So what on earth makes anyone think that more tax cuts will cause the executives of these companies to "create jobs"?

This is what companies do when they have large cash reserves (NYT link):

at a time when the nation is looking for ways to battle unemployment, big companies are creating fewer jobs, and critics say they are neglecting to lay the foundation for future growth by expanding into new businesses or building new plants.

What is more, share buybacks have not fulfilled their stated purpose of rewarding investors over the last decade, experts say. “It’s a symptom of a deeper problem, which is a lack of investment in the long term,” said William W. George, a Harvard Business School professor and former chief executive of Medtronic, a medical technology company. “If we’re not investing in research, innovation and entrepreneurship, we’re going to be a slow-growth country for a decade.”

Liberal critics insist the trend is another example of top corporate executives raking in an inordinate share of the nation’s wealth, even as their employees suffer.

“It’s an extraordinarily unimaginative way to use money,” said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor under President Clinton who now teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. After diving in the wake of the financial crisis, buybacks have made a remarkable comeback in recent years, with $445 billion authorized this year, the most since 2007, when repurchases peaked at $914 billion.

But spending on capital investments like new plants and infrastructure has stagnated more broadly in corporate America, confounding efforts by the Obama administration to spur economic growth. Capital expenditures by companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are expected to total $546 billion in 2011, down from $560 billion in 2008, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters Eikon.

The principle behind buybacks is simple. With fewer shares in circulation, earnings per share can rise smartly even if the company’s underlying growth is lackluster. In many cases, like that of the medical device maker Zimmer Holdings, executives are able to meet goals for profit growth and earn bigger bonuses despite poor stock performance.

“It’s clear there’s a conflict of interest,” said Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “Unless earnings per share are adjusted to reflect the buyback, then to base a bonus on raw earnings per share is problematic. It doesn’t purely reflect performance.”

In addition, executives, who are often large shareholders, stand to benefit from even a small, short-term jump in stock prices.

When everything is about the stock price, and keeping the insatiable maw of Wall Street analysts happy, there's zero incentive to create actual growth by investing in products and services and plant, let alone investing in people.

The whole "public" ownership model has become a sham. The concept is that issuing stock allows companies access to more capital than they might be able to tap otherwise. But "public" (and I use the quotation marks deliberately) ownership isn't about returning actual value to shareholders, it's about keeping Wall Street happy.

Case in point: Apple.

On a recent flight back form Florida, I counted no fewer than ten iPads befre I had to get on the plane and stop counting. At least three others of them besides me were reading Steve Jobs on it. I would say that at least twenty percent of the people on that flight were listening to iPods. Another sizable number had iPhones. There are other tablets and music players and smartphones, but these names are becoming almost generic terms for all brands of their concepts, much the way "Kleenex" now means facial tissue, no matter who makes it.

On October 18, Apple announced its third-quarter results, which included sales of 17.07 million iPhones. Got that? OVER SEVENTEEN MILLION iPhones sold in three months. That's over five million a month or over a million a week. But the stock immediately lost five percent of its value, because the "Wall Street analysts" predicted sales of 20 million -- and it's been swooning ever since, closing yesterday at $369.01.

Has anything really fundamentally changed at Apple since the stock surged to over $400/share in early November -- almost a month after Steve Jobs' death? The day after he died, 96% of Wall Street analysts gave the stock a "Buy" rating with a MEDIAN target price of $500/share. And now the price is $369, because some idiot in a suit pulled a number -- twenty million -- out of his ass, and because only a million and a half iPhones sold per week, the stock has been slammed.

And this is the system we're protecting? No wonder executives are buying back stock to artificially prop up the price rather than actually invest in something that might help their companies actually grow. Taking chances is punished by Wall Street.

We keep hearing about how we have to lower corporate taxes to eliminate "uncertainty". Is this what business has come to? Guaranteed results, every time? Business is all about uncertainty. Innovation is what generates growth in a business, and innovation THRIVES on uncertainty. A new car model may not go over well with buyers. A new drug compound may turn out to be ineffective and have to be scrapped. Buyers may be wary of a hi-def webcam because they don't want to have to dress up and put on makeup to talk to relatives. 3-D television may prove not to be perceived as having sufficient additional value to warrant the cost. The very nature of business is a crapshoot. It's full of uncertainty, and it always has been. But today business is governed by Wall Street, and Wall Street goes into a panic at the slightest bit of bad news. Today we hear news that Greece may default? The Dow will drop by almost 400 points. Tomorrow there are signs that an agreement may be reached? A 300-point surge. Day after tomorrow we'll hear bad news about Italy and it'll be another swoon.

Is this any way to run an economy? What happened to rewarding the risk-takers; those who take a chance that they may lose, but that they also may win? In an environment in which a risk that doesn't reward is punished out of all proportion to the supposed "offense", why take the chance?

There's a nice little company called Angie's List. The concept is simple: People who have used contractors and other professoinals rate them, so that if you need someone to, say, install insulation in your attic, you can read other people's unsolicited experiences with insulation contractors, rather on just relying on the references the contractor provides. It started with construction-related services, but has branched out into medical, veterinary, and other services. No anonymous reviews are allowed, only members are allowed to review companies, and while your name and contact information isn't published, Angie's List knows who you are. This also keeps contractors themselves from spamming their pages with bogus reviews. I'm a member, and I don't hire anyone without checking their reviews on Angie's List. The membership is about fifty bucks a year.

Angie's List is about to be ruined, because it's going public, with an initial IPO price of $13/share. Three venture capital companies are going to own 43% of he company. and as you can see, the analysts are already freaking out. My guess is that within three years, Angie's List will cease to exist and you'll be back to waiting until one of your neighbors has work done on his house to find a good contractor. All because Wall Street hates "uncertainty."

It's all part of today's "up is down" world, in which the biracial son of a single mother is said to have "grown up in a privileged way"; Republicans use veterans as political props to shore up their so-called defense cred and then vote against veterans' benefits; and yacht owners are the real victims of the recession.

It's no wonder our economy is in the crapper. It's run by a bunch of people who, like five-year-olds, want iron-clad guarantees of success before they'll take any chances at all -- like on hiring people, one of whom could very well have the Next Great Idea.

Awwww....poor widdeh babeee.....

I know that I will hardly be able to focus on work today because of the trials and tribulations being visited upon Robert Benmosche, the current head of AIG:

After just three months as head of battered insurer American International Group, Robert Benmosche has threatened to leave his post as he struggles to deal with heavy government oversight and restrictions on what the bailed-out company wants to pay employees, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported online late Tuesday that Benmosche told AIG's board he was "done" with the job, although he reportedly is reconsidering his stance in the face of the board's dismay.

According to the people, the former MetLife CEO is frustrated with the constraints of leading a company majority-owned by the government, the paper said. The Journal said Benmosche has complained to AIG's board about the outcome of the Treasury Department's pay review which slashed pay for a number of AIG executives by 91 percent from 2008. WSJ:

This is the guy who spent the first two weeks on the job at his Adriatic vacation home overseeing his vineyard. His compensation package is worth $10 million, But oh, he is so put upon because during a recession, when one in six American workers cannot find a job, people are upset because of the idea that it is necessary to shower multiple millions of dollars on people to move ones and zeroes around on a computer screen.

What's infuriating is not that Benmosche and other executives like him is such a whiny-ass titty baby, or that he is so soulless that he doesn't even understand how infuriating his remarks are to people who are either out of work or worried about being out of work. What's infuriating is that people like Robert Benmosche are the ones the economic advisers to the Obama Administration serve.

Dana Milbank is a dick

I sure hope that Keith Olbermann stops having this, well, dickweed on his show. Because guys like Nico Pitney, who has been in Iran reporting live while Dana Milbank has been nibbling cocktail weenies with MoDo at Washington cocktail parties, are mopping the floor with so-called "journalists" like Milbank:

The larger issue isn't the petty bitching of hacks like Milbank over whether the Obama White House solicited questions from Iranians so that Nico Pitney could ask them. The issue is whether so-called journalists from so-called newspapers like the Washington Post are doing their jobs. We know from eight years of George W. Bush that they didn't. And the reason young people aren't reading newspapers is because they now know just how close the Washington Press Corps is to the White House.

As for Dana Milbank, I don't recall him expressing this kind of outrage when George W. Bush was calling on a gay prostitute again and again to ask softball questions:

Norm Coleman is appealing to a higher authority

God Himself:

“I campaigned 36 hours nonstop at the end, because it’s over Nov. 4,” Mr. Coleman said. “Well that was six months ago. And it’s not over. This certainly is a surreal experience.”

“I have more dinners home with my wife than I ever have before,” said Mr. Coleman.

He said that every morning, he puts tefillin — black leather boxes containing scrolls — on his arm as part of a morning Jewish prayer ritual. “I bind myself every morning,” he said. “I bind myself to God every morning because it’s in his hands.”

He paused. “David Letterman will make fun of me for this,” he said.

You're damn right he will. And so will every other sane person in this country. There you have it -- the defeated Senator from Minnesota and the next great Fox News Blubbering talk show host: Norm Coleman: crybaby.

It isn't over till Norm Coleman wins

Or so sayeth the Coleman camp tonight, after a 3-judge panel in Minnesota declared Al Franken the winner of that state's Senatorial election last November:

"More than 4,400 Minnesotans remain wrongly disenfranchised by this court's order," Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg said in a statement. "By its own terms, the court has included votes it has found to be 'illegal' in the contest to remain included in the final counts from Election Day, and equal protection and due process concerns have been ignored. For these reasons, we must appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court so that no voter is left behind."

The three-judge panel rejected Coleman's equal-protection arguments, saying that "errors or irregularities identified by contestants in the general election do not violate the mandates of equal protection."

The court's decision marks a new chapter in the race — one that will play out not just in the legal system but in the court of public opinion.

Even as the two sides were awaiting Monday's ruling, they were engaged in a message war — with Franken's allies amping up the pressure on Coleman to quit and Republicans blaming Franken for dragging out the process.

“The clock is ticking for Norm Coleman – and should he choose to drag this out longer with an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, it ought to be the end of the road,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said before the court ruled. “It is time for him to stop allowing national Republicans to hold the seat hostage to pursue their ideological agenda.”

In the days before the ruling, Coleman’s allies were increasingly trying to highlight what they see as a constitutional violation — that Minnesota counties used varying methods for tabulating thousands of absentee ballots. Moreover, they were arguing that the delay in seating a new Minnesota senator falls on Franken for trying to limit the review of some 4,400 ballots.

“I think the bigger problem is that Democrats want to end the contest before it has run its course,” said Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, which launched a petition drive urging Coleman to continue fighting in the courts.

Coleman himself has been making the rounds on conservative radio and TV talk shows to make an appeal that he’ll win eventually – an effort strategists say helps bolster Republican support nationally in a bid to help raise funds. And he’s been making the rounds in Minnesota to keep his backers behind him in the ongoing affair.

Franken, meanwhile, is trying to show that his seating is imminent, with a spokeswoman saying before the ruling came down that he is “spending time listening to Minnesotans and preparing to tackle these issues the minute he’s sworn in.”

The case heads next to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and a decision there likely won’t come until the end of May at the earliest. At that point, the loser has a choice — seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court or wage a new battle in federal district court.

Norm Coleman's refusal to go away even though he has clearly lost and makes new arguments that often contradict the old ones are the first real test since the Bush/Gore race of 2000 of the new Republican doctrine of elections: disenfranchise as many Democrats as you can, and if that isn't enough, tie up close elections in the courts forever. Every day that Franken isn't seated is one less day of the Democrats being that one vote closer to the filibuster-proof Democratic majority that Republicans fear more than anything else.

And in regard to The Liberal Media, Brad Friedman reports on AP's refusal to call the person who received the most votes the winner.

The Republicans still don't realize that they LOST the election

When George W. Bush was president, the Republicans wanted swift capitulation by Democrats in confirming any nutjob that Bush wanted to put on the Federal bench. Now that a Democrat is in the White House, they're demanding veto power for themselves over all judicial nominees:

A letter signed by all 41 Senate Republicans was sent to the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy yesterday in which the GOP demanded inclusion in, and ultimately veto power over, the confirmation of the president's judicial nominees.

The demand was a sharp turn-around for Republicans, who had for the past eight years been calling for the swift confirmation of then-President George W. Bush's appointees.

The letter is couched in historical language, which notes that "our Democratic colleagues have emphasized [senate involvement in appointments] for several years" and "the principle of senatorial consultation (or senatorial courtesy) is rooted in this special responsibility, and its application dates to the Administration of George Washington." But the GOP's request for veto power of nominees before the judiciary even debates a particular appointment is far from the norm.

The letter gives lip service to themes of bipartisanship, saying they "look forward to working with" the president and that "the judicial appointments process has become needlessly acrimonious." However, what they demand is nothing short of minority control. The letter states that if Republicans "are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states" they will "not support moving forward," presumably threatening a filibuster.

The phrase "senatorial courtesy" may sound better than "threat of filibuster," but as Politico points out, "the letter is an opening salvo in what could be a partisan battle in the Obama years." The public perception of the use of filibusters is perhaps reflected in this language of bipartisanship that insists upon senatorial courtesy "regardless of party affiliation." The letter emphasizes the idea of working together, when the true intent is more threat than peace offering.

The GOP's determination to oppose Obama's judicial appointments became clear a little more than a week after the 44th president was elected. As we reported back in November, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) pledged to get his colleagues onboard an aggressive filibuster campaign against what he termed "radical leftist" nominees he feared would come out of this new White House.

Yet, back in 2005, Kyl was firmly on the opposite side of this argument:

"This is strictly about whether or not a minority of senators is going to prevent the president from being able to name and get confirmed judges that he chooses after he's been elected by the American people."

In fact, the recent past offers many instances in which conservatives attempted to shame Democrats into abandoning filibuster rights in judicial appointments. The "senatorial consultation" referred to in the letter, also known as the "advice and consent" clause in the Constitution, was argued by supporters of Bush to mean that the Senate's role was to confirm or deny appointees, not offer advice. For a comprehensive run-down on the hypocrisy of GOP lawmakers and activists regarding this argument, see this blog entry at Right Wing Watch

How much of this is the delusional nature of Republicans and how much is a response to Barack Obama's attempts at bipartisanship when Republicans sense any attempts at consensus as weakness is anyone's guess. But the sheer chutzpah that they continue to demonstrate is simply breathtaking.

Norm Coleman: Just like his hero, George W. Bush

In 2000, Gail Sheehy wrote about George W. Bush in Vanity Fair:

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.… It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. "There was only one problem—my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you—he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.

It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level."

Now, Norm Coleman is taking the spoiled fratboy from Kennebunkport as a role model and deciding that since he didn't win re-election, we should have a "do-over" until he does:

The talk from the Coleman campaign about how the Minnesota election results are unreliable, and that a do-over election could be an option, has now gone beyond just Norm Coleman's lawyers -- it's now coming from the mouth of Norm himself.

Coleman did an interview with Sirius conservative talk-radio host Andrew Wilkow, and discussed the campaign's argument that the court's current strict standards for allowing in previously-rejected ballots must by extension render illegal a whole lot of ballots accepted and counted on Election Night, when local election officials used lax standards:

"What does the court do?" Norm asked rhetorically. "Yeah, you know some folks are now talking about simply saying run it again, just run it again."

"Have another statewide election?" Wilkow asked.

Coleman responded: "You know the St. Paul Pioneer Press is...one of the second largest papers in the state, last week [they] said we're never going to figure this out, just run it again. So you start hearing that. Ultimately the court has to make a determination, can they confirm, can they certify who got the most legally cast votes?"

Coleman also said that he truly believes that he is the one who got the most legally cast votes, but on the other hand, this whole situation shows serious concerns about the process.

"I got to believe next time this happens folks are going to say ... if you have something within a couple of say percentage - this is by the way was thousandths of a percent - but if you have something within a couple of hundred votes out of three million cast, probably the best thing to do next time is run it again in three weeks and put all this other stuff aside."

Bingo!!

At last, someone in the mainstream media recognizes what Republicans mean by "bipartisanship". Note how well Contessa Brewer duplicates the Republican whine:

Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

Tonight we take a peek at Republican crybaby Eric Cantor:

House Republicans are reacting strongly to reports that the White House plans a political onslaught to pressure Republicans into supporting the stimulus package and to punish those who don't.

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will soon issue a statement contending that Obama's promise to "put an end to petty politics" is "threatened" as the White House and their allies "are making political threats rather than crafting a bipartisan economic stimulus plan."

Of course what Cantor means by "bipartisan" is "Give us everything we want."

Here's what I have to say to YOU, Mr. Cantor...but only because Skippy already posted what I wanted to originally:

Now let's see just how far Obama's "I won" stance goes

While I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of stones Barack Obama has shown in dealing with the Republican obstructionists in Congress, who subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh doctrine of "It's better for the nation's economy to completely collapse than for Obama to succeed", I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of the stimulus package. It's bad enough that the package contains far too much in yet MORE tax cuts for the wealthy, put in as a gesture to placate conservatives for whom compromise is a dirty word, but the more the package is tinkered with in order to please John Boehner, the less effective it's likely to be. This is the first real test of Obama's much-lauded "bipartisanship", and what worries me is that in the end he's going to please nobody.

Paul Krugman, who has been critical of the amount devoted to tax cuts in this package, is softening his tone somewhat, perhaps so as not to give the Republicans any more clout. Today he gives a point-by-point rebuttal to John Boehner's vapors about the plan:

Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”

But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.

...and he goes on to do just that. Read and study, my friends, because you WILL hear these around the water cooler and you WILL see these in letters in your local newspaper.

ThinkProgress has put together a compilation of what Obama's dinner companions have had to say:

You remember the night he dined with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol a few days before the inauguration, right? Krauthammer wrote a column a day or so later claiming that Barack Obama's policies were in fact a vindication of George W. Bush, and I haven't had the heart to read the others.

As Steve at Last Chance Democracy Caf´ says, Obama gave peace a chance, and now it's time for the kickass part of bipartisanship:

There’s no denying that Obama tried; his initial stimulus package seemed designed as much to placate Republicans, as to please Democrats. His hope seemed to be that he could buy a little right wing love by putting way too much of the proposal’s spending into (relatively ineffective as stimulus) tax cuts, instead of public spending.

But congressional Republicans are having none of it. They may not have much actual power left, but that doesn’t seem to have put them in a mood to compromise. Either send up a pure George W. Bush-style tax cut package, they insist, or they’ll vote against the bill.

The major media, speaking right on cue, is spinning this as a test of Obama’s commitment to bipartisanship. I suppose they think that makes for a better story than the truth of Republican obstructionism. To these media “elites” the question now is whether Obama will be a good little post partisan president by giving GOP representatives everything they want, or an evil partisan politician (because he stands by his own principles as well as what might actually work).

So exactly what is it that the GOP wants?

This from The New York Times:

“Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don’t think it’s going to work,” the House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And so if it’s the plan that I see today, put me down in the no column.”

While the plan can potentially pass the Democratic-dominated House without Republican support, it will continue to face opposition when it comes before the Senate, said Senator John McCain of Arizona, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.” At least two Republicans will need to approve the bill for a filibuster-proof majority vote of 60.

Senator McCain, who lost the presidential election to Mr. Obama in November, said that he planned to vote no unless the bill were changed.

So what sort of proposal will McCain and his defeated brethren support? From the same Times article:

“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s extend and even expand Bush’s tax giveaways to the rich. I mean, that’s worked out real well for us so far, hasn’t it?

There’s no mystery about what’s going on here, of course. The GOP smells blood. What Obama intended as an extended hand they took as evidence of a weak spine: they’re starting to think — or at least to hope — they can push him around, at least a little. For what it’s worth, I strongly suspect they’re wrong. Underestimating Barack Obama’s political skill has generally proven to be a mistake. But Obama’s the only person who can prove it, and the way he can prove it, of course, is by pushing a strong stimulus package, reflecting Democratic Party values, through Congress.

The message would be unmistakable: if Republicans want to participate in the formation of future legislation in good faith, his door is open. But pure obstructionism will not be tolerated.

There is no such thing as bipartisanship when one party utterly refuses to compromise. We've seen where massive tax cuts for the wealthy gets us. We've seen where trickle-down economics -- that notion that if you just pack enough cash into the gaping maws of greedy bastards, they'll buy enough stuff to make up for the fact that the middle class doesn't exist anymore. I'm sorry, but not even John Thain (and of course Limbaugh is defending him, citing his $1.2 million office redecoration as an example of economic stimulus) can make up for the middle class' impact on the economy.

It's funny how George W. Bush's promises of being a compassionate conservative were completely ignored by the media once he was actually elected, but the same media -- you know, the ones wingnuts insist on believing is "liberal" just because Rachel Maddow has five hours a week on the teevee -- that admired George Bush's "guts" and "strength" are using Obama's promises to include Republicans as a cudgel against him, and against this plan. I mean, Paul Krugman can't be EVERYWHERE to knock down the gotcha idiocy of the nattering class.

We've seen what massive tax cuts for the wealthy do. We've seen the results of allowing the haves and the have-mores to stuff their pockets and wait for a few singles to trickle out of those pockets in our direction. If Americans wanted more of this, they would have elected John McCain and a Republican Congress. We didn't. So it's time for John Boehner and his peculiar obsession with contraceptives to shut the hell up. If the Obama plan doesn't work, they can bitch during the 2010 midterms.

Party of Whiners

Perhaps conservatives need to endure some actual hardship in their greedy, venal, petty little lives so that they don't sound so ridiculous when they whine about a dweeb like David Shuster being mean to them:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Or how about THIS particular Cancer of the Airwaves, whining because she had to wait a day to whine on national television because someone more newsworthy came up:

(h/t)

Conservatives are the people for whom the word "projection" was coined. Who knew that rich white people were the most oppressed people in the history of the world?

If you can't win an election outright, change the system

Saxby Chambliss must be worried about keeping the Senate seat he stole from Max Cleland in 2002. Here is what happened:

There was absolutely nothing pointing to a Chambliss win at that time:

USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, "In Georgia, an Atlanta
Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a
49%-to-44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss." Cox News Service,
based in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, "Pollsters
may have goofed" because "Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent
Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a
political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that
Chambliss had been ahead in none of them."

Just as amazing was the 2002 Georgia governor's race. "Similarly," the
Zogby polling organization reported on Nov. 7, "no polls predicted the upset
victory in Georgia of Republican Sonny Perdue over incumbent Democratic Gov.
Roy Barnes. Perdue won by a margin of 52 to 45 percent. The most recent
Mason Dixon Poll had shown Barnes ahead 48 to 39 percent last month with a
margin of error of plus or minus 4 points."

Almost all of the votes in Georgia were recorded on the new touch-screen
computerized voting machines, which produced no paper trail whatsoever.
Similarly, as the San Jose Mercury News reported in a Jan. 23, 2003
editorial titled "Gee Whiz, Voter Fraud?" "In one Florida precinct last
November, votes that were intended for the Democratic candidate for governor
ended up for Gov. Jeb Bush, because of a misaligned touchscreen. How many
votes were miscast before the mistake was found will never be known, because
there was no paper audit." ("Misaligned" touchscreens also caused 18 known
machines in Dallas to register Republican votes when Democratic
screen-buttons were pushed in 2002: it's unknown how many others weren't
noticed.)

But now, with a runoff looming, Saxby Chambliss, an incumbent who couldn't get to 50% in one of the few states that went for John McCain, wants to change the rules to benefit his own incumbency:

Republican lawmakers are considering proposals for next year's legislative session that would shorten Georgia's early voting season and make it more difficult for close elections to reach a runoff.

State Rep. Austin Scott said he expects legislators to discuss tightening runoff guidelines in the wake of the surprising showing by Democrat Jim Martin that forced a Dec. 2 showdown with Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss. He also said he was considering whether to draft a measure that would shorten Georgia's 45-day advance voting period.

"Most people think it was stretched out too far," said Scott, a Tifton Republican who chairs the House committee charged with drafting electoral policy. "Maybe two weeks would be long enough."

Early voting began this year on Sept. 22 and expanded to more sites a week before the November election. More than 2 million people voted during the period, and some waited in lines as long as eight hours.

Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, said the long lines proved that "voters like the flexibility of having these options" but also said a thorough conversation is needed before deciding whether to revive the policy.

Her predecessor Cathy Cox, a Democrat, has said the popularity was a sign that elections officials should devote more resources toward early voting.

Scott said the six-week advance period could also expose the system to more voter fraud, and he said legislators could limit potential abuse by tightening early voting.

"The two goals of the election are access and integrity," he said. "And reaching that balance is sometimes easier said than done."

Republicans could also overhaul election rules that now require a runoff if none of the candidates earn more than 50 percent of the vote.

Scott and a slew of House Republican leaders unsuccessfully proposed lowering the bar to 45 percent last year, and he said the provision could resurface from legislators concerned about the mounting costs of runoffs.

Somehow I think that if Jim Martin had received 45% and was ahead, Chambliss would have no problem with the current system.

When Inbred Mutants Breed

This is what the offspring of inbred mutants look like.

Brokaw's first question to Obama will be "When did you stop beating your wife?"

Now that John McCain has decided that simply reporting on a question asked by a voter, in public, is "gotcha journalism", it's hardly surprising that Camp Grandpa would throw tantrums about anything whatsoever that didn't cast its candidate as a comic book, larger-than-life action hero instead of a an old man who clearly has lost some of his faculties and has decided that a theocratic nitwit should be next in line if something should happen to him.

But that a television network, which broadcasts over what's supposed to be the public airwaves, has a special envoy to Camp Grandpa, whose job is to silence the whining and the kvetching by bowing and scraping, is beyond the pale. But that is exactly what NBC is doing, in the person of Tom Brokaw:

In an interview here after Sunday’s broadcast, Mr. Brokaw said that over the summer he had “advocated” within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Their expressions of strong political opinions from the MSNBC anchor desk has run counter to the more traditional role Mr. Brokaw played on “NBC Nightly News” for more than two decades. NBC said earlier this month that the two hosts would mostly relinquish their anchor duties to Mr. Gregory, while being present as analysts.

“Keith is an articulate guy who writes well and doesn’t make his arguments in a ‘So’s your old mother’ kind of way,” Mr. Brokaw said. “The mistake was to think he could fill both roles. The other mistake was to think he wouldn’t be tempted to use the anchor position to engage in commentary. That’s who he is.”

Mr. Brokaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate’s aides that — despite some negative on-air commentary by Mr. Olbermann in particular — Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates — until his name was invoked.

“One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, ‘If it’s an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won’t go,’ ” Mr. Brokaw said. “My name came up, and they said, ‘Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it’s going to be Brokaw.’ ”

Mr. Brokaw will moderate the second debate, on Oct. 7, in Nashville.

When you look at what the McCain campaign regards as "a fair shake" -- fawning, unquestioning coverage of John McCain's claim that he puts "country first" and his relentless lies about his positions when there is videotape to show that his claims are preposterous, one wonders how Brokaw is going to be able to satisfy this bunch of, well, whiners, without asking questions like "Senator McCain, are you a hero, a real hero, or the most heroic man ever to walk the face of the earth?"

Today's Republican Stunt in One Sentence

It comes from The Minstrel Boy:

The "Country First!" crowd just declined to back a proposal their president, their leadership claims is crucial to avoid financial disaster because they had their feelings hurt.

She's here, she's queer, get used to it, Joe.

Joe Scarborough is already pissing and moaning about the promotion of Rachel Maddow. Oh, he's not using her name, but earlier this morning he was griping that he got only around fifteen seconds of face time during last night's convention coverage, and claimed it was because he ticked off "a certain person."

It's no secret who that "certain person" is, and why he's holding a grudge:

Grow the hell up, Joe. You were pwn3d, and you know it. You were pwn3d by someone you hate, and you hate her not just because she's gay, out and proud; and not just because she's smarter on her worst day than you on your best; and not just because she made you look like a fool on national television and got your goat. You hate her because she got your old timeslot, and because that liberal blowhard Keith Olbermann has the power at MSNBC, not you. And you hate her because you know that your party's ideology is one epic fail, you hitched your wagon to that fail, and now you look like a fool because Rachel Maddow is smarter than most people and effortlessly can rattle off all the ways your so-called "maverick" has proven to be a craven panderer whose lust for the presidency crawls like poison ivy over every fiber of his being.

Even Tweety has resigned himself to the inevitable, and while he'll never be president of the Rachel Maddow Awesomeness Appreciation Society (because I am), even he (along with everyone else on the MSNBC team) at least recognizes her gift with words after she came up with "post-rational" (which I hope becomes the new "truthiness") to describe the PUMA crazies.

So stamp your widdle feet, Joe, and let Mika and Willie and Mike Barnicle kiss your behind on the air for four hours every morning, and bemoan the fact that the mean old feminist lesbian is keeping you off prime time. And keep thinking that this somehow makes you a big man. I'm going to go make another batch of popcorn and watch over the next two weeks as Rachel mops the floor with you.

Then do us all a favor and step down

Clarence Thomas, the angriest man in America, doesn't much like being a Supreme Court Justice:

Clarence Thomas told an overflow crowd at Chapman University Monday evening that he never wanted to become a Supreme Court justice, or even a judge.

"There's not much that entices about the job," Thomas said, answering questions from the public that provided a rare glimpse of the man behind the office. "There's no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me."

Thomas, 59, said the position is satisfying because he feels he's serving the public, and he's honored by it, "but I wouldn't say I like it."

Then maybe it's time to step down and open up a spot for someone who takes the job seriously and doesn't see it as a substitute for the kind of therapy Thomas so desperately needs so he can stop cultivating his Garden of Old Grudges.

(via ThinkProgress)

Hey Clarence, your back won't hurt as much if you take that boulder off your shoulder

Just because you have a book published doesn't mean anyone wants to read it. And just because someone doesn't want to read hundreds of pages of an accomplished, educated man whining and kvetching about how terrible his life is doesn't make that person a racist.

Clarence Thomas and his friends, who rail against "the entitlement society", seem to think Clarence is entitled to adulation from everyone:

They're calling themselves "Friends of Justice Thomas," and they say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his bestselling memoir have gotten a bum rap from the "mainstream media."

So, headed by Wendy Long, one of Thomas's former high court law clerks, the friends announced this morning the launch of a website named after Thomas's book, www.mygrandfathersson.com. The site features favorable reviews of the book, which tops the New York Times bestseller list, as well as links to blog entries and video and audio of interviews with Thomas. The site, says Long, is an effort to give readers an alternative to what she characterized as "agenda-driven, ignorant, and in some instances racist attacks on Justice Thomas" by the Times and other media.

I hate to tell these people, but Clarence's Complaint is #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Sorry, Clarence, but I Am America (and So Can You) is #1.

(h/t)

UPDATE: Thomas' devaluation of his Yale law degree isn't something that was done to him by racists, it was done to him by himself. Trey Ellis at HuffPo explains:

George Bush the First's appointment of a black man who was patently unqualified to the highest bench is exactly what affirmative action is not supposed to be about. The point is to open up gatekeepers like elite law schools and medical schools. Once the students graduate, however, they, and every other job applicant has to rise to a certain standard. My sister is a heart surgeon. Nobody is going to let her cut somebody open just to fill a quota. She has to be excellent at what she does. The bar for a lifetime appointment to our highest bench should have been just as high.

My mom went to Yale law school a few years after Thomas, after having graduated Magna Cum Laude from Howard. She was a thirty-five-year-old black mother of two teenaged kids. She knew she was brilliant, the best of the best, and thrilled at debating the other students. She never once said, "Oh, I'm only here because they needed a brown body. I really belong at the DeVry College of Law."

And that's how she raised me. Old school. Yes, racism still exists, she would tell me. So a B+ might do for the white boys, but you have to be that much better. How pathetic is it that Clarence Thomas writes that he graduated from Yale Law School with his head hanging low, convinced that the world knew that his diploma came with an asterisk of inferiority? When my mom's friends graduated they burst out of law school ready to kick ass and take names.