Saturday, June 19, 2010
Maybe Not A Bad Idea
And I have no particular beef with the World Bank (there maybe be a beef, just not expressing one personally), but I think it's fair to be skeptical of ideas which implicitly assume the relative non-corruption of supposedly benevolent international institutions.
Brought To You By BP
A CNN promo just informed me (rough quote): "Fareed Zakaria says we need to stop vilifying Big Oil because we aren't going to end our addiction any time soon."
I imagine that if big oil dropped a few million gallons of the crap on his house he'd be in a bit more of a vilifying mood.
I imagine that if big oil dropped a few million gallons of the crap on his house he'd be in a bit more of a vilifying mood.
The Great Shirk
I fear the war on the unemployed is just heating up.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul on Friday urged Americans who have been unemployed for many months to consider returning to the workforce in less desirable jobs rather than continue relying on government unemployment assistance.
Recovery Summer
This NYT article says this summer is when the bulk of the stimulus infrastructure projects happen. Hope the administration is right, and recovery summer is here...
Friday, June 18, 2010
You Got It, Dude
The good news is that the new face of BP is the evil villain from every Bruce Willis movie.
Don't Be Mean To The People Who Are Destroying Everything
Once upon a time the major media outlets were called "the establishment media." After years of strategic badgering by the right, that somehow morphed into "the liberal media." It's time to bring back the term "establishment media."
50 Little Hoovers And One Big One
Sadly it's starting to look like stating the obvious that more stimulus is needed is going to be about as effective as trying to point out that Colin Powell was, in fact, full of shit at his slam dunk UN speech. But I'll keep saying it.
My Facebook Postings Are Important News
I'm not sure it's such a bad thing if the era of mandatory interviews with certain media outlets for politicians is over, however as Eric says, mainstream reporters have enabled this situation by rushing to type up every twitter and facebook utterance from Sarah Palin.
Meth Mouth
The government needs to take care of all of this as best they can, but sadly I think this isn't a problem that can be solved.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
Grow Up You Big Poopyface
It seems we have Very Serious People on the Left too.
There are people roughly 'to my left' who I don't always agree with either on policy or tactics, but I also generally think we need more of them, not fewer.
There are people roughly 'to my left' who I don't always agree with either on policy or tactics, but I also generally think we need more of them, not fewer.
The Man Who Destroyed The World
Uncle Alan tells us it is very sad that all the problems he predicts have not happened because it makes it more likely that the problems he predicts will happen.
And The Great Recession will continue, becaus fools will continue to listen to this Very Serious Person.
An urgency to rein in budget deficits seems to be gaining some traction among American lawmakers. If so, it is none too soon. Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading.
Despite the surge in federal debt to the public during the past 18 months—to $8.6 trillion from $5.5 trillion—inflation and long-term interest rates, the typical symptoms of fiscal excess, have remained remarkably subdued. This is regrettable, because it is fostering a sense of complacency that can have dire consequences.
And The Great Recession will continue, becaus fools will continue to listen to this Very Serious Person.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Welcome to 1937
Krgthulu:
Suddenly, creating jobs is out, inflicting pain is in. Condemning deficits and refusing to help a still-struggling economy has become the new fashion everywhere, including the United States, where 52 senators voted against extending aid to the unemployed despite the highest rate of long-term joblessness since the 1930s.
Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession. And here in Germany, a few scholars see parallels to the policies of Heinrich Brüning, the chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose devotion to financial orthodoxy ended up sealing the doom of the Weimar Republic.
These Programs All Cost Money
They'd all cost quite a bit of money. Yet, to any particular individual, they'd be of fairly little help. If we're going to spend money on this stuff, why don't we just spend it on jobs? I get tired of all of these bank shot proposals. Fix the bridges. Fix the sewers. Give money to school districts and community health clinics. Clean the streets of South Philly. Whatever.
People On The Internets Are Mean
Subtitle: even sucky bloggers have feelings too.
After doing this for 800 years or so now, I'm pretty thick skinned. It's sort of necessary. Though occasionally I do get a bit peeved when people suggest that I don't spend any time on this blog, or that I hate the commenters, or whatever. Whatever the quality of this sucky enterprise - and people are entitled to their opinions! - it takes up an immense amount of my time and is in its own weird way rather stressful. Trying to gently nudge the comments section in the right direction is also a lot more time consuming than people think.
Not really complaining, just sharing. Because I know you care.
After doing this for 800 years or so now, I'm pretty thick skinned. It's sort of necessary. Though occasionally I do get a bit peeved when people suggest that I don't spend any time on this blog, or that I hate the commenters, or whatever. Whatever the quality of this sucky enterprise - and people are entitled to their opinions! - it takes up an immense amount of my time and is in its own weird way rather stressful. Trying to gently nudge the comments section in the right direction is also a lot more time consuming than people think.
Not really complaining, just sharing. Because I know you care.
Crazy Plans That We Can't Possibly Afford
An absurdly expensive high speed rail plan that we could've done 7 times over if we didn't blow the money on the Excellent Iraqi adventure.
Selfish desires aside, to the extent that we'd spend that much money on upgrading inter-city rail, I'd spend most of it elsewhere, and my preferences would be to blow a bunch of money on improving intra-city transit in many places. But as we see $100 billion as an impossible expenditure, we should remember that the military wants another emergency supplemental bill for $33 billion...
Selfish desires aside, to the extent that we'd spend that much money on upgrading inter-city rail, I'd spend most of it elsewhere, and my preferences would be to blow a bunch of money on improving intra-city transit in many places. But as we see $100 billion as an impossible expenditure, we should remember that the military wants another emergency supplemental bill for $33 billion...
AT&T Station
As long as it avoids confusion, I don't have a problem with selling naming rights for subway stations. For most stations it would cause confusion, but the "Pattison" station name was never especially helpful anyway, as it's basically the stop for the stadium/arena/ballpark complex and there was no real association with Pattison. AT&T Station might even stand out a bit more and be more memorable for the occasional riders.
They Didn't Make Us Do It!!!
Obviously MMS does suck, but it's a ridiculous thing for BP to claim.
But officer, you didn't stop me from killing him!
In response to a U.S. senator's questions in a letter, BP said it never follows a federal law requiring it to certify that a blowout preventer device would be able to block a well in case of an emergency. The inquiry stemmed from a hearing in May into the Gulf oil spill from the explosion and fire which sank the Deepwater Horizon rig.
But, at the same time, the British oil giant blamed the federal oversight agency, Minerals Management Service, for not asking it to comply with the law.
But officer, you didn't stop me from killing him!
Things To Hire People to Do
Yes I'm broken record on this, but water systems all over the country, including in the urban hellhole, need almost unlimited work. And, hey, when they're done fixing it all they can probably just go ahead and start all over again.
The Great Shirk
As evidenced by growing sentiment in Congress as reflected in DiFi's comments, elites are coming to the conclusion that they are not the failures in this employment crisis, but that people are simply too lazy to find jobs in a world with 9.7% unemployment.
It is very depressing.
It is very depressing.
Tragedies
I hope Republicans continue to their strategy of apologizing to a foreign oil company that has destroyed a big chunk of our country.
We Could Hire Them To Dig Holes And Fill Them Up Again
I'm kidding, just, but the way to get people working is to hire them. The way to do that is not to set up a program, or a subsidy, or a grant, which is administered through some office, which is then used by some business or nonprofit, which maybe eventually one day filter down into someone's paycheck. The way to do it is to have the government hire people to do stuff. Inevitably not all of that stuff will be tremendously productive, but plenty of it will be.
Work Until You're 80
The increase-the-retirement-age fetishists, most of whom don't realize it's a already been increased to 67, don't comprehend that when you lose your job and you're over a certain age you aren't going to find another one.
Or as Dianne Feinstein puts it, "lazy old people get too much in unemployment benefits."
Or as Dianne Feinstein puts it, "lazy old people get too much in unemployment benefits."
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Our Dumb Country
And Haley Barbour personifies it.
President Barack Obama insisted BP set the money aside, and the company agreed to put $5 billion a year into the fund for the next four years.
"If they take a huge amount of money and put it in an escrow account so they can't use it to drill oil wells and produce revenue, are they going to be able to pay us?" Gov. Haley Barbour told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.
For Realz
I've said a few times that the spill won't be real until it hits land, will be more real if it hits Florida, will be even more real if it hits Atlantic coast states. Exxon Valdez was less real because it was off in that crazy Russia bordering state. I'm not saying that I think that makes any sense, just that there is a certain hierarchy to these things and to people who don't live in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, such places are ranked pretty low in importance.
Think Of The Pensioners!!!
BP is suspending its dividend.
I really can't believe how fast the "you can't hurt BP! If you do, you're just hurting poor little old ladies!!!" idea was spread.
I really can't believe how fast the "you can't hurt BP! If you do, you're just hurting poor little old ladies!!!" idea was spread.
Dianne Feinstein's Net Worth Is Around $75 Million
But no unemployment benefits for you.
Feinstein did actually vote for the measure, but she's really concerned about your lazy ass.
"We have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance," Feinstein said. "The question comes, how long do you continue before people just don't want to go back to work at all?"
Needless to say, no help is forthcoming from Congress for the 99ers, the several million people who will have exhausted all available benefits by the end of the year.
Feinstein did actually vote for the measure, but she's really concerned about your lazy ass.
Who?
As for who told Obama offshore drilling was safe, this article suggests it was ultimately Carol Browner. Though there's this too:
Nobody could have predicted, yada yada.
Top Obama administration officials say that they did an exhaustive job marshaling information for more than a year, and that the president asked what he needed to ask when it arrived at his desk. Anyone, they said, would grow complacent about the safety of offshore drilling after decades without a major spill.
"It's really important to understand you have decades of nothing going wrong," said one senior administration official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of White House policy.
"The last time you saw a spill of this magnitude in the Gulf, it was off the coast of Mexico in 1979," a second senior administration official said. "If something doesn't happen since 1979, you begin to take your eye off of that thing."
Nobody could have predicted, yada yada.
Pricing Carbon
Ambinder:
I actually don't think this is true, at least in the broad sense. Pricing carbon might be a good (or best) way to reduce carbon emissions, but it isn't the only thing that can achieve that goal. We could subsidize the hell out of other means of energy production. We can remove all kinds of car-dependent sprawl encouraging policies. We could set up a massive program to have people go door to door and, for free, improve insulation in existing buildings. Hell, just painting every roof in Philadelphia silver/white would do a lot.
- But Obama wants action on climate change, and the only way to wean our dependence off fossil fuels is to put a price on carbon.
I actually don't think this is true, at least in the broad sense. Pricing carbon might be a good (or best) way to reduce carbon emissions, but it isn't the only thing that can achieve that goal. We could subsidize the hell out of other means of energy production. We can remove all kinds of car-dependent sprawl encouraging policies. We could set up a massive program to have people go door to door and, for free, improve insulation in existing buildings. Hell, just painting every roof in Philadelphia silver/white would do a lot.
Escrow
NYT breaking news tells me BP is going to put "about $20 billion" in escrow. Obviously making BP pay is important, but so is cleaning things up as fast and as comprehensively as is possible.
Why So Sensitive
I thought Risen's defensiveness was rather weird. The basic criticisms, that the Afghanistan minerals "scoop" wasn't really new for the most part and that the story was timed, are confirmed.
Get Behind This Thing Whatever It Is
Obama supporters are supposed to support some amorphous "energy bill" or "climate bill" depending on the week. The specifics of it aren't clear, and there are no specific policies put out there to be supported. But it will make the ponies appear, because it will so trust them.
This Is A Good Idea But There Are Other Ones And Well Who Knows
It'd be nice if they could just get behind...something...
Lies and the Lying Liars
They are not dealing with good faith actors.
Last month, Mark Hafle, BP's senior drilling engineer for the oil well that's now spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, testified in Kenner that he and his team believed they had worked in concert with a contractor to come up with the safest possible design for encasing the well with cement and steel tubing so that "all the concerns had been addressed."
But now, e-mail messages released by congressional investigators paint a different picture of Hafle's confidence in the troubled well.
They show Hafle expressed concerns in the week before the April 20 disaster on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, calling the Macondo well 5,000 feet below that rig "a crazy well."
Partners
Deep in what only can be called the ideology of Washington, DC is the idea that the government's role with respect to large corporations is as a partner. Regulatory agencies do not demand compliance with the law. Rather they work with their business partners in some kind of mutual interest. Glenzilla:
While Axelrod is pushing back against this idea here, much of our difficulties to date stem directly from the idea that the way to fix problems is to partner up with industry--the NSA with the telcos, HHS with the insurance and drug companies, MMS with the oil companies, Treasury and the banksters--to deliver "private sector" solutions. Of course, they say "free market," but this kind of thing is pretty much the opposite of a free market, and is, just by the way, a distance away from anyone would generally mean by "liberal" or "progressive." Large profit-making entities do not have the public interest at heart; they (at best) care about their shareholders' dividends. The notion that the relationship between them and the government should be accommodating, rather than adversarial is quite a radical shift away from the views of FDR or LBJ.
But this notion runs deep. It is so strong in Dancin' Dave that it is like a fish's awareness of water. He seems to be literally unable to understand what Axelrod means by accountability.
(You can take the tire-swinging, watersports, and Blackberry stylin' as given here.)
MR. GREGORY: But this is a straightforward question. If you are in partnership with somebody -- and make no mistake, the government is in partnership with BP to get this problem solved -- does the, does the president of the United States trust the man on the other end who is leading this operation?
MR. AXELROD: Our, our mission here is to hold them accountable in, in every appropriate way, and that is what we're going to do. I, I'm not -- I don't consider them a, a, a partner, I don't consider them -- they're not social friends, they're not -- I'm not looking to make judgments about their soul. I just want to make sure that they do what they're required to do.
While Axelrod is pushing back against this idea here, much of our difficulties to date stem directly from the idea that the way to fix problems is to partner up with industry--the NSA with the telcos, HHS with the insurance and drug companies, MMS with the oil companies, Treasury and the banksters--to deliver "private sector" solutions. Of course, they say "free market," but this kind of thing is pretty much the opposite of a free market, and is, just by the way, a distance away from anyone would generally mean by "liberal" or "progressive." Large profit-making entities do not have the public interest at heart; they (at best) care about their shareholders' dividends. The notion that the relationship between them and the government should be accommodating, rather than adversarial is quite a radical shift away from the views of FDR or LBJ.
But this notion runs deep. It is so strong in Dancin' Dave that it is like a fish's awareness of water. He seems to be literally unable to understand what Axelrod means by accountability.
(You can take the tire-swinging, watersports, and Blackberry stylin' as given here.)
Like when Alexandria lost the Great Lighthouse
Farewell Big Butter Jesus, and let us consider that the gigantic dirty bookstore directly across it on I-75 was not smote in the least.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
If Nancy Says No, We'll Just Call John
The lack of women on the Sunday shows is one of those glaringly obvious things. What's also glaringly obvious is how to fix it, if anyone there cares.
Al Gore Gains 75 Pounds
I'm not sure why the World Wrestling Federation has a blog, but apparently Al Gore is still very fat.
So Much Space
On those occasions that I head out into the burbs I'm struck by just how much space is used. It reminds me of when I was living in Pwovidence, Vo Dilun, during a time when they were trying (somewhat successfully) to revitalize the downtown area. A presenter noted that you could fit the entire downtown inside the footprint of one of the local malls. Anyway, it's helpful for understanding why people see mass transit as some sort of alien and at best unpleasant thing, given the distances involved. For me, 3 miles is a a rather generous estimate of the radius of my every day life. For many, 3 miles is the minimum distance to anything.
Gonna Be There Awhile
Very, very modest.
Nothing says luxury like "corrugated steel boxes."
With no Marriott, Hilton or Holiday Inn hotels nearby, BP is housing hundreds of oil-spill clean-up workers on the Louisiana coast in "flotels" - 40-foot-long corrugated steel boxes that contain dormitory style beds, the Associated Press reports.
The white boxes that resemble giant shipping containers are stacked atop a barge at Port Fourchon, the story says. The 1,300-acre shipyard that serves as the oil industry's Gulf hub is surrounded by sensitive marshes, the story says.
Nothing says luxury like "corrugated steel boxes."
Cranky Blogging
I know I've been a bit cranky lately, but it's just rather distressing to see that even with Democratic control elites just aren't up to the task of governing this county in an adequate fashion. I didn't have high hopes for a great liberal revolution, but I did expect, well, better.
The Catfood Commission
While we're thinking about deficit scolds, it's important to remember what the basic thrust of Peterson's merry gang of thieves is. In the early 80s Uncle Alan Greenspan had a cunning plan to deal with Social Security, which was to jack up regressive payroll taxes and collect a surplus in the form of obligations from the general fund which will then be paid down as the boomers retire. The deficit scolds will claim that they essentially can't afford to pay this money back, stealing your promised retirement money.
New Rule
Digby:
We could save a bit of money by, say, not having as many lovely wars, but in terms of trends it's all about health care. Nothing else matters.
- Any deficit scold who doesn't put reducing health care costs at the very top of the agenda is just a demagogic crank doing the dirty work for the aristocratic overlords.
We could save a bit of money by, say, not having as many lovely wars, but in terms of trends it's all about health care. Nothing else matters.
Accepting The Unacceptable
I have no idea if this employment forecast is correct, but if it is then our overlords have indeed decided to accept the unacceptable. There was a time when suggesting unemployment would hit the 10% range was crazy talk. Obama's people, in 2009, projected that unemployment would fall to around 7.5% at the end of 2011 without any stimulus and with a stimulus package would hit around 6.5%.
It's truly depressing.
It's truly depressing.
Austerity
Nobody could have predicted that measures likely to tank the economy would undermine market confidence.
It's really weird that people are actually thinking this way, but they are and people will suffer the consequences.
It's really weird that people are actually thinking this way, but they are and people will suffer the consequences.
Our Overlords
I guess as long we return to the prior GDP peak, the level of unemployment is irrelevant. Also if we double GDP and triple the population it's all good.
Can Do Better
I don't know what the best way to organize something like this is, but it's clear that it isn't being done perfectly.
From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.
“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.
Monday, June 14, 2010
They Write Books
Deanna Zandt, who I know from various conferences and things, wrote a book.
Sadly she did not use my recommended title, Suck On This! But I suppose that one has to be saved for the autobiography of Tommy Friedman.
Sadly she did not use my recommended title, Suck On This! But I suppose that one has to be saved for the autobiography of Tommy Friedman.
Not Actually All That Much
4% premium for apartments near light rail isn't actually all that much.
When I was househunting in the urban hellhole, I was struck by how little the subject of public transit ever came up (agents, ads, etc.). It isn't a concern for everyone, but it is for some. Eventually I decided that real estate agents have highly car-dependent jobs so it wasn't really on their radar.
(ht reader j)
When I was househunting in the urban hellhole, I was struck by how little the subject of public transit ever came up (agents, ads, etc.). It isn't a concern for everyone, but it is for some. Eventually I decided that real estate agents have highly car-dependent jobs so it wasn't really on their radar.
(ht reader j)
I'll Have The Coated Crab Soup Please
Very, very modest.
BARATARIA BAY, La. -- The sand dunes and islands of Barataria Bay, a huge expanse of water and marsh on Louisiana's coast, have become the latest casualty of the environmental disaster spewing from BP's offshore well. And fishermen are bitter.
Oil-caked birds, stranded sea turtles, globs of gooey brown crude on beaches, coated crabs and mats of tar have been found throughout the inlets and mangroves that dot the bay. The oil has coated the water with a rainbow sheen and is threatening the complex web of wetlands, marshes and bayous that make up this ecological and historic treasure.
...
"The whole place is full of oil," said fishing guide Dave Marino. "This is some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil's coming in just wave after wave. It's hard to stomach, it really is.
Keeping The White Man Down
Aside from Pat Buchanan who, while having despicable views, at least understands the racial-ethnic tribalism he pushes. Most of the rest would deny that they ever favor the white guy, while assuming that any black person in power is inevitably guided by racial preferences.
Nightmare Well
I hope some day Obama stops listening to The Men In Nice Suits so often and starts listening to the hippies a bit more frequently.
The first link covers the decision making process behind the awesome plan to expand offshore drilling. Nobody could have predicted and all that.
- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six days before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling engineer called the rig a ''nightmare well'' that had caused the company problems in the past.
The first link covers the decision making process behind the awesome plan to expand offshore drilling. Nobody could have predicted and all that.
What Took Them So Long
I've long been puzzled by the persistence of pay-for-Wifi in places like Starbucks and especially at would-be competitors where free wifi could provide them with a bit of an advantage. Maybe they knew what they were doing, or maybe it just hurts to give away anything for free.
Street Term
Maybe even a little bit ghetto.
One of largest pet peeves is when DC pundits hit the fainting couch over a "bad" word, especially one like ass which doesn't even really qualify. People in DC swear. I've heard members Congress who just met me swear. Reporters have to hear this stuff all the time.
One of largest pet peeves is when DC pundits hit the fainting couch over a "bad" word, especially one like ass which doesn't even really qualify. People in DC swear. I've heard members Congress who just met me swear. Reporters have to hear this stuff all the time.
Ongoing
BP's people aren't exactly playing the role of pessimists about this crisis, and even they say that at best maybe kinda sorta they can capture significantly more oil by the middle of next month.
Unemployable
As Brad says, long term unemployment is a problem not just because of the immediate pain, but also because of the fact that over time these people find that their skills become more and more mismatched with the needs of employers even if the economy turns around.
Pensioners
As people are discussing in the comments, the poor impoverished BP invested British pensioner story has also taken hold.
BP's 10 largest investors.
BP's 10 largest investors.
Dividends Are Not Guaranteed
The degree to which the media buys into this narrative of shareholders' god given rights to annual dividends is weird.
And Speaking Of Hundreds of Billions
To put things in a bit of context, the internet tells me we've spent roughly $250 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA tells me annual GDP is about $25 billion there.
DoD Infowar
I started to look into this a bit this morning, but kudos to Ambinder for pointing out that the ZOMG THERE'S LITHIUM UNDER THESE HILLS scoop isn't new, just a DoD press operation.
So how many more hundreds of billions should we spend to safeguard a trillion worth of minerals?
So how many more hundreds of billions should we spend to safeguard a trillion worth of minerals?
I Love Newspaper Commenters
Favorite so far over at Ezra's place:
Thank God we have oil companies who supply the fuel that drives our free-market system which has produced the greatest most dynamic standard of living known to mankind.
Not Very Hopeful
You don't even have to look outside our own country to understand that the benefits of resource extraction go to the few, not the many, and corrupt government and environmental degradation are fringe benefits.
It doesn't have to be that way, but somehow it always is.
It doesn't have to be that way, but somehow it always is.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
And It Dropped
Was waiting for the reason for our excellent adventure to endure indefinitely to appear.
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Wolverines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I have grim news: "Red Dawn" isn't coming Nov. 24, as the conservative blogs have all promised. In fact, no one knows when the movie will ever be released. Although it sounds like yet another liberal Hollywood conspiracy, the movie (which was filmed in Detroit last year) is suffering from a far bigger problem: It was made by MGM, and MGM has run out of money. The troubled studio managed to make several movies recently, one that was already released ("Hot Tub Time Machine"), one that is being released next year by Sony ("The Zookeeper") and one, "Red Dawn," that is in the can but may stay there for quite a while, at least until someone buys MGM or provides the kind of big investment needed to market and distribute new films.
According to an MGM insider, the bloggers have a few other things wrong beside that release date. The film didn't cost $75 million. It was made for $42 million, thanks to a load of tax breaks from being filmed in Michigan. It doesn't have any music by Toby Keith, because no one has recorded any music for its soundtrack yet. (Keith's name was simply used as a reference in the script.) And Tom Cruise's son, Connor, isn't the star, simply one of an ensemble of young actors paying the roles handled by Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell in the original.
Jenga
As I've said a few times, bailing out the debtor countries is really just bailing out their creditors.
and the game goes on...
FRANKFURT — French and German banks have lent nearly $1 trillion to the most troubled European countries and are more exposed to the debt crisis than the banks of any other countries, according to a new report that is likely to add pressure on institutions to detail their holdings.
French banks had lent $493 billion to Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland by the end of 2009 while German banks had lent $465 billion, according to the report by the Bank for International Settlements, an institution based in Basel, Switzerland, that acts as a clearing house for the world’s central banks.
and the game goes on...
Legal Authority
Now I'm curious.
WASHINGTON — President Obama for the first time will address the nation about the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday night and outline his plans to legally force BP executives to create an escrow account reserving billions of dollars to compensate businesses and individuals if the company does not do so on its own, a senior administration official said on Sunday.
“The president will use his legal authority to compel them,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman.
Really Need To Put The Brake On
Before they destroy the place.
Pennsylvanians are only slowly becoming aware that we are under siege. More than a thousand Marcellus Shale drill sites are in the works, with tens of thousands more poised to descend on Penn's Woods, its towns and neighborhoods, threatening to poison water tables, suck streams dry, pollute the air with ear-splitting noise and toxic fumes -- all without meaningful regulation, without meaningful taxation.
Like coal, which successfully resisted a severance tax, leaving taxpayers and volunteer associations to wrestle with the social and environmental damage wrought by more than a century of exploitation, gas drillers enabled by politicians expect Pennsylvania to remain the only major gas-producing state without a severance tax. These deep-drilled deposits of natural gas will be severed from the commonwealth forever without compensation and with little or no enforceable liability for the devastation wrought on the land, water and air. We cannot allow this to happen!
Mixed Messages
There is a relatively simple coherent message, that short term deficits are necessary and additional spending is rather small relative to the long term projected deficits, but the Obama administration really has been all over the place on the messaging. It's good that they're pushing for state aid more strongly - I guess maybe someone in there finally convinced the important people that the jobs situation still sucks - but their premature embrace of MUST CUT SPENDING rhetoric has been a problem.
Sunday Bobbleheads
This Week has Hoyer, Boehner, and some billionaire.
Face the Nation has Crist, Barbour, and Thad Allen.
Meet the Press has Fiorina, Axelrod, Wasserman-Schultz, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Document the atrocities!
Face the Nation has Crist, Barbour, and Thad Allen.
Meet the Press has Fiorina, Axelrod, Wasserman-Schultz, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Document the atrocities!
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