Making A[nother] Wild Guess...

During an interview last week, Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) told ThinkProgress that he doesn’t believe that LGBT people should be protected from being fired because of their sexual orientation.

But yesterday, Lankford went on Oklahoma local television to say that we misrepresented his comments. According to Lankford, he wasn’t saying employers should be allowed to fire someone for being gay — just that being gay is a choice and LGBT people should not be protected from workplace discrimination. Did you notice the distinction? Neither did we.

  Think Progress

Rep. James Lankford (R-not-OK) is gay, isn't he?

Previous wild guess.

Financial Reform? Bah. Humbug.

Among the more laughable features of commentaries on Jamie Dimon’s recently revealed $2 billion (at least) gambling losses are earnest pronouncements that the debacle will stymie the efforts by Dimon and Wall Street in general to further deregulate the financial industry.

[...]

The last time naked credit default swaps (naked meaning they are traded as speculative bets rather than hedges) got in the headlines was the fall of 2008, when, via the massive exposure of AIG to these same instruments, the global financial system trembled on the brink.

[...]

Major players on Wall Street were swift to take action. Led by Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, nine leading financial institutions set up the CDS Dealers Consortium and hired the master derivatives lobbyist Ed Rosen, of Cleary, Gottlieb, to keep things in order. Rosen crafted a memo suggesting that the market remain under the benign supervision of the Federal Reserve (which at that point was underwriting the banks to the tune of $7 trillion and more.) Meanwhile Timothy Geithner at Treasury was working on his master plan for policing the CDS market. Eventually, in May, 2009, Geithner unveiled his proposal, identical in all essential respects to Rosen’s memo.

A lot of money has flowed under the bridge and into legislators’pockets since then. The Dodd Frank financial reform legislation finally hit Obama’s desk, laced with loopholes and riddled with exceptions.

[...]

Now comes the fiasco of [JPMorgan's] $2 billion (make that $4 billion, at least) loss on a hugely stupid bet dutifully reported in the media as a “hedge.”

[...]

Back in 1986, Dimon was the bright young protégé of “Sandy” Weill, when he was forced out of American Express in a coup de requin. Master and servant made their way to Baltimore, Maryland, where Weill acquired a storefront moneylending firm called Commercial Credit. Potted media biographies flung together since the news of JP Morgan’s massive gambling losses broke last week put a decorous sheen on this phase of Dimon’s career. ABC News for example described the Baltimore company as “a sleepy finance firm that catered to middle-class clients.” Weill’s former assistant, Alison Falls, got it right at the time. “Hey guys,” she is said to have remarked “this is the loansharking business.”

  Counter Punch

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Drone Wars: Broadening the Aperture

A human rights lawyer and a group of investigative journalists who have exposed the extensive civilian casualties from CIA drone strikes in Pakistan are being smeared by anonymous U.S. government officials, who have even accused them of being sympathetic to al Qaeda.

[...]

Pakistani human rights attorney Shahzad Akbar and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) say the campaign is intended to deter mainstream news organizations from reporting that the White House is lying about how many innocent people are being killed by the drone strikes.

President Obama's top terrorism adviser John O. Brennan recently contended that civilian deaths were "exceedingly rare." [...] Drone attacks in Pakistan have dramatically increased since Obama took office: President Bush was responsible for 52; Obama for 270 and counting.

  Nieman Watchdog

America’s Third War is escalating quickly in the skies over Yemen. Despite previous rebuffs from the White House, last month the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the CIA—which both run parallel drone campaigns in Yemen—were granted broad authority to conduct “signature strikes” against anonymous suspected militants, who are determined to support al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) based on the observed “patterns of suspicious behavior” from multiple intelligence sources.

A senior Obama administration official described the enlarged scope of targets as “broadening the aperture” for JSOC and CIA drones. By one estimate, there have been more drone strikes in the past month (seventeen, including two on Saturday) than in the preceding nine years, since the first strike on November 3, 2002.

  Council on Foreign Relations.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed seven al Qaeda militants and eight civilians in the southern part of Yemen on Tuesday, three Yemeni security officials said.

It was the latest of several U.S. strikes in Yemen.

[...]

At least seven civilians were injured in the Tuesday strikes, the officials said.

[...]

The United States has increased the pace of airstrikes in Yemen in the last few years. At least 24 of 31 such strikes conducted since 2002 have happened in the last two years, according to the Long War Journal, which analyzes how the U.S. conducts its fight against terrorism.

[...]

Jaar district residents said civilians were killed after they rushed to the site of the first strike.

"Our lives are valueless in the eyes of our government, and that is why civilians are being killed without a crime," resident Ali Abu Abdullah said.

One of the security officials expressed regret for the civilian casualties and injuries.

  CNN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pot & Kettle

Today's lesson in the archaeology of the many Romneys comes from 1994, when the late Senator Edward Kennedy resolved to make Romney a memory in their race for the United States Senate in Massachusetts. Kennedy and his campaign made great use of Romney's adventures as a vulture capitalist. […] Fed up, Romney decided that […] he'd point out that the Kennedys weren't exactly holding bake sales themselves, and that they hadn't made their particular pile singing in the choir, either. At which point, the Senior Senator laid him out flat:

"The Kennedys are not in public service to make money. We have paid too high a price."

[...]

The line of attack on Romney for what he's done in business is not to accuse him of greed, it's to accuse him of having all the human empathy of a brick tossed through a window. If you're running against Romney, who's done nothing his entire career except make money for himself and his investors, it is a more obvious strategy today than it was in 1994. More people are out of work longer. And it's certainly emotionally effective. The problem is that the president goes around the country undermining the strategy by cozying up to the people who are in the same business as Romney is.

Ted Kennedy, filthy rich son of a bootlegger pappy, was able to get away with this because he and his brothers could have spent their entire lives chasing tail on Miami Beach and, instead of doing that all the time, they also threw themselves into public service to the point where two of them were shot to death for their trouble. (And let's be kind to Romney and not mention that, when his war erupted, Jack Kennedy signed up for virtually suicidal PT boat duty while, when his time to be called came, Romney dedicated himself to keeping Provence safe for Mormonism and from the Viet Cong.) So, when Kennedy hooked off the jab in that debate, there was so much emotional power behind it that Romney went down like a sack of meal.

The president doesn't have that option. He needs the money too badly. So, at the same time he's lining up in his commercials with unemployed steelworkers, he's raising money from hedge-fund cowboys, and speaking softly about Jamie Dimon and his unfortunate experience at the casino's $2 billion window. Meanwhile, Steve Rattner, the president's genius car czar, is calling the ad unfair, and Republicans are pointing out (rightly) that Jonathan Levine, one of the president's chief bundlers, was actually in charge of Bain when it closed the steel mill in question.

  Charles Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Facebook: An All American Corporation

Run by all-American profiteers. They learn young these days.

“When profitable corporations can use the stock option tax deduction to pay zero corporate income taxes for years on end, average taxpayers are forced to pick up the tax burden,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). “It isn’t right, and we can’t afford it.” This tax preference for corporations costs the U.S. about $2 billion in revenue per year.

[...]

The right-wing has been lauding Facebook co-founder Edward Saverin for his decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship in order to avoid taxes. But he isn’t the only one who’s going to slash his tax bill in the wake of Facebook’s upcoming initial public offering: both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company itself will lower their tax bill for years to come.

[...]

[If] follows through on his plan to sell $5 billion in Facebook stock options, as the New York Times noted, he may then never pay a dime of taxes on the rest of his Facebook wealth.

[...]

Zuckerberg’s using a totally legal accounting gimmick to transfer money to his unborn children, thus avoiding the gift tax. He also — by virtue of accepting a $1 dollar salary and purely living off his wealth — could be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is intended to benefit low-income Americans.

  Think Progress

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

SoThis Is What It Takes to Get a Response from Margaret

Helen takes Mitt to task for the latest. And concludes with this:

“Gay marriage?”  Why not?  Everyone should be allowed to be with the one they love.  I honestly don’t understand what all the hoopla is about.  If you don’t agree with gay marriage then don’t marry a man who dresses like Rick Santorum or has hair like Mitt Romney.  If you don’t like gay people simply ignore them.  They probably don’t like you either.  If an octogenarian from Georgia can see that, why can’t privileged politicians?

  Margaret & Helen

And Margaret makes a rare appearance:

Hoping You Wouldn't Notice

[The] administration of President Obama — whom Andrew Sullivan has repeatedly credited with “presiding over” the Arab Spring — announced on Friday that the U.S. would resume arms sales to the regime in Bahrain, a move that “has incensed opposition activists in the tiny Gulf kingdom who see the deal as a signal that the US supports Bahrain’s repression of opposition protests.” Moreover, “the resumption comes despite Bahrain doing little to sufficiently address” systematic human rights abuses against democratic protesters. But as Sullivan put it in his latest in a long line of Newsweek love letters to the Commander-in-Chief, Obama succeeded last week “the way he always does: leading from behind and playing the long game.” Given that, I’m sure there is some good explanation for how these arms sales to the regime in Bahrain proves he’s more supportive than ever of the Arab Spring and democracy, just as his failed effort to keep troops in Iraq meant He Ended The Iraq War, his unprecedented war on whistleblowers demonstrates his commitment to open government, increased anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world shows he nobly restored America’s standing in the world, and his relentless civilian-killing drone assaults prove the merit of his Nobel Peace Prize. It’s all about the long game.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So What's One More Sociopath in the Whitehouse?

We're becoming a nation of sociopaths, why bother ourselves with having one at the top of the chain?  Certainly it's not the first time lately.  And as for bullies, well George W wore that like an honorific.

Charles Pierce has a confession to make about his own bullying youth and an observation to make about Mitt Romney's.

[It] takes one to know one, as the schoolyard saying goes, and so my first reaction was that the so-called "presumptive Republican candidate for president" is lying — either to us or to himself. He remembers. Of course he remembers. He has to remember, because no one forgets doing something like that, and the ones who do forget....

[...]

Which is what led me to my second reaction: What if Mitt Romney is telling the truth? What if he doesn't remember because he thought nothing of it? The language of his statement suggests that he's copping to being a prankster but not a bully — that he's not denying the past but simply saying that the past is a matter of interpretation. But it's not, and as man who has spent the better part of his life silently pleading guilty to the kinds of crimes of which Mitt Romney stands accused, I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if I tried to beat the rap of conscience on a technicality. I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if instead of confronting the past I tried to forget it or, worse, tried to say it wasn't really that bad. I can only wonder what kind of person I'd be if the stone of cruelty in my heart was subject not to the slow trickle of conscience but rather to my sense of ambition and entitlement — to those jewelers of the self who, beholding the stone, declared it a gem, precious and hard, of inestimable worth in the bazaars of business and politics, and set it for my presidential ring.

And here’s the thing: I thank God I don't know. Long ago, I made an innocent kid suffer; one of the great gifts of my life is that I suffered in return. Mitt Romney doesn't appear to have suffered at all for the suffering he inflicted; but as one lucky enough to have broken the mean bone in my body and to have worn it in a sling, I can tell him that what he's accused of doing to the boy whose hair and existence was such an affront to him was not a prank; it was a punishment.

  Charles Pierce

Th-th-th-that's All Folks

Ron Paul, the US congressman who led a doggedly persistent presidential bid against presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and other rivals, has said that he is suspending active campaigning.

In an email on Monday to supporters, Paul said he will "no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted. Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have."

Paul said he is instead opting to work on amassing delegates to the party's national convention, even though his chances of winning the nomination are virtually nil.

  alJazeera

Just Go Take Some More Ambien and Leave Us Alone

Has there been a more vastly overrated person in the past 50 years than Colin Powell?

  Charlie Pierce

In a word, No.

Remember that Cheney told Powell he should give the [UN Iraq-has-aluminum-tubes] speech because Powell could afford to lose a few points off his approval numbers and, instead of spitting in that vile old vampire's eye, Powell went out and... gave the speech.

[...]

There are accounts of him literally tearing up intelligence reports and throwing them on the floor, and calling them "bullshit." So at that point, he knew he was being pushed to put his credibility on the line before the world on behalf of a case for war that he knew already was at least partly cooked.

[...]

Hundreds of thousands of people died, or were wounded, or were displaced. An apology is in order.

Instead, we get another book wherein, apparently, he tries to whine his way past his responsibility.

The least we can do is spell his name correctly. Colon.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.