Black business women face more barriers

post from Let's Talk Honestly on 12 January 2009 03:15:05 PM. © Let's Talk Honestly

Black women face special challenges in their efforts to reach the top levels of corporate America, according to a new study. Read more by clicking the link below: http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/blacknewsblackviews.html Posted in black women, business, racism, sexism, women Tagged: african american, black companies, black women, business, corporate, glass ceiling, racism, women, women are paid less [...]

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Should the Democrats Fear Rob Portman

post from FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right on 12 January 2009 03:09:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right

Ohio's George Voinovich will retire rather than run for re-election in 2010. When I was looking at senatorial career paths the other day, Voinovich had the track record that perhaps impressed me the most, having been governor, lieutenant governor, a Republican (although officially nonpartisan) mayor in the very Democratic city of Cleveland, and then serving two terms in the Senate.

GOP folks don't seem too upset, though, because one of their rising stars, former 2nd District Congressman and OMB director Rob Portman, is strongly considering a run for the position. Is Portman someone whom the Democrats should be worried about -- the de facto favorite against a Democratic candidate like Tim Ryan?

I'm not so sure. Even if the political climate has turned slightly more toward the Republicans in 2010, being a member of the Bush cabinet is not likely to be one of those things that sells all that well to voters - nor is "wonk" likely to play as well in a state like Ohio as "populist". Portman won election to the Congress seven times between 1993 and 2004, receiving between 70 and 77 percent of the vote on each occasion, but OH-2 is very conservative and that is pretty much par for the course for a Republican in that district. Nor is the electoral environment all that favorable for Republicans in Ohio right now, where they're now at roughly an 8-point disadvantage in partisan identification.

Still, Portman will have little trouble raising funds from Republican partisans, and could very easily accumulate as large a warchest as Voinovich might have had. He'll know how to hire a staff and how to run a campaign. And while his name recognition is probably pretty far from 100 percent statewide, he'll get plenty of earned media between now and then -- it's easy enough to imagine Portman becoming a semi-regular on FOX News or CNBC to talk about the economy.

Basically, he'll have most of the advantages that Voinovich would have had, as we'll as Voinovich's biggest disadvantage -- he's an establishment Republican in a state where establishment Republicans aren't very popular. Ultimately, this election will be a litmus test for how much voters blame Bush versus Obama if the economy is still tepid in 2010.

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Reply-all e-mail storm hits State

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 12 January 2009 03:08:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

We've all been there. Someone sends an email to a slew of people, cc's them all instead of bcc'g them, then more than a few brainiacs decide to reply to the entire list, everyone on the list, perhaps hundreds of people, to complain that they want to be taken off the list. Then the replies hit replies, and pretty soon, it's a mess. Well, it seems this rather low-tech threat nearly brought down the State Dept. computers. Kind of fascinating.

Officials said the storm started when some diplomats used the 'reply all' function to respond to a blank e-mail sent recently to many people on the department's global address list.

Most demanded to be removed from the list while others used 'reply all' to tell their co-workers, in often less than diplomatic language, to stop responding to the entire group, the officials said.

Some then compounded the problem by trying to recall their initial replies, which generated another round of messages to the group, they said.

Ah yes, America's finest.

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Israel bans Arab parties from running in upcoming
elections (Associated Press)

post from memeorandum on 12 January 2009 03:05:01 PM. © memeorandum

Associated Press:
Israel bans Arab parties from running in upcoming elections — The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month's parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country's Supreme Court.

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White House press corps sends off Bush with
awkward goodbye.

post from Think Progress on 12 January 2009 03:05:00 PM. © Think Progress

At the conclusion of President Bush?s final White House press conference earlier this morning, he addressed reporters, telling them: ?It has been an honor to work with you. ? I wish you all the very best.? And with that, Bush concluded the briefing and walked off the podium, leaving the press corps unsure of how to react. Some hesitated to stand, while most stayed seated. One said ?thank you Mr. President,? and a small number offered half-hearted applause. Watch it:

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Midday open thread

post from Daily Kos on 12 January 2009 03:00:04 PM. © Daily Kos

I think Andrew "The Internets are bad for you" Keen is hilarious.

The 1930s fascists were expert at using all the most technologically sophisticated communications technologies—the cinema, radio, newspapers, advertising—to spew their destructive, hate-filled message. What they excelled at was removing the the traditional middlemen like religion, media, and politics, and using these modern technologies of mass communications to speak with reassuring familiarity to the disorientated masses.

Imagine if today’s radically unregulated Internet, with its absence of fact checkers and editorial gatekeepers, had existed back then.

Yeah, what would happen if there were no fact-checkers????? We'd be like Nazis!!!!!

Which means, I guess, that Keen is a Nazi. This is me from October 2007:

Andrew Keen recently wrote a book called "The Cult of the Amateur" in which he lambasts citizen media for degrading our culture. To him, Craigslist, YouTube, blogs, and the like are dangerous because "the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred."

Despite the patent absurdity of the premise, I picked up the book anyway, thinking it may have some value.

What did Keen, an "expert" technologist and entrepreneur, have to add to the debate?

I started reading until I got to page 52, and unexpectedly came across this passage:
Unfortunately, the internet is bloated with the hot air of these amateur journalists. Despite the size of their readership, even the A-List bloggers have no formal journalistic training. And, in fact, much of the real news their blogs contain has been lifted from (or aggregated from) the very news organizations they aim to replace.
It is not surprising then that these prominent bloggers have no professional training in the collection of news. After all, who needs a degree in journalism to post a hyperlink on a Web site? Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, for example, the founder of Daily Kos, a left-leaning site, came to political blogging via the technology industry and the military.

Even back then, the About page on this site said:

Moulitsas earned two bachelor degrees at Northern Illinois University (1992-96), with majors in Philosophy, Journalism, and Political Science and a minor in German.

And as I noted in that post, any cursory research into my past would've dug up examples of my journalism background, including running my college newspaper (and being inducted into its hall of fame), freelancing for the Chicago Tribune, and writing for the Guardian (UK). So it's striking that even today, Keen is still blabbering about "fact checkers" when he himself can't be bothered to properly research his own bleatings.

Speaking of Hitler, did you know that Cheney was better than Hitler? Phew! I'm relieved he cleared that bar.

MN-Sen: Another interesting data point from the Research 2000/Daily Kos poll last week:

QUESTION: Which statement best reflects your point of view? (ROTATED):
The recount process has been fair to both Norm Coleman and Al Franken OR The recount process has been mostly unfair to Norm Coleman OR The recount process has been mostly unfair to Al Franken BOTH COLEMAN FRANKEN NOT SURE ALL 63% 17% 12% 8%
DEMOCRATS 69% 7% 18% 6% REPUBLICANS 54% 32% 5% 9% INDEPENDENTS 66% 14% 11% 9%

Note that overall, despite the whines of right-wing pundits and the Coleman campaign, only 17 percent of Minnesotans think the recount was unfair to Coleman. and even among Republicans, less than a third (32%) thought the process was stacked against their guy.

Joe the Plumber is yet another reason I'm so, so glad I'm not a conservative.

Discover Magazine has a list of the top 100 science stories of 2008.

My neighborhood.

I suspect Atrios would like this.

Yeah, Slumdog Millionaire is awesome. And yes, Freida Pinto is insanely gorgeous. But neither she, nor her co-star Dev Patel, are dancers (but I don't hold it against them).

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More TARP Programs, More Policy by Deal

post from TPMCafe on 12 January 2009 02:59:00 PM. © TPMCafe

Back on January 2, the Treasury Department announced something called the Targeted Investment Program. I missed this at the time, along with (according to a quick search - thank you Google Reader!) all of the economics blogs that I read. The press release admitted that this was a program announced after the fact to cover the second Citigroup bailout (the first was under the Capital Purchase Program, the main bank recapitalization plan). In essence, the program says that if Treasury thinks a financial institution is at risk of a loss of confidence, Treasury can invest in it under any terms they want. This is very similar to the Systemically Significant Failing Institutions Program, also announced after the fact (in November) to cover the second AIG bailout, which reads almost identically, except instead of talking about a "loss of confidence" it takes about the "disorderly failure" of a systemically important institution.

This isn't a power grab by Treasury - they already had this power under the EESA (the main bailout bill passed in October, commonly known as TARP). And I happen to agree that if a systemically significant institution - the kind that whose failure would have a major impact on countless other institutions - is going to fail, it should be bailed out. However, I think these programs have two major failings.

First, they do only the vaguest job of specifying what types of institutions will be bailed out, making it difficult to predict when the government will step in. Shouldn't the government be able to figure out at this point which institutions are systemically significant, and say what they are instead of periodically relaxing the criteria to let in, say, GMAC? Second, and more importantly, they are completely vague on the terms of such a bailout (as opposed to the Capital Purchase Program, which has predefined terms that happen to be quite generous to participants). This is a problem because of the incentives it creates. If you are a shareholder in a bank that may be in trouble, you cannot be sure whether or not it will qualify for a bailout. And if you happen to run a bank that may be in trouble, you know that if push comes to shove, you can negotiate a deal with Treasury at the last minute by threatening to blow your brains out on their nice carpet.

This is a case where it would be good for Treasury to tie its hands in advance by predefining the terms of a rescue operation (say, type of asset invested in, warrant amount, strike price, governance, executive compensation restrictions, etc.). First of all, it would enable public debate over the terms, instead of the usual second-guessing on Monday morning when Treasury announces the deal it struck on Sunday evening "before the Asian markets open." Second, it allows Treasury to say, "This is the only deal on the table. Take it or leave it." It is a commonplace in negotiations that you are better off if you can credibly claim that your hands are tied, because this gives you a valid reason why you simply cannot concede to your counterparty's requests.

The counterargument will be that each failing institution is different and the rescue has to be tailored to its situation. But I don't really buy this. The predefined plan could be, to take a simple example, that Treasury will buy as much common stock as is needed to inject the required capital, at a 10% discount to the price on at the previous market close. No matter how much capital a bank needs in a pinch, it can get it under those terms - but the more capital, the more the existing shareholders get diluted, which is exactly as it should be. This plan should have relatively harsh terms; the Capital Purchase Program is the one with easy terms that banks turn to first. Even these terms are better for shareholders than bankruptcy, which means that the bank's board of directors has a fiduciary obligation to take them if they can't find private capital and the only alternative is bankruptcy. This is obviously just a simplistic example (maybe convertible preferred stock would be better than common), but I don't see why certain ground rules like this can't be defined in advance.

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Fearguth’s Great Snark Hunt

“Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nationswhich ye shall possess served their gods, upon the highmountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars,and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew downthe graven images of their gods, and destroy the [...]

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PLEASE JUST GO!

As I watched the frat boy defiantly give his final press conference and try his best to rewrite history, I must confess that I almost felt pity for the man. (Almost) There he was today trying to save his legacy, and trying to hold on to what slither of dignity he has left. As he took questions from the press corp, you had the feeling it was more like a trial than a standard White House news conference.

Some of the questions were tough: reporters asked him about our tarnished image abroad, his fuck up with the Iraq war, his declaration on an aircraft carrier that our mission was accomplished, when clearly it was not, and his handling and response to hurricane Katrina.
Of course he refused to own up to his mistakes. Sure he said he could have done a few things differently here and there (like actually landing his plane in Louisiana after one of the most devastating natural disasters in our country's history) but he never really owned up to the mess that he has left his successor. As has been the case with the frat boy from day one, he was right and everyone else was wrong.
"I think it's a good, strong record.... You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature."
Of course not, your "nature" is to stubbornly go into an unnecessary war with a country that had nothing to do with 911 in order to expand the powers of the executive branch and hold on to political power. And it didn't hurt that you had your trusty henchman, Dead eye Dick, riding shotgun to carry out your dastardly deeds every inch of the way.

"The question is, in the long run, will this democracy survive, and that's going to be a question for future presidents.."
He was talking about Iraq, but he might as well have been talking about A-merry-ca. Because after eight years of his awful and detestable administration, I think our democracy is on life support.
Thursday night he will be on prime time giving his final address to the nation. It will be more of the same: Defiance. Denial. Prevarication. One more go round with the frat boy as he tries to win our hearts and make us forget how miserable he has made our lives. It won't work. We will all look at that cocky walk to the podium, that irritating little smirk, and every single one of us will wish it was 2000 all over again.

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http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2009/01/please-just-go.html

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IA-Sen: Will Chuck Grassley Be the Next Senate
GOP Retirement

Just twelve days into 2009, we already have four Senate Republican retirements, including two in the last week. And there may still be more to come. With Florida's Mel Martinez, Kansas' Sam Brownback, Missouri's Kit Bond, and now Ohio's[...]

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