Tuesday Reads: Philippines Disaster, Economics News, and the Concern Troll Media
Posted: November 12, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, morning reads, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alex Bolton, Andrew Huszar, Bart Chilton, Ben Bernanke, Chris Cillizza, concern troll media, Elizabeth Warren, Gary Gensler, Janet Yellen, Noam Scheiber, Philippines, Politico, Rebecca Ruth Guy, T-Bogg, Timothy G. Massad, Typhoon Haiyan 72 Comments
Good Morning!!
Boy did I ever get a shock when I looked out my window this morning and saw a mix of snow and rain coming down outside. Noooooo! It’s way too early for winter weather. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.
Now that I’ve looked at this morning’s news from the Philippines, I’m ashamed to be complaining about a little bit of freezing rain. The disaster following Typhoon Haiyan is beyond belief. ABC News talked to a 19-year-old American woman who who survived the massive storm.
Rebecca Ruth Guy, 19, was living in the city of Tacloban, which bore the full force of the winds and the tsunami-like storm surges Friday. Most of the city is in ruins, a tangled mess of destroyed houses, cars and trees.
“When the storm hit, our apartment was flooding so we tried opening the door but the flooding was already rising up to our chest,” Guy told ABC News.
Faced with a life-and-death situation, Guy’s friend smashed the window so they could climb to the roof and escape the storm surge, which is being blamed for a large part of the destruction and death.
“We got out to the roof,” she said. “The rain was coming, the winds were crazy and it was getting cold. So we ended up sandwiching together and holding onto one another for warmth, praying for protection of the people.
“The most harrowing was when I saw women and children piled under tarpaulin, and when I saw dogs skewered on gates, cars thrown into buildings, people trying to find something to eat, water to drink,” she added.
According to the article, the U.S. sent planes to evacuate Americans living in the Philippines; other residents aren’t so fortunate.
CNN is reporting that 1,774 people are dead; but that number will continue to rise.
Cebu, Philippines (CNN) — Typhoon Haiyan has killed too many people to count so far and pushed to the brink of survival thousands more who have lost everything, have no food or medical care and are drinking filthy water to stay alive.
By Tuesday, officials had counted 1,774 of the bodies, but say that number may just be scratching the surface. They fear Haiyan may have taken as many as 10,000 lives.
The storm has injured 2,487 more since it made landfall six times last Friday, the government said. It has displaced at least 800,000 people, the U.N. said Tuesday.
Unfortunately a new storm and an earthquake have hindered rescue efforts.
As authorities rush to save the lives of survivors four days after Haiyan ripped the Philippines apart, a new tropical low, Zoraida, blew in Tuesday delivering more rain, the Philippine national weather agency PAGASA reported.
Zoraida is not a strong storm, but has dumped just under four inches of rain in some places, CNN meteorologists say….
An earthquake also rattled part of the affected area. The 4.8 magnitude temblor shook San Isidro Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
Here are a few more links about the storm and its aftereffects:
An aerial view of a coastal town in Samar province on Monday, Nov. 11. (REUTERS/Erik De Castro)
The Week: The terrible destruction of Typhoon Haiyan. This one has a number of shocking photos like the one to the left.
CNN: How it happened: Tracing Typhoon Haiyan’s havoc in the Philippines (lots more photos at this link)
NPR: WHO Rates Typhoon’s Medical Challenges ‘Monumental’
NPR: ‘It Looks Like A 50-Mile Wide Tornado’ Hit The Philippines
CTC News: Typhoon Haiyan: Before and after photos of storm’s damage
In other news, here’s one that will interest Dakinikat: Obama to Tap Treasury Official as Top Derivatives Regulator. From The New York Times Dealbook blog:
President Obama will nominate Timothy G. Massad as the new chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday, a White House aide said, choosing the senior Treasury Department official to run an agency that polices some of Wall Street’s riskiest activity.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Massad will succeed Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs banker who overhauled the agency in the wake of the financial crisis. Mr. Gensler, credited with turning one of Wall Street’s laxest regulators into one of its most aggressive, must leave office at the end of the year when his term officially expires.
Mr. Massad, an assistant secretary of the Treasury who oversaw the unwinding of the government’s bailout program stemming from the financial crisis, would join the agency as it undergoes a makeover.
Bart Chilton, the agency’s most liberal commissioner, announced last week that he would soon depart. David Meister, the enforcement director who led actions against some of the world’s biggest banks, departed the agency last month. And Jill E. Sommers, a Republican commissioner, left months ago.
The vacancies have raised the stakes for Mr. Massad’s nomination. If Mr. Chilton and Mr. Gensler depart before their successors are confirmed, the five-member commission will be down to just two members: one Republican, Scott D. O’Malia, and one Democrat, Mark Wetjen.
That would not be good. I know Dakinikat is busy today, but here’s another article for her to weigh in on if she has time: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer. From Andrew Huszar at the Wall Street Journal:
I can only say: I’m sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed’s first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I’ve come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.
Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system’s free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs.
The Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed’s central motivation was to “affect credit conditions for households and businesses”: to drive down the cost of credit so that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the initiative “credit easing.”
Huzar claims that Janet Yellen will likely continue Bernanke’s policies.
Even when acknowledging QE’s shortcomings, Chairman Bernanke argues that some action by the Fed is better than none (a position that his likely successor, Fed Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen, also embraces). The implication is that the Fed is dutifully compensating for the rest of Washington’s dysfunction. But the Fed is at the center of that dysfunction. Case in point: It has allowed QE to become Wall Street’s new “too big to fail” policy.
More pundits are joining the anti-Hillary ranks. According to The Hill’s Alex Bolton:
Liberal leaders want Hillary Clinton to face a primary challenge in 2016 if she decides to run for president.
The goal of such a challenge wouldn’t necessarily be to defeat Clinton. It would be to prevent her from moving to the middle during the Democratic primary.
“I do think the country would be well served if we had somebody who would force a real debate about the policies of the Democratic Party and force the party to debate positions and avoid a coronation,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, an influential progressive group….
Clinton raised concern among the Democratic Party’s populist base when she recently accepted an estimated $400,000 from Goldman Sachs for two speeches.
Influential progressives wonder whether someone who accepted such a large sum from one of Wall Street’s biggest investment firms could be expected to hold corporate executives accountable if elected president.
They also wonder how aggressively she’d call for addressing income inequality, which many see as one of the biggest economic problems facing the nation.
That’s odd, since Obama ran to Hillary’s right in 2008 and received more contributions from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms than either Hillary or John McCain. But let’s not get caught up in facts…
Politico has taken up the suggestion from Noam Scheiber at The New Republic that Dakinikat wrote about yesterday that Elizabeth Warren should run against Hillary. Concern trolls Ben White and Maggie Haberman write:
There are three words that strike terror in the hearts of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives across the land: President Elizabeth Warren.
The anxiety over Warren grew Monday after a magazine report suggested the bank-bashing Democratic senator from Massachusetts could mount a presidential bid in 2016 and would not necessarily defer to Hillary Clinton — who is viewed as far more business-friendly — for the party’s nomination.
And the fear is not only that Warren, who channels an increasingly popular strain of Occupy Wall Street-style anti-corporatism, might win. That is viewed by many political analysts as a slim possibility. It is also that a Warren candidacy, and even the threat of one, would push Clinton to the left in the primaries and revive arguments about breaking up the nation’s largest banks, raising taxes on the wealthy and otherwise stoking populist anger that is likely to also play a big role in the Republican primaries.
So what does Warren think about all this?
A spokesperson for Warren declined to comment on whether she would consider a presidential bid against Clinton, though Warren has previously said she has no plans to run. People close to Warren note that she signed a letter from female Democratic senators urging Clinton to run in 2016. And Warren associates, mindful of any appearance of creating the narrative of a Warren-for-president campaign, have corresponded with Clinton associates to stress that they didn’t fuel the New Republic story by Noam Scheiber.
Assholes. Hey, I have an idea–why not get Kirstin Gillibrand to run against Hillary too? Of course Chris Cillizza is also rooting for Warren and Clinton to destroy each other’s chances to do anything positive about the economy:
Quick, name someone who would have a realistic chance of beating out Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential nomination. Martin O’Malley? Nope. Joe Biden? Maybe but probably not. Howard Dean. No way. There’s only answer to that question that makes even a little sense. And that answer is Elizabeth Warren.
And so on… bla bla bla… Don’t these idiots have anything important to write about? Like maybe jobs, children without food or health care, or the upcoming battle over the debt limit?
Thank goodness for TBogg at Raw Story: What if Elizabeth Warren went back in time and smothered Baby Hitler in his crib?
If you have been perambulating about the internet these past few days, the above is exactly the kind of linkbait bullshit narratives that are being peddled by people who have wearied talking about President of New Jerseymerica Chris Christie or whether Rand Paul was the real life inspiration for the J.L. Borges short story, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. It seems that frustrated writers lacking hobbies have turned their lonely eyes to the Democratic side of the 2016 presidential election which is just around the corner, if by corner, you mean: three years from now. But with Hilary “Killary” Clinton pretty much chillaxing with the nomination ripe for the taking (providing she doesn’t rehire Mark Penn, aka The Man Who Could Fuck Up A Baked Potato) there isn’t a whole lot of tension the likes of which you can find on a daily basis on the Republican Wingnut Flavor of the Week side.
So naturally, Noam Scheiber felt obligated to create some Democratic conflict. T-Bogg responds:
I love Elizabeth Warren. I would totally have her baby if she would have me. You love Elizabeth Warren. We all love Elizabeth Warren. Someday Elizabeth Warren t-shirts may very well become as ubiquitous as Che T’s. But, outside of the hazy crazy patchouli-scented fever palaces that are the comment sections of the manic progressive websites, nobody really thinks that Warren could, would, or should run an insurgent primary campaign against Clinton. And, to be quite frank, those who think Warren should run to in order to “start a conversation” are the kind of people who have attempted this kind of thing in the past and , as my grandmother used to put it, “don’t have dick to show for it”.
Read his replies to Politico and Cillizza at the link. BTW, I wrote comment before I discovered T-Bogg’s piece. Great minds think alike, but T-Bogg expressed my reactions so much better than I could.
That should be enough to get us started on the day’s news. What stories are you following? Please post your links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!
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Sky Dancing 
It is clear that the lazy media does love a “horse race”. They already covered the possibility of Big Boy and Hillary going “head to head” three years away from the actual event.
The latest attempts to keep “the ball rolling” is them seeking out GOP leaders for their take on Christie and he hasn’t even announced (though he it is certain he will). Most of them do not like him and any chance that Christie has in the general (should he make it that far) is dependent upon Dem voters and Independents which is why he is already making the rounds to “soften” up that bullying image.
Warren is not going to run. It just looks like “fun” for the press to create a scenario for themselves pretending to “handicap” the potential candidates while amusing themselves at the same time.
Women will be the deciding factor this time around and watch for these potential candidates to be “wooing” them with promises of this or that while lowering the temperature for doing away with their rights. We won’t be fooled.
2016, what the media wants from TBogg’s post …
Yeah, I love that clip.
It’s a classic. I like it almost as much as Willard Mitt being interviewed by a chicken during the 2012 campaign.
I sure hope women won’t be fooled. I’ve had it with these games.
It may freeze here tonight. It is early yet.
We had a light snow overnight. That’s unusual for mid-November.
It’s been a lot colder in Indiana than in Massachusetts. My mom said she had snow on the ground this morning.
Light dusting of snow on the ground and bare trees, here, in N. E. Ohio.
Snow here this AM too, but then I remember always having snow here in NJ before Thanksgiving.
It’s snowing again, here, south of Cleveland.
I must say, I love it.
The woolly worms here have very thick dark coats which doesn’t bode well for a mild winter.
Yeah Beata, same thing with the woolly worms here in Banjoville.
NPR has been doing a surprisingly good job in its JFK assassination anniversary coverage. This interview with T. Jeremy Gunnthe, who headed the Assassinations Records Review Board in the 1990s, was fascinating: Inconsistencies Haunt Official Record Of Kennedy’s Death
Gunn revealed that Dr. Joseph Humes told him about irregularities in the official autopsy:
Two more interesting interviews with JFK book authors at NPR:
Botched Investigation Fuels Kennedy Conspiracy Theories (interview with Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act, which critiques the Warren Commission’s investigation.
In ‘Dallas 1963,’ A City Of Rage, Seized By ‘Civic Hysteria‘ (interview with author Bill Munutaglio.
Should have been “City of HATE”.
Another tidbit on the assassination, BB. Manchester had a heck of a time tracking down Mrs. Kennedy’s bloodstained pink suit. We know from his book that she was wearing the suit all night, and finally removed it only shortly before dawn in the White House when her maid persuaded her to take off the suit and prepared a bath for her. Manchester says Mrs. Kennedy was so traumatized she had shown no response at all to two sedative injections a doctor had given her while they were waiting for the autopsy at Bathesda. After that, he says, no one knew or wanted to talk about what her maid, Providencia, had done with the suit. Manchester eventually located it in an attic in Janet Auchincloss’, Jackie’s mother’s home. He opens the book with it, describing it poignantly as what, if one did not know the whole story, would appear to be the clothing of a young woman who had met with a terrible accident. Manchester said the suit eventually made its way to the National Archives, but who knows what may have happened since.
I found his account telling, not just for the symbolism of the suit, which we’ll never forget even though we’ve never seen it again, but because by all other accounts, Janet Auchincloss was frankly a terrible mother to Jackie and Lee in an emotional sense, and obviously left them with permanent emotional scars. Yet, on that one day, she was the sole person who managed to do everything right…caring for the children, supporting Jackie, and, apparently, taking custody of the suit from the housekeeper, on a day and night when many more powerful than she were making error after error. It’s a strange psychological twist.
Wow! There’s an interesting segment in William Manchester’s book on the assassination, where he talks about how many otherwise calm and rational people did completely irrational things that day. Manchester was writing in the mid-1960’s, decades before the word “stress” became an everyday term, and before psychology really understood that extreme stress interferes with judgment. Manchester cited several examples of this kind of impaired judgment in the 24 hours or so immediately following JFK’s assassination. It sounds as if the good doctor was not involved in any intentional deceit, but acted emotionally and wasn’t even aware of the possible implications of his act.
” But, outside of the hazy crazy patchouli-scented fever palaces that are the comment sections of the manic progressive websites,…”
That’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. I laughed out loud.
He can be truly funny sometimes! His ‘your Mumia sweatshirt won’t get you into heaven anymore’ post is an absolute classic. Here’s a post with some links to the classics.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2013/08/21/a-gaggle-of-geese-a-scrotum-of-teabaggers-a-treasury-of-shit-i-wrote/
That whole TBogg piece is side-splitting hilarious.
The guy can be crude, but he’s also funny as hell. I especially like “manic-progressive.” I need to remember that one.
Nails the freakin’ press…
SteveM: MEDIA DESPERATE TO CLEAR THE GOP FIELD FOR CHRIS CHRISTIE
Great stuff. That’s my favorite new-to-me blog, Ralph, thanks to you.
He’s a little pessimistic at times but he keeps up with what’s going on with the wingnuts. That’s valuable information these days,
Hell yeah……..that’s what they are doing, pitting Hillary and Elizabeth, and opening the gates for the Big Jerk.
Gonna be an interesting case to watch.
tp: Major Insurance Company Faces Lawsuit For Allegedly Tricking Customers Into Canceling Their Policies
OMG! Would insurance companies actually do that?
snark, which I hope was obvious.
🙂 snark was very obvious
Oh No!!!! I had no idea insurance companies could be so dishonest.
I thought I could trust them with my life!
Republicans seem to trust them with OUR lives 😉
Good! It’s time the Dems fought for their principles now. No laying down, no backing up, screw it.
OMG, I missed this one this morning.
Richard Cohen, supposedly writing about Chris Christie and the Tea Party:
Think Progress: The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen Isn’t The Only Columnist Confused By The De Blasio-McCray Marriage
Stop This Man Before He Writes Something Again
Pierce on Cohen.
Excellent.
Richard Cohen and Maureen Dowd deserve each other. What a pair of gigantic remarkably stupid assholes.
Damn, Cohen’s version of “conventional views” is fucking disgusting and racist to the bone. He sets off my gag reflex and certainly has no business writing for a major US newspaper!
Alex Pareene at Salon: “Richard Cohen: Please fire me”
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/12/richard_cohen_please_fire_me/
WTF is going on at WAPO, some sort of reverse civil rights movement?
What a truly pathetic column. Does this guy only watch black and white TV?
ROTFL!!!
unbelievable!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/wapo-publisher-calls-cohen-column-brilliant
I know I just saw that, WTF right?
Fuck the lot of them!
You know, It’s about them losing power to force all the rest of us to live in “their” America. They can live under their rocks and do what ever they want in their homes and churches. They just don’t have the right to force the rest of us to live like that.
It absolutely is about “them losing power”. They’ve been able to lord their narrow-minded brand of “cultural” morality and their repressive views and opinions over this country for so long, they’re terrified at the prospect of their undeniable decline.
May they rest in pieces.
Scott Lemieux is also funny here…
LG&M: WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?
LOL. TP wingnuts could read that one and nod their heads in agreement, not realizing it is satire.
🙂
444,000 signed up!
Although article gives the impression that private insurance pays generously, that is not always true.
How could someone get the idea that Medicaid was no better than or worse than being uninsured? That would take a good snow job to pull that off.
Hey y’all. I’ve had a bad migraine headache and yesterday we had to take Bebe to doctor…today is my brother’s birthday, so it is just plain busy. There is so much going on…geez, I’ve found so many links for tomorrow’s post.
I had to share this however, it made me laugh and that was something I really needed to do. I got it from Facebook, some dude named Eddie Relick
Remember: Cold season is starting and cows seek heat on car hoods. do not forget to tap on the hood to give the cow enough time to get off before you drive away!
So nicely matched in color. Wonder what that hood looks like after the cow got down. If that’s a real problem, somebody should sell hood protectors!
LOL… From the looks of that picture, BMW will get right on that.
Is that Lori Gottlieb’s car? I sure hope she has good auto insurance.
roflmao!!!
And Happy Birthday to JJ’s brother!
Second that!
I third it!
Happy Birthday to Denny!!!
Don’t miss this one:
Concern troll Dylan Byers sort of defends Richard Cohen, but pretends he’s not speaking for himself.
Politico probably has to defend racism. Without it, what would they do?
The media can’t have Hillary become a nominee without holding primary contests they could write about. These elections are media’s bread and butter. Primary-less nomination for them is like for sports journalists seeing all baseball teams mutually agree to give Red Sox the 2014 championship and skip the whole 2014 season.
So the 2016 Dem primary has to happen, even if only in their heads.
There will be a primary, because Joe Biden is going to run. I’m sure a few others will too. But Elizabeth Warren will not be among them.
Oh, I forgot about Biden. He hasn’t made any gaffes recently, so his good behavior has kept him out of spotlight 🙂