Study of the brain, Conservative vs. Liberal

Noted:




Link found here:

Taibbi on BOA, the zombie bank that won't die

Taibbi:


At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

It's been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they'd be beneath your average street thug. Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers. It brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus, "robo-signed" evidence – a type of mass perjury that it helped pioneer. It hawked worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, draining them of hundreds of millions in value. And when it wasn't ripping off workers and pensioners, it was helping to push insurance giants like AMBAC into bankruptcy by fraudulently inducing them to spend hundreds of millions insuring those same worthless mortgages.

But despite being the very definition of an unaccountable corporate villain, Bank of America is now bigger and more dangerous than ever. It controls more than 12 percent of America's bank deposits (skirting a federal law designed to prohibit any firm from controlling more than 10 percent), as well as 17 percent of all American home mortgages. By looking the other way and rewarding the bank's bad behavior with a massive government bailout, we actually allowed a huge financial company to not just grow so big that its collapse would imperil the whole economy, but to get away with any and all crimes it might commit. Too Big to Fail is one thing; it's also far too corrupt to survive.
--------------------
Rest is here:

Moveon's 'War On Women' video:

Moveon's 'War On Women' video:

Pat Robertson: Tornadoes in Kentucky caused by lack of prayer

Yeah, that's right, and this isn't an Onion article.  Here's the new right wing lunatic that'll be on my radar.

So this toddler and her entire family who died in this storm were just a bunch of heathens.

Leo Fatlip:

He said that the storms weren’t a malicious act of God and instead turned it around on the victims, asking, “why did you build houses where tornadoes were apt to happen?” [...]

Robertson continued that the tornadoes may not have happened if people had prayed for divine intervention, “If enough people were praying He would’ve intervened, you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms.” He also told people who live in areas prone to natural disasters that it’s “their fault, not God’s.”

But come on, does anyone really take this lunatic seriously anymore? I mean, you’d have to be completely insane to court him and give him any attention as a real public figure worth…

--------------
Full article here:

Afghanistan slaughter video

Get us the hell out of these countries:

Rush/Republican meltdown, Dems have 25 pt advantage on R's with women

Well oh well, it appears we've found something of a lightning bolt issue in regards to women's reproductive health, so say this new Washington Poll that gives him a 25 point advantage with women and the exodus of advertisers from Rush Limbaugh's show, m'yeah, try like over 141 groups, including the United States Army.

Raw Story:

"A memo being circulated by the distribution company behind Republican shock jock Rush Limbaugh has revealed a massive flight from Limbaugh’s program in the wake of his offensive comments about a Georgetown law student.

The companies include major corporate players like Sony, British Petroleum, McDonald’s, NBC, Toyota, Subway, Lowes, Autozone, Geico, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, State Farm, IBM and many others.

And in a surprise reveal, it appears that the U.S. Army is among them.

Activists have been pressuring corporate advertisers to withdraw from Limbaugh’s show after he called a woman a “slut” and a “prostitute” who should publish sex tapes online if she obtains contraceptive coverage from her private insurance policy.

Even Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, was leaned on by activists calling for Limbaugh to be taken off the Armed Forces Network. Levin said he would like to see Limbaugh off the network as well, but the Pentagon has not yet initiated a review. Levin added that Congress should not get involved, saying that he hopes the administrators of the Armed Forces Network will see just how offensive Limbaugh’s is and take it off the air.

In all, 141 advertisers have left Limbaugh’s show so far, but just 50 were known before the memo surfaced. It shows that 91 additional companies have ditched not just Limbaugh, but right-wing radio talkers altogether, including Limbaugh acolytes Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. Limbaugh is often cited as the unofficial voice of the Republican Party."

---------

Rest is here and here:

Paul Krugman - Honored to welcome their hatred

NYT Krugman:

A correspondent tells me that Fox News has declared me a “menace to society”.

Always glad to be of service.

Almost Half of Bailed Banks Repaid the Government With Money “From Other Federal Programs”

Well, lookie here. Turns out the banks didn't pay jack back.  They simple dove into some other government programs.  How much more do these people expect the American people to take with unemployment at 8%, corporate profits at all time highs and the division of wealth at historic highs?

Naked Capitalism:

The Government Accountability Office continues its subtle war on the talking point used by Treasury that “TARP made money”. Here’s the GAO, with a report out today.

As of January 31, 2012, 341 institutions had exited CPP, almost half by repaying CPP with funds from other federal programs. Institutions continue to exit CPP, but the number of institutions missing scheduled dividend or interest payments has increased.

Much of the government-supplied TARP funding (to small banks) was replaced by the Small Business Lending Fund passed in 2010, which Republicans called “TARP 2.0″.  The larger banks, however, where much of the bank-based credit creation in the economy takes place, didn’t use this program.  Instead, they got an implicit subsidy of between $6B and $300B a year from the widespread belief that the government will not let their bondholders lose money.

The talking point that the Troubled Asset Relief Program made money for the taxpayer is an important structural argument for the Treasury Department and the political elements in the Obama White House.  Yves Smith quoted an earlier GAO report on this phenomenon a few months ago.

Although Treasury regularly reports on the cost of TARP programs and has enhanced such reporting over time, GAO’s analysis of Treasury press releases about specific programs indicate that information about estimated lifetime costs and income are included only when programs are expected to result in lifetime income.

Our banking system is still reliant on the government for support.  Officials can claim that TARP made money, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is a way of avoiding a description of the actual policy framework.

--------------

and HP:

Though lots of people grumble about the government bailing out banks in the financial crisis, we have at least taken some comfort in the idea that the government has turned a profit on that bailout.

Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves.

All told, including dividend, interest and other payments, U.S. banks have repaid the government $211.5 billion under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the first phase of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), according to a report Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. That's more than the $204.9 billion the banks initially got under TARP.

$211.5 billion minus $204.9 billion equals profit, right?

But 48 percent of the banks that have repaid the CPP used money they'd gotten from other federal programs, according to the GAO report. Those programs include the Community Development Capital Initiative -- another TARP program -- and the Small Business Lending Fund, a program designed to encourage lending to small businesses. Both of those programs have more favorable borrowing terms for the banks than the original CPP.

This isn't a new issue -- The Wall Street Journal reported last October that banks were repaying TARP funds with cash earmarked for small-business loans, after the Independent Community Bankers of America lobbied for the ability to switch money "from one Treasury program to the other."

Small businesses have continued to struggle to get credit, a drag on the recovery, while banks have been using funds earmarked for lending to small businesses simply to pay back their first TARP bailout.

At Yahoo Finance, Dan Gross sees a silver lining in the fact that these banks have at least swapped out of one government program that simply hands them cash for ones that encourage them to do something constructive with that cash.

Still, the fact that some banks refinanced their initial TARP investments by borrowing from other federal government programs undercuts the Treasury Department's claim that the government has made money from TARP, wrote Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a former senior policy advisor to former Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, in a post at the Naked Capitalism blog:

Our banking system is still reliant on the government for support. Officials can claim that TARP made money, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is a way of avoiding a description of the actual policy framework.

Meanwhile, there is still about $16.7 billion in original CPP money that hasn't been paid back, the GAO report says. (The government has turned a slight profit on CPP so far because the dividend and interest payments from other banks have amounted to more than that $16.7 billion). And while the biggest banks have paid their money back, several smaller banks are having trouble making regularly scheduled payments to the government, the GAO report says.

The Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog wrote:

As of Nov. 30, 158 had missed quarterly payments, a marked increase from eight in February 2009, GAO said. And the number of problem banks–those that demonstrated financial, operational or managerial weaknesses that threatened their continued financial viability–rose to 130 in December 2011 from 47 in December 2009 GAO said.

It may be unfair to quibble with the Treasury Department's claim that the government is making money on TARP. After all, the bailout was not meant to be a get-rich-quick scheme. It was meant to stop the financial sector from collapsing into a giant black hole that was going to suck the global economy inside of it.

But it is worth remembering that the banking sector is where it is today thanks to the good graces of American taxpayers, who are still on the hook if these banks can't pay back the money they've borrowed to stay afloat. And whether we're talking about small banks or big banks, it's still too early to say the banking sector is in the clear.

Recent debate over contraception comes as GOP loses gains among women

Well derp.  Who didn't see this coming.  Gee, I guess restricting the rights of 51% of a population has some consequences:

WP:

The fragile gains Republicans had been making among female voters have been erased, a shift that has coincided with what has become a national shouting match over reproductive issues, potentially handing President Obama and the Democrats an enormous advantage this fall.

In the 2010 congressional midterm elections, Republican candidates ran evenly with Democrats among women, a break with long-established trends. That was a major reason the GOP regained control of the House.
A number of polls show Obama’s approval among women has risen significantly since December, even as it has remained flat among men.

The same trend, which began even before the controversy in recent weeks, is also showing up farther down the ballot.

When the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey asked last summer which party should control Congress, a slim 46-42 percent plurality of women said it should be the Democrats.

But in a survey released Monday, compiling polling since the beginning of the year, that figure had widened considerably to a 15-point advantage for the Democrats, according to polling by the team of Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff. Fifty-one percent favored Democratic control; only 36 percent wanted to see the Republicans in charge.

-----------
Rest is here:

Thank God... A little good news.

Who care who proposed the legislation.  I'm just glad to see it in the legislature.  Wonder how quick it'll die in the House?

HP:

Indefinite Detention Targeted In Democratic Bill On Handling Terrorist Suspects

WASHINGTON -- A pair of lawmakers on Thursday offered a bill that would repeallaws that allow the indefinite detention of Americans and others by the military without trial.

The power of military authorities to arrest and jail people as long as they want stems from Congress' 2001 joint resolution authorizing the use of military force against terrorists, but was explicitly codified into law last year after President Obama signedthe National Defense Authorization Act on New Year's Eve. While allowing military detention of anyone, the act mandated that certain terrorist suspects had to be held by the armed forces.

Civil libertarians on the left and right were sharply critical of the law, even though the president promised not to grab Americans.

Obama set out policy rules last month making good on that pledge, specifying that U.S. citizens and numerous other categories of suspected terrorists would not be clapped into the military system, which somewhat mollified critics.

But many pointed out that those rules are only good as long as Obama is president, prompting Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) to offer their bill Thursday.

"On the books, we have a law that gives the executive branch the power to indefinitely detain people here in the U.S., even U.S. citizens, and we believe we should take that off the books," Smith said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "Even though you can make an argument that this executive will not exercise that authority, has not exercised that authority, we don't believe we can afford to allow that kind of power to reside in the executive branch."

"That policy won't tie the hands of future administrations," said Udall. "I continue to believe that the NDAA detention provisions weaken our national security and our constitutional protections."

------------

Rest is here:

Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine- A good piece

A good piece on our corporate dominated lives, take a look:

The collapse of Bank of America on the horizon? Looks like it

Rolling Stone/Taibbi:

It looks like Bank of America might have started circling the drain before the Occupy movement even had a chance to launch its campaign against the company. For weeks now there have been ominous signs of trouble at the bank, and yesterday we heard yet another dark piece of news.

Last year, there was an uproar when Bank of America announced a plan to slap customers with a monthly $5 fee for debit card usage. The bank eventually backed off that plan when the public and some politicians cried foul.

Now it seems the company is going to try to put a new package on the same crappy idea and sell it again. This time, the plan is to add charges that range from $6 to $25 a month. From an MSNBC report:

Pilot programs in Arizona, Georgia and Massachusetts are experimenting with charging $6 to $9 a month for what’s called an “Essentials” account. Other account options being tested in those states carry monthly charges of $9, $12, $15 and $25, but give customers opportunities to avoid the payments by maintaining minimum balances, using a credit card or taking a mortgage with Bank of America, according to an internal memo cited by the [Wall Street] Journal.

It’s a very bad sign that a bank is in a desperate cash crunch when it tries repeatedly to gouge its customers. David Trainer, an analyst for Market Watch, a WSJ publication, wrote that the new fees are a sign of series trouble at BAC. He writes: 

In my opinion, there are four actions taken by financial services that signal the company is headed to serious trouble.

1. Management shake-up and major layoffs - lots of layoffs over the past year

2. Exploiting accounting rules to boost earnings - SFAS 159

3. Drawing down reserves to boost earnings: to the tune of $13.3 billion in 2011 and 2012

4. Bilking customers with new fees: tried it before and trying it again

-------
Rest is here: 

Get Wall Street traders a tissue, they think they're being treated unfairly

As Eric Cartman said; "let me taste your tears":

Bloomberg:

Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,” Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

:::Jump:::

Most people can only dream of Wall Street’s shrinking paychecks. Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, lower than the previous year and less than 1 percent of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s $7 million restricted-stock bonus for 2011. The percentage of Americans living in poverty climbed to 15.1 percent, the highest in almost two decades.

------------

Rest is here:

#OccupyLexKY receives Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice award

Great job everyone!

HP:

Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of 'The 99%' 

A banker left a 1% tip in defiance of 'the 99%' at a Newport Beach restaurant the other week, according to his dining companion and underling who snapped a photo of the receipt and posted it to his blog, Future Ex Banker. (Update: the blog is now offline.)

In posting the photo, the employee gave some background on his boss and the receipt:

Mention the “99%” in my boss’ presence and feel his wrath. So proudly does he wear his 1% badge of honor that he tips exactly 1% every time he feels the server doesn’t sufficiently bow down to his Holiness. Oh, and he always makes sure to include a “tip” of his own.

The "tip" of his own in this case was to tell the server to "get a real job." Pleasant.

----

Rest is here:

Redistricting in KY ruled unconstitutional by KY Supreme Court

Well oh well, there is a glimmer of justice every now and again.  Looks like David Williams won't be having his way this year, Senator Stein will keep her seat:

CJ:

Kentucky Supreme Court rules legislative redistricting plan unconstitutional

FRANKFORT, KY. — The state Supreme Court on Friday upheld a circuit judge’s ruling that this year’s legislative redistricting bill is unconstitutional, and it ordered elections for the General Assembly to be run in the districts in place since 2002.

The ruling is a victory for House Republicans and one Senate Democrat who argued that the redistricting plans contained in House Bill 1, passed earlier this year, violated state constitutional guidelines.

The six-judge panel took less than four hours to rule on the matter after hearing arguments Friday morning. All six judges who sat on the panel concurred.

--------
Rest is here:

Another bailout for Wall Street, no I'm not kidding

Get your pitchforks ready, people...

These people have to be the most tone deaf people on the planet. I want to know what kinds of drugs they're taking. The business end of their crack pipes must be hot to the f*$&*#g touch.

CBS:

(MoneyWatch)  U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook to bail out big banks -- again. The Financial Times is reporting that taxpayers will subsidize a large portion of the $25 billion mortgage settlement, which was broken down into two distinct pieces:

1. $5 billion in cash payments, of which $1.5 billion would go directly to approximately 750,000 borrowers who were wrongly or illegally foreclosed on between September 2008 and December 2011. This is the part where you have heard that borrowers who were wrongly foreclosed on could receive up to $2,000.

2. $20 billion in "credits" the banks will receive for principal write-downs and other aid to nearly 1 million homeowners at risk of default, up to $20,000 per loan.

It's part two that's coming under scrutiny. A clause in the provisional agreement allows the banks to use the government's Home Affordable Modification Plan, or HAMP, to cover the principal reductions. Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector-general of the TARP, described the clause as "scandalous." Says Barofsky: "It turns the notion that this is about justice and accountability on its head."

-----

Rest is here:

What Wall Street is saying about OWS

Does anyone really like Pat Robertson?

Wow are these people out of touch:

Taibbi on the R Primary

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

How the GOP race became a showdown between a walking OCD diagnosis and a flatulent serial adulterer

They may be shit for choosing a good candidate for the presidency, but say this for the Republican primaries: They're fast turning into the most luridly entertaining political spectacle of our time. In an inherently conservative, bottomlessly moneyed, scrupulously stage-managed electoral system designed to preclude chance or weirdness from playing any part in determining our political future, the unthinkable is happening: real drama. This isn't part of some clever but inscrutable master plan, put on by the hidden hands who run this country, to fool or distract the masses. This is an unscripted fuck-up of heroic dimensions, radiating downward from the highest levels of our society, playing out in real time for all of us to watch. Our oligarchy has thrown a rod.

If you're not a conservative voter with a dog in this fight, watching Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and whoever else is running for the GOP nomination this week try to hold on to front-runner status has been great slapstick, like watching a cruel experiment involving baboons, laughing gas and a forklift. No matter how many times you ring the bell, those poor animals are never going to figure out how to move that pallet of bananas – yet they keep trying, taking the sorry show from one state to the next, over and over, as if something is going to change.

The latest ape to fall off the heavy machinery is Romney, who in a single week before the South Carolina primary went from near-certain nominee to national punch line, in genuine peril of becoming one of America's all-time electoral catastrophes. The overwhelming expectation was that Romney would roll into South Carolina, kneel on the ball a few times, and run out the clock on the party's yearlong display of manic instability. Heading into South Carolina, he'd raised $32 million; none of his competitors appeared to have enough cash to keep the lights on for more than a few more weeks, let alone a whole campaign. This experienced national politician, who had run a superbly organized campaign for president in 2008, a man whose very trademark is inoffensiveness and caution, and who for the year has appeared dedicated to saying nothing in public more controversial than "God bless America," needed to hang on for only 10 or 11 more days after his decisive win in New Hampshire without completely wetting himself on television, and the nomination was his.

But he couldn't do it. Less than a week after New Hampshire, Romney committed a series of gaffes that revealed his crucial character flaw: He's a hypernervous control freak who flips out if you try digging around below the paper-thin veneer of his schlock patriotic presentation. The robotic Mormon financier looks like a walking OCD diagnosis, a trim coil of tightly wound energy with perfect coif and tie, seemingly living in permanent terror of a single hair falling out of place. For this type of anal-retentive personality, the messy chaos of South Carolina was a phobic horror. Faced with actual opposition, he lost his grip on everything. At a time when a quarter of the population has zero or negative net worth, when outrage against the financial elite is at an all-time high on both sides of the political aisle, Romney, it turns out, is so weirdly tone-deaf about his status as a one-percenter and bloodsucking corporate raider that any question in that direction sends his eyes pinwheeling. As his electably boring-mannequin act began to crumble, his carefully concealed true self – a deluded gazillionaire nitwit – was suddenly thrust naked onstage for all of America to gape at.

First he made the mistake, in explaining his income as a private-equity vampire, of insisting that the money he receives each year in speaking fees is "not very much." Romney's idea of "not very much" turns out to be $374,327.62 – a microscopic portion of his total earnings, but still a number that all by itself put him in the one percent. Then, in the crucial debate in Charleston on January 19th, he seemed to go into a mental tailspin. With both the debate and the primary slipping away from him, Romney reached into his bag of clichés for an "I'm not from Washington, I'm an outsider like you" speech. Only he ballsed it up: "If we want people who spent their life and their career, most of their career in Washington," he said, indicating his opponents, "we have three people on the stage who've..."

But as Romney looked to his left, he spotted long-practicing doctor Ron Paul. "Well, I take that back," he fumbled. "We got a doctor down here who spent most of his time in the, in the surgical suite."

The surgical suite? But wait, Paul was an obstetrician! "Well, not surgery," Romney corrected himself. "The birthing suite."

Then, as he looked pleadingly at CNN moderator John King, it was Dan Rather time. Dead fucking air. Romney's candidacy was literally dying in front of his eyes. He realized that he had forgotten King's original question, which was about why he had called Gingrich an "unreliable leader."

"Now, you asked me an entirely different question," he said to King. "What's..."

The crowd laughed as Romney looked around to the other candidates for help. Gingrich, who despite an utter lack of self-control is a cunning old crook with a keen instinct for combat, moved quickly to drive the knife in. "Beats me. I don't know," he said. "Where are we at, John?" The crowd roared.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-odd-couple-romney-vs-gingrich-20120130#ixzz1lMq7erBa