Freaky Friday News

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Shitzen Giggles Department:

Republican lawmakers miss oath, vote on floor anyway

Two Republicans, including a member of the GOP leadership, voted on the House floor several times despite not having been sworn in, throwing the House into parliamentary turmoil Thursday — the same day the Constitution was read aloud on the floor.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) missed the mass swearing-in ceremony on the House floor Wednesday but proceeded to cast a series of votes. Sessions, appointed to the Rules Committee, participated in some committee activities, and that panel was forced, at the suggestion of House parliamentarians, to suspend consideration of a rule for the repeal of last year’s health care overhaul until the matter was resolved.

Some Democrats are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill over this but while embarrassing it’s hardly a constitutional crises.

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Greg Sargent kinda sorta almost gets it:

The problem with William Daley as new chief of staff

Now that Daley has been picked, there will be a fair amount of commentary to the effect that Obama has wisely received this message and is in the midst of a course correction. But here’s the thing: Daley is wrong. Obama didn’t govern from the “left.” And as it happens, he did govern from the “center left.”

This has all been argued already at length by others, but here goes. Obama’s approach to the crises he inherited were by any sane measure mostly moderate and reasonable. The stimulus was smaller and less ambitious than most liberals wanted. The health care plan he adopted jettisoned the most liberal elements and embraced solutions once championed by Republicans. The Wall Street reform bill was the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations in generations, but as observers across the spectrum have noted, it wasn’t fundamentally transformative. Obama is winding down the Iraq War, but he escalated in Afghanistan. And he has embraced some controversial Bush policies on civil liberties and terrorism. And so on.

Despite all this, Republicans and conservatives have uniformly condemned the Obama administration as in the grip of unrepentant leftism run amok. Yet what’s actually happened is that in so doing, Republicans have moved to the right, and we’ve all agreed to move what we arbitrarily call the “center” to the right in order to accomodate this.

The pick of Daley, however, will reinforce the conventional narrative that Obama has recognized the error of his ultraliberal ways and has picked a “seasoned Beltway hand” to steer the adminstration back to the center. Obviously this is only one of many things to consider about the Daley pick, and there may be many other good reasons to pick him that outweigh this problem.

But in interpreting the Daley pick, many commentators will be pointing to Daley’s interpretation of the first two years as if it’s, well, true. They’ll assert that Obama has internalized it. And maybe the President has internalized the Daley interpretation of his young presidency. But that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what actually happened.

Obama did not govern from the “center-left.” With the exception of a few bones tossed to the left he governed from the right. Now he’ll move even farther right.

Just remember, only 2 years and 13 days left before the end of the error.

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Or maybe not:

Get Used To It
It could be six years before liberals can accomplish anything.

[…]

There’s only one problem with this scenario: the time-frame. Politicos and pundits are used to thinking in two-year cycles, and it’s easy to convince oneself that, in 2012, Obama will be able to capitalize on an improved economy, favorable voter-turnout patterns, and a weak GOP presidential field in order to sweep into office with a renewed mandate. But that misses a big part of the picture. Even if Obama wins reelection by a comfortable margin, it’s most likely that the House will remain in Republican hands and Democrats will lose seats in, and perhaps control of, the Senate—and beyond that, Republicans will probably do fairly well in 2014. In other words, we could be looking not at two years of damage control, but six.

That’s why 2008 was so critical. It should have been a sea-change election, and instead we got sewage.

Oh well, que sera, sera. This too, shall pass. (like a kidney stone)

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Things that make you go WTF?

Why Are Taxpayers Subsidizing Facebook, and the Next Bubble?

Goldman Sachs is investing $450 million of its own money in Facebook, at a valuation that implies the social-networking company is now worth $50 billion. Goldman is also creating a fund that will offer its high-net-worth clients an opportunity to invest in Facebook.

On the face of it, this might seem just like what the financial sector is supposed to be doing – channeling money into productive enterprise. The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking at the way private investors will be involved, but there are more deeply unsettling factors at work here.

Remember that Goldman Sachs is now a bank-holding company – a status it received in September 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, in order to avoid collapse (see Andrew Ross Sorkin’s blow-by-blow account in “Too Big to Fail” for the details.)

This means that it has essentially unfettered access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window – that is, it can borrow against all kinds of assets in its portfolio, effectively ensuring it has government-provided liquidity at any time.

Any financial institution with such access to such government support is likely to take on excessive risk – this is the heart of what is commonly referred to as the problem of “moral hazard.” If you are fully insured against adverse events, you will be less careful.

I should have gone to banker school. They gamble (investing is gambling) with other people’s money. If they win, they keep the profits. If they lose, Uncle Sugar bails them out.

It’s the perfect scam.

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Do we have another brave and noble martyr?

Ex-CIA officer charged with leak to Times reporter

A former CIA officer has been indicted on charges of disclosing national security secrets after being accused of leaking classified information about Iran to a New York Times reporter.

Federal prosecutors charged Jeffrey Sterling with 10 counts related to improperly keeping and disclosing national security information.

The indictment did not say specifically what was leaked but, from the dates and other details, it was clear that the case centered on leaks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen for his 2006 book, “State of War.” The book revealed details about the CIA’s covert spy war with Iran.

Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was arrested Thursday and appeared in federal court in St. Louis later in the day. U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry I. Adelman told him he would be detained through the weekend because the government had declared him a danger to the community. There was no plea entered. Another detention hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Sterling served on the Iranian desk at the CIA and handled Iranian spies who had defected to the United States. In Chapter 9 of the book “A Rogue Operation,” Risen detailed how a CIA officer mistakenly revealed the CIA’s network in Iran in 2004.

Iranian security officials were able to “roll up” the CIA’s agent network in the country. Risen called it an “espionage disaster.”

Before anyone fits Sterling for a halo, there is more to the story:

Sterling worked for the CIA from 1993 to 2002. His final posting was in New York beginning in 2002. According to the indictment, Sterling left the CIA an embittered man.

Sterling, who is black, filed a complaint against the CIA in 2000, claiming racial discrimination and later sued the agency unsuccessfully. He also submitted his memoirs to the CIA to be published and was extremely unhappy with the review process.

The indictment said Sterling’s anger and resentment grew towards the CIA and claimed that he retaliated against the agency by attempting to cause the publication of classified information. The indictment said that government officials warned Risen, identified only as Author A, and his newspaper employer, that Sterling’s information could endanger a human asset’s life and that in May 2003 the newspaper agreed not to publish it.

The story is somewhat unclear. It mentions that Risen revealed a major CIA fuck-up in 2004, but Sterling left the agency in 2002 so it’s unclear how he could have had any knowledge of the incident.

Apparently whatever information Sterling is charged with leaking to Risen was never published.

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You didn’t really think I was gonna let you have an Assange-free Friday, did you?

Assange’s mental health

Instead, there seems to be something about Assange personally which sets people on edge and makes them dislike him intensely: his biggest fans are often those who have never met him or who have known him only for a very short amount of time.

That’s unfortunate, to say the least: it takes an issue which is messy to begin with and makes it a great deal messier. But at the same time, Assange has clearly been under an enormous deal of stress — and this is a man who once checked himself into hospital with depression after being charged with computer hacking in Australia. It’s easy to see how he wouldn’t have considered that to be an option in recent months.

My suspicion is that there’s something quite unstable and destructive about Assange’s current mental state and that there has been since before he was in Sweden. I hope his publishers have a lot of patience: getting his very expensive book into a publishable state could be a very arduous process indeed.

I’ve noticed that Julian seems to have stopped giving interviews. I’m guessing his lawyers told him to use his right to remain silent because every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it.

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He should have gone to Krispy Kreme:

Florida Professor Arrested for Having a “Suspicious” Bagel on a Plane

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.

That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

I used to have a girlfriend who made me bagel sandwiches for lunch. She had other bad habits too.
(I feel about bagels the same way Uppity Woman feels about Peeps)

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Just for laughs:

Tru TV’s 25 Dumbest Criminals of 2010: A Pictorial Salute

Tasha Lee Cantrell cracked open a beer in the back of a squad after her friend was popped for DUI. Noah Smith broke into a house, passed out naked, then fought with the cops after he stuffed a computer mouse up his ass. They’re the dumbest in mopes in America, courtesy of TruTV.

My personal favorite:

Cops confronted Carolee Bildsten after she allegedly left a restaurant without paying her bill. The woman allegedly defended herself with a “clear, rigid feminine pleasure device.”

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Today in History:

1999 Senate begins to try President Clinton on lying under oath and obstruction of justice in the Lewisnky case
1979 Vietnamese forces capture Phnom Penh from Khmer Rouge
1967 “Newlywed Game” premieres on ABC TV
1835 HMS Beagle anchors off Chonos Archipelago

Birthdays:

1977 Dustin Diamond
1964 Nicolas Cage
1958 Donna Rice
1957 Katie Couric
1946 Jann S Wenner
1912 Charles Addams

Deaths:

1990 Bronislau “Bronko” Nagurski
1990 Horace Stoneham
1943 Nikola Tesla
1536 Catherine of Aragon

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NFL playoffs start tomorrow. Opening today:

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