Wing-nut Rush Limbaugh says 'environmentalist wackos' caused Gulf of Mexico oil disaster

President Obama has declared the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a national disaster and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal initiated a state of emergency, calling for urgent help to prevent fragile wetlands and vital fishing communities along the coast from pollution on a massive scale.

While there's not yet any indication as to what caused the disastrous explosion that sunk a British Petroleum drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh has come up with a rather coy suggestion: "environmentalist wackos" did it.

Noting that the explosion happened on Earth Day, Limbaugh at times known as the Republican Party’s true leader hyped the coincidence in which "the jury was still out," but ‘the regime’ will let everyone know what really went down.

On Thursday HBO's Bill Maher Tweeted, "Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty." 

Thousands of workers and labor leaders marched on Wall Street for a massive protest of financial sector greed

On Thursday afternoon, thousands of workers and labor leaders marched on Wall Street for a massive protest of financial sector greed and lending practices by big banks.

About 10,000 AFL-CIO members gathered on the streets of downtown Manhattan forcefully calling out for major changes Wall Street's culture of greed.

The rally, one of the largest in recent memory to take place at the center of the financial world, was timed to begin at 4:00 p.m. the close of trading. Dozens of individual unions were in attendance, with a march down a six-block route to the iconic bull at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, followed by a speech from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

"Sisters and brothers, our history and our heritage teach us that America is about more than making easy money and looking out for number one. Our lives and our livelihoods are all bound together. And we are all paying the price for those who knew no limits on their greed," Trumka was prepared to say, according to advance remarks. "Eight and a half million lost jobs -- that's the price of greed -- that's the real cost of bankers' bonuses and private jets and cute tricks like the one that got Goldman Sachs in trouble last week."

Regulatory reform is now going to be debated in the US Senate after Democrats broke a three-day long Republican filibuster and brought legislation to the floor. The legislation comes up short of many of the AFL-CIO's goals, but Trumka has been supportive of the bill nonetheless and is likely to cheer progress in the Senate as a sign of where the political winds are blowing.

Many believe that Republicans finally dropped their opposition because they finally sensed they were on the wrong side of a divisive argument. According to national polls the conservative base is just as enraged as the unions with the favoritism Wall Street enjoys in Washington D.C.

As the AFL-CIO was out on Wall Street demanding tougher rules for the financial industry, the Tea Baggers were nowhere to be found. The progressive blog The Huffington Post is reported to have contacted to two official Tea Bagger organizations to see if they would send individuals to the Wall Street march. Neither Tea New York nor the Tea Party Express would be in attendance, said their representatives. What a surprise!

Progressive advocacy group releases ad critical of US Senator Brown's (R-MA) devotion to Wall Street

The progressive group ‘Americans United for Change’ has produced a new ad seeking to highlight the inconsistency between Scott Brown the candidate, a regular truck driving guy from Massachusetts, and the way they see the current US Senator Scott Brown (R_MA): a Wall Street supporting, limousine riding, anti-financial regulatory reform Republican.

Tom McMahon, Executive Director for Americans United for Change, said in a statement announcing the ad "After taking money hand over fist from Wall Street banks during his campaign, it doesn't look very good that Senator Scott Brown is now shielding these same banks from accountability for their recklessness that collapsed the financial system and left 8 million Americans without jobs."

McMahon continued: "The longer Senator Brown and his Republican colleagues delay Wall Street reform and refuse to even allow a debate, the greater the risk of another financial collapse that will cost more jobs on Main Street."

Watch the ad here:

http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/blog/entries/scott_brown_drives_a_wall_street_limo_not_a_massachusetts_truck/

New studies suggest Tea Baggers have higher probability of being racially resentful, may be greater motivator than their stated concerns about reckless federal spending

Since its beginning last spring the Tea Bagger movement has been plagued by charges of racism. 

Placards at rallies have depicted President Barack Obama as a witch doctor, denounced his supposed plans for white slavery, and likened Congress to a slave owner and the taxpayer to a n----r. Faction supporters claim that the hateful signs are the work of a small fringe.

A new survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality suggests that 25% of people who are Tea Bagger supporters have a higher probability of being racially resentful.

Surveyers asked respondents in California and a half dozen battleground states  a series of questions that political scientists typically use to measure racial hostility. On each one, Tea Baggers expressed more resentment than the rest of the population, even when controlling for partisanship and ideology.  The study revealed that Tea Party enthusiasts were also more likely to have negative opinions of Latinos and immigrants.

A recent New York Times/CBS News survey showed that Tea Party sympathizers are whiter, older, wealthier, and well-educated than average Americans. They are more likely to be employed, and more likely to describe their economic situation as very or fairly good, according to this survey.

If Tea Baggers are doing relatively fine, what are they so riled up about? These studies suggest that, at least in part, it's about race. New demographic data shows that minority births will soon outpace white births. By 2050, Hispanics are expected to account for more than a quarter of the American population.

David Bositis with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which examines issues of race, said “The Tea Baggers feel a loss, like their status has been diminished. If you listen to their language, it's always about 'taking our country back.' But it's really not taking the country back as is. It's taking the country back"—as in time.”

Bositis finds the movement's arguments about reckless federal spending unpersuasive. Why, he asks, weren't they up in arms when President George W. Bush launched two costly wars and created a new unfunded mandate with his Medicare prescription-drug plan? Why didn't they take to the streets when he converted a surplus into a massive deficit?  Given modern societal norms, "they know they can't use any overtly racist language," he contends. "So they use coded language"—questioning the patriotism of the president or complaining about "socialist" schemes to redistribute wealth.

Some Tea Partiers blame the media for casting them as racists. "It really makes me mad," says Tom Fitzhugh, a Tea party activist in Tampa. "They have tried to portray us as a bunch of radical extremists." He considers Obama an abomination—possibly "the most radical-voting senator that ever was" and someone likely to "take us down the path of destruction." He believes the administration is intent on taking away his guns, trampling on states' rights, and opening the borders with Canada and Mexico. He has serious doubts that Obama was born in the U.S. and suspects that the president is a closet Muslim. (There's no evidence to support any of these accusations.) But his anger has nothing to do with race, he says. The real issue is that Obama is "taking down the Constitution and the way it's governed us for hundreds of years." All he wants, in other words, is to take his country back.

Senate Republicans side with Wall Street again , they want back room deals, don't want Consumer Protection Agency.

Unconcerned with the political consequences, US Senate Republicans hung together and again blocked Democratic efforts to start debate on financial reform legislation to rein in Wall Street greed.

For the second time in two days, lawmakers voted 57-41 to take up the popular bill, falling short of the 60 needed to move ahead with the toughest regulatory overhaul of its kind since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"Republicans have made it clear whose side they’re on: Big banks on Wall Street, not middle-class families," said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who set the stage for a similar vote on Wednesday.

The vote came as top Goldman Sachs executives faced a barrage of questions and criticism from a key Senate committee over the investment giant's actions in the run up to the collapse, now the subject of a fraud lawsuit.

Republican Senator Richard Shelby, their conference’s lead negotiator, said they want to give back-room negotiations begun last year more time to forge a compromise bill. Shelby said "the biggest obstacle" was the creation of an "intrusive" consumer financial protection agency.

The financial reform legislation aims to tighten regulations on the giant market in derivatives, complex, privately traded instruments tied to the underlying value of a commodity and seen as vehicles for dangerous speculation.

The Republican argument against health care reform was that there were too many back-room deals negotiated, when it comes to protecting the interests of Wall Street over middle-class Americans the Republicans now want to give back-room negotiations more time.

Goldman Sachs hit with investor lawsuit for lying about subprime mortgage CDO designed to lose money

Goldman Sachs was hit with an investor lawsuit on Monday. The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court accused Goldman of making materially false and misleading statements about an Abacus collateralized debt obligation tied to subprime mortgages that regulators say it created and marketed though it was designed to lose money.

The complaint also alleged Goldman concealed its receipt of a Wells notice last July from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating potential civil charges over Abacus.

According to the complaint, Goldman's actions caused its shares to trade at inflated levels. The shares fell 12.8 percent on April 16, wiping out more than $12 billion of value, after the SEC filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Goldman.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status and unspecified damages on behalf of potentially thousands of shareholders.

Goldman did not return a request seeking comment. Other executives named as defendants are Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn and Chief Financial Officer David Viniar.

Goldman Shares closed down $5.37, or 3.4 percent, at $152.03 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

In their lawsuit over the Abacus transaction, the SEC accused Goldman of failing to tell investors that securities underlying Abacus were chosen by billionaire hedge fund investor John Paulson, who was betting that the securities would lose value.

Paulson made about $1 billion on Abacus, roughly the amount other investors are believed to have lost. 

Nobel Prize winning economist slams Republican Senate Minority Leader (recipient of huge Wall Street contributions) for being dishonest about financial reform bill

Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for saying that the financial regulation reform bill now before the Senate would institutionalize bank bailouts. Krugman said the top-ranking Senate Republican's rhetoric was possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics.

On Fox News Sunday, McConnell threatened a Republican filibuster this week because of what he called "the partisan bill." He insisted that Democrats are unwilling to work with Republicans on reforms of Wall Street.

Pointing to McConnell's distortions of what Democrats intend to do with their bill, Krugman shredded McConnell's political posturing on ABC Sunday morning.

"Anyone who says we need to be bipartisan should bear in mind that for the last several weeks, Mitch McConnell has been trying to stop reform with possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics, which is the claim that having regulation of the banks is actually bailing out the banks," Krugman declared. "Basically the argument boiled down to saying that what we really need to do to deal with fires is abolish the fire department, because then people will know that they can't let their building burn."

Watch Krugman discuss Wall Street reform on ABC Sunday here:

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/roundtable-reforming-wall-street-10470570