Long story short: I am a moron.
Long story not short: I was screwing with the widgets and deleted all the ads, and had to do a restore from the backup at 5 am. I will put posts that disappeared back up in a little bit.
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Long story short: I am a moron.
Long story not short: I was screwing with the widgets and deleted all the ads, and had to do a restore from the backup at 5 am. I will put posts that disappeared back up in a little bit.
by John Cole| 71 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
John Jon Stewart just referred to Ben Bernanke as Hamid Karzai’s stunt double and then went on to make fun of the tea party morons (has it been explained to them that taxes are LOWER right now than they were during the Bush years thanks to tax cuts the Republicans voted against), Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs.
This TDS looks like a keeper.
by John Cole| 61 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
Not to be left out of some cheap populism, Bob Owens takes to the pages of Pajamas Media with this exclusive titled “Contributions to Obama Campaign Track Bailout Money“:
Barack Obama’s lack of leadership in a down economy has now hit crisis proportions, as his claimed inability to block millions of dollars in bonuses for executives of bailout recipient AIG has caused even his supporters to turn on him.
But while the ire of Congress and the media focus are on the $165 million that AIG paid out in bonuses to their executives, the president is hoping you won’t notice the $100 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars that AIG paid out to other banks, including $58 billion to foreign banks and $36 billion given to French and German banks alone.
The Obama administration is allowing AIG to bail out the rest of the world with your tax dollars.
Putting aside the silly notion that it is Obama’s lack of leadership that has caused this crisis, Owens then goes on to build the case that Obama is just shoveling money to these companies because of campaign contributions from those corporations. He then links to Open Secrets, which has the following in BLARING RED LETTERS:
This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization’s PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
Next, our dimwitted friend apparently didn’t even read the Businessweek piece he linked to, because if he had, he would have seen the .pdf file that they used as the basis for their report. I can’t blame Owens for not reading it, as it was a massive document.
It was six pages, two of which were graphs and charts.
“Hidden” in page one of the document is the following:
Using funds from the emergency loan, financial counterparties listed on Attachment A (all attachments are posted online at http://www.aig.com/Related-Resources_385_136430.html ) received a total of $22.4 billion in collateral relating to CDS transactions from AIGFP between September 16, 2008 and December 31, 2008. This amount represents funds provided to such counterparties after the date on which AIG began receiving government assistance. The counterparties received additional collateral from AIG prior to September 16, 2008.
On November 10, 2008, AIG and the FRBNY established Maiden Lane III, a financing entity, to purchase the securities underlying certain CDS contracts from the counterparties to such contracts, allowing the cancellation of the contracts. Attachment B lists payments made by Maiden Lane III to such counterparties.
Municipalities in the states listed on Attachment C received a total of $12.1 billion from AIGFP between September 16, 2008 and December 31, 2008 in satisfaction of Guaranteed Investment Agreement (GIA) obligations. GIAs are structured investments with a guaranteed rate of return. Municipalities typically use GIAs to invest the proceeds from bond issuances until the funds are needed.
Public aid was also used to satisfy obligations to financial counterparties related to AIG’s securities lending operations. Securities lending counterparties listed on Attachment D received $43.7 billion from September 18, 2008 to December 31, 2008.
The time period of September 18, 2008 to December 31, 2008 was mentioned not once, not twice, but three times on the VERY FIRST PAGE OF THE DOCUMENT. Apparently concerned that some folks might miss those dates, they included them in large bold letters at the top of their charts and graphs, as well:
Now, if you read Bob Owens during the campaign, you would have thought that Obama’s first priorities as President would have been to institute Sharia law, unionize ACORN and pay them 100 dollars an hour to go door to door taking away shotguns from white people, and then burn down every small business and build a mosque in its place. But, the times have changed, and now Owens informs us that President Obama is looting the treasury to send your tax dollars to companies that were by law forbidden from contributing to his campaign but he is sending them the money anyway, and even better, Obama managed to do it while Bush was President.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes
This is exactly what the California GOP needs right now (via the WaMo):
The California Republican Party has been pummeled by some tough body blows in recent years – and results at the ballot box have been just part of the pain.
Now, at a time when the national GOP is trying to find its voice and cultivate new candidates, California GOP activists have begun engaging in a new pastime: issuing “fatwas” to punish state Republican legislators deemed too moderate on tax issues.
This circular firing squad was on display last week at a “Tax Revolt” rally that drew 8,000 people to a Fullerton parking lot. It was organized by popular conservative talk show hosts John and Ken – John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of radio station KFI in Los Angeles.
The raucous California tea party featured such dramatics as the spearing of a likeness of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head, and the sledge-hammering of a pile of Schwarzenegger dolls, videos and movie memorabilia – even an action hero lunch box.
The radio hosts’ “fatwas” target a handful of moderate GOP legislators who sided with Democrats to end the state budget impasse. Their calls to recall those lawmakers have reverberated throughout the Republican grassroots.
Could someone tell these clowns in California that Pete Sessions didn’t want the GOP to create an actual Taliban?
by DougJ| 80 Comments
This post is in: Media
I emailed the reporter, Michael Calderone, who wrote the JournoList piece and asked him to respond to criticism that the existence of the list was hardly a surprise, per John’s earlier post. He was kind enough to respond:
Obviously, I’m aware there are other lists. But the point here is that JList serves as a far more comprehensive gathering of left-of-center opinion writers, mainstream reporters, bloggers, policy people, and academics than any I’ve come across before. As someone writing on the intersection of media and politics, I hoped to provide a window into how ideas–large and small–can be discussed daily in an informal, OTR way before making their way into the public conversation through blogs and print publications.
Considering that JList has never been profiled in two years, and includes hundreds of members-including several current and former Politico reporters-we thought it was worth covering. Not to mention, in the past couple weeks the issue of publishing from an OTR listserv came up regarding the Charles Freeman nomination. Given that, I fail to see why that’s such a terrible thing to want to note on a political news site.
I realize a lot of people here trash the Politico, and I don’t think it’s perfect, but they are generally much better about responding to readers than anywhere else I know of. Calderone, who runs a good blog on media there, deserves credit for responding here.
Response from the Politico’s Michael CalderonePost + Comments (80)
by DougJ| 43 Comments
This post is in: Politics
The special election campaign in NY-20 (Kirsten Gillibrand’s old seat) has turned into an amazing shitstorm for Republicans. When last we left it, the race — which should be a gimme for Republicans for a variety of reasons (big rej advantage, experienced candidate with great name ID) — appeared to be tight, largely because of the Republican candidate, Jim Tedisco’s, refusal to say how he would vote on the stimulus package. The idea was then that a weak Tedisco performance in the election would be used as a pretext to fire Mike Steele (a worthy goal, although he has almost nothing to do with this particular disaster).
Things have gotten worse for Tedisco. The race is now rated a dead heat, Tedisco’s been forced to admit he would have voted against the stimulus (an unpopular choice throughout upstate NY), and now something truly bizarre is happening with the National GOP Trust PAC. From the Albany Times-Union’s Irene Liu:
Yesterday, we had a blog post reporting that the National Republican Trust PAC had asked for its anti-Murphy ad to be taken off the air after NBC affiliate WNYT-13 asked for documentation proving the claims on their ad.
Last evening, National GOP Trust PAC Executive Director Scott Wheeler called to dispute elements of the post. It was an, erm, colorful conversation. I informed Wheeler early on that the conversation was on-the-record. You can hear the audio below. (Only part of the conversation is recorded, as it took a little time to set up my recorder).
Among a number of complaints, Wheeler says that his organization did submit documentation to the station.
However, when asked again about the documentation, NBC affiliate WNYT-13 general manager Steve Baboulis said, “They may have sent something — as far as we know, we didn’t have it. My general sales manager does not have any backup received from that group. Our national rep firm who handles that business out of their office, they said did not receive that. The operative message that we got was that that particular copy on that spot was to be discontinued and that we would see more copy forthcoming.”
Wheeler says that they have resubmitted the ad to WNYT with the exact same language as before, with only one addition: “Vote against Scott Murphy.”
You have to hear the call to believe it. In local elections like this one, getting caught lying to reporters is a killer. It pretty much means that they stop reading any of your press releases (as they should).
I’m not sure I can convey to you how much fail there is in this story.
The whole thing is a bit sad. There used to be some really good Republican Congressmen in upstate New York — Sherry Boehlert (my old Congressman), Amo Hougton (one of three Republicans to vote against the Iraq war). Now the national party has run all that into the ground. Sad.
Sorry if this post is a little Inside Baseball. I find this stuff fascinating.
by John Cole| 60 Comments
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes
I have read this story twice now, and it appears to me that the rocket scientists at the Politico are shocked because like-minded people share a listserv. I hope no one rattles the drama queens over there by talking about usenet news groups and IRC channels, because then the shit will really hit the fan.
Are they really that damned stupid? Is it that slow of a news day?
*** Update ***
Via the comments, I see this has already been covered at Ezra’s. I also note I am not the only one to have this reaction:
Wait. Wait a minute.
So you’re saying that a bunch of like-minded people who share the same profession talk to each other? About stuff related to their jobs?
OVER E-MAIL?
How long did you plan on betraying our trust like this, Ezra… if that IS YOUR REAL NAME!
Posted by: August J. Pollak | March 17, 2009 11:47 AM
Heh.