EZRA NOTICES THE OUR CEOS GET PAID MUCH MORE THAN OTHERS

And concludes that it's because America has a different social norm about these things than say a country like Japan.   I think if we let the owners of the companies (the shareholders) have a direct vote on top executive pay, this disparity with other countries would greatly diminish.

IS PRESS SECRETARY GIBBS PART OF THE PROBLEM?

Kevin Drum notes with dismay how poorly the WH & Congressional Dems sold the stimlus bill and I'm wondering if Robert Gibbs non-fluent speaking style was a factor. Unlike glib sociopaths like Tony Snow, Gibbs often takes too long to get to the point and that likely means we won't get any appealing sound bites.

SIROTA DOESN'T QUITE GET IT...

In an opinion piece about why too many people believe the unemployed are "lazy bastards," David Sirota writes:

First, there's what psychologists call the Just-World Fallacy -- the tendency to believe the world is inherently fair. This delusion is embedded in our pervasive up-by-the-bootstraps, everyone-can-be-a-millionaire catechism. The myth of the lazy unemployed can seem to make sense because it connects those ancient fables to current news, effectively alleging that today's jobless deserve their plight.

I think this fallacy is a logical consequence of conservatives' belief in the Free Market Fairy, which entails that the free market is NEVER less than perfection.

THE FUNDIES WANT TO PRESERVE DADT SO...

some GOP senators are threatening to vote against the START Treaty if the repeal of DADT is even brought up for a vote. Let's be clear: these senators are putting intolerance ahead of national security.

NET TOYS FOR XMAS :-)

1) Want to know who links to your site and how much?  Go here.  (h/t Barry Ritholtz)

2) Want to compare the relative frequency of two words or phrases?  Go here.  (h/t Kevin Drum)

I'VE MADE POSTS ABOUT THIS BEFORE

But Barry Ritholtz links to a great piece by McClatchy about the sub-prime mess.

Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis
By David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:


* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.


* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.


* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote recently that while the goal of the CRA was admirable, "it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — who in turn pressured banks and other lenders — to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."

Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.

What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.

KYL & DEMINT GET SMACKED DOWN BY FUNDIES

(h/t Greg Sargent)

Their whines about having to work during the Xmas season didn't go over well with some Fundies, including Falwell's old stomping grounds:

Dr. Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law dismissed the senators’ comments entirely:

I’m not sure that I would think that that kind of a comment actually deserves a legitimate answer. The fact of the matter is no one is asking somebody to work on Christmas Day. But if you’re asked to work a couple of additional days — they are servants of the public. I just don’t think such a comment has much merit.

NO SURPRISE HERE

It's a Great Time to Be Rich
If the tax cuts become law, the next two years will be the best in living memory for many wealthy Americans to shield their income and fortunes

By Ben Steverman
December 15, 2010, 11:50PM EST
Business Week

So, where are all the jobs?

WIND-UP TOY JINDAL HAS ANOTHER FAIL

Of course, Sean Hannity will never mention this.

Oil-spill panel calls Jindal's sand berms a $220M waste
Dec 16, 2010
USA Today

The presidential commission investigating the BP Gulf of Mexico spill has concluded that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wasted $220 million building controversial sand berms that captured a "minuscule amount" of oil and proved to be "underwhelmingly effective" and "overwhelmingly expensive."

FATS LIMBAUGH DIDN'T HAVE AN ANSWER

It's rare that Fats can't come up with some BS to fool the rubes but today he got a cal from an unemployed 52 year old man who was in favor of extending the unemployment benefits and all Fats could do was bloviate about initiative.   This man said he was a regular listener and didn't sound at all convinced.

The caller also brought up age discrimination as a barrier to him finding another job and I think that's going to turn into a huge problem for people over 50.

AND DOUBLE FUCK YOU, DAVID GREGORY

(h/t Peter Hart at FAIR)

Lame-brain Gregory hops on the "Punch a Hippie" meme:

MR. GREGORY:  You know, Harold, the question was, was this a Sister Souljah moment, to go back to the Clinton era, for President Obama, standing up to the base?

I MISSED THIS AND SO DID MOST OF THE BECKSTERS

(h/t David Weigel)

Glenn Beck isn't as much of a Fundie as I thought, according to Mark Lilla:

The night before the “Restoring Honor” rally Beck held an event called “Divine Destiny” at the Kennedy Center for a mainly handpicked audience of ministers and churchgoers. ... Beck echoed many of the ideas found in Willard Cleon Skousen’s Mormon political catechism, The Five Thousand Year Leap, and in the dubious historical research of David Barton, an influential, self-taught evangelical minister who was on stage with Beck during the event. But when Barton, who runs a Christian nationalist organization called WallBuilders, repeated his group’s dogma that “most of our presidents and founding fathers thought of this as a Christian nation,” Beck objected, took the mike, and stated flatly that “one thing that cannot happen: religion and politics must not mix…. That’s what happened in the Weimar Republic.” Barton backed off.

THE INHUMANE TREATMENT OF PRIVATE MANNING

The Christian Science Monitor and Amy Goodman both reported on the very serious long-term effects of prolonged solitary imprisonment and now Glenn Greenwald reports that Private Bradley Manning is being subjected to the same kind of treatment.   This is something that Pres. Obama should stop right now!

WHAT'S UP WITH ALL THE CRYING?

Glenn Beck's shtick may have brought this to the general public's attention but Rep. Boehner and Sen. McConnell seem determined to make weeping the new "manly" thing for conservative politicians.

I LIKE THE GOAL

I take Pres. Obama at his word when he claims to want to change the culture of American politics but I don't think 4 or even 8 years of reasonableness is going to make much of a dent to a noise machine that goes back to Edith Efron's The News Twisters (1971), the first major attack on "liberal bias' in the news media.

SKOUSEN WOULD'VE BEEN PERFECT FOR THE ALEX JONES SHOW

According to Zaitchik's book (p.217), in The Naked Communist (1958), Skousen claimed that FDR advisor Harry Hopkins not only gave the Soviets "50 suitcases" of information on the Manhattan Project, he also gave them half of our supply of enriched uranium.  No wonder Skousen was a Bircher favorite!

NOW THAT SOME QUASI-LIBERAL BILLS WILL BE PASSED

the wingnuts are whining about the lame duck Congress, with several of them declaring it  illegitimate or even illegal.

DEMINT & KYL WHINE ABOUT HAVING TO WORK DURING THE CHRISTMAS SEASON

And DeMint makes a serious theological blunder by falsely asserting that Xmas "is the most sacred holiday for Christians."  It's Good Friday-Easter Sunday to those of us who aren't Baggers.
BTW, three cheers for Sen. Reid.

GUESS WHO SAID THIS...

"What we are witnessing is a very carefully and methodically executed program designed to destroy constitutional government as we have known it and make a shambles of the society which has wanted to keep the Constitution alive. Only then can a highly centralized, socialist state be established."

No, it's not Glenn Beck or Mark Levin but it is Beck's hero, Willard Cleon Skousen. Skousen wrote those words in his book The Naked Capitalist (1970, which explains how people like Nelson Rockefeller (!) are secretly trying to create a socialist world order.

I found this juicy tidbit in Alexander Zaitchik's book about Beck, COMMON NONSENSE: Glenn Beck and the triumph of ignorance, which I recommend to anyone interested in this latest outbreak of konservative kraziness.

FUCK YOU, WEBB

The base was FOR all the positive things you mention¹:

RATIGAN: How does a tax plan like this soup to nuts, help create more jobs in America and why is this a good thing to do through that lens?

WEBB: Well, I think it`s a good thing to do because the first thing I would say is that the president has really stepped up and shown some leadership here. I`ve been waiting for him to do something like this, to sort of step away from the base and get into helping solve the problems of the country.

¹MSNBC
December 13, 2010 Monday
SHOW: MSNBC SPECIAL 4:04 PM EST
For December 13, 2010
BYLINE: Dylan Ratigan
GUESTS: Jim Webb
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 1254 words
HIGHLIGHT: Discussion of tax deal.

WELL NEIL, WHAT ABOUT JOHN GIBSON?

Neil Cavuto is upset that Chris Matthews pointed out that Gov. Chris Cristie is fat but he didn't say anything when John Gibson brought up the same topic a few weeks ago and went so far as to claim that this would prevent Cristie from running for President.

REMEMBER WHEN JANE HAMSHER TEAMED UP WITH GROVER NORQUIST?

That was back on Dec. 23, 2009 and at the time I remember thinking poorly of Jane for working with one of the leading conservatives of our time.  Over at Osborne Ink, it seems that Jane has been guilty of other serious mistakes, including calling wacko Eric Erickson an "honest broker."

FAUX NEWS IS REALLY EFFECTIVE IN "CRYSTALLIZING OPINION"

(h/t Mark at News Corpse)

You may recall that the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that FOX News viewers were the most uninformed about Iraq in the summner of 2003. FOX hasn't gotten any better since then.

In August 2009 an NBC/WSJ poll found that the FOX rubes were also the least informed about health care reform:

On Health Care Reform, Those Who Believe That It Will…	MSNBC/CNN Viewers	Fox News Viewers
Give Coverage To Illegal Immigrants:	41%	72%
Lead To A Government Takeover:	39%	79%
Pay For Abortions:	40%	69%
Stop Care To The Elderly:	30%	75%

A more recent PIPA poll done after the 2010 mid-term found that on a number of issues, FOX News rubes were simply delusional:

91% believe that the stimulus legislation lost jobs.
63% believe that the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.
49% believe that income taxes have gone up.

THIS IS AN INTERESTING ARGUMENT

(h/t Mark Thoma)

Jonathan Weinstein has provided some strictly economics arguments that the standard conservative notion of "whatever the market will bear" is unjustfied.  In this particular case, Weinstein offers a defense of the graduated income tax:

Besides which, anyone whose output is easily scalable, including inventors, entertainers, and financiers, is able to create value in proportion to the size of the economy. Fairness would seem to dictate that they owe a greater proportion of their income to the upkeep of society than those in non-scalable professions such as hairdresser, teacher,etc.

An added bonus is Weinstein's mockery of Ayn Rand:

I have always thought that the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged, in which the noble
captains of industry go to their own secluded valley to be free of the oppressive liberal state, is a hilarious, unintentional, reductio ad absurdum against the entire position of the book. I mean, really, how exactly are financiers, railroad managers, entertainers or authors, who pro t immensely from living in a large industrial society, going to achieve anywhere close to those pro ts by moving to a tiny community of elites?

IF YOU GO HUNTING WITH THEN-VP DICK CHENEY THEN...

this isn't too surprising:

Scalia To Teach Bachmann's Inaugural Class On The Constitution
Submitted by Kyle on December 13, 2010 - 4:13pm
Right Wing Watch

YEAH, BOEHNER WANTS MORE RESPECT

Instead, he should be in jail with the other GOP crooks:

Blunt, Boehner Share Broad Network of Lobbyist Ties With DeLay
By Jonathan D. Salant and Laura Litvan - January 10, 2006 00:01 EST
Bloomberg News

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Representatives Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boehner of Ohio have been among the key intermediaries between Republican lawmakers and lobbyists since their party took control of the U.S. Congress in 1995.

In 1995, Boehner handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry to members on the House floor at a time when lawmakers were considering eliminating a tobacco subsidy.

ISHMAEL REED LIVES IN ANOTHER DIMENSION OF TIME AND SPACE

That's the only conclusion I can come to about a man who would write this line:

Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all.

Yup, it's been all our way for the last 40 years (dolt!).

YEAH, WE'RE STILL SOCIALSTS ON A LOT OF ISSUES

(h/t Atrios & Kevin Drum)

A Bloomberg poll found that on several issues, most Americans oppose the Baggers, the glibertarians and the talk radio whores.   The details of the poll are here and I particularly liked these findings:

- 50% think unemployment is the most serious problem, only 25% think it's the deficit.

- 59% think the tax cuts for the wealthiest should be repealed.

- 70% want to impose a tax on Wall Street profits

DESPITE THE HIPPIE PUNCHING...

the political wizards in the White House still managed to lose 63 House seats so I have to wonder what good did it do?

CHARLIE COOK CHANNELS LIMBAUGH & HANNITY

(h/t DemFromCT at DKOs)

Cook is one of America's best pundits yet he lapses into the same talk radio agit-prop that the Baggers believe:

Independents’ Day
The tax deal is just the kind of compromise that independents wish Washington would do more often.
Thursday, December 9, 2010 | 2:33 p.m.
The National Journal

Liberals seem myopically focused on the fact that a group they hate—the rich—will achieve some benefit from the tax-cut agreement.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS FUNNY

But it really should happen to a few hundred investment bakers.

'Off With Their Heads!' Mob's Royal Attack of Opportunity
Britain's Prince Charles, Camilla Unhurt After Mob Attacks Car Over Tuition Hikes
By JEFFREY KOFMAN, LEE FERRAN and SARAH NETTER
Dec. 10, 2010
ABC News

When they did spot the royal car, however, the students -- who have been protesting school tuition hikes for weeks -- surged around it, hitting and kicking the car while at least one person yelled "Off with their heads!" The rowdy mob smashed windows in the Rolls Royce and splattered it with paintballs.

LOCAL WHINING

The voters of the city of Tucson voted down a proposed raise to the sales tax and that meant that the city would have to cut more services.   On KVOI, one of the Fundie/Bagger radio stations, an ad turns the defeat of the proposed increase a vote against "big government" when in fact it was just as likely  a vote by the people of a low-wage city in a low-wage state to find other sources of revenue instead of a regressive tax.