Investment Corner

Hey fellow US taxpayer, do you remember that $45 billion that former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson dumped into Citigroup?

Take a guess what the market value of that $45 billion investment is right now, a mere three and a half months after the initial investment.

Answer: Just over $1 billion.

And what is Treasury’s response? It just increased its stake in Citi.

Without a trace of irony, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit called the deal a “bridge to profitability” but I think we’ve seen this bridge before.

Question: Where are the stockades when we need them?

[Props=Sullivan]
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Update: Forget the stockades, it’s time for the guillotine.

From Bill Moyers’ interview with Simon Johnson of The Baseline Scenario.

BILL MOYERS: Geithner has hired as his chief-of-staff, the lobbyist from Goldman Sachs. The new deputy secretary of state was, until last year, a CEO of Citigroup. Another CFO from Citigroup is now assistant to the president, and deputy national security advisor for International Economic Affairs. And one of his deputies also came from Citigroup. One new member of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board comes from UBS, which is being investigated for helping rich clients evade taxes.”

Is it naive to believe that we are not going to begin to dig our way out of this mess until we cease taking advice from the same people (operating within the same system) who got us into it?

Transcript and video here. Do watch this, and watch to the end, because it gets slightly more hopeful. I believe that the model of Teddy Roosevelt breaking up the monopolies should be our model going forward. Time to smash some oligarchies!

When Journalists Attack

Over at Huffpo, S.D. Liddick goes off — and I mean really goes off — on another Huffpo journalist, Dahr Jamal, for this article, Iraq’s Teflon Don.

A random excerpt: “You hide behind political artifice to lob your mines of pre-conclusion, like a craven wretch. And really, I think that goes to the solid core of the dregs of the problem. You’re not a coward merely because you’re afraid to seek the truth when it might not conform to your views … rather your chickenshit views are shaped by the fact you’re a coward.”

He goes on to call him:

• [an] ignorant cur
• a sniveling coward and ankle-biter hiding preconceived intentions behind putative journalism, and
• a craven obfuscationist

He really did not like that article. Not one bit. But, in the midst of the vitriol, he makes some pretty good points about how best to make use of our limited options in Iraq.

Republicans Throughout History

Newsifact ponders and conjectures and scratches its head over what response today’s Republican party might have had to some of the great moments in human history.

By around 46BC, the Romans had sewage systems to drain waste from homes. In the 19th century major cities undertook projects to create sewage systems for most homes.

Republicans: “Can you believe this? The government is actually going to spend money on connecting each home to a series of pipes just to take away human waste! Let’s just have some tax cuts and keep the government out of people’s homes!”

Read it here.

Memo from an Alternate Universe

You know what the problem with the Bush Administration was? Too friggin’ liberal, that was the problem.

At least according to John Bolton:

The former United Nations Ambassador packed the largest ballroom at Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel and delivered a rousing speech filled with attacks on the Obama administration but also plenty of broadsides aimed at George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice. He ripped the administration for ruling out the use of force to stop the Iranian nuclear program and he denounced the multilateral, six-party talks that the Bush administration initiated to thwart North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. According to Bolton, the talks succeeded only in giving the Pyonyang regime another five years to perfect its nuclear program and strengthen its missile capacity.

Is Obama Asking America for Too Much Snackrifice?

Today’s commentary on President Obama’s address to the nation yesterday missed what I thought was one of the key passages, highlighted below, in which the president practiced tough-love by asking America for greater snackrifice in the days ahead.

Excerpt from the prepared text of President Obama’s address to the nation, February 24, 2009:

“We have come through an era where too often, short-term taste was prized over long-term weight-gain; where we failed to look beyond the next snack cracker, the next cheese puff, or the next pork rind. A surplus of late afternoon hunger became an excuse to transfer a jumbo bag of Cool Ranch Doritos into our mouths, instead of an opportunity to invest in a nice apple or a banana. ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’ became our new national motto. And look at the results: we’re in a debilitating recession and our asses are huge.

Diets were gutted for the sake of the quick snack, the annual raise — or rather raisin cookie. Too many of our appetites were ruined by eating right before dinner, or by filling up on bread. People ate snacks they knew they didn’t need, sold to them by unscrupulous convenience stores who just relabeled soda pop as energy drinks and candy bars as protein bars. And all the while, critical sit-ups and difficult jumping jacks were put off for some other time on some other day, after Lost, after American Idol, after basketball season.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our snacking future is here. America, I stand before you today as your newly elected president. And as your president, it is my sad duty to tell you that, yes, those jeans do make your butt look big. And not in a good Michelle way.

America, we can do better! We haven’t always been ‘big-boned.’ Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — not only to rescue our nation’s debauched taste-buds, but to build a foundation for lasting snack prosperity. America, have you tried Baked Lays? They’re not bad. Multigrain cookies? Pita chips? I recommend the Tuscan Herb. It’s time for America to rediscover fresh fruit, and even, dare I say it?, the quiet dignity of hunger. In short, it’s time for the country I love to stop stuffing its yap.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

Call it the Laugher Curve

As if the Jindal speech didn’t reveal the utter intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current crop of Republicans, along comes Matthew Yglesias to highlight more financial lunacy from the Grand Old Party: “[Republicans] are also preparing to use the ballooning deficit to renew their push for additional tax cuts.”

The reporters on the piece, Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane, might have observed that a deficit is, by definition, a shortfall between revenue and spending. Thus, it’s extremely difficult to envision circumstances under which “additional tax cuts” would prevent the deficit from ballooning. As this handy chart indicates, ballooning deficits are strongly correlated with either fighting World War II or else governance dominated by a desire for “additional tax cuts”

He provides the following helpful chart, which really says it all.

Bobby, We Hardly Knew Ye

Do you smell that? It’s the acrid stench of Bobby Jindal’s presidential ambitions going up in flames.

Nate Silver: If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that’s because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.

Here is Jindal’s speech in full (i.e., before the inevitable Youtube mash-ups with Kenneth the Page that will be appearing within minutes).

This thing is the Battlefield Earth of political speeches.

30 Days in the Hole

Were you aware that pretty much the entire right wing has utterly lost its shit? There’s actually something quite comforting about this situation: grown ups are back in charge and the lunatic fringe is back where it belongs, out in the shed and keeping busy by endlessly revising its enemies list, hoarding guns and dry goods, and fetishising odd conspiracy theories. And this is only thirty days into the new administration.

From Eric Boehlert at Media Matters:

If we just pause and take one or two steps back from the daily/hourly barrage of hate, it’s obvious that faced with the new Obama presidency, the Republican Noise Machine has already lost all perspective — has gone totally loco — and it’s only February, a mere month into Obama’s first four years in office. Who dares to even imagine where the right-wing “conversation” goes from here?

It’s astounding to watch the avalanche of hate ooze from conservative media quarters. And why? Because Obama passed an economic recovery bill. Good Lord, imagine if he had failed to win the popular vote and then led the country into a pre-emptive war based on faulty intelligence, a war that lost thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of foreign lives, while milking the U.S. treasury out of a few trillion dollars in the process.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald reminds us all how these patriots behaved when the stakes really mattered:

Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 gave rise to the American “militia movement”: hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the “liberals” and “leftists” running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups — the cultural precursor to George Bush’s prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day — spawned the decade of the so-called “Angry White Male,” the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, pseudo-revolutionary, play-acting tough guys.

What was most remarkable about this allegedly “anti-government” movement was that — with some isolated and principled exceptions — it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional — limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending — they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

The Nonpology

Seinfeld introduced the notion of the unvitation, which is an invitation sent to someone you don’t really expect (or even want) to attend the event.

Elaine: The wedding is in one week. I got this (Holds up invitation) today.
Jerry: So you think it’s a “non-vite”?
Elaine: It’s an “un-vitation”!

– The Betrayal, Season 9, Episode 8

The recent behavior of several prominent Republicans reminds me of another bit of urban nomenclature: the nonpology, or the apology that does not apologize, especially one that blames the aggrieved party for being offended.

Last month we highlighted John Tanner, the Bush-appointed head of the DOJ’s voting section, who got in trouble for joking that he liked his coffee “black and bitter,” just like Mary Francis Bacon, who was then the Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. When the comments came to light, Tanner issued a classic nonpology, trying to explain and contextualize his comments instead of just apologizing, saying, “The term ‘bitter,’ of course, meant no sugar in the coffee, and was not meant as a reflection on you or your attitude towards a challenging situation.” Of course.

The latest example of the nonpology comes from Jim Bunning, Republican senator from Kentucky, who got himself in trouble for speculating to supporters that US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead within nine months:

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges “and that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer.”

“Bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from,” he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

“Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer,” he said.

Today, Bunning issued a written nonpology.

“I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsberg (sic),” Bunning said. “That certainly was not my intent. It is great to see her back at the Supreme Court today and I hope she recovers quickly. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.”

Bunning’s nonpology gets style points for spelling Justice Ginsburg’s name incorrectly and for wrapping Bunning in the Lord’s mantle after wishing someone else dead for her political views. From these examples, we can glean some of the hallmarks of the standard-issue nonpology, as detailed below.

It’s Probably an Nonpology if:

• It does not include the words, “I am sorry.”
• It is longer than eight words.
• It includes the phrase, “Mistakes were made.”
• It includes any of the following conjunctions: if, but, though, or while
• It is issued by an athlete caught cheating, an actor or musician entering rehab, or a politician under any circumstances.

Here are few other classic Republican nonpologies.

[Props=Huffpo]

This is How It’s Done, Christian

A couple of weeks ago, the Innertubes were all abuzz with Christian Bale’s rant on the set of Terminator Salvation. First there was the rant itself, then the remixes, then the parodies, then the other parodies, then the other other parodies (this one is actually pretty funny), then the apology, then the apology remixes.

I was reminded of Christian’s antics today when I came across the clip below, which is from Werner Herzog’s documentary, My Best Fiend (Mein liebster Feind – Klaus Kinski), on his tumultuous relationship with Klaus Kinski, a relationship that yielded Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Cobra Verde, and Fitzcarraldo, among other movies. Christian, baby, this is an on-set tantrum, and until you can terrify the native extras (and make Adolf Hitler himself sound relatively sane in comparison), you’re just a piker. Klaus wasn’t Method, Christian, he was just insane.

By the way, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World was nominated for Best Documentary (it lost to Man on Wire). Come to think of it, Werner Herzog also worked with Christian Bale on the criminally underrated Rescue Dawn. No doubt Werner’s experiences with Klaus came in handy when he found himself out in the jungles of Thailand with Christian.

So Christian, repeat after Klaus: “You’re no director! You have to learn from me! You’re a beginner, a dwarf’s director, but not a director for me.”