The OpEd Heard Around the World

President Barack Obama penned an OpEd which ran in the Los Angeles Times.

We are living through a time of global economic challenges that cannot be met by half-measures or the isolated efforts of any nation.
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No one can deny the urgency of action. A crisis in credit and confidence has swept across borders, with consequences for every corner of the world. For the first time in a generation, the global economy is contracting and trade is shrinking. Trillions of dollars have been lost, banks have stopped lending and tens of millions around the globe will lose their jobs. The prosperity of every nation has been endangered, along with the stability of governments and the survival of people in the most vulnerable parts of the world.
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We have learned that the success of the American economy is inextricably linked to the global economy.
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My message is clear: The United States is ready to lead, and we call on our partners to join us with a sense of urgency and common purpose.
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Through our example, the United States can promote a global recovery and build confidence around the world; and if the London summit helps galvanize collective action, we can forge a secure recovery, and future crises can be averted.
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We must put an end to the reckless speculation and spending beyond our means; to the bad credit, over-leveraged banks and absence of oversight that condemns us to bubbles that inevitably bust. Only coordinated international action can prevent the irresponsible risk-taking that caused this crisis. That is why I am committed to seizing this opportunity to advance comprehensive reforms of our regulatory and supervisory framework.
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All of our financial institutions — on Wall Street and around the globe — need strong oversight and common- sense rules. All markets should have standards for stability and a mechanism for disclosure. A strong framework of capital requirements should protect against future crises
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I know that America bears its share of responsibility for the mess that we all face. But I also know that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.

What makes this so interesting is that this OpEd was published in more than 30 papers around the globe (h/t” AmericaBlog).

Tuesday Open Thread

Bobby Jindal just got his ash handed to him by Mt Redoubt, in Alaska.

In February, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) decried the presence of expanded funding for “something called ‘volcano monitoring’ ” in President Obama’s stimulus package, turning the geologic program into a flash point for fiscal conservatives and raising the ire of scientists.

Yesterday, policymakers got a chance to reemphasize the importance of the monitoring program after Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupted overnight, sending five explosive bursts of ash and steam as far as nine miles into the air and shutting down many flights at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

“This is an indicator and proof of the importance of earth science to the United States of America and to the Department of the Interior and the” U.S. Geological Survey, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said during a telephone briefing. “Through the work of the USGS and being able to monitor what was happening with Volcano Redoubt, we were able to actually forecast this event . . . to prevent the endangerment of people and places that would otherwise have occurred.”

I wonder if Sarah Palin can see that from her front porch.

UPDATE

Astute observer TerryHusseinBinTurtle notes that the photo above is from 1990, so it doesn’t count. Slideshow from the most recent series of eruptions is here, but there is nothing as spectacular (yet) as the 1990 photo.

Nike..The King of Social Injustice..Sweatshops

Michael Capitolo, an 8th grader, made this video about Nike and their sweatshops.

Behind the Swoosh, is by Jim Ready, a 10-year veteran in the struggle for worker rights.  This is absolutely heartbreaking.  Once you watch this, I don’t know how anyone could buy another pair of Nikes.

Gas to hit new highs – affect global economy

No, that’s not today’s headlines. But look back:

Gasoline prices going up, up, up
Experts predict $3 per gallon soon — grim outlook through 2006
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, April 8, 2005

“This run-up, however, hasn’t produced a recession, at least not yet.

SOARING OIL PRICES COULD TRIGGER WORLD RECESSION, WARNS JAPAN ENERGY CHIEF – STRONG MESSAGE FROM GROUP OF EIGHT NEEDED IN JULY
8 June 2008

Japan’s energy chief launched a meeting of ministers from the world’s top industrialized nations Sunday by warning that soaring oil prices could trigger a global recession if they’re not checked. …
“If left unaddressed, it may well cause a recession in the global economy.”

Surging oil prices could trigger a global recession
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 09/06/2008
Reporter: Phillip Lasker

There are now growing concerns that rising oil prices will drive the global economy into recession.

IEA warns high oil prices could trigger global recession
22 Sep 2008

The world economy faces a recession if the price of oil stays above $90 a barrel, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned. The price of oil crept up again today, reaching $95, following two days of declines caused by the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and slumping stock markets. Fears of a deep recession had pushed the price below $100 a barrel for the first time in six months.

Finally, an incredibly prescient report from 3 years ago:

I Love Naming Contests

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (or NAMBLA NASA), recently held a contest to choose the name of a new section of the space station.

NASA is deciding on a name for the International Space Station’s Node 3 – a connecting module and its cupola – before the two segments travel to space and are installed on the orbiting laboratory. The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station, and follow in the tradition set by Node 1- Unity- and Node 2- Harmony.

They offered four choices

Eliot Spitzer: Regulatory System Was Structurally Flawed

Question:  Where do you see the flaw having been?

Eliot Spitzer said ” the Regulatory system was structurally flawed, but that is not why this happen.  After the last round of scandals such as Enron, Tyco and we passed Sarbanes-Oxley, ah ha, we have solved the problem.  Now we have another set of scandals.  There are enough laws and regulations on the books for smart, aggressive regulators and prosecutors to make all the cases, what was missing was judgement.  You can’t legislate judgement.   You can’t regulate judgement.  Either the people who are regulators will walk into a bank and say your leverage is too great.  We are going to take actions to pull it back.”

Introducing Financial Media Matters

It’s good to know that the folks from Media Matters have now launched a new site: Financial Media Matters.  Hopefully, this site will bring light to the lies that are told not just on CNBC, although it gets the most light, of late, especially since Jim Cramer’s brutal slap-down by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, but across the financial talking heads.  If anything is sorely needed right now is some honesty in reporting financial news.

This is one to add to your Favorites.  It is bound to be a keeper.

If you missed the urban legend on Dodd getting a “sweetheart” deal from Countrywide here it is.  This is a good read.

And if you are looking for some good news in the whole financial meltdown, then wait no longer:  Madoff bilked millions from the neoconservative “think tank” Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith work for.

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If the shirt fits…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

The Patience of Job…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jack Ohman, Portland Oregonian

Obama’s “Katrina moment”

by Frank Rich (NY Times columnist)

Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?
Published: March 21, 2009

A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”

Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.

Otherwise it never would have used Lawrence Summers, the chief economic adviser, as a messenger just as the A.I.G. rage was reaching a full boil last weekend. Summers is so tone-deaf that he makes Geithner seem like Bobby Kennedy.

Read this entire post…

Paul Krugman had a piece out yesterday morning as well:

The Populist

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

President Obama fires back at Cheney

President Obama was on 60 Minutes last night saying that he “fundamentally disagreed” with Dick Cheney’s assertion that the new terrorism policies were putting the country at risk.

Partial transcript:

OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can’t reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don’t torture, with our national security interests. I think he’s drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don’t bear him out. I think he is… that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many… how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment, which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.

KROFT: Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo.

Monday Open Thread

Boy, a hot frothy cup of coffee sounds good about right now…

“I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.”  ~Flash Rosenberg

It’s Monday morning and this is the place to talk about whatever you like!

“Don’t miss” reading for this morning over your coffee:
The Real Criminals are Neither Lynndie England nor the AIG Traders by Thom Hartmann

The Big Takeover

Rolling Stone, by Matt Taibbi

It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream.

It’s no accident.  Wall Street crashed this economy because they could, and now they’re looting the taxpayers of this country for generations to come.

Ronald Reagan started the ball rolling in the 80s when he declared that regulation was BAD.  Why did we buy into that?  Did the average Joe, who was hollering “free market!!!” really think any of the “little people” would get on that gravy boat?  Idiots.

Then along came George W. Bush and his merry band of power-hungry, bloodthirsty money-grubbers to deliver the coup de grace to the American economy, the world economy, and generations of taxpayers.  Oversight?  What the hell is that?  Three to the noggin — bang bang splat!!

Taibbi’s article is a long one, but read the whole thing.  It will make you fucking sick, but you’ll have a clearer idea of what the hell happened at AIG.

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President Obama’s budget: Four principles

Truthout

The budget fight is going to be an ugly one.  The Republicans will fall on their fainting couches, declaring they will NEVER vote for such an abominable budget.  The Blue Dogs and ConservaDems will be ambivalent on their fences, while lapping up money for their districts.

Meanwhile, President Obama is getting things done.  These are the four principles he expects to be met with this budget:

First, it must reduce our dependence on dangerous foreign oil and finally put this nation on a path to a clean, renewable energy future. There is no longer a doubt that the jobs and industries of tomorrow will involve harnessing renewable sources of energy. The only question is whether America will lead that future. I believe we can and we will, and that’s why we’ve proposed a budget that makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy, while investing in technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and fuel-efficient cars and trucks that can be built right here in America.

Second, this budget must renew our nation’s commitment to a complete and competitive education for every American child. In this global economy, we know the countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, and we know that our students are already falling behind their counterparts in places like China. That is why we have proposed investments in childhood education programs that work; in high standards and accountability for our schools; in rewards for teachers who succeed; and in affordable college education for anyone who wants to go. It is time to demand excellence from our schools so that we can finally prepare our workforce for a 21st century economy.

Boot straps, little people — boot straps!!

Created for TheZoo by Paul Jamiol
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

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The Garden of Eatin’: A Short History of America’s Garden

Washington’s Not-So-Secret Garden

Michelle Obama announced that she would be planting a vegetable garden on the South Lawn, and digging began in earnest on Friday.

This is the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden during World War II. Though there are 18 acres to play with, no White House resident since has had the urge to dig into the dirt and, with a little hard work, enjoy the delight of harvesting peas and tomatoes off the vine.

Why are the Obamas the first in more than 60 years to put in a vegetable garden?

Read on to see what others had to say about this…

Sunday open thread

Coffee cake anyone...?

Good morning, everyone!

Is anyone around today?  What’s on your mind?

President Obama’s Weekly Address

The President’s weekly youtube address.

Portia De Rossi Apologizes For Being Selfish and Marrying Ellen

She apologizes to Elaine Sutler, who suffered debilitating paper cuts from holding up her message of choice.  To Amanda who came down with pneumonia from standing in the rain protesting my marriage.  To George Binder whose mind was so tragically blown by the idea of two gays getting married that he has to spend the rest of his life wearing this hat.

Look very closely at the dog that is wrapped in the Prop 8 sign, by his butt is a McCain/Palin Sticker =)

Eating their own…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Just think…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Perception is Everything

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

Dallas School: South Oak Accused Of Staging Cage Fights

The Dallas school system was rocked by allegations Thursday that staff members at an inner-city high school made students settle their differences by fighting bare-knuckle brawls inside a steel cage.

The principal and other employees at South Oak Cliff High knew about the cage fights and allowed the practice to continue, according to a 2008 report by school system investigators.

Bill Maher: New Rules March 20, 2009

Keith Olbermann and Senator Bernie Sanders were guests.

For more of this episode, go here.