Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi

The "founding fathers" and "domestic dissidents" of the MEK have been removed from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Quelle surprise.

They've been working at this for at least the last five years, the effort mainly driven by typical greenbaiting suspects like Max Boot,  Daniel Pipes, and Rudy Giuliani, plus one Alireza Jafarzadeh (who I pointed out back in 2007 as a possible successor to Achmed "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" Chalabi. Evidently I wasn't alone in making this link.).

Which I guess means under the impeccable logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", a group of Stalinist Marxist Islamists who were supported and funded by Saddam Hussein are now perfectly okay with valiant defenders of Western values and freedom. As well, I imagine it strengthens the hand of Jafarzadeh, who's apparently been one of the prime people flogging the "IRAN WILL HAVE NUKES ANY DAY NOW" line since at least 2005, and continuing today as a "commentator" for FAUX News.  

Glenn Greenwald has a few words about the MEK:

What makes this effort all the more extraordinary are the reports that MEK has actually intensified its terrorist and other military activities over the last couple of years. In February, NBC News reported, citing US officials, that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by [MEK]" as it is "financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service". While the MEK denies involvement, the Iranian government has echoed these US officials in insisting that the group was responsible for those assassinations. NBC also cited "unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran". 

In April, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that the US itself has for years provided extensive training to MEK operatives, on US soil (in other words, the US government provided exactly the "material support" for a designated terror group which the law criminalizes). Hersh cited numerous officials for the claim that "some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today." The MEK's prime goal is the removal of Iran's government.

Despite these reports that the MEK has been engaged in terrorism and other military aggression against Iran - or, more accurately: likely because of them - it was announced on Friday the US State Department will remove MEK from its list of terrorist organizations.

 Thus we see that oodles and oodles of money, judiciously directed, will fund even the most hypocritical Realpolitik while those without proper lobbying are prosecuted.

And thus we creep all the closer to yet another war.

WE ARE NOT THIS DAMN STUPID

Oh. Oh, man, where to fucking begin?

To start off with, some personal indulgence.

The corporation I had trusted not to be Wal-Mart has tossed me out on my ear and left me to the tender mercies of bureaucratic hell, after thoughtfully screwing me out of my medical coverage, after lying to me and saying I was covered to the end of the month, and my accumulated vacation hours. (CHOKE ON THOSE 10.5 VACATION DAYS, YOU BASTARDS.) So now the whole vexed question of aid for the needy comes home in a big way, given I'm less the 99% now and more the 9.6%

I go downtown to the Department of Employment and Workforce (Orwell-esque and ungrammatical for the win) and the line merely to get told where to go is out the door, doors propped open letting the precious air-conditioned indoor climate bleed out. How much of my taxes are going to fund that bullshit? Inside it's like a refugee camp, which I suppose is a better analogy than I thought it was, given the class war we're in. And are evidently losing.


This in the richest, most powerful country on God's grey Earth. Hi, you fucked up, get in line and fill out these forms and shut up and wait.

It's the waiting that kills. Waiting to see if you're eligible for benefits, waiting to hear back on those resumes you've sent out that seem to have disappeared into the void, waiting for the pension company to get around to mailing you your check for your 401K you had to cash out. "Significant penalties for early withdrawal", but for fuck's sake, you need money to live on. You can't pay your utility bills with promises.

Whee, let's apply for public assistance. This should be fun and easy, if you ignore the fact that a system which gave me migraines when I had to deal with it back in 1993 is now even more overburdened and poorly funded. I suppose one solution would be to use the applicants for assistance to help process requests, if it weren't for the fact that it might cost money and the federal and state scumbags who allocate the money would rather die horrible deaths than see funds go to "the unproductive". Also ignore the fact that the system is biased towards children and families, as if in America single adults can't possibly be considered needy. And even more waiting and forms to fill out and resentful employees and the constant stinky assumption that you're going to defraud the system because YOU PEOPLE do that kind of thing.

Lost my insurance so it's time to find something else. There's COBRA, but I don't have the $350 dollars a month that it would take to keep my present coverage, so what else is out there? SWEET HOLY FUCK is that deductible actually $1000? Yep, you can either have a massive deductible and a reasonable monthly payment, or no deductible and an obscenely huge monthly payment. If they cover you at all. Don't worry, it'll all get better when the ACA is fully implemented in 2014, so I guess I'll just not get sick for the next couple years. Oh, and if the ACA doesn't get repealed. Hell, keep from getting sick for the next 20 years and I can get Medicare! If that's still around.

So, yeah, I'm paying a bit more attention to politics than I did previously. Kind of motivates you to do that when your future depends on it.

And what do I see but a week-long circlejerk in which the GOP fails to address any issue beyond "OBAMA SUCKS!!", culminating with Mitten's paean to himself and his view of what America could be, which is basically what it was at least four years ago. Obama failed; let's go back to Bush. Ain't that a winning program.

And even better - I walk into the grocery store yesterday, take a look at the papers, and there's big pictures of Mittens and Paulie Fishnuts with their smug privileged-white-boy grins and the tagline for Thursday night, "WE DESERVE BETTER".

"We deserve better." From the people who want to grab America by the scruff of its neck and drag it back to the Bush era/the Reagan era/the Cold War Fifties/the Gilded Age.

Here, buy these magic beans from me! They'll cure what ails you!

Aren't these the same shitty magic beans you idiots sold me eight years ago that made things WORSE?

Yeah, but these are IMPROVED magic beans! And Obama sucks!

Hey, why not? What we really goddamn need is another war, some more failed economy, more bigotry, alienate the rest of the world again. Maybe we can get a couple thousand people killed this time, too, then use their mangled corpses as stage props for 2016. Worked so well last time.

Paulie's budget cuts everything except "defense". Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, TANF, Social Security. The stuff I may need to depend on in the near term, if the job situation doesn't turn around. And where does all that money go but to tax breaks for the ultra-rich, who are supposedly going to fund all those new jobs? You know, like they've done for the last decade, what with all the tax money Bush gave to them. Don't worry, he's not getting better because we haven't bled him enough!

Goddamit, given that America can be a stupid, stupid country, but we are not this stupid. I can't seriously believe we are. We are not that vicious and shallow and stupid.

At least I hope not.

Oh, the things you find on the Intertubes!

Where, oh where do I begin with this steaming heap of bullshit  I found yesterday from one Rick Newman by way of MSN.com?  Livid doesn't being to describe the way I felt when I clicked through.

What no one's telling US workers 
While policy wonks argue about how to address income inequality in this country, plenty of hardworking Americans need to hear a more practical message. 

 "More practical". Um. This can't be good.

The simmering debate over income inequality got a jolt of energy recently with the publication of Edward Conard's book "Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong." Conard is a former partner of Mitt Romney's at Bain Capital, so his book can be interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as the Bain View of the Universe. 

My! Former partner of Mittens! The "Bain view"! Indeed, let's hear what this presumably ultra-rich yahoo has to say about the economy. It should be interesting, in a kind of sick, masochistic way.  

Conard mounts an unapologetic defense of the 1% and the economic activity they generate, arguing that spending and investment by the wealthy is the main thing that keeps the economy humming and creates jobs. The New York Times Magazine summarized his argument this way: "If we had a little more (income inequality), then everyone, particularly the 99%, would be better off." 

 JEEZUS. Stick a goddamn fork in this one, already.

The rich are now 4 times more wealthy than they were 12 years ago, so if this "the 1% creates all our jobs" crap were actually true, we should be overwhelmed with jobs at the moment.

Where are all those jobs that additional wealth should have created? Or is this yet another goddamn lie from the frigging Haves? I know where my suspicions lie.

Anyway, back to the cuddly Mr. Newman:  

What politicians and policymakers really ought to be telling struggling Americans is this: You're on your own. The government is running out of money and is borderline dysfunctional besides. Instead of new policies that will make the economy more fair, we need more self-sufficient workers who aren't looking to government for answers.

Yeah, screw you, you proles. Even though the government has shitloads of money for illegal wars and massive corporate bailouts, YOU can take a hike. After all, those taxes you're paying have to go to the 1% so they can keep creating those jobs that don't exist. Shut up and get back to work! Do you expect your CEO to go hungry or something?


(And are we still working on Mr. Conard's opinion, here? Or is all the rest of the article Mr. Newman's own view? Or are they the same thing? Did we just bring up the book in the first place to hide an opinion behind? It's impossible to tell. It's like the lamest argumentum ad verecundiam I've ever seen.)

The economy is changing rapidly, and it's not completely clear why it's gotten so much harder to get ahead.

 Yeah, it's a total fucking mystery.

Oh, wait, it's not.

But there are certainly clues. Education has a lot to do with it: There are very limited opportunities these days for people who don't have a college degree or whose training is outdated.

 G'wan, get yerself some education. Take out a student loan. You'll probably die before you pay it back, but what the hell. Of course, don't expect any kind of government assistance, and if you choose wrong in what you learn, you're screwed! Whee, it'll be so much fun.

Technology is another factor. People whose careers are tied to the digital revolution enjoy the good fortune of working in a burgeoning field, while many others work in shrinking fields being decimated by new technology. Workers able to ride the wave of globalization, at companies that do business around the world, have an edge.

Careful, don't mention the o-word. It's the American worker's fault for making ridiculous job-killing demands like minimal safety regulations, a 8-hour day, or even a minimum wage. How absurdly selfish to expect employers to keep jobs in the U.S. if they can find someone in New Delhi to do it for sub-sub-sub minimum wages and no benefits. And you certainly can't expect a company to do business with the horrible confiscatory taxes imposed in this country.

Attitude is another factor. Too many American workers rely on somebody else for their livelihood, without the grit that it takes to adapt and recover when something goes wrong. This is the natural byproduct of a long era of prosperity in which living standards rose for nearly everybody, just because the economy was booming. It didn't take extraordinary fortitude to get ahead. Often, all you had to do was show up.

Oh, for fuck's sake. It's like having Rush Limbaugh lecture you on weight loss.

How lazy of you people to expect a job, much less rising living standards. God knows you should just get off your pudgy asses and go out and forge your own fortune, like, oh, Mittens did. Real entrepreneurs never rely on someone else, much less the government, for a hand up, after all.

 And "grit"? Really?

Maybe if we were living in, oh, say, an irradiated post-holocaust Mad Max future instead of THE RICHEST FUCKING NATION ON GOD'S GREY EARTH. Still, keep rolling that rock, suckers!

Things are different now, and the bar for success is higher. Instead of arguing over the abstract causes of income inequality or hoping for miracles from Washington, national leaders ought to be sending this message to America's workers: Get smarter. Work harder. Go where the opportunity is. Prosperity isn't going to trickle down from the wealthy, or arrive in the form of a government check. The only person looking out for you is you.

Dear American Citizens: We aren't even going to bother pretending we give a fuck about you any more. Love, the 1%.

And this is what passes for economic journalism in the 21st Century. Jeebus fucking Christmas.

They've found the SMDs

Police confiscate kitchen greywater sink from Occupy Boston Thursday night:

This evening, riot police invaded the Occupy Boston encampment to seize the protestors’ kitchen sink. The action, which led to the arrest of three protesters and a police officer accidentally stepping on a college-age female protester, was in evident violation of the restraining order that forbids the seizure of personal belongings extended today by Suffolk Superior Court Frances McIntyre.

Obviously police had to act immediately on the reports of sink of mass destruction-related program activities. They could have cleaned the city of Boston, people! Thousands lavaged! SOAP AND EVERYTHING. And if they got their anarchistic hands on Boraxo - ! Think of the pink freshly-scrubbed horror that was narrowly averted by this!

Those damn dirty hippies should... um... wash...

ummmmm...

*ahem* it had to be done 'cause shut up, that's why.

The Glass Teat: December 5, 1968

Whole lotta nuthin' going on.

TV executives opt for warmed-over dog kibble instead of new programming.

Elections are driven by money (only $40-50 million back then!), when the airwaves do/should belong to the people of the country.

The FCC is a bunch of spineless jerks beholden to the very people they're supposed to be policing, which is A Very Bad Thing for the rest of us.

TV features too many goddamn remakes of washed-up crap, partially because they pay the writers shit wages; partially because they just don't care. Writers got paid $10-25 thousand for a pilot script for a series that would cost half a million plus to produce. I don't doubt things are much the same even now. As Ellison points out, you're surprised that so much shit get made and distributed when the script, the heart of the production, might as well be written with crayons on butcher paper by the producer's six-year-old nephew?

(And as far as scripts go - you really think the proliferation of cinematic re-makes of mostly-crappy old TV shows recently has been driven by nostalgia? More like it's been driven by the fact that anyone who's seen more than ten minutes of any of those old shows can pretty much churn out a script faithful to the original in their sleep. Most probably do. Face it - how much literary talent does it take to write a brand new script for the likes of "The Munsters" or "Andy Griffith" or "Mr. Ed"?)

Anyway, blah blah TV sucks TV producers are idiots the audience is a bunch of cretins writes get shafted yadda yadda tell us something we don't know already.

The Glass Teat: November 29, 1968

Above: Kam "Cupcake" Nelson, back in the day

The subject this week is a thing called The Groovy Show, one of those long-gone dancing & variety shows where some adult host would spin young folk's records while trying not to look severely out of place amid dancing teens. "It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it! I give it an eight!" and that kind of stuff.

Anyway, the resident eye candy on display on The Groovy Show was one Kam Nelson, who Ellison was assured by the producers was an exceptional Renaissance Gal who all but cured the common cold with one hand behind her back - and yet - well, let's let Harlan explain it:

"Let's take her stint on last Thursday's show. Mr Riddle [the adult host] called her out and she emerged suitably micro-mini'd. He asked her what she'd been doing lately. She stared at him for several beats with wide, innocent eyes and then mumbled something about having gone to 'the liberry' (sic) for research on marriage in Scandinavia. Riddle seemed to think that was pretty exciting, and asked her what she'd found out. Then emerged from Miss Nelson's mouth a syntactical jumble of half-sentences drenched with 'yeahs', 'uh-huhs' and ending lamely with 'T don't really know'. (Everything she comments on ends with 'I don't really know'.)
"Later, in an effort to get her to haul her own weight, he cleverly tried to introduce the second record by asking her something about French, I believe it was the word for bicycle. Once again there were mumblings and mouthings and Riddle, now floundering, went to the record. Yet just before it cut in, he could be heard asking her with something akin to bemused impatience, 'What do you mean, "you don't know"?'"

This wonderous Bubblehead Barbie performance is all the more pleasant given the assertion by the producer that "the kids seem to identify with her". Apparently whatever Miss Nelson's talents and skills outside the show, displaying those would have been inappropriate and risked alienating her peers - therefore the Little Miss Ditz performance.

She's not supposed to raise consciousness or educate - if they had wanted to do that, they'd naturally have brought on a guy instead.

She's just a girl, after all.


Can't be expecting her to remember her French or paying attention to what she read at the liberry or things like that. Don't worry your little head, sweetie. Just sit back and let the nice responsible people do your worrying and thinking for you. See the bad people in Iran? Don't they look scary? Boy, are they scary. Maybe we need to bomb them. But we'll take care of that. Look at the nice man on TV! His hair is so nice. Don't you think he should be President? Look at all those dirty hippies! What are they saying? Well, it's just too confusing, so we'll say they're just not saying anything at all. Let the police take care of them... they're there to protect and serve, after all.

(Hmm.

To some extent, as far as the media's concerned we're ALL "just a girl", I guess.)

"Television is too potent a medium, too exacting an educational force, for anyone to dismiss even a boondock area such as The Groovy Show and its ability to shape and mold manners or morals.
"No, I would not have a 17-year-old girl genius on The Groovy Show; but neither would I have Susie Sparkle set up as the end-all and be-all for emerging personalities. What is wrong with Miss Nelson as a Force in our times is what is wrong about the Miss America contests and all the other shallow, phony shucks put over on kids too young to separate the wheat from the chaff.
"And in conclusion, I trust Miss Nelson and her attorneys will understand that while I may have nothing but the highest regard for her as a human being, it is the slapstick number she proffers six times a week on television that needs some examination. I think women are, uh, groovier than that."

Amen.

Lazy SOBs just sitting around with their hands out waiting for the goverment to help them

Goddamnit. Fuck. Damnit. Damnit. Fuckashitpiss.

This just makes me goddamn livid:

In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

Whee! You thought the bailout we knew about was bad; this is literally ten times worse. The TARP bailout was $700 billion; this little shenanigan was to the tune of $7.7 TRILLION. AND the bastards made money off of it! $13 billion they didn't feel they had to let anyone know about, yet they continue to impose new charges on account holders. BoA wanted to charge you to access your own goddamn money they held, on the grounds that they needed the additional revenue, while quietly having socked away billions in profit from these loans. Isn't that nice?

And why did they have to be secret? Because, for one, if people had known about them, the banks might have been reluctant to hit the government up for more money:

The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.

And, better yet, the banks didn't have to worry about that mean ol' Congress doing anything to regulate them or break them up, since Congress didn't know jack shit about the program!

Lawmakers knew none of this.

They had no clue that one bank, New York-based Morgan Stanley (MS), took $107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008, enough to pay off one-tenth of the country’s delinquent mortgages. The firm’s peak borrowing occurred the same day Congress rejected the proposed TARP bill, triggering the biggest point drop ever in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (INDU) The bill later passed, and Morgan Stanley got $10 billion of TARP funds, though Paulson said only “healthy institutions” were eligible.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, declined to comment, as did spokesmen for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Had lawmakers known, it “could have changed the whole approach to reform legislation,” says Ted Kaufman, a former Democratic Senator from Delaware who, with Brown, introduced the bill to limit bank size.

Moral Hazard

Kaufman says some banks are so big that their failure could trigger a chain reaction in the financial system. The cost of borrowing for so-called too-big-to-fail banks is lower than that of smaller firms because lenders believe the government won’t let them go under. The perceived safety net creates what economists call moral hazard -- the belief that bankers will take greater risks because they’ll enjoy any profits while shifting losses to taxpayers.

If Congress had been aware of the extent of the Fed rescue, Kaufman says, he would have been able to line up more support for breaking up the biggest banks.

Byron L. Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota, says the knowledge might have helped pass legislation to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which for most of the last century separated customer deposits from the riskier practices of investment banking.

“Had people known about the hundreds of billions in loans to the biggest financial institutions, they would have demanded Congress take much more courageous actions to stop the practices that caused this near financial collapse,” says Dorgan, who retired in January.

These are the poor struggling entities that Michael Bloomberg was so angry with OWS for criticizing.

Plus, breaking them up would have been "punishment":

Lobbyists for the big banks made the winning case that forcing them to break up was “punishing success,” [Sen. Sherrod] Brown says.

Yeah, well, ignoring the fact that the banks GODDAMN WEREN'T SUCCESSFUL AT ALL and in fact were in financial trouble, only getting their asses pulled out of the cellophane by OUR DAMN MONEY.

Employees of the banks weren't hurting at the time, either:

Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the average for all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics hourly compensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3 billion on compensation in 2010, or an average of $126,342 per worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s up almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less than 15 percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks in 2010 was about the same as in 2007, before the bailouts.

Think of that when you contemplate how much YOUR paycheck has gone up recently.

Still another reason lawmakers didn't need to know about the bailouts was the fact that it just would have been too goshdarn complex:

At the meeting with [Sen. Ted] Kaufman, [New York Fed president Timothy] Geithner argued that the issue of limiting bank size was too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions, Kaufman says

That would be the same Timothy Geithner who is now Secretary of the Treasury. Wheee! Yes, let's leave keeping an eye on the henhouse to the foxes and weasels who are familiar with things like this. I mean, Congress deals with trade issues and foreign policy and treaty negotiations and federal law, but understanding banks would be just too difficult for them. Tee hee! Macroeconomics are hard!

Oh, and the whole idea of punishing these bastards by pulling your money out and changing over to credit unions? Evidently those nice people at the Fed will make up for your irresponsibility by propping up your former bank until someone can come along and purchase it:

Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Corp., the fourth-largest U.S. bank by deposits before the 2008 acquisition. Because depositors were pulling their money from Wachovia, the Fed channeled $50 billion in secret loans to the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank through two emergency-financing programs to prevent collapse before Wells Fargo could complete the purchase.

“These programs proved to be very successful at providing financial markets the additional liquidity and confidence they needed at a time of unprecedented uncertainty,” says Ancel Martinez, a spokesman for Wells Fargo.

So, to recap: These banks, which lied to Congress and the American people about their solvency, received over $8 trillion in taxpayer loans, interest free, minimal strings attached, then proceeded to successfully lobby against the same government that they had taken money from imposing any kind of regulations on them. And, far from suffering for all this, they have continued to post massive profits, some of which they felt they didn't even have to reveal. (Think - how would the IRS react if they found out YOU were hiding income?)

As Talking Points Memo puts it:

The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a record high this year.

And yet we're to believe it's the dirty hippies of OWS who are the whiny children sitting around waiting for a handout from the government.

Right.