The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Make the pie higher

Josh Marshall extends John Thune's $1 trillion stack just a tad higher:

[W]hat we've done here is do an apples to apples comparison of current unemployment numbers to the stimulus spending number using the Thune Stacking Formula as a basis of comparison. Here we have dollars stacked on top of each other versus current number of unemployed Americans stacked on top of each other.

Good thing the Republican Party has owned up to the last election. I'd hate to think they were a bunch of bitter, ignorant twits.

And another thing: Why doesn't Norm go home? He lost. Finally.

DC buried under snow, too

But DC's snow is coming from the right, not above. Exhibit: the inability of any Republicans to speak honestly about the President's proposed stimulus plan. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) doesn't understand that a stimulus bill is, by definition, a spending bill; GOP Chair Ron Steele says to Wolf Blitzer, "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job." (Um...NASA? The military? Jim DeMint's congressional staff?)

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has a good explanation of why:

[T]his isn't a brainstorming session — it's a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it's that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.

Note to Republicans: you live in the reality-based community now.

UK buried under 30cm of snow

Western Europe also. The snowfall has paralyzed (paralysed?) the entire country:

South-east England has the worst snow it has seen for 18 years, causing all London buses to be pulled from service and the closure of Heathrow's runways.

The Met Office has issued an extreme weather warning for England, Wales and parts of eastern Scotland.

Up to four inches is forecast to fall later on Monday in south-east England, and up to 12 inches in the north-east. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "We are doing everything in our power to ensure services, road, rail and airports are open as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to monitor this throughout the day."

(After which Conservative Party leader David Cameron asked if Brown still believes that the freeze-thaw cycle has ended.)

All of my colleages at my client's office in Chicago—where we've had snow on the ground without interruption all year—wonder what the fuss is about. The visiting Londoners reminded us that the UK probably has fewer snowplows than a typical Chicago ward, and complained that the one snow day they're likely to see all year doesn't affect them (the client's London office is closed today).

In unrelated news, the cheeky rodent came out wearing sunglasses today, so if woodchucks are any good at predicting the weather, we'll have another 6 weeks of snow on the ground. (Malverne Mel, on Long Island, did not see his shadow. The cognoscenti know Mel's a better forecaster.)

Update: Le Monde has photos from Paris and Madrid.

So who is this Quinn character, anyway?

The Chicago Tribune has an introduction:

[T]he prospect of Gov. Quinn is shocking to many Illinois politicians who thought of him as a gadfly, a master of holding Sunday news conferences to gain media attention on traditionally slow news days. There he would pitch plans such as electing taxpayer and insurance watchdogs or non-binding referendum questions that looked good on a ballot but had no real effect, such as a ban on naming rights for Soldier Field.

His two biggest achievements, the result of tapping into voter anger, occurred more than a quarter-century ago: cutting the size of the Illinois House by one-third and creating the consumer advocacy Citizens Utility Board.

The piece touches on, but doesn't dig too deeply into, Quinn's financial interests and flirtations with good old Chicago-style corrup—er, politics. It'll be interesting to see what he does, and how his relationship with House Speaker Mike Madigan goes as well.

Et tu, Brute?

Via Crain's Chicago Business, Roland Burris releases a statement about the recent unpleasantness:

"Impeachment is about whether our state's best interests are being served having the governor remain in office," the statement says. "Today's conviction speaks loud and clear that there are serious issues preventing him from fulfilling those reponsibilities."

Of course, appointing Mr. Burris wasn't one of those "serious issues." At least in the opinion of Mr. Burris.

... "It is my hope that today will be remembered as a new beginning, more than an end," says Mr. Burris. The state now can focus on "more pressing issues."

In unrelated news, new Illinois Governor Pat Quinn this morning announced renewed support for a recall amendment to the Illinois constitution. Also, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) on Sunday announced plans to introduce a U.S. constitutional amendment removing U.S. Senate appointment powers from governors.

Another reason why he didn't resign

Apparently, if the Illinois senate convicts the governor (possibly today), he gets to keep his pension:

The state's constitution spells out that punishment after an impeachment trial can't go beyond removal and a ban from holding office again. Should Blagojevich end up convicted in federal court of felony corruption charges, however, state retirement officials could decide to take away his pension.

It's unclear whether he'd receive his pension had he simply resigned. And, of course, he gets to keep his congressional pension. All the better to pay lawyers with.

In unrelated news, House Republicans voted en bloc against the President's stimulus bill yesterday, showing their true commitment to bi-partisan lawmaking. David Cameron would be proud.

(Wait a second. That picture of Cameron shows the sun behind him...yet he's apparently lit from the right? I wonder what this says about the Tories' relationship with the reality-based community...)

David Cameron...lit from within. And behind. And the right. But not the left.

The price of security

Via Calculated Risk, a report that the FBI knew about mortgage fraud but couldn't do anything because they were too busy with counter-terrorism:

"It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.

The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities.

... Both retired FBI officials asserted that the Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties.

Keep in mind Osama bin Laden's goal: hurt America. What does al-Queda care if they hurt us directly or if they get us to hurt ourselves? Probably not much at all. If they distract the police so much that crime generally rises, the criminals win.

On the other hand, given that so much of the financial disaster in this country has benefitted the super-rich people the previous administration coddled, perhaps they weren't simply incompetent.