And Right On Cue...

..here's Peter Orszag moving the middle to the right yet again. I know he no longer works for the Obama administration but here's my prediction. The media will give him MORE credibility now that he is both a) out of the administration and b) is going against the administration.

So even though most credible economists think we should discontinue ALL of the Bush tax cuts, not even keeping the ones for the middle class, Orszag wants us to continue them ALL for another two years. So now instead of the administration arguing for discontinuing all of them or at least the ones for the upper 1% of the nation, and then negotiating from there with Republicans who argue for keeping them permanently, now the argument will quickly go to whether to extend ALL of them for another 2 years or permanently.

Listen, I don't know if the administration put Orszag up to this or not but either way you can bank on the conversation going that way. And if they are smart and they DIDN'T put him up to it they will smack that shit down like Mutumbo. If they handle it with kid gloves...well then you have your answer.

And Another One Bites The Dust

The GOP and their wingnut base have claimed another scalp after repeated attacks on Errol Southers, the Obama administration choice to head the TSA, forced him to withdraw his name from the process.

You know when there is only one side screaming and ranting sooner or later people will pay attention to them no matter how dead ass wrong they are. Another lesson not learned by Democrats...

Goldman Sachs Stacked The Deck

After this reporting by McClatchy on how Goldman Sachs rigged their securities so that practically no matter what their investors would lose and they would win I have two thoughts running through my mind.

1. Why haven't the Goldman Sachs executives been summoned on the Hill for some hearings and grillings like the AIG and Citibank folks etc have?

2. Now that it turns out that many of the risky investments that helped bring down our financial system last year were dealing with mortgages in the Cayman islands rather than just mortgages here in the States, is there anyone still foolish enough to believe that the government forcing banks to give poor brown people mortgages was really the root cause?

I don't know how much longer the Obama administration and Congress can continue to effectively look the other way when it comes to Goldman Sachs and expect the people of this country not to act a damn fool.

Cue The Wingnut Freakout And The Cheney's On TV

The Obama administration will announce today that they will be transferring GITMO prisoners to a prison in Illinois.


I think I am going to turn off the TV and unplug for the rest of the week.

It Is Time To Start Calling Bullshit, Bullshit!!!

From Laura Rozen:

The report said the U.N. fact-finding mission investigating Israel's conduct during the January 2009 war found evidence of Israeli war crimes. Israel has denied the allegations and said the report's mandate was biased -- an opinion echoed by U.S. officials.

The Obama administration is ready to use the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council to deal with any other "difficulties" arising out of the report, the White House official said Wednesday. The administration also has made clear to the Palestinian Authority that Washington is not pleased with a P.A. petition to bring the report's allegations against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Last week, the State Department said the U.S. had "serious concerns" about the report by the Gaza fact finding commission, which had been headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.

Now here is the deal, if our government is going to cover for Israel at the U.N. then we should never vote for not a single prosecution of war crimes EVER again with the ICC. If the inference here is that the UN is biased against Israel then we should also pull out of the UN. You simply can not have it both ways anymore.

A blind man can see that Israel's behavior was reprehensible in the Gaza strip earlier this year. By taking the posture that we will veto any action against Israel based on actual evidence collected by UN investigators we have cemented our legacy as enablers of Israel and as being biased against Arabs and Muslims. Can you imagine the US vetoing an action that the UN proposed taking against Palestinians or Lebanese or Syrians?

Hell no you can't.

We can keep saying that no man is above the law but it is now very apparent that at least one nation is. Thanks to us that is.

Saw You Coming From A Mile Away

The wingnuts aided and abetted if not led by FoxNews had become apoplectic about the number of "czars" in the Obama administration. Setting aside the facts that Republican President President Richard Nixon was the first one to come up with the word czar to describe one of his advisor, that George W. Bush had 47 so called "czars", that the people who are called "czars" really have official titles that don't include that word, that the media largely are the ones who describes people as czars instead of their official titles, and that more than a few of the people the right wingers describe as czars have been confirmed by the Senate, other than that they might actually have a point. Of course because the wingnuts are shrieking about this bullshit, the mainstream media feels they have to cover it. Well White House Spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was fully prepared for this line of questioning.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs fired back at GOP critics of White House czars on Wednesday.

Gibbs said GOP “silence was deafening” on the issue of czars during former President George W. Bush's administration.

Republicans didn’t raise the issue, he said, when Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) pushed a Y2K czar or when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called for a manufacturing czar.

“You've read Sen. Bennett was pushing for a Y2K czar that he didn't think was powerful enough,” Gibbs said. “You've seen Lamar Alexander call for a manufacturing czar."

He also brought up the name of Randall Tobias, a Bush administration deputy secretary of State and “abstinence czar” who resigned after it was discovered his name was on a prostitution-services call list.

“You know, somebody referred to in the Bush administration as the abstinence czar was on the D.C. Madam's list,” Gibbs said. “Now, did that violate the Constitution, or simply offend our sensibilities?”

Gibby FTW!

(h/t Benen)