"The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them, much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same."

-- David Mamet

 

"Never judge a book by its movie."

-- J.W. Eagan

 

 

"I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences."

-- Jim Morrison

 

Movie Palace Matinees and The Drive-In at Midnight

by

Justice Putnam

 

I had an eclectic upbringing. My mother was a regional jazz singer in the Northwest and had pretensions of being an artist, while my dad was a college professor who espoused a neo-Turnerist and Progressive historical perspective. That meant being exposed to Art, Literature, Music and Cinema at an early age. We didn't watch television much when we lived at Blue River in the Cascades on the way to Sisters; mostly because reception was so poor.  Later, when we lived outside of Corvallis, reception remained poor. We would entertain ourselves at home; but movie palace matinees and the drive-in at midnight were important cultural excursions.

The first movies I truly remember was at the age of three, in our backyard. We lived next to the Cascade Drive-in along Highway 126 in Springfield, Oregon and the year was 1958. The concession stand had loudspeakers and the pole speakers for the cars would resonate to our house that we could just set up chairs on warm summer nights and enjoy the movies. The first one I remember, one that had a profound impact on me was, "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman." I was three, as I stated; the movie totally freaked me out and gave me dreams that foreshadowed the penance paid for a misogynistic life. I must say, I've always watched my step, lest I be crushed underfoot!

Though we could make snacks ourselves; often my parents would walk over to the concession stand and buy popcorn and sodas; hot dogs and hamburgers; french fries and Bon Bons. I have no idea of the prices, being so young. But I learned later that the proprietors of the Drive-in had a tacit agreement with the neighborhood that if we supported the concession stand that no walls would be built to obstruct the view of the screen. After we moved in 1961, a wall was built. The Cascade fell the way of most Drive-ins and a housing development has occupied the space for the last 30 years.

My dad began teaching at Oregon State University in 1961 in Corvallis, Oregon just before Bernard Malamud left to teach back East. In fact, it was Malamud who introduced our family to the Whiteside; a very ornate, Italianate movie palace. We saw "Twelve Angry Men," "Rebel Without a Cause," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Ben Hur," "Exodus," "Sunset Boulevard"; really so many it's hard to list them all. The concession sold a large tub of popcorn for 75 cents, hot dogs for the same, bottles of Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and Orange Nehi for 50 cents. Reese Cups, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Butterfingers, and Baby Ruth Bars were 50 cents, Bon Bons were 75 cents; but Big Hunks could be had for a dime. Generally, the admission price was for a double feature. Yes, a much simpler and abundant time; except for the upheavals of the age.

In 1965, my father began teaching at Cal State Fullerton. Until the summer of 1969, we lived in the Rowland Heights/ West Covina area of the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. We would go as a family to the Capri in West Covina, but I would also go with my friends to the 5th Ave Theater in Rowland Hts, since it was within the range of my Stingray bicycle.

The Capri showed a double feature for the price of admission. "A Patch of Blue," "Lilies of the Field," "Cat Balou," "Hud," "The Sound of Music," "The Great Escape," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?," "Two for the Road," "Dr. Strangelove," and "Failsafe" are movies that stand out in my memory.

The 5th Ave Theater was a box-like single screen with non-descript concessions, but what stands out in my mind is seeing "2001: A Space Odyessy" six times in a row on one admission. The movie started at 11 in the morning on a Saturday. My chums and I watched and analyzed the movie until the last show let out after 11 that night. I had told my parents earlier that morning of our plan to see the movie repeatedly; they didn't think, though, that an eighth-grader would be out until almost midnight. I did have the movie memorized at that point, so my recollection proved the study.

We moved to Yorba Linda in 1969, the summer before my freshman year in High School. I mostly saw movies with my friends at that point, rather than with my family. We would go to either the Fox Fullerton, The Anaheim Drive-in off the 91 or the Highway 39 Drive-in off Trask near Beach Blvd. The Fox Fullerton showed one movie per admission; The Anaheim and Hwy 39 Drive-ins showed a double feature. One great "perk" about going to the Drive-ins was that we either brought a "picnic" or stopped at Carl's Jr before.

Movies that stand out in my mind at the Fox were "Paint Your Wagon," "McCabe and Mrs Miller," "Mash," "Fists of Fury," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Cool Hand Luke."

The Anaheim Drive-in showed "The Godfather," "Two-Lane Blacktop" and "Bonnie and Clyde," while the Hwy 39 Drive-in showed "Vanishing Point," "Play Misty for Me," "Scarecrow," "The Shining," "The Wild Bunch," "Easy Rider" and "Apocalypse Now."

I started going to the Nuart in Santa Monica around 1978. I don't remember the concession prices because at that point, I rarely bought concessions at the movies. Admission was for one movie. The Nuart was famous for showing foreign and "independent" productions. I was fortunate to see all of Kurosawa's movies, as well as "Wages of Fear," "Les Visiteurs Du Soir," "Man Bites Dog," "Les Diabolique," "The Swimmer," "Belle du Jour," "Two or Three Things I Know About Her,"  "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans," "Eraserhead," "Fires on the Plain," "Spetters" and "The White Rose."

I saw "Blade Runner" when it was first released at the tiled-courtyard theater in Laguna Beach, when I lived there.

I moved to the Bay Area "full time" in 1984. I would mostly go to the UC Theater and since I live nearby, The Elmwood. Both showed one movie per admission. I've seen many movies over the years at The Elmwood, but two that stand out are "Blue Velvet" and "Wings of Desire."

The UC, when it was open, could be counted on for Documentaries, Foreign  and Independent movies. Some I saw there were,  "Henry and June," "Woman in the Dunes," "My Life As A Dog," "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge," (though I had first read the Ambrose Bierce story in jr hi and had seen the short in 10th grade at our "little theatre"), "Papillon," "A Boy and His Dog," "Cinema Paradiso," "They Shoot Horses Don't They?," "Desert Bloom," "Down By Law," "Man Facing Southeast," "The Player" and of course, the long running midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

I mostly see movies these days with my Netflix subscription; but when I do go to the theater, I frequent The Elmwood (since it has been refurbished and a neighborhood group "saved" it), and The Parkway in Oakland. The Elmwood shows one movie per admission and the Parkway shows a double feature, if you get there for the first one. With a great mix of sofas and coffee tables, plus large, overstuffed recliners; they also have gourmet pizza and foodie specials in the $6.00 to $18.00 range; plus microbrewed beers on tap costing $14.00 for a pitcher; and some superb red and white wines by the bottle or the glass. Yum!

Movies are no better and no worse than in years past. The same dynamic of Art and Commerce drives the industry; as it always has and always will. There might be movies "produced" by accountants and focus groups; movies that are brazenly formulaic. But as in every era of the cinema, from Hollywood and foreign alike, true gems of the art emerge out of the mediocrity.

It is the search for and discovery of these gems that has always interested me.

 

© 2009 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen

Where do we even start in criticizing the distinguished Governor? 

Well, not in the category, "Hair and Makeup," that's for sure.  I don't know how sophisticated the software is or whether you are even seeing these TPM ads whereever you might happen to be.  Maybe for you, it's Jerry Lewis's muscular distrophy pitch, but what is showing up on our TPM screens here in freezing-cold Eastern Europe, are highly unflattering mouth-agape pics of the ex-Beauty Queen with the question in big letters, "Like Palin"?   In bigger script sometimes, "Do You Really Like Palin?" 

If the subtly repelling accompanying photo (yucch!!, and there are several of them rotating) is any clue to the preferred answer, the desired reply is "I'm actually a little tired of that mouthy skank!").   Mind you, this is funded by Newsmax, that conservative I-really-dunno-what-kinda group.   But this is an intra-conservative thing, apparently!  Eat their own!  Are they fronting for, say, Bobby Jindal in 2012?   Or are they on the level and just have excruciatingly bad taste in imagery (I'm serious)?

As any pro can tell us, the world is *full* of bad photography, really bad.   No Overreach -- even the covers of less expensive magazines are *so* frequently debased by repugnant shots.  The riddle thus obtains, "Is this subliminal or just totally idiotic?"   Is the Moose Queen being set up, or what the hell is going on, eh?! 

Several American cartoonists have weighed in on the controversial New York Post cartoon comparing whoever wrote the stimulus package to a monkey. Many found the cartoon tasteless, or cited the author's "bad judgment," but the notion that the piece was racist is shared by virtually none of these professionals.Here are their opinions:

"Dozens of cartoonists weighed in on dailycartoonist.com. Some said it was a simpleton move to use the tired metaphor of a monkey to make fun of something -- no matter what it was. One poster wrote, "Wha...?" pointing out that Obama didn't write the stimulus package; lawmakers did."

"The media love arguments about race.

I was thinking of drawing a cartoon with the media frantically rushing to cover the "racist" Delonas cartoon, while Attorney General Eric Holder calmly stands in front of the melee telling Americans how they are "cowardly" in avoiding discussions about race.  I expect we're in for a lot of this for the next four years."

Columbia Journalism Review asked the opinion of several "cartoonists and their editors," most of whom saw it as tasteless, yet not racist.

My best guess, from being a cartoonist and knowing cartoonists, and knowing how they think and work, is that the intention of the cartoonist was not to play off of the invidious cartoon characterizations of African-Americans in the past, but to use the recent news event, in which a chimpanzee was shot, as a topical reference with which to criticize the stimulus bill."

"This is so inside baseball that I didn't get it the minute I looked at it. It's a little bizarre. It's nice to give cartoonist editorial license, but I think this exceeds the taste boundary.

It's not obvious to me that it's racist.

I think it's saying, we don't like the stimulus bill; it's just like a monkey wrote it. I'm African-American, and I can totally see how people are going to take this the wrong way, but as a cartoonist, I think no racial intention was made.

You have to think about how people could misunderstand this, and I can see how people how can misconstrue it. Editorial cartoonists are against censorship of any kind; this one, I think, shows bad judgment.

"I think he really screwed up, but not for a racist reason. It's in bad taste to take an ape that injured a woman."

"It would help if everyone took a deep breath and tried to calm down. You can say it was insensitive or ignorant, but I think a lot of the outrage is manufactured."

"I knew what the guy was trying to say, and I don't remember thinking "racist" at all. He was taking a news event and tying the ludicrous stimulus bill to it, and he was making fun of Congress who drafted this bill."

Here is the list of what are probably the names of the original IAEC officers and advisors. The IAEC web page circa 2001 can be viewed in its entirety in the internet archives.

Note that Peter G. Kelly, former DNC finance chairman, was a member of the advisory committee although Kelly does not list that position on his law firm bio.

MANAGEMENT PROFILE

The Chairman of the Council is Ambassador Christopher R. Thomas, former Assistant Secretary General of the Organization of American States (1990-2000). Ambassador Thomas is a national of Trinidad and Tobago with vast experience at the Caribbean, Latin American and International levels. Ambassador Thomas was head of his country's Foreign Service, served as his country's Ambassador to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru and served as Chairperson of a number of United Nations bodies and committees over the period 1975-1990. Ambassador Thomas holds a First Degree (B. A.) from the University of London; a Diploma in Education (with distinction) from the University of the West Indies; a Masters in Latin American Studies from the University of Bristol, England; and a Masters in Political Science from New York University. Ambassador Thomas has lectured extensively on Latin American and International Relations, is the author of numerous articles and two books on the Organization of American States. He is fluent in Spanish and is regarded as a leading expert on Latin America and the Caribbean.

The President of the Council is Mr. Barry S. Featherman. Mr. Featherman is an Attorney at Law with wide consulting and corporate experience throughout the region. He is a national of the United States of America. Mr. Featherman is a Phi Beta Kappa Graduate of Temple University where he completed his degree magna cum laude in three years. He earned his law degree from American University where he served on the Law Review and holds a Masters degree in Inter-American Law from the University of Miami. Mr. Featherman has served several governments and business corporations throughout Latin America.  He also served as President of the U.S. and Canadian Divisions for one of Mexico's Largest Government Owned Engineering Companies and an Internet Service Provider in Central Mexico.  Mr. Featherman also helped administer leadership programs for the United Nations University in Amman, Jordan.   He is fluent in Spanish and is active with numerous civic, political and charitable organizations.

 The Secretary General of the Council is Dr. Luis Oganes. Dr. Oganes is a national of Peru and currently Vice President for Emerging Markets Research at J. P. Morgan. Dr. Oganes is a Fixed Income Strategist for Latin America with prime responsibility for the Andean countries - Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru. Dr. Oganes holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from the University of Lima, Peru and a PHD degree in Economics from New York University. Dr. Oganes' Doctoral Thesis is titled Optimal Fiscal Response to a surge in Capital Inflows. His fields of research specialization include International Finance and Monetary Economics; Inflationary Finance and its Effect on the Banking System; Reform of the State-owned Development Banking Institutions; Privatization of the Social Security System and the Deregulation of the Insurance Industry. Dr. Oganes is fluent in English and is regarded as a leading Developmental Financial Analyst in Latin America.

 The Vice President of the Council, Dr. José Rafael Gomez is a national of Venezuela. Dr. Gomez served for ten years as a member of Congress in Venezuela and was a ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Venezuelan Congress. Dr. Gomez is now a member of the Presidential Commission on Airport Security in Venezuela.

 The members of the Council's Advisory Committee are:

 Mr. Douglas Bergeron, Former  President and CEO, GEAC

Dr. Sylvia Ostry, University of Toronto

Dr. Robert Litan, Vice President and Director of Economic Studies, Brookings Institute

Dr. Guillermo Belt, former Inspector General of the OAS

Lic. Aureliano Gonzalez Baz Bryan, Gonzalez Vargas y Gonzalez Baz

Dr. Ruben Guevara, Former Director General, CATIE

Mr. Luis Correa, Legal Counsel for Banco Santander

Ing. Felipe Rubio Castillo, Director General, CIATEQ

Peter Kelly, Former Finance Chairman,  DNC, Washington

In a previous post by Obey, The unbearable weirdness of Greg Mankiw he quoted Mankiw as follows: 

The expression "create or save [4 million jobs]," which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius. You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus. [...] So he gave us a non-measurable metric.

If Dr. Mankiw is bothered by "non-measurable metrics", he should abandon economics and take up some other occupation. Economics is largely based on "non-measurable metrics".

Let's start with "market capitalization", which is the outstanding shares of a corporation times market price. This is "non-measurable" because if you actually attempt to sell that many shares, or even a large percentage, the market price would change. Furthermore, it is well known that there are several differing estimates of the value of a corporation, such as "book value", "enterprise value", "takeover value" and "breakup value". Depending on how they are made by an investment bank, the latter estimates will vary, and in any case they will likely consist of ranges and qualified estimates. Think of "Antiques Roadshow" and the appraiser's advice that the pair of vases will fetch $10,000 to $15,000, maybe $18,000 in a well attended auction, and they aren't really a pair so they might fetch more if sold separately, and in any case insure them for $20,000.

Even more non-measurable is "total stock market wealth". It may be of academic interest to know that if you sum up the market capitalization of all stocks traded in the market you get a large number. But if market cap is non-measurable, stock market wealth is even more so. Alas, due to the herd mentality of investors, the theoretical value of the market as a whole cannot be estimated with much more precision that the value of individual corporations. Prices are correlated, they go up and down together, and the Central Limit Theorem doesn't really apply.

Another non-measurable is "housing wealth", which takes the estimated appraised values of homes and sums them up over the country. This is even more mythical, since houses aren't standard commodities like stocks, and the market data on individual selling prices is even more dubious. There are reasons why homes might be sold at higher or lower than actual market prices.

In general, any computation of "market prices" times "quantity of items" summed over all the items is "non-measurable", unless the aggregate quantity of items is less than a small multiple of the daily market volume. Such aggregate sums are completely theoretical, and they have no more objective existance than unicorns or dragons.

Unfortunately, these non-measurable, market-based numbers aren't just used for theoretical discussions of psychological wealth effects - when "market-based accounting" is used for large banks, they sustitute for other estimates which may be more accurate.

For example, if a bank has a few 100 billion of mortgage-backed securities on its books, the quantity exceeds a few days volume in the market, and the market-based value is therefore theoretical and non-measurable. It is no sounder than the alternative methods of valuation based on historical prices and anticipated cash flows.

Even when individual firms have smaller quantities on their books, the same problem of non-measurability exists when speakng of the collection of firms. You can't take the amount of mortgage-backed securities held by each firm, multiply them by the market prices, sum over the firms, and then make assertions like "regional banks have another $500 billion in mortgage losses to go". The most that can be said is that they might have additional losses, but we can't measure accurately what they will be.

We are going to try this again. I will explain this amended blog in a comment.

PROLOGUE

I am sitting listening to a tape of a discussion with the Mississippi Freedom Riders on CSPAN dated July 19, 2008. There was present Lewis Zuchman, Eric Etheridge,  Robert Singleton,  and Helen Singleton and they are talking about their part in in the Civil Rights Movement of the early sisties. Eric was talking about the segregated jail cells in Mississippi. And there was amongst these black and white protesters some darker skinned Jewish people. So Sheriff Andy Taylor is yelling at this Jewish guy and asking him if he is black or white. And the Jewish guy kept saying things like "You see, it really doesn't matter that much does it?"And the sheriff is getting madder and madder and was initially going to put him with the Blacks.

Then there was a horrendous story about a man they had met in prison who had been a minister. One day during services the police came into his church and he raised a ruckus. At the time the Riders came across him, this minister had been held in prison for fifteen years WITHOUT A TRIAL AND WITHOUT CHARGES FILED. IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

What I attempted to do yesterday, and I am trying to do again today is to simply introduce people to the Office of Legal Counsel.  I attempted to give a little history of this strange political and governmental animal. I wanted to point out that there are three branches of government, regardless of dicky c's views.

There are the federal courts or Federal Judiciary headed by the Supreme Court.

There is Congress composed of two Houses. The House of Representatives and the Senate.

And there is the Executive Branch of Government headed by the President of the United States.

We usually think of Congress as passing the legislation that becomes law.

We think of the President as executing those laws.

And the Courts are there to interpret the laws.

But it is not that simple. The separate branches of government work together on many things out of necessity.

If the President signs onto the legislation, a simple majority of both houses of Congress is all that is needed. If the President vetoes the legislation, Congress needs a 2/3 vote to override the veto.

So too, Congress has powers under the Constitution with regard to defining the jursidiction of the Federal Judiciary.

What must be pointed out is that the Executive Branch has a hand in contruing legislation and in determining the constitutionality of that legislation.  

At first, Presidents like Jefferson acted as their own Office of Legal Counsel in a way. Although the Attorney General was the real Office of Legal Counsel.

The Office of Legal Counsel was created in 1934 by an act of Congress, as part of a larger reorganization of executive branch administrative agencies. It was first headed by an assistant solicitor general. In 1951, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath gave it division status with an assistant attorney general in charge, and named it the Executive Adjudications Division. This was changed to Office of Legal Counsel in an administrative order by Attorney General Brownell, issued April 3, 1953.[1] Wikipedia   

So in looking at the Office of Legal Counsel we can see that it was created by an Act of Congress. And it was first headed by an Assistant Solicitor General and now is headed by an Assistant Attorney General. Created by Congress. Very important. And sort of part of the Department of Justice and sort of an entity on its own.

Now we move onto the function of the Office of Legal Counsel.  

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) assists the Attorney General of the United States in his function as legal adviser to the President and all the executive branch agencies. (Hence the appellation "the president's law firm."[2]) The OLC drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the executive branch, and offices within the Department of Justice. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or about which two or more agencies are in disagreement. The Office also is responsible for providing legal advice to the executive branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality. The decisions of the Office are binding on all executive agencies.(Wikipedia)

If you just google (I happen to Yahoo) Office of Legal Counsel you will discover that almost every state has its own.  We, the people, are not just governed by the Federal Government but by  50 state governments with their own tripartite divisions.

But if you come to this link you will come to the official blog for the Federal Office of Legal Counsel:http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/

The site has an introduction which confirms what Wikipedia is saying:

By delegation from the Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel provides authoritative legal advice to the President and all the Executive Branch agencies. The Office drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the Executive Branch, and offices within the Department. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or about which two or more agencies are in disagreement. The Office also is responsible for providing legal advice to the Executive Branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality.

All executive orders and proclamations proposed to be issued by the President are reviewed by the Office of Legal Counsel for form and legality, as are various other matters that require the President's formal approval.

In addition to serving as, in effect, outside counsel for the other agencies of the Executive Branch, the Office of Legal Counsel also functions as general counsel for the Department itself. It reviews all proposed orders of the Attorney General and all regulations requiring the Attorney General's approval. It also performs a variety of special assignments referred by the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General.

The Office of Legal Counsel is not authorized to give legal advice to private persons.   

The only point of this part of my blog on this was to provide an outline defining what the OLC is, how it was created, and what it does.  But I also wanted to stress how powerful the office is.

If you are part of the Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota, and a new series of regulations are being issued pursuant to some statutory authority, you will probably end up in the Minnesota OLC asking for an opinion as to whether or not these regulations are in line with that statutory authority before issuing the regulations.

The same thing would apply on the Federal level for the EPA. And most people at TPM Cafe know that the EPA has had some splainin to do lately with regard to its regulations and its interpretation of those regulations.

Now just multiply this one example times all the departments of the Federal Government and you get an idea how much work the OLC is responsible for. And understand that before the President signs legislation, he will have opinions from the OLC involving its opinion as to constitutionality. And later on there will be questions as to how to interpret certain provisions in that legislation.

A good example of the immense proportions of this is the recent one thousand page Stimulus Package that Representative Boner (pronounced Banyner) likes to throw on the floor.

The other point that I was attempting to demonstrate was the power of the judiciary in general. Courts in Mississippi thought it was all right to keep a Black Minister in prison for fifteen years without charging him with a crime or giving him a trial. That could not have happened without those state courts. And this had occurred before the 1964 &  1965 Civil Rights legislation.  The Federal Government at that time did not always oversee such injustices as what had occurred to that Black Minister.

What I had tried to point out to Olden Golden yesterday in another blog (probably with my own lack of acuity) was that if you put sixteen attorneys in a room and asked them to interpret a 100 page piece of legislation. you would probably get sixteen different opinions and eventually there would be some disagreement as to what the real meaning of 'is' is.I have actually read cases where the meaning of the word 'shall' was at issue.

Now, I am not an attorney. I certainly am not a constitutional lawyer or expert.But as a lay person I am starting a discussion as to allegations of impropriety that occurred within the OLC over the last eight years. There are very important people involve that we have all read about.

There is John Yoo, Gonzo, and many others. The OLC issued all sorts memos, legal opinions concerning the legality of certain actions the Executive branch wished to take with regard to imprisonment of individuals with no charges being brought, no attorney being provided, no opportunity to speak to family members or friends. There was definitely, in my view, torture that occurred during the  Iast eight years under the direction of the Executive Branch and with its knowledge and approval.  Prisoners were sent to other countries in addition to our base in Cuba.  Wiretapping American Citizens in America was approved without a warrant procured.
Under the direction of the Executive branch and with its knowledge and approval.
Propaganda concerning all  these issues and more were sent out for public consumption.
I would point out that none of these actions occurred without opinions issued by the OLC.

And If you think that our country is incapable of such things.  Think about that Black Minister I heard about today.  Some Mississippi OLC okayed that.

Greenwald at Salon has tons of articles on this subject. TPM has covered so many perspectives on this. Daily Beast is always a good source of information. The NYT of course has mounds of printed paper on this. For fun I just hit search on Newsweek Magazine on this issue:

http://services.newsweek.com//search.aspx?offset=0&pageSize=10&sortField=pubdatetime&sortDirection=descending&mode=summary&q=office+of+legal+counsel&site-search-submit.x=46&site-search-submit.y=7&site-search-submit=0

 Report Delayed New Window
 Filip also insisted that detailed responses from the three former senior lawyers at the department's Office of Legal Counsel--Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury--be included as part of the final copy of the report, one former
February 16, 2009 | Politics | By Michael Isikoff
http://www.newsweek.com/id/185072
#
A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers New Window

two former top officials--Jay Bybee and John Yoo--as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to
February 14, 2009 | Periscope | By Michael Isikoff
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184801
#
Imagining Life Without Lawyers New Window

echoes criticism recently leveled by former Bush administration lawyer Jack Goldsmith. Goldsmith, who ran the Office of Legal Counsel for a time, warned in his 2007 book, "The Terror Presidency," of a post-Watergate government culture in
January 31, 2009 | Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues | By Dahlia Lithwick
http://www.newsweek.com/id/182569
#
The Politics Of Vengeance New Window

s delegated authority.) We also know that the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department felt it their task tothe top of my list would be to give Justice's Office of Legal Counsel a mandate of independence--with, on the toughest
January 19, 2009 | Politics: The Obama Presidency | By John Barry
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180442
#
Obama's Cheney Dilemma New Window

obscure but critically important unit called the Office of Legal Counsel. OLC acts as a kind of lawyer for the executive branchcertainly be some. Obama has chosen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel--Jack Goldsmith's old job--Dawn Johnsen, an
January 10, 2009 | Politics: The Obama Presidency | By Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas
http://www.newsweek.com/id/178855
#
Now We Know What the Battle Was About New Window

mining program had begun with a blessing by John Yoo, an ultraconservative lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo was a close ally of hard-line lawyers in the White House and worked closely with David Addington, Vice
December 13, 2008 | National News | By Daniel Klaidman
http://www.newsweek.com/id/174602
#
Breaking The Will New Window

Judge Jay Bybee, who wrote memos about interrogation methods when he served as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel six years ago. One of those memos, dated Aug. 1, 2002, gave an extremely restrictive definition of torture
December 11, 2008 | Voices - Terror Watch | By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
http://www.newsweek.com/id/173870
#
No Small Task For Eric Holder New Window

GOP. Secret memos produced by the department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized brutal interrogation techniques andrestoring the integrity and independence of the Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on the lawfulness
November 22, 2008 | Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues | By Dahlia Lithwick
http://www.newsweek.com/id/170382
#
Closing the Door New Window

Cheney's 302 report were to be publicly disclosed seemed a stretch. (The legal claims were prepared in part by Office of Legal Counsel chief Stephen Bradbury, whose legal opinions on interrogation and torture have come under fire from Congress
July 16, 2008 | Voices - Terror Watch | By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
http://www.newsweek.com/id/146651
#
The Truth About Torture New Window

interrogation methods found legal by administration lawyers, and in particular by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). According to long tradition, the OLC is considered a sort of Supreme Court of the executive branch
July 12, 2008 | Politics | By Stuart Taylor Jr.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/145842

I hope you will review this and go to the OLC Site. Join in the discussion and feel free to set up your own blog.  Oh and anyone who just wants to take the burden off of me. Fine. I will comment on your site.  As a matter of Fact I think I would like CarolG or TheraP to do this anyway. The issues besides torture include prisons, charges, rights to attorneys, right to trial, wiretapping foreign and domestic, and Gitmo. But within the OLC itself or the DOJ for that matter, the part that politics played in hiring practices. Hiring practices within the OLC. So too, what was communication like between OLC and w and the VP's office...

I've been following the "controversy" over Attorney General Eric Holder's Black History Month speech haphazardly in the mainstream media for the past few days and yesterday I caught a piece on NPR where All Things Considered featured a "debate" between a much out-classed (in very sense of the word) Joe Klein and Professor Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University.  Klein was shouting like he was auditioning for a the McLaughlin Group.  Such a squeaky shout.  Of course the schedulers choreographed this match-up to a predictable formula: a White putative liberal arguing, no, we're not a nation of  cowards, and a Black liberal scholar arguing that yes, we are.  But it got me thinking nonetheless: and while I can't speak for the rest of the nation, on my own behalf I have to plead guilty, with extenuating circumstances.  To do this, I need to be a bit biographical: bear with me or yawn and turn to the next blog, as you wish.

I'm 67 years old (for a month or two yet).  I grew up in a Swedish enclave in Minneapolis-itself a Swedish enclave.  I never saw garlic until I went to college, and when I encountered it the first time, I thought it was a water chestnut-crunchy like, you know?  I met my first Black person in eighth grade: my home-room teacher, Mr. Bates.  He was the first Black teacher in my junior high, and this was his first year there.  There were zero Black students in the school.  My grandparents and parents had taught me to be respectful, and they were careful to say Negro, which was the polite thing back in those days.  Mr. Bates intrigued me.  I think I liked him...but home-room lasted only 20 minutes, so I can't say that I got to know him well-no eighth grader gets to know teachers really well, do they?

I moved on to High School, leaving the public schools to go to the same private school my father had attended.   Yup, it served the Swedish community-if someone wasn't a Johnson or a Peterson, one could bet he/she was a Larson or Anderson...occasionally something more exotic like a Nystrom or a Kjellberg.  Zero black students in the school.  We played the occasional pre-season basketball game with a couple of the city high schools, so my first encounter with Black kids was on the basketball court.  I enjoyed and didn't enjoy the experience.  The playing was fun: the losing by fairly significant margins was not.  And we were good-in our own league.

On to College, where my horizons significantly broadened.  After all, that was where I learned about garlic.  It was also where I had my first Black classmate:  Not an African-American, but an International Student sent to my school by missionaries.  His name was Washington Odongo, and yes, he was from the (Belgian) Congo.  I can't imagine what it must have been like for him.  I know he kept pretty much to himself-not because any of us were hostile to him, we were too polite for that, but perhaps because we treated him like a curiosity. 

My college was in Chicago-on the North Side.  I perhaps visited the South Side a half dozen times-to go to the Museum of Science and Industry, to take my GRE exams at Illinois Institute of Technology-things like that.  But this was the early sixties, and there was racial unrest.  The Loop belonged to everyone-not much else did.  But every Sunday I visited the South Side.  There was a black owned radio station, and from early morning to late evening it broadcast live from one black church to the next black church.  I encountered gospel singing and marveled.  Had I had the guts, I would have gone to First Church of Deliverance, rather than worship from afar.   

On to graduate school in Cleveland.  Cleveland was as racially segregated as Chicago, with the exception of Shaker Heights which was making a concerted effort to stay integrated, rather than let redlining and block-busting turn the suburb over.  My school was on the border between the Black ghetto to the north and the Italian Ghetto to the south.  In graduate school I made my first tentative friendships with blacks: fellow students and residents in the graduate dormitory.  I began to realize how little I knew and how much I missed what I didn't know.  My awakenings were sometimes rude.  A Black woman studying in the law school guffawed, when I called Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde  "jazzy".  How could I be wrong?  I read it right off the record jacket.  I knew it didn't sound anything like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which I had encountered in the first Cinerama movie.  It didn't sound anything like Miles Davis or Bessie Smith, either...but I hadn't encountered them-yet.

My politics completed the flip-flop that began in College.  I became a Democrat, to the mild unhappiness of my parents.  I voted for Carl Stokes, who became the first Black mayor of Cleveland in 1967, but this was through the motions stuff-well meaning, the "right thing to do" along with marching for nuclear disarmament, ending Viet Nam, and in support of Civil Rights.  The number of blacks I actually knew could be counted on the fingers of one hand, with a couple of extra fingers left over.

But there were some things changing-some I have not thought about for years.  The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in which I sang under the baton of Robert Shaw, was thoroughly integrated.  I can remember hanging out around the pool when we went to Puerto Rico in 1963, and, several years later when a bunch of us, Black and White, went on a boat ride on the Lorraine River, listening to Handel's Water Music or singing "In these delightful pleasant groves" together.  Thank you, Robert Shaw-for integrating a chorus both in terms of class and race.  I sang with Mel, the postman on one side of me, and a coroner who taught in the medical school on the other.  I was awakening to how much I needed diversity, and how sheltered and insular my life had been.

On to work in a small college in New England-in a town which had few if any Black citizens in it.  This was 1972.  To the best of my memory there were two Blacks employed by the school-one a faculty member and one an electrician.  Both are still there now-as am I.  I count them both friends now...but it took a long time.  Here's where my cowardice struck, and the point of this reminiscence comes here.  I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing, of being clumsy, of making a joke which might be taken wrongly, that I said little or nothing more than commonplace pleasantries.  And in some ways, I think they felt the same way.  Better to smile and keep it cool and pleasant than take the risk of an argument-even though I loved to argue with my white peers.

As I've gotten older, I hope I've gotten wiser.  Our campus is far more multi-toned now than it once was.  I'm comfortable enough to talk seriously with my Black colleagues, and to crack a joke with them or at their expense-knowing that I'll get the slap-down I deserve if I blunder badly, but that all will be forgiven.  I have more black students now-there were hardly any twenty years ago.  And I'm brave enough to extend friendship to them.  I was rewarded with a surprise tin of cupcakes on my 65th birthday..organized by two delightful young black women.  
My sixty-sixth year marked another small step.  For the first time ever I slept over at the home of a Black friend, and for the first time ever I had a Black friend guest overnight in my house.  Am I  a little braver now-I guess I am.  I'm still afraid of saying the wrong thing...but then I'm also afraid of saying the wrong thing to Whites I don't know very well.   

So I guess I'm concluding that I'm leery of the idea of a collective national dialogue.  Not that I think that's a bad idea or an unnecessary thing.  But in the sixties I was there and did that.  What we need-what I need is more courage to engage in individual dialogues, not so much for the sake of settling anything, but for the wonders and surprises and sheer pleasure of discovery that these can bring.  

If anyone wants to invite me over for dinner, I'll contribute lingonberries, sylta, and orange-fennel ryebread.  Not pickled pig's feet, though.  My Aunt Hannah and Grandpa Hans loved those, but they in their mercy didn't make me eat them.

The Global Integrity Report is a bottom-up look at what's working and what's failed in efforts to fight corruption and abuses of power. I'm using this blog to share some of the findings with TPM.

The Global Integrity Report: 2008, released this week, covered more countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) than ever before; among the Report's key findings is that when MENA is compared to the rest of the world, the most significant anti-corruption performance lag is not election integrity but poor access to government information.

While there are a small number of success stories in the Middle East and North Africa (such as Jordan), Arab countries assessed in the Global Integrity Report: 2008 are overwhelmingly behind the rest of the world in providing basic transparency mechanisms for citizens to access government information. When compared to all other regions in the world, the access to information deficit in the Middle East and North Africa is roughly double those countries' deficit on any other issue assessed by Global Integrity. That staggering transparency gap generates negative spillover effects across government, politics, and public policy in the Middle Eastern and Northern African countries assessed.

(For details of the Global Integrity approach, see methodology , download XLS data or dig into the scorecards.)

Without basic transparency mechanisms in place, citizens and businesses have no way to monitor government budgets or public procurement; have no way of knowing which companies or countries are funding the campaigns of their elected leaders; and lack the basic tools to monitor the performance of other key anti-corruption bodies such as audit agencies and anti-corruption commissions. While the average citizen may tend to use access to information mechanisms for daily services such as obtaining land records or birth certificates, anti-corruption watchdogs in the media and civil society can be significantly hampered without effective and regular access to government documents and records.

Access to Information and Economic Growth

Similarly discouraging can be the negative effect of poor access to information on the business climate, especially for foreign investors unfamiliar with the local market. Access to information helps to level the playing field for businesses involved with government procurement and privatization by making the "rules of the game" transparent to all competitors; it can also help to streamline licensing and permitting processes by limiting discretion on the part of public officials. All other factors being equal, these Middle Eastern and North African countries' poor performance on information transparency could be a red flag for foreign investors and multinationals assessing opportunities in the region.

2008 marked the first year that Global Integrity gathered Integrity Indicators data in the West Bank, and the access to information situation there was little better than the rest of the region; in fact, systemic governance challenges seem to be the norm in the troubled territory. Despite relatively effective electoral mechanisms in the West Bank, we report how, "Political considerations, personal loyalties, family connections, and the like serve as common factors in hiring, firing, and promotion of civil servants," while, "The government rarely acts on the findings of the [human rights] ombudsman." In the context of the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territories, poor government transparency can certainly be of little help in closing the gap in trust between Palestinian political leaders and their citizens, a dynamic that only hampers the peace process.

Other country-specific findings in the region include:

Egypt: There are laws that actively prohibit citizens from accessing government information and records. For example, Law No. 35 (established in 1950) prohibits publishing any information related to the government; offenders risk imprisonment. The personal asset disclosure records of all state employees are considered "official" documents and are therefore prohibited from being made public to citizens, rendering them useless as an anti-corruption deterrent. Interestingly, however, the legal framework and enforcement of citizen access to privatization regulations and bids are relatively strong, so the climate for privatization in Egypt remains somewhat positive.

Iraq: There is no legal right of public access to government information in the Iraqi constitution. Government audit reports are not accessible publicly and are kept strictly within the Prime Minister's office. While there is a legal framework for citizens to be able to access the financial disclosure records of senior government officials, the requirement for those officials to submit reports is not enforced effectively, and there is no evidence of anyone having ever accessed such disclosure records in practice.

Jordan: In contrast with most countries in the region, Jordan has a law (circa 2007) guaranteeing citizens the right to access government information. Citizens, for example, can access the results of public procurement bids either through the department of public procurement website or via text message. However, while the public can obtain information and records at a reasonable cost and within a reasonable timeframe, the government exercises considerable discretion in granting and denying applications for information requests. In addition, a government secrecy law considerably weakens the effectiveness of the new right to information law.

-- Global Integrity

Our local newspaper here in our part of middle America (Ok, so we went for W twice and McCain) is pretty pathetic anyway. Not only does it print the AP articles without fail, we get editorials from the far right pundits that are so far right that they are unknown to most (Dale McFeatters ?). Michael Barone's column appears regularly. Heck the damn paper is run by Repub Ohioans.

 

Today's edition features the new economic guru Rick Santelli and his views. The front page headline claims: " Bailout for Homeowners Stirs Up Strong Feelings".   Inside is a Washington Post article (rare for our paper to reprint a news article from the Post- usually only the conservative op-eds from the Post make it to our paper) with the headline: "Anger Over Mortgage Aid for Homeowners Portends Class Fight".

The local TV stations are not much better.  Fair and Balanced My Ass!

Now so far the only complaints I have heard locally are about the bailouts the banks and Wall Street  are getting.  The reality on the ground here is that the factories owned by out of staters are just now starting to close and putting lots people out of work (timing wise, we are always behind the biorhythms of the rest of the country). These are people who have always paid their mortgages on time and will be hurting soon.  They will be glad that they have avenues for relief. However, with this kind of leadership from our local media, no doubt our DINOs (Democrats in name only) will paint our historically blue state red again in 2012.

 

Please make the brain washing stop !!!!  The spin dry cycle is making red water pour from my ears!!! 

This is the last weekend of the winter, at least the way I see it. It is the last weekend that will pass without a Red Sox game to occupy some of the time, and to accompany me while battling the forces arrayed against us. Next weekend, I will be listening, perhaps not intently but with at least one ear, to Joe Castiglione and whoever happens to sit with him as he describes games that do not count, but against the Twins, the Reds and the Northeastern Huskies.

Read more »

This is inspired by a comment made by tlees2: it's something I had, ironically forgotten about -- Reagan may have remained in office long after he was fit to hold it.  He was our oldest president and, in the latter years of his term, was likely experiencing the early signs of Alzheimer's and dementia.  If it's true that Reagan was mentally impaired and he still held onto his office, or that his his aides manipulated the situation in order to remain in power is one of the great crimes of late 20th century American politics.

Certainly members of the press corps at the time debate Reagan's mental fitness in his later years with Leslie Stahl remembering moments of Reagan's impermanent lucidity.

There's no way we'll settle this one in a blog post.  Reagan's mental condition during his last few years in office might never really be revealed.  But in the discussion of the "Reagan Myth" that was held this week, nobody even approached the topic of Reagan's mental health.

It really is surprising to me that TPM decided to host such a milquetoast review of the Reagan legacy.  There was a lot of Larry King style sycophancy on display, even from some of Reagan's supposed critics.  Fortunately, the commenters stepped in where the featured discussants failed us.

Many among the chorus of voices across the political spectrum now urging bank nationalization make it sound quick, clean and simple. The watchwords are "bite the bullet," "cut the Gordian knot"; the implication is usually that Obama and Geithner are wasting precious time and money and heightening market uncertainty by by dallying, trimming, refusing the grasp the nettle.

So it's striking that one of the highest profile advocates of nationalization, Nouriel Roubini, whose words today are freighted with the current gold standard of credibility, having forecast the market meltdown, argues yes, that selected behemoth banks must be nationalized -- but also that the time is not yet ripe. From today's Wall Street Journal:

So, will the highest level of government be receptive to the bank-nationalization idea? "I think it will," Mr. Roubini says, unhesitatingly. "People like Graham and Greenspan have already given their explicit blessing. This gives Obama cover." And how long will it be before the administration goes in formally for nationalization? "I think that we're going to see the policy adopted in the next few months . . . in six months or so."

That long? I ask. "Six months from now," he replies, "even firms that today look solvent are going to look insolvent. Most of the major banks -- almost all of them -- are going to look insolvent. In which case, if you take them all over all at once, you cause less damage than if you would if you took over a couple now, and created so much confusion and panic and nervousness.

While Geithner gets pounded for vagueness and Obama for timidity, look for Obama to follow the Emperor Augustus' watchword: festina lente. Make haste slowly. Wait till the bad bank harvest is ripe.

I'm not qualified to judge the wisdom or the direction of Geithner/Obama's long-term thinking about the banks. Or Roubini's, for that matter. I'm simply transliterating Roubini's implicit reading of what they're up to.

Here is the blueprint that Roubini and his colleague Matthew Richardson laid out in last Sunday's Washington Post:

Two important parts of Geithner's plan are "stress testing" banks by poring over their books to separate viable institutions from bankrupt ones and establishing an investment fund with private and public money to purchase bad assets. These are necessary steps toward a healthy financial sector.

But unfortunately, the plan won't solve our financial woes, because it assumes that the system is solvent. If implemented fairly for current taxpayers (i.e., no more freebies in the form of underpriced equity, preferred shares, loan guarantees or insurance on assets), it will just confirm how bad things really are.

Nationalization is the only option that would permit us to solve the problem of toxic assets in an orderly fashion and finally allow lending to resume. Of course, the economy would still stink, but the death spiral we are in would end.

Nationalization -- call it "receivership" if that sounds more palatable -- won't be easy, but here is a set of principles for the government to go by:

First -- and this is by far the toughest step -- determine which banks are insolvent. Geithner's stress test would be helpful here. The government should start with the big banks that have outside debt, and it should determine which are solvent and which aren't in one fell swoop, to avoid panic. Otherwise, bringing down one big bank will start an immediate run on the equity and long-term debt of the others. It will be a rough ride, but the regulators must stay strong.

Second, immediately nationalize insolvent institutions. The equity holders will be wiped out, and long-term debt holders will have claims only after the depositors and other short-term creditors are paid off.

Third, once an institution is taken over, separate its assets into good ones and bad ones. The bad assets would be valued at current (albeit depressed) values. Again, as in Geithner's plan, private capital could purchase a fraction of those bad assets. As for the good assets, they would go private again, either through an IPO or a sale to a strategic buyer.

The proceeds from both these bad and good assets would first go to depositors and then to debt-holders, with some possible sharing with the government to cover administrative costs. If the depositors are paid off in full, then the government actually breaks even.

Fourth, merge all the remaining bad assets into one enterprise. The assets could be held to maturity or eventually sold off with the gains and risks accruing to the taxpayers.

The eventual outcome would be a healthy financial system with many new banks capitalized by good assets. Insolvent, too-big-to-fail banks would be broken up into smaller pieces less likely to threaten the whole financial system. Regulatory reforms would also be instituted to reduce the chances of costly future crises (my emphasis).

Superficially, Roubini and Richardson seem to suggest that the Geithner plan is inadequate ("the plan won't solve our financial woes") and that nationalization is straightforward (4-step program). At the same time, they mark Geithner's stress test as a necessary first step, acknowledge the enormous difficulty and risk inherent in nationalization, and -- as in today's Journal interview -- stress the importance of timing in steering through the anticipated "rough ride." The key is to do it "in one fell swoop," and that can't be done yet.

Obama has built the reputation of a master of timing. Let's see how he rides the nationalization tiger.

I see that the left's honeymoon with Obama is still in full swing. Despite mounting evidence that Obama is not going to be a very liberal president at all, that he is hiring some of the same guys who got us into this economic mess to fix it, that he's following that Bush administration's policies forward on excessive secrecy and on Guantanamo prisoners, everyone's cutting him a lot of slack.

Kinda reminds me of the right; You know, the guys who supported Bush no matter what he did?

Yes, I know it's early. Yes, I know we can't blame him for Republican partisan slash and burn tactics in Congress. But we can blame him for the company he keeps, and the policies he crafts, and for legacy policies that he upholds rather than repudiates. And we can also blame him for hypocrisy when he abrogates his own rules, citing the financial meltdown as an excuse.

Some things to ponder about the Obama administration so far:

1) In the administration's first major test case on the rights of a Guantanamo detainee, they supported the Bush administration's previous position.
2) Timothy Geitner was former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's right-hand man during the crafting of the initial, woeful T.A.R.P. plan - the one that had no real oversight at all for how the money was spent - hence, no loans, and big bonuses for execs in the bailed out companies. Geitner and Paulson are both veterans of Wall Street. Couldn't Obama have picked someone more Progressive, like Paul Krugman, or former Labor Secretary Robert Reich? Similarly, Robert Rubin, another top architect of the Obama economic plan, helped gut Citibank (while receiving a salary of over 100 million dollars annually). And Lawrence Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor, loves tax cuts and hates infrastructure. Sounds like... Bush! These people are embedded representatives of the culture of unrestrained greed and short-term gain that got us into this mess - do we really want the foxes guarding the hen house again? Don't we want people who are part of the solution, not part of the problem?
3) A recent NY Times article found the Obama economic plan to be strikingly similar to the Bush plans drawn up in November and December.
4) Obama abrogated his own promise not to hire lobbyists into his administration, citing the financial meltdown as a mitigating factor. Yes, I'm absolutely sure that there are no people outside of the power/money elite that have the skills and background to do the job.
5) A new article today indicates that the Obama administration is also perpetuating the same over-secretive tactics of the Bush administration in its dealings with congressional oversight and Media.
6) Despite the most catastrophic economic meltdown since the 1930's, no one from the President on down through his administration has talked about our bloated, unsustainable military budget. This is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, studiously being avoided by everyone in power. It is inconceivable that this bloated budget (which includes plans for more nuclear submarines and a new generation of larger, even more expensive aircraft carriers), not be under review. One would think that the 'most liberal member of the Senate' might spend a little of his political capital (after all, unlike Bush, he actually did win a mandate) and put our military budget, our Imperial Achilles Heel, into the national debate about our future. Instead, all signs point to a heroin-like injection of even more capital into military projects, which will provide some short-term relief, and major withdrawal symptoms later on. This country has been on a permanent war-economy footing since 1939, and we simply can't sustain it. Yet, the President, the Congress (and the Media, for that matter), don't mention it, don't bring it into the debate, into public consciousness.

So, yes, I'm officially worried. Far from being the most Liberal president in my lifetime (I guess I'd give that to Carter, who's looking more prescient every day in some respects), Obama seems Centrist, embedded in the power elite, and towing the line for the Military-Industrial Complex.

It's time for the left (where oh where for art thou, Move On?) to make some noise. It's time to stop wishing, and fantasizing, and imbuing Obama with all of our hopes and dreams, and start demanding some action on the ground.

This financial crisis is actually an incredible opportunity to change this country's direction, and to challenge some of the basic tenets of our government and economy that have been taken for granted for years. It's an opportunity that hasn't been seen since the early days of FDR. Unlike FDR, Obama is dealing with a much more strident and intransigent Republican faction in congress, which is more intent on bloodying him and the Democratic party than in saving working people's lives, livelihoods, and dreams. I get that. But he is not even speaking to the real problems. He's not even trying to inject new thinking into the old order. He's surrounded himself with the usual Beltway/Wall Street suspects, and they're polishing deck chairs on the Titanic. (Think I'm exaggerating? Look at the Stimulus Bill, and compare it to what FDR did; very little money for boots on the ground projects, lots to government agencies and... I can't believe it... MORE TAX CUTS!). Yes, he needed some Republican votes. But the input from the Obama side itself had woeful little in terms of infrastructure construction and repair. The bill should have created something like the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The government could have employed hundreds of thousands of people to install solar power and water heating, windmills, for every federal building. This would have been akin to Roosevelt's bold moves. Instead, we get incremental, timid, mostly status-quo mediocrity.

No, Obama isn't Bush - don't mistake what I'm saying for that. But from Geitner, Rubin etc. to his policies on secrecy and detainees, there is a whiff of 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' - or at least, it's feeling a bit more like that than 'change we can believe in' - I don't see it. Same old crew, same old policies, incrementally polished up, same lobbyists like Remoras, swimming in a stream of money, sucking on the Federal carcass.

Kinda makes you pine for a real Revolution...

Don't Piss In My Pocket And Tell Me It's Raining
Non-Aligned Political Thought

As we await a formal announcement from President Obama on his choice, Timothy Foley, the activist blogger for health care, has posted an excellent piece about Kathleen Sebelius's qualifications for HHS. 

"Internaute"

As in astronaut. See...?

It's what our ponsy chicken friends across the pond call all us people floating around the www. Just something to have rolling around your hypothalamus as you continue on your adventurous explorations, space-walkers.

(Yes, it sounds a bit flat in English, but as Stephen Colbert would say - 'It's French, bitch!' Articulate accordingly.)

That's all I got.

ps. HELP NEEDED: If anyone can tell me how to upload/insert/paste pictures into posts, that would be greatly appreciated. I click on the the little 'insert image' icon, and it immediately tells me 'no assets found' without letting me 'search' anything. Thanks.  

For you general information . . . With Comments Disabled

For info:About Intelligence Squared Debates

There is a twelve-part video after the debate lead in. It's 90 minutes in length.So for those of you who have the ability to concentrate longer than few of sound bites, get yourself something to sip and sit back and enjoy the debate. . . .

Intelligence Squared U.S.

Is The Government Responsible For Health Care?

npr.org/templates/story/story=94812584

by Julie Rovner NPR.org

September 24, 2008 · It's a debate that has raged on and off in the United States for more than a century now, with no clear resolution in sight: whether to guarantee healthcare for every American.

During the past 100 years, medicine has advanced from a rudimentary craft to a scientific pursuit capable of near miracles. Its cost has increased accordingly: In 2006, U.S. health care spending hit $2.1 trillion, or roughly $7,026 for every man, woman and child in the nation.

As a percentage of the gross domestic product, that is substantially more than any other country. Yet a substantial portion of the American population -- 47 million that same year -- lacked any health insurance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

As the number of people without insurance increased, so did concern over the problem. But Americans have never neared consensus about what role government in general, and the federal government in particular, should play in ensuring health coverage for all, despite the fact that every other industrialized country has long since established some system of universal insurance.

The stage appears set for yet another major national health insurance debate in 2009, so the Intelligence Squared U.S. series decided to get a head start by choosing it as the topic for its first event of the season. The organization sponsors Oxford-style debates featuring six experts -- three on each side -- who try to sway an audience that votes before and after the session.

The debate statement was "Universal health coverage should be the federal government's responsibility."

Two of the panelists were Canadian, but they presented sharply divergent views of that country's experience with government-guaranteed health care.

At the start of the event, held at New York's Rockefeller University and moderated by John Donvan of ABC News, 49 percent of the audience agreed with the motion that the government is responsible, 24 percent disagreed and 27 percent said they were undecided.

npr.org/templates/story/story=94812584

Universal Healthcare Debate 1: Introduction (1/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 2: Paul Krugman (2/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 3: John Stossel (3/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 4: Michael Rachlis (4/12)



Universal Healthcare Debate 5: Sally C. Pipes (5/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 6: Art Kellermann (6/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 7: Michael Cannon (7/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 8: Q & A, part 1 (8/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 9: Q&A, part 2 (9/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 10: Q&A, part 3 (10/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 11: Closing Remarks, part 1 (11/12)

Universal Healthcare Debate 12: Closing Remarks, part 2 (12/12)

This is re-posting without the ability to comment.

~OGD~

Hello, morning.  Can you see me yet?  The darkness of night still shrouds your glory, so perhaps blindness ensues.  I understand.  The same thing happens to me, sometimes.  Even now, I wonder if my reality is fixed - or if it is waiting for the curtains of time to open and display the truth.  The idea scares me.  I don't know why.  Am I that easily frightened or just too simple to grasp the complexity? 

Hello, friend.  Can you hear me yet?  The distance between now and then fades your voice, maybe it's just a bad connection.  It wasn't before.  The lines must have gotten old, I guess.  I was really hoping to talk to you - my questions are building and the answers are fewer still.  The confusion scares me.  I don't know why.  Did you gently drift away or have I forgotten how to reach you? 

Read more »

It's so easy. Throw together a few hot button themes and mix in an undercurrent of hatred and

instant attention. Takes no talent at all but it does the trick. We all know it. Shock and awe. The sad old routines of the hate jocks that amazingly have been on the air for years now. Sad commentary on this country that these people get their contracts renewed over and over. Once you had to exhibit some measure of talent. Now you just have to be a loud mouthed fat  white jerk spewing out vitriolic spittle. This constitutes talent now, of a different lower kind.

This is also what you get when the number is 2. When you only get 2 of everything, you automatically get division. Two of something divides. Our stupid two party system allows these kinds of subhumans to thrive in our "democracy." The solution is not a three party system because this willl be a cold day in hell but there is a quick solution you can do tomorrow and this is to register Decline to State. Claim neither party and in this way, we can kill the two party system which is so pathetic and infantile but so are the super rich. Pathetic and infantile.

"But here comes the middle class!!" the super rich say. Thank God. We now have to resurrect them because we need them now to bail us out. Before when they were going into the toilet, we didn't really care but now, we need to resurrect them so we can suck off of them again since they are the only ones/suckers that regularly work and produce something and there are a lot more of them than there are of us so for God's sake get that middle class going again. They have to bail us out. And if you live in California you not only get to pay for the bailout, the stimulusl bill, the foreclosures but you get to pay TWICE because your taxes are going up including taxes on your car. You know the one you need to go JOB HUNTING? Well, your registration fees may triple but it's ok. You'll need to pay THIS tax because after you walk away from the house you can't afford because your state income taxes went up about $1000/year, you'll need to live in the car as you move out of a very fucked up state that wrenches its residents around like a ball on the end of a long chain. Wee. This way then that way then this way then that way...weeee. Here we go again. But we really need to help the silly little super rich and their tendency to make rash decisions so get out there "middle class" and get on your feet! The corporate criminals need you! The bankers need you! The State of California needs you!

But I diverge. Boy do I diverge. This was supposed to be that someone somewhere needs to dog The New York Post because I bet those bastard's ad revenue is down and I bet if some stimulus package money shows up through whatever channel, they'll snatch it up like paparrazi on Lady Di's death. Yea yea yea. Keep an eye on the finances of the New York Post because if even a dime of that stimulus money they like to make fun of using cheap and humorless tripe comes into their rotten-smelling air space, they'll gobble it up because people like this have no scruples anyway. Hypocrisy? Sure. They'll do it. Show them the money.

So c'mon everybody. Lets keep an eye on the finances of the Post. Lets catch 'em in the act.

Dog 'em.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solves everything and nothing all at the same time.

All day today, Drudge has flogged this new idea of using Google Finance to track the stock market since January 21, 2009 to try to show that Obama has caused the market to tank. Of course, this ignores the fact that he has been president for 4 weeks and the previous year of stock market crash under Bush W.

So I took the liberty of playing with Google Finance for him to show the stock market during W's last 6 months:

http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1232485200000&chddm=98532&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0

Hard to imagine Fox News putting such a statement out there describing the discontent felt for Bush ... But now with a popular Dem in office, Fox News will just egg on more hatred with a headline shouting:

"Watch Out, Obama, We're Mad As Hell!"

This, after a man in TN went on a rampage killing "liberals" after reading and utlra-ring-wing hate filled book.

I would say, hard to imagine ANY national news outlet saying such thing about ANY president. Will anyone hold News Corp accountable for this treatment of the president?

I certainly do not wish to push traffic over to FoxNews.com, but you have to check it out and see if it turns your stomach as much as it did mine.

The smartest electrical grid is the one with the fewest losses and the most reliability. Shorter distances yield the first, and distributed generation yields the second goal. The best form of local power is wind and solar. Craig Rose, in the Nation, writes on some projects and the associated costs and political issues.

In Minnesota, a study of new transmission capability needs found that the money spent to build enough grid to bring wind-powered current from North Dakota, at $1.7 billion, would suffice to build 600 megawatts of local wind turbine installations without needing any new lines. And there would be less power lost, as a bonus. Better yet, it would mean a more robust grid system, with less demand on a few large lines, thus higher reliability.

Read more »

Rick Santelli's CNBC populist outrage whining rant on the so-called "deadbeats with the extra bathroom" has garnered a lot of attention. But few people have really looked at the numbers behind how we got into this mess and who really is affected by it.

While it may be good television to pander to the traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or the Chicago Board of Trade or the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ, or your buddies on morning televsion on CNBC, MSNBC and all the other cable outlets, the reality is no one on television or elsewhere in the media has approached this problem from an objective viewpoint and with the appropriate statistics to explain the problem.

Let's call it the "Enronization" of America. For if you look closely, you will see a pattern emerging -- not just of boom/bust cycles, but of a methodology of creating expensive but worthless "products" designed to extract as much money as quickly as possible from the hapless saps uninformed consumers who bought it, hook, line and sinker.

While one can make a reasoned case that you don't "need" technology and fancy websites with flaming logos (the dotcom boom/bust) or fancy energy and oil derivatives (Enron boom/bust), housing -- and this is about housing, not just home sales -- is a very different matter. Everyone needs shelter.

Everyone needs shelter and there are only two ways to get it: you either rent or you buy. And the damage done to housing by this boom/bust affects everyone.

California is a bellwether of what is in store for the rest of the country. The independent group, the California Budget Project (www.cbp.org) has taken a comprehensive look at California's budget problems since 1994. Starting 2000, the CBP has published "Locked Out" a series of detailed reports on the status of California housing crisis. The 2008 report is startling. In studying the numbers, you see the problem in a whole different light. This is a housing crisis, not a foreclosure or subprime loan crisis. 

The harsh reality is that the financial community is to blame for not putting a halt to the sale of over-priced homes by just not writing mortgages on them. Not because there was something wrong with prospective homebuyers, but the home sale was flawed. How do you justify inflating the cost of a home by more than 200% in 5 or 7 years? How do you knowingly write a loan for that house? They did it because they could sell confusing mortgage products to customers in need of housing. And it would make the lenders loads of easy money.   

Read more »

On Wednesday I wrote a piece on Huffington Post and another at Open Left talking about the centrality of fixing the foreclosure crisis to any recovery from the economic meltdown. Since the toxic assets at the center of the meltdown are based on mortgages that are entering foreclosure at a rate of one every 13 seconds, we have to address foreclosure as a part of getting America back on its feet.



The Homeowner Affordability and Stabilization Plan (HASP), announced in Phoenix on Wednesday by President Obama, which will help up to an estimated 9 million families, is a good first step - and the first serious effort by the Federal government to confront the challenge.

But just because there was an announcement does not lessen the urgency of the problem. We are still in a situation where four families every minute enter the foreclosure process. We believe there must be a moratorium on foreclosures until HASP is fully implemented.

So yesterday we at ACORN launched the Home Defenders campaign in seven cities - a campaign to force the question of moratoriums and to press the urgency of this crisis into the consciousness of elected officials on the state and national levels. This is a campaign of refusal and resistance, refusal by distressed homeowners to cooperate with the foreclosure process and resistance to attempts to evict them from their homes. And in some cases it is a campaign of getting people back into their homes.

I wanted to give everyone a report-back from our activities yesterday.

Read more »

Disclaimer - Political content of this blog is pretty nigh nil.  Read on if you must.

 

The sun has set and I´m sitting in the plaza of a Spanish colonial town in Mexico.  Townspeople are walking about the beautiful plaza, crowned with a colonial era church, and dotted with lovely, and tall palm trees.  Children are playing and shouting and laughing with delight.  As I watch them, (my guess is they're 5-7 years of age), flowing from one side of the church to the other like waves lapping an elaborate stone shoreline, I´m reminded of summers of my own childhood long gone.  Their play resonates, reminding me of nights when as children, we tempted our fates by disregarding the ordained time to be home, in favor of one more game of kick the can under incandescent street lights.  In short, I find this all very charming.  It´s something I´ve not seen in an American town, (at least not without a bevy of mothers overseeing the play), for some time now.  I admit my experience may be a tad limited, and I´m not in the habit of hanging out by schoolyards and playgrounds.  Perhaps somewhere in some small towns in my country scenes like this play themselves out night after night, like re-runs of last weeks' cinema offering, were someone there to witness it.  I hope so.

 

Knowing the degree of control exerted over children these days, leads me to wonder what the long term effects of such regulation will be on personality development.  Perhaps I'm projecting.  I was never very good at´'towing the line' as it were.  I grew up in a blessedly less threatening time and was also blessed with parents who understood and fostered a sense of exploration in me.  When I consider some of the things I was more or less OK'd to do, if not encouraged to do so, I am sort of amazed.  I'm amazed at my good fortune to be born at such a time and amazed at my parents´lassaiz-faire attitude toward child-rearing.  I suppose to some extent, that too, was a function of that particular snapshot in time.

 

 

Read more »

The Guantánamo Testimonials Project was initiated in the Fall of 2005 by The UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas (CSHRA), in an attempt "to assess the effects of the U.S. war on terror on human rights in the Americas".

In December 2008, Brandon Neely, former U.S. Army Specialist in the 410th military police company, who was honorably discharged, contacted the CSHRA, desiring to testify as to what he'd witnessed and been part of at Guantanamo Bay. The 410th military police company was stationed at Guantanamo Bay when the first GWOT detainees arrived. What follows is a short excerpt from Brandon Neely's testimony:

Read more »

We will see whether the Obama administration is doing a good job or a poor job as the days and weeks go by. Today's post focuses on a few news items that seem to indicate good governance. I am not going to include a fair and balanced litany of stories that are critical of President Obama's leadership. I will leave that to shallow pundits and Republicans; I am frankly partisan here.

Corporatocracy holds less sway. The U.S. economic meltdown happened in part because business has been far too much in charge of government. To see less of their influence now is a very good thing. Politico writer Eamon Javers wrote an interesting piece Friday titled, "The Obama Cabinet is a CEO Black Hole," highlighting the lack of people in the current cabinet primarily from the business sector and pointing out that there may not be a connection "between success in business and success in Washington." Quoting Javers further,

Whether it is a significant absence, however, is far more debatable. As it happens, only a small number of the business leaders in recent administrations were stand-outs. And several were ostentatious flops.

. . . In a new economic climate, and with populist resentment growing against the trappings of CEO life . . . it might be a long time before Fortune 500 executives are welcomed back into government, argues Michael Franc, . . . Heritage Foundation. "You have to ask yourself: Are CEOs tainted now? Is there an untainted CEO type out there who is not one of the people who got us into this mess in the first place?" But Franc also sees the influence of Obama's own life story in the makeup of his inner circle. "Obama's more academic, intellectual and political," Franc said. "He comes from a whole different tradition."

. . . Terry McAuliffe says Obama won't be limited by the paucity of executives at the White House. "He reaches out," McAuliffe said. "It's not like the business community can't get to him and hive him ideas. He's very open."

Indeed, in early February Obama announced the formation of the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a bo[d]y stocked with economic experts who the president can turn to as a sounding board for ideas. . . "I'm not interested in groupthink, which is why the board reflects a cross-section of experience and expertise and ideology," Obama said at the time.

Talented people are in charge of change. Because President Obama has tried to get the most competent people in the country to help him govern, crucial interventions have better chances to succeed. Ben Smith writes a great profile of OMB Director, Peter Orszag in Politico (2/19/09). Orszag recently headed the Congressional Budget Office during the Bush administration. His specialty is health care which is in need of reform. Smith revealed that Orszag played a key role negotiating the final stages of work in Congress' work to reconcile the recent Stimulus bill. To quote from the item,"Budget to Kick off Health Care Rewrite"

"In my mind, if there is a hero in all of this, it is Peter Orszag," Reid, who knew Orszag from his previous role as director of the Congressional Budget Office, observed, unprompted, to Politico's David Rogers after the deal was done. "He was wonderful."

Orszag's emergence as a central figure and key negotiator in Obama's economic policy team has come as a bit of a surprise to watchers of the administration, from Reid on down. Orszag, at 40 the youngest member of the Obama Cabinet, left a profound mark on the stimulus, which focused heavily on healthcare technology, a major focus of his research.

. . . And the bill spends more than $1 billion on Orszag's pet cause, research on the effectiveness of medical practices, which he sees as an opening to reforming American health care . . . With a growing body of research finding some practices more cost-effective than others, the program's reimbursement rules can be used to force changes at those hospitals -- a sort of back door to health care reform.

"Medicare and Medicaid are big enough to change the way medicine is practiced," he said.

Smart people have the insight and courage to know when they are on the wrong track and change direction, sometimes when it seems very late in the game. This story by Neil Irwin and Binyamin Appelbaum, from the WaPo (2/16/09), is the perfect illustration of my point: "Late Change in Course Hobbled Rollout of Geithner's Bank Plan." To quote:

Just days before Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was scheduled to lay out his much-anticipated plan to deal with the toxic assets imperiling the financial system, he and his team made a sudden about-face.

According to several sources involved in the deliberations, Geithner had come to the conclusion that the strategies he and his team had spent weeks working on were too expensive, too complex and too risky for taxpayers.

They needed an alternative and found it in a previously considered initiative to pair private investments and public loans to try to buy the risky assets and take them off the books of banks. There was one problem: They didn't have enough time to work out many details or consult with others before the plan was supposed to be unveiled.

Good people who are new at the game bring all their previous life experiences with them. The best people have everything they need to do well, if they know when and who to ask for help, and if they have a bit of luck. I like it that Tim Geithner listened to his gut and changed direction, though he knew there would be grumbling. I like it that corporate interests no longer get to have things all go their way. And I like it that the health care system will be asked to use the "what treatment works best" method to assure the quality and effectiveness of what our megabucks purchase. It all bodes well for us, I do believe.

Related References:

1. "Obama Diary: The First 100 Days" -- BBC News


2. "Scientists Happy But Wary With Obama's Direction" -- CQ Politics (2/15/09)


3. "Obama Governs by Committee" -- Politico.com (2/13/09)


4. "Winners and Losers in the Stimulus Fight" -- Politico.com (2/13/09)


5. "Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions" -- Memeorandum from WaPo (2/14/09)


6. "Copernicus Vindicated" -- "Democratic Strategist" (2/16/09). To quote:
   

   Barack Obama's general leadership as president continues to enjoy robust public support, despite the reams of MSM, conservative, and sometimes progressive opinion suggesting that his first days in office have been characterized by a steady fall from grace.

See related items at my new blog, Behind the Links.

Cross-posted at South by Southwest.

My "creativity and dreaming" post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news news and politics obama administration economy leadership

The actual headline was "Kerry visits Gaza, shuns Hamas." But nobody expected him to meet up with Ismail Haniyeh, did they?

What's more puzzling is the elaborate Kabuki that saw the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee touring Gaza on the same day as two fellow Democrats from the House of Representatives, and seemingly never crossing paths.

Here at TPM, MJ Rosenberg writes that Kerry toured Gaza "with" Reps. Ellison and Baird, but the New York Times says:

Separately, two other congressmen visited Gaza: Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Their trip was arranged independently of Kerry's but included similar tours of destroyed areas and meetings with U.N. officials.

Let me get this straight: UN officials gave two separate guided tours, providing security for both, and nobody suggested co-ordinating them? Then there's this from AP:

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Kerry met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert early Thursday, but made no mention of his plans to go to Gaza.

Does anybody -- ANYBODY -- buy that? If Israel could deny ex-president Jimmy Carter's request to enter Gaza, there sure as hell is no way ex-presidential candidate Kerry simply flashed his passport and strolled through the Erez border crossing.

Then there's the image of three congressmen, in two separate groups, touring -- seemingly without incident -- an area under the control of what the U.S. government has labeled a terrorist organization.

Security was ostensibly provided by the UN. Funny, I don't recall the UN having any armed forces in Gaza; most weapons belong to the Hamas-run police. What's being left unreported is this: UN officials in Gaza negotiated the logistics of the tours with Hamas, and it signed off on providing security for them. Indirect talks.

Kerry went out of his way to stress that his visit signaled no change in U.S. policy, though of course it does. Maintaining that illusion perhaps explains the pretense of two separate tours. Baird and Ellison were left free to issue a joint statement calling the destruction inflicted on Gaza appalling and beyond description. Kerry doesn't have to say anything. 

In the front page post, the Big Boss wonders if the Obamian silence on Nationalizaion is intentional. If so, it's an illustration of the power theory I wrote up back on the old site a long time ago: namely that when you have the power to do something, you don't. Work things around so other people suggest it, and wait until there is nothing else to do, then do it.

In this case, nationalization would have provoked unthinkable furor but if it is moving to the only reasonable position when Obama finally does it, it will be much better recieved and less likely to provoke opposition from any but the GOP dead enders.

I never fail to be amazed at the interconnectedness of the folks on Right Wing Avenue. I was reading the latest market worshipping from the Heritage Foundation recently and somehow ended up scanning the bio of Rebecca Hagelin, a senior communications fellow who served as the vice-president of communications and marketing from 2002-2008.

Before joining Heritage, she was the vice-president of communications for WorldNetDaily, a truly bizarre faux news site that her bio describes as a"fiercely independent news site that specializes in the investigative
reporting of government waste, fraud and abuse."

Not exactly. You can find examples every day on the site of the fantasies presented as news or credible commentary. My recent favorite was a column February 10th by Janet Porter with Faith2Action. 

Porter raises the possibility that Obama is a communist and was groomed for the presidency since he was young by "Soviet Russian Communists...to pave the way for a Communist future." 

The source for this revelation is a former vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention who received the information from a software developer who visited Russia often during the early 1990s. 

Porter realizes this might be hard to believe and even says she can't prove it, shocking as that may be, but says "in light of all that is happening, it doesn't seem that far-fetched anymore."

My question after making you read this insanity is how can somebody who worked for World-NUT-Daily be taken seriously at the allegedly credible Heritage Foundation?

The most prominent market fundamentalist think here in North Carolina has a staff member who used to write for WorldNut and several county chapters of the Republican Party list the site as a place to go for news.

I don't get it, not why right-wing groups associate with World-Nut, but how they can be considered credible if they do? Help me understand. And look out for the black helicopters coming over the ridge.

Greg Mankiew,
Harvard Economist with a famous past.

In Honor of Obey's excellent musings on The unbearable weirdness of Greg Mankiew.

I have done some research and I believe that I have identified the source of Obey's queasiness.

I discovered the little known fact that Mankiw is not the original family name.  In 1971 his  parents made the difficult decision to change the name to Mankiw in order to protect 'little greggy' from public attention and the constant hounding of the paparatzi.  

You might remember his father the famous television star,

Mr. Mankiew

His parents are very proud of Greggy.

Megan McArdle captures something significant about the state of reason in our public discourse. On the stimulus debate:

It is an empirical question whether the multiplier for government spending is greater or less than one. It is an empirical question whether the multiplier for the spending we just did is greater or less than one. It is an empirical question whether the sorts of crises we are now in produce liquidity traps such that fiscal shock therapy can result in a permanently higher level of growth.

I do not say that we will know the answer to these empirical questions; I daresay we won't, at least not to a certainty. But there *is* an answer out there in the ether, yet most of the public debate about these questions is not much tied to empirics. They are being debated as emotionally as if the topic were the relative virtues of the debaters' spouses.

Once again, I am driven to quote the immortal Charles Murtaugh: the universe is not here to please you. Fiscal stimulus will make the economy grow faster, or it will not make the economy grow faster, without regard to whether taxation is theft or universal healthcare is an immediate moral imperative. I doubt I'm the only one who is wearied by the way so many of the participants in the debate seem to already know the answer they want, and are merely looking for a set of questions that will get them there most expeditiously. Was there ever a time when people didn't think that tricky economic conundrums could, or should, be used to "prove" that their personal values about the level of taxation and spending are a scientific fact? Probably not. Still, given how important this question is, I wish more people would treat this as a problem to be solved, a question to be answered, rather than a battle to be won.

The distinction between theoretical and empirical arguments seems to have little currency among the chattering classes, as debate flows glibly between values and evidence, between what's right and what works, between the "whether" and the "how." The virtue of one's goals becomes inseparable from the efficacy of one's strategy.

Rarely is there recognition that torture is morally reprehensible and that eliminating it might compromise our security; that the social safety net should be expanded and that many welfare recipients don't bother looking for work; that the minimum wage is unconscionably low and that raising it will lead workers to get laid off; that dropping a-bombs on Japan was pure terrorism and that it likely saved lives overall. The tendency, rather, is to play make-believe. We pretend we live in an ethically rational world where good deeds lead to good outcomes and bad deeds lead to bad outcomes.

We thirst for cognitive consonance. And so we concoct it.

 

This post first appeared at jesselava.com. 

There've been some real screwy rumors of late that Rupert Murdoch is - in his dotage - "going liberal".

Yeah. I know what you're thinking. I can't believe it either. The weathered Sauron of some global right wing, whose News Corp. evil empire turned over journalism to high-tech carnival barkers and unleased the corrosive, perverse Bill O'Reilly on an ingenuous broadcast audience... is going left?

When snowballs in hell abound and stone-frozen dimetrodon eggs burst forth with hatchlings mewling.

Read more »

Apologies for the long post; I didn't have time to write a short one. Apologies too, for weighing in too late to contribute to the conversation.

They say liberal is someone who won't even take his own side in an argument, and so it was with me this President's Day. I received an astonishing document in the mail maybe a month ago, from Brian Lamb of C-Span, asking me to rank every president from one to forty-three on ten "Individual Leadership Characteristics." I remember chuckling at the ILC's fine-grained sensitivity. Maybe there are people who can really responsibly rank John Tyler vis-a-vis Ulysses S. Grant as to their "Administrative Skills," Grover Cleveland versus Calvin Coolidge as to their "Morality Authority"--but I am not that man. I sent apologies to Mr. Lamb; I hadn't, I explained, anything near the erudition to carry out the appointed task.

Then, last Monday, I learned that America's "presidential historians" had, without benefit of my vote, named Ronald Reagan the tenth-best president in United States history.

Read more »

Earlier this week, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a prestigious research organization that advises Congress, released a long-awaited report detailing comprehensive recommendations to improve the practice and use of forensic science in the American criminal justice system. The report concludes that forensic labs and the system of oversight of forensic science are in dire need of broad structural changes to ensure reliability, and put forensic evidence on a sound scientific footing.  This report was the culmination of an ambitious two year study, conducted by a NAS committee at the direction of Congress, of the current state of forensic science. This committee was charged with, among other tasks, assessing the accuracy and reliability of forensic testing and evidence used in criminal trials and investigations; identifying systemic problems with the practice and use of forensic science; and recommending best practices and solutions to improve the reliability of forensic evidence utilized in the criminal justice system.

 

Given the critical importance of forensic testing and evidence in the investigation, apprehension, and conviction of criminals, as well as the exoneration of the innocent, the task assigned to the National Academy of Sciences was a critical one. The use of forensic evidence in the criminal justice system has skyrocketed in recent decades, and unfortunately, so have the instances in which faulty forensic evidence contributed to the wrongful convictions of innocent people. Despite the reputation of forensic science as being a reliable and accurate means of excluding certain suspects and identifying others, often fostered by popular shows such as CSI, forensic science is often deeply flawed and inaccurate--unreliable or false forensic evidence led to the wrongful conviction of over half of the first two hundred people exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States.

 

The findings of the NAS are consistent with this fact. Their report concludes that forensic science is rife with problems, including a lack of thorough research and testing to establish the reliability of many forensic disciplines, under-staffed and under-funded forensic labs, a lack of adequate educational and training programs for forensic scientists, a lack of mandatory certification requirements for analysts and accreditation programs for labs, and effective oversight of analysts and forensic facilities. These systemic problems, among others identified by the NAS, "pose a continuing and serious threat to the quality and credibility of forensic science practice." The report recommends the establishment of a National Institute of Forensic Science to establish and enforce best practices for forensic science professionals and laboratories; and standards for the mandatory accreditation of labs and certification of analysts. NAS recommends this new institute fund additional research in the various forensic science disciplines and research on the possible sources and effects of bias and human error in the practice of forensic science, as well as funding to assist all forensic laboratories in the states to become independent from law enforcement agencies.

 

I commend the NAS for their exhaustive review of forensic science in our criminal justice system, and their recommendations to re-structure the way forensic science is practiced in the United States. In 2008, the Justice Project released, Improving the Practice and Use of Forensic Science: A Policy Review, which offers recommendations and solutions for improving the practices and standards of forensic science. The review includes information on current forensic practices, case studies, states that have enacted reforms in forensic analysis, and a model policy. All of the Justice Project's recommendations--improved oversight and standards, programs to prevent bias and human error in the practice of forensic science, independence from law enforcement agencies, improved training and certification programs, as well as additional funding and resources, are consistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

It is my sincerest hope that now, with the body of research and guidance provided by the National Academy of Sciences, the federal government and the states will begin to take critical steps towards improving the practice and use of forensic science in criminal trials. Ensuring the best and most accurate evidence makes it into the courtroom is absolutely critical in maintaining fairness and accuracy in the criminal justice system.

 

John F. Terzano is President of  The Justice Project, a nonpartisan organization that works to increase fairness and accuracy in the criminal justice system.

As far as Jared Bernsrein's comments about bailing out home owners with high debt to income ratios, So what about all the people who went and and ran up debt on cars, furniture and other material things. It sounds like now taxpayers are supplementing more than just mortgages. At what point if any, will there be guidelines to differentiate piled up debt after the homes were bought?
It is dead wrong to put this on the taxpayers and these socialist policies are dividing this country more than ever.
 

I'm going to start reading Haruki Murakami.  That's because I just read this speech of his, which is simply outstanding.  Go ahead and read it all for yourself.  Or let these few excerpts below entice you to want to read more.

Initially, Marukami begins by admitting he's in the business of lying professionally - as a novelist.  And he explains how the making up of lies, through fiction, shines a light on the truth:

Namely, that by telling skillful lies -- which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true -- the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

He then goes through an explanation of why he decided to travel to Jerusalem to accept a literary prize, despite the recent invasion of Gaza.  And he goes on to explain the importance of one fragile person up against a seemingly impenetrable system:

Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is "the System." The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others -- coldly, efficiently, systematically. 

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

I find his words so illuminating, so edifying, so ultimately hopeful;  I find in him a kindred spirit:

We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong -- and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System. That is all I have to say to you.

My thanks to SL, who found this and passed it on.

KRAKOW, Poland -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that Washington could accept a political agreement between the Afghan government and Taliban rebels along the lines of a truce in neighboring Pakistan.

Gates' comments contrasted with those of Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who said this week that he was worried that the peace deal was tantamount to surrender by Pakistan.

On Monday, Pakistan announced it would agree to the imposition of Islamic law in the restive Swat valley in the northwest part of the country as part of an agreement aimed at restoring peace after an 18-month military campaign. The pact was spearheaded by a hard-line cleric who is negotiating with the Taliban in the valley to give up their arms.

Looks like we may have found a way out of Afghanistan.  At the very least this is a trial balloon to see how Americans feel about doing such a truce with the people that refused to give us Osama Bin Laden and allowed training camps to organize in their nation.

After reading the history of Afghanistan and other nations trying to 'control' it -- this may be the only way of ending our war there.

I can see where we agree to stop fighting Taliban with the conditions that we leave a couple of bases there to stop any new 'camps' from forming.

I'll be curious as to how this is accepted here.

During last year's Presidential election, some people took to nicknaming the Republican Presidential ticket.  Perhaps no nickname fit better than "Unstable/Unable".

Give the Republicans credit for efficiency.  Not wanting to waste their valuable resources, they now only allow interviews with people like Michael Steele, Steve King and Pete Sessions.  As such, they can demonstrate inability and instability in one monstrous swoop.

However, for sheer spectacle, no one goes over the cliff without so much as a skidmark quite like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).  The saucer-eyed Congresswoman, you may recall, made national waves by recommending a return to the days of Joseph McCarthy.  She then compounded the problem with this Politico piece, and then proceeded to blame Chris Matthews for tricking her.

Apparently, voters in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District don't have much use for national reputation or competent representation, because Bachmann somehow managed to be re-elected. 

Of course, we've got Madoff and Burris and Bush (oh my!) to occupy us on more serious matters.  It is good, though, to not let perpetual train wrecks like Bachmann escape our notice.

---

(WARNING:  The author of this blog, as well as its host, TalkingPointsMemo.com, are not responsible for the liquefying of brain cells that will likely occur if you actually listen to the Bachmann interview linked below.  If you don't believe me, ask the driving puppy.)

---

Still here?  Okay!  Through the looking-glass we go!

Frau Bachmann's latest trip into her alternate-reality bunker happened last weekend.  In a radio interview with KTLK conservative talker Chris Baker, Bachmann was responsible for the following utterances.

• ACORN is "under federal indictment for voter fraud," but the stimulus bill nevertheless gives ACORN "$5 billion." (If you have followed the theme of this post so far, you will not be surprised to learn that ACORN is not under federal indictment and isn't mentioned in the stimulus bill at all.)
• Many members of Congress have "a real aversion to capitalism."
• The stimulus bill includes a measure to create a "rationing board" for health care, and after the bill becomes law, "your doctor will no longer be able to make your healthcare decisions with you."
• Republicans are "too nice" and won't fight back.
• The recovery package is part of a Democratic conspiracy to "direct" funding away from Republican districts, so Democratic districts can "suck up" all federal funds. Bachmann doesn't think this will work because, as she put it, "We're running out of rich people in this country."
• The "Community-Organizer-in-Chief" (yes, that's verbatim) is also orchestrating a conspiracy involving the Census Bureau, which the president will use to redraw congressional lines to keep Democrats in power for up to "40 years." When the host said he was confused, noting that congressional district lines are drawn at the state level, Bachmann said Obama's non-existent plan is an "anti-constitutional move."

No, I am not making any of this up.  Yes, these are all taken straight from the interview.  Yes, you should listen to the whole thing.  No, you cannot sue me for damages.  Frankly, if you listened to the interview before getting to this part of the blog, you may, in fact, qualify as a true medical miracle for surviving the dain bramage caused by trying to logically process Bachmannese.

There is a slim silver lining in Bachmann's cloudy return to Washington.  It was only a matter of time before the nation would once again be treated to watching Bachmann's mind roam wild and free in that gigantic space which it occupies. 

A Palin/Bachmann 2012 GOP ticket has been proposed here before.  But, by combining evidence of being unstable and unable in one gobsmacking package, with absolutely no countervailing evidence of legislative or governing ability, Michele Bachmann is making a strong case to move to the top of the ticket as the true face of the Republicans.  Here's hoping.

Michelle Bachmann said it, along with a bunch of other simply crazed comments, but she said it, "This country is running out of rich people!"  The suggestion is that rich people have been carrying the load and are tired of doing so.  The private sector is so burdened with this poor economy they just can't go out and have dinner with champagne every night anymore!  {Sigh}  Woe is they!!! Woe!!!

What Bachmann should have said is, "Rich people are running out of the country!"  What was their first sign, the very first sign, that sticking around was a bad idea?  Oh, I'm no economist, but when Bush was continuing with tax cuts while getting the nation into two wars, that might have been a clue that management was incompetent.  After all, no President in the entire history of the United States had ever thought reducing revenues when war time expenses were demanded of a country was a good idea.  I'm pretty sure it's not a local phenomenon either. I believe this concept of cutting taxes during war time is something globally recognized as somewhat less then wise.

The rich people, those share holders who feel that a company owes them a piece of the action in perpetuity, have fled the country and taken their money with them. By last report, the US was requesting 50,000 names from people with Swiss Bank accounts.  The very example of rich people leaving and taking their money with them.  It is not the job of rich people to clean up after anyone, even themselves.   They eschew the toil of working to make companies profitable, preferring to leave when things go south and finding another host to support the lifestyle to which they have become acustomed.

Then karma came.  What goes around comes around, and this flat world is in fact round.  In their efforts to avoid the uncomfortable task of righting the party of the Right, they shirked their duty to country.  They are citizens of the world and their loyalties are to multinational corporations fighting to prevent the UN from interfering in their unethical and immoral colonial-esque practices.  It's hard not to make a profit when you can manufacture sneakers for about $10 in one country and still return to the US and sell them for $100.  But when the global economy collapses, what good are boat loads of $100 sneakers when no one can afford them?

One has to wonder what would this nation be like if those regal refugess who could not bare to take a stand against the absurdities of the Bush Regime had actually remained to fight.  What if they had taken the bold step of confronting the Bush Regime and demanding he refrain from the deeds that were destined to failure?  Where would we be now?  What if they had realized that their silence, bought by lucrative contracts in the wars, would lead to this gloabal collapse?  Had they fought him then, within their own party, would we have been able to fight and defeat them now?  Would their fortunes be greater if they might have seen how the entire system was in jeopardy and that their fortunes would share the turmoil they allowed to be unleashed, even though the easy money of military contracts might ease their pain?  Guess we will never know, but there is a part of me that still resents their cowardice for letting Bush run wild.  This collpase was predictable.  

MS software: unsafe

I see that former President Bill Clinton is out on the trail 'talking' and giving 'his' opinion about the way President Obama is conducting his administration.  May I ask -- why?  May I also ask if Bill Clinton will be on the TV route through out Obama's administration?  He practically ignored former president George W. Bush's administration -- why is Bill suddenly interested?

While, so far, the former president is saying nice things except for today's comments about Obama, "should talk more optimistically' during an interview with Good Morning America.  Excuse me?  In each and every speech Obama has given since taking on the recession and housing crisis, he's always added the FACT that American's will get over this hill, as we have always done.

President Clinton, your wife is overseas doing her job, President Obama is doing his.  Why don't you go back to traveling to other nations instead of sending signals to others on TV about how 'you' feel Obama is doing?

I have a gut feeling what the former president is doing is, he's playing Mr Nice Guy about Obama now, making subtle suggestions.  Then in about 2010-2011, the former President will use those same words to justify why he thinks things worked or didn't work pertaining to the economy. If Obama solves the crisis and has good ratings, Bill Clinton will take credit for some of the success claiming, "I told him to do that...". 

On the other hand, if Obama looks like he will do badly in 2012, Bill will come out swinging and supporting his wife (she'll resign in late 2010) for president saying -- I tried to help Obama but he wouldn't listen, now we need somebody in there that can do the job right.

Am I way off base or what?

I just don't trust Bill or Hillary anymore.  Even if I did, I'm not sure I want him out there talking about what Obama is doing or not doing.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/20/rnc-gives-verdict-of-first-month-disappointing/

Yes, what a SHOCK! The RNC believes that Obama is a disappointment. Yet there is CNN.com touting this as a news story without bothering to point that HE reached out to the GOP and THEY decided to vote NO. But that is somehow not bipartisan of Obama.

Then there is this tidbit, which is getting hammered this week by FNC and the like: Obama's questionable ethics. REALLY?? What ethics questions dog Barack Obama? There are none. Nominees that owed back taxes? OK. You mean like Sarah Palin and Dick Morris, right?

Some lobbying ties? Perhaps a few. But not like when their guy Bush W was in office or the lobbyists that made up McCain's campaign. At least with Obama, they cannot go right back to lobbying after serving in his admin.

But no mention of any of these things by CNN. Nope. He is disappointing. What is disappointing is the lack of a minority party that gives a hoot about solving problems and a complicit media that is intent on giving the right wing crazies all the headlines.

Well, news flash: 60% of the country disagrees with the RNC!

If you're like most of the staff of the Religious Action Center, you've got enough blogs plugged into your Google Reader to keep you busy for hours at a time just reading through daily posts. But here's one piece of reading you should make sure you get to today - Rabbi David Saperstein, the RAC's director, has a piece up today on Huffington Post about the significance of the judiciary!

Read more »

Link to analysis piece on the nation's infrastructure at "RENY-digital"...Real Estate New York.  

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he didn't exist.

Dear John:

My economic house is in bad repair: the guy before me did nothing.   I have made emergency repairs.  They cost a ton.

I need to know whether this is generational theft.

Sincerely,
Barack
The White House

I AM THANKFUL:

FOR THE WIFE

WHO SAYS IT'S HOT DOGS TONIGHT,

BECAUSE SHE IS HOME WITH ME,

AND NOT OUT WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

 

(Or perhaps this might apply to you better)

FOR THE HUSBAND

WHO IS ON THE SOFA

BEING A COUCH POTATO,

BECAUSE HE IS HOME WITH ME

AND NOT OUT AT THE BARS.

 

FOR THE TEENAGER

WHO IS COMPLAINING ABOUT DOING DISHES

BECAUSE IT MEANS SHE IS AT HOME, NOT ON THE STREETS.

 

FOR THE TAXES I PAY

BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM EMPLOYED .

 

FOR THE MESS TO CLEAN AFTER A PARTY

BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS.

 

FOR THE CLOTHES THAT FIT A LITTLE TOO SNUG

BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT.

 

FOR MY SHADOW THAT WATCHES ME WORK

BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM OUT IN THE SUNSHINE

 

FOR A LAWN THAT NEEDS MOWING,

WINDOWS THAT NEED CLEANING,

AND GUTTERS THAT NEED FIXING

BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE A HOME .

 

FOR ALL THE COMPLAINING

I HEAR ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT

BECAUSE IT MEANS WE HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

 

FOR THE PARKING SPOT

I FIND AT THE FAR END OF THE PARKING LOT

BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM CAPABLE OF WALKING

AND I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH TRANSPORTATION .

 

FOR MY HUGE HEATING BILL

BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM WARM.

 

FOR THE LADY BEHIND ME IN CHURCH WHO SINGS OFF KEY BECAUSE
IT MEANS I CAN HEAR.

 

FOR THE PILE OF LAUNDRY AND IRONING

BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE CLOTHES TO WEAR.

 

FOR WEARINESS AND ACHING MUSCLES AT THE END OF THE DAY

BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN CAPABLE OF WORKING HARD.

 

FOR THE ALARM THAT GOES OFF

IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS

BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM ALIVE.

 

AND FINALLY, FOR TOO MUCH E-MAIL

BECAUSE  IT MEANS I HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE THINKING OF ME.

 

Live well, Laugh often, & Love with all of your heart!

For fun, I've been working my through the Madoff client to figure out who's who and how they made the list. The Syracuse investment firm that specialized in managing union funds certainly deserves closer scrutiny. $1 billion down the drain and no casino hotel to speak of.

Several individual accounts are in care of  Trezza Management with addresses on Court and Pacific Streets in Brooklyn. Trezza Management is a real estate management firm registered by Madeline Trezza in 1998. Several NYC buiilding permits have been issued with her name as the sponsor.

Somehow, Ms Trezza ended up on a list of "investors" in a Panamanian company as part of a scam perpetrated by Chaim Chalfon (Keem Kalfon), an Orthodox Jew on the lam. One of his associates, Isaac Sofair, was bagged by the SEC a couple of years ago but I don't know if Chalfon was ever charged with a crime.

Although Madeline Trezza does not appear to have had much money invested in Global Heritage Asset Protection Ltd - Life Style Master Inc. in 10/05, I noticed the names of two people with Madoff accounts in her custody -  Michael Goldstein and Ludwilla Goldberg - were also on the Life Style Master list. .

The Chaim Chalfon Cheats Investors website is a bit over the top but has some useful information, particularly in the attached documents. One letter about a private placement  refers to clearing funds through LCP Capital:

"...For your information only, the "Non-risk Placement Letter" Exhibit A, which will be issued to the client after submitting his letter of intent, is issued by LCP Capital Corp, a NASD registered broker-dealer clearing through CIBC/Oppenheimer Corp (100 Wall Street, NYC, NY), maintaining a banking relationship with the Bank of New York.

All in all, its a very solid program which I will devote time and effort to. There are millions of people with $100k plus who would kill to earn 15% apr while their principal is secured, and I am only going after 18 of them, the rest I leave for you and Fred and anyone else you trust not to prostitute this opportunity. ... '

Why go through Chalfon? I visited the LCP Capital website and I can invest money practically guaranteed to earn 20% with minimal risk. LCP investors who got in early are still earning 15%+ on other alternative investments. Such a deal!

Getting back to Madeline Trezza, she apparently is running a successful business in a tough  market so she's no dope.  How did she get hooked up with Chalfon and then Bernie? Or vice versa?

Is Trezza a victim or participant?

Just curious about how these things work.

In the end, we are all humans, and the American ideal rests on one thing: Equality. There is no real status that can elevate one of us above another. So when one of us fails miserably and smugly does his own cheerleader dance for an audience he specifically ruined, he deserves to be called on it.

Sir Moshe arose with his normal aches and pains. He was to make an appointment at the Room of the Roundish Table where there was to be a discussion of the border issues up north at Hadrian's Wall and the problems in the Southeast with the Angles.

He appeared slight in build and all of five and a half feet, but he always surprised the crowd at the tournaments because he had a wiry strength. His grandfather had been Badegamus who really was a bad king. King Badegamus had created his father on a milk maid, which actually saved all three of them from the Pox, although no one knew why at the time. It was of course because Grandmama had had the cow pox. If she only knew why the few scars on her hands and face had saved her from a crueler end. But speaking of a cruel end, having been raped by a rogue and terrible man was not so elegant.

Sir Moshe's father had been Sir Thomas, a good and true knight of the south and it was through him, a Christian, that he found himself at the Roundish Table. His mother had been Lady Gladys who was from the Holy Lands. She was a Jew, but the couple kept that hidden for years. It was when his brother Solomon became a rabbi that things became sticky.  At first Sir Moshe was banned from knighthood but when he won the Tournament of Whitsunday that King Arthur restored his knighthood and made him a full member of the Round Table.

Therefore at this time, Sir Moshe never tried to hide who he was, where he came from or who he worshiped.  Cleaning his face and torso at the window of his quarters, Sir Moshe let out a WHOOSH like he always did as the cold water woke him into stark consciousness.  He used the cleaning brush and dressed and finished his morning prayers.

Sir Moshe arrived just in time at the Room and several of the knights were present and ready to hear their Ruler's declarations of the day.  The great King arrived with Bedivere and Blaise at his side. And of course, opened with a prayer:

May my Savior and Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and God the Father bless all our benighted guests and deliver us from evil. Amen

And of course, everyone crossed themselves except for Sir Moshe. Everyone used to stare at him but they all let it go after a few years when Sir Moshe proved himself.

Today, sirs, we are confronted with some new problems in the north and in the south....

The King discussed the many issues of illegal immigration, terrorism and the import of goods that go undetected and therefore untaxed. The king noted that someday all of these problems will evaporate.

Finally the meeting ended with Gareth asking if all this means that he must give up his silk underclothes that help him with his..er..infection.

Sir Moshe was given a simple solo quest.  He is to ride quickly up to Hadrian's Wall and bring back a report to the King and Bedivere as to the status of the area with regard to those barbarian Picts and Scots and to seek if he could bring back some of that aged Scotch Whiskey.

The Jewish side of his family not only knew maps, but made them.  He was very careful in his packing for a tour. He pulled the relevant maps, wrapping them carefully in waterproof skins. He put together his clothing satchel as well as his food kit.  He was forced to make his own food in a special area of the kitchen with his own utensils. He also brought his Torah.

After packing he set off on his Arab Steed for the northern parts. The weather was fine which meant he had to make good time just in case.  And he carried a make shift compass. A magnetized piece of metal as well as a little cup which he would fill with water when he stopped.  But the Roman Roads were still maintained even though the Romans had left in 410 AD.  Sir Moshe was ready, willing and able.

Ben was his steed and he was proud of him. They had been through so much with each other. The knights would tease him for the steed's height, until they found themselves knocked on their arses during tournament time. Not that Sir Moshe liked competing in tournaments. Real battles to be fought and won. After one has been properly trained, what is the purpose of this mock war fare?

Besides, as one reaches the big XXX, it is time to begin thinking about one's health. He remembered seeing Lancelot hit Tristan so hard, Tristan was incapacitated for SIX MONTHS.
Besides, ten years ago, when he was hit hard, it hurt for a day or two. Now the real pain does not set in until the third day. And it takes a month before full recovery sets in.

Ben and Sir Moshe had been out on the road for about eight hours when he saw a Moor. What is a Moor doing way out here?  As he got closer he could see it was his old friend Sir Palidan. Ho Moor, what ist thou doing out where others might seeist your terrible gait?

Sir Moshe, I see you brought your favorite canine with you today. Hahahahahahahahaha!

Both dismounted and hugged and sat down for a snack in the open field. 

Still eating that pretend food?

You know, a little more pretend food on your part, and when you stood up you could see your boots. Hahahahahahahaha!!!!

They sat and ate and lied about their women folk and their exploits when lo and behold, another knight coming from the north. 

Sir Gawain, Sir Gawain welcome!!

Sir Gawain dismounted and joined the feeding frenzy and the discussions.

Sir Palidan and Sir Gawain had a lot to talk about.  Gawain had no idea why he had ended up at home and Sir Palidan had just recently remembered that he had been with Gawain and they were supposed to be going north to Hadrian. Of course, Gawain did not have a trusty steed to help remind him of what had transpired.  After their conversations, the three decided it would be best if all continued upon the path set by Sir Moshe.

Three hours later the sun was setting and they happened upon the village of Norfolk. A nice village that had been taken over by the barbarians from the north. Farther north than France.
But the invaders had more or less melded in with the local folk and all was well. They found the local inn.

Three men walk into a pub, a Christian a Moor and a Jew and....hahahahahahahahah.

I can see Eduardo is still at it.

Senor Eduardo to you Sir Moshe.

Hahahahhahaha. Yes Senor.

Oh Senor Eduardo will calm down as soon as he gets his bucket of ale for the night. Now as we discussed, Sir Moshe, you must make sure Sir Gawain and I are more temperate tonight.

Meanwhile back at the SE Quadrant:


Morose. No other word could better describe his emotional condition. Morose. Sir Dobbs has awoke just as his fever broke. He did not even care that he had been close to death. Now his face twisted by healing wounds. His jaw damaged so that he could not longer speak the proper language he had learned as a child of a well heeled family.

PURSUE ALL ANGLES

Ha!!! You hit these barbarians head on. What do they do? Split up into sixteen different directions.  They hide in their little boats off shore. Some run north. Some south. Some west.
What was needed was an immigration plan that....Don't we all deserve a government that works?

Just give me twenty thousand troops. I'll show you a plan that works. I will show you an immigration policy that works.

Otherwise, what the hell. Lets just all go home and call it Angleland. Angleland. We would be the laughing stock of Europe. Rome has been decimated. The colors are gone forever.  Our King gets a boar tusk up his arse and thinks he has seen God. (Blesses himself) Damn. (Blesses himself again) Just then the Field Marshall walk into Dobbs' quarters.

Fathead, they tell me you are feeling better.

I stump en gran sitior fheld scrip. (Don't call me fathead your asshat)

Fine, fine. Good to hear that you are up and around again. Dobbs we need you on the field again.You are going to have to be second in command of your troops though. It is just too damn difficult to understand what you are saying.

Gahhgoaoeng kes pzeringserty fuckering buck nut. (Fuck you and your mother too)

Good. Good. Do you think you can get out there tomorrow after a morning planning session?

Lsppdmy's' og s;dfgaajur abalalrpe;sg'g; (What the fuck.)

Good. Good. Chin up fathead. We will prevail in the end.  The Field Marshall saluted fathead.

Fathead salutes.

The next morning Sir Dobbs arrived at the planning session. The Field Marshall wanted to have a hundred cavalry going straight south and another hundred coming straight north and three hundred riding straight at the enemy.

Pqnnrotp pa;;wyetyqa;; fuslallttyyth   (Are we sure the enemy is there? Pointing to the map.)

Good point Fathead. Yes you are to lead your troops from this northern point.

/.zncnlfrg/ hbaqotyp[wojyyqerfuk'a'ir y (You dipshit. No wonder we have been down here so long with no results)

Good point again. But after this I think Colonel Colonel should do all the talking.

Having completed their seance, the officers split to get their troops to their appointed places.
   
The pain had really left Sir Dobbs. He was still angry about his new speech impediment but not so morose.  Not as long as he had the chance to do the Angles bodily harm. His troop-well really Colonel Colonel's troop-had finally reached their goal in the north. And the order was given.

The troop progressed south for about an hour when they were suddenly confronted with the Questing Beast. Now this strange creature had the head of a snake, the body of a leopard, the fanny of a lion and the feet of a stag. From its stomach raged the barking of twenty pair of hounds.   But our Questing Beast, after it was through belly aching and scaring the horses began to dance and sing:

Oh I'm the Questing Beast and that's OK
I eat all night and I scream all day
I scare the bejesus out of cavalry
And I kill the human beings

I am uglier than the worst of them
I have no friends around
They tell me I am smelly
They tell me I am strong
But no one seems to tell me
That I am all that wrong

Chorus (with the cavalry)

Oh He's the Questing Beast and that's OK
He eats all night and he screams all day
He scare's the bejesus out of cavalry
And when his belly's barking
He kills the human beings

I eat the horses and I eat the knights
But that's cause  both kinds seem to agree
With my sensitive stomach
The Angles are kind of bitter
The Romans taste smoother to me


Chorus (with the cavalry)

Oh He's the Questing Beast and that's OK
He eats all night and he screams all day
He scare's the bejesus out of cavalry
And when his belly's barking
He kills the human beings

All of a sudden the cavalry stopped singing and settled down.

Owpetopaj fuckkkektipw[r[poajg''a'';lalkjgf   Dobbs said with vigor. (No real translation)
Owpetopaj fuckkkektipw[r[poajg''a'';lalkjgf   Dobbs repeated.

Hearing these cruel words that no one but the Questing Beast could understand, the monster took off northward at a pace never to be seen in these parts again. The cavalry was saved.  And Dobbs was the first since Pelleas to frighten off the beast.

It's a miracle yelled the Colonel.  And at once all one hundred soldiers dismounted and fell to their knees to pray and to be in awe of Sir Dobbs.

Dobbs still standing looked at his troops and said : 

wpporhthpy;lzkjbkbdsbgp;[[tou;[eprpks'h;kh';aslkhpphspofopjla;pojjdgjjgijgjjgjjjdfg'ooop

(Translated: you have got to be fucking kidding me)

After that the troops had held a new found respect for Sir Dobbs and never called him fathead again. And no one ever wished to anger Sir Dobbs again!!!!!

And when he returned to base, well we will get to that later after the battle.

By now, many of you will probably have seen this rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli. Matt Drudge gave it the red, italicized font treatment, and its the top story out of Morning Joe. In the somewhat humorous clip, Santelli expresses outrage at the foreclosed assets plan unveiled by the President this week. I call the clip somewhat humorous, because Santelli's righteous indignation (and that of those traders and reporters behind Santelli) comes with a healthy dosage of self-protection. The $250 billion package, which many will remember being discussed during the "Town Hall debate" during the election, will be used to buy and renegotiate mortgages that have surpassed the total value of the property. "How many of you want to buy your neighbor's mortgage?" Santelli asks the room, smiling as the crowd grunts their disapproval. To be frank, I would much, much rather buy the house of my neighbor than a new plane for CEOs Santelli cohorts with from day to day. Where was Santelli when we were told that the banks needed $700 billion NOW (and will they arrive when the next bailout is debated)?

"Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo, Mississippi, voted out a 12-year-old boy who 'asked Jesus to live in his heart' at the church two weeks ago. Why the ban? Joe is biracial, and church members didn't want the black side of his family attending with him... (T)hey were 'afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church,' church pastor John Stevens told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal."

-- Steve Benen
Carpetbagger Report
26 August 2006

 

"The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished.  It was stained by this nation's original sin... "

-- Barack Obama
Constitution Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
18 March 2008

 

"(D)escendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that... (t)hat particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today."

-- Condoleeza Rice
Washington Times Interview
28 March 2008

 

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

-- Eric Holder
18 February 2009

 

The confessional literature of Proust, Henry Miller, Kerouac and so many others consumed much of my reading when I was younger. So much so that my own writing is stamped occasionally as, "confessional."

I think the label misses the point, though. What I attempt is to hold a mirror up at society, culture and government. I attempt to show things as they are. The family, like sports is considered to be a microcosm of society as a whole. What you see in a society you see on a sports team; you see it in the extended family.

The story of a nation then, is made up of the many paragraphs in which each family is a participle of a sentence.

The following is often mistaken as a story about my family; when in fact, I wrote it for the 10 year memorial of Martin Luther King's assassination. It is a story of many sins; some racial, some sexual. It is a story of sins against gender and the generatiions. It is a story about sins of power and sins of apathy.

It is a story of America and no matter how much we might deny it, all of us are...

 

Born with Sin

by

Justice Putnam

 

When was the first thought?
The first inkling of cognition?
Can I reach back
Find the original light?
Or was it a sound?
A drum beat
Heart beat
Moving feet and souls?

I heard a crying
A low moan
Quivering breath
And then a scream

Shrill
Loud
And piercing.

Did I clench my fist
Lick and then bite my lower lip?
Did I pray to a god
That did not exist?

When would my scream begin?
And for what reason?

Would I scream for the woman
Who gave me life
Lying in the corner
With blackened eyes
And scattered dreams?

Or for the man
Whose sperm
Made up half
Of my emotional outlook?

Whose hands would caress
Upon one moment
And pummel
Through many others?

Or would my cries and screams
Be for myself?
Helpless under
The blankets of despair

Pleading to the Saints
Of battered children and wives
Never getting an answer
Only delays.

Cries and screams
For my bare feet
Running on the gravel
Of Camp Creek

The McKenzie
Nineteen fifty-eight
The United States.

But I was born into
A sonic boom of recognition
And a silent fear of remorse.

A mushroom crowd
Walking in atomic heels
Crying hydro-electric tears
Pumping Bourbon blood
With bias plied hearts.

There were Catholics
There were Atheists
There were Protestant politicians
Burning black flesh
On Southern barbecues

While a quiet
But effective
Northern bigotry
Butchered more lions
Dressed in African velvet.

And women
Were subservient
In sexual boredom

Stepping out
And applying
Lipstick and polish
Mascara and perfume.

Walking with a sway
Along a jazz bebop
Saxophone avenue.

Escaping the file cabinet bedrooms
And dish soap romance

Meeting lovers for
Back seat hand jobs
And cashmere petting

And they all temporized guilt
With motel showers
And a street sign excuse.

And the children were asleep
In station wagons
Parked at cocktail lounges

And fathers were doing time
For involuntary manslaughter

Drunk in a car.

Penitentiary phallus
And penetrating denial

Barred-window shadows
On concrete block walls

Absent and jealous

Fermenting hot-white revenge
In the testes
Of another born
In a suffering Nativity.

 

(Los Angeles and Laguna Beach, California, 1978)

 

© 1978 and 2007 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen

(Born with Sin was performed as part of KCET Los Angeles Channel 28 New Poets Series, produced and hosted by Luis Campos, filmed in Los Angeles and Sun Valley, May 1984; and has appeared in Art in a Liberal Frame: Selected Writings and Images of the Daily Kos Community Summer 2007.)

Read more »

You may have seen clip of Rick Santelli raging on CNBC about the stimulus bill and how it rewards people who have been irresponsible and doesn't offer anything for the majority of us folks that buy homes within our means and pay our mortgages on time.  His rants are annoying and overdone, but he voices an opinion that lots of people have right now.  Most of us recognize that this money needs to be spent and will benefit the majority of people in the long run but some are leery of paying to keep people in homes they can't really afford while they themselves may see only a small tax break incentive.  What about the rest of us?  How about some stimulus in the form of low interest rate incentives so we can refinance our mortgages and spend the savings?  We could use that stimulus money to subsidize very low fixed rate loans (under 4.5%) available to all of us for our primary residences. 

If the money for the housing sector went to subsidize lower interest rates on mortgages for the general public there would be savings to those who are struggling to keep their homes, for some of these folks a reduction in principal might be added if they owe more than their home is worth.  Many fewer of these homes would be foreclosed on.  People who aren't headed for foreclosure could refinance their mortgages and have extra money to spend.  Most people use refinance induced savings to spend on home repairs, autos and other things that put people to work.  Perhaps an extra bonus could be thrown in for those who buy an American made car.  And for the people who do not yet own a home a very low interest rate (fixed of course) will bring many into the home market.  They will be able to purchase homes for the first time and further boost the housing sector.  It's a win-win-win.   And for the nay sayers and stimulus haters they can simply turn their nose up and continue to complain.  Or they could embrace the plan, take advantage of it and shut the heck up.

I'm thoroughly skeptical of BMD systems to begin with, particularly the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.

The technology for decoys is simply too easy, it's basically the same as the shiny metalized children's balloons you can get at party city, and striking a reentry vehicle when closing speeds are in excess of a mile per second seems to me to involve awfully long odds.

I call it "faith based missile defense," and one of the earliest goals of the Bush administration was to ensure that it be deployed into service come hell or high water, on the theory that once it was there, it would be politically costly to remove it.

OK, I get that part, Saint Reagan called for it, so it must be done, and since it must be done, you have to drag our European allies into this too.

So here's the con: Those scary Persians are going to lob an IRBM at Europe, so we have to put an Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system into Poland, so as to protect everyone.

Poland?  Why put it in Poland?

Thing is, Poland is a pretty crappy place to put a BMD system to protect our NATO allies, and this installation, along with the associated radar at Brdy in the Czech Republic,^* and it's gotten the Russians absolutely batsh$# insane.

If you figure out the trajectory of a Ballistic missile,^† and the tools to the this can be found in a number of places on the web, the location does not make sense.

It does not protect Turkey, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, or southern France.

I've had discussions with people who have suggested that it would protect the eastern seaboard, and it would, if you launched the missiles from downtown Tehran, but just like our ballistic missiles are not located on Washington DC or Crystal City, it's unlikely that they would put their installation there.

They would want to locate it as far away from a potential aircraft carrier, NATO airbases in Turkey, and the US base at Diego Garcia.

This would put a missile base in the North East corner of the country about 500 miles east of Tehran, in the general vicinity of Masshad, the 2nd largest city in Iran.

Suddenly that interceptor in Poland does not do such a good job protecting the east coast.

For an attack on the West Coast, it's path is too far from either Poland, or the base at Fort Greely, and the installation at Vandenberg seems iffy for covering San Francisco and points north.

Now, the folks the Missile defense agency claim that the installation in Poland is unable to intercept Russian ICBMs (bottom picture), but unsurprisingly the Russians do not believe them.

The Russians did offer a site at Qabala, which they rent from Azerbaijan, if the US dropped the Polish installation, but the response of the United States at the time was a diplomatic raspberry.

In any case, it's clear that Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia would be prime locations for such a site, though there are serious political issues there, but sites in Turkey, Romania, or Bulgaria would provide better coverage of Europe, and might have a shot at intercepting something headed forChicagoland, which none of the current installations do.

There is the additional issue that pissing off the Russians has real consequences for our security, as evidenced by their outbidding the United States about access to the airbase in Kyrgyzstan.

So, it seems to be a really bad idea, and SecDef Robert Gates is already making noises about there has been no final decision on the Euro missile shield.

So, why were Bush and His Evil Minions^™ so intent on putting that GMD installation in Poland?

All it really seems to be capable of doing is pissing off the Russians.

Well, Occam's razor says that the simplest answer is the one most likely to be correct, and the simplest answer is that the goal of this whole was to piss off the Russians; they decided that it would be a good thing to poke the bear with a stick.

Why would this be so?  It doesn't make sense from the perspective of the real security needs of the United States.

The answer is as venal as it is stupid: Someone (Dick Cheney?) decided that it would be to the political advantage of the Republican to have a hostile power, armed with thousands of nuclear warheads capable of striking the US.

The big scary Russians would make the voters run to the Republicans.

Additionally, it would give Condi Rice something to do once she left the State Department, since her gig as the Worst Sovietologist Ever^™, where she made a career of painting them as 10 feet tall and irredeemably hostile, had basically ended when the Berlin Wall came down.

Basically, they were trying to recreate the Cold War for personal and political gain.

^*In fact, the radar, which can surveil all the airspace in European Russia, may be more of a sticking point than the missile base in Poland.
^†I used Google Maps. Go there, then click "my maps", and then click on "browse the directory", and click on the distance measurement tool, and it will compute great circle^‡ distances, which is what modern aircraft, and ballistic missiles, do .
^‡It's the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. The straight line on a Mercator projection is actually longer. It's what you would get if you used a globe, and a tight string between two points on that globe.

Cross posted from 40 Years in the Desert.

After Stillidealistic's semi-recent post about online dating, I decided to try it on.  Hoping, of course, that one size doesn't fit all.

So I joined eHarmony three weeks ago.

As some background information, for those of you who don't know me, I broke up with a live-in boyfriend a year ago and I've been enjoying living alone ever since.  But, as I admitted to Stilli one night while chatting, I've been sort of missing that nice pleasant feeling that comes with walking hand-in-hand down the street with a guy who's taking me to see a show, or out to dinner, or (insert pretty music, here) along the beach...

So Stilli talked me into trying eHarmony for a month.

Well, I'm sure she would've liked it better if I'd joined for a year, but they want your money all up front.  So I went for the more expensive one-month option.

I spent over an hour answering all the questions in their website questionnaire, then created my "profile page" and uploaded my good ole orange avatar that you all get to see day after day, and then I logged out and hoped for the best.

Within days I'd seen every Tom, Dick, and Harry in my home state, plus a guy from Canada, a guy from Virginia, and at least 10 guys from Pennsylvania pop up as potential matches in my home page.  It was Canada and Virginia that made me narrow down my search.

After two weeks of studying my matches and trying to use the canned "questions/answers" system to contact those I felt a little interested in, I was approached by a guy who lives only two towns away and he suggested I use "Fast Track", where you get to private message the person outside the suggested (canned) Q&A slow track system.  I was all for that, so we started messaging.  He seemed nice, he was in his early 50's, owned a company, and was 6'1".  For me, being 5 foot nine and a half, height is important.  Well after messaging back and forth, all free-style, he eventually called me and we seemed to hit it off over the phone well enough, so we talked one more time and then met up for a date.

This guy was kind enough to meet me at a local bar/restaurant around the corner from my house, but decided early on that it didn't have the right ambiance so he asked me if he could take me 10 minutes away to HIS local bar.  Other than the fact that he wore too much cologne, I could sense nothing wrong with the man, so I agreed.  We then had one of the most fun evenings I've had in a long time.  His local pub was Irish, the crowd was really cool, they allowed smoking (somehow, I don't really know how, but they did) and after we'd been there for an hour a band walked in and proceeded to play Irish jigs on pipes, drum, fiddle and guitar.  My date won two games of pool and we both had a great time and I thought to myself:  This is awesome.

We finally had to say goodnight and that's where it gets a little odd because he decided he was not able to drive me home and he invited me to stay at his place.  I, of course, said no, and told him I'd be happy to call for a cab and I was willing and able to pay for it.  He refused to let me pay for it and gave me cash and a long passionate kiss when the cabbie showed up.

My date also said he wanted to have me over for dinner the next night, at his place -- he'd cook, which is a huge plus, since I don't really cook very well -- and off I went into my carriage, er, pumpkin, er cab, feeling rather happy and pleased.  

The next night rolls around and.....no phone call.  Nada.  Nothing.  No email, no phone call, no nothing.  So, I go to bed disappointed and slightly worried and slightly wondering if maybe this guy is a flake.

The next day, which happened to be Valentine's Day, I get a phone call at dinnertime, and it's HIM, and he says he's sorry for not calling the night before but he had to work late to keep an important account of his.  I forgave him instantly, of course, and when he asked me if I wanted to meet up in about 2 or 3 hours for another date, I readily agreed.  He said he'd call me back between 8 and 9 to firm up our plans but he really needed to eat dinner first.  I said fine, I would look forward to his call.

Well, three and a half hours later, I was still left hanging high and dry.  Four hours later, and I was no longer willing to give this man the time of day.  A week later, after our first -- and only -- date, I still haven't heard a word from him and I want nothing to do with the bastid.

So much for that.

But then, I start looking back on that entire evening a week ago, and I realize that I made a lot of concessions and diplomatically overlooked a lot of his shortcomings, and I say to myself....."Self?  He was a right asshat, altogether, now, wasn't he?"  And my self agrees.  And I say to myself...."Self?  You should not be making concessions for right asshats like that right from the git-go, now should ye be?"  And my self agrees.

It's nice to be nice, don't get me wrong....but when it comes to dating and meeting a potential life partner, one really has to be careful and not get carried away with the desire to be "wanted" or "loved".  One should always keep one's head.

Which is why, when I meet my new match on Sunday, I'm going to keep my head about me, and stay smart and discerning.  

I just thought I'd share that with you all.

Oh, and did I mention this new guy is funny as hell, handsome, and six foot three??

I've loved listening to Barack Obama speak for as long as I've known of him.  The "new guy" at the 2004 Convention, the "new guy" as the Senator from Illinois, the "new guy" with the audacity to announce his candidacy for the presidency.  With each step along the way, he grew into a true orator ... finding his voice.

He's not so new, now.  Not to any of us who live in the world today.  Yet - his words, his emphasis, his tenor and his depth still inspire us.  The underlying strength of the man is not that he leads us to believe in him.  What matters more than anything else, the reason we elected him our President, is his belief in us.

Here's an interesting take on his words, his thoughts and the expressions of each.  My thanks to Old Grouch for passing it along to me.

http://www.themillionsblog.com/2009/02/diagramming-obama-sentence.html

 

 

 

See? Get it? Outrage! Outrage at the thought of the gov't trying to save millions of homeowners who have lost their jobs because of the global recession, or who were snookered by bad-faith loans and mortgage bankers:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29283701

That's right! Wall Street NEEDS your money. A second TARP bail-out, please! But with CNBC, WSJ and FNC on their side, they can start the faux outrage now: Why would you non-Wall Street peons need to be rescued?

WASHINGTON - Republicans are preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending in the $787 billion stimulus package as they refocus their criticisms of a measure whose success could hurt their 2010 election prospects.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats also promise rigorous oversight, including a new Web site to help people track various projects funded by the massive bill. But the two parties will reap different political rewards if they find waste or abuse, which is virtually inevitable when the government tries to spend so much money so fast, authorities say.

Looks like Obama was right.  The stimulus package 'will' create jobs, many of them will be those working for the Republican Party.  Since the Senators and Representatives don't do their own leg work, they will need to hire extra help to go over every inch of the stimulus expenditures.  They'll be spending their every waking hour trying to do a 'gotcha' on the president and the Democrat Party.

The money for the jobs that are created to report those expenditures on the website and elsewhere, was included in the stimulus bill.

I'm not sure where the GOP will come up with the money to pay for those new researchers they hire to search for errors in the stimulus spending.  Perhaps since they are 'so mindful' of taxpayer dollars, they will pay the researchers out of their very own pockets?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02192009/postopinion/editorials/that_cartoon_155984.htm

Here you can check to see if your congressperson secured earmarks for the TMA Group, of which you may have heard relative to the unfolding scandals involving democratic PA Congressman John Murtha, and how much PMA paid your congressperson for the favor.

The entire Congressional Quarterly report may be found here.

Those who have read Dee Brown's book Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow know that in the latter half of the 1800s those desiring railroad grants, which usually paid by the mile of track laid in both cash from the federal treasury and federal land, would essentially buy congresspersons to secure congressional railroad grants. (That's how Jim Hill, the Empire Builder, secured millions of acres of land through the Cascade Mountains, which he later sold to Frederick Weyerhaeuser.)

The only difference between the cash stuffed envelopes of the railroad grant days and today is that congress has legalized the bribery, so long as all of the proper reports are filed.

Congressional corruption and bribery is as old as the republic. Actually older, as a number of members of the Continental Congress engaged in war profiteering during the revolutionary war.

Lobbyist Vicki Iseman, whom The New York Times may or may not have implied, a year ago, had an affair with John McCain (and the NYT can't do anything about reader inferences as to what it did or did not imply, or intend to imply) has a pennies-on-the-dollar settlement (not literally, because she gets nothing financially) with the newspaper, which primarily consists of the paper publishing an online column written by her attorneys, and an NYT note to readers" in Friday's print edition.

Given that the NYT didn't have to give Iseman any money (other that, possibly, lawyers' fees; that's unclear), my parsing of the original article, above the first link, should sum up this issue.

I think it's clear the newspaper won this baby. It just, in today's newspaper fiscal world, didn't want to spend any more money on attorneys.

As a newspaper editor myself, if I ever were in a similar situation, I KNOW I  would feel like I had won.

Take, for example, the stipulated verbal announcement language of the settlement.

The NYT never outrightly said Iseman/McCain had an affair in the first place. So, it's definitely no skin to stipulate that. As for the "imply," well, the NYT can't do a thing about what readers inferred it implied. The settlement language not mentioning that shows how tissue-thin it is.. As for the "intent" issue, the question of Iseman being a "public person" or not is irrelevant. It's tough to prove intent, period, in a civil case, without a big smoking gun. Especially, since the NYT "note to readers" says it did not "intend to conclude" (emphasis added) a relationship existed.

In short, the NYT did not withdraw a single word of the original story, and did not offer an apology on behalf of its readers' inferences about any NYT intent.

In fact, it's arguable Iseman lost, by having such a weak settlement rather than withdrawing the suit entirely. Now, she and her lawyers have brought new attention to herself and the story.

If Ben Smith thinks she won, it shows how much of an idiot he is. And, as I posted there, where did she get such clusterf*ck lawyers?

My father passed away while I was disappeared and I am still distraught thinking that he died without knowing whether I was dead or alive.

Farag's request:

It is my hope that the President will not only establish this commission, but that he will also direct the relevant authorities to investigate and prosecute those who broke American laws in ordering the torture and disappearance of people like me. Truth and justice are not in opposition; both are necessary, and both are the right of all Americans and the victims harmed in their name.

See this clip of sleazy politician Clay Davis from the HBO show The Wire.  He's a baltimore version of blago except Clay is a little more silver-tongued.  It's priceless.

Most of you who have read very many of my blogposts know that I am a Marine mom whose son did two combat deployments to Iraq, including the bloody Battle of Fallujah in November of '04, and an aunt to one nephew who did three Marine combat deployments to Iraq, another who deployed with an army Stryker brigade in the Diyala province during Bush's So-Called Surge, and another who's done a tour in Afghanistan with Army Special Forces.  Their ranks range from Marine Lance Corporal to Army Major.

(The army nephews are still active-duty, but my son and his Marine cousin are out of the service but still remain on Ready Reserve status, which means they can be yanked back at any moment and deployed to war yet again.)

Every male member of my family (including in-laws) my age or older did a combat tour either in Vietnam or later, in the Balkans and Afghanistan, ranking from enlisted Marine Master Gunnery Sgt. all the way up to Army Special Forces Brigadier General.  Even my sister did a stint in the Air Force.

So I am pro-military.

I am also opposed--and have been from the very beginning--to the Iraq war.

This puts me in a unique position, because so many peace activists whom I've encountered through the years not only oppose war in all its forms, but they tend to be suspicious of, and negative toward, the U.S. military.  When they discuss Iraq, for instance, they are far more likely to look upon Abu Ghraib as more representative of U.S. troop behavior than, say, all the schools that have been built in the Anbar province in the past year by the Marines, or all the free medical care provided to Iraqis who, say, have survived suicide bombings.

But still, I have worked tirelessly in my way to end a war that I thought was not only unprovoked and illegal in the first place, but was then so horrifically mis-managed for years on end that the brave and exhausted troops who have been forced to fight it have been, literally, abused, through revolving-door deployments, stop-loss, and so on. 

With full support from my son I became a highly vocal advocate for these troops and their families, and received much quiet support from veterans, military families, and active-duty troops who hesitated to speak out themselves from fear of career retribution.

What most people do not understand is that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who take the oath of office to protect and defend our country are the very people who LEAST want to go to war, because they, and they alone will be asked to pay the terrible price.

Which is why, when I read a truly profound little book called, "WILL WAR EVER END? A Soldier's Vision of Peace for the 21st Century," by active-duty Capt. Paul K. Chappell, U.S. Army--with a forward provided by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (ret.), author of the groundbreaking work, "ON KILLING, The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society," I knew I had to track down Capt. Chappell for a chat.

(It might interest you to know that Col. Grossman's book is not only required reading by the U.S. Marine Corps, but also at peace studies programs at Berkeley, and at Mennonite and Quaker colleges.)

Capt. Chappell's book, "Will War Ever End?" is a slender little volume, less than 75 pages long, but it is power-packed, not just by ground-breaking ideas, but by this young West Point graduate's ability to take complex subjects and make them simple through imagery and metaphor.

An Afterward by the publisher states that all its profits are going toward veteran's organizations, as are all of Capt. Chappell's royalties.

At a price of less than ten bucks, it is well worth it.

Capt. Chappell expounds on Col. Grossman's findings, which are, in a nutshell, that with the exception of sociopaths, people do not normally kill easily, and that when they do, they tend to suffer for it, and the closer the combat, the harder it is to deal with. 

For instance, bomber pilots don't feel the sting of their actions with near the intensity of, say, a grunt to throws a grenade and then must listen to the screams of dying victims, or one who must shoot to kill at point-blank range.  The worst cases of post traumatic stress, Grossman reports, don't have to do with experiencing battle as much as they have to do with being forced to kill or be killed.

Capt. Chappell presents what he refers to as a "Manifesto for Waging Peace," and enlists the aid of all of us who would like to see war end.  He calls us all, "Soldiers of Peace."

Both authors make a compelling case for the fact that war and violence--contrary to the popular myth--are not natural states for mankind.  When a soldier kills or commits an act of heroism, it is nearly always because he is trying to protect those he considers family--his buddies.  As Capt. Chappell puts it:

"If human beings were naturally violent...then the highest military award (the Medal of Honor) should be given for the act of killing, and the person who kills the most people should receive the highest award.  However, many Medal of Honor recipients I studied never killed a single person."

It is compassion, he says, not a lust for violence, that leads to acts of heroism, such as the Navy Seal in Iraq who threw his body onto a grenade and saved the lives of three or four of his buddies.

Ask any war veteran you know what was the most important thing in battle, and they'll say that it was the urgency to protect those with whom he or she served.

A true combat veteran will almost never, ever say that it was killing the enemy.

It is not bloodlust, according to Grossman and Chappell, that prevails in battle; it is compassion.  Writes Capt. Chappell (paraphrased):

...Peace is possible...It is a fact that war drives people insane...the greatest problem of every army is how to stop soldiers from running away...being loving allows us to be brave, (and) cooperation is the key to our survival...

When Chappell talks about "waging peace," he mentions how offended he was when, while serving in Baghdad, he saw U.S. news reports in which commentators claimed that those who criticized U.S. war policy were not patriotic.  He offers an excellent illustration of the true meaning of patriotism:

"They believed that patriotism meant waving a flag and being blindly obediant, but as Socrates and others have shown, this is not what it means to be patriotic...We can better understand love of country by realizing what it means to love a child caught stealing, abusing people, or being dishonest...If we love our country, we will do our best to improve it.  We will try to make America a better place for everyone, as courageous citizens have always done."

He then presents a template for what "soldiers of peace" can do to end war.

We do it through compassion, community, peaceful activism, and expecting accountability from our politicians and the media.  He writes:

"Similar to movements that abolished slavery and gave African Americans their civil rights, the women's rights movement in America gained women the right to vote, not because everyone participated in it, but because a small percentage of the population was willing to wage peace and make a difference.  Those victories reveal that if we are determined to take small yet significant steps toward a better world, we can bring humanity closer and closer toward the end of war and a global civilization of peace and prosperity."

Chappell points out that "our world will never know peace if we sit around and do nothing about it.  War will only end if we end it."

This can be done, first of all, by studying war in the same way that a doctor or a healer will study disease in order to be better able to cure someone who is ill.  Our planet is ill with war, and we need to study war if we want to heal our planet.

He goes into more detail on this and other points in a radio interview he gave to peace activist Susan Galleymore, founder of the organization MotherSpeak.  Ms. Galleymore gained some measure of fame back in 2004 when, frantic after her son had been deployed to Iraq soon after returning from Afghanistan, she actually traveled to his army base in Iraq to see him.  She's been working on a book of her own, LONG TIME PASSING: Mothers Speak About War and Terror, which will be out in May.

Capt. Chappell is also hard at work finishing a second book entitled, Peaceful Revolution, which will explain more about ending war, including "the war on our planet," but I was impatient and chose to ask him my questions, point-blank, now.

We've had a lovely e-mail correspondence in and around his military duties as he prepares to deploy to the Middle East again.  I was able to find him at his website, where you can order Will War Ever End? (The earlier link I provided was to Amazon.com.  Copies are also available through MotherSpeak.)

I asked Capt. Chappell six key questions.  I will share with you some of our correspondence so far, but I will be continuing to write about our conversations over the next several weeks in my blog, Blue Inkblots, and here. 

Our ongoing dialogue has been fascinating, informative, and intelligent.  I encourage you to check in each week for the latest installment.

My questions were:

1)  One of your central points in the book is that it is up to an engaged, empowered, involved citizenry to step up and do what is necessary to end war which, in the case of democracy, is elect leaders who will not wage war for political or ideological purposes, but only as a last resort in national defense.  If it's up to the citizenry to stop war, then what do we do with the people who glorify war, since they themselves HAVE NEVER BEEN SHOT AT?

2)  What do we do about an enabling media, willingly allowing themselves to be used by government propagandists, then refusing to admit it even when the truth comes out?

3)  How do we foster greater understanding between peace activists and the military?  They each tend to hold stereotypical views of the other, and might be surprised to find how much they have in common.

4)  In the event that we are successful at ending or greatly reducing war, what is your vision for the future of the U.S military?  Do you see them as police officers of the world, stopping genocide, for instance?  Trainers to third-world militaries?  Nation-builders?  How do we prepare our military for 21st century realities?

5)  Do you think hatred lends itself to rage and paranoia, or is it the other way around?  And how, as soldiers of peace, can we best combat it?

6)  What do you see as the most effective way for our military to deal with the situation in Afghanistan?

In his response to my first question, Capt. Chappell emphasized the importance of patience and understanding when dealing with the war-mongers in our lives--particularly the ones who tend to glorify war because they, themselves, have never had to fight one:

"The experience I have gained from interacting with people from diverse backgrounds has taught me that most human beings do in fact mean well.  Furthermore, if we have the patience and compassion necessary to channel their good intentions toward the truth, this more effectively solves our problems than reacting in an aggressive and angry manner, which does nothing to help them see our point of view.

"After I give this person the benefit of the doubt, I then try to understand where they are coming from.  As Spinoza would say, our purpose should not be to despise people, or to laugh at them, but to try and understand them.  To understand why so many people in our society glorify war, we will explore two crucial ideas, a concept I call 'the freedom dilemma' and another idea that we will refer to as 'the war myth.'

"To begin, what is the freedom dilemma?  This is the notion that in some ways, free people are easier to manipulate than people who are not free, and that the nature of human freedom makes it easier to convince those who are free to choose war.  This is not because people are naturally warlike, or because people will always choose violence if given an option.  Instead, this occurs because free people have so much to lose.  "

Chappell then compares a speech given by George W. Bush in 2002 to one presented by Pericles to Athens in the 5th century, B.C.

He explains how, in our society, we've been conditioned to see violence as our savior when we are afraid, from comic books to movies to video games.

And yet, in all this exposure to mythical war, most people still have no true idea of how modern warfare actually works, and how much more effective diplomacy--done right--can be.  After all, we "won" the Cold War without a third world war.

He offers steps for dealing with war-supporters:

1) Acknowledge and calm their fear

2) Channel their fear away from the use of violence and toward a more effective way of solving our problems

3) Give them examples of more effective means

4) Question their assumptions--for example, Chappell often asks those who enthusiastically endorse war, "Why don't you join the army yourself and go to war?"

This is only a skip-over of the main points of our discussion--frustratingly short because this post is already so long.  And I will definitely go into more detail in future posts, including more of Capt. Chappell's answer not just to this first question, but to all the others, as well as my responses to him and our enlightening back-and-forth.

But here's another teaser:  In discussing my second question, Chappell goes into the role played by the media in our history leading up to the present, and then he draws an interesting analogy of modern warfare:

"We can compare war to a giant machine.  It structure is made up of money and material resources, its gears are turned by soldiers, contractors, and engineers, and it is fueled by popular support.

"When money and material resources are low, the government can always borrow more and drive our country deeper into debt.  Soldiers can be replaced by lowering recruitment standards, and new contractors and engineers can be hired from all over the world.  But when popular support at home runs out, the war machine simply stops working.  When public opinion is no longer there to fuel war, it ends...

"Today, wars are waged on Al Jazeera, FOX news, and CNN as much as they are fought on the battlefield.  It is a war for hearts and minds, a war for popular support and public opinion, a war for the fuel that keeps the machine running..."

Chappell goes on to explain the differences between modern warfare, the so-called "war on terror," and the media's responsibility for, and to, it, and how we, as an informed and engaged citizenry, can demand accountability.

I encourage you to stay with me on this fascinating series of conversations between a Marine mom and an army officer, as we discuss what it truly means to "wage peace" and how we, as "soldiers of peace" can truly take part in making our world a better place.

Come visit my website at http://deaniemills.com or keep watching for future posts here at TPM Cafe for a stimulating and invigorating discussion.

Because ending war is not as impossible as it seems.

Just as electing a little-known, inexperienced senator from Illinois to the White House--it takes the mass involvement of thousands who raise their voices and, together, say, IT IS TIME.

What Will War Ever End proves is that world peace IS possible.  It's not just a silly tag-line at a beauty pageant--it's real, and ending war is something that can be accomplished if enough people work together to make it so.

(cross-posted at http://deaniemills.com and at Huffington Post)

In light of all of the Republican posturing about the evils of federal spending, why isn't the data on federal spending vs. federal taxes paid getting more play?  The statistics put out by the tax foundation paint a pretty damning picture of who's really sucking at the federal teat. Hint - it's not those evil CA or NY elitist liberals.  The top half of the list is deep red.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fedspend_per_taxesbystate-20071009.pdf 

This should surprise no one.  Gonzo is under criminal investigation.  The only way he testifies is, of course, with immunity--which solves all of his problems.  I'm sure he'll be happy to sing long and loud.

I just saw cheerleader's RICK SANTELLI tape and he is crying about helping REGULAR PEOPLE, I note that he has never said ANYTHING about sending MASSIVE amounts to the banks and tax cuts to the wealthy!

I will watch Olberman ONE MORE DAY to see if he says anything and if not then HE is just a culpable for not calling Santelli on it. BTW, Just heard Kramer say "we've got to bust the Union" when it comes to Automakers.

CNBC is just a shill for BIG BUSINESS! If you know how to get through to NBC please put it up. An 800# that would cost GE would be best.

Perhaps CNBC means Cheering Nonstop for Big Corporations 

Can't find a link of his stupidity yet, if you have one please post it!

I'm outraged about what's happening to America. Just typing that once sentence, I can already feel the slight breeze generated from the collective eyerolls of the liberals reading this. They wouldn't understand, in fact they think what's going on in this country is "a refreshing break from the Bush administration" -- a comment which boils down to yet another dig at the prior administration, while excusing any action of the current administration so long as it is different. While I'll be the first to agree that Bush has made more than his share of mistakes, I don't believe that merely differing from Bush (or more often a Bush "strawman") is the right metric to judge things by. It seems that the days of ideas standing on their own merits is gone forever, and instead the only analysis is whether the previous administration might have proceeded similarly or not.

The country that has been my birthplace, my supporter, the very thing that has provided a framework for me to realize my potential, and allowed me to come from nothing to something, is headed in a direction that won't let future generations do the same. Using the politics of fear under a cynical veneer of hope, our country seems to have accepted a direction that rewards individual failure, while blaming the "other" for any and all ills. No one is accountable in this new reality except for those dastardly "wealthy few Americans." And we can expect those wealthy few to become even fewer.

To Stimulate, or Not to Stimulate...

The lack of curiosity of most Americans, and the blind acceptance of others, about Obama's stimulus plan, is downright scary. Will the provisions in the stimulus, estimated by some to exceed 3 trillion dollars in real, total costs, ever expire? Not that I can tell. Will the increased spending, most of which will be realized after a year or so, really help an economy that is hurting now? Many economists think the recession will start to reverse itself by the end of this year, without any stimulus adding to the national debt and creating inflation. And if that's true and our economy gets better in the next 6 to 9 months, can we rescind the rest of the spending in this package? Doubtful. Even the OMB has raised some serious questions as to the effectiveness of this plan. Yet the lack of discourse on this issue, even with Obama's many campaign stops across the country in support of it, is nothing short of astounding.

The common refrain in response to these issues, voiced by the President himself, is that Republicans raised the deficit, so any debt hawkishness is now hypocritical. Never mind the realities Bush had to deal with at the time, Worldcom, Enron, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on -- none of that matters, and in fact, was probably all Bush's fault too by this line of reasoning. Never mind that Obama himself chastized Bush/McCain for increasing the deficit during the '08 campaign. The entire episode drips of insincerity while eerily reminiscent of a kindergarten squabble over birthday cake.

Help Me Obama, You're My Only Hope!

Next up is Obama's housing plan introduced yesterday. Some aspects of the plan, most notably the lack of draconian government interference, and instead a reliance on incentives for the private sector to adjust overvalued mortgages, are actually better than I had expected. But to really agree with the housing plan means suspending any critical thinking and concern for the long term.

For example, is injecting even more money into Fannie and Freddy, so that they can back even more loans, really the right way forward? Weren't Fannie and Freddy, and their backing of loans that shouldn't have been made in the first place, at least part of the problem?

With regard to providing government incentives to banks for rewriting existing mortgages, does anyone really believe that this won't have drastic consequences to the future of America's economy? We're not just talking about a new relationship between private banking and individuals who apparently don't have to be responsible for their own decisions, but also in terms of interest in investment in our economy. Take hope and change out of the equation for a second, would you invest in an economy whose participants can arbitrarily rewrite the contracts that they enter into?

As a homeowner who will not be taking advantage of some of these primo giveaways by our new President, I have been spending a lot of time wondering about my own home's value. Namely, what is it worth when prices throughout the country are being artificially elevated by government action? The response to this question is a false-choice strawman: Would you rather have all of your neighbors forclosed? What would the value of your home be then? As bad as our economy is, most Americans will not lose their homes. What we will lose with this plan however, is the ability to purchase new homes for what they are actually worth, and this is a much more devastaing outome.

As much as I love my current home, it's too small to raise a family. After many years of responsible home ownership, I should be able to purchase something larger and more expensive, provided I can afford it. But when the price of that larger home has been manipulated, artificially maintained above it's real value, then it really doesn't matter what I can afford. Let's put aside the imagery of soviet era housing assignments, which is what this would result in by way of unintended (I hope) consequences. Let's forget the question of fairness where some people will get to remain in larger homes they could not afford, at goverment backed interest rates and government contributions to the principle, while responsible Americans like me are stuck in their responsible homes with their responsible interest rates and responsible principle. Why would I buy a house whose price is artificially high? Why would any bank these days provide a mortgage for a purchase of an overvalued home? Answer: I wouldn't and the banks wouldn't, and that's the problem here. This plan has no concern for any of these important questions, it just puts off the inevitable cost correction of inflated home prices for just a few years more (I'm assuming about 8).

So Many Strawmen, Crows are Endangered

Liberals suggest that all guys like me can do is complain about these policies without providing alternative suggestions. Fact is there are many alternative suggestions that just haven't been listened to. Here's one: If people can't afford the home they are in, then perhaps the government can help find them a new home to buy or rent that is within their means. Simple, keeps the market functioning as it should, but unfortunately, this wouldn't mean a major increase in government spending or control, and actually implies people have to deal with consequences of their actions, which I'm now learning is terribly unfair.

The president himself is no stranger to strawmen, using one most recently in his prime time conference, "What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed." Can we be specific? If we are talking about the Bush tax cuts, then I'd like an explaination dotting the line from those cuts in taxes apparently for "the wealthiest few Americans" to the current mortgage mess. There simply isn't one. Moreover, there is plenty of blame to be shared between both parties for the current mortgage mess, Dems for pushing politically correct lending schemes on banks, Republicans for going along with it. Those failed policies are what should be abandoned. But Obama's housing plan seems to double down on the real failed policies, all the while demonizing an actual tried and true method for stimulating the economy - tax cuts.

Meanwhile, the revisionist New Dealers are out in force claiming that FDR was a genius and his new deal limited the Great Depression to lasting just over a decade. Of course, we've had over 20 recessions in the last 100 years, and FDR's Great Depression was the only period that lasted so long, the rest on average were about 14 months. But to hear big government liberals talk about it (with the requisite glint in their eye), FDR saved this country. I really don't think so, and there are plenty of those far more studied than I on the matter that agree. The very fact that there are many dissenting views flys in the face of Obama's own rhetoric that the question on the New Deal was settled long ago. Nevermind any of that, we have no time to think about the best approach because as Obama says, "We are going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," which by the way is another misrepresentation of the facts.

Last but not least is Eric Holder, the Attorney General of our country, suggesting that America is a nation of cowards because of a supposed lack of discourse on race. Of course, race has been in the public discourse for the better part of America's history. Not to mention the reality that if any of us were to go arguing about racial matters in our workplace, we would quickly find ourselves out of the work place. The fact is, we fought a hot war over slavery, and a soft war over civil rights. While there will always be prejudice by the ignorant, America has been anything but cowardly in doing what is right on this issue.

Comments like Holder's do nothing to heal the racial divide, in fact they do just the opposite. Internally, such comments put whites who are not racist on the defensive, and they provide cover for those who see racism behind every ill in their lives. Externally, it prepetuates the idea that America is intolerant of certain races, when the exact opposite is true. I thought that one of the silver linings of an Obama presidency is that we could finally stop the victimology of race after a majority of Americans, regardless of their race, voted for Obama regardless of his (I voted against Obama, but also not because of race). Not so. I'm not sure what outrages me more, the Holder comment itself, or the nodding heads that are quick to agree with this dreck (just look at many of the responses in the link). Apparently, it's more important to have a discourse on race than on the stimulus plan, but I digress.

All of this goes to the question of what is happening to this great country. A country that went from rewarding individualism and ingenuity, to rewarding irresponsibility and espousing a mindset based on being a victim. Republican or Democrat, this is not the kind of change America wants.

Here I am, pretending to be a giant pug with a finance fetish who sometimes does stupid animal tricks with 'google-links'. Why should you listen to me? So I work hard to make my links and comments interesting and enlightening, and my arguments cogent and convincing. My pug isn't so much a protective device as a way of focusing the reader's mind on evaluating what I say rather than where it is coming from. And I like reading other anonymous posters for the same reason: I enjoy the focus on the thoughts. 

On the other hand, there are writings that appear under names such as 'Bill Kristol' or 'George Will' where I can't help wondering what lies behind the name. There's a certain credential attached ('big-ass pundit') and other signs - editorial boards and such - meant to reassure me there is a thinking human being behind these names. But I'm pretty sure their collective writings and sayings wouldn't pass the Turing test for personhood; something that has the basic capacities of rationality and human interaction or something functionally equivalent. There is something zombie-like - a mindlessness - about whatever or whoever writes this stuff (yes, I also have a zombie-fetish). But I'm not much bothered by these writings, I mostly just ignore them. As long as I don't find myself next to 'Bill Kristol' or 'George Will', I feel pretty safe. 

Other writings bother me more. So there are texts and blogs which appear under the name 'Greg Mankiw' which I have read a lot of. There's a great economics textbook, for instance, editorials in big papers, and a popular blog. There are also serious credentials (big-ass Harvard economist) attached to the name. So why is he freaking me out?

Let me give you my theory of why writers like this give me the heeby jeebies and then give you the reason.

There's a certain problem that interests roboticists, psychologists and philosophers called the 'uncanny valley'     

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.

So cartoons and those funny japanese robots who can dance are not so scary, actually quite endearing. But if you make something almost human-like, like this, it starts to, or should, give you goose bumps. And I think this is what 'Greg Mankiw' is doing to me.

Now, why do I bring this up? Well, it's not the first time I feel this way, but today I find on the GM blog this text on the stimulus plan, which contains the following:

  The expression "create or save [4 million jobs]," which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius. You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus. [...] So he gave us a non-measurable metric.

This is a strange thing to say. Because it is stupid and 'Greg Mankiw' could not have the credentials It has if It were stupid. Firstly, 'create or save' just means the gap between (i) the unemployment rate with the stimulus and (ii) the expected counterfactual unemployment rate were there no stimulus. So you make a forecast for what you would have expected without a stimulus, and then see if things actually pan out X% better with the stimulus. And you can use that as your metric to judge Obama's plan. Or, if you're too lazy to make a forecast, you take the Obama administration's forecast - like so - and you see if that evolution of the unemployment rate pans out, and hold the administration to that. Or you criticize and modify the administration's counterfactual forecast. It's not that hard (though making or modifying the forecast may be).

Now, if 'Mankiw' were a mindless zombie, this kind of thing would be understandable. After all, there are zombie masters in the republican party who want the Obama plan to fail, or at least look like it has failed. And if it succeeds, it is hard to make it look like it's failed, so you might want to discredit any metric by which to tell whether it's succeeded or failed. But 'Mankiw' is not a mindless zombie - he says lots of other things that are strikingly human-like.

And it's not just a one-off mistake - a bad hangover morning or some such. It's happened before. The first time It creeped me out was when It said, or implied, that the massive structural deficit Bush created, making big counter-cyclical spending such as the present very dangerous, was a wonderful thing. I don't understand a mind that works that way. And there are other instances (here and here, and this wierdness). I could understand it if this person were dumb or lazy, or counted on making some dough. But none of those three apply here.

My only explanation is that 'Greg Mankiw' is a high-functioning zombie, of god knows what creation, wtih god knows what motives. Hence the 'uncanny valley' and the freaking.

The moral of the story being, that I prefer my blogs to be anonymous, and I don't like credentials - because without them all this kind of cognitive dissonance goes away.

Update: Mankiw's principles of economics summarized - hilarious (if you're a geek) 
Late Update: Saladin solves the puzzle: Mankiw's not a zombie, he's a Munster
 
BREAKING: Saladin's got the full scoop on Mankiw's hidden past.    

"What started as a financial crisis, became an economic crisis, is now becoming an unemployment crisis - and to what degree does it become a human and social crisis?" Robert Zoellick - World Bank president

"To what degree does it become a human and social crisis?"

That is the big question isn't it and a rather stupid one, if you think about it. It is as if economic problems and unemployment problems were not occurring among human beings and were not therefore automatically social problems in nature.

That the question could be glibly formulated in this way by the head of the "world" bank is surely part of the problem itself.

In Zoellick's question it seems implicit that finance and economics are like the weather, existing outside of humanity, with laws of their own instead of being human creations that, as humans have made them, humans can remake them... and are remaking them constantly.

That separation of economics from its human component is perhaps the most transcendental characteristic of the "conservative revolution", which appears to be collapsing around our ears at the moment.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

It's been a pleasure these past several months watching the Republican Party literally come unhinged.  The glory days of McSame/Failin, the post-election Republican intraparty cannibalizing, George W. Bush's infantile hijacking of Blair House, the Republican opposition to the stimulus followed immediately by their praising of the bill when speaking in their home districts, Michele Bachmann's latest tour of her very own alternate reality...it's all blended together into one lovely, non-stop, red-tinged funnel headed straight for the cesspool of political irrelevance.

Fortunately, just as one neoconservative finishes a smoldering wreck against the granite face of reality, another is on hand to treat us to a mind-blowing display of buffoonery. 

Today's comic relief is brought to you by none other than Michael Steele, the new RNC chairman.  In an interview with the Washington Times, flagged by Politico's Ben Smith, Steele has pulled back the Iron Curtain to give us all a peek at his strategy for rescuing the Grand Old Party from Whigland.

...Steele plans an "off the hook" public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."

Yo, Chairman...as Bill Lumbergh might have said:  "Did you see the memo about this?"  Never mind the now-passe "off the hook".  We'll let that slide. 

Your party wreaked havoc on minorities for years.  So, now you plan to dress up the same nonsense (think "the government never created a single job") in G-Unit branding and sell it?  BRILLIANT!  You can start on the South Side of Chicago.  Good luck with that.

And I'm sure that the Hispanics who left the Republican ledger in droves last November are looking forward to John Cornyn appearing in Dickies, driving a candied-out low rider '65 Chevy, campaigning at the local bodegas down in Texas.

Really, what else could Steele possibly be inferring other than to try and present the same tired neocon ideology - somehow - with a "minority-friendly" PR attack?

Oh, but wait....there's MORE!  Here's how Steele plans to win back the mid-Atlantic seaboard:

"We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings."

At this point, I was rolling around in laughter.  Thoughts of Sarah Palin in Baby Phat and Dick Cheney in Rocawear stumping together through Charlotte and Richmond leapt to mind. 

The very image, in fact, had me so overcome with guffawing that I almost missed this nugget of "compassionate conservatism".

But, [Steele] elaborated with a laugh, "we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets."

Yeah, that'll do it.  Maybe they can get Daddy Yankee to cut the ad to appeal to that demographic.  Let him write his own ad copy, too. 

It's not your messengers, Mr. Steele.  It's your message.

This sort of cosmetic nonsense is nothing more than a continuation of John McCain's "thinking" in selecting a vice-presidential nominee and the RNC's "thinking" in selecting a chairman.  Such lunkheaded stupidity bodes well for the Democrats.  Steele inherited a rotting corpse of a political party.  His big revival idea is to spritz it with Axe body spray, get it dressed in "Weekend at Bernie's" style, and take it out for a night on the town. 

And here I thought Steele wasn't quite as loopy as Ken Blackwell or Chip Saltsman.  Guess I was wrong about that.

Three months ago, I noted that Japan entered recession before us. Baffled by the willingness of the Japanese people to re-elect the same party decade after decade despite its stewardship of the longest recession in the industrialized world, I diagnosed Japan with bipolar manic-recession, "alternating between periods of extreme stagnation and hyper-productivity." At the end of the post, I noted that the nation has recently been run by "a series of controversy-prone bureaucrats who have deftly succeeded in doing absolutely nothing, which is just how the [Liberal Democratic] party likes it. The latest PM, Taso Aso, took office in September and appears to be no different."

Quelle understatement. Quelle understatement. The Japanese economy contracted 3.3% (12.7% annualized) in 4Q08, Japan's worst decline since 1974--and that includes the burst of its own real estate bubble and decade long swoon from which it had only recently recovered. By contrast, the U.S. economy shrank 1% (3.8% annualized). And economists forecast "a drop of around 4% in 2009--a contraction twice as severe as in America and Europe."

Fortunately, Japan's finance minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, has taken aggressive actions to deal with crisis. He has a 12 step plan:

Read more »