Motley Moose – Archive

At last some progressives are awakening to the political reality of our economic condition:

Nothing in this year’s exit polling hurt more than this:

Got that? Of the 35 percent who think Wall Street is to blame for our economic problems, 57 percent voted Republican – the party that does nothing but carry water for Wall Street.

Kos – Get Wall Street out of the White House Daily Kos 18 Nov 10

Yeah.  But what makes Democrats so different?  Well…  Not much, it seems:

…people think there is no difference between the parties when it comes to the rich and powerful.  And why should they?  Obama’s finance team is essentially a branch office of Goldman Sachs and company.

Kos – Get Wall Street out of the White House Daily Kos 18 Nov 10

Time to get serious, folks.  And big decision time for Obama.  I think Kos has got this right:

Here’s the bottom line – Obama and the Democrats need to repair their relationship with voters.  They can either focus on that, and the hell with Wall Street’s hurt feefees, or we’re headed for a Republican trifecta in the White House, Senate, and House in 2012.

Kos – Get Wall Street out of the White House Daily Kos 18 Nov 10

The next president will be the one who has convinced a nation of confused and angry voters that he or she is going to lead an administration which will put a stop to this nonsense, and let the chips fall where they may.

What is frustrated that no one has fixed the economy or created jobs, but feels good about nothing happening for the next few things, and thinks Congress should set the agenda even though they won’t compromise with President Obama?

Several news outlets are reporting that Palestinian blogger Waleed Hasayin is facing life in prison for insulting Islam and promoting atheism online.

But many people in Qalqilya seem convinced that this Facebook apostate is none other than a secretive young man who spent seven hours a day in the corner booth of a back-street hole-in-the-wall here. Until recently the man, Waleed Hasayin, in his mid-20s, led a relatively anonymous existence as an unemployed graduate in computer science who helped out a few hours a day at his father’s one-chair barber shop. Several acquaintances described him as an “ordinary guy” who prayed at the mosque on Fridays.

But since the end of October Mr. Hasayin has been detained at the local Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters, suspected of being the blasphemous blogger who goes by the name Waleed al-Husseini. The case has drawn attention to thorny issues like freedom of expression in the Palestinian Authority, for which insulting religion is considered illegal, and the cultural collision between a conservative society and the Internet.

New York Times

This diary is guaranteed to cheer you up… How?

Firstly, as Americans, you ought to know that there are many European countries who have responded in an even worse fashion to even more parlous economic woes. Secondly, there’s always the immense intellectual satisfaction of “I told you so” when exploring the further disastrous ramifications of our global financial system.

Even if you’re facing unemployment, surveying  your recently repossessed house, is there at least some residual bleak satisfaction in saying “I was right”?

Follow me below the fold for an international schadenfreudefest (™ Strummerson)

   

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

The mid-term elections entailed a number of changes in California. Here are some of the implications:

A Republican Wave That Did Not Reach California

While Republicans did extremely well nationwide yesterday, California Republicans had reason to be disappointed. Republican campaigns in the senatorial and gubernatorial races, seemingly competitive, ended up falling far short of victory. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman lost by double-digits, while Republican senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina barely cracked the single digits.

More below.

Today, the New York Times reports: Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S.

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

This report, uh, reportedly details the triumphs and travails of Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.  People have long acknowledged the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi scientists with regard to postwar intelligence, but per the NY Times, “this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.”

For decades, stuff like this has made great fodder for conspiracy theorists, who like to suggest that US collaboration with Nazi technokrauts after WWII marked the beginning of fascist domination of the upper echelons of the US establishment and the military-industrial complex.

OK. So firedoglake has compiled nominations to primary Obama.  It’s an awesome list!!! (See below the fold).

Here’s a weekend game.  Let’s put our own list together.  Out of the FDL nominations, I’m particularly interested in the notions of a Spitzer/Hagel 2012 campaign, or a Clooney/Affleck fall back.

But my first choice would be two names that that crowd failed to anoint for consideration: A Snoop Dog/Floyd Landis ticket.  Check the list below.  Whaddya think?  Other ideas?  How about David Blaine and some anonymous mathematician from, say, Stanford?   Mark Wahlberg and Lady GaGa?

so the White House may compromise on the Bush Tax Cuts. Obviously…the elections brought a Republican majority in the House. An new AP poll says 53% of Americans think we should keep the tax cuts on everyone.

But when news broke on the notoriously wrong Huffington Post that David Axelrod sorta, kinda, maybe hinted at the possibility that perhaps the White House would compromise on tax cuts, Blogistan erupted in furor, you’d think this is the first time we’re hearing this.  

It would have probably been fair to say of Sarah Palin that until a few days ago ‘policy wonk’ would have been an unlikely description, love her or loathe her, of any facet of her complex relationship with American politics.

But now this:

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities.  The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds.  And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this?  We’re printing it out of thin air.

Sarah Palin via Robert Costa- Palin to Bernanke: ‘Cease and Desist’ National Review 7 Nov 10

That’s very interesting on a lot of levels.  The piece is coherent and sober and, more importantly, it is aimed directly at a weak point in the current administration’s monetary policy and an electoral vulnerability in the allegiances of establishment Republicans in the newly constituted House of Representatives.  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the champion of this recently announced second round of ‘quantitative easing,’ promised Congress on 3 June 2009 that the Federal Reserve would not ‘monetise the debt‘ of the US government, in other words just print money “out of thin air.”  But that seems to be exactly what we are now proposing to do and there are dissenting opinions within the Federal Reserve system itself:

For the next eight months, the nation’s central bank will be monetizing the federal debt.

This is risky business. We know that history is littered with the economic carcasses of nations that incorporated this as a regular central bank practice.  So how can the [‘quantitative easing’] decision made last Wednesday be justified?

Richard W Fischer – Recent Decisions of the Federal Open Market Committee: A Bridge to Fiscal Sanity? Federal Reserve of Dallas 8 Nov 10

So which is it?  Well, that all depends on whose telling the story.  But it’s already a done deal.