots and make it easier for people to borrow money.

Last week, for example, Bank of America Corp. told some customers that interest rates on their credit cards will nearly double to about 14%. The Charlotte, N.C., bank, which got $45 billion in capital from the U.S. government, also is imposing fees of least $10 on a wide range of credit-card transactions.

Citigroup Inc., another recipient of government cash, is trying to entice customers to borrow at high rates. "You could get $5,000 today," Citigroup's consumer-finance unit wrote in fliers mailed to customers. The ads don't disclose that the loans often carry annual interest rates of 30%.

The interest rates "compare competitively to similar offers in the market" and vary depending on the creditworthiness of borrowers, a Citigroup spokesman said. Citigroup has received $50 billion in capital from taxpayers, and the U.S. government will soon own as much as 36% of the company's common stock.

"To continue to offer competitive products and services and responsibly lend in this current environment, we must adjust our pricing," said a Bank of America spokeswoman about the company's new fees and interest rates.

The U.S. government's ownership stakes in hundreds of banks, as well as political ire stoked by lucrative pay and perks, are raising the specter of new regulation on basic banking practices. First-quarter results due starting this week will be scrutinized for signs of how much taxpayer-funded capital is being funneled into loans.

Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the body named by Congress to oversee the federal bailout, said the panel is working on a report examining instances of potentially inappropriate lending by banks that got taxpayer capital. "The people who are subsidizing the activities of the banks through their tax dollars are the same people who are furnishing the high profits through consumer lending," Ms. Warren said in an interview. "In a sense, we're asking taxpayers to pay twice."