Friday Reads
Posted: July 29, 2011 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: crazy Michelle Bachmann, debt ceiling debate, John Boehner, Tea Party Extremists, Warren Jeffs 60 Comments
Good Morning!
I’m really glad it’s Friday and I’m wondering what the markets will be doing. There’s more extremist nonsense coming out of the Congress in the debt ceiling and deficit debate. Let’s take a brief look at the headlines.
First, it appears that Pell Grants are under attack.
House conservatives who have stalled legislation to raise the national debt limit are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare.
Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.
There’s speculation that some of the teabots may have their districts cannibalized by an angry Speaker of the House in redistricting measures.
Jim Jordan’s open defiance of Speaker John Boehner’s efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe House seat in next year’s election.
Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today that Jordan’s disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.
“Jim Jordan’s boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody’s thinking,” said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The easiest option for everybody has presented itself.”
Jordan’s rural 11-county district, which has a 60 percent Republican voter index, “is easy to cannibalize because it stretches so far,” the other source said.
Michele in Wonderland thinks the impasse on the debt ceiling is not an emergency. Can some one please tell this woman to report to someplace where she can buy a clue or a brain or some sanity?
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann again brushed off warnings from leaders in both parties that the country would face disastrous economic consequences if the government fails to raise the debt ceiling by next Tuesday.
“I do not believe for one moment that we will lose the full faith and credit of the United States,” Bachmann said Thursday during a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington.
Bachmann, a House member from Minnesota, has been a staunch opponent of the debt ceiling hike for months, saying the move poses no threat to the markets or to the American public and would only give President Barack Obama license to increase government spending.
Other insane Bachmann stories today including her defense of using Federal Loans for her own housing while lambasting the very agencies that helped her afford her house. Evidently, it’s not welfare when she does it.
GOP presidential contender Michele Bachmann (R) has been in hot water in recent weeks for personally taking advantage of hundreds of thousands of dollars in government aid while denouncing the very programs she benefited from. Most recently, the Washington Post discovered that Bachmann and her husband signed for a $417,000 home loan backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac just weeks before she called for the two mortgage giants to be entirely dismantled.
Bachmann has been a consistently fierce critic of mortgage lending programs and has advocated abolishing the government sponsored mortgage enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet she took out the maximum possible loan from those programs to finance her family’s move to a lavish 5,200-square-foot home on a golf course.
Bachmann also wants to declare her family business’ “pray away the gay” discredited therapy practice put off limits.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) visited the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday for a speech and question-and-answer session. The GOP presidential contender’s remarks focused mostly on her opposition to raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances. She did field one question on an issue we’ve covered: reports that the Christian counseling clinic she co-owns with her husband tries to cure gay people of homosexuality. Bachmann has repeatedly dodged questions on the issue, and even gone so far as to cut off interviews with Iowa reporters who broach the subject; when I caught up with her outside the MoJo DC office recently, she was a no comment (literally, she didn’t say anything).
On Thursday, Bachmann was asked if she believes homosexuality is a lifestyle decision that can be cured. So, with her husband sitting to her left at the Press Club, how’d Bachmann respond? By dodging the issue entirely and declaring her spouse, her children, her foster children, and her business off limits:
The next interesting trial on TV should be that of Polygamist Cult Leader Warren Jeffs who is being tried for sex assault on a 12 year old girl. Jeffs wants to act as his own lawyer.
Prosecutors said they have an audio tape of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs sexually assaulting a 12-year-old child, The Salt Lake Tribune reported on its websiteThursday.
The revelation came during opening statements on Jeffs’ trial on child sexual assault charges.
The prosecutor also said DNA evidence would prove that Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl, the Tribune reported.
Earlier Thursday, Jeffs threw the trial into disarray when he fired his defense lawyers and demanded the right to represent himself, which the judge then granted.
“It’s not as easy as it looks on TV, Mr. Jeffs,” State District Judge Barbara Walther told him. “You’re on your own.”
Jeffs refused to answer when Walther asked him whether he wanted to make an opening statement, the Tribune said.
Jeffs, the leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, is charged with child sexual assault and aggravated child sexual assault in connection with his “spiritual marriages” to a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in remote west Texas.
Here’s a great article from Alternet on how Wall Street broke the economy. It’s an interview with Gretchen Morgensen on her new book. Here’s a great conversation on how predatory lenders fed bad loans into Fannie and Freddie.
TM: After the S&L crisis, we were going to fix Fannie and Freddie, but things only got worse. When you ask the fox how to clean the henhouse…
GM: You make a good point about who’s to blame. Blame falls on both sides of the aisle in Congress. It’s not an either-or, Democratic or Republican issue, not a liberal or conservative issue — there’s enough blame to go around. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were primary movers in the push for home ownership. And there’s nothing wrong with that, owning your own home is a deep-seated wish in the American psyche. The problem was in the execution. You don’t lure people in who are unsophisticated, who don’t understand what they’re doing. You certainly don’t offer them the kinds of poisonous loans that were targeted to minority borrowers; low-income borrowers; first-time home buyers.
TM: Targeted by Fannie and Freddie or targeted by predatory mortgage lenders?
GM: This is where Fannie and Freddie step aside and the mortgage lenders step into the breach. Countrywide was Fannie Mae’s biggest provider of loans. A lot of the losses that taxpayers are footing at this moment came very late in the game, in 2005, 2006, mortgages that were really ugly and really poisonous. Fannie Mae led the way, pushing for home ownership, degrading underwriting standards, pushing for more relaxed lending standards. Then the predatory lenders take the ball and run with it because there’s so much money to be made.
TM: And because of Fannie Mae’s initiative, so little risk.
GM: So little risk. Fannie Mae was either guaranteeing the loans that Countrywide and other lenders were making or taking them into their own portfolios. The taxpayer was essentially taking on the risk. There is an unholy alliance between Fannie Mae, a government sponsored enterprise, and predatory lenders and Wall Street. Wall Street saw Fannie Mae creating pools of loans that they would sell to others to sell to investors. Wall Street took that ball and ran with it, issuing trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities bursting with predatory loans.
I’m glad to see her clarify the misunderstanding of the role of Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage meltdown. It wasn’t their affordable housing role that created the bigger mess. It was their lack of due diligence in investigating loans packaged by known predatory lenders and their managers who were dealing themselves quota bonuses. Congress didn’t watch what they were doing either. They just assumed they were following their mandate.
I’m happy to see that a Judge will allow a defamation suit against propagandameister Breitbart to proceed. The suit was filed by Shirley Sherrod and dealt with the horrible edit job his site did to make her look like some kind of racist. You may recall she used to work in the Department of Agriculture.
Last year, Breitbart published a video of Sherrod describing to an NAACP conference how she overcame her own racist attitudes. However, a video from that speech was deceptively edited to make it appear that she was describing how she used the power of the government against a white farmer.
She was fired from her post at the agriculture department within hours of the clip hitting Breitbart’s website, and for at least a day the world believed Sherrod was a racist who abused her power to harm a white farmer.
Once it became clear that was not the case, the government offered her the job back, but she declined. Even after a formal apology from the White House and an offer to talk to the president, Sherrod still refused.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took it a step further and offered her a position dealing with civil rights and discrimination issues at the USDA, but Sherrod declined and vowed to sue Breitbart over his deceptive prank.
The suit also targets Breitbart colleague Larry O’Connor and one other unnamed defendant.
Lawyers for the defense argued that the suit was invalid because it was triggered by a matter of “pure opinion,” not statements of fact.
So, that should give you something to think on this morning. What’s on your reading and blogging list today? Please! Share with us!
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Regarding Fannie and Freddie. It should be noted that F&F got in late in the game. The private label stuff was already tanking ( i think about 2006). Up until that time their underwriting standard kept them F&Fout of trouble. Then the alliance with Countrywide came. F&F gave Countrywide a very preferable rate in terms of doing business. F&F dramatically lowered their underwriting standards.
The private label shadow banking system was going down and F&F stepped in to continue the secularization process.They saw the market share gain the private label had accomplished and they wanted in on the gravy train.
This was all predicated on the insane idea that real estate would not go down. Complete repudiation of the laws of supply and demand. Those who say that F&F were the reason for the real estate collapse completely ignore the private label collapse started in 2006-2007. Investors were not buying the securities and the banks were hiding them in the Special Investment Vehicles. This was identical to what Enron did and nobody learned the lesson. The SIV’s collapsed because short term funding dried up and the bad securities and had to be brought back on the banks books.
Thank you, you explained that well!
Very nice, concise explanation.
It’s also worth noting that one of the basics of company management, for at least the past 40 years, has been never to allow one customer to represent more than 10% of your sales in order to limit exposure in the event a customer runs into trouble. It’s as though Fannie and Freddie–or whoever wrote the rules for Fannie and Freddie–threw all good management practices right out the window.
Thanks for the great explanation FL…and for the additional information grayslady.
I’m happy to see that a Judge will allow a defamation suit against propagandameister Breitbart to proceed.
Excellent!
…, the government offered her the job back, but she declined. Even after a formal apology from the White House and an offer to talk to the president, Sherrod still refused.
Shocking! The offer to talk to Obama was on the table and a chance for a beer summit didn’t change her mind???
Shocking! The offer to talk to Obama was on the table and a chance for a beer summit didn’t change her mind???
LOL!!!! I SOOO happy it didn’t. Kucinich got a ride in Air Force One and sold out the American people on health care. Nice to see someone with integrity….
Hillary 2012
Shirley Sherod is a SHERO!
That LDS – fundamentalist. I’ve been following this story since it broke.
In order for the old buggers to have plenty of wives the young men/teenagers are driven from the cult’s land. There’s a regular rescue mission for these boys.
As for playing the recording of the rape — that poor child — being re-raped by the prosecution. It would seem that with all the evidence the prosecutor has playing that recording is just plain rude and gross.
My grandfather walked away from the LDS church as soon as he could leave home. I’d say he hated that church. So I’m biased.
I wonder if Mitt Romney wears Mormon underwear?
The LDS — put a lot of money and work into killing the ERA. So if you want to know what it got stalled at 38 states — thank the LDS.
So, they had a past record, then proceeded with the Prop 8 campaign, hemmm, didn’t know about the ERA campaign. Thanks.
Arab Spring goes Kosher
Mass protests sweep Israel
damn tags! sorry for all the bold!
I fixed it for you.
Thank you!!!
If I hear one more GOP politician refer to “doing the will of the American people” I will vomit.
This is not what the American people want. To even suggest that they are even remotely close to knowing what the American people want is insane.
We do not want our social safety nets obliterated. We are not in favor of unnecessary military excursions that drain our resources. We do not want our air and water supply tampered with. We are not in favor of eliminating much needed healthcare services that treat women and children. We are not supporting cutting services to the elderly. Nor do we want to see education reduced.
The ignorance and arrogance of this current crop of idiots is beyond comprehension. No one is ever certain of what is contained as cost saving measures in any of these multiple bills and to sit back and watch these thieves protect the bank accounts of the wealthy is criminal in nature.
Where the hell lis President AWOL anyway? Who is actually fighting for us? We are in the grip of the most ignorant, self serving handful of people who will stop at nothing to prove their stupidity even at the cost of dragging us down into the muck and mire they have emerged from.
We are on our own.
Where the hell is President AWOL anyway? No doubt he is getting centered.
He’s going to speak in the White House press room at 10:20 Eastern.
Ugh…I guess he wants to get it over with so he can go golfing…
LOL
if there’s not a bill to sign or a lecture to give , he’s at a compleat loss .As far as govering is concerned, Obana signs whai others have fashioned without reading it and he lectures, that’s it .
on tee vee again ;lol;
When the cable pundits were saying President Obama would be working this weekend, we all busted out laughing…we all work weekends, all the time…next they will say he has to read the bill.
Let me tell you about this healthcare thing. I recently tore my meniscus in my right knee, went to the specialist and am going to get surgery to correct it here in a few weeks. A fellow co-worker, who is female, completely tore here ACL has the same insurance, the same doctor and was told she wasn’t a priority. WTH? My injury is bad but hers is far worse. Now I understand that mine will be much easier to fix but still she has been out of work for a couple of months, just came back and still can’t walk at all. We need some changes in our system. I’ve got to think this is a subtle form of misogyny.
I’m equally appalled, Pat. I hear Republican after Republican claim that “this is what the American public wants.” Toomey was on this morning mouthing the same damn chant, while poll after poll shows that this is exactly what Americans do not want. They want the uber-rich to pay their fair share, they want corporate subsidies to end, the endless wars concluded and they want JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.
The GOP has always tended to be dense but they’re bloody deaf anymore. Obama’s right up there, too, carrying Republican water.
Now we find out that Pell grants are Welfare at the very moment when we need an educated population to reasonably compete in this global nightmare. And grad students? Their loans will now collect interest while they’re in school because obviously grad students are bankrupting the Nation.
Will these people get real!
The Fed funneled 16 trillion dollars out to foreign and domestic banks to save their rearends [and that’s just the money we know about]. But students are the enemy. Along with the elderly and disabled, of course. And if you’re poor? Forget about it.
You can’t make this crap up.
Well said, Pat! All we can do is let our Congress-creatures know that in no uncertain terms.
What makes me mad is that this is not necessary. Yes, we need to deal with debt long-term: raising taxes back to Clinton era rates (except for people at the lower end) and getting out of unnecessary wars would help. What we really need to do is put the unemployed back to work (which will increase revenue) and get the states a helping hand so they don’t have to layoff so many police, teachers, etc. That would call for an additional stimulus.
Time has article here that might be of interest:
http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/15/the-u-s-is-not-drowning-in-debt/?hpt=hp_t2
djmm
Latest Pew Poll has Obama neck in neck with a generic tree stump…RealClearPolitics – Obama Loses Re-Election Support in New Poll
This little news item just ruined my day!
The very thought of President Perry, Palin, Bachman, Santorum, Gingrich or Pawlenty just sent me running for the Motrin bottle!
In all that is holy will someone from the liberal left please stand up and primary this guy before we are all saluting one of these ignorant fools?
I’m begging here.
I am failing to see the difference between Obama and any of those nitwits.
I am failing to see the difference between Obama and any of those nitwits.
agreed …they both do as the paymasters want…
You left out Romney. And there is zero difference between Obama and Romney.
I am lost in a sea of confusion once again.
Are we actually sitting around waiting for the passage of a bill that is guaranteed not to get through the Senate and will actually “die” before it even gets out of the House? Is this the “suspense” we are all clinging to for the next 12 hours? An outline of whether or not John Boehner will or will not be able to hold onto his Speaker role? Is this it?
So we are essentially sitting around wondering which of these multliple bills which few of us have knowledge of what they contain will pass while the rest of the world questions our ability to raise the debt ceiling?
I have never seen such gross stupidity in my lifetime.
I feel your pain, Pat – nice rants here today – I have such a headache over all this garbage I have to lay low today if I can – I loathe every goddam one of them
McCain uses ‘Lord of the Rings’ to make fun of tea party
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/mccain-uses-lord-of-the-rings-to-make-fun-of-tea-party/
John McCain is still a lying, two faced hypocrite. He then went on Hannity and praised the same Tea Party he called “bizarro”.
Still trying to live down his huge mistake in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, the man has no scruples when it comes to anything coming out of his mouth.
As long as he can remain viable in the press he is more than willing to shrug off any sense of integrity to do so.
As I remember it, Pat, you were gung ho for the McCain/Palin ticket in 2008.
Over at The Confluence, you and Carol Diamonds were vying for the pleasure of babysitting Piper Palin.
Am I wrong? Do I have you confused with someone else?
At my age, that’s easy to do.
Pat was never gung ho for McCain, and she always hated Palin, as I recall.
She loved Piper… I remember that lol! …Well Piper was cute
McCain was my “protest vote” against Obama. Here in MA there was no doubt that Obama was going to win so my vote made little difference in the outcome.
As for Palin, I had my reservations quite soon after her infamous interview with Couric but kept most of my reservations to a minimum.
It was Carol who pushed for Palin not me. Describing me as “gung ho” for McCain is simply not the case. I pointed out on more than once occasion that we had a choice of choosing between two very mediocre candidates and as time went on any attraction for Palin went by the roadside. The only edge that McCain had was the experience that Obama lacked from the outset.
My heart and head was always with Hillary and remains so. I think that time has proven me correct about Palin. She was and is a disaster in the making and a pox on McCain for trying to pull a fast one on we women Hillary supporters by inserting her into the mix.
That protest vote is one I regret for even sticking my little toe into the Repub camp even for one split angry second.
If this makes me a “bad person” so be it.
Hey Pat, there were many of us who voted for McCain in protest…and I am one of them. It was the first time voting for a Republican for me and I don’t regret it. I had the right to choose who I wanted to be the president, and Obamas sure wasn’t my choice. As for making anyone a bad person, forget it…it does not make anyone a bad person, hell I would think that all the OBots out there need to look deep inside themselves…because they are the ones who pushed Obama over the top…aside from all the big money wall st and oil and others who had it all planned out back in 2004.
at least the Democrats would be fighting a President McCain and I’m still not sure he’s more conservative than Obama at this point….
Couldn’t agree more!!! I feel the same way.
Who said you were “bad”? I missed that post …
The vote for MaCain is not the issue , I voted for McCain myself as a protest . The rich did sooooo not want him ,…it’s mind wipe of the Piper love ….that ‘s the issue.
and Minx , well said!
Pat, I have to say that I voted for McCain/Palin as well. There was just no way that I could associate myself in any way to Obumbles. McCain was the lesser of two evils. Obumbles was the greater.
Asshat.
Hillary 2012
John Boehner is the godfather of proprietary colleges. His loyalty to Pell Grants has nothing to do with wanting young people to have more access to education. He wants +privately owned “colleges” to be able to riip off people who have hopes of bettering their lives by signing away their future to cruddy schools that teach little or nothing and have lousy rates of success in placing graduates in decent paying jobs in their field. Students at prorietary schools default on their loans at twice the rate of attendees at public universities and four times the rate of private schools.
I got talked into teaching at a proprietary school for seven months. You would not believe the abuses of students (and teachers) that I saw in that seven months. I still feel guilty about my part in denying the stdents the education that they paid for and deserved.
Even in this time of economic cattastrophe, Boehner is trying to take care of an industry that has bought and paid for him.
Interesting. Thanks for that background!
One of the news shows had an expose on these ‘private,’ fly-by colleges a good year or two ago. They were preying on the Native American kids, who ended up signing their financial futures away for basically a lot of hot air promises and nothing more. A shameful scam. The so-called institutions promised job placement after graduation, well-paying jobs. Graduates ended up with squat, except for a huge bill at the end.
It’s all being fueled by greed and craven indifference for anything beyond maximized profits.
The ads for such places are indeed everywhere and a huge scam……more serfdoom
You can see by my many typing errors in my above comment that I should not be teaching anybody. j/k
Good Lord, teabots are idiots! Pell grants are beneficial mechanism that works out as win win for the individual and the state. They allow people to attain skills needed to benefit corporate America and those skills lead to a better paying positions that are then “paid for” by the taxes the individual pays after being employed.
This one ought to be a no brainer. Particularly when companies are whining they can’t find candidates with the technical skills they need.
This is a long interview, but it should be requirted viewing for everyone in Congress and most Americans. This guy should have been the head of Obumbles Job council. Dak, I’m curious to hear your thoughts as well…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=3000035110
Hillary 2012
Steve Clemons: The Upside of Default
What I am reading here is “cheaper American products”. I am not an economist but the only way that happens is if there are massive layoffs, the economy completely tanks, minimum wage is reduced and desperate American’s work for peanuts, no benefits and crappy hours.
Not much of a benefit there now is it. At least not for the vast majority of Americans. Then again, if you already have a load of cash on hand you’ll instantly be much more wealthy and the American worker will be reduced to little more than a slave.
This isn’t my idea of putting our domestic house in order. Rather, it is cleaning up your house by pouring kerosine in it and then lighting the match. I also am failing to see how the financial sector does poorly, at least the people with real money. What we are talking about is completely destroying the middle class and making American laborers competitive with Asian laborers. Our leaders are attempting to make us into a third world country where we only have the super rich and the poor. In this scenario there are a heck of a lot of “republicans”, small business owners, and those doing pretty well who are going to find out that they aren’t part of the “in” crowd.
Gregory, if the value of the dollar drops with respect to other world currencies, American goods are cheaper to people outside the US. That’s why exports go up when the dollar drops. A widget may cost $100 before and after the drop, but the $100 after the drop will be cheaper to someone in the UK who is paying in pounds or someone in France paying with Euros.
djmm
Thanks for the link, BostonBoomer. Yes, exports may increase, but I must say that this reminds me of The Life of Brian song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!”
djmm
Okay, I just saw a link to the following article on HNN, History News Network. I am not familiar with the author, so take this for what it is.
Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man by Justin Raimondo — Antiwar.com
I’m familiar with him. He’s been blogging for a long time–used to have his own blog.
she should be prosecuted. Maybe Interpol will go after her.
I just learned via a tweet that the Oslo/Utoya murderer got the ammo by mail from the US. It was cheaper and he couldn’t get clips with that many bullets in Norway. I wonder how many other places selling ammo are doing this and I thought the US postal service didn’t mail arms or ammo!?!
Shocking, just shocking…
GDP Report Shatters Illusion of Jobless, Productivity-Filled Recovery.
Follow link for graphs.
Okay, just look at the title of this Fox news piece…Balanced Budget Amendment Appeases House Conservatives, Frightens Economists – FoxNews.com
Balanced Budget amendments are absolutely the worst idea in the world. They let legislatures over spend when they shouldn’t be spending and then they cause legislatures to make recessions worse. It’s the biggest nonsense possible. All you have to do is look at the problems the states are having right now and see what a bad idea they are.