Saturday, February 05, 2011

Hackers Penetrate Nasdaq's Computers

rubenfeld:

WSJ is really on fire this weekend.

Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose, according to people familiar with the matter.

The exchange’s trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn’t compromised, these people said. However, it couldn’t be determined which other parts of Nasdaq’s computer network were accessed.

Investigators are considering a range of possible motives, including unlawful financial gain, theft of trade secrets and a national-security threat designed to damage the exchange.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Friday, February 04, 2011

Change You Can't Believe In

It’s funny how they want to redefine rape, but refuse to redefine marriage.

The ever hypocritical Tao of the GOP.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Hannity Couldn't Name One

greenstate:

veganasty:

flightofthehobo:

inothernews:

Stephen Colbert names six democracies that arose following violent uprisings that Fox “News” host Sean Hannity couldn’t name, besides Iraq.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Sean Hannity. Did you ever take a history course in your life? EVER? 

Irony: News on the comedy channel, comedy on the news.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

The Anti-Victim Anti-Female Narrative Of The GOP

How much of a f*cked-up patriarchy do we live in where “feminism” is a bad word and Conservative politicians, almost all male, try to redefine rape? Such massive control issues for such little men, a sign of a weak and bitter mind.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Thursday, February 03, 2011

"Known Unknowns", Like Your Credibility

pantslessprogressive:    Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions | New York Times    The title of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s new memoir, “Known and Unknown,” comes from a remark he made about whether Iraq had supplied or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me,” he quipped in 2002, “because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir plays a fast and loose game of dodge ball with what are now “known knowns” and “known unknowns” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others — most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III) — for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years. It is a book that suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly” undertaking — that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an unwillingness to re-examine past decisions.  Not only does Mr. Rumsfeld frequently assume a smug, know-it-all tone — he says he warned President George W. Bush to “tone down any triumphalist rhetoric” in his end-of-major combat-operations speech, made on May 1, 2003, in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner — but he also displays a tendency, familiar to viewers of his news conferences, to make bold assertions with no pretense of substantiation. [read more]      Never forget how incompetent and willfully ignorant this man was, and never forget that he and Dick Cheney spent 30+ years crafting neo-con rhetoric that was ultimately the Bush Administration cabal.

pantslessprogressive:

Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions | New York Times

The title of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s new memoir, “Known and Unknown,” comes from a remark he made about whether Iraq had supplied or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me,” he quipped in 2002, “because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir plays a fast and loose game of dodge ball with what are now “known knowns” and “known unknowns” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others — most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III) — for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years. It is a book that suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly” undertaking — that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an unwillingness to re-examine past decisions.

Not only does Mr. Rumsfeld frequently assume a smug, know-it-all tone — he says he warned President George W. Bush to “tone down any triumphalist rhetoric” in his end-of-major combat-operations speech, made on May 1, 2003, in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner — but he also displays a tendency, familiar to viewers of his news conferences, to make bold assertions with no pretense of substantiation. [read more]

Never forget how incompetent and willfully ignorant this man was, and never forget that he and Dick Cheney spent 30+ years crafting neo-con rhetoric that was ultimately the Bush Administration cabal.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Senate Defeats Repeal of Affordable Care Act

"The US Senate voted last night to strike down a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The bill fell by a party-line vote of 51 to 47.
It needed a 60-vote super majority to pass, and was widely expected to fail as it did."
Thanks for the predictable waste of time, Republicans.

Judicial Activism Goes Well With Tea

Cue The Obama 2012 Victory

Apparently part of her ridiculous national ambitions, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) will travel to South Carolina — home to one of the earliest 2012 primaries — this week.

Please run.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

The Farce That Is Fiscal Conservatism

shorterexcerpts:    Why, it’s almost like their deficit scaremongering was just a load of bullshit to get them elected!  via images2.dailykos.com    Republicans have not, and will not, ever live up to their rhetoric. In fact, they can almost do the opposite of what they say and their voters won’t even notice.  It’s all about power: conserving what is out there and stopping others from having access.

shorterexcerpts:

Why, it’s almost like their deficit scaremongering was just a load of bullshit to get them elected!

via images2.dailykos.com

Republicans have not, and will not, ever live up to their rhetoric. In fact, they can almost do the opposite of what they say and their voters won’t even notice.

It’s all about power: conserving what is out there and stopping others from having access.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

One Life

"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one."


Richard Dawkins
The supreme arrogance of religion caters to the selfish ego of the unenlightened.

@senatorsanders

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) joins Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in calling for President Mubarak to step down.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

It's All About Semantics

When it comes to the legislation itself, the key question actually comes down to semantics. It's broadly agreed that tax breaks are constitutional. The individual mandate could've been called the "personal responsibility tax." If you can show the IRS proof of insurance coverage, you then get a "personal responsibility tax credit" for exactly the same amount. This implies that what makes the mandate unconstitutional in the eyes of some conservatives is its wording: It's called a "penalty" rather than a "tax.

The principle conservatives are fighting for is that they don't like the Affordable Care Act. And having failed to win that fight in Congress, they've moved it to the courts in the hopes that their allies on the bench will accomplish what their members in the Senate couldn't. That's fair enough, of course. But they didn't see the individual mandate as a question of liberty or constitutionality until Democrats passed it into law in a bill Republicans opposed, and they have no interest in changing its name to the "personal responsibility tax," nor would they be mollified if it was called the "personal responsibility tax." The hope here is that they'll get the bill overturned on a technicality. And perhaps they will. But no one should be confused by what's going on. -

Ezra Klein

Republicans are trying to get the courts to do what they could not. "Judicial Activism" is its purest form.

[Note: Sen. Bob Dole (Kan.), back when he led the Senate's Republicans in the 90's, co-sponsored a bill that included an individual mandate.]

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Blatantly Lying When You Don't Like The CBO Data

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday rejected the CBO's cost estimate of healthcare repeal as "garbage in, garbage out."

McCain said the Congressional Budget Office estimate that repealing the healthcare law would increase the deficit by $230 billion relies on flawed assumptions.

"So what I'm saying is, garbage in, garbage out," McCain said on the Senate floor.

"Garbage in, garbage out" from the man who graduated 894th out of 899 from the Naval Academy. Fifth from the bottom!!

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

This Is Your Priority?

Why is this the focus of a middle-aged male politician who is from the party of limited government in the middle of a financial and unemployment crisis?

That’s your legacy? How misogynistic can you get? How much control do you have to have over women? #complete scum

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

The Paradox of Corporate Taxes in America

Arguably, the United States now has a corporate tax code that’s the worst of all worlds. The official rate is higher than in almost any other country, which forces companies to devote enormous time and effort to finding loopholes. Yet the government raises less money in corporate taxes than it once did, because of all the loopholes that have been added in recent decades.

“A dirty little secret,” Richard Clarida, a Columbia University economist and former official in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush, has said, “is that the corporate income tax used to raise a fair amount of revenue.”

Over the last five years, on the other hand, Boeing paid a total tax rate of just 4.5 percent, according to Capital IQ. Southwest Airlines paid 6.3 percent. And the list goes on: Yahoo paid 7 percent; Prudential Financial, 7.6 percent; General Electric, 14.3 percent.

Economists have long pleaded for an overhaul of the corporate tax code, and both President Obama and Republicans now say they favor one, too. But it won’t be easy. Companies that use loopholes to avoid taxes don’t mind the current system, of course, and they have more than a few lobbyists at their disposal.

The rich getting richer, not because they work harder, because they have the tax codes as incentives. Which leads to inefficiencies.

Decisions that would otherwise be inefficient for a company — and that are indeed inefficient for the larger economy — can make sense when they bring a big tax break. “Companies should be making investments based on their commercial potential,” as Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University, says, “not for tax reasons.”

Instead, airlines sometimes buy more planes than they really need. Energy companies drill more holes. Drug companies conduct research with only marginal prospects of success.

Inefficiencies like these slow economic growth, and they are the reason that both conservatives and liberals criticize the corporate tax code so harshly. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, says it hurts job creation. Mr. Obama, in his State of the Union address, said that the system “makes no sense, and it has to change.”

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Democracy Is People

Democracy is people. Not the military. Not corporations.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

What If Sarah Palin Were Black? pt 2

"This is just one more example of white privilege in action: [Sarah] Palin’s actions do not blight her whole race; just like Jared Loughner’s actions don’t throw into question whether white men can be trusted with guns (compared to, say, attacks by Muslims, etc.).

By extension, Palin’s despicable behavior is in no way taken as a comment on white women as as a whole. In the United States, women of color are afforded no such luxury. They are marginalized both because of their gender and their race. Ultimately, to be a member of a racial minority in a society where Whiteness is the norm is to be collectively linked to strangers. For example, when white men go crazy, commit acts of political violence, try to kill police because Glenn Beck told them to, behave irresponsibly, or act with poor judgment, it is neither a comment on Whiteness nor on white men as a group. No, it is the deed of one person—an individual who has the privilege of embracing the “I” as opposed to the “we” of collective blame and responsibility.

As W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked, “how does it feel to be a problem?” Because of the shield that is Whiteness, white folk—and Sarah Palin in particular—have rarely (if ever) had to ask that question."

What if Sarah Palin were Black? The Sequel (via thetart)

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Black History Month Begins

51 Years Ago Today: On Feb. 1, 1960, four N.C. A&T students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth’s, Greensboro, N.C.   More on Freedom Riders, the Woolworth’s sit-in, the SNCC, and the Greensboro Four.

51 Years Ago Today: On Feb. 1, 1960, four N.C. A&T students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in Woolworth’s, Greensboro, N.C.

More on Freedom Riders, the Woolworth’s sit-in, the SNCC, and the Greensboro Four.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

Monday, January 31, 2011

Unplug

The Obama Effect On Egypt

From Nate Silver:

"Egyptian popular opinion toward the United States has substantially improved over the course of the past 2 to 3 years, to the point that a new leader would probably not gain any points by expressing anti-American sentiment."

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com

GOP Not Serious About Jobs

The GOP’s next distraction: “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.”

Useless symbolic votes, not a care in the world to actually help the economy. Why? They have absolutely no experience. The Party of No.

The One Word Conservatives "Long To Hear"

Only one sitting president in the last 82 years has publicly uttered the magical phrase "American exceptionalism" -- care to guess who it is? Ronald Reagan, he of the "shining city on a hill?" George W. Bush, who closed his speeches by asking that "God continue to bless" America? Nope. The only president to publicly discuss (and for that matter embrace) "American exceptionalism" is Barack Obama.
This would be the same president, of course, who is subject to a steadily rising stream of suspicion because of his supposed refusal to give voice sufficient voice to his love of country.
Kathleen Parker, a conservative pundit for CNN and the Washington Post, said Conservatives "long to hear" the word. Even adding Obama has "studiously avoided using the word".  Must be nice being paid to be willfully wrong all the time.

Bush, in case you're curious, twice used the word "exceptional" to describe Harriet Miers, his failed, ridiculous Supreme Court nominee, but never referenced American "exceptionalism," Republican longing notwithstanding.

Let's face facts here.

If Obama could walk on water, they'd complain that he's only doing that because he doesn't know how to swim.

Glenn Beck’s American Ark

Beck has become a preacher. Turn down the sound and he is indistinguishable from the televised megachurch evangelists who hammer away at sin day and night. The relentless pacing of the stage, punctuated with pregnant pauses and abrupt stops; the impish “we know something they don’t know” grins; the fierce earnestness; the odd and inscrutable gazing into the distance; the weeping and wailing for the nation’s soul.

Beck has fashioned a faith that merges politics and religion—and he is its messiah. It is a faith that draws on and re-enacts the nation’s most enduring religious tradition: decrying a cancer within the body politic and calling for redemption and a return to wholeness. Think of witches, slavery, Catholics, Jews and blacks. Think of the John Birch Society and godless Communists.

What has replaced witches and slavery and minorities and Communism is the American state. Not the America that exists in Beck’s imagination, but “establishment” America, represented by the federal government’s bloated bureaucratic agencies, addiction to spending and secular humanism. “Those with the spiritual armor will save the republic,” Beck cries out near the end of Broke.

Of course, this is all an act: an act of faith. Faith is a conviction that goes beyond the available evidence and becomes true through the process of believing. Beck has constructed a story in which America is at war against itself—the “real” America against a usurper state. It’s the founders and their true descendants who believe in freedom versus the progressives—from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama—who believe in the enslavement of individuals and the ever-increasing power of the state.

A century of progressivism—which is to say, treason—brought us to this point. Now, the battle is on.

Posted via email from liberalsarecool.com