Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's Labor Day Weekend, the last long weekend of summer. The President is at Camp David. He'll spend Labor Day in Wisconsin.

This morning, his weekly address is on "Honoring the American Worker."

And, I have to give a shout out to Nico Pitney and Karina Newton who are getting married tonight. They really are a great couple and are just very, very good people. Love 'em both. Congrats! Read More......

More Hindi Zahra

It's a sunny but cool Saturday here in Paris. I really didn't adjust well from the high temperatures in Spain (mid to upper 90sF) to chilly Paris which has been stuck in the upper 60s and low 70s. There's nothing quite like a summer cold. I'll try getting back on the bike again today but even that has been spotty. A small (and silly) crash in Spain led to a hospital visit and broken rib so that completely derailed my plans for lots of exercise. Sitting around wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend August. Read More......

Roubini: half of troubled US banks will fail

The bailout was necessary to prevent an even worse crisis though again, the implementation was a failure. The US now has over 800 banks that are listed as troubled and it's rising quickly. Besides failing to tie bailout money to lending or long term pay, it also only helped a few select banks. The majority of US banks have been in trouble and only a few (the ones who were bailed out) remain profitable. We're now facing even more consolidation in the industry which will mean fewer consumer choices and a greater risk of "too big to fail" in the banking industry.

This crisis was not a simple hiccup that could be resolved overnight. Outside of Washington more and more people accept that this crisis was in fact the end result of decades of poor economic policy. Reaganomics and trickle down economics always sounded like voodoo and yes, it was. Throwing credit on top of credit on top of credit and then selling it is not "innovative" as Wall Street likes to think. It's greed and it's as fake as Bernie Madoff. CNBC:

Even if the US and European economies manage to avoid a double dip, it will still feel like a recession, while more than half of the 800-plus US banks on the "critical list" are likely to go bust, according to renowned economist Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics.

The second half of the year will remain weak as tailwinds become headwinds, Roubini told CNBC on the shores of Lake Como, Italy at the Ambrosetti Forum economics conference.

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Mariner Energy had 13 incidents on oil rigs since 2006

But remember, offshore drilling is safe. We know this because Mariner says so during their protests.

Mariner Energy has been involved in a string of at least 13 offshore accidents since 2006 in Gulf of Mexico waters -- including a blowout and four fires -- that were investigated by the Minerals Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement). Possible violations were reported in at least seven of the reported accidents and Mariner has paid at least two separate civil penalties related to accidents, records show.

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Afghanistan asks US for bailout of troubled bank

Been there, done that. This sounds like more of a personal problem for Karzai and his cronies. After bailing out Wall Street there's little interest in bailing out anywhere else.

As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan's biggest bank, President Hamid Karzai told Afghans on Thursday not to panic shortly after his brother, a major shareholder in the beleaguered Kabul Bank, called for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.

"Kabul Bank is safe," Karzai said at a joint news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. "People need not panic, need not be worried."

Earlier in the day, Mahmoud Karzai voiced concern over Kabul Bank's ability to withstand an onslaught of depositors demanding their money back. "America should do something," he said in a telephone interview. He suggested that the Treasury Department guarantee the funds of Kabul Bank's clients, who number about 1 million and have more than $1 billion on deposit with the bank.

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Poll: 71% blame Bush for economy

So why are the Democrats running in the opposite direction as if they have something to fear? Stand firm and fight for goodness sakes. USA Today/Gallup:

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, more than a third of those surveyed said George W. Bush deserved a great deal of the blame for economic woes and a third said he should get a moderate amount of it. Not quite another third called that unfair, saying Bush warranted not much or none of the responsibility.

The 71% saying Bush should get blamed was a modest decline from the 80% who felt that way about a year ago, in July 2009.

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Sharron Angle: unemployment insurance 'really doesn't benefit anyone'

Wow.

Sitting down with conservative radio talk show host Heidi Harris, Angle once again addressed a topic that brought her a bit of political heat -- including a hard-hitting ad from her opponent Harry Reid-- not too long ago.

"People don't want to be unemployed," she explained. "They want to have real, full-time, permanent jobs with a future. That's what they want, and we need to create that climate in Washington, D.C. that encourages businesses to create those full-time, permanent jobs with a future, and all [Rep.] Shelley Berkeley and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid want to do is put a band-aid on this by extending unemployment, which really doesn't benefit anyone. What happens is of course that your skills stagnate. You become demoralized yourself, you know, feeling that I can't ever get a job, and these are not the solutions to the problem. We have real solutions, but they won't look at the real solutions."

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Report: Palin had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was during campaign

Why bother someone who is ill just for a photo op? After all, Thatcher was hardly on par with the "prayer warriors." Read More......

'Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power ... race as a trump card'

I'm going to call this strategy "White-washing Civil Rights". I'm also going to call it brilliant.

I normally don't quote anonymous posters on conservative message boards. I quote this one though, because:

1. The race-strategy analysis is correct, and
   
2. Beck has confirmed, via Twitter, that this poster is "The ONLY guy to actually get it!"

Here's the part of the post that deals with Civil Rights (h/t Ben Smith at Politico; my emphasis):

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence...

I've read the whole post, and it's standard stuff — some obvious accurate perceptions, and many "permanent victim" errors of fact. A sample of both:

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1 [elections], for a while, weak on level 2 [institutions], and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 [cultural] phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Yes, Virginia, Tea Partiers are culture warriors (interesting image, given the slow-footed visuals); and No, Virginia, Movement Conservatism has definitely not failed to build institutions.

In fact, they own the post-Reagan world precisely because of those institutions — Heritage Foundation, AEI, Federalist Society, Fox News, to name just a few. Hell, even Opus Dei and the Coors Beer kingdom (which I like to call "Twins for Jesus").

So, no link. Ride the Google if you want. I'd rather let their people finance their clicks.

But the race point, I think, is spot on; and we should be taking notes to counter it. The Big Lie technique has two aspects — saying the lie a bazillion times, and picking the right lie to say.

It's called the "Big Lie" because you pick the most outlandish one, the one no one would think any sane person would dare utter. You also pick the one that can do the most damage.

And Beck and the poster are right. Democrats will have the moral high ground forever because of race, and Repubs will always be Macaca'd with it — partly because it's their history, and partly because they can't stop smearing themselves.

But Beck has thrown down on the step of the Lincoln Memorial, on the very anniversary of "I have a dream." He want to take away race as a permanent issue, and he's said so.

Why? Precisely because, if there's any issue on which Movement Conservatism is evil, it's this one. There's no way to re-spin hanging blacks from trees, except by white-washing the bad guys with the Big Lie.

White-washing Civil Rights. This one has legs.

More in a bit — game on.

GP Read More......

Christian conservatives partner with communist China for abstinence education

It's a marriage made in heaven. Why does Focus on the Family love communism and hate America?

If all goes according to plan, this fall a girl somewhere in China's Yunnan Province will tell her boyfriend she can't have sex with him. And he'll have an abstinence program from the United States to thank.

In Yunnan schools this year, teachers are being trained with a sex education curriculum created by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. The agreement with the Yunnan ministry of education is a milestone for Focus on the Family, which has struggled for four years to make inroads on abstinence in China.

It is also the result of a narrow confluence of interests: Evangelical Christian groups want an entree into China. And Chinese authorities, despite the country's official atheism, want help with controlling population growth and managing the society's rapidly shifting values.

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How'd that rally for more drilling work out for Mariner Energy?

Mariner Energy would be the owners of the rig that caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. The day before Mariner had been participating in a public rally demanding more drilling. Why? Because it's so doggone safe, of course! There's nothing quite like corporate organized public fury.

The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally.

Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times on Wednesday: "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf coast, Gulf coast employees and Gulf coast residents."

The good news for the environment is that is sounds like there will not be an oil leak since they were not yet drilling. Read More......

Krugman: We need another stimulus

The administration ignored him the first time, and they'll ignore him again this time. And we may lose the House, and thus most of everything else we expected from this administration, as a result:

The actual lessons of 2009-2010, then, are that scare stories about stimulus are wrong, and that stimulus works when it is applied. But it wasn’t applied on a sufficient scale. And we need another round.

I know that getting that round is unlikely: Republicans and conservative Democrats won’t stand for it. And if, as expected, the G.O.P. wins big in November, this will be widely regarded as a vindication of the anti-stimulus position. Mr. Obama, we’ll be told, moved too far to the left, and his Keynesian economic doctrine was proved wrong.

But politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. The economic theory behind the Obama stimulus has passed the test of recent events with flying colors; unfortunately, Mr. Obama, for whatever reason — yes, I’m aware that there were political constraints — initially offered a plan that was much too cautious given the scale of the economy’s problems.

So, as I said, here’s hoping that Mr. Obama goes big next week. If he does, he’ll have the facts on his side.

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More Jan Brewer debate videos have emerged

You saw her debate performance fail. And, then, there was the post-debate press conference fail. But, now, the Jan Brewer debate practice video has emerged:

I think Jan Brewer has provided ample fodder for the talented Barbara Seville

And, behind the scenes, courtesy of the also very talented Andy Cobb:
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Obama reviewing hundreds of billions worth of tax cuts

If we just go along with the Republicans and play friendly, they will kindly reward such behavior with open arms and a new spirit of bi-partisan cooperation. Isn't that what's been happening since the beginning? Who would have guessed that being GOP-Lite was Change We Can Believe In?

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars - to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.

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BP holds US to ransom - demands new drilling permits or not payouts

Predictable. As I have said countless times, when the tables are turned this is how the corporate world reacts. Whether it's Big Oil or Wall Street, they will gladly accept a handout when it's there (massive tax breaks, bailouts, etc) without strings. Naturally when someone else is asking them for something in return it's always with strings attached. In the case of BP, they are reneging on a previous deal to payout those financially impacted by the oil spill. No strings were ever attached. The US government could have radically changed the terms of the deal by making links to government contracts since BP relies so heavily on business with the US government, but they didn't.

BP is as oily as the slick they left in the Gulf of Mexico and can never be trusted. Maybe it's time for Washington to play hardball with this company instead of once again playing nice. BP has yet to show they can behave responsibly so why tolerate this behavior?

Is BP saying that they have not yet added the $20 billion into the escrow account? If that's the case Washington should start rounding up single contract with BP and start blocking all payments until this issue is resolved. Freeze their accounts as we've done for states such as Iran until the issue is settled. The US holds an enormous upper hand here so to let BP make an attempt at dictating payment terms should not be allowed. No apologies are required for asking BP to hold up their end of the bargain. None at all.

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.

BP executives insist that they have not backed away from their commitment to the White House to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund over the next four years to pay damage claims and government penalties stemming from the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The explosion killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

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