Will They Ever Stop Whining?
In Opinion on Feb-28-2010 with no comments
I think most of our politicians in DC and reporters live in a bubble where they have no clue what the rest of the world outside of it is like. But I swear, folks that work on Wall Street live inside of a bubble inside of a bubble.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, says he believes Washington has become increasingly erratic and unfair in its treatment of the banks over the last few months, and he now has some regrets about participating in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
“F.D.I.C. is going to cost us a lot of money. TARP cost us a lot of money. This bank tax, my first reaction was, ‘That will cost us a lot of money,” Mr. Dimon said Thursday at the bank’s annual Investor Day conference in New York. “I think we are getting into the capricious, arbitrary and punitive behavior.”
Oh boo fucking hoo dude, you got a $17 million dollar bonus last year, not to mention billions from the tax payers to bail your sorry ass out. For the first time in my life I’m really beginning to understand why the French went so nuts with the guillotine. They were just sick to death of having to watch spoiled, super rich aristocrats behave like a bunch of assh0les and decided to put an end to it.
Canadians Respond to Hockey Upset
In Humor on Feb-25-2010 with no comments
I mean you didn’t have to go there did yeah …..
Sneak Peek: The Return Of Chuck
In Toys, Video on Feb-25-2010 with no comments
Don’t get me wrong, I do love the Olympics. But there are a few of my favorite shows that are on “pause” cause of it. One is Chuck, which gets back to new shows starting Monday. I just have to say I wish more people would watch this darn show so every year I don’t have to worry that it might be canned. It is laugh out loud fun. Over-the-top action. And even some romance. High production value. I just don’t know what more you could want from a show. And if this sneak peek is any indication, it looks like we’re going to get some “closure” on a few long run story lines.
Progressives Get Played Again By Their Own
In Opinion, Politics on Feb-23-2010 with no comments
Many progressives often like to point out to the religious right that many Republicans play them for fools. They talk about the abortion issue and a “right to life” to obtain their votes and contributions, but do little if anything to change the laws once in power. Well sadly the same thing often happens to my party and we often can’t/won’t admit it either.
Politics Daily, October 4, 2009:
Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. [....] He’s a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor—and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”
President Obama often says a public option is needed to drive down costs and keep insurance companies honest. To Rockefeller, it’s both more basic and more vital: The federal government is the only institution people can count on in times of need.
The Huffington Post, yesterday:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it [....]
“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that” [....] In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.
Rockefeller seemed to be on CNN and MSNBC almost daily throughout much of 2009 saying what a righteous champion he was for the public option. That it was basically the cause of his life. Doing all of this while he knew it had no chance to pass with 60 votes.
But now that Democrats are considering the reconciliation process—which will allow passage with 50 rather than 60 votes—Rockefeller is all of a sudden “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.” Pretty strange excuses for Rockefeller to make with regard to something that he claimed, just a few months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass of course), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its passage.
“Sure,” The POTUS Could Order A Village Massacred
In Opinion, Politics on Feb-22-2010 with no comments
This is just hard to comprehend. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff found this little exchange in the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report’s discussion of John Yoo’s August 2002 memo (.pdf) that is widely seen as one of the key legal opinions authorizing the use of torture by the Bush White House. On page page 64 of the report you get this exchange:
Q: I guess the question I’m raising is, does this particular law really affect the President’s war-making abilities ….
Yoo: Yes, certainly.
Q: What is your authority for that?
Yoo: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.
Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? [....] Is that a power that the president could legally [.....]
Yoo: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief’s power over tactical decisions.
Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?
Yoo: Sure.
Just hard to comprehend on so many different levels. And John Yoo is actually a law professor and has not been disbarred. I mean what exactly do you have to do these days to lose credibility?
Update: In an interview today with San Francisco radio station KQED did not back away from his previous statements and added that congress cannot stop the President from using nuclear weapons.
Look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [....] Could Congress tell President Truman that he couldn’t use a nuclear bomb in Japan, even though Truman thought in good faith he was saving millions of Americans and Japanese lives? [....] My only point is that the government places those decisions in the President, and if the Congress doesn’t like it they can cut off funds for it or they can impeach him.
Tommy Young is a marketing consultant, tech geek, designer, writer, and sometime thinker based in St. Louis. More »
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