Kyl, Kavanaugh And The Slaveholder Religion

Politically, Arizona may be headed in a good direction... but it may be a very long time before it gets there. Democrats in the state-- guided by Chuck Schumer-- picked the single most conservative Trump-supporting Democrat in Congress, as their Senate nominee, Kyrsten Sinema, head of the Blue Dog Caucus. But the Republicans in Arizona are worse; all of them. And that includes Trump-hating Jeff Flake, who was originally elected to the Senate because he was the most conservative Arizona congressman.

Governor Doug Ducey is mandated to pick a Republican for John McCain's seat because McCain was a Republican. He's not mandated to pick someone like McCain though. He's appointing lobbyist-turned-senator-turned-lobbyist Jon Kyl, who will only commit to staying on for a few months because he's eager to enhance his lobbyist clout as a senator again before going back to his lobbyist career. As wretched and horrible as Kyl is-- and, believe me, he is--Ducey could have picked someone even worse: Kelli Ward, Joe Arpaio, Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon, John Shadegg... all of whom were banging on his door and all of whom are even further right than Kyl.

Complicating Ducey's decision had to have been that Kirk Adams, the Arizona House's former speaker and now Ducey's chief of staff, wants to run for the Senate seat in 2020 and if Kyl resigns before 2020, there will be huge pressure on Ducey to appoint Martha McSally-- likely to lose to Sinema in November. That will end Adams' hopes to win that seat. A whole other scenario would be that Ducey simply appoints himself to the Senate after the November election-- whether he wins or loses to Democrat David Garcia.

Kyl's first vote is likely to be on confirming Brett Kavanaugh-- an obvious conflict of interest, since he has been Kavanaugh's "sherpa" for the confirmation process. Obviously Ducey wasn't looking for a maverick, just someone to vote to confirm Kavanaugh and kill Obamacare. And a bonus in case anything comes up for Kyl's lobbying clients, Merck, Northrop Grumman, PHARMA, Raytheon and Walmart.

Miss the NY Times OpEd from Monday, The Evangelical Case Against Judge Kavanaugh? Rev Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a Baptist minister in Durham, N.C. and author of Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion, wrote that his faith compels him "to challenge the way reactionary conservatives have hijacked our faith to serve their narrow interests.

Conservative evangelicals were at the White House last week for an event the Rev. Robert Jeffress described as “a half state dinner and a half campaign rally.” Evangelicals like Mr. Jeffress are ebullient as the Senate prepares to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh next week, praising President Trump as “the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-conservative judiciary president of any president in history... [E]vangelicals who toe the line that the religious right has laid out for decades lift their hands in prayer to thank God for a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that now seems just weeks away."

As an evangelical who cut my teeth in politics during the heyday of the Moral Majority movement in the 1980s, I know the enthusiasm many conservatives feel at the prospect of culture war victories at the Supreme Court. But I join many other faith leaders to oppose Judge Kavanaugh not in spite of our faith commitments, but because of them. As we read the Bible alongside Judge Kavanaugh’s record, we find his nomination a threat to the Christian ethic we are called to preach and pursue in public life.

Leading the evangelical challenge to an extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a group of evangelical women has issued a “call to pause,” asking fellow believers to step back from the rhetoric of “life” to examine how decisions before the court would impact the vulnerable people we claim to care about, even the unborn. “The way to reduce abortion is not through escalating culture wars but by reducing poverty,” they argue, noting studies that show abortion rates at an all-time low, though they remain highest among poor women who lack access to health care.

Lisa Sharon Harper, an African-American evangelical who has been a principal organizer of the “call to pause,” notes that a “right to life” is about more than abortion. “Majority conservative rulings have already whittled back civil rights protections, leaving this generation’s children as vulnerable to a new Jim Crow as my great-grandparents, who fled for their lives from the terror of the Jim Crow South.”

For many nonwhite evangelicals, the life issues that matter most are voting rights, living wages, environmental protection, access to health care and public education. The experience of many of those evangelicals illuminates how life issues have been narrowly defined by conservative evangelicals over the last 40 years.

Following the civil rights movement in the South, many white evangelicals felt threatened by political and cultural changes that challenged their assumptions about the natural order of the world. Leaning on the logic of slaveholder religion-- which, as the historian H. Shelton Smith showed, justified human bondage by arguing that white control of society was in keeping with God’s design-- religious conservatives rallied the faithful for moral resistance to the “unnatural” expansion of 14th Amendment protections to women and minorities. Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” in 1954, Southern preachers like Jerry Falwell had preached against liberal “activist judges.” But the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision offered Mr. Falwell’s Moral Majority a rallying cry that appeared selfless: defense of the unborn.

Despite an incredible investment in outreach to them, a vast majority of African-American evangelicals never got on board with the conservative rhetoric of the culture wars. Many black evangelicals understood that a reactionary movement against “activist judges” wasn’t rooted in godly concern for unborn children but in a fear of change, even if they, too, valued every child as a person created in God’s image. Across the Sunbelt and the Rust Belt, African-American evangelicals-- who represent as much as three-fourths of the black population-- leaned Democratic.

The enthusiasm of older white men who still control mainly white evangelical organizations like the Family Research Council and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association that thrived on the culture wars should give all Americans pause, especially as we pay attention to what Judge Kavanaugh himself has said. In a lecture to the American Enterprise Institute last year, he celebrated the legacy of Chief Justice William Rehnquist by noting how Chief Justice Rehnquist had led the Supreme Court’s turn “away from its 1960s Warren court approach, where the court in some cases had seemed to be simply enshrining its policy views into the Constitution, or so the critics charged.”

...Whether we have any experience in reading the law, evangelicals are familiar with Judge Kavanaugh’s way of reading authoritative texts. This is precisely how fundamentalists read Scripture in the early 20th century, when evolutionary science challenged their reading of Genesis and social science confronted narrow corporate interests during the Gilded Age. Fundamentalism taught reactionary religious voices to dig in their heels and claim final authority about what the text “actually says.” But evangelicals should know better: Our movement in America was founded in an attempt to maintain a commitment to Jesus and the Bible while rejecting reactionary extremism.

As proponents of “Christian nationalism” continue to be the most consistent base of support for President Trump, my evangelical faith compels me to challenge the way reactionary conservatives have hijacked our faith to serve their narrow interests. With Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, their 40-year effort to overturn expansions of 14th Amendment protections by the Warren court may be in reach. This will not necessarily save unborn children, but it will make life more difficult for minorities, workers, poor people and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

When Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” in John 10:10, he wasn’t thinking about a victory for those who have used religion to fight back against the gains of the civil rights movement. Jesus was inviting all of us to work together for the vision at the heart of that movement-- a beloved community where all people created in God’s image can thrive.

Voters-- Even Republican Voters-- Are Growing Sick Of Trump's Lies

Yesterday, as all days, the Lazy Boy President, was up early watching TV and tweeting delusions and obsessions with his self-image and his reactions. What had set Señor Trumpanzee off in his Jersey gold resort? He wasn't working if course-- he doesn't know what work is-- he was watching CNN, which had just had Senator Blumenthal on to talk about Putin-Gate. And, remember, while Blumenthal was an actual U.S. marine fighting Vietnam, Trump was a serial draft dodger who had played dress up soldier at a military academy for incorrigible juvenile delinquents from wealthy families. At 7:32AM Trumpanzee tweeted he was "working hard" from New Jersey. Then Blumenthal was on TV and-- BOOM!-- at 7:47AM he launched his false attack on the Connecticut senator. (In his self-absorbed little mind, this is the essence of "Making America Great Again.")

The Republican polling firm, Firehouse Strategies polled likely Midterm voters in key swing states Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And the news was all bad fro Trumpanzee. His base-- aggrieved, uneducated white men-- is shrinking. It's not just that Trump’s base of support has shrunk from 35.3% of voters who have a 'strongly favorable' view of him in April to only 28.6% today... much of that erosion among Republicans-- and that he cannot take continued GOP support for granted in swing state-- but that "nearly half of voters (48.3%) believe Trump lies intentionally to mislead people, up from 43.4% in April. For Congressional Republicans, 51.8% now believe the same about them, up from 45.7% in April. Only 14.6% now believe Trump never lies, and only 9.1% believe the same about GOP congressmen/women. Today, only 5% of Republicans we surveyed believe Trump never lies, down from 31.3% in April. Trump’s false statements are eroding his credibility with voters, including Republicans." None of this rant about Blumenthal yesterday is true:

The new Quinnipiac Poll finds that 34% of voters define Trump as "honest" and 62% say he is dishonest. NY Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg dealt with Trump's compulsive lying on Monday morning: Many Politicians Lie. But Trump Has Elevated the Art of Fabrication. "Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant here, likes to tell his clients that there are 'three keys to credibility,' "she wrote. 'One, never defend the indefensible,' he says. 'Two, never deny the undeniable. And No. 3 is: Never lie.' Would that politicians took his advice. Fabrications have long been a part of American politics. Politicians lie to puff themselves up, to burnish their résumés and to cover up misdeeds, including sexual affairs. (See: Bill Clinton.) Sometimes they cite false information for what they believe are justifiable policy reasons. (See: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam.)

But President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called 'the conflict between truth and politics' to an entirely new level."

From his days peddling the false notion that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to his inflated claims about how many people attended his inaugural, to his description just last week of receiving two phone calls-- one from the president of Mexico and another from the head of the Boy Scouts-- that never happened, Mr. Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis.

In part, this represents yet another way that Mr. Trump is operating on his own terms, but it also reflects a broader decline in standards of truth for political discourse. A look at politicians over the past half-century makes it clear that lying in office did not begin with Donald J. Trump. Still, the scope of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods raises questions about whether the brakes on straying from the truth and the consequences for politicians’ being caught saying things that just are not true have diminished over time.

...[S]ometimes it’s easier to tell what’s false than what’s a lie. President George W. Bush faced accusations that he and members of his administration took America to war in Iraq based on false intelligence about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush and his team emphasized and in some cases exaggerated elements of the intelligence that bolstered the case while disregarding dissenting information, leading critics to accuse them of lying. Among those who said Mr. Bush had lied was Mr. Trump.

Over the past two decades, institutional changes in American politics have made it easier for politicians to lie. The proliferation of television political talk shows and the rise of the internet have created a fragmented media environment. With no widely acknowledged media gatekeeper, politicians have an easier time distorting the truth.

And in an era of hyper-partisanship, where politicians often are trying to court voters at the extreme ends of the political spectrum, politicians often lie with impunity. Even the use of the word “lie” in politics has changed.

“There was a time not long ago when you could not use the word ‘lie’ in a campaign,” said Anita Dunn, once a communications director to Mr. Obama. “It was thought to be too harsh, and it would backfire. So you had to say they hadn’t been honest, or they didn’t tell the truth, or the facts show something else, and even that was seen as hot rhetoric.”

With the rise of fact-checking websites, politicians are held accountable for their words. In 2013, the website PolitiFact declared that Mr. Obama had uttered the “lie of the year” when he told Americans that if they liked their health care plan they could keep it. (Mr. Trump won “lie of the year” in 2015.)

“I thought it was unfair at the time, and I still think it’s unfair,” Ms. Dunn said, referring to Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama later apologized to people who were forced off their plans “despite assurances from me.”

On the theory that politicians who get caught in lies put their reputations at risk, Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College (and contributor to the New York Times’s Upshot) and some colleagues tried to study the effects of Mr. Trump’s misstatements during last year’s presidential campaign.

In a controlled experiment, researchers showed a group of voters a misleading claim by Mr. Trump, while another group saw that claim accompanied by “corrective information” that directly contradicted what Mr. Trump had said. The group that viewed the corrections believed the new information, but seeing it did not change how they viewed Mr. Trump.

“We know politicians are risk averse. They try to minimize negative coverage, and that negative coverage could damage their image over time,” Mr. Nyhan said. “But the reputational consequences of making false claims aren’t strong enough. They’re not sufficiently strong to dissuade people from misleading the public.”

Of course, lying to court voters is one thing, and lying to federal prosecutors quite another. When Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, was accused of a long list of federal corruption counts related to claims that he tried to sell Mr. Obama’s seat in the United States Senate, he was asked quite directly about lying.

While Mr. Blagojevich was testifying under oath, a prosecutor pressed him on whether he made a habit, as a politician, of lying to the public. They sparred over whether Mr. Blagojevich had fed a misleading story to a local newspaper.

“That was a lie,” the prosecutor, Reid Schar, was quoted as saying.

Mr. Blagojevich refused to fess up. “That was a misdirection play in politics,” he answered.

He was sentenced to a 14-year prison term in 2011.

...Many of Mr. Trump’s lies-- like the time he boasted that he had made the “all-time record in the history of Time Magazine” for being on its cover so often-- are somewhat trivial, and “basically about him polishing his ego,” said John Weaver, a prominent Republican strategist.

That mystifies Bob Ney, a Republican former congressman who spent time in prison for accepting illegal gifts from a lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and lying to federal investigators about it. “It really baffles me why he has to feel compelled to exaggerate to exonerate himself,” Mr. Ney said.

But other presidential lies, like Mr. Trump’s false claim that millions of undocumented immigrants had cast ballots for his opponent in the 2016 election, are far more substantive, and pose a threat, scholars say, that his administration will build policies around them.

The glaring difference between Mr. Trump and his predecessors is the sheer magnitude of falsehoods and exaggerations; PolitiFact rates just 20 percent of the statements it reviewed as true, and a total of 69 percent either mostly false, false or “Pants on Fire.” That leaves scholars like Ms. Goodwin to wonder whether Mr. Trump, in elevating the art of political fabrication, has forever changed what Americans are willing to tolerate from their leaders.

“What’s different today and what’s scarier today is these lies are pointed out, and there’s evidence that they’re wrong,” she said. “And yet because of the attacks on the media, there are a percentage of people in the country who are willing to say, ‘Maybe he is telling the truth.’”

Maybe they should replace Gen. Kelly with painter Nancy Ohanian

So what happened to the Comcast-TWC deal? Not enough lobbying, or not good enough lobbying?

"They talked a lot about the benefits, and how much they were going to invest in Time Warner Cable and improve the service it provided, but every time you talked about industry consolidation and the incentive they would have to leverage their market power to hurt competition, they gave us unsatisfactory answers."

-- an unnamed senior Senate staff aide, quoted by the NYT's Eric Lipton regarding Comcast's massive lobbying efforts for its takeover of Time Warner Cable

"No amount of public-interest commitments to diversity would remedy the consumer harm a merged Comcast-Time Warner would have caused to millions of Americans across the country."

-- CA Rep. Maxine Waters, who had "offered reserved support for [Comcast's] NBCUniversal deal after playing a leading role in pushing for concessions by Comcast to promote diversity in its programming"

"This merger would have further enhanced this company’s incentive, its means and its history of abuse of market power."

-- CT Sen. Richard Blumenthal, an early critic of the deal

by Ken

As a Time Warner Cable customer, and thus hardly a disinterested observer, I have so far resisted the impulse to dance a jig over the announcement that Comcast has abandoned its effort to swallow TWC. I can't help thinking that great minds will yet knock heads together and come up with something worse.

Still, it's a relief. My only problem with TWC is that they charge too damn much. Whereas those Comcast people -- they're devils.

So what happened? "Ultimately," says the NYT's Eric Lipton in his post mortem, "Intense Lobbying Failed to Assure Comcast's Deal," the deal to amalgamate the country's top two cable operators "collapsed because of clear signals that federal regulators were preparing to block it."

Eric leads off with this tale:

David L. Cohen, the master salesman who runs the Comcast Corporation’s lobbying efforts, stood before a room full of Latino House lawmakers one morning in early December trying to convince them that they should embrace his $45 billion deal to acquire Time Warner Cable.

But as Mr. Cohen continued to talk — taking up much of the time set aside for the closed-door session — at least some of the assembled lawmakers began to wonder if his highly polished pitch was falling short.

"He was smothering us with attention but he was not answering our questions," said Representative Tony Cárdenas, Democrat of California, who said that in the early stages of the deal he was open to supporting it if his questions were addressed satisfactorily. "And I could not help but think that this is a $140 billion company with 130 lobbyists — and they are using all of that to the best of their ability to get us to go along."

So we're talking, what, not enough lobbying? Or just not good enough lobbying?
"The warning signs," says Eric, "were already present from the muted reception [the deal] had received on Capitol Hill."

Despite the distribution of $5.9 million in campaign contributions by the two companies during the 2014 election cycle, and the expenditure of an extraordinary $25 million on lobbying last year, no more than a handful of lawmakers signed letters endorsing the deal. By contrast, more than 100 signed letters of support in 2010 when Comcast was pushing its merger with NBCUniversal.

Congress has no direct power to approve or disapprove any merger, but endorsements, particularly if they come from black and Hispanic leaders, can send a subtle but important message to regulators that the deal is in the public interest and should be cleared. It was not that many lawmakers spoke out against the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal — it was just that many of them remained silent.

And it's not as if Comcast hasn't been to this rodeo before. Eric notes that the company, "at least until this deal, had a near-legendary reputation in Washington for leveraging its connections."
Its connections?

In 2013, President Obama stopped by Mr. Cohen’s Philadelphia home for a fund-raiser, and Mr. Roberts was envied for having played golf with President Obama that same year in Martha’s Vineyard.

Oh, its connections.

The company carefully assigned members of its sprawling lobbying team to different lawmakers at both the federal and state levels, based often on their ethnicity or past relationships, company officials acknowledged in an interview shortly after the Time Warner Cable transaction was proposed in February 2014.

Comcast, for example, assigned Juan Otero, a former Department of Homeland Security official who serves on the board of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and now works as a Comcast lobbyist, to be the point person to work with Mr. Cárdenas.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Stewart, an African-American lobbyist on the Congressional Black Caucus Institute board, was assigned to work with Marc Veasey, Democrat of Texas, who is also black. She personally appealed to Mr. Veasey’s staff, urging that he not sign a letter last August questioning the deal, according to an email obtained by The New York Times, citing the company’s work on behalf of the minority community. (Mr. Veasey still signed a related letter.)

Comcast also asked Jordan Goldstein, a former official at the Federal Communications Commission who is now a Comcast regulatory affairs executive, to work with [Connecticut Sen. Richard] Blumenthal’s office. Mr. Goldstein had previously developed a working relationship with Joel Kelsey, a legislative assistant in charge of reviewing the matter for the senator, who is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee.

At the state level, it also hired at least two former state attorneys general — Patrick C. Lynch of Rhode Island and Walter W. Cohen of Pennsylvania — to reach out to state officials, who in many cases have their own antitrust powers, to try to remove impediments to the deal’s approval.

Senator Blumenthal, Eric has already pointed out, "was critical from the deal from the start." He says now, ""There are limits as to how effective even the best advocate can be with a losing case, as this merger would have further enhanced this company’s incentive, its means and its history of abuse of market power."

Oh my.

Lawmakers cited a variety of reasons as to why Comcast’s elaborate pitch failed to gain traction this time: The miserable customer service ratings the company earns, for instance, made politicians leery of helping it out. In addition, there were much more substantial antitrust concerns associated with this deal, and some members of Congress said they thought Comcast had failed to live up to its promises in the NBCUniversal deal, and so could not be trusted this time.

Other lawmakers and staff members on Capitol Hill, in interviews Friday, cited Comcast’s swagger in trying to promote this deal. They said they felt that Comcast was so convinced in the early stages that the deal would be approved that it was dismissing concerns about the transaction, or simply taking the conversation in a different direction when asked about them.

"The miserable customer service ratings the company earns made politicians leery of helping it out"? And members "thought Comcast had failed to live up to its promises in the NBCUniversal deal and so could not be trusted this time"? Oh my.

Comcast itself isn't talking much.

Comcast did not offer on Friday its own post-mortem on the deal’s collapse. "Today, we move on," the Comcast chairman and chief executive Brian L. Roberts said in his short statement. A Comcast spokeswoman declined to comment further.

We learn, though, that "in some cases, lawmakers like Mr. Cárdenas and Mr. Blumenthal had private conversations with Thomas Wheeler, the chairman of the F.C.C., to express their reservations." Oh my. And Senator Blumenthal "also spoke directly with Mr. Cohen," the master lobbyist, "who visited the senator’s office for a chat." The senator, however, "said he came away from the meeting unconvinced."

So did "others on Capitol Hill who had similar conversations," like the two quoted at the top of this post, the "senior Senate staff aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly," and Rep. Maxine Waters."

Meanwhile Comcast is "mov[ing] forward." Watch out in case it comes too close. Unless you're already one of its customers, in which case God have mercy on your soul. And we TWC customers are left to wonder what's in store for us next.

#

Will Taliban Dan Protect Florida Families From Illegal Foreclosures? Does He Even Know What They Are?

 

Last week we learned that, under intense pressure from Congressman Alan Grayson and other determined congressional and executive watchdogs, Bank of America decided to join banksters JPMorgan Chase and GMAC in suspending foreclosure processes in 23 states that "weren't reviewed properly." How many illegal foreclosures have already forced families out of their homes? It's why Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), early in 2009, told her constituents to stay put in their homes if some crooked bankster tried to force them out.

In the video above, Rep. Grayson explains, in layman's terms-- and with horrifying details-- what kind of unconscionable fraud the banks have been up to. Even the staid old NY Times has taken note of the scandal this week.

The foreclosure machinery that has forced millions of Americans out of their homes is beginning to seize up as some lenders and their lawyers are accused of cutting corners in their pursuit of rapid home repossessions.

Evictions are expected to slow sharply, housing analysts said, as state and national law enforcement officials shine a light on questionable foreclosure methods revealed by two of the country’s biggest home lenders in the last two weeks.

Even lenders with no known problems are expected to approach defaulting homeowners more cautiously and look more aggressively for resolutions short of outright eviction.

Despite the turmoil, some economists said the breakdown could ultimately lay the groundwork for a real estate recovery.

Stricken neighborhoods across the country, for example, could benefit. One big factor undermining home sales is fear of a large number of foreclosed homes coming to the market. If the foreclosures are delayed or never happen, housing prices might find a floor.

...As more defaulting homeowners become aware of the lenders’ problems, they are expected to hire lawyers and challenge the proceedings against them. And if completed foreclosures were not properly done, families who bought the troubled homes could be vulnerable to claims by the former owners.

Apparently alarmed about such a possibility, one of the major title insurance companies, Old Republic National Title, has sent a bulletin to agents saying that “until further notice” it would not insure title to properties foreclosed upon by GMAC Mortgage, the country’s fourth-largest home lender and one of the two big lenders at the center of the current controversy.

GMAC declined to comment, and Old Republic representatives did not return calls.

GMAC has acknowledged legal missteps in processing mortgages, and JPMorgan Chase has acknowledged the possibility of missteps, and both have suspended all foreclosures in the 23 states where they need a court’s approval. That’s 56,000 in the case of Chase alone; GMAC declined to provide a number.

Attorneys general in half a dozen states are demanding action or opening investigations. The Treasury Department said Thursday it was asking regulators to look into “these troubling developments.”

“We’re seeing a fundamental breakdown in the system, because no one cared that much about getting things right,” said Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat of Florida, who unsuccessfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt all foreclosures in that state.

Grayson, of course, was maligned and viciously slandered again and again by Fox News for having the temerity to interfere. However, after Grayson got Florida to act, other states did likewise. Friday Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered a moratorium on all foreclosures by all banks for two months and California Attorney General Jerry Brown ordered J.P. Morgan to prove it is following the law before it continues foreclosures in California.

[I]n Connecticut, Blumenthal said in a statement that he is investigating J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally, formerly GMAC, which is the recipient of a $17 billion federal bailout and majority-owned by the U.S. Treasury, as well as other lenders.

He said the actions of J.P. Morgan and Ally are a "possible fraud on the court undermining the integrity of the legal process and consumers' ability to fight foreclosures.

"This freeze should stop a foreclosure steamroller based on defective documents and enable effective remedies," Blumenthal said.

It's worth noting that Michael Moore, in a kind of open letter to the fractured and bumbling Democrats, laying out a roadmap for salvaging the midterms and turning them into a landslide victory instead of what pundits are predicting, calls for just this kind of action in the 3rd of 5 suggestions:

3. Announce a Moratorium on All Family Home Foreclosures.
Last month (August) there were more home foreclosures than in any month in U.S. history. Worse than any month in the worst year ever, 2009. The bleeding hasn't stopped-- it's only gotten worse. And now, this week, two of the largest crime organizations who are throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes (GMAC and JPMorgan Chase) have been forced to momentarily stop doing this. It turns out, they don't really have the paperwork to prove they actually own these houses! It's madness. So if you do one thing for the middle class this week, do this. It will take an hour of your time to draw up the decree and issue it. We'd rather watch It's a Wonderful Life than Poltergeist.

Obviously, with corporate shills like Steny Hoyer and his collection of mangy, bribe-hungry Blue Dogs, having so much say in the Democratic Party, this is never going to happen. It's Sunday, a very good time to get Grayson's back; he about all we've got standing between us and what Frank Rich referred to today as "the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails... Wall Street potentates and corporate titans."


UPDATE: Of course there's a simpler way of dealing with this... as Donald Duck can easily explain: