Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 18 April 2012 11:30:53 PM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge Credit: The Fancy - Just Be Cool

The Victory Hoodie. Open Thread below...

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Open thread for night owls: Another bad choice
for an economic advisor. What else is new

post from Daily Kos on 18 April 2012 11:30:04 PM. © Daily Kos

Open Thread for Night Owls William K. Black is Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He writes:

Presidential nominees of either U.S. party can secure economic advice from any economist in the world. This makes it all the more amazing and sad that they choose economists with track records of disastrous policy advice. Bill Clinton chose Robert Rubin, George W. Bush chose Gregory Mankiw, Obama chose Lawrence Summers, and Mitt Romney chose Mankiw. Rubin and Summers led the Clinton administration?s efforts to gut financial regulation. Mankiw led the efforts under Bush. Collectively, these efforts created the criminogenic environment that produced endemic financial fraud (?green slime?).
I have often emphasized the importance of George Akerlof and Paul Romer?s 1993 article (?Looting: the Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit?) to understand the economics of why we suffer epidemics of accounting control fraud and recurrent, intensifying financial crises. Mankiw was the ?discussant? when they formally presented their paper. I was also present at their invitation. Mankiw was unconcerned about looting. It was my first introduction to Mankiw morality: ?it would be irrational for savings and loans [CEOs] not to loot.? I was appalled, but my outrage at Mankiw paled when I observed that the members of the audience, professional economists, were not even made visibly uncomfortable by such a depraved response to elite fraud. CEOs owe fiduciary duties to the shareholders. Mankiw?s response to the findings that CEOs were looting their shareholders was to praise the rationality of the fraudulent CEOs (if you don?t loot you aren?t moral ? you?re insane). One cannot compete with theoclassical economists? unintentional self-parody. [...]
The entire crew of leading economists for the last three Presidents and Romney has proven catastrophically wrong about financial regulation. The remarkable thing is that they do not drop their dogmas even after they engineer multiple crises over the course of three decades. We will soon experience the 30th anniversary of the Garn-St Germain Act of 1982, which set off a renewed ?competition in laxity? among the States (principally California and Texas; whose S&Ls, collectively, caused roughly two-thirds of all S&L losses) and produced the criminogenic environment that led to the second phase of the S&L debacle. [...]

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010:

It took the Republican Party sixty years of dedicated effort to make the word "liberal" radioactive in some parts of the United States. In less than half that time they've also done a pretty good job of making "Republican" just as disliked, associated as it is with the politics of wretched excess, fetishizing ignorance, bowing to K street lobbyists, and diaper-wearing-toe-tapping-lesbian-bondage sexual hypocrisy.
So lately conservatives, and especially the most hard right wing of conservatives, have been on the lookout for other terms they can use rather than the dreaded "R" word when describing themselves. Some of them have jumped on board the Glenn Beck self-promotion tour. Considering that it's an artificial movement generated around a cheap media persona, declaring yourself a supporter of the Tea Party is a bit like being a proud member of a Monkees Fan Club (and you don't even get to hear "Last Train to Clarksville"), but hey, it plays better than being a part of the George W. Bush legacy.
Other conservatives have jumped in a different direction and declared that they're really "small government Libertarians." Only they don't seem to understand what Libertarian actually means. [...]

Tweet of the Day:

The Associated Press would like to hear from anyone who wants Thomas Friedman to get places faster.
? @jesseltaylor via web

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

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-owls-Another-bad-choice-for-an-economic-advisor-What-else-is-new-

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Wednesday Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 18 April 2012 11:09:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

Yes, I know it?s ridiculous to keep harping on the idiocy of Fix Noise, since all they?ll do is recycle pretty much the same crap all over again for the next news cycle, but even though I feel like I?m tilting at about 20 windmills as it were, I also feel like I have to keep trying to speak truth to stupid...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and even though he hung on waaay too long, give Dick Clark credit for popularizing pop music on ?American Bandstand,? which once originated out of the studios of 46th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

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Late Night FDL: Immediate Openings U.S. Secret
Service: STD and Credit Checks Required

post from Firedoglake on 18 April 2012 11:00:34 PM. © Firedoglake

It now appears that the global scope of America's security mission, given this morally repugnant and clinically insane definition of who we are and what we're entitled to do, has egregiously overreached our ability to select the most disciplined and[...]

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C&L's Late Night Music Club With Danny & The
Juniors

post from Crooks and Liars on 18 April 2012 11:00:13 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Title: Rock N' Roll Is Here To Stay Artist: Danny & The Juniors

R.I.P. Dick Clark. American Legend. Do you have a favorite Bandstand moment to share?

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http://crooksandliars.com/jared-shade-reynolds/cls-late-night-music-club--79

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My Odds-on Favorite to Run Berkshire Hathaway
After Warren Buffett Retires

post from Jutia Group on 18 April 2012 10:33:19 PM. © Jutia Group

Warren Buffett is back in the news, and not on the opinion pages about the so-called "Buffett Rule" that would subject high-income earners to additional taxation.

Buffett is on Page One because he has prostate cancer. It's Stage One, easily treatable and not life-threatening, The revered Oracle of Omaha says he not only feels great but will keep working his normal schedule, though his travel will be restricted later this summer as he undergoes radiation.

So, predictably, it's game-on for Buffett watchers, who are all over the airwaves speculating as to the palace intrigue and about how Ajit Jain clearly will be the next CEO. But Jain is too valuable as Lord Chancellor of Berkshire Hathaway's . . . → Read More: My Odds-on Favorite to Run Berkshire Hathaway After Warren Buffett Retires

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r-warren-buffett-retires/

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trouble signing in to comment

post from Everyday Citizen on 18 April 2012 10:27:33 PM. © Everyday Citizen

Haven't been able to sign in for comments, now for several days.Angelo, I wanted to comment about[...]

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ALEC Sends Out an SOS to Breitbart Bloggers

post from Firedoglake on 18 April 2012 10:08:27 PM. © Firedoglake

ALEC is playing defense due to the fact that, almost every day, another ALEC member corporation and funder decides to quit. With Blue Cross Blue Shield?s announcement yesterday that it was pulling out of ALEC, the number of companies that have decided to[...]

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War on Women #satire

As the gender gap threatened to undermine their crusade for a one-term Obama, the GOP turned to Twitter to un-sink the Titanic. Don?t worry your pretty little heads about our party?s mandated transvaginal rapes and birth control bans, a host of Republicans shrieked. It is President Obama who is waging the war against women by sentencing two of them to life?on the Supreme Court.
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FullofMitt: There?s no war on women coming from me. I?m so committed to protecting equality that I promise to lock Lilly Ledbetter in an airtight kennel. #TheDogLovedThat

JohnMcMaverick: War, you say? Well, we must bomb Womanistan before they force us to swallow their nuclear pill. #AlsoBombSyria #AndIran #AndCanada

ReinceStag: Who cares what the marketplace pays women? I need my wife to stay home to wage war on all these damn caterpillars clogging up my tax loopholes. #1%TopRateForThe1%

GovNikki: Women don?t care about birth control. They care about the rising cost of a decent mani-pedi & a vacuum that doesn?t lose suction.

Limpbaugh: Quit having so much sex! Or else send me your sex tapes. See, we stand for choice even more than them. #SoMuchViagraSoLittleCatholicBabePorn
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GreatStateOfArizany: You can get the pill from your doctor only if you obtain permission from your boss. Also be sure to ask your boss whether your lunchtime BLT offends his faith.

FullofMitt: Contraceptions are people, my friends.

VomiSantorium: We?ll get the sluts next time. #Theocracy2016

MrsMitt: It?s grueling work managing five kids, five houses, a herd of dressage horses?not to mention all those nannies, undocumented gardeners & accounts in the Caymans.

FullofMitt: But Moms without $100 million IRAs must learn the dignity of minimum wage work. Also, let?s get rid of the minimum wage. #AndPlannedParenthood

VirginiaGOP: If a woman is pregnant, she?s ipso facto been penetrated before. So why would she object if the state shoves this transvaginal stick up in there too? #DoesntSheLoveHerHomeState?

GovofPenn: If a woman doesn?t want to look at the ultrasound screen, she can just close her eyes. It?s worked for my wife in our bedroom for nearly 40 years.

Dubya: The people of the United States will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with IUDs. #HeMustHaveHidThemInASecretWomb!

UndisclosedDick: The vaginas will treat us as liberators.
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http://crooksandliars.com/steve-weinstein/war-women

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Hate group tries to claim credit for Komen
debacle

The officially-designed religious right hate group, American Family Association, is now oddly (or typically) claiming credit for the failure of two Susan G. Komen events to pull in the support they previously expected. Here is AFA's latest email alert:

Nationwide, women are choosing to no longer support Komen and its partnership with Planned Parenthood.

A March 25 Komen race in Southern Arizona was short 7,267 participants of their goal of 11,000. The event also failed to meet their fundraising goal of $700,000 by over $100,000.

Another race in Indianapolis scheduled for next week is also expected to be at least 10,000 short of last year's 37,500 participants.

There's that. Or maybe people are leaving Komen in droves specifically BECAUSE of what it did to Planned Parenthood. I don't know anyone progressive who would ever give another dime to Susan G. Komen after the Planned Parenthood debacle. So, gee, perhaps that's why their fundraising and turnout is suffering.

AFA is good at trying to claim victory from the jaws of the defeat. Probably because they're just not that good at this game. Hell, Joe and I beat them a few years ago when they got Ford Motor Company to stop advertising in gay publications. After we blew the issue up here on the blog, forcing other gay groups to finally get involved, Ford caved. AFA was ticked at us. I know they were, because someone inside subsequently defected and told me about the meetings.

So it's understandable why AFA feels the need to claim credit when it's not clear that any is due. Otherwise, they'd have nothing to say.