Sanguine in Seattle

Peak wing-nut?

2009-08-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

It's funny how the left's rage is only portrayed for a news cycle or two (banking fiasco, iraq war, etc.) but the right's rage has been displayed on the nightly news for over a week now. When will it start to get a little too ho-hum to keep showing some angry middle-aged white person afraid of losing their country?

Are we nearing peak wing-nut?

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Health Care ad by Obama

2009-08-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

LOVE it! Keep hammering how outside the norm these CEOs and top managers are. Most Americans think we should not tax the rich because they might be rich someday too. If by rich, they mean 100-220K/year, then maybe. If by rich they mean $5 million+/year, dream on. Actually, stop dreaming. Wake up to reality. We need more tax brackets so we don't lump the $200K/year crowd in w/the $20M/year crowd. But of course, the richies want it that way. The bigger to top bucket, the more people to complain against increases.

Malkin's crazy right wing talking point: "People are LAZY"

2009-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Malkin Spews on ABC

If TANF or unemployment were so great, we'd ALL want to be on them. No one in their right mind would ever choose unemployment or TANF over a good job. There just aren't enough good jobs.

Malkin forgets that not everyone is mentally or physically equipped for a job. It's sad but true. But, it's much easier and more satisfying for her and others like her to scream "LAZY!" than to really address that fact.

Malkin reminds me of someone who'd look at someone else who has to strap themselves into the dialysis chair twice a week and say "Jeez, I don't have diabetes and YOU shouldn't either. Buck up and get a job"

Jephthah

2009-06-15T14:34:00.001-07:00

Murray and Cantwell both vote against a credit card interest rate limit

2009-05-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

The bastards...I'd love to hear their justification. Roll Call

His holiness, the Bishop of San Pedro, Paraguay

2009-04-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Independent

It was shocking enough when the first woman stepped forward asserting that she had had a child with President Lugo, 57, who assumed power on a wave of popularity just eight months ago. It is worth bearing in mind that before running for president he was a prominent Catholic bishop.

The President not only acknowledged the truth in the startling claims of Viviana Carrillo, 26. According to local media reports, he even opened his palace to her and the child, who is now almost two. Seemingly, they are settling in well. The child has even adopted his name.

But before the country knew how to react – it is at once overwhelmingly Catholic but is also a macho society that may consider the procreational activities of its leader a sign of fortitude – two more shoes or, rather, babies, dropped. A second purported mother of a Lugo child vowed to file a paternity suit against him on Monday. And yet another woman popped up on Wednesday with more Lugo offspring.

Bet the Catholic radio stations won't be touting this story. Ah yes, his holiness and his holy rod and his holy staff. How lovely. How absolutely within the confines of the "do as I say, not as I do" crowd that tend to rise in the ranks of the large conservative denominations. I hope Paraguay is proud. I hope Bush has several meetings with his holiness/President Lugo when he visits his ranch in Paraguay. They can talk about the foundations of society and the holiness of matrimony and other such lofty matters.

What COULD Jesus Do?

2009-04-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

I am a tiny bit of carbon...

2009-04-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

..and I'm ok w/that:

Atheist rages at Christians then commits murder

2009-04-14T07:21:00.001-07:00

Oh, whoops, I got the title backwards. Actually a rabid (and very apparently mentally ill) Christian himself and a woman who continually "turned down his advances" on Good Friday.

Just watch the first few minutes and you will understand the sickness.

Here is the link to the Detroit News

Apparently this story isn't getting picked up by the National Media. Imagine if it really was as the subject of this post states. I think it would get more play in the media..

Scamming Summers & Geitner

2009-04-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Sachs lays it all out. Disgusting!

Here's how. Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zero market value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset. All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders.

Suppose, however, that Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-Private Investment Fund (CPPIF) under the Geithner-Summers plan. The CPPIF will bid the full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset, because it can borrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury, to make the purchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75K of the total.

Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset, while the CPPIF ends up with an utterly worthless asset against $850K in debt to the FDIC. The CPPIF therefore quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walks away with a cool $1 million. Citibank's net profit on the transaction is $925K (remember that the bank invested $75K in the CPPIF) and the taxpayers lose $925K. Since the total of toxic assets in the banking system exceeds $1 trillion, and perhaps reaches $2-3 trillion, the amount of potential rip-off in the Geithner-Summers plan is unconscionably large.

Epic Fail.

Frank Rich on the waning influence of the "culture warriors"

2009-03-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

NYT

When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

What a mighty fine world if we could shift all that energy and rancor in the culture warriors and their flocks toward poverty, injustice, inequity and hypocrisy. Might fine.

Let the sun shine in...face it with a grin

2009-03-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

WSJ

The European principalities of Andorra and Liechtenstein pledged to relax their bank-secrecy laws, yielding to international pressure on tax havens to stop shielding the holdings of the rich.,,,

The global financial crisis has encouraged cash-strapped governments to crack down on the offshore industry, which helps wealthy clients evade billions of dollars a year in taxes. The downturn has also exposed alleged financial frauds that flourished under lightly regulated jurisdictions such as Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny Caribbean nation that hosts scandal-plagued Stanford International Bank....

The OECD blacklist comprises Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco. In recent months, France and Germany asked the OECD to compile an expanded roster of countries that don't adequately share bank information with foreign tax authorities. That roster, which will be shared with G-20 countries, currently names about 30 nations, including Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Singapore, Hong Kong, Andorra and Monaco, among others.

The OECD has no regulatory or policing powers but carries political weight in Western capitals. In a recent report, the OECD listed estimates for the assets held by the offshore banking industry as high as $11.5 trillion. Together, Andorra and Liechtenstein account for about 1% of that total.

And Obama gets in on the act.

The developments come two days after the Obama administration endorsed legislation in the U.S. Congress to crack down on countries that refuse to cooperate in multinational tax and securities-fraud inquiries. "We fully support the legislation," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, both Democrats, have submitted bills that require the Treasury Department to publish a list of "Offshore Secrecy Jurisdictions" subject to "special measures" including trade sanctions. The draft list includes Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and other countries in Europe and the Caribbean. The list is similar to the OECD's list of uncooperative tax havens.

It's high time we get the scum-suckers into the light and let their festering slimy bodies of filth and lies dry out and decay in the light of regulation and law obedience. Or are laws just for the "little people?" If transparency and honest dealing are the only good that come out of the fetid stink that is the global capital market, it would still be a worthy outcome.

No wonder the churches are losing followers

2009-03-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

Jezebel

Although the Catholic Church is standing strong with the decision to excommunicate the Brazilian medical team that performed an abortion on a 9-year-old rape victim, many have come forward with dissenting opinions.

On March 4th, a medical team from Recife, Brazil, performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl. She was pregnant with twins after being raped, allegedly by her stepfather. Police say that the abuse had been going on since she was 6. Abortion is illegal under Brazilian law, but it is possible to get a judge's approval in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger, both of which applied in this case. The girl's doctors, her family, and the court were all in agreement that this was the safest way to deal with the pregnancy. The Catholic Church disagreed.

Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho (seen above left) swiftly excommunicated the entire medical team, along with the the girl's mother. Church law exempts minors from excommunication, so the girl was not included in the blanket condemnation of the medical procedure. They also chose not to excommunicate the stepfather. Sobrinho told Globo TV that "A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." As Hortense mentioned over the weekend, a senior Vatican official has spoken out in support of Sobrinho's actions, and said: "Life must always be protected, and the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

What is it about a group of cells that has such primacy in the eyes of the church over a real live 9 year old child with a mind and memories and whose body is not even physically capable of carrying twin children? Is she not also an innocent life? What is it with the fetus-fetish? I just don't get it.

Those darn Vermont-ers - beating us at our own rationality

2009-03-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

HuffPo

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

Full survey at American Religion Survey

Original Sin

2009-03-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

My new favorite original sin analogy from the comments of Unreasonable Faith:

Original sin is like an omnipotent parent leaving a hot stove on (already knowing that the child will burn itself, having already seen the burning incident take place in the future, as a result of the omnipotence), telling the child that it’s dangerous, but then creating a talking snake, so full of wit and charm and cunning that his insistent, beguilling injunctions to touch the stove cannot be ignored…

…and then smacking the child for hurting themselves.

And then cursing all of that child’s children for all time…

Ah yes, infinite punishment for a single infraction. It's so loving. I would extend it by saying that the omnipotent parent then sends himself to die so as appease himself from his own wrath.

Anti-Limbaugh-ism from Frum

2009-03-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

David Frum, W's speechwriter and no small potatoes in the conservative pantheon, lays out the case against Rush, and by extension, against the wackaloons currently in charge of the Republic party (see, I can use nouns as adjectives too, just like the Republics who go on Rush and call Pelosi part of the Democrat party). Anyway, here's some of Frum's advice to his fellow (sane) conservatives from Newsweek:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time....

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help).

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

We lost the presidency in 2008. In 2006 and 2008, together, we lost 51 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate. Even in 2004, President Bush won reelection by the narrowest margin of any reelected president in American history...

We need to modulate our social conservatism (not jettison—modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists. The rule that both our presidential and vice presidential candidates must always be pro-life has become counterproductive: McCain's only hope of winning the presidency in 2008 was to carry Pennsylvania, and yet Pennsylvania's most successful Republican vote winner, former governor Tom Ridge, was barred from the ticket because he's pro-choice.

Read the rest of the article. Frum nails the "base" on their fervor and their undoubted ability to run the Republican party into the ground.

Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists.

From his pen to god's...well, you know.

Rewarding bad behavior indeed

2009-03-06T07:19:00.001-08:00

I love how when we reward bad behavior in allowing bankruptcy judges to change mortgage terms it's the end of capitalism; but when we reward bad behavior by allowing AIG and Citi and BofA to continue to stand then it's necessary to maintain capitalism. Why is it that when a policy is good for the common person, it's socialism, but when it's good for the Bilderburgers (i.e., the bankers) it's capitalism?

The House on Thursday passed bankruptcy reform legislation that dealt the banking industry its first major defeat since 1994. The bill, passed 234-191, largely along party lines, encourages lenders to renegotiate mortgages with troubled homeowners. If they can't, the bill allows bankruptcy judges to modify the mortgages, a reform that bankers have argued undermines the sanctity of a contract and rewards bad behavior.

But their arguments fell on deaf ears in a chamber that has appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout funds for major banks.

"There are some people who said during the debate, 'Well, this bill rewards irresponsibility or bad choices.' Well, my goodness," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.). "Many people in my district feel that those [bank bailouts] rewarded irresponsibility and bad decisions, but they were done in the name of a broader interest. So on this issue, frankly, the banks were out of touch with the American people."

The Republicans in 2009

2009-03-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

Angry, kooky, middle-aged white people focused on liberals' testicles.

Ziegler is the towering wealth of intellect who just released the DVD about how Obama won because the media was in love with him. Ziegler's all jazzed up about Sarah Palin's 2012 run, and as you can see, a very thoughtful intellectual who typifies the best and brightest in the Republican party.

File under: "No sh#( Sherlock"

2009-02-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

Harvard Business School via Jezebel

According to a nationwide study of anonymous online credit card transactions, Americans living in traditionally religious, conservative states consume more online porn than their godless liberal blue state fellow citizens, with Utah leading the way.

Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, analyzed anonymous credit card transactions to attempt to find a link between the rise in online porn consumption and division of "red" and "blue" states from a sociological standpoint. "Do consumption patterns of online adult entertainment reveal two separate Americas," Edelman writes, "Or is the consumption of online adult entertainment widespread, regardless of legal barriers, potential for embarrassment, and even religious conviction?"...

Church-going porn subscribers also tended to download less porn on Sundays, as church attendance provided a drop in porn usage. States that banned gay marriage had 11% more porn subscriptions than states that had not banned gay marriage. And, as Callaway notes, "States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour

As the saying goes, when someone is ranting about the evils of theft, hold on to your wallet. No one screams louder about sexual perversion than the sexual perverts who believe everyone must be as perverted as they are. Most people can chalk their sexual desires up to being human. They ensure that their sexual desires are enjoyed only with consenting adults and let it go at that. But the holier the roller, usually the louder the invocations against "impurity" and the more likely that said holy-roller has lots of issues that should rightly be addressed w/a therapist.

Thought for the day

2009-02-27T07:34:00.001-08:00

The Republicans: They were FOR deficits before they were AGAINST them.

Don't you love after trillions spent in Iraq, how the repubs have finally re-found their love of balanced budgets? Interesting how a president who squandered a trillion dollar surplus and wasted billions in Iraq was never stopped by majorities in Congress for 6 years. But now that money might actually go to the little guy, it's "Henny Penny the sky is falling...."

Not Bush's America Anymore!!!

2009-02-26T17:34:00.000-08:00

Boston

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced this afternoon that the Pentagon has decided to lift the complete ban on video and photos of the return of the war dead to US soil.

Now, it will be up to the families of the service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan whether to allow such media coverage.

Between this decision, putting the writer of the Organic Regs in at number 2 at USDA; putting Solis in at Labor; submitting a budget wherein we finally tax the wealthy at a minuscule-ly higher rate; I have to say I apologize to team Obama. They had me worried, but I think they're on the right track. Now, if we can just expand the number of tax brackets and start taxing social security on ALL income - rather than capping it as applying on only the first $105,000 of income.

Brooks on Jindal: Nihilism

2009-02-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

Bobby proves once again that when you elect people into government who believe that government is the problem, what you get is ineffective and bad government. Bobby, that's why we elected Obama. The problem isn't that we have a government. It's that for too long, we've ignored it (the masses) or used it as a means of funneling the money of the many into the coffers of the few (lobbyists). What we need are politicians who BELIEVE IN GOVERNMENT and who believe in fixing the problems. Not ignoring them; not making them worse; not spending just enough to fail and then point to the failures and saying "See, we spent millions here, and we couldn't fix the problem." Um, maybe because the problems need billions to address. Billions that can be found in the incomes of the multi-million dollar earners.

I feel that the tide is turning and that silly down-home, gee-whiz hucksterism as practiced by Jindal in last night's rebuttal to Obama, are finally falling on deaf ears; as they should have done for years now. Perhaps much good will come of this crisis. Perhaps people have finally seen the naked greed inherent in poorly and under-regulated capitalism. Perhaps people have decided that they don't want politicians with all the charm of snake oil salespeople who deliver their oratory in a teletubby sing-song cadence while gosh-darning us into wanting to drink a beer with them. Perhaps people are finally waking up from their long national stupor. If even Brooks can't spin Jindal, where have the republicans finally gotten with their government-hating mantras?

Bobby, your views hold no water. America is waking up.

Calling an idiot an idiot

2009-02-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

CBS

The granddaughter of the man who founded Bank of America in San Francisco in the early 1900s called the bank's current condition "totally repulsive" and blasted the bank's management for being "idiots."...

One of the best things to come out of this mess is the destruction of the illusion that those on Wall St. are "Masters of the Universe"; gods who understand something about finances that the rest of us unwashed masses do not. What they understood was how to take millions of dollars, spend it on hookers, champagne and yachts in the South Pacific, while running the system into the ground thanks to their "me first and fuck you" attitudes.

So, how does the grandaugther of AP Giannini, Ms. Hammerness, think we should deal with the mess? Nationalization? Of course not. She's just another greedy shareholder who would be completely wiped out. I thought that was the point of shares - you know, risk and reward. Shareholders today want just the upside and want the American people to assume all the downside. Well, no thanks.

While she doesn't favor nationalization — a government takeover of the banking industry — Hammerness said she is worried that the bank's ongoing decline could leave little in the future for the other heirs in her family.

"I just think what's happening is just nauseating really. I feel so sorry for my children, my grandchilden, my great grandchildren and everybody else's," she said. [but not sorry enough to fix the problem at her own expense]

When asked if she still puts her money in the Bank of America, the Giannini heiress responded: "Well, of course. But I have no loyalty to it. It's just there because I'm too lazy to go somewhere else... That's the honest to God truth, just too lazy to move it somewhere else."

Lazy and greedy, what a nice combination.

Kurt Warner's Deep Thoughts on his loving god...

2009-02-07T07:02:00.001-08:00

...who will be leaving "good people" out of heaven because they didn't say the magic words. Doesn't matter how good they are to others. Doesn't matter that they even believe in and love god. Nope, you have to say the magic words and believe as Kurt thinks you need to believe in order to have the magic door opened unto you.

I wonder how Kurt feels about throwing his daughters, Jada, Sierra Rose and Sienna Rae, to a maddened crowd lusting for flesh? Ah yes, biblical morals.

Genesis 19:8 (New International Version) 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."

Don't want the gov't to tell you how to run your bidness?....

2009-02-06T10:44:00.001-08:00

don't take TARP funds. See, how easy was that? HuffPo

Wall Street bankers, with their $18 billion in bonuses, private jets and gaudy conferences, are causing headaches for the GOP.

President Obama has proposed capping compensation for executives at banks that take taxpayer bailout money at $500,000. Republicans hate the idea -- a position puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently about as popular as child-porn producers and subprime mortgage brokers.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the "tone deaf" bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.

"Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That's not a good thing in America," Kyl told the Huffington Post.

"What executives have done is troubling, but it's equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives," said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).

Of course the Republitards have to side with the multi-millionaires. That's where their bread is buttered. It's going to be fun to see how Rush makes this one palatable to the backwards-baseball-cap crowd. "Yeah, see Limbaugh-heads, they can't tell the CEOs how much money they can make on your dime, 'cause that would be unAmurican, 'cause well, when you give people money, you shouldn't ask how they spend it, like, um, well, like welfare recipients, we don't ask how they spend it...right?....What?...We do?...Well let me get back to you on this one...."

Welfare reform that passed in the 1990s created the program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The government intervenes intimately into the lives of TANF recipients, requiring drug testing, time spent doing government approved activities and near-constant documentation of continuing compliance. The intervention is justified by reference to the payments being made.

One House Democratic aide quipped that bankers should be required to jump through some of the same hoops that welfare recipients are, beyond a simple salary cap. He suggested making bankers fulfill a strict work requirement and submit a time sheet, signed by a supervisor -- perhaps the Board of Directors -- in 15-minute intervals, proving that they worked 40 hours each week. Only certain activities would count, as is the case with TANF recipients.

"That three hour jet ride to get to the meeting in Chicago doesn't count. Reading the Wall Street Journal is also not a countable activity. If they fail to do this once, you cut them off of TARP funds. If they fudge the time sheet, you charge them with TARP fraud and make them pay back any government money they've received," the aide joked. "I'm sensing a legislative opportunity."

I will volunteer to personally review the timesheets of the CEO-bastards who got us into this mess, who took multi-million-dollar bonuses for the past 5 years, and who stood in line w/their hands out for TARP money. VOLUNTEER for it!