Recently a local news reporter asked Barack Obama whether he was too good-looking to relate to working class people. She stated how some think that Obama looks like a male cover model from the magazine "GQ". Hmm... I don't think they ever thought this would be the problem.
He goes on to address comments that he is an "elitist", which is the most bizarre thing to pin on someone who was raised by a single mother and his grandparents, who was a community activist and civil rights lawyer on Chicago's poor South side, and who has just finished paying off his students loans after working to get into Harvard.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Obama answers 'elitism' stuff
On bowling scores, underhanded press coverage, elitism, street cred ... (4:40)
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS: Jeremiah Wright
Part II
& Obama Press Conference 4.29.2008
Part II
. . .. ... ..... ........ oOo ........ ..... ... .. . .
& Obama Press Conference 4.29.2008
- more (tpm)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Judgment Day looms for Hillary Clinton the wrecker
by Andrew Sullivan
(London) Times Online
Even after all the hype, this Tuesday’s vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election. This isn’t because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic party since Kennedy.
It isn’t because it’s been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice. It isn’t even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.
It is because the Clintons have turned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November. And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove – Bush’s master of the dark arts – destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.
That’s what is being tested this coming week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one in November.
For a month now, Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways I have never witnessed in a primary campaign. Senator Hillary Clinton has directly argued that he is less qualified to be commander-in-chief than the Republican nominee, John McCain. She has said that she doesn’t know for sure that he is not a secret Muslim. She has said his choice of church is unacceptable to her. She has said he deliberately wants many Americans to continue scraping by without health insurance.
Her campaign has insinuated that he was once a drug dealer. Her husband has equated him with the rabble-rousing preacher Jesse Jackson. The Clintons have publicly associated Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, and with antisemitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan. And what is remarkable about all this is that most of it was not done by surrogates, but by a former president of the United States against a senator in his own party, and directly by Clinton herself. Every time you think: “Nah, they won’t go there, will they?” – they do.
* * * *
This, the Clintonites tell us, is what the Republicans will do to Obama this autumn. So we’re only showing you! The strategy is to persuade super-delegates that only the Clinton brand can withstand Rove-style attacks, and so foment a revolution before or at the convention to dislodge the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the greatest number of popular votes.
* * * *
And that’s why Tuesday will be so instructive. Hillary Clinton should win Pennsylvania easily. She had a 20-point lead until relatively recently. And if the Clintons are right about their classic Atwater-Rove tactics, she will win by double-digits after throwing the kitchen sink, the boiler, the couch and the septic tank at her opponent.
However, if Obama keeps her lead to single digits, if he goes on to win in North Carolina and Indiana, if the momentum of the race does not change, something else will be shown.
It will show that the crisis America is in now has made the kind of tactics of the past two decades moot. It will show that the issues of the Iraq occupation, the teetering economy, the unsustainable debt, the collapsing dollar, the constitutional disarray and the moral collapse of the torture programme are now more salient than cultural identity. It will show that the voters actually want to debate something more than lapel pins and who is or is not a secret Muslim or patriot. It will show we are in a new era.
Maybe we’re not. Maybe the old politics and the old patterns have one more turn of the screw to go. Maybe the Clintons are right. And that’s the beauty of democracy. On Tuesday, we will go a long way towards finding out.
(London) Times Online
Even after all the hype, this Tuesday’s vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election. This isn’t because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic party since Kennedy.
It isn’t because it’s been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice. It isn’t even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.
It is because the Clintons have turned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November. And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove – Bush’s master of the dark arts – destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.
That’s what is being tested this coming week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one in November.
For a month now, Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways I have never witnessed in a primary campaign. Senator Hillary Clinton has directly argued that he is less qualified to be commander-in-chief than the Republican nominee, John McCain. She has said that she doesn’t know for sure that he is not a secret Muslim. She has said his choice of church is unacceptable to her. She has said he deliberately wants many Americans to continue scraping by without health insurance.
Her campaign has insinuated that he was once a drug dealer. Her husband has equated him with the rabble-rousing preacher Jesse Jackson. The Clintons have publicly associated Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, and with antisemitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan. And what is remarkable about all this is that most of it was not done by surrogates, but by a former president of the United States against a senator in his own party, and directly by Clinton herself. Every time you think: “Nah, they won’t go there, will they?” – they do.
* * * *
This, the Clintonites tell us, is what the Republicans will do to Obama this autumn. So we’re only showing you! The strategy is to persuade super-delegates that only the Clinton brand can withstand Rove-style attacks, and so foment a revolution before or at the convention to dislodge the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the greatest number of popular votes.
* * * *
And that’s why Tuesday will be so instructive. Hillary Clinton should win Pennsylvania easily. She had a 20-point lead until relatively recently. And if the Clintons are right about their classic Atwater-Rove tactics, she will win by double-digits after throwing the kitchen sink, the boiler, the couch and the septic tank at her opponent.
However, if Obama keeps her lead to single digits, if he goes on to win in North Carolina and Indiana, if the momentum of the race does not change, something else will be shown.
It will show that the crisis America is in now has made the kind of tactics of the past two decades moot. It will show that the issues of the Iraq occupation, the teetering economy, the unsustainable debt, the collapsing dollar, the constitutional disarray and the moral collapse of the torture programme are now more salient than cultural identity. It will show that the voters actually want to debate something more than lapel pins and who is or is not a secret Muslim or patriot. It will show we are in a new era.
Maybe we’re not. Maybe the old politics and the old patterns have one more turn of the screw to go. Maybe the Clintons are right. And that’s the beauty of democracy. On Tuesday, we will go a long way towards finding out.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Obsidian Wings: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)
Obsidian Wings: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)
by publius
Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held this debate on April 16, 1858 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
MODERATORS:
CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC NEWS
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS
MR. GIBSON: So we're going to begin with opening statements, and we had a flip of the coin, and the brief opening statement first from Mr. Lincoln.LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.
We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?
LINCOLN: Sure I do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?
LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?
LINCOLN: Eight.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Proceed.
LINCOLN: In my opinion, slavery will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?
LINCOLN: When I was a boy in Illinois forty years ago, yes. I think he was a deacon.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you aware that he regularly called Kentucky “a land of swine and whores”?
LINCOLN: Sounds right -- his ex-wife was from Kentucky.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why did you remain in the church after hearing those statements?
LINCOLN: I was eight.
DOUGLAS: This is an important question George -- it's an issue that certainly will be raised in the fall.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce him?
LINCOLN: I’d like to get back to the divided house if I may.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him?
LINCOLN: If it will make you shut up, yes, I denounce and reject him.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce and reject him with sugar on top?
LINCOLN: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No takesies-backsies?
LINCOLN: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Whoa, so you would consider a takesie-backsie?
LINCOLN: That’s not what I meant…
DOUGLAS: When I was 11, my grandpappy and I chopped wood and shot bears.
LINCOLN: Ahem, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect slavery will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you love America this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?
LINCOLN: I think we covered this…
GIBSON: If I may interrupt…
LINCOLN: Please.
GIBSON: I noticed, Mr. Lincoln, that your American flag pin was upside down…
LINCOLN: Yes, the wind caught it. Now, as I was saying...
GIBSON: We get questions about this all the time over at Powerline and on Hannity’s talk show. Mr. Douglas has said this is a major vulnerability for you in the fall. So I’ll ask again – do you love America?
LINCOLN: (scowling with a forced smile). Yes.
GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?
LINCOLN: (pausing with disgust and turning back to camera) Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South.
DOUGLAS: He didn’t answer the question Charlie. This fall, that question is going to be on the minds of the American public. I’ve proudly stated that my love for America is Very Berry Strawberry.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask it another way. If Elijah Johnson were chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, would you eat it? Or would you decline to eat it?
DOUGLAS: Personally, as for me, I would decline to eat it.
LINCOLN (shaking his head): Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak -- compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ll get to Dred Scott in the second hour, time willing, but I want to get back to the ice cream question. And that's what we'll do, after the break.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Olbermann vs. O'Reilly
HuffPo
Keith Olbermann has become an expert in O'Reilly-baiting, but last night he may have set a new record. Olbermann pushed back against Bill O'Reilly's habitual NBC-bashing — a particularly nasty bout wherein O'Reilly had extrapolated from GE's business dealings with Iran to GE chair Jeffrey Immelt bearing personal responsibility for dead American soldiers — and turned around and laid that blame at O'Reilly's own doorstep.
more ...
Keith Olbermann has become an expert in O'Reilly-baiting, but last night he may have set a new record. Olbermann pushed back against Bill O'Reilly's habitual NBC-bashing — a particularly nasty bout wherein O'Reilly had extrapolated from GE's business dealings with Iran to GE chair Jeffrey Immelt bearing personal responsibility for dead American soldiers — and turned around and laid that blame at O'Reilly's own doorstep.
"After all the shilling and ass-kissing you did for the administration before this phony war," said Olbermann, "You are more personally repsonsible for the 4,000 dead Americans in Iraq than all of America's corporations put together."
more ...
Ex-marshal: Air marshal training 'a national disgrace' - CNN.com
Ex-marshal: Air marshal training 'a national disgrace' - CNN.com
SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Their mission is to protect airline passengers from acts of terror on U.S. flights. But in a special investigation, former and current air marshals told CNN that the number of marshals assigned to police flights is so low that the federal agency overseeing them has drastically lowered its firearms and psychological testing standards just so it can qualify new hires.
More than a dozen current and former marshals told CNN that so many federal air marshals have resigned and are not being replaced that airport screeners are being employed to fill the dwindling ranks.
SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Their mission is to protect airline passengers from acts of terror on U.S. flights. But in a special investigation, former and current air marshals told CNN that the number of marshals assigned to police flights is so low that the federal agency overseeing them has drastically lowered its firearms and psychological testing standards just so it can qualify new hires.
More than a dozen current and former marshals told CNN that so many federal air marshals have resigned and are not being replaced that airport screeners are being employed to fill the dwindling ranks.
But the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, says that's not true and the rate of those leaving has remained at 6.5 percent a year since 2001.
A former federal air marshal and weapons trainer who left the agency in 2006 after four years of service said the situation was so bad that managers at his office fudged the numbers by assigning marshals to short, no-risk flights.
The former marshal said that was done to make it appear that the percentage of manned flights was higher than it really was.
"I think it's a national disgrace,'' said the former marshal, who asked not to be identified because he still works in law enforcement.Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Bruce Springsteen Endorses Senator Obama
HuffPo
Legendary all-American rocker Bruce Springsteen has thrown his red bandanna into the political ring, today endorsing Barack Obama for President on his website. Wrote Bruce:
Like most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."
The endorsement seems to have been prompted by Obama's recent comments about Pennsylvanians being "bitter" and "clinging" to guns and various prejudices, first reported by the Huffington Post — and seems to take a swipe at Hillary Clinton in his endorsement:
At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.
So: Anyone who thinks that Barack Obama doesn't respect his small-town fellow Americans can take it up with the guy who wrote "Born In The U.S.A." (and "Thunder Road," and "The River," and "Backstreets" and "Badlands" and pretty much a zillion classic songs about working-class life in small-town America).
What's interesting about this endorsement from a new media perspective: It went up on the Boss' website. That's where it broke, and from what I can tell we were the third site to pick it up (kudos to you, CBS News and Marc Ambinder). It's going to go huge, obviously, and it's gonna happen before noon (cable news producers are digging up the stock footage now). That's a phenomenon unique to this election cycle, and yet another example of how lightning-fast the news cycle is. It's also a really interesting new wrench to throw into the "bitter" story, which has basically been running unchanged for the past six days — and this completely turns it on its head, making Obama the victim and Clinton the villain for trying to "distract us from discussing the real issues." Look for Springsteen on "Meet The Press" on Sunday. (Oh, my God, Tim would love that. For sure he has an old Boss concert hat to pull out.)
Springsteen, who memorably supported John Kerry in 2004 (i.e. in concert, and every Bruce concert is memorable), seems pretty intent on making his point:
After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.
In other words, honey he's got the heart he's got the soul he needs control right now. I smell a collaboration with will.i.am in the offing.
Message From Bruce Springsteen [BruceSpringsteen.net]
CQ Politics analysis of delegate
a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts ... projects a district-level delegate split of 53 to Clinton and 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Mr. Sam and the increasing viscosity of history
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Interesting OCC Study
OCC Working Paper 2008-1
See also Yaniv Grinstein & Ajay Palvia, Executive Loans, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance -- Evidence from Banks (SSRN-id921484 October 2006).
by Ajay A. Palvia
Risk Analysis Division
Office of Comptroller of Currency
March 2008
Abstract
This paper examines the role of the bank examination process in disciplining bank management. Examining data from more than 3,800 U.S. banks, I find that, after factoring in financial condition and various market and organizational factors, poor supervisory ratings and recent ratings downgrades lead to increased executive turnover. In addition, the results suggest that ratings-driven executive turnover is positively related to future performance, after controlling for current financial condition. The results are consistent with the explanation that the bank supervision process, by imposing greater manager discipline, improves the profitability of banking firms and thereby raises shareholder value.See also Yaniv Grinstein & Ajay Palvia, Executive Loans, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance -- Evidence from Banks (SSRN-id921484 October 2006).
a peek at db culture
From: Warren Reports via TPM Café
Caught Lying to Zippy
Since the beginning of the sub-prime crisis, anti-predatory lending advocates have pointed to how the egregious behavior of lenders and mortgage brokers have contributed to the crisis; their arguments recently found yet another anchor of evidence in the recently surfaced memo from JP Morgan Chase entitled “Zippy Cheats & Tricks.”
The nation's second-largest bank, Chase originates mortgage loans in addition to operating as an underwriter and funder of loans brought to them by a network of mortgage brokers. The memo instructs brokers on how to get their loans approved by Zippy, the bank’s automated loan underwriting system, explicitly suggesting that brokers inflate borrowers’ income or otherwise falsify loan applications.
While it’s easy to imagine various mortgage brokers scattered throughout the country engaging in the fraudulent practices that resulted in the crisis, it may be harder for many to imagine an FDIC-insured bank sanctioning those same practices. But it happened and though it hasn’t received much news coverage, federal legislators should keep the Chase memo at the forefront of their minds as they craft legislation aimed at protecting the nation from a repeat of the current fiasco.
The bank says that although the memo bears a Chase corporate logo and was emailed from Chase, it does not reflect the bank’s corporate policy. The Oregonian, reporting on the issue, commented:
“Even if the memo was penned by a single employee, it illustrates an attitude prevalent in certain corners of the mortgage industry during the boom years. In the face of sustained and significant home price increases, much of the industry veered away from traditional notions of safe and sound lending. Loan volume became as important as loan quality, particularly for the rank and file typically paid on commission.”
After being forced to write down $1.3 billion in nonperforming mortgages at the end of 2007, Chase no longer makes the stated income loans (also known as no document loans and liar loans) to which the memo was referring. But while Chase waited for this inevitable lesson, thousands of families were induced to take bad mortgages and the taxpayer funded FDIC was tricked in to insuring a bank making consistently bad loans.
The existence of the memo is a powerful reminder of what many advocates have been saying for years: we need regulation that anticipates that even the nation’s largest and most respected lending institutions are all too capable of systematically manipulating their customers and lying to the federal government, which not only insures them, but is certain to bail them out when times get tough. They face unchanging and powerful incentives to be profitable; they need equally powerful incentives to be honest and ethical.
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