Did John McCain used to be a decent man, or was he always just a sleezy politician doing and saying what would get him re-elected? I vote for option no. 2. Via Think Progress:
Today, while the Senate continued to debate Wall Street reform, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) ventured south of the Capitol to a fundraiser hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Years ago, when McCain still considered himself a “maverick,” McCain and the Chamber clashed bitterly as McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts and pushed for campaign finance reform to rein in corporate power over elections.
ThinkProgress approached McCain as he walked to the fundraiser from his car. Asked if he supports new campaign finance reforms, McCain said no, and said that Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) bill does not include disclosure requirements for unions. In fact, the DISCLOSE Act would force ads funded by unions to reveal the same information as ads funded by corporations. Asked why he was attending a fundraiser hosted by the organization that helped kill his own campaign finance reforms, McCain flashed ThinkProgress a thumbs up and yelled that he “love[s] the Chamber of Commerce”:
The perils of selling yourself to the highest bidder.
Representing the 52nd District in California, Duncan Hunter [R] is calling for the deportation of children born to undocumented immigrants. Children and babies who are U.S. citizens, no less.
"Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens," Hunter was asked. "I would have to, yes," Hunter said. "... We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now," he said. "... It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls. ..."
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
If you'd like to contact me about a legislative issue, you can reach me via e-mail, by phone at (202) 225-5672 or regular mail. Please mail all correspondence to: Congressman Duncan Hunter; 1429 Longworth House Office Building; Washington D.C.; 20515.
Russell Pearce is the chief sponsor of the Arizona bill, and as many have noted, the bill, in effect, legalizes racial profiling. From the Fayetteville Observer [emphasis mine]:
Arizona Immigration Bill Sponsor Russell Pearce Has White Supremacist
Ties, Nativist Views
In 2006, Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce got himself into a
bit of trouble.
Pearce is the chief sponsor of Arizona's brutal new immigration law.
In '06, he
circulated emails from the National
Alliance, a white supremacist group. The email defended a racially
conscious white person who "looks askance at miscegenation or at the
rapidly darkening racial situation in America." (Miscegenation refers to
interracial relationships.)
The email went on to blame the media for forcing on the public the
notion of equality of the races, the truth of the Holocaust and "the
wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring
across our borders ... ."
Pearce claimed later to not know what the group was or what was in the
email, but the chairman of the state Republican Party called the email a
"severe mistake."
Then-U.S. representative J.D. Hayworth, who is no softy himself on
illegal immigration, said: "Given the regrettable and disturbing nature
of the e-mail Russell Pearce circulated earlier this week, I cannot in
good conscience lend my endorsement to his candidacy for State
Representative."
If the email "slip" had been Pearce's only tie to racism and nativism,
maybe it would be no big deal on the scheme of things. But there's more.
Pearce, who is now a state senator, has been videotaped
and photographed
palling around with nativists and white supremacists at anti-immigrant
rallies, including with neo-Nazi and white power activist J.T.
Ready. [......]
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, has until tomorrow to sign, veto, or allow the nation's toughest bill on illegal immigration to pass without her signature. It is expected that she will sign it, making it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona.
Civil rights activists have said the bill would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes. Hundreds of Hispanics protested the legislation at the State Capitol complex on Thursday.
Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. That includes for example the recent efforts in Arizona which threaten basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe. In fact, I’ve instructed members of my administration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation.
But if we continue to fail to act at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided efforts to open up across the country.
“As I said on this stage two years ago, I believe in the power of the free market. I believe in a strong financial sector that helps people to raise capital and get loans and invest their savings. That’s part of what has made America what it is. But a free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That’s what happened too often in the years leading up to this crisis. Some -- and let me be clear, not all -- but some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged there’s family looking to buy a house, or pay for an education, open a business, save for retirement. What happens on Wall Street has real consequences across the country, across our economy. [emphasis mine]
With 17 applications in hand from companies that want to build 26
reactors, the agency is likely to name a lot more inspectors; it also
expects five more
applicants in the next few years.
Is this the long-awaited renaissance of the nuclear construction
business, after years of being moribund?
Certainly, some crucial ingredients are falling into place. Nuclear
power provides 70 percent of the nation’s carbon-free electricity,
important at a time when environmentalists track carbon in the
atmosphere the way baby boomers check their cholesterol levels.
Despite months of bipartisan negotiation and promises of cooperation, Republicans recently threatened to filibuster the bill. A visibly angry Dodd took to the Senate floor today to condemn the GOP’s obstructionism, calling out their “very false talking points” and warning them that they will have to explain to Americans, “I’m sorry but we’re not on your side:”
DODD: A letter from the Minority Leader said we’ve got 41 votes here to stop you from even debating this bill. Well, you explain that to the American taxpayer, to the small business, to the American family, and to others out there who are paying an awful price because the the mess that the very institutions who are today leading the charge against us getting a bill. Explain to them why the status quo is in their interest and their benefit. Mr. President, those who vote to block this bill will be sending a clear message to American families, businesses, community bankers and tax payers and that message will be, I’m sorry but we are not on your side. We are choosing another side of this equation.
Last month, my good friend the Minority Leader and the Republican senator responsible for campaign fundraising participated in meeting in New York with Wall Street executives. … Comes back right afterwards and we get all of a sudden, we get this rhetoric about too big to fail and we can’t possibly go to this bill. Don’t tell me that miraculously, these things happen and all of sudden we find ourselves with 41 senators [opposed to this bill].
Clearly, there was a massive increase in financial concentration, with a few true behemoths emerging. It’s easy to argue that this creates moral hazard, because the giant firms know that they’re too big to fail – which is also an easy slogan to remember. The idea that size is the problem has gained a lot of credibility from Paul Volcker, who personally embodies the truth of too big to fail (if you’ve ever met him); more seriously, Volcker has argued strongly that the repeal of Glass-Steagall, allowing financial firms to grow big in part by merging conventional banking with investment activities, set the stage for the crisis.
My view is that I’d love to see those financial giants broken up, if only for political reasons: it’s bad to have banks so big they can often write laws. But I’m not sold on the centrality of too big to fail to the crisis, for reasons best explained in terms of the second doctrine.
There is no social value to having banks above $100 billion in total assets and we all now understand the danger of allowing banks to become 10 times that size – let alone entering the $2-$3 trillion range; we will gradually and responsibly force our biggest banks to become smaller. This worked for Standard Oil – no one can claim it hurt the oil industry. And who would really want to go back to having AT&T run a monopoly in any part of telecommunications?
The silly twitnever seems to get the history. Has she ever even read any American history? Or European? Is she even aware of that thing called The Enlightenment? You know, that period that the Founding Fathers were a part of, and that strongly influenced the founding of this country, as well as the principles contained in our Constitution. We are, in fact, blessed with a "Godless" constitution.
A certain former half-term governor appears to be drifting even further away from the American mainstream. Over the weekend, appearing at an evangelical Christian women's conference in Louisville, Sarah Palin rejected the very idea of separation of church and state, a bedrock principle of American democracy.
She asked for the women -- who greeted her with an enthusiastic standing ovation -- to provide a "prayer
The slide show Goldman used to pitch Abacus is pretty damning. It starts with so many pages of fine-print "disclaimers" and "risk factors" that it seems like a Viagra ad ("call your doctor if ..."). There's a lot in there about well-respected (but at best gullible) ACA, this firm that Goldman claimed was picking the bonds. About half of the 66 slides sing ACA's praises, but there's no mention of Paulson. There are long descriptions of ACA's capabilities, their "internal" and "external data sources," and their "defensive trading" designed to "minimize real market value exposure."
Here's where it gets uncomfortable for Geithner and some executives. Remember all that criticism of the taxpayer-funded AIG bailout, and how under Tim Geithner's direction (he was running the New York Fed then) AIG paid 100 cents on the dollar to Goldman and other "counterparties" for its debts? It turns out that AIG insured seven Abacus deals, and the debts they were ordered to pay may have included payoffs on some of these deals. It turns out that AIG reportedly wanted to pay 60 cents on the dollar, but Geither's New York Fed directed them to pay the full amount.
AIG paid $13 billion from its bailout to Goldman at Geithner's direction. And now, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the SEC "is investigating whether other mortgage deals arranged by some of Wall Street's biggest firms may have crossed the line into misleading investors." And, while "It isn't known what deals the SEC is investigating," the Journal adds that "among the firms that created mortgage deals that soon went sour were Deutsche Bank AG, UBS AG and Merrill Lynch & Co., now owned by Bank of America Corp." [......]
Goldman Sachs has been drawn into a fresh controversy as lawyers demand to know whether it was partly responsible for triggering Lehman Brothers’ downfall by shorting its rival’s shares.
The Wall Street behemoth is already being investigated by a number of financial regulators around the world in addition to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud charges over derivatives mis-selling. It has now been named in a court filing seeking information about short-selling Lehman shares.
Goldman has been subpoenaed to hand over documents to Lehman’s Bryan Marsal, the man responsible for winding up the bank’s affairs and repaying creditors. Goldman was named in the court filing along with four other firms, including hedge funds SAC Capital and Citadel. Goldman declined to comment on the Lehman case.
As a financial reform bill starts to take shape in Washington, two
key lawmakers came to New York City last week to explain
what it means for Wall Street, and how financial executives might
help prevent some of its least market-friendly aspects from
becoming law by electing more Republicans, FOX Business Network has
learned.
About 25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers,
sat down for a private meeting Thursday afternoon with
two of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in Congress: Senate
minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and John Cornyn,
the senior senator from Texas who runs the National Republican
Senatorial Committee, one of the primary fundraising arms of
the Republican Party.
The undercurrent of the gathering, however, was undeniably political. [......]
McConnell's hometown paper published a scathing editorial titled "McConnell to big banks' rescue". The Lexington Herald-Leader accuses McConnell of pandering to Wall Street executives ,as well as his repetition of the false talking points created by Luntz.
In his weekly remarks, President Obama accused Mitch McConnell of lying. You GO, Mr. President!
Now, unsurprisingly, these reforms have not exactly been welcomed by
the people who profit from the status quo – as well their allies in
Washington. This is probably why the special interests have spent a lot
of time and money lobbying to kill or weaken the bill. Just the other
day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the
Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street
executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue.
Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican
Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we’ve proposed. In
doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would
somehow enable future bailouts – when he knows that it would do just the
opposite. Every day we don’t act, the same system that led to bailouts
remains in place – with the exact same loopholes and the exact same
liabilities. And if we don’t change what led to the crisis, we’ll doom
ourselves to repeat it. That’s the truth. Opposing reform will leave
taxpayers on the hook if a crisis like this ever happens again.
Palin, the biggest liar in the GOP, intentionally distorts Obama’s comments on nukes to paint him as someone who hates America. Really ugly. Via The Plum Line:
In a new Facebook missive, Palin butchered Obama’s quotes at the nuke summit in a strikingly dishonest (even for her) way, tearing them out of context to suggest he’s uncomfortable wielding American power and is hostile towards American exceptionalism:
“Mr. President, is a strong America a problem? Asked this week about his faltering efforts to advance the Middle East peace process, President Obama did something remarkable. In front of some 47 foreign leaders and hundreds of reporters from all over the world, President Obama said that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.” Whether we like it or not? Most Americans do like it.”
Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, was accused of securities fraud in a civil suit filed Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims the bank created and sold a mortgage investment that was secretly devised to fail. The move marks the first time that regulators have taken action against a Wall Street deal that helped investors capitalize on the collapse of the housing market. Goldman itself profited by betting against the very mortgage investments that it sold to its customers.(emphasis mine) [……]
On Thursday, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum that extends rights of hospital visitation to same-sex partners of gays, and directs respect for their choice of an advocate to make medical care decisions for them.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
SUBJECT: Respecting the Rights of Hospital Patients to Receive Visitors and to Designate Surrogate Decision Makers for Medical Emergencies
Scott Brown (R-MA), elected in January to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate, after a campaign largely financed by Wall Street, is now “returning the favor”. But of course.
As the Senate prepares to take up Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) financial regulatory reform bill, Brown said “in his strongest statement yet” that he “can’t support it.” While Brown said he is still “open” to working on a bipartisan bill, he seemed befuddled when asked how the bill could win his support: [……]
"The American people need to be reminded that 98 percent of Americans got a tax cut last year," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.
Reid was referring to the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus -- essentially, the only Obama policy to really impact people's 2009 tax returns. In fact, tax refunds reached an all-time high this year in part because of the stimulus, the president said in his weekly address on Saturday. Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.
"The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous," Gale told Hotsheet. "The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand." […..]
Not really hard to understand, Mr. Gale. The Tea Party is about race, Obama’s race, not taxes.
Earlier in the week, I talked about Mitch McConnell, and the GOP’s efforts to kill the financial reform bill now in the Senate.
As of yesterday, the lies from the GOP were coming ever faster and more furious. And all based on a memo by GOP pollster Frank Luntz, concerning tactics to be used by the Republicans to kill health care reform, which talking points have now been converted and used to attempt the murder of financial reform. Imagine that. Republicans lying. Republicans protecting Wall St. and the very financial services companies that drove us to the brink of economic collapse.
Barney Frank obliterated the nonsense last night on Hardball.
Russell Pearce is the chief sponsor of the Arizona bill, and as many have noted, the bill, in effect, legalizes racial profiling. From the 
Economist, 
The 
The slide show Goldman used to pitch Abacus
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
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