Graffiti Monday

Anyone want to take a stab at answering this question?

The Glenn Beck Comedy Show

Apparently, this is not a joke:

Glenn Beck, Fox News Channel's latest sensation, is taking a comedy show on the road for six live performances over six days during the first week of June.

Beck calls his act a "poor man's Seinfeld" and intends to mix topical humor with his modern-day reimagining of Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet "Common Sense."

I’m starting to wonder if Glenn Beck isn’t one giant performance-art experiment along the lines of Andy Kaufman.

Maybe Glenn Beck is Andy Kaufman.

Bankers Behaving Badly

Yesterday’s New York Times took a look at some of those risky municipal bond deals that were sold by Morgan Keegan to Tennessee cities and counties. Apparently the deals were highly complex, involving something called interest rate swaps, and some of the municipalities who took part are now complaining they were sold a lemon:

Officials in the small cities of Lewisburg and Mount Juliet, and in Claiborne County, have complained that Morgan Keegan’s bankers failed to warn them about the consequences if the bonds’ insurer, Ambac Financial Group, was downgraded. When that occurred, the bonds’ interest payments quadrupled and the pay-off time increased. The cost of terminating the interest-rate swaps was exorbitant.

Experts in municipal bonds have said that bond derivatives are inappropriate for small towns and rural counties, and that higher fees associated with the derivatives often eclipsed any savings the transactions had provided.

Even worse, the folks hawking these financial deals, Morgan Keegan, were the same folks leading “day-long seminars” designed to inform city and county officials about the risks of the transactions.

Here, y’all will like this:

Asked if it had been a conflict for Morgan Keegan to serve as adviser and underwriter of the bonds, the governor said, “I think that really is probably at the core of what went wrong here.”

Gee, ya think?

You know, it’s not just homeowners and clients of Bernie Madoff who were sold investment deals they either couldn’t understand or else were not fully informed about. It’s municipalities like Mount Juliet and Lewisburg (and possibly Cleveland, TN), too.

Meanwhile, Morgan Keegan Managing Director Joe Ayres told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that the New York Time’s article was “politically oriented,” and that

some people look for a scapegoat for the effects of the world economic troubles, which is beyond the reach of his investment bank.

You buying that? I’m not. Especially when you remember that Morgan Keegan has been ordered to repay investors over losses incurred in the subprime mess:

The award – which is the largest arbitration award against Morgan Keegan’s bond funds as of late – set a precedent for pending arbitration lawsuits against the company, Stoltmann said.

“There has been some nefarious stuff that (has) come out in the last two months that has changed the dynamics of these cases and made them better,” he said. “An award like that is a real clear sign that the arbitrators were upset with what they heard.”

Wow, nefarious stuff, huh? Where have we heard this before? Sounds an awful lot like the greedy, predatory lending behavior of the folks at Countrywide Financial.

The problem, as Paul Krugman noted in his column yesterday, is that deregulation opened a Pandora’s Box of funny money deals that no one can understand, certainly not the average first-time home buyer and not even a city or county commissioner. So you rely on an expert in the investment banking world, someone like a Morgan Keegan. But when the guy telling you all the risks and benefits of these convoluted arrangements is the same guy making money off of the deal, aren’t you just asking for trouble?

You know, there oughta be a law. I'm just sayin' ...

Krugman waxed nostalgic for the days of “boring banking,” which he called

an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans.

After 1980, however, as the political winds shifted, many of the regulations on banks were lifted — and banking became exciting again. Debt began rising rapidly, eventually reaching just about the same level relative to G.D.P. as in 1929. And the financial industry exploded in size. By the middle of this decade, it accounted for a third of corporate profits.

I agree that boring is highly underrated these days. Boring banking is fine with me, and we get that way by implementing some serious regulation of the banking industry. Whether it will happen, however, I don't know. Seems like a lot of folks have just accepted the fact that the financial world needs to be exciting and all Gordon Gekko-like because it's been that way for 20 years and it's all a lot of folks know.

Says Krugman

[...] boring banking would mean poorer bankers, and the financial industry still has a lot of friends in high places. But it’s also a matter of ideology: Despite everything that has happened, most people in positions of power still associate fancy finance with economic progress.

I suspect folks at some city and county governments across Tennessee feel likewise. But unless there are some serious changes, we're going to be walking down this road again.

Rick Warren Spins Those Prop. 8 Claims

[UPDATE]:

Rick Warren a no-show on This Week .... Spokesperson cites "exhaustion."

-------------------------

Rick Warren’s spokesperson has sent a letter to Shuck & Jive blogger John Shuck, a progressive Presbyterian minister here in Tennessee who supports marriage equality and who rightfully called Warren on his “I never campaigned for Prop 8” lie.

Apparently some other folks got the letter too (I didn't), so it seems Warren’s spokesperson is doing a little damage control in the wake of that Larry King Live appearance. Warren, it appears, was against Prop. 8 before he was against Prop. 8 before he was for gays before he was against them .... or somethin'.

She actually thinks folks will buy this nonsense:

When Dr. Warren told Larry King that he never campaigned for California's Proposition 8, he was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative in that state, based on his focus and leadership on other compassion issues. Because he's a pastor, not an activist, in response to inquiries from church members, he issued an email and video message to his congregation days before the election confirming where he and Saddleback Church stood on this issue.

This is really rich. I’ve never seen someone in such deep denial about the craven ambition of their client. Rick Warren is just a simple pastor, not a limelight-seeking celebrity with a coterie of media handlers. A guy whose video messages to his congregation are inconsequential little things that go completely unnoticed by anyone outside his small little church community. Right.

Shuck rightfully calls him on this little BS, too, and the rant is awesome:

He thinks that somehow having "gay friends" absolves him from actively working to pass Proposition 8. Yes, he actively worked to pass Proposition 8. He didn't stuff envelopes. He didn't go to meetings. He didn't knock on doors. He didn't make telephone calls. He helped the cause of Proposition 8 more than thousands of hours of activism by those who did those things.

He did it with a two minute fifteen second video. Care to see it again?

Do go over to Shuck & Jive and read the rest of the post. Let me say, as a progressive Presbyterian myself, Pastor Shuck rawks.

I just don't get this fence-riding by Warren. I guess he wants everyone to love him, from conservative evangelicals to the gays he claims as friends. But when you take a public stand on someone's civil rights, and classify certain people as more equal than others, you're gonna piss folks off.

Here a lesbian woman is about to get deported because she can’t legally wed her partner of 23 years, the woman with whom she has two children. She is not a U.S. citizen but her partner is; if she were straight she could wed and be a citizen. She’s not straight, she’s gay, and the federal government won’t recognize her relationship because of ignorant people like Rick Warren who have taken certain passages of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, while completely ignoring others. What they end up with is a world view that discriminates and destroys families.

Here’s a reminder for Rick Warren: people used the Bible to justify slavery, Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, the slaughter of Native Americans, the oppression of women, and a host of other atrocities. Those people were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

The Best Global Warming Denial Money Can Buy

Global warming denier Marc Morano, former spokesman for global warming denier/wackadoodle Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, has gone into the global warming denial business fulltime:

Now, with Congress debating legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Morano is hoping to have an even greater impact. He has left his job with Mr. Inhofe to start his own Web site, ClimateDepot.com.

The site, scheduled to debut this week, will be a “one-stop shop” for anyone following climate change, Mr. Morano says. He will post research he thinks the public should see, as well as reported video segments and ratings of environmental journalists.

Wow, that’s great. Morano, as the article says, has been very successful pushing misinformation, exaggerations, and outright lies about climate science. Now he’ll get to do it fulltime.

Just in time for a pitched battle in Congress over carbon cap-and-trade. How conveeeeeenient. Or, not:

Mr. Morano’s new Web site is being financed by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit in Washington that advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues.

Craig Rucker, a co-founder of the organization, said the committee got about a third of its money from other foundations. But Mr. Rucker would not identify them or say how much his foundation would pay Mr. Morano. (Mr. Morano says it will be more than the $134,000 he earned annually in the Senate.)

Public tax filings for 2003-7 — the last five years for which documents are available — show that the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation and from foundations associated with the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime financer of conservative causes best known for its efforts to have President Bill Clinton impeached. Mr. Rucker said Exxon had not contributed anything last year.

A quick check of CFACT’s Wiki listing shows the group also received $60,000 from Chevron from 1994-1998, $25,000 from the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund in 1997, and a paltry $500 from Ford Motor Co. Fund in 1996.

Good to know.

Shameless Shilling For The F-22

This is depressing, yet entirely predictable. On Monday I wrote we needed to watch for those retired military “analysts” boosting the F-22 without disclosing their financial ties to military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman.

As if on cue, Fox News brings us this:

Yesterday, Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney appeared on Fox News to discuss the Somali pirates situation, and managed to use it as an opportunity to shill for the F-22:

McINERNEY: I’d put F-22s and combat air patrol out there, two of them, with tankers. … The reason I’d put the F-22s is because they can go 1.6 to mach 2, and they have a very quick reaction time and a 20 millimeter canon.

“It doesn’t take an Air Force general to see how bizarre McInerney’s military reasoning is,” Gawker’s Ryan Tate writes, noting that the F-22 — an exceedingly expensive fighter jet designed for air combat — could do nothing to solve the current problem.

Indeed, McInerny spread good ol' fashioned propaganda and misinformation:

He neglected to mention virtually every U.S. fighter made in the last 30 years carries such a cannon (usually the six-barrel M-61 Vulcan), including the F/A-18 Hornet already in use by the U.S. Navy. He also fails to mention that, no matter how fast the F-22 might be, it can't be based off an aircraft carrier. So its reaction time could never be as good (from a land base on, say, the Arabian Peninsula) as a Hornet or other existing Navy jet floating in the waters nearest the pirates.

As I noted yesterday, we were attacked on Sept. 11 by the lowest of low-tech: men armed with box-cutters, slipping through lax airport security. It seems the world of warfare has changed and big, expensive weapons systems can’t combat the low-tech terrorism we’re seeing on the high seas or on the streets of Baghdad. I'm not saying we don't need any big fancy weapons systems, I'm just thinking we don't need any more.

And here’s Fox News putting an “analyst” with ties to a defense contractor on the air so he can pluck a piece of news from the headlines and fashion it into a talking point to save the F-22.

Utterly predictable.

How utterly reprehensible. He should have his “military analyst” pass revoked.

Torture, It’s Strictly Confidential

A confidential Red Cross report on the use of torture by the CIA on high level detainees has been leaked.

You can read it here.

I’m reading it now. Next time someone asks if we’re a Christian nation maybe we should just point them to this report.

BTW, none of the prisoners tortured were either Iraqi or arrested in Iraq. So much for “flypaper” and "the central front on the war on terror."

Permanent War Economy Redux

I just came from a coffee with Congressman Jim Cooper and a few other bloggers--the first of many, I’m told, so if you’re a Nashville blogger who didn’t get word of this meeting, don’t feel left out, as there will be others.

Our conversation hopscotched around a variety of topics, but one issue of interest to me was Defense Secretary Gates’ plan to halt production of the F-22 in late 2011. It’s a decision Cooper supports--I liked his statement earlier this week that "we no longer have the luxury of running the Defense Department as a hometown jobs program”--but it’s significant that Cooper and Sen. John McCain were the only members of Congress to signal support for the plan.

It of course all comes down to politics, and Cooper told us that of the 60 people on the Armed Services Committee, “I may be the only one who doesn’t have a major defense contractor or base in their district.” It’s why Lockheed Martin's F-22 is assembled from parts made in 44 states, he noted; that's not a manufacturing necessity, but a political one. It spreads their sphere of influence over a broad swath of congressional districts.

What’s alarming is that our snooze media has done its usual half-assed job of reporting on the proposed Pentagon budget, framing it as a budget cut when it is in fact a budget increase. And while lots of attention has been given to the phase-out of the F-22, not too much attention has been given to the part of Gates’ budget which calls for accelerating production of the F-35.

Republican Senators Chambliss and Isakson have vowed to keep F-22 production going, and they will make an economic argument, which I find morally reprehensible:

His tactic likely will be to target union-state Democrats and convince them that the F-22 is a "shovel-ready" jobs program and a necessary deterrent.

Excuse me, but if you base your economy on building weapons, then aren’t you also basing your economy on war? Aren’t you pretty much guaranteeing more unnecessary debacles like Iraq? What are we building all of these weapons for, if not to use them? If they're just for "show," as a "deterrent," then how many of these damn things do we need?

It’s a popular saying these days that America no longer manufactures anything; I’ve probably said it myself. But it’s not true. We make weapons. Lots of ’em.

Isn’t this the “permanent war economy” we’ve all said we don’t want?

Over in Fort Worth, Texas, Lockheed Martin expects to do very nicely under Gates’ proposed budget, the F-22 notwithstanding:

Even with no additional F-22 work, Lockheed Aeronautics, which is based in Fort Worth, should "be a $20 billion company within five years," Stevenson said. It was worth $11.5 billion last year.

Wall Street analysts were nearly unanimous in the view that Lockheed should fare well under Gates’ plan.

Gee, that’s nice. Too bad about that ethanol plant that just declared bankruptcy, though. Ditto these biofuels producers that also declared bankruptcy in recent weeks.

I’m trying to remember the last time a defense contractor went bankrupt.

It’s certainly disappointing to me that our best argument supporting the phase-out of an expensive and obsolete fighter jet is that “we’re still increasing the Pentagon’s budget, so quit yer whining!” Why is there never a conversation about slashing the size of our military, period? And by the way: Why are we still spending $10 billion a month on Iraq?

I can certainly foresee a future in which political pressure on "union-state Democrats" wins out, and we keep manufacturing the F-22 so Georgia doesn’t lose any jobs while at the same time boosting production of the F-35 for the people in Texas. And this is how we grow our military and maintain the power and influence of the military industrial complex. The permanent war economy is here and it's, well, permanent.

I don't have any answers but I sure do have some questions. Rep. Cooper told us he's the ranking Democrat on a panel looking into reform of the defense contracting process. I eagerly anticipate hearing what this panel has to say. Because right now, the defense contractors have far too big an interest in making sure we're building more and bigger weapons, which means they have an interest in making sure we are always under threat. It's now part of our "economic stimulus." People forget we were attacked on Sept. 11 by some individuals armed with no more than boxcutters. All of the fighter jets in the world wouldn't have prevented that.

With that in mind, for those who missed Jon Stewart's smackdown on the media misinformation surrounding the Defense budget, enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Full Metal Budget
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

I Hate Haloscan

Is it me or has Haloscan gotten suckier of late? Haloscan outages occur on a daily basis; it's ridiculous. I need a new commenting system. Please leave your suggestions in comments.

The Amazing Transformation Of Rick Warren

Shuck & Jive calls out Rick Warren on his Prop. 8 hypocrisy. Seems Pastor Warren told Larry King last night that reports portraying him against gay marriage and a supporter of Proposition 8 were all one big misunderstanding.

Why, Warren claims, he

never once even gave an endorsement in the two years Prop 8 was going.

Really? So this video statement from October 2008 where he says...

Now Let me just say this really clearly. We support Proposition 8. And if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8.

... was not an endorsement, and just part of this big misunderstanding, huh?

Warren has undergone an amazing makeover these past few years. Once a proud member of the wackadoodle far-right fringe, who sent this pre-2004 election letter to his flock informing them that abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research were the most important issues of concern to Christians, he now claims that he's "impartial." BTW, in that letter he closed with the admonishment:

this election REALLY counts more than most others have.

Yes, it sure did. Pay no attention to the war and torture your president did in your name, Pastor Warren.

Meanwhile in 2005, Warren was enjoying fresh celebrity thanks to Ashley Smith. So he appeared on Hardball, where he all but called Michael Schiavo a murderer:

MATTHEWS:  What do you do in that situation, after four or five years of sitting in a room with a person, in this case, 15 years of being in a room where he knows, when he goes in that room, there is not going to be another person in there?  What do you do for hope?

WARREN:  Well, my first question is, I wonder why he is in a hurry to pull the feeding tube on her.  In the first place...

MATTHEWS:  Fifteen years is a hurry? 

WARREN:  Well, he has already began his own life.  He is living with another girl. 

[...]

MATTHEWS:  So why is he doing this, do you think?

WARREN:  I have no idea.  Well, I don‘t know.

There‘s 1,000 reasons could you speculate.  What if she came back out of the—out of this state and had something to say that he didn‘t want said?

Wow, that’s some amazing compassion and understanding right there.

Interestingly, despite being such a prominent religious voice during the Terri Schiavo debacle, Warren had nothing at all to say when President Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research. According to Warren’s spokeswoman,

Kristin Cole said he will not be issuing a public statement on it. Cole said in a brief phone conversation that Warren typically avoids making public statements on political matters.

Really? Since when? He said in that October 2008 video that he won’t endorse a candidate but he will speak out on moral issues. I guess stem cell research and "right to life" are no longer moral issues for Pastor Warren. What an amazing flip-flop.

However, let's give Rick Warren credit for taking on the evangelical establishment on issues like global warming and AIDs in Africa. These issues are popular with young evangelicals; it allows him to hobnob with President Obama and rock star Bono. But it’s hard for me to take anything he says seriously, knowing that Warren’s commitment to a cause seems to shift with the political winds--and the all-important desire to take his "brand" global.

Rick Warren has always been a limelight-chaser. He’s ambitious, and ambition and religion are a deadly combination. He wants to be “America’s pastor” but the thing is, America doesn’t need a pastor. This is post-Christian America, remember?