TWO REAL ISSUES

Outside of Wingnut World, we have 2 serious questions about the Obama Administration:

1) The banks really are insolvent and tbe bailout plan won't work

2) The Obama Administration is defending the Bush Administration's violation of the 4th Amendment and FISA

THE NOISE MACHINE AT WORK

A few weeks ago, war criminal Dick Cheney said Obama has made America less safe. Newt Gingrich echoed Cheney today on Politico and Michael Savage said Obama is a "national security threat." The vicious attacks aren't limited to those 3 freaks: Hannity thinks Obama has a "deep resentment" of America and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Bedlam) is worred about re-education camps and she's not the only one.

I think we're back to the bad old days when Bill and Hillary Clinton were relentlessly attacked by the radical right.

OK, SCREW THEM

Christy Hardin Smith reports that GOP senators are holding up 2 of Obama's nominations to the Justice Dept. because they want to prevent the release of the Bush torture memos. Here's what I think Pres. Obama should do: promise to stop the release and after the 2 are confirmed, release them anyway.

There's no sense playing fair with these radical scumbags.

IS ROD DREHER FROM OUR PLANET?

In a column that fusses over gay marriage, he writes:

moral reasoning in our postmodern culture is largely incoherent

John Rawls and dozens of other moral philosopers are incoherent?
Dreher does get one thing right:

In our culture, the framework for these arguments favors secular liberalism.

He's right because Western Civilization is liberal.

THE 11-13 RULE WORKS PRETTY WELL

In this case, the idea that we should try to improve relations with Muslim nations is approved by a huge majority and only opposed by 10%. From the WaPo:

23. How important do you think it is for Obama to try to improve U.S. relations with Muslim nations - very important, somewhat important, not so important or not important at all?

          ----- Important -----   ----- Not important -----     No
         NET   Very   Somewhat   NET   Not so   Not at all   opinion
3/29/09   81     46       36      18       9         10          1

MAYBE JOHN TAYLOR IS CORRECT

The main cause of the crash was Uncle Alan's cheap money policy at the Fed. Two economists writing in the WSJ point out the obvious connection between cheap money and bubbles and conclude that Greenspan's easy money policy in the early part of this decade was the prime bubble blower. Note how the black vertical lines highlight the link between cheap money and the housing bubble:

SUPPOSE SOMEBODY SAID...

"They reject economics, they reject knowledge, they reject facts." Wouldn't you think that "they" are a real threat to America? Well, that's how Mark Levin described liberals a couple of weeks ago and since then we've heard and read a lot of talk from the far-right about the need for a revolution in America. Markos Moulitsos points out that this sort of talk is dangerous and the wingnuts decide that he's the fear and hate monger, not them!

NO WONDER THE WINGERS LOST THE CULTURE WARS

(h/t Roy Edroso at Alicublog)

Stop the ACLU, a hard-core winger who thinks he is a super-duper American, doesn't even know one of the most famous American composers, Richard Rodgers.

GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN AMERICANS

Maybe the despicable Christian Right is weakening. Jon Meacham in Newsweek writes about the end of Christian America but the real point is that Dobson, the Southern Baptists and other Fundies have LOST the wars they engaged in over the last 30 years. Kathleen Parker in the WaPo has a better analysis:

Christians may have no place in the political fray of dealmaking. That doesn't mean one disengages from political life, but it might mean that the church shouldn't be a branch of the Republican Party.

I noted below that Ann Coulter has come in for serious criticism from some Fundies because she really isn't on their side and Parker reports that even Focus on the Family has gotten smacked around:

Shortly thereafter, in late March, Christian radio host Steve Deace of WHO Radio in Iowa aggressively interviewed Tom Minnery, head of the political arm of Focus on the Family. Minnery, whom Deace described as "the Karl Rove of the religious right," accused Deace during the interview of ambushing him when he had expected a chat about Dobson's legacy.

Indeed, Deace was loaded for bear -- or Pontius Pilate. It wasn't exactly a Limbaugh-Obama matchup, but it was confrontational, and corners of America's heartland and Bible Belt have been buzzing ever since.

Deace's point was that established Christian activist groups too often settle for lesser evils in exchange for electing Republicans. He cited as examples Dobson's support of Mitt Romney and John McCain, neither of whom is pro-life or pro-family enough from Deace's perspective.

If these people will go back to "good works," they'll have a lot more support from regular Americans.

THEN WHAT IS ISRAEL?

County Fair has a video clip of Charles Krauthammer calling Europe a parasite on the U.S. and here's the transcript:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Where does one begin? Obama says in America there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.

Maybe that's because when there was a civil war in Europe's doorstep in the Balkans and genocide it didn't lift a finger until America led.

Maybe it's because there was an invasion in Kuwait it didn't lift a finger until America led.

Maybe it's because with America spending over half a trillion a year keeping over the sea lanes and defending the world, Europe is spending pennies on defense.

It's hard to appreciate an entity's leading role in the world when it's been sucking on your tit for 60 years as Europe has with regard to the United States, parasitically.

THE MOTU STILL DON'T GET IT

One good result of the G-20 Conference was an agreement that the obscene payments to the MOTU should be curtailed. The MOTU still don't get it, including this clown.

Bankers rage at G20 'witch hunt' against bonuses and buccaneers
Basic pay bumped up as City tries to retain risk-taking 'talent', warning it may go abroad
Elena Moya The Guardian, Saturday 4 April 2009 Article history

"Regulation is generally bad. You should let the market decide what the people will get paid," said Matthew Prest, managing director at Close Brothers investment bank. "Sometimes regulation has the opposite effect of what you want and I think bankers' salaries regulation would fall under that category. I don't hear anybody calling for Hollywood star salary caps. This is a trendy, fashionable thing to do, it will have bad consequences."

I don't recall Hollywood stars causing a world wide recession.

WHAT AM I MISSING HERE?

Home owners try to modify their mortgages yet 58% end up paying the same? How is that going to help? The WSJ has a nice graph that shows we have to reduce the monthly payments to reduce the default rate.

WILL KRISTOL HAVE TO APOLOGIZE TO LIMBAUGH?

Limbaugh has been one of the many radio gasbags who have blamed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for the housing bubble and William "The Bloody" Kristol thinks that is BS:

Singer and others can point us to a path very different from Obama-like nanny-state liberalism, but also different from head-in-the-sand-everything-was-fine-except-for-the-Community-Reinvestment-Act conservatism.

MORE TALK RADIO MURDERS

This time in Pittsburgh.

Police official: 3 officers killed in Pa. shooting
Apr 4 11:18 AM US/Eastern
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press Writer

PITTSBURGH – A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

The lie about guns has been spread by radio conservatives and here in Tucson, Diamondback Police Supply has an ad on a local radio station that claims Obama will be coming after guns.

NAPOLITANO IS WORKING FOR HIS FAUX NEWS PAYCHECK

His latest blog post is full of the same nonsense that you'll hear from Hannity. First, he states that government "demands [on banks] for more control are more recent" but doesn't bother to tell his readers what these demands are. He then moves the cliche about hired help who may "will lose key employees who will go to work elsewhere." Yeah, the entire banking industry is shrinking and these clowns will go somewhere else?

TWO LOONS ARE TOO LATE

The loons are Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann, the issue is the hoax that the U.S. may go off the dollar. At one point, there's a worry about the global standing of the U.S.:

BACHMANN: France calling for this new expansion of the International Monetary Fund for moving the dollar as the standard of exchange. If that happens, again, the United States will lose its position as the premier financial authority. And we need to recognize just how critical this is.

SOURCE: Glenn Beck Show, 3/31/2009
Video clip at News Hounds

How can Bachmann even think we have authority after our financial engineers screwed up the entire world's economy?

MARX DESCRIBES THE WINGNUTS

I've tried to look at our modern wingnuts in psychological and historical terms in order to understand them better. I came across this passage, originally written in the early 1840's¹, in a biography of Marx², and I thought it was a pretty good description of wingnuts, especially the Fundies.

...because the real situation of these gentlemen in the modem state bears no relation at all to the conception that they have of their situation; because they live in a world situated beyond the real world and because in consequence their imagination holds the place of their head and their heart, they necessarily turn towards theory, being unsatisfied with practice, but it is towards the theory of the transcendent, i.e. religion. However, in their hands religion acquires a polemical bitterness impregnated with political tendencies and becomes, in a more or less conscious manner, simply a sacred cloak to hide desires that are both very secular and at the same time very imaginary.

Thus we shall find in our Speaker that he opposes a mystical/religious theory of his imagination to practical demands . . . and that to what is reasonable from the human point of view he opposes superhuman sacred entities.

Marx was referring to the Prussian ruling class but we can see that key points, such as a denial of reality and a flight to religion, also characterize modern day wingers.

¹ "Debates on the Freedom of the Press and on the Publication of the Parliamentary Proceedings" in K. Marx, The Early Texts, ed. D. McLellan (Oxford, 1971).
² Karl Marx: A Biography. David McClellan, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

IS HARVARD GOOD FOR AMERICA?

I'm only half-serious in asking this but I'm beginning to wonder a tiny bit. We know that Harvard has been a breeding ground for wingnuts and now we know it also helped create some of the crooked MOTU.

Harvard Begins Case Study as Tainted MBAs Reveal Damaged Brand
By Oliver Staley

April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard Business School, stung by criticism that it hasn’t prepared alumni to cope with the economic meltdown, will dissect its performance using a practice it employs to examine corporations in crisis.

Harvard’s alumni include Stanley O’Neal and John Thain, the former chief executive officers of Merrill Lynch & Co. who presided over the New York company’s decline; Rick Wagoner, the ousted CEO of General Motors Corp.; and Christopher Cox, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

WELL, WE'VE GOT A LOCK ON THE YOUTH VOTE

Hugh Hewitt indirectly admitted that the Democrats have the youth vote for the foreseeable future during a discussion about how conservatives should try to appeal to younger voters. He doesn't want Ann Coulter being virtually the sole voice of conservatism on campuses and said that we need someone else who is more "hip" - LIKE JONAH GOLDBERG!!! (I'm not making this up. The transcript should be available by tomorrow.)

ONE OF THE WINGNUT BITCHES GETS HAMMERED

Watertiger at FireDogLake found a great clip of Ann Coulter getting scolded by hard-core, right to life Fundies because she supported Mittens Romney. It turns out Romney has flip-flopped several times on the abortion issue and that's enough to put Coulter in the dog house. The clip also has Ann saying that these Fundies are "fanatics" and compares them to the birthers!

The clip will come in handy if Mittens tries to run again and we can also use it to slam Coulter for being a hypocrite.

THIS IS CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE

Pres. Obama isn't doing anywhere near enough to make sure that the massive amounts of bailout money are being well-spent. David Corn notes that on average, about 10% of any government program can be lost to fraud and waste and let's recall that the recipients we're dealing with are mostly MOTU who have demonstrated time and time again that they care more about money than ethics.

MORE ON THE ST. RONNIE MYTH

I wrote before about how Reagan did raise taxes and thanx to commenter Curt22 at Politico, I have more evidence, this time from the NRO itself.

A Taxing Experience
Bruce Bartlett
National Review Online
October 29, 2003, 8:53 a.m.

Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

In 1984, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar-sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first 2 years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.

KPMG AT IT AGAIN

Another major accounting firm is caught ignoring reality to please the customer.

UPDATE 3-Auditor KPMG hit with billion-dollar U.S. lawsuit
Wed Apr 1, 2009 11:58pm BST

By Tom Brown

MIAMI, April 1 (Reuters) - Accounting giant KPMG was hit with a billion-dollar lawsuit on Wednesday over claims its "grossly negligent audits" helped trigger the collapse of a top subprime mortgage lender at the start of the U.S. housing crisis.

New Century Financial Corp, the largest independent provider of home loans to people with poor credit, filed for bankruptcy two years ago amid mounting customer defaults.

What I found especially damning is this tidbit from the Wall Street Journal:

In the lawsuits filed Wednesday, Thomas, Alexander & Forrester said emails showed specialists within KPMG had tried to point out errors in the company's financial statements but were silenced by the KPMG partner in charge of the audits "to protect KPMG's business relationship with, and fees from, New Century." Accordingly, the trustee said KPMG lacked the independence that is required by ethical and Securities and Exchange Commission rules.

"They were cheerleaders for management when they were supposed to be cheerleaders for the public interest," Steven Thomas, counsel to the trustee, told Dow Jones Newswires.

The lawsuit cites an email by KPMG specialist John Klinge in which he continued to raise questions about an incorrect accounting practice on the eve of New Century's 2005 10-K filing. In an emailed response, according to the complaint, John Donovan, lead KPMG audit partner, said, "I am very disappointed we are still discussing this. As far as I am concerned we are done. The client thinks we are done. All we are going to do is p--- everybody off."

As I noted before, this is a problem KPMG has had for more than a decade.

THE "GET OFF MY LAWN" CROWD

The old folks make up the core of the FAUX news audience. Hannity has a total of about 2.5 million viewers, but only 600K are in the 25-54 demographic. O'Reilly has a bigger audience but it's still weighted to older people, 3.6 million overall but only 800K in the 25- 54 demo. (TV Newser)

According to Jon Sinton, the first president of Air America, the same applies to the wingnut's radio audience:

The dirty little secret of conservative talk radio is that the average age of listeners is 67 and rising, according to Sinton—the Fox News audience, likewise, is in its mid-60s: “What sort of continuing power do you have as your audience strokes out?” (Vanity Fair)

This age difference was also reflected in the 2008 election results: McCain only won the 65 and over group.

WHAT "FAIR AND BALANCED" REALLY MEANS ON FAUX NEWS

In an article about Big Auto, it means you give the opinions of two different "analysts," one from AEI and the other from Heritage.

GASBAG VS. GASBAG

Yesterday, in another attempt to justify the corruption on Wall Street, Fats Limbaugh claimed that self-interest, not sacrifice, made America great. He didn't mean "enlightened self-interest," he meant Ayn Rand greediness. Today Hannity, in an attempt to attack Obama's plans, claimed that we were about to lose the American heritage that our parents sacrificed to give us.