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Blogs Eric Reads
Franken Claims Recount Lead, and more
- Marc Elias, chief recount lawyer for Al Franken’s campaign, announced that Franken now leads Coleman by 22 votes according to the campaign’s recount results tracking. This is the first time in the entire process that the Franken camp has claimed a lead. Could we have 59 Democratic Senators when Congress convenes in January? (TPM Election Central)
- 75% of Americans approve of Obama’s Cabinet picks so far, according to a CNN poll. And then, of course, the rest of the poll is about whether Obama or Clinton will actually be president. Good times. (CNN)
- And in other Cabinet news, could the first black president appoint the first openly gay secretary? Mary Beth Maxwell, a labor activist and out lesbian, is reportedly on the shortlist for Secretary of Labor. (Wall Street Journal)
- The economy is so bad that the Bushes are only buying a house for Christmas. Yeah, you read that right. While you’re all having you homes foreclosed, George and Laura Bush are buying a house that’s two hours away from the ranch they already own. Also, we can all eat cake for Christmas. (ABC News)
Economists: Recession Began December 2007
And it’s been downhill ever since:
The U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007, a committee of economists at the private National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday. The economy reached a peak in December and has been declining since, according to the business cycle dating committee of the NBER.
Still, the wingnuts will contintue to blame (not officially President yet) Obama and absolve (still-President) Bush. Graaah socialism!!
1071
- Barry O says he’s going to fix the economy starting January 20 by creating jobs, rebuilding schools, and kicking our oil addiction. And if you play the video backwards and listen carefully, you can almost make out the words “wealth” and “resdistribute.” Seriously. Do it. (Change.gov)
- Also, the economy is so bad that even the frickin Congress is homeless. New Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) plans to save money by buying a cot and sleeping in his Congressional office. This January 20 economy-fixing can’t come soon enough. (CNN)
- For some strange reason, people really care about where the Obamas are going to send their daughters to school. Weird. Anyway, they’ve settled on Sidwell Friends School which is nice because Joe Biden’s grandchildren go there and OH MY GOD THAT’S WHERE THE CLINTONS SENT CHELSEA!!!1one! Obama is a puppet for the Clintons! That’s not change we can believe in!11!1!! (The Caucus)
- If there isn’t already a law against this, there should be. A handful of St. Louisans were fired after Election Day because they had to stand a line for a long time to vote. That’s a real shitty thing to do, even if this hadn’t been an especially historic election. Time to make a Election Day a holiday, I think. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Off To A Good Start
The squiggly line that controls all of our lives is headed generally upwards this morning!
I think that means it’s going to be a good day.
Perino Doesn’t Know If We’re In a Recession
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino is the epitome of FAIL:
Q Do you think the U.S. economy is in a recession?
MS. PERINO: You know I don’t think that we know. … So I couldn’t say. The classic definition of a recession is not something that we could determine now, or forecast. It’s something that people look back on. […]
I don’t know — look, April, I don’t know if there’s — if we are in a recession right now. And in fact, there’s no one who could actually tell you if we precisely are in a recession right now. […]
But I don’t think anybody could tell you right now if we’re in a recession or not. Those are just — those are determinations that come later.
Ummm, Dana?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average for the past ten days, from 3:00pm CT October 7
I’m not economist, but it sure looks like we have a trend here…
Shorter AIG Executives
- $85 billion? Woohoo, we’re goin’ to Malibu!!
“Shorter” concept created here. Are you aware of all internet traditions?
If the Sheet Fits
Now that the McCain campaign has descended entirely into panic mode, the Republican base is starting to show their true colors.
First, a local party treasurer in my home state:
A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform, wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so “the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.” He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag “with a star and crescent logo,” an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to “raise taxes to pay for Obama’s inner-city political base.”
The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county’s representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.
Then we have the Florida teacher who used a racial slur to describe Obama:
Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials determined [teacher Greg] Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a dry-erase board in his class Sept. 26 at Marianna Middle School.
It said, “C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected.”
Howard, who’s been teaching in the district for 17 years, wrote the comment during his seventh-grade social-studies class that included 17 white students, six black students and one Asian.
There’s also the increasing sense among right-wing pundits like Ann Coulter that minorities are responsible for the economic crisis:
Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.
Instead of looking at “outdated criteria,” such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named “Caylee.”
And finally, of course, there’s Sarah Palin and her Barracuda Buddies:
McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev.Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”
Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
[Update: Greg Sargent says the unmentioned racial epithet was "uppity Negro."]
Republicans have seen the polls and they know that they’re in serious trouble, which means it’s time for the gloves to come off and pointy hoods to go on.
There are twenty-seven days left until the election. Now is the time to work like crazy to get out the vote for Obama or these racists will have another four years in power.
Wall Street Tells Us to Take Our $700 Billion and Shove It
Remember a few weeks ago when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked you if he could borrow 5 bucks one hundred and forty billion times or else the entire universe might implode? Well, Hank got his $700 billion bailout, but now it looks like Wall Street might not take the money:
Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government’s $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come.
‘There is a growing feeling that banks … might instead decide to tough it out,’ said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager.
Wait, what? After we’ve essentially agreed to forget about providing universal healthcare, funding real education reform, and developing new sources of energy for a few years, why is it that the banks that begged for this money suddenly don’t want it? Because they might have to take a pay cut:
One of the least attractive elements is a section designed to curb executive pay at banks that participate in the bail-out package. These include limiting stock-related pay and banning ‘golden parachutes’ for executives.
‘I think this hodge-podge of regulations and rules will be enough to put many [chief executives] off participating,’ Caldwell said.
Sources close to Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch indicated the banks might choose not to participate in the bail-out as there is a growing view on Wall Street that the market may be bottoming out.
Well, that seems perfectly reasonable! How could we reasonably expect banking executives to give up their third or forth vacation homes or their private jets and let their $700 billion investors have a little oversight as to what they did with our money? Let’s just let them fool around with the world’s economy for a little while longer on the off chance that maybe the market is “bottoming out.” After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
The Gays Destroy Wall Street
Republicans blame Democrats. Democrats blame Republicans. But the religious right and the rest of Greater Wingnutia knows who’s really responsible for our economic crisis:
Christian fundamentalists are suggesting gays and lesbians are to blame for Wall Street’s woes, a frequently made charge in the wake of national calamities.
In a September 25th blog post titled ‘The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex’, Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.
…
A related post by Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian at the National Review’s website pushes a similar theme, this time focusing on Friday’s failure of WaMu.Krikorian suggests the big bank failed because it was too accommodating to minorities, including gays, African-Americans and Hispanics.
Great job, homos. You really screwed the pooch on this one.
(h/t)
McCain vs. McCain on Economic Bipartisanship
Greg Sargent has been keeping track of John McCain’s flip-flopping on the need for bipartisanship to fix our economy:
On Monday, McCain blamed Obama and Dems for the bailout collapse — and then decried finger-pointing in the very next sentence. On Tuesday, McCain denied he’d ever blamed them, even as his campaign released an ad blaming them.
And today, the McCain campaign released an ad calling for an end to the fingerpointing only a few minutes after his campaign got done pointing a finger directly at Obama.
How can anyone take these clowns seriously anymore?