Monday Morning News and Views

Good Morning Conflucians! Today is Patriots’ Day, a holiday in Massachusetts that commemorates the the initial Revolutionary War battles in Lexington and Concord. On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere

…was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren and instructed to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them. After being rowed across the Charles River to Charlestown by two associates, Paul Revere borrowed a horse from his friend Deacon John Larkin. While in Charlestown, he verified that the local “Sons of Liberty” committee had seen his pre-arranged signals. (Two lanterns had been hung briefly in the bell-tower of Christ Church in Boston, indicating that troops would row “by sea” across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than marching “by land” out Boston Neck. Revere had arranged for these signals the previous weekend, as he was afraid that he might be prevented from leaving Boston).

On the way to Lexington, Revere “alarmed” the country-side, stopping at each house, and arrived in Lexington about midnight. As he approached the house where Adams and Hancock were staying, a sentry asked that he not make so much noise. “Noise!” cried Revere, “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!”

On the morning of April 19, 1775, the “embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard ’round the world.”

At the Concord North Bridge, a small group of militia battled a force of British soldiers. At this point, the British commander decided to retreat back toward Lexington, as it became evident that more and more Minutemen were arriving from all of the local villages and farms.

During this retreat, the British kept to the road, while the American farmers fired at them from behind trees, walls and any obstacle they could find. When the British force returned to Lexington, they were met by a relief column. The combined British units then headed for Boston. The Minutemen continued to harass them the whole way.

By the end of the day, British casualties numbered 273, while the colonials suffered only 94, 18 of which fell during the initial clash at Lexington. The American Revolutionary War had begun.

Today in Boston, it’s also marathon day. This year, 26,776 runners will try to complete the harrowing 26 mile course. Unfortunately, some entrants have not been able to get here because of the volcanic ash that is preventing flights from Europe.

TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY

April 19, 2010 is also the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Murrah Building Memorial

…on April 19, 1995, when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck filled with explosives parked in front of the [Murrah] building.[1] McVeigh’s co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks, claiming 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6.[2] More than 680 people were injured.[3][4] The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius,[5] destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings.[6] The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.[7]

Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992), McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deaths at Waco.

Tonight on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow will play previously unheard audiotapes of Timothy McVeigh talking about his role in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He expresses no remorse, but admits his involvement in the crime.

Newsweek talked to Paul Heath, a psychologist who worked in the Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Office when the building was bombed. Heath had worked with many veterans who suffered from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and he thought Timothy McVeigh probably also had PTSD from his experiences in the first Gulf War. Heath still wonders why McVeigh came to his office shortly before the bombing–supposedly to apply for a job.

OTHER NEWS: VAMPIRE SQUID DOMINATES

The Goldman Sachs story is everywhere today. Paul Krugman’s column for today is titled “Looters in Loafers.”

We’ve known for some time that Goldman Sachs and other firms marketed mortgage-backed securities even as they sought to make profits by betting that such securities would plunge in value. This practice, however, while arguably reprehensible, wasn’t illegal. But now the S.E.C. is charging that Goldman created and marketed securities that were deliberately designed to fail, so that an important client could make money off that failure. That’s what I would call looting.

And Goldman isn’t the only financial firm accused of doing this. According to the Pulitzer-winning investigative journalism Web site ProPublica, several banks helped market designed-to-fail investments on behalf of the hedge fund Magnetar, which was betting on that failure.

At Huffpo, Vicky Ward reveals that “Senior Goldman Exec Is Married to Former Head of ACA.” ACA Capital Holdings Inc. is the now defunct bond insurer “at the center of” the SEC civil suit against Goldman Sachs. Ward wants to know why the obvious conflict of interest caused by two senior people at two firms doing business like this being married to each other is not included in the SEC case.

According to Business Week, the SEC suit will probably lead to a “wider probe” and “more regulation.” Let’s hope so!

And to top it all off, from Raw Story: Surprise: Goldman Sachs to pay out $5 billion more in bonuses for first three months of 2010

As if to put the icing on the cake, the investment bank Goldman Sachs is set to shell out another $5 billion in bonuses to employees.

What’s more, the bonuses are expected to cover the employees’ work for just the first three months of the year, according to the UK Sunday Times.

According to the report, bankers will receive remuneration of about $170,000 per person for the firm’s 32,500 employees. Some traders are set to receive millions.

Earlier this year, Goldman’s “junior” bankers were told they’d begin receiving salaries that were double their previous takes.

“It’s made me rethink everything,” a Goldman Sachs employee, “sipping champagne,” told the site. “I like the new structure even better. My monthly take home just went way up.”

What are you reading this morning? Please share your links in the comments, and have a marvelous Monday.

Sunday Late Night: What’s Happening?

We’ve had a couple of really serious discussions today. How about looking at the lighter side of politics for a bit? If you’d like to imbibe some liquid or chemical refreshment, please feel free. I had to quit all that stuff more than a quarter of a century ago myself. Now I’m just high on life! Actually, I’m a complete political junkie and internet addict, in case you hadn’t noticed.

So anyway, our Dear Leader is on another one of his trips, this time to Latin America for the “Summit of the Americas.” The Castro brothers are warming up to Mr. Obama, and Hugo Chavez seems to like him a lot too. Chavez gave Obama a book called Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galliano. The book quickly rocketed to second place on Amazon’s bestseller list and is now sold out. According to the BBC:

President Obama looked surprised when Mr Chavez got up from his seat, handed him the book and then shook his hand.

It was a Spanish-language paperback copy inscribed with the message: “For Obama, with affection”.

A little later, Mr Obama had this reaction: “Well I think it was a nice gesture to give me a book. I’m a reader.”

Fox News, in their usual unbiased “we report, you decide” manner, offers an entertaining story from the summit with the headline “Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe.” (H/T, Jangles)

President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba’s Communist government.

Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes. The speech was part of the opening ceremonies at the fifth Summit of the Americas here.

Actually, the U.S. has subjected Latin America to more than a century of nighmarish aggression, exploitation, and interference with sovereign governments, but I digress. Back to the Fox story:

Ortega denounced the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s new Communist government in Cuba in 1961, a history of US racism and what he called suffocating U.S. economic policies in the region.

In his 17-minute address to the summit, Obama departed from his prepared remarks to mildly rebuke Ortega.

“To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We’ve all heard these arguments before.”

Actually, the president misspoke on the sequence of events in Cuba. The invasion of CIA-trained rebels at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba occurred in April 1961. Obama was born August 4, 1961.

As Jangles pointed out in a comment on the previous thread, once again Dear Leader is confused about the timing of public events in relation to his birth. Perhaps if he didn’t have to reflexively make everything about himself, he wouldn’t repeatedly make these kinds of mistakes.

While I was perusing the Fox News website, I came across this hilarious story about Vice President Joe Biden: “Rove Calls Biden ‘Liar’ After VP Boasts of Scolding Bush.” Apparently the gaffe-tastic Mr. Biden told this story on CNN recently.

“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office,” Biden began, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.’”

Karl Rove is having none of it.

The exchange is purely “fictional,” said Rove, who was Bush’s top political adviser in the White House.

“It didn’t happen,” Rove, a FOX News contributor and former Bush adviser, told Megyn Kelly in an interview taped for “On The Record.” “It’s his imagination; it’s a made-up, fictional world.

“He ought to get out of it and get back to reality,” Rove added. “He’s making this up out of whole cloth.”

Rove also said few presidents would spend a long time with anybody in the Oval Office, particularly “with all due respect, a blowhard like Joe Biden.”

OK, I can’t stand Karl Rove, but that’s funny. In 2004, Biden told a similar story on Bill Maher’s show.

“When I speak to the president – and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff,” Biden said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” in April 2006. “And the president will say things to me, and I’ll literally turn to the president, say: ‘Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don’t know the facts?’ And he’ll look at me and he’ll say – my word – he’ll look at me and he’ll say: ‘My instincts.’ He said: ‘I have good instincts.’ I said: ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough.’”

Hmmm…I wonder if Biden would have the guts to talk to Dear Leader like that?

So what are you reading/watching/hearing tonight? If anyone is still around, that is.

I keep forgetting that only in Massachusetts is tomorrow a legal holiday. Patriot’s Day. It’s the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord–the beginning of the American Revolution. Nowadays we just have a marathon and an early baseball game.

Concord Minuteman Memorial

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.