THE OCCUPIERS AND THE BAGGERS

Both groups are very upset with the banksters but only the Occupiers seem to want to make real changes to the MOTU system.  Mark Meckler (Tea Party Patriots) and Judson Phillips (Tea Party Nation) both think the Occupiers have little in common with the Baggers.  David Cay Johnston sees the basis for a widespread movement:

...you will hear common themes from libertarians and liberals, truck drivers and college professors, atheists and believers.

Some are articulate, others inchoate. But there is absolute agreement that the super rich, especially the financiers, are sophisticated thieves who steal not with guns, but something called derivatives.

For me, the good news is that major GOP players like Rep. Paul Broun and Rep. Eric Cantor are scared by the Occupiers.

THE NEXT TIME THE GASBAGS PRAISE THE ERROR-FREE MILITARY

remind them of this story:

War drones keep flying despite computer virus
WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 7, 2011 10:55pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government's unmanned Predator and Reaper drones are continuing to fly remote missions overseas despite a computer virus that has infected the plane's U.S.-based cockpits, according to one source familiar with the infection.

Government officials are still investigating whether the virus is benign, and how it managed to infect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where U.S. pilots remotely fly the planes on their missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Wired magazine first reported the virus infection on its website on Friday and said it was logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely flew missions over Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Wired said the problem was first detected nearly two weeks ago by the U.S. military's Host-Based Security System, but there were no confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source.

The virus had resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, Wired said, quoting network security specialists.

This is the second major screw-up with the drones that I am aware of. The first one was transmitting the video feed without encryption.

MORE SUPPORT FOR PRES. OBAMA'S JOBS BILL

I noted below that several economists think the bill will help the economy and a Bloomberg survey of 34 economists finds that they concur:

Obama Jobs Plan Prevents 2012 Recession in Survey of Economists
By Timothy R. Homan - Sep 27, 2011 9:00 PM MT
BLOOMBERG

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

AMERICANS JUST CAN'T DO THIS STUFF

We can offer disaster aid but we just can't rebuild a country.   The Bush-era follies in Iraq continued into the Obama Administration:

Author Exposes U.S. Gov’t Cluelessness, Gets Persecuted by U.S. Gov’t
by Greer Mansfield
4:30 pm October 6, 2011
WONKETTE

Van Buren is a Foreign Service officer who spent a year in Iraq (2009-2010) heading two “reconstruction teams” assigned to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure and “win hearts and minds.” What Van Buren saw in Iraq during the “civilian surge,” however, was mostly waste, futility, and criminal insanity.

Just a few examples: a truckload of classic American books translated into Arabic that end up being dumped behind a Baghdad school (their purpose was to teach Iraqi children “basic literacy skills,” but they were apparently unreadable); the expensive construction of a milk-processing plant in the middle of the desert far from people or dairies; programs to make Iraqi women dress more like American women, etc. In the midst these schemes, no one thinks to attend to basic necessities like water, sewage, and electricity.

I would love to know who this is...

Van Buren has to endure several mind-numbing meetings with clueless administrators, advisers, policy wonks, and military brass. The cast of characters at a meeting with “fellows” from a “prominent national security think tank” includes an unnamed neoconservative journalist:

He liked military high tech; he used words like awesome, superb, and extraordinary (pronounced EXTRAordinary) without irony to describe tanks and guns. He said in reference to the Israeli Army, “they give me a hard-on.”

You can get the book here:

We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren, Metropolitan Books, 288 pages, $15.67 

THE PRESS FAILED US AGAIN

(h/t Atrios)
The Establishment Media didn't bother to tell us that Granpa McCain had a serious anger problem and they didn't bother to tell us what a frigging zombie bitch Sarah Palin is. Now a REAL insider with no axe to grind steps forward:

Q&A with Palin Advisor-Turned-Novelist Nicolle Wallace
By Claire Suddath Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2011
TIME

Well, first let me just say that the novel is by no means meant to build a case against Sarah Palin. However, to the extent that the people around [the fictional vice president] Tara watched in this troubled state of confusion, despair and helplessness as she flailed around — that was something I experienced. Palin vacillated between extraordinary highs on the campaign stage — she ignited more enthusiasm than our side had seen at any other point — to debilitating lows. She was often withdrawn, uncommunicative and incapable of performing even the most basic tasks required of her job as McCain's running mate.

There certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for her to be sworn in.

OCCUPY TUCSON IS CATCHING ON

I just got a flyer from a guy who's with the local movement and according to him, starting Oct. 15th there will be some people at the Pancho Villa Park (Broadway & Congress) all the time. The web site is impressive by Tucson standards and other groups, like MoveOn, are getting behind the effort to hold the banksters accountable.

THE GASBAGS TOLD US THE MILITARY WAS LIKE 90% CONSERVATIVE

A new Pew poll finds that the post 9/11 military are somewhat more conservative and less liberal than the general American public:

Politically, post-9/11 veterans are more likely than adults overall to identify with the Republican Party—36% are Republicans, compared with 23% of the general public. Equal shares of these veterans and the public call themselves independents (35%), while 21% of post-9/11 veterans and 34% of the public describe themselves as Democrats.

WRITING FOR A BIRTHER SITE IS BAD ENOUGH

Writing for World Nut Daily should eliminate Herman Cain.  Being a friend of Joseph Farah should make him a laughingstock:

Farah, a friend of Cain's for several years, told The Ticket that he has been surprised by Cain's rise over the past few months. While Farah would not make an official endorsement, he said Cain is his "favorite" candidate.

"Of the Republican candidates in the top tier of the race--and he is certainly one, according to the most recent national polls--he is my favorite," Farah told The Ticket in an email.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

It is far more important for the GOP that Obama lose his job than that more Americans should save theirs' - even if it means voting against proposals they have endorsed in the past. - Andrew Sullivan

Back in October 2010, Sen. Mitch McConnell said that his top priority was "for President Obama to be a one-term president."

PERRY COPIES ANGEL, BREWER AND O'DONNELL

All 3 strictly avoided any non-conservative media and that's what Gov Goodhair has been doing according to this POLITICO article.  His stance on college for the children of illegal immigrants has really hurt him with the Baggers and I think that means his chance for the nomination is approaching zero.

I MISSED THE BOTTOM LINE ON THIS GRAPH

The WaPo has a nice article on how the MOTU have rigged the CEO compensation game and included this graph:

On the very bottom of the graph on the right, the average annual pay of employees is given and it's barely above the X-axis. The article explains what we are seeing:

Since the 1970s, median pay for executives at the nation’s largest companies has more than quadrupled, even after adjusting for inflation, according to researchers. Over the same period, pay for a typical non-supervisory worker has dropped more than 10 percent, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.

In addition, the old practice of filling the board with buddies is still alive at some companies:

At Amgen, for example, four of the six members of the board compensation committee had personal or business connections to Sharer before joining the board. In fact, he nominated at least two of the six to the board, according to a company source and reports.

I HAVE NO PITY FOR GROVER NORQUIST

For decades Norquist has supported extreme conservatism and now he's getting a taste of it himself:

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) on Tuesday ripped the Grover Norquist tax pledge and the tax activist himself.
He also slammed the conservative for profiting from "unsavory people" and questioned Norquist's background.

"Simply put, I believe Mr. Norquist is connected with and has profited from a number of unsavory people and groups out of the mainstream,"

Norquist's response is too weak to impress the Bagger wackos:

"It's just silly," Norquist said. "It's just a series of rants that mean nothing and have no effect on anything, and are neither honorable or honest."

DISTURBING

Is it possible that America really is doomed to sink to an "also-ran" country?  That's the major impression I got from Michael Lewis's article "California and Bust" in Vanity Fair.  It reminded me that too many Americans have been living beyond their means for the last decade or so and the merry-go-round of debt- and speculation-fueled growth may stop permanently.   In this context, Occupy Wall Street is too little and too late, not the seeds of real change.

CRASH & BURN

Michele "The Eyes" Bachmann is polling around 3.4% in Florida and Hank Williams, jr. is learning about War Whore Laura Ingraham's admonition to musicians: Shut Up and Sing.

UPDATE: The Eyes is also sinking in Iowa.

"IF YOU'RE ON DEFENSE, YOU'RE LOSING"

If that political motto is true, then conservatives are losing the issues of booing the gay soldier, cheering the number of executions in Texas and approving the death of a young man who doesn't have health insurance. Limbaugh, Hannity and Mark Levin have tried to deflect criticism on each of these issues and that indicates that many Americans were disgusted with these conservative positions.

REGULATION ISN'T CAUSING UNEMPLOYMENT

(h/t Media Matters)

Conservatives have been whining about excessive government regulations hampering business and thus causing unemployment.  David Weigel found some data about layoffs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they show that once again, the cons are full of it.
 
In the 1st Quarter of 2011, there were 225,136 separations and 257,031 UI claims. Of the separations, 77,265 were due to lack of demand but only 429 were due to government regulation or intervention. Similarly, 101,907 UI claims were due to lack of demand but only 538 were due to government regulation or intervention.

SOME OF OUR FOUNDERS WERE A BIT MORE SKEPTICAL OF THE STATES AND THE PEOPLE

Unlike the Baggers, several of our Founders were pessimistic about the rights of the people as expressed in the states.  This is from Forrest McDonald's excellent States' Rights and the Union, pp. 17-18:

"The evils we experience," said Samuel Adams's erstwhile protégé Elbridge Gerry, "flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots." Edmund Randolph of Virginia declared that the origin of the evils was to be found "in the turbulence and follies of democracy: that some check therefore was to be sought agst. this tendency of our Governments." And they were not alone in having these sentiments.

The most radical proposal for restraining the states came from Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and James Madison. During the second week of the convention, Pinckney moved that the national legislature be empowered to veto state laws that it judged to be "improper." Madison seconded the motion, declaring it to be imperative. "This prerogative of the General Govt. is the great pervading principle that must control the centrifugal tendency of the States; which, without it, will continually fly out of their proper orbits and destroy the order & harmony of the political system." After discussion, Madison conceded that the power might be entrusted to the upper house, in order that "the more numerous & expensive branch therefore might not be obliged to sit constantly." The motion was overwhelmingly rejected, three state delegations being in favor, one divided, and seven against. The question came up again on July 17 and August 23 and was rejected both times. Yet, even after the convention had ended, Madison remained convinced that the absence of a negative on state laws was a flaw that might prove fatal to the Constitution.

MARX, ENGELS, LENIN & UTOPIA

In 1917, V. I. Lenin finished writing what he considered his most important work, The State and Revolution. It's full of quotations from Marx and Engels and seems like a good introduction to Marxism. I was struck by their naive conception of human nature:

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been definitively crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e. when there is no difference between the members of society in their relation to the social means of production), only then does 'the state . . . disappear' and does it become possible to speak of freedom. Only then will a truly complete democracy, democracy without any exceptions whatever, become possible and be realized. And only then will democracy begin to wither away because of the simple fact that, relieved of capitalist slavery, of countless horrors, savageries, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for ages and repeated for thousands of years in all copybooks — and to observing them without force, without compulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compulsion which is called the state.

Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for there are millions of times that we see around us how easily people become accustomed to observing the necessary rules of social intercourse when there is no exploitation, when there is nothing that rouses indignation, nothing that calls forth protest and revolt and creates the need for suppression.

HANNITY & FATS LIMBAUGH VS. THE MOTU

According to a Bloomberg poll, over 60 percent of the Masters of the Universe want higher taxes on incomes of $1 million and over.

Obama Backed by 63% of Investors for Buffett Rule
September 30, 2011, 2:28 PM EDT
By David J. Lynch
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Global investors overwhelmingly support President Barack Obama’s proposed tax increase for those earning annual incomes of $1 million or more in an effort to reduce the deficit.

By a margin of 63 percent to 32 percent, respondents in a Bloomberg Global Poll approved of the president’s proposal, known as the “Buffett rule” in a nod to Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., who has said it is wrong that he pays a smaller share of his income in taxes than does his secretary.

The call for the rich to pay more, however, found backing among financial professionals in the quarterly Global Poll of 1,031 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers.

POLTIFACT ON GLENDA BECK

I used to see challenges to liberal posters on POLITICO threads to name even one thing Glenda Beck has been wrong about.  Here's a few of his bigger, "pants on fire" whoppers:

Says Michelle Obama has 43 people on her staff; Nancy Reagan had just 3.

"The government is trying to now close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings."

"In the health care bill, we're now offering insurance for dogs."

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."

WITH ENEMIES LIKE THESE

I almost feel a tiny bit sorry for Gov. Goodhair Secession:

Republican politician calls out Rick Perry’s ‘Muslim blind spot’
Posted on September 28, 2011 at 4:47 pm by Kate Shellnutt in Campaign 2012, General, Issues
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Here’s what Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from Colorado and a Republican president hopeful in the last election, had to say in a post for The Daily Caller:

He extends his taxpayer-funded compassion not only to illegal aliens but also to Muslim groups seeking to whitewash the violent history of that religion. Perry endorsed and facilitated the adoption in Texas public schools of a pro-Muslim curriculum unit developed by Muslim clerics in Pakistan….
Perry’s close alliances with pro-Islamic Republican activists like Grover Norquist give additional cause for concern. Norquist supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens and is well known in Washington, D.C. circles for his tireless efforts to build Republican bridges to pro-amnesty groups and to slander advocates of immigration enforcement as “racists.” Norquist also has close ties to the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose Houston chapter bragged in a recent newsletter that “Rick Perry’s relationship with Muslims may set him apart.” Precisely so, but not in a way that helped him with voters in the Florida straw poll.

BTW, Tancredo also supports reactionary Arizona state senator Russell Pearce:

Russell Pearce group may be violating state law on donations
Officials: Campaign-finance rules ban anti-recall corporate donations
by Mary K. Reinhart - Jun. 7, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Team America, a political-action committee headed by former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., sent an e-mail blast Friday soliciting corporate and private donations for Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall.

But state elections officials say Arizona law bans corporate and union donations to influence an election, and that includes opposing a recall effort.

I'M A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED

I've been reading John Gray's study of F. A. Hayek, Hayek on Liberty, and I'm underwhelmed by Gray's analytical skills and Hayek's deeper thoughts.

Hayek seems to embrace a sort of sociobiology in his approach to ethics and morals. According to him, the differential reproduction of groups of people with different ethical and moral systems informs us about their vailidity. On that ground, we can say that the Chinese and the Indians have the most valid moral systems.

Hayek also emphasizes our ignorance of the overall working of the Market and that's why he claims central planning is simply impossible. On the other hand, he uses a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative to evaluate systems of ethics, laws and morals and I can't see how the ignorance argument wouldn't also apply to any attempt to consider the universalizability of actions or rules.

LOCAL ACTIVITY

Occupy Tucson

September 27th, 2011 · Ella · 6 comments

TIME: Saturday, October 1 @ 9:00am
LOCATION: Round fountain, SW corner Stone/Congress
Tucson is currently organizing on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/napsky?ref=ts

THE RATINGS AGENCIES ARE ALL INFECTED

The malfeasance that helped create the Housing Bubble wasn't limited to the Big 3: S& P, Moody's, Fitch.

SEC finds 'apparent failures' at credit rating agencies
30 September 2011 Last updated at 13:10 ET
BBC News

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has discovered "apparent failures" at 10 credit rating agencies.

The other credit rating agencies covered in the SEC's annual report are AM Best, DBRS, Egan-Jones, Japan Credit, Kroll Bond, Morningstar, and Rating and Investment Information.