Steve King is proud of his contribution to animal cruelty.

Steve King (R-IA) is a teabagging right-wing nut. So of course, he loooooves states' rights! According to Think Progress, he loves them so much that he apparently thinks that states maybe have the right to disregard Supreme Court decisions?

KING: Why should I care about the conclusions that have been brought forward by the Supreme Court if we can race from 1965, Connecticut having a Tenth Amendment right to establish a policy, a Supreme Court that creates a right to privacy that’s the foundation for mandated abortion, and here were are discussing whether we’re going to mandate everybody in America fund and provide that contraceptives. … Why should I care?

At least I think that's what he's trying to say. Either that or he thinks that Griswold v. Connecticu says the opposite of what it actually says. Anyway, he's a big old tenther.

Which made this news story pretty surprising:

(LA TIMES)

WASHINGTON — Taking aim at California's pioneering efforts to bolster animal safety, the House Agriculture Committee has moved to block states from imposing their own standards for agriculture products on producers from other states.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who represents the country's leading egg-producing state, said he introduced the amendment because the California law and others like it "scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations."
"If California wants to regulate eggs that come into the state, fine," King said. "But don't be telling the states that are producing a product that's already approved by the USDA or the FDA how to produce that product."
He said that the California requirement violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce issues.

Because if there's one thing right-wing Republicans love even more than states' rights, it's the commerce clause!  King's amendment is even called the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act”

 So this amendment must be all about protecting Interstate Commerce, right?

King released a statement Thursday night promising that his amendment “will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and PETA are prohibited from establishing a patchwork of restrictive state laws aimed at slowly suffocating production agriculture out of existence."

Ooooh, that makes more sense. Of course, it's a bill to defend against an imaginary threat from relatively weak organizations like PETA against the super-powerful agricultural industry. Now that's the Steve King we've come to know and despise.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read all about King gloating about how his bill will stop animals from getting halfway-decent treatment in the loathsome "Daily Caller" here.

Oh, that's shockingly offensive, pass the salsa, please!

The Pollo Tropical chain recently opened up a restaurant near my place of work in the Atlanta area.

So, I've been there a couple of times, food is pretty good. Prices pretty decent. Reasonably healthy.

Overall, I like the place.

Then today, I see this sign.

IMG_20120718_142439.jpg, a photo by spudboy67 on Flickr.

Are you kidding me?

Is there some way in which that is not offensive?

Who wrote this, some 19th Century British colonialist?

Oh, there's nothing those Caribbean folks like more than serving non-Caribbean people! They're happy that way.

Fortunately, I don't think that any of the employees there were Caribbean, but I'm pretty sure the chain is based out of Florida, where there is a large Caribbean population. Can you imagine how a Caribbean person would feel, having to see that racist shit on the wall at work every day?

Funny Woman of the Day -- Catherine O'Hara

Y'know, if you have to write a disclaimer this long,

maybe you should just not write the column.

Facts don't support Obama's charges against Romney

By David Gergen, CNN Senior Political Analyst

updated 6:59 PM EDT, Mon July 16, 2012

 

Um, I'm pretty sure that they do, but let's hear what an objective, unbiased source, you know, a "journalist," has to say on the subject. You are objective, aren't you, Mr. Gergen?

 

  

Eeeeehhhhhhh. . . . .

Let me acknowledge upfront what I have said several times on CNN: I have a past relationship with the top partners at Bain that is both personal and financial. I have worked with them in support of nonprofit organizations such as City Year. I have given a couple of paid speeches for Bain dinners, as I have for many other groups. I was on the board of a for-profit child care company, Bright Horizons, that was purchased by Bain Capital. It was a transaction with financial benefits for all board members and shareholders, including me.

Um, that sound like you have a bias. You have personally profited from your association with Bain, both being paid directly by them for speeches and from being on the winning side of one of their buyouts. I think that's pretty much the dictionary definition of having a bias.

So, yes, I have a bias. But let me also add how that bias plays out: I have come to admire and like the leaders of Bain Capital  

So you have a bias, but don't worry because you really like the Bain people? The people who have paid you lots of money? You like those people, do you?

 I have come to admire and like the leaders of Bain Capital because I have learned firsthand that in a private equity industry, where there are obviously some predatory companies, Bain stands out for the respect in which it is generally held 

 By whom? By whom is it held in respect? By those who profited from their association with it?

 Bain stands out for the respect in which it is generally held and for the generous philanthropy of some of its partners. Nothing I have seen so far has shaken that view.

None of the paychecks that I have seen so far has shaken that view.
By the way, generous philanthropy is often used as a means of softening one's public image or assuaging one's guilty conscience when one has made a great fortune off of the misery of others.  Just sayin'.

Has Romney basically lied about when he actually departed Bain? Has he tried to mislead the public or investors? Here we come to the heart of the recent controversy. I may be wrong but based on what we know so far, I would conclude that we do not have persuasive evidence to show that he has.

Unless you, y'know, read newspapers or something.

 Romney has argued for years that after he was called in to rescue the Salt Lake City Olympics in February 1999, he turned his full attentions there and no longer exercised active management at Bain. The story is a complicated one because Bain was a complex partnership and because the company filed various SEC papers after February 1999 still listing Romney in various key roles, including CEO and chairman. But if one takes time to look behind the SEC filings, what emerges is much more supportive of Romney's statements.

Oh, it's okay. Romney's not lying now, he was lying to the SEC back then. It's not like that's some sort of crime or something.

 

It is? Since when?

The crazy thing is that American mainstream journalism has actually sunk so low that Gergen probably didn't even need to disclose his enormous conflict of interest. It's not like CNN has a whole big bunch of integrity left.

How to tell that the big banks will continue to screw people for all eternity.

Because why wouldn't they, under these circumstances?

(via C&L)
July 13, 2012 10:00 AM

Wells Fargo To Pay $175 Million Settlement For Steering Qualified Minority Buyers To Subprime Mortgages

$175 Million?That's pocket change to Wells Fargo! What is that? That's not even a slap on the wrist, at least a slap on the wrist stings a bit.

How much of a sting does $175 million have for Wells Fargo?
According to the LA Times:

Wells Fargo profit up 17% as lending increases

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times

July 14, 2012

 Mortgage applications are at an all-time high at Wells Fargo, which earned $4.6 billion, or 82 cents per share, during the second quarter, up from $3.9 billion, or 70 cents, a year earlier.

Let's see, $4.6 billion for the quarter. If my math is correct, and there's always a chance that it could be, that comes out to about $50.4 million PER DAY in earnings. So $175 million, is what, about 3 1/2 days' profits? That's the penalty for defrauding 34,000 customers?

At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the bank’s discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.

 That comes out to about $5,000 per defrauded customer. What are the odds that these customers were screwed out of any less than 5 grand?

Cole said that with the settlement, the second largest of its kind in history, the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.
The bank will pay $125 million in compensation for borrowers who were steered into subprime mortgages or who paid higher fees and rates than white borrowers because of their race or national origin rather than because of differences in credit-worthiness. 

And now it's even less, $125 million.

 Wells Fargo also will pay $50 million in direct down payment assistance to borrowers in areas of the country where the Justice Department identified large number of discrimination victims.

Wow, an entire $50 million to help folks who lost their homes afford down payments on new ones! $50 million to be spread around the various areas of the country where discrimination is wide spread. Well how many places could it be, really?

Those areas are Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland and San Francisco, New York City, Cleveland, Riverside, Calif., and Baltimore.

So, yeah, that 50 mil is going to go a long way!

So, to recap, you can, assuming you are a large bank, screw 34,000 mortgage customers just because you're a racist ass, and IF you get caught, you might be docked about 3 days' pay. So what is your incentive not to screw people over?