Michelle Malkin just dropped his pants and crossed him over on the way to a lay up and high fives from a row of teabaggers.

well damn! Obama doing things. Stark contrast to Romney’s self deportation policy.

Update:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.

Shame on Argyll and Bute Council in Scotland (think School district) for Not letting a 9 year old Martha Payne answer “What did you have for lunch today?” in her own blog She helped to get kids thinking about what they were eating:

And no, to stave off the inevitable snark, she’s not a bratty entitled kid. Here’s how we know: By her 19th post, she decided she’d gotten enough attention that she wanted to redirect it somewhere useful, and she asked her followers to donate to a charity called Mary’s Meals that funds school food in Africa. She started off the donations by sending £50 that she got from a magazine that reprinted some of her photos. By today, according to her father’s note, she had raised £2,000.

I only cared about recess at 9. Martha’s sign off:

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.

Give to Mary’s Meals here.

Meanwhile the adults are pouring money into UK’s Banks in a misguided attempt to prop up their economy by giving more money to banks that helped to create the credit crisis that broke the economy.

A major punk move by the Romney campaign:

The Romney campaign bus appeared to be circling and honking at the location of a campaign speech to be given by President Obama during a visit to Cleveland, Ohio today, according to a tweet by CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller.

source: Romney Campaign Bus Circling, Honking At Obama Speech Site | TPM Livewire.

Exceedingly proving his default behavior is of someone who never had to put his own skin in the game due to their wealth and social position.

David Brook’s The Follower Problem:

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

[…]

In his memoir, “At Ease,” Eisenhower delivered the following advice: “Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.” Ike slowly mastered the art of leadership by becoming a superb apprentice.

[…]

To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it. Those skills are required for good monument building, too.

Here’s what the central banks are doing:

BIS slammed the easy credit policy of the Fed and other central banks, the failure to regulate the shadow banking system, “the use of gimmicks and palliatives”, and said that anything other than (1) letting asset prices fall to their true market value, (2) increasing savings rates, and (3) forcing companies to write off bad debts “will only make things worse”.

Remember, America wasn’t the only country with a housing bubble. The world’s central bankers let aglobal housing bubble development.

source: No Wonder the Eurozone is Imploding –

[…]

These truths are as applicable in Europe as in America. The central bankers have done the wrong things. They haven’t fixed anything, but simply transferred the cancerous toxic derivatives and other financial bombs from the giant banks to the nations themselves.

And Europe – like the U.S. – has made the cardinal sin of covering up fraud, so that the wound can never be cleaned, but will just infect the patient. Indeed, the sepsis is killing the patient.

source: The Spailout Has ALREADY Failed … Before the Ink Has Even Dried | The Big Picture.

A great introductory post to some polling on US Presidential 2012 from Democracy corps by Steve M at No More Mr. Nice Blog:

James Carville and Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corps has been conducting focus groups of swing voters in swing states; a new report from the firm says that voters in the focus groups don’t really see signs of an economic recovery, which means they’re struggling to decide whether to vote for Obama again.

[…]

We gave respondents a fact sheet about Mitt Romney and asked them to indicate which items were most significant for them, both positive and negative. The top six responses were all negative and all focused on Mitt Romney’s personal wealth, Wall Street connections, and cavalier attitude toward those less fortunate. The single most important issue for these voters was that Romney holds millions in an offshore account.

source: No More Mister Nice Blog.

Cory Booker et al are not the boss of us nor are they in step with us. The Romney out of touch because of Bain/Swiss Accounts/Elevator House/Corporations are people attacks work and resonate because they are true, not because they are unfair. Who cares if these Democratic big guns are concerned about Bain investor feelings. If they are, be a surrogate at fundraisers and local campaign events. Bain executives can put some money on it. What they really fear is a slight increase in taxes, not what we think about them.

Note: i feel like the previous Bain attack was a test run and that it will be tuned and rolled out throughout the campaign. It works, it stops Romney’s b.s. lies on the stump by forcing him to actually explain what he thinks we should do if he were President: corporations are people, the Ryan Budget, repealing his health care plan spread nationwide, calling rich people who outsource and fire folks “job creators” and the like. I just wanted to point out, the media uses validators to stand in for reality. Just because these Democratic politicians who are centrist on the Wall Street issue say: talking about Bain is bad, doesn’t mean it’s true.

David Brook’s The Follower Problem:

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

[…]

In his memoir, “At Ease,” Eisenhower delivered the following advice: “Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.” Ike slowly mastered the art of leadership by becoming a superb apprentice.

[…]

To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it. Those skills are required for good monument building, too.

From Atrios via Bloomberg on elite CEO Jamie Dimon’s leadership:

Dimon treated the CIO differently from other JPMorgan departments, exempting it from the rigorous scrutiny he applied to risk management in the investment bank, according to two people who have worked at the highest executive levels of the firm and have direct knowledge of the matter. When some of his most senior advisers, including the heads of the investment bank, raised concerns about the lack of transparency and quality of internal controls in the CIO, Dimon brushed them off, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

From the WSJ on elite CEO and Politician Jon Corzine:

A bankruptcy trustee blamed former MF Global Holdings Ltd. MFGLQ -6.06% Chief Executive Jon S. Corzine for events leading to the financial firm’s collapse, saying he may pursue legal claims against the former financier for ramping up risks and failing to safeguard money belonging to customers.

James Giddens, the trustee trying to recover money for the company’s U.S. brokerage unit, said in a 275-page report Monday that he may pursue claims of “breach of fiduciary duty and negligence” against Mr. Corzine and other officials at the firm for revving up the firm’s risk-taking appetite without improving controls needed to keep customer funds safe. He cited Mr. Corzine’s giant trading bets and failure to put systems in place to prevent improper transfers of customer money.

source: MF Global Autopsy Flags Risks by Corzine – WSJ.com.

Mind you, David Brooks wants us to follow these people and to trust them, implicitly. These guys had impeccable reputations, and they ended up doing some seriously stupid things. Is it because they are stupid? No. Is it because I think they know less about banking than I do? No. It’s because they were reckless gamblers and gamblers chase.

Leadership is about having some respect and empathy for people you lead and Brooks seems to ignore that requirement of the whole leader/follower thing.

Here’s Curt Schilling on his video game company 38 Studios in happier times:

Curt Schilling, March 2012, on Hannity: touting his Job creativeness.

Some choice quotes:
“…government gone right…”
“…And as someone — now spent five years in a private sector with my own capital my own skin in the game.
I understand at over at a much.– fundamental level.
How our economy works and doesn’t work in in and so every every dollar — income that I have that is potentially taxed away.
It is a dollar can put in my company to create jobs — my my my entire companies around job in the regional lender then you hire a gladly be — right I yeah absolutely I mean and these are high wage jobs…” – Curt Schilling, Former Small Business Owner

Come to find out some small business owners quite often don’t know sh*t about their business:

38 Studios relocated to Rhode Island in 2010 in exchange for $75 million in guaranteed loans, and, earlier this year, put out its first game, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” to positive reviews. But things fell apart after the company missed a $1.1 million payment to the state on May 1. The payment was eventually made, but the company was then unable to meet payroll, and Schilling asked the state for more money. Gov. Lincoln Chafee came out publicly against the idea, saying at a press conference that “there’s no more easy money,” and that 38 Studios should seek private money to stay in business. On May 24, 38 Studios laid off all its employees.

Actually most don’t. Here are the failure rates for small business in years 1 through ten:

1. 85
2. 70
3. 62
4. 55
5. 50
6. 47
7. 44
8. 41
9. 38
10. 35

Schilling went out of business. He’s not an idiot or dumb for going out of business. Most small business owners fail early. He may have made the mistake of borrowing too much from the government, but that’s on him and Rhodes Island!

In addition here’s the thing about a lot of those small businesses that succeed, they may not be in it to maximize profits:

What economic theory says is that workers maximize utility and therefore employers who want to get workers to do something that’s unusually dangerous or unusually unpleasant will have to pay a premium. A small business operator is in the same situation. She’s balancing income against other lifestyle factors, including the hours put in on the job, the pleasantness of the work, the sense of self-esteem that comes from having something to do, possibly a sentimental attachment to a particular location or certain employees. What economic theory says is that a profit maximizing small business person has to be someone with a very unusual utility function.

Where profit maximization enters into the picture is precisely with the widely held large business.

So can we stop pretending that every time we talk about business, every small business owners opinion is supreme?

From ABC News Texas Honor Student With Two Jobs Jailed for Missing Too Much School:

In addition to working at Elliot’s wedding-planning venue, Tran works full-time at a dry cleaners. She has been supporting an older brother and a younger sister since her parents separated and her mother relocated out of state, Elliot said. Her father often works too late to come home, so she sometimes lives with Elliot’s daughter.Tran, 17, had already been warned not to miss any more time at her Houston-area school, but when Judge Lanny Moriarty heard she’d skipped again, he sent her to jail for 24 hours Wednesday, according to KHOU 11 News.

[…]

When those close to Tran suggested she switch to home schooling, Tran refused because she wanted to be named among the top-10 students in her class just like her brother, Elliot said.

Judge Moriarty told KHOU 11 News that he intended to make an example of Tran.

“If you let one run loose, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Let them go, too?” Moriarty asked the TV station.

Who the hell is this judge?

And this extreme case shows the ridiculous standard thought process of this judge. So what if Tran was not an honors student and was just trying to take care of her family? Would he jail this hypothetical non A+ Tran too? He basically is saying “Yes”, because she was “running loose” in Moriarty’s mind. This shows you how often incarceration is seen as some kind of tough love that should be used for kids in place of any kind of case work or really say coming up with some sort of discretionary solution.

So what will happen now? Extreme home makeover/Secret Millionaire type philanthropy and Kony 2012 parachute advocacy will be deployed instead of solving a real issue. To a degree this has already happened as the charges have been dropped after the (justified) nationalization of this story.

But Judge Moriarty (yes he’s Republican) is still a judge who decides truancy cases and can’t tell the difference between say a person running loose and a young student with a shitty home situation, but remarkable work ethic, a big heart, an intelligent mind and loyalty to her family. Jail doesn’t teach anything except how to go to jail. She’s an honors student taking Advanced Placement courses, so she plays Rosa Parks to some other probably unknown Claudette Colvins of principled truancy (is that even a thing) you don’t need detention or incarceration for this, but what if this is a teen parent or the kid is in vocational school? Would this even be a story? Would Judge Moriarty be applauded?

Please RT/Repost. That is all.

Whoever released unauthorized images of Ronald Poppo’s half eaten face did an extremely exploitative, unethical and awful thing. If they are in law enforcement or health care they should be fired and held accountable. These pictures aren’t ours and it must be extremely painful for his family to not only lose their loved one years ago but to be reminded of this by his gruesome hospital photos being splashed across TV and computer screens everywhere.

In addition, his attacker Rudy Eugene was not a zombie. Maybe calling him a zombie is some way that the rest of us can pretend that mental illness, drug abuse and indigence is something that won’t happen to us or people around us, a kind of denial by ridicule, but we don’t do ourselves any favors to live that fantasy.

I am so thankful that Joe Walsh has donates some of his time dedicated to representing the good people of Illinois District 8 to explain to me all the ways Jesse Jackson has tried to enslave Blacks, Latinos and really all other Americans.

Just in case you were wondering: His opponent is Lt. Colonel Tammy Duckworth. She’s a veteran of the Iraq War, a former Assistant Secretary of Veteran Affairs a fierce advocate for veterans and a Democrat.

Zimmerman’s bond bail has been revoked. Must report to jail in 2 days. This whole thing gets more awful and muddled each week.