Published on Sunday, February 21, 2010 by Rolling Stone

This Matt Taibbi guy from Rolling Stone magazine doesn’t hold anything back. He calls it like it is. It is well researched. The language is descriptive. It is long and in-depth. It will make you angry. It will make you frustrated. It will make you want to turn the Tea Partiers loose on the crooks running Wall Street. If the government won’t clean them out maybe the Tea Partiers will. Elliott Spitzer for President!!! He’ll get the bastards!

Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

by Matt Taibbi

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses – meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because Continue reading…

(This is the response made by Planned Parenthood regarding the passing of HB12 that makes women criminally liable for intention miscarriages. The response shows the votes of all senators and representatives.  Only 12 representatives and four senators voted against it.)
Earlier today, the Senate passed Representative Carl Wimmer’s
House Bill 12, which will make women criminally liable for
intentional miscarriages. During the floor debate, both Senator
Margaret Dayton and Representative Wimmer refused to support an
amendment that would provide protections for victims of domestic
violence! The bill is now going to the House of Representatives
for the signature of the Speaker and will then move to the
Governor for his signature.

Over the last few months, we worked with the ACLU of Utah to
amend the legislation to protect women who seek legal abortion
services. Even with these amendments, however, we are extremely
disappointed that Utah’s legislators would opt to punish women
instead of providing practical options to prevent Continue reading…

Washington » Justice Department lawyers showed “poor judgment” but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Friday found.

The decision closes the book on one of the major lingering investigations into the counterterrorism policies of George W. Bush’s administration. President Barack Obama campaigned on abolishing the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding and other tactics that he called torture, but he left open the question of whether anyone would be punished for authorizing such methods.

With this landmark ruling the Obama Justice Department will become known as the ‘No Justice Department.’

All the crimes that have been committed by the Bush Administration during the Iraq War, and there are plenty, have been buried. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Bush lawyers all go scot free.

America should hang its head in shame. It is not the America of truth and justice that we were taught as kids.That was all bravado. All an illusion. At Nuremburg we weren’t so great—just powerful.

Obama’s message of hope has become a message of Nope. A devastating disappointment.

An initial review by the Justice Department’s internal affairs unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department’s top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed.

“This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda,” Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released Friday.

Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos “flawed” and said that, at every opportunity, they gave interrogators as much leeway as possible under U.S. torture laws. But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct.

Lawyer, BYU alum

Jay Bybee, now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco, earned an undergraduate and law degrees from Brigham Young University. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chile.

From the webpage, UnknownNews.org. Democracy depends on an informed public discourse, and it’s imperiled when lies and misinformation are multiplied by mass media, or by bloggers or panicked emailers. Please — our nation and our world face very serious, very real problems, and you can help, by being a little skeptical about all the phony, non-existent problems that are only distractions. —H&HH

This seemingly unending list of lies vomited up by pathological liars is so long you won’t have the patience to read it all. Sadly, this is what the Republican Party has come to. A ridiculousness that should result in an almost complete abandonment by anyone with a brain. Oh, the awful embarrassment of being associated with this stuff.

Latest update: Feb. 14, 2010

No, it’s not true that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. This video does a good job tracking down the single wingnut who made that bogus claim, which has been repeated ceaselessly by climate change deniers ever since.  #

No, Republicans are just lying when they claim that prosecuting terrorists in ordinary American courtrooms is something unusual or dangerous. There’s nothing outrageous or even out of the ordinry about how the Obama administration is prosecuting the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  #

No, contrary to conservatives’ claims, big snowstorms don’t disprove global climate change. A snowstorm doesn’t mean science is a fraud. As explained briefly, we’re going to see more snow, not less, because more precipitation — including heavy snowstorms — is a sign of global warming, as atmospheric moisture levels have increased with warmer temperatures, meaning more storms with heavy snow or rain.  #

No, it’s not true that Sen Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) has proposed legislation the would establish universal voter registration, including votes for ex-felons and welfare recipients and oh my!
It sounds like a great idea to me. I believe people should be encouraged to vote and voting should be as easy as is practically possible — but for their own reasons, other people like to have a few hurdles in the way so that only people who bother to jump those hurdles get to vote. You could make reasonable arguments for the latter notion, and maybe that’s a conversation we should have.
But instead of making those reasonable arguments, right-wingers like John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are simply lying, because Senator Frank has made no such proposal. There’s no universal voter registration legislation to oppose. When you hear or read about this proposal from Senator Frank, you’re hearing or reading a lie.  #

No, the widespread right-wing meme that the underwear bomber quit talking as soon as he was read his Miranda rights is bull.  #

No, it’s not true, despite columnist George Will’s claim, that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would “abolish workers’ rights to secret ballots”. It’s a right-wing talking point, but it’s no more true today than the last time it was debunked on this page. It’s untrue every time you hear it, which sure is often.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama used a teleprompter to address a class of sixth-graders at an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia.  #

No, despite Investor’s Business Daily’s hokum, the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t cause Continue reading…

by Noam Level

Association Press

Washington » As the nation struggled last year with rising health care costs and a recession, the five largest health insurance companies racked up combined profits of $12.2 billion — up 56 percent over 2008, according to a new report by liberal health care activists.

Based on company financial reports for 2009 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the report said insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group, Cigna Corp., Aetna and Humana Inc. covered 2.7 million fewer people than they did the year before.

It is not good news to see that the top five health insurance companies in the nation had higher profits in 2009 with fewer customers and more premium revenue being spent on salaries and administration.

Insurance companies are doing little to drive down the cost of medicine. They are declining coverage and increasing premiums and the cost of medicine continues to escalate.

Companies are abandoning coverage of their employees and this will increase the bad debts incurred by hospitals for giving required emergency care. Hospital emergency rooms will not be able to handle the increased number of uninsured people who have no alternative but to suffer until emergency care is their only option.

Insurance companies are leaving the high risk risk customers for the government, hospitals, and doctors to take care of. If we don’t get a nationalized health insurance program we will have people dying on the streets like other Third World countries—-which we will become without facing the health care issues.

Republicans who just say ‘no’ are the ‘death panels’ they fear from the government.

The report Thursday also said three of the five insurers cut the proportion of premiums they spent on their customers’ medical care, committing relatively more to salaries, administrative expenses and profits.

Prepared by Heath Care for America Now, a coalition of liberal advocacy groups and labor unions, the report was aimed at bolstering the drive by Continue reading…

By Ami Joi O’Donoghue

The Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — An opinion issued by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said electronic signatures collected in the state initiative process are invalid under state law and should not be counted toward satisfying signature requirements.

This ruling was totally expected. It will only increase support for the ethics and fair boundaries initiatives. What was not expected was how early the ruling came in the process. It was expected that it would be delayed until the last minute so as to reduce the time for initiative backers to challenge the matter in court.

The decision gives the initiatives an energy boost and draws even greater attention to the need for these initiatives.

The two initiative groups are all prepared for legal action and they feel very confident about their position. In the meantime the drive for 95,000 signatures remains in full gear, including both paper and electronic. Full steam ahead! We are going to make serving in the legislature a true public service instead of a front for a con game.

Governor Herbert has become the poster boy of the Ethics Initiative, having received a $10,000 payoff from a coal company to fast track a permit, and a $50,000 payment from one of the state’s main building contractors. People are looking for a place to sign the petition, and if the court approves online signatures it wouldn’t be a surprise if more than 300,000 sign it.

The decision, released from Lt. Gov. Greg Bell’s office Wednesday, is a setback to a citizen group’s efforts to get a government-ethics and reform initiative before voters this fall.

The Peoples Right Group invited registered voters to go to a Web site, www.I-Sign.us, and sign two petitions it has on government ethics.

At the time of the announcement in January, state elections manager Mark Thomas said he was doubtful the electronic signatures would hold up under legal scrutiny because the current initiative petition law is “paper based.”

That doubt was solidified in Shurtleff’s opinion, which said the law as it stands does not “contemplate or allow for the use of electronic signatures and the statutes concerning the use of electronic signatures do not require they be accepted in the initiative process.”Shurtleff goes Continue reading…