We’ve known for some time that Goldman Sachs and other firms marketed mortgage-backed securities even as they sought to make profits by betting that such securities would plunge in value. This practice, however, while arguably reprehensible, wasn’t illegal. But now the S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed securities that were deliberately designed to fail, so that an important client could make money off that failure. That’s what I would call looting.

That’s what I would call it too.  More attention needs to be paid to the reprehensible-but-not-illegal aspect of the whole financial crisis.  What gets me the most is that, during the 1980s and 90s, the Republican Congress (with the help of a lot of Democrats, including Bill Clinton, who now says he made a mistake) gutted and/or bypassed the financial regulations put in place during the Great Depression.  These regulations, such as the Glass-Steagal Act, had protected us for half a century from the wild swings that are a characteristic of unregulated markets.

The Democrats in the current Congress are now attempting to come to grips with regulating the financial industry.  The usual suspects are screaming bloody murder (Wall Street, Republicans, right-wing commentators).  The biggest danger is that, like with Health Care Reform, too little will be done to really fix the problems, but some progress will be made.  Well, no, the biggest danger is that the Republicans and their Democratic enablers will prevent anything from being done, and we’ll just stay on this roller coaster until it flies off the tracks completely.

The goal is to confront the public with two sides hurling identical charges at each other — the better to convince them that it’s just another partisan mudfight and who the hell knows…anyway.

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation:  Come back to us.

Now the advice.  You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some examples — by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you’re going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you’ll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can’t flip out — and threaten impeachment - when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that’s centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can’t vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it’s done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) —  114 of you (at last count) did just that — and it’s even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.

You can’t refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn’t meet with you.

You can’t rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.

You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can’t be for immigration reform, then against it .

You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

You can’t flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same.  Bush.  Ford.

You can’t complain that the president hasn’t closed Gitmo yet when you’ve campaigned to keep Gitmo open.

You can’t flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush.  Nixon. Ike. You didn’t even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed (on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on “kissing terms” with the US.

You can’t complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent.  (And, no, Newt – the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)

You can’t attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn’t issue any condemnation).  *Obama administration did the day of the event.

You can’t throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when — in fact — only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.

You can’t condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.

You can’t mount a boycott against singers who say they’re ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he’s ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.

You can’t cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it’s too short.

You can’t support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.

You can’t demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it.  Repeatedly.

You can’t praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it “treasonous” under a Dem president.

You can’t propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.

You can’t be both pro-choice and anti-choice.

You can’t damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you’ve paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.

You can’t condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harms way, then attack the president when US troops are in harms way , the only difference being the president’s party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).

You can’t be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.

You can’t vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of  ’open debate’.

If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it’s 2004 or 2010.  This is true, too, if you’re taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN.  Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution.  This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God’s stand, too.

When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can’t send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).

You can’t criticize Dems for not doing something you didn’t do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.

You can’t decry “name calling” when you’ve been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.

You can’t spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare

You can’t praise the Congressional Budget Office when it’s analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it’s unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don’t.

You can’t vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president.  Either you support X or you don’t. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.

You can’t call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.

You can’t spend taxpayer money on ads against spending taxpayer money.

You can’t condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.

You can’t demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don’t.

You can’t whine that it’s unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party’s former leader admits you’ve been doing it for decades.

You can’t portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can’t complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you’ve routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain — threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.

You can’t question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn’t object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can’t preach and try to legislate “Family Values” when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer’s wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife’s mother;

Hyperbole

You really need to disassociate with those among you who:

• assert that people making a quarter-million dollars a year can barely make ends meet or that $1 million “isn’t a lot of money”;
• say that “Comrade” Obama is a “Bolshevik” who is “taking cues from Lenin”;
• ignore the many times your buddies use a term that offends you and complain only when a Dem says it;
• liken political opponents to murderers, rapists, and “this Muslim guy” that “offed his wife’s head” or call then “un-American”;
• say Obama “wants his plan to fail…so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy”;
• equate putting the good of the people ahead of your personal fortunes with terrorism;
• smear an entire major religion with the actions of a few fanatics;
• say that the president wants to “annihilate us”;
• compare health care reform with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot the attack on 9/11,or reviving the ghosts of communist dictators (update: it’s also not Armageddon);
• equate our disease-fighting stem cell research with “what the Nazis did”;
• call a bill passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, by members of Congress each elected by a majority in their districts, an unconscionable abuse of power, a violation of the presidential oath or “the end of representative government”;
• shout “baby killer” at a member of Congress on the floor of the House, especially one who so fought against abortion rights that he nearly killed health care reform (in fact, a little decorum, a little respect for our national institutions and the people and the values they represent, would be refreshing — cut out the shouting, the swearing and the obscenities);
• prove your machismo by claiming your going to “crash a party” to which you’re officially invited;
• claim that Obama is pushing America’s “submission to Shariah”;
• question the patriotism of people upholding cherished American values and the rule of law;
• claim the president is making us less safe without a hint of evidence;
• call a majority vote the “tyranny of the minority,” even if you meant to call it tyranny of the majority — it’s democracy, not tyranny;
• call the president’s support of a criminal trial for a terror suspect “treasonous” (especially when you supported the same thing when the president shared your party);
• call the Pope the anti-Christ;
• assert that the constitutionally mandated census is an attempt to enslave us;
• accuse opponents of being backed by Arab slave-drivers or of being drunk and suicidal;
• equate family planning with eugenics or Nazism;
• accuse the president of changing the missile defense program’s logo to match his campaign logo and reflect what you say is his secret Muslim identity;
• accuse political opponents of being totalitarians, socialists, communists, fascists, Marxists;  terrorist sympathizers, McCarthy-like, Nazis or drug pushers; and
• advocate a traitorous act like secession, violent revolution , military coup or civil war (just so we’re clear: sedition is a bad thing).

History

If you’re going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they’re NOT synonymous!)

You can’t cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you’ve decided you don’t like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word “terrorism” or say we’re at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you’re going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can’t just pretend historical events didn’t happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn’t make it better.)

You can’t say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from “socialist utopia”; health care reform is not “reparations”; nor does health care reform create “death panels”.

Hatred

You have to condemn those among you who:

• call members of Congress n*gger and f*ggot;
• elected leaders who say “I’m a proud racist”;
• state that America has been built by white people;
• say that poor people are poor because they’re rotten people, call them “parasitic garbage” or say they shouldn’t be allowed to vote;
• call women bitches and prostitutes just because you don’t like their politics     ( re - pea -ted - ly );
• assert that the women who are serving our nation in uniform are hookers;
• mock and celebrate the death of a grandmother because you disagree with her son’s politics;
• declare that those who disagree with you are shown by that disagreement to be not just “Marxist radicals” but also monsters and a deadly disease killing the nation (this would fit in the hyperbole and history categories, too);
• joke about blindness;
• advocate euthanizing the wife of your political opponent;
• taunt people with incurable, life-threatening diseases — especially if you do it on a syndicated broadcast;
• equate gay love with bestiality — involving  horses or dogs or turtles or ducks — or polygamy, child molestation, pedophilia;
• casually assume that only white males look “like a real American”;
• assert presidential power to authorize torture,  torture a child by having his testicles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk, order the massacre of a civilian village  and launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;
• attack children whose mothers have died;
• call people racists without producing a shred of evidence that they’ve said or done something that would even smell like racism — same for invoking racially charged “dog whistle” words (repeatedly);
• condemn the one thing that every major religion agrees on;
• complain that we no longer employ the tactics we once used to disenfranchise millions of Americans because of their race;
• blame the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks for their suffering and losses;
• celebrate violence , joke about violence, prepare for violence or use violent imagery, “fun” political violence, hints of violence, threats of violence (this one is rather explicit), suggestions of violence or  actual violence (and, really, suggesting anal rape with a hot piece of metal is beyond the pale); and
• incite insurrection telling people to get their guns ready for a “bloody battle” with the president of the United States.

Oh, and I’m not alone:  One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.

So, dear conservatives, get to work.  Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bald-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred.  Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America.  We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we’ll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms.  We need you.

(Anticipating your initial response:  No there is nothing that even comes close to this level of wingnuttery on the American Left.)

Written by Russell King

Culprits

What, you may ask, do Wall Street bonuses have to do with the NASA budget?  Bear with me for a moment. By now most of us have heard about the tone-deaf avarice of executives at AIG, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup etc. etc. taking huge amounts of “stimulus” money from the taxpayers and then spending millions on luxury trips, private jets, ostentatious decorations, and bonuses.  The only surprise here is that the angry mobs with torches and pitchforks haven’t materialized…yet.

Now, it is common these days whenever the subject of NASA and space exploration comes up for people (sad to say, including many Liberals with whom I agree on the vast majority of issues) to say things like, “Who cares about space? We should be spending that money here on Earth.”  Well, that is just wrong on so many levels.  NASA and the U.S. space program has been the source of so much benefit, from the mundane to the existential to the simply practical, that it’s hard to list all the ways.  Yes, it costs a lot of money.  That’s why the government has to do it.  But wait…

How much does it really cost, in context? That’s the point I’m working toward here.

According to the New York Times, Wall Street firms paid out an estimated $18.4 Billion in bonuses in 2008.  That’s right, the geniuses who are largely responsible for the worldwide financial crisis got $18.4 Billion last year in addition to their already obscene salaries and benefits.  Now, for comparison, the proposed 2009 budget for NASA is $17.6 Billion.  Let that sink in for a moment.

All the money for the space shuttle program, the Mars program, the various planetary and Earth-sciences missions, the salaries for the engineers, astronauts and support personnel — ALL of it — is substantially less than the bonuses paid to a handful of investment bankers on Wall Street.

So what’s my point? Aside from the unrestrained soulless greed and possible criminal activity of these neo-robber barons, the real benefits we get from NASA and the space program are a bargain.  Yes, we have critical problems that are having a devastating effect on people’s lives and demand immediate attention and lots of money.  It’s is simply wrong-headed to use NASA as a scapegoat for money not being spent where it is needed.  The real goats are wearing Armani suits and jetting between their mansions.

Let the games begin!

But in one of the most gut-wrenching good news/bad news situations ever, improvements in medical care for wounded troops has dramatically reduced the percentage of combat wounds resulting in death. That’s the good news part.  The bad news is that those whose lives have been saved now face life with horrific damage to their bodies and psyches, years upon years of overcoming daunting physical obstacles and the associated emotional difficulties including PTSD.

As if that weren’t enough, the Bush administration has used the troops as public relations props again and again, while pulling truly despicable stunts designed to go unnoticed.  Here’s the latest via Hilzoy:

From the LATimes, another story about the Bush administration deciding to nickel-and-dime wounded veterans:

“Marine Cpl. James Dixon was wounded twice in Iraq — by a roadside bomb and a land mine. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a dislocated hip and hearing loss. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Army Sgt. Lori Meshell shattered a hip and crushed her back and knees while diving for cover during a mortar attack in Iraq. She has undergone a hip replacement and knee reconstruction and needs at least three more surgeries.

In each case, the Pentagon ruled that their disabilities were not combat-related.

Words fail me to describe how disgusting and hypocritical this kind of maneuvering is.  You deliberately mislead people into believing that they are serving the interests of their country by going to war, and then brush them aside when they are grievously wounded.  Grrrrrrr.

That is just wrong. Moreover, it’s also wrong to make disabled vets jump through hoops in order to get the benefits they’re entitled to. If you’ve been blown up by an IED, our government should do you the courtesy of allowing you to concentrate on healing your wounds and moving on, not on arguing with them about whether your disability was “combat-related.”

this

The speculation about Rex – will he or won’t he? – has been the major topic in the media and across the blogosphere. Michelle Malkin of Hot Air called it “an affirmative action appointment” and questioned whether Rex is in fact a US citizen or a Golden Labrador. ‘If they allow a Canadian puppy onto US soil illegally, next thing you know Obama will be negotiating with terriers, and without preconditions,” she told Fox News. “Furthermore, Rex should be required to learn English first.” And Dick Morris told the Sean Hannity that passing up the black Labrador in the next kennel will definitively end the honeymoon between Obama and civil rights leaders.

We can be certain that Blue Dog’s won’t just roll over and play dead on the heels of this announcement.  But of course, with the pack mentality in Congress, it’s clear that the scenery never changes unless you’re the lead dog. And there’ll only be one alpha male in the White House, but he’ll be outnumbered by the … females. (I’m not going to go there!) So I guess there’s nothing to do but put aside our pet peeves and wait for someone to let the cat out of the bag.

First Puppy

Volt Dashboard

[UPDATED BELOW]
The latest company to go to Washington asking for a handout is General Motors, and after the less than auspicious start to the $750 Billion Wall Street/bank bailout, many people, not just “free market” conservatives, are asking, “Why should we bail out the big American auto companies?”  The underlying implication among conservatives is that labor unions are the source of the problem.  Others think, rightly so in my opinion, that the car companies got themselves into this mess by ignoring fuel efficiency and building ever bigger and heavier gas-hogs.  So why not let them go belly up?  That’ll teach ‘em a lesson!  As is usually the case, it’s not that simple.

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has an interesting post discussing the impact of a possible GM bankruptcy on the development of the greatly anticipated Volt electric car:

So maybe the people who seem to know even less about auto manufacturing than they do about economics should consider that GM is in the forefront of green engineering with the Chevy Volt.  From US News:

The prototype Volt that GM has been showing off is a sporty four-seater with futuristic touches meant to draw in mainstream gearheads. The dashboard controls are touch-sensitive and set in a white console reminiscent of an iPod. Instead of standard gauges for speed and RPMs, there’s a digital display that looks like the screen of a Sony PSP. Wind-tunnel engineering has made the Volt even more aerodynamic than a Corvette, critical for milking the most mileage possible out of the battery. GM says that recharging the car at home, through an ordinary household outlet, will cost less than $1 per day and drain less power than it takes to run a refrigerator.

But before you put the Volt on your 2010 wish list, consider that sending GM into bankruptcy would do more than just break the UAW — it could condemn the Volt from ever reaching the market:

Ever since Ronald Reagan fired all the striking air-traffic controllers in his first year in office (a strikingly irresponsible thing to do), conservatives have fantisized about ridding the country of labor unions.  Never mind that labor unions were largely responsible for the rise of the middle class in American in the mid-twentieth century.  As Hamsher points out:

In fact, in their last contract the UAW made deep concessions that put GM wages at a par with their non-union counterparts in the US.  But this isn’t about facts, this is a religious crusade where “free-marketeers” want to impose Shock Doctrine tactics for philosophical reasons with little regard for the consequences.

The president of GM once famously said “What’s good for GM is good for America.”  Most of us would probably take exception to that these days.  But there is a kernel of truth there: letting GM fail could be disastrous for America, especially now with the economy, after eight years of the Bush administration, careening like a football bouncing down a staircase.  Bush’s own suggestion is particularly poor (who would’ve guessed…).

George Bush is in favor of helping GM.  But he wants to take the $25 billion in loans to automakers from the 2007 Energy Bill and repurpose them, he doesn’t want to use funds from the $700 billion Wall Street bailout (which Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have indicated they would like to do).

Congress approved the funds for a Department of Energy program that would help the automakers to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

Got that?   George Bush wants to kill the program that would build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

There are some other ideas floating around that make a lot of sense in the long run, like this one via Atrios:

As Josh says, if we’re throwing around billions and trillions of dollars we might as well get something good. Instead of writing a big check to the auto companies or loaning them money we could, you know, enroll all their employees in the new national health insurance system.

The point has been made repeatedly that the cost of healthcare is one of the big factors that makes it difficult for U.S. automakers to compete effectively with companies in countries that have some form of national health insurance (that would be ALL of them, except the U.S.).  So, what an elegant solution it would be to remove the financial burden of providing health insurance from the car companies as part of a universal health insurance program.  Makes sense to me.

UPDATE: Digby has more on this here.  Regarding the role of unions in all this:

You simply can’t wipe out a million jobs or more as we are just going into a terrible worldwide recession. It’s like telling someone they have to go on a diet when they are in the middle of a heart attack. There has to be a bailout.

But there is something else going on, which I mentioned last week in this post — the Republicans’ reflexive political response is to take the opportunity to break the unions…

[...]

And, in the big scheme things, I think we can all agree that well paid, secure employees make for a stable society. The problem with the Big Three has far less to do with their employees than it does with their management — and a capitalistic ethos that requires a myopic obsession with quarterly profits over long term investment. The union members just make the cars they’re told to make. It’s not their fault if Americans insisted on buying behemoth gas guzzlers and the auto executives insisted on giving them to them knowing full well a day of reckoning was coming.

Who was it who said, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…”?

There’s no doubt that the incoming administration has its plate more than full with a whole spectrum of disasters.  But there is some unfinished business that we can’t allow to slip into the memory hole.  Over the past eight years untold numbers of people within the U.S. Government have committed crimes of an epic nature.  As Ian Welsh at Firedoglake points out:

The SAME people who were responsible for Nixons’ crimes, were responsible for Iran/Contra. They and their proteges came back and were responsible for Bush, Iraq, torture, screwing up Katrina and so on.

But we’re supposed to let bygones be bygones so they can do it again in the next Republican administration.

If these crimes are allowed to go unpunished, the rule of law will be seriously damaged.  This is not about revenge; it’s about justice.  A desire to “let bygones be bygones” is misguided in an insidious way.  That’s not bringing us together.  That’s letting people get away with murder.