This is more bad news for the state in the sun---run by Arnold.

From the WSJ: Big Banks Don't Want California's IOUs

A group of the biggest U.S. banks said they would stop accepting California's IOUs on Friday ... if California continues to issue the IOUs, creditors will be forced to hold on to them until they mature on Oct. 2, or find other banks to honor them.

...

The group of banks included Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., among others.

I guess the banks don't think the 3.75% annual interest rate is worth the risk for a "BBB" rated debtor on the Rating Watch Negative list.

What a mess.

Duncan has a plan:

As I've said, I'm not sure what the Feds should do for California, but perhaps having the Fed guarantee California's IOUs, assuming they have that authority, so that banks will cash them for their customers might not be such a bad idea. It's just a bandaid for the overall problem, but will help some pretty needy people who need the cash.

I asked for California to get a bailout from President Obama in an earlier post instead of the IMF because soon, the money will dry up completely. I know a bailout won't solve the problem because we have the most frakked up legislative process in the US and that needs to really, really, really be fixed. Conventional thinking is that if we were to receive help then we'll never fix the problem. I agree with that, but what happens when the state is broke and nobody will play with us? As for Arnold, I'll take a phrase that Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson of The Closer commonly uses: Thank you, thank you so much.

Such poetic irony, don't you think? The deaths of the little people working for corporate behemoths goes to pay bonuses to their company's top earners. Hey, it may be legal - but it sure lacks class.

Banks are using a little-known tactic to help pay bonuses, deferred pay and pensions they owe executives: They're holding life-insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of their workers, with themselves as the beneficiaries.

Banks took out much of this life insurance during the mortgage bubble, when executives' pay -- and the IOUs for their deferred compensation -- surged, and banking regulators affirmed the use of life insurance as a way to finance executive pay and benefits.

Bank of America Corp. has the most life insurance on employees: $17.3 billion at the end of the first quarter, according to bank filings. Wachovia Corp. has $12 billion, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has $11.1 billion and Wells Fargo & Co. has $5.7 billion. (Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia at the end of last year.)

The insurance policies essentially are informal pension funds for executives: Companies deposit money into the contracts, which are like big, nondeductible IRAs, and allocate the cash among investments that grow tax-free. Over time, employers receive tax-free death benefits when employees, former employees and retirees die.

Though not improper, the practice is similar to what is known as "janitors insurance," an insurance-on-employees technique that has long been controversial. Critics say the banks' insurance contracts are a way for companies to create tax breaks for funding executive pensions. And some families have complained that employers shouldn't profit from the deaths of their loved ones.

Huffington Post:

Ken Silverstein of Harper's has discovered that Washington Post columnist David Broder has been spending time recently on the business lecture circuit. Among the groups to which he's spoken in the past few years are the National Association of Manufacturers, the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, the American Council for Capital Formation, and an organization of health insurance companies.

As Silverstein points out, this is especially notable because Broder's spent years criticizing journalists who do this as being "greedy" and appearing to be "part of the establishment and therefore part of the problem." Silverstein has yet to receive a response from Broder about how much he's been paid for these speeches, although he did find that Broder seems to have received $12,000 for a 2006 talk.

And this behavior is nothing new from Broder. For decades his shtick has been to posture as an independent-minded guardian of the DC press corps' conscience, while engaging in exactly the kind of intellectually corrupt Washington insider-dom he publicly deplores. In fact, he's so shameless it almost makes you feel bad for everyone there with him in the DC muck. They may be all be whores, but Broder -- whenever he's on break from servicing the clientele -- makes the rest of the hookers listen to pious sermons about the evils of prostitution.*

What's unclear is whether Broder is deeply devious, or suffers from the kind of anti-self awareness usually associated only with severe brain damage. Perhaps it's the latter, and he believes those nice gentlemen are leaving the envelopes of cash on the dresser because he and they share a deep emotional connection.

Whatever the case, here's a little-known but especially hilarious example of Broder at his most Broder-iffic. Read on...

I'm Manila Ryce from The Largest Minority, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to trick you.

It's Thanksgiving here in the states, so let's take a look at A Native American View with a post from 2000. It was written pre-9/11 which means it's probably very inaccurate. Read with caution. After showing our thanks by consuming copious amounts of food, we then consume more the following day. One Kucinich intern has a different idea for Americans on the largest shopping day of the year.

It's well known that Conservapedia was created to counter the left-wing bias of reality, but did you know that it's also the airport bathroom of the internet? A Capitol Idea (or two) informs us that 9 out of 10 of the most viewed pages on Conservapedia are about homosexuality! Now that's a whole lot of gay. Something must be done to cure these sinners of their conservatism.

With the unbiased reporting the Western media is known for, you no doubt know that Hugo Chavez is not just a leader with virtues and faults, but an insane dictator. His most recent acts of insanity? Protecting gay rights under the Venezuelan Constitution and breaking strict religious laws at the OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia. He's as threatening as all the other leftist leaders. What leftist leaders you ask? Nevermind.

Since we're on the topic of media coverage regarding the images of politicians, while completely disregarding their policies, let's journey over to The Daily Banter, where Ben Cohen looks at one of the miscellaneous "experts" in the corporate media and her hack opinion of the Democrat whose Neocon policy is most worthy of serious criticism.

Quaker Dave is back and it's worth mentioning. He hasn't been able to blog lately because he's been sick with leprosy and his fingers keep falling off. Even typing with his tongue, he's already informed me that Bjork and I share the same birthday, so we're pretty much meant to be. I hope she doesn't wear that swan dress to the wedding. That's what I'm wearing.

Don't give up folks. Submit links to: John (dot) William (dot) Harrison (at) Gmail (dot) com

Sadly, No! Republicans weep tonight not for their actual losses but because they know they’ll not have a blank check again for perhaps a generation

Alas, a blog: Fundamentalist Jews and Muslims unite in their hatred of gays...why can't they be more like this pious asshat?

Attytood: Sh*t-for-brains shill claims U.S. suburbs "more violent than Iraq"...and driven mad by the election results, Hewitt is reduced to posting inane gibberish.

King of Zembla: Terrorists pitch a shutout

Opinions You Should Have: A prominent male hooker was forced to step down amid accusations of sex with a sleazy Evangelical leader

More problems in Ohio...this Buckeye also had problems trying to cast his vote...MELTDOWN '06: Machines Down....Polling places turn to paper ballots after glitches'....Bogus VA voter calls point to Allen campaign

The Hill: How some lawmakers are sabotaging the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and why they are wrong.

My run-in with a Fundy...We need never bow to God's bullies. After reading these two items, I thought it was important to support this soldier in the fight against the AmTaliban .

Online NewsHour: Offered a timid examination of the controversy surrounding the use of electronic voting machines. Serious problems were noted but they didn't mention this or this.

Workbench: Andrew Breitbart is getting huge traffic and raking in lotsa ad $ because former partner Drudge links to his copies of AP and Reuters news stories. Don't generate any click-thru cash for him. Avoid Brietbart.com links.

The Impolitic: White House announces its new al Qaeda chief in Iraq

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE: by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1935--"Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the--well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist...Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?" (thnx to reader Cynthia)

Fanatical Apathy: The early returns in Iraq point to a victory for....Iran!

Iddybud: Pious GOP frauds show us who they really are. They talk incessantly of morality and values but their actions expose them as hypocrites.

War and Piece: And we're supposed to trust the judgement of the people who brought you this?

: Pious GOP frauds show us who they really are. They talk incessantly of morality and values but their actions expose them as hypocrites.

War and Piece: And we're supposed to trust the judgement of the people who brought you this?

Martini Republic: Ihre Papieren, Bitte! Ohio GOP goose-steps closer to totalitarianism behind ethically-challenged Bob Taf

As you can see, I'm going around to other blogs today and posting what they are saying today.

from Blogenlust: It's the Beatitudes, Stupid

Here's an interesting article in the Washington Times about how Christian Evangelicals are lobbying Congress for even more power to influence public policy. A scary thought, no doubt, especially considering how much influence they already have. However, what bothers me the most is the pious posturing by politicians to secure the support of this demographic. read on

Let's put the Ten Commandments in all public places. Libraries, schools, stadiums, parks, malls, shopping centers, movie theaters...then when some mischievous teenagers start the graffi project on them the zealots can claim religious persecution by the seculars and spend three weeks on FNC and Scarborough Country.

On MTP Sens. Rick Santorum, R-PA, & Joseph Biden, D-DE discussed Social Security

MTP transcripts

Video

via TPM

He hits all the key points. Like: "No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it's not about the solvency of Social Security."

Yes, just so.

Or this: "And the presumption that Social Security can't meet its obligations rests on the notion that the federal government will default, something it's never done in 220 years, on an obligation, on Treasury notes, IOUs, just like the IOUs Japan has and other countries have in terms of buying our Treasury bonds. And so I don't think we'll default."

So true!

It was a minor masterpiece of counter-bamboozlism