STILL FUMING ABOUT NEWS PHOTOS

My first post on this blog puzzled over the wingnuts desire to attribute some nefarious intentions to press photos. Over 4 years later, they are still at it, this time accusing Reuters of supporting Hamas because of a minor error in a few photo captions.

SCHIAVO REDUX

The Fundies just don't seem to get it - Americans by and large aren't buying their crap but they persist in their backwardness. They will now try to re-fight the Schiavo travesty despite the fact that a large majority of Americans opposed them. In a way, I'm glad they are doing this because the more exposure these fanatics get, the better off the rest of us will be in the future.

PARTY BEFORE COUNTRY: THE GOP'S 1ST RULE

Despite the economic threat we are ALL facing, the conservatives are still stuck on being obstructionists who are only thinking about pandering to their dwindling base. Prime example: Patrick Ruffini of NextRight:

The GOP's number one priority politically is to set into motion a series of events that will make Obama look more ineffective, partisan, and unpopular than he is today.

THE STATES ARE HURTING, HERE'S ONE EXAMPLE

Arizona may run out of money before the end of February, forcing it to borrow money to pay the bills. This won't be helped by any "shovel-ready" stimulus package.

State could be out of money by next month
AZ fund balance might fall to negative $50M on Feb. 23
The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona Published: 01.05.2009

PHOENIX — Arizona could run out of money to pay its bills as early as next month and may have to borrow money in the short term for the first time since World War II, state Treasurer Dean Martin said.

An analysis by the treasurer's staff shows that the state's fund balance could dip to negative $50 million on Feb. 23 at the earliest and mid-March under a more optimistic scenario.

"No matter what (lawmakers) do with the budget, we'll be negative in March or April," Martin said.

With no reserves to cover the bills, that could force the state to borrow at least that much, if not far more.

ODD BELIEFS

A couple of days ago, I heard an invited female guest on Savage's radio program read off a lot of claims about Hamas and I was struck by one: Hamas thinks the Rotary Club is a tool of the Zionists and should be eliminated. I thought this was just more wingnuttery but it may be true. I found 2 online sources for Hamas' Charter (one, two) and each backs up the woman's claim.

Here's the relevant passage:

Article Seventeen: The Role of Muslim Women
The Muslim women have a no lesser role than that of men in the war of liberation; they manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The enemies have understood that role, therefore they realize that if they can guide and educate [the Muslim women] in a way that would distance them from Islam, they would have won that war. Therefore, you can see them making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture, using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes such as: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, gangs of spies and the like. All of them are nests of saboteurs and sabotage. Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfill their mission amidst societies, with a view of implementing Zionist goals and sowing the concepts that can be of use to the enemy. Those organizations operate [in a situation] where Islam is absent from the arena and alienated from its people. Thus, the Muslims must fulfill their duty in confronting the schemes of those saboteurs. When Islam will retake possession of [the means to] guide the life [of the Muslims], it will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam.

DRUDGE SCREWS UP AGAIN

He reports that NBC has banned Coulter for life! (Memeorandum) Will he offer a retraction?

TORTURE AND THE CIA

Former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta is Obama's choice to head the CIA and the wingnuts are disappointed he chose someone who opposes torture. Uncle Jimbo is still "economical with the facts":

Since his left wing vetoed John Brennan for the crime of having served while W was President, even though he opposed most of the programs they hate

Glenn Greenwald PROVED that Brennan supported torture and that is the reason we opposed him.

I AGREE WITH ATRIOS & THERS

The wingnuts have been trying to figure out why their "great ideas" haven't gone over well with the American people. Atrios has one answer:

But, basically, they fail because they and their readers are, well, pretty stupid.

I like Thers' answer a little better:

Twitter, shmitter. The problem facing "conservatives" is that there is no brand of "conservatism" that is not completely insane.

Oh yeah, they also lie all the time.

ANOTHER MEDIA MATTERS SUCCESS?

UPDATE: Politico found that Coulter announced the cancellation on her website, no word yet from NBC.
UPDATE II: Politico reports that NBC bumped Coulter solely for news reasons.

Media Matters started a campaign to get NBC to cancel Ann Coulter's appearance on the Today Show and during the first hour of his radio show, Hannity said that she wouldn't be appearing and that was because her new book was too critical of the media. As of now, there's nothing on the Today site about the cancellation.

THE FED GETS IT, HERITAGE HACKS DON'T

Two members of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve have called for massive stimulus spending, no matter what the hacks at Heritage think:

Fed Officials Endorse ‘Big Stimulus’ to Battle U.S. Recession
By Scott Lanman and Vivien Lou Chen

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve officials, after taking the historic step of cutting the benchmark interest rate to as low as zero, are calling for greater government spending to help revive the U.S. economy.

San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen said yesterday at an economics conference in San Francisco that “it’s worth pulling out all the stops” with an economic recovery package. Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, told the same gathering he believes a “big stimulus is appropriate.”

UNCLE MILTON IS WRONG AGAIN

Paul Krugman points out that Milton Friedman's theory of the Great Depression has been falsified:

Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution’s behalf: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

It turns out, however, that preventing depressions isn’t that easy after all. Under Mr. Bernanke’s leadership, the Fed has been supplying liquidity like an engine crew trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and the money supply has been rising rapidly. Yet credit remains scarce, and the economy is still in free fall.

Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy — large-scale deficit spending by the government — is needed to fight mass unemployment. The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time. And Keynesian thinking lies behind Mr. Obama’s plans to rescue the economy.

THE MOTU DON'T UNDERSTAND STATISTICS

The sophisticated risk models used on Wall Street are a joke, as I wrote previously, and Yves at Naked Capitalism points out the Joe Nocera of the NY Times doesn't understand stats either. Yves includes this nice little factoid about how absurd these models are:

As Paul De Grauwe, Leonardo Iania, and Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser pointed out in "How Abnormal Was the Stock Market in October 2008?":

We selected the six largest daily percentage changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average during October, and asked the question of how frequent these changes occur assuming that, as is commonly done in finance models, these events are normally distributed. The results are truly astonishing. There were two daily changes of more than 10% during the month. With a standard deviation of daily changes of 1.032% (computed over the period 1971-2008) movements of such a magnitude can occur only once every 73 to 603 trillion billion years. Since our universe, according to most physicists, exists a mere 20 billion years we, finance theorists, would have had to wait for another trillion universes before one such change could be observed. Yet it happened twice during the same month. A truly miraculous event. The other four changes during the same month of October have a somewhat higher frequency, but surely we did not expect these to happen in our lifetimes.

I DON'T GET THE LOGIC

Many people have a part-time job, perhaps more than one, so I fail to see the logic in denying them unemployment benefits.

Obama Considers Major Expansion in Aid to Jobless
By JACKIE CALMES and CARL HULSE
Published: January 3, 2009
NY Times

One proposal, as described by Democratic advisers, would extend unemployment compensation to part-time workers, an idea that Congressional Republicans have blocked in the past.

THE MOTU ARE A MORAL HAZARD

I guess we can't get rid of all of them but we need to make drastic changes to the incentive structures on Wall Street. Michael Lewis and David Einhorn have a 2-part op-ed in the NYT (part one, part two) that exposes some of these structures and this one happened to be my favorite:

If you work for the enforcement division of the S.E.C. you probably know in the back of your mind, and in the front too, that if you maintain good relations with Wall Street you might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.

The commission’s most recent director of enforcement is the general counsel at JPMorgan Chase; the enforcement chief before him became general counsel at Deutsche Bank; and one of his predecessors became a managing director for Credit Suisse before moving on to Morgan Stanley.

SUNDAY RADIO TIDBITS

Billy Cunningham is best described as a Sean Hannity clone and he has a 3 hour show on Sunday night that took over locally for the Drudge Report. Tonight I heard the same lies that Hannity spews, such as the New Deal failed to help pull us out of the Depression, and I heard him call a listener who disagreed with Billy's economics a "fool."

ANOTHER WINGNUT NARRATIVE BREAKS DOWN

A local wingnut radio station used to air a promo they made from callers to the station and part of it included statements that thanked them for representing the views of "most of us" and for saying what most of us think "behind closed doors." On an AOL News message board, I came across one poster who was astounded to find that most middle-class Americans DON'T agree with the movement conservative agenda. It seems the wingnuts really need to believe that their views are representative of the majority of Americans, though I can't imagine WHY they need to believe that. IF the wingnuts really believe in individual freedom, they shouldn't need the false comfort of thinking most Americans agree with them.

Maha sums up this delusion:

A cornerstone of the right-wing worldview is the belief that most Americans — most white Americans, anyway — believe the same things righties believe. If they see another American expressing a different worldview, either this person is “loony” — an aberration; not to be taken seriously — or “they’re just being PC,” meaning most Americans who express liberal ideas are just saying what they are supposed to say, not what they really believe. And if conservatives lose elections, it’s either because of voter fraud or media bias, not because most American don’t think the way righties do.

SUSAN COLLINS DOESN'T GET IT

(h/t Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog)

The movement conservatives have been saying for months and in some cases years that the GOP needs to move further to the Right yet Sen. Collins (R-MAINE) thinks her hard-core GOP colleagues won't do that.

Moderate Republicans may be in big demand in Senate
There are fewer of them, but Democrats may need them to break potential GOP filibusters.
By Janet Hook
January 2, 2009
LA Times

Moderate Republicans worry that their party's conservative wing is not going to change its ways in response to the GOP's election drubbing.

"I would hope that the more conservative members of our caucus would take a look at these election results," Collins said. "It's difficult to make the argument that our candidates lost because they were not conservative enough."

Somebody should tell Collins that that is exactly the argument Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the Heritage Foundation ARE making.

MARKET-DRIVEN HEALTH CARE

Matt Yglesias writes:

...people are much better equipped to judge the quality of hospital amenities than they are to judge the quality of patient care.

And that's because people don't have access to the relevant information. Where does one go to find out who's a good doctor for X, aside from asking friends and acquaintances? The wingnuts prattle on and on about giving people a choice but how can you make a choice without the necessary information?

MARCUS AND THE LAW

Ruth Marcus, a Villager in good standing who has a regular column at the WaPo, is opposed to the Rule of Law when it comes to applying it to the criminal Bush regime. Glenn Greenwald has done a good job of exposing her mis-justifications and I want to discuss one of her more specious points:

Fourth, there is a cost to pursuing criminal charges. As appalling as waterboarding is, for example, it was pursued with the analysis and approval of lawyers who concluded, however wrongly, that it did not rise to the level of torture. If government officials cannot safely rely on legal advice, they will err on the side of excessive timidity.

You can't rely on legal advice from people who don't give a damn about the Constitution.

SOMEONE ELSE WHO GOT IT RIGHT

(h/t Atrios)

In August 2005, Raghuram Rajan, a professor at U. of Chicago's B-School, delivered a paper at an Alan Greenspan love fest at Jackson Hole which warned of the coming Crunch and was roundly criticized because "A dangerous all-or-nothing orthodoxy had come to dominate the policy debate, where one was either for free markets or against them." The "all or nothing" sounds exactly like wingnut "Us vs. Them" thinking.

Mr. Rajan Was Unpopular (But Prescient) at Greenspan Party
U.S. NEWS JANUARY 2, 2009
By JUSTIN LAHART
Wall Street Journal

Mr. Rajan, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth Graduate School of Business, chose that moment to deliver a paper called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?"

His answer: Yes.

Incentives were horribly skewed in the financial sector, with workers reaping rich rewards for making money, but being only lightly penalized for losses, Mr. Rajan argued. That encouraged financial firms to invest in complex products with potentially big payoffs, which could on occasion fail spectacularly.

He pointed to "credit-default swaps," which act as insurance against bond defaults. He said insurers and others were generating big returns selling these swaps with the appearance of taking on little risk, even though the pain could be immense if defaults actually occurred.

Mr. Rajan also argued that because banks were holding a portion of the credit securities they created on their books, if those securities ran into trouble, the banking system itself would be at risk. Banks would lose confidence in one another, he said: "The interbank market could freeze up, and one could well have a full-blown financial crisis."

THE BARBARIANS LOVE BLACKWELL

Ben Smith reports that prominent conservative troglodytes, such as Bozell, Schlafly, Dobson and Regnery, support Ken Blackwell for Chairman of the RNC. They are clearly going against the Lord's Will because Kenny Boy opposes socialism:

In addition to touting the economic and employment benefits of lower taxes, we must once again begin educating the public about the moral superiority of limited government over the concept of big government socialism. At some point, it becomes morally wrong for government to take too large a percentage of a person's income. We can all argue about what that percentage is, but we must make the point that big government socialism is morally wrong.

THE VILLAGE & THE FREE MARKET FAIRY

Josh and Atrios point out that the Villagers are very receptive to GOP talking points and I'd like to add that this seems especially true when the topic is economics. Clowns like Grover Norquist are still invited to be on cable shows and hacks at CEI are taken seriously.

GAME OVER FOR THE WINGNUTS!

Mullah Robertson has been informed by the Lord Himself that not only will America accept socialism, the economy will rebound this year!

Pat Robertson predicts U.S. will embrace socialism, economy will recover in ’09
By Steven G. Vegh / The Virginian-Pilot
Saturday, January 3, 2009
BOSTON HERALD

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. _ Citing information he says is from God, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said Friday that America is headed for veritable socialism as well as an economic rebound under President-elect Barack Obama in 2009.

"What the Lord was saying, the people are willing to accept socialism to alleviate their pain," Robertson said on a broadcast of "The 700 Club." ... obertson said the economy, particularly the stock market, could start rebounding by the second quarter.

My grasp of wingnut theology isn't clear on this point but doesn't this mean that wingnuts who continue to argue in favor of the Free Market Fairy are going against God's Will?

Here's the video:

A NEW WINGNUT HIVE EFFORT

The Americans for Limited Government have come up with a site to aggregate BS from conservative blogs, NetRightNation. This could be your go-to site for conservative nonsense, such as this little gem:

In their interest to regain NATIONAL STANDING the RNC SHOULD IMMEDIATELY name NEWT GINGRICH as National Chairmen of the GOP! The DEMS ACTUALLY FEAR him!

Dems think of Newt the Babbling Munchkin and start to chuckle to themselves.

AND THE WINNER IS....

IRAN!

Yes folks, no matter what the war whores and wingnuts say, the real winner of our invasion of Iraq is Iran, as Billmon pointed out several years ago.

Iraqi PM says links with Iran are developing
Jan 3 03:37 PM US/Eastern
AFP

Relations between Iraq and Iran are developing in a number of ways, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said during a visit to Iran on Saturday.

"The exchange of high ranking visits between the two country's officials shows that the bilateral relations are developing in different areas," Maliki said after a meeting with Iran's first vice-president, Parviz Davoudi, according to the Iraqi leader's office.

Maliki, who arrived on Saturday for a two-day visit, also met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Maliki is also scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Ministerial members of Maliki's delegation immediately went into talks with their Iranian commerce, power and transportation counterparts, the official IRNA news agency said.

The two sides agreed to boost bilateral trade from the current level of about five billion dollars, with Maliki urging greater Iranian investment for his war-battered country.

Maliki's fourth visit to Iran since he took office in 2006...

THE CHEAPSKATE SOUTH

6 of the 10 states that have the lowest weekly unemployment MAXIMUM are in the South.
10 States With the Lowest Weekly Maximum Benefit
1. Mississippi

Unemployment rate: 7.2%
Weekly benefit maximum: $210
Average weekly benefit: $180.77
Benefits recipient rate: 25%

2. Alabama

Unemployment rate: 6.1%
Weekly benefit maximum: $235
Average weekly benefit: $194.54
Benefits recipient rate: 35%

3. Arizona

Unemployment rate: 6.3%
Weekly benefit maximum: $240
Average weekly benefit: $214.86
Benefits recipient rate: 29%

4. Louisiana

Unemployment rate: 5.3%
Weekly benefit maximum: $258
Average weekly benefit: $209.68
Benefits recipient rate: 28%

5. Tennessee

Unemployment rate: 6.9%
Weekly benefit maximum: $275
Average weekly benefit: $220.03
Benefits recipient rate: 28%

6. Florida

Unemployment rate: 7.3%
Weekly benefit maximum: $275
Average weekly benefit: $236.29
Benefits recipient rate: 32%

7. South Dakota

Unemployment rate: 3.4%
Weekly benefit maximum: $285
Average weekly benefit: $230.21
Benefits recipient rate: 18%

8. Nebraska

Unemployment rate: 3.7%
Weekly benefit maximum: $298
Average weekly benefit: $238.51
Benefits recipient rate: 32%

9. Alaska

Unemployment rate: 7.3%
Weekly benefit maximum: $248-$320
Average weekly benefit: $200.02
Benefits recipient rate: 48%

10. Missouri

Unemployment rate: 6.7%
Weekly benefit maximum: $320
Average weekly benefit: $242.68
Benefits recipient rate: 30%

THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR OR READ THAT

Fannie, Freddie, the CRA or Chuck Schumer created the Big ShitPile, remember where the Wall Street Journal put most of the blame:

For the U.S. securities industry to unravel as spectacularly as it did in September, many parties had to pull on many threads. Mortgage bankers gave loans to Americans for homes they couldn’t afford. Investment houses packaged these loans into complex instruments whose risk they didn’t always understand. Ratings agencies often gave their seal of approval, investors borrowed heavily to buy, regulators missed the warning signs. But at the center of it all — and paid hundreds of millions of dollars during the boom to manage their firms’ risk — were the four bosses of Wall Street.

From "The Weekend That Wall Street Died", WSJ, 12/29,2008

(h/t Barry Ritholtz)

NO CREDIT CRUNCH?

I've read in a couple of places that there really isn't a credit crunch yet this article indicates that the crunch is huge:

Banks cut lending by 55% in 2008
U.S. loan issuance fell to the lowest volume since 1994 as banks repair balance sheets, shun underwriting new, risky deals.
Last Updated: December 30, 2008: 2:29 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- U.S. loan issuance in 2008 tumbled 55% to $764 billion, the lowest volume since 1994, as the global credit crunch choked off lending to American businesses, according to data from Reuters Loan Pricing Corp.

Loan issuance was down from $1.69 trillion in 2007 as banks focused on repairing balance sheets damaged by mortgage losses and had little interest in underwriting riskier deals, RLPC reported on Tuesday.

Investment-grade loans fell to $319 billion, down 52% from 2007's 658 billion, while leveraged loan issuance slid to $294 billion, down 57% from $689 billion in 2007, RLPC said.

JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) was the lead issuer for U.S. loans in 2008, with $198.5 billion, or 26% market share, followed by Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), with $137.4 billion, or 18% market share, and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), with $116 billion, or 15% market share.

LUSKIN IS AS BAD AS McCAIN

From the NY Daily News:

10. (tie) "Anyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one — especially the worst one since the Great Depression — is making up his own private definition of "`recession.'" — commentator Donald Luskin, the day before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, The Washington Post, Sept. 14.

McCain didn't get the job he was seeking but the real puzzle is why a known idiot like Luskin still has one.

THE LOCAL ECONOMY IS BAD & GETTING WORSE

Two articles from one of the local papers.

Food Bank recipients get less
For first time ever, demand forces agency to give a family 1 box monthly instead of 2
By Andrea Kelly
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona Published: 01.01.2009

The recent rising demand for food boxes has forced the Tucson Community Food Bank to reduce the amount of food it can give each family monthly — the first time this has happened in the organization's history.
For the past several years, the Food Bank has provided families in need with two food boxes each month, and from now on it will reduce that to one per month, said Jack Parris, spokesman for the Tucson Community Food Bank.

The State government is also hurting:

Ariz. tax collections far below projections
Chances of improvement in near term called bleak
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Tucson, Arizona Published: 01.01.2009

New figures Wednesday from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee put November sales tax revenues at about $317.5 million. That's almost $49 million less than the same month a year earlier — and more than $67 million below what lawmakers forecast when they put together the $9.9 billion state budget.

Income tax collections, a reflection of the money withheld from workers' paychecks, also are off by close to $35 million from November 2007, and more than $50 million below estimates. And the chances of that picture improving in the near term also are bleak.

Arizona shed more than 83,000 jobs between November 2007 and November of this year, putting the state jobless rate at 6.3 percent. Researchers at the state Department of Commerce are predicting the unemployment rate will definitely top 7 percent and might even hit 8 percent before the state economy turns around.

HM - I WONDER HOW FATS & SEAN WILL REACT TO THIS?

If a hack from Heritage thinks the gasbags have lost influence, will they try to attack Heritage?

Political winners and losers of 2008
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Conservative media: "Conservatives need to find a younger Rush Limbaugh," said [Heritage Foundation analyst Mike] Franc. "Conservative media showed no creativity and no ability to define the debate in the way that the left did."

KIND OF NICE

The conservatives often try to portray male Democrats as being less than completely "manly," and that usually comes down to the claim that they aren't "strong" or "decisive." That smear meme doesn't seem to have worked against Obama.

Poll: Obama leadership rates high as Bush's after 9/11
From Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director
updated 9:51 p.m. EST, Wed December 31, 2008

Seventy-six percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday said Obama is a strong and decisive leader.

"That's the best number an incoming president has gotten on that dimension since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

Eight in ten Americans said Obama inspires confidence, can get things done and is tough enough to be president, three characteristics Americans look for in a leader and the three qualities on which Obama got his highest scores.

He also gets higher marks than Bush did in 2001 on honesty, values, issues, management abilities and compassion.