Inspire Political Discourse

VIDEO: Anderson Cooper Has Heated Debate With Army Birther Doctor

Cooper challenges Lt. Colonel Terry Lakin, 
who has refused deployment to Afghanistan [and has been court martialed] based on Lakin's discredited assertion that Obama was not born in the United States in spite of all evidence to the contrary. 

It seems to me that if you are going to make such spurious accusations publicly, you ought to be willing to defend your position without hiding behind your lawyer, but then again, we are talking about a member of the Tea Party

In any case, the Birther Meme is getting very old, especially considering that even our far right wing SCOTUS has refused to hear any birther case, and other cases of military personnel refusing orders on the same basis, i.e., questioning Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief, have been dismissed. . The Tea Party faction of the G.O.P. needs to find another way to depose Obama, as that is clearly their intent evidenced by so many of their actions over the past year or so. View the video below.

AIG in the Mix

And more to come, we can be sure.

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." [......]

Wall Street is a House of Cards

And the cards are collapsing, one by one. Or more. [Emphasis and link, mine.]

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.

SEC Files FRAUD Charges Against Goldman Sachs

This is BIG. Civil charges only. But still……..

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) [……]

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Frickin' hypocrites........

Frivolous lawsuits from the criers of "torte reform now"?  Of course. They can't resist the display of utterly useless hypocrisy.

Will Republican oppostion to health care reform hurt them in November?

The Republicans have threatened to repeal the health care reform bill one piece at a time. 13 attorneys general, all Republicans, have filed a lawsuit against the federal government to exempt their states from health care reform.

Health care now becomes a policy story rather than a legislative sausage-grinding story. Tales of death panels and warnings about losing your doctor can now be falsified. (That's what happened to the early scare stories about Social Security and Medicare.) And Republicans who denounce the program and promise to repeal it will no longer be bashing an abstraction. They will be proposing to take away existing, tangible benefits. [.....]