Saturday Stuff

I realize that I could merely link to this and say not much else to point out what shameless weasels Fix Noise are in general, but Perino's bubbleheaded, moronic, sycophantic noise is particularly insulting considering this story...



...and here is a bit of a Saturday (Sunday?) meditation, with an interesting (and sad) story about the performers (here).

Friday Stuff

An "object" failure, Issa? I would say that failing to provide health care for our veterans qualifies also (here).

And while I have a feeling some of the recordkeeping on the "stim" jobs has been off a bit, I would like to know how someone could possibly come up with an exact number considering that we're talking about an over-$700 billion piece of legislation...



...and this tune is timely for today, even if the video has more to do with the stock market tanking (let's hope and pray we don't see those days again for awhile - just an excuse to hear the song again, really).

Another Corporate Media Epic Fail

This Time Magazine feature by Andy Serwer of Fortune Magazine laments how the decade that he believes is coming to a close was so horrible (of course, the decade chronologically doesn't end until next year, but why let reality get in the way of a good story line?). And I'll agree that not a whole lot of good things have occurred; the Phils won the Series last year, Obama was elected (which, despite the weak "stim" and Afghanistan, is still a good thing), and Patrick Murphy was elected also, and a couple of other good things happened (personally, I had a slammin' time in Las Vegas a few years ago, but I digress).

But it's a funny thing ("funny strange" as opposed to "funny ha-ha") - you read all 4,033 words of his article, and somehow there's no mention whatsoever of the deluded, quasi-literate egomaniac who very nearly wrecked this country as a result of his utter, eight-year nightmare of a presidency (and who is pictured above).

...

Sometimes there are no words, people.

Where The Rubber Meets The Road (11/27/09)

As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week (not a lot going on again today - and I also posted here).

House

Medicare doctor payments. Voting 243-183, the House passed a bill (HR 3961) that would avert a 21 percent cut next year in Medicare payments to doctors. The bill was opposed mainly because its cost of $210 billion over 10 years would be deficit spending. The bill would permanently change the Medicare formula for paying doctors. It would increase payments by nearly $20 billion per year over 10 years and cause slight annual increases in Medicare premiums.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Joe Sestak (D., Pa.).

Voting no: Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

By the way, the Medicare reimbursement formula was concocted in 1997 when the Repugs ran Congress, and it has remained in force up until now.

GOP Medicare plan. Voting 177-252, the House defeated a Republican motion to restructure HR 3961 (above) as a two-year rather than permanent fix of Medicare's system for paying doctors. The motion also identified a revenue source to pay for the proposed two-year remedy.

A yes vote backed the motion.

Voting yes: Adler, Castle, Dent, Gerlach, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Fattah, Holden, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.

And as long as I’m highlighting yet another bad vote by John Adler, I should note that former Philadelphia Eagles (and now San Diego Chargers) offensive lineman Jon Runyan has announced that he will run as a Repug next year and seek Adler’s seat (here).

I’ve always admired Runyan as a player, and the fact that his former employer chose to let him go (along with fellow all-Pro Tra Thomas) were moves of such astonishing stupidity that the fan base of this city should have immediately turned on this moribund franchise. But I’m not sure that that will ever happen.

Concerning politics, though, it should be noted that Runyan’s voting record is questionable (here), and I’ll await his attempt to explain how a million-dollar-salaried professional athlete can speak with knowledge and insight to the issues facing working men and women earning a fraction of his yearly income.

Senate

Guantanamo prisoners. Voting 57-43, the Senate allowed funds in the 2010 military-construction budget (HR 3082) to be used for securing U.S. prisons to hold terrorist suspects transferred from overseas. The vote tabled (killed) an amendment designed mainly to prevent detainee transfers from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison.

A yes vote was to kill the amendment.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Ted Kaufman (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Arlen Specter (D., Pa.).

And by the way, I’m sure it comes as no surprise whatsoever that the amendment was sponsored by Jim Inhofe (stand up and take another bow, all you brainless Oklahomans who support this numbskull).

Update 11/30/09: And here is another golden moment with Oklahoma's senatorial mistake.

Judge David Hamilton. Voting 59-39, the Senate confirmed federal Judge David Hamilton, 52, of the Southern District of Indiana, for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Based in Chicago, the court hears appeals from federal rulings in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

A yes vote was to confirm Hamilton.

Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Kaufman, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Specter.

As noted here, part-time songwriter Orrin Hatch decried Hamilton as an “activist judge” who didn’t honor a parental consent law the way Hatch wanted and also didn’t impose a life sentence on a drug dealer (with the “activist judge” label particularly funny from someone who voted to confirm Antonin Scalia and “Strip Search Sammy” Alito to the “show”). Also, as noted here, Hatch and his pals were given a second chance to question Hamilton, even though they threw a hissy fit and chose not to do so at their first opportunity.

This week, the House and Senate are in Thanksgiving recess.

Happy Thanksgiving

I got a kick out of this (courtesy of Pixdaus and The Daily Kos).

...and here's another holiday fave, with an intro by Seth MacFarlane at Stewie Griffin (and again, the captions make this hilarious as far as I'm concerned)...



...and here's more holiday fun.

Who Let The Money Flee The PBGC?

(And I also posted here.)

This tells us the following…

Some executives have received huge compensation packages even as their firms eliminated worker pensions. Ten large U.S. companies paid senior executives a total of $350 million in the 5 years leading up to terminating traditional pension plans for employees, a new Government Accountability Office analysis found.

Each company in the study, which does not name the 10 publicly traded companies that filed for bankruptcy in the last decade, had underfunded its pension plan by at least $100 million and had over 5,000 workers whose pensions would be affected. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures private sector pensions, then became responsible for the shortfall. Some employees who were promised retirement benefits above the PBGC's limits, such as airline pilots, say their pensions were reduced. The PBGC insures pensions up to certain limits, which is $54,000 for a person who retires at age 65 in 2010. The pension insurer had a deficit of $22 billion in fiscal year 2009.

To learn more of how we have arrived at this sorry state, read here to find out how Goldman Sachs managed to wrap its tentacles, as it were, around the PBGC (along with BlackRock and J.P. Morgan) to change the Corporation’s asset allocation into equities and real estate, at which time the stock market meltdown was well underway (some speculation on this move is offered by blogger emptywheel here).

The person responsible for this genius move was PBGC Director Charles E.F. Millard, who said, "Our strategic relationships will be long-term in nature, and will add tremendous value for the PBGC going forward."

Heckuva job…

The PBGC has been a favorite target of the investor class for some time, actually, since, until the ruinous Bushco reign, it actually functioned as a successful federal corporation created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. This mentality is typified by this Murdoch Street Journal editorial, which basically alleges that it made UAW pensions “whole” while sacrificing the workers at auto parts maker Delphi, though, as noted here, “in a side arrangement, G.M. (agreed) to pay special supplements, called top-ups, so that Delphi’s union retirees get everything they were promised” (besides, the PBGC was tasked to ensure solvency of defined benefit plans, which usually pay out more than defined contribution plans; concerning the latter, there is no guaranteed return for the individual who invests in the plan, as opposed to defined benefit plans, which rely on precise calculations to - in a perfect world - guarantee a defined return over time).

And under Bushco, it should be noted that Dem U.S. House Rep George Miller of California led an effort to keep the PBGC from eliminating the pensions of United Airlines’ workers (and as also noted here, Miller assited the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) which sought to impose a six-month moratorium on plan terminations by the PBGC; like everything else in the foul Bushco universe, the PBGC served the opposite function of what it was chartered to do – in this case, eliminating pensions instead of protecting them.)

It should also be noted, though, that a bill sponsored by Dem Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin has been introduced to correct what currently ills the PBGC, which, were it to become law, would provide for better communication between the board members as well as on behalf of the general public, as well as form an audit committee and establish a risk management function within the corporation, among other changes.

Given the recent upheaval at the PBGC, I would say that it is long past time to act on Kohl’s bill.

Tuesday Stuff

"Worst Persons" (Carly Fiorina was for the bailout before she was against it, Bill Orally thinks he put an end to the TV career of Bill Moyers...way too damn funny, and Beck calls Sen. Mary Landrieu a hooker again...Keith's point is well taken, but a response from Landrieu herself on this is called for also, ya' think?)...

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...and the more I think about Beck, Orally and their fellow loons (not too much, I promise), the more I realize that this should be their theme song.

Tuesday Mashup (11/24/09)

(Posting will slow down considerably as we approach the holiday, by the way.)

This story from Der Spiegel tells us the following…

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

Gee, I sure hope not, given that Former President Numbskull encountered protests when he visited the Philippines in 2003 (here), protests when he visited Santiago, Chile in 2004 (here), New Delhi in 2006 (here), and Edmonton, Alberta (Canada, for the geographically impaired) last month (here).

Would it have been better for Obama to come back with some kind of agreement, understanding on an initiative, mutual declaration or understanding or whatever? Yes. But it’s not as if the guy has been exactly “sitting on his hands” all this time either (here).

I for one am very grateful that we have an intelligent adult as our head of state once more. Even when I disagree with him, I at least believe that he will give me the consideration and basic respect of acknowledging my point of view.

And I’m glad that, while our leader has not achieved the plaudits of a long-term president (Obama has still served less than a year after all), at least the man isn’t almost universally despised.

Also, Joe Klein was in full-on pundit wanker mode yesterday here, commenting on the “war tax” idea from U.S. House Dem Rep David Obey, which I think is a great idea, by the way.

However, Klein also told us this, one of the snottiest pundit remarks I've heard in awhile (and that's saying something, people)…

“If the public honestly wants the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan and increase the risk of an Islamist military coup in Pakistan, then its views should be honored.”

And now, from the reality point of view, I give you the following (here)…

It seems that one way or the other, and at some time or the other, the Taliban will form part of the governing structures in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai has been talking about this for a long time. The British have been advocating it and now the Americans too are quite willing, and perhaps anxious, to open a dialogue with the Taliban; in fact, it would be safe to assume that they might be already talking to it directly or indirectly. Underlying this willingness to deal with the Taliban is an implicit acceptance of the fact that it cannot be defeated. Indeed, Gen. Stanley McChrystal has acknowledged that the insurgents are getting more sophisticated, that there is at least a loose coordination among the different groups of insurgents and that time is not necessarily on the side of the coalition forces.

The Taliban, for its part, knows that it can win by not losing and the coalition loses by not winning. Now, the Taliban has added a new weapon to its arsenal, diplomacy. In a statement on October 8, to coincide with the eighth anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban has declared that it has had no intention of attacking any western country. “We had and have no plan of harming countries of the world, including those in Europe ... Our goal is the independence of the country and the building of an Islamic state. Still, if you [the U.S and NATO troops] want to colonise the country of proud and pious Afghans under the pretext of a war on terror, then you should know that our patience will only increase and that we are ready for a long war.”

The Taliban isn’t going anywhere, people. And as much as we don’t like their presence, it’s about time we all started acting like adults and realized that we don’t have the resources to defeat them (I got into this earlier here), at least not without thoroughly bankrupting this country and, more importantly, wasting the lives of many more thousands of our fine men and women in the military.

In a situation like this, intelligent adults do their best to reach an accommodation with them. After all, this is about al Qaeda, of which there are only about 100 in the country to begin with.

And as far as Pakistan is concerned, it’s quite possible that the “Islamist coup” that Klein fears is already underway, as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker (here)…

The rise in militancy is a sensitive subject, and many inside Pakistan insist that American fears, and the implied threat to the nuclear arsenal, are overwrought. Amélie Blom, a political sociologist at Lahore University of Management Sciences, noted that the Army continues to support an unpopular President. “The survival of the coalition government shows that the present Army leadership has an interest in making it work,” she said in an e-mail.

Others are less sure. “Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them,” Pervez Hoodbhoy, an eminent nuclear physicist in Pakistan, said in a talk last summer at a Nation and Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy forum in New York. For more than two decades, Hoodbhoy said, “the Pakistan Army has been recruiting on the basis of faithfulness to Islam. As a consequence, there is now a different character present among Army officers and ordinary soldiers. There are half a dozen scenarios that one can imagine.” There was no proof either that the most dire scenarios would be realized or that the arsenal was safe, he said.

The current offensive in South Waziristan marked a significant success for the Obama Administration, which had urged Zardari to take greater control of the tribal areas. There was a risk, too—that the fighting would further radicalize Pakistan. Last week, another Pakistan Army general was the victim of a drive-by assassination attempt, as he was leaving his home in Islamabad. Since the Waziristan operation was announced, more than three hundred people have been killed in a dozen terrorist attacks. “If we push too hard there, we could trigger a social revolution,” the Special Forces adviser said. “We are playing into Al Qaeda’s deep game here. If we blow it, Al Qaeda could come in and scoop up a nuke or two.” He added, “The Pakistani military knows that if there’s any kind of instability there will be a traffic jam to seize their nukes.” More escalation in Pakistan, he said, “will take us to the brink.”

During my stay in Pakistan—my first in five years—there were undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam had grown. In the past, military officers, politicians, and journalists routinely served Johnnie Walker Black during our talks, and drank it themselves. This time, even the most senior retired Army generals offered only juice or tea, even in their own homes. Officials and journalists said that soldiers and middle-level officers were increasingly attracted to the preaching of Zaid Hamid, who joined the mujahideen and fought for nine years in Afghanistan. On CDs and on television, Hamid exhorts soldiers to think of themselves as Muslims first and Pakistanis second. He claims that terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year were staged by India and Western Zionists, aided by the Mossad. Another proselytizer, Dr. Israr Ahmed, writes a column in the Urdu press in which he depicts the Holocaust as “divine punishment,” and advocates the extermination of the Jews. He, too, is said to be popular with the officer corps.

A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. “They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,” he said. (The Pakistan Army denies this.) In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to England for additional training.

“Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?” the Obama Administration official asked. “In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics.”

Lovely; by the way, what comes through loud and clear when you read Hersh’s piece is, basically, that Pakistan really can’t be trusted (though we are by no means innocent ourselves either, of course). There is a pathological mistrust of our country’s relationship with India, with the rampant belief that, were Pakistan to communicate even the minutest details of their nuclear program to us, that information would be communicated to New Delhi in no time.

Our presence in the region only destabilizes it, just as our presence has done to Iraq.

To imply that I, for one, wants to destabilize the region because I want our people to come home is insulting (tell me again how this doesn’t parallel Vietnam in that regard, Joe).

I guess Klein is lamenting the fact that he misses the whole “shoot first and never ask questions, because questions are for wimps” approach of Obama’s predecessor on display here (with Joe appropriately fawning over the horrendous “Mission Accomplished” moment).

Also, today marks the 150th anniversary of “On The Origin of Species” written by Charles Darwin, in which he presented the theory of evolution (here), still being debated in this country after all this time (and as far as I’m concerned, this is the finest production of the legendary play and movie in that vein).

Given this, do you think it would be too much trouble for a U.S. film distributor to support this movie?

Finally, this tells us the following…

Envy is a form of flattery, but don’t tell MSNBC “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann, on his Nov. 23 broadcast, didn’t stray from his usual shtick of character assaults and name-calling for his “Worst Person in the World” segment. But he did hint his feelings were hurt after he named Fox News host Glenn Beck the third place recipient in this “Worst Person” contest.

…

Olbermann noted the amount of media coverage Beck’s announced intentions got, and it’s hard to miss considering Beck draws huge numbers. But the problem – they didn’t cover Olbermann’s Astroturf-ish free health care clinics that occurred in Little Rock, Ark. over the weekend. Though even former Democratic President Bill Clinton turned his nose up at for being overly politicized (which Olbermann himself had admitted had a purpose to sway the vote of certain U.S. senators, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark, pictured.)

First of all, the clinics were sponsored by the National Association of Free Clinics, not Keith Olbermann. Second, he helped to raise $1.2 million for the clinics, and as nearly as I can determine, all the funds came from viewers of “Countdown” (so much for the “Astroturf-ish” lie – both are noted here).

Third, if President Clinton chose to avoid the clinics because he thought they were “politicized,” that’s his business. But as far as “swaying” the vote of Blanche Lincoln, among other Dems sitting on the proverbial fence here, all I know is that Lincoln eventually voted to begin debate on the bill.

If that qualifies as “politicizing” a vote, then let’s see more of that instead of less.

Monday Stuff

Wow, 37 counts for "Governor Appalachian Trail," huh? And by the way, the "boring" remark comes from the parodist only here...



...and how funny is this - if The Sainted Ronnie R were still with us today, he wouldn't even qualify for membership in his own party (and as Chris Kofinis expounded, I'm sure some wingnuts out there said "heh heh, we won in Virginia and New Jersey," which is true, but I think Kofinis is talking about the Repugs establishing themselves as a national "brand"...and just a reminder, "Card Check" is Republican-ese for The Employee Free Choice Act)...

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..."Worst Persons" (yep, I had the same thought that K.O. did when I read that New York Times column on Saturday profiling Glenn Beck...memo to "The Old Gray Lady" - Fix Noise and that brood WILL ALWAYS HATE YOU; and Beck and Flush Limbore are back for calling Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana a prostitute, with nary a word of rebuke from ANYBODY!!! (and I'm hoping Keith was speaking directly to pundit pinheads like Andrew Malcolm who criticized Olbermann about the "meat sack with lipstick" remark about Malkin, when in fact, as we've just seen, what K.O. said about Malkin is "hugs and kisses" by comparison); but Catherina Wojtowicz of the so-called Chicago Tea Party "Patriots" gets it for this, hooting down grandmother Midge Hough who told the horrific story of how her daughter-in-law, pregnant with her grandchild, first lost the baby and then the mother herself died, ultimately because they didn't have health insurance, and while the grandmother told this story, Wojtowicz and her single-brain-celled fellow travelers hooted down Hough...don't worry, I won't wait too long for Bishop Thomas Tobin and other religious "leaders" to decry this also)...

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Update 11/24/09: And by the way, speaking of Tobin, kudos to Patrick Murphy for this.

...and when Chris Kofinis made that remark about "Thunderdome politics," I immediately thought of this song.

Monday Mashup (11/23/09)

(And I also posted here.)

As noted here…

WASHINGTON — The official responsible for the problem-plagued disability compensation system at the Department of Veterans Affairs will resign early next year, the department announced Friday.

The official, Under Secretary Patrick W. Dunne, has run the Veterans Benefits Administration since 2006, a period in which the agency has been swamped by claims not only from wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans but also aging Vietnam veterans. The rise in the backlog of unprocessed claims has fueled bitter complaints from members of Congress and veterans’ advocates.

The benefits administration also came under fire this year when it was late issuing payments to colleges and students under the new G.I. Bill. In response, Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, ordered offices to open on a Saturday to make emergency payments to students.

In response, I give you Richard Allen Smith of VetsVoice (here)…

When the G.I. Bill implementation resulted in epic FAIL, Dunne was responsible. When Veterans received benefits letters which incorrectly informed them that they had the fatal disease ALS, Dunne was responsible. Any SNAFUs with VA benefits since Dunne was sworn in as Undersecretary in October of 2008 were ultimately his responsibility.

Additionally, If you were to research Dunne's bio, you'd also find that between August 2006 and his appointment as Undersecretary, Dunne served as Assistant Secretary for Policy and Planning. Placing that in context, this was the period when VA was planning to implement the policies which would drive the administration of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. From start to finish, the utter failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to administer education benefits to 21st century Veterans lies at the feet of Patrick W. Dunne.

Any one or two of the mishaps at the Veterans Benefits Administration could be attributed to a lowly incompetent staffer. But the exorbitant nature of repeated failure occurring under the incompetent leadership of Patrick Dunne can only be attributed to a leader who was derelict in correcting the deficiencies of the led. In my humble opinion, Dunne should have been canned for the G.I. Bill fiasco alone.

The only thing I will say in Dunne’s defense is that I can’t see how anyone could be successful when you have an agency run by both the execrable James Peake (who compared PTSD to football injuries here – nice guy), and the possibly-even-worse Jim Nicholson; under his “leadership,” it took 145-150 days to process disability payments (noted here).

Oh, and did I mention that, under Dubya’s VA, Dunne’s predecessor Daniel Cooper thought that Bible study was more important than doing his job (here, with a particularly ridiculous remark by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History)?

Starting one war based on lies while short-changing another (and leaving a future administration a huge mess as a result) is one level of evil incompetence. Thoroughly abusing those who have paid the price as a result once they have returned to this country on top of that is almost too monstrous to describe.

Turning to politics, I give you the following from Arizona Repug Senator Jon Kyl (here, on the matter of how Dem Senator Mary Landrieu ended up doing the right thing by voting to begin debate on health care reform)…

Republicans have questioned an addition to the bill that provides for $100 million in extra Medicare subsidies for "certain states recovering from a major disaster." Landrieu's state of Louisiana, of course, was hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. GOPers have dubbed the provision the "new Louisiana Purchase" saying it helped buy off Landrieu's vote.

So clever the Repugs are, boys and girls…

Oh, by the way, it should be noted (here) that Kyl requested over $232 million in congressional earmarks for fiscal year 2008-2009, more than doubling Landrieu’s subsidy here (so, then, if that means that she is the recipient of the “new Louisiana Purchase,” is Kyl guilty of “Arizona Avarice?”).

Finally, I give you some of the most ridiculous pundit wankery this side of David Broder from Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times here (in the matter of who “owns” our current recession)…

Ah, the eternal campaign. James Joyner at Outside the Beltway seems to have surrendered to it: “While we may technically be out of the recession, unemployment is now in the double digits for the first time in many Americans’ memory and trending upwards. Obama’s sitting in the White House and, rightly or wrongly, he gets the blame. It’s actually rather remarkable that he’s doing as well as he is. I credit Bush Fatigue. People were so glad to see his predecessor leave office that Obama still seems good by comparison. But that won’t last forever.”

Well, there he’s gone and mentioned the unmentionable. It brings to mind a debate we were having eight short years ago about presidential legacies, a new administration’s inheritances and pinning the blame on the donkey or the elephant. In that case, you may recall, the eventual answer was clear: 9/11 wasn’t “Clinton’s” or “Bush’s” — it was all of ours. So too, I suspect, is the economic morass of 2009.

9/11 was an intelligence failure on the part of the alleged adults who were tasked to defend us by virtue of election to office, dumbass (putting the asterisk next to that in Dubya’s case, I realize). And I didn’t invent the credit default swap, leveraging debt upon more debt and trying to make money off it in the bargain. And I sure as hell wasn’t responsible for offshoring our jobs and failing to invest in our economy.

But of course, as noted here, Harshaw is no stranger to acting as a stenographer for conservative talking points, so this is merely more of the same.