stupid
Banks Are Terrifying
I already knew this, but an article from Huffington Post detailing the financial reform bill makes my blood curl. Here are some examples:
This time around, Congress bailed out Wall Street, protecting the largest firms from collapse, which enabled them to lobby hard against reform, spending over a million dollars a day.
They spent taxpayer money to make sure they would be able to get taxpayer money again in the future. That’s like buying a victim buying a gun for a mugger.
The effort suffered from the administration’s hesitation to embrace an agenda that would genuinely remake Wall Street.
The Obama Administration took half-measures when they have the ability to go all the way? I am shocked. Shocked to my very core, I say.
The bill creates a consumer financial protection entity over the strenuous objections of the GOP and Wall Street…largely bars banks from trading taxpayer money for their own profit and bans many of the deceptive mortgage lending practices that fueled the housing bubble. [Emphasis mine]
So technically banks can still trade taxpayer money for their own profit and some deceptive mortage lending practices are still allowed. Good to know that we almost fixed problems that had to be fixed. Who can complain about that? It’s not like they half-assed it. It’s more like they 3/4-assed it.
Perhaps most significantly, the law will limit the total amount of derivatives speculation a single bank can engage in, aimed at preventing a run-up in food or energy prices. In 2008, Goldman Sachs and other swaps traders drove the price of wheat to levels that caused starvation around the globe.
I knew Goldman Sachs was evil, but holy shit. They caused worldwide starvation and made a profit from it. It’s one thing to create bubbles that crash an economy, but it’s a special kind of evil causes people to starve to death in order to make money.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for reformers is that the bill leaves in place the major banks that caused the crisis. The largest banks have grown larger under Obama’s watch. Banks will still be able to speculate in the riskiest kinds of derivatives and invest in hedge funds and private equity funds. Depending on what regulators decide, they may not be required to hold much more capital to protect against losses than before the crisis, since neither a number nor a formula was specified in the bill. They may still continue to lever up their investments, imitating a practice of the fraud-inflated housing boom in which some investment firms used $1 to back up every $30 in investments and bets.
1 million Americans are expected to lose their homes this year.
The unemployment rate was at 9.5% in June. It’s expected to rise as 700,000 census workers are laid off. The unemployment rate does not include those who have given up looking for work.
The Senate refuses to extend unemployment benefits. Republicans couch their argument in the falsehoods that the jobless are lazy and that we can’t risk increasing the deficit (unless it’s for tax cuts). The purpose of ruining the lives of the unemployed is done so voters believe it’s the party in power that’s the culprit. This tactic is done so Republicans can get back into power and continue ruining people’s lives.
But at least something called “financial reform” is getting passed. It has a nice ring to it.
World Cup, My Balls
Everyone seems to be going nuts that the US just scored a last minute goal against Algeria in the World Cup and will advance to the next round. For the few people in America who follow soccer when it’s not the World Cup, that’s a thrill. They know the players, they know the game inside and out, and they appreciate the skill involved. Everyone else saw a ball go in a net, knew we scored a point, and that we won. USA! USA! USA!
Unless we win the World Cup, no one is going to care by the end of the summer. Soccer will remain a second-tier sport. Here’s a question for everyone who is going apeshit over the World Cup right now: how many Major League Soccer games have you attended? Hell, here’s an easier one: how many soccer games, MLS or other, have you watched in the past four years? If so, was it because nothing else was on television?
We don’t care about soccer. That’s why we call it “soccer” and every other country refers to it as “futbol” or “football”. Then they ridicule “American Football” and we don’t give a shit because we like it more than stupid soccer where nothing happens. Soccer is a slow sport with hardly any drama. The field is gigantic, you never know when the game is going to end, and it feels like a game takes an eternity as a result. But other countries love it because it requires a ball and nothing else so they grow up playing the sport. If you’re an impoverished nation, it’s really the only sport you can play.
So think about Algeria. Soccer is arguably their most beloved sport. They were eliminated today by a country that doesn’t really give a shit when it’s not the World Cup. I hope the USA goes all the way because maybe we’ll care about the game after the tournament is over. If we don’t win, we’ll behave like spoiled children and act like we didn’t really care anyway. And the truth is, we don’t. I hope a country who cares about soccer wins. In the meantime, US fans who are really into the sport once every four years can blow their vuvuzela’s out their ass (it will still sound the same).
Special Comment: Keep McChrystal
I could not disagree with Olbermann more on this Special Comment. His argument is that Obama should decline General McChrystal’s resignation because a) It would avoid more flack from the right; and b) it would force McChrystal’s loyalty. These arguments are as stupid as McChrystal’s decision to do the interview with Rolling Stone in the first place.
First, if we’ve learned anything from the past 18 months of Obama’s presidency, it’s that there is no respite from the right. They’d hate him if he chose Corn Pops over Honey Smacks. He can’t win with that crowd and to keep McChrystal, not to even to please the right but to simply avoid their wrath on this issue, is an exercise in futility.
Furthermore, a soldier’s loyalty to his commanding officer shouldn’t be forced. Olbermann suggests that Obama should keep McChrystal’s resignation in his desk, as if the President somehow needs that slip of paper to accept the general’s resignation or to remind the general of his impudence. You don’t get to mouth off about your commanding officer. Otherwise, it sends a signal to every soldier that you can disrespect your commanding officer and he should turn the other cheek.
Olbermann compares McChrystal’s criticism of Obama to that of generals under Bush who disagreed with the former President’s strategies and rational for the Iraq War. But Olbermann misses a key distinction: the generals under Bush weren’t criticizing the President himself, but his decisions. McChrystal undermined the Commander-in-Chief as an individual. This wasn’t to save lives or promote a particular battlefield strategy. It was a snotty remark just like the ones he made about other members of Obama’s administration.
Olbermann makes another poor argument by comparing this situation to Truman’s firing of General MacArthur. Except McChrystal isn’t MacArthur. He’s not considered a national hero. I imagine that most Americans had never heard his name before today, or if they had they forgot five seconds later.
The choice of a general shouldn’t be a political calculation. It should be what’s best for the troops on the ground. Olbermann admits that McChrystal isn’t irreplaceable, so replace him. Get someone who respects the chain of command. I don’t care that McChrystal feels that way about people in Obama’s administration. I care that he was stupid enough to tell it to a reporter. Do we want a guy this dim-witted running what has become the longest war in our nation’s history?
I think Obama should fire McChrystal and here’s why: because if he doesn’t, it’s yet another capitulation on our President’s part. It’s the same thing he’s done with Republicans, Wall Street, BP, and everyone else who knows that this President doesn’t do retribution. Obama’s behavior is almost libertarian in the belief that, as one of my college professors put it, “Everything would be nice if people were just nice.” Well, yeah. No one gives a shit that Obama has a stern reprimand when there’s no action behind it. You’re a conservative Democrat who doesn’t want to extend jobless benefits because you’re a deficit hawk? Well, I guess our country has no choice but to yield to you, the Senator from fucking Nebraska. So let’s make a deal because why should the President of the United States have any real power?
I find Olbermann’s cynical, empty-headed argument to be a painful disappointment. Watch the Special Comment after the jump and judge for yourself.
A Triumphant Call to Vague Places and Unknown Solutions
59 days after the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting spill into the gulf coast, Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on this crisis. When The Huffington Post and MSNBC are saying Obama’s speech sucked, you know it sucked. It was a bad speech that called for commissions and studies, cited statistics without sources, ignored the stalled energy bill in the Senate, and then just went straight for platitudes with not a single specific plan for the future.
5 Important Things I Learned Tonight at the Conan Show
1. If you’re planning to take a lot of pictures with your digital camera, make sure the fucking camera battery is charged.
2. If you’re going to shell out cash for a live show, do it up right, and don’t cheap out for a seat that’s so far to the side that you’re cheating yourself out of a better show. Also, go for the inside aisle seat.
3. I can’t understand people who leave a few minutes before the show is over because they’re trying to beat the traffic. They want to pay the premium ticket price for a live show because they love the person they’re going to see, but not as much as they love to beat the traffic.
4. I kind of already knew this, but the Fox Theatre has the worst fucking acoustics. I don’t give a shit if it is an Atlanta landmark. If you’re a place that gives live performances, and large percentage of what you hear sounds muffled, then you’re a shitty theatre.
5. Don’t go to a show by yourself. If you can’t find someone when you’re about to buy a ticket, just buy two, and figure out the friend thing later. Worse comes to worst, you can sell it on Craigslist.
I had a good time tonight, but I would have a had a better time had I known these lessons beforehand.
Here’s a Crazy Idea
“I think that everybody that supported one of the Democrats will have an obligation to now — as the President would and has in races that the nominee that he has supported hasn’t one — now support the Democratic nominee,” Gibbs added.
- Press Secretary Robert Gibbs regarding last night’s a quote from a “senior White House official” (*cough*Rahm Emmanuel*cough*) regarding unions of flushing $10 million “down the toilet” by supporting Blanche Lincoln’s challenger, Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic primary run-off election.
Here’s a thought that Gibbs–who follows the grand tradition of White House Press Secretaries being smug, boneheaded schmucks that would easily crumble under serious interrogation if the White House press corps wasn’t completely fucking useless–should consider: The unions and self-identified Democrats don’t have to support anybody! AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale said as much in the following email statement:
“If the White House thinks everyone has obligation to support someone just because they’re a Democrat, they are still really missing the point of last night.”
The White House? Missing the point? I’m shocked! Shocked to my very core! But liberals have to shoulder some of the blame here. We’re so anti-conservative that we let any weak-sauce Democrat saunter into office because it’s the lesser of two evils. And what incentive do Democratic leaders have when they know that the liberal base, as much as we bitch and moan, will eventually fall into line no matter what?
Liberals need to bite the bullet and not vote for Democrats who clearly have no progressive aims in mind. It’s not a matter of a litmus test. It’s a matter of supporting your constituents when they take up a liberal cause, as when a majority of Arkansans wanted health care reform and Lincoln voted against it. But corporations have put such a stranglehold on our politics and this pro-business White House is only happy to help pull the rope tighter.
We can’t avoid voting Democratic in every election and it’s going to become more difficult when there’s the danger of an insane tea-party candidate getting into office. But remember: we survived–somehow–eight years of George W. Bush. And as long as we give away our vote to Democrats who take it for granted, we have no chance of stopping this bullshit conservative-lite agenda let along furthering progressive causes.
If the White House truly wanted to stop playing the same old Washington politics, then they would stop supporting the same old Washington politicians.
Supreme Court Once Again Invokes Right to Remain Stupid
In a 5-4 decision (surprise, surprise), the Supreme Court rules that a suspect must invoke his right to remain silent just as a suspect must invoke his right to an attorney. Of course, this poses two problems:
1.) Suspects will have no way of knowing that they’re the ones who must actively say (ironic, I know) that they wish to remain silent. Does this mean that when a suspect is read their Miranda rights, an officer must state, “You have the right to claim silence,”?
2.) Rights, by virtue of being rights, do not always need to be actively invoked. When someone criticizes the government, they do not first proclaim “I will now exercise my 1st amendment right of freedom of speech.” Rights pertaining to the actions of the individual are granted rather than announced. Requesting an attorney must be announced because it requires a second party.
I’m not a lawyer. But I do know that this is yet another example of conservative-dominated court that has fundamentally changed yet another aspect of American life. Earlier this year, there was debate over how long interrogators could go without reading the Times Square bomber his Miranda rights. Now the Supreme Court has added the question of when those rights are read, will the suspect be aware of this major (and counter-intuitive) caveat?
Why the BP Oil Spill Doesn’t Impress Me
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been front-page news for over a month now. It’s a story that fails to grab my interest because I already know the outcome. Here’s what will happen:
- Eventually, they will somehow stop the leak.
- The effects to the environment will last generations.
- No criminal action will be taken against BP and attempts to sue them will take decades.
- Rather than be a watershed moment in calling for innovation in energy technology, we will continue to remain dependent on oil (not to mention the coal-mining related disasters that tend to occur every 6-8 months). People will continue to purchase their gas from BP.
- The media will move on. When Obama comes up again for reelection, no one will remember how he let BP handle the mess (and fail at it) for over a month rather than stepping in, working to solve the problem, and then handing BP the bill.
BP’s latest attempt, “Top Kill”, failed. Their next plan is to send in–I shit you not–robot submarines. After that fails, BP will crack open their ACME catalog and ask Wile E. Coyote what else he recommends.
Maybe it doesn’t impress me because I feel helpless to do anything about it. I know that nothing is going to change that would prevent a spill like this from happening again. There won’t be any political ramifications and we’re too dependent on oil to create financial repercussions against BP. Environmentalists will continue their failed campaign of trying to scare people into being good stewards of the Earth. And BP will put more money into repairing its image rather than preventing the next catastrophe. Looking at the BP oil spill, I just can’t bring myself to muster any impotent rage.
Update: I think this video proves my point:
Steve Jobs Is Weird
I don’t hate Apple. I hate the Cult of Apple. Of course, zealotry in all its forms is annoying, but Apple actually weaves it into its marketing and image. I didn’t know “smugness” could test so well. Apple competes with PCs, but other competitors–Coke and Pepsi, Marvel and DC, PlayStation and XBox–I don’t see a complete condescension to the consumers who prefer one over the other. Sure, there was the Pepsi Challenge, but Pepsi didn’t go out, show someone drinking a coke, and then vomiting. Of course, that’s down to personal preference whereas technology can be scientifically measured and analyzed to achieve objective results.
But Apple marketing isn’t about science. It’s about making sure its users seem cool. Which is why the iPad is a “magical and revolutionary” device. While I’ve had no problem making fun of that slogan, I’ve held off on commenting on the machine itself until I actually tried it out. I played with one a few weeks ago at Best Buy. My conclusion: it’s a very neat toy. To call it a giant iPod Touch is pretty much on the money. And that’s fine. I’m planning to buy the new model of the iPod Touch whenever it comes out later this year. But I think Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing put it best when he said of the iPad: “Incumbents make bad revolutionaries.”
There Is No Such Thing as Post-Partisanship
Obama’s front-runner to replace retiring Supereme Court Justice is the President’s Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Huffington Post says, “Conservatives are responding favorably to the potential of a Justice Elena Kagan,” particularly her views on Presidential power (powers which Obama has somehow managed to make even broader than they were under George W. Bush), civil liberties, and anti-terrorism laws.
The reason why Obama wants her should come as no surprise to anyone following our President’s modus operandi over the past year and a half: She’s an easy confirmation that will give Obama a boost going into the 2010 elections, and her conservative positions on various issues appeals to Obama’s notion of post-partisanship. Nevermind that she wouldn’t follow in the footsteps of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. She could shift the balance of the court on key issues from 5-4 to 6-3. Yes, she’s pro-choice and pro-gay rights, but why give conservatives a nominee when they’re not in the executive office?
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