Obama Finally Figuring Out How To Deal With Republicans?

Nice to see the President landing a few hard blows on right-wingers for a change:

Republicans said it was unconstitutional. An overreach of executive power. A blatant slap at the Senate.

But when it comes to waging war over a handful of obscure recess appointments, the Senate GOP is struggling with how to respond.

They fear a knock-down, drag-out fight is exactly what the White House wants — and that President Barack Obama would use such a battle to ratchet up his campaign against a dysfunctional and gridlocked Congress. The internal debate highlights the party’s challenges, with public opinion soured on Congress and Republicans still lacking a presidential nominee to rally behind.

Ahead of a closed-door party retreat Wednesday at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Senate Republicans suggested that they might let their business allies fight the battle over recess appointments for the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The 47-member conference didn’t reach a resolution Wednesday.

Translation: We got our asses kicked on the last shutdown battle, and we’re not eager to do that again right before we have to run for re-election.

Friday Cat Blogging

Long-rumored, now at hand

“A bravado performance.” –Eliot Spitzer talking about the State of the Union, accidentally speaking truth on Countdown

Robert Fisk, London Independent:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

I think this is less important a development than Fisk does. But it’s a sign that Obama’s statement that America is not in decline is pure bravado.

Amy Koch: My Dimmesdale’s No Longer A Senate Staffer

Former Minnesota State Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, who resigned that post after admitting to an “inappropriate relationship” with a male Senate staffer widely suspected to be Michael Brodkorb, dropped a small hint earlier this week as to her Dimmesdale’s identity:

She [Amy Koch] said that for legal reasons she won’t name the staffer, who has since left his job at the Capitol.

Anyone care to divine how many male Senate staffers became ex-Senate staffers during the period starting December 16th, 2011 and ending January 23, the date of the interview that forms the basis for the KARE story on Senator Koch?

The Field Guide to Minnesota Republican Factionalism, Second Edition

Reblogged from Mercury Rising 鳯女:

There have been some changes in the statuses of various figures mentioned in the first edition of the Field Guide, so I figured it was time for a new edition. Some may wonder why I see the Brodkorb-Koch imbroglio as just another phase of the Fall of the House of Sutton. The relationships detailed below — relationships that are seldom if ever openly delineated by most local Establishment media journalists ever fearful of losing their precious access to GOP powerbrokers — should make my position clearer. …

Third edition, revised to update Dave Thompson’s and the TCF Coopers’ info.

Follow me past the jump for a chart, by no means complete, of the players, their factions, their relationships, and their desires. Feel free to tell me about any I missed.

Best comic lines of today

From Hadley Freeman, The Guardian:

If you’ve been wondering where Palin has disappeared to, I can reveal the truth: Gingrich has eaten her. And by eating her, he has absorbed her shtick….
…
Perhaps Gingrich shouldn’t be so coy. While one could point out the inherent ridiculousness in his thinking that legalising gay marriage threatens the “sanctity of the institution” far more than, say, a man who has ditched two ailing wives for healthier ones, others take a different tack. A “Dr Keith Ablow” writes on Fox News’s website that Gingrich’s marital history proves his desirability: “I worry,” says Ablow, “whether we’ll be clamouring for a third Gingrich term.” Newt wants to marry America! But what if he then ran off with a younger, hotter country? Back off, Croatia, you hussy!

The anniversary of Tahrir

HBO will have a 30-minute documentary tonight on the Egyptian uprising. The current situation, by my analysis, is that Egypt remains under military dictatorship with a Muslim Brotherhood mask.

Now, this is not to disparage the Muslim Brotherhood. They are some of the canniest and most tenacious players in Egypt. They aren’t puppets, and they will be trying to use and co-opt the military as strenuously as the military will try to use and co-opt them. But for the moment, the military controls not just the streets, but the economy. That’s a powerful combination.

Cam McGrath, IPSNews:

CAIRO, Jan 25, 2012 (IPS) – When Egypt’s dictator was ousted during a popular uprising last February, the military leaders who assumed control of the country pledged to “protect the revolution” and ensure a swift transition to civilian rule within six months. One year later, the ruling generals appear to have hijacked the transition to preserve the military institution’s economic autonomy and secure their own political future.

Cam McGrath, IPSNews:

CAIRO, Jan 25, 2012 (IPS) – When Egypt’s dictator was ousted during a popular uprising last February, the military leaders who assumed control of the country pledged to “protect the revolution” and ensure a swift transition to civilian rule within six months. One year later, the ruling generals appear to have hijacked the transition to preserve the military institution’s economic autonomy and secure their own political future.
…
“The military controls many economic sectors, and now it controls the government that regulates these sectors,” says Ahmed Sakr Ashour, professor of management at Alexandria University. “You can see why it wouldn’t want to give that up.”

Cam McGrath, IPSNews:

CAIRO, Jan 18, 2012 (IPS) – For three decades Western governments and lending institutions bankrolled a corrupt regime in Egypt that trampled human rights and stifled democracy. Now they appear ready to do it again, say critics of the military council that has ruled since removing president Hosni Mubarak last February.
…
The popular uprising that unseated Mubarak had a deep impact on Egypt’s economy. Foreign reserves plunged over 50 percent in 2011 to reach 18 billion dollars as the vital tourism industry and other business sectors continue to suffer from political instability and labour unrest. The government is anticipating a budget deficit of 11 percent of GDP this year unless it can successfully implement austerity measures to save over 3 billion dollars.

The West was quick to offer a lifeline to battered Arab Spring economies. Group of Eight (G8) finance chiefs meeting in Deauville last May said international banks could provide up to 20 billion dollars to post- revolution Tunisia and Egypt. Officials said the funding would be distributed in stages to reduce the risk of national institutions, including the military, misusing the aid or simply syphoning it off.

Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, IPSNews:

CAIRO, Jan 19, 2012 (IPS) – The Islamist landslide in recently concluded parliamentary polls has led to fears in some quarters of an impending paradigm shift in Egyptian foreign policy. Most local analysts, however, dismiss the likelihood of any sea changes, especially when it comes to the sensitive issues of Palestine and the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

Shorter State of the Union and Response: a Duet

Obama: Everyone should join the Army to learn what it means to be an American.

Mitch: Private enterprise blew up the American economy, so it should be given all power to fix it.

Everything else is commentary.

TCF Coopers, Tony Sutton’s Patrons, Soon To Follow Him Down The Drain?

It looks like TCF is in big trouble financially:

Anecdotally, TCF Bank seems to be struggling — in Uptown, for instance, the bank used to have numerous ATMs, but they’ve all been removed over the last year or so, sometimes replaced with generic machines.

TCF’s fourth-quarter earnings report provides hard data to support that anecdote. It reveals that the bank’s profits more than halved during the fourth quarter of last year compared to the last quarter of 2010.

The City Pages article goes on to mention the possible reasons therefor, the biggest one in reporter Aaron Rupar’s opinion being TCF’s not being able to gouge retailers anymore by charging high fees whenever one of their check cards is used to pay for retail goods. I personally suspect that other forces are at work, namely the spectacular failures of Baja Sol and Cooper State Bank.

I was wondering why TCF pulled almost all of its downtown Minneapolis ATMs a few months ago. The only ones I know of are in the IRS Center on the second floor (skyway) level) — and even those have been cut back from three to two when they were replaced with generic machines recently. TCF’s Express Teller ATMs have — up to now — been a part of the Twin Cities landscape for over twenty years. The only reason I could think of for their disappearance was big-time financial trouble on TCF’s part. And sure enough, the latest financials show that.

I suspect that Tony Sutton’s (former?) patrons, the TCF Coopers are about to lose their position as the 800-pound gorillas of Minnesota Republican politics — if they haven’t lost it already. Is this why the evangelical Emmer-Quist crowd, with backing from Primera’s Bob Cummins, seems to be ascendant again barely a year after Emmer’s defeat in a race that Sutton ally Marty Seifert would likely have won?

Wales reclassified

Via Avedon, Wales is a country!

(image from WalesOnline)

Martin Shipton, WalesOnline:

It is most usually known for its unsung work developing the international standards that underpin everything from agricultural equipment to construction tools or medical devices.

Yet the Geneva-based International Organisation for Standards (ISO) has now changed a name that has infuriated many in Wales – it has officially reclassified the nation as a country instead of a principality.