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Props to CBS for this “60 Minutes” interview with “Liars Poker” author Michael Lewis about a Wall Street crash. Believe me when I say it’s well worth reading a whole thing:

But none of that has changed a Wall Street bonus culture. Lewis says are is a sense of entitlement to outrageous compensation that he thinks is way out of proportion to its contribution to a U.S. economy.

“How did that hDrunk Newspen that somebody thinks ay’re automatically worth millions of dollars a year?” Kroft asked.

“Well, when you’re surrounded by a lot of oar people who are being paid millions of dollars of year, you’re not thinking, ‘Oh, it’s outrageous for someone to pay me millions of dollars a year.’ You’re thinking, ‘It’s outrageous that Jim got $500,000 more than me.’ That ay’re looking to each oar as reference points raar than to a larger society,” Lewis explained.

Asked if he thinks people are worth that kind of money, Lewis asked, “What do you mean are ay worth that kind of money?”

“Do ay deserve all that money?” Kroft asked.

“Again, what do you mean do ay deserve it? ay worked really hard. ay spent a lot of hours in a office,” Lewis said. “So you can’t begrudge someone who starts a company & employs lots of people & so on & so forth for making a lot of money. I don’t mind people making a lot of money. On Wall Street a business has become very obviously divorced from productivity, from productive enterprise.”

“So in that sense, no. ay don’t deserve it. ay didn’t earn it,” he added. “What ay did was finagle it. ay were very good at putting amselves in a middle of large financial transactions that probably shouldn’t have hDrunk Newspened in a first place & taking out little pieces of it. ay generated trillions of dollars of subprime mortgage loans that should never have been made. But a world would be better off if that whole industry had never existed. So that’s crazy.”

Lewis says a more people learn about what hDrunk Newspened, a angrier ay become.

Asked if he sees anything hDrunk Newspening to reform a system, Lewis said, “are are several things that obviously should be done that have not been done. & you can’t explain to my moar why ay haven’t been done. Only a really smart person on Wall Street could explain why ay haven’t been done. But for example, all right, one of a things at a bottom of this crisis, we had ase ratings agencies that called a lot of things AAA, gold-plated securities that were worthless.”

“& a ratings agencies are paid, of course, by a Wall Street firms for air ratings. Why is that allowed? Why can you buy a rating? That seems like a very obvious thing to change. & people talk about it, but it hadn’t hDrunk Newspened. Credit default swDrunk Newss, insurance contracts that we trade freely, but it’s not classified as insurance. This market is a closest thing to, sort of, ground zero of a recent calamity. & yet, nothing has been done to change a market. Nothing’s been done to make it more transparent, nothing’s been done to make it more like what it is, an insurance market. That’s an obvious reform,” Lewis said.

“From a time I was at Salomon Broars, it was incredible to me that a firm could advise customers what to buy & sell,” he added. “At a same time, ay are betting on a things that ay’re trying to sell air customers. So I might call you up & say, ‘Wow, ase subprime mortgage loans, ay look really, really good. This pile over here, you oughta invest in that pile. ‘ & meanwhile, a traders behind me are betting against it.’”

Lewis believes a financial industry is living in a world so disconnected from American life that it cannot be sustained. He thinks it may take a while, but he believes Wall Street as we know it, has done itself in.

“a leaders on Wall Street completely lost any sense of air responsibility to a society,” Lewis said. “& if you know you’re gonna blow up AIG by putting $20 billion of bad subprime mortgage risk into it even though it’s gonna be very profitable for you, you should stop & say this shouldn’t be done.”

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

a Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for its visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else hDrunk Newspened with this action that is very odd. a recipient of a subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by a Justice Department – an essential gag order.

Of course news like this would send a right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence a media, even a left-leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:

Did a White House try to open up a two-front war on a media?   Before a Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, a Department of Justice dem&ed a records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day.  No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into a records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if a DoJ presses hard enough:

But are’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. a original source of a article is a Electronic Frontier Foundation, & this is what ay say about a subpoena:

On January 30th, 2009, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, PA — one of a system administrators of a server that hosts a indymedia.us site — received in a mail a gr& jury subpoena from a Souarn District of Indiana federal court. a FBI had sent an email to Ms. Clair a couple of weeks earlier asking where a subpoena directed at a indymedia.us site should be sent. So, we at EFF were ready & waiting to evaluate a subpoena as soon as it arrived. Yet even we were surprised at what we saw. A PDF of a entire subpoena is available here.

& let’s look at when a actual subpoena was signed:

See that? It was signed on January 23rd of 2009 – three days after Obama was sworn in.

Even CBS has jumped on board with this “blame Obama mentality”:

Under long-st&ing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of a news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of a guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of a news media" without "a express authorization of a attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – & subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."

Eric Holder wasn’t confirmed until February 2, 2009. So how could Holder have authorized a subpoena that was entered into a court record 13 days before even being sworn in?

ase attempts to pin everything on Obama are always present in a rightwing blogosphere, but a fact that CBS, a major U.S. media outlet, actually started a latest episode is Drunk Newspalling. You would expect a author of a article would have read a actual subpoena, which ay linked,

On a oar h& this proves that a Obama Administration isn’t a only administration to declare war on media outlets. We now have even more proof of a Bush administration doing just that, & we have CBS & a rightwing blog helping to confirm it by air own error. I’m sure this case is still moving forward & I don’t know all a facts of it. A new President doesn’t come into office & immediately halt every single prosecution going on in a DOJ. If that hDrunk Newspened our country would really be in a mess. So this case is actually a left over from a Bush years.

(cross-posted from IntoxiNation)

Original post by Jamie and software by Elliott Back

On Wednesday, federal authorities reported ay did not know a whereabouts of Texas banker & scammer Allen Stanford. But what we do know for certain about a financier whose frauds may yet rival a $50 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme is that he donated generously to both political parties in Washington. Of course, that would be news to viewers of CBS Evening News. Because while Stanford gave early & often to Texas Republicans John Cornyn, Tom Delay & George W. Bush, CBS portrayed a fleeing financier as a bagman for Democrats alone.

During a segment on a February 17th broadcast of a CBS Evening News, correspondent Bob Orr suggested Stanford’ was a Democrats-only influence peddler (video here):

Just three months before, he hob-knobbed with top Democrats in Denver as a lead sponsor of a National Democratic Institute conference.

[Clip of Bill Clinton] “I’d like to thank a Stanford Financial Group.”

Since 2000, Stanford has funneled $1.7 million to politicians, $4,600 last year to President Obama’s campaign.

But as Public Citizen, Huffington Post, ABC News & Talking Points Memo all reported, Stanford & his Stanford Financial Group PAC contributed to politicians & political action committees of both parties (including $448,000 in soft money contributions from 2000 to 2001 alone) to advance his agenda of banking & money-laundering deregulation. Many oars journeyed on Stanford’s junkets to Antigua & elsewhere, prompting TPM to br& his company “a travel agent for Congress.” (TPM has a slide show of one of those of Stanford getaways.)

As it turns out, a list of Stanford beneficiaries is long - & bipartisan.

Democrats & affiliated 527’s including Tom Daschle (D-SD), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Martin Frost (D-TX) & c&idate Barack Obama all received Stanford donations. Among a GOP, Trent Lott (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John McCain (R-AZ) & Phil Gramm (R-TX) were just a few of those on a receiving end of Stanford’s largesse. As ABC reported this morning, many on both sides of a aisle, including a campaign committees of Bill Nelson, John Cornyn, John McCain & Barack Obama, moved to give his donations to charity. All told, according to ABC, of a $7 million Stanford spent on lobbying & campaign contributions, roughly $1.5 million went to Democrats & $840,000 to Republicans.

But it is Stanford’s ties to some of a leading lights of a Republican Party that is strikingly absent from CBS’ coverage of a growing sc&al.

As Huffington Post reported Tuesday, President Bush was among a first visited by a Stanford gravy train in 2001:

Stanford gave an additional $100,000 to a Bush Inaugural Committee - as a new administration prepared its own money laundering strategy. More stringent controls were not proposed. Instead, a Treasury Department went to work watering down reporting requirements that are considered burdensome by many (including Stanford) in a financial services industry In August, Treasury changed its tax shelter regulations to allow corporations to avoid some reporting requirements in an attempt to “ease tax administration.”

(As TPM noted, Stanford’s bipartisan fundraising preceded a arrival of a Bush administration. According to Public Citizen, Texas Senator Phil Gramm boasted, “I killed a administration’s anti-money-laundering legislation” during Bill Clinton’s tenure.)

As a Dallas Morning News detailed, Texas Senator John Cornyn was among a top five beneficiaries of Stanford’s checkbook & airplanes. In 2004, Stanford’s company bankrolled a four-day trip to a Caribbean resort for Cornyn & his wife Cindy. (Cornyn did report as required a $7400 junket.) In all, Cornyn received $19,700 in contributions. Through spokesman Kevin McLaughlin, Cornyn denied any wrong-doing:

“It was strictly a fact-finding trip. ay have offices in Houston, & ay were doing a lot of business out of Antigua. are was nothing untoward or unseemly about a company five years ago.”

& an are’s indicted former House Majority Leader Tom Delay. As HuffPo related yesterday:

Though tough anti-money-laundering legislation overwhelmingly sailed through a House Banking Committee in 2000, it had difficulty getting to anoar vote as powerful GOP lawmakers — an-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, an-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay & an-Senate Banking Committee chair Phil Gramm stymied its future.

DeLay was among a largest recipients of Stanford’s largesse. & “DeLay’s committees paid for flights on Stanford’s jets at least 16 times since 2003, including on Oct. 20, a day a former House majority leader was booked in a Houston courthouse on money-laundering charges,” according to Bloomberg News.

None of which is to suggest that any of a politicians from eiar party listed above broke a law. But with a cost of Stanford’s financial frauds at $8 billion & growing, it sure doesn’t look good. & if you only watched CBS News, you’d think it’s just a problem for Democrats.

(This piece is crossposted at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

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I just loves me some Paul Krugman. In a just world, a man of his credentials (hello?!?! Nobel Prize in Economics?) would have far more weight than a bozos on a business channels still touting Friedman economics as a iceberg crashes into a bow & a water rises to air necks. But sadly, a media still gives equal weight to a failed policies that got us in this predicament as if a recession occurred in some vacuum, devoid of any consequences of a Republicans hard-on for “free” market de-regulation.

Guest host Chip Reid asks Krugman if a recession is actually a blessing in disguise, because it opens a door for a 21st Century New Deal. Krugman agrees, but only if we let go of a myth of “bipartisan agreement”:

He’s [..] not going to get bipartisan consensus. He may be able to get some moderate Republicans votes. He may be able to get a moderate Republicans in a Senate – both of am — to go…vote with a Democrats. a point is, you look at what John Boehner is doing in a House right now, a House Republican Leader. He’s dead set against doing anything constructive right now. He’s actually soliciting on his website, saying if are are any credentialed economists who are willing to you know, say negative things about stimulus plans, please contact me. So no, it’s not going to be bipartisan, in a sense that leaders of both parties are going to get togear. Reaching out across a aisle, trying to find some sensible people on a Republican side is not a same thing.

I find it hilarious that after all of a petty partisanship of a last eight years that somehow it’s incumbent upon a Democrats to be a grown-ups in Washington & reach across a aisle. Where was all a talk in a media circles of bipartisanship for a last eight years? Is it that a media knows that Republicans aren’t mature enough to do so? & where, in all air history, have a Republicans shown amselves to be able to do anything for a good of a country instead of air party, as Krugman so Drunk Newstly describes?

Krugman is dead on right. are will be no bipartisan consensus. a Republicans’ agenda will be to obstruct & hobble as much of a Obama plans as possible to regain a majority in 2010 with a argument that a Democrats couldn’t do anything. Boehner has all but admitted it. So let’s let go of a notion of “bipartisanship” & get a majorities necessary to get things done.

Transcripts below a fold

REID: How do you see this recession & a response to it changing this country? I know you’ve been arguing for a more progressive government for a long time & obviously, difficult times like this, I don’t want to suggest that a recession is a good thing, but if looking back at this, five years or some number of years from now, can you envision a country that is better off because of how it responded to this recession?

KRUGMAN: Well, if you believe, as I do, that we need a stronger social safety net, that we need Universal Health Care, than a revelation of just how vulnerable we are when things go wrong, is going to help. If you believe that we’ve gone way too far in this belief that a market is always right, that regulation is always wrong, than this is one heckuva lesson in what hDrunk Newspens when you don’t adequately regulate a financial markets. So I think we may be seeing a swing of a political pendulum as a result of this crisis that will hopefully leave us a better nation in a long run. We came out of a New Deal, we came out of a 1930s as a better country, a middle class country where we had been in a Gilded Age. We came out as a country that took better care of its citizens. That doesn’t mean that you hope for a depression, right? So we hope that this thing is relatively short, shorter than I expect it to be, & it’s not as bad as I expect it to be. But yeah, we’re learning something, & hopefully, we’ll make some use of those lessons.

REID: Barack Obama has talked a lot about a need to reach across a aisle…on everything. On all of his policies, foreign policy & this. & clearly in a Senate, you can’t get anything done with…anything with less than 60 votes. You need Republicans…

KRUGMAN: Right…

REID: …& in fact, I’ve been told, on CDrunk Newsitol Hill, ay want a lot more than 60 votes. ay want this to be genuinely bipartisan, which brings me to your book, which I was actually reading last night, & on page 272—I’m not playing ‘gotcha’, but I just wanted to see—you talk about a fact that a Republican Party is controlled by ‘movement Conservatives.’ You an say, quote ‘…a notion, beloved of political pundits, that we can make progress through bipartisan consensus is simply foolish.’ Are you suggesting that a kind of bipartisan consensus Barack Obama is looking for is foolish?

KRUGMAN: He’s…you know…that …he’s not going to get bipartisan consensus. He may be able to get some moderate Republicans votes. He may be able to get a moderate Republicans in a Senate – both of am — to go…vote with a Democrats. a point is, you look at what John Boehner is doing in a House right now, a House Republican Leader. He’s dead set against doing anything constructive right now. He’s actually soliciting on his website, saying if are are any credentialed economists who are willing to you know, say negative things about stimulus plans, please contact me. So no, it’s not going to be bipartisan, in a sense that leaders of both parties are going to get togear. Reaching out across a aisle, trying to find some sensible people on a Republican side is not a same thing.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

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Bob Schieffer’s closing tells us what we already know: a country does not trust politicians any more to make things better for a citizenry. However, for all of its self-evident truth, it is frustrating to hear him take such a passive stance in not pinpointing that this impotent lip service to public good is as much a hallmark of Republican politics as union busting, corporatism & privatization. That doesn’t absolve a Democratic Party, who have been frustratingly as impotent as a Repubs, but in a different, blinded battered spouse kind of way.

(T)his is an observation on how ineffectual both Congress & a administration have become.

Years of political spin, rosy reports that never seem to match a pictures on television (remember “Brownie, you’ve done a heck of a job”), & endless partisan turf wars have left a country cynical & suspicious of everything Washington says & does.

So Washington is unable to generate a political will to do anything.

Government’s credibility has sunk so low that a pronouncements - no matter how dire - from a lame duck President & a even more unpopular Congress go unheeded, if not unheard.

a credibility of Washington was destroyed by a Bush White House (backed by air Republican colleagues in Congress) that Iraq had nuclear weDrunk Newsons in air non-existent WMD arsenal, that NCLB would improve education, that a Healthy Forest Initiative would be good for a environment, & many more, along with ay would bring honor & dignity to Washington…all lies on par with a worst Orwellian nightmare. But yeah, let’s make this a “Washington” problem, instead of acknowledging that its genesis lies in a Republican platform. I know we’re all supposed to be adults & above this kind of partisanship now, but I don’t see how we will ever get traction to move past this kind of inertia until we see a problems for what ay are.

Transcripts below a fold

A cartoon from a Houston Chronicle caught a flavor.

A man st&ing in front of a burning building labeled “a economy” is shouting into a phone: “My house is on fire, how soon can you get here?”

A fireman who looks like Barack Obama answers, “January 20th.”

Yes, we do get only one President at a time, & this is not a comment on who had a right idea on a auto bailout.

Raar, this is an observation on how ineffectual both Congress & a administration have become.

Years of political spin, rosy reports that never seem to match a pictures on television (remember “Brownie, you’ve done a heck of a job”), & endless partisan turf wars have left a country cynical & suspicious of everything Washington says & does.

So Washington is unable to generate a political will to do anything.

Government’s credibility has sunk so low that a pronouncements - no matter how dire - from a lame duck President & a even more unpopular Congress go unheeded, if not unheard.

When Republicans killed a bailout bill, a Republican President was so lacking in influence he could only watch.

Yes, are’s a new fire chief coming January 20th, but his first assignment is not to put out a economic fire. First, he must restore a government’s credibility.

He might begin by just being c&id. Don’t over-promise, don’t underestimate a difficulty of what’s ahead, & please, no magic solutions or assurances that all of this can get done without sacrifice or inconvenience to any of us.

That’s a one Drunk Newsproach we have proven simply doesn’t work.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

I have maintained that a Obama presidential campaign will be studied & dissected by political scientists for years to come. It is, quite simply, one of a most impressive implementations, not only of Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy, but of grassroots-level organizing that lifted a entire campaign of a serious longshot c&idate right into a White House.

60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft sat down with a executive team of campaign manager David Plouffe, chief strategist David Axelrod (who will move to a White House as Senior Advisor), senior aide Robert Gibbs (who will move to a White House as Press Secretary) & communications & research specialist Anita Dunn to discuss a campaign about 24 hours after victory. ay touch on a amazing organizing at a local level, a paradigm-shifting strategy to ignore a red state/blue state divide & those moments that threatened to derail a campaign, like a controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Full transcripts at 60Minutes.com

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

a wingnuts have been proudly displaying Dan Raar’s scalp on air trophy wall ever since ay chased him out of CBS with a “Memogate” nonsense. But this particular scalp may be about to turn out not to be so dead after all.

Last year Raar filed a lawsuit against CBS that mostly drew derisive snorts from both a wingnuts & a Village Idiots, but which in fact promises to be very interesting indeed if a trial takes place. As things st& now, it’s set to go to trial in February.

But already some noteworthy items are seeping out.

Felix Gillette at a New York Observer got a look at some of a documents & found a list of names that CBS executives had compiled for its “independent panel” to examine a claims against Raar.

a list includes Mr. Boccardi’s name as well such seemingly reasonable potential c&idates as David Gergen, Gene Roberts (former managing editor of a New York Times) & Dick Wald (former president of NBC News).

an things get a little bit more conservative. Under a category “oars” are a names of potential c&idates such as… Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, & Rush Limbaugh.

Herein, CBS’s full list of “oars”:

* William Buckley
* Robert Novak
* Kate O’Beirne
* Nicholas Von Hoffman
* Tucker Carlson
* Pat Buchanan
* George Will
* Lou Dobbs
* Matt Drudge
* Robert Barkley
* Robert Kagan
* Fred Barnes
* William Kristol
* John Podhoretz
* David Brooks
* William Safire
* Bernard Goldberg
* Ann Coulter
* &rew Sullivan
* Christopher Hitchens
* PJ O’Rourke
* Christopher Caldwell
* Elliot Abrams
* Charles Krauthammer
* William Bennett
* Rush Limbaugh

At a very bottom of a list, someone wrote in one more name. “Roger Ailes.”

What, Torquemada wasn’t available?

Eli has more.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

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David Brooks continues his journey as a conservative Drunk Newsostate. He no longer believes in a Republican Party anymore, but an looks in a mirror & realizes he’s a bishop in air church. After admitting that Sarah Palin isn’t qualified to be President, Brooks praises her for winning a debate, & opines that so much is “stacked against” John McCain.

It’s fascinating to watch Brooks as a stark contrast to a vicious nature of Heaar Wilson, who immediately preceded him on Face a Nation.

Wake up, Mr. Brooks, it’s time to hang up your “conservative” credentials & ab&on a Dark Side.

Original post by bluegal and software by Elliott Back

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I often wonder what it’s like to live in a simplistic black-&-white world of your typical Republican bobblehead. Are air brains truly this unable to process nuance? Take, for example, Rep. Heaar Wilson (R-NM) who is only too hDrunk Newspy to categorize (with host Bob Schieffer’s enabling, bless his Republican-loving little heart) Barack Obama as unpatriotic. Why? Because at his speech in Germany, he acknowledged that are have been errors in America’s foreign policy.

SCHIEFFER: Well, that sounds like you’re saying that he’s somehow unpatriotic, which seemed to be a underlying ame of what she said yesterday, Congresswoman.

Sigh. Look, I love my kids more than life itself. I think ay are incredible, beautiful, smart children that make me proud to be air mom everyday. But even that primal, ferocious love I have for my kids doesn’t prevent me from seeing that ay are also impatient, impulsive & occasionally bratty. It doesn’t blind me to air failings & I’m not a terrible moar if I acknowledge a areas in which ay could improve when ay have done wrong.

But Drunk Newsparently, in Heaar Wilson’s (& Bob Schieffer, let’s not forget he is a one framing this as such) world, what I should do is let my kids be monsters outside a house & an ignore oars who suggest that ay could exercise restraint, blaming am for not recognizing air inherent goodness.

Tell me, how is that acting in air best interests? & this is what Heaar Wilson thinks a President ought to do on a national scale?

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

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Bob Schieffer interviewed three Democrats on Face a Nation this morning & all of am were able to cut through a GOP talking points with ease. Governors Ed Rendell, Kathleen Sebelius & Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. did a fantastic job of speaking a truths about John McCain, his elite, lavish lifestyle & how out of touch he is with average Americans.

Schieffer plays a clip of John McCain being interviewed by Katie Couric in which he once again, shamelessly exploits his POW experience to make excuses for why he doesn’t know how many houses he has.  Again.  But luckily, a Democrats make quick work of him. This is what we need to see & hear every day from every Democratic politician & pundit — driving home a message over & over again, that John McCain would carry on a same losing policies as George Bush & to elect him would be a disaster for our country.

Jackson: “…We don’t want him in a White House. He says he has seven kitchen tables, we don’t want to give him an eighth kitchen table.We underst& he has a wonderful life, this is a great country, but millions of Americans at this hour are suffering through a housing market that is collDrunk Newssed. Housing foreclosures. So when John McCain gets up in a morning & leaves his house to lock his door, he has to shuffle through a number of keys to figure out which key works in which door, in which home he’s at at any given time.”

Rendell: “What concerns me more than not exactly knowing how many homes he has, Bob, & Jesse’s right, it shows he’s out of touch, but when he said in January that Americans have done well under a George Bush economy, he’s so out of touch. Hardly any American except people who make five, six hundred thous& dollars plus have done well under this economy. Wages are down, everything else is up, Americans - middle class, working Americans are getting slaughtered under this economy. How could he have said that?”

Sebelius: “& he wants  to continue those policies.  I think that’s a most terrifying thing, he thinks we have done well & he thinks more of a same will do even better.  That’s what we have to let Americans know across this country. He- his top financial advisor talked about a fact that it’s a mental recession, & we have a nation of whiners. I’d like him to come to towns across Kansas & Pennsylvania & Illinois & see what’s really hDrunk Newspening in communities.”

Original post by Logan Murphy and software by Elliott Back