Where Do We Go from Here?

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, The New York Review of Books

January 13, 2011

Despite what optimists within the White House may believe, the odds are not good for a repeat of 1996, when Bill Clinton made a startling political comeback after suffering a drubbing in the previous midterm elections. Clinton, after all, presided over a booming economy: in the two years prior to the 1996 election, the US economy added more than 5 million jobs, and by November 1996 the unemployment rate was only 5.4 percent. In contrast, Obama presides over an economy that has suffered a severe financial crisis-and recovery from a severe financial crisis is almost always slow and painful, with very high unemployment persisting for years. Professional forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve now predict an average unemployment rate of 8.7 percent in 2012, awful news for a president seeking reelection.

A tough, skillful political team might be able to win even in the face of such economic weakness. But the Obama team has demonstrated neither toughness nor skill. The trouble was apparent right from the beginning. After the 2008 election, Obama had the political winds at his back. Yet rather than bargaining from a position of strength and demanding an economic program adequate to the scale of the economy’s problems, Obama made his goal the working out of a cooperative political process-accommodation and the fantasy of bipartisanship.

And despite warnings from many economists (ourselves included) that the stimulus package that resulted was much too small, Obama engaged in premature triumphalism. In February 2009, he said of the plan:

It is the right size, it is the right scope. Broadly speaking it has the right priorities to create jobs that will jump-start our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.

The only thing missing was a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

…

(Democrats can not count) on Obama himself to lead a comeback. In a dispiriting 60 Minutes interview given after the midterms, he actually seemed to accept Republican smears-blaming himself, not the GOP, for the failure to “maintain the kind of tone that says we can disagree without being disagreeable.” And it’s truly astonishing that as corporate profits hit new records despite mass unemployment, Obama apparently takes seriously accusations that his administration is antibusiness.

Even if Obama were suddenly to find an inner FDR, would anyone notice? His aloofness has become so indelibly registered in voters’ minds that if he tried to change style-even if he wanted to, a big “if”-this would immediately come across as opportunistic. Having trusted and been disappointed by Obama once before, they are very unlikely to give him another chance.

…

And this brings us to our last point. Democrats need to make it clear that if Obama isn’t going to be the leader of the Democratic agenda-and all indications are that he can’t or won’t-they will advance that agenda anyway, with or without his help. They have to be ready to delink their political fate from Obama, and make it clear that they won’t tolerate further undermining of their goals by deluded calls for bipartisanship.

…

How far should delinking from Obama go? There is no obvious contender to mount a primary challenge, which is in itself a testimony to Democratic weakness. But the possibility is clearly there, and both will and should become a reality if Obama follows a path of capitulation.

I’m Not A Witch I’m You



And, I’m Under Investigation

Reporting from Baltimore –Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of a client who has been questioned as part of the investigation. The case, which has been assigned to two federal prosecutors and two FBI agents in Delaware, has not been brought before a grand jury.

When One Plays One Ethnic Group Against Each Other Through The Mass Media  

 

Genocide Happens  

Cote d’Ivoire is “on the brink of genocide,” according to the country’s new UN ambassador appointed by Alassane Ouattara, who is viewed by the UN, European Union, US and African Union as the winner over incumbent Laurent Gbagbo following last month’s presidential election.

Youssoufou Bamba made the remarks after presenting his credentials to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, on Wednesday, making him the first Ouattara government envoy to assume a diplomatic post since the November 28 poll.

Bamba warned that the tug-of-war over the presidency was pushing the West African country to “the brink of genocide”.

“The situation is very serious,” Bamba, 60, told journalists after meeting with Ban in New York.

“Houses have been marked according to your tribe. What will be next? Something should be done.”

 “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away.”



“Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day,”  

PARSONS, Kan. – An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.

That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap.

In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides.

Religious Intolerance    



I’m Sure Your Just “Shocked”    

A LETTER signed by 27 prominent Israeli rabbis’ wives calls on Jewish girls not to go out with Arabs or work in places where Arabs are employed.

The letter states: “There are quite a few Arab workers who give themselves Hebrew names. Yussef turns into Yossi, Samir turns into Sami, and Abed turns into Ami.

“They ask to be close to you, try to find favour with you, and give you all the attention in world. They know how to act with courtesy, as if they really care for you, but their behaviour is only temporary.

Are You Kidding Me?  

 

He Has A Serious Side    

Sometimes laughter really is the best medicine. In America’s angriest political landscape in living memory, where bickering lawmakers pursue self interest ahead of the public good and the corridors of power resound to the word “no”, one public figure proved this week that he stands alone in his capacity to get things done. He is Jon Stewart: comedian, host of The Daily Show and the country’s unofficial satirist-in-chief.

Two months after enticing roughly a quarter of a million people to his “Rally to Restore Sanity”, and a month after a poll pegged him as the “most trusted figure” in TV news, Stewart, 48, has successfully concluded a campaign to steer a piece of legislation called the James Zadroga Act through the US Senate. In doing so, he scored a signal victory against Republican members of the highest legislative body of the most powerful nation on earth.

We Don’t Believe Your lying Eyes Or Your Words Either  



What Was That You Said?

An activist decapitated, a journalist killed, a lawyer beaten, a magazine closed and an embarrassing legal case mysteriously settled out of court. In the past few days China’s netizens have dug their claws into a smorgasbord of crimes and controversies in which the only constant is a reluctance to believe the official version of events.

Such is the scale of the trust deficit and the power of online opinion that police took the remarkable step today of welcoming citizen investigators to help investiagte one of China’s most high-profile cases.

Following a huge internet outcry, they will look into the grisly death of Qian Yunhui, a villager whose neck was severed by the wheels of a truck on a quiet rural road in Xinyi, Zhejiang province, on Saturday.

Broadcast?  Bwahhahhahhahhah.

A good night to write diaries.

I foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she’d simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that’s a worse case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.

• ABC Family– Gone in Sixty Seconds
• AMC– Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part 2
• Bravo– Top Chef marathon
• Discovery– Mythbusters marathon
• ESPN– College Throwball, Texas Bowl: Baylor v. Illinois, Alamo Bowl: Arizona v. Oklahoma State
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Georgetown @ Notre Dame, Marquette @ Vanderbilt
• Food– Dinner Impossible
• FX– S.W.A.T. x 2
• History– Modern Marvels (premier)
• Lifetime– Raising Helen
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer marathon
• Nick– Curious George
• Oxygen– Practical Magic x 2
• Style– When a Man Loves a Woman
• Turner Classic– The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit
• TNT– Bones marathon
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (with premier thank goodness)
• USA– Juno

Later-

• AMC– Back to the Future Part 3
• Comedy– Bender’s Big Score
• Oxygen– The Craft
• Turner Classic– The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets

Dave in repeats from 12/16.  Conan in repeats from 11/16.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Biff Tannen Museum! Dedicated to Hill Valley’s #1 Citizen. And America’s greatest living folk hero. The one and only Biff Tannen. Of course we’ve all heard the legend, but who is the man? Inside you will learn how Biff Tannen became one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Learn the amazing history of the Tannen family, starting with his great-grandfather, Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen, fastest gun in the West. See Biff’s humble beginnings and how a trip to the race track on his 21st Birthday made him a millionaire overnight. Share in the excitement of a fabulous winning streak that earned him the nickname “The Luckiest Man on Earth.” Learn how Biff parlayed that lucky winning streak into the vast empire called Biffco. Discover how, in 1979, Biff successfully lobbied to legalize gambling and turned Hill Valley’s dilapidated courthouse into a beautiful casino-hotel!

I just wanna say one thing! God Bless America.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Bloomberg takes flak over New York storm response

by Paola Messana, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 12:33 pm ET

Today’s Top Story is dedicated to TheMomCat.

2 West Africa struggles to resolve Ivory Coast crisis

by Ola Awoniyi, AFP

2 hrs 58 mins ago

3 West Africa delivers ultimatum to Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo

by Dave Clark, AFP

Tue Dec 28, 6:50 pm ET

4 W.African defence chiefs plan I.Coast intervention

by Ola Awoniyi, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 11:48 am ET

5 Suicide bombers kill four in Iraq police station

AFP

Wed Dec 29, 1:09 pm ET

6 England crush Australia to retain Ashes

by Robert Smith, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 5:17 am ET

7 China milk activist freed from jail, supporters worry

by Marianne Barriaux, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 1:12 am ET

8 Sudan’s Bashir vows to aid ‘brotherly south’ after vote

by Simon Martelli, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 12:14 am ET

9 Mayor Bloomberg under fire for handling of blizzard

By Bernd Debusmann Jr., Reuters

43 mins ago

10 China’s rare earths export cut raises trade concerns

By James Regan, Reuters

2 hrs 27 mins ago

11 California woman arrested in insider trading case

By Jonathan Stempel and Emily Chasan, Reuters

9 mins ago

12 Allstate sues BofA and Mozilo over Countrywide losses

By Jonathan Stempel, Reuters

Wed Dec 29, 8:21 am ET

13 Home foreclosures jump in 3rd quarter: regulators

By Dave Clarke, Reuters

Wed Dec 29, 1:02 pm ET

14 More talks needed in ICoast crisis: ECOWAS envoys

By Ange Aboa and Bate Felix, Reuters

Tue Dec 28, 5:55 pm ET

15 AP-GfK Poll: Baby boomers fear outliving Medicare

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and JENNIFER AGIESTA, Associated Press

1 hr 24 mins ago

Another Liars Poll-

Way to force the answer you want assholes.

16 3 suicide bombers used to kill tenacious Iraqi cop

By BARBARA SURK, Associated Press

1 hr 26 mins ago

17 Feds probe Christine O’Donnell’s campaign spending

By BEN NUCKOLS and MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press

12 mins ago

18 Maine ski area: Lift had problem before failure

By GLENN ADAMS, Associated Press

6 mins ago

19 NFL fines Favre $50K for ‘failure to cooperate’

By DAVE CAMPBELL, AP Sports Writer

1 hr 18 mins ago

20 BP’s spill costs look manageable 8 months later

By CHRIS KAHN, AP Energy Writer

Wed Dec 29, 12:04 pm ET

21 Retiring senator spurs action on Indian issues

By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 1:42 pm ET

22 Belgian activist priest admits sexual abuse

By GABRIELE STEINHAUSER, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 9:29 am ET

23 Friends: 8 killed in NO fire musicians, artists

By KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 3:20 am ET

24 Neighbors put Ivory Coast military option on hold

By MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

4 mins ago

25 Pakistan’s ruling party in crisis negotiations

By MUNIR AHMED, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 10:46 am ET

26 Hawaii’s governor wants to reveal Obama birth info

By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press

Tue Dec 28, 9:34 pm ET

27 Americans turn to technology to control impulses

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

2 hrs 11 mins ago

28 Nissan Juke is definitely different

By ANN M. JOB, For The Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 12:33 pm ET

29 US bison ranchers struggle to meet consumer demand

By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 10:36 am ET

30 Remote NYC neighborhoods more isolated by storm

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press

Wed Dec 29, 3:30 am ET

31 E-mails, letters favor pardon for Billy the Kid

By SUE MAJOR HOLMES, Associated Press

Tue Dec 28, 8:02 pm ET

32 New laws may not be on the books for very long

By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

Tue Dec 28, 3:23 pm ET

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

2011: A Brave New Dystopia

Chris Hedges, December 27, 2010

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.



[snip]

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

And the hopeful and cheerful truth is:

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

“when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity“?

Our plutocrats would do well to take heed.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Mikhail Gorbachev: The Senate’s Next Task: Ratifying the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

JUST a few weeks ago, the fate of the New Start nuclear arms treaty seemed to hang by a thread. But since last week, when the United States Senate ratified the treaty, which reduces the size of the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, we can speak of a serious step forward for both countries. I hope this will energize efforts to take the next step to a world free of nuclear weapons: a ban on all nuclear testing.

In the final stretch, President Obama put his credibility and political capital on the line to achieve ratification. That a sufficient number of Republican senators put the interests of their nation’s security, and the world’s, above party politics is encouraging.

The success was not without cost. In return for the treaty’s ratification, Mr. Obama promised to allocate tens of billions of dollars in the next few years for modernizing the American nuclear weapons arsenal, which is hardly compatible with a nuclear-free world.

William Hartung: New START, Next Steps

The Senate’s 71-26 vote to ratify the New START agreement was a victory for the Obama administration, key members of Congress, the arms control and disarmament movement, and ultimately, all of us, as it makes the world a safer place. . . . .

But that was then and this is now. The battle to define the meaning of New START’s ratification has already begun. For Robert Kagan, writing in the Washington Post, the treaty is “good news” and a pillar of a “sound American foreign and defense policy.” But his idea of a sound policy includes escalation in Afghanistan, a tougher line on China, and an “adequate” (which for him means larger) defense budget. This is what he wants the coalition that came together to ratify New START to work towards next. More directly, he wants more money for missile defense — he derides Republicans for using missile defense as a “talking point” and asks whether “the next, more Republican Congress will put its money where its mouth is” by pressing for more missile defense funding.

Charles Krauthammer is on the case as well. While acknowledging that New START — along with his tax deal and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — marks a political victory for President Obama, he’s still fixated on missile defense. He criticizes New START and the surrounding debate for its “gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry.”

Unni Karunakara: Haiti: where aid failed

Why have at least 2,500 people died of cholera when there are about 12,000 NGOs in the country?

Haiti should be an unlikely backdrop for the latest failure of the humanitarian relief system. The country is small and accessible and, following last January’s earthquake, it hosts one of the largest and best-funded international aid deployments in the world. An estimated 12,000 non-governmental organisations are there. Why then, have at least 2,500 people died of cholera, a disease that’s easily treated and controlled?

I recently went to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and found my Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleagues overwhelmed, having already treated more than 75,000 cholera cases. We and a brigade of Cuban doctors were doing our best to treat hundreds of patients every day, but few other agencies seemed to be implementing critical cholera control measures, such as chlorinated water distribution and waste management. In the 11 months since the quake, little has been done to improve sanitation across the country, allowing cholera to spread at a dizzying pace.

Ten days after the outbreak hit Port-au-Prince, our teams realised the inhabitants of Cité Soleil still had no access to chlorinated drinking water, even though aid agencies under the UN water-and-sanitation cluster had accepted funds to ensure such access. We began chlorinating the water ourselves. There is still just one operational waste management site in Port-au-Prince, a city of three million people.

Unni Karunakara is the president of the International Council of Médecins Sans Frontières

Amy Goodman: ‘The Combeback Kid’ and the Kids Who Won’t

President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law during the lame-duck session of Congress and was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” amid a flurry of fawning press reports. In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. history, and 2010 has seen the highest number of U.S. and NATO soldiers killed.

As of this writing, 497 of the reported 709 coalition fatalities in 2010 were U.S. soldiers. The website iCasualties.org has carefully tracked the names of these dead. There is no comprehensive list of the Afghans killed. But one thing that’s clear: Those 497 U.S. soldiers, under the command of the “Comeback Kid,” won’t be coming back.

Ralph Nader: Pharmaceutical Industry Fraud

The corporate defrauding of taxpayers (eg. Medicaid and Medicare) and prescription drugs with skyrocketing prices was the subject of a report by Public Citizen’s Dr. Sidney Wolfe and his associates (see citizen.org).

Dr. Wolfe’s team compiled a total of 165 federal and state settlements since 1991 totaling $19.8 billion in penalties. A key finding is that the drug industry’s penalties under the Federal False Claims Act exceed even those assessed against the overcharging defense industry for fraud.

Before we become overly impressed with the cumulative amount of the penalties, specialists in corporate crime law enforcement believe that adding more federal cops on the corporate crime beat, backed by a determined law and order Justice Department with White House backing, would have greatly increased the number of cases and imposition of penalties on these drug industry giants.

John Nichols: Cheney’s $250-Million ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card

What’s the going rate for getting a former vice president off the hook in a major criminal case that involves charges of government corruption and raises concerns about violent wrongdoing and even murder?

If you’re Dick Cheney, it’s roughly $250 million.

That’s the amount that Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR Inc. are reported, by Nigerian officials and international observers, to have paid to get the government of the African country to drop bribery charges against the former corporate CEO and other Halliburton employees and operatives.

Top Nigerian lawyers and newspapers are objecting, and rightly so.

The charges against Cheney and his colleagues go far beyond the usual corporate corruption.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Filibuster Reform At Last?

As the lame-duck session drew to a close, progressives were reminded of the capacity of Congress to accomplish important things but also of what we are giving up as a new session begins. In the House, Democrats have lost their majority, and will be dealing with the possibility of John Boehner and Eric Cantor wielding their new power to do real harm and undo real progress. In the Senate, Democrats will maintain their majority, though that may be little consolation. With a loss of five Democratic Senate seats, the caucus finds itself seven votes-and many miles away-from the ability to stop the filibuster.

Considering the damage the filibuster has done over the past two years, our new circumstances are, indeed, distressing. Back when Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the Senate, he needed to file for cloture to end a filibuster only once. During President Obama’s first two years, Harry Reid filed for cloture 84 times. To put that in perspective, the filibuster was used more in 2009 than in the 1950s and 1960s combined.

Sometimes it seems to me that all I write about is Economics, but I do have other interests.  Alas, pitchers and catchers don’t report until February 13th and no Formula One until March 11th.

But there are other things happening that we shouldn’t forget, indeed that’s one of the things the Versailles Villagers count on is our having a short attention span.  Fortunately the Tubz are here to remind us of the dim distant past, say April 20th, 2010.

Taint Part 1.

Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

‘It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,’ toxicologist says

By Kari Huus, MSNBC

12/27/2010 6:04:49 AM ET

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing – examining fewer samples but more comprehensively – shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.

…

“What we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,” contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smith’s team. “We now have a sufficient number of samples to provide FDA with probable cause to include such testing, really. They need to go back and test some of their archived samples as well.”

…

Their approach draws on the work of scientists from industry, government and academia who banded together in the 1990s to develop guidelines for public health officials and environmental engineers faced with petroleum-related exposure and contamination. The work of the U.S.-funded Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group was part of a flurry of research that occurred in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

…

“What gives us confidence that we are finding oil in these samples is that we are using multiple lines of evidence,” he said. “We are finding – even in metabolized samples – a lot of matches to BP oil.”

Sawyer and Kaltofen began finding high levels of TPH in seawater and sediment in June. Many scientists had previously expressed concerns that the heavy use of chemical dispersants by BP to break up giant oil slicks would lock the contaminants in the water column, making them more available to marine life.

“From there you can reasonably predict that there are going to be more and more findings in the food chain,” said Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute. Shaw, who is not a member of Smith’s scientific team, is one of 14 scientists tapped for the independent DOI Strategic Sciences Working Group to dissect the oil spill consequences and make policy recommendations to the agencies. She has been a vocal opponent of the heavy use of dispersants throughout the response.

“What we’re seeing now is plausible evidence from independent labs that – just as we thought – there’s oil in the food web, and here’s where we’re finding it,” said Shaw.

…

“We are taking this situation seriously,” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the gulf’s seafood supply.”

Bullshit.

The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece on the final hours of the BP Deepwater Blowout Disaster, which the whiney Galtian Gatekeepers at Associated Press claim is not a scoop though they don’t dispute it’s original reporting.

Who cares you crybabies?

Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours

By DAVID BARSTOW, DAVID ROHDE and STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times

Published: December 25, 2010

It has been eight months since the Macondo well erupted below the Deepwater Horizon, creating one of the worst environmental catastrophes in United States history. With government inquiries under way and billions of dollars in environmental fines at stake, most of the attention has focused on what caused the blowout. Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem.

…

What emerges is a stark and singular fact: crew members died and suffered terrible injuries because every one of the Horizon’s defenses failed on April 20. Some were deployed but did not work. Some were activated too late, after they had almost certainly been damaged by fire or explosions. Some were never deployed at all.

…

The paralysis had two main sources, the examination by The Times shows. The first was a failure to train for the worst. The Horizon was like a Gulf Coast town that regularly rehearsed for Category 1 hurricanes but never contemplated the hundred-year storm. The crew members, though expert in responding to the usual range of well problems, were unprepared for a major blowout followed by explosions, fires and a total loss of power.

They were also frozen by the sheer complexity of the Horizon’s defenses, and by the policies that explained when they were to be deployed.

Finally, I mentioned earlier that Shareholder Democracy is a joke.  The only way to assert your Contract Rights as a Shareholder is to sue-

New York, Ohio Pensions to Lead Plaintiffs in BP Investor Case Over Spill

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg News

Dec 29, 2010 12:01 AM ET

U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison in Houston named New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Ohio State Attorney General Richard Cordray, who head their states’ public employee pension funds, as lead plaintiffs for investors who bought either BP common stock or American depositary receipts from June 2005 to June 2010.

Ellison also named four individual investors as lead plaintiffs for a smaller class of investors who bought common shares of London-based BP or ADRs from March 2009 to April 20 of this year, the date the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, sparking the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

While the sub-class of investors claim that BP’s leadership made misleading statements about drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico in the months before the rig explosion, the state pension funds “argue more generally that BP made fraudulent statements between 2005 and 2010 about its safety precautions in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere,” Ellison said in yesterday’s order.

The New York and Ohio funds also claim substantial losses from BP ADRs purchased several weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, a timeframe not covered by the complaint of the smaller group of investors, Ellison said. For six weeks after the blast, the funds claim “BP intentionally understated the oil flow rate in an attempt” to diminish harm to the company, lawyers for one of the institutional funds said in court papers.

Good, because you’re arrogant, greedy, narcissistic, assholes who broke the law and should be in jail.  Grow up you crybaby Galts.

Obama & Wall St.: Still Venus & Mars

By: Ben White, Politico

December 28, 2010 04:33 AM EST

(P)olls suggest most Americans believe Obama has handled the titans of Wall Street with an exceedingly light touch. He supported the deeply unpopular $700-billion bank bailout, pushed a financial reform package that stopped short of breaking up the biggest behemoths and, just this month, signed off on tax cuts for the wealthiest and continued low rates on capital gains and dividends.

And, of course, big-time bonuses at bailed-out banks are back, even as average Americans continue to get tossed out of their homes, corporate America has turned in its most profitable quarter in history and the stock market is at a two-year high.

…

Their complaints fell along similar lines: Obama and the White House don’t understand how capital markets work, don’t like people who make a lot of money and relish using Wall Street as a whipping boy to score points with the left.

…

“You would really have to go back to 1934 to find a time when Wall Street was this angry at an administration following a crisis that was largely of Wall Street’s own making,” said Charles Geisst, a financial historian and professor at Manhattan College. “Back then, Wall Street basically went on strike and would not issue bonds for corporations. They stomped their feet like little kids. The same thing is happening now.”

But, as Geisst noted, this is not 1934. Not even close. Big banks are not getting broken up. Nothing Obama has done equates to having created the Securities and Exchange Commission.

…

(W)hat about the fact that “community organizer” Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, rammed through an extension of all the Bush tax cuts over howls from the left and is just as much a card-carrying member of the bohemian bourgeoisie as any Wall Street banker?

…

But Geisst also suggested the shock and disdain is something of a pose, a feint to fight off greater re-regulation.

“Their best defense here has been incredulity,” he said. “Wall Street just pretends they don’t understand what all the fuss is about and can’t believe how they are being talked about and hope that their incredulity will translate into softer treatment, which is exactly what happened here.”

Out of Lehman’s Ashes Wall Street Gets Most of What It Wants

By Christine Harper, Bloomberg News

Dec 28, 2010 12:01 AM ET

The U.S. government, promising to make the system safer, buckled under many of the financial industry’s protests. Lawmakers spurned changes that would wall off deposit-taking banks from riskier trading. They declined to limit the size of lenders or ban any form of derivatives. Higher capital and liquidity requirements agreed to by regulators worldwide have been delayed for years to aid economic recovery.

“We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem,” said John Reed, 71, a former co-chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc., who estimated only 25 percent of needed changes have been enacted. “I’m astounded because we basically dropped the world’s biggest economy because of an error in bank management.”

…

U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in the largest bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve and government provided unprecedented support to insurance company American International Group Inc. as well as nine of the largest banks. Obama, who raised $15 million on Wall Street, promised that his administration would “crack down on the culture of greed and scheming” that he said led to the financial crisis.

While Obama vowed to change the system, he filled his economic team with people who helped create it.

….

Even when changes were advocated by people who couldn’t be characterized as radical populists, their ideas were dismissed as unrealistic, misinformed, advancing ulterior motives or damaging to U.S. competitiveness.

Such tactics helped bat back suggestions from billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charles Munger that regulators ban purchases of so-called naked credit-default swaps — contracts that allow speculators to profit if a debt issuer defaults.

…

A suggestion that banks deemed too big to fail should be broken up or made small enough to fail — an idea backed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and hedge-fund manager David Einhorn — also failed to win support from U.S. policy makers, as bank executives argued that size alone didn’t make a company risky and that it could be essential for banks to compete.

…

Even before Obama took office in January 2009, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker, an economic adviser to the president-elect, was calling for clear distinctions between banks that take deposits and make loans and those that engage in riskier capital markets businesses. The recommendation, a modern version of Glass-Steagall, was put forward in a report by the Group of 30, an organization of current and former central bankers, financial ministers, economists and financiers whose board Volcker chairs.

…

(I)n areas that weren’t technical, such as bonuses, the financial industry was able to resist tough regulation.

With polls showing strong popular support for limits on pay, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pressed for a tax on banker bonuses and one on financial transactions to deter speculative trading.

Obama didn’t go that far. Instead, the administration appointed Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to review pay for the 100 top executives at firms receiving “exceptional assistance” from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Feinberg ordered cuts at Bank of America, Citigroup and AIG, as well as at two bankrupt car companies and their finance divisions.

…

In a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted Dec. 4 through Dec. 7, 71 percent of Americans said big bonuses should be banned this year at Wall Street firms that took taxpayer bailouts, and 17 percent said bonuses above $400,000 should be subject to a one-time 50 percent tax. Only 7 percent of the respondents said they consider bonuses a reflection of Wall Street’s return to health and an appropriate incentive.

…

Reed, the former Citigroup executive, said he didn’t understand why lawmakers gave so much credit to arguments made by financial-industry participants whose job it is to put the interests of their shareholders above any concern for the safety of the financial system.

“I’m surprised that the people in Washington think that the stockholders are the people that they should protect,” Reed said. “It would seem to me that the people who should be protected are the overall banking system and the many, many, many companies that depend on it.”

And the fact of the matter is that their fraudulent criminal practices DON’T benefit the shareholders whose concerns are routinely ignored and overidden by Boards of Directors composed entirely of cronies of Management.  Shareholder Democracy is a joke.

These thieves don’t care about anyone but themselves.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

December 29 is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are two days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre took place near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Cankpe Opi Wakpala) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

In the years prior to the Massacre, the U.S. Government continued to coerce the Lakota into signing away more of their lands. The large bison herds, as well as other staple species of the Sioux diet, had been driven nearly to extinction. Congress failed to keep its treaty promises to feed, house, clothe and protect reservation lands from encroachment by settlers and gold miners; as well as failing to properly oversee the Indian Agents. As a result there was unrest on the reservations.

On December 28, the day before the massacre, , a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk’s (Big Foot) band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them 5 miles westward (8 km) to Wounded Knee Creek where they made camp.

The rest of the 7th Cavalry Regiment arrived led by Colonel James Forsyth and surrounded the encampment supported by four Hotchkiss guns.

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle claiming he had paid a lot for it. A scuffle over Black Coyote’s rifle escalated and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry opening firing indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers. Those few Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking troopers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.

By the time it was over, at least 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux had been killed and 51 wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five troopers also died, and thirty-nine were wounded (6 of the wounded would also die). It is believed that many were the victims of friendly fire, as the shooting took place at close range in chaotic conditions.

More than 80 years after the massacre, beginning on February 27, 1973, Wounded Knee was the site of the Wounded Knee incident, a 71-day standoff between federal authorities and militants of the American Indian Movement.

The site has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

 1170 – Thomas Becket: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: 3,500 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia without firing a shot.

1786 – French Revolution: The Assembly of Notables is convened.

1812 – The USS Constitution under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures the HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three hour battle.

1813 – British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812.

1835 – The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1845 – According with International Boundary delimitation, U.S.A annexes the Mexican state of Texas, following the Manifest Destiny doctrine. For others, the Republic of Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.

1851 – The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.

1860 – The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS Warrior is launched.

1876 – The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster occurs, leaving 64 injured and 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio.

1890 – United States soldiers kill more than 200 Oglala Lakota people with four Hotchkiss guns in the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1911 – Sun Yat-sen becomes the provisional President of the Republic of China; he formally takes office on January 1, 1912.

1911 – Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty.

1930 – Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s presidential address in Allahabad introduces the Two-Nation Theory and outlines a vision for the creation of Pakistan.

1934 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.

1939 – First flight of the Consolidated B-24.

1940 – World War II: In The Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, killing almost 200 civilians.

1949 – KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

1959 – The Lisbon Metro begins operation.

1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology.

1965 – Filming began on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in England.

1966 – The Beatles start the recording session that would become the hit single Penny Lane at Abbey Road Studio.

1972 – An Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 (a Lockheed Tristar) crashes on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101.

1975 – A bomb explodes at La Guardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and injuring 74.

1989 – Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

1992 – Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, tries to resign amidst corruption charges, but is then impeached.

1996 – Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union sign a peace accord ending a 36-year civil war.

1997 – Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation’s 1.25 million chickens to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.

1998 – Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million lives.

2001 – A fire at the Mesa Redonda shopping center in Lima, Peru, kills at least 291.

2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

Holidays and observances

   * Christian Feast Day:

         o Thomas Becket

         o Trophimus of Arles

   * Constitution Day (Ireland)

   * The fifth day of Christmas (Western Christianity)