Friday AM Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 22 April 2010 11:33:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

(Big-time Blogger/ISP issues last night...)

Whether it's the stimulus, health care reform or financial reform, always count on the Repugs to chant the same tired script (here)...

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...and by the way, April is Jazz Appreciation Month, so here's a memorable number for the occasion.

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New whale hunt 'compromise' allows hunting of
endangered whales

post from AMERICAblog News on 22 April 2010 11:32:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News

Huh? And this is supposed to be progress? How can anyone think this is a great step forward in protecting whale populations? And anyone who thinks the whalers will abide by any limits is kidding themselves. They're already selling whale meat on the black market so there's little reason to trust them. BBC:

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has published draft proposals for regulating whaling for the next decade.

Japan's Antarctic whale hunt would fall in stages to less than a quarter of its current size. But hunting would continue on the endangered fin whale.

The draft is the latest stage in a two-year process aiming to find compromise between pro- and anti-whaling camps.

It will be debated at the IWC's annual meeting in June. Some conservation groups have already condemned it.

Commercial whaling was banned globally in 1982, but Iceland, Japan and Norway continue to hunt under various exemptions, collectively targeting more than 2,000 whales each year.

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 22 April 2010 11:30:12 PM. © Crooks and Liars

This is not an over-sized pocket protector, this is Apple's new Platomorphic Optical Shield, the I-POS, a steal at $399.99. You will need to buy this because, uh, something something petabytes of cool. Something something provenance. Something something lineage. Something something mouth-feel. Something something post-millennial design elements. Something something peevish insouciance.

Open Thread below...

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http://crooksandliars.com/driftglass/open-thread-31

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I agree with Dick Cheney

post from Daily Kos on 22 April 2010 11:30:04 PM. © Daily Kos

Words I never thought I'd think let alone say: I agree with Dick Cheney ... at least with his take on the 2004 incident on the floor of the U.S. Senate, when he told Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) to "fuck yourself."

MILLER: I love that move. One of my favorite stories. Muttering that.

CHENEY: You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.

Compared to the long list of heinous acts he perpetrated against this country, he's right. Being a total ass is the best thing he's ever done.

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ney

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Random Thoughts about Earth Day 20104022

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 22 April 2010 11:14:43 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Most of you who read my posts will agree that I prefer environmentally friendly industries, transport, and food. You also know that I grow quite a lot of my own food, and a guide will be published here, this coming Saturday, at 7:30 PM when I guest[...]

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rth-day-20104022

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Like Sinn Fein & the IRA

post from Talking Points Memo on 22 April 2010 11:04:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Newt Gingrich says the Tea Party movement will turn into the "militant wing" of the GOP. [...]

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C&L's Late Night Music Club with The XX

post from Crooks and Liars on 22 April 2010 11:00:33 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Title: CrystalisedArtist: The xx
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The XX are three* twenty(ish) year olds from London who are very softly spoken. They're quiet, bashful and they tend to look down when they're talking. They're so shy that when singers Romy and Oliver started the band together, they had to sing at the same time because neither one of them wanted to go first. But don't take this as an inability to communicate. Their lyrics are simple but they get the message across, even though it's mostly about sex. And relationships.

They use a drum machine, they wear practically all black, the guitars strum bare, singular notes and there's a lot of xylophone. Romy's voice breaks breathily over the music and Oliver's voice isn't particularly special. It really shouldn't work at all, but their debut album, XX, is still as addictive as it was a year ago.

*There were four, as shown in the videos, but she... left.

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http://lnmc.crooksandliars.com/lmes/cls-late-night-music-club-xx

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Late Nite FDL: Name Our Pot Campaign Contest,
1st Round Semifinal Voting

Welcome to Round 1 of our semifinal voting for FDL’s “Name Our Pot Campaign” contest.We had hundreds of entries, way too many to consider fairly in one night, so we’re breaking it up over several days. Round 2 will continue at[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2010/04/22/late-nite-fdl-name-our-pot-campaign-contest-1st
-round-semifinal-voting/

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No fracking way!

This Earth Day, while an oil rig was burning and sinking and spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, I joined a small band of protesters during my lunch break to tell the government to stop a similar crime against nature, one that is taking place in my[...]

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House of Cards

So you're a savvy, cautious investor. You do you research and look for those Standard & Poor's and Moody's ratings. Independent analyses that really let you know you're on solid ground. Yeah. No.

WASHINGTON — A Senate panel investigating the causes of the nation's financial crisis on Thursday unveiled evidence that credit-ratings agencies knowingly gave inflated ratings to complex deals backed by shaky U.S. mortgages in exchange for lucrative fees.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a detailed hearing on Friday, where its chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., will introduce e-mail records in which executives from Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service acknowledge compromising the integrity of ratings to win business from big Wall Street firms.

"They did it for the big fees they got," Levin told reporters on Thursday after outlining the broad strokes of what he'd pursue Friday when he puts current and former ratings agency officials on the hot seat....

In one example obtained by the committee, Yvonne Fu, a Moody's employee, sent an e-mail to a banker at Merrill Lynch in June 2007, pressuring the investment bank to lock down a big fee in exchange for a positive rating.

"We have spent significant amount of resource on this deal and it will be difficult for us to continue with this process if we do not have an agreement on the fee issue," Fu wrote....

In another bit of explosive evidence, the panel on Friday will release an e-mail from a Standard & Poor's employee acknowledging complicity in building up a doomed market.

"Rating agencies continue to create an even bigger monster _ the CDO market. Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," the employee wrote on Dec. 15, 2006.

"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired" before we bring our whole financial system crashing down around our ears. I guess we're just lucky the entire economy hasn't devolved into a barter system. That's where these guys would happily have led us, as long as they got theirs.