MoronCowboy.com

Republicons Behaving Badly (~Surprise!~)

2009-07-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Caribou Barbie for Prez

So, this a real surprise! Sarah abdicates her governor's mansion for nonsensical, incoherent reasons. Check Gail Collins in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/opinion/04collins.html

Your ever-watchful Demon dares to opine that if running for President is on her agenda, it would be the greatest thing EVER for this country ~ the finishing nails on the coffin of a GOP that, sadly, refuses to recognize that it is dead, and persists in walking upright (loosely speaking). The uber-right-winger of Alaska made such a hash of it in the 1st go-round, we can hardly wait to see what gaffes she'll pull in the next.

More: Exhibit B: John Boehner, a sterling example of the kind of knee-jerk whinging, whining and ideological wailing denial of climate change that has irked us citizen-onlookers for years now. Not that a member of Congress should not be able to take a critical view of a particular bill, no. What offends Your Demon is that John and his ilk seem to think they still matter on the large stage. All that grandstanding and orotund oratory is just wearisome, dude. Give it a rest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/us/politics/05hill-web.html

Go into the light, my misguided friends, while the rest of us go about the heavy work of mopping up after eight long years of your Unholy messes!

Bizness as Usual, No Change: Another Voice (Is Obama Listening?)

2009-04-20T01:21:00.001-07:00

Those Cadillac-Driving Welfare Queens on Wall Street~surprise! still no accountability!

On C-span tonight, Janet Tavakoli, a very sharp, succinct financial expert, took on topics such as Tim Geithner ("part of the problem, not the solution"), "financial meth labs", incompetence at the SEC, "backdoor bailouts," and the global financial meltdown being created by the very people Obama now hopes (improbably) will "fix" it, "widespread fraud," a "bought Congress"not doing a damned thing about it, and, of course, still- unanswered questions why the mainstream media "isn't nailing them" all.

Present policies are "misguided... we're delaying fixing the problem by giving comfort to the financial system...unwarranted comfort."

"Instead of shutting them down (e.g. JPMorgan Chase), they just accelerated..."

"Hank Paulson was 'an interested man' who made decisions to the benefit of his former employer. This myth about Goldman Sachs being the best and the brightest is similar the AIG myth."

"The taxpayer is foooting the bill for a lot of malfeasance and Congress is not questioning it...it wasn't an innocent mistake, it wasn't the 'Black Swan'..."we have a lot of 'interested men'" pulling strings to benefit themselves at taxpayer expense.

"Citigroup should have been put into receivership instead of getting $40 billion," and (still another) "non-transparent back-door bailout which propped up the price of Citi's stock."

"There is no magic bullet answer, but we need to get back to prudent finance...there are a lot of sound banks, but we have to go after the bad guys. We can't keep bailing out the bad banks...there's a lot of lying going on [regarding JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon's assertions that toxic assets are somehow no longer toxic].

Click on the Flash video to watch:

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=285329-1

What's scarier, and not at all unlikely, is more of the same in the new(er) proposal to put taxpayers at risk while encouraging privateers to buy up toxic assets ~ there is, apparently, NOT A THING preventing the same 'interested men' bidding on and driving up the price of their own stinking garbage, leaving taxpayers holding the bag--in other words, the same old shenanigans. See here: (tip o' the tinfoil hat to Anonymous Liberal):http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2009/04/reconsidering-geithner-plan.html

bailoutmoney

2009-03-30T15:44:00.001-07:00

Cadillac-Driving Welfare Queens in the 21st Century

2009-03-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

Right-Wing Free-Marketeers Scream "Socialism" at News that GM CEO Asked to Resign by White House

Nobody listens~

Your Demon's "quote of the day," from the Washington Post/Slate website commentary on the sudden precipitous decline of confidence in the MBA degree:

"If we ask why no one stopped these people, however, we come right back to business school. It was the market fundamentalism that dominates business school thinking that assured us that markets are self-regulating. It was the management myth—the idea that there is some specialized, teachable body of expertise that constitutes management—that confirmed the strange notion that these people were capable of regulating themselves. And it was the shareholder-value model from Business 101 that said all you need to do is load up managers with tons of stock options and they'll be sure to do the right thing. These aren't just ideas that happen to be taught at business school; these are the ideas that provide the rationale for the existence of the schools.

"The only semblance of a theory behind modern business education is that it purportedly produces 'experts' in shareholder-value maximization who are capable of forming an ideal, self-regulating market.

"It's a neat theory, of course, and pretty radical, too. But not since the fall of the Soviet Union has a system of belief woken up with so many parking tickets on its windshield."

Extra-Credit reading assignment: on the GOP's exploitation of the "Lemon Populism" eight years of their concerted efforts did so much to bring about:

"The clearest sign that the recent strain of populism may turn out to be a lemon is how quickly the GOP rushed to embrace it. Conservatives are now running attack ads against AIG bonuses—which is pretty rich, considering that the AIG bailout began under a conservative administration whose guiding economic theory was to reward risk and to lower taxes on high compensation. Republicans aren't running those ads to usher in a new era of equality; they want to poison the well against government action of any kind, from the economy to health care."

http://www.slate.com/id/2214946/?from=rss

Wall Street Impervious to Self-Created Global Economic Meltdown

2009-03-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

AIG Bonuses Threaten Wall Streeters' American Way of Life; America's "Marie Antionette Moment"?

Sad to say, it seems to this Demon that Obama's normally close-to-perfect ear for political pitch has failed him where his ongoing efforts to turn the problem over to the very people who created it are concerned, and who, Demon dares opine, counted on "helicopter Ben" to bathe Wall Street in taxpayer cash and politely look away while Geinther and Dodd tucked obscene bonuses in their tailored suit pockets.

Demon is thinking that Wall Street knew damned well that they wouldn't be allowed to go under, no matter how egregious their behavior. Thus the extreme arrogance and preposterous sense of entitlement.

Everyone, it seems, has been caught flatfooted by the "populist" outrage that ensued. Good news: It's the first time in many years that your Demon has been gratified to know that Americans ARE indeed paying attention.

Better late than never. It is the equivalent of paying a finder's fee/reward to the arsonist who burned your house down, and while it would have been much preferable to have in place prophylactic mechanisms to prevent such a thing iin the first place, it HAS happened, and somehow the privileged moneyed classes who benefitted when times were good (and they were very, very good for a long time, for certain people, at least-- I can't resist the urge to say toldja so) have managed to convince the humble taxpayer that we must throw more heaps of our cash into the funeral pyre and plague them NOT them with our bothersome requests for accountability.

Too, I am baffled and mystified that Obama isn't taking steps to discipline the Welfare Queens and strip them of their positions and the temptation that will surely cause more of the same -- oh, silly me!

I forget--THEY own the government and representatives; we don't. They own our taxpayer funds, and will"tell" us what they intend to do with them. They ruined the global economy, and they still have jobs, marshalling our money around! Quite a feat. "A" for ingenuity, boys!

Since Obama, who is normally quite astute about his press, seems to have missed it, I'm doing the public service of providing a link to Bill Moyers discussing with the former head of the International Monetary Fund how third-world-government-by-teeny-pointy-headed-and-tin-pot dictatorship- self-serving oligarchy this all feels. Hardly fitting for what was once the world's most powerful economy, and one that had supposedly learned its lessons in the Great Depression of the last century.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02132009/profile.html

Keeping in mind, of course, that Democracy-for-sale got a big boost in the Clinton Administration, and "corporate Democrats," of whom Obama is rumored to be one (along with Nancy Peolosi, who was heard opining a day or two ago that there's no need to pursue the matter of the bonuses anymore because the oligarchs at AIG have surely gotten the message by now). It's head-spinning, that's what it is.

More today: from Harper's running commentary blog:

http://www.harpers.org/subjects/WashingtonBabylon

But that's not all of the scandalous story regarding the hijacking of "democracy" in service of the gluttonous rich wanting to get much, much, richer--it's the fact that such wealth has simultaneously loosed itself from any particular geographic confines, making the "construct" of a home country such as America irrelevant to anyone but the poor bastards who don't have enough money to relocate, nor a place to go that's generating real middle class jobs and less economically perilous ground. The world has been made safe for Cannibal Capitalism.

And that's what really scares me, as well as the fact that, just when we need to put our heads together and arrive at a solution, somehow make our politicians (who are, after all, OUR employees) as well as the cannibal captains of commerce understand that they cannot expect us to rescue them when they've also destroyed the economy and our ability to work our way out of this mess for a long time to come, we're still hampered by the fact that we're fighting "culture wars" over "wedge issues" invented by the extreme right-wingers whose political greed matched, if not exceeded, that of the cannibal capitalists themselves.

So, while I support Obama generally, I also think his political instincts tend toward finding a center--but, what was the "center" is nonexistent now, thanks to the extreme right wing and their dogmatic (often comically so) positions on everything over the past eight years. They have arrogantly overplayed their hand, and most people are sick to death of their whining, their ideology-trumps-reality stance, and their unpatriotic obstructionism. I have hope that Obamawill soon realize that to a certain (but unusually vocal) minority of them he absolutely can't do anything right, so he may as well write them off and go forward rather continue to try fruitlessly to appease them.

I also have the sense that, if he thinks he has political will behind him, he will move more boldly -- he is no one's definition of a coward. I am heartened, but I still wish he'd move more quickly to clean house where the self-serving and self-interested Wall Street oligarchy is concerned.

WOW!!!

2008-11-04T22:54:00.001-08:00

Ponder this electoral map and consider how close it was: http://news.yahoo.com/election/2008/dashboard

As Nation Waits With Bated Breath, Bushco Pursues Nefarious Last-Days To Do List

2008-11-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

We'll all be glued to our tubes tonight, on this, the most important Presidential election eve in recent memory, waiting for the early election returns--more than half of us, your Demon ventures to opine, ready to leave the country, or at least seriously contemplate it--if the man above wins, others ready to mourn and tear their clothes if he doesn't, with some religious types opting to sit this one out in protest (if my admittedly inexpert polling holds true).

But the current occupants of the White House aren't sitting on their keisters, oh no (for a change).

Besides securing access to Iraq's oil for friends and contributors a month or so ago (sorry, your Demon has been so harried of late she forgets where she read it, but is certain Cheney had a paw in it), today's New York Times points out that "President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.
Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush’s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come."

If you're not sufficiently motivated to get out and vote (and there's time enough to do it) read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html

Protection For Irresponsible Free-Marketeers

2008-10-25T15:40:00.001-07:00

But Not, Necessarily, For YOU, Plebe!

With today's news that Paulson is about to funnel taxpayer funds to more insurance comapanies, despite the fact that he really doesn't have the authority to do so (but since when does the absence of Congressional authority mean anything to a neocon corporate capitalist--just ignore valiantly all signs that fantastical ideologically-based thinking hasn't worked and then run to Congress with a three-page proposal and they'll have to pass it or risk losing their jobs along with the rest of the plebes!), we get a clearer sense of how neo-socialism is going to work--more robbing from the middle and working classses to distribute upwards, with no or few apparent consequences for the abject profligacy of the neo-robber barons of the past eight years.

Again, your Demon wants to know, where are the protections for the plebes whose wallets are being raided and futures mortgaged--you know, girls and boys--reworking of bankruptcy laws, usury laws on the terms and conditions of credit, and investigating whether insurance companies are going to continue to be able to charge average joes higher premiums based on problems with credit in the past--and what did that ever have to do, really, with insurabilty where products aimed at average people--home, auto, life--are concerned, anyway?

While you're at it, Congress, start considering how credit problems affect average people looking for jobs--if a position doesn't involve handling of or direct access to money, why is it relevant, why is it perfectly legal (still?) With the number of layoffs sure to be coming and the disastrous effects sure to be experienced by ordinary people, whatever their political affiliation, ignoring these problems even while funnelling taxpayer funds into a never-ending bailout of the politically connected wealthy interests who caused the problems in the first place would be a move fraught with danger to the pols who attempt it as well as the health of whatever democracy we have left.

I'm jus' sayin'...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/24/AR2008102401715.html

The Dress-Me Caribou Barbie Special

2008-10-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Conspicuous consumption, excess focus on the superficial to the detriment of substance, silly distractions, a cynical circus of the bizarre? Just biz-as-usual for the GOP, especially as Wall Street melts down and takes the global economy with it.

All of the hullabaloo over Sarah Palin's ginormous wardrobe expenses (including high-end baby clothes for the adorable special baby who's kept up way past his bedtime in order to be a campaign stage prop) has your Demon all atwitter today. After all, I am a woman, and nothing can ever be more important than looking good in the bright light of public opinion, most especially if one is a woman, and one who's had to bear 10 children in the frozen tundra at that (although having a ruggedly handsome snowmobile-racing, moose-shooting baby-making-machine of a husband who'll lie for you to avoid a Troopergate scandal ameliorates such harsh circumstances greatly).

So, take this post with a grain of salt, Sarah, all of us are just jealous cats--mmrrrow! hsss! spit!--and all of us women out here would not at all mind breaking our manicured nails to have your looks, your man, your babies, your God-given superstar status, and Tina Fey mocking--er, imitating, us on national TV (singlehandedly reviving Saturday Night Live to its halycon status for a nation that hasn't watched it since the '70's). And, now, your $150K wardrobe. Face it girls--we all want to be Sarah Palin--it's a fantasy sequence come true! We're just in mass denial and some feminist consciousness-raising is in order!

That's what the McCain campaign thinks, anyway, and the real reason they brought an empty-headed far-right wingnut on board, surfaces in force, finally, today. If anyone attacks you they can portray it as an attack against an historically disadvantaged minority, thereby stealing any thunder the opposition might be able to rally--if only he'd pander to his "natural" constituency, which he has assiduously so far avoided--and if only a McCain campaign aide hadn't been caught lying when she accused a big bad though unfortunately NONEXISTENT black man of robbing her and carving a backwards "B" in her face in supposed retaliation for her support of McCain.

"[McCain campaign spokesperson] Wallace said the media storm about Palin's wardrobe was a terrible disservice to her and said there seemed to be a 'double-standard for women in politics.'
'That any aspect of her shoes, clothes or appearance has become a distraction is a terrible commentary on the state of the media and politics. Let's get on with our great debate about the best direction for the country in these challenging times for our economy and our nation's security' she said. "

The politics of divisiveness is alive and well in the GOP, thanks to you, and they're hoping it will stoke the fires of the closet anti-affirmative action activists still buried deep within the GOP nut-wing hatchery base--those who imagine themselves the oppressed victims of all those liberal years of government affirmative-action regulations: you know, hiring preferences and all. It was really political all along, an attempt to displace white men from positions of centuries of entrenched power and influence (which they rightfully held). Sure, women and other-colored people can achieve things, but not more than the rest of the rabble and hoi-polloi who have to come to resent it, and mightily.

Or maybe the real reason they had to spend all that money to clothe you, Sarah, was that this photo got out: you definitely need some help dressing yourself if you think this outfit makes you look like anything but a streetwalker in desperate need of some grownup sartorial direction.

RNC Shells Out $150,000: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14805.html

McCain Camp Bemoans "Double Standard for Women in Politics: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE49N7JM20081024

Dollop of Lagniappe: McCain Volunteer Admits She Made Up Robbery Story: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/24/mccain-aide-admits-she-made-face-carving-story/?partner=RSS

Another "Business" Too Big To Fail

2008-10-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Even if the 'business of America is business' (and your Demon takes issue with that postulation--the true 'business' of America is looking out for the commonweal, of which moneyed interests are only a part),the bailout is nothing short of a bloodless coup.

~ Massive transfer of wealth from 'the people' threatens to succeed only in bankrupting America, cannibal capitalists win--all y'all can all go home (if you have one). Absolutely nothing to see here, folks , move on~

So, is it supremely fitting that the American Administration destined to be remembered only infamously as the worst, most unAmerican ever bestows as its parting gift a crippling deficit too big to be imagined, or what?

Of course, the Bush administration is not entirely to blame for creating such a huge debacle--its roots go back to Mr. Morning in America himself, Reagan--but for perfecting it and taking it to its logical and disastrous conclusion, and consistently treating the federal taxpayers' monies with an approach that amounts to "friends and contributors welcome to back the trucks up to the Treasury door and take it all away," and to years of conservative think tanks, letting lobbyists write legislation and appointing foxes like Paulson to guard the henhouse, we have years of concerted and tireless Republicon efforts to thank.

Wall Street has succeeded in extorting its bailout, mostly on its own terms. Where is legislation to help the little people--say a complete repeal of the dastardly bankruptcy legislation the credit card companies managed to push though, just for starters?

Face it, America--the worst President ever and his maleific friends have just succeeded in completely subverting democracy in the name of 'capitalism'--except that, like everything else in this Administration, with its penchant for trying to convince us that up is down and other disingenuous misnomners, the fact is that 'capitalism' has somehow succeeded in privatizing profits and socializing losses, the precise opposite of what we all supposed it to be.

And don't look now, but when you lose your job, and the creditors who are the beneficiaries of this bailout-shakedown come after you, there won't be any social services left to help you get back on your feet, nor any particularly effective laws to prevent them from coming after anything you might manage to salvage.

If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention, as the old saw goes, and yeah, what about the plan that Sweden successfully implemented when faced with the same situation, described in a New York Times article not so long ago?

As the WaPo reports, the amount of the bailout must be borrowed because, er, we really don't have that much money on hand: "What is clear is that the Treasury will have to borrow the money: The bill increases the legal debt limit by $700 billion, to $11.3 trillion."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301108.html

So what if America turns out to be "too big to fail?" Who's going to bail us out, and incidentally, own us?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081020/greider

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/opinion/03krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Nancy Change a l Her Mind About Something, At Least

2008-08-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

~ but not about anything that would have any immediate effect ~

Okay, it blows your Demon's mind, the extent to which Democrats are NOT doing a very good job of wresting the country's direction back from the belligerent, bellicose neocons who have done such a thorough job of undermining and eviscerating American democracy such that all but the hard-core dead-enders can see it clearly now.

What's to argue about, Demon wants to know? There couldn't be a clearer popular mandate to head away from the bankrupt policies by which the neocons have led (more like forced) us into our own destruction, nor a more important election, nor an opposition candidate who stands more clearly for McSame.

And still the Dems can't seem to get their shit together. On any position or policy matter you can name, instead of finding a way to articulate a position and STAND by it for more than a few brief seconds of a news soundbyte, they behave as if they're scared of their own shadows--and perhaps that's more truth than metaphor, because, at root, what's wrong with the Republican party is what's wrong with the Democratic party, only less so in this particular iteration circa 2008. That's why we're so hopelessly stuck in this either/or cycle, and WILL be until somebody comes along who has the courage to dream up something new and the facility to articulate it (hopefully with the nuanced complexity it deserves).

I had hoped, now that the Republicons have been in power so long they've been thorougly and completely corrupted by it, to the point that it's almost comical ~you can be certain at this point that anything issuing from a GOP mouth is spin, propaganda, a gross oversimplification, and, most commonly, all of the above. And still the Dems regularly fall into the trap Republicons set: the extremely dumbed-down policy debates that can be encapsulated in moronic, but pithy, electioneering slogans of which Karl Rove is master.

So it is with the absurd "drill here, drill now" mantra issuing recently from McSame in Sturgis, South Dakota, and the empty play-acting of those GOP Congresscritters who would have us believe that by merely talking about it, they made gas prices fall!

Of a piece with "the recession is all in your heads" and never mind the reality on ground~ which is, all but the most menial jobs have been outsourced abroad, you may not be able to stay in your home, you may have to sell your big-ass SUV, because otherwise you may not be able to afford groceries and your healthcare premiums. And oh, by the way. while you weren't looking, we did away completely with the social safety net, which you won't realize until you fall rudely to the ground, breaking all your metaphorical bones.

Oh well!

Your Demon is more than usually irate and excercised today because both Barack Obama and now, Nancy Pelosi, are being drawn into the same old traps, letting Republicans set the terms of the debate and being drawn into meaningless quibbles about effects while completely ignoring causes.

Nancy changes her mind re offshore drilling, from a U.K. paper,which seeks to explain why to a European audience why short-sighted Americans care more about gas prices than anything else, and how the illusory chimera of hope way, WAY down the road can possibly throw the most important American election in a century to a candidate who promises only to stay a disastrous worldwide course. They get it half-right:

"But energy policy has rapidly become the hot topic of the election, overtaking even Iraq or Georgia. In a country whose cultural and economic life is dominated by the car, there are no more passionate debates than over the doubling of petrol prices in the past couple of years."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/17/johnmccain.barackobama?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

The other half of the story, the part that really matters to those of us who have to live here and watch wearily as our Dems snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory yet again, is that, for some reason that escapes me entirely, the Dems aren't apparently able to take hold of the gift that so many years of GOP dominance and arrogance have delivered right to their doorsteps--and that is pervasive corruption on a scale that truly boggles the mind and should, in any sane and healthy democracy, be on the front pages every damned day.

That the multiple and still unresolved scandals generated by the Bush Administration over the past 8 years are left to fester, grow and infect the democratic process is a travesty that can be laid directly at the spineless Democrats' feet, including and especially Pelosi and Obama. Corruption and no-nonsense proactive proposals to clean it up should be the Democrats' rallying cry from here.

"Centrism" is not a political position so much as it is a survival strategy, a way of treading water while unbelievably vicious and nasty rightwingers have made of EVERYTHING a partisan issue. WAKE UP! The worst of them are gone now, marginalized, their theories and dire predictions completely discredited, having left everything in utter disarray. There could not be a better time to begin to turn things around, while the memories are fresh and the detritus lies in heaps around our feet.

Instead we get Dems who've internalized the empty rhetoric of their abusers and can't seem to find the courage to do anything more than tinker at the edges of disastrous neocon policy and practice in every last area that matters.

Update: Truthout, the indie news organization that's doing such a wonderful job of picking up news & keeping it alive for those of us not easily distracted by garbage and fluff ( a la Fox), reports today that the upcoming Democratic Convention will move more boldly to the left--even into dreaded progressive positions (*gasp*) that have been treated as political poison for the past several decades. Is there hope after all?
http://www.truthout.org/article/liberal-positions-gaining-popularity

It's The Absence Of Regulation, Stupid

2008-07-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

~ While McBush tries valiantly to convince us the recession is all in our heads, those of us still dwelling in the reality-based community know better~

For those of you out celebrating the fine summer evening weather who missed it, Bill Moyers on his Friday night Journal had an excellent show about how the subprime mortgage debacle has ravaged Cleveland, Ohio, how the Fed ignored it, leaving the city, after trying to pass banking regulations that the Ohio state governor and legislature ~ all Republicans, natch ~ defeated, to ultimately to file suit against lenders whose irresponsible pursuit of profits (in the complete absence of federal regulations) had them joining in the frenzy to bundle and sell shaky mortgages, reap profits, and divest themselves of the burden of carrying the loans before entire neighborhoods (and social structures) collapsed. TV well worth watching. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch.html

Last Thursday, E.J. Dionne wrote about the collapse of Reaganomics that "the biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.

"Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing.

"You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to 'grow the pie' is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is 'protectionism.'

"The old script is in rewrite. 'We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation,' Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview. He notes that in 1999 when Congress replaced the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act with a looser set of banking rules, 'we let investment banks get into a much wider range of activities without regulation.' This helped create the subprime mortgage mess and the cascading calamity in banking.

"While Frank is a liberal, the same cannot be said of Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet in a speech on Tuesday, Bernanke sounded like a born-again New Dealer in calling for 'a more robust framework for the prudential supervision of investment banks and other large securities dealers.' Bernanke said the Fed needed more authority to get inside 'the structure and workings of financial markets' because 'recent experience has clearly illustrated the importance, for the purpose of promoting financial stability, of having detailed information about money markets and the activities of borrowers and lenders in those markets.' Sure sounds like Big Government to me.

"This is the third time in 100 years that support for taken-for-granted economic ideas has crumbled. The Great Depression discredited the radical laissez-faire doctrines of the Coolidge era. Stagflation in the 1970s and early '80s undermined New Deal ideas and called forth a rebirth of radical free-market notions. What's becoming the Panic of 2008 will mean an end to the latest Capital Rules era.

"What's striking is that conservatives who revere capitalism are offering their own criticisms of the way the system is working. Irwin Stelzer, director of the Center for Economic Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute, says the subprime crisis arose in part because lenders quickly sold their mortgages to others and bore no risk if the loans went bad. 'You have to have the person who's writing the risk bearing the risk,' he says. 'That means a whole host of regulations. There's no way around that'"

"While some conservatives now worry about the social and economic impact of growing inequalities, Stelzer isn't one of them. But he is highly critical of 'the process that produces inequality'. 'I don't like three of your friends on a board voting you a zillion dollars,' Stelzer, who is also a business consultant, told me. 'a cozy boardroom back-scratching operation offends me.' He argues that "the preservation of the capitalist system" requires finding new ways of "linking compensation to performance."

"Frank takes a similar view, arguing that CEOs 'benefit substantially if the risks they take pay off" but 'pay no penalty' if their risks lead to losses or even catastrophe - another sign that capitalism, in its current form, isn't living by its own rules.

"Frank also calls for new thinking on the impact of free trade. He argues it can no longer be denied that globalization 'is a contributor to the stagnation of wages and it has produced large pools of highly mobile capital.' Mobile capital and the threat of moving a plant abroad give employers a huge advantage in negotiations with employees. 'If you're dealing with someone and you can pick up and leave and he can't, you have the advantage.' 'Free trade has increased wealth, but it's been monopolized by a very small number of people,' Frank said. The coming debate will focus not on shutting globalization down but rather on managing its effects with an eye toward the interests of 'the most vulnerable people in the country.'"

"In the presidential campaign so far, John McCain has been clinging to the old economic orthodoxy while Barack Obama has proposed a modestly more active role for government. But the economic assumptions are changing faster than the rhetoric of the campaign. 'Reality has broken in," says Frank."

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-death-reaganomics

Your Demon would add ~ and with a crash.

The funny thing about the terms of economic debate in America since Reagan, certainly, is that discussions about its effects seem never to take into consideration the tendency of go-go capitalism to override and obliterate concerns about whether a functioning democracy can really survive in the face of it. Our founding fathers warned against the very thing.

But by now, I suppose, we all know that was the point, at least in the Bushworld version of radical neocon corporate capitalism.

Big Money=Big Campaign Contributions=Access, Influence and Favorable Policy Toward Big Money.

Bad Karma Lagniappe: Yesterday's MarketWatch online newsletter warned potential buyers that it's getting harder to get a mortgage, and cited as anedotal evidence the example of a Bear Stearns employee:

[...]"Case in point: One of his clients, an employee at Bear Stearns, was recently required to get a statement from the human resources department indicating continued probability of employment at the firm. The statement could not be obtained, and the mortgage wasn't approved, he said. 'They're trying to be a lot smarter than they were three, four or five years ago,' he said. "

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/mortgage-credit-stay-tight-months/story.aspx?guid=%7BF7C15623%2D4C7E%2D46C9%2D89BC%2DC83CFC9792D2%7D&dist=msr_1

Fourth of July ~ Quote of the Day

2008-07-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

By way of warding off the excess of jingoistic, mindless patriotism to which we're sure to be treated, to considering that it is an election year, a failed war on terra drags on, and the Moron Cowboy is still in office ~ celebrating his LAST 4th of July there, I might add~ your Demon wishes to share these thoughts from Teddy Roosevelt in celebration of the big day, which certainly cheered her up when she precipitiously ran across them earlier today:

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

"Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Kansas City Star (1918-05-07)

A Tale of Two Torture Lawyers

2008-06-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

Two stories in the American Bar Association Journal today highlight lawyers whose refusal, in the first instance, and participation, in the second, have earned them everlasting infamy (and a demotion in the case of the resistor) in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Daniel Levin once worked for Alberto Gonzales's Department of Justice ~ until he wrote a memo disagreeing with Bushco's torture policies, whereupon he was asked to step down. "Too independent," it was said, after he had himself subjected to waterboarding while researching the Bushco predetermined party line that waterboarding isn't torture.

"[A] former high-level Justice Department lawyer says he was asked to leave after he wrote a memo opposing harsh interrogation techniques he considered torture but was promised a job as a U.S. Attorney by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"Daniel Levin confirmed in testimony yesterday that he was asked in 2005 to leave his DOJ job as the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel after he opposed harsh interrogation techniques in a 2004. Although he didn't draw a direct parallel between the memo and the request to step down, others did, reports ABC News, relying on unnamed sources.

"Meanwhile, sources say Levin was told by Gonzales that he would appoint him to a U.S. Attorney position, once the dust settled, to sweeten the downward departure to a position the ex-AG found for him at the National Security Council. Although Gonzales reportedly made a preliminary move or two to get Levin a job as a U.S. Attorney, that never happened and Levin later left to return to private practice.

"'Levin, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, was seen by some in the administration as too independent, sources said. For example, while analyzing specific interrogation techniques, he went to a military base outside Washington and personally underwent waterboarding, which he concluded qualified as torture, unless done in a narrow way with close supervision,' the ABC News article recounts'."

Gonzales Axed Anti-Torture Lawyer: http://www.abajournal.com/news/gonzales_axed_anti_torture_doj_lawyer_but_promised_us_attorney_job

Researching North Korean Torture Methods at the Pentagon

Today, a former lawyer for the Pentagon's testimony is expected to shed more light on when torture was first conducted versus when the Pentagon finds it now convenient to claim that it was authorized.

"The lawyer, Richard Schiffrin, said the information he obtained included studies of North Koreans’ attempted mind-control experiments on American prisoners during the Korean War. 'It was real Manchurian Candidate stuff,' he told the Times.

"The revelation comes amid disclosures that Pentagon lawyers played a more active and earlier role than previously disclosed in developing aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo, the story says.

"The Washington Post reports that new evidence appears to contradict previous statements by former Defense Department general counsel William Haynes II about the timing of research into enhanced techniques. Haynes previously said research was done at the request of Guantanamo jailers in October 2002. But memos and e-mail show Haynes was soliciting interrogation ideas as early as July that year, the story says.

"Military lawyers raised strong concerns about the legality of enhanced techniques in November 2002, a month before they were approved, according to the Post.

"Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved enhanced interrogation techniques in December 2002, but he rescinded his order allowing the harshest methods a month later, the Times says. The military never authorized interrogations as harsh as those carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, which used waterboarding until the end of 2003.
The techniques approved for use at Guantanamo included stress positions and sleep deprivation.

"Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., contends in a statement that research into aggressive techniques by senior officials helped pave the way for Abu Ghraib abuses."

http://www.abajournal.com/news/ex_pentagon_lawyer_acknowledges_research_into_real_manchurian_candidate_stu

Former General Calls For War Crimes Investigation

2008-06-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

Retired General Antonio Taguba (of "the famous Taguba of the Taguba report," as Donald Rumsfeld once taunted him, at the same time professing to never have seen his report on Abu Ghraib), has called for an investigation into Bushco war crimes, according to McClatchy News today.

Taguba "accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing 'war crimes' and called for those responsible to be held to account.

His "remarks...came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

"'After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,' Taguba wrote. 'The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.'
"Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. 'The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,' he wrote.
"A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment."

Will Congress take time away from its frenetic and self-aggrandizing witch-hunt endeavors to pass yet another piece of legislation granting the telcoms retroactive immunity for spying on us without warrants to heed the call?

The group Physicians for Human Rights has revived the controversy by issuing a report titled Broken Laws, Broken Lives "described ...as the most in-depth medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date.

"Doctors and mental health experts examined 11 detainees held for long periods in the prison system that President Bush established after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. All of them eventually were released without charges.

"The doctors and experts determined that the men had been subject to cruelties that ranged from isolation, sleep deprivation and hooding to electric shocks, beating and, in one case, being forced to drink urine.

"Bush has said repeatedly that the United States doesn't condone torture.

"'All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated and, if substantiated, those responsible are held accountable,' said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. The Defense Department responds to concerns raised by the International Committee for the Red Cross, he said, which has access to detainees under military control.

[...]

"The physicians' group said that its experts, who had experience studying torture's effects, spent two days with each former captive and conducted intensive exams and interviews. They administered tests to detect exaggeration. In two of the 11 cases, the group was able to review medical records.

"The report... concurs with a five-part McClatchy investigation of Guantanamo published this week. Among its findings were that abuses occurred — primarily at prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were held en route to Guantanamo — and that many of the prisoners were wrongly detained.

"Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq.Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld didn't specifically approve of the worst abuses, but neither he nor the White House enforced strict limits on how detainees would be treated.

"There was no 'bright line of abuse which could not be transgressed' former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora told the Senate committee.Leonard Rubenstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuses his group uncovered.

"'The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and ... suffering,' he said.Detainee abuse has been documented previously, in photos from Abu Ghraib, accounts by former detainees and their lawyers and a confidential report by the International Committee for the Red Cross that was leaked to the U.S. news media.

"Of the 11 men evaluated in the Physicians for Human Rights four were detained in Afghanistan between late 2001 and early 2003, and later sent to Guantanamo. The remaining seven were detained in Iraq in 2003.
"One of the Iraqis, identified by the pseudonym Laith, was arrested with his family at his Baghdad home in the early morning of Oct. 19, 2003. He was taken to a location where he was beaten, stripped to his underwear and threatened with execution, the report says.
'Laith' told the examiners he was then taken to a second site, where he was photographed in humiliating positions and given electric shocks to his genitals.
"Finally, he was taken to Abu Ghraib, where he spent the first 35 to 40 days in isolation in a small cage, enduring being suspended in the cage and other "stress positions."
He was released on June 24, 2004, without charge."
Report Dismissed by Pentagon as Ravings of Disgruntled Former Detainees

"'It adds little to the public discourse to draw sweeping conclusions based upon dubious allegations regarding remote medical assessments of former detainees, now far removed from detention,' Gordon said.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html

And Regarding the Pentagon's "The Red Cross Was There" Defense ~ (Imaginary)

Yesterday, a Senate report confirmed that Bushco was hiding detainees from the International Red Cross to avoid scrutiny of its torture operations.

"'We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,' Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to 'break' detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. 'True, but officially it is not happening,' she is quoted as having said.
"A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.
"'In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC,' Fredman said, according to the minutes.

"The document, along with two dozen others, shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation methods in the belief that terrorism suspects were resisting interrogation.
"It's unclear from the documents whether the Pentagon moved the detainees from one place to another or merely told the ICRC they were no longer present at a facility.
"Fredman of the CIA also appeared to be advocating the use of techniques harsher than those authorized by military field guides 'If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong,' the minutes report Fredman saying at one point."
Beaver testified that she didn't recall making the comment about avoiding "harsher operations" while ICRC representatives were around, but she said she probably was referring to the need to conduct extended periods of interrogations of detainees without disruption."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/41394.html

News Compendium: Bushco War and Torture Troubles

2008-06-12T18:14:00.001-07:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy

http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/

Bushworld Comes Crumbling down, Albeit in Bits and Pieces

Recent news has not been good for the warmongering Bushies, past and present, but none more so than today, when the Supreme Court handed down its THIRD wrist-slapping decision on the topic of indefinite detention without fair trials, and more specifically, the ersatz sytem of "justice" embodied in the misguided "Military Commissions Act" and related detainee legislation.

"The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.

"Congress and the administration had passed a shortened alternative to a habeas procedure for the prisoners in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said that procedure 'falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute' because it failed to offer 'the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.'
Justice Kennedy declared: 'The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.'

"The decision, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer, was categorical in its rejection of the administration’s basic arguments. Indeed, the court repudiated the fundamental legal basis for the administration’s strategy, adopted in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, of housing prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere at the United States Naval base in Cuba, where Justice Department lawyers advised the White House that domestic law would never reach."

[...]

"Writing separately, Justice Souter said the dissenters did not sufficiently appreciate 'the length of the disputed imprisonments, some of the prisoners represented here today having been locked up for six years.'

The detainees whose fates are at issue in the case are Algerians who were legal residents of Bosnia when they were detained by Bosnian police on suspicion of planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, arrested in the immediate wake of the post-911 frenzy. The New York Times calls them "not at all typical of the people confined at Guantanamo."

"The Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered them released three months later for lack of evidence, whereupon the Bosnian police seized them and turned them over to the United States military, which sent them to Guantánamo."

Bush, speaking from the Roman leg of his "farewell tour" of Europe, strenuously objected to the Court's assertion of its final say over legislation a cowed and manipulated Congress pushed through on his say-so. What? Bush doesn't have the power to detain by executive fiat any random bodies it designates terrorists, lock them up indefinitely, render them extralegally, subject them to torture and the kangaroo courts set up by the Military Commissions Act?

The Detainee Treatment Act, for instance, provided that the "military [can] assign a 'personal representative' to each detainee, but defense lawyers may not take part. Nor are the tribunals required to disclose to the detainee details of the evidence or witnesses against him — rights that have long been enjoyed by defendants in American civilian and military courts.The Act also provided that "detainees may appeal decisions of the military tribunals to the District of Columbia Circuit, but only under circumscribed procedures, which include a presumption that the evidence before the military tribunal was accurate and complete."

No American in his or her right mind could call that a fair trial. But when has Bush or anyone else in his Administration, or his judicial appointees, been constrained by the rules of fair play, even in the most important decisions of life and death ~ or just lingering, indefinite detention in the legal no-man's land of U.S. prisons on foreign soil and/or prison ships or secret CIA flights?

Justice Scalia went predictably ballistic in his dissent and called on his inner Neocon Cassandra to predict very bad things for America if we aren't willing to rewrite centuries of common law on habeas corpus, later enshrined in our own law. "Reflecting how the case divided the court not only on legal but, perhaps, emotional lines, Justice Scalia said that the United States was 'at war with radical Islamists,' and that the ruling 'will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.' 'The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,' Justice Scalia said. "

Saying not much for the notion of "judicial temperament" when dealing what should have been a tempest in a teapot before Bushco (for many reasons only tangentially related to "terrorism") decided to make it the cause celebre of the Militant Right Wing of America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/12cnd-gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&hp

How We Got There ~ A Short-Attention-Span Administration for a Short-Attention-Spanned Country

On the much-vaunted Senate Intelligence Committee report, suitably whitewashed for Republion consumption, Slate had some choice analysis the other day.

"On June 5, the Senate intelligence committee released its long-awaited report on whether President George W. Bush and his top officials knowingly exaggerated or falsified intelligence when making the case for invading Iraq.

"The 171-page document is neither quite as damning as the committee's press release suggests nor remotely as exonerating as a Washington Post editorial would have you believe.But more significant are the report's implications (buried between its lines) for how the next president should change the way that National Intelligence Estimates are written—and, even more, the way that they are read. "

The piece concludes that if one reads the NIE selectively (i.e., without being distracted by dissenting footnotes), some of the claims made that whipped Americans into a glassy-eyed wartime frenzy were ~ I'll be charitable ~ "true, or once were."

"The committee examined dozens of public statements about Iraq made by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and so forth—then compared their claims with what classified intelligence analyses were reporting at the time. All the statements turned out to be wrong. But were the officials simply, and perhaps unwittingly, reciting mistaken intelligence reports? Or were they exaggerating, twisting, or even falsifying what those reports were really saying?"

"Some of the officials' claims, the committee concludes, were 'substantiated by available intelligence information.' [...] "In several instances, the claims were backed by the intelligence estimate's majority view but were disputed by some of the agencies. (An NIE is a consensus product, put together by the nation's 16 intelligence agencies; if some of the agencies disagree on some point, they often file a dissenting footnote.) This was the case for the claims that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program and that it was building unmanned aerial vehicles for the purpose of dropping biological weapons on Americans and our allies. The Senate report chides the officials for failing, at times willfully, to take these dissents into account."

"On a few other issues, officials made claims with great confidence, whereas the intelligence reports expressed considerable uncertainty. This was the case for claims about chemical-weapons production and the prospects of postwar stability.

"Finally, several claims had no basis in, or were even contradicted by, the official intelligence reports. These include the claim that Saddam Hussein intended to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, that he had a partnership with al-Qaida, that he had WMD facilities in deep underground bunkers, and that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague in 2001.

"It is worth noting that the claims that reflected U.S. intelligence—on biological weapons, ballistic missiles, and support for non-al-Qaida terrorist groups—were, while serious, not the sorts of threats that would rally a nation to war. Meanwhile, the claims that did galvanize support for the invasion—on nuclear weapons and alliances with al-Qaida—either exaggerated or falsified the intelligence of the day.

"Another intriguing point, made fleetingly in the Senate report's preface, is that the committee reviewed 'only finished analytic intelligence documents'—not 'less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch.' In other words (though the authors don't put it in these terms), the committee once again evaded the key question of whether the White House pressured the Central Intelligence Agency into hardening its October 2002 NIE on Iraq.

"Unless this question is addressed, the report is beside the point.[...] " If...government officials politicized the intelligence information, then the report only perpetuates the sham."

http://www.slate.com/id/2193283/

House Democrats Call for Special Counsel on Genesis of Torture Instructions

Your Demon is glad to see House Democrats catching on, and calling for a Special Counsel from outside the DOJ, which is captive itself to the Executive and highly unlikely to investigate closely while Bushco remains in office.

"In a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, the lawmakers cited what they said is 'mounting evidence' that senior officials personally sanctioned the use of waterboarding and other aggressive tactics against detainees in U.S.-run prisons overseas. An independent investigation is needed to determine whether such actions violated U.S or international law, the letter stated.

"This information indicates that the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law," it said. The letter was signed by 56 House Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and House Intelligence Committee members Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y)."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060701194.html

While They're At It, Investigate This

File under obstruction of justice: report that detailed notes on interrogations were destroyed at the Pentagon's behest in anticipation of investigation into illegality.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=6ecab625-9b8f-45a5-88ee-e96a23e90ecc

Kangaroo Courts: Detainee's Attorney Seeks Dismissal
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060701904.html

More Kangaroo Courts: Judge Who Insisted on Evidence in Detainee Case Abruptly Dismissed

"A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo31-2008may31,0,6244452.story

NYT Editorial: Interrogations Carried Out By Private Contractors (You guess why).
"Operating free of the restraints of military rule and ethics, some of these corporate thugs turned up in the torture scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison and walked away with impunity. Others are now believed to be in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency at secret prisons that remain outside the rule of law, exempted even from the weak 2006 rules on interrogating prisoners."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/opinion/12thu1.html

In conclusion: do we detect a trend whereby a privileged boy President and his evil shadow have NEVER been forced to play by the well-established rules, and wonder what all the hub-bub and censure are about? Absolutely outragous, in'it?

McCain's Sympathy For The Devil

2008-06-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

Who also happens to be Militant Right Wing Movement Hero and "Highly Effective Fundraiser"

Ill: The Wizard of Whimsy http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/

Poor John McCain ~ he so desperately wants to be everything to everybody he runs the risk of being nothing to no one. In a nutshell, he's schitzophrenically all over the map, on no matter more than his troubled relationship with Dick Cheney, a man who famously tolerates no dissent and is inclined to view even the most innocuous gentlemanly conduct as puling weeny-weakling pansy stuff, and doesn't at all mind telling all the world about it in mocking tones.

Cheney is a hero to the rabid right-wingers? How very sad (and what peculiar standards for the word "hero" the deluded acolytes must harbor) ~ but a blogger for Politico who posits the idea of Cheney as Veep to McCain examines the hints that it still may be possible for Cheney to play a some sort of role in a McCain administration.

All indications are (in this particular iteration of McCain's multidimensonal public persona, anyway), that the chances are slim, given that Cheney harbors grudges regarding unflattering ~ even if true ~ things McCain has said about him and his staunch ally Donald Rumsfeld in the past, and although McCain privately "ran over to me and apologized" afterwards per Cheney.

Your Demon is beginning to wonder if there's a pattern in McCain's behavior whereby he first shoots his mouth off then scurries around trying to make amends when he realizes that he's only succeeded in inserting his foot ~it's a plausible explanation, but not very Presidential.

Anyway, the tibbits in the article that caught my eye:

"Cheney and McCain ...have had a rocky relationship. They have clashed publicly and privately during the Bush years on matters ranging from the treatment of terrorist detainees to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Most recently, they’ve been on opposite sides on the idea of a gas tax holiday and on a Cheney-backed energy bill. As a result, Cheney finds himself on the outside looking in, without a clear role to play in one of the most consequential campaigns in history and one where his signature foreign policy legacy is on the line.

"Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said the vice president had not yet campaigned for McCain and had not, to her knowledge, been asked. 'I don’t think the McCain people want Cheney anywhere near him,' said a former Cheney aide. Asked about what role Cheney would have in the campaign, McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker only said: 'John McCain will always treat the vice president with respect.' McCain sources note that there are no plans for Cheney and McCain to campaign together and most observers view such a prospect as highly unlikely, given Cheney’s low poll ratings and Democratic efforts to frame McCain as the third term of the Bush administration.

"Still, Cheney sympathizers believe the vice president can be helpful. "

Even though a "close" Cheney advisor recommended getting Cheney to talk McCain up on right wing talk radio as a means of energizing the demoralized conservative base (encouraging, what?), the article goes on:

"But even in a limited capacity, Cheney might make for an awkward surrogate given the prickly nature of his relationship with McCain. After McCain said last year that Rumsfeld, Cheney’s friend and mentor in the Ford administration, would 'go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,' the vice president made plain his displeasure. 'I just fundamentally disagree with John,' Cheney told ABC News in an interview. 'John said some nasty things about me the other day and then, next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he’ll apologize to Rumsfeld.”

"Cheney was alluding to an interview McCain gave to Politico in which he said President Bush 'listened too much to the vice president' and had been 'very badly served by both the vice president and, most of all, the secretary of defense.'

"Of course, McCain hasn’t always been critical of Cheney. In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes’ biography, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, McCain said: 'I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.'

"Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post. Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: 'I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths.'

"But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

A star-crossed romance in the making?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11000.html

Kucinich Introduces Articles Of Impeachment

2008-06-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

Update: Why Not Impeach Bush? Oh yeah. Dana Milbank reminds us why we should be grateful the Articles of Impeachment seem destined to die in the Judiciary Committee.

"Why so unwilling to impeach Bush? As Democratic leaders like to say, two words: Dick Cheney. At this late stage in his presidency, Bush can still feel confident that his job is secure, if only because his foes are so terrified of the man who would succeed him. " Dana cites a speech given by Cheney today at the Chamber of Commerce.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103558.html

(Again?) Bless 'is 'eart. Raw Story carries the video, which aired today on C-Span.

Don't see the MSM even bothering to report it, do you?

Click here to see it:

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Kucinich_presents_Bush_impeachment_articles_0609.html

Bushco "Secret" Plan To Thwart Dems, Protect Signature Achievements In Iraq

2008-06-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

Ill: The Worried Shrimp

http://www.theworriedshrimp.com/

Whilst expressing her deep dismay, but not any particular surprise, at our most estimable American corporate media's disinterest, for the most part, in bringing the story to our attention in a way that fully fleshes out the depths to which Bushco will descend to get its way in Iraq, your Demon speculates that that very complacent streak in our MSM is probably why certain Iraqis offered it to the UK press first.

Witness: allegations that the United States, under Bushco, is holding hostage $50 billion in Iraqi assets parked in a New York bank unless the Iraqis agree to a perma-occupation of American military bases, as well as control of its airspace, and immunity from prosecution for American soldiers and mercenaries ~ er, "contractors" ~ which would also have the twin advantages of thwarting any future American Presidential ambitions to get us out of Iraq, AND keep Congress from being able to do anything about it. Seems to have "the Dick" Cheney's paw prints all over it ~ arrogance, secrecy, oil interests, and military dominance.

"The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

"US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

"Iraq's foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq's funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq's independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new 'strategic alliance' with the United States.

"The threat by the American side underlines the personal commitment of President George Bush to pushing the new pact through by 31 July. Although it is in reality a treaty between Iraq and the US, Mr Bush is describing it as an alliance so he does not have to submit it for approval to the US Senate.

"Iraqi critics of the agreement say that it means Iraq will be a client state in which the US will keep more than 50 military bases. American forces will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens and conduct military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government. American soldiers and contractors will enjoy legal immunity.

"The US had previously denied it wanted permanent bases in Iraq, but American negotiators argue that so long as there is an Iraqi perimeter fence, even if it is manned by only one Iraqi soldier, around a US installation, then Iraq and not the US is in charge.

"The US has security agreements with many countries, but none are occupied by 151,000 US soldiers as is Iraq. The US is not even willing to tell the government in Baghdad what American forces are entering or leaving Iraq, apparently because it fears the government will inform the Iranians, said an Iraqi source.

"The fact that Iraq's financial reserves, increasing rapidly because of the high price of oil, continue to be held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is another legacy of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein. Under the UN mandate, oil revenues must be placed in the Development Fund for Iraq which is in the bank. The funds are under the control of the Iraqi government, though the US Treasury has strong influence on the form in which the reserves are held."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-issues-threat-to-iraqs-50bn-foreign-reserves-in-military-deal-841407.html

Dick Cheney's Office Trying to Force the (Non-Negotiable) Deal on Iraq

"A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

"But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

"The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

"America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military 'surge' began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

"The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. 'It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,' said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

"The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: 'This is just a tactical subterfuge.' Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its 'war on terror' in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

"Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called 'strategic alliance' without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create 'a permanent occupation'. He added: 'The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.'

"Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.

"Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.

"The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.

"The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.
The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html

Bush and Cheney, understandably, want their signature achievements preserved, and to hell with any notion of democracy, ours or theirs.

Quip Of The Day

2008-06-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

Your Demon happened to stumble upon Night Line last night just as it was reporting viewers' responses to the question whether Obama should invite Hillary to serve as his vice-president ~

Answers:

1. Caller: "I won't vote for him unless he does!"

2. Caller: "Should a boy scout invite/take a rattlesnake into bed with him on his first camping trip?"

....ssssizzle....

Mr. McTyranny

2008-06-04T17:28:00.000-07:00

McCain Reverses Position, Now Sez He'll Keep Unitary Executive Powers to Spy on Americans

~ with Telcom Immunity, natch ~

It's been a difficult and delicate thing for John McCain to distance himself from Bushco's most controversial and unpopular positions ~ such as the infamous "declare war unilaterally and then expand presidential powers 'in wartime'" school of Imperial Legal Reasoning. Just witness the way his campaign has flip-flopped in an effort to appease those who worry about the effects on civil liberties and the right-wingers at the same time. After all, he's running on his official War Hero cred, and he needs the war to continue and expand if he wants to win the President's office ~ and more importantly, stay in it.

Truthout, picking up a Wired story yesterday, enlightens us:

"Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements [calling for holding the telcoms accountable for secretly complying with Bushco's illegal gambits to spy on Americans], and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.

"'[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

"'We do not know what lies ahead in our nation's fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

"The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001.

"McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007, interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Then, he was quoted by the paper as follows: "I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is."

"The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , 'So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?' To which McCain answered, 'I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law.'

"McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back...from...comments made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month. When liberal blogs picked up the story that McCain had moved to the left on wiretapping, the McCain campaign issued a letter insisting that he still supported unconditional immunity, as well as new rules that would expand the nation's spy powers.

"The campaign's response was consistent with McCain's past positions and votes. But it riled Andrew McCarthy at the conservative National Review Online, who read the campaign's position as a disavowal of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, and a wimpy surrender of executive power to Congress.

"'What does it mean when he says Sen. McCain does not want the telecoms put into this position again?' McCarthy asked. 'Is he saying that in a time of national crisis, the president should not be permitted to ask the telecoms for assistance that is arguably beyond what is prescribed in a statute?'

"That's when the campaign issued the letter explaining McCain's new views of executive power, and revealing that McCain would, in certain future circumstances, rely on the same theory of executive power in wartime.

"A spokesperson for McCain's camp did not respond to a request Monday for an explanation of the difference between the new policy and the December interview."

http://www.truthout.org/article/mccain-id-spy-americans-secretly-too

All of you disaffected Hillary supporters might want to reconsider just what you're going to get if you do, in fact, vote for Mr. McTyranny. You might as well be voting for George Bush's third term on all of the most pressing issues, and against democracy and the rule of law itself.

Hillary, Defeated, Sez She Won

2008-06-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Dana Milbank for the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/03/AR2008060303568.html

Rumor has it she's angling for the Vice-Presidency now. However good that would be for the unity of the Democratic party, if I were Obama with a Clinton-and- hubby second-in-command, I'd probably be too distracted trying to watch my back for knife wounds and assassination attempts ("We all remember Kennedy campaigning in June," indeed) to do much governing.

Clinton Democrats Endeavor To Snatch Defeat From Jaws Of Victory

2008-06-01T18:13:00.001-07:00

Some Hillary Supporters Threaten to Vote for McCain; Harold Ickes Tosses Hissy Fit."Disenfranchisement," "Popular Vote," Become New Pro-Hillary Battle Themes

Will Rogers said it a long time ago, and it's still true: "I'm not a member of any organized political party ~ I'm a Democrat."

What a sad and debilitating circus for the Democratic party, and one that lends more than a little credence to what guest Pastor Pfleger of Obama's (now former) church in Chicago lampooned as Hillary Clinton's sense of "entitlement," especially after the DNC rule-makers all got together and decided to seat the delegates of the contested Florida and Michigan primaries, albeit with just half the votes they would have had otherwise IF THOSE STATES HAD FOLLOWED THEIR OWN PARTY'S RULES.

Seems to your Demon, that, as Donna Brasile noted, if Hillary had followed through on her promise to play by the rules in Florida and Michigan, where voters were told well in advance that their votes wouldn't matter if they insisted on defying party rules about not trying to race around and cut in line ahead of other states without waivers from the DNC to do so, she couldn't now be accused (justly) of whining that the rules should be changed to benefit her.

I watched the raucous event in its entirety on C-Span. All I have to say is *tsk tsk*

While Floridians claim that it was the Republican majority in that state who somehow conspired to move the Democratic primary ahead and thereby violate the DNC's rules, an argument I'm inclined to empathize with, the Michigan primary is another matter altogether. Both surviving Democratic presidential candidates agreed that they wouldn't run in that particular "beauty contest," but only Obama withdrew his name from the ballot. Some are saying that it was a deliberate dirty double-cross on Hillary's part; I won't go that far, but it is certainly a cynical and disingenuous move on Hillary's campaign's part to now quibble over the amount of delegate half-votes that should be awarded to Obama.

Your Demon can only roll her eyes everytime she hears one of the Hillary camp's attempts to tap into the residual anger over the Bush-Gore outrage by loudly asserting that she has "won" the popular vote, or again with Ickes' line yesterday accusing the DNC Rules Committee of "hijacking" votes.

"The Clinton campaign’s popular vote tally includes zero votes for Mr. Obama in the Michigan primary, where his name was not on the ballot although his supporters were urged to vote for 'uncommitted.'

"The campaign will begin airing an ad tomorrow touting touting Senator Clinton’s popular vote tally."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/

More Little White Hillary Lies After Puerto Rico

Bloomberg just reported that voter turnout was low, and that Clinton's win has failed to revive her bid. Despite that, "Clinton's supporters argue that she is winning the popular vote. Yet going into Puerto Rico, she trailed Obama by more than 275,000 votes. Those figures include the votes in Florida, where the candidates agreed not to campaign. They don't include the results from Michigan, where the candidates didn't campaign and Obama took his name off the ballot.

"In Puerto Rico, Clinton scored a net gain of less than 150,000 votes, leaving Obama with an overall lead of 125,000, more than enough to offset any gains she may make in South Dakota or Montana.

"Clinton yesterday continued to predict she would win the most popular votes, though such assertions aren't likely to carry much weight after this weekend.
"'I will lead in the popular vote; he will maintain a slight lead in the delegates,'' she said at a rally in San Juan, Puerto Rico, adding that the race would come down to the superdelegates."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aa32h.Rez7EA&refer=home

Update: more from Time today: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1811112,00.html

And yes, there is a plethora of things wrong the American system of presidential elections, never-ending fundraising and the need of the "big" states to push ahead in defiance of party rules just to assure the rest of us will have to live with their candidate selections chief among them, but I'm tired of the cyncism, dirty trix, and divisiveness.

Hillary, you did this to yourself (on so many levels). For future reference, I'm square in the middle of "your" demographic, and wasn't fully decided until just now. These recent maneuvers and your previous record on the war, together with the "centrist" appeasement strategies your husband's administration adopted toward the Neocons, and your apparent strong streak of self-aggrandizement (not, unfortunately, unknown to anyone who's been to law school ~ but it remains the one thing I hate most in fellow lawyers, most particularly if the claims are demonstrably untrue).

You are not "entitled" to the Crown just because you want it. And your "do anything to win" mindset ~ even if it includes the weakening of your own party and your supporters threatening to throw the most important Presidential election in history if we are to restore the rule of law and some shred of our standing/moral authority worldwide post-Bushco blunders to McBush III reminds me too much of the Republicons, who, notwithstanding, must be laughing their arses off right now. Thanks!

Brave New Bushworld ~ Governance By Propaganda

2008-05-28T23:02:00.001-07:00

It's certainly not news to those of us who've been paying any attention at all for going-on-8-years now. So can we finally muster the political will to impeach the bastards before some other country tries them for war crimes?

Your Demon has to applaud Scott McClellan, even though everybody else, right and left, is vilifying him. He has, albeit hamhandedly, and for a price, written a tell-all memoir about his days as White House Press Secretary that finally begins to sound closer to the truth than what we've been hearing all these years. The book is what it is, and doesn't carry any particularly surprising information. Its failures and shortcomings, too, are rather pedestrian for the genre: 1. He wasn't to blame for parroting lies and misinformation; 2. He believes that Georgie, too, was misinformed and ill served by conniving advisors when he wasn't engaging in "self-deception"; 3. the MSM shares some blame for being too credulous in the run-up to the war.

Therein lies the cause for the very noisy controversy.

The LA Times says, "Get McClellan a press secretary!" Talking heads on all the late nite shows yesterday were huffing and puffing (if they were media types) how outrageous it is that the man feeding them cotton-candy lies and spin wants to blame them, serious journalists, for not pushing McClellan harder! The gall!

A very few pointed out that, er, he was right.

Right-wingers' heads were exploding all over print and the web yesterday and today. Karl Rove said of McClellan's opus that it sounded like it was written by a liberal left-wing blogger, the worst invective he could think of, no doubt, to hurl at the former denizen of the holy inner circle ~ treason, that's what it is!

Since when, Karl probably wants to know, is propaganda and spin a bad thing to the inner circle and workings of the Republicon machine? Weren't we all agreed that Americans are too stupid, lazy and uninterested to deal with reality? ~ feed them dreams, glory, righteousness, and leave the dirty business of running the country and the world to those who know better!

The Bush White House promptly proved McClellan right in its denials and spin: three people, including Rove and Dishy Tart Perino, said the exact same thing (no echo chamber here): "It doesn't sound like the Scott McClellan we knew." Suggesting, of course, that liberal bloggers had taken him hostage, or drugged him, or that he has gone completely and inexplicably off his nut.

He couldn't have suddenly sprouted a conscience and seen what all but the less-than-30% of the hard-core dead-enders have also seen: Bushco is the greatest fraud perpetrated on this country, EVER. We've just very nearly escaped a new brand of NeoCon fascism. McClellan is not the first to have noticed and sounded the alarm, and I daresay he won't be the last. It's getting harder and harder for the Radical Right Wing to shout down and/or demonize the few left who don't see what they're all about. I guess we should all be thanking our lucky stars they got too arrogant, greedy, and careless. If Bushco had been more competent...I shudder to think.

What amuses your Demon most, however, is that the same media accused of complicity by McClellan is pumping this story through the roof mostly as a result of its indignation~ while the very recent Pentagon-War-Profiteer Pundits shoulda-been-a-scandal, flogged by those same media? Nary a word, still. How dare McClellan call them complicit??

If you haven't read the excerpts from McClellan's tell-all that's set Washington afire, check the Politico link for the scoop on the CIA Plame leak and alleged conferences between Libby and Rove to get their stories straight, McClellan's thoughts on Bush carrying the campaign spin mindset into the WH when honesty was needed, and the "denial" Bush experienced over Hurricane Katrina.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052803030.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/washington/28mcclellan.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/clarke-and-mcclellan-2004-and-now/

Way to go, McClellan. Pretty impressive for a guy seemed to be destined to play minor hack and toady on the big world stage of history. You've almost redeemed yourself. And bitten Bushco's ass big time in the process, probably despite yourself.

Stand Aside, Obama ~ Let Bush Show How Negotiating With Terrorists Is Done

2008-05-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

Capping his Nazi-invoking performance in Israel, Bush pays a visit to Saudi Arabia and the Sultans of Oil to "jawbone" his good friends there into increasing oil production.
Sultans say ~ er, NO!

~ Tide of chrome-encrusted SUV's expected to flood American used car lots~

In a real dig at Obama's naiive postulations that we can "negotiate with terrorists," or so Bushco propaganda has it, Bush promptly turns around and proves it's a different matter entirely when you're only negotiating with the countries who finance them. And even so manages to fall flat on his face, even though he's promised the Saudis enriched uranium (for "peaceful" nuclear uses), according to the WaPo today.

Well, that's some admirably tough negotiating for yas. Give 'em anything they want, including the capacity to make nukes, even if you get nothing in return. Even conservative bloggers are going apopolectic over the news.

Turns out that it wasn't only McCain and Obama watching Bush's performance before the Israeli Knesset. The Sultans of Oil were, too, and reportedly did not like it one bit.

..."With the president under pressure at home to show he is fighting to lower gasoline prices, the Saudi gesture gave Bush a face-saving outcome after a day of meetings with Saudi leaders. Bush has invested enormously in improving his personal ties to King Abdullah, and administration officials say the effort has paid off in greater cooperation in fighting terrorism, confronting Iran and other shared concerns.

"But the limits to this warmth were on full display as Bush arrived in Saudi Arabia for his second visit of the year and was whisked off for private consultations and dinner with the king at his palatial horse farm near Riyadh. Not only did the Saudis resist efforts to boost production even more -- as many congressional leaders are demanding -- they also pointedly said that the extra output was a week-old response to commercial customers, not to the president. And they made clear their unhappiness with Bush's emotional speech Thursday to the Israeli Knesset.

"In the address, Bush touched only lightly on the Palestinian quest for a state, while paying homage to the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state -- a contrast that deeply angered many Arabs. 'It was so one-sided,' said Saudi academic and writer Khalid al-Dakhil. 'The president is supposed to be evenhanded.'

"Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal voiced disappointment in remarks to reporters. 'We are well aware of the special U.S.-Israeli relationship'" he said. 'Stressing the right of a nation to exist should not strike out or revoke the rights of other nations.' The Palestinians 'are in dire need to enjoy their rights,' he said.

"White House officials dismissed the suggestions that the president is insufficiently committed to his goal of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of the year, and said Bush will renew his efforts on Saturday when he meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Egypt.

"After a detailed briefing for the president by the Saudi oil minister, White House officials also seemed satisfied with Saudi explanations that they are investing billions to expand their production capability over the next several years and that there is not much more they can do to lower prices. White House officials said Bush asked the Saudis to increase production as much as they can but made no specific numerical demand."
[...]
"The Saudis have taken the measure of the administration and found they can convey their concerns to the administration, but they are not required to do much in return," said Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy in both Democratic and Republican administrations."
[...]
"Another source of tension is the financing of terrorists. Saudi promises to set up a charities commission to regulate the flow of money that U.S. officials believe is supporting terrorism have not materialized, according to current and former U.S. officials. In little-noticed Senate testimony last month, the top U.S. official tracking terrorist financing portrayed a mixed picture of cooperation.

"'They are serious about fighting al-Qaeda in their kingdom, and they do,' said Stuart A. Levey, a Treasury undersecretary, who added that the same 'seriousness of purpose' has not extended to combating financing for terrorists. 'Saudi Arabia today remains the location from which more money is going to Sunni terror groups and the Taliban than from any other place in the world,' Levey said. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051601111.html

And in other news today, Bush shows he can negotiate with North Korea's Kim Jong Il and safely ignore our allies, the Japanese, who are in the way, after all, of North Korea's nukes. They persist in thinking they should have a say and are being uncharacteristically vocal about the matter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603920.html

Tin Pot Dictators 'R' Us

2008-05-15T23:41:00.000-07:00

Too much fun news to pass up recently:

Bush Bangs the War Drums in Israel ~ Bloviates about Nazi Tanks Invading Poland
~ we daresay, a calculated ploy to ensure applause on Israel's 6oth Anniversary~

Presnit Bush makes America proud again as he stumbles, mumbles and mispronounces his way through a speech before Israel's governing body, thumping his chest and deploring "appeasers" who would "negotiate with terrorists," likening them to American Nazi "appeasers" of the early twentieth century.

Watch it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlKIGssQIE&eurl=

Check this commentary on MSNBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puLMrnC6SYo&NR=1

(Barack Obama, on the other side of the world, takes exception to the comparison, and that tarty dish White House Press Secretary Dana Perino responds that while Obama may think the world revolves around him, no, it's just not true.)

So, the rest of us are left to ponder how much better the world might be if purveyors of snide liddle kiddle sensibilities, cheap shots, and playground-bully tactics were to evacuate the White House and be replaced with real adults...oh, wait! That's just around the corner now.

Bonus tidbit on Poppy Bush's enabling of financing in Nazi Germany: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

Meanwhile, Republicans Find the Reality-Based Community Perplexing and Not at All to their Liking, Fret About their "Brand" and Slogans

~ Demon suggests some new ones, below~

Still unwilling to believe that the jig is up and revealing an almost-touchingly naiive faith in the marketing, PR and disinformation campaigns that brought them to power to also cure all that ails them now ~ wondering where the magic has gone, natch ~ *poof*~ Republicon members of Congress fret and sweat, and certainly don't seem to be reading the same news the rest of the country does. For instance, food prices rising, the United Way announcing that the social safety net nationwide is in tatters just as "the party of personal responsibility" has succeeded in wrecking the economy, and things like this: nefarious associations within the Grand Old Party of a marketing firm, representing the Burmese military junta as well as your more run-of-the-mill special interests, leads to the resignation of the Republicon National Committee Convention Chief (chosen by McCain) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002762.html).

Your Demon just has to take the opportunity to gloat a little about this article, appearing in the Washington Post today:

"House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.
"In huddles, closed-door meetings and hastily arranged conference calls, some Republicans demanded the head of their political chief, while others decried their leadership as out of touch with the political catastrophe they face.
"GOP leaders sought yesterday to 're-brand' the party with a new slogan and renewed pledges of fiscal rectitude and limited government. But the slogan -- 'The Change You Deserve' -- came under mocking fire, because it parallels Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama's 'Change We Can Believe In' motto and it mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor.

"'What we've got is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence in the American people that we will do what we say we're going to do,' conceded Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"The losses of conservative House seats in Louisiana and Illinois this spring were explained away by many Republicans as setbacks in which they were hampered by bad candidates. But Tuesday's loss in northern Mississippi was devastating. The district had given President Bush 62 percent of its vote in 2004. To reverse its losing streak, the NRCC pumped $1.3 million from its depleted coffers into the race. Freedom's Watch, a conservative independent group, pitched in. Vice President Cheney appeared at a last-minute rally. Bush and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, lent their voices to automated phone calls imploring Republicans to vote for Southaven Mayor Charles G. 'Greg' Davis.
Davis lost the contest by eight percentage points, a wider margin than in either of the two previous special-election defeats.
"As soon as the results came in Tuesday evening, Democrats were already gloating, some even talking publicly of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst, scoffed at 60, but he said he now could see gains of as many as seven Senate seats and 15 to 25 in the House. Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority in the House, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago, and Republicans face a flood of retirements in the chamber. Retirement announcements from Senate Republicans in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia have created prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, who will not be defending any open seats in November.

"Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, has been badly damaged by scandals besetting his family and his party in Alaska, creating an unexpected opportunity for Democrats. Sen. John E. Sununu (N.H.) is defending a seat in a state where Democratic fortunes are on the rise, and other Republican senators -- including Susan Collins (Maine), Norm Coleman (Minn.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.) -- are seeking reelection in states leaning Democratic in a presidential election year. In total, 23 Republican-held Senate seats will be on the ballot this fall compared with 12 for Democrats.

"Even Republican strategists were downcast about their prospects for the fall.
'These races were not in New Jersey or New England, where Republican erosion has taken place over the last decade. They were in the heart of the Bible Belt, the social conservative core of our coalition,' Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) fretted in a 20-page memorandum given to House Republican leaders yesterday and provided to The Washington Post.

"'Members and pundits, waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and Independents will snap back to the GOP, fail to understand the deep seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party.'

"Republicans from across the ideological spectrum of their party said yesterday that they understand the need to change course. But they disagreed on what change is necessary.
[....]

"Several Republicans decried the NRCC's strategy in the Mississippi and Louisiana special elections of nationalizing the campaigns by linking the Democratic candidates to Obama. All that did, they said, was energize African Americans to vote, while taking the GOP's focus off the local issues the Democrats were riding to victory. 'Cheap, partisan political points' are not going to work in this environment, Keller said.

"At a tense closed-door meeting of the House Republican Conference, Cole took full responsibility for the string of losses. But in a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, he dismissed any call for his resignation or a staff shakeup, which some Republicans have suggested may be necessary.

"'You have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a long, hard look if there's something wrong with your product,' he said. 'It would be a great mistake to think that this could be fixed by tweaking a few things or a staff thing.'

"And Cole rejected the notion of a dramatic break with Bush.
"'I don't see it particularly as an advantage to be in a debate with our president,' he said. 'It's not for me to second-guess the president of the United States.'

"But the numbers point to some dramatic action. In recent days, two polls put Sen. Elizabeth Dole's Democratic challenger within striking distance of her in North Carolina. Another poll showed Democrats gaining on Smith, a moderate who appeared to be escaping the heat of the election year. Even Sen. John Cornyn, one of Bush's closest allies and a fellow Texan, may be feeling some heat from state Rep. Rick Noriega, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. "

Even Funnier: Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich, those titans of moral rectitude, poster boys and personifications of everything that's wrong with the GOP, weigh in on how to fix it

'We haven't hit bottom yet. I've never seen members so frustrated or demoralized,' former House majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) said in an interview.
"DeLay and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) have been issuing calls to arms to their former troops. But even they disagree on the steps needed to reverse their fortunes, with Gingrich demanding an emergency meeting of all Republicans to craft a new agenda. Gingrich is offering unusual proposals such as reforming the Census Bureau and the Federal Aviation Administration.
"But DeLay called those ideas 'a yawn' and instead demanded a dramatic agenda that would energize the conservative base -- or else face major losses in the fall leading to wholesale changes in leadership next year.
"'That sort of thing will happen over time if there are more losses. You can never gauge when members have had enough,' he said.
"'There is no simple, easy way out of this,' said Glen Bolger, a GOP pollster who works closely with congressional Republicans. 'This is extraordinarily problematic.'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403611.html

I know, boys! How 'bout "No New Taxes"! "Drown Government in the Bathtub (except for bailing out moneyed interests)"? "The Constitution: Shred It, Torture It, Burn It." "Lying. Spying. Torture. Bullish on America." "All of the Above: Mission Accomplished. Our Work Here is Done." Or, "You Weren't Using Those Civil Liberties Anyway ~ You Won't Miss Them." "America is Hurting~ Don't YOU Need a Corrupt Politician On YOUR side?"

Er, how 'bout, "Government for You, Not Us and Our Special Interests?" Or maybe, just maybe, you guys really shouldn't have voted against Mother's Day after all.

Much Ado About Nothing ~ Fear Of A Black Nation

2008-04-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Our Great American Mainstream Media For Its Superlative Campaign Coverage!

~ Of Obama and his dangerous "radical" associations, at least ~

Bread and Circus in the 21st Century

In the More of the Same Department today, we find CNN joining the rest of the American media doing what it seems to do best ~ attempting to whip the public into a frenzy over a trumped-up newsbyte consisting of deliberately edited soundbytes devoid of context, declaring whatever it is a "crisis," then wandering off to the next manufactured media stunt ~ all the while ignoring REAL news ~

Your Demon was watching CNN last night ~ Anderson Cooper's 360, to be precise ~ and was astounded and absolutely appalled to find CNN once again giving Fox some major competition in the crusade to completely corrupt and distort American political news coverage, using airwaves owned by us, the public, to propagate pathetically shallow self-manufactured "news" coverage.

First they aired the predictably incendiary "clips" of the "controversial" Reverend Wright, taken completely out of context, and then tried to make it all Obama's problem with a purported "failure to address it earlier," ignoring the fact that Obama has addressed the issue already. Last month, most recently.

I almost fell off my chair in astonishment when Cooper read the question why he didn't off the teleprompter, albeit with a toneless and flat expression of voice and face that suggested it wasn't exactly his personal idea of a legitimate or pressing issue. The panelist to whom the question was addressed was also visibly taken aback by the profound inanity. I see that the Boston Globe and countless others have picked up the meme today.

It's distortion and noise masquerading as respectable news coverage ~ the sort of thing that Fox has foisted upon us for many years. Can we not discern the difference anymore? The clip is deliberately edited to create the most controversy, taken out of context, played over and over and over again, and what's more, that "news" purposely conflates Wright's alleged impropriety with Obama personally, seeking to make him answer for someone else's alleged "sins" against an America that admits no wrongs, no mistakes, no history, and certainly no self-examination (that would be unpatriotic in the brave new Bushworld we're now forced to inhabit!)

So Obama was basically forced by shrill media screeching, relentless and interminable, to answer for things he did not say, that there's no reason to think he believes (don't forget that he has had a vastly different life experience than has Rev. Wright) and that he correctly termed a short while ago "distractions." Obama did that, but with plainly visible sadness and discomfort. Not surprisingly. "Gotcha," cries CNN.

(Obama breaks completely with Wright: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html)

Reaching desperately for some reason this crap should be relevant to anything, CNN and others (including other presidential candidates) beat the tired meme that it goes to those nebulous things called "character" and "judgment." The catch-all when they can't otherwise justify gossipy, salacious, logically disconnected coverage to any other issue of legitimate interest.

Er, yeah, no less than Hillary's little white lies and John McCain's involvement with the Keating Five speaks to their "characters" and "judgment." But never mind that. It's not news, especially when a Republican is involved.

What irks me more than anything is that, here, again, the great American corporate media that has served us so well with its edifying and astute coverage of Bushco machinations, and its ability to sniff out and investigate the real outrages upon the Constitution and illegal interpretations of international law such as the Geneva Conventions (not!), never mind other candidates' "controversial preachers" (see "Presidential Preacher Wars" blog entry below), is completely blowing yet another opportunity to address and flesh out a long-standing problem in this country, and contribute some progress to healing the racial divide by devoting just a tenth of the ink and airtime they waste on trying to whip up controversy, and to foment misunderstanding and hatred for the sake of excitement and ratings ~ reality-TV style ~ and instead do something constructive with it.

Your Demon modestly suggests they could contribute more positively by helping our history-challenged and the more self-absorbed and short-attention-spanned citizens among us to understand what Reverend Wright is talking about, instead of cynically exploiting it for the all-important (but transient) daily ratings game.

I don't defend Reverend Wright's means of garnering public attention just as the first viable black candidate for the American Presidency ascends to the national spotlight (it was a selfish "dis" on Obama which may ultimately compound the difficulties Wright's flock faces), nor do I blame him for using the attention to advance his own purposes. But I've lived in more truly diverse cross-cultural communities than most Americans, and I greatly enjoy his style, his oratory, and, above all, his intelligence. Is he radical? Is he subersive? I don't think so. Quite to the contrary. He argues passionately for us all to find common cause, whatever our racial identities, our ethnic heritage, or our religions. He may not hold the precise same views of history as the average white person, but then, that's because African-Americans have lived a different history than whites. That's all he's saying. (And I can't believe this even needs to be pointed out in the year of our Lord 2008.)

See CNN's own transcript of Wright's address to Detroit chapter of the NAACP. And again, it's a matter of that all-important context. Anyone in his right mind should be able to wrap a spare brain cell around the fact that the speech was aimed at an audience of other African-Americans, and at celebrating what he legitimately says is "different, not deficient."
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/wright.transcript/

Otherwise, I find most of what Wright says to be true and unobjectionable (when I can find a reliable source that reports it accurately) and at the very least valid from African-Americans' points of view ~ e.g., the Tuskegee Airmen "experiments," during which American military doctors let black servicemen believe they were being treated for syphilus when in fact the doctors were just charting the progression of the disease purposely left untreated. Instead, the media chooses to hoot at Wright for not loudly declaiming the "bizarre" idea that the AIDS virus is largely left unchecked or maybe even invented by the government because AIDS is perceived to be the problem of a misbehaving minority (blacks, gays and the stupid people who sleep with them), which may or may not have originated with him. We'll never know what Wright really thinks if it's left up to the media.

Any reasonable person, Demon thinks, should be able to at least understand why black Americans so profoundly distrust American government. Never mind slavery, Jim Crow, legally sustained segregation (the Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine), still unaddressed lynchings and angry white men terrorizing the black community in white robes and pointed hoods. Whose behavior is more deplorable? Or, stated another way, who had the social power to do something about it, didn't, and wants to complain now that blacks are just whiny and don't have the wherewithal to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Er, first they have to be able to afford boots.

Oh, but Wright "praised" Farrakahn, a real radical, and an anti-semite. Doesn't that mean that Obama's commitment to Israel should be questioned?

Get a grip! Wright's attempts to make common cause with "Nation of Islam" blacks does not reflect on or impugn Barack Obama. No more than Reverend Hagee's radical views of the Catholic Church mean that John McCain believes it because Reverend Hagee must be speaking for him. Until the media starts grilling McCain and faulting him for not repudiating Hagee we can hardly be expected to take any of this garbage as anything but a hit job on Obama. I also note the complete absence of media attention to the fact that Hillary prays with a weird cult-like preacher whose main theme, according to The Nation, is "only the power elites matter." And Hillary dares to call Obama "elitist?" Why is the media not hammering on Hillary's hypocrisy? (I know ~ they'll get around to it tomorrow.) Maybe it doesn't matter because everyone already knows McCain and Hillary have no special attachments to their loopy preachers? What's the reason for the disparate treatment? I want to know, seriously. It seems creepy and weird to me that the one candidate for President who did have a genuine bond to his preacher (that he was clearly pained to break) is forced by relentless and insipid media accusations to do just that while it does not seem to be remarkable that the other candidates' preachers are patently more oppressive and hate-filled than the one just disavowed.

Worse, as to the complex, nuanced and less easily addressed (now festering) issues of race (that Wright so stridently insisted we listen to him go on about), economics and "style," for lack of a better term, on the two sides of the racial divide, CNN, joining the usual suspects in the right-wing media and blogosphere, seem to be tired of hearing that meme and want to move on ~ white America is tired of being flogged with it, it's really old news, before our time, and it doesn't generate controversy and ratings. Except for the fact that the entire country is still suffering for it, and the black community more than anyone else.

Your Demon thinks that, in the comi-tragedy that American Presidential elections have become, the very worst news here is how our corporate media "misses" so much and instead resorts to cheap shots, sensationalization and tangential manufactured "issues" to sell advertising, leaving the truth-telling, serious discussion and investigative press functions upon which the democratic process so seriously depends to wither and die.

*So what? Our ratings are through the roof!*

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Still Waiting For An Apology...And Waiting...And Waiting

2008-04-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ill: Mark Byran

with permission

www.artofmarkbryan.com

MSM TV News Still Hasn't Properly Acknowledged Being Duped by Pentagon For-Profit Propaganda Stooges

Your Demon can't say she's surprised, but really ~ aren't they just the wee bit interested in maintaining the appearance of journalistic integrity and trustworthiness?

I've been interested in any follow-ups to the New York Times article first published a week ago (see below), but of the offenders, only ABC and CNN have attempted to address their miserable failures to not only report the news truthfully but to ask some questions in the furtherance of investigative journalism.

Not forthcoming, even from ABC and CNN. Rather, ABC buried its very brief acknowledgment in investigative reporter Brian Ross' pages, and promptly scurried to point out that the Pentagon has its own news channel. And, er, your point was, Brian? There's a hell of a difference between an ostensibly "real" television news network parading Rummy's pumped-up-on-war profits bellicose retired generals as "independent" analysts by ABC (covertly) and the Pentagon having its own network, where the average joe with two working brain cells would expect to encounter happy news about Iraq and would, heaven forfend, know enough to take it with a grain of salt.

CNN, which is behaving more and more like a subsidiary of Fox everyday with regard to election coverage (imitating the peurile gossipy salacious tone of same, I should say), also briefly acknowledged its participation in the hoodwinking of the masses.

But all the others remain conspicuously silent, Kremlin-like. They've apparently adopted the GOP-SOP: if it's bad news for us, ignore it. Americans, after all, have notoriously short attention spans and a high appetite for whatever transient fancy appears on their screens. Lay low, be quiet and it'll all be forgotten by the next newscycle.

Or maybe they got assurances from Bushco ~ a plan to head it off. Never mind it's the same old, same old ~ announce the program is being suspended, and, later, resume it when nobody's really paying attention. Worked with torture and spying, after all.

Suspension of the "Pentagon stooge" program: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61696&archive=true

Bonus tidbit on NPR: Pentagon propaganda extends even to third-graders' Weekly Readers:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5553746

Resumption of torture: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/washington/27intel.html

Do something: FreePress, a nonpartisan group for media reform, has an action campaign aimed at launching a Congressional investigation. Wait for the section tilted "Progaganda Pundits" to appear on the left.

http://www.freepress.net/

WarMachine 101 ~

2008-04-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy
http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/index.html

War by and for Cabalists in the Military-Industrial Complex ~ A Nation's Worst Fears Realized

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address, 1961

* * *

Bushco Oil and Terra Wars, 2002 : In return for "access" ~ to Pentagon poobahs, introductions in Iraq and classified information ~ retired Generals and lobbyists with billions of dollars in war business interests sold themselves, the American media, and us down the river in a calculated effort to convince America the war was going well ~

"A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

"It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,' Robert S. Bevelcqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox news analyst, said.

" Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. 'This was a coherent, active policy,' he said. As conditions in Iraq deteriorated [he said] he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

"Night and day,' Mr. Allard said, 'I felt we'd been hosed."

"...The Administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, some analysts said...' you'll lose all access."

How likely, on the face of it, would you think it'd be that George W. and "the Dick" Cheney, both of whom spent the Vietnam War either AWOL or hiding in school behind the wife's skirts, would live to be the architects of a brave new world order whereby war is fought for the most callow and self-serving purposes, largely by propaganda and a newly roaring military-industrial complex? Could a great nation and its legendary "free press" be so easily co-opted and fooled so blatantly? Almost 8 years into it, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Though you wouldn't know it by the mainstream media silence otherwise, The New York Times on Sunday carried what is, to your Demon, a bombshell 17-page article, the result of its suit against Bushco's DOD to get information regarding Bushco's successful progaganda ploy to convince Americans that its grand and glorious war in the Middle East is going as planned, despite all the evidence on the ground to the contrary.

There's a reason for that ~ the American media who've been complicit in hyping the war even though it hasn't gone well ~ CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN as well as ABC ~ have all been hoodwinked in an elaborate ruse by Bushco to wage a disinformation campaign and distort news by deliberately planted information through Generals and lobbyists with very profitable business interests in the Middle Eastern war machine. Bushco successfully planted these a***holes as "media analysts" to keep us "on message," which was, predictably, the war, despite some setbacks, is going well.

It's a nightmare of stunning proportions, and includes the run-up to the invasion, even though Bushco knew there wasn't any good evidence for invading Iraq. Even worse, the aforementioned networks were complicit in that they didn't look very closely into the hired guns' business interests, claiming now that it was up to the hired guns to voluntarily disclose them.

One ~ General Marks, who was "working intensively on a 4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in Iraq" and was even "made president of the McNeil spin-off that won [a] huge contract in Iraq" ~ at the same time as he was serving as a paid consultant for CNN~ told the New York Times that he had "zero challenge separating myself from a business interest" and that it did not affect his commentary on the war.

"CNN said it had no idea until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure made several months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job." As a result, CNN ended the relationship ~ but not, your Demon posits, before the damage was done.

Fox, of course, the only source of "fair and balanced coverage" in the nation, refused to participate or comment on the article, and promptly returned to its obsessive gossipy coverage of the radical Mormon cult in Texas and examination of Britney Spears' profound cultural significance.

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican, is surely spinning in his grave. Your Demon is willing to bet that he's none too pleased that a pair of pansy cowards like Bush and Cheney would be responsible for such a debacle. But not, I suspect, at all surprised.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html

Your Demon can't wait to read history's judgement of this abysmal episode of American history (seriously!) How much more evidence do we need that Bushco is a criminal enterprise, for cryin' out loud? Impeach them NOW!

Winning Ugly

2008-04-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

Big Money in Short Sales

Quote of the Day:"Capitalism isn't pretty" but "So what?"

"It's clear somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. It's not pretty at all because people say, 'Oh my God. Look how much money these guys are making while people are losing their homes and are complaining about the cost of eggs and sugar.' But so what? We don't live in a society that is pretty all the time. That's why it's capitalism."

~ So sayeth Daniel Strachman, a former hedge fund consultant and author

Over the past 2 days, all of the news is about hedge fund manager John Paulson and the obscene amount of money he made personally last year--3.7 BILLION~ "by betting subprime mortgage securities would sour...
[...]

"He wasn't the only one with Titanic-size profits. Two other fund managers, George Soros and James Simons, who are notoriously secretive about their investments, earned $2.9 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively, according to Alpha Magazine's annual list of top hedge fund earners.

"The numbers left jaws agape across Wall Street and Washington. With his windfall from last year alone, Paulson could have bought troubled Wall Street giant Bear Stearns three times over. Or he could have matched the price Delta agreed this week to pay to merge with Northwest Airlines and still have $600 million left over.

"A few years ago, individual income reaching into the billions of dollars was unfathomable. In 2002, the first year the magazine tracked hedge fund compensation, the top 25 managers earned $2.8 billion combined.

"Paulson's feat was even more astonishing because he started 2007 managing $6 billion, not a massive pool of money by hedge fund standards. Over the course of the year, one of his funds earned a whopping 590 percent return, and another soared 353 percent, according to Alpha. By the end of December, his funds' assets were worth $28 billion.

"He amassed his winnings by 'shorting' securities linked to subprime mortgages. In a short sale, the investor borrows securities -- in this case, subprime mortgages that were widely held by banks, brokerages and other investors -- and sells them to another buyer. Later, the investor must buy those securities back and return them to the original lender. As the subprime market collapsed, the value of the securities fell, and Paulson was able to pocket the difference. The lenders were stuck with the losses.

"Several hedge fund managers, including Philip Falcone, who has been challenging the board of the New York Times Co., also profited from the mortgage crisis by betting that subprime debt securities would plunge in price. Falcone earned $1.7 billion last year. Others made fortunes by betting that the prices of commodities such as oil, sugar and corn would rise.

"Hedge funds are pools of private money, largely generated from wealthy individuals, pension funds and endowments, used for a wide range of investments. Usually 80 percent of any gains are given to such investors, while fund managers take 20 percent, plus an annual fee for their services. Alpha's list tracks the income that managers receive after paying their staff members and other expenses.

"Some Wall Street analysts who follow the industry said the gigantic compensation figures may prompt Congress to consider raising taxes on the business. Last year, several lawmakers introduced bills aimed at raising the tax rate, usually 15 percent, that fund managers pay on their gains. None of these efforts became law. "

Mr. Strachman and others claim raising taxes on hedge funds really isn't fair ~ the Captains of Churning Wall Street Markets gambled that borrowed stock, and won that money, fair and square!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041602027.html

The New York Times observed yesterday that "the..unprecedented and growing affluence underscores the gaping inequality between the millions of Americans facing stagnating wages and rising home foreclosures and an agile financial elite that seems to thrive in good times and bad. Such profits may also prompt more calls for regulation of the industry.

"Even on Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure of success, the size of the winnings makes some uneasy. 'There is nothing wrong with it — it’s not illegal,' said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco. 'But it’s ugly.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html

Your Demon can't help but note that the last time we saw such extremes in the economy it was the good old Roaring '20's ~ except that it inevitably led to a crash, and suicides as the cannibal captains of Wall Street watched their fortunes melt away, and, rather than face the world without money, leapt out of Wall Street windows to their deaths. The Great Depression followed. But that can't happen now, can it? Banks are supposed to be regulated (except if they're investment banks like Bear Stearns) ~ but no matter ~ you, the taxpayer, are indemnifying them from all their bad and risky decisions. You pay more taxes (they get more favorable rates than you), and you pay the increased costs of everything due to the tanked dollar and a moribund economy ~

If you really want an-eye-opening treat regarding the historic paralells and danger signs, over at that heretic liberal progressive website TPM Cafe there's a very lively book review and discussion going on about the ghosts of the Roaring '20's and what they might teach a new crowd of progressives about the empty activity generated by churning money markets (or nothing of very great practical use being produced, except profits of "thin noney, aka money "out of thin air"~) that led to the Crash.

For instance, an interesting comment:

"Now, the next key question is: what does that 'thin air' money get used for? If it is used to purchase physical goods and services, and to invest in the future expansion of output then things pretty much stay in balance and everyone's happy.

"Everyone, that is, except the usurers and speculators, who would rather use the 'thin air' money to create even more 'thin air' money. When you allow this to happen, the end result is always, always bad. This is the problem we have run into today. There is a fundamental mismatch: the financial system can create an unlimited amount of debt. The real economy cannot do the same for physical wealth. (see "The roots of the subprime crisis" at http://www.eurotrib.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2008/3/11/122016/316

"So, when you have a financial meltdown, it's usually because the ability to create money out of thin air was being used for private speculative gain, rather than for the public good. The solution, therefore, is relatively straightforward: you use the sovereign power of government to cancel or negate all useless 'thin air' money - in our case today, some $500 trillion of derivatives - and you use the 'full faith and credit' of the government to either reorganize that 'thin air' money or create new 'thin air' money while making sure that it is directed only into useful and productive activities. No speculation, no usury.

"Of course, it does not work out all that simple, largely because of the massive political crises that are created as the faction of usurers and speculators attempt to maintain their prerogatives. That's basically the story of the creation of the conservative movement: a bunch of rich twits who were unhappy with the New Deal restraints on their ability to get rich quick kiting 'thin air' money decided to create a movement to demand 'free trade' and 'free markets.' That's really what it all boils down to.

"The usurers and speculators will do anything to prevent this, including attacking, deprecating, and sabotaging the'full faith and credit' of the economy. The last time it got this bad, Franklin Roosevelt stuck to his guns, a bunch of usurers and speculators (including George Bush's grandfather) ended up asking retired Marine General Smedley Butler to stage a military coup and impose essentially a banker's fascist dictatorship. I am NOT making this up! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot Fortunately, General Butler listened to the bankers very politely, then turned right around and screamed "foul" as loud as he could. Unfortunately, all the coup plotters got off without even a scolding - we would probably be better off today if at least a few of them had been shot for treason.

"So, the technical side of what to do to stop and get out of a meltdown is relatively simple. It's the politics that presents the real messy problems."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/16/the_perils_of_deregulation/

Bushco Last Days To-Do List, Above The Law (Still)

2008-04-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ill: Micah Ian Wright/Propaganda Remix

with permission

http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html

Eye in the Sky

Several recent newsbits caught your Demon's attention this past week, and before we all yawn and go back to worrying about other things, I'd like to take the opportunity to reflect upon the damage wrought by Bushco on our civil liberties here at home in the name of "fighting terrorism."

This past Saturday Bushco sprang on Congress the news that it's pushing ahead with a new domestic spying program ~ a "National Operations Application" office that has to do with satellite technology.

This despite the fact that Congress thought it had determined to hold the program in abeyance. Bushco apparently got around the inconvenience posed by the recalcitrance of a co-equal Constitutional governmental body by classifying the program's funding sources and its size. Voila! It's invisible to us all!

Likewise, nobody knows what legal vetting the program has undergone (if any~given Bushco's track record so far in legal matters where civil liberties and human rights are concerned, your Demon is inclined, with good reason, to speculate that it's the same BushState version of "l'etat, c'est moi " school of imperial "make it happen" legal reasoning that also produced the infamous John Yoo-David Addington "torture is not torture until organ failure or death" memos, now disavowed, we're led to believe.)

"The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

"Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

"'There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,' Chertoff wrote [the Chairs] of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.
'I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns' Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. 'I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.'

"His statements marked a fresh determination to operate the department's new National Applications Office as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The administration in May 2007 gave DHS authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response.

"But Congress delayed launch of the new office last October. Critics cited its potential to expand the role of military assets in domestic law enforcement, to turn new or as-yet-undeveloped technologies against Americans without adequate public debate, and to divert the existing civilian and scientific focus of some satellite work to security uses.

"Democrats say Chertoff has not spelled out what federal laws govern the NAO, whose funding and size are classified. Congress barred Homeland Security from funding the office until its investigators could review the office's operating procedures and safeguards. The department submitted answers on Thursday, but some lawmakers promptly said the response was inadequate.

"'I have had a firsthand experience with the trust-me theory of law from this administration,' said Harman, citing the 2005 disclosure of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, which included warrantless eavesdropping on calls and e-mails between people in the United States and overseas. 'I won't make the same mistake. . . . I want to see the legal underpinnings for the whole program.'

"[Congressman] Thompson called DHS's release Thursday of the office's procedures and a civil liberties impact assessment 'a good start.' But, he said, 'We still don't know whether the NAO will pass constitutional muster since no legal framework has been provided.'

"DHS officials said the demands are unwarranted. 'The legal framework that governs the National Applications Office . . . is reflected in the Constitution, the U.S. Code and all other U.S. laws,' said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said its operations will be subject to 'robust,' structured legal scrutiny by multiple agencies."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103655.html

And if you believe that, or the fact that the spying/monitoring will be limited to innocuous civil warning sytems applications to which nobody can really object, I have a bridge for sale. See me later.

I suspect that what they're really talking about here, though the WaPo doesn't come out and say it, is domestic spying via MILITARY satellite, anytime, anywhere, and fuck quaint old-fashioned notions such as "probable cause." It's a brave new BushWorld we live in now.

I've said it before and I'll say it again ~ 911 is the best thing that ever happened to the disingenuous warmongering neocons ~ it has made their careers and provided the perfect cover to revive and relive some of this nation's sorriest historical moments since J. Edgar Hoover's most paranoid fantasies of Commie infiltration and nationwide panic. Bushco exploited a nation's legitimate fears to subvert the authority we surrendered ~ and now we can't seem to get it back. We were led to believe that internal spying could only be for our own good, and reassured us all that our civil liberties would remain inviolate and intact.

Nixonian Revival ~ Spying on Domestic "Enemies"

In 2004 Salon ran an article titled, "Outlawing Dissent," documenting the resurrection of domestic spying on peaceful anti-war dissidents, and the FBI's use of local undercover cops to infiltrate and, on some occasions, try to provoke group members into acting in a way that could have resulted in violence. The article handily recaps some history that bears remarking:

"In the early 1970s, after the exposure of COINTELPRO, a program of widespread FBI surveillance and sabotage of political dissidents, reforms were put in place to prevent the government from spying on political groups when there was no suspicion of criminal activity. But once again, protesters throughout America are being watched, often by police who are supposed to be investigating terrorism. Civil disobedience, seen during peaceful times as the honorable legacy of heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., is being treated as terrorism's cousin, and the government claims to be justified in infiltrating any meeting where it's even discussed. It's too early to tell if America is entering a repeat of the COINTELPRO era. But Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Law in Manhattan, says, 'There are certainly enough warning signs out there that we may be.'

[...]
"COINTELPRO's abuses came to light in 1971, when a group of activists calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Penn., and stole several hundred pages of files.

"In his recent history of COINTELPRO, 'There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan and FBI Counterintelligence,' David Cunningham writes, 'These files provided the first public disclosure of a range of Bureau activities against targets such as the Black Panther Party, the Venceremos Brigade, the Philadelphia Labor Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and college students with 'revolutionary' leanings.'

"Eventually, damaging revelations about COINTELPRO led the FBI to adopt reforms designed to prevent a repeat of Hoover's excesses. Attorney General Edward Levi laid out a set of standards for FBI domestic surveillance. 'These so-called Levi Guidelines clearly laid out the criteria required for initiated investigations, establishing a standard of suspected criminal conduct, meaning activity (rather than merely ideas or writings, which had been adequate cause for targeting groups and individuals as subversive during the COINTELPRO era),' Cunningham writes. 'The guidelines also stipulated as acceptable only particular investigative techniques, making it considerably more difficult to initiate intrusive forms of surveillance.'

"The Levi guidelines didn't end all political spying -- in the 1980s, the FBI targeted the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador, or CISPES. As the ACLU reports, 'Strong evidence suggests that CISPES was targeted for investigation because of its ideological opposition to then-President Reagan's already controversial foreign policy in Latin America. The FBI persisted in an intensive six-month investigation of CISPES in which it often reported the group's activities to the Department of Justice in a prejudicial and biased manner.' Yet most civil libertarians believe that even if the rules were occasionally broken, they still worked to protect First Amendment rights.

"Contrary to the claims made by defenders of Bush administration policies, the Levi guidelines would not have impeded an investigation of al-Qaida. As Cunningham points out, cases 'with suspected ties to 'foreign powers' were not subject to this criminal standard.' Nevertheless, after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new rules gutting the Levi guidelines. Thanks to Ashcroft, FBI agents are now allowed to monitor public meetings even if they don't have any reason to suspect that there's any criminal activity being committed or planned.

"'Now, that means if there is a rally of people who are criticizing the United States and its policies and saying that the United States will someday perhaps be destroyed because of that, the FBI agent can go and listen to what's being said,' Ashcroft told CNN's Larry King in May of 2002. In other words, merely arguing that U.S. policies may result in the country's destruction justifies FBI snooping. This gives the FBI investigative license far beyond even that it enjoyed during the COINTELPRO period, let alone under the Levi Guidelines."

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/02/11/cointelpro/index.html

The aforementioned John Yoo took it still a giant leap further in the very-recently revealed memo in which he advised the White House that the 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure doesn't apply when a brave boy President takes it into his head to conduct "domestic military operations ~ a position Mukasey has disavowed, for now. (Glenn Greenwald on John Yoo's War Crimes: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/02/yoo/)

It's not like we weren't warned. For example, last year the ACLU called for a moratorium on the use of military spy satellites trained on our own population: http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/31835prs20070906.html

Bush's War Not So Easily Stage Managed Now, Even Harder to Fight

2008-04-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

Bushco Presents: Never Mind the Economy ~ Look Over There ~ War in Iraq! Dangerous Iranians!

Of course your Demon was paying attention to the recent Petraeus and Crocker dog and pony show of military hardware (Petraeus's chest) accompanied by smooth-talker (hardly) Ryan Crocker, Bushco's ambassador to Iraq.

I just wasn't impressed or motivated enough to comment upon it. Talk about stale. I'm not only one who thought so.

Dick Cavett, legendary talk show host, has a tart review of the performance in the NYT titled, "Memo to Petraeus and Crocker ~ More Laughs Please." Dick examines their stage presences, as well as their facility with presentations, and finds both sorely lacking: "It’s hard to imagine where you could find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers."

[...]

"Never in this breathing world have I seen a person clog up and erode his speaking — as distinct from his reading — with more 'uhs,' 'ers' and 'ums' than poor Crocker. Surely he has never seen himself talking: 'Uh, that is uh, a, uh, matter that we, er, um, uh are carefully, uh, considering.' (Not a parody, an actual Crocker sentence. And not even the worst.)

"These harsh-on-the-ear insertions, delivered in his less than melodious, hoarse-sounding tenor, are maddening. And their effect is to say that the speaker is painfully unsure of what he wants, er, um, to say.

"If Crocker’s collection of these broken shards of verbal crockery were eliminated from his testimony, everyone there would get home at least an hour earlier.

"Petraeus commits a different assault on the listener. And on the language. In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to 'Eyewitness News.' Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of 'learnedness' and 'scholasticism' — possibly even that dread thing, 'intellectualism' — to their talk. Sorry, I mean their 'articulation.'

[...]

"I find it painful to watch this team of two straight men, straining on the potty of language. Only to deliver such . . . what? Such knobbed and lumpy artifacts of superfluous verbiage? (Sorry, now I’m doing it…)

"But I must hand it to his generalship. He did say something quite clearly and admirably and I am grateful for his frankness. He told us that our gains are largely imaginary: that our alleged 'progress' is 'fragile and reversible.' (Quite an accomplishment in our sixth year of war.) This provides, of course, a bit of pre-emptive covering of the general’s hindquarters next time that, true to Murphy’s Law, things turn sour again.

"Back to poor Crocker. His brows are knitted. And he has a perpetually alarmed expression, as if, perhaps, he feels something crawling up his leg.

"Could it be he is being overtaken by the thought that an honorable career has been besmirched by his obediently doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas? The one whose foolish military misadventure seems to increasingly resemble that of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn?
"Not an apt comparison, I admit.
"Custer sent only 258 soldiers to their deaths."

An alert commenter adds (paraphrased), "Another reason the comparison isn't apt ~ at least Custer fought alongside his men, can't say the same for GWB."

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/memo-to-petraeus-crocker-more-laughs-please/?th&emc=th

Despite your modest Demon's unwillingness to appear to take issue with the highly literate and very urbane Mr. Cavett, there were several junctures in the otherwise boring drone-fest that I found very amusing, and indeed, laughed at loud upon hearing during the Petraeus/Crocker show, but none more than Crocker's plaintive response to a question posed by Sen. Obama.

"Not to sound like a broken record, but this is hard and this is complicated..."

"SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), Illinois: I'm trying to get to an endpoint. That's what all of us have been trying to get to.

"And, see, the problem I have is, if the definition of success is so high, no traces of al-Qaida or no possibility of reconstitution, a highly effective Iraqi government, a democratic, multiethnic, multi-sectarian, functioning democracy, no Iranian influence -- at least not the kind that we don't like -- then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.

"If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo, but there's not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there's still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it's not a threat to its neighbors and it's not an al-Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe.

"And that, I think, is what everybody here on this committee has been trying to drive at and we haven't been able to get as clear of an answer as we would like.

"RYAN CROCKER: And that's because, Senator, it is a -- I mean, I don't like to sound like a broken record...

"SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I understand.

"RYAN CROCKER: ... but this is hard and this is complicated. I think that when Iraq gets to the point that it can carry forward its further development without a major commitment of U.S. forces, with still a lot of problems out there, but where they and we would have a fair certitude that, again, they can drive it forward themselves without significant danger of having the whole thing slip away from them again, then clearly our profile, our presence diminishes markedly."

Your Demon was also gravely amused by Sen. Biden's conclusion, after questioning Crocker, that, "I can't think of any circumstance where you fellows are likely to recommend, no matter how bad things got, where you would withdraw, but I may be mistaken. That's part of everyone's concern, at least mine."

Iran! Iran! Iran!

Another item that caught my attention was the extent to which Iran is being blamed for ~ well, everything in Iraq. The infamous Joe Lieberman and the equally infamous (Mr. Global Warming Denier) James Inhofe pursued the point with Petraeus and Crocker, and indeed, Lieberman testified for them:

"Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands -- excuse me -- hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?

"GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: It certainly is -- I do believe that is correct. Again, some of that also is militia elements who have been subsequently trained by these individuals, but there's no question about the threat that they pose and, again, about the way that it has been revealed more fully in recent weeks.

"SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Though we all have questions about the recent Iraqi government initiative under Prime Minister Maliki's leadership in the south in Basra, is it not possible that there's something very encouraging about that initiative, which is that it represents a decision by the Maliki government in Baghdad to not tolerate the Iranian-backed militias, essentially running wild and trying to control the south of his country?

"RYAN CROCKER: The reflection of that has been seen in the level of political unity behind the prime minister. It says -- or are more extensive than anything I've seen during my year there.

"JUDY WOODRUFF: Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma asked if Iran was trying to duplicate its influence in Lebanon, backing the Hezbollah, in Iraq.

"SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R), Oklahoma: In your opening statement, you referred to, I believe, Ahmadinejad making the statement that, if something happens, that we leave precipitously, that there would be a vacuum, and he would fill that vacuum. Do either of you want to comment on what would happen if they were to fill that vacuum?

"RYAN CROCKER: Because the general level of violence is down, we could see, I think, much more sharply defined what Iran's role is in the arming and equipping of these extremist militia groups.

"And what it tells me is that Iran is pursuing, as it were, a Lebanization strategy, using the same techniques they used in Lebanon to co-opt elements of the local Shia community, and use them as, basically, instruments of Iranian force.

"That also tells me, sir, that, in the event of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal, the Iranians would just push that much harder."

Excerpted from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june08/hearings_04-08.html

If you're interested in this debate and all for expanding the war into Iran (I'm not) I urge you not to overlook the second page where Retired Gen. Odem, now Yale professor (who, as I recall, was practically forced to retire because Bushco can't abide anyone in the ranks who has the cajones to disagree with its insane pre-fixed war-mongering policy) and Republicon New American Century/American Enterprise Institute "military historian" Frederick Kagan go at it. Here's a taste:

"GEN. WILLIAM ODOM (Ret.), U.S. Army: The uncomfortable truth is beginning to dawn on them. The surge has sustained military instability and achieved nothing in political consolidation.

"Allowing these sheiks in the Sunni areas and other strongmen to sign up with the United States to be paid, where we protect them from Maliki's government, diffuses power, both political and military.

"The possibilities for the Shiite camp to break up have been there all along. Sadr's forces, his Mahdi Army, were standing by to see what would happen. Maliki, against the best advice of both Ambassador Crocker and Petraeus, General Petraeus, went ahead, rushed down, and got into a fight in Basra, which he lost.

"Now that is a huge political setback for Maliki, and it shows you how fractured the Shiite camp is, not to speak of the multi fractures within the Shiite-Sunni area.

"So the things are much worse now. And I don't see that they'll get any better. This was foreseeable a year, a year-and-a-half ago. And to continue to put the cozy veneer of comfortable half-truth on this is to deceive the American public and to make them think it's not the charade it is."

And finally, your Demon's choice for the most amusing testimony of the bore-fest that was the Senate hearings otherwise: Republicons switching sides & now falling all over themselves to NOT be associated with the failed "war on terra." (See PBS Online Newshour transcript).

Now my vote for biggest omission in the tragi-comedy the whole mess has become ~ the 800-lb. gorilla in the room that Petraeus and Crocker allude to in only the vaguest of terms ~ and that is the fact that there's been NO progress on the Iraqi oil-revenue sharing law that would give foreign interests (read US) a guaranteed cut of the pie, and would also be my choice for the reason we're hedging our bets by supporting (read throwing money at) anyone in Iraq who will accept it, even if they oppose the "official" government we had a hand in installing. Way to go, Bushco! No wonder the Iranians have the moral upper hand in so many Iraqis' minds.

On March 17 (last month) this report appeared in the UPI:

"Charles Ries, U.S. State Department minister for economic affairs and coordinator for economic transition in Iraq, said the proposed law isn't necessary for Iraq to produce oil 'but it would clearly be much, much better and incentivize private investment to help Iraq produce more if a bill would pass.'

"U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is in Iraq Monday and said he's pressing Iraqi leaders to move the controversial legislation forward.Ries said Iraq has set aside $2.5 billion for Technical Support Agreements over the next two years. TSAs, being negotiated with BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, would see a transfer of technology, expertise and training to Iraq's oil sector.Further down the road, Ries said Iraq will sign production-sharing agreements to develop areas not currently producing."

http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Analysis/2008/03/17/analysis_iraq_oil_law_holdup_political/2837/

First things first: the Neocon strategy is clear to me ~ invade on a trumped-up pretext (9/11! Al Queda! 9/11! Al-Queda! They need and want democracy even if they don't know it!), persuade them to part with their oil, and then we'll think about leaving. Even more so now that we've made world-class asses of ourselves in eyes of even our allies.

And Then There's George

2008-04-08T02:28:00.001-07:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy

http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/index.html

The Neo-Cons' Extravagant, Unbridled Resurrection of a Neo-Gilded Age

The New York Times, in the wake of an unprecedented rescue of Bear Stearns at taxpayer expense and amidst a worldwide economic meltdown, asks the question again: why do plainly incompetent robber barons take home outlandish pay packages and bonuses even while their companies post losses, and the uneveness of wealth distribution grows ever more glaring ~ the current disparity between the very rich and the very poor has reached a level not seen in this country since the late 1800's. Guess when that was? The so-called Gilded Age of very rich people who got that way by very frequently exploiting the very poor. (E.g. when women and children did piecework in sweatshops and were often trapped and died when the buildings caught fire)?

That was in the bad old days before we had unions, the eight-hour day, and things like that. Just a reminder in case you're too young or too busy to remember America's social history. Flash forward to today--we've outsourced the sweatshops along with other business, so we don't have that sort of stuff happening on our shores anymore, but we are still the buyers of those products, and we don't have a lot of jobs left in this country.

Your Demon notes it because she's long been warning of the extreme social engineering policies pursued by the man pictured above. What's occurring now in the never-ending gravy train of bailouts is the implementation of a public policy that privatizes profits and socializes losses ~ leaving you, the taxpayer, holding the bag while the robber barons churn markets and run up illusory profits while adding nothing but wave after wave of popping bubbles. For this they should be rewarded? Seriously.

Ah well ~

* * *

"It’s hard to square the conceit that chief executives are rewarded for improving companies’ performance with the fact that chiefs at 10 financial-services firms in the study made $320 million last year, even as their banks reported mortgage-related losses of $55 billion.

"Meanwhile, the average earnings of typical workers have failed to keep up with inflation in four of the past five years. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, average incomes in the highest-earning 1 percent of the United States grew 11 percent year-over-year between 2002 and 2006. Incomes in the bottom 99 percent grew by 0.9 percent annually over the period. This year looks bad, too.

"This polarization is producing a pattern of income distribution rarely seen outside Africa or Latin America, and unheard of in the United States, at least since the gilded age. In 2006, the 15,000 families in the top 0.01 percent of the income distribution — earning at least $10.7 million apiece — pocketed 3.48 percent of the nation’s total income, double their share in 1993.

"Some analysts argue that the spectacular rise in executive pay is to be expected in a marketplace in which bigger and bigger firms compete for talent. Others suggest it has more to do with the ability of chief executives to manipulate their boards to set their own pay.
In any case, the combination of inexorable income growth at the very apex of society and stagnation everywhere else can serve no public good.

"The Bush administration has focused its economic policies on cutting taxes for the very richest Americans. Taxation needs urgently to become more progressive. If the United States is to continue to embrace globalization, technological innovation and other forces that contribute to economic growth, it has to share the spoils better."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/opinion/08tue4.html

Thanks, GOP, for taking us back to "the good old days~"

Welfare for Robber Barons & River Boat Gamblers

2008-04-02T02:35:00.000-07:00

$50 Million Bonus for Wrecking the International Economy ~ Where Do I Apply for a Job?

Bear Stearns!

Truthout had a great rumination on the new class of welfare recipients yesterday ~ a logical outgrowth the Bushco fondness for unbridled, deregulated rapacious cannibal capitalism ~ ruin the world's biggest economy, and we'll bail you out using the "independent" Fed to do it. Whine about your stock price and we'll sweeten the pot.

But you there, little welfare mommy trying to feed your family with foodstamps ~ don't get any bright ideas from this. Welfare allotments for you are another matter entirely. You have to learn to live within your miserably inadequate budget for food, and do not whine about the astronomical prices of bread, eggs, and butter. Do not bother to complain about Medicaid spend-downs, either. A $6,000 annual deductible isn't that bad for health insurance for poor people! We can't hear you!

Two worlds under Bushco

A grocery-shopping true vignette from the real life of your Demon ~ last evening I stopped by my local Safeway to pick up some chicken while it was still on special and a few other things. Only one register was open, and in front of me was an ordinary looking mother and her small child with a shopping cart crammed full of stuff. They looked like any other people you'd see shopping in a striving-for yuppie-dom neighborhood.

Due to Safeway's unfortunate placement of its cash register computer screens, every minute detail of your shopping habits is broadcast to everyone in line behind you, including payment method. So I couldn't help but notice that it was a food stamp transaction. The time the transaction took was more than the ordinary, and as I was standing there I noticed also that for the amount of the transaction, this welfare mom must have been a heroically thrifty shopper.

She utilized coupons, spent $100, and got a shopping cart full of groceries. I have to say ~ I admire a hard shopper, a person who can pinch a penny so hard it screams (I just don't like waste!)~ and this woman was a paragon.

I saw store brands, mostly, some name brands (purchased with coupons), and some substitutions that wouldn't have occurred to me--for instance, a value-sized tub of cooking lard, but no butter or other cooking oils.

Not that I was taking inventory. These were just a few of the things I saw when not otherwise entranced by a National Enquirer cover of amateurishly pasted-together cover photos of Obama and Reverend Wright atop a lurid headline about how they're plotting to destroy the country from the inside out. ("Sorry, fellas, Bushco already beat you to it," I'm thinking.)

When I had completed my purchase and was on the way out, the welfare mom and her daughter were still standing next to their cart, Mom scrutinizing her cash register receipt to be sure there had been no mistakes.

I daresay this woman was not Ronald Reagan's demonized, vilified, and all-too-easy to hate Cadillac-driving Welfare Queen.

True story. So you might imagine how your Demon was affected when, later, she read the story about how the Bear Stearns investors and employees had succeeded in whining the price of their worthless stock from $2 to $10 when they should have been thanking their lucky stars to get $2--better than bankruptcy!

Your Demon is willing to bet no one at Bear Stearns is being forced to buy lard because they can't afford butter.

* * *

..."Long live the welfare king." This person really exists [unlike Ronald Reagan's Cadillac-driving welfare queens], his name is James E. Cayne, and taxpayers just handed him almost $50 million. Mr. Cayne got this gift when J.P. Morgan renegotiated the terms of its takeover of Bear Stearns. The buying price went up fivefold, fetching Bear Stearn's stockholders $1.2 billion instead of the $236 million in the agreement brokered by the Fed last week.

"While Bear Stearns shareholders may still have been unhappy about their losses even at the higher price (the stock had been worth more than ten times as much a year earlier), in reality this was a very generous gift from US taxpayers. As an inducement to carry through the takeover, the Fed gave J.P. Morgan up to $30 billion in guarantees, in case the bank has to make good on Bear Stearns' liabilities. In other words, J.P. Morgan is being given the opportunity to do some gambling, with the taxpayers committed to making good any losses. The money that J.P. Morgan paid for this privilege went to Bear Stearns shareholders, not the taxpayers.

"James E. Cayne did especially well as a result of the taxpayer's generosity because as the former CEO of Bear Stearns, and current chairman, he owned a great deal of the company's stock. To put the taxpayer's gift to Mr. Cayne in some context, this is approximately equal to the amount paid in TANF to 10,000 working mothers over the course of a year.

"Of course Mr. Cayne and the rest of the Bear Stearns stockholders are not the only incredibly rich people benefiting from the taxpayers' generosity these days. The Fed's actions are reining [sic] down taxpayer money all over Wall Street. When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke rushed in to save Bear Stearns last week, he made two other important policy changes. He indicated a commitment to protecting other major investment banks and he opened the Fed's discount window to the investment banks. These are both huge taxpayer subsidies to these titans of free market capitalism.

"The story of the discount window is straightforward. The Fed is allowing investment banks, which are subject to none of the restrictions or disclosure requirements of commercial banks, to borrow at a government subsidized interest rate. Currently the discount rate is two-and-a-half percent. Those seeking to refinance mortgages, most of whom are probably better credit risks these days than the investment banks, may want to call Mr. Bernanke and ask for the same deal.

"While the subsidy involved in the below market lending is easy to see, the commitment to support the investment banks is probably the bigger subsidy to the Wall Street crew. The basic story here is that the investment banks made commitments, mostly in the form of credit default swaps, that they lack the resources to honor. These credit default swaps are essentially a form of insurance. The investment banks promise to make payments to bondholders in the event that there is a default on the bonds they hold.

"The banks were prepared to deal with an occasional default, but they don't have the resources to deal with the sort of large-scale collapse that we are now witnessing as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble. Mr. Bernanke has effectively told the banks' creditors not to worry, because the Fed will make good on these credit default swaps, even if Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or Goldman Sachs can't.

"This is a very nice deal for the investment banks, because they got the fees for selling the credit default swaps, not the Fed. And they were very big fees, making the banks and the bank's executives extremely wealthy. In effect, the investment banks sold insurance that they actually were not in a position to provide. Instead the Fed is providing the insurance, but the investment banks get to keep the money they got from selling the insurance: nice work, if you can get it.

"This is yet another episode of the Conservative Nanny State, the story of the how the government intervenes in the market to redistribute income from those at the middle and bottom to those at the top. In this case, the media would have us applaud Mr. Bernanke and the Fed for keeping the financial system from freezing up and preventing the economic chaos that would follow.

"While the Fed deserves some credit for preventing worse financial distress in the face of the collapsing housing bubble, government handouts for the very richest people in the country are difficult to justify. In other areas, we usually expect to see some quid pro quo, for example, serious regulations on lending and perhaps restrictions to accomplish social goals, like a cap on executive compensation ($1 million a year should attract a much more competent crew). This is welfare as we know it now."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_033108A.shtml

More: In Congressional hearings, banks BLAME the Fed for coming to their rescue.

*Asian markets hadn't opened yet ~ we could have gotten more!*

Ungrateful robber barons!

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/32562.html

McCain On The Mortgage Crisis

2008-03-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

~ Er, Doesn't have a Lot of Hope to Offer ~

Via Gail Collins, your Demon's fave new snarky NYT editorialist:

.."Fortunately for the quivering Democrats, McCain has also felt compelled to speak about the mortgage crisis. His economic thinking — which is, in any form, a brand-new phenomenon — harks back to the time when Republicans all seemed to be elderly rich guys who muttered a lot about bonded indebtedness. The public’s deep lack of enthusiasm for this worldview was what encouraged Reagan to change the subject to optimism and abortion.

"The theme for his mortgage speech this week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, 'not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.' The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is 'working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets' the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

"He did, however, leave the door open for some vague, amorphous, undefined aid to good homeowners, as opposed to irresponsible ones who ... did something irresponsible. Like taking that vacation.

"McCain then suggested that the federal government ought to do something about getting regulations off the back of the financial markets and concluded with a call to reduce the corporate tax rate. It was not exactly a rallying cry for the masses."

"Not the responsibility of government to bail out those who act irresponsibly?"

Well, except for Bear Stearns, commercial banks and certain mortgage brokers! What John means, we think, is "irresponsible" individuals, who, after all, deserve to be punished, driven out of their homes and get foreclosed on.

Not the commercial operations who lured buyers into "irresponsibility" ~ they've been punished enough. See Bear Stearns investors and employees complaining about its stock price below. How are they going to make the payments on their exotic homes and cars? You're not thinking of their plight, are you, America ~ poor downtrodden free marketeers!

More here from Gail on Democrats as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29collins.html

Wall Street Begs To Be Rescued From Itself

2008-03-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

~ Wall Street is begging, yes, you heard right, begging for regulation, proving even the Cannibal Captains of Capitalism know that they've gone too far and are about to devour themselves~

More on the troubling paradoxes of capitalism from the edge of the abyss

In his "Talking Business" column in the NYT, Joe Nocera reflects on the surprising support for stronger regulation than the Fed's Paulson has proposed, and Democrat Barney Frank's ideas (*gasp*) for taking a non-efficent system inherited from the Depression era (with major gutting along the way under Bill Clinton's watch), and strengthening it gathering steam, viewed with favor by major players on Wall Street:

...[Frank] "also said that capital requirements for nonbanks needed to be reassessed, that consumer protection needed to be enhanced, that mortgage originators — indeed, all lenders — should have to carry a portion of their loans on their books so that they would bear some risk if things went wrong, and that companies should be regulated not according to whether they were a bank or an investment bank or a hedge fund but whether they did things like create credit. 'We now see a situation in which more damage was done by inadequate regulation,” he said. He called for a new era of 'sensible regulation.'

"You may have noticed that when the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., made his big Wall Street regulation speech a few days ago, in which he took a far more cautious — or tepid, depending on your point of view — position on the need for new regulation, he took a swipe at Democratic proposals like Mr. Frank’s, saying that most of their ideas 'are not yet ready for the starting gate.'

"But Mr. Paulson is wrong. Given Mr. Frank’s position as chairman of the central [House Financial Services] committee, his ideas are very much at the starting gate. He will hold hearings and get support, especially if the crisis deepens. Indeed, Mr. Paulson will release on Monday his own set of ideas, which were obtained Friday by The New York Times. Although his proposals are elaborate, they strike me as mainly an effort to keep new regulation to a minimum.

"And lest you think Mr. Frank’s notions for new regulation are just the knee-jerk impulse of a liberal Democrat, I can say with some authority that there is a surprising amount of support, even on Wall Street, for the idea that investment banks need more stringent regulation. That includes influential people like Byron Wien of Pequot Capital, Laurence Fink of BlackRock, the economist Alan Blinder, Allan Sinai of Decision Economics, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, and even Larry Kudlow, the archconservative host of 'Kudlow & Company' on CNBC.

“'I think investment banks need to be regulated,' Mr. Kudlow told me flatly. He added that although he often disagreed with Mr. Frank, he felt that he was 'a good thinker and not a knee-jerk liberal'” I’ll tell you, I nearly fell off my chair.

[...]

"There are any number of problems with [the regulatory] system [as it presently exists]. One is that...it is both duplicative and full of gaping holes. The main concern in the wake of the Depression was the banking system — so banks wound up heavily regulated. Investment banks, by contrast, were far less important to the overall financial system, so they wound up with a very different kind of regulation; in general, they can take all the risk they want with their balance sheets without the government saying boo.

"Yet over the last few decades, and especially since the abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that separated investment banks from commercial banks, the two kinds of institutions have come to perform many of the same functions. All kinds of banklike institutions have sprung up that are largely unregulated. Mr. Sinai, the chief global economist at Decision Economics, estimates that today, only 20 percent of loans are made by regulated banks. The rest are generated by institutions that are much less regulated.

"Indeed, thanks to securitization, banks don’t have anywhere near the assets or power they used to have — while investment banks are a far larger and more powerful part of the financial system. For that reason, said Mr. Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the large public money manager, 'I believe, as I have for years, it is time for investment banks to be regulated.'

"Here’s another problem: the bank regulators and the securities regulators have very different mind-sets. For good reason, the Depression caused bank regulators to focus on the 'safety and soundness' of the banking system. These many decades later, that is still their major concern.

"Protecting bank customers, by contrast, has been a much less pressing concern. A number of people told me, for instance, that the Fed could have reined in mortgage lenders if it had wanted to, or cracked down on subprime loans. But the Fed chairman then, Alan Greenspan, was really quite hostile to the notion that he should be wading into the subprime market. Indeed, he thought the benefits of broader homeownership were worth the risks that subprime loans entailed. And the few regulators who tried to sound the alarm about those risks were ignored.

"The S.E.C., meanwhile, cares a great deal about consumer protection — indeed, its mandate is to protect investors — but it’s not really equipped to evaluate the safety and soundness of the investment banks it regulates.

"Lynn Turner, a former S.E.C. chief accountant, points out that the agency actually has an office of risk management, which was established a few years ago when William Donaldson was the chairman. Its job is to do precisely what Mr. Frank is proposing: make sure Wall Street firms aren’t taking on more risk than they can handle. But in its most recent annual report to Congress, the S.E.C. admitted that the office had been unable to function properly because it was plagued with staff turnover.

"Mr. Paulson’s essential position, as articulated in both his speech and the proposals he will formally unveil Monday, is that the Federal Reserve’s opening of the discount window to investment banks — an action not taken since the Depression —means that the Fed will have to have some new measure of regulatory control over investment banks. After all, the discount window makes loans to banks that are having problems — and since it’s the taxpayers’ money that is being lent, the Fed needs to be able to assess the size of the problems. He wants the Fed to be able to burrow into investment banks and scout out potential problems.

"But putting investment banks under the purview of the Fed because they have access to the discount window is about as minimal a step as one could take. And while Mr. Paulson also calls for consolidation of some regulatory agencies, he is still not tackling some central problems. His proposals won’t cover institutions like mortgage companies that make loans and then send them to Wall Street to be turned into complex securities. It won’t come to terms with the potential dangers of derivatives themselves. It won’t cause the Fed to become more consumer-friendly, or the S.E.C. to care more about the soundness of investment banks. Without serious, wholesale change, the system will still look for all the world like a Rube Goldberg contraption.

“'The system is broken,' Mr. Sinai said. 'The animal spirits of the private sector, plus lax regulation, did it in.' He is among those who believe that we need a new supervisory agency that would regulate, as he puts it, 'all the banklike institutions.' Those that took the most risk would have the biggest capital requirements — no matter whether they were investment banks or hedge funds or banks. The government would be able to examine investment banks, just as it now examines banks. Outliers like mortgage brokers wouldn’t be able to play by one set of rules while banks play by another.

"I don’t know whether a big new agency is the right way to go. The ideas that emerged from the Depression came after much thought and many Congressional hearings — and one would hope the same would happen this time.'You don’t want to rush into a new regulatory regime,' said Mr. Blinder, the former Fed board member who now teaches at Princeton. Indeed, one of the things I like about Mr. Frank’s approach is that he is not trying to rush through legislation. He has thrown out some interesting, provocative — and in many ways, quite sensible — ideas, and now he’s going to see where they lead.

"That’s hardly the approach of a knee-jerk liberal. Even Mr. Kudlow would seem to agree."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business/29nocera.html

Meanwhile, it is reported last week that the employees (of the infamously "brass-knuckle," "no holds barred," "we'll put you and your little dog too through the meat grinder and serve you as barbeque") Bear Stearns were crying in the halls last Friday at the injustice of having to settle for a $2 per share stock price in the government bailout. They want at least $10! Shareholders chimed in.

They're lucky that we didn't leave them to die and go bankrupt, like we did with Drexel a decade ago. But brass-knucklers like Bear don't know how to be grateful that they've dodged a bullet and are left alive at all. With true Wall Street chutzpah and unmitigated gall, while they're still standing they think they have an absolute right and entitlement to more, more, more.

Seems they don't at all mind playing with fire as long as somebody else ~ in this case, the entire American economy~ gets burned. Take a coupla bucks away from them when they should be grateful they're still standing, and they cry like little girls. Doncha wish somebody would spank the nasty little brats but good?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/business/24deal.html

Clinton Backers Send Pelosi A $24M "Love" Letter

2008-03-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

~A Telling Commentary on the Role of Money in Modern Politix ~

Today The Capital Eye reports that in a not-at-all-subtle effort to sway Nancy Pelosi away from Obama, major donors to Hillary's campaign and the Democratic party send Pelosi a letter advancing the most persuasive argument they can apparently conceive ~ a stern reminder just how important they are.

"Prominent backers of Hillary Clinton sent a multi-million-dollar message to Capitol Hill this week: Watch out, Nancy Pelosi. In a letter to the Speaker of the House that urged her to stay out of the debate over how superdelegates should cast their votes, the 20 major Democratic donors didn't call direct attention to the $23.6 million that they've given to the Democratic Party since 1999, but they reminded her of their 'enthusiastic' support over the years.

"'We appreciate your activities in support of the Democratic Party and your leadership role in the Party and hope you will be responsive to some of your major enthusiastic supporters,' online copies of the letter read.

"Every signer of the letter has contributed to the Democratic Party in every election cycle since at least 2000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, and there's no way to know how many more millions they've helped raise from others, or bundled, to support the party. The authors clearly favor Clinton in the presidential race, and many of them serve as bundlers for her campaign. Clinton has collected $315,000 for her Senate and presidential campaigns from these major donors and their spouses over the last 10 years, or $554,000 including contributions to HILLPAC, her political action committee. By comparison, Barack Obama has collected $34,700 from these donors for his Senate and presidential campaigns, plus $17,500 to his PAC, Hope Fund. Eleven of those listed on the letter to Pelosi have given to Obama over the years, although only one couple has given to his presidential account in the 2008 cycle.

"The donors also pointed out to Pelosi that they have been strong supporters of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party appartus that supports the Democratic members she leads in the House of Representatives. Nearly $3 million of the $23.6 million that the authors of the letter have given to Democrats has gone to the DCCC. In addition to the money they've given to candidates, parties and other Democratic committees, the donors have contributed about $3 million to 527 committees, the independent issue groups that frequently get involved in elections.

"The contest between Clinton and Obama has been tight from the start and might come down to the votes of superdelegates, that elite group of Democrats that includes members of Congress, party leaders and state officials. Pelosi has urged the superdelegates to support the candidate who emerges with more pledged delegates by the time of the nominating convention this summer, arguing that the party will suffer if the superdelegates are perceived to defy the popular vote."

http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=341

Note to Nancy: Money Talks

BushCo's Last Days List ~ To-Do's While Still In Office

2008-03-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy

http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/

Your Demon's admittedly dark and perverse sense of humor doesn't prevent her from looking eagerly forward and, yes, rather naiively, to the day we finally learn the real reasons behind America's abysmal failure to oust Dick Cheney and George Bush via the self-restorative tonic of impeachment for various crimes at home and abroad when the red flags were awave in all our faces ~ scintillating as it's sure to be ~ but I rather doubt history's judgment will be anywhere near complete in my lifetime. Or during the lifetimes of any of the major actors ~ certainly not Bush himself, who's promised to keep his "Presidential Library" in Texas off-limits to serious scholars for many years to come.

I mention it only because I can't help a whistful game of "what if" as I launch into this evening's topic of things we shouldn't have to suffer again: the fact that the neocon wish list of things undone so far continues to be pursued with unabashed vigor and with no more grounds nor imagination than we've had to endure previously, no matter how unsuccessful to date and transparent the insult to our collective intelligence.

War with Iran, for instance: Cheney should be embarrassed to keep harping on it, never mind resurrecting the highly credible argument of WMD's, despite no intelligence to support it. Deja vu, anyone?

"Vice President Dick Cheney charged in an interview released Tuesday that Iran is trying to develop weapons-grade uranium, though international inspectors and U.S. intelligence services have not found evidence of such an effort.

"'Obviously, they're also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels,' Cheney said, according to a transcript released by the White House of an interview done Monday in Turkey with ABC's Martha Raddatz.

"Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy production, but the U.S. and other Western countries fear Tehran will eventually develop nuclear weapons.

"In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, says Iran is enriching uranium at its plant in Natanz to less than 3.8%, which is the level necessary to create fuel for a civilian reactor. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 80% or 90%.

"Cheney's comment also contradicted the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies, which concluded in a report revealed late last year that Iran had halted its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2003.

"The vice president's statement was the second time in a week that a White House official has made an allegation regarding Iran's nuclear program and its intentions that did not square with publicly known facts.

"President Bush said last week that Iran's leaders had 'declared' they were seeking nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied the charge, and the White House later backpedaled, calling the president's remarks 'shorthand.'"
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cheney26mar26,1,7973825.story

Another favorite Bushco agenda bugaboo, besides expanding Middle Eastern boondoggle-wars, is the continuing campaign to privatize social security (after borrowing against it for lo these many years), but oddly enough, we do have money for bailouts of "riverboat gambler" investment and commercial banks who've brought ordinary America to its knees financially, and, of course, we always plenty of money for war! (Through some little dishonest budget trix like not counting the costs of private contractors, or the waste and fraud lost to friendly no-bid contracts).

"US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday that America's Social Security program for the retired is 'financially unsustainable' and needs an urgent overhaul."

What most people don't realize is that retirement benefits haven't been keeping up with inflation because of by-now-familiar Bushco jiggering of figures, comparing apples to oranges, while the "privatization through the back door" of Medicare Advantage programs that lure Medicare recipients away from Medicare and into private plans that often are more expensive to those in desperate need of reliable health care with cost containment have been heavily subsidized. Wonder if those sacks of money in subsidies to private entitites are being counted as a "cost" to the taxpayers as well, in the rush to pronounce social security on its last legs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080325/ts_alt_afp/uspensionhealthgovernmentpolitics_080325191211
Senior's League reports:
"Newly Released 2009 COLA Forecast Would Keep Five Million Seniors Below Poverty Line 2.8 Percent Increase Would Raise Average Benefit Just $30.20 Per Month During Economic Downturn"

"February 14, 2008 (Washington, DC) – Late last month, the Congressional Budget Office published a little-noticed estimate that forecasts seniors will receive just a 2.8 percent increase in their Social Security checks beginning in January, 2009.
Despite the increase, at least five million people aged 65 and over will remain in poverty, since senior costs are rising significantly faster than the annual Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA).

"Between 2001 and 2008, Medicare Part B premiums have soared by more than 93 percent while the COLA has crept up just 19 percent, leaving many seniors on their own to cover all other rising costs. Part B premiums cover doctors’ visits, tests, and outpatient hospital care. Although the COLA is intended to help seniors keep up with inflation, a recent study by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) that analyzed eight key expenditures found that people 65 and over have lost 40 percent of their buying power since 2000. Expenses such as home heating oil and gasoline have more than doubled since the beginning of the decade, while food staples such as potatoes and butter have increased by 47 and 39 percent, respectively.

"A majority of the 48 million Americans aged 65 and over who receive a Social Security check depend on it for at least 50 percent of their total income, and one in three beneficiaries relies on it for 90 percent or more of their total income.

“'Social Security is supposed to protect seniors in need – but with five million seniors below the poverty line, it’s clear the system is failing them,' said Shannon Benton, executive director of The Senior Citizens League. 'If it’s true that a nation’s greatness is defined by how well it treats its most vulnerable citizens, then we must do a better job of protecting impoverished seniors.'

"To help offset the cost of Medicare Part B, TSCL is lobbying for a change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) used to determine the COLA. The government currently calculates the COLA based on the CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), a slow-rising index that tracks the spending habits of younger workers who don’t spend as much of their income on health expenditures.

"However, the government also tracks the spending patterns of older Americans with the CPI for Elderly Consumers, or CPI-E. By tying the annual increase in the COLA to the CPI-E, seniors would see much needed relief in their monthly checks."
AARP: http://www.aarp.org/about_aarp/aarp_leadership/on_issues/health_care/making_medicare_fair.html

So, while Bush dreams of his legacy and insists that someday America will look back and see him as a visionary, your Demon thinks that proper word for it would be, not visionary, but delusional.

The Rev. Wright's REAL "Chickens Come Home to Roost" Sermon

2008-03-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

~ A Demon Princess public service message ~

We should all know by now to beware of conservatives who twist, manipulate, and take everything out of context, shouldn't we?

You won't be surprised, then, to find that the real "chickens come home to roost" sermon wasn't anything like hate-filled rant first shown on Fox, then picked up by CNN, which played it, uncritically, over and over again until the entire country was induced to think that Reverend Wright is a madman. In fact, the "chickens come home to roost" was a comment made by a (white) ambassador to the Mideast.

The truth is, with respect to that particular speech, Wright is anything but a madman. Watch it yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ

And here is the "God Damn America" speech in context (which would be more appropriately titled the "America confuses itself with God," and THAT'S what Wright damns speech):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw

Another basic truth about which we should be hypervigilant in the brave new post-Bushworld is that the right wing media will stop at nothing to destroy anyone/anything who threatens their carefully constructed, media-manipulated status quo. They're not about to go gracefully. Look for more of the same in the near future.

5 Years In Iraq ~ And A Civics Lesson for Dick

2008-03-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

Apologies, kittens, but your Demon didn't have time this past week to appropriately remark the Anniversary of the Grand and Glorious War in Iraq, nor to lobby for the commendable idea of expanding it to Iran. Why not bring a campaign that's met with so much success to other nations we really dislike since we can't control them anymore (and happen to be sitting on oil reserves that should be ours, anyway?)

Lessee: bonuses and dividends so far: the normalization of lying, spying and torture abroad and at home; the suspension of habeus corpus; giving Faux News Network and hate-spew radio a reason to exist and; the complete suspension of international and domestic law! Those things are quite an achievement in a democratic democracy! *wink, wink*

To all of which, Dick Cheney sez, rightfully: SO?

If we were stupid enough to surrender all that power to them on such feeble and unexamined pretexts, don't we deserve what we get? And all the rest of the world, too ~ SO?

Wouldn't there be rioting in the streets if such things had really happened? Wouldn't they have been impeached by now?

A former bigwig GOP supporter has the nerve to upbraid the excellent Mr. Dick and presume to give him a civics lesson:

"For at least six years, as I've become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration's repeated betrayal of constitutional -- and conservative -- principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I've known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.

"I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush's transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney's belief in "the military option" and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.

"What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of "those about whom we should be greatly concerned"?
It is Cheney's all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"

.."Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.
[...]

"The decision to go to war, I told the students -- to send young Americans off to battle, knowing that some will die -- is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation's Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress.

"Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system.

"In Europe, before America's founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

"If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

"That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's 'head of state,' but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102482.html

Personally, Mr. Mickey Edwards's op-ed on the topic sounds like heresy to me. If all that was true, how is it that Bush and Cheney have been able to convince "the people" to go along with things that are not supposed to happen under a Constitutional framework that provides for 3 separate, co-equal branches of government?? He must be hallucinating.

I want some of what he's injecting.

~ The Presidential Preacher Wars ~

2008-03-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Get yer semi-religious swag from Betty Bowers for WhiteHouse.org

http://www.cafepress.com/bettybowers/627903

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
Seneca, Roman Philosopher, mid-1st Century AD

* * *

Wherein your Demon Opines that the Holier-than-Thou Plague in Presidential Politix has Finally Reached its Most Absurd and Completely Logical Apex ~ so let's have a Holy-Roller smackdown~

In the things your Demon would sorely like to see Department today~ a face-off, a royal rumble, an official smackdown featurin' those freaky, whacky, hate and brimstone-spewin' Presidential Preachers! Let's have a contest to see whose personal conception of God would despise, vilify,demonize and kill for no particular reason the greatest number of people on the slimmest of theological pretexts! Enquiring minds wanna know!

Leading the pack by two to one, John McCain has 2 Certifiably Crazy Holy Rollers in his camp, the 1st being Reverend Hagge in one corner, calling the Catholic Church a "cult" and the Whore of Babylon, but he doesn't have the sense to stop there, oh no! He also prays for Armageddon so the Christ-hating Jews will all go straight to hell, where they belong. Just a taste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViQ0hVV57Q

In the second corner, also for John McCain, we have a Reverend Parsley, who believes Allah was a demon spirit and that America was founded on the notion that Islam should be wiped from the face of earth (a "charitable" and "Christian" view, hey?) that Keith Olbermann is forced to debunk himself when McCain refuses to respond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcaYNSZlnWY

Update: Is McCain really a Christian? He seems to have evaded baptism for 15 years according to his home-state pastor:

"McCain...was raised in the Episcopal Church but has been attending Yeary's church for about 15 years. Yeary declined to comment on McCain's reluctance to finally undergo a baptism ceremony, a key ritual of the faith. 'John and I are having continual dialogue about his spiritual pursuits,'" Yeary said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080322/pl_nm/usa_politics_mccain_pastor_dc_2;_ylt=ArwBUM2CnUiFFsqH6vR1EWvzj9AF

But none of that seems to be really remarkable, nor are McCain's holy-rolling preachers getting the attention they deserve over the past week, compared to the scorn and opprobrium heaped upon Obama's reverend for claiming that Jesus was a black man, and that white people were really, really, really mean to black people historically. Which, as to the latter, if you're African-American, seems a perfectly reasonable and plausible hypothesis. But right-wingers who have difficult relationships with historical fact resent it being thrown in their faces prefer and seem to prefer to view it as a matter of blacks having the proverbial chips on their shoulders or "reverse racism" and fear, if truth be told, that if a black man is ascendant politically, they'll be made to suffer somehow in retaliation.

Reverend Wright's experience in historical context: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032208F.shtml

Reverend Wright's "Chickens Come Home to Roost" sermon in CONTEXT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ

If in fact Obama is really Christian at all ~ he does have that middle name "Hussein," after all.

Update: Not to be out-religioned in the Holier-than-Thou Culture War, the Nation has an article on Hillary Clinton's relationship with the Lord, or at least those who purport to have a direct feed to Him. A former acolyte name of Sharlet reports:

"Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings.

"The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the 'meek.' They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's 'dominion' on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or 'cells.' 'We work with power where we can,' Doug Coe has said, and 'build new power where we can't.'"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

~ Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Paul ~

* * *

“On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

* * *

“Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

~ Voltaire

* * *

“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.”

~ Georgia Harkness

Still Waiting For Those Interest Rate Cuts To Trickle Down?

2008-03-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Bonus Econonic News Tidbit

Your Demon thinks she should take this opportunity to compare and contrast the recent hububs and rescue operations carried out by the Fed of "riverboat gamblers," banks and other assorted operations, the attendant bailouts and interest rate cuts, while noting belatedly that in Bushco's notion of the free market, the ordinary consumers don't really rate ~ you know, those of us in our little houses driving little cars and paying down our little credit cards ~ er, trying to pay down our little credit cards, more like.

Were you aware that there was (or is) such a thing as a credit-card holders' Bill of Rights movement afoot? Did you know legislation has been drafted, and hearings held?

Yes, it was a great idea ~ until the last minute when the credit card companies decided not to let consumers testify about unilateral contracts whereby an issuer can raise rates, fees, and penalties, without notice or consent, such that you'll NEVER be able to pay off that balance.

Read about it on the Mother Jones blog:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/03/7666_credit_card_ind.html

A NYT op-ed titled "Plastic Card Tricks" picked up the issue from there:

.."The Federal Reserve is focused mainly on making it easier for consumers to understand credit card contracts — some go as high as 30 pages of nearly unreadable fine print. Clarity, however, is not enough. One bank contract stated baldly: 'We reserve the right to change the terms at any time for any reason.'

"Congress needs to address numerous unfair practices, including interest rates that skyrocket for no apparent reason and due dates that suddenly shift — forward — so that an unwary consumer pays late. Late fees are a big profit center in some banks. Some raise interest rates when consumers get close to their credit limits. In other cases, a late payment on one company’s card raises the rates on other cards in your wallet." [...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29sat3.html

And how 'bout the credit scoring industry itself? Any "little person" who's had any experience with any of the 3 titans in that field know how impossible it is to get errors of "derogatory" credit reporting removed or explained.

Never mind that a derogatory credit report can tank your little-people ability to get a job, the rates you pay for insurance (I've never understood the logic behind why that should be so ~ your auto and home insurer can say, in effect ~ yeah we'll write ya, but for reasons totally unrelated to your actual insurance risk, we're docking you and forcing you to pay MORE, when it appears to us you've already had some problems), or the rates you pay for a whole host of other necessaries.

There is a penalty for being poor in America (even temporarily) after all! Don't like it? Nobody's keeping you from moving!

Making The World Safe For Billionaires

2008-03-16T21:59:00.000-07:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy

http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/index.html

The Troubling Paradoxes of Capitalism

~ America's First MBA/CEO President Bails Out a "Riverboat Gambler" using the Fed to do it ~ hey, we didn't say he was a good CEO!

Deliciously ironic (if you like these sorts of ironies), the Fed resorts to a little-used Depression-era law to effect a bailout of Wall Street giant Bear Stearns, which is, in case you missed it, an investment bank (not a regular commercial one) that had a hand in the ingenious packaging of sub-prime loans such that nobody could follow or figure out what was in them after an innovative wash-spin-rinse cycle. The bailout set off a firestorm of controversy.

The New York Times provides the back story:

..."But why save Bear Stearns? The beneficiary of this bailout, remember, has often operated in the gray areas of Wall Street and with an aggressive, brass-knuckles approach. Until regulators came along in 1996, Bear Stearns was happy to provide its balance sheet and imprimatur to bucket-shop brokerages like Stratton Oakmont and A. R. Baron, clearing dubious stock trades.

"And as one of the biggest players in the mortgage securities business on Wall Street, Bear provided munificent lines of credit to public-spirited subprime lenders like New Century (now bankrupt). It is also the owner of EMC Mortgage Servicing, one of the most aggressive subprime mortgage servicers out there.

"Bear’s default rates on so-called Alt-A mortgages that it underwrote also indicates that its lending practices were especially lax during the real estate boom. As of February, according to Bloomberg data, 15 percent of these loans in its underwritten securities were delinquent by more than 60 days or in foreclosure. That compares with an industry average of 8.4 percent.

"Let’s not forget that Bear Stearns lost billions for its clients last summer, when two hedge funds investing heavily in mortgage securities collapsed. And the firm tried to dump toxic mortgage securities it held in its own vaults onto the public last summer in an initial public offering of a financial company called Everquest Financial. Thankfully, that deal never got done.
Recall, too, that back in 1998, when the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund required a Fed-arranged bailout, Bear Stearns refused to join the rescue effort. Jimmy Cayne, then chief executive at the firm, told the Fed to take a hike.

"And so, Bear Stearns, a firm that some say is this decade’s version of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the anything-goes, 1980s junk-bond shop dominated by Michael Milken, is rescued. Almost two decades ago, Drexel was left to die.

"Bear Stearns and Drexel have a lot in common. And yet their differing outcomes offer proof that we are in a very different and scarier place than in the late 1980s.
'Why not set an example of Bear Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, we’re brass knuckles, we’re tough?' asked William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with Fred Sheehan of Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve. 'This is the perfect time to set an example, but they are not interested in setting an example. We are Bailout Nation.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/16gret.html

The comments to a Wall Street Journal blog entry explaining the Depression-era law still on the books indicates that even dyed-in-the-wool Republicans were reconsidering the whole capitalistic free-marketeer enterprise:

"Bear is an 'investment bank', not a 'commercial bank' like Bank of America, Suntrust, Wachovia, etc. Given this, why is the fed involved. These investment banks are riverboat gamblers and now the Fed is sanctioning their actions. This is a bailout. I’ve tried to be level headed about this, but I think this goes too far. I consider myself a conservative, but I have come to the conclusion that some industries should be regulated. Banks, airlines and utilities all spring to mind. De-regulation hasn’t worked in these industries.
Comment by What do I know"

"Let’s see. The money is funneled through JP Morgan, but if Bear defaults, the taxpayers pick up the tab? I’ve been a Republican a long time, but this makes no sense anymore. What’s in it for JP MC? This is getting very confusing. Does Morgan Chase take a cut of the action or what?
Comment by CC "

"I want to be JP Morgan! They get to make money from making a risky loan to Bear Stearns, but if it turns bad then the Fed picks up the risk!Who’s underwriting the Fed, then? The Chinese?How the pecking order has changed!
Comment by Greg T "

"I believe that the Fed is trying to avert a complete economic collapse. The easy credit given out was completely insane, and the motivation was pure greed. However, there are millions of Americans invested in these companies who are not independently rich but saving for retirement. A complete collapse would wipe out many taxpayers’ hard earned savings and investments. The Federal government could have stopped this right away but everyone in Washington, D.C. is bought by Wall Street and every other major industry. I would like to see strict regulation, which is rigorously enforced. I doubt that will happen. Bush’s pep talk about the economy is not going to change people’s minds. It will be years before people recover from this mess and some will not. I would not rule out a very long and deep recession. A depression would not surprise me either. Wall Street definitely needs regulation, a concept alien to far too many in Washington and the people at the WSJ. Capitalism needs some restraints. Booms and busts do not work and the proof is being seen everyday.
Comment by Jake"

"Privatize profits, socialize losses. That’s the system we’re operating under. I’m glad to see the comments from several Republicans who finally realize that this business of skewing all policy to favor the rich has finally reached its endgame.
Comment by John R"

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/03/14/fed-invokes-depression-era-law-for-bear-loan/?mod=fpa_blogs

Maybe America's gamblers on Wall Street have finally overcome the deregulation mania that started with the Reagan administration and trickled on down to the present day, having reached its zenith in the person of one GWB (pictured above).

Speaking of whom, if you didn't see his pathetic presentation on the economy in the past several days, watch a mercifully abbreviated version here, and note the transparent and not very well executed efforts at diversion (your Demon particularly likes "9/11!"): http://youtube.com/watch?v=3XssEHgOYZI

However, everyone has noted by now that Bush won't admit the depth of the stuff we're swimming in, and everytime he speaks on the topic it brings to mind what a landmark excercise in denial and propagandistic talking points it is to be America's 1st MBA President ~ worthy of a leader of Soviet Russia or Communist China in their heydays~ heaven forbid, there cannot be a recession, much less a full-blown depression ~ because George SAYS there isn't! Much as there are no real problems with finding work, or inflation, or food costs, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, a Harvard economist says we may be headed for a "slump" the magnitude of which this country hasn't seen since World War II.

"The United States has already slipped into a deep recession that could be the most serious since World War II, said Martin Feldstein, president of the Cambridge group that is considered the official word on economic cycles.
"'The situation is bad, it's getting worse, and the risks are that the situation could be very bad,' Feldstein said in a speech yesterday at a financial industry conference in Boca Raton, Fla.

[...]

"Also yesterday, Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis consulting firm run by several former Federal Reserve officials, said the US economy barely grew in January and predicted it declined by 0.7 percent in February.

"Feldstein's remarks were punctuated by an extraordinary run of alarming developments yesterday, including surging oil prices, new worries about home foreclosures, and the near collapse of a venerable investment bank that sparked another rout in stock prices on Wall Street.

"US investment giant Bear Stearns Cos. yesterday morning received an emergency bailout loan for an undisclosed amount that was facilitated by the Federal Reserve Bank, which invoked a little used Depression-era measure to unleash the funds. Bear Stearns is in dire need of cash after it was forced to write off billions of dollars of losses in mortgage-related investments, and worried investors withdrew their funds.

"Bear Stearns's stock lost $3.2 billion of value yesterday, almost half its market capitalization. The major stock indexes all posted steep declines, with the Dow Jones industrial average down 195 points to close below 12,000.

"US oil prices, meanwhile, remained above $110 a barrel, after hitting a record $111 on Thursday, putting increasing strain on consumers and businesses alike. United Airlines and Continental Airlines raised round-trip fares by as much as $50 a ticket to help recoup the cost of rising jet fuel prices, the latest in a wave of ticket increases throughout the industry. Heating oil and gasoline prices also surged.

"Rising oil prices, in turn, are driving up prices for everything from food to electricity, threatening to end years of modest inflation. Gold prices hit a fresh record yesterday, as investors embrace it as a hedge against inflation and a weakening US dollar, which remained at lows against the euro.

"Earlier this month the US Labor Department reported that private employers slashed their payrolls by 101,000 jobs in February, the third straight month of job reductions. Also yesterday a widely followed monthly index of consumer sentiment posted a 16-year low."

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/03/15/recession_is_here_economist_declares/

Here in Seattle, we got the cheery news over the weekend that we have one of the highest inflation rates in the nation:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/352078_economy21.html

We're told that's good news because we still have a strong economy ~ for now.

Wait here while your Demon goes to count her blessings and her store of canned tuna.

News Roundup: Stupid Human Trix

2008-03-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

First and most prominent Dunderhead of the Day Award: Get Down in the Mud & Fling Feces Through a Proxy (Not the First Time)

The Clinton Campaign's Willie Horton Moment

To Geraldine Ferraro of the Hillary Clinton camp, for trying to fan the flames of racism against Barrack Obama:

"Ferraro, who sits on Clinton's finance committee and has spoken at her rallies, sparked the firestorm when she was quoted by a California newspaper as saying: 'If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.'

"Obama...called the remark by the Democrats' 1984 vice presidential nominee 'patently absurd.'

"'I don't think that Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or the Democratic Party,' he told Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call.

"His campaign clamored for Ferraro's head, noting the swift resignation of an Obama aide last week after her remark that Clinton was a 'monster' sparked howls of outrage from the New York senator's team. [...]

"Clinton said only that she did 'not agree' with Ferraro's portrayal of Obama as the privileged recipient of affirmative action, and found it 'regrettable' that supporters might resort to personal attacks."

This after Clinton purportedly tried to portray herself as the Democratic frontrunner by "magnanimously" offering Obama the Vice Presidency when in fact the two are still in a dead heat, and previous manipulative stunts such as darkening photos of Obama to make it appear his skin tone is blacker than it really is, allegedly.

With nasty political personal attacks like this ~ speaking to nothing like real issues or policy positions, illustrating only that Hillary herself will do ANYTHING to win~ from a Democrat, who needs the GOP?

Next we'll be hearing from the Clinton camp that they're doing Obama a favor--after all, it's what everybody's really thinking, isn't it--shouldn't Obama toughen up and face it now?

But Clinton doesn't really want to go there ~ the same unspoken "bigotry of soft expectations" applies to women who try to enter the traditional white male citadels of politics, law and other professions, and in fact, the Obama rejoinder (which does address substantive issues of experience upon which Hillary herself campaigns) is true--she's been in the White House as a First Lady, which is not to be confused with the actual Chief Executive. She attempts to amalgamate that experience with her experience in Congress, and unfortunately overreaches.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080311/pl_afp/usvote

Second Stupid Human Trick of the Day:

Speaking of white males with power pennies to burn, your Demon has to note the unfortunate fact that a great many of them can't keep their peckers in their pockets, and it seems there's an even more unfortunate correlation of power to their pitiful underestimations of the political consequences if they're discovered ~ and I don't mind noting that this is and has been true on both sides of the aisle, though conservatives today aren't mentioning that little nugget of info.

Wall Street is in a state of bliss today to learn that its nemesis Eliot Spitzer has been outed as a frequenter of prostitutes. As a woman myself, along with untold numbers of women everywhere, I know what kind of pain the male human proclivity for whoring (not to mention the talent for blaming it on the objects of their unchaste desires) causes, but I'm not of the opinion that it's a matter of great public interest in and of itself, unless of course it involves children, people who are incapacitated, sex slaves or any right-wing televangelist who's been caught in said acts and cried in public in the past 10 years.

Unfortunately, like crusaders before him, Spitzer saw fit to apply a standard of morality to others that he couldn't uphold himself. It's one thing if the whoring was more than tangentially related to his famous investigations on Wall Street (did captains of industry indeed throw money at call girls and prostitutes, and in so doing, adversely affect the companies' interests), along with the more usual forms of raiding consumers and investors of money that they otherwise would have realized?)

The latter is a justifiable and worthy goal, especially now, when disparaties of wealth are insane and cannibal capitalism under Bushco has driven the world economy into the ground. However, Spitzer is learning, like political elites from both parties before him, that it is ever advisable to remove the log from one's eyes before complaining of logs in others.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120519411945525721.html?mod=fpa_mostpop

Rove Is Gone (In Theory) But Homages Abound

2008-03-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ohio Republicans "cross over" temporarily in effort to throw the vote for Clinton as suggested by Limbaugh because everyone knows the lunatic right will vote for McCain over her.

~ Isn't tampering with votes supposed to be a crime? Rush Limbaugh and his deluded acolytes in Ohio don't seem to realize it, or don't care ~

A weird piece in a Cleveland paper shows that fans of Rush Limbaugh and his hate-spew radio show took part in "a plot" to try to throw the Ohio elections by cross-dressing as Democrats, but only temporarily ~ on the theory that Clinton would be easier for McCain to beat in the Presidential elections than Obama. Ohio election officials assure us there weren't enough voters (who would admit it, not surpringly, because I'm pretty sure it's a crime to try to influence elections this way~ but where's your Demon's head today? Still stuck in the Bad Ol' Librul Days Before Bushworld, apparently)~ to succeed in throwing the election to Clinton, really. So I guess there's no need for a do-over.

In any event, two poll workers in their '70's, staunch Republicans, cheerfully admitted to the paper they'd assisted other Republicans with the cross-registration process, or at least didn't challenge the really transparent registrations, some following the Great White Leader's example by attaching their own "signing statements." The elderly pranksters then went on to cross over and vote the same way themselves!

And all this time your Demon thought the GOP was supposed to be the law-and-order party! Apparently there's now an exception when trying to save the country from damnation and demonic liberals. Let us call it "the Limbaugh Rule."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031008J.shtml

Politix Makes Strange Bedfellows, Part the Bazillion

2008-02-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

Poor John McCain ~ not only has Bush declared him heir presumptive of some messy, perpetual, mind-bogglingly botched Wars on Terra in Any Place That Has Oil, he's also saddled himself, inadvertently, we're sure (he's the straight talker, the morality man, what?) with lobbyists for special interests running his "maverick" anti-special interest campaign for the presidency.

(While protesting repeatedly there was not anything improper in his relationship with a pretty little young blonde lobbyist on whose company's behalf he wrote letters urging Congressional action!) ~ but never mind, the weak NYT story about it convinced people who are inclined to believe such things anyway that there's a vast librul conspiracy in the MSM to destroy the GOP and McCain turned it all to his advantage in the form of a giant, very successful fundraiser! Hip, hip, hooray!

Apparently emboldened, McCain goes on to embrace a second group that's so far been a boon to and willing fodder for exploitation for the GOP: right-wing Christians ~ er, ultra right, uber right wing, so far out there it is with great trepidation that we should even be calling them "Christians."

I know all this because I read blogs ~ Glenn Greenwald:

"The McCain/Hagee story is growing, though still not as much as it ought to. My new friends from the Catholic League emailed earlier to advise that Bill Donohue was being interviewed for tonight's program of The Situation Room on CNN. Blogs at The Washington Post and ABC News today covered the growing scandal from the anti-Catholic bigotry perspective, with the latter actually featuring the unbelievably inflammatory You Clip -- found by Ann Althouse, which I posted yesterday and which is now being distributed by the Catholic League -- of a shirt-sleeved Pastor Hagee spewing the creepiest, most hateful bile imaginable about Catholicism ('This is the Great Whore of Revelation 17').

"As The Post noted, Catholics United, a less reactionary group than the Catholic League, has now also denounced McCain's warm embrace of Hagee and demanded that he repudiate his endorsement. Thus far, it is Hagee's anti-Catholicism which is being featured -- largely because when Bill Donohue issues press releases, the media jumps to cover it. While that angle has substantial political ramifications -- Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote in 2004 as the most vital to the GOP's electoral successes -- the reality is that Hagee's hateful and twisted extremism extends far beyond that realm.

"In sum, John McCain has aligned himself with one of America's purest -- and most powerful -- haters, and that ought to be the story here. [...]

"As has been noted many times, most recently today by Matt Yglesias, Hagee's so-called 'commitment to Israel' actually means that he wants Israel united so that the Rapture can happen and all Jews, including Israelis, will be slaughtered and sent to hell. And the 'spiritual leadership' which McCain heralds consists of calling the Catholic Church the 'Mother Whore' and a 'cult' and arguing that Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in the devastation of tens of thousands of lives, was God's punishment against New Orleans because it scheduled a gay pride parade that week. " http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

Yet, despite it all, your Demon is not feeling particularly concerned about any of this. Why? Because after 8 years of Bush-Cheney and a lock-step GOP Congress, the results speak for themselves, and I (scientifically) prophesy that any GOP candidate has less than .0000001-1/2 chance of a snowball's in hell of getting elected. The somnambulent American public seems to have woken up.

So McCain may have to ally himself with a darker power than radical right wing Hagee to pull this one off ~ though by some lights Hagee is indeed doing the Dark One's work by calling the Catholic church a "cult," and praying for Armageddon so the Christ-hating Jews will all be destroyed ~ my vote for the most powerful personification of evil incarnate here right now would be some Beast with the head of Karl Rove, the deranged and evil mind of Dick Cheney and the bombastic rhetorical wiliness of Antonin Scalia.

Oops! McCain already has that Beast's support. Maybe Hagee is the better bet.

What a shame! I once liked McCain, believe it or not.

Bonus funny for those who've made it this far: Number 40 on Stanley Bing's List of 50 Bullshit Jobs: Political Reverend. Also making the top 50: Talking head/pundit (exemplified by Robert Novak) comes in a number 46, just before velvet-rope Nazi.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/bing/0704/gallery.bing_50jobs.fortune/40.html

Bank Nationalization in Two Countries; Economic Newsbits

2008-02-20T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Ultimate Cadillac-Driving Welfare Queens

Your Demon observes that the UK has recently nationalized Northern Rock Bank due to the worldwide subprime mortgage debacle; but here at home in the US we call it by a different name ~ corporate welfare. Both amount to use of taxpayer funds to bail out private entities. So whose method gives greater control and better returns to the "investors?"

Just askin' because I don't know. Does the US retain any say in how/where the taxpayers' bailout funds go, or is it just, in effect, a giveaway with very little required from the beneficiary in terms of "behavior adjustment" and/or invasion of privacy?

A welfare queen is a welfare queen, hey ~ ?

"Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing 'massive amounts' from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.

"The newspaper said the use of the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of their assets, saw borrowing of nearly $50 billion of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.

"The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks' growing reliance on indirect forms of government support."

US: Banks Quietly Borrow $50 Billion from the Fed: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1821384420080219

UK nationalization: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7250668.stm

Unemployment figures:

In other recent financial news, a report by McClatchy News questions Bushco's silly bromide that unemployment isn't really as bad as all that.

No, it's worse, because the long-term unemployed, the underemployed, and people holding more than one job aren't counted appropriately.

"The Bush administration acknowledged the contraction, but pointed to the national unemployment rate of 4.9 percent to say that the labor market wasn't a harbinger of recession.

"A closer look at unemployment data by McClatchy, however, found that jobless Americans are spending more time looking for work and that those who can't find work now make up a greater share of the unemployed.

"Several measures of unemployment, in fact, show that the workforce is under the kind of stress not seen since March 2001, when the U.S. economy entered a nine-month recession, followed by a so-called jobless recovery.[...]

[W]hen Americans unemployed for 27 weeks or longer are measured as a share of the total number of unemployed, the story is very different.

"The long-term unemployed amounted to 18.3 percent of all the unemployed in January. That means that while overall unemployment is low, almost one in five unemployed workers has been jobless for six months or more."

A spokesman for the Conservative Heritage Foundation poo-poos the notion that Bushco is jiggering figures to make things look better than they really are, saying that including lost manufacturing jobs is unfairly skewering the picture. "It's kind of hard to point at that to say that this is a tremendously serious problem here," he said, suggesting that the long-term unemployment picture is skewed by unemployment in troubled states that have lost manufacturing jobs."

However, "If there's disagreement over what measure of chronic unemployment tells the real story, other gauges developed by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics show a strain on the quality of employment.

"The gauges came into use in 1994 to measure things such as part-time workers who are unable to get full-time jobs, and Americans who aren't employed or aren't looking but said they'd take jobs if they became available.

"Those groups of workers together accounted for 9 percent of the labor force in January. In March 2001, at the start of the last recession, they were 7.6 percent of the workforce.
In addition, in January, 4.7 million people were working part time in the United States, up sharply from about 3.3 million in March 2001.

"During the last slowdown, the number passed 4 million in the final months of that recession and fell below that only once since, in April 2006.

"'If you did a survey of people just walking up the street (they'd say they could find work) ... it may not be what they want, but they probably could get a job,' said Sharon Morgan, an area director of a state workforce center in Liberty, S.C., a region hit hard by the closure of textile mills.

"The number of multiple jobholders nationwide exceeded 7.6 million in 2007, the highest number since 1999. As a percentage of the employed, they made up 5.2 percent of workforce, down from 5.8 percent in 1999."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/28014.html

Health Insurers Rigging the Game? For those of you fortunate enough to have a job with somewhat decent health insurance benefits, this news is for you:

New York State is investigating the possibility that health insurance "consumers" have been getting systematically ripped off when it comes to compensation for services outside "preferred provider networks," and that at least one company responsible for collecting data by which those determinations are made has a conflict of self-interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18mon1.html

For those of you who don't, this won't tell you anything you don't already know ~ the stress hormones generated by poverty are poisonous to developing minds (I'd argue that they don't have any salutary effects on adult ones, either).

Your Demon invites you to read it anyway. There's an election on. Vote your conscience. And your outrage. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html

Trust Us ~ It Was Just A "Glitch"

2008-02-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ill: Micah Wright/Propaganda Remix
http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html

Your Demon has completely lost her capacity to be surprised, even when what was unthinkable not so long ago when she was an idealistic little Demonette in law school is now, apparently, par for the course.

Exhibit A: Not only does our own government spy on us, they do it so sloppily and badly that who-knows-what gets caught in their fishing nets. An "episode" that occurred in 2006 comes to light only now, as a result of that heretic liberal organization Electronic Frontier Foundation's work.

In the NYT today:

"F.B.I. officials blamed an 'apparent miscommunication' with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.
[...]
"The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect.

"The problem has received no discussion as part of the fierce debate in Congress about whether to expand the government’s wiretapping authorities and give legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations.

"But an intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because surveillance operations are classified, said: 'It’s inevitable that these things will happen. It’s not weekly, but it’s common.'

"A report in 2006 by the Justice Department inspector general found more than 100 violations of federal wiretap law in the two prior years by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, many of them considered technical and inadvertent.

"Bureau officials said they did not have updated public figures but were preparing them as part of a wider-ranging review by the inspector general into misuses of the bureau’s authority to use so-called national security letters in gathering phone records and financial documents in intelligence investigations.

"In the warrantless wiretapping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, technical errors led officials at the National Security Agency on some occasions to monitor communications entirely within the United States — in apparent violation of the program’s protocols — because communications problems made it difficult to tell initially whether the targets were in the country or not.

"Past violations by the government have also included continuing a wiretap for days or weeks beyond what was authorized by a court, or seeking records beyond what were authorized. The 2006 case appears to be a particularly egregious example of what intelligence officials refer to as 'overproduction' — in which a telecommunications provider gives the government more data than it was ordered to provide.

"The problem of overproduction is particularly common, F.B.I. officials said. In testimony before Congress in March 2007 regarding abuses of national security letters, Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau’s general counsel, said that in one small sample, 10 out of 20 violations were a result of 'third-party error'” in which a private company 'provided the F.B.I. information we did not seek.'
"The 2006 episode was disclosed as part of a new batch of internal documents that the F.B.I. turned over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that advocates for greater digital privacy protections, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the group has brought. The group provided the documents on the 2006 episode to The New York Times.

"Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the privacy foundation, said the episode raised troubling questions about the technical and policy controls that the F.B.I. had in place to guard against civil liberties abuses.

'“How do we know what the F.B.I. does with all these documents when a problem like this comes up?' Ms. Hofmann asked.

"In the cyber era, the incident is the equivalent of law enforcement officials getting a subpoena to search a single apartment, but instead having the landlord give them the keys to every apartment in the building. In February 2006, an F.B.I. technical unit noticed 'a surge in data being collected' as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal bureau report.

"An Internet provider was supposed to be providing access to the e-mail of a single target of that investigation, but the F.B.I. soon realized that the filtering controls used by the company 'were improperly set and appeared to be collecting data on the entire e-mail domain' used by the individual, according to the report.

"The bureau had first gotten authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the e-mail of the individual target 10 months earlier, in April 2005, according to the internal F.B.I. document. But Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in an interview that the problem with the unfiltered e-mail went on for just a few days before it was discovered and fixed. 'It was unintentional on their part,' he said.

Well, your Demon should be relieved to know that the FBI actually deigned to recognize the FISA Court's authority, even if she has lingering doubts whether the FBI's characterization of the little mess as "unintentional" makes her feel any better.

Not really.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/washington/17fisa.html

The Pre-Election Malaise Edition

2008-02-16T05:05:00.001-08:00

Things and people your Demon is unspeakably sick of, in no particular order:

Democratic party superdelegates who can ignore popular votes if they wanna.

"Superdelegates Get Campaign Cash:" http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/superdelegates.html
Caucus results unverifiable in any event: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/128773.asp

Complete and total inattention to the fact that the entire election system is still broken:

New Mexico: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/76500/

New Hampshire: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5607

Diebold machines still crash erratically: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html

GOP-backed election laws may hinder student and minority voters: http://www.alternet.org/stories/72748/

Presidential candidates who refuse to disclose campaign financing ~ McCain and Clinton. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/opinion/15fri1.html

Whiners on Wall Street arguing against desperately needed regulation in economic markets even as members of their breed hold extravagant 1929-style parties in Vegas. "Creators of Credit Crisis Revel in Vegas": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/08trader.html

Credit card companies who benefit by fed interest rate cuts turn around and raise interest rates on consumers, preferably seniors on fixed incomes.

Oh, come on now! You didn't really think the rate cuts were meant to "trickle down" to benefit YOU, didja? Funny, your credit card issuer thinks otherwise.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2008-02-06-consumer-credit-charges_N.htm

Antonin Scalia, bombastic blowhard from hell, cares not that he reveals himself (again) to be the most unprofessional and perhaps unethical person to sit on the Supreme Court in recent memory. He continues to opine inappropriately on matters he'll soon have to decide on the bench, in open defiance of the basic legal supposition that judges who have already made up their minds before a case is argued before them should step aside and not pretend they're neutral.

Can you say "Banana Republic," kittens? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23153116/ Don't look for a sudden seizure of conscience from Scalia ~ he's proved over and over again that he doesn't have one. What, deprive posterity of his prejudged opinions? Never!

Karl Rove has resurfaced as contributor to John McCain, who's taken to lauding Roves's "brilliance" and proclaims he'd be happy to get the great one's advice. Karl Rove is a two bit hustler, a chiseller, and master of nothing but dumpster-diving dirty trix in politix. Dressing him up this way is the proverbial putting lipstick on an ugly pig. Stay in retirement, Karl ~ we want to hear no more of your nastiness.

Republicans who remain in deep denial about Bush's miserable failures as Preznit, and particularly the bone-headed memes that super-secret lying, spying and torture have somehow made us safer. They are so numerous I can't name just one. They're interchangeable, ubiquitious, and uniformly make me want to retch.

Presidential candidates selling their souls for power, especially John McCain gratefully assuming the mantle of Preznit Bush's Botched War on Terra.

Thus we see absolute proof of the old adage that politix makes strange bedfellows indeed ~ a man who was tortured himself in Vietnam and who has always stood against it now appears to be ready to take up where Bush leaves off, and gets the shameful amateurish mess Georgie AWOL-boy has made of everything dumped in his lap.

We especially like Bushco's new nonsensical argument that sending in a team of interrogators to feed shots of Starbuck's to and make nice with detainees can sanitize testimony previously extracted by torture.

Oh, and never mind that it's taken 8 years to finally bring them to trial. We had to set up the kangaroo courts first, and to ensure Justice Scalia has had ample time to reach prejudgment before we can bring them to "justice."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/02/injustice-at-guantanamo-torture.php

Mukasey: Why Was He Ever Confirmed~ Amnesia Sets In~

2008-01-31T19:28:00.000-08:00

~It's not as if he's changed his tune all that much, & as with all prospective politicos, tells you what he thinks you want to hear until the morning after ~

Democrats, & even some Republicans, regret drinking the kool-aid, but only when the hangover won't go away.

Remember this, last November, in the NYT, reporting on Michael Mukasey's nomination as the 3rd Attorney General to serve under Bushco?

"Six Democrats joined 46 Republicans and one independent in approving the judge, with his backers praising him as a strong choice to restore morale at the Justice Department and independently oversee federal prosecutions in the final months of the Bush administration.

"Thirty-nine Democrats and one independent opposed him.

'The Department of Justice needs Judge Mukasey at work tomorrow morning,' said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. 'The Department of Justice has been categorized as dysfunctional and in disarray. It is in urgent need of an attorney general.'

"But Democrats said Mr. Mukasey’s refusal to characterize waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, as illegal torture disqualified him from taking over as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

'I am not going to aid and abet the confirmation contortions of this administration,' said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. 'I do not vote to allow torture.'

"All five senators who are running for president -- Joseph R. Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher J. Dodd, all Democrats, and John McCain -- did not cast votes. The four Democrats had said they would not support Mr. Mukasey because of his equivocation during the confirmation hearings over whether waterboarding is torture. Mr. McCain has also denounced the interrogation method but he issued a statement last week saying he would vote to approve the nomination.
[...]

"Mukasey was initially hailed by Democrats as a leader who would bring welcome change to the Justice Department. His nomination had been recommended by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a member of the party leadership familiar with Mr. Mukasey from his service on the bench in New York.

"On the first day of his confirmation hearings, Mr. Mukasey said he would resign if directed by the White House to take any action he believed was illegal or violated the Constitution, winning Democratic praise. On the second day of his testimony, Mr. Mukasey sidestepped the question of whether waterboarding was torture and also suggested that the president’s Constitutional powers could supersede federal law in some cases.

"Those responses stirred strong Democratic opposition, throwing his confirmation into question. Trying to stem the rising opposition, Mr. Mukasey said that while he personally found the concept of waterboarding repugnant, he could not pass judgment on whether it was illegal because he had not been briefed on administration interrogation techniques.

"Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said she was confident that Mr. Mukasey would be nonpartisan and that his refusal to make a judgment on torture without knowing all the facts of interrogation policy should not keep him from the post.

'This man has been a judge for 18 years,' said Ms. Feinstein, who along with Mr. Schumer provided the key supporting votes to push Mr. Mukasey through the Judiciary Committee. 'Maybe he likes to consider the facts before he makes a decision.'

"But she was in conflict with most of her Democratic colleagues. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, opposed the choice even though he said he was predisposed to back Mr. Mukasey.

'During his confirmation hearings, Judge Mukasey expressed views about executive power that I and many other senators found deeply disturbing,' Mr. Reid said. 'And I was outraged by his evasive, hair-splitting approach to questions about the legality of waterboarding.'

"Republicans hailed Mr. Mukasey and accused Democrats of stalling the nomination and focusing on the torture issue to score political points. 'The Department of Justice has a vital role to play in the war against Islamic terrorists, and it is critically important that it have a leader who can ensure that it fulfills its mission,' said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. 'Judge Mukasey is this kind of leader.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/washington/09mukasey.html

That was then, this is now: Mukasey takes Bush direction well, adopting familiar nonsensical positions.

Dahlia Lithwick, one of my favorite legal commentators, points out in an article on Slate that:

.."Where Gonzales tended toward weaselly whininess, Mukasey is inclined toward curt directness. In response to an elaborate three-part question from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, toward the very end of a very long day, Mukasey responds, 'It is, we are, and I do.' Where Gonzales invariably blamed some faceless 'senior leadership of the department,' Mukasey is willing to shoulder sole responsibility for his decisions.

"The problem is that Mukasey is only willing to make and defend his decisions without explaining them. Still, he is very convincing in asserting that even though his decision is secret and its rationale is secret, and all future applications are secret, he is nevertheless confident that it's the right decision.

"As you'll recall, last October, nominee Mukasey promised the Senate that while he couldn't yet offer an opinion on the legality of the alternative interrogation technique called water-boarding, he'd be able to do so once he was 'read into the program.' As you may also recall, that nonanswer came close to scuttling his nomination. Last night, Gen. Mukasey let the Senate know in a sort of constitutional Dear John letter that he wouldn't opine on water-boarding today either, both because we stopped doing it and because it's 'not an easy question.'

"In other words, having set about diligently to scrutinize the legality of the interrogation program, its legal justifications, and its applications, the nation's top lawyer has come up with this lawyerly answer: It depends.

"Over the course of a long, maddening day, it's quickly manifest that Mukasey's legal opinions have a 30-second shelf life. He won't opine on what's happened in the past and he won't opine on anything that might happen in the future. When Sen. Arlen Specter—concerned about seven years of vast new claims of executive authority—asks Mukasey whether, in his view, the president 'can break any law he pleases because he's the president—including, say, statutes banning torture,' as well as FISA and the National Security Act, Mukasey replies, 'I can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.'

'Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,' Specter shoots back. Mukasey's response? 'Both of those issues have been brought within statutes.'

"Specter is flabbergasted: 'But he acted in violation of statutes, didn't he?'
'I don't know,' Mukasey replies. But does is really matter? What's past is past.

"Enter Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., as the ghost of Christmas Future. Even if Mukasey won't opine on past water-boarding, might he give some future guidance for future torturers? 'In your letter,' says Kennedy, 'you wouldn't even commit to refuse to bring water-boarding back, should the CIA want to do so. You wouldn't take water-boarding off the table! … Under what facts and circumstances would water-boarding be lawful?'

"But Mukasey won't speculate about future water-boarding, either, claiming he will not be drawn into 'imagining facts and circumstances that are not present and thereby telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those eventualities.' He also refuses to tell 'people in the field ... what they have to refrain from or not refrain from in a situation that is not performing.'

"Just to be clear then, to the extent that there is any purpose to the law, i.e., to punish past bad acts and to alert people as to what types of conduct will be punished in the future, the attorney general has just obliterated that purpose. Unless someone were to actually be water-boarded before Mukasey's eyes at the witness table in the Hart Senate Building, America's lawyer cannot hazard an opinion as to its legality.

"Joe Biden, D-Del., gets Mukasey to obfuscate even further. Mukasey explains to Biden that the legal test for torture—conduct that 'shocks the conscience'—has less to do with shocking the conscience than the exigency of the situation.

Under his test, torture that 'shocks the conscience' can be 'balanced against the information you might get that couldn't be used to save lives.' That's not a legal rule. It's a judgment call.

"Biden calls him out on it: 'You're the first person I've ever heard say what you just said ... I just never heard the issue of torture discussed in terms of the relative benefit that might be gained from engaging in the technique.'

Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., pounds away at Mukasey's claim that he can't define water-boarding as torture without 'tipping off our enemies about how we apply our laws.' If that's so, wonders Feingold, 'How could you ever prosecute such acts as crimes?' Mukasey replies that a subcontractor was once prosecuted for abusing a detainee. See? Problem solved.

"Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gets off the best line of the day when—citing Mukasey's statement that 'reasonable people can disagree' about the legality of water-boarding—he asks the attorney general to name some on the pro side.

"And Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., tries to get Mukasey to explain why the Justice Department is investigating the destruction of the CIA torture tapes, but not investigating the underlying torture itself.

"Mukasey's reply, 'I don't start investigations out of curiosity,' speaks for itself. When Whitehouse tries to get Mukasey to agree that they both know enough classified information to have a very concrete, nonspeculative legal discussion about whether what happened on those tapes is legal, Mukasey again insists that whether or not what happened on those tapes is legal is about which 'certifications were given' and 'who permissibly relied on it.'

"Whitehouse calls this the 'Nuremberg defense. ... I had authorization and therefore I'm immune from prosecution.'

"More and more frequently, we hear members of the Bush administration crying about the evils of "lawfare"—the notion that foreign policy gets decided in courts, and government actors are paralyzed by future legal liability and unable to act boldly to protect us. You'd think the answer would be to clarify for those government actors what the rules are, so they might conform their behavior to protect themselves. But in the new Bush/Mukasey construction, rules tip off the enemy, so it's better to make them up in secret as you go along."

"Thank You. Now Go to Hell": http://www.slate.com/id/2183165

Yes, Democrats who voted for Mukasey, the Democratic presidential candidates who conveniently stayed out of it, & even some Republicans are all now belatedly waking up to find the new AG-Prince Charming not only has feet of clay & looks a lot like George Bush (eek!) but farts under the covers.

So Long, Mr. Bush

2008-01-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

~ Did anyone out there in TV Land really pay any attention to POTUS'S last SOTU adress? Me neither ~

Your Demon admits to having walked past the TV several times & to listening from the kitchen, but admit it ~ after almost 8 years of the fellow, even the sound of his voice makes ya cringe, doesn't it?

And I really can't help, every time I have to bear witness to his latest stupid stunts ~ never mind watch him deliver a speech as the President with the glowering evil visage of Dick Cheney perched over his shoulder ~ I can't help but think, if only the Democrats had had the spine to start investigations with an eye to impeachment, I wouldn't have to witness the sorry spectacle, & the entire world would be with me in breathing a huge sigh of relief ("those arrogant, crazy, politically-highjacked Americans have come to their senses, finally!") That's my dream, anyway.

But the disappointing reality is that they're still in office, & predictably, Bush used most of his time to continue the relentless pounding on the drums of war. Really, those two won't be satisfied until the entire Middle East is engulfed in flames.

I kept hollering from the kitchen, "Has he talked about the economy yet?" I must have lost interest entirely before he got to it, because I wandered off, yet the press accounts say he did. Seemed to me NOT to be the focus, though. And no wonder.

History is going to judge Bushco harshly, & deservedly so. Along with spineless Democrats who could've done something but didn't~they'll fare no better, I'm guessing.

Your Demon was somewhat comforted to read this newsbit titled, "Congress Unlikely to Buy Bush Proposals" early this morning:

"A Democratic Congress is poised to heed President Bush's call to help save the economy, but may not give him much else after a State of the Union speech that recycled many of the administration's past initiatives.

"A lame duck president called again for immigration reform, an end to lawmakers' pet projects, control of Social Security spending and making tax cuts permanent. Democrats have rejected those Bush initiatives before..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080129/ap_on_go_pr_wh/state_of_union;_ylt=Aql5I8EJxwLAOvPvNuSoNQ6MwfIE

And Think Progress was on the ball with a piece debunking the Bushco favorite mythologies presented in his State of the Union address, claim for claim.

Even your Demon thinks it is tiresome beyond belief that Bush still thinks we're that stupid. He's still following the Rovian advice that got him elected in the 1st place ~ "repeat silly propaganda-talking-points- endlessly-until -enough- dumbbells-believe- them-to -be true" ~ hence the boast that that whole crew were "above the reality-based community."

http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=State+of+the+Union

A History Lesson for David Brooks & Other Laissez-Faire Opinionators

2008-01-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.internetweekly.org/

Duelling Views of the Economy From Two Voices ~ "Wretched Excess Just an Aberration" v. "We've Been Down This Road Before." Apparently, we have to save their greedy asses again!

First up, from David Brooks, the conservative journalist who's not an economist, but who purports to bring us absolute certitude anyway. He helpfully points out that there are 2 narratives from which to choose regarding the economic pickle we're in & the go-go cannibal capitalists whose behavior has done so much to bring it about: the "greed narrative" & the ecology narrative." (Hint: the latter is pretty much "boys will be boys!")

"There is roughly a 100 percent chance that we’re going to spend much of this year talking about the subprime mortgage crisis, the financial markets and the worsening economy. The only question is which narrative is going to prevail...

"The Greed Narrative goes something like this: The financial markets are dominated by absurdly overpaid zillionaires. They invent complex financial instruments, like globally securitized subprime mortgages that few really understand. They dump these things onto the unsuspecting, sending destabilizing waves of money sloshing around the globe. Economies melt down. Regular people lose jobs and savings. Meanwhile, the financial insiders still get their obscene bonuses, rain or shine.

"The morality of the Greed Narrative is straightforward. A small number of predators destabilize the economy and reap big bonuses. The financial system is fundamentally broken. Government should step in and control the malefactors of great wealth.

"The Ecology Narrative is different. It starts with the premise that investors and borrowers cooperate and compete in a complex ecosystem. Everyone seeks wealth while minimizing risk. As Jim Manzi, a software entrepreneur who specializes in applied artificial intelligence, has noted, the chief tension in this ecosystem is between innovation and uncertainty. We could live in a safer world, but we’d have to forswear creativity.

"The United States has generally opted for financial innovation. This has worked out pretty well. The U.S. has enjoyed 25 years of strong economic growth, in part because capital has been efficiently allocated to companies that can use it well.

"Financial instruments like adjustable-rate and subprime mortgages have allowed millions of people to get homes they could not otherwise purchase, and research shows that most of these tools have been used intelligently.

"Hedge funds have proliferated to help investors manage risk. These things exist precisely because investors want to smooth out volatility. In the old days, a blow to, say, the Texas economy could have dried up lending in Texas, but now funds flow globally, and money from one part of the world can shore up weakness in another.
As Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations has pointed out, time and again hedge funds have dampened market instability. If a currency, a company or a stock market starts to spiral downward, deep-pocketed funds, smelling bargains, will come in and stabilize its assets. If a company’s price is rising to unsustainable levels, contrarian funds bet against the hype.

"Most of the time, the complex new instruments diversify risk and serve the public good. But life requires trade-offs, and, as we’re being reminded this week, the innovation process involves a painful adolescence.

"When a new instrument enters the market, it takes a while before people understand and institutionalize it. Whether the product is high-yield bonds or mortgage-backed securities, there’s a tendency to get carried away.

"In the first stage of this adolescence, investors look around and see everybody else making money off some new instrument. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford notes: “They assume they are fine because they see everyone else buying it.” Individual bankers have a special incentive to get in on the ride because their yearly bonus is determined by how they do in the short term.

"Then there’s a moment when people realize how stupid they have been. They’ve bought a pile of subprime mortgages without really knowing what they’ve purchased. The ratings agencies suddenly don’t look so reliable. The cycle of overconfidence becomes a cycle of underconfidence because nobody knows who is holding worthless paper.

"Then, finally, maturity sets in. Those who have lost great gobs of money get fired. People still find the new product useful, but within parameters and with greater safeguards.
The lesson of the Ecology Narrative is that, in most cases, the market corrects itself. Maybe this year banks will change their pay structure so there’s not so much emphasis on short-term results. Maybe companies will change their boards to improve scrutiny over complex new instruments. In short, markets adapt.
People who embrace the Ecology Narrative don’t like the offensive bonuses that get handed out on Wall Street. They just don’t see any way the government can curtail them without rending the fabric of the ecosystem. They don’t like the periodic crises, but don’t see how government can prevent them without clamping down on innovation. The challenge is to give people the means to withstand the perturbations.

"The Ecology Narrative is not morally satisfying. I wouldn’t bet on its popularity as a backlash against Wall Street and finance sweeps across a recession-haunted country. But the Ecology Narrative has one thing going for it. It happens to be true."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25brooks.html

What happens to be true, actually, is that David & other apologists for the sorry mess we're in fail to mention is that, no, Wall Street is not going through an unfortunate adolescence. They've already been through it, dragged the entire country under, & Republicans have failed to learn from the miserable experience. Ever hear of the Gilded Age of Robber Barons & the Great Depression that followed it, David? ~ Stay tuned as we educate you~

Recent history lessons

For the David Brookses of the world *in denial or blinded by ideology*, here's an informative read from 2002 by Robert Kuttner, educated at the London School of Economics & a co-founder of the American Prospect about the parallels to that era this. Then, it fell to liberals to save capitalism from itself. Kuttner points out that crony capitalism was practiced by Bush himself (according to the article, he benefitted from insider stock sales when he was CEO of Harkin Energy) so neither he, nor any other lasseiz-faire fantasists who profited can be said to be credibly neutral on the topic, having succeeded in disembowelling protections that the New Deal liberals put into place ~ to prevent just what we've been seeing take place before our very eyes ~ following on Enron & other debacles ~ another meltdown that has the potential to grow into a full-fledged crisis.
...
"While the New Deal is commonly remembered for its public-spending and social-insurance legacies, its regulatory changes were at least as important to the stabilization of capitalism. The Roosevelt administration initiated much tougher regulation of banking, securities underwriting, accounting, electric power, civil aviation, telephones, broadcasting and labor relations. It added new teeth to pre-existing regulatory agencies in charge of railroads and trucking, as well as antitrust.

"The rationales for the new spate of regulation were diverse, often ad hoc and even contradictory. One strand of regulation addressed the problem of ruinous competition. In a normal economy, competition is good. But in a depression, if companies keep cutting prices and laying off workers, the result is a general downward spiral. Some of the New Deal's regulation was aimed at stabilizing prices and breaking the cycle of deflation. Other regulations set rates--in order to stabilize emergent industries, such as airlines, power companies and telephones--by assuring profits high enough to stimulate innovation and investment, but not so high as to gouge consumers.

"At its heart, however, New Deal regulation was about the stabilization of finance, for financial markets are both the essence of the market system and its Achilles heel. Congress and the White House wanted to make sure that the conflicts of interest and speculative ruin that characterized the 1920s would never be repeated.

"New Deal regulation, entrusted to the new SEC, imposed standards on corporate governance, on the issuance and sale of stocks and bonds, on the accounting profession and on stock exchanges. New Deal banking regulation put a wall between the operation of commercial banks and the underwriting and sale of securities. It regulated bank interest rates, offered deposit insurance, and imposed new conditions on bank safety and soundness. All of this succeeded in stabilizing capitalism--for about 70 years.

"To infer a consistent theory of the economy from New Deal regulation, one might say: Some sectors of the economy need to be regulated for purposes of financial stability, some to introduce greater income security and equality, and some to provide social goods that markets don't efficiently deliver. But underlying all these kinds of regulation is a distrust of the market's ability to regulate itself, and a reliance on government to keep capitalism efficient and honest. This insight was the centerpiece of the modern Democratic Party.

WHAT ARE THE PARALLELS WITH THE PRESENT ECONOMY?
"One is the vast waste of economic resources in speculative investments. Despite nonsensical tracts such as the book Dow 36,000, it's now clear that much of the stock run-up of the 1990s was an enormous bubble. Until the Enron affair, many analysts thought that the damage was limited to dot-coms and closely related technology companies. But as one corporation after another gets a new auditor and 'restates' its recent profits, it's evident that trillions of dollars of investment in far-flung corners of the economy went to no useful purpose. It remains to be seen how disastrous the assault on the real economy turns out to be, and how much lower the stock market has to fall.

"The second parallel is that much of the speculative excess was the result of conflicts of interests that could and should have been prevented. Bankers, brokers and corporate insiders all enriched themselves by temporarily pumping up stocks and contriving off-the-books deals.

"The whole system of compensation by stock option gave senior executives irresistible incentives to contrive phony profits and merger deals that made no economic sense. Corporate directors, never the arm's-length supervisors promised by market theory, were in fact cronies of the CEO. Auditors were in bed with their clients. All of this reflected the systematic dismantling of financial regulation, causing the economy to revert to the laissez-faire world of the 1920s, with its myriad attendant vulnerabilities. If the regulation of options-trading and electricity had not been undermined, Enron would have had to make its money in the old-fashioned way: selling real products and services and reporting honest earnings. If the Glass-Steagall Act had not been gutted by regulatory indulgence and then formally repealed, banks could not have enriched themselves by making profit-sharing deals with dishonest partners such as Enron. If the Congress and the SEC had not undercut the regulation of accountants, corporate books could not have been cooked to artificially inflate profits. If SEC oversight had held corporate directors personally accountable for their decisions and their lapses, corporate boards would never have approved many rotten deals. If stock options had been more tightly regulated, insiders would not have had an incentive to artificially pump up share prices in order to cash them in. What deregulation has produced is an economy and a culture rooted in conflicts of interest.

"The SEC already had the power to police most of these, but [the Republican] Congress directed it not to. And when Bill Clinton vetoed Newt Gingrich's bill that made it almost impossible for investors to sue for securities fraud, (see also Nice Work if You Can Get It I post re Supreme Court decision & Bush SEC intervention) Congress, with the support of many Democrats, passed it over Clinton's veto.

"Bush's law-and-order rhetoric and his call for longer prison terms for felonious CEOS misses the point utterly. What's needed is tighter scrutiny and clearer barriers to prevent such double-dealing at every step. Moreover, regulation is not a one-time action but an ongoing process. Financial scammers are always coming up with new gimmicks to circumvent existing prohibitions.

"For example, New Deal regulators, mindful that speculative stock investments in the 1920s were made substantially with borrowed money, limited that practice by regulating 'margin'--money lent to customers by brokers to finance direct stock investment. But margin is now archaic. You can speculate with borrowed money by investing in derivatives.

"Many of the abuses of the 1990s were the intended consequences of new inventions. The aggressive use of derivatives was new. The use of huge personal loans to executives to create off-the-books subsidiaries was new. Enron-style trading of futures was new. The ubiquity of options to reward CEOS was new. If the general conceit is that anything invented by markets should be celebrated as innovation and that any excesses will be disciplined by investors, existing regulations won't do the job, and there will be a bias against new regulation to counter new abuse. In the era that began with Reagan, when the market fundamentalism of The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation spread like an oil slick to the general media and the Democratic Party, markets got a free pass. When new scams were contrived, it took uncommonly courageous regulators such as SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to call for new forms of regulation.

"That's why the counteroffensive needs to be much broader than a mere crackdown on the current spate of frauds. The mixed economy itself needs to be rehabilitated, and market fundamentalism disgraced.

ASSESSING THE DAMAGE
"The economic commentator George Goodman, who wrote in the 1970s and 1980s under the pen name Adam Smith, liked to say that you don't see the bones until the tide goes out. A lot of the long-term damage to the economy is still hidden, and the tide is still going out.

"For example, it has almost been forgotten that the Federal Reserve has been keeping interest rates at historic lows in order to contain the damage of the first stock-market meltdown, the collapse of the dot-coms.

"Monetary policy to keep the economy afloat is already being used to its practical maximum. As Jeff Faux observes in this issue [See "Falling Dollar, Rising Debt," page 12.], America's chronic trade deficit is a source of hidden weakness that is suddenly far more precarious in a stock market meltdown. We finance the trade deficit by importing capital--about $400 billion a year. Until recently, the United States had no trouble importing that capital, despite our very low interest rates, because of America's reputation as the safest investment haven. But that inflow is now slowing, causing the dollar to lose value, and at some point the Federal Reserve will need to raise rates to keep foreign investors from fleeing--just as the economy is weakening.

"That will only slow economic growth and worsen the stock market slide. The late bull market also provided a lot of economic stimulus, which is now reversing. In the 1990s, institutions as well as individuals became addicted to the premise of a stock market permanently rising at four or five times the rate of economic growth. Pension funds that assumed a l0 percent normal annual return and thus were considered "overfunded" suddenly have far weaker balance sheets. So do many insurance companies. Large nonprofit institutions reliant on endowments--such as foundations, universities and hospitals--are suddenly a lot poorer. They must either curtail their existing operations or raise costs to consumers. So far, banks have not taken a big hit, but consumer and corporate debt are at record levels and bank profit margins are thin. A lot of banks overextended themselves in their own merger binge. As corporate stock prices fall, corporate ratios of equity to debt worsen. As the economy softens, bad loans mount. Banks would be in even worse shape were it not for the fact that some tougher supervision by examiners was restored in the wake of the banking and savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s. And as the banks' own prices fall, their own debt-equity ratios deteriorate. As the stock market has softened, a lot of money has poured into real estate--the last safe haven. But real estate is built and purchased with borrowed money, and offices and apartments need tenants. If the real economy falters and vacancy rates keep rising, the real-estate boom could be the next bubble, and another key sector would succumb to debt deflation.

"It's hard to think of any large sector of the economy that is immune to what is now unfolding. But aren't rates of productivity growth impressively high? And didn't the economy bounce back smartly from both the dot-com crash and the shock of September 11? Yes on both counts, but productivity is not relevant when the problem is a financial implosion. If retirees lose their stock portfolios and workers their jobs, the money to purchase products--no matter how efficiently produced--dries up.

"The history of capitalism is replete with eras in which new inventions made the real economy highly productive but chaos in the financial sector still dragged it into depression. The 1930s was a time of technological progress, in electronics, automobiles, telephones, electric power generation and basic science. But none of it was sufficient to compensate for the financial hangover and the shortfall of total demand. Japan still makes countless products more efficiently than anybody else, but its financial mess has kept it in a self-perpetuating slump. Although the economy still retains a lot of momentum, at some point all of this corporate unwinding has to translate into a slowdown of growth and a rise in unemployment.

"Ideally, the carnage will be contained--it will be enough to discredit laissez-faire and corporate excess, but not so serious that it produces a prolonged slump. Thanks to the part of the New Deal that the right has not managed to repeal, the economy is far more resilient than it was in 1929. Social Security, welfare checks and unemployment compensation are far from adequate, but they do prevent the bottom from falling out of consumer demand. Despite the efforts of the right to condemn the interference with free markets, bank deposits are still insured. The Federal Reserve, given new powers in the 1930s to be a lender of last resort, is a lot more savvy and effective than it was in 1929. Total public spending is about one-third of GDP, and this provides a lot of ballast.

"The more venturesome Democrats have assembled an adequate package of reforms to deal with the financial abuses now unfolding. Taken together, legislation sponsored by key Democrats would sever auditing from consulting, require a majority of corporate directors to be independent, tighten accounting standards across the board, define new categories of corporate criminal fraud, constrain exorbitant stock-option compensation to insiders, protect ordinary employees' pension plans and hold senior executives criminally liable for fraudulent practices that are now beyond prosecution. Republicans are already backing some of these measures in spite of themselves. (A nice summary is on Rep. Richard Gephardt's Web site, http://democraticleader.house.gov/.)

"None of this is 'anti-business.' It is emphatically pro-business in that it prevents the squandering of capital for personal enrichment and because it is necessary to restore investor confidence. Such measures are only the beginning of a long struggle to wrest back a mixed economy. The unleashing of market forces has been harmful to ordinary people and to the modern liberal project in ways that go far beyond the harm inflicted in the current crisis. Why, for example, don't Americans have decent health care? Because the health-care industry wants it that way, and because the ascendant ideology says that markets can do the job better than government-sponsored insurance. Ordinary experience and scholarly evidence both demonstrate that market provision of health care is a disaster.

"But the ideological conventions of the era blind politicians to what their own constituents know and desire. By the same token, the problem with retirement security isn't just that some 401(k) plans are inadequately regulated and at risk of being looted. Half of America's workers have no pensions at all save Social Security, and they will only get pensions when government policy demands it.

"The free market is supposed to solve this problem, but it doesn't. The voucher craze, lately supported even by some Democrats, is another money-making scheme relying on the spurious claim that markets are superior to public investments. The view that lifesaving drugs are commodities rather than social goods is yet another market conceit.

"Bush's appalling tax cut reflects the belief that personal income is entirely private rather than subject to social claims. And the ultimate manifestation of the laissez-faire's hegemony is the global free market, in which speculative money flows periodically wreck the economies of developing countries, undercut labor and environmental regulation in advanced democracies, and invite the creation of tax havens for the wealthy.

"The market fundamentalists also insist that the deregulation of particular industries, such as airlines and telephones, saves consumers hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting prices. But these calculations leave out the sheer economic waste that occurs when a natural monopoly such as telephone service is fragmented. They ignore the huge financial loss that results from hundreds of billion dollars of duplicative investments and bankruptcies...deteriorating service ... and the lost wages to workers when high-wage industries become hypercompetitive low-wage sectors.
"Can Liberals Save Capitalism Again?" http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-1933981/Can-liberals-save-capitalism-again.html
Author Bio: http://www.prospect.org/cs/about_tap/about_the_editors#kuttner

"The entire set of free-market era claims are due for scholarly reappraisal and broad political challenge. Just as the soaring stock market and the cult of the CEO gave prestige to markets and deregulation generally, so the disgrace of corporate capitalism is an opportunity to dethrone the role of the market generally. Only when that occurs will the liberal project regain the momentum that it enjoyed in the mid-20th century. Ordinary people are able to connect the dots, if leaders will only lead. It's a pity that it took this kind of crisis to open the door. Lately it has been the right, not the liberal left, that it is ideologically serious. But ultimately, in this pragmatic country, nothing fails like failure.

And furthermore: Paul Krugman, another economist, on why tax rebates for those already paying taxes (& doing well, presumably,) isn't likely to be an effective stimulus: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25krugman.html

Nice Work If You Can Get It, Pt. Two

2008-01-24T18:39:00.000-08:00

Ill: Wizard of Whimsy

http://home.comcast.net/~wizardofwhimsy/index.html

More from the Frontlines of the War to Protect Rich Peoples' Preogatives:

Heretic liberals take untoward advantage of economic woes to taunt proven money makers (well, for themselves. at least). You should be outraged!

Robert Borsage, writing in support of the liberal agenda, dares to criticize the captains of cannibal capitalism whose hard work made this latest recession bearable for CEO's, & unfairly taunts former Citibank CEO Charles Prince. (Who really didn't get paid enough to take this crap!):

As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

"These now-immortal words of former Citibank President Charles 'Chuck' Prince were uttered in July, as Citibank was about to lose billions in everything from mortgages to credit cards. Prince departed with a reported $68 million good-bye package. Stanley O’Neal, who led Merrill Lynch to write off a record $9.9 billion in last quarter, departed with a $161 million severance package.

"Now the top five Wall Street banks – three of whom racked up record losses – have announced that they are paying their employees a record $39 billion in year-end bonuses. Hemorrhaging losses, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bear Sterns had to increase the percentage of revenue they devote to pay to ladle out these bonuses. So much for pay for performance.

"Bank spokesman were not exactly lining up to justify this, but Jeanne Branthover, managing director of a global search firm, helpfully explained: 'It’s essential that pay is still there or you’re going to lose really good people.'

"Well. Is she talking about the really good people whose feckless speculation is now pushing the global economy into recession and will cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes? The really good people whose 'dancing' got so risqué that the somnambulant Federal Reserve just issued new regulations requiring bankers to assess whether the borrowers they are lending money to actually have a blue moon chance at repaying the loan? The wizards who, as Allan Sloan points out in The Washington Post, spent the last couple years buying back their stock at the top of the market, only to be forced to sell it off to foreign investors at the bottom in the desperate effort to keep from going belly-up?

More: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/keep-dancing-chuck

Mean, mean Robert Borsage, attacking defenseless free-market capitalists when they're down!

But, in other news today, President Bush's Ronald Reagan Republicans, with neo-con lite Democrat friends like Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid, struck a blow today in the much-vaunted "bipartisan effort" to inject some stimulus into the economy that the captains of commerce, despite their best efforts to buy bigger McMansions, more Beamers, stretch Hummers, small jets & expensive jewelry for their soon-to-be 2nd or 3rd wives, could not, by themselves, fulfull through no fault of their own.

Tax refunds for the working poor, extended unemployment benefits, & more foodstamps are OFF the table in the House of Representative's proposal.

Hooray! After all, who would the captains of industry (or money-churning, as it were) get to work for them as maids, office boys, clerks, secretaries & miscellaneous beancounters at slave wages if we gave the self-evidently UNDESERVING a break? Bush capped it by heroically vetoing for a 2nd time the Children's Health Insurance Plan expansion which would have spread the scourge of socialized medicine to their even more undeserving children.

If you insist in reading about the tawdry mess yourself:

WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303844.html

Reuters: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2008-01-24T234357Z_01_HUN476626_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ECONOMY-STIMULUS-1.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-R2-Today-3

Undeserving Children: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22805359/

Study: Bush Lied About Iraq

2008-01-22T22:01:00.000-08:00

259 times, to be precise

In the not-news-but-it-is-always-fun-to be- reminded department today, we look up from checking the status of our retirement accounts to learn that Bush lied us into war with Iraq, according to a pair of non-profit foundations on journalism & media.

"Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

"The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports,

"'The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war,' the study concluded.

"'Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq,' it said. "
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/misinformation_study;_ylt=AsRTUAFZg8771RYorozu9Uas0NUE

Now go back to worrying about your investments, if you have any, or the lack of any social safety net if you don't. (See really lengthy diatribe below.) Bush took away the latter when you weren't paying attention ~ maybe you were hopefully wishing against hope that you'd never need it.

With the news of the heroic interest rates cuts today on top of an already weak dollar, your DP is worrying about inflation, food prices, etc., the things normal patriotic Americans think about. I advise y'all to stock up on canned tuna.