Vaguely Logical

wall street & main street got all they want...

2011-08-14T08:06:00.002-04:00

... and we're paying. Steven Pearlstein rips corporate America today for their role in having "helped create the monsters that are rampaging through the political and economic countryside, wreaking havoc and sucking the lifeblood out of the global economy."

What started as an effort to cut their tax bill a little and maybe push back on a regulation or three has now metastasized into anti-government (not "less government," but "NO government") tea party style Republicanism. And we're all paying.

Pearlstein's column here.

income inequality: united states worse than ivory coast

2011-06-19T10:40:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I don't post here much anymore. But today's Washington Post had an excellent article today about income inequality, based on recently-concluded research by economists based on US tax returns.

Some of the highlights: in the 1970s, the top 0.1% of earners in the US took in 2.5% of the pay. Now, that same 0.1% take in 10.4% of the total pay - they are four times better paid, while wage earners get about 9% LESS in constant dollars.

Most of that 0.1% are executives - 60%, the breakdown being about 18% at financial firms and 42% at other businesses, so it ain't just the crooks on Wall Street getting rich.

Lawyers are only 6% of that 0.1%, and athletes and media figures only 3%. So for every LeBron James or Lady Gaga out there making big bucks, there are 20 corporate executives.

The difference - James and Gaga do not get to set their own compensation levels. Executives do.

Oh and this article failed to note another issue: the massive decline in the top marginal tax rate. The increase in take-home pay for top executives is even BIGGER than indicated in this study.

In terms of the GINI coefficient (which tracks income equality), we rank way worse than other developed countries like Japan or Germany or France. In fact, according to the CIA, the US is worse than the Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

Banana republic?

vote for china!

2010-10-16T12:29:00.002-04:00

Eliot Spitzer on the unseriousness of the GOP... and China wins if we allow the cultish "tax cuts rule" impulse of the Republicans to continue to undermine our economic competitiveness.

Clinton years: small increase in taxes, budget surplus, 23 million jobs

Bush years: huge cuts in taxes, massive budget deficit, 1 million jobs

go to hell glenn beck, and take your tea partying followers with you

2010-08-28T08:02:00.005-04:00

I awoke early this Saturday morning and decided to head to an Arlington (VA) diner for a delicious albeit unhealthy breakfast. The diner was unusually full for 7:00 AM. As I settled in with my coffee I noticed some of the customers (aged 40-60) were wearing t-shirts with messages like "Restore Honor" on them.

Outside the window of the diner, local buses headed down the main drag, en route to a shopping mall near the Pentagon which includes a subway stop. The buses were unusually full for 7:00 AM on a Saturday; not just the usual folks, largely immigrants, heading to their jobs but also well-fed white folks in baseball caps and shorts, some sporting t-shirts with messages supporting gun rights and the like, carrying backpacks, looking like they were ready to spend a day on the Mall.

As I drove back up the pike towards home, I saw a bus-stop near a motel, with a bunch more of those well-fed politically-messaged-tshirt-and-baseball-cap wearing backpack toting white folks waiting for a bus to take them to the Metro station which would take them to downtown Washington where they could go to the Lincoln Memorial for Glenn Beck's stupid Restoring Honor rally.

So I'd like to give a little message to these folks. Go to hell. You're coming to the Lincoln Memorial, the taxpayer-funded monument which commemorates the man who preserved the Union and ended slavery and at least set us on the path of treating non-Christian whites as full citizens (you know, things like the 14th Amendment that some of you want to revoke allofasudden). You ride there on the taxpayer funded bus (which runs along taxpayer funded roads) and taxpayer funded Metro rail system. You probably flew to Washington on a commercial airline; taxpayer funded airports and air traffic control systems made your trip safer or even possible. Or you drove here on taxpayer funded highways.

And you are here to protest against well just about everything it would appear and wanting to "Restore Honor," which is as far as I can tell the code word for keeping middle class (aka "white") perks and tax breaks and sending everybody who wasn't born in America back to Kenya. You don't want to pay taxes and you decry socialism (let's face it, you don't really know what "socialism" means, but that doesn't stop you) but by God we better not fuck with your Medicare and by God you want your Congressman and Senator to bring more public work projects to your town in Alabama or Wyoming or wherever the hell you come from. You demand your freedoms, including your freedom to impose your religious beliefs on others, and your freedom to deny the freedom to Muslims to build a community center in lower Manhattan. You bitch about the bail-out and stimulus package (and you are insufficiently sophisticated to realize that the bank bail-out was signed by de facto President George W. Bush NOT President Obama) but you also bitch about the Obama Administration not doing enough to save American jobs. You demand the continuation of Bush's tax breaks despite the fact that they significantly benefit something like 2% of Americans who can easily afford the return to the tax levels that prevailed in the 1990s when the American economy was booming under Bill Clinton. You carry posters linking Obama to Hitler and Stalin, but you defend right-wingers like Dr. Laura or George Allen when they sling hateful words like "nigger" or "macaca" or "raghead" around. You don't want any immigrants but you were happy to eat a great breakfast at that charming little diner which is run by immigrants and the children of immigrants. You get a chubby when Sarah Palin comes out with her sexy librarian outfit and blathers incomprehensible codewords espousing racism, violence, and patriotism, despite her venal corruption and support for Alaskan secession. You are suspicious about all people with skin darker than Conan O'Brien but you rode that taxpayer funded bus driven by an African-American person who may have harbored some thoughts about the inappropriateness of a race-baiting crowd of the sort Beck will draw speaking at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

Your inconsistencies and miscomprehensions are exceeded only by your ugly hatreds and narrow-minded beliefs.

So go to hell Glenn Beck, and take your crowd today with you.

an embarrassed conservative

2010-08-04T16:26:00.002-04:00

Professor Bainbridge lists his reasons to be embarrassed about being a conservative. He has a good point, and the fact that he comes up with such a list shows something in him (sanity and honesty to start) that you can't find among the Palins and Fox Newses of the world. Though Bainbridge and others must accept some guilt by association for as long as they condone or vote for the bad kind of conservatives...

The list, from Bainbridge's blog:

Let's tick off ten things that make this conservative embarrassed by the modern conservative movement:

1. A poorly educated ex-sportwriter who served half of one term of an minor state governorship is prominently featured as a -- if not the -- leading prospect for the GOP's 2012 Presidential nomination.

2. Tom Tancredo calling President Obama “the greatest threat to the United States today" and arguing that he be impeached. Bad public policy is not a high crime nor a misdemeanor, and the casual assertion that pursuing liberal policies--however misguided--is an impeachable offense is just nuts.

3. Similar nonsense from former Ford-Reagan treasury department officials Ernest Christian and Gary Robbins, who IBD column was, as Doug Marconis observed, "a wildly exaggerated attack on President Obama’s record in office." Actually, it's more foaming at the mouth.

4. As Doug also observed, "The GOP controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006: Combine neocon warfare spending with entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects and you end up with a GOP welfare/warfare state driving the federal spending machine." Indeed, "when the GOP took control of Congress in 1994, and the White House in 2000, the desire to use the levers of power to create “compassionate conservatism” won our over any semblance of fiscal conservatism. Instead of tax cuts and spending cuts, we got tax cuts along with a trillion dollar entitlement program, a massive expansion of the Federal Government’s role in education, and two wars. That’s not fiscal conservatism it is, as others have said, fiscal insanity." Yet, today's GOP still has not articulated a message of real fiscal conservatism.

5. Thanks to the Tea Party, the Nevada GOP has probably pissed away a historic chance to out=st Harry Reid. See also Charlie Crist in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and so on. Whatever happened to not letting perfection be the enemy of the good?

6. The anti-science and anti-intellectualism that pervade the movement.

7. Trying to pretend Afghanistan is Obama's war.

8. Birthers.

9. Nativists.

10. The substitution of mouth-foaming, spittle-blasting, rabble-rousing talk radio for reasoned debate. Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, and even Rush Limbaugh are not exactly putting on Firing Line. Whatever happened to smart, well-read, articulate leaders like Buckley, Neuhaus, Kirk, Jack Kent, Goldwater, and, yes, even Ronald Reagan?

king of america

2010-06-10T10:27:00.003-04:00

Talking about the absurd demands that President Obama spend all his time punching out BP executives and cleaning oil off of seabirds, Nicholas Kristoff identifies a real problem for the American political system.

The lack of a separate head of state. For you non-political-science majors, a "head of state" is the person who is top dog in a country; this is distinct from "head of government," the person in charge of the actual governing apparatus. The easiest way to explain this is by turning to Britain. Queen Elizabeth II is the "head of state." David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, is the "head of government." Head of state can handle ceremonial duties and represent the country; head of government gets much less pomp and circumstance, and focuses on policy and governing.

A head of state does not have to be a royal or hereditary position; in Germany for example, an elected president is head of state, and a chancellor (prime minister) is head of government. The best model for a head of state is one with extremely limited powers. The British monarch is a good example, as is the German president. They can take certain actions on their own in extremely limited circumstances; otherwise, they concentrate on representing Britain/Germany as nations, not on representing the Cameron or Merkel governments.

In the US of course, the president must handle both duties, the ceremonial and the political/governmental. As Kristoff observes, this eats into a president's time. It also has the unfortunate aspect of politicizing even ceremonial, supposed-to-feel-good things the president does with his head of state cap. For example, some complained that President Obama was not going to Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day (never mind that Reagan never went, Bush the Elder never went, and Bush the Younger usually but didn't always go. AND never mind that instead Obama was going to attend similar ceremonies at ANOTHER military cemetery in Chicago, also the final resting place for American servicemen.) The criticism was mostly from the right wing, and it was mostly just another chance to dis Obama. But if it had been an American head of state doing this, the "let's score political points" angle would not have been a factor.

I'm not a fan of absolute monarchy or hereditary power. But a constitutional monarch or similar head of state would have great advantages. Ronald Reagan I thought was a pretty poor head of government - disconnected, possibly not quite all there at the end, and overall a poor set of policies. Reagan, however, was a wonderful head of STATE. He was classy, enjoyed the ceremonial duties, could project empathy (which nowadays would disqualify him from consideration for the Supreme Court according to some Republicans). Reagan was great in consoling family members and the nation at the memorial for those killed on the Challenger.

I don't expect we will ever had a separation between head of state and head of government. But it would be nice.

just for the record

2010-06-07T23:30:00.001-04:00

I have not had sex with Nikki Haley.

another republican in lust

2010-05-19T08:40:00.003-04:00

What do you know, another abstinence supporting family-values married Republican is quitting because he has been screwing around. Indiana Congressman Mark Souder is outtahere after admitting he was boffing a part-time staffer, Tracy Meadows Jackson. Jackson was Souder's co-host on an abstinence education video, which is sweet. (I must say from the photo on the web, Jackson is somebody it would be hard to abstain from.)

Dana Milbank has an interesting little column about the problems the Republican House of Representatives Class of 1994 has had in avoiding legal, corruption, sex and/or marital scandals. Milbanks says 15 of the 73 members of that class have had scandals revealed - so far. Per Milbank, roll call includes:

Bob Barr (sex)
Jim Bunn (marital)
Helen Chenowith (sex)
Jon Christensen (marital)
John Ensign (sex/marital and corruption)
Mark Foley (sex)
David Funderburk (legal)
Enid Greene (marital, corruption)
J.D. Hayworth (corruption)
Steve LaTourette (sex/marital, corruption)
James Longley (marital)
Bob Ney (corruption)
Mark Sanford (sex/marital)
Joe Scarborough (marital)
Mark Souder (sex/marital)

I'm not inclined to condemn people for adultery. It's a personal issue, not a scandal. But when you are a family-values pounding Christian with a capital C type politician, quick to condemn others for human frailties, it is fair to expect them to perhaps live up to that standard. Sleeping with employees is NEVER right (that applies to Bill Clinton, too). Hitting on people who are under 18 is never right (Foley). And for any politician of any party, corruption is bad, mmkay?

get knocked up and make big bucks

2010-05-18T13:00:00.003-04:00

So who says getting pregnant before graduating high school can get in the way of a lucrative and easy career of giving speeches to high school kids about not getting pregnant before graduating? Or to be specific, about practicing ABSTINENCE - which clearly Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson were avoiding.

In Palin-land, all things are possible. $15,000 to $30,000 a pop for speechifying about keeping your zipper zipped. Quite a cushy job for a 19-year-old with no obvious qualifications, apart from being a teen mom.

But seriously, don't expect this to be a valid career path, unless your mom is Sarah Palin or somebody like that. Wonder if there will be any attempt to steer money and support towards the half-term ex-governor via her fecund daughter? Do you even have to ask?javascript:void(0)

kagan and scalia?

2010-05-12T22:00:00.004-04:00

Separated at birth? Well, I doubt their judicial philosophy would be very similar. But give right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia a good shave and give nominee Elena Kagan some glasses...

times square

2010-05-02T07:24:00.004-04:00

Thank goodness the gasoline in that Nissan Pathfinder SUV didn't ignite in Times Square yesterday. That would have been ugly.

And now, as we await word who was responsible for the attempt, some on the right are attempting to shape the information battlefield. This guy says he thinks it was probably Islamic terrorists (based in part on some undefined degree of proximity to Comedy Central headquarters and the timing so soon after South Park attempted to depict Muhammad), but if not, it was liberal/anarchist nutjobs. The evidence for the left-wing attack theory? It was an SUV, and liberals hate SUVs. One commenter at this blog suggest an inside job by the Federal government so President Obama and FEMA can start rounding up and arresting opponents. Sort of a Reichstag fire scenario, I guess. The evidence for this view? Fevered imagination as far as I can tell.

Regardless of whether it was Islamic terrorists of the domestic or international kind, right-wing domestic terrorists (many "militia" types hate New York City, though there is at the moment ZERO public evidence for their involvement), left-wing terrorists, or people who just hate the theater, this was clearly an attempt at terrorism.

isn't this insulting to god?

2010-05-01T14:45:00.002-04:00

Washington Post religion writers today write:

Moscow's Interfax newswire reported that the Association of (Russian) Orthodox Experts called the April 14 eruption -- whose gigantic cloud of ash grounded transatlantic flights for more than a week -- a response to gay rights in Europe and Iceland's tolerance of "neo-paganism." Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh said God was angry over health-care legislation. San Antonio megachurch pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, said God was unleashing his wrath on Britain for deciding that Israeli tourism ads featured parts of the disputed Palestinian territories, not Israel.

Personally, I think Limbaugh and Hagee are being extremely insulting in drawing this conclusion about the Icelandic volcano.

I mean, if this really WERE an attack from God, wouldn't His aim be better? Iceland had nothing to do with the health care legislation (I presume Limbaugh was blathering about the US legislation recently passed) nor with British tourism advertising. Surely God could hit the US and Britain directly, if he so chose?

At least the Russian Orthodox were being intolerant about Iceland...

for crist's sake

2010-04-30T07:05:00.004-04:00

Charlie Crist will run as an independent in Florida, bailing on the Republican Party that was clearly (unless Marco Rubio was found in bed having sex with a dead boy who worked for Castro) about to kick Crist to the curb.

Republicans are shocked, shocked, that somebody would betray the people and switch parties before running. Some headlines call this an "unprecedented" move.

My, memories are short - or more realistically, memories are selective. How many Republicans are former Democrats, especially in the South? Ask Senator Richard Shelby, for one, who switched parties back in '94 when the going was good. This isn't anything new. Republicans seemed to like the idea a few years back when Joe Lieberman bailed on the Democrats after he lost that primary and ran as a GOP lackey I mean independent for Senate (and won).

court martial

2010-04-24T21:22:00.003-04:00

Gosh, do you think the American Patriot Foundation would have supported a soldier who tried to argue that an order from de facto President George W. Bush was illegal because he wasn't actually elected?

Nah. He was one of theirs.

It is a curious thing, a soldier demanding that the President do something (in this instance, produce a birth certificate) before said soldier deigns to carry out an order. Lt. Col. Lakin should rot in the brig.

preparing for the insurrection

2010-04-13T07:18:00.003-04:00

So maybe Oklahoma would like to be the South Carolina of the second Civil War? Some right-wing legislators in that state along with whacko tea party leaderrs (pardon the redundancy) are apparently considering creating a new volunteer state militia. Purpose? "(T)o help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty."

It isn't exactly clear how they propose to do this. The what, however, of such a proposal is clear. The what is treason, or perhaps insurrection.

How else to describe people taking up arms to resist by force the legitimate acts of a legitimate government? That's what these embittered loons are implying, though for sure they will resent the implication and will try to back off and say this isn't about treason or insurrection or intimidation of their political opponents. The fact that they are trying to do it at a state level doesn't change the basic equation. South Carolina and the rest of the Confederate state also committed treason in 1860-65.

Not all Oklahoma Republicans are drinking this Kool Aid. Republican state Senator Steve Russell said that the existing Oklahoma National Guard can handle disaster relief, and "Anything beyond that purpose should be viewed with great concern and caution." But at least two state legislators - Randy Brogdon and Charles Key, both Republicans - have made positive noises about this prospect.

I guess they would rather contest the issues of the day by armed intimidation, instead of using legislatures, courts, and the polling booth. A new twist on the modern yet half-baked tea party concept of nullification.

no texting while driving

2010-03-27T09:14:00.004-04:00

Some guy in Massachusetts died in a car accident yesterday. He had been sending text messages while driving. His death is sad (he was 21), and illustrates the dangers of distracted driving.

If all driving-while-texting (or cell-phone talking) incidents were single car crashes, well I'd be tempted to let nature take its course. But they aren't. The driver yesterday lost control and hit a tree. But he could have lost control and plowed into an oncoming car. Or onto a crowded sidewalk. Or into a storefront.

Cell-phone driving impairs people much like driving while drunk does. Texting while driving is even worse. There is a reason that states should ban these practices. Because the market won't, and evolution won't work fast enough to save the innocent bystanders.

a moronic constitutional proposal from texas

2010-03-25T21:17:00.005-04:00

So many Republicans are bent out of shape over the imposition of mandatory death at age 60 - I mean, over the confiscation of all private property and guns and our daughters - I mean, over an incrementalist health care reform package that means insurance companies can't quit insuring you if you are sick, yeah that's the one - that is is hard to keep track of them.

One particular clown, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert has raised an idea to stop the Senate from doing anything so wrong as passing legislation with 60 votes that Republicans, tea baggers, and others on the deranged right-wing fringe don't approve of. He wants a Constitutional Convention to repeal the 17th Amendment.

No, that's not the one banning slavery or giving all Americans the right to vote, though you can bet there are some on the right, including those anti-health-care-bill protesters who yelled "n****" at Congressman John Lewis on the steps of the Capitol last week, who wouldn't mind revisiting those. It's the one that gave us Americans the right to vote directly for our Senators, instead of having them elected by the legislatures of the states.

Sayeth Gohmert's overwrought press release, since "the safeguard of State legislatures electing U.S. Senators was removed by the 17th Amendment in 1913, there has been no check or balance on the Federal power grab for the last 97 years." Not even during the years that Republicans had one, two, or three out of the Presidency, Senate, and House?

Well I'll give Gohmert some points for originality in the cause of paranoia. I've heard people complaining about the establishment of the Federal Reserve, or the introduction of the federal income tax, etc. But never before have I heard an American elected official suggest that reducing the rights of Americans to elect their legislators, in this case US Senators, would be a good thing.

Isn't that TAKING power away from the American people, Congressman Gohmert? Are you implying that you don't trust the voters of Texas or Massachusetts or Oregon or where-ever to elect Senators, and you'd rather give that power to the politicians in Austin, Boston, and Salem?

Well this is a loser on several levels. First, Gohmert's press release asserts this convention would cover ONLY the 17th Amendment. Can't do it like that: there is NOTHING to prevent a Constitutional Convention from addressing ANY issues that it wants. So the whole shebang would be open for renewal and revision.

And again, I don't think that taking electoral power away from the voters and giving it to STATE legislators is a terribly pro-democratic thing.

Finally, has Gohmert looked at the control of state legislatures. Currently, the Democrats have a 27-16 edge, with 7 states divided. So let's give the Democratic Party two senators in states they control, and split the other 7... and we have a 61-39 Democratic majority.

Control of state legislatures can change, of course. But I fail to see what Gohmert really thinks this would address.

Gohmert also refers to "the usurpation of the rights of states" in decrying the passage of health care reform.

Rights of states. States' rights. Ah, that seductive call of those who are too afraid, too devious to openly describe themselves for what they really are: supporters of the elite conservative moneyed ruling and business classes, and allies of racists.

dick armey, tea-bagging moron

2010-03-16T08:17:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I see something that spurs me to dust off the password and add something to this semi-retired blog. This Washington Post story from Dana Milbank about Dick Armey did it today.

Milbank rightfully skewers Armey for not getting his history right in Armey's speech criticizing Washington (a place, as Milbank points out, where Armey has spent a lot of time and made a lot of money).

First, at his luncheon address to a bunch of tea party types, Armey said "Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow."

Bzzz, wrong. Jamestown, founded in 1607 before Marx or anybody else had really come up with "socialism" - heck, before we really even had "capitalism" - was founded by a bunch of entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck. Well, it wasn't so profitable, and it was also mismanaged and many people did starve. But NOT because it was a government venture - it was a PRIVATE enterprise, the only government role was permission to do it.

Hey Armey, I thought you were a history professor?

The other history Fail is even better. A questioner asked how come tea baggers like Alexander Hamilton when Hamilton was well-known as an advocate for strong central government?

Armey hemmed and hawed, then said basically "Says who?"

Says EVERYBODY including Hamilton himself, back in the day. As Milbank noted, "Hamilton favored a national bank, presidents and senators who served for life and state governors appointed by the president."

Governors appointed by the PRESIDENT. You don't call that strong central government.

As is so often the case with Republicans, you have to ask yourself, is Armey stupid enough to not know two pretty basic facts about American history that many high school students, let alone college history professors, know? Or is he willfully misrepresenting the facts - that's lying - to advance his reactionary political cause.

I think Armey is plenty stupid. But in this case, I think he was lying ... and was counting on a compliant, foaming-at-the-mouth group of teabaggers not to have the school learning or independence of thought to know these facts, nor to challenge Armey on them.

the bush economy

2010-01-02T09:39:00.001-05:00

For the years 2000-2009, the US economy generated zero net jobs. None, nada.

For eight of those ten years, we were enduring the de facto administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, friends of Wall Street and Big Oil.

It would be not entirely accurate to blame the current economic woes solely on Bush/Cheney. Our financial regulatory system is completely out of whack, due in large part to financial deregulation ("un-regulation" would be a better word) by Congress in the 1990s - mostly Republicans, but some Democratic abettors, legislation signed by Clinton.

But this does underscore the absurdity of blaming Barack Obama for the current economic climate. Not that this would stop Obama haters from doing so; there's isn't a rational opposition.

production error at fox?

2009-11-19T22:35:00.003-05:00

Again Fox News has been accused of using footage of crowds out of context to make a Republican or Teabag event look good. This time, they made it look like former Alaska Governor/current teabagger wet dream Sarah Palin had huge throngs at her book signing. Except the crowds they showed were from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Fox claimed a "production error".

Of course, that's not true. These are intentional moves to puff Fox's favorites. We all know that, right?

fox news projects itself on the obama administration

2009-11-15T16:17:00.002-05:00

Back from semi-retirement because of this headline from Faux I mean Fox News: Some Fear Bush Administration Could Become Target in 9/11 Trial.

The "some" that fear this includes Karl Rove. Why does Rove fear it? For two reasons. First, he knows the de facto Bush Administration was incompetent and morally corrupt in its response to 9/11 and in its policy of torturing people. (Eric Holder and company at DOJ must feel they have a very good case against these bastards that won't rely on their own testimony, since that would be badly tainted by the fact that they were tortured.)

And second, if 9/11 had happened on Al Gore's watch and George W. Bush had been elected president in 2008, Rove would have made DAMN sure that a trial of these Al Qaeda criminals would have had Gore and the Democrats as the main target. Rove and Fox News are projecting THEIR tactics upon the Obama Administration.

the shape of things to come, maldives version

2009-10-17T11:33:00.002-04:00

The Maldives' government has held a cabinet meeting. Underwater. The way their low-lying island country will be if we don't come to grips with climate change, pronto.

it was usoc, not obama

2009-10-04T10:42:00.002-04:00

Predictably the right-wing is ecstatic, reveling in the defeat of an American city by a bunch of foreigners. They're spinning Chicago's failure to win the 2016 Olympics as a repudiation of President Obama.

Wrong. Washington Post sports columnist Tracee Hamilton nails it: this was a repudiation of the US Olympic Committee. The International Olympic Committee and USOC have been fighting over TV money, and surprise that ended up being reflected in the vote.

Plus there were other factors. Brazil's president was there too, as were the Japanese and Spanish prime ministers. There has never been an Olympics in South America, and Rio is certainly a world-class city - it's not like Chicago lost to Podunkopolis, Nowhereistan. And the US has already hosted more Olympics than any country, most recently Atlanta 1996. We don't have any natural right to host every fourth or fifth Olympics.

But the right-wingers won't let reality get in the way of a good story. No reason to expect this to be different.

olympic hype

2009-10-02T06:41:00.002-04:00

President Obama is in Denmark, pushing Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. He's received some criticism for this, especially from the right-wing who probably think this is one more step in imposing islamo-fascist-nazi socialism in the good old US of A.

I don't have a problem with it, personally. Obama's counterparts from Chicago's competitors (Tokyo, Madrid, Rio) also made the trip to Copenhagen to pay obeisance to the Olympic committee, a corrupt group of old men who no longer satisfied with booze, bribes, boondoggles and young girls, also want to be toadied to by political leaders before granting some city the privilege of hosting an orgy of over-hyped steroid-fueled athletic competition.

It's a coincidence that Chicago, Obama's adopted home town, is the US candidate, and that raises suspicions by people who are already suspicious about everything Obama does.

But if de facto President George W. Bush had made a similar trip in 2001 to support Dallas or Houston for the 2009 Olympics, OR McCain were in Denmark this week talking up Chicago, USA, I would have been fine with that. It's how the game is played, unfortunately.

gerson correct but incomplete

2009-09-25T22:31:00.004-04:00

Michael Gerson notes correctly the problem of hatred being spewed freely on the Internet. He notes that the democratic Germany of the 1920s was subverted and eventually taken over by the Nazis, who were particularly adept at exploiting that day's new technology, radio.

But Gerson is incomplete. First, he doesn't note that radio remains a potent tool to promulgate propaganda and hate thought thru talk radio, which also helps set or at least reinforce the agenda on cable TV and the internet.

And he fails to note that in the US of 2009, as in Germany in the late 1920s/early 1930s, that it is right-wingers who are spewing forth the vast majority of hatred and bigotry. (It's true. You didn't see any armed nuts outside Bush's speeches.)

Oliphant's recent editorial cartoon names names - Fox News. They aren't alone, but are a major contributor. So is most of the Republican Party. Some for failing to repudiate the hatred being promulgated. And worse yet, some for encouraging it.

it's officially a republican scandal

2009-09-17T18:34:00.003-04:00

I was sympathetic to Governor Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina, if you didn't know) for falling in love with another woman. The human heart is fickle. The fact that he charged South Carolina taxpayers for his visits to Argentina gave South Carolinians legitimate reasons to criticize Sanford or to call on him to resign. The fact that he criticized Bill Clinton for fooling around and now is seeking forgiveness makes him a Republican hypocrite - pardon me for repeating myself.

Now, we learn that Sanford, who didn't want to take Federal stimulus money and is definitely one of those who profess to support small government and less spending, doesn't advocate doing things on the cheap when it comes to HIM doing business.

Turns out Sanford and some aids have taken a couple of nice European trips over the past two years, to places like France, Germany, Estonia, Czech Republic, and Poland. Nice trips, but sure governors can travel to promote trade.

But Sanford and company didn't fly commercial. They flew in a nice little chartered aircraft. Cost the South Carolinians a total of $63,000. Now sure, commercial wouldn't have been free. But it would have been a lot cheaper and hey Sanford, I thought you were all about not wasting taxpayers money?

Mark Sanford is now officially a one-man Republican scandal, combining hypocrisy about morals and money into one quintessentially GOP package. Congratulations.

republicans stay classy

2009-09-10T21:37:00.002-04:00

Best thing about President Obama's speech was the GOP showing its true colors. Uncivil and rude. Joe Wilson was merely the most clearly rude.

stop me before i securitize again

2009-09-06T07:27:00.002-04:00

News from the New York Times to warm the cockles of a quant's heart - and send shivers down the spine of the rest of us who don't make a living selling financial products to suckers I mean investors. The geniuses on Wall Street want to

buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Sound familiar? It's like what they did with mortgages and car loans and student loans - buy a bunch without regard for whether they were risky or solid bets, cut them into little itty bitty pieces, convince us (with the help of their lap-dog credit rating agencies, who would rate a CEO's loose bowel movement AA) that it was a good deal, and this distribute risk widely. Of course, it was predicated on people not going into default on mortgages above a certain rate. And THAT was predicated on the real estate market rising continually. Which was a false hope.

So what's wrong with this insurance thing? Already even without securitization investors are taking advantage of the sick and elderly on life settlements. Note that I don't oppose them - but they should be regulated because betting that somebody will die creates some perverse incentives.

And these insurance securities would be based on the idea that people will die on schedule. In other words, if there were a medical breakthrough and life expectancy for these policy holders increased 10%, they could become a losing proposition. So you'd create an incentive on Wall Street that would not favor medical research? Good idea.

Some Wall Street banks are also doing something called "re-remics" - resecuritization of real estate mortgage investment conduits. In other words, repackagins MONEY-LOSING investments into higher-rated ones. How does THAT work?

This all just reinforces the lesson some of us have learned over the past 18 months or so that better financial regulation is critical to the REAL economy, not just to protect the investor class.

missing the point

2009-08-22T14:35:00.002-04:00

Accusing Howard Kurtz of missing the point is like accusing your old grandmother of wallowing in nostalgia for the days when Frank Sinatra was young and hot - pretty obvious.

But pretty obviously, Howie has done this again. Writing about former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's disclosure in a book that some of the 2004 terror alerts were politically motivated, Kurtz's angle isn't about misusing government programs and scaring the public for political gain. No, it was to bemoan people for not keeping their mouths shut when they are out of office.

Is Ridge's careful, veiled disclosure ideal? No. It would have been better if he'd fought it harder. Just once I'd like to see a senior American political official have the balls to resign in protest - I can't think of one who has done so since Cyrus Vance quit as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State. (If Ridge had done so back then, he would have been pilloried as a traitor and a secret agent of the Democratic Party by the Fox-Limbaugh-Bachman wing of the GOP...)

But disclosing this after the fact - not so much news as confirmation of many suspicions - is better than nothing.

ridge: terrorism alert manipulated for 2004 elections

2009-08-20T15:57:00.002-04:00

From Agence France Presse (quoted in full):

Former Bush aide says politics colored US 'terror alert'
by Olivier Knox Olivier Knox 1 hr 40 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge is quoting as writing in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again."

Some of Bush's critics had repeatedly questioned whether the administration was using warnings of a possible attack to blunt the political damage from the unpopular Iraq war by shifting the debate to the broader "war on terrorism," which had wide popular appeal.

Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania, was the first secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security that the US Congress created in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.

He also says that Bush's homeland security adviser at the White House, Fran Townsend, called his department ahead of an August 1, 2004 speech to ask Ridge to include a reference to "defensive measures ... away from home" -- language that he read as being a reference to the Iraq war.

In those remarks, Ridge said he was raising the threat alert level for the financial services sector in New York City, northern New Jersey, and Washington DC, and went on to praise Bush's leadership against extremism.

"The reports that have led to this alert are the result of offensive intelligence and military operations overseas, as well as strong partnerships with our allies around the world, such as Pakistan," said Ridge.

"Such operations and partnerships give us insight into the enemy so we can better target our defensive measures here and away from home," he said at the time.

He later publicly acknowledged that much of the information underpinning the new alert was three years old, stoking Bush critics' charges of political manipulation.

Ridge also details his frustration after the White House rejected his suggestion to establish department of homeland security offices in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and -- long before Hurricane Katrina -- New Orleans, according to the summary.

He also says he urged his successor, Michael Chertoff, to reconsider the appointment of Michael Brown as the head of the Federal Emergency Response Agency (FEMA), whose response to the killer storm drew widespread criticism.

Ridge also charges that he was often "blindsided" during daily morning briefings with Bush because the FBI withheld information from him, and says he was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings.

Nobody will be surprised by this. This stinks of Rove and Cheney. As does the entire sorry history of the de facto Bush Administration.

taking a break

2009-05-31T05:37:00.001-04:00

For any readers out there, thanks for checking out my blog. I'm taking a hiatus from Vaguely Logical. I may come back to regular blogging, but I'm not sure.

oh one last thing - iraq wasn't connected to 9/11; richard clarke says so

2009-05-31T05:31:00.003-04:00

Richard Clarke, who tried with "hair on fire" along with the CIA and NSC to convince de facto President Bush, King Dick Cheney, and Condi Rice the Unready in the early months of 2001 that Al Qaeda was going to try something big against the US, is having none of Dick Cheney's claims that in those scary post-911 days everybody agreed that everything was justified to defend the US.

Clarke notes that since they didn't take the threat seriously BEFORE 911 ("Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened."), the unprepared trio were in a state of shock - not a good state to be in to make reasoned policy responses. Instead, they took on policies not to protect us, but to win re-election in 2004 - a clear recognition that they knew they'd screwed up at any Administration's top job, to protect Americans.

Indeed.

those climate skeptics, what a bunch

2009-05-19T06:26:00.002-04:00

Climate change skeptics in Congress -- all Republicans, naturally -- had their day, holding a news conference to announce an alternative to the Democratic cap and trade bill in Congress.

They're feeling a bit besieged, these skeptics. But there's no reason to feel sorry for them - they held the White House for the last eight years, doing incalculable damage to efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and maybe prevent or mitigate global warming.

If I weren't opposed to torture, that crowd would be good candidates for some enhanced interrogations. We could ask, do you REALLY not believe the science, or are you merely protecting the interests of big business? In other words, are you stupid or are you venal?

For Ohio Republican John Boehner, the stupid part is true if he really thinks somebody is suggesting that carbon dioxide is a carcinogenic...

it ain't easy being poor

2009-05-18T10:31:00.002-04:00

This is an interesting, sobering story about the high cost of poverty. Interest rates of 800% to get pay-day loans. Bus rides. Waiting. Expensive corner grocery stores.

It's not easy being poor. Believe it or not, most people in that situation aren't there by choice, either...

still worrying

2009-05-16T18:56:00.002-04:00

Not many people have died in the US from swine flu, excuse me H1N1. But the fact that it's mid-May and we're seeing flu season levels of influenza cases - half of them H1N1 - is worrying. Hope that vaccine work goes quickly. It could be ugly this winter.

torture, photos, commissions...

2009-05-16T18:47:00.002-04:00

On balance I am disappointed that President Obama decided against releasing the torture photos. Short-term I suspect they WOULD inflame some in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, potentially endangering American troops and other interests.

Of course, it really wouldn't be the PHOTOS that do that, but just further confirmation of the fact that the United States under the de facto Bush Administration was torturing people. In the long run I think these photos will get out anyway. Better to release them all at once and get it over with.

I'm less critical on the decision to keep military commissions. Trying terrorism suspects will be difficult. Personally I think the courts can probably handle it. But military commissions with greater legal protections for the accused may be okay. We'll have to see how this goes. But on balance, I think this is a wrong decision - less wrong than the photos, but wrong anyway.

Oh and I'm sorry senior CIA people but your agency's credibility on torture and the reasons for it are totally shot. The TIMING of the most intense torture of people like Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheik Mohammed - in other words, in late 2002/early 2003, precisely at the time Cheney and his crowd wanted "proof" of the links between Al Qaida and Saddam's Iraq - is just too convenient. Hey, these guys had been coming out with information under normal interrogation techniques, but would NOT admit to Al Qaida/Iraq links (for the excellent reason that there WERE NONE). If one thing has been proven about torture, it is that it is very good at getting the victims to say what the interrogators WANT them to say. So, you waterboard those thugs often enough and ask them over and over, "Al Qaida and Saddam were working together, right? Right?", eventually they will wise up and say "Yes" just to make the torture stop.

of social security, cheneys, and judges

2009-05-13T09:11:00.003-04:00

First on Social Security. It won't be "insolvent". It will simply exhaust its existing buffer and have to either increase intake or decrease payments. Quite simple.

The real cure is simple: raise the cap on income beyond which people don't pay SS taxes. And means-test the benefits. No reason to continue the fiction that FDR created to get SS passed in the first place that people are getting back what they paid in; they're getting MORE. Call it what it is, a pension for the aged and disabled. Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Michael Jordan, as hard working as they all have been, don't really need it. Neither do a lot of other less-well-known but well recompensed people.

The Cheneys, Dad and daughter Liz, are having fun bashing Obama. Ok, not very dignified but that's their prerogative; despite Dick Cheney's best efforts, it is still a free country, and thankfully freedom of speech survived the Cheney-Bush regime.

Indirectly, they are bashing Bush, too. Liz Cheney said, "One of the nice things about my dad being out of office is that he doesn't need sign-off. He is out there speaking out because he personally feels so strongly about these issues."

And not always in agreement with what was the policy of the de facto Bush Administration. Interesting...

Oh and finally on justices and candidates to replace Souter, that paragon of positive race relations Jeff Sessions, the Republican Senator from Alabama, presumes to tell Obama what will be an acceptable nominee. Sessions, speaking behalf of the Senate and you and me, said if Obama sends "a highly qualified individual with a distinguished record that demonstrates judicial restraint, integrity and a commitment to the rule of law, his nominee will be welcomed in the Senate and by the American people."

But remember GOP lingo. "Judicial restraint" means "liberal judges don't act like liberals". CONSERVATIVE judges need no such restraint. Or else Roberts and Alito and Scalia and Thomas would never have been approved.

Indeed, if conservative judges acted with judicial restraint, it's a pretty good bet the Supreme Court would have returned the Bush vs Gore decision to the State of Florida to decide however it saw fit. That my friends was a state issue, and the GOP is all for states' rights. Unless, of course, that would result in Al Gore being President. Just as the Republicans were all for seating people in Congress even during recounts. Unless of course that would mean a Democrat like Al Franken being seated...

dishonest republicans and a too-credible columnist

2009-05-12T07:20:00.003-04:00

William Kristol, who is paid by the media to promulgate GOP agitprop, suggests the GOP go after Obama instead of gazing into its navel. Well, oppositions are there to oppose, so fine.

But Kristol wants to go after Obama on debts. MOST OF WHICH were accumulated by de facto President George Bush in times of economic PROSPERITY. Bush and the Republicans hate Bill Clinton so much they got rid of all he did INCLUDING the budget surplus.

Kristol says Obama is cutting defense spending. Well that is, what is the word, oh yes a big fat lie. Obama and Gates want to reprioritize defense spending, having noticed that the Soviet Union is no more and we are unlikely to fight big conventional tank battles in the Fulda Gap. And they INCREASED defense spending (well, have proposed to anyway). Increased, not cut.

And Richard Cohen is clearly having a Senior Day today. He wonders if Dick Cheney "the old Faithful of Nonsense" is right when he asserts that torture I mean "enhanced interrogation" really stopped attacks. Cohen notes that Cheney wants two CIA memos released, two memos that "support his contention that the harsh interrogation methods worked and that many lives were saved."

Cohen has forgotten a few things. First, he has forgotten that Cheney and the rest of the Cheney-Bush regime weren't shy about browbeating intelligence types into coming up with conclusions that supported the Cheney-Bush preconceptions of things. "Want connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Coming right up sir! "Proof" of WMD in Iraq? Sure, and would you like that with fries?"

And Cohen ignores the fact that the CIA upper types - put there by Cheney-Bush - would be anxious to "prove" that the perversion of American ideals, the torture of our prisoners, had SOME benefit to offset the black stain it put on our country's image and soul. So with the White House wanting it, and CIA leadership wanting it, is it ANY surprise that a couple of memos might be out there saying "Hey, we waterboarded this guy and crushed his testicles and because of that, we stopped a planned attack on a boat show in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin?"

With all those ulterior motives, any such memo should be taken with a gallon of salt. And Cohen should know better.

bolton moans about prosecutions

2009-05-06T07:45:00.003-04:00

Former Bush hack John Bolton aka The Walrus (check out his 'stache) writes today to moan bitterly about the Obama Administration not doing enough to protect the people from the de facto Bush Administration from possible prosecution by nasty foreigners.

Boo hoo.

Bolton also writes, I believe strongly that criminalizing policy disagreements is both inappropriate and destructive.

Actually, I agree. But the issue here isn't policy disagreements. Nobody wants to penalize the Bushies for supporting war against Iraq, even though many strongly disagree with that.

It's about torture. And you see, this isn't criminalizing a policy disagreement. This is going after deliberate circumvention of existing US law and US treaty obligations. Big difference.

In any case, if Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility has its way, nobody will be prosecuted. What, are they siding with fellow lawyers out of professional loyalty?

shut it DOWN

2009-05-06T07:41:00.002-04:00

Bank of America needs a mere $33.9 billion cushion to withstand a bad economy.

Why put taxpayer money into this just to be a shareholder?

Do like the FDIC routinely does to banks that have failed. Shut them down. Shareholders and executives lose some $$$. Shame. Clean them up. Find a buyer, and get it going again.

No trying to carry it along like a financial zombie, neither dead or alive. Put a stake thru its heart (sorry I'm mixing my monster metaphors) clean and quick.

it ain't over necessarily

2009-05-04T09:59:00.001-04:00

The public health pros at Effect Measure have it right. When you see a potential emergency like swine flu or H1N1 come along, you don't wait to see if it's bad. You act quickly.

Say you see a fire in a wastebasket in your house, near a curtain. How do you respond? Do you just wait, comfortable in your assumption that it will burn itself out without further damage? Or do you dash to smother it before it can get out of hand?

Well that's what public health people in Mexico, the US and elsewhere are doing. I think it is too much to call it "overreacting", even IF swine flu aka H1N1 turns out to be less effective at spreading and less lethal than initial reports indicated.

Remember, for public health, "When public health works, nothing happens." And that's a good thing.

In any case, another concern is that this will be a prequel to a resurgence of swine flu during the normal flu season. That does happen - see 1918-19.

jack kemp

2009-05-03T05:00:00.003-04:00

I can't imagine that I would have ever voted for Jack Kemp, who just died. His belief in supply-side economics - what George H. W. Bush correctly characterized as "voodoo economics" during the 1980 Republican Presidential primaries - was too much to take. His pushing for massive tax cuts in the early 1980s contributed to the huge Republican deficits left to Bill Clinton to sort out.

But Kemp didn't stick slavishly to the Reaganite Republican ideology. Though conservative, he supported civil rights, rights for illegal immigrants, and affirmative action.

Today I imagine that the Limbaughs and Boehners of the GOP would call Kemp a RINO (Republican in name only), like they did Arlen Specter and Jim Jeffords. Those two both left the Republican Party. Kemp was already out of politics, but his empathy for those with left would be viewed suspiciously within the party today.

glad to see congress is focused on the key issues

2009-05-02T07:07:00.003-04:00

On Friday the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection had a hearing. Texas Republican Joe Barton, who has introduced legislation on the issue of the day, said "It's interesting that people of good will keep trying to tinker with the current system, and to my mind it's a little bit like -- and I don't mean this directly -- but it's like communism. You can't fix it. It will not be fixable. Sooner or later, you're going to have to try a new model, and that's why we're here today."

Strong words from Congressman Barton, who even used the "communism" card. So what system is he decrying? The practice of corporate chiefs to name their friends to their compensation committees to guarantee fat raises? Price-fixing by the oil companies? The system by which businesses and their lobbyists get special little bits of legislation passed to benefit a certain class of business, defined so narrowly that only the particular firm in question can benefit?

No, Joe Barton is complaining about the college football Bowl Championship Series.

Now look, I'm sympathetic to the Boise States of the football world. Yes, the BCS is a sour, pustular chancre on the face of college football. Yes, the big power conferences plus Notre Dame have rigged this to guarantee the vast majority of TV bowl money continue to flow into their pockets. Yes, the NCAA is a bunch of weak-willed wimps for not allowing a REAL championship for big-time college football, the way it is done for college basketball and wrestling and swimming and baseball and water polo and volleyball. The way it is even done for FOOTBALL, outside of the big Division 1-A schools.

But why is the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection talking about this? Ultimately, the NCAA is a private organization. Believe it or not, there is NO national interest at play in how the NCAA rigs its championship bowl games. There is NO compelling reason for Congress to be involved.

Funny, I thought the Republicans wanted the government to keep its nose out of private business.

republicans are guaranteed to be unhappy

2009-05-02T00:03:00.003-04:00

President Obama said he would replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter with somebody who "respects the Constitution and brings "empathy" and "understanding" to the bench."

Respecting the Constitution? Empathy? Understanding? These are not Republican judicial values! They want ideologues like Antonin Scalia, who can twist the Constitution and the law to support Republican ideological goals. Understanding the Constitution? That sort of crazy talk could have allowed Al Gore to have been allowed to become President.

human nature

2009-04-30T08:26:00.002-04:00

It is good to know that at a time of growing concern about swine flu, aka H1N1 influenza, that people are urgently seeking to respond to the situation, applying ingenuity and technology to respond to growing concerns.

I speak of course of scammers. Seems your friend and mine, the internet scammer community, are taking advantage of the flu scare to sell fake drugs and steal credit card info.

Isn't that special?

This blog has some examples of names that have been registered since last Friday and some of the not so helpful "products" they are selling. As always, buyer beware.

a whole *$@^load of !(%+ing news

2009-04-29T07:04:00.002-04:00

Lots going on.

Spectral Shift

You may have heard that Senator Arlen Specter the RINO is now a Democrat. Newt Gingrich snarks that Specter left "the Republican Party in name as he left it in spirit". In fact, the Republican Party left Specter and lots of other moderate to liberal former Republicans. Normally you think people leaving you is bad news, but de facto Republican leader Rush Limbaugh joined in the chorus, saying this would make the GOP "more focused".

Hey, the Libertarian Party is also very focused. Of course, it's also not close to being in power. There aren't enough hard-right Americans of the Gingrich-Limbaugh ilk to put together a national majority.

The Flu

Meanwhile, H1N1, aka swine flu, maybe should be known as the Glorious Flu. It seems it may have begun in the little Mexican town of La Gloria. Lots of pig farms around La Gloria, so plenty of people to be exposed to whatever poor porker it was that had the misfortune of contracting a couple of different types of flu at once where they could do their recombining thing into this new form. La Gloria may not like being identified - and in fact Mexican epidemiologists suggest H1N1 could have originated in the US and been brought to Mexican by people visiting relatives.

Sounds a bit complicated, more than the idea that it began somewhere in Mexico. But not impossible - after all, it appears the great Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19 that killed up to 60 million worldwide probably began in Kansas.

Swearing'll Cost You

And finally the fucking Supreme Court fucking well ruled that the god-damned Federal Communications Commission "may penalize even the occasional use of certain expletives on the airwaves". Ain't that the shits?

Well it's not necessarily final - they kept the ruling narrow rather than establishing any constitutional principle.

don't panic about swine flu

2009-04-27T09:53:00.002-04:00

Sure, it's too soon to panic about swine flu. Nobody outside of Mexico has died from it - yet.

But it has some unpleasant aspects to it - happening outside of east Asia, outside of flu season... and so the authorities in the US, Europe, and elsewhere are well, not panicking. But preparing.

a tortured scenario

2009-04-26T06:50:00.004-04:00

Ex-CIA agent and Osama Bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer resorts to a scenario worthy of an episode of 24 to criticize the Obama Administration for revealing the torture memos. Scheuer says when we have Bin Laden in our grasps and a bunch of nukes are about to go off in American cities, we will just have to say "shucks, hope they don't nuke my home town" because nobody will torture Bin Laden.

This fanciful scenario ignores a few things. It ignores the unlikelihood of Al Qaeda getting nukes they can use. It ignores the unlikelihood of us getting Bin Laden or anybody else as the proverbial fuse burns. It ignores the problem that information gained through torture is not always true - if Bin Laden after being waterboarded for the 37th time in a day says "praise Allah, we will blow up Kansas City on Thursday," why the hell would ANY person BELIEVE him?

Scheuer should know better.

-----------
Also on torture, Frank Rich on the banality of evil, Bush-Administration-style.

And Kathleen Parker (hardly a leftist) notes correctly that if you have to ask, "is this torture" it probably is. On the memos, Parker writes: Most important, we can hardly present ourselves as arbiters and protectors of human rights when we selectively abuse those in our custody, no matter how compelling our cause. When we parse definitions of "mental pain" and "suffering," we begin to slip down the slope of moral ambiguity where deceit finds company among the dead.

regrets, he's had a few

2009-04-25T07:21:00.003-04:00

At least that's what friends say about federal judge and de facto Bush Administration torture defender Jay Bybee.

But the defense is a bit feeble. One guy said, "On the primary memo, that legitimated and defined torture, he just felt it got away from him. What I understand that to mean is, any lawyer, when he or she is writing about something very complicated, very layered, sometimes you can get it all out there and if you're not careful, you end up in a place you never intended to go. I think for someone like Jay, who's a formalist and a textualist, that's a particular danger."

So the words just piled up and before you know it, you're legalizing TORTURE? Pardon my skepticism.

Look, I know it must be tough to be working in a government agency and to know you have the ruler of the country - oh and not just Dick Cheney but also the President - leaning on you to come to a certain conclusion in your work. We saw this with how Cheney and his allies in the Administration leaned on CIA analysts to come up with "links" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and "proof" that Iraq had an active WMD program. It must have been hard for Bybee and others to resist when Cheney's bigfoot David Addington was pressuring them for some after-the-fact legal findings that the extreme measures being employed against some detainees were legal.

And Jay Bybee may really regret it now. But that's not an excuse. "Just following orders" went out of vogue with the Nuremberg Trials. If this process really went to places where Bybee felt uncomfortable, legally or morally, he should have done the honorable thing and refused to sign the memos.

Or he should have quit.

people dead in mexico from swine flu

2009-04-24T21:39:00.003-04:00

Some of these stories read like the script for a movie about pandemics. We know that some people in Mexico have died from the new strain of swine flu detected in California and Texas. We don't know that ALL the cases attributed to swine flu really are swine flu.

But obviously it's got the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization and the Mexican government, which has closed schools in Mexico City. And a prep school in New York City is testing students with symptoms that they fear are consistent with swine flu.

Two disturbing things if the reports are all accurate. (1) It appears to be hitting the young the hardest - like the "Spanish" Flu of 1918-19. (2) It isn't even flu season in Mexico and the US.

For those old enough to remember the swine flu scare of 1976 which in pandemic terms was a flop, remember that in 1976 one person died and the US had a vaccine available very quickly. Twenty or more people have died so far in Mexico and there is no vaccine available.

industry is self-serving?

2009-04-24T06:23:00.002-04:00

Well whaddaya know? The Global Climate Coalition, which despite the innocuous name worked for Big Oil and Big Coal and other industry to obfuscate and smother the discussion over the damage greenhouse gases are doing and the implications for climate and the future of human civilization, really DID know that they were full of shit on the science.

They really DID know - or at least were told by the scientists they employed who had not sold their souls - that “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied”. That was from an internal GCC report. Written in 1995.

And yet they denied and lied and blurred. All in the name of protecting profits and bonuses and the shareholder. Never mind the damage done to the human race and the unfortunate animals and plants that have to share the planet with us.

Can't we execute some of these people? Pour encourage les autres? Unfortunately I'm opposed to the death penalty, and technically they probably haven't committed a crime in the legal sense. But even more than spewing emissions, LYING about the science to try to prevent action to avoid or mitigate the extent of climate change approaches the level of crimes against humanity.

why do republicans want to secede from america?

2009-04-24T06:19:00.002-04:00

Daily Kos asked the question, Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America?

Democrats said "No we love America" by an 82%-15% margin. Republicans? 48% said "Yes we want to leave America" and 48% said "We'll stay with America." Oh and 51% of Republicans in Texas APPROVED of Rick Perry's suggestion that Texas might have to leave the United States.

Funny, Fox News and the Drudge Report don't seem to be following the New Secessionism too closely. Just imagine if it had been Democrats expressing that sentiment... we'd never heard the end of it.

more swine flu

2009-04-24T06:16:00.002-04:00

Now medical authorities have uncovered a total of seven people in Texas and California with a strain of swine flu. People that haven't been around pigs, so apparently human-to-human transmission. They are all OK - it seems mild. But the fact that the strain "is a hybrid that resulted from a combination of four different viruses -- one that typically infects people, one that originated in North American birds and two from pigs in Europe and Asia" demonstrates the dangerous side of flu, it's changeability.

swine flu 2?

2009-04-22T06:52:00.001-04:00

Swine flu in kids in San Diego? They're okay, but it's still disconcerting...

an insidious republican meme

2009-04-22T06:44:00.003-04:00

Amid all the news about President Obama's decision to release the infamous torture memos is the insidious idea being bruited about by Dick Cheney and other Republican supporters of torture (although they prefer to call it something else). The latest is South Dakota GOP Senator John Thune, who criticized the Obama Administration, saying "They would be well served not to depart abruptly from the policies that have kept us safe the last seven years."

See, they're setting things up so that if some sort of big terrorist attack does happen, they can say it was because Democrats were soft on terrorists.

Never mind that most of the info gleaned from high-value captured terrorist types like Abu Zubaida was obtained BEFORE the "enhanced interrogation techniques" began.

Never mind the observation of knowledgeable types that torture and coercion "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain."

Never mind that even the Israelis, with legitimate security/terrorism concerns and a no-nonsense attitude, concede that torture does NOT gain reliable information AND damages the torturers.

Obama HAS made the right call. And I'm sympathetic to NOT prosecuting working-level interrogators as long as they followed what was at the time the legal policy.

Go after the policymakers and go after the lawyers who perverted their professional morals to ofter after-the-fact justification for what the de facto Bush (and Cheney) Administration had already decided to do.

tortured logic

2009-04-21T04:44:00.002-04:00

It's always good to see a Marc Thiessen op-ed piece in the Post because I know it will be easy to read and understand. Deep he ain't.

For example, today he is writing about what he daintily calls enhanced interrogation. You and I know it as torture. Thiessen says the extra-special interrogations worked and saved lives and got good information!

How does he prove his point? By citing one lonely memo from Bush's Justice Department. The same Justice Department that provided that lovely legal reasoning by which things like waterboarding and walling and sleep deprivation - things we would be very irate about were they done to Americans - are not considered torture also said that not only is it not torture, it works!

Well, accepting the defense's testimony as proof that the defense is innocent would make Thiessen a bad lawyer. But it makes him a good Bush speechwriter, since this is a rather thin defense for the ex-Bush types. And not even a good one.

Oh, and Thiessen at the end says lots and lots of people will die because Obama released the info, yadda yadda yadda.

bush takes a trip

2009-04-19T06:59:00.003-04:00

Former de facto President George W. Bush is in China for something called the Boao Forum.

Wonder how much he was paid to attend?

Anyway, China is a good choice for the former President. They are unlikely to entertain any ideas to arrest the guy for authorizing torture or other things done on his watch.

Which raises an interesting mental exercise: what would the Obama Administration do if say Bush went to a EU country and somebody convinced a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest, and the police tried to arrest him? It would be a mess. Agree with Bush or not, I doubt ANY American administration would want to see an ex-Prez being arrested and prosecuted overseas.

a move on greenhouse gas emissions

2009-04-18T06:33:00.002-04:00

I know the preference is to have Congress pass legislation to try to put us on a path to slash our greenhouse gas emissions, which with luck might make climate change less bad and in any case would probably greatly reduce our reliance on the Middle East for oil.

But the move by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announcing intent to list carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses as a danger to public health is wise. It is a back-up should Congress fail to act - and perhaps a spur to wavering members to pass something rather than leave it to the EPA.

the reactionary right?

2009-04-17T18:53:00.006-04:00

Janet Napolitano's apology over that Department of Homeland Security report notwithstanding, it is fair to be concerned about elements of the violent, armed extreme right. Egged on by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right wing noise machine, they are potentially dangerous. They are also badly misinformed, in large part because of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right wing noise machine.

As New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted in a recent blog entry aptly entitled Dangerous Talk, there is a group called the Oath Keepers - military (active and retired) and cops who say they will keep their oath by refusing to follow unconstitutional orders. Naturally, Oath Keepers has been founded since Barack Obama was elected President. After all, they didn't have to worry about de facto President George W. Bush doing anything unconstitutional did they?

The gist of this movement of white guys is their proclamation that they will refuse to carry out ten specific orders that apparently they think are likely to be issued by the Obama Administration. Let's look at and discuss these ten orders, shall we? Drawn from a page on the Oath Keepers web site, they are (in short form without the long explanation about 1775 and all that) (comments in italics):

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

Well, since no such orders have been issued nor are likely to be issued, they should be OK on that one.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.

How many warrantless searches do you think were conducted under the Bush Administration? In any case, warrantless searches are wrong. I don't see this coming, but the Oath Keepers "expect that warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, under some pretext, will be the means used to attempt to disarm the people."

And who would be warning them of this alleged imminent action? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and some of the more irresponsible Republican politicians.

3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

Good they shouldn't. But hey didn't the Bush Administration do just this with John Walker Lindh? And that guy who tried to blow up a plane, you remember him the one whose arrest John Ashcroft announced while on a trip to Moscow? All well and good to pledge to oppose possible unconstitutional orders - but you don't get to pick and choose when to do that based on whether you agree with the ideology of the person occupying the White House at the time. The Constitution is the Constitution, whether Barack Obama or Dick Cheney is in charge.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

They are referring to the Federal government doing so. So presumably it is OK if a state did that. Last time that sort of thing happened was during the Civil War, so assuming no states try to secede, this shouldn't be an issue. Oh, wait - I forgot their fellow wingnuts are talking secession...

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

Exanding on this, our friends at Oath Keepers explain "the people of each state reserved to themselves the right to judge when the national government they created has voided the compact between the states by asserting powers never granted." Ooh, the Nullification Principle revived for the 21st century! Maybe South Caroline Governor Mark Sanford can follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors and provoke another nullification crisis by trying to nullify a Federal law he doesn't agree with! Hey wait, isn't he already talking about doing that by refusing to accept money from the Federal government?

Wow, why do I feel like we are in the run up to the Civil War again? This shit is scary.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

Actually I'd think the Oath Keepers would like this, since liberal voters tend to be concentrated in cities. Surprisingly, the Oath Keepers cite the Nazi blockade of the Warsaw Ghetto. I'm surprised to find anything critical of the Nazis in this document. In any case, if ANY administration were ever to issue such an order, it would be wrong and should be opposed.

BUT IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN!!!! Sorry for shouting, I get emotional when faced with willful ignorance and sheer stupidity. Why not say you will refuse to implement an order to shoot all old people in the head with a staple gun? That is just as likely to happen.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

See above. Sheesh.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”

To expand, they said "the use of foreign troops and mercenaries against the people is wildly unconstitutional, egregious, and an act of war."

Ah, another element of their wingnuttery is revealed. Clearly a reference to the Black Helicopter concept. You know, the idea that the Democratic President and Democratic Congress have invited foreign troops from enemy states like Russia and France and China and Nigeria into America under UN control and are hiding them in some place (Where would so many troops hide ESPECIALLY with so many so-called patriots specifically on the look-out for them? Don't ask impertinent questions.) to impose some sort of foreign government - often described as Zionist although not on this particular web site - on America.

Why precisely the Democrats would work so hard to win an election in order to hand power over to a foreign coalition is not explained. Because it is pure lunatic fantasy. This is the sort of thing these wingnuts imagine as they fondly stroke their guns, inventory their bullets, and masturbate to photos of Sarah Palin.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

Well that is good. Luckily, they won't have to make the difficult decision whether to follow such orders, because such orders simply will not be coming. Really.

10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

They say further, "Tyrants know that the pen of a man such as Thomas Paine can cause them more damage than entire armies, and thus they always seek to suppress the natural rights of speech, association, and assembly. Without freedom of speech, the people will have no recourse but to arms. Without freedom of speech and conscience, there is no freedom.

Therefore, we will not obey or support any orders to suppress or violate the right of the people to speak, associate, worship, assemble, communicate, or petition government for the redress of grievances."

I fully support the right to freedom of speech, association, assembly, worship, etc. But riddle me this: where were these people when the Bush Administration was infringing such rights with the USA PATRIOT act and nasty warnings that people better watch what they say?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you feel up to it you could watch some of the videos at their web site, with various white cops and troops (and retirees) going on about how they will protect America against the godless Obama regime that is going to trample their rights any day now.

DHS, personally I think it is wise to keep an eye on these guys. After all conditions ARE right for a possible resurgence of right-wing violence. Part of it is poor economic times. But let's be honest, the real reasons to be afraid are the fact that the Democrats are in power and the President is black. Coincidence that the militia movement was active in 1993-2001, and then quiet in 2001-2009? Of course not.

secessionist republicans

2009-04-17T07:22:00.001-04:00

What is it with Republican governors offering aid and comfort to the idea of secession? First we have Alaska governor and former VP nominee Sarah Palin; not only has she given warm welcoming remarks (by video and in person) to the notorious Alaska Independence Party, her husband and would-be First Dude Todd Palin was a member of the AIP until it became politically expediant to quit.

And now in the country's second-largest (by territory) state, Governor Rick Perry when given the chance refuses to say that expressing support for secession is wrong.

Actually, I'll agree with Perry there - despite eight years of Bush-Cheney, we still have a somewhat-abridged right to free speech. But it was pretty feeble. And just imagine how Fox News and the wingnut media and blogosphere would react if the same situation had happened with two states with DEMOCRATIC governors. They would be screaming at the cameras, organizing Brook-Brothers-style tea party riots in the streets, howling for the blood of the traitor governors. If Bush-Cheney were still President, they would make some nasty growled warning about not aiding and abetting enemies of the country I mean Homeland.

There's a Democratic Party platform: The Democrats - we support the Union. Quite a change from 1860-61!

Oh and Tom DeLay joins in with talk about "standing up for the sovereignty of Texas" and how Texas can secede by daring the US to divide Texas into 5 states and create 8 new Senators. To Chris Matthews' credit, he compares this to 1861 and really takes DeLay to account. AND notes that nobody talked radical talk like this under Bush - only now under a Democratic President. Good job.

torture memos

2009-04-17T07:18:00.003-04:00

It's good that the Obama Administration has released the memos and won't prosecute the actual people who tortured, as long as they followed the guidelines. The guidelines were wrong; the people who advocated those policies are the ones that should suffer.

(Incidentally, the argument that releasing the details of torture would deter people from government service is stupid - although it might deter some sadists.)

The memos are pretty awful. This was torture in the name of Americans. And full of evasions and lies. This one, as excerpted by Talking Points Memo, caught my eye:

"You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation."

Bullshit. Sleep deprivation of the sort encouraged by the Bushies causes serious mental and physical damage to all. It is a facile cop-out to say "only the nut jobs flip out when kept awake for days on end." Talk about blaming the victim.

george is cranky

2009-04-16T06:33:00.003-04:00

George Will, unleashing his inner curmudgeon, says that people who wear jeans are immature and are trying to look shabby, and that it's all another symptom of how terribly wrong America is today.

A couple of observations.

Didn't Ronald Reagan like to wear jeans? Ponder THAT, Will!

And besides, they're comfortable.

And styles change.

Will gets a last insult in: "(A confession: The author owns one pair of jeans. Wore them once. Had to. Such was the dress code for former senator Jack Danforth's 70th birthday party, where Jerry Jeff Walker sang his classic "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." Music for a jeans-wearing crowd.)"

Let me assure you George, many of us jeans-wearing types do NOT want to hear Jerry Jeff Walker. Yuck.

do they hate america? why doesn't fox news ask?

2009-04-16T06:18:00.003-04:00

You know, one year ago if a bunch of protesters had settled in Lafayette Park across the road from the White House and had made derogatory comments about the White House's current resident and his economic policies, I'm pretty sure Fox News (1) wouldn't have encouraged and probably sponsored the protest and (2) if they deigned to cover it at all, would have said the protesters all hated America.

On April 15 as you know, Fox News sponsored/encourage/drummed up "tea party" protests against taxes. Well, theoretically against taxes, although somehow they failed to do any protesting on April 15s in 2001-2008. Really, it was an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat protest.

Protesting taxes is fine. It is frankly a sign of a politically immature person who probably lacks the basic wit to wonder how the services he (mostly) or she derives from government are paid for. You know, services like fire departments, police protection, roads to drive on, jails to keep bad guys locked up, air traffic controllers to stop mid-air collisions from killing us all, schools, just to name a few.

But the protests of course went beyond that. Dana Milbank describes some of the signs at Lafayette Park. Let's review them, shall we?

"Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate". Ooh clever. A 1984 Orwell reference in "Big Brother". Never mind it was the de facto Bush Administration that tried to slip the Total Information Awareness Program past us to mine data and spy on us all. That was big brother. As for the birth certificate issue, dudes grow up. Nobody with three neurons to rub together thinks Obama was born in Kenya. His mom never even WENT to Kenya, which would have made it quite difficult for her to give birth there.

"Blackbeard Obama, King of the Tax Pirates". Topical at least, with the Somalian pirate thing. Of course, Obama didn't impose any of these taxes. Congress does that. But that is a level of political sophistication beyond the Fox News watching Lafayette Park crowd.

To quote Milbank: "A third showed the president dressed up as Steve Urkel, the nerdy black kid with big glasses and suspenders from "Family Matters." "Did I do that?" the sign said, showing a graph of the economy plunging." Ha ha, funny. Except the recession began in DECEMBER OF 2007. 13 months before Obama was inaugurated. When a guy called Bush was still de facto president. The collapse of Wall Street and the onset of the global financial crisis began in SEPTEMBER of 2008, when Bush still occupied the White House - although he seemed to have abdicated his responsibilities by then, without telling anybody.

"The Audacity of the Dope." Lame.

"O Crap" and Obama as an acronym for "One Big Awful Mistake America." Ha ha.

"Napolitano -- Obama's Gestapo Queen" and "Hang 'Em High Traitors." Hmm. Calling a Cabinet official a Nazi (and by extension, Obama too) and suggesting that all of "them" should be executed as traitors. Such calm political discourse. Seriously, isn't this an incitement to violence? Against government officials?

How fucking close to the White House do you think such assclowns would have been allowed when Bush was in occupancy?

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Janet Napolitano was defending the fact that her Department of Homeland Security accurately noted in a report that home-grown political violence was possible from right-wing groups.

Like Tim McVeigh. Remember him? I guess because his victims were overwhelmingly federal government employees, that was okay with people like the nuts in Lafayette Park, and the hate-mongers on Fox.

expensive pizza

2009-04-15T07:28:00.002-04:00

This Washington Post on-line article describes how an Ashburn family is trying to save money in the current economic crisis.

Father Michael said they took the two kids to the National Zoo in DC for an outing. Said Michael, "by the time we paid for pizza, two cups of coffee, hot chocolate and parking, it came to $100. We're not going to D.C. again."

How much was that pizza, dude?

pay your taxes

2009-04-15T07:26:00.002-04:00

No, you can't become a trust and not pay taxes. Yes, the 16th Amendment applies to YOU and there is a legal basis for collecting federal income tax. Yes, you are a citizen of the United States, not just of Mississippi or Colorado or wherever.

Calling yourself a tax denier or tax defier is fine. But you might end up in the slammer. Which is paid for by my taxes.

So just pay your damn taxes, ok?

boring wasn't so bad

2009-04-10T07:53:00.002-04:00

Remember when banks were boring? Paul Krugman does. It wouldn't be a bad thing to bring some of that boredom back to the financial sector. Not saying everything should return to 1970, but some serious regulation and oversight - and getting rid of some of the perverse incentives that helped lead to the current financial snafu - would be a nice idea.

It might be boring for the bankers, who may have to settle for being just rich instead of rich and exciting. Too bad.

selectively applying their catholic principles

2009-04-09T08:04:00.003-04:00

A bunch of priests from the Congregation of the Holy Cross are warning Notre Dame that it will burn in hell and snakes will eat everybody and flames will consume the campus if that evil, evil man Barack Obama is allowed to deliver the commencement address next month.

I exaggerate slightly, but those priests and a bunch of bishops are all exercised about it because Obama supports abortion rights.

I clearly didn't get the memo when the Catholic Church became a one-issue organization. I mean, they had de facto President George W. Bush as a commencement speaker too. It was in 2001, so before Bush invaded Iraq on trumped-up charges. But still, Bush's support for capital punishment was well known. So much for the culture of life.

a couple of unrelated thoughts

2009-04-07T08:18:00.002-04:00

Two recent columns struck a chord with me. First, Maureen Dowd has been writing columns almost completely free of snarkiness lately. She did a good job in this one though describing Obama's European adventure and his ability to get along well with his fellow leaders through simple things like letting them go first in press conferences - and his ability to adapt. Sounds like basic stuff until you remember the permanent smirk of our former de facto President.

And Richard Cohen made an interesting observation about how people like Larry Summers and David Axelrod have sacrificed millions in income to work for the Obama Administration. People did the same in the Bush regime too, although some of them never really left their lobbying jobs when they went to dismantle environmental protections on behalf of the American people...

a sad return, the right decision

2009-04-06T17:16:00.002-04:00

Staff Sergeant Phillip Myers was killed in Afghanistan over the weekend. He returned to the US on Sunday. And the ceremony surrounding Sgt. Myers's return to American soil at Dover Air Force Base was covered by the media, with the permission of Myers' widow.

The decision whether to permit media coverage of such sad returns should lie purely with the family. I can't say whether the Myers family's decision was right - but it is right that it was left to them to decide, rather than having a blanket ban on all such coverage as was the case under the de facto Bush Administration.

The military takes these things seriously. They treat the fallen soldiers with incredible, soul-moving respect. I wish the Old Guard had less call for its services.

iowa supreme court, ok!

2009-04-04T18:52:00.003-04:00

In upholding a lower-court ruling that struck down a state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, the Iowa Supreme Court summarized the issue very well. In one sentence.

The justices wrote: "We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective."

Precisely.

Anyway, not all Iowans are happy at this ruling, which effectively legalizes gay marriage there.

Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King said, "This is an unconstitutional ruling and another example of activist judges molding the Constitution to achieve their personal political ends."

1. In our systems it is the courts that determine constitutionality, not whack-job congressmen like King. 2. What personal political ends does he think the entire Iowa Supreme Court is advancing? I doubt any of them run out to get into a same-sex marriage. It amuses and worries me how so many right-wingers take this sort of thing so personally.

After all, gay marriage is just becoming acceptable and in some instances legal. Not mandatory.

g20

2009-04-03T09:05:00.002-04:00

The G20 summit in London didn't suck. As Steven Pearlstein noted, Obama got most of what he wanted, the US showed flexibility in an international forum, last demonstrated some time before January 20, 2001, and hopefully the agreements will help bring about economic recovery and make another similar financial melt-down less likely.

So although not the be-all and end-all, it worked out pretty decently. And Queen Elizabeth doesn't seem to mind that Michelle Obama made a friendly gesture and touched her.

another sign the bush era is over

2009-04-03T09:03:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama's administration has nominated Robert M. Groves to head the Census Bureau.

Groves actually understands demographics, surveying, and censuses. In other words, he is qualified.

Truly, George W. Bush is no longer in the (white) house.

a good decision but NOT a vindication

2009-04-02T04:23:00.004-04:00

Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the judge to dismiss the federal corruption case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, because the prosecution team has repeatedly screwed up, for example not turning over evidence to the defense.

Now that is NOT a vindication for Ted Stevens. There is still the question of Stevens accepting gifts worth over a quarter of a million dollars from "friends," many of whom had business before Congress.

But it is a very good decision by Holder. Prosecutors have a responsibility to make sure they have the case lined up correctly and to be above-board. Despite the fact that Stevens is almost certainly guilty of accepting bribes, Holder made the right call, and I imagine the judge will dismiss the case.

Oh and by the way - can you imagine any of former de facto President Bush's Attorneys General dismissing a case against a member of the Democratic Party because of inappropriate behavior by the prosecutors? Of course not. The Bush Justice Department was more likely to FIRE prosecutors for refusing to charge Democrats when evidence was not there, rather than to fire them for tampering with evidence or just not following correct procedures.

The case was screwed up; the Public Integrity Section at Justice clearly needs reform. But a big nod to Holder for making a difficult but appropriate call. Even if it lets an arrogant jerk like Ted Stevens walk.

accounting

2009-04-01T03:02:00.003-04:00

Friedman's right in making the analogy about accounting practices not covering depletion of resources and pollution of earth, air, and water.

And ultimately, a toxic environment - or an environment changed to a new form never experienced by civilization before - is a lot more dangerous than fancy derivatives based on sub-prime mortgages.

and for what?

2009-03-29T07:35:00.002-04:00

Hey, you know how the de facto Bush Administration had Abu Zubaida tortured in our name? The Bush crowd said it got us valuable information and stopped terror attacks.

Except it turns out it did NOT. The best info they got from Abu Zubaida was from before the waterboarding and other torture began. And professionals in the government say it stopped NOTHING.

So they tortured and besmirched our name. For nothing.

And speaking of torture, the following six ex-Bush officials may want to cancel their vacation to Spain: Alberto Gonzales, Doug Feith, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee; and William Haynes II. A Spanish court is considering bringing charges against them for their role in providing legal cover for the torture at Guantanamo...

first you gotta know where it's all coming from

2009-03-27T06:54:00.002-04:00

Glad to see the new Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is moving to establish a greenhouse gas registry - a census of how much carbon, methane, etc that are being belched into the atmosphere.

You gotta know where it's coming from and in what quantities to try to do something about it. Funny, ex-de facto President George W. Bush never got around to doing this, even though it was a plan passed by Congress. Sort of a pocket veto.

financial regulation might be a good idea

2009-03-26T06:40:00.001-04:00

I look forward to seeing what is in the Geithner's proposed ideas for regulating financial firms. From the Post, we see that it would "define which financial firms are sufficiently large and important to be subjected to this increased regulation. Those firms would be required to hold relatively more capital in their reserves against losses than smaller firms, to demonstrate that they have access to adequate funding to support their operations, and to maintain constantly updated assessments of their exposure to financial risk."

Gosh, doesn't that seem like the kind of thing a responsible firm would do ANYWAY? The fact that somebody has to regulate simple prudence is an argument in favor of regulation.

As for regulating derivatives and being given the power to shut down non-bank financial firms, well I think the fine example of AIG, the bail-out that keeps on bailing, is probably a good indicator of why such abilities are probably a Good Idea.

john hope franklin

2009-03-26T06:38:00.001-04:00

Prominent American race/civil rights historian John Franklin Hope has died, at the age of 94. His book "The Militant South, 1800-1861" is one of the best things I have ever read. RIP.

"it's a secret" is not a permissable defense

2009-03-25T05:06:00.002-04:00

It doesn't matter whether it was the de facto Bush Administration, or the Obama Administration, but dismissing lawsuits based on the premise that to defend against the lawsuit would require uncovering state secrets is NOT legitimate in a democracy.

sometimes it's okay to praise republicans

2009-03-24T05:34:00.002-04:00

Republicans in the Senate are not keen to move the "Tax the Bonus" bill the House passed last week.

Their motives may be questionable. But delay is the best thing for that turkey of a bill. Delay, followed by its quiet death.

I take a back seat to nobody in decrying the increasing disparity between executive pay and what the rest of us get, about the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots in America. But as I said before, such a bill endangers the trillion-dollar efforts the Federal government is undertaking to revive the financial sector.

And it's a bit crass to focus such a tax on such a narrow class of earners. Not a great precedent. Don't give the GOP any ideas. Maybe they would like to propose a 90% tax on income above $50,000 for any doctor that performs abortions...

treasury's new plan

2009-03-24T05:27:00.002-04:00

Tim Geithner has a new plan to use $100 billion to help take some bad assets off of the banks' hands so they can start lending again.

It's all complicated. I admit to worrying that the fact that would-be buyers don't think those toxic assets are worth near as much as the would-be sellers think is a fundamental problem. As the Washington Post editors said, "If all goes according to plan, the market know-how of the private firms will lead to maximally efficient deployment of government resources, and taxpayer losses will be relatively modest."

Umm, isn't the so-called LACK of market know-how, aka judgment, the reason we are in this mess in the first place? Not confidence-inspiring.

And I know Paul Krugman, who knows a thing or two, is despairing of the whole thing - which is in essence a nice big fat subsidy, with the taxpayer sharing in the potential upside, but owning 100% of the downside.

But what worries me most about it is that Wall Street LIKES it, and the Dow Jones went way up. We need to get out of the mindset that what is good for Wall Street is necessarily good for America, and away from the misconception that a day or even a week or a month of a rising stockmarket means ANYTHING.

I still think we should wrap up some of these banks like the FDIC does routinely. We don't want to let zombies roam the financial landscape, as was the case for Japan through-out their stagnant 1990s.

leave those animals alone

2009-03-21T06:13:00.002-04:00

Florida and Alaska are both considering laws banning bestiality, following incidents of men having sex with various animals.

I tend to be a "keep the government out of the bedroom" kind of guy, but I am completely behind Florida and Alaska on this one. And the argument isn't based on what I think is gross or fun or whatever. It's the same argument that should be applied to other acts involving sex that we deem crimes.

The lack of consent.

Animals can't give informed consent to have sex. So banning sex with them is like having laws for statutory rape, or against having sex with somebody in a coma, or somebody who is for whatever reason incapable of giving informed consent.

If they can't say or nod "yes", assume you should go somewhere else for your thrills. And dogs, sheeps, goats etc can't say yes.

self-regulation can kill

2009-03-20T07:27:00.002-04:00

It's shocking, simply shocking, that when for-profit organizations are responsible for assessing the safety and soundness of how a business operates, cozy relationships between the auditors and auditees sometimes spring up, and things that should not be acceptable are covered up, swept aside. In fact, sometimes these organizations are actually PAID by the company, let's call them Company A, they purport to be overseeing.

Sometimes, you end up with another business, let's call them Company B, that decides to inspect the operations of Company A themselves - and find that it is NOT being run in a safe, sound way. But Company B of course has no obligation to blow the whistle on Company A, and so the malfeasance continues unabated until something goes wrong, and people are hurt badly.

In THIS particular instance, I'm talking peanuts. Company A, the Peanut Corporation of America of salmonella fame, and Company B, Nestle, which decided NOT to buy PCA's peanuts after seeing the shit on the floor.

But it sure sounds like Wall Street, doesn't it? Substitute rating agencies like Standard & Poors instead of inspectors like American Institute of Baking International (which gave PCA's operations passing grades). When Standard & Poors and their fellow rating agencies gave AA ratings to securities including all sorts of dubious mortgages, they were essentially telling us all that those securities were safe to consume. In the case of peanuts, several people have died.

The credit rating agencies contributed to destroying Wall Street and the economy by calling those rat-turd infested CDOs "prime investment material."

Even Alan Greenspan now realizes that allowing industries to "self-regulate" (which means "minimally regulate") is NOT effective.

cutting off the nose spites the face

2009-03-20T07:09:00.004-04:00

I don't necessarily believe those AIG employees deserve that $165 million in bonuses. But I do believe it is dumb for Congress to pass a law imposing a punitive tax on bonuses of firms that are getting bail-out money.

Yeah, sure there is the question of the rather odd way the financial sector tends to structure its compensation - bonuses are a normal and expected part of the overall pay, just paid out as "bonuses" to keep base compensation down because there are tax advantages for the companies to do that. I'm fine with fixing that loophole.

But in the short run, this bonus tax is dumb because it might cause the leadership - people who get paid bonuses - of some financial institutions to decide to put their personal interest ahead of that of the shareholders and indeed of the country as a whole and decline federal assistance. That may not cause their bank to fail, but it may well constrain their ability to lend. And that will put a damper on the economy, deflating some of the already inadequate stimulus package and keeping the squeeze on credit a little bit tighter.

I'm sure President Obama will sign it, and a lot of people will cheer for it. But it's dumb. To claw back some of that $165 million, we are undermining the effectiveness of the TRILLION dollars-plus the US government and the Federal Reserve have poured into the system.

And besides, as Steven Pearlstein notes, there are other things we SHOULD be riled up about.

keep your finger away, doc

2009-03-19T04:14:00.002-04:00

Hey, whaddaya know? Those PSA blood tests for prostate cancer "saves few lives and leads to risky and unnecessary treatments for large numbers of men". Large numbers? Apparently, a positive biopsy leads to risky and painful treatment when the fact is, only 1 out of 50 guys with that diagnosis actually ever get prostate cancer.

But gosh, they are just so profitable, let's keep on doing them, right? What else does a specialist have to do?

who gave the order to torture?

2009-03-17T06:14:00.001-04:00

That's the question. There should be an investigation to see who gave the authority to torture. Because it was a policy decision made somewhere pretty high up in the US government...

As Anne Applebaum writes, The guilty, however senior, should be named, forced to testify and called to account -- because the rule of law, and nothing else, is what makes us exceptional.

torture, says red cross

2009-03-16T09:25:00.003-04:00

The International Red Cross keeps its reports on conditions at POW camps confidential; that is so that it can gain access. But its report on Abu Ghraib was obtained and leaked somehow by professor and author Mark Danner. It confirms what has been alleged - systematic ill-treatment of high-value prisoners in a manner consistent with torture, the word used by the Red Cross.

The bad guys in question all were consistent in describing their treatment. But "A U.S. official familiar with the report said, 'It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves.'"

But surely these high-value terrorists were kept isolated, right? If so, to make such consistent claims would tend to confirm the validity of what the Red Cross found. If they were making it up or were exaggerating, they would be unlikely to come up with the same consistent story...

farmer wants to secede from california

2009-03-14T07:07:00.002-04:00

California farmer Virgil Rogers wants to divide California into two. He wants to separate coastal California - you know, the part of the state with 90% of the people - from the interior.

Why? Because “Those Hollywood types don’t have any idea what’s going on out here on the farms.” Seems old Mr. Rogers is upset that city folk "just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.” And now Proposition 2 has banned the tight confinement of egg-laying hens, veal calves and sows.

There are other things Hollywood types don't know about what's going on out on the farms. They don't know about the fat farm subsidies they get, cash from you and me to them. They don't know about the subsidized water rates they pay - that we are taking water from the Owens Valley and Mexico in order to allow farmers to grow alfalfa in the DESERT.

So if we're gonna do some truth telling, Mr. Rogers, let's make sure we do it in both directions. The fact is, rural-dominated legislatures (like the US Senate) are reactionary, farm-protectionist outfits. Believe it or not, legislatures don't exist solely for the sake of farmers. They represent, they protect the interests of us ALL. That includes the interests of farmers, and the interests of the OTHER 98% of Americans.

kurtz reporting on comedians doing kurtz' job

2009-03-14T07:02:00.002-04:00

Jon Stewart jumped all over CNBC star Jim Cramer on The Daily Show the other night, reports Howard Kurtz, for CNBC's failure to reveal the bullshit CEOs were peddling on their show.

Remember, Jon Stewart is a comedian. And Jon Stewart, Kurtz reports, is trashing the news media for failing to do its job. In this case, for taking all of the stuff the Wall Street types were saying at face value.

Do you think when Howard Kurtz writes a story like this, he thinks "gosh, Jon Stewart just did something I could do, since I am a reporter who is supposed to cover the media"?

misplaced confidence

2009-03-12T05:33:00.002-04:00

David Ignatius isn't entirely off base. The current economic crisis IS a crisis, and it is like the phony war at the beginning of World War II - with worse to come, I fear.

But he then criticizes the Obama Administration for not having enough BUSINESS PEOPLE in the CABINET.

Hello, David, have you been paying attention? Who the hell do you think was running Countryside while it churned out more and more mortgages to people who couldn't pay them? Or with insidious terms like "interest only" for five years? It was business people.

Who do you think was working at places like AIG and Lehman Brothers taking those dubious mortgages, dicing them into tiny pieces, blending them with less dubious mortgages and a few mortgages that looked rock solid, and offering them for sale as if the solid portion would make the whole financial instrument less risky? It was business people.

Who do you think was working at the rating agencies like Standard & Poors that then looked at those steaming turd-piles called collateralized debt obligations and other derivatives, and decided they were prime-grade AAA rated instruments? It was business people.

Who do you think is running General Motors and Chrysler and Ford, and decided to put all their eggs in the SUV basket, failing to compete on innovation or economy and therefore shocked, shocked when the market changed? It was business people.

Hell, for that matter, do you remember how after George W. Bush was selected as the de facto President by the Supreme Court, that many assumed he would have a very competent people because it would be staffed by a bunch of MBAs? In other words, even in the case of the failed Bush Administration, it was business people.

Jeez Ignatius, it is okay now to come off of the hero-worshiping attitudes of business people that has dominated the mainstream media in the 1990s and 2000s up until about oh March of 2008 (and can still be found at CNBC and other places, who are too set in their ways to learn).

Yes, many of them are smart and careful and wise and love their mothers. But others of them are shallow or stupid, in their place due to luck and/or connections from college or family (hello George W. Bush).

And further, most business people have no more idea than Ignatius or me or my pet beagle about how to run a government agency, or how to fix the economy.

opposition research

2009-03-11T06:20:00.004-04:00

Hey, a biologist at Liberty "University" brings his Advanced Creation Studies "biology" class students to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

They look at the dinosaurs and discuss how they were created on the sixth day and all lived on the earth with mammoths and humans. They talk about how the earth is 6000 years old. They look at all of the stuff the Smithsonian, that proud bastion of evolution, puts out their to support the Darwinian case.

Class instructor David DeWitt says, "As an educator, I want them to see the most up-to-date material." And says "We come every year, because I don't hold anything back from the students."

"I don't hold anything back from the students?" Somehow I doubt it. There is no way to make a creationist case without holding something back.

Now I can understand his students being ignorant and/or faithful enough, depending on whether you feel like being factual or charitable, to believe in creationism, especially the literal young-earth creationism that DeWitt and his colleagues espouse.

I don't understand how somebody can get a biology degree from a reputable university like Michigan State and a PhD in neuroscience from a reputable university like Case Western Reserve and still believe in the young earth myth (to call it a "hypothesis" or "theory" would be to grossly overstate its credibility.

The human capacity for self-delusion truly is impressive. And whenever I read or hear young earth or any OTHER type of literal creationists explain their cases, all I can think is truly, their logic is dizzying.

another reminder that george w. bush isn't president

2009-03-09T08:17:00.002-04:00

President Obama is going to lift restrictions on stem cell research. And the White House is going to issue guidelines that should shield science from politics.

Good signs. Sometimes science says things I don't like. For example, I really don't like what most reputable scientists believe is likely to happen as we spew more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere; global warming, climate change - I don't like them.

But that doesn't mean you ignore them.

the best reporting yet on the pathetic state of financial and business reporting

2009-03-08T05:19:00.005-04:00

It doesn't pay to "bail out" of an appearance on the Daily Show. Watch this clip, and enjoy it. The first two-plus minutes are Jon Stewart skewering Rick Santelli over his little rant on the floor of the NYSE recently - and for backing out of an appearance.

The rest of the clip is a funny but sobering compilation of things CNBC has gotten wrong over the past couple of years about things like whether AIG would require federal assistance (CNBC said no), about their hardball interview with scam artist "Sir" Allen Stanford (question: is it fun to be a billionaire), about whether Bear Sterns was in trouble (they said no; it collapsed six days later), about whether Lehman Brothers risked the same fate as Bear (CNBC said no; it collapsed three months later), about whether Merril Lynch needed to raise more capital (CNBC said no, they were wrong, and Merril Lynch is no more).

You can hear the audience as the Daily Show intersperses Jim Cramer's boosterish "buy buy buy" advice and softball interviews by lame CNBC personalities with plain graphics pointing out how utterly wrong they were. The audience kinda laughs, but it's a pained groan of a laugh. They get it, that our allegedly top business and financial network was completely in the pockets of the people they purported to be covering. Who were, of course, often the people buying advertising on CNBC and thereby paying the salaries of Maria Bartiromi, Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and the rest.

So is it any surprise they failed so completely? Nope. They couldn't afford to succeed. It's as if the sports pages of the New York Times had to rely exclusively on advertising revenues from the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, and Roger Clemens.

So watch, and groan. Once again, the Daily Show is providing the best reporting on top stories for the day. And it's supposed to be the one doing fake news. The others just fake doing the news.

(That embed thing may not be right. Try this link.)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

rail?

2009-03-08T04:59:00.002-04:00

The Obama Administration is talking up high-speed rail, both to reduce congestion at airports and as the sort of project to spend stimulus funds on.

I've ridden high speed rails in Japan and Europe, and I like them. But the scale is different there - cities are closer together. In the US, I fear the critical mass for such rail will be limited to a few key city pairs, as is the case now where the only significant rail-riding going on is in the DC-New York-Boston corridor.

Will Californians ride trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles? I dunno...

bunning for senate 2010

2009-03-06T05:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a potential Democratic pickup in 2010 - the Kentucky senate seat held by Jim Bunning. And the GOP knows it, so they're trying to get the cranky old pitcher to retire gracefully.

Doesn't seem to be Bunning's style.

But isn't ex-Bushie Phil Musser a bit unfair when he says of Bunning, “He is perceived as being out-of-touch, hot-headed and generally counterproductive”?

I mean, how many Republicans does that describe?

everybody's in favor of health care reform...

2009-03-06T04:51:00.003-05:00

At least so it would appear from the health care summit President Obama held at the White House. Insurers, politicians, big business - all making positive noises that reform is needed, the current system fails many American patients and businesses, etc.

But I thought Utah Senator Robert Bennett (a Republican) sounded an appropriate warning. He agreed with "absolutely everything" Bill Clinton said in his 1993 address to Congress... but then disagreed with almost the entire plan.

From the Post: "Bipartisanship is not just a nice thing we say to each other before we touch gloves, go to our corners and come out swinging when the bell rings," Bennett said. Health reform will require "wrenching change," he added. If it is to succeed, political leaders in both parties will have to "join hands and jump off the cliff together."

I happen to think this can probably be done without 100% Republican support. But some would be good...

two more reminders that george w. bush is no longer president

2009-03-05T04:51:00.003-05:00

I occasionally have to remind myself that the de facto Bush Administration is over. Two items help bring that fact home.

First, President Obama has nominated Craig Fugate to be the head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency of "heck of a job Brownie" Katrina screw-up fame. And Fugate is actually qualified. He has headed Florida's Division of Emergency Management since 2001, and has done a good job in running the agency and responding to hurricanes. Fugate was first appointed by Jeb Bush, the competent Bush brother. And he is a choice that I can't imagine George W. having made. Hope he's up to date on his taxes.

And second, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers will testify about the Great US Attorney Massacre and their roles. Admittedly, it will be before the House Judiciary Committe, with no cameras or media present. But they WILL be subject to perjury if (?) they lie, and transcripts will be made and eventually published.

Not entirely perfect, but the perjury element is important.

rushing to suck up to rush

2009-03-04T05:37:00.002-05:00

It's fun watching Republicans like RNC chairman Michael Steele suck up to Rush Limbaugh, and hastening to grovel if they have the temerity to criticize the fat old oxycontin-popping "entertainer". Even if - ESPECIALLY if - they criticism is true.

So what does Rush bring to the GOP? Well, he has his 20 million ditto-head listeners. But hey, it's not like most of those guys (for guys they are, mostly) will leave the conservative precincts to cast a vote for a Democrat just because some Republican says something bad about old Rush.

Instead, they get to see Rush's face back in the headlines, helping remind independent voters that THIS is the Republican Party's de facto leader. Helping remind them of Limbaugh's appeals to latent racism, scare tactics, and the old stand-by, outright lies in the cause of reactionary radical Republicanism.

Helping remind them why they voted Democratic last time, and why they should do so next time.

the sins of the recent past

2009-03-03T03:51:00.001-05:00

The Sins of Torture and Covering Up

Speaking about the fact that the CIA destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations, spokesman George Little said "If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts."

Well then Mr Little, perhaps you would care to enlighten us. Because it doesn't look good. US government agencies, famous for their pack-rat tendencies, don't usually get rid of - destroy - documents and records like those videos lightly. Especially after court orders instructing their preservation are issued, as was the case here.

Face it, it looks bad. If the Agency has some "facts" that would better explain what to the uninitiated might look like "destruction of evidence of torture" or "covering their ass", maybe they would like to share with the class? Otherwise, I think we can all safely assume (even if we can't prove it in a court of law) that the CIA has intentionally destroyed proof that it was torturing people, in the name of the American people. Which is sickening. And illegal (torture and destruction of evidence).

The Sins of Trampling on Our Rights

Meanwhile, a batch of Bush-era legal memos post-911 have been released. Seems those memos, including some by the infamous John Yoo, were all rescinded because they contained "errors" in legal reasoning. Although some of them weren't rescinded until the last WEEK of the woeful de facto Bush era.

"Errors"? How kind. They weren't "errors." They were clear efforts by lawyers who were more loyal to Bush-Cheney than to the Constitution to provide legal cover for illegal and unconstitutional actions. They weren't errors, they were POLICIES.

let's be more like canada, eh?

2009-03-02T08:11:00.002-05:00

We like to make fun of our Canadian neighbors. But you know, they have some good things going for them.

Like health care. Nick Kristof has a good column picking apart the kneejerk reaction to the idea of national health care that "we'll all have to wait months for an operation like in Canada."

Well, a health care system that gives us, at the price of the highest expenditure on health care per capita in the world ($6800), a lower life expectancy than Cyprus and children that die twice as often as in Portugal and women that die in childbirth three times more often than in Greece maybe isn't the grand bargain you think. Especially when you remember that when you lose your job, you lose your insurance too - a double hit.

Maybe the Canadian system isn't so bad.

And now as we pump cash into AIG and Citibank and count the dead and dying banks, we can look north and see a country full of healthy banks. In fact, Canada has the healthiest banking system in the world. Why? A combination of cautious regulation and cautious moves by the banks themselves.

So personally I'd love to be a little bit more like Canada. Although I will draw the line at hockey.