Go, Saints –delightful win
  –This was a lovely Super Bowl to watch, or partly watch. Go Saints–a nice bright moment for New Orleans, and the city deserves it. Streets and cable channels celebrating, and no wonder. Of course it’s always fun to watch warm weather (from the perspective of stuck-in frigid DC) and a good game. This one had some extra pluses.

Tracy Porter speaks becomingly . . .

As everybody knows, the game also included one of the brightest interceptions lately–one of the best i.e. most memorable for me individually since a Rice alum intercepted for an 11-yard touchdown run for the Redskins against the Dallas Cowboys. Fun all the way around, though possibly less so if you’re watching in a Dallas sports bar.

Those Saints do usually know how to find a warm place. I actually met one of them–years ago–in a Little Rock bar where three gentlemen introduced themselves modestly as Tom, Jack, Tom and taught me (temporarily) how to play bourre. Only after the game started did I notice that one of the guys named Tom held his cards, un-self-consciously, in a hand with the fingers sheared off at an angle. Apparently that same youthful accident took off parts of the toes on one foot–and he became a really good kicker.



Speaking of New Orleans, the city also elected to return to the Landrieu family line for its new mayor, Mitch Landrieu. Another sign that that telephone stunt in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office by James O’Keefe and the other young people, costumed, that he used for the op may not have gone over too well in the court of public opinion. Wonder whether Landrieu’s mayoral election is being mentioned by the tea partiers.

Another late Friday afternoon drop: Goldman CEO gets $9M bonus
  –Another news drop postponed to a late Friday afternoon, another postponed announcement by Goldman Sachs. Goldman, if you recall, previously did its bit for Scott Brown by delaying its annual bonus announcement–scheduled for the day before the Massachusetts special election–until a couple of days after the election to fill the seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy.



Goldman London office

A further delayed release dribbled out late yesterday–the amount of the 2009 bonus for Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. This item is not hitting the news cycle quietly, however; already there are hundreds of carries on it. The New York Times among numerous others also notes that the business press, especially Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, is emphasizing the minuses in the Blankfein bonus. True enough, the $9 million for 2009 does represent a decline from Blankfein’s peak bonus of $68 million. Also to be noted, as hundreds of publications have, is that Goldman Sachs had a record-breaking profitable year in 2009.

These people are not subtle.

Some more good news on the financial horizon
  –Following yesterday’s post. With Republicans and tea partiers becoming ever more aggressively irrational–radio hostess with the leastest Heidi Harris said yesterday on the Ed Schultz Show “I don’t know,” when Ed asked her whether President Obama was born in the United States–it is essential that the public be reminded when rational moves are made in the realm of finance. One positive move previously mentioned–New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America and its former head.

Another example–

Now that the GOP has come out more-or-less overtly with a proposition to privatize Social Security, Democrats in Congress are going to compel a vote on it. The privatizing proposal, which is already drawing some reportage, will be foregrounded by the Democrats’ move, which also will force congressional Republicans to vote up or down on an unsavory proposal from one of their own.

Congressmembers John Larson (D-Conn.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) introduced the resolution for the vote.

From the resolution:

“Social Security has provided the foundation for Americans

NY AG Cuomo sues Bank of America, Shelby tries to hold up ALL Obama nominations
  –There are bright spots on the financial horizon, aside from the somewhat less dismal unemployment figures released today. This week in the news: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a civil complaint against Bank of America and its former chief executive. The AARP, numbering several million members, is among those calling for a consumer protection agency at the federal level.

From the CEO’s publicly released statement:

“While economic statistics point towards a rebound, Americans still
need relief. We are encouraged by the President

Not ready for their close-up: Fotosearch probable source for Landrieu office caper costumes?
  (–Why didn’t they just go dressed as Saints fans? They would have had no trouble getting entree . . .)

Image:  Fotosearch # x17592140

Caption:  Telephone repairman using telephone, close-up

Type:  Stock photography

Description:  Guy on handset, blue work shirt over white shirt or stock, white hard hat, work gloves


Google the image and see it.


btw Did the two young men posing as telephone repairman–Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel–have work gloves? Nothing in the FBI affidavit about that.

Nope and Noper: House Repubs, Senate Repubs
 —Haley Barbour: Dems “trying to ram health care down our throats”

Not much heat or light from the Sunday talk shows today, with prominent Republicans understandably subdued after the president’s very persuasive appearance at the GOP retreat in Baltimore Friday. Video links of Obama’s speech and Q&A with GOP House members are posted here among other places. The exchanges went heavily in Obama’s favor.

It’s a good thing the Internet makes some of the Obama-GOP Q&A available, often via YouTube, because very little of the true flavor of the event came through reporting or commentary on this morning’s talk programs. No surprise there. When I clicked on the TV, I had two questions for myself (“Self . . .“). One was whether any of the prominent journalists who monopolize the Sunday morning airwaves would do justice to the president’s command of issues in that conference of House Republicans. The other was whether the bizarre incident when far-right favorite James O’Keefe entered one of La. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s offices with some of his post-frat brethren, costumed as telephone repairmen, would be mentioned. Predictably, the answer to both questions is no.

One of the biggest weapons in the corporate media arsenal against participatory democracy is simply to flatten. We are seeing it now. The words “bipartisan” and “bipartisanship” are all over the place in big media outlets–and btw I do not recall seeing that emphasis in the media during the Bush years. The effect of calling for “bipartisanship” without context, of course, is to conceal any qualitative difference between policies on one side and policies on the other.

Calling for ‘bipartisanship’ without context in political commentary is also false political reporting. There was never any hope for Republican bipartisanship with Obama, and to pretend otherwise is journalistic fraud. An easy example is the proposal to set up a federal commission on the budget deficit. Previously, Republicans called for such a commission, co-sponsored legislation to bring it about, and vilified the White House and congressional Democrats for not setting one up. Now that President Obama urges a deficit commission, Republicans are opposing it–even Repubs who were previously co-sponsors. This is simply Lucy and the football. There is no hope for genuinely bipartisan action with people like Mitch McConnell or John Boehner. To pretend that there is, that somehow the president simply hurt GOP feelings so much, that they had held their little tiny pink hands out to shake and he just ran over them with his bike, when they were doing all they could to rein in insurance company abuses, to extend unemployment benefits, to impose transparency and fairness on the banks and the financial sector, etc., is fraudulent.

The word “bipartisanship,” in this kind of journalistic flattening meant to imply that both major parties are equally at fault, that the picture is somehow ‘fifty-fifty’–‘a plague on both their houses’ is another favorite flattening metaphor–simply hammers the administration and the Dems, any time they move in the public interest.

The word “jobs” is being used the same way. Like a nonexistent ‘bipartisanship,’ seizing on ‘jobs’ to create an illusory hope or demand that the White House magically create them is simply a weapon to use against the Democrats and against Obama. Haley Barbour’s appearance today on Face the Nation was a perfect example. Barbour’s GOP talking point is that the White House concentrated on health care instead of concentrating on “jobs.” Barbour put it unfortunately, claiming in a Freudian slip that the White House was “trying to ram health care down our throats.”

A couple of obvious points here: One, a lot of people, in fact the overwhelming majority, would prefer to get “health care” when needed. Two, the GOP does not exactly have a track record of supporting jobs programs. Since at least the Great Depression, Republicans have responded to jobs programs by screaming either ‘Communism’ or ‘higher taxes,’ and they’re doing the same thing today.

Btw Barbour did not mention the word “insurance,” as in the phrase “health insurance reforms.” And that’s in spite of the fact that Barbour should know something about insurance abuses, having lost a house in Hurricane Katrina.

Barbour and the rest of the top-dollar GOP, of course, are sticking to the talking point that the way to create ‘jobs’ is ‘cutting taxes.’ For them, also of course, that means cutting taxes for the rich. If they were halfway sincere about budget deficits, they would favor raising taxes on the rich, and on corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas, but that’s a different branch of the topic.

That one, Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm handled well. Also on Face the Nation, Granholm may have fallen into the ‘jobs’ trap, but at least she salvaged something by opposing ‘jobs’ to ‘the deficit.’ Granholm pointed out accurately that most ‘angry’ voters are much more concerned about unemployment than about the budget deficit.



Any halfway smart Democrat ought to learn from the vocabulary not being used by the GOP. What are they not talking about–McConnell, Boehner, Barbour, McCain and the rest? –They are not talking about insurance abuses. They are not talking about the cost of the Iraq war in regard to budget deficits. They are not talking about contractor rip-offs. They are not mentioning, publicly, that their presidential candidate supported the Wall Street bailout.

In spite of occasional nods to ‘infrastructure,’ they are not mentioning rape crisis centers being
cut, or libraries being closed, let alone teachers and police losing jobs. They are certainly not mentioning thousands of police, firefighters, teachers and others able to stay on the job via state funding through the stimulus program. They also have little to say about foreclosures, or about long hospital stays that drive people bankrupt–they tend not to mention bankruptcies much, either–or about domestic violence. It looks as though they are even going to oppose Obama’s excellent plan to fund student loans directly without having the taxpayers subsidize middleman private lenders imposing loan-shark interest rates. They didn’t mention that one, either.

These omissions map perfectly on to the omissions by large media outlets.

By the same token, predictably there was no mention today about James O’Keefe and his team–the young guys who, if you recall, almost gained access to the telephone-wiring closet in one of Landrieu’s offices under false pretenses (they were turned away by a suspicious employee at the last minute) and are now claiming that they were only there to videotape.

Stan Dai

More on that tomorrow. Suffice it to say for now that some media outlets would be almost as embarrassed as the GOP, by reminders of past Nixonian and Rovian collegiate-style dirty tricks in politics. The pattern would be familiar to any citizen with some civic literacy, but civic literacy is not a desideratum in all political circles, or in all media circles.

On a brighter note–CNN continues its excellent coverage of the disaster in Haiti. Things may be looking up, with tons of food on the way to the suffering people there.

Good State of the Union address; self-serving ‘analysis’ the morning after

Two days after the Massachusetts special election for the senate was safely
over, Goldman Sachs announced its fourth quarter 2009 earnings and projected
bonuses. The huge bank, a top recipient of Bush