Headline of the Day dos

68% Say Political Class Doesn’t Care What Most Americans Think

Like duh. I'm glad that, just for once, when 2/3 of Americans agreed on something, they got it right. Not that it matters.

Headline of the Day

A BuzzFlash headline:

BP To Up Iraq Rumaila Field Output By 100,000 Barrels a Day. Hey, Why Do You Think Tony Blair Joined Bush and Cheney in Seizing the Oil Fields in Iraq?

It was all about the oil. Never forget.

BP's Secret Ticket Request Line

MoJo

For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at the Sacramento stadium named after its West Coast subsidiary.

In the past five years, BP has given state officials more than 1,200 complimentary tickets to the Arco* Arena, hosting them in its corporate suite to see Sacramento Kings games, World Extreme Cagefighting matches, and Britney Spears and Lil Wayne concerts. Getting the tickets is as easy as calling the BP ticket request line, an exclusive, unpublished phone number that appears to exist for the sole purpose of granting freebies to lawmakers, regulators, and their staffs.

"You make a request, leave it on the voicemail, and at some date the tickets either magically appear or they don't," says a legislative consultant who gave me the ticket line's number and spoke on condition of anonymity. "They don't talk to you; you just see 'em or you don't." The ticket line's message was taken down sometime in the past week, shortly after I began my reporting. You can still listen to the original recording below.

*Acronym for Atlantic Richfield Co.

Stern says the ticket giveaways illustrate why California's ethics rules need to be tightened. "These tickets, in a sense, are worth more than their face value," Stern says. The third-smallest stadium in the NBA, the Arco Arena has some of the basketball league's highest ticket prices and sells out nearly every game. It's also unclear whether the face value of the free tickets, which BP has reported as being as much as $170 for Kings games, reflect their actual cost to the company. Arco Arena would not disclose the price of a corporate suite.

Now that the BP ticket request line isn't picking up, lawmakers may have to find a new way to score free tix from the world's most-hated oil company. But the persistent can always give it a try: (916) 444-7968.

Everything BP does pisses me off. They're not the only ones doing this kind of bribery either, just the only company that's coming under scrutiny right now, and this is just one insignificant little offshoot of just one Hydra-like company.

The corporate-political system is rotten and corrupt from top to bottom. I think we'd have to destroy the village to save it.

The Mogi Doughnut - Fire in the Hole!

The news about D.C.'s "largest ever recorded earthquake!" is amusing. A 3.6 is about the same as a freight train going by and not nearly as loud. Since I quit drinking and am no longer prone to taking naps on the railroad tracks, I don't wake up for either of them.

I grew up with earthquakes. I'm used to them. I'm thankful that California gets those instead of tornados and hurricanes. Here's the only two things you need to know to survive them:

1. Earthquakes don't kill people. Falling things that get shaken loose by them do. That's why there aren't many brick houses out here and why savvy folks don't have heavy stuff anywhere above their beds. It's also why I get a little nervous in tall buildings. Top floor, bottom floor, you're dead either way.

2. If an earthquake opens up a fissure in the earth between your feet, pick a side. Don't dawdle!

Interesting article in the LATimes, but this photo says volumes. I've been to Parkfield (Pop. 18, sometimes as many as 2 or 3 are visible at any given moment). If it wasn't for earthquakes and their bluegrass festival, nobody would ever go there. The nearest actual tourist destination is the James Dean Monument at the Jack Ranch Cafe in/which is Cholame (pronounced 'Show-lahm'). Busloads of Japanese tourists stop there, but they don't go to Parkfield. The Japanese are much more blasé about earthquakes than we are. Heh.

The 'Mogi doughnut hole' is a new concept to me. Then again, so was plate tectonics years ago.

Signs in Parkfield, Calif., alert tourists that they are passing over the San Andreas fault. The area is so prone to earthquakes that scientists have wired it extensively to collect data. The San Andreas, along with the Elsinore and San Jacinto faults, would be enclosed in Southern California's so-called Mogi doughnut hole. Northern California’s doughnut hole includes the San Andreas and Hayward faults. (Spencer Weiner, Los Angeles Times / July 18, 2010)

Yo, refudiate this...

WASILLA (The Borowitz Report) – Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin today defended her use of the word "refudiate," telling her critics, "Look it up in the fictionary."

While claiming that "refudiate" is a real word, she reserved her right to make up new words in the future.

"Everyone makes up words – Shakespeare, George W. Bush, Levi Johnston," she said. "The only person I know who doesn't do it is my husband Todd, who doesn't speak."

Gov. Palin also lashed out at those who criticized her use the word "refudiate," calling them "incohecent."

In a related story, Gov. Palin would defeat President Barack Obama if she ran in 2012, according to a poll published in Mayan Prophecy Weekly.

Headline of the Day

Right Wing Apoplectic That Montana School Is Teaching Tolerance, Safe Sex, And Anti-Bullying Measures

Understandably so. It goes against their entire agenda, particularly bullying.

The Real Reason Geithner Is Afraid of Elizabeth Warren

I know banking and finance is important, but reading about it puts me to sleep. This post took me a long time...

HuffPo

Certainly, Warren is not the commercial banking industry's first pick to serve in this new role. And unlike other legislation in which an industry's lobbying effort would naturally slow or cease once the legislation is passed, the new financial reform bill is continuing to attract enormous lobbying action from the banks. The reason is simple. The bill has been written to put a great deal of power as to how strongly it is implemented in the hands of its regulators, some of which remain to be chosen. The bank lobby will work incredibly hard to see that Warren, the person most responsible for initiating and fighting for the idea of a consumer financial protection group, is denied the opportunity to head it.

But this is not the only reason that Geithner is opposed to Warren's nomination. I believe Geithner sees the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as a threat to the very scheme he has utilized to date to hide bank losses, thus keeping the banks solvent and out of bankruptcy court and their existing management teams employed and well-paid.

And this is where defeat of the nomination of Elizabeth Warren becomes critical for Geithner. For Geithner's strategy to work, the banks have to find increasing sources of profitability in their business segments to balance out their annual loan loss recognition from their existing bad loans in an environment in which they continue to recognize new losses in prime residential mortgages, commercial real estate lending, sovereign debt investments, bridge loans to private equity groups, leverage buyout lending and credit card defaults.

The banks have made no secret as to where they will find this increase in cash flow. They intend to soak their small retail customers, their consumer and small business borrowers, their credit card holders and their small depositors with increased costs and fees and are continuing many of the bad mortgage practices that led to the crisis (ARM's, option pay deals, zero down payments, second mortgages, teaser rates, etc). American and Banking Market News reports this week that the rule changes in the financial reform bill may lead banks to start implementing fees that had essentially disappeared from the industry early in the new millennium, such as fees for not meeting minimum balance requirements on a checking account, or reinstituting fees for certain online banking transactions that are currently free or charging to receive a paper statement or to talk to a live teller as Bank of America's CEO has recently proposed.

As to the other two potential nominees on Obama's short list for the position, Michael S.Barr is Geithner's boy currently working for him as an Assistant Secretary at Treasury. More importantly, he is Bob Rubin's boy, having served as Rubin's assistant in the Clinton administration. If you are Rubins' boy, you are the bank lobby's boy as this position of Rubin's boy was previously held by Summers and then Geithner. Eugene Kimmelman seems like a nice enough person who has no background in finance. If the banking lobby can't get their guy in, the next best thing is to get a completely clueless person in who is too afraid to act boldly given he couldn't tell a CDO from a CEO. He has been the top lobbyist for the Consumers Union, so he is pro-lobbying and as a positive comment, really understands how toasters and garage door openers work.

Elizabeth Warren won't just protect consumers, her Oklahoma bred sense of honesty, fairness and decency just might reinvigorate and redirect a government and a banking industry that for too long has seen the average American taxpayer and the typical small consumer as the enemy to be taken advantage of at every turn.

If you want to help make sure Elizabeth Warren is appointed to head the new consumer finance protection agency, please take a minute and sign this online petition that will be presented to the President and then use the accompanying email opportunity to invite your friends to do the same.

She's a dangerous woman to the status quo. Besides, Liz is gorgeous. Go sign.

Redo Dat Voodoo

Paul Krugman

Republicans are feeling good about the midterms — so good that they’ve started saying what they really think. This week the party’s Senate leadership stopped pretending that it cares about deficits, stating explicitly that while we can’t afford to aid the unemployed or prevent mass layoffs of schoolteachers, cost is literally no object when it comes to tax cuts for the affluent.

And that’s one reason — there are others — why you should fear the consequences if the G.O.P. actually does as well in November as it hopes.

But we’re talking about voodoo economics here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that belief in the magical powers of tax cuts is a zombie doctrine: no matter how many times you kill it with facts, it just keeps coming back. And despite repeated failure in practice, it is, more than ever, the official view of the G.O.P.

But if politicians who insist that the way to reduce deficits is to cut taxes, not raise them, start winning elections again, how much faith can anyone have that we’ll do what needs to be done? Yes, we can have a fiscal crisis. But if we do, it won’t be because we’ve spent too much trying to create jobs and help the unemployed. It will be because investors have looked at our politics and concluded, with justification, that we’ve turned into a banana republic.

Anyway, we really should thank Senators Kyl and McConnell for their sudden outbursts of candor. They’ve now made it clear, in case anyone had doubts, that their previous posturing on the deficit was entirely hypocritical. If they really do have the kind of electoral win they’re expecting, they won’t try to reduce the deficit — they’ll try to make it explode by demanding even more budget-busting tax cuts.

Read the rest. I have nothing to add.

Update:

Repug motto, from a Raw Story headline:

"Help the rich, screw the poor"

With or without the comma.

Update 2:

Jim Hightower

Deficit hawks are on the fly in Washington, madly screeching that America can no longer afford...well, the American people.

Having slashed taxes for the wealthiest 1 percent of our society, having lavished gabillions of dollars on unnecessary wars that enrich politically connected government contractors, having laid out trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street's casino banksters who crashed our real economy -- Washington's brave fighters for extending more of our nation's wealth to the already-rich have suddenly turned into born-again budget whackers.

Are they cutting back on any of the above elites, you ask? What a joker you are! No, no -- it's regular folks who must pay the price for the decade of excess that these politicos lavished on the rich.

So, students, the lesson here is that public spending is only sensible if it goes to the moneyed elites, and budget cuts are only good when applied to the rest of us.

A new definition of "free market" just popped into my head: If you own the market, everything's free. Other people will pay for it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Iowa Tea Party Billboard Links Obama to Hitler, Lenin
Hoping to attract both fascists and communists to their cause.

New Theory: Gravity an Illusion
Reality “smoke and mirrors.”

California State Democratic Party Considers Supporting Proposition 19, Pot Legalization
Making “What were they smoking?” rhetorical question.

Bad News: Texas Can’t Afford Newly Revised Textbooks
Good news: Texas can’t afford newly revised textbooks.

Quit waffling, Joe ...

Biden had his chance (and missed) to call the Tea Party out for what it is.

...

I understand the need for political tact, but what is the point of such cowardice -- yes, it's cowardice. and not candor at all. Why not just be honest? Why not just be blunt*? There's actually a lot of racism in the Tea Party "movement." It's not just isolated to a few rogue individuals waving Confederate flags and mouthing off about the president's race. And the "comments" of these racists haven't been "unfortunate" -- what a wishy-washy word to use -- they've been indications of a nefarious and deep-rooted bigotry that animates so much of the right, particularly the anti-government, anti-Obama populism of the teabaggers, who direct so much of their angry virulence at a president who is of mixed race but who is, for all their intents and purposes, black, and, lest we forget, at any government policy that seeks to benefit non-whites (even if benefits whites, too), be it health-care reform or immigration reform or what have you.

...

Michael says what the Vice President should have.

*I'd assumed that's why they brought Biden on as VP in the first place; to say things bluntly where Barry has to be more tactful.

The "Sam" family ...

Digby makes it nice and simple, so even Republicans can understand it.

...

We'll call the government the "Sam" family. And this family is in debt because Mr Sam decided to quit his high paying job as a Hedge Fund manager during the good years but they all spent like there was no tomorrow. Then the economy crashed and they lost a lot of their equity in their house and Mrs Sam got her hours cut back. They had to borrow from their dwindling 401K and Mrs Sam went back to school part time to learn some new skills so she could get a better job. But she needs another year or so before that can pay off.

Meanwhile, Mr Sam insists that everyone go on a diet, sell their possessions, their bodies, whatever it takes, but under no circumstances will he ever go back to work. In fact, he blames everyone in the family but himself for the mess they are in and wants them to pay for him to take a long vacation in Miami so he can stop listening to their whining. He insists that he's doing his part by tipping the poolboys.

Mr Sam, of course, is a Republican.

...

Update:

D-cap looks at Mike Pence and his ilk.

...

Think about this - the unregulated "financiers" on Wall Street played cat-and-mouse with pension funds, insurance pools and securitized mortgages. 30 years of binge chugging finally led to an economic meltdown. Bush and company then bailed them out (as he walked out the door). The rest of the country - including the idiots who voted Republican because of a bunch of slogans like "we think government is too big" or "we will insure your right to own a gun" ended up losing their jobs, their homes and their life savings and watched as un- (and under-) employment drove towards depression levels. Two scant years later, the criminals who took us down this road are making more money than ever and those without jobs can't even get a $425 unemployment insurance check from Mike Pence.

...

Legalizing reefer ...

Nunya gets it.

No shit.

What if the Tea Party was a black group?

The answer is probably obvious. If the Tea Party was a Black group, ATF'd be hamming down the doors. The FBI would have the state organizers under close surveillance. The local [cops] would be hassling the shit out of them.

...

And if you think Fox "News" is nuts about the Black Panthers, conservative heads would be exploding if angry black folks were gonna "take back the government" and show up at Republican fundraisers wearing sidearms.

Put yer Boehner ...

On a billboard. Too good.

...

Meanwhile, if you haven't voted for your favorite John Boehner billboard the contest is still open. We've been getting an amazing response, far exceeding our expectations. We may just be able to keep the billboards up until the election.

...

Don't forget to Beat yer Boehner.

Seat Covers

This is from me mate 828cc in Limeyland.

Rods, bobbers and pretty gals...

Says it all. Enjoy.

Wasteland Of The Free

Iris Dement Wasteland Of The Free 2006 Hardly Strickly Bluegrass Festival, October 8th 2006, San Francisco, California.

Thanks to martin000ec.

Seeing the Elephant

William Rivers Pitt

Before getting into how ridiculous it is that the Democrats could be in position to lose the House, it needs to be said that I don't believe it is going to happen. The Republican Party has become a preposterous farce, dominated by the likes of Sarah Palin and Michael Steele. The Tea Party movement is basically nothing more than a Trojan Horse filled with hard-core GOP base members whose views on everything from religion to the constitution to freedom of choice is not shared by roughly 75% of the general population.

They are the Taliban of American Christianity, and the only reason they have gotten so much ink is because the national press corps likes to take the easy way out whenever possible. Add to this the fact that the Tea Party has shot the GOP in the foot several times already by running off electable Republicans and nominating the cast from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

You can't even see the lobotomy scars. The Repugs do it with kool-aid these days.

The Good News About Mel Gibson

Daddy Frank on Mel Gibson and the decline of the religious right. Thank you, Jesus.

The cultural wave that crested with “The Passion” was far bigger than Gibson. He was simply a symptom and beneficiary of a moment when the old religious right and its political and media shills were riding high. In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal antihomosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the “born-again” serial killer David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) in America.

Conservative America’s new signature movement, the Tea Party, has its own extremes, but it shuns culture-war battles. It even remained mum when a federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the anti-same-sex marriage Defense of Marriage Act this month. As the conservative commentator Kyle Smith recently wrote in The New York Post, the “demise of Reagan-era groups like the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority is just as important” as the rise of the Tea Party. “The morality armies have failed to inspire their children to join the crusade,” he concluded, and not unhappily. The right, too, is subject to generational turnover.

As utter coincidence would have it, the revelation of the latest Gibson tapes was followed last week by the news that a federal appeals court, in a 3-0 ruling, had thrown out the indecency rules imposed by the F.C.C. after Janet Jackson’s 2004 “wardrobe malfunction.” The death throes of Mel Gibson’s career feel less like another Hollywood scandal than the last gasps of an American era.

Praise the Lord!

Hot Rod Boogie

This one's for Fixer. Heh.

Thanks to waneonnol.

California Dreamin'

Some dumbass pol suggested folks go to Nebraska for the wonderful minimum wage jobs. Screw that - we got 'em right here! Do this for half a day and you'll understand why the Meskins are here. It will come to you in a flash of heat stroke while they're haulin' yer lazy Anglo ass off on a stretcher.

Yes, I know pickin' cotton is pretty much all done with machines these days. It's an allegory and it's Saturday. Button it.

Thanks to waneonnol. He's my age and has lots of stuff like this. Old guys rule!