Hatfield & Morse

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Friday January 06, 2012 · 1:55 PM PST

2012/01/06 · 13:55

Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) 1964:

Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening (D-AK) were the sole wise men in the US Senate in 1964. Thirty-eight years later in 2002, when GWB wanted to destroy Iraq, there were 23 wise women and men in the Senate. At this pace of progress, it will be 2052 before there will be 51 wise women and men in the US Senate. (Can the world wait that long?)

Marie

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Sunday December 04, 2011 · 5:58 PM PST

2011/12/04 · 17:58

Preliminary Egyptian election results - WAPO:

The High Election Commission said the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party garnered 36.6 percent of the 9.7 million valid ballots cast for party lists. The Nour Party, a more hard-line Islamist group, captured 24.4 percent.

61% of the vote in the election was won by two Islamist political parties: the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Salafists. Imagine if Ayman al-Zawahiri had been as patient and skilled at politics as the Ayatollah Khomeini and not linked up with the Muslim Richard Girnt Butler, Osama bin Laden, he could be the current leading candidate to run Egypt. To scream night and day on TV, I am a Muslim!

Marie

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Friday October 21, 2011 · 6:12 PM PDT

2011/10/21 · 18:12

Might be time to modernize the Stature of Liberty by replacing:

"Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

With:

Buy a house; Get a visa.

In the fine print, as reported by Robert Johnson in Business Insider that's a $500,000 or more house. But it is an American Resident Visa.

Marie

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Wednesday October 19, 2011 · 5:10 PM PDT

2011/10/19 · 17:10

One frequent sign at OWS rallies and marches is “Restore Glass-Steagall.”* (Or “Repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley” or “Repeal The Financial Services Modernization Act.) Equally important would be the repeal of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

Democratic Party high-muckety-mucks have been telling the hoi-polloi that Dodd-Frank is as good as restoring Glass-Steagall. However, the dead-of-night transfer of BofA's Merrill Lynch unit's derivatives to a federally insured deposit subsidiary is proof that it isn't so. Before explicating this move, let's review what it was like in the bad old days of financial regulation.

Marie

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Thursday October 13, 2011 · 12:49 PM PDT

2011/10/13 · 12:49

Or seeing clearly through all those artificial fogs created by the wealthy and powerful.

Occupy Wall Street is fine just the way it is. If there is anything wrong with this effort, it's with those observing it and not the participants. OWS is getting what has eluded protesters on the left for decades. KISS (even at the expense of complete accuracy and clarity). 100 people protesting for a 100 days is more difficult to ignore than 10,000 for 1 day.

The rightwingers and one percenters have always known that they're outnumbered. That's why they scream louder. It's the only tactic they have to artificially boost the numbers they don't possess. Sometimes (in the US most times), it works. Sometimes it doesn't. This may be one of those times when it doesn't.

Marie

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Thursday September 29, 2011 · 2:12 PM PDT

2011/09/29 · 14:12

From a non-existent article of apparel, to a luxury good, to an affordable necessity, to a cheap consumer good, the history of the lowly sock long and reveals much about what is viewed as human progress, industrialization and capitalism. The living memory of a time when socks were just costly enough that women darned heel and toe holes in her family's socks is rapidly disappearing. The need to do so for most disappeared a few decades ago. The skill to do so, may have already disappeared.

Unlike most clothing items, few people are required to manufacture socks. It has long been almost 100% mechanized. In the great migration of textiles from the northeast in the US to the southeast in the quest for cheaper labor, many sock factories ended up in Alabama. Labor to sew the toe together. The only step in the production process that has defied mechanization.

Marie

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Friday September 16, 2011 · 5:22 PM PDT

2011/09/16 · 17:22

The cheapest mousetrap usually wins. A better and/or less expensive one in the long-term all too often disappears too soon to demonstrate its superiority. The long tomorrow and capitalism aren't compatible. What Danny Hillis has defined as The Long Now. A short bit from in his 1995 essay, The Millennium Clock illustrates that tension.

I think of the oak beams in the ceiling of College Hall at New College, Oxford. Last century, when the beams needed replacing, carpenters used oak trees that had been planted in 1386 when the dining hall was first built. The 14th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now?

*
Read More

Secrets, Renditions, and Invitees

Marie

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Friday September 02, 2011 · 4:07 PM PDT

2011/09/02 · 16:07

The discovery and initial disclosure by Reprieve of documents in a court case is almost too explosive to fully comprehend because it touches on several issues in the so-called war on terror.

The Retrieve report Huge stash of rendition documents reveal how the CIA covered its tracks supplies the easy takeaways that the evidence supports:

Marie

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Thursday August 25, 2011 · 7:26 PM PDT

2011/08/25 · 19:26

In February there was Asmaa Mahfouz:

The people came. The people protested. The people shunned guns and violence. Mubarek left.

Note: Ms. Mahfouz was recently picked up by the current military government authorities. The public outcry was so loud and intense that she was quickly released.

Marie

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Monday August 15, 2011 · 12:02 PM PDT

2011/08/15 · 12:02

In case you have forgotten, Kevin Diaz of the Star Tribune reminds us

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann hasn’t forgotten about the light bulb bill.
Under new GOP management in the House, the Minnesota Republican is reintroducing her signature “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” a new iteration of legislation that went nowhere when the Democrats were in charge.

Her aim: Repeal the 2007 mandate which requires that traditional incandescent light bulbs be phased out in favor of those squiggly energy efficient compact fluorescent jobbies.

Marie

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Sunday August 07, 2011 · 3:32 PM PDT

2011/08/07 · 15:32

Plenty of whining during the past few years; some here over the Public Option, TeaBaggers, Bush Tax Cuts, and Debt Ceiling. Not effective, but ... A couple of differences this time. First, Obama and Geithner are whining with us. Second, S&P isn't wrong. Allow Richard Wolff (who you should be reading) to explain why:

The S&P downgrade is important because it clarifies and underscores two key dimensions of today’s economic reality that most commentators have ignored or downplayed. The first dimension concerns exactly why the US national debt is rising fast. There are three major reasons for this: (1) major tax cuts especially on corporations and the rich since the 1970s and especially since 2000 have reduced revenues flowing into Washington, (2) costly global wars especially since 2000 have increased government spending dramatically, and (3) costly bailouts of dysfunctional banks, insurance companies, large corporations and the economic system generally since 2007 have likewise sharply expanded government spending. With less tax revenue coming in from corporations and the rich and more spending on defense/wars and bailouts, the government had to borrow the difference. Duh!

Marie

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Thursday June 23, 2011 · 4:35 PM PDT

2011/06/23 · 16:35

For once, Matt Taibbi left some space for others in his Michele Bachmann smackdown.

As Bachmann has told and retold her story as one of divine inspiration, she has recast her biography in ever more grandiose directions. A great example is the issue of her "28 children." Bachmann has five kids and, something even her most withering critic should acknowledge, has cared for 23 foster kids. But in 2008 — 10 years after any of her foster children had been in her home — Bachmann was talking as though she was still dashing home from Congress to cook for them. "Every weekend now when I go home, I will go to the grocery store, I'll buy food for the family," she said. "We have five kids and 23 foster kids that we raise. So I go to the grocery store and buy a lot of food."

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Hatfield & Morse

Did They Die For This?

Coming To America 2012

Derivatives, Counterparties, BofA. and OWS

The Youthful Advantage of Naivete

A Nickel A Sock

Solyndra – Boondoggle, Dumb, or ? - Update w/Jon

Secrets, Renditions, and Invitees

When Women Lead

Not So Into Incandescent Bulbs After All

S&P Speaks; Whining Ensues

About Bachmann's Twenty-Three Foster Kids