Jon Stewart Thanks Elizabeth Warren for Some Financial Chicken Soup

Elizabeth Warren does such a good job of explaining the economy.

h/t to Calculated Risk.

Dazed & Confused

News timing and blog duty necessitate a Letter From California this morning’n normally I’d promptly spit one out no problem, but in my ninth day without a cigarette it’s time to bluntly state an obvious fact: my fucking mind is blown. I constantly mis-place things, lose objects, then drive to the gym, only to end up at the grocery store. I have zero, I mean zero tolerance for any inanity or nagging element of life, I’m spitting mad at any negative instantly, it gets old.

Duty is duty, right, and I’ve begged off the last two days, which is more intolerable than not smoking. I’ll get to it in a minute.

Open Thread

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick asks whether just getting over it is the right answer when the subject is torture.

Indeed.

One article that was burned into my brain as the Bush administration was embedding torture as a matter of bureaucracy and routine was this one by Vladimir Bukovsky. As a victim of Stalin's torture regime, he reflected on how the acceptance of torture undermined the quality of people the state could attract when it was known that one could be working side by side with brutal sadists.

[T]orture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

...Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists.

When we have doctors and psychologists participating so intimately in torture, there is something deeply wrong with our country that cannot be just "gotten over."

Change

Associated Press:

In a diplomatic exchange of the kind that normally takes months or years, President Barack Obama this week dropped restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, then challenged his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro to reciprocate.

Within hours, Castro responded with Cuba's most open offer for talks since the Eisenhower administration, saying he's ready to discuss "human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners -- everything." Cuban officials have historically bristled at discussing human rights or political prisoners, of whom they hold about 200.

The United States fired back Friday, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offering: "We welcome his comments, the overture they represent and we are taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond."

And OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said he would ask the 34 member nations to invite Cuba back into the fold after 47 years. Analysts doubted Insulza -- known for his political caution -- would have done so without a nod from Washington.

Open Thread

So while Gov. Perry of Texas tries out for top revolutionary and decides Texas can do without the stimulus funds, the Republican Texas Legislature says "are you nuts?" Texans collecting unemployment breath a sigh of relief.

Obstructing Justice By Any Other Name

Mr. President, you can give all the pretty speeches you want about "this being a time for reflection, not retribution". It's all fluff, and you constantly get away with it on the subject of torture because you think that simply closing Gitmo and supposedly closing the Agency's black sites gets you a pass on prosecuting war crimes here at home.

It doesn't.

I can almost see the logic of letting the Agency staff off the hook for their "just following orders" defense. Plus, the agency has you scared shitless and you still stupidly think that not going after the Agency will somehow buy you some bipartisanship from a party that has no desire to be bipartisan.

But if you plan to extend this unwillingness to prosecute torturers to those who wrote and approved the war crimes policies, then you have not only enabled future war crimes, but you've prevented the highest law enforcement agency in the land from enforcing our own laws and the Geneva Convention protocols.

In other words Mr, President, you yourself will be obstructing justice. And if you go that far, for any reason, you are no better than George W. Bush.

They Hate Him Because He Is "Black"

I deliberately use the word black rather than the words African American. The latter lacks the proper emotional value. It is cultural and geographical. The former is visceral. Bigotry is not subtle. It is primal. It is not about ideas. It is irrational.

He is smarter and more educated and more articulate than they. A self-made man, he represents everything they would claim to value. But he looks different, to them. They hate him because he looks different. They hate him because he is dark. In "Western" "Culture," the very words black and dark have powerfully negative value. They often are used as synonyms for the sinister.

They hated President Clinton, and tried to destroy him. But one of their elected governors didn't talk secession. They didn't talk revolution. They didn't attempt (and miserably fail) to launch nationwide protests against him. Bill Clinton was a lot of things. He was not black.

President Obama is no crazy liberal. He is increasing defense spending. Even Alan Greenspan is suggesting economic solutions more akin to "socialism." Gun lovers have nothing to fear. On policy grounds, we crazy liberals have been criticizing him from day one. The radical right have been lambasting him. With the nation fighting two wars and an economic meltdown, they openly hope he fails. But they are not about policy. They are about hatred. And they hate Obama as they have never hated any president. It's not complicated.

The Department of Homeland Security just warned:

Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.

"Extremist" is now a corporate media phenomenon. Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Ann Coulter? Bill O'Reilly? Faux News?

They hate him not because of policy or politics. They hate him because of who he is. Not like them. By the color of his skin. It's time to stop pretending or excusing or evading the obvious. They hate him because he is black!

Open Thread

Well, who is more to blame for the financial crisis: the bankers or the economists? Daniel Gross thinks the economists (Mr. Greenspan and the like) are likely culprits. That corresponds to Nouriel Roubini's thesis a few weeks back that Washington was more to blame than Wall Street. Whatever. I think it would be good to put at least a few of the scoundrels in Jail.

Question For Our Neocon Friends

Should we invade Lehman Brothers?

h/t Magnifico.

The Shrinking Bedrock

Thank you President Bush, for the hollowed-out economy you and the conservatives left us with. From this morning's report by the Fed on the nation's industrial production:

Industrial production fell 1.5 percent in March after a similar decrease in February. For the first quarter as a whole, output dropped at an annual rate of 20.0 percent, the largest quarterly decrease of the current contraction. At 97.4 percent of its 2002 average, output in March fell to its lowest level since December 1998 and was nearly 13 percent below its year-earlier level. Production in manufacturing moved down 1.7 percent in March and has registered five consecutive quarterly decreases.

Bush's economic and tax policies actually drove our industrial production down below where they were when he took office. A decade of disaster capitalism spending, wars without security, corporate welfare, declining personal and family incomes, graft perpetuated by GOP cronies for GOP campaign contributors, unregulated markets, and tax giveaways and havens to the wealthy and Wall Street have given us an industrial base that contracted below where it was over ten years ago.

And yet the GOP's manufactured tea-baggers want more of it.

What Real Protest Looks Like

Today is the great day when our earnest Republican cousins allegedly take to the streets to supposedly protest in righteous anger and fury about…well, it really isn’t clear at all, some mess of angst taxation from the Obama folks, even though all of them likely just got a tax cut from Obama. Ultimately, as the peerless Matt Taibbi pointed out yesterday, it’s all just sad, manipulated lost Americans railing against the wrong thing, a pitiful made-up Fox show.

Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights protest 1968

Open Thread

This is cool! Portland's Streetcar is blazing the trail for the nation.

What I like about Portland's public transit model is how the downtown, extending to the other side of the river (upto Lloyd's Center) is free. It makes it very easy for people to go from PSU to Powell's or Lloyd's Center and now OMSI without having to use your car.

Portland's public transit is one of the best in the nation and it just keeps getting better.

Way to go, Portland! (And thanks, Atrios, for the heads up.)

Unclear On The Concept

Some people just don't get it.

Still Spinning Outrage

As you endure the right-wing silliness tomorrow about "tea parties" around the country, remember one thing: the same people who are staging this supposedly spontaneous outrage also manufactured this supposedly spontaneous outrage back in late 2000:

The "Brooks Brothers Riot" has much in common with tomorrow's tea parties. They are both manufactured outrage from the right wing spin machine, nothing more.

AP and Reuters images

Goldman Sach's Profitability

Perhaps this has something to do with Goldman Sach's ability to pay back the American taxpayer? Or as Paul Krugman notes, could it be Bush accounting?

Tuesday Open Thread

Here are various items to start your Tuesday:

Obama does the right thing by ending the GOP ban on family travel and cash transfers to Cuba, ending a tired policy that achieved nothing in 50 years. Of course, the decision also allows American telecom companies to set up shop in Cuba as well.

The Minnesota panel of judges rules in Al Franken’s favor, forcing a desperate Norm Coleman to file an appeal to the state Supreme Court, where he hopes a campaign donor will help him.

Fearing government regulation and oversight, Goldman Sachs is scurrying to pay back its TARP funds early. Sorry assholes, just because you got Larry Summers and Bob Rubin to carry water for you inside the White House, I’m not sure Congress will be letting you off the hook so easily.

After this blog asked aloud over the weekend why the Obama administration doesn’t assign a battle group to the waters off East Africa to drive the pirates to hell, the administration signals it may do just that. And after Newt Gingrich tagged Obama for looking weak over the weekend, he walks it backward Monday.

72% of Americans disagree with Dick Cheney and don’t think we are less safe with Obama as president.

On the side of disappointment, the “legal left” has cooled towards Obama, for defending Bush policies.

Squandered Political Capital

One of the unnerving things about watching Barack Obama deal with the economic difficulties we face is his willingness to squander his large political capital and follow the lead of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in dealing with Wall Street and the banks, instead of staking out a harder line that demands more of the people who got us into this mess. And he allows these guys to carry on some of the same policies that the previous administration would have followed, when in fact Obama has the political support to break up the banks and work with even conservatives to get the money into the hands of Main Street and regional financial institutions and consumers rather than bail out Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and other lenders who should eat their spinach like the rest of us.

Exactly how much support does he have right now to do these things? Quite a lot, according to the latest Gallup poll out this morning.

Over two-thirds of Americans -- 71% -- have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in President Obama to do or recommend the right thing for the economy, a much higher level of confidence than is given to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, or the Democratic or Republican leaders in Congress.

Congress? Not so much, but better for congressional Democrats.

Americans are not overwhelmingly positive about either the Democratic or the Republican leaders in Congress. Still, the Democrats fare better on a comparative basis. Fifty-one percent of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the Democratic leaders, compared to 38% in the Republican leaders.

What's notable in this poll as we head into the next election cycle is that the poll's sample was largely made up of independent voters.

Gallup Poll
April 6-9, 2009
Sample Party ID

Independent 40%
Democrats 35%
GOP 24%

Obama has three-quarters of the public behind him, wherever he wants to go, and the best we can do right now is to let Geithner and Summers drive us back into the warm embraces of Wall Street and billions more in taxpayer bailouts without making the big money people feel the pain the rest of us do every day.

Get It Over With

Reading the latest Glenzilla piece on the shameful, disgraceful, acutely embarrassing Obama administration’s Bushian embrace of gutting habeas corpus one is left with an obvious urgent question: why?

The few times this question is obliquely answered in the various reeking, disgusting perusals of the story the answer is always the old standby: power greed. Give any President the chance at greater powers and they will always take it, oh well.

Open Thread

Paul Krugman lays out just how bizarre the current Republican Party is and hopes that soon the once great party will once against become a credible party to the discussions about our future. Because today, they simply are not even interested in being at the table.