Chart of the day

It is no secret that this blog largely believes that Congress, mostly the Senate, is an especially stupid place where all that is cheap and low rent about this country comes together to bludgeon us to death slowly with poorly thought out half-measures and cheap compromises. Hell, the entire function of TB is to catalog the dumbest parts in gape mouthed horror.

But it is rare when you see a visual aide put together that shows to just what extent our elected betters doing anything is detrimental to the country. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has found that chart.

That's a chart of the projected deficit over the next few decades... barring the negation of this country and/or all life in a catastrophe. The top dotted line is the deficit if Congress decides to do what it always does: kiss ass to the richest part of the country and heap them with tax cuts. The bottom dotted line is what happens if they just do nothing and allow the tax cuts to expire. It amounts to a $4 trillion difference in the deficit over the next 10 years alone.

Anyone want to guess what has a lot of support?

Congress, don't always feel you have to do things. Sometimes, we want you to sit around and twiddle your thumbs on issues. Sometimes, we need you to have those thumbs up your asses. This is one of those times. Godspeed.

Chart of the day

Today was a banner day for government as our elected betters paused and decided to spend five minutes giving a shit about the unemployed. It was about 50 days too late and will invariably crop up the next time around, but hey, this is as close to progress on the economy as this country is allowed to have.

So they extended unemployment benefits, big deal. What about that part where they get together and figure out how to make there be not as many unemployed people? What would that take, besides a miracle? Actually, what would it take just to get us to the point where we were back before everything turned to shit?

Well, according to the good people at the Brookings Institute, 200,000 jobs a month for somewhere around 150 months. 12.5 years.


In case you haven't been paying attention, we aren't creating 200,000 jobs a month. We don't look to start anytime soon either. The Center For Economic and Policy Research is slightly more optimistic, saying that it will only take until 2014 to get us to 2007 employment levels, 2021 if you take into account the 6.5 million people that will have entered the job force between 2007 and 2014. In both scenarios, that's if everything goes swimmingly and starts doing so around a week from now.

So in other words, things will get back on track shortly after pigs learn to fly but not before they fly out of your ass. Hope that brightened your day.

The nice old man is here to tell us of our impending financial doom

We are on the verge of having tepid financial reform getting passed. Either when West Virginia's 42nd Annual Moonshinin' and Couches What Done Burn Festival ends and they appoint someone to Robert Byrd's seat or when Democrats water the bill down even more to get one other person to jump on. Oh mediocre day.

As we are close to yet another monument to our government's time wasting ineffectiveness, half measures, and total subservience to business in the face of all rational fact, the New York Times decided to interview former Fed chair and current senior White House adviser Paul Volcker to comment on the impending legislation. Try not to be bowled over by the overwhelming stream of "Meh" and the "we're probably all doomed, but I'm optimistic" vibe he exudes.

If he were a teacher, and not a senior White House adviser and the towering former chairman of the Federal Reserve, he says, he would have given the new rules just an ordinary B — not even a B-plus.

Yeah, but he's grading on a curve. So Congress' performance gets bumped up because they didn't dub Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein King of All Money and Jewels That He Surveys. Continue, Pauly.

For all of what he describes as the overhaul’s strengths — particularly the limits placed on banks’ trading activities — he still feels that the legislation doesn’t go far enough in curbing potentially problematic bank activities like investing in hedge funds.

No shit.

....he’s concerned that it still gives banks too much wiggle room to repeat the behavior that threw the nation into crisis in the first place.

Hmm, then it doesn't seem to me like it does its job. Maybe that curved B was a little high, no? Or were we grading for effort? That B still seems high. Anyway, any ominous statements about the future to add?

“People are nervous about the long-term outlook, and they should be,” he says.

Maybe I was giving him too much credit with the "Meh" thing. He seems to give this thing a passing grade, then goes on at length at why he should expel all the students from Chug-A-Lug House for poor academic performance and destruction of property.

At the age of 82, Mr. Volcker is from a generation of Wall Street personalities who accepted strict financial regulation as a fact of life through much of their careers.

HAH! How quaint. Volcker must feel like the last human alive wandering through a mass of zombies whenever he goes to Wall Street. But what of his proposed, and smart, Volcker Rule, which would have prevented banks from risking their funds on trading in default swaps and mortgage backed securities? You know, the one that got watered down.

Mr. Volcker thinks that Congress has watered down his trading rule...but rather than roar in protest, he has resigned himself to the present shape of the Volcker rule as well as the overall legislation.

“The success of this approach is going to be heavily dependent on how aggressively and intelligently it is implemented,” he says, emphasizing that a new, 10-member regulatory council authorized by the bill will have to be vigilant and tough to prevent the nation’s giant banks and investment houses from pulling America into yet another devastating credit crisis.

Hmm, so..... no hope at all? If elected and appointed representatives can't be tough and vigilant with banks, what are the odds the people they appoint will be? I thought so. Any statements you would like to make that unwittingly describe the shoddy means by under which we are governed?

“The thing went from what is best to what could be passed,” he says.

Another phrase that should be engraved on a plaque and hung in the halls of Congress. And really, when dealing with the fallout from one of the most massive financial crises in world history, isn't doing what's best of little concern? Close it out with a statement underlying just how underwhelmed you are.

“We have to have a regulatory system that reflects today’s problems and tomorrow’s potential problems,” he says. “This bill attempts to do that. Does it do it perfectly? Obviously it does not go as far as I felt it should go.”

You gotta love it when eminently smart men who know an issue inside out are asked about the problem they have helped Congress work on fixing for the past year plus and the best thing they can say about the legislation is that it attempts to do something. Then the eminently smart man follows that up with a statement telling you that it isn't close to what he, the eminently smart man with the experience and knowledge, would attempt to do. Spirit lifting is what it is.

He's just too nice to tell us we're all fucked and we've left the exhaust port on the Death Star wide open. Wall Street is going to slip a ship past the big guns, fire a proton torpedo into the son of a bitch sometime soon and there's nothing we can do about it. Happy days.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.08

Darryl Cunningham Investigates: Homeopathy

In You're Living Up To The Stereotype of Your Country News, Colombian police have uncovered an attempt to send 24 pounds of cocaine to Spain in the form of a molded World Cup statute. Don't plan that celebration, you still have to get through the Oranje first, Espana. Bonus points for creativity, you did find a substance that would make the value of the World Cup even greater. All that aside, if you want an even better story about Colombians and World Cup soccer, give the ESPN documentary The Two Escobars a look.

Let me see if you can follow this. The public sentiment is for cutting the deficit and cutting spending, while at the same time improving the economy and job market. If government were to focus on spending cuts and deficit reduction that would have a negative effect on the economy and job markets, making them worse. Economists know this and have been saying it for months. Our elected betters have been told this for months and should know it. Yet, cutting the deficit and spending is popular. So what is everyone going to do? Try to cut the deficit and spending in order to win in November. Because if we've learned anything over the past decade, it's that doing something smart isn't a good idea if doing something dumb and popular and destructive is. I'll see you in the bread lines.

After years of stalling anything and everything that Democrats could do, Republicans are riding high over thoughts of what could happen in November. They're even planning out their new agenda. But after hamstringing the Democrats on all their priorities, surely Democrats wouldn't be eager to help the GOP go after one of their priorities: gutting Social Security. I mean, that would be ridiculous, helping Republicans carve up one of the great progressive achievements in the country's history, right? Wrong. The Democrats are eager to help. And why not, fucking with Social Security is so very popular. Besides, old people love eating catfood. Good luck with that.

What if I were to tell you that not only was there an Illuminati card game that referenced a Gulf oil spill, but there was an oil company board game from the seventies that talked about the possibility as well. Surely you'd think this was just a decently thought out scenario that simply prefaced an easily possible bad scenario using the oil industry and the area with which they were working in, right? Nope. IT'S PROOF THIS WHOLE OIL SPILL WAS PLANNED ALL ALONG!! JESUS CHRIST, CAN'T YOU SEE IT? Man, the Illuminati, Parker Brothers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Egg Council were all planning this for decades. We're through the looking glass here people. Comb through Trivial Pursuit to see if there are any cryptic references to nuclear war and I'll see when Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots predicted the robots would take over.

Europe Is Better Than Us: #3,215 in a series. In this episode Europe, having surveyed the damage cause by global financial giants, sees that it might be smart to tie bonuses to little things like results, performance, and whether or not a collection of assholes toilets the world economy or not. This is just one of the many, better, steps that their continent has taken while we still dick around wondering if we should leave everything pretty much as is, or give the financial giants a little slap on the knuckles and tell the scamps not to do it again. Plus it comes right at the same time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pillories us for hamstringing our own recovery, employment prospects, and general social fabric. On the bright side, if we continue to ignore their good advice and follow their smart lead, nothing they do in Brussels will be able to stop the effects of the next mega crisis America enables. Who's the smart one now, Europe?

In closing, enjoy this racist cat.

Jobblog

As These Bastards is the foremost economics blog on the web, it is our duty to bring you the most cutting edge economic theories going. Mostly these have to do with the flagging job market where there are somewhere in the neighborhood of five applicants for every opening.

Now most of the new economic theories from our elected betters seemed to stem from them plugging their ears and yelling "Get a job anyway you lazy wretches, stop freeloading on the less than $12 grand a year in unemployment you would be theoretically getting if we in Congress could ever pass a jobs bill. You're all probably on drugs." You know, America's lazy peasant problem.

So we feel it's necessary to highlight any new solutions to our joblessness problem, for you: the unemployed hobo reading this while eating a tin of beans underneath a highway underpass. Don't deny it; we know that's 90% of our audience. We have the Google Metrics.

First up is Minnesota GOP candidate for governor Tom Emmer, who is chuffed that some bitch waitress expected a tip last night after she slowly delivered drinks that the asshole bartender was watering down.

Tom Emmer, the GOP-endorsed candidate for governor, told reporters at the Eagle Street Grille in St. Paul on Monday that the minimum wage for service workers who earn tips should be cut. Some waiters and bartenders, he noted, can earn as much as $100,000 a year, which he said is unfair to the employers that hire them.
...
Minnesota is one of few states that does not follow the federal minimum wage for tip-earners — $2.13 an hour. Instead, tip-earners make $5.25 to $7.25 an hour in addition to tips. Emmer says that hurts businesses’ bottom lines.

“Government can only inhibit business, can only keep it from growing, as opposed to creating jobs,” he said. “Right now, we have too much of it, guys. We’ve got to pull government back.”

I know. This economy would be right back on track if bartending and waitressing, two of the most lucrative and desirable jobs in America, nay, the world, we treated like the slave labor they were. I'm tired of these six figure waitresses killing businesses with their minimum wage salaries. Hasn't anyone ever heard of being grateful to be allowed inside an air conditioned building for a ten hour shift? Maybe you repay that shelter from the elements by serving a few drinks or a club sandwich or two without collapsing the world economy. Is that to much to ask, waitresses?

By the way, I'm going to need you to split this check.

On the other hand, potentially crazy... you know, what, I'm going to drop the "potentially" part. Crazy Democratic South Carolina U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene has another plan to help revive the job market. By employing people in what I'm sure is the seriously flagging Alvin Greene doll making industry.

"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."

That is outside the box. Like outside of a padded box after the dose of medication they gave you didn't have any effect, then you overpowered seven guards before throwing a water fountain through the window, climbing out, and running to freedom. Luckily the reporter was able to finish the interview without being skinned and Alvin using his face as a mask.

So there you have it, the solutions to our problems: stop tipping rich waitresses and start making dolls of a weird Senate candidate. We'll be back on our feet in no time.

Must the government infringe on a man's right to be orange?

Cheap humor. Sweet, sweet, cheap humor.

We like to make fun of John Boehner for his tanning regimen. Why, because it's easy and we don't like to sweat for a joke. Besides, have you seen him? Motherfucker's orange. Thankfully, John likes easy humor as well, because he's serving up a nice opportunity for everyone to mock him for being a vain, self-obsessed Oompa Loompa.

What's he up to this time? Why he's decrying the abominable health reform bill by blasting out a press release knocking an onerous tax on... tanning beds.

The new tax adds 10 percent to the cost of tanning services businesses provide. Some 30 million Americans visit a tanning salon at least once a year and 75 percent of the employees and customers are women, according to industry sources.
...
According to this Wall Street Journal article, ObamaCare’s tanning tax is causing all kinds of problems for business owners who provide tanning services as well as other products or those who include tanning services as part of a gym membership.

And they call this America? Can't a man be uncommonly orange without the government trying to make him pay and extra buck for it? Is there an uncommonly weepy metaphor the GOP can use to complain about a tanning tax?

Unfortunately, no amount of sunscreen or Aloe will relieve the pain of the Democrats’ impending 10 percent tax on indoor tanning beds

The pain. The pain. Oh the pain. Does perhaps the former standard bearner and Presidential candidate of the Republicans have a Jersey Shore related pun he could unleash to complain about the tanning tax? Perhaps in a Tweet to Snooki?

@Sn00ki u r right, I would never tax your tanning bed! Pres Obama's tax/spend policy is quite The Situation. but I do rec wearing sunscreen!

SenJohnMcCain.

This is serious business, people! I mean, the outrage! People engaging in a luxury activity that increases their likelyhood of cancer by 74% should not be expected to pay minuscule taxes on that activity in order to pay for health care. Also, why would a Senator with a history of face tumors not want to get outraged over a tax that might decrease the amount of people who develop skin cancer?

Look, GOP... I know your minority leader is a tanning addict, but can't you let his unnatural obsession with looking like a citrus fruit be a personal thing? I mean you seemed to have organized a full court press from your leadership on this and even got the conservative media to go after it. Aren't you supposed to be a serious party concerned about serious issues? Isn't this supposed to be a serious country with adult leaders concerned about important business?

Oh, that's right, it isn't. Carry on then. OOOH THAT TANNING TAX! *shakes fist at sky*

Ominous words

From a NY Times article trying to explain just what the fuck it is the world's political bodies are doing in response to the financial crisis.

The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.

Oh God. They're openly doing the thing they know is wrong and failed spectacularly in the past... but this time they're hoping that whole 1930's decade was a fluke and they'll luck out and be successful this time. Well, if there's one thing that history has taught us it is that if you repeat history exactly, especially bad things, the results will usually turn out different in the end and in no way repeat.

Here's hoping you can remember all those stories your grandparents tried to forcibly tell you about the Depression, I think they'll come in handy. You probably shouldn't have tuned them out.

Them!

Weepin' John Boehner decided it had been a while since he had stepped on his dick in public, so he decided to open his mouth and remind everyone why he shouldn't be allowed to to run a roadside frogurt stand.

In between calling for rebellion, noting that the groundswell for rebellion was greater now than at any point since 1776, calling for the retirement age to be raised to 70 so the GOP can pay for all the wars they want to wage, whining on behalf of BP, crying over health reform, and talkin' big about how he's gonna kill it, he decided to muster up that extra bit of gumption to really shill for the financial industry and the mean nasty government that's trying to regulate them because they destroyed the world economy.

Boehner criticized the financial regulatory overhaul compromise reached last week between House and Senate negotiators as an overreaction to the financial crisis that triggered the recession.

“This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,” Boehner said.

Oh, the poor defenseless financial giants. When will government stop looking out for them 99% of the time and start looking out for them 100% of the time. They're just a tiny little ant being menaced by government.

Yeah, ants.



Nuclear irradiated ants that will kill and eat us all unless we mobilize the government to smash them into irradiated ant paste. Boehner made a pretty apt metaphor... as long as you make it correspond to 50's monster movies. Although if this example were real, our government would decide to partner with the giant nuclear ants to regulate the giant nuclear ants. Then the large irradiated ant-loving Boehner would bitch that we weren't turning enough of our society over to our radioactive Vespoidean overlords.

The largest financial crisis since the Depression. Ants. Someone hit him.

Your future crisis

With the United States about to pass some week kneed financial reform full of loopholes, the rest of the world has come together at the G-20 Summit to tell the world they are prepared to do little else, that everyone agrees that it's time to focus on imaginary problems, and that they are fully committed to not making the financial system less dangerous in any way. Bully for them. 10% unemployment in the US and larger unemployment figures in Europe is just something people should learn to get used to.

But as we see what the world's elites has learned from this crisis (nothing) and their plans going forward (do nothing), one wonders what our financial betters have learned. Other than they can do whatever they want with no consequences, that after they set everyone's money on fire they still have immense credibility and influence with lawmakers, and that no matter what they do and how reckless it is governments will line up to bail out their failures. But we knew that already. They knew that already. I'm talking about what they've learned from this recent crisis to help them make more money creating the next crisis. And just what will that next crisis be?

Simon Johnson thinks he's figured it out: Debt-to-GDP ratios in the developed world. He cites a quote from a high up Goldman Sachs muckity muck. How will they leverage Debt-to-GDP in the emerging world? Through lending to emerging markets and leveraging the fact that debt-to-GDP in the developing world is about half what it is in the developed world. Johnson goes to the trouble of listing why this new plan is dangerous, the problems in their thinking, and the way it will inevitably fail, this time taking down emerging countries with it, but he ties it around the question: What is Goldman Sachs thinking?

I think I have it figured out:


I think that's pretty much the extent of their thinking, even down to the pirate costumes. Maybe there's a variation on this where Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein imagines himself as a cartoon cow with wobbly legs, playing a ukulele in a grass skirt, but I think I pegged it pretty close.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.21

Moritz Resl's 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Alan Greenspan and Paul Krugman got into a economic slap fight over the weekend with competing op-eds. Greenspan arguing we need to focus on debt instead of jobs, Krugman arguing jobs instead of debt. Let's see, do we believe the tired old man who sat at the apex of this crisis unable to see what was going on or do anything about it, or do I believe the guy who just won a Nobel and has been horrifyingly right every step of the way. What's that? Unemployment is hovering at 10% and focusing on the debt by cutting spending will kill more jobs? Gee, hard to see who to listen to on this point.

On that point, the Washington Post looks at how our elected betters' myopic concerns over making minuscule "drop in the bucket" dents in the deficit is taking precedent over, you know, fixing the economy and getting people back to work. No worry about the massive state budget crises, the Senate has to make it look like they're listening to the ill-thought out concerns of voters by being fake concerned about the deficit. So a year from now when we're all eating catfood underneath an abandoned freeway, remember to thank them all for they way they knocked down the deficit by $5 bucks.

After 28 years the Bloody Sunday killings were officially ruled unlawful at the conclusion of a 12 year inquiry by Lord Saville. Apparently shooting the Irish under flimsy pretenses and then claiming they all had guns and you were under attack isn't, in the strictest sense, legal. But hey, they finally got to the bottom of it after three decades. See what you have to look forward to in 2038, Israel?

Simon Johnson looks at all the ways in which the soon to pass and soon to be heralded as a "serious fix to the an unforeseeable and unprecedented crisis" Financial Reform bill fails to do any of the shit it needs to do. Who could have foreseen that catering to banks and Wall Street and treating them as if they had credibility left would result in laws that failed to adress the things that caused the last financial collapse or deal with the fallout? But at least it's called "Financial Reform". They can technically say they passed "Financial Reform". There is that.

On the Bright, Shiny, Happy front, one of the men who helped eradicate smallpox has a message to the world: we'll all be dead in a 100 years, thanks for fucking everything up you soon to be extinct shits. There's a myriad of reasons, but mostly overpopulation and the fact that we're ruining the environment and only engaging in half measures -at best- to address those problems. He's 95, so he'll be dead soon. He just wants us to know that we caused it, we refused to fix it, and we should enjoy a hellish decades of existence that will result in our violent painful extinction. Way to depress everyone on your way out.

The Intertubes has found the only way to listen to the inane tweets and proclamations of the Tea Party set: by making them poot out the butt of a colonial soldier. They call it: Tea Farty.

In closing we give you Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age covering "What, What (In the Butt)."

Your government at work

It's been a long held contention of this blog that the US Senate is where all things good and intelligent go to be made stupid and awful, slowly strangled in an abandoned alley by a cackling horde of willfully negligent septuagenarian bastards. And that's our opinion on a positive day. This can largely be seen in nearly any and all debate on matters of national importance, but is almost always most clearly seen during debates and bills dealing with the attempted economic recovery.

I mean unemployment is only at 10% and it's looking like we're going to enter an entire lost decade of growth.... so who needs to treat any of this with any amount of seriousness? The Senate GOP can keep trying to pull the country down on top of itself with procedural stalling and Senate Democrats can actually be the first group of people in history to die of a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts.

Oh sure, the House has it's moments of horrid futility and stupidity explosions -like, say, when they're attempting to cut growth by $50 billion and cost this country 300,000 jobs in a myopic, ineffective, back-patting, meaningless snit about the deficit- but the Senate really takes the cake when combining large scale inaction and ineffectiveness with small scale fuck yous so petty that they should be delivered by 13 year old girls in text message form. Take the jobs bill the Senate is currently half-assing:

Senate Democrats are exploring whether to eliminate an extra $25 a week in unemployment benefits, part of the economic stimulus legislation passed in 2009, as a way to cut costs and attract Republican votes for a stalled package of tax breaks, tax increases on the affluent and safety-net spending.

Top officials said that change would save billions of dollars over the next six months and could lead to approval of an overall extension of jobless pay by making the legislative package easier to swallow for lawmakers worried about deficit spending.

Now they're just chintzing a couple of bucks out of people so that they can better pass a collection of half-measures that fails to fully address the actual problems this country is experiencing. And they actually want you to believe that knocking $25 bucks out of unemployment benefits is going to make people opposed to actions that might help an actual person, flip head over heels about the prospects of extending the entire program for another couple of months. But hey, I'm sure the deficit hawks and the Blue Dogs will feel good about the minuscule impact they had on the deficit when we're in year ten of a recession. I'm sure taking $25 bucks from the unemployed in the worst economic crisis since the Depression will get those people back on their feet and the economy back in shape in no time.

At least the Roll Down the Window of Your Bentley and Spit At Poor People In the Street Act is stalled in committee.

Business as usual

So you've gone and dumped the entire oil/dinosaur blood contents of the earth into the Gulf of Mexico. One million billion trillion gallons of oil so far and the flow doesn't look to be stopping any time during this calendar year. It's beginning to look like you caused the death of all sea life, ruined the coastal economy of the Gulf states, and have made our elected betters spend in excess of five whole minutes considering that maybe we should make a serious push into renewable sources of energy. What do you do? I mean besides attempt to stop media access to the area and make anyone with a boat sign a confidentiality agreement. You start gearing up to buy Congressmen.

Halliburton’s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it “the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008,” Politico reports. Thirteen of the 14 contributions from May went to Republicans, while seven went to members of Congress who are “on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath”:

About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton’s reelection effort. It was Halliburton’s second-largest donation of the month — topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.

In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.

And that's only one of the three companies legally culpable for the oil spill. I'm sure BP and Transocean, the oil rig company run for and by transsexuals, are doling out the cash as well. In fact, over the last few years BP has doled out nearly $30 million to influence legislation. In fact they've already won a small victory by getting shallow water drillers to be excluded from offshore drilling bans and moratoriums. Because apprently you aren't as big of a dangerous, negligent shitbag if you do your drilling in knee high water. The NYTimes article was notable for some grade A whining from lobbyist shits, complaining that a little massive environmental disaster might affect the industry that caused it. Who woulda thunk it?

Bruce Vincent, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents both deep-sea and shallow-water drillers, said Wednesday that he was concerned about a “domino effect” sweeping through Washington, with new regulations now under discussion threatening to cut oil production, jobs and industry profits.

“It’s amazing to see the impact that one company can have for all sorts of other people,” he said. “When a plane crashes, you don’t just shut down every airline in the fleet until you find out what happened.”

Good point, although I'm struggling at the moment to ever think of a plane crash that rendered a massive body of water a toxic oil dump. And one oil company impacts all the others, because we've all rightly assumed that BP's practices, regulations shirking, shoddy safety, and numerous violations are the industry standard. You guys don't seem to be big on sacrificing a single nickel to maybe make it a tiny bit less certain that all the oil you're drilling doesn't flood into the ocean in a torrent of Biblical proportions.

So in case you were worrying that a little think like the end of all life in the Gulf and oil replacing water in the Gulf was going to cause sweeping changes or our elected betters choosing what's right over money, rest assured the oil companies are gearing up to make sure that doesn't happen. Whew! I was worried there for a minute.

It's the little moments

Long time readers of this blog know that both Sean and I have a great appreciation for those little moments in our political system when the veil is lifted and we get an awful look into all the horrid things our government does that are viewed as acceptable and standard operating procedure.

You know, like the close, almost overtly sexual relationship between our elected betters and our corporate masters on Wall Street. I say "almost' because I find it hard to believe that these doughy, asexual money creatures could take time out of humping piles of bank notes to start in on each other. Well, that's was before we saw them try to sell front row tickets to the pre-orgy celebration party.

A small Wall Street securities firm has teamed up with a lobbyist for the financial services industry to host an all-day event on June 15 -- right in the middle of the conference committee negotiations over the financial reform bill -- that will feature "the KEY House and Senate Conferees and majority and minority Committee staff, as well as leading financial lobbyists covering interchange, banks and major non-banks affected by so-called Wall Street Reform bill," according to an invitation obtained by TPM.
...
The other firm helping to organize the event, according to the email invitation, is Federal Advisory LLC. The registered agent for Federal Advisory LLC is Tim Rupli, according to Virginia corporation records. Rupli is a former aide to Tom DeLay and now a high-powered Republican lobbyist for the payday lending industry and the community banks trade association, among other clients.
...
While the invitation says the event will be on Capitol Hill, it doesn't not specify the exact venue. Rupli's Capitol Hill townhouse on New Jersey Avenue within easy walking distance of the House office buildings next to the Capitol, has been the frequent venue for fund-raising receptions, ranking as the 10th most popular congressional partying spot of 2008.

Aww yeah, come and get down with our financial elite and our government elite. Drinks will be served, party music will be played, and if the mood strikes, you might see Mitch McConnell balls deep in Jamie Dimon before the night is out. Or vice versa. See our leaders physically get it on with banks and financial giants this time, not metaphorically like before. Can you smell the eroticism?

Seems to me to be a waste of money. Why pay to have this get together when government is already doing everything the financial sector wants? Ah well, it's not like these guys are smart with money anyway. I think the past few years have borne that out.

So, if you're up for seeing how things in this country truly work, see pasty white septuagenarian flesh smash together as bizarre opera music plays, and get the stink of Ben-Gay and sex in your nostrils... June 15th at Tim Rupli's is the place. Place your keys in a bowl at the entrance and bring your own creepy masquerade mask. You will be sworn to secrecy at the conclusion of the events you will never be able to unsee, but you'll finally understand how things work. You'll just be killed if you try to explain it. Maybe the haunted look on your face will explain enough.

Compare/Contrast

$60 billion to extend wars that will seemingly never end and don't seem to provide any benefit to the United States? Come right in Mr. War Spending, sit down, the supermodels will be in momentarily for the orgy.

The U.S. Senate approved a $60 billion war-funding measure as the conflict in Afghanistan has surpassed the Iraq war in annual cost and number of troops.

Senators voted 67-28 for the bill, which goes to the House for consideration next month. The Senate rejected a proposal to require President Barack Obama to submit a non-binding report outlining when he plans to end U.S. involvement in the almost nine-year-old Afghan conflict.

$24 billion for unemployed workers and state aid? Go fuck yourself, peasants. Go dig ditches or die in an abandoned train yard or whatever it is you people do.

anxiety over out-of-control budget deficits led House leaders to drop tens of billions of dollars in spending from a separate catchall bill anchored by an extension of jobless benefits.

Confronted with a rebellion by Democratic Blue Dog moderates, House leaders planned to dump overboard $24 billion in aid to states and allow generous health insurance subsidies for laid-off workers to expire. The changes were an effort to round up votes to extend unemployment benefits and renew more than 50 popular tax breaks that expired last year.

God love the Blue Dog Democrats and their concern over deficits. That is to say their concern over deficits when it looks like that money is going to be spent on actual people who actually need it. When it's billions of dollars being spent of wars or boondoggle defense systems with no plans to pay for them, then the Blue Dogs are totally cool with deficit spending. They just will not suffer an American being extended an unemployment benefit in the worst job market in decades.

Nice to know where our priorities are.

Quote of the day

There are certain times when you just well up with pride over the state of American democracy. Like when lobbyists and business leaders talk openly to a newspaper about their "connections", "fundraising", and plans for if the the GOP takes back the House in November and John Boehner becomes speaker. You might otherwise know it as "bribery", "kickbacks", "Using the apparatus of government to fuck over citizens in favor of corporations" and "wanton open corruption." Business as usual.

Several GOP lobbyists said they are advising their clients to try to make inroads with Boehner before the 112th Congress, even though a Republican takeover next year is far from assured.
...
“Being bullish on Republicans in the House is a good investment right now.”

For many lobbyists, that means advising clients to increase their campaign contributions to Republican incumbents — particularly to vulnerable Members whom Boehner has put at the top of his political priority list.

The message from K Street seems to be resonating. The Minority Leader, optimistic about the prospect of taking back the House, is raising money at a fast clip.
...
Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, whom Boehner tapped earlier this year to serve as the chairman of the GOP leadership, said that when he announced Boehner would hold a fundraiser for him in Portland, he noticed an increased interest among his donors about meeting the Republican leader.

“Business leaders are saying, ‘I’d like to meet him,’ ‘I want to meet him,’ ‘I’ve seen him,’ ‘I like him,’” Walden said. “And they know they are not coming for free.”

Splendid. For his part, Boehner has assembled a massive array of lobbyists to run his fundraising efforts an court business leaders, while simultaneously talked about creating the openest and most transparentest Congress ever if he becomes Speaker. Apparently corporations will have to hand over burlap sacks with dollar signs on them on the floor of Congress now.

So... that bodes well. You just love it when a bunch of politicians and lobbyists will talk to a newspaper on the grounds that they really want you to know how well oiled their bribery and kickback machine is should you let them run things.

Politician: "Hey, would anyone like to trade money for access? We're willing to do your bidding in exchange for cash." Corporation: "Sure, we have money and would like access. Here is an incredible sum of money and a list of things we want done." Newspaper: "Isn't this interesting? We will make no comment about how shady this all seems and treat what seems like massive open corruption as business as usual."

Shit, I bet Democrats are still dirty dealing in smoky back rooms. Hah, just kidding. No one who gives money to Democrats gets what they want.

All better now

You may have heard that the Gulf oil spill was an awful environmental disaster, an ecological nightmare, the equivalent of two Exxon Valdezes a week, is 10 times worse than the original 5 time worse than estimate of the original catastrophic spill estimate, is worse than even pessimistic government estimates, and entered the Gulf Loop current and was threatening reefs and the Florida Keys.

But that was before BP CEO Tony Hayward said the spill was "relatively tiny" compared to the "very big ocean" and that they had finally got some kind of partial stopgap measure on the leak to stop it from dumping all that oil into the water. So... all better now. Which is why our elected betters can finally start dealing with the important matters: like making sure the oil industry doesn't have to pay for cleaning up all that oil they spilled.

Even in a Washington as dominated by corporate money as today's, it's not often that you see a lawmaker side with financial backers over the public interest as brazenly as Alaska's senior senator did yesterday.

In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.

Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap.

Ah yes, the old "It'll hurt small business" gambit. I think every law that had to do with any kind of business anywhere in the last hundred years has been attacked as "hurting small business." What a coincidence.

Thankfully Murkowski was there to tell us that this wasn't the time to be talking about an issue like raising liability caps on offshore drilling. No, we need not discuss liability for giant offshore drilling accidents right in the middle of a giant offshore drilling accident. That just doesn't make sense.

So, dear readers, in case you were wondering if there was a limit to which fat stacks of corporate cash and subservience to your corporate masters could ever be overridden by common sense, large scale disasters, or a basic sense of shame; no there isn't. Not even during the height of a crisis, knowing that media attention will be on you. Can you blame her? How else is she going to earn that high paying lobbying job for the API two seconds after she retires? Not by employing any shred of integrity during a Senate career, that's for sure.

For the kids

You know, it's been a while since we've openly mocked our elected betters in Washington for nakedly playing politics with important issues. It must be a few days now since we've done it. But we can only mock them when they give us fresh material. I mean we can't make the stuff up, right? I mean sure, I'd love for our legislative branch to somehow combine politicizing education, disrespect for the sciences, needlessly harming kids, actively trying to dumb down future generations, and add in massive dashes of cheap legislative tricks, political cowardice, and a healthy dose of repressed sexual puritanism, but that kind of stuff just doesn't happen everyday.

Wait. In 3... 2... 1...

In an example of Republican obstructionism rendered beautiful by its simplicity, the GOP yesterday killed a House bill that would increase funding for scientific research and math and science education by forcing Democrats to vote in favor of federal employees viewing pornography.
...
In this case, Republicans included a provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who've been disciplined for viewing pornography at work.

To proceed with the bill and bring it to a final vote, Democrats would have had to vote against the motion to recommit, and against the porn ban.

But they didn't have the stomach for it, and 121 Democrats jumped ship and voted with Republicans to kill the bill.

Eat it kids. "It" being 'Waste or excrement from the digestive tract that is formed in the intestine and expelled through the rectum'. You'd know about that whole process as well as the basic digestive process that would happen after you ate 'it'... if you didn't just have your science and biology curriculum needlessly fucked with by adults, that is. Well, legally they're adults, but in reality they're more childish than you'll ever be my dear, sweet, stupid, stupid children.

Ideally the bill is still able to be brought back up for a vote, but who knows what amendments supporting funds for the perverted arts, motions to support the rape of everyone's mother, and efforts to tack on riders that give away home makeovers and manicures to child murderers will have to be dealt with so that our children will not regress into fearing the fire orb in the sky and eating mud.

Wonderful. In order to look like they don't support the porn, our elected betters choose to support dicking over kids and education, all the while not actually doing anything to make themselves look less like conscienceless assholes and getting nothing done. I think that is the textbook definition of a win-win-win-win scenario. So good we have adults in Washington tackling the important issues in a serious manner.

Cheap Blogging Crutch - 5.6.10

Welcome back, my fiends. I hope you're not still reeling from another exciting day at the dog track. It's times like these when I fail to understand why you investment-minded folk out there don't just bet your paycheck on Papa's Moustache in the 3rd. I suspect the ROI is about the same. Warning: Here Be Linkage.

After some legwork, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan confirmed that in Britain, you can, in fact, vote drunk. At long last, this explains how that country ever found Margaret Thatcher an attractive option.

Today on Don Imus' show, Glenn Beck refused to endorse Arizona batshit insane Republican senate candidate, J.D. Hayworth, agreeing with Imus that Hayworth is a "fat, undisciplined maggot." All this after arguing the other day that the NYPD was right to mirandize Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Can we please get Beck off of whatever medication he is on? I don't want to live in a world where he even comes close to making sense.

A police officer in the 81st precinct of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant surreptitiously recorded fellow officers and superiors between June 2008 and October 2009. The tapes showed a systematic manipulation of crime statistics and civil liberties at the behest of commanding officers that makes The Wire's Baltimore look like Mayberry. Naturally, the NYPD responded by detaining the whistleblowing officer and whisking him off for psychiatric evaluation.

For the past 18 months, the meeting room in Nebraska's Adams County courthouse has been adorned, as is traditional, with portraits of both Gov. Dave Heineman and President Barack Obama. The catch? Obama's portrait was not an official one but this notorious fake. County Supervisor Eldon Orthmann, who is responsible for the photo, has relented and will replace it with one featuring the president in full Kenyan Chieftain garb, drinking heartily from the severed throat of a white Christian infant.

And finally, our intrepid research staff has uncovered a photo of the male prostitute hired by heavy luggage-toting anti-gay zealot George Alan Rekers. It seems Rev. Rekers specifically requested the Mythical Creature Package. (Mythical Creature's Package?)

Guns for terrorists

With the recent Times Square bombing plot foiled and capture of the alleged perpetrator, we are again bombarded with suggestions from our political betters on what to do with such haters of freedom.

They want the terrorists interrogated to the exacting dramatical standards of our top terrorism related TV shows. Gitmo! Under no circumstances are they to be Mirandized or afforded any sort of minor legal protections... even if it helps out intelligence gathering and legal efforts. If they are in fact American citizens, just strip them of that citizenship so we can torture and imprison them easier. Double Gitmo! Smoke them for hours over mesquite chips, thinly slice them, pile them up on rye bread with brown mustard, and eat them... for liberty's sake. It doesn't matter, just make sure these people aren't afforded any discernible legal protection or allow them to be within shouting distance of anything that could be called a Constitutional right.

Well, unless....

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's appeal to what he called "common sense" at a congressional hearing Wednesday morning failed to sway two Republican senators who said that giving the government the ability to block the purchase of guns by suspected terrorists would undermine the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.
...
Admitting that "at first blush" the bill "seems to be an obvious step that we should take," Collins said that many people on the FBI's watchlist don't belong there. "None of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun, but neither should we want to infringe upon a Constitutional right of law-abiding Americans," she said.

Graham described the bill as an instrument of those who would ban guns altogether. "We're talking about a constitutional right here," he said, explaining that he could not support a bill that would force "innocent Americans" to "pay the cost of going to court to get their gun rights back."

Graham wasn't nearly as concerned about rights when he launched into a disquisition on the treatment of American citizens accused of terrorism. "I am all into national security," he said. "I want them to stop reading these guys Miranda rights."

That's right, these terrorists are dangerous, America hating monsters and they should be treated as if they have no legal rights... but it'll be a cold, cold day in hell before you're allowed to infringe on a terrorist's right to by a gun in America. I mean you can sit back all day and listen to GOP lawmakers tell you all the ways in which terrorist suspects aren't really people and aren't covered by any facet of US law, international law, or the Constitution... except when it comes to the Second Amendment. No, the Second clearly has a specific clause about infringing the rights of terrorists.

So remember, no matter how much Mirandizing suspects and treating them as if they had legal rights helps us gain information, it is a practice we should stop. But if say there were a way to stop terrorist suspects from buying guns or at least identify that they were purchasing guns, like say... in March... in Connecticut... a month before they were to attempt to bomb Times Square... we should under no circumstances try to stop it. Because of the Constitutional protections that don't seem to apply when dealing with any other aspect of terrorists rights.

In case you wanted to know how completely owned our elected betters were by the gun lobby... that's how completely owned. They won't even oppose taking guns away from terrorists inside our country. Stay safe!

LBJ Wants a Little More Stride in the Crotch

"Mind the bunghole, son!"

Courtesy of an acquaintance who is planning an LBJ-themed Memorial Day barbecue (yeah, you heard me) and the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, we bring you the following audio gem.

The time is early August, 1964. Congress has just passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Johnson expanded powers to deal with the "threat" posed by North Vietnam. And what is foremost on the Commander-in-Chief's mind at the outset of the most controversial military conflict of the 20th century?

Fuckin' SLACKS, is what. Listen as LBJ orders custom pants from Haggar, making clear they take his "nuts" and "bunghole" into consideration. Seriously, listen all the way through. Johnson even lets a mighty belch rip without breaking conversational stride. Full audio and transcript here.

h/t Dibbes