What did Bloomberg’s homies do? The shadow knows

Posted on November 4, 2011 by oddmanout215

Here’s New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a self-styled independent who has always been careful to suck up to the liberal establishment, reminding us he’s a blood brother of the vampires whose world-class scamming drained the life out of the housing market and left millions of people deep in debt:

It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not saying I’m sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have gotten them without that.

To Matt Taibbi, this statement at a business breakfast on Tuesday amounted to Bloomberg’s “Marie Antoinette moment,” and proved the mayor would rather tell bald-faced lies than badmouth the real villains:

In fact, just the opposite was true. This was an orgiastic stampede of lending, undertaken with something very like bloodlust. Far from being dragged into poor neighborhoods and forced to give out home loans to jobless black folk, companies like Countrywide and New Century charged into suburbs and exurbs from coast to coast with the enthusiasm of Rwandan machete mobs, looking to create as many loans as they could.

And now the word on the street in New York City is that Bloomberg might seriously crack down on OWS protesters, possibly because their continued presence near the citadels of power is beginning to make the country’s biggest crooks very nervous:

Mike Bloomberg has started to publicly lose patience with the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. Yesterday, he told the Observer that recent reports of crime and sexual assault in the park were “a very high priority” for the administration and that any withholding of information from the police by protesters “is despicable, and I think it is outrageous and it really allows the criminal to strike again making all of us less safe.”

Today during his weekly appearance on John Gambling’s radio show, Bloomberg said that “we’re not going to tolerate” some of the behavior at Zuccotti. “If you see what happened like in Oakland, we are not gonna have that here,” he said. “That’s not gonna happen here.”

The story gets better with each new day of occupation. How long will this smooth-talking, well-groomed little monster allow the Zuccotti Park protest to persist like a shadow on the people who wrecked the economy, who are a few blocks away, not even under indictment, still making billions? And to remind Americans that he, the “independent” Mike Bloomberg, condones and defends what they did?

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, weasel | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Citizens United decision corrupt, not ‘insane’

Posted on November 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

Everyone knows what would be the first and most important step toward campaign finance reform. The question is whether there are enough honest people in Congress to make reform a reality:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday night slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision and supported legislation to overturn it. Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Michael Bennet of Colorado introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would overturn the ruling, which gave corporations and unions the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.

Sanders told [Keith] Olbermann he thought passing the constitutional amendment was possible, despite the inevitable opposition from conservatives.

“I think what we are seeing now, through the Occupy movement and other efforts, is a growing anger and frustration with the power of big money in this country. You’re seeing it just the other day, when people actually defeated the biggest financial institution in America, Bank of America, who wanted to impose the $5 debit fee. We beat em.”

“I think right now, whether you’re talking to a Republican or a progressive, people are saying that that Supreme Court decision, Keith, is basically insane,” he said. “Nobody that I know thinks that Exxon Mobil is a person.”

Footnote: Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the four dissenting judges in the Citizens United case (Jan., 2010), explaining why the majority opinion was so corrupt and corrupting:

At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Congress, Politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Marx Brothers, still in their prime

Posted on November 2, 2011 by oddmanout215

How cool that one of the greatest comedic movie scenes can be downloaded and watched with the click of a mouse. A few minutes of screwball perfection, more than 75 years old, as fresh as any skit you could name. Seemingly improvised, almost chaotic, but a masterpiece of timing and ensemble acting.

Elsewhere is a clip of Groucho in very old age being honored at the Academy Awards. Below the clip are viewers’ comments. Someone wrote what a shame it was that a guy as vital and sharp as Groucho had to become old and frail. I look at it the other way. What a miracle it is that Groucho and his brothers in their prime can be seen now and, presumably, for as long as people still like to laugh.

Posted in arts, humor, movies | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Obama to fight Wall St. corruption — joking!

Posted on November 2, 2011 by oddmanout215

When Barack Obama took office, it was almost embarrassing to watch so many otherwise intelligent people rejoice at the notion that he could somehow do good and remain closely allied with the corrupt Wall Street banks that had wrecked the economy during the Bush era.

Most people know better now, but what’s amazing is that this president, with a re-election fight ahead, remains as obsequious in his dealings with the Wall Street crooks as he was when he appointed Wall Street alums Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council and Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury.

As this point, the idea of Obama reforming Wall Street has been reduced to a joke, even to Robert Reich:

Next week President Obama travels to Wall Street where he’ll demand – in light of the Street’s continuing antics since the bailout, as well as its role in watering-down the Volcker rule – that the Glass-Steagall Act be resurrected and big banks be broken up.

I’m kidding. But it would be a smart move – politically and economically.

Politically smart because Mitt Romney is almost sure to be the Republican nominee, and Romney is the poster child for the pump-and-dump mentality that’s infected the financial industry and continues to jeopardize the American economy. Romney was CEO of Bain & Company – a private-equity fund that bought up companies, fired employees to save money and boost performance, and then resold the firms at a nice markups.

Economically it would be smart for Obama to go after the Street right now because the Street’s lobbying muscle has reduced the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to a pale reflection of its former self. Dodd-Frank is rife with so many loopholes and exemptions that the largest Wall Street banks – larger by far than they were before the bailout – are back to many of their old tricks…

I doubt the President will be condemning the Street’s antics, or calling for a resurrection of Glass-Steagall and a breakup of the biggest banks. Democrats are still too dependent on the Street’s campaign money. That’s too bad. You don’t have to be an occupier of Wall Street to conclude the Street is still out of control…

And you don’t have to be a professor at Berkeley to suspect voters aren’t going to see a dime’s worth of difference between Obama’s and Romney’s attitudes toward the banks that are drastically undermining living standards for 99 percent of Americans.

Posted in economic collapse, finance reform bill, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Mitt Romney, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Gitmo is Bush and Obama’s ‘law-free zone’

Posted on November 1, 2011 by oddmanout215

I thought it was the responsibility of professional American journalists to call attention to politicians who, after being elected, break promises they made on the campaign trail. And to write stories about the lies of former office holders whose illegalities while in office did great harm to the public good and the rule of law.

And yet the only new stories I’m seeing regarding presidential approval of torture and broken promises to close the Guantanamo Bay jail are coming out of European and Indian publications:

The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a “law-free zone” there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba. Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush’s executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.

Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as “torture” – were in breach of the US’s own statutes on torture, and added: “If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted.”

Davis’s Crimes of War project is leading pressure on the administration of President Barack Obama during Guantánamo’s 10th anniversary, with firm reminders of Obama’s unequivocal pledges to abolish military commissions and close the camp. Professor Thomas Keenan, the head of the Bard College human rights programme, which staged the conference, said: “The president campaigned on a pledge to close down the jail at Guantánamo Bay, and to end the use of military commissions to try its inmates. How is it possible that, two years after he was elected, there are still more than 150 prisoners there, and this November, one of them will go on trial before one of those very commissions?”

Posted in Iraq war, liar, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Music to haunt you on Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

There are at least three varieties of scary songs — novelty numbers, done for laughs; songs that have dark lyrics but aren’t all that scary; and songs (“compositions” is a better word) that actually sound scary and give you the creeps. Here are some that fit in the latter category, at least for me:

“Moonlight In Glory,” Brian Eno and David Byrne, My Life In the Bush of Ghosts. First there’s the retarded preacher’s sermon, then the young guy knocks on the old lady’s door…

“Bat Chain Puller,” Captain Beefheart, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). In case you want to hear what an army of zombies marching in lockstep sounds like.

“Farewell Ride,” Beck, Guero. A master of postmodern pop writes and sings a 12-bar dirge as spooky and sincere as something by Robert Johnson or Son House. Go figure.

“Clap Hands,” Tom Waits, Rain Dogs. “They all went to heaven in the little rowboat.”

“Rebel Music,” Bob Marley and the Wailers, Burnin’. Sounds like horrible things would be happening if everybody wasn’t so stoned.

“Broken English,” Marianne Faithfull, Broken English. The lyrics are troubling, the melody stark, but Faithfull’s broken voice is what’s scary.

“Always Crashing In the Same Car,” David Bowie, Low. World-weary, fatalistic, dreamy, chilling.

“O Superman,” Laurie Anderson, Big Science. This one scared the hell out of my best friend’s young son many years ago. Scared me, too.

“I Put a Spell on You,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Frenzy. Yeah, it’s a novelty tune, but Screamin’ Jay was authentically, undeniably demented.

Posted in arts, humor, pop music | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Back in the saddle. Bike thief still at large.

Posted on October 30, 2011 by oddmanout215

I forgot to mention weeks ago that I finally found an affordable used bicycle to replace my Iron Horse, the theft of which left me in a funk not unlike Jimmy Stewart’s in Vertigo after he failed to save his fellow cop from plummeting to his death during a rooftop chase of a bad guy. My self-loathing was so severe, the doctors had to lock me in a padded room for weeks and play Mozart records until I snapped out of it…

Actually, I became angry and searched the neighborhood for a long time, hoping to blunder into the thief with the bike, or the bike by itself. I was ranting. Someone said, “If a stolen bicycle upsets you this much, how would you react if you found out you had terminal cancer?” I replied, “I would die, I guess. That’s a stupid question.”

My point was that a setback that seems minor to one person might seem earth-shaking to someone else. It depends on your hierarchy of needs and frame of mind. Years ago I suffered an ankle injury — torn ligaments — that kept me on crutches for three months. I was in a resilient frame of mind, so I reacted by doing a lot of upper-body exercises and speed-walking on crutches.

This time I wasn’t feeling resilient, and my mood didn’t improve until I was able to buy a new bike. At some point I re-watched Bicycle Thieves (also known as The Bicycle Thief), the old Vittorio De Sica movie about a poor man supporting his family with a job that requires him to have a bicycle. His bike is stolen and he steals someone else’s bike after a fruitless search for his own. He gets caught, of course, right in front of his son, and ends up feeling shame as well as outrage. Now that’s a setback.

The moral of Bicycle Thieves is don’t do something that might embarrass you in front of your son. Or don’t steal bicycles unless you’re a professional thief. Or don’t steal bikes that are so slow and clunky, you’ll get caught in the act.

There is no moral. Great stories don’t have a moral. De Sica’s movie is about coming to grips with the fact that opportunities are rare and second chances even rarer, especially if you’re poor. It’s about the difficulty of enduring mundane cruelties without becoming cynical or defeatist. There is a sociopolitical subtext to the movie, but De Sica was too artful to allow his story to become overtly polemical. There is no happy ending.

Footnote: You can watch the whole goddamn movie on YouTube!

Posted in arts, bicycling, humor, movies, The New Depression | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

More bad apples in NYPD? I’m shocked!

Posted on October 29, 2011 by oddmanout215

How many bad apples does it take to spoil the whole barrel?

Every week, all over the country, police misconduct takes place, much of it violent. Cops take heat if the misconduct is related to big stories — the tear-gas-and-rubber-bullets attack on Occupy Oakland that has left Scott Olsen with brain damage, the pepper-spray attack on women protesters in Manhattan by Deputy Inspector Tony Baloney — but most of their bad behavior is never challenged by the media or the general public.

Politicians laud cops as heroes, except for the “bad apples.” Once in a while, a reporter shines a light on some flagrantly illegal police action — sometimes violent, sometimes not. When this happens, police officials accuse the media of casting all cops as bad apples.

All of which is to preface the following — no big deal except insofar as it reminds us of the extent of the rot in the apple barrel:

Sixteen New York Police Department officers pleaded not guilty to charges of widespread fixing of traffic tickets as well as more serious crimes, in the second scandal to hit the force in a week. Five civilians were also netted in the nearly three-year undercover probe that involved the wire tapping of more than 10,000 phone calls and resulted in indictments containing some 1,600 misdemeanor and felony counts.

Although most charges were for relatively minor crimes of tampering with traffic tickets to help friends and relations, the probe bared an ugly side to New York’s so-called “Finest” just days after the arrest of officers in an unrelated gun-running scandal…

On Tuesday, eight serving or retired officers were among 12 people arrested on charges of conspiracy to smuggle assault rifles, handguns and other items worth more than $1 million…

Footnote: I think my anti-cop fervor flared after I read of how closely the NYPD is tied to the Wall Street robbers they should have arrested a few years ago.

Update: Even the NYT couldn’t help commenting on the NYPD’s arrogance: “A three-year investigation into the police’s habit of fixing traffic and parking tickets in the Bronx ended in the unsealing of indictments on Friday and a stunning display of vitriol by hundreds of off-duty officers, who converged on the courthouse to applaud their accused colleagues and denounce their prosecution.”

Posted in Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, movies, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Romney lies faster than I can type

Posted on October 28, 2011 by oddmanout215

Yesterday I wrote, “The pious Mr. Mitt has been telling a new lie each day concerning where he stands on workers’ bargaining rights.” This was in response to a story out of Ohio. I filed my blog entry and went about my real-world business.

Meanwhile, Romney was in my hometown, serving up a whopper to contradict his previous statements on another subject:

Speaking to a crowd in Philadelphia yesterday, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) suddenly changed his position on whether humans contribute to climate change, insisting that “we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”

He added that “the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”

Romney’s comments might confuse those who listened in on him in June, when he told an audience in New Hampshire, “I believe that humans have contributed” to climate change.

“Trillions and trillions…” There should be a blog just for Romney’s lies and flip-flops. New material would be available every day, every time he made a public statement. We know where you stood on health insurance this morning, Mr. Mittens, I mean Mr. Romney. What’s your opinion this afternoon?

Posted in climate change, economic collapse, environmentalism, Great Recession, humor, mainstream media, Philadelphia, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Oops, I didn’t really mean to unleash the goons

Posted on October 28, 2011 by oddmanout215

It’s a sad commentary on her leadership skills, but I believe Oakland Mayor Jean Quan meant well. She doesn’t seem like someone who would tell weasel-y lies (hello, Mitt Romney) about her words and actions. Well, maybe one or two lies:

After a violent, nationally televised clash between police and Occupy Oakland protesters on Tuesday, [Quan] is facing a growing list of heated voices recommending — or demanding — that she step down…

… Quan, who was out of town at a meeting in Washington D.C. during the clash, authorized the morning raid of the Occupy Oakland campsite but has been stumbling over the incidents that occurred at the violent protest following night. “I don’t know everything,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday, when asked if she was satisfied with how police handled the incident…

… In response to the incident, MoveOn released a video showing clips of the protests and tear gas raids, climaxing with footage of the critically injured Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, being carried to the medic. A narrator asks, “Mayor Quan, is this your city? Is this how we treat free speech in the United States of America?”

For her part, Mayor Quan has been aggressively attempting to amend the situation. On Thursday, she granted the protesters access to Frank Ogawa Plaza. Later that day, she personally visited Olsen in the hospital, shook his hand, apologized and promised an investigation.

It seems Quan is simply in over her head and needs to take a crash course on our rights to assemble and petition without fear of attack from police departments that turn into goon squads when dispatched to protest sites.

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment