TSA Operation VIPR Searches Cars and Trucks at Random at Port of Brownsville, TX

Obama's fascist police state flexes its muscles, and tightens its grip on your constitutional liberties.

The story is here.

Mother Jones is warning here of expanded Operation VIPR searches to come at train and subway stations, and ferry and bus terminals as TSA seeks expanded funding to add 12 VIPR teams to 25 existing units which already conduct 8,000 checks a year.

If they're doing that many already and we have to rely on stupid stories like this to learn about it, you know that the sheeple of the United States are just mutely complying, as they do at airports.

You know who you are, and you disgust me. Slaves all.

Huntsman is Pro-Gay, Tied to Log Cabin Republicans

The story is in Politico, here.

Like Romney, Huntsman Won't Sign Anti-Abortion Pledge

As reported on Rush's show today.

Zuckerman is Mortified: It May Be A Depression

He takes a long look at the depth of the unemployment problem, here, and concludes with this:

Gluskin Sheff's Rosenberg captured it perfectly: We may well be in the midst of a "modern depression."

Liberal Bizarro World Bait and Switch Tax Math

Just when I thought the headline "Payroll tax cuts rob the poor to feed the rich" meant that I was going to read a fine story by a liberal lamenting how the richest Americans, everyone making about $106,800 a year and "to infinity and beyond," don't pay Social Security taxes on all their income, I was met with this instead, that the present and proposed cuts in the payroll tax do nothing but finance the extension of the Bush tax cuts which, evidently, benefit only the rich:

Specifically, I'm talking about a new proposal to rob from Social Security to fund a continuing tax break for people who don't need Social Security — the wealthy. ...

It started back in December, when President Obama capitulated to the GOP on a budget deal by cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security. Advocates for the program pointed out then the shortcomings of this approach: It was targeted inefficiently and unfairly, skewing to the upper middle class and hurting lower-income families in comparison with the Making Work Pay tax credit it replaced.

Nevermind that the ten year Bush tax cut regime is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in which we presently find ourselves, with over 45 percent of the population paying nothing in federal income taxes, and a sizeable minority actually enjoying a negative tax rate whereby they receive government welfare through the tax code.

Nevermind that the latter is specifically designed as a subsidy to offset the regressivity of Social Security taxes on the poorest wage earners.

And nevermind that the future solvency of Social Security isn't really front and center in the author's mind, either.

What is Michael Hiltzik's greatest fear?

[O]nce you've cut a tax, it's ever harder to restore it.

You mean like abolishing the Bush tax cuts and thereby raising taxes on the poor by 50 percent?

I'll say.

Or how about this one?

In 2008, the top 14 million tax returns had AGIs totaling $3.8 trillion. If a liberal were really serious, he'd be advocating taxing all this income to make not just Social Security solvent, but Medicare, too. At 6.2 percent, we're talking an extra $236 billion of foregone tax revenue annually.

As tax loss expenditures go, it's the largest one I know of, by a long shot. But try getting people to focus on that one instead of my measly mortgage interest deduction, a tax loss expenditure of $88 billion.

Liberals are so caring.

Nike Drug Messages Upset Boston Mayor, Vulgarities . . . Not So Much

The story is here:

". . . an accepted expression for performance at the highest level . . ."

-- Nike

Yeah, if you're an elephant maybe.

Obama is Vulnerable: McCain Lost Because of Nine States, 1.38 Million Votes

Yahoo News repeats the myth here:

McCain lost to Barack Obama in 2008 in a race that was not close.

McCain's loss was actually very narrow, and attributable to two interrelated factors, as here:

1) he lost nine formerly Red states which went to Bush by just 1.38 million votes; that's 1.04 percent of 131.5 million votes cast; had these gone his way, he'd be president today, not Obama;

2) in those same states, Obama outperformed Kerry and McCain underperformed Bush by a margin of over 3.2 million votes; Obama turned out his vote in those states, McCain turned his away.

Republicans and independents won't vote like that again . . . unless of course Republicans buy up all the stupid pills at Walgreens and make McCain their candidate again.

Aging US Nuke Plants: 48 of 65 Sites With Tritium Leaks, Rusting Underground Systems

The AP has a long and detailed accounting here of its investigation of radioactive contamination of groundwater from leaks at 75 percent of the US nuclear power sites where 104 aging reactors routinely get re-licensed by an industry-compliant US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, despite mounting evidence of problems associated with deteriorating underground infrastructure.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that much of what is rusting underground would be depended upon to bring critical cooling water to the plants in an emergency, but they don't routinely test it or inspect it.

Meanwhile, 110,000 tons of cooling water contaminated with radioactivity has piled up at Fukushima in Japan and threatens to go to sea unless operators can get a de-contamination facility working properly.

Neither this nor our own problems with nuclear power have done much to move our feckless leaders in either party, while Barack Obama enjoys a very cozy relationship with GE head Jeff Immelt, whose company built many of the units in question, including the ones which have melted down in Japan. 

Too busy golfing.

Government Interest Payments as a Percentage of GDP

As reported here:

Greece            6.7 percent

Italy                4.8 percent

Portugal          4.2 percent

United States  2.9 percent.

The Left in Wisconsin is Falling Back, and Calling in the Lawyers for Cover Fire

So says the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Pat McIlheran, here, who moves on to a new assignment.

We wish him well.

Here Come The Bird and Insect Drones: They'll Be Hiding in Plain Sight, Watching You

The New York Times has the story, here:

In February, researchers unveiled a hummingbird drone, built by the firm AeroVironment for the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which can fly at 11 miles per hour and perch on a windowsill. But it is still a prototype. One of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three-foot-long Raven, which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill.

Fukushima Cooling Water Requirements Total 500 Tons Per Day

The water gets contaminated with radioactivity and must be stored on site. A new system to decontaminate this water was unsuccessfully tested on Friday.

NHK World reports here:

Contaminated water is increasing by 500 tons a day as fresh water is continuously being injected into the reactors to cool them down.

The storage facilities for the contaminated water are filling up and a delay in restarting the system could cause the water to overflow [into the sea] in about a week.

A story via Reuters here says 110,000 tons of the stuff has already accumulated since 3/11 and that space is running out.

The Indignants of Spain: 'We are not property in the hands of politicians and bankers'

Their story, here, is also our story.

Our politicians and bankers also view us as their property, indeed their slaves. It doesn't make much difference if it's your job that's theirs, or your mortgage, when the politicians are owned by the bankers.

We view them both as our tyrants, slaves also like us, but turned inside out.

Our answer?

NO, to either condition!

RINO Romney Won't Affirm Pro-life Position

Bachmann pins him to the wall. Story here.

Christopher Hitchens: You Can Take the Liberalism out of the Brain Dead Liberal . . .

. . . but he'll still be brain dead.

"From a playwright, however, one might also have expected some discussion of what the Attic tragedians thought: namely, that tragedy arises from the fatal flaw in some noble person or enterprise."

In the New York Times, here.

And for someone who has concluded that the founders were playing swine off against each other in writing the constitution in the way that they did, the absence of the discussion of Attic tragedy is doubly disappointing.

A hole in his education, and that of his Republican rabbi, perhaps. No one knows everything, not even Hitch. Tragedy at 11.

After QE2 Ends It Continues, But on a Far Less Grand Scale

At least for the time being.

Tom Petruno for the LA Times notes:

The Fed may be slow to consider more stimulus for another reason: It still will be reinvesting the proceeds from its total $2.6-trillion securities portfolio in more Treasuries. And the central bank seems certain to keep short-term interest rates near zero for the time being. So in Fed parlance, policymakers remain very "accommodative" for growth.

Readers are left to wonder just how much money is involved when the Fed reinvests "the proceeds from its total $2.6-trillion securities portfolio."

According to the Federal Reserve, here, the earnings of the Fed in 2010 break down as follows:

The Reserve Banks reported comprehensive income of $81.7 billion in the year ended December 31, 2010, up from the year prior.

Total comprehensive income included interest earnings of $44.8 billion on the federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgage-backed securities (MBS) holdings,

$26.4 billion on holdings of U.S. Treasury securities,

and $3.5 billion on holdings of government-sponsored enterprise debt securities.

In addition, total comprehensive income included interest income of $3.5 billion on loans to depository institutions and others.

The consolidated LLCs contributed to the Reserve Banks’ comprehensive income, with net earnings of $7.6 billion for the year ended December 31, 2010. ...

Net earnings from the [System Open Market Account] portfolio were approximately $76.2 billion; most of the earnings were attributable to interest income on Treasury securities and federal agency and GSE MBS.

So compared to the QE2 program of $600 billion in purchases, the Fed's intention to reinvest the proceeds of about $75 billion annually in like instruments represents a continuation of the program, but scaled back by roughly 85 percent.

Various scenarios for the unwinding of the Fed's massive balance sheet are discussed here.

The Problem with the Public Schools is that the Teachers are Illiterate

From The Wall Street Journal:

"People who come out of college with a degree in education and not a degree in a subject are severely handicapped in their capacity to teach effectively," Mr. McCullough argues. "Because they're often assigned to teach subjects about which they know little or nothing." The great teachers love what they're teaching, he says, and "you can't love something you don't know anymore than you can love someone you don't know."

Much more here.

Under Bair, FDIC Sought and Won Powers Nothing Short of Fascist

With Sheila Bair out after five years, the authors of this piece in Forbes don't exactly call a spade a spade, but their message is unmistakeable nonetheless:

The legislation [Dodd-Frank] granted the FDIC additional powers, including the extraordinary power to liquidate systemically important non-bank institutions.

One nation, under the banks and for the banks, and anyone else large enough to give us a campaign contribution or a job when we leave office.

Working it, as ever.

Joe Nocera Takes a Look at the Passage of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933

For The New York Times, here.

Glass-Steagall separated investment banking from commercial banking and created the FDIC to protect the latter.

Nocera fails to note how the abolition of Glass-Steagall in our time left the FDIC in place to protect the former, which leaves taxpayers on the hook for the speculative failures of the trading desks of the big banks.

He poo-poos the Republican charge in 1933 that it all amounted to socialism. He's right. It's fascism, and it has gotten a whole lot worse.

Jim Cramer Defends His October 2008 Sell Advice

Here was his advice on Monday, October 6, 2008 on The Today Show:

“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”

The market free-fall had already begun after September 19 when this index was still above 1200. Selling two weeks into this crash was like trying to catch a falling knife. The time to bank one's profits had been after a pull-back from the highs over 1500, at the 1400 or even the 1300 level, not after a "mere" 100 point pull-back from 1200 to 1100. By then the time for action had already passed, over 400 points off the highs on the S and P 500.

"I know I have been castigated for having told people to sell stocks to raise money for anything they might need for five years, a solid attempt by me to really warn people who were counting on stocks for retirement and college tuition when we were at Dow 11,000 and Dow 10,300.

The assumption at the time was that things were bad -- like now -- but that it was worth buying and holding and 'riding it out.'

I didn't think so. I thought it was better to sidestep it and then come back when the coast was clear . . .." (source)

He's now laying out what a worst case scenario going forward would look like this time around, apparently in order to be able to say "I told you so" if we have another crash.