Good Morning!
Photos by: joanneleon.
Tunes
Dion - Abraham, Martin, & John
News & Opinion
The $13 Billion JPMorgan Settlement Is a Good Start—Now Someone Should Go to Jail
JPMorgan Chase, the star of mega-banks, is up against the wall at the Justice Department, trying to settle its myriad crimes for $13 billion. That’s real money, even for a trillion-dollar bank. So this is progress. After years of scandalous indifference, the Obama administration appears to have found its backbone.
Better late than never, grumpy citizens can say. But that doesn’t settle the matter. Four years ago, Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware crisply described the more fundamental problem posed by the wantonly reckless behemoths of Wall Street.
“People know that if they rob a bank they will go to jail,” Kaufman said. “Bankers should know that if they rob people they will go to jail too.” Can we hear an amen on that? Not yet. But the complaint Kaufman voiced repeatedly is now on the table. “At the end of the day,” the senator warned, “This is a test of whether we have one justice system in this country or two. If we do not treat a Wall Street firm that defrauded investors of millions of dollars the same way we treat someone who stole $500 from a cash register, then how can we expect our citizens to have any faith in the rule of law?” (See my piece from April 2011, “How Wall Street Crooks Get Out of Jail Free.”)
Human Rights Watch.
US: Reassess Targeted Killings in Yemen
United States targeted airstrikes against alleged terrorists in Yemen have killed civilians in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The strikes, often using armed drones, are creating a public backlash that undermines US efforts against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The 102-page report, “‘Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda’: The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen,”examines six US targeted killings in Yemen, one from 2009 and the rest from 2012-2013. Two of the attacks killed civilians indiscriminately in clear violation of the laws of war; the others may have targeted people who were not legitimate military objectives or caused disproportionate civilian deaths.
Saudis are freaking out. This can't be good. And turning down a seat on the UN Security Council is a big deal.
US-SAUDI IN TALKS
PARIS: US Secretary of State John Kerry sought yesterday to calm rising tensions with Saudi Arabia, which has spurned a UN Security Council seat in fury at inaction over the crisis in Syria.
Saudi Arabia rejected a coveted two-year term on the council on Friday in a rare display of anger over what it called "double standards" at the UN.
Its stance won praise from its GCC allies and Egypt.
[...]
No country has previously been elected to the council and then walked away.
And there's this.
Amnesty International warns that Saudi Arabia has ‘ratcheted up the repression’ and that human rights are getting worse
Amnesty International on Monday said Saudi Arabia had failed to act on UN recommendations and “ratcheted up the repression” since 2009, with the arbitrary detention and torture of activists.
The London-based watchdog’s statement was released ahead of a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Monday to discuss the oil-rich kingdom’s record, and comes after Riyadh rejected a seat on the UN Security Council, citing the international body’s “double standards” and inability to resolve regional conflicts.
“Saudi Arabia’s previous promises to the UN have been proven to be nothing but hot air,” said Amnesty’s MENA director Philip Luther, accusing the kingdom of relying “on its political and economic clout to deter the international community from criticising its dire human rights record.”
DSWright. The latest news via mcjoan is that the Rs won't cough up any tax revenue and that there will be no Grand Bargain but maybe a mini-bargain instead. I'm not counting on that. Any deal that includes cuts to Social Security and/or Medicare is no mini-bargain. Ask the country how "mini" that would be. And if "entitlement cuts" are off the table then why is Dick Durbin on Fox News talking about them? Plus there's that trial balloon that Ezra Klein floated about taking something else, like the immigration bill, instead of tax revenues.
Democrats Opening The Door On Cuts To Social Security
You would think after winning the shutdown and debt ceiling battle Democrats would press their advantage, instead they seem to be volunteering cuts to Social Security as a solution to a future budget deal. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin went on Fox News to promote a deal that would cut Social Security in exchange for tax increases.
[...]
And 20 years? We have record poverty, unemployment, and stagnant wages today. It’s time for the Democratic Party to prioritize and not open the negotiations by buying the Republican’s framing of the argument and offering cuts to historic promises. Especially without even offering a progressive alternative. Otherwise what was the point of winning the budget showdown – to reopen a conservative government?
Here is that clip of Dick Durbin from Sunday. The latest
Why Democrats Might Cave On Social Security Cuts
Sam Seder last week talking about the infamous trolling event that was the Fix the Debt Q&A session. People are still talking about this.
Billionaire Funded Astroturf Austerity Group Gets Destroyed on Twitter
Tomgram: William Astore, War! What Is It Good For? Profit and Power
The Business of America Is War
Disaster Capitalism on the Battlefield and in the Boardroom
There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue. Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century “scramble for Africa,” but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.
In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world. “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.
Ramping up the noise about restoring the sequester cuts to DoD. The volume will just get louder and louder. I think it's telling that there has been so relatively little fuss up until now, actually, which indicates to me that DoD and the defense contractors aren't all that worried about having their budgets restored. But maybe they're a bit worried now. And seriously, complaining about a three-year old budget? The military budget has doubled since Bush took office and Obama has done nothing to rein it in. We're fighting about 80, 80 covert wars, in addition to the covert ones. The whining here is surreal. Money is gushing into military, intel and Homeland Security and the fire hose has been gushing for more than a decade while everything else is crumbling and the people paying for all of this sacrifice. Booze Allen alone, one contractor, took in $25 billion for one year, most of it from the government. This is sickening.
U.S. Army Says Only Two Brigades Fully Trained Amid Budget Cuts, Fiscal Uncertainty
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Two years of budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty have forced the U.S. Army to greatly curtail spending on training, leaving it with only two combat brigades fully prepared to go to war, the Army's top officer said on Monday.
"Right now, we have in the Army two brigades that are trained. That's it. Two," General Ray Odierno told a news conference at the annual conference of the Association of the U.S. Army.
[...]
"You can't run the most important military on the face of the Earth locked into three-year-old budgets," McHugh said.
Hedges.
Let’s Get This Class War Started
The public face of the oligarchic class bears little resemblance to the private face. I, like Fitzgerald, was thrown into the embrace of the upper crust when young. I was shipped off as a scholarship student at the age of 10 to an exclusive New England boarding school. I had classmates whose fathers—fathers they rarely saw—arrived at the school in their limousines accompanied by personal photographers (and at times their mistresses), so the press could be fed images of rich and famous men playing the role of good fathers. I spent time in the homes of the ultra-rich and powerful, watching my classmates, who were children, callously order around men and women who worked as their chauffeurs, cooks, nannies and servants. When the sons and daughters of the rich get into serious trouble there are always lawyers, publicists and political personages to protect them—George W. Bush’s life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. The rich have a snobbish disdain for the poor—despite well-publicized acts of philanthropy—and the middle class. These lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances that have to be endured, at times placated and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged. It was a deeply unpleasant experience. But it exposed me to their insatiable selfishness and hedonism. I learned, as a boy, who were my enemies.
The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Fitzgerald wrote of the wealthy couple at the center of Gatsby’s life. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
I don't quite get "The Reflecktors" thing, but Arcade Fire was on Colbert last night as The Reflektors and I have to agree with a lot of the people on Twitter who said that they "killed it". Thoroughly enjoyable, especially after seeing Jon Stewart's interview with... Alan Greenspan! Gah. But leave it to Colbert to save the day with this performance. And they apparently did another song after hours and Colbert posted it on the Colbert Nation web site.
The song they played on the show is "Normal Person" and for whatever reason, there is no separate segment video available right now. Here's the link to the full episode. It's at the end and you have to sit through a lot of ads to get to it. I think it's worth it but you might want to wait to see if they put it into a separate clip. So I've included a link to the full episode, a different, live version of "Normal Person" from YouTube embedded below, and the bonus song embedded below, for your listening (and watching) pleasure.
I have autoplay set to "false" so I hope it doesn't autoplay anyway.
Arcade Fire as The Reflecktors on the Colbert Report
Action
October 26th, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
A Rally Against Mass Surveillance
Right now the NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications, and they’re operating without any meaningful oversight. Since the Snowden leaks started, more than 571,000 people from all walks of life have signed the StopWatching.us petition telling the U.S. Congress that we want them to rein in the NSA.
On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US Patriot Act, we're taking the next step and holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing the half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us -- and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
12pm Eastern, Saturday October 26th
Gather at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station, then march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool
|
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues
!?
More Tunes
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence - Madison Square Garden