Month: November 2007

Gee, People are Upset That Edwards Tells the Truth

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I’m not a fan of Senator Clinton. I am less of a fan of Obama, whose Adlai Stevensonesque Hamlet act is very old, and whose homophobic dog whistle overtures to socially conservative black Democrats in South Carolina are despicable.

What John Edwards is saying is factually accurate. Clinton is refusing to commit to removing troops from a combat role in Iraq, and while not personally corrupt herself*, she has surrounded herself with people who make money lobbying for big money interests, Mark Penn only being the most egregious case, and she has defended this system of pay to play in the debates.

It is a legitimate course for Edwards to take. For what it’s worth, FDR was very much the slick prepackaged politician in 1932, so Hillary may be better than I expect if she gets the nomination, and wins the general, which is the likely result for any Democrat who wins the nomination this time around.

*She is arguably the second most investigated individual of the past 30 years. The best that Richard Mellon Scaife could come up with Whitewater, a land deal in which she lost money.

Courts Allowing Electronic of Suspects Without Probable Cause

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Welcome to 1984, only 23 years late.

The feds are increasingly using the enhanced 911 services to track people’s movements, and most of the judicial precedent at this point is saying that they do not need probable cause to get a court order, it is noted that, “Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas”, so we get

In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.

Which means that the agents think that all they need to show is that they want the information.

Conversational Hebrew

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This little tidbit from the times gives one a pretty good idea how people think what they really think about Condoleeza Rice:

The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice’s many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: “lecondel,” meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results. The word is based on Ms. Rice’s first name.

This misadministration still shocks me with its incompetence.

Republican Rivals Start Opposition Research Huckabee

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Well, this is pretty good evidence that he has them running scared.

I’m not sure really why the need to do the research though. They already have the very public case of Wayne Dumond, where Huckabee lobbied for the convicted rapist’s parole, and Dumond later raped and murdered a neighbor.

He did this because Dumond’s first victim was a distant cousin of Clinton, so the wingers were claiming that he was “railroaded”, because…well…it involved Bill Clinton.

This is how Wingnuts thing.

Georgia’s Sex Offender Housing Laws Overturned

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This law basically amounted to exile from the state, as it prohibited “registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and other areas where children congregate”, and the Georgia supreme court has ruled it unconstitutional.

There were a number of problems with the law:

  • It applied to all sex offenders, so people who were no threat to children, like indecent exposure, public sex or lewdness (like Larry Craig), etc. were covered.
  • It covered 150,000 school bus stops in the state, making it’s coverage too broad.
  • As the court noted, offenders obeying the law, “face the possibility of being repeatedly uprooted and forced to abandon homes.”

Honestly, it’s not like pedophiles can’t drive. I understand that the case that brought this on was a sex offender that was living near a day care center and re-offended, but this should be handled through the corrections process, such as longer sentences, and probation conditions.

Mike Huckabee Calls for Investigation of Bush Over Plame Leak

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I think that Huckabee has been tacking a bit against Bush, he unfavorably compared Bush and Musharraf, but his latest statement, calling for an investigation of Bush on the Plame affair, is kind of stunning.

I think that Huckabee believes that he can win by tacking against Bush. There is a significant enough plurality of Republicans who are sick of Bush to put him over the top in a multi candidate field.

RGE – With the Recession Becoming Inevitable the Consensus Shifts Towards the Hard Landing View. And the Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown

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Noriel Roubini’s latest prediction:

I now see the risk of a severe and worsening liquidity and credit crunch leading to a generalized meltdown of the financial system of a severity and magnitude like we have never observed before. In this extreme scenario whose likelihood is increasing we could see a generalized run on some banks; and runs on a couple of weaker (non-bank) broker dealers that may go bankrupt with severe and systemic ripple effects on a mass of highly leveraged derivative instruments that will lead to a seizure of the derivatives markets (think of LTCM to the power of three); a collapse of the ABCP market and a disorderly collapse of the SIVs and conduits; massive losses on money market funds with a run on both those sponsored by banks and those not sponsored by banks (with the latter at even more severe risk as the recent effective bailout of the formers’ losses by theirs sponsoring banks is not available to those not being backed by banks); ever growing defaults and losses ($500 billion plus) in subprime, near prime and prime mortgages with severe known-on effect on the RMBS and CDOs market; massive losses in consumer credit (auto loans, credit cards); severe problems and losses in commercial real estate and related CMBS; the drying up of liquidity and credit in a variety of asset backed securities putting the entire model of securitization at risk; runs on hedge funds and other financial institutions that do not have access to the Fed’s lender of last resort support; a sharp increase in corporate defaults and credit spreads; and a massive process of re-intermediation into the banking system of activities that were until now altogether securitized.

Let’s be clear, Dr. Roubini is, and always has been, a bear. Truth be told, Since I started following this in 2001, so have I.

More important that this is that the bears in general, and Dr. Roubini in particular, have been right time and time again.

We have trillions of dollars in leverage in instruments that no one understands, and when this unwinds, it will be ugly.

Desmond Tutu Gets it on Homophobic Bigotry

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Basically, Nobel prize winning cleric is saying that with all the evil and hate in the world, the Church has no time to generate its own hate:

He said it should rather be focusing on global problems such as Aids.

“Our world is facing problems – poverty, HIV and Aids – a devastating pandemic, and conflict,” said Archbishop Tutu, 76.

“God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another.

“In the face of all of that, our Church, especially the Anglican Church, at this time is almost obsessed with questions of human sexuality.”

Congress Reviewing Bill to Allow Bankruptcy Judges Review Terms of Mortgage Loans

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Brad Miller (D-NC) and Linda Sanchez (D-Ca) have proposed legislation in the house, and there appears to be a push for this in the Senate.

It is anticipated that this could reduce foreclosures by 2 million.

One of the wierd things that I discovered in reading this is that, Judges already have this power for “Vacation homes, farms and investment properties.”

But not for principal homes…Weird.

If this passes, it may save the mortgage industry from itself.