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.

HAS FAUX NEWS DUMPED MICHELE BACHMANN?

Blather Watch reports that Bachmann's appearances on FAUX have declined along with her polling numbers so I decided to a LexisNexis search to see if this is true.

Looking for "Michele Bachmann" as a Subject Term, here are the results for the last few months:

Sept.  34
Aug.   55
Jul.     41
Jun     42
May    20
Apr     21
Mar     16

Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll on Aug. 13th, so that can account for her August numbers.  It looks like she became a FAUX staple in June and now is on the decline.

WTF IS WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Last Tuesday, Fats Limbaugh attacks compassion and today David Brooks attacks empathy.

KEEP 'EM COMING!

The more civil law suits against the banksters, the better.  We may even see some structural & social changes as a result.

Note that neither Bear Stearns nor Countrywide were covered by the CRA.

JPMorgan, BofA sued over mortgage debt losses
By Jonathan Stempel

Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:34pm EDT

(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America Corp were hit with new lawsuits by investors claiming losses on $4.5 billion of soured mortgage debt, adding to litigation targeting the two largest U.S. banks.

The plaintiff Sealink Funding Ltd said it lost money after buying nearly $2.4 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) from JPMorgan and $1.6 billion from Bank of America from 2005 to 2007, relying on offering materials that were misleading about the quality of the underlying loans.

Another plaintiff, Germany's Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg, raised similar claims in a separate lawsuit against JPMorgan over $500 million of RMBS that it said it bought.

The lawsuits accuse the banks of packaging large amounts of high-risk mortgages by such issuers as Countrywide Financial now owned by Bank of America, and Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, now owned by JPMorgan, in pursuit of higher profit.

I CAN SEE WHY LEVIN HATES CHRISTIE

(h/t The Dish)

Christie is more like John Gray or Isaiah Berlin than Norman Podhoretz or Bill Kristol:

The United States must also become more discriminating in what we try to accomplish abroad. We certainly cannot force others to adopt our principles through coercion. Local realities count; we cannot have forced makeovers of other societies in our image. We need to limit ourselves overseas to what is in our national interest so that we can rebuild the foundations of American power here at home - foundations that need to be rebuilt in part so that we can sustain a leadership role in the world for decades to come.

MARK YESTERDAY'S DATE

It's nice to keep track of gasbag predictions, like this one, because they are almost always wrong.  Glenda Beck made another contribution when he said yesterday "this time next summer [sic] our cities will be on fire."

NO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE MOTU

I don't think I will ever get used to the lavish rewards given to MOTUs who are essentially fuck-ups.

Recently fired HP CEO departs with more than $13M
AP – 1 hr 55 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Recently fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is walking away with more than $13 million in cash and stock after an 11-month reign that saw the technology's company market value plunge by nearly $40 billion.

Apotheker's parting package includes a $7.2 million severance payment and a $2.4 million bonus for his performance while he was CEO. He also will keep restricted stock currently worth about $3.7 million.

MAYBE THE BAGGERS ARE A GOOD THING

The GOP Noise Machine is very much alive and well but I've noticed that there is much more division within conservative circles than I've seen in years.  The first radio gasbag who made me aware of this is Billy Cunningham, who definitely wants to us to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, something his best buddy Sean Hannity is against.  William Kristol expressed his exasperation with all the candidates and after that, I noticed that another radio backbencher (Mark Levin's phrase), John Gibson, is also not on board the "deport them all" Bagger Express and last night he went so far as to make fun of The Eyes Bachmann for her insistence on ideological purity.   Bachmann herself has also been criticizing Romney and Perry and Herman Cain has openly stated he could not support Rick Perry as the GOP nominee.  Despite the fact that his buddy Mark "Foamer" Levin despises Chris Christie, Fats Limbaugh said that he doesn't think "There’s Anyone Out There Who’s Better."

I think the extremism of the Baggers has seriously disturbed the conservatives in America and that has led to an increase in disunity.

"A CONSPIRACY SO IMMENSE..."

(h/t Marie Diamond at Think Progress)

I noted before that Edmund Burke held to his notion that there was a devious "double cabinet" running Britain behind the scenes despite the lack of evidence.   The leadership of the NRA has fallen into a similar fallacy because they are using the fact that Pres. Obama hasn't attempted to enact stricter gun controls as proof that he will do so.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...?

This clip provided by Ian Millhiser at Think Progress reminded me that Lou Dobbs has practically disappeared since he left CNN, not that I'm complaining.   Glenda Beck not only saw his TV ratings decline, he also lost over 1 million radio listeners.  Talkers Magazine had him at 10 million listeners in Spring 2010 and by Spring 2011, he's down to 8.5 million:

A KEEPER QUOTE FROM FATS

Fats seems to have argued himself into a corner today while trying to worship the Free Market Fairy:

The best way to describe the market is it's just irrational.

The classic market defense used to be that it embodied more information than any other system possibly could and thus reached better outcomes.

UPDATE: Speaking of irrational...

Rep. Michele Bachmann is worried that Hezbollah is giving Cuba missiles.

I USED TO VISIT THIS WINGNUT SITE A LOT

I stopped doing so several years ago because WizBang became boring to me.  From this post, it seems that it's also gone Bagger-wacko:

When I hear the word “contract” I reach for my revolver think of two unique definitions — formally, a legally binding mutual agreement made between two or more parties, or idiomatically, an attempt to hire an assassin to kill one or more of your enemies.

HANNITY: "ED KOCH HATES ISRAEL"

No, The Baby Jesus hasn't said that but given his attacks on Pres. Obama for being insufficiently Likud, that's what he should say.

Ed Koch Endorses Obama Despite Earlier Misgivings
Sep 27, 2011 4:06pm
By Shushannah Walshe
ABC NEWS - THE NOTE

Koch endorsed President Barack Obama today.

In an email sent to supporters and obtained by Politico, Koch says he is backing the president for recent moves regarding Israel.

CLOSING IN ON THE BANKSTERS

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering taking action "against Standard & Poor's for securities law violations after the ratings agency gave top grades to a package of securitized mortgages in 2007 that quickly soured."

And civil suits are still being filed:

Deloitte sued for $7.6 billion, accused of missing fraud
By Kevin Gray | Reuters – 2 hrs 17 mins ago

(Reuters) Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd , the world's largest accounting and consulting firm, was accused on Monday of failing to detect fraud during its audits of one of the biggest private mortgage firms to collapse during the U.S. housing crash.

A trust overseeing the bankruptcy of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp, or TBW, and one of the company's subsidiaries filed complaints in a Miami Circuit Court claiming a combined $7.6 billion in losses.

Deloitte "certified TBW as a solvent, viable company with accurate financial statements every year from 2001 to 2008," one of the complaints said.

"Despite Deloitte's credentials and expertise as one of the 'Big 4' accounting firms, those statements -- and the rosy picture they depicted of TBW -- were completely false," it said.

WHY WE NEED UNIONS OR...

THE FREE MARKET FAIRY AT WORK.

Crap like this happens all the time because homo economicus thinks human labor is just another commodity.

Inside Amazon's warehouse
Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer.
September 17, 2011|By Spencer Soper, Of The Morning Call

Allentown, Pa. — Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world's largest online retailer.

Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.

"I never felt like passing out in a warehouse and I never felt treated like a piece of crap in any other warehouse but this one," Goris said. "They can do that because there aren't any jobs in the area."

WHY DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN IN EARLY 2010?

Pres. Obama surely knew by then that the Republicans were a bunch of extremist wackos.  A more aggressive approach may also have save some seats in the House.

Obama slams Republicans in West Coast money swing
By Alister Bull | Reuters – 2 hrs 24 mins ago

ATHERTON, California (Reuters) - President Barack Obama harshly criticized Republican opponents on Sunday as he began a West Coast fundraising tour, accusing them of "ideological pushback" at a time of national crisis.

"You've got a governor (Perry) whose state is on fire, denying climate change. You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have healthcare," he said, referring to recent televised Republican debates.

HuffPo has a little more on this new approach:

Obama hit back at the conservative media, urging supporters to "push back" on the "inadequate information" found on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

ISAIAH BERLIN BY JOHN GRAY

I've posted about Isaiah Berlin several times (see some quotes here) but I've never gotten around to placing in relation to other liberal or Enlightenment thinkers. John Gray has done it for me (page 8):

The species of liberalism which Berlin's work embodies is a deeply distinctive and decidedly original one that is at odds both with the schools of liberal thought recently dominant in the Anglo-American world and with the older traditions of liberalism from which these newer developments spring. As it is-expressed in the work of Rawls and Dworkin, Hayek, Nozick, and Gauthier, all of recent liberalism turns on a conception of rational choice, whether Kantian or Million, Lockean or Hobbesian in content, from which liberal principles are supposedly derived. If, in J. S. Mill, liberal principles are adopted as rational strategies for the maximal promotion of general well-being — as devices for the maximization of utility — then in John Rawls, late as much as early, they are adopted as rational terms of cooperation among persons having no comprehensive conception of the good in common. In Berlin's agonistic liberalism, by contrast, the value of freedom derives from the limits of rational choice. Berlin's agonistic liberalism — his liberalism of conflict among inherently rivalrous goods — grounds itself on the radical choices we must make among incommensurables, not upon rational choice.

Gray later gives a great description of Berlin's ideas of values plurality, uncombinability and incommensurability (pages 43-44):

First, Berlin affirms that, within any morality or code of conduct such as ours, there will arise conflicts among the ultimate values of that morality, which neither theoretical nor practical reasoning about them can resolve. Within our own liberal morality, for example, liberty and equality, fairness and welfare are recognized as intrinsic goods. Berlin maintains that these goods often collide in practice, that they are inherently rivalrous by nature, and that their conflicts cannot be arbitrated by any overarching standard.

Secondly, each of these goods or values is internally complex and inherently pluralistic, containing conflicting elements, some of which are constitutive incommensurables. We have seen already how on Berlin's view liberty, even negative liberty, contains rivalrous and incommensurable liberties: examples may be The liberties of information and of privacy, which are often competitive and which may embody incommensurable values. The same is true of equality, which breaks down on analysis into rival equalities, such as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Such goods are not harmonious wholes but themselves arenas of conflict and incommensurability.

Thirdly, different cultural forms will generate different moralities and values, containing many overlapping features, no doubt, but also specifying different, and incommensurable, excellences, virtues and conceptions of the good. Or, to state this third aspect or implication of value-pluralism in another way: There are goods that have as their matrices social structures that are uncombinable; these goods, when they are incommensurables, are also constitutively uncombinable. This is the sort of incommensurability that applies to goods that are constitutive ingredients in whole ways or styles of life. This is the form of incomparability among values, cultural pluralism, that is most easily confused with moral relativism — the view that human values are always internal to particular cultural traditions and cannot be the objects of any sort of rational assessment or criticism. Berlin's value-pluralism embraces all three forms or levels of conflict in ethics in that he affirms that incommensurability breaks out in each of them.

CONSERVATIVES ARE STILL AFRAID OF HIPPIES

A NY Times reporter went out of her way to fit her story on Occupy Wall Street into the long-standing con meme of the evul hippies:

Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: September 23, 2011
NY Times

By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms. Tikka had taken off all but her cotton underwear and was dancing on the north side of Zuccotti Park, facing Liberty Street, just west of Broadway.

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Ms. Tikka, 37, told me.

Ms. Tikka was born after 1973.

KYL AND HIS SPEECH ACT INTENTIONS

Remember the lie Sen. Kyl told about Planned Parenthood?  The one which required a Kyl spokesman to say "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement."? The one that Kyl had expunged from the Congressional Record?

Well, Kyl is using that tactic again. He's now attempting to walk back from his statement that he will quit the special debt committee if there are more defense cuts.

Kyl denies threatening to quit committee
by Dan Nowicki, columnist - Sept. 25, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

"I didn't threaten to leave the committee," said Kyl, one of six Republicans on the supercommittee and the only Arizonan. "I was just making an offhand remark that that's not what I'm on the committee for."