Planet Carlton

2009-02-19T22:31:00.002-05:00

NEW LOCATION

In case anyone cares -- which is unlikely -- I am blogging sporadically here.

2008-09-21T14:20:00.002-04:00

I HAVEN'T CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT THE BAILOUT

But this is annoying:

Paulson resisted suggestions being made by Democrats that the program be
changed to include further relief for homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures
and to include an additional $50 billion stimulus effort. Some Democrats have
also suggested capping compensation of executives at firms who get the bailout
help.

Paulson said he was concerned that debate over adding all of those
proposals would slow passage of the bill, delaying the rescue effort that is so
urgently needed to get financial markets moving again.

Also proposed, fixing some of the more horrible and taxpayer-unfriendly elements of the bankruptcy code. I think these include the sections making credit card debt impossible to discharge in bakruptcy -- giving a perverse incentive to debtors to pay the cards each month and stop paying the mortgage.

If it's that big of an emergency, shouldn't we take the kitchen sink approach? The numbers here are so large already that it boggles the imagination. If we're in this for $700,000,000,000, what's another $100,000,000,000? Especially if it might really do some good?

2008-09-20T23:17:00.001-04:00

SILENT RUNNING

Not a lot of posting here lately. Obviously there's lots of news. Maybe I'll have something to say about it in the days ahead -- or maybe not!

2008-09-20T23:16:00.001-04:00

THE BAILOUT

I don't claim to have any particular expertise on this, but I think that the poplist outrage towards the proposed plan is misplaced. There's a real emergency at hand right now, an imminent threat that if not properly handled could result in a truly miserable state of affairs, affecting all Americans. The proposed plan may not work, or be the best possible, but some of the rhetoric I've seen is wrongheaded.

My understanding is that the interbank lending which allows our financial system to function is simply not happening - because no one wants to lend to an insolvent bank, and it's impossible to tell who is and isn't insolvent because these huge assets (the mortgage-backed securities, primarily) held by the banks are impossible to value. Are they worth 50% of face value? 5%? This new agency sets a minimum price for the assets, and then we can sort out who is actually insolvent using that price.

Two responses to the objections: 1) The assets the government would buy aren't valueless, just difficult to value -- and some of them may end up being worth equal or more than the government pays for them. The government isn't throwing this $700 bn out the window (though it may net a loss). 2) If a man sets his own house on fire for the insurance money, we still call the fire department. Later, we put him in jail. We're calling the fire department right now.

2008-09-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

I CLEARLY MEANT "L"

When I said "W" before.

2008-07-24T19:56:00.002-04:00

ANOTHER PREDICTION

The next big financial institution to make news by going under will have a name that begins with the letter 'W.'

That is all.

2008-07-23T22:04:00.004-04:00

SILENCE

After I posted the last one, I noticed that I actually had some comments on some old stuff. Somebody asked/taunted me about Hillary losing to Obama, and why I'd been so quiet. Believe it or not, they are unrelated phenomena.

Executive summary: Hillary lost, and by the time she dropped out I was ready for her to go. She had all the advantages, and should have won, but she squandered every them all. My thumbnail take on her candidacy was that she let loyalty to longtime staffers (Penn) overwhelm good sense. Maybe I'll write more about that, but I think the moment has passed.

(I do still like her -- she's very smart, tireless, and I believe she really wants most of what could be described as a progressive agenda. And she looked great, especially when she made her concession speech. Loyalty to that stylist, I support. I did not care for her campaign.)

Now, I'm fully on the Obama love train. If I start doing this again, there will certainly be more on this topic.

2008-07-23T21:46:00.002-04:00

SO, IT'S BEEN A WHILE/PREDICTION

I just popped in to offer an off-the-cuff prediction, based on nothing except an itch that I developed in my testicles while reading through some news articles today: The Republicans will not run John McCain as nominee for president. "Presumptive" is as close as this guy gets.

Before the convention, the GOP will get its collective act together and decide that he can't win, that he is so crippled and bumbling as a candidate that ANYONE would be a better choice. Certain people will have a nice quiet get-together with McCain, and he will shortly therafter announce some newly-discovered health problems. Then, with a bare minimum of disruption, the new candidate will step into McCain's shoes and be elected at the convention in the first vote. (When Republicans get the memo, they follow the memo.)

Why do I think this? C'mon y'all, the guy is TERRIBLE. He can't keep his own story straight, he can't remember which country we're talking about. He doesn't know anything (Shia v. Sunni, for example, or where Pakistan is on the map), and doesn't really care to know -- too much like what we've already had for too long. His advisors (Gramm, Black) are even more odious and narrow-minded than he is. He can't win, and the right people are starting to realize it. Have you heard any of his speeches? The man is effing RIDICULOUS. People are starting to NOTICE.

Who will be on the ticket in his place? That's much harder to predict, but I'll go with it: Romney/Rice. (And they lose!)

You heard it here first!

2008-02-14T22:51:00.004-05:00

SUPERDELEGATES

There's been a lot of this kind of horseshit spread around recently:

This is not a negotiable position. If the Democratic Party does not
nominate the candidate for POTUS that the majority (or plurality) of its
participants in primaries and caucuses want it to nominate, then I will quit the
Democratic Party. If you think this is somehow rejecting the rules and bylaws of
the Democratic Party, you are wrong. The fact is that there is nothing in the
bylaws of the Democratic Party that dictate how super delegates should vote at
the Democratic national convention. In the absence of any legal dictation of how
they should vote, I will hold them to the principles that make me a Democrat: as
the democratic institution through which internal disputes of the American
center-left are resolved. If the Democratic Party fails to respect those
principles, and their "super" delegates nominate someone for POTUS other than
the person who received the most support during Democratic primaries and
caucuses, then I fail to see any reason to continue participating in the
Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party is not a democratic institution, then
to hell with the Democratic Party.

I need to get this down before the entire campaign changes, because it seems to do so overnight, these days: Superdelegates have been a part of the Democratic party primary system for a long time. Since the 1980s, I believe. Hillary and Bill didn't think it up all on their own.

You need 2000-odd delegates to win the nomination. They can be regular delegates. They can be superdelegates. The winner will have a mix -- mathematically, I think the winner has to have both.

If Hillary is behind in regular delgates and gets enough superdelegates to win, she wins. Period. If she's ahead in regular delegates, and Obama gets put over the top by supers, he wins. Period. Either one could happen. Do you know what they call a candidate in that situation? The nominee. There is no legitimate way to resolve it otherwise.

Is it ideal? Does it make people feel warm and fuzzy about all those votes they just cast? Does it validate all those nights spent watching MSNBC waiting for primary/caucus results? Does it reflect a pure form of direct democracy? No on all counts.

But those are the rules. They may be bad, stupid rules, but they are the rules. They were in place long before this cycle. For whatever reason, the rulemakers deliberately eliminated direct democracy from the process. They gave a great deal of power to these 700-800 party apparatchiks -- who may be idiots, hacks, or Joe Lieberman -- and this time, they may just be asked to exercise that power. They will probably decide the winner.

Maybe that's stupid, but that's how you win the Democratic nomination.

2008-02-12T17:35:00.001-05:00

GREG

I think Greg wants me to acknowledge his official disapproval of Senator Clinton. Duly noted. I would like to acknowledge the fact that he seems to have successfully procreated.

Views on Clinton: Boo!

Procreation: Yay!

2008-02-12T17:24:00.001-05:00

NOT-SO-SUPER TUESDAY

I voted in our local primary thingie today. It was much quicker and easier than in the midterms, fer sure. For one thing, I took off early from work, and there was no one waiting in line at 3:45. For another, there was just one choice. At the midterms, there was a confusing barrage of initiatives -- and I felt like I should vote on each one, being a good citizen and all. (Not good enough to figure them out before I got there, though). This time, there was just one question.

I voted for Hills, of course. As I've said, If Obama wins, I will vote for him enthusiastically, but with a bit of uncertainty. For whatever reason, I feel like we all know Hillary already -- which is probably why some people don't like her, I know.

It's not looking good for her these days. Today won't knock her out, but she may very well end up losing. I suppose it is approximately a tie right at the moment, but I think her position is eroding while Obama's strengthens. We'll just see. You'll hear it here last.

2008-02-09T12:36:00.001-05:00

CREDIT CARDS: YOUR ENEMY OR YOUR WORST ENEMY?

You have a credit card. If you carry a balance they charge you -- buying with your card is essentially the same as taking out a short-term, high-interest loan. In accounting terms, this loan is a debt to you, and a credit to the issuer of the card. But they wouldn't seem as friendly if you called them "debt cards."

If you miss a payment, or don't pay the entire minimum, the issuer of the card takes a couple of nasty steps. One of them is almost certainly jacking up your already-high interest rate (11% if you are lucky) to usurious levels (up to near 30%). That hurts, but it's your fault. You messed up.

In the past few years, some issuers have been using a different set of criteria as an excuse to raise your rates. They have access to all your financial information (how did THAT happen, anyway) -- if you miss a payment on another card, or a utility bill, or a decline in your FICO score, suddenly you become a dangerous credit risk, and they "have" to jack you. That's even though you never missed a payment on your account with them. Bastards. At least it makes a certain kind of sense; you did something that changes your profile as a customer.

Now we've reached the next phase: They raise your rates just because they want more of your money.

Credit-card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on
cardholders who aren't behind on payments, but whose credit score has fallen for
another reason. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC - News) is hiking rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all.
. . .
What's striking is how arbitrary the Bank of America rate increases appear,
credit industry experts say . . . Bank of America appears to be taking an
even more aggressive stance because, beyond credit scores, it is using
internal criteria that aren't available to consumers. That makes the
reason for the rate increase even more opaque. "Congress has faulted credit-card
companies for lack of transparency in raising rates," says William Ryan, a
financial industry analyst at Portales Partners, a New York-based research firm.
"Bank of America is bringing it to a new level."

If BoA gets away with this, expect every other issuer to follow in lockstep. So pay off those cards.

2008-02-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

WOW!

Super Tuesday was . . . oh, you know. The very idea that we would have two excellent, indestructible candidates, and that they would be in a statistical TIE at this point is just awesome. Howard Dean came out the other day and said that, if this went on too much longer, they'd have to work out "an arrangement" betwen the two candidates -- and I assume he means a Clinton/Obama ticket, because she's not backing out any other way. But who knows, really?
(Just to restate: I'm for Hillary, but I'd vote for Obama if it came to that.)

Contrary to what some say (that's the Fox News straw man "some", erected just so I can knock him down), I think this battle is a wonderful thing for the Democrats. How excited are people about this race? Very. I mean, the primary here in Virginia is going to be significant, for once. After every one, you hear stories of lines around the block before the polls open, and shortages of ballots (not a good thing in itself, but a sign). Democrats are fired up. Let it go on for a while.

Republicans are busy booing their presumptive nominee . . .

In his speech before CPAC, McCain noted that he has faced strong criticism
within his party for some of his political stands. He noted that his support of
a failed immigration bill that would eventually allow undocumented immigrants to
get citizenship was not popular with everyone.
Apparently, McCain's stand still evokes bitter feelings within the party as the conservative crowd began to boo the Republican frontrunner when he spoke about immigration.

. . . and I'm laughing my ass off. Sure, they'll eventually realize that they have no other choice but to get behind hin, and they will. But will they have the full-throated bloodlust of the 2008 Democrat? Will McCain raise over $7 million in two days, as BOTH Hills and Obama did this week? I don't think so.

(And yes, I know about the loan. We have yet to see how that shapes up.)

2008-02-07T22:24:00.000-05:00

EQUI-TASTIC!

Just a link to a very cogent (it seems to me) discussion of equity and various types of home financing, from the excellent Irvine Housing Blog. With charts!

I read it all the time, and you should too. It's where I got this!

2008-01-30T21:44:00.001-05:00

MINSKY

My wife and I were talking this evening about this strange gift I seem to have for seeing the things in the media that turn into actual news stories. I get most of my news from the Internet, but it sometimes seems that, if I turn the TV on for five minutes, I'll see the clip that everyone repeats for the next couple of days. If I flip though a random magazine on the john, I'll happen to read the article that everyone talks about for the next little while. I don't mean to overstate this, but it happens often enough that we have remarked on it. It's not because I'm smart or handsome or anything.

I wrote a tiny little report on here in November about a book I had been reading: Manias, Panics, and Crashes, A History of Financial Crises, by Charles P. Kindleberger. One of the first chapters discusses the so-called "Minsky Cycle" (or something like that), named after economist Hyman Minsky. In brief, it's the life cycle of an asset bubble. Like the one that's bursting now. But y'all, I had never heard of this guy before that.

So I read this book, and understood some portion of it, back in the spring. (I ordered it from Amazon in December 2006!) Since then, I have run across a big pile of articles and blog posts with titles like "Are we at the peak of the Minsky credit cycle?" or "A 'Minsky Moment'", and the like. Just today, I open the latest New Yorker, and the first talk of the Town feature is titled, "The Minsky Moment."

(And y'all, everyone seems to focus on the moment when the bubble bursts, but here's a clue: the important moment comes well before, when we enter the "euphoria" stage. That's when the people who control the banking apparatus decide whether or not to open the spigot to all these speculators who have no business borrowing these small fortunes to invest in whatever the overspriced asset du jour is. But nobody cares about that.)

And all this from a book I read because Kevin Drum said he liked it. Like I said, I don't want to make more out of this than it really is. But damn if it isn't kind of spooky.

Oh, and really effing bad news for the economy. But who cares about that?

2008-01-30T21:41:00.001-05:00

EDWARDS OUT

As I've written before, I would gladly vote for any of the top three Dem candidates for the Big Job . As I've also written before, I can't believe that a guy like John Edwards would be THIRD in this race -- given his charisma, ceaseless campaigning, and powerful personal story.

But now he's out. He did a lot for the race -- pushing an anti-poverty agenda, making the other candidates speak in detail about health care, etc. His wife even took down Ann Coulter on TV.

Thanks, John. Maybe another time.

2008-01-28T22:14:00.000-05:00

INSTEAD OF WATCHING THE SPEECH

Read this chart.

Enjoy.

2008-01-28T19:19:00.000-05:00

BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH

I heard this on the radio this morning, and I just had to look it up. Regarding the vote on the FISA bill today:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) . . . observed succinctly: "It’s not about frightening the American people. The American people should be frightened and remember full well what happened on 9/11."

[Edited to remove some silliness that took away from the utter inanity of the quote.]

It's hard to replicate this in the laboratory. I tried to come up with a snappy line to parrot the internal anti-logic of the quote, but nothing is better than the thing itself.

2008-01-27T16:59:00.000-05:00

SOUTH CAROLINA

My girl Hillary got quite the drubbing in SC yesterday -- which is OK. She can take it. (And if she can't she shouldn't win.) Like Kevin Drum, I still think it's likely that she'll get the nomination on the end, although I'm happier about it than he is, for sure. As I've said before, however, it's OK with me if it's Obama.

People are all atwitter about Bill Clinton's comments about SC in general, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson (as in, someone who won South Carolina in the primaries). I'll admit that he's kind of pushing it, here -- but I see where he's going, strategically. Obama wants to be this transformative, post-race figure, and so his message has a racial aspect to it, by definition. Bringing up Jackson, who is not terribly popular even among blacks, I think, does call back some unpleasant memories and paste them onto Obama. This may backfire, especially if, as I think, Obama comes off so well in the comparison that he does seem like the post-race candidate.

But some people, you know, object. I have a hard time getting worked up about this, at this stage. The Dems are still paying Laser Tag in order to get ready for the Somme. If Hillary wins, the tactic will have the victor's genius. If she loses, no one will really care.

2008-01-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

FOOLS DO WHAT WE ASK

It's a bit late to psychoanalyze the current administration, but here's another shot at it. This is probably more descriptive than analytical, exactly, but it's something I've noticed a couple of times in recent news items, and it seems to go back a ways.

Readers may remember a recent post about the Dulles-DC Metro link project -- how state and local planners had undergone a lengthy revision process at the behest of the administration, changing the plan, reducing the budget, increasing the percentage of local participation. After doing everything that the Federal Transit Administration asked, checking all the boxes, etc., the administration finally shrugs its shoulders and says that they don't really like public transit after all. The demands were just a smokescreen.

That resonated with something I saw at uber-blogger Glenn Greenwald's site . The underlying story is about Sen. Dodd's attempt to block passage of legislation giving telecom companies retroactive immunity for cooperating with the administration's (probably illegal) wiretapping programs:

As always, the significance of what has occurred here shouldn't be overstated. The only reason Senate Democrats became angry on Thursday is because Republicans actually refused to allow Democrats to capitulate, as they were ready and eager to do. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from caving in completely to Bush because they didn't want this issue resolved. They wantto ensure that Bush, in Monday's State of the Union address, can accuse Senate Democrats of failing to act on FISA, and thus attack and mock them as being weak on national security and causing the Terrorists to be able to Slaughter Us All.

And, rather pitifully, some Democrats are shocked -- so very upset -- that, yet again, their demonstrated willingness to give the Republicans everything they demanded has not prompted a Good, Nice, Courteous Response. "We did everything you told us to do. Why are you being so mean and unfair?" That sad posture is what led even Jay Rockefeller apparently to announce that he will vote against cloture on his own bill.

And let's not forget this golden oldie, from March of 2003 (which is exactly what I thought of when I saw what Greenwald had written). Remember, before we invaded Iraq, how we insisted that we had to invade Iraq because they wouldn't disarm, specifically that they had all these awesome missiles that were such a big threat?

Iraq today resumed destroying its short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles. . .

President Bush, in his weekly radio address today, took a far harder line
than the United Nations weapons inspectors, declaring that Iraq ''is still
violating the demands of the United Nations by refusing to disarm.''

Mr. Bush dismissed the destruction of the Samoud missiles as ''a public
show of producing and destroying a few prohibited missiles,'' and argued anew
that American intelligence -- which the administration has declined to release
-- ''shows that even as he is destroying these few missiles, he has ordered the
continued production of the very same type of missiles.''

In Iraq, the government destroyed 6 of the short-range Samoud missiles
after a one-day hiatus, bringing the total destroyed under United Nations
supervision in the last week to 40 -- approximately one-third of Iraq's known
stock of the missiles.

The Iraqis knew what was up, though, even if no one on our side could puzzle it out:

''We are all afraid because we expect we could be attacked at any minute,'' said
Raghad Majid, a 23-year-old art student. ''They want to attack no matter what.''

The administration's goals do not change. They do not compromise. They do not tell the truth. They enter into negotiations only as a pretense, to delay or in order to demand concessions that are (hopefully) impossible for their adversaries to provide. This bad faith comes to light most glaringly when they actually get what they say they want, and have to 1) insist that, as much as it may appear that you did what they asked, you didn't, or 2) completely reverse position without explanation, leaving those across the table to realize that we were chumps even to talk to them. In every case, if pressed, they will accuse the opposition of dishonesty.

They are not affected by changes in facts or circumstances. They do not get embarassed. They have no concept of good faith. In fact, if you aren't One of Them, they will go out of their way to rip you off, waste your time, ruin your good name.

It's fascinating, really. Pathological.

2008-01-22T21:45:00.000-05:00

ON LIVING FOREVER

I undertook some long-postponed maintenance this weekend, and the results were good. First was an eye exam, which I hadn't had in over three years.

Result? I am not going blind. In fact, I am exactly the same amount of myopic/astigmatic as I was three years ago. So . . . if I stay away from flying awls and exploding meth labs, I should be OK.

The other was a trip to the dentist. It's been a long time, y'all. I haven't had a regular dentist in YEARS. I don't hate the dentist -- I've never had a bad experience, but it was never a priority.
I brush, etc., but I was really afraid that my mouth was going to be a chamber of horrors.

Result: Fine. The guy wants to seal a couple of my back teeth, but it isn't pressing. See you again in six months, doc.

Anticlimactic, huh?

2008-01-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

IN MY COUNTRY THERE IS PROBLEM . . .

and that problem is transport.

(Some background: There are two airports in Northern Virginia, one small and close in -- Reagan -- and one big and far out -- Dulles. Flying into/out of Reagan is more convenient and more expensive, and those two things are probably related. A cab ride from my house to Reagan is $15-20. A cab ride to Dulles is $85. Dulles is much less useful to the area than it might be because it's really hard to get there and back.)

Federal officials remain skeptical of the plan to extend Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and might reject it, even though their consultants recently found that the proposal meets requirements for full funding, government and project sources said.

Officials with the Federal Transit Administration say they are concerned about the
price tag and the specter of another Big Dig, the Boston project built by the same contractor in charge of the Dulles rail line, which took years longer and cost millions more than planned, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are sensitive. In addition, the agency has been reluctant to promote large-scale transit projects.

That last line is the key, apparently. DOT: "It's not that this project doesn't meet any of the criteria we came up with, or that you haven't changed it in accordance with all the requests we've made, or that you didn't trim the budget the way we asked. It's just that we don't like public transit, and we don't want to do it. Even more than that, all the things we asked you to do with this project were just a smokescreen. We took advantage of your mistaken impression that this project might ever happen."

State and local officials, as well as project advocates, say they are ready to
meet any requests by the federal government. Officials slashed $300 million from
the budget in September. The project is to link the region's major
international and transcontinental airport to the rest of the transportation
network and help remake Tysons Corner. But without the more than $900 million in federal funding requested by Virginia, the plan would collapse.

Nine hundred million sounds like a lot, doesn't t it? Not according to Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia:

"We can see no reason why the project would be rejected at this point," Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said during a question-and-answer session yesterday on washingtonpost.com. "Under normal conditions, communities often put up 20 to 30 percent of the costs of these transit projects with the federal government picking up the remaining share. In this instance, the local share is more than two-thirds, and Congress has already demonstrated that this is a project of national importance by allocating significant budgetary resources."

Putting aside the fact that Tyson's corner is a regional business center, and that it might be nice to be able to, say, get into the city without having to sit in out crippling gridlock for a couple of hours (to go 15 miles), not to mention alleviating some of said crippling gridlock by having some light rail. It's not that it's not too expensive, it's not that it wouldn't work, it's not that anyone in the affected areas isn't in favor of it -- it's just that the Bush people don't like the idea. And they don't need any reasons.

Reasons are for people who aren't 100% sure that they are right.

2008-01-18T23:20:00.001-05:00

NEVADA

I have no idea who will win Nevada, of course. I'm for Hillary in the long run, as I've stated. Part of me hopes that Edwards takes it by a whisker, just to shake things up.

And as things turn dirty, and as all these soandsos on DailyKos and elsewhere are just horrified that Ms. Clinton's campaign might be -- heavens -- implicating indirectly the fact that Obama is black, admitted to using drugs, said something nice about Ronald Reagan (for God's sakes, man) . . . to those people I say, buckle up. If Obama wins the nomination, she will have done him a favor. You don't win a Democratic primary by race-baiting the electorate, and she knows that. But he wants to be the "post-race" candidate, the uniter -- if she is implicating race, and some people seem to think she is, the stategy is just to make him talk about it, throwing him off message. And it may work. Horrors.

But you know, if he can't deal with this kind of subtle, arched-eyebrow, tone of voice, veiled-statement-by-surrogate-followed-by-apology kind of semi-assault, he can't take on the Republicans in November. They'll get their machine cranked up and have people claiming he was giving crack to 13 year-old white girls in exchange for anal sex in a mosque while listening to gangster rap.

2008-01-18T22:54:00.000-05:00

GEEKING OUT

The other day I was watching David Tennant's video diary serialized on YouTube -- DT being the actor playing the tenth incarnation of Doctor Who. They were behind the scenes on the episode "The Age of Steel" which aired in the second season. One outdoor scene, already hopelessly behind schedule, was interrupted by a freak snowstorm which wouldn't let up.

One of the producers of the show looks into Tennant's camcorder and says, "We may be getting ready for a 'Claws of Axos' rewrite."

A WHAT? To the internets!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

The Claws of Axos is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from March 13 to April 3, 1971.

and, most importantly,

During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, an overnight snow
storm necessitated the creation of a line in the programme to explain that the
variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes are "freak weather
conditions" as a result of Axos' arrival.

Geeking OUT.

2008-01-18T22:43:00.000-05:00

JUST DO WHAT MR. CHENEY SAYS, OK?

I'd like to call my readership's attention to this story, regarding a fracas between a citizen, Steven Howards, and Vice President Dick Cheney last year. Accounts vary, but most agree that Mr. Howards approached Mr. Cheney to express displeasure with the Administrations' policies at a Colorado ski resort. To make his point, he touched M. Cheney in some way. He says it was a "pat"; others at the time say it was more aggressive. Cheney's Secret Service detail pointed out Howards to a Secret Service Agent named Reichle, who arrested Howards. Howards spent a few hours in a county jail. Howards has since sued.

Clear enough? It gets tricky . . .

The agent who made the arrest, Virgil D. Reichle Jr., said in a deposition that
he was left hanging with an untenable arrest because two agents assigned to
the vice president had at first agreed with a Denver agent that there had
been assault on Mr. Cheney by Mr. Howards, then changed their stories to say
that no assault had occurred.
Mr. Reichle, who did not witness the encounter, said in his deposition that
he believed the vice president’s security detail had wanted the Howards arrest
to go away so that Mr. Cheney would not be inconvenienced by a court case.

Come on, Reichle, go along! The VP just wanted to teach the guy a little lesson, let him sweat it in jail for a while. The actual law and facts don't matter when the VP is involved! Do you know what happens when you don't play along?

This happens:

But one of the three agents assigned to [Cheney], Daniel McLaughlin, said in his
deposition that Mr. Reichle’s description was backward. Mr. McLaughlin
said Mr. Reichle, who has since been transferred to Guam, asked
him in a call several hours after the encounter to say that there had been an
assault to bolster justification for the arrest.

Emphasis mine, naturally. And the private citizen whose rights were (probably) violated? Who cares? He's just some guy. This is CHENEY we're talking about.

2008-01-10T21:42:00.000-05:00

WELL, ACTUALLY

I wasn't totally wrong. I was wrong about Edwards winning anything, of course, but I had Hillary in NH. And I was/am right about the Dem race going deep into the primaries. I believe I'm still right about Clinton.

I was wrong about the Repubs, though, in that I predicted Romney. And the whole shebang is not decided -- unless it turns out to be McCain in the end, and then I can claim that NH was dispositive and I was right after all. (This is what keeps our well-coiffed TV oracles in business, the ability to make a dozen conflicting predictions and crow with glee when one of them turns out to be true.)

I found Tuesday night to be tremendously exhilarating (exHillaryating? ugh.) Not only for the result, which I supported on the Dem side, or for the upset of the ConWis (which was pretty nice, to be honest). Nope, the best thing was that once again, the awesome depth of the Democratic bench was on display.

I heard Edwards' concession speech first, as did everyone, and thought: This guy is handsome, charismatic, tireless, eloquent, with a powerful and timely populist message and he's THIRD? You have to be kidding me! And his wife has incurable cancer? Come on!

But then there was Obama's speech -- and he's not necessarily better in any particular way than Edwards, but he's got a certain something. Based on the very little reading I've done, he seems the weakest on actual policy -- kind of a centrist mushball. But he's got that je ne sais quois, and that voice . . . and you see why he's beating Edwards. (Plus he's raised a lot more money.) Over the past few days, I gave some serious thought to an Obama nomination, and decided that I'd be OK with it. I might even be enthusiastic, after a few quiet moments of mourning for my favored one.

And then there's Hillary. Picard may have told Data that it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose -- which is bullshit, by definition (I really hate ST: TNG, in case anyone cares) -- but Hillary in NH may be a case of winning through the right sort of "mistake." (And I don't mean her victory jacket -- but what was that, anyway?) Fascinating.

Yeah, this is all ajumble, so I'll quit now. Any thoughts?

2008-01-06T21:19:00.001-05:00

MOLLY'S NEW SITE PLUS *BOOK*

Check out the link to Molly's new site, at left. She's got some crazy idea about drawing every day and posting, so be sure to egg her on.

And check out her book, which is avaialble for purchase and download (for free, until she figures out how to fix it -- act now!) here.

2008-01-06T21:13:00.001-05:00

ON HOW I WAS RIGHT

. . . about literally nothing. Huck and the Big O teamed up to blow a hole in the ConWis that Oprah Winfrey could Jazzercise though. Quite possibly my girl H-bomb's chances of becoming president of the Twelve Colonies . . . I mean the US . . . are sunk as a consequence. Oh well. Obama would be fine with me.

I maintain, however, that we will not have a President Huckabee any time in the near future.

2007-12-30T20:35:00.000-05:00

IOWA, NEW HAMPSHIRE AND OTHER CHOICE JANUARY VACATION SPOTS

These contests will be held soon, and everyone turns their eyes to Planet Carlton for the definitive prediction as to the outcomes of both races. Well, here you go: I have no idea.

. . . which is really exciting! Put aside the fact that this is by all accounts a rather important election, once-in-a-generation-opportunity, blah dee blah, and we have a really close race on both sides. Democrats are split on who's best and Republicans can't seem to figure out if they can tolerate any of their choices.

But if pressed [OW!], I will make some predictions:

On the Democratic side, I predict that whomever wins Iowa and New Hampshire, even if the same person wins them both (I kind of think Hillary will do that, but I don't really know), the margins of victory will be small enough that the battle will continue deep into the primary calendar. And it really could be any one of them. I like Hillary, as I've said, but I don't want that to influence what I think will actually happen. It really could be any one of them.

I predict: Edwards in Iowa, Clinton in New Hampshire. Clinton takes it all.

The Republican side is really tough. I think this race will be decided in New Hampshire, for two reasons.

One is that I don't think Huckabee is really a serious candidate, despite his recent surge -- and that surge has almost entirely been in Iowa. Even if he beats Romney in Iowa, I don't think he has the money and organization to follow it up in NH. If that's correct, then it will be Romney and McCain (back from the dead) duking it out there. McCain is resurgent, and he won NH in 2000, and the two big papers in that state have broadcast their "Stop Romney" message . . . but I still think it will be close between those two.

The second reason that New Hampshire will be decisive is that the Republican world is very uncomfortable with this level of confusion. Their normal modus is to anoint a front-runner very early and then destroy any who dare to challenge him, of whatever party. Bush was the party pick well before the New Hampshire primary in 2000; it was only after McCain had the audacity to Straight Talk his way to victory in that state did the good Republican voters of South Carolina learn about McCain's (fictional) mulatto love child.

The Republican party is, above all, authoritarian. They want to be told which banner to wave, which slogan to scream through a bullhorn. With a commander, they are bloodthirsty stormtroopers. Without one, they are as anxious as kindergarten children who don't know which teacher can let them go to the bathroom. They want it decided, like yesterday, before they wet their collective pants.

If my theory is correct, it's bad news for Giuliani, who was counting on winning the later states -- and if my theory is correct, that was always a very bad strategy.

I predict: Romney, who will lose to the Democrat. (I think McCain would be a better president, if I had to choose, but whatever.)

So there you have it. We'll see how wrong I am in the coming weeks.

2007-12-30T20:32:00.001-05:00

A CHART I FOUND FLOATING AROUND THE INTERWEB

For your perusal.

If anyone asks you about income disparity in this country over the past little while, you can refer them here.

I got this from this post, which is a very interesting essay on the Obama/Krugman dustup, bipartisanship and the state of "progressive" politics. Read it! Or don't!

2007-12-24T17:51:00.000-05:00

MERRY WHATEVER

Enjoy whatever you are doing over the next few days -- and even therafter if you can manage it!

2007-12-24T17:42:00.000-05:00

EPISODE IV: A NEW BLOG

Not to replace this old one, but I have generated a new page on wordpress dedicated to a project I have set for myself this year: to read and blog about a new edition of War and Peace.

The book:

The blog: overestimated.wordpress.com. Soon to be a permalink.

We'll see how this goes. You are invited to share my journey by reading my blog -- and what the heck, maybe the book?

2007-12-21T22:03:00.001-05:00

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS

. . . and if I'm wrong, you'll probably forget it.

Here it is: The next bubble asset class, due for a speculative spike followed by a crash, will be agricultural futures, specifically wheat futures, corn futures, soybean futures.

Even if I am right (unlikely), I have no idea how to make any money on this information.

2007-12-21T21:41:00.000-05:00

ORGANIC SAVINGS

Via Kevin Drum, I ran across a report from Merrill Lynch regarding the housing bust. In amongst the opinion (for which I do not vouch) regarding housing starts, prices, etc. is this little gem of a paragraph:

The need to save for retirement will have to increasingly come “organically” in
the form of setting aside an extra nickel or dime from every dollar earned in
after-tax wages and salaries as opposed to what we as a society have been doing
for the better part of the past decade, in essence, blurring the distinction
between real estate as a “consumption good” (place to live) and real estate as
part of the “portfolio” (investment) that was going to experience sustained
double-digit appreciation and emerge as a fountain of cash-flow in the
future.

Saving for retirement "organically" -- in other words, by actually hanging onto some of your income instead of spending it. In other words, saving, rather than sending the bucket down the well and trusting it to come up full. I guess we have been on a pretty wild ride if we have to reintroduce this concept.

And they conclude with this upbeat statement:

Here is what we really “do not get”. There are still economists out there
talking about how the housing recession is still local and not regionally broad
based. We have no idea who their data vendors are. In our view, this clearly
goes down as the most national real estate downturn since the 1930s.

The 1930s -- good times!

2007-12-19T22:46:00.001-05:00

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD, PART WHATEVER

As per the professional news that I referenced darkly a while back: I have a new job. It's still at the IRS, and the only people who would really understand all the acronyms of the various offices concerned in the move are the people who actually work there. It's not really worth explaining, and it probably won't make a difference to any of you, my loyal subjects . . . I mean readers. Same building, different floor. Same salary, more or less. I start on January 7.

I should say a couple of things in passing:

This new job comes along at a very good time for me. I was doing pretty well at my old office, but it's not a good place to be right now. People there are demoralized, directionless, leaderless, and about half of the lawyers there are not speaking to the other half (for good reason, all would agree). Some of my coworkers are really first class people. Some, too many, are batshit crazy. The term "poisonous atmosphere" is never far from my mind while I am there.

My job hunt was a big part of the reason that I stopped blogging for a long period. Some of the government jobs to which I applied require a security clearance, and I was pretty sure that posting regularly about how stupid ol' Dubya is wouldn't get me anywhere. I didn't want to take down my blog, really, but I didn't think posting was a good idea, so I just stopped for a while.

That is all.

2007-12-19T22:22:00.000-05:00

THE PRESS MACHINE

I haven't commented on this before, but the new-ish press secretary for the White House, Dana Perino, is really quite the hottie. There's something about a well-spoken, attractive woman who can look you in the eye and lie and lie and lie . . . (I was going to say she was "smart" but that's still up in the air.)

That's not really the point, however. The point is that Ms. Perino saw fit to take on the New York Times, specifically, from her podium at the White House, over an article that they published today. Not over an article, actually, but over the sub-head to an article -- the little recap below the headline but before the text. The article was about the CIA's destruction of some legally (ethically, morally) relevant torture investigation tapes, said destruction contra to policy, court order, etc. The subhead said:

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the
discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more
extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

And Ms. Perino objected to that, saying that she must be the "officials" referenced in the sub-head, and she hasn't changed her story at all. The Times is accusing her of lying! So the Times needed to correct itself before it wrecked itself. And by golly, it did.

So what? You can go a couple of directions with this (and I'm stealing all of this from others): one is that Perino feels personally attacked by the editor who wrote the sub-head, and that she's trying to clear her own good name against charges of hypocrisy, disingenuousness, etc. (lying). The video of her response from the podium lends some credence to that. She's emphatic, perhaps a tad emotional, with a slight quaver in her voice, waving the newspaper around like a piece of evidence. ("That's not what THIS says!") It sure looks like that to me.

The second is that her attack on a insignificant detal of this piece allows the WH to discredit the whole piece ("They've already printed a retraction!") without having to attack the substance of it at all. Clever! That makes a great deal of sense to me, too.

So which is it? If it's just the former, it's just too convenient that Ms. Perino's personal outrage should provide a perfect weapon to discredit the substance of an unfriendly article. If it's just the latter, it's quite a performance on her part.

Most intriguing, however, is the combo meal: that Ms. Perino is able to gin up real personal outrage on cue to suit the hacks in the White House propaganda machine, that her opinions, emotions, and gut reactions -- the real ones -- are synthetic, made-to-order commodities at the disposal of her masters. That she's not lying; that she herself, her personality, is a lie.

Did I mention that she's smoking hot?

2007-12-06T20:22:00.000-05:00

AGORAPHOBIC OENOPHILE = A DRUNK SHUT-IN WITH AN ENGLISH DEGREE

It just came up in conversation.

2007-12-06T18:27:00.000-05:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

. . . to Greg, who no longer seems to blog.

2007-12-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

THIS IS WHY

Folks, this is why I didn't want to comment about the primary race on the Democratic side, and this is why I didn't want to comment on the Republican side. It's just too difficult to predict. The public was doing its best to tune out this race until now, especially in the supersaturated media markets like Iowa and New Hampshire. Only now, with Iowa less than a month away, are people waking up to the idea that they will have to vote for one of these jokers. And they are right to do this, I might add -- as important as this election is, you just can't watch all the commercials, debates, interviews, read all the articles, etc. I mean, it's not sports or anything.

I've said from the beginning -- maybe not here, but I've said it -- that I would cast a general election vote for any of the top three Dems without any problems. I like Hillary the best, for reasons unclear even to me -- maybe just recognition? maybe some deep psycho-sexual attraction? maybe her political journey has impressed me in some way? -- but Obama and Edwards seem like sober, rational people. Forget what they say about experience; I'm a believer that no job really prepares you for the presidency, and the best ones have learned it at the desk, quickly.

Now it's gotten really tight, for the very good reason that any of the three would be a legitimate candidate in the general, each with unique pluses and minuses. I've been reading about Hillary and Obama duking it out over African-American women, for example -- electorally speaking, are they black or are they women? For that matter, even AA males seem conflicted. Edwards is lagging, but the struggle between the top two could create an opening. I mean, who knows?

Overall, though, I don't think we have a bad choice, or at least not a very bad one.

On the Republican side, I don't see a good choice, and it doesn't seem like your average GOP voter sees one either. I attribute the Huckabee surge to the same phenomenon that gave us the Fred Thompson (Non) Experience -- Repubs en masse realising that they didn't have anyone acceptable to vote for. It's like throwing your letters back in Scrabble -- surely anything is better than what I have. With Thompson, however, they got a narcoleptic waste of space. With Huckabee, I believe they've gotten a stealth theocrat, with all the attendant lapses in ethics and judgment. I think that scrutiny may take the shine off of him, but will it be in time for the primaries? The worst result for the GOP would be to nominate the new flavor, only to have him self-destruct.

If that happens, I will cry for them.

If I had to vote for one of these Republican clowns, I'd probably pick Romney. He's an empty suit, but at least he isn't a crazy guy who wants to start more wars, like asap.

Your comments are welcome.

2007-12-05T17:50:00.000-05:00

I'VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE

Fred Kaplan in Slate:

Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never
been so isolated. If Bush were to order an attack under these circumstances, he
would risk a major eruption in the chain of command, even a constitutional
crisis, among many other crises. It seems extremely unlikely that even he would
do that.

Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I smell a little "Peace in our time" on the wind here. Surely no one thinks that anything like a consensus of experts is going to stop this president from doing anything he wants to do? Or that the Vice President wants to do?

2007-12-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

HELLO LARRY

Some more dudes come forward to say how Larry Craig, also a dude, either had or tried to have dude-sex with them. It all sounds quite sordid.

And of course, the whole thing isn't that he's a dude who likes dudes, but that the dude lied about liking them. I mean, dude, like whoever you want, but you gotta be straight (heh) with us about it.

Yes, I am taking a perverse joy in watching this unfold. Why do you ask?

2007-12-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

OK, THAT'S SETTLED

No boom-boom in Hillary HQ. That's good.

2007-11-30T14:37:00.001-05:00

DON'T DO IT

The latest from New Hampshire:

An armed man, possibly with a bomb, has taken people hostage at Hillary
Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, N.H.

Clinton was attending a National Democratic Committee meeting in Virginia, but has
canceled a 3:30 p.m. EST speech. New York TV station WNBC reported that the
suspect has demanded to speak to her. Police said a man in his 40s, with
salt-and-pepper hair, is in the building and has what appears to be an explosive
device strapped to his body, TV station WMUR reported.

My impression is that all most of these guys really want is to go out in a blaze of glory. Let's hope that doesn't happen in this case . . .

2007-11-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

PRE-NEWS

There may be some minor news about to break for me professionally, which I think will be positive. Let's see, shall we?

2007-11-30T10:12:00.000-05:00

TIME CRASH

If you, like me, are a Doctor Who fan from way back (though not way, way back), this Youtube video is a kind of harmonic convergence of awesome.

To explain (although I wonder why I would do so): Doctor Who is a British sci-fi show that was on from the early '60s to the late '80s. It was on hiatus (except for a made for TV movie, which I haven't seen), until the BBC restarted it a few years ago. The main character is a time-travelling alien who periodically "regenerates" -- changes appearance, personality, etc. but remains essentially the same person. In the regular TV show + movie, there have been ten actors playing the role (Currently David Tennant).

For the last couple of years, DW has done a 7-minute episode for a charity special that appears around this time -- it comes after the finale of the last season and before the first of the next, and tends to be a long scene that takes place in that time which is very interesting to the viewer but not necessary to the overall story.

In this one, the Tenth Doctor end up running into the Fifth (played by Tristan from All Creatures Great and Small). Check it out! Or don't!

2007-11-30T10:02:00.000-05:00

NEXUS OF PLANET CARLTON DISCOURSES

This is really tough to excerpt, so I won't, but check out the story of how a guy who was indicted for bribing GOP former US Rep Duke Cunningham was ALSO commiting mortgage fraud and selling his fraudulent mortgages to the secondary securities market via Washington Mutual.
Fifty million dollars' worth. At least.

Oh, and take note of how, after signing a plea agreement for the bribery, he continued the mortgage fraud. Now that's class!

2007-11-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

LIFE CYCLE OF A BAD IDEA

Bad ideas are very revealing of a person's thinking, both in the kinds of bad ideas he/she/it generates and the response to having the badness exposed to the world. (Good ideas are far less revealing.) Take Sony's rootkit, as an example. Or take Iraq.

I'm not member of Facebook (although I have a mostly-neglected account at Friendster and an active one at MySpace). Evidently the newest "feature" that Facebook has offered to (read: forced upon) its readers is something called "Beacon", which somehow takes the users' activity at other (non-Facebook) sites and broadcasts them to all of FB. To use Josh Marshall's example,

I'm on Facebook. And I haven't noticed this. Maybe because I don't buy enough
stuff online. But according to this article in the Times, they've got it set up now where your "friends" are notified about what you buy online -- presumably by some modern equivalent of cookies. So you get pinged "Josh bought 'Jack's Big Music Show DVD" from Blahblah.com!

While I can see how somebody thought this was a neat idea ("Think of the cross-selling opportunities!"), it also sounds -- at best -- to be a giant, annoying pain in the ass. Forget the fact that I don't really care about what everyone is buying as much as they seem to think I should, I don't want MY purchases broadcast to the entire universe. Forget "Jack's Big Music Show" -- it's only a matter of time before everyone on Facebook is notified that "Carlton Bought 'Eskimo Cum Dumpsters 5' from Ass. com." Or whatever.

In its original mode, apparently the FB member couldn't opt out of the "feature" -- or at best, had to opt out for each individual purchase.

As you might imagine, this was met with a firestorm of appreciation!

Facebook keeps tweaking its new Beacon advertising program, which tracks users’ actions on sites other than Facebook. The program sparked a petition from MoveOn.org Civic Action that has won the support of 50,000 Facebook users. Facebook introduced a new version of the Beacon alert box on Thursday that still lacks an easy way to avoid participating.

All, right, so an otherwise successful new media company launched a facepalm-worthy bad idea that irritates its consumers to the extent that they are organizing a sizeable protest -- and only loyal, engaged consumers organize protests, right? If they weren't loyal or engaged, they would just let it happen or go somewhere else, right? These are important people, at least as a group.

What's FB's response to this protest? Do they say, "whoops, thought you folks would really like this, guess we were wrong, of course we understand how you all want to protect your privacy"?
All they would have to do is let users who never want to use the system opt-out, once and for all. Simple, Right?

From the same NYT article, above:

Facebook executives tell reporters that users who ignore the alert boxes will no
longer be considered to have said “yes,” even after two days. If users ignore
the alert box, Facebook says it will not post the news of their purchases to
their friends. This is a big change, if implemented correctly. Users will still
be hassled by the alert boxes from Facebook on its partner sites, but ideally
they can ignore them now and not worry about their purchases being
shared. Facebook executives say they do not want to add a universal
opt-out button because then users would not be able to try out Beacon on different sites to see what it can offer. One Facebook executive predicts that consumers may “fall in love” with Beacon once they understand it. Only time will tell.

Translation: We expect to make a lot of money off of this, so you're going to take it and like it. After all, you'd just die without Facebook, right? Hahahahahahahahaha!

2007-11-26T22:27:00.000-05:00

A QUICK ONE

The WSJ has a chart of major players that have blamed their troubles on the subprime problem. Most of these are probably legit, but some are probably companies hiding a bad year in the shadow of a much bigger crisis.

I mean . . . Hershey?

2007-11-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

CONSEQUENCES OF A FLIGHT TO QUALITY

Lawrence Summers, Harvard professor, discusses how our financial system may be unravelling at its roots.

In the FT:

Second, it is now clear that only a small part of the financial distress that
must be worked through has yet been faced. On even the most optimistic
estimates, the rate of foreclosure will more than double over the next year as
rates reset on subprime mortgages and home values fall. Estimates vary, but
there is nearly universal agreement that – if all assets were marked to market
valuations – total losses in the American financial sector would be several
times the $50bn or so in write-downs that have already been announced by big
financial institutions. These figures take no account of the likelihood that
losses will spread to the credit card, auto and commercial property sectors. Nor do they recognise the large volume of financial instruments that depend for their high ratings on guarantees provided by credit insurers whose own health is now very much in doubt.

Emphasis mine. As the passage quoted above suggests, he has a couple of additional points to make on the subject. It's stiff stuff.

2007-11-25T18:58:00.001-05:00

"TO SING OPERA"

Everyone on Earth probably knows about this already, but here's a fascinating clip from the first round of Britain's Got Talent, in which a snaggly-toothed fellow in a cheap suit steps up to sing. I especially enjoy watching the female judge's face during his performance.

(As a textual note, the word that is repeated three times at the end of the aria means "I will win!" Thanks, Wikipedia!)

2007-11-25T17:28:00.000-05:00

SUBPRIME, ALL THE TIME

Here's another article indicating that the source of this whole mess was less that people took on loans that they couldn't handle, but that banks were willing to make the loans in the first place.

While many accounts portray resetting rates as the big factor behind the surge
in home-loan defaults and foreclosures this year, that isn't quite the case.
Many of the subprime mortgages that have driven up the default rate went bad in
their first year or so, well before their interest rate had a chance to go
higher. Some of these mortgages went to speculators who planned to flip their
houses, others to borrowers who had stretched too far to make their payments,
and still others had some element of fraud.

Who is supposed to be the gatekeeper of the banking industry, after all -- the individual borrower, who doesn't know his credit score from his shoe size, or the professional banker?

Larry Litton Jr., chief executive of Litton Loan Servicing, says resetting of
adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, has recently emerged as a bigger driver of
defaults. "The initial wave was largely driven by a higher frequency of
fraudulent loans...and loose underwriting," says Mr. Litton, whose
company services 340,000 loans nationwide. "A much larger percentage of the
defaults we're seeing right now are the result of ARM resets."
More than half of the subprime delinquencies and foreclosures this year involved loans that hadn't yet reset, and thus were due to factors such as weak
underwriting and falling home prices, according to Rod Dubitsky, an
analyst with Credit Suisse.

I read all this to indicate that loosening credit standards allowed all kinds of borrowers to get loans who shouldn't have: homeowners who couldn't sustain an ARM after the reset, speculators who depended upon prices rising to meet their obligations, and outright fraudsters. The first category is probably the largest, and is the one with the largest incentive to try to make good on their loans (i.e. to keep their homes). What the WSJ is getting at in this article is that it is mostly the latter two (smaller) categories of borrower who have defaulted at this point. The larger wave, of homeowners who have exhausted all avenues to make their payments, hanging on by fingernails until the last, has yet to come. So buckle up, folks.

Putting aside the relatively dire implications of that conclusion, there's still that question: how did this happen? What happened to all the sober, serious, professional bankers out there who are supposed to prevent massive miscalculations like this one? Answer: they were in it up to their hipbones, trying to make a buck. We're talking about big names: Merrill Lynch fired its CEO, which would be great if it was all his fault, rather than a fall guy. It's telling that they turned their back on all-but-certain successor, Larry Fink, when he asked too many questions:

Over the last week, Mr. Fink had been engaged in detailed conversations with the
Merrill Lynch search committee. Merrill Lynch is a 49 percent shareholder in BlackRock, the fund company he founded. Mr. Fink was thought to be a leading candidate, an impression Mr. Fink himself received, according to people briefed on the discussions.
According to these people, Mr. Fink said he would be interested
in pursuing the job further as long as he received a more detailed accounting of what Merrill’s exposure to subprime-related securities was.

ML recently announced its choice for a new CEO: some other guy! Then there's Citibank, writing down $ 11 billion or so, Barclays, etc.

What (little) I've read indicates as follows: They always do this. The reputation that the financial services industry has for being conservative and serious is little more than a good PR job. Every player seeks to maximize short-term profits in any way possible, and very few have a forecast horizon that stretches beyond the next two years (if that). And much like your average high school clique, there is a strong tendency to do what everyone else is doing, no matter how bad an idea it may be.

And what's the result of all this? Be careful who you give your money to, I suppose.

2007-11-25T16:08:00.000-05:00

THE MEMORY HOLE

TPM has a good rundown of the various types of (formerly public) government reports, official statements, and information that the administration has tried to keep from the public in 2007. It's a surprisingly long list. Check it out here.

My personal favorite (links probably don't work here):

* On June 2007, the New York Times reported that Dick Cheney's resistance to "routine oversight of his office's handling of classified information" is so intense that he has "suggested abolishing" the National Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch. Because Cheney has repeatedly refused "to comply with a routine annual request from the archives for data on his staff's classification," "the Information Security Oversight Office, a unit of the National Archives, [has] appealed the issue to the Justice Department, which has not yet ruled on the matter." In a related effort to prevent the release of information about his office, Cheney has also instructed the Secret Service to destroy copies of visitor logs.

2007-11-15T22:16:00.000-05:00

O BRAVE NEW WORLD

Where the worlds of politics and female professional bridge players collide.

2007-11-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

"I COULD TELL FROM YOUR PRESENTATION THAT YOU APPRECIATE HUMOR"

Direct quote from a person who came up to me after a speech I made the other day to a group of accountants. He then proceeded to describe a New Yorker cartoon about an accountant.

(Now, I don't make any claims to be a great speaker. Or particularly funny. Compared to the woman who went after me, though, I killed. )

2007-11-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

BATTLE OF THE PUNDIT STARS

This TPM post is a good roundup of the recent sub silentio contretemps between P. Krugman and D. Brooks on the NY Times Opinon page concerning Reagan, Republicans and Racism -- the "three Rs" of the Mississippi system of public education. It's pretty fun to watch, and worth checking out. Regular readers will know where my allegiances lie in that dustup.

(Sub silentio contretemps? WTF? I need two different kinds of italics to contain my erudition!)

2007-11-11T11:14:00.000-05:00

TALENTS

In response to my post "Out of Business", my brother cited the following passage from 1 Timothy:

9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted
after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many
sorrows.

That's certainly an important and relevant passage. Linking to the last post, regarding the colossal waste of capital and credit that has happened during this administration, I am reminded of the parable of the talents (found here: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=3079).

One servant gets five talents (which are some kind of money), and uses them to earn five more. One gets two, and makes two more out of them -- who can argue with 100% returns? The last servant gets one, and buries it in the ground, so that he only has the one to give back to the master. The master thinks this is very wicked, and punishes the servant.

How much more wicked is it for a servant to take a hundred talents and squander them by giving some away and throwing the rest into a lake? And then, after wasting the many talents he has been given, to use the name and good reputation of his master to borrow two hundred more to cover up the losses? And when those are gone, to borrow still more and to gamble with them, each time thinking that a higher bet will get him out of the hole that he has dug for himself?

Eventually, the bill comes due. The servant has ruined himself, of course, but also has bankrupted his master. Worse, by trading on his master's good name, he has ruined his reputation.

In the parable, the master punished his servant. In my example, what punishment could possibly be enough for all the damage that servant has caused?

2007-11-08T21:22:00.000-05:00

THAT'S GONNA BE SOME VISA BILL

Joseph E. Stiglitz in Vanity Fair, on the true economic cost of the Bush years:

It is natural to wonder, What would this money have bought if we had spent
it on other things? U.S. aid to all of Africa has been hovering around $5
billion a year, the equivalent of less than two weeks of direct Iraq-war
expenditures. The president made a big deal out of the financial problems facing
Social Security, but the system could have been repaired for a century with what
we have bled into the sands of Iraq. Had even a fraction of that $2 trillion
been spent on investments in education and technology, or improving our
infrastructure, the country would be in a far better position economically to
meet the challenges it faces in the future, including threats from abroad. For a
sliver of that $2 trillion we could have provided guaranteed access to higher
education for all qualified Americans.

I used to imagine what would happen if every city in America had a decent public transport system -- and it cost a nickel to ride wherever you wanted to go. Now I imagine a world in which crossing a bridge isn't a crap shoot.

There's a lot more to the article, which is a good read. While I don't think that Bush + Cheney + Rumsfeld + whomever really anticipated the giant money suck that Iraq has become (to be fair, it has exceeded the most pessemistic expectations), they have made up the difference by borrowing. What I'm trying to say is that I think Bush's economic policy during the war is exactly the same as it would have been if there wasn't a war on. They don't maneuver, they don't adapt. If they suddenly have less cash on hand than they had thought they would, they put the rest on the credit card.

2007-11-07T22:58:00.001-05:00

WORK

I don't write much about my work, which is as it should be. But today, I lost my temper with someone -- technically my supervisor -- for being a ninny. My office has a lot of problems, which aren't exactly this fellow's fault, but they aren't NOT his fault either, exactly. And he's basically thrown up his hands and declared that he can't do anything about it and he's going to just sit on the sidelines and let someone else do his job, which no one else is available to do.

I know that's vague, but it's not going to get any clearer.

I try not to lose my temper, for a couple of different reasons. One is that I don't do so very effectively, and tend to come off as ridiculous rather than threatening or intimidating. The other is that I have a hard time getting over it, and I usually end up feeling really bummed out and embarassed for the rest of the day. Like now!

2007-11-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

OUT OF BUSINESS

For anyone following the beat-down of the various markets as a result of the subprime situation, I'd recommend a book: Manias, Panics, and Crashes, A History of Financial Crises, by Charles P. Kindleberger. I'm no economist, and the book was a struggle (although better on the reread that the first time through). I gather it's something of a classic in the area, though I, being an ignoramus, was unaware of it.

One thing that sticks with me from the book was the description of the "euphoria" that comes when a bubble becomes truly extraordinary, when the prized asset class (houses, tech stocks, tulip bulbs) seems to guarantee amazing profits for anyone who has the money to invest, and banks are co-incidentally willing to lend money easily to invest the the asset class. When the mania really gets cooking, evidently, other types of business and commerce slow or cease, because everyone is intent on the particular object of the mania.

Like, for example, bond insurance companies:

MBIA and Ambac are the two top players in the obscure but lucrative business of
bond insurance. Both sport market values of $7 billion and trace their roots
back more than 30 years when they insured municipal bonds against default,
helping cities like New York minimize financing costs. MBIA, based in Armonk,
N.Y., has about 500 employees, and Manhattan-based Ambac has 350. In recent
years, however, the firms have moved to guaranteeing more esoteric forms of debt, like subprime mortgage loans and other forms of so-called structured finance, which are securities often backed by speculative debt or loans.

One fascinating thing about the current crash of the subprime mortgage market is that it is slow-moving, like some kind of alien blob-creature. Anyone who's bought a house knows that it takes months, even when everything goes smoothly. That's contrasted to a stock trade, which can be accomplished in a few seconds over the Internet -- which makes this cycle seem to play out in slow motion.

Also, it seems to me, this crisis is kind of interesting because of the different ways in which it manifests and on how many levels. On the one hand we have the average Joe, who is able to participate by purchasing a house with one of these bad loans and then defaulting on it. On the other hand, the move to slice-and-dice these mortgages into exotic investment vehicles involves the big financial players like the bond insurance firms listed above, and -- hello -- General Motors?

Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner cited concerns about defaults on subprime
mortgage loans at GMAC LLC and auto sales in the U.S. and Germany. Slumping U.S. sales in the past half year ``feel like the conditions we're going to face,''
Wagoner said.

``This all suggests that GM thinks that things are so ugly out
there that they can't see the possibility of profitability for many quarters,
maybe even years,'' Bradley Rubin, an analyst with BNP Paribas in New York, said
in an interview.

Speaking of getting out of your normal business. GM has long had a financial services arm -- GMAC -- which might lead to some questions in and of itself. But everyone seemed to get in on this: banks, pension plans, private individuals, you name it. This crisis is so pervasive that at the same time Joe loses his house, the bank that made the loan may go under, the city where he lives may default on its bonds, its insurer may in turn go belly-up, and the company that makes Joe's car may go into bankruptcy.

Don't get me wrong -- this is going to bring a lot of pain to a lot of people (and even pseudo-people, like corporations). But it is fascinating to watch.

(If anyone knows anything about this, and wants to comment -- even to tell me I'm wrong -- please do so.)

2007-11-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

ADMIT IT

Watch this clip, then concede: our President is drunk off his ass at this press conference.

2007-11-07T22:01:00.000-05:00

THE (HERETOFORE UNKNOWN) NARCO-SUBMARINE MENACE

Say you're a Colombian drug lord. All your customers are in America, but you just can't get enough product to them via your normal channels: boat, truck, plane . What do you do?

Why, build yourself a fleet of diesel powered submarines, of course!

From the LA Times:

Perched on a makeshift wooden dry dock late last month were two 55-foot-long
fiberglass vessels, one ready for launch, the other about 70% complete. Each was
outfitted with a 350-horsepower Cummins diesel engine and enough fuel capacity
to reach the coast of Central America or Mexico, hundreds of miles to the
north.

The vessels had cargo space that could fit 5 tons of cocaine, a
senior officer with the Colombian coast guard's Pacific command said in an
interview.The design featured tubing for air, crude conning towers and cramped
bunk space for a crew of four, he added.

I don't have much to say about this, except to observe that: 1) the drug war has really improved our national security, and 2) it's a HOMEMADE SUBMARINE! How unbelievably cool is that?

2007-11-04T10:23:00.001-05:00

FILE UNDER 'Y' FOR 'YA THINK?'

Quoth Paul Krugman, from Friday's paper:

Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it's not
"in dispute." It's not the case that "Democrats say" they’re not advocating
British-style socialized medicine; they aren't.

2007-11-03T14:53:00.000-04:00

CAUTIONARY TALES

From Radar magazine, the Ten Most Dangerous Toys of All Time.

CNN posted an interactive obesity map of the US over time. So go interact!

2007-11-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

A LITTLE TAX HISTORY

From the NY Review of Books:

The wealthiest Americans went from paying a top rate of 24 percent in the 1920s
to 63 percent during FDR's first term and 79 by his second. By the mid-1950s, it
was 91 percent (today's top rate is 35 percent).

This is an easy way to refute the "raising taxes one iota will cripple our economy" crowd -- if this chart (PDF or something similar) is to be believed, the top bracket hovered around that 91% mark (sometimes higher!) during the entire period of 1943-1963. Since the Roosevelt to Kennedy years weren't an economic catastrophe on the order of the Great Depression, but instead a period of pretty awesome expansion and growth for the US, then tax rates alone can't be the sole factor controlling growth. If the economic engine wants to run, it will run.

Just something to chew on. Enjoy your Saturday.

2007-10-24T22:02:00.001-04:00

CHARMING

As you may guess, Gentle Reader, I have been accumulating some links over the past few days and am now getting them out (Out, I say!). This one was just fun, in a grit-behind-the eyeballs kind of way.

Ever wonder how it is, exactly, that scumbags like Blackwater ended up guarding our diplomats in Iraq? Why not, you know, American soldiers? The NYT reports:

"It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn't their problem," said a former senior State Department official. Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.

Rumsfeld: You want soldiers to guard you? Your diplomats aren't patriotic enough to protect! They don't even carry guns!

Me: hahahahahahaha

2007-10-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

PRIMARILY SPEAKING

Yeah, some of you are clamoring for me to jibber-jabber about the primaries. Frankly, I don't have the strength just yet. It's too early, and the whole circus is just a distraction from the fact that the still-active president that we have right now is going to attack Iran in order to show that he still has at least one horrifically bad idea up his sleeve. (If that happens, by the way, I think it will be the single thing for which this administration is remembered -- just not in a good way.)

Oh, the primaries. My totally non-expert opinion on the subject is that Hillary is going to win not just the nomination but the whole shebang, so the actual name of the malformed semi-primate the Republicans toss out for her to maul is not so important. But I could be wrong.

Of the Repubs who have some chance of winning the right to have his arms, legs and head ripped off by HRC and the rest used as a stool for her to stand on while getting sworn in . . .
I really have no idea. McCain appears to be sleepwalking, like not even he believes what he's saying any more. Giuliani is, from accounts that I have read, a raving, immoral, unknowledgeable, insecure, jealous, vindictive, irrational, authoritarian lunatic. Here's a sample of his thought process, from a speech he gave back in 1994:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or
50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the
oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our
background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people
can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority.
Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]
You have free speech so I can be heard.

Yep -- we have rights for him to use. But he was mayor of a city that was bombed on 9/11, and he didn't fall down when the cameras were on, so the Republicans might just nominate him.

Fred Thompson . . . is this guy even alive? Check out the picture at this link and tell me what you think. And yes, he still thinks it is the "Soviet Union."

To be honest, my Republican money (which is all the good money, you know), is on Romney. Although Mitt seems not to understand the colloquial meaning of the expression "favorite book", and once tried to sound authentic and folksy by using the word "varmint" (audio/video) while wearing a $3,000 suit (estimated), he seems like the one least likely to plunge us into World War IV. McCain would do it to get re-elected (and lose), Thompson would do it while stroking the soft, soft skin of his new young wife, and Giuliani would do it just to show that he really is a tough guy after all.

I hope I'm right about Hillary, however.

2007-10-24T21:06:00.001-04:00

HOUSING

Want to know what's happened to housing prices over the past year? Here's a fun map:

The question is: what's up with Alabama?

2007-10-24T20:40:00.000-04:00

LINKMASTER TO CLINKMASTER

Here's one that's short but profound: the gent in Britain that ran the TV-links website (the one where I watched S3 of Doctor Who LONG before it came on TV here) has been arrested.

The man was taken into custody on Thursday last week after an investigation by
the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the local trading standards
office. Initial reports from FACT said he had been arrested for "offences
relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet".

So, what was this site?

TV-links, by all accounts, was (it is no more) a place where users could post
links to content from TV shows, movies and so on, so that other web users could
view them. The site didn't host the material directly, but did, according to
reports, embed some video clips.

So, he was committing some kind of, like crime, right?

[S]ection 92 [of the applicable law] is very clear that:
"A person does not commit an offence under this section unless- (a) the goods are goods in respect of which the trade mark is registered, or (b) the trademark has a reputation in the United Kingdom and the use of the sign takes or would take unfair advantage of, or is or would be detrimental to, the distinctive character or the repute of the trade mark."
There has been no suggestion (so far) that TV-Links was involved in anything other
than providing access, via web links, to copyrighted material.

So, they are trying to make a case that he was committing a crime by linking? You know, I linked to that site just a few posts below this one. Did I commit a crime? Are the good people at FACT going to send the police after me?

And who is FACT, anyway?

When it was established in 1983, FACT’s primary purpose was to protect the
United Kingdom’s film and broadcasting industry against counterfeiting,
copyright and trademark infringements. FACT did this by representing the
interests of its members in the face of the steady influx of illegal – or
pirated - films and videos.
Today, the Federation is still the leading
representative trade body that is committed to protecting the interests of the
audio-visual industry in the fight against pirate film and DVDs and the
increasing threat from online piracy.

So what we have here, folks, is a private, industry-funded trade organization sending the police after people. For linking on a website. Which isn't even a crime.

Some good questions:

Is the message that it's less criminal to host illegal content on YouTube than
it is to to link to it from a site such as TV Links? Or is it just that FACT
(Federation Against Copyright Theft) and the police won't tackle anybody with
enough high-powered lawyers to fight back?

This worries me. And now I can't watch Doctor Who.

2007-10-18T21:38:00.003-04:00

ROBO-BOOGIE

Minor news item: a robotic military anti-aircraft gun went berzerk in South Africa, killing a bunch and wounding a bunch more.

One female soldier, evidently filled with esprit de corps, went toe-to-toe with the mechanical killing machine:

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging
computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It
sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun
firing position.By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader
magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

Robots, automatic 35mm cannon . . . it's only a matter of time folks. (youtube clip)

2007-10-16T09:42:00.001-04:00

WAITING FOR A CAB

Which needs to show up pretty darn soon, really. Or else I'm screwed.

2007-10-16T09:38:00.000-04:00

HARMONIC CONVERGENCE?

My wife has a new job, which she really likes. Her boss is a woman originally from Norway, who has a very distinctive Norwegian first name. Upon hearing it, I recall that I knew a woman (slightly) with the same (or a very similar) name when I was at Indiana University -- my acquaintance was in the harp program at IU, which is evidently world-famous.

So I googled "My friend's name" + harp. It turns out that she's some kind of minor harp celebrity in the Classical/New Age scene. How about that?

2007-10-16T09:37:00.001-04:00

IT WOULD HELP IF THE LINK WORKED

Rate your students, at left.

2007-10-15T21:19:00.000-04:00

SHORT HIATUS

I realize that I have just gotten back online, but Uncle Sam sees fit to send me off to do a work-related thing in the middle of our fair country for the next few days. I don't blog about work much, or at all, which is probably how it should be. But let me say this: when there are fifteen people in my office who are at least as qualified as I am to do these sorts of routine trips, yet I get stuck doing four of them in three months, something is amiss.

2007-10-15T19:03:00.000-04:00

NEW LINK

I don't teach any more, and may never again, but I've been reading and enjoying the blog Rate Your Students (link at left). If you teach, or ever did, or are a student, or ever were, I recommend it.

I liked teaching and hated the students (even the hot girls who came to class naked). What does that say about me?

2007-10-15T18:58:00.000-04:00

QUOTABLE QUOTY-QUOTE

From Kevin Drum:

In tomorrow's edition of [Department of the Obvious]: our foreign policy should probably consist of more than war, the threat of war, and contempt for anyone who questions war. There will be a quiz at 11.

Ya think?

2007-10-13T12:20:00.000-04:00

HMMMM

Its funny, but I don't really feel like I've gotten warmed up to this thing like in the past. Give it time, I guess.

2007-10-12T21:52:00.000-04:00

GRAEME FROST

Who is he? Quoth Krugman:

Two weeks ago, the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address
was delivered by a 12-year-old, Graeme Frost. Graeme, who along with his sister
received severe brain injuries in a 2004 car crash and continues to need
physical therapy, is a beneficiary of the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program. Mr. Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded that
program to cover millions of children who would otherwise have been uninsured.

The Dems used a charismatic kid to make a point. Classic political theater, right? Except this time, the mindless attack dogs on the right identified the kid (and his family) as Enemies Who Must Be Destroyed. Led by Michelle Malkin, they "investigated" the family's finances, the schools the kids attend, how much their house is worth, etc. The Frosts were phonies and liars, rich cry-babies who want the government to give them handouts because they are too cheap to get their own health insurance. Malkin herself visited the Frost's home and business property.

They turned out to be wrong, of course. From TIME:

It turns out, however, that not everything about the Frosts' life pops up on a
Google search. While Graeme does attend a private school, he does so on
scholarship. Halsey Frost is a self-employed woodworker; he and his wife say
they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to provide for their family of six.
Their 1936 rowhouse was purchased in 1990 for $55,000. It was vacant and in a
run-down neighborhood that has improved since then, in part because of people
like themselves who took a chance. It is now assessed at $263,140, though under
state law the value of that asset is not taken into account in determining their
eligibility for SCHIP. And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most
certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health
coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.

Krugman, again:

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern
right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on
character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a
Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy
on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old
child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a
fraud.
Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to
distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in
the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.

Well, the fact that the right wing crazies got all indignant and righteous about something that turned out to be, well, a lie is nothing new. Happens all the time.

My only comment is that, these days, it is quite possible to have a decent income, a home, cars, etc., and not be able to afford health insurance outside an employer-sponsored plan. I don't care about the other things; if you can't afford health insurance, you are poor.

2007-10-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

MORE ON TURKEY

From Juan Cole:

But no dispassionate observer could avoid the conclusion that the Congressional
vote condemning Turkey came at a most inopportune time for US-Turkish diplomacy,
at a time when Turks were already raw from watching the US upset all the apple
carts in their neighborhood, unleash existential threats against them, cause the
rise of Salafi radicalism next door, coddle terrorists killing them, coddle the
separatist KRG, and strengthen the Shiite ayatollahs on their borders.

No real comment, I just find this stuff very intersting. Scary, but interesting.

2007-10-11T21:48:00.000-04:00

ROUNDUP

So, what's going on these days? I haven't done this, howyousay, blogging thing is a while, so bear with.

1. File under "The Enemy of My Friend Is My Enemy, Unless He's Also My Friend": Turkey, our ally, prepares to invade Iraq, our client/puppet state, in order to settle some scores with the Kurds, our allies. It's safe to say that we would rather they didn't do this.

2. In order to placate the Turks, our allies, we are preparing to declare them guilty of genocide. That'll smooth things right over.

3. File under "Do Not Open Until Christmas -- Oh Why Not?": A private firm employed by the U.S. Government cracks into Obelisk, an al-Qaeda intranet with a cool name. This is something of a big deal, because it means we can know what they are doing without them knowing that we know what they are doing. We like that.

The firm scores a download of the next bin Laden video before anyone else even knows about it, and shares it with the White House, with the warning that it shouldn't be made public until after the video is released by the bad guys. (So, you know, they won't know that we know about their network -- this spy stuff sure is complicated!) Of course, some brainbox in the Executive Branch promptly leaks the tape to the press a day before it is released by al-Qaeda, exposing the fact that we have hacked into their system. Al-Qaeda subsequently takes down the entire system, leaving us in the dark again.

(Attention-payers may hearken back to a more innocent time, 2004, when we had broken some supersecret codes that the Iranians were using, and Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who was such a good friend that we were going to make him President-For-Life of a liberated Iraq, TOLD THE IRANIANS about it.)

What's that sound you hear? The sound of this administration squandering intelligence assets. Listen close: Squander, squander.

4. I won't insult my readers by pretending you haven't heard of the whole Larry Craig business. I will say that, having learned who he is and working very near the Capitol, I see someone who looks just like him every single day. It's never him, of course, but the number of tall old bald white guys with glasses on Pennsylvania Avenue is staggering. (They aren't all as staring and smiling as he is in that picture, though. Honestly, that picture scares me.)

5. If you're a fan of Doctor Who, you'll think this video is hilarious. If not, it's kind of meh.

6. Speaking of Doctor Who, this season (number 3 of the New Reckoning, maybe number 29 otherwise), it had some of the best and worst episodes of the new series, in my opinion. The Dalek two-parter (Muppets, I mean Daleks take Manhattan) was just . . . ill-advised. But Human Nature/Family of Blood was really good, as were the first two episodes (Utopia and The Sound of Drums) of the season-ending three parter. Then there was the season ender, which kind of sucked rocks. But Blink was actually kind of scary.

All can be viewed on your computing box here.

7. For those of you keeping track of my ongoing non-feud with Jacob, the guy who was recapping Who at Television Without Pity -- who was, in my opinion, making an awful hash of it -- is no longer doing so. He's still working there, however, and presumably still googling himself obsessively -- Hi, Jacob!

So, how are you all?

2007-10-03T17:52:00.001-04:00

NOT DEAD, JUST DORMANT

I see my fans have been clamoring. I haven't been blogging, obviously -- not out of laziness, exactly, but for a particular reason that I won't get into. I'm not certain that the particular reason has any more currency, however. If I find out that it doesn't, I'll gladly get back on the mic.

So stay tuned.

2007-05-06T20:51:00.000-04:00

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: FIGHTING CORRUPTION AT HOME AND ABROAD

Link to parody of internal World Bank memo from Wolfie:

I hope that by now, most of you have accepted my sincere apology for the unusual
pay and promotion package given two years ago to your colleague, Ms. Shaha Riza.
That is, when I arrived here from my position helping to plan and manage the
Iraq war for the Bush administration. I have acknowledged my mistakes (at my
present job, that is), and asked for your understanding. As staff, you
understand how difficult it can be to navigate the Bank’s complex rules and
procedures. Please do NOT regard my small slip as providing moral cover for poor
developing-country client states that are not able to meet the good governance
conditions we ask before disbursing aid.

This and the last bit were pillaged from Eric Alterman's site.

2007-05-06T20:48:00.000-04:00

WHEN YOU CAN'T WIN

Bruce Bartlett in National Review:

At some point, politically sophisticated conservatives will have to recognize
that no Republican can win in 2008 and that their only choice is to support the
most conservative Democrat for the nomination. Call me crazy, but I think that
person is Hillary Clinton.

I'm not posting this to say he's wrong, I'm posting it to say -- what a difference three years make!

2007-04-28T12:27:00.000-04:00

MY INTERSECTION WITH HISTORY

From a WaPo article regarding the politicizing of the hiring process at DoJ:

According to a former deputy chief in the civil rights division, one honors
hire was a University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk
for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. about the time the
judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked
opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile
to civil rights.

A few months after he arrived, that lawyer was given a cash award by
the department, after he was the only member of a four-person team in the civil
rights division who sided with a Georgia voter-identification law that was later
struck down by the courts as discriminatory to minorities, according to two
former Justice lawyers.

What does this have to do with me? Well, Judge Pickering was the federal District Judge for my home district, with the courthouse in Hattiesburg. I interviewed with him for that clerkship, at just about the time he was put forward for appointment to the Fifth Circuit. Our interview was just before that happened, actually.

Now, there was never any chance that he was going to hire me -- we were not on the same page, ideologically speaking, and he asked for a two-year commitment when I had expected it to be one year only . . . but it is interesting how these things play out.

2007-04-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

MORE, PLEASE

All the world is abuzz with the news that Harry Reid said something that most Americans think is true:

"This is the message I took to the president," Reid said at a news
conference.
"Now I believe myself ... that this war is lost, and that the
surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in
Iraq yesterday," said Reid, of Nevada.

David Broder had a heart attack. William Kristol called for Reid's resignation for, you know, the good of the Democrat(ic) party. Even the people of the lefty blogosphere had to scratch their heads and wonder: "Did he have a seizure?"

Or, for the most Pollyanna-ish of us, maybe it was a mistake, but at least maybe he meant to say what he said:

Some have questioned his rhetoric and his choice of words, calling it a gaffe.
But what if Reid had carefully chosen his words? What if his intention was to
spur debate, or even further, to forward the debate beyond the question of this
supplemental funding bill and the squabbling over it?

I mean, maybe something can be salvaged of this horrible, horrible mistake, and maybe the Republicans and Brit Hume won't be mean to us any more about it. Maybe we can just forget it happened.

Bull feathers. This country is in a state of crisis, and we aren't going to get anywhere by talking around the facts. Our reluctance to say things like this out loud and in front of television cameras has allowed this situation to develop into the full-blown crisis that it is today.

Say it again, Harry. The war is lost. Accept it as a fact, and do something smart based on that fact.

2007-04-05T21:39:00.000-04:00

ONE FOR THE GEEKS

A computer glitch fouls up the Cricket World Cup. But what's the actual error?

Bob Harris explains:

This makes sense, actually. New Zealand had lost a wicket before scoring a
run, which meant their "run rate" (a cricket stat you don't need to worry about)
would have required dividing by zero, something the scoreboard designer
apparently never realized could happen. (OK, so maybe this wasn't
Microsoft's fault.) Instead of a line of code fudging a zero or inserting
a blank for the stat, there was a sudden unexpected fireworks display visible
(but barely legible) to the sheep wandering across a distant parking lot.

There you go.

2007-04-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

THE MUFFIN JOKE

This has been going around for a while now. If you're a sociologist studying laugh responses, you have to tell jokes. Here's one:

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow,
it’s hot in here!” And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking
muffin!”

And to study laughter in different social situations, it helps if you tell the same joke each time. So . . .

[The muffin joke] was inflicted by social psychologists at Florida
State University on undergraduate women last year, during interviews for
what was ostensibly a study of their spending habits. Some of the women were
told the interviewer would be awarding a substantial cash prize to a few of the
participants, like a boss deciding which underling deserved a bonus.

The women put in the underling position were a lot more likely to laugh at the
muffin joke (and others almost as lame) than were women in the control group.
But it wasn’t just because these underlings were trying to manipulate the boss,
as was demonstrated in a follow-up experiment.
This time each of the women watched the muffin joke being told on videotape by a person who was ostensibly going to be working with her on a task. There was supposed to be a cash reward afterward to be allocated by a designated boss. In some cases the woman watching was designated the boss; in other cases she was the underling or a co-worker of the person on the videotape.

When the woman watching was the boss, she didn’t laugh much at the
muffin joke. But when she was the underling or a co-worker, she laughed much
more, even though the joke-teller wasn’t in the room to see her. When you’re low
in the status hierarchy, you need all the allies you can find, so apparently
you’re primed to chuckle at anything even if it doesn’t do you any immediate
good.

Well, interesting. But that doesn't get at the real question: Is the Muffin Joke funny?

John Tierney, writer of the above article and blogger for the New York Times: It is so not funny. He does moderate his position to a certain degree:

I’ll grant that the muffin joke meets a theoretical test for humor. The second
muffin’s response fits Kant’s definition of laughter as “an affection arising
from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.”

But still: So. Not. Funny.

Response: It is too funny!

Other responses: Yeah! Funny!

Your thoughts?

2007-04-02T10:30:00.000-04:00

THE NEXT ONE

As you probably know, the Congress (House + Senate) recently passed a supplemental bill for funding the Iraq war that contains language setting deadlines for getting our troops out of there. The two houses passed different language, which I guess will be reconciled in conference.

The House-passed measure requires the withdrawal of combat troops by Sept. 1,
2008. The Senate bill mandates the beginning of a withdrawal within 120 days,
and sets a nonbinding goal of March 2008, for its completion.

Our president's response: No way I'm signing that. You're on the road to Veto City.

The Senate Democrats have a response today:

Washington D.C. - U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced today that they are introducing legislation
that will effectively end the current military mission in Iraq and begin the
redeployment of U.S. forces. The bill requires the President to begin safely
redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq 120 days from enactment, as required by the
emergency supplemental spending bill the Senate passed last week. The bill ends
funding for the war, with three narrow exceptions, effective March 31, 2008.

Dems to President: You don't like this bill? Think it's a bitter pill? Well, the next one is a suppository.

I wouldn't pretend to know how this will turn out, but I like this way of thinking. Of course, this President seems completely willing to drive the bus over the cliff in the name of his own vanity, making the brinksmanship game quite dangerous. I could imagine him leaving our troops in the desert with no gas, food or ammunition, just to show everybody what happens when he doesn't get what he wants.

2007-03-29T19:57:00.000-04:00

YAHOO! SERIOUS . . . LY SCREWED

Dear Friends: Something is wrong with my yahoo -- it's blocking some messages and letting others through. If any of you have tried to reach me via that address and I haven't responded, that's why. Please leave a message in comments and I'll get back to you.

Nobody's sorrier than I am about this.

2007-03-28T09:35:00.000-04:00

300 MEN IN LEATHER HOTPANTS, CONT.

I figured I was done with 300, but I've seen enough commentary on the film to make a small roundup worthwhile:

1. 300 is homophobic. Bonus message: white people should totally kill all those brown people.

2. 300 could be about "how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war," but it isn't. It's just homophobic and racist.

3. 300 is totally gay. In fact, it's about the conflict between butches and femmes.

4. It's anti-Iranian propaganda!

5. 300 has no central message, excapt that it is deeply Anti-American.

6. It's . . . confusing. Which one is supposed to be us again?

And now, my take:

If I were to make a direct comparison between the movie and current events (which I would never do), I'd say that the movie illustrates the peril of sending an insufficient number of soldiers for a mission -- even if they are the best trained, best-equipped, most mostivated soldiers in the world. Even if they are all volunteers, with nine-pack abs.

The thing that cracked me up during the movie was when the Spartan characters spoke about how they were all free men, and how they were preserving freedom for generations to come, ushering in a new age of freedom, etc. I'm no historian, of course, but I do believe that Sparta was a slave-holding, autocratic, military dictatorship that killed its own children if they showed any sign of physical or mental defect. I also think that this "New Age" that the Spartans ushered in included Greece's subjugation to the Roman Empire, etc. etc.

I hope that answers everyone's questions.

2007-03-28T09:22:00.000-04:00

NEGATORY ON THE STATUTORY, DUDE

Just to show that love can build a bridge . . . between your husband and a child younger than 13.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Country music star Wynonna Judd said she filed for
divorce Tuesday from her estranged husband, Dan R. Roach, after his arrest last
week in Texas on sex charges involving a minor.
Roach, 49, was arrested
Thursday in Abilene and charged with three counts of aggravated sexual battery
against a child younger than 13 in Nashville, police said.

Oh dear. My sympathies to Ms. Judd, and nothing at all to Mr. Roach.

2007-03-26T14:08:00.000-04:00

JACOB HAVE I LOVED . . . OH WAIT, HATED

I check the sitemeter for this li'l page every so often, and so few people visit that I can look at most of them -- where in the world they are (generally), what brought them here (although NOT any names, addresses, etc.). Every so often there is a minor swarm of visitors looking for something about "Jacob at TwoP" or "Jacob recap" or some such. Those searches turn up some of my old posts, in which I expostulate on the craptastitude of the man's writing about Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who. (Not the man himself, mind you. Just his writing.)

Now those searches will turn up this post as well!

For those interested, here's my one sentence policy statement on the subject of Jacob's writing: I'm avoiding it, and I'm avoiding anything referring to it.

2007-03-26T10:54:00.000-04:00

READING FREAKONOMICS IN BELGRADE

The book Freakonomics, which my wife and I both read and enjoyed, has been translated into Serbian. As the authors note on their blog, everything was translated, including the author's names and the proper names in the "Whitest and Blackest Children's Names" chapter.

If you were a Serbian reader, you would be left believing that some of the
blackest names in America are Sanis and Precis, and some of the whitest are
Dzejk and Hanter. And our predictions for the most popular American names in
2015: Vejverli, Kejt, Aser, and Vil.

More here.

2007-03-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

300 MEN IN LEATHER HOTPANTS

I went to see 300 this weekend, which was more entertaining than I expected. A bit heavy on the "freedom isn't free, and sometime you have to break laws to save the nation!" message, but fun.

In other news:

Before 300, there was a preview for a new horror/supernatural movie starring Hilary Swank, in which she stars as a supernatural investigator (who -- surprise! -- doesn't believe in the supernatural) , checking out events in some boonie town in the States that mirror the plagues of Egypt. Fire, locusts, etc. I know this because the preview telegraphed what must be every key scene in the movie -- that's pretty standard these days.

At one point, words flashed on the screen: Water Into Blood.

I thought: dang, that's a cool title for a movie, even a crummy one.

Then more words: What Hath God Wrought?

I thought: Whoa, another pretty cool title. But wait, which is it?

The real title of the movie: The Reaping.

Ugh. 100% derivative. Who does these things? The Shining, The Haunting, etc.

Get ready for The Reaping II: The Reapening.

2007-03-24T10:18:00.000-04:00

WHERE THE !#$% DO IDEAS COME FROM?

Recently, I had a very short (consisting of exactly one message from each side) email conversation with an old friend about writing, and we exchanged some inspirational quotes regarding the keeping up of the chin, the staving off of the quitting, the putting of it all in perspective, etc. It was all very nice.

But I just ran across this videoblog on the same topic, which does a pretty decent job of summing up the whole conundrum. Watch it. (If you don't like some bad language, especially in catchy little songs, then don't watch it.)

2007-03-23T11:34:00.000-04:00

ADDENDUM

. . . to the last post, is something the OpEd writer makes clear but I didn't quote: That these letters from the FBI essentially turn private citizens into deputies of the Secret Police, requiring us to inform on one another, keep secrets from one another, lie to one another. The letters can (and have, evidently, in the case of the writer) come between lovers, family members, spouses, in that one is legally prohibited from discussing the matter with the other.

Here's a question: has anyone been prosecuted for violating the gag order? If they had, would we know?

. . . or maybe I did quote the relevant part. What, you want me to read my own posts?

2007-03-23T09:18:00.000-04:00

GAGGED

An anonymous OpEd in the WaPo this morning regarding National Security Letters issued by the FBI. It's anonymous because the writer was the recipient of one such letter, and is subject to a legal order prohibiting him from revealing that he received the letter. Interestingly, the gag order is still in place -- even after the underlying investigation has ended and he is challenging the legitimacy of the letter itself.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat
of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case
-- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my
family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend
where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in
a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am
the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice
but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and
being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have
doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The rest is here.

I feel safer all the time.

2007-03-22T18:33:00.000-04:00

SOMEBODY FIGURED IT OUT

YouTube video (30 seconds?): two competing perspectives on the Bush administration. Number one: try to believe that they are reasonable people and will do what they ought to do because well, deep down they know what's right. Number two: acknowledge that they are unrepentant thugs who will commit crime after crime until they are made to stop.

The video: Arlen Specter (number one) and Patrick Leahy (number two) arguing over whether to accept the White House's terms regarding testimony of senior officials.

2007-03-19T13:55:00.000-04:00

SIGNATURES

Not the defunct Jack Abramoff restaurant -- actual signatures.

I link to the following, in which an intrepid guerreilla consumer goes to great lengths to figure out exactly what you can put in the signature line of a credit-card transaction form and still make the purchase. Answer as follows:

Credit Card Prank I

Credit Card Prank II

The answer may surprise you. Or it may not. Or you may fall asleep out of boredom. (Probably not, though.)

2007-03-19T10:01:00.000-04:00

YOU HAVE CHOSEN WISELY . . . OR NOT

Update to last post: this is a good thing unless CB is cast as Harrison Ford's love interest. I mean, he's a movie hunk of yesteryear, emphasis on the yesteryear. The man is in his sixties, people, and she is in her thirties.

I'm sure he likes much younger blondes (c.f. Calista) -- and he's rich and famous enough to have a bevy of them waiting at home to welcome him with his slippers, pipe and a dollop of personal lubricant. But I have 1) fond memories of the Indiana Jones franchise, and 2) a good deal of admiration for Ms. Blanchett -- both for her art and her pulchritude. The enactment of a certain party's old man fantasies onscreen endangers both, in my mind.

2007-03-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

"YOU HAVE CHOSEN . . . WISELY"

Evidently, Cate Blanchett has signed on to the new Indiana Jones movie!

Folks, it doesn't get much better than that.

Unless the movie sucks, of course.