The Day The News Kept Breaking: Michael, Murtha, And Iranian Uranium, Mandela Anniv

February 9th, 2010 - by: danny

WSJ: Wall Street’s Race to the Bottom | Jamie Dimon is wrong. We shouldn’t expect a crisis ‘every five to seven years. by Elizabeth Warren

“For years, Wall Street CEOs have thrown away customer trust like so much worthless trash.

Banks and brokers have sold deceptive mortgages for more than a decade. Financial wizards made billions by packaging and repackaging those loans into securities. And federal regulators played the role of lookout at a bank robbery, holding back anyone who tried to stop the massive looting from middle-class families. When they weren’t selling deceptive mortgages, Wall Street invented new credit card tricks and clever overdraft fees.” [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

IRAN DECIDES TO ENRICH URANIUM, WORLD FREAKS
MURTHA DIES, WHACKO’S DR. INDICTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER
HOW NELSON MANDELA WAS REALLY FREED

Monday was the day news junkies live for – one breaking news bulletin after another. I had been trying to Palinize my approach by writing the stories I wanted to cover on the inside of my hand but I quickly ran out of room in part because of a scar I have going back to childhood.

But I quickly used my sanitizer and erased the old to make way for the new.

First there was a bulletin on the space shuttle heading for the heavens and then a report that they are still not sure of who may still be missing in that power plant explosion in Connecticut, the one that sounded like an earthquake and freaked out that whole region. Later it was determined that everyone at the plant was accounted for. It also came out that the plant had been bought up by one of those private equity companies eager to make a quick profit.

Then, there was another bulletin, this time from Iran that they are going ahead with enhancing Uranium they day to work with medical isotopes. The West freaked out.

• PressTV: “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided to produce the 20 percent enriched uranium domestically while the road for negotiations remains open.”

In a later broadcast, Iran’s Press TV reported :

• Iran Nuclear Move Angers West, and Russia

“Officials from the Untied States, France and Russia said Monday serious measures should be taken against Iran after the country informed the UN nuclear agency of its plans to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity for a medical research reactor in Tehran.”:

But back here in the US of A, Professor Juan Cole, who follows these developments with more detachment and keener analysis was much calmer in his Informed Comment blog. For one thing, it was informed:

• More Nuclear Scaremongering about Iran from Clinton; Neocons Quake at Ahmadinejad threat to make … gasp … Medical Isotopes

“Kudos to [CNN's] Crowley for not letting that ridiculous assertion [of Hillary Clinton] pass [video]. To put Iran in the same category as North Korea in 2010 and to make it among the primary ‘threats’ challenging the United States is just bizarre. The US intelligence establishment continues to doubt that Iran has or wants a nuclear weapons program.” [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

Israel has been cranking up world hysteria on this issue calling Iran an existential threat. Too bad John Paul Sartre is gone or he could have dissected that existential angle for us.

Also:

WSJ: Cheney’s Revenge — The Obama Administration is vindicating Bush antiterror policy.

“Dick Cheney is not the most popular of politicians, but when he offered a harsh assessment of the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism last May, his criticism stung – so much that the President gave a speech the same day that was widely seen as a direct response. Though neither man would admit it, eight months later political and security realities are forcing Mr. Obama’s antiterror policies ever-closer to the former Vice President’s.” [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

After this news bomb – sorry, bad choice of words—came another, this time from the New York Times on a story closer to home and of broader interest outside the think tanks and Pentagon:

• Michael Jackson’s Doctor Is Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter

NYT: Michael Jackson’s personal physician, Conrad Murray, was charged on Monday with involuntary manslaughter for providing Mr. Jackson with a powerful anesthetic that was ruled a major factor in his sudden death nine months ago. The charges cap an investigation that revealed Mr. Jackson’s heavy reliance on narcotics, including propofol, an anesthetic normally used in surgery but administered to Mr. Jackson, 50, as a sleep aid. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

So, now all those suspicions I passed along from Jesse Jackson and others back in the days of mourning seem to have some substance. This doctor is innocent as they say and insists so. Michael Jackson’s father was on Larry King’s Show last night charging that others have exploited Michael and suggesting they wanted him dead. No evidence was produced.

Even as we were reeling from this latest shocker, there was another.

Democratic Congressman John Murtha who represented Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in the Congress died after a botched gall bladder operation, the very thing that killed my mom. He was 77. He was implicated in some lobbyist campaign finance hanky panky but was better known for having spoken out against the Iraq War, a rather gutsy stand for an ex-marine and military cheerleader.

I suspected that he was in fact carrying a message from the military brass who knew first hand how President Bush screwed up the war for Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.) I was in Washington at the time Murtha was getting flak for his out-front stand. I dropped by his office where an aide confirmed that he was speaking for his buddies on the insider. That aspect of his stand was rarely covered.

And then there was this:

News of The Absurd

• RawStory.com: No joke: South Carolina now requires ‘subversives’ to register | Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government.

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

And even more absurd:

• James Kwak: The Banks’ Choice — Agree To Sensible Reforms Or Screw Their Customers

“The big banks face a choice. They can agree to sensible reforms that protect consumers and rein in the excesses of the past decades. Or they can simply decide to screw customers, but do it openly this time, since they have so much market share it almost doesn’t matter what customers think. How else do you explain, say, Citigroup’s concocting a new credit card “feature” explicitly to get around a new requirement of the Credit CARD Act? Or Jamie Dimon saying that financial crises are something to be expected every five to seven years, so we should just get over it?”

“We like to make fun of government in this country, but really, what are you and a few of your buddies going to do to fight JPMorgan Chase on your own? For all of our beloved rugged individualism (and our individual right to handguns), it doesn’t do much good when you’re up against your credit card issuer. There is no Chicago-school free market solution to an oligopoly that, on top of all its other advantages, has an implicit government guarantee that gives it a major funding cost advantage over its competitors. One of the purposes of government is to protect ordinary people from forces (hurricanes, terrorists, monopolies) against which free market forces do not provide adequate protection. This is why we need a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And this is what Frank Luntz wants to trick people into forgetting.” [More here Ã¢â€ â€™]

Hats Off to CNN’s Anderson Cooper for returning to Haiti to give some attention to the continuing pain of the Haitian people. He also reported a story that is page one in the New York Times today:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Private medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian children to the United States for treatment have largely stopped because aid workers, doctors and government officials are worried about being accused of kidnapping if they transport the children without first getting paperwork that is slow to arrive or is unavailable.

The News Dissector