Wachovia is looking at $1.1 billion in losses, much of it tied to it’s 2006 purchase of Golden West Financial Corp. of Oakland, California.
The contageon is spreading.
Year: 2007
Norman Mailer dead at age 84
Norman Mailer is dead at age 84.
I’m kind of embarrassed. I’ve never read any of his stuff.
Friday Cat Blogging
Guiliani: to McCain: I See your Kerik, and I’ll Raise You a Keating
McCain teed off on Guiliani about Kerik, and in response, Team Rudy brings up the fact that McCain was one of the Keating 5.
I love it when Republicans call each other crooks. It’s about the only time that they are honest.
Water Wars
It appears that Floridahas decided that it will not play nice with Georgia regarding water during the ongoing drought.
I’m not sure why, though with rain predicted in the next week, the point may be moot.
That being said, all this is like two kids throwing spitballs, compared to the inevitable water wars in the Western US, these are arid regions to begin with, they have experienced explosive population growth, and the source of much of the water, the Ogallala Aquifer, is largely primeval water, and recharges very slowly, so this will get very, very ugly.
Of course, global warming makes this all a crap shoot.
Weirdness on the Mukasey Vote
The story here is odd. It appears that Senators received something less than an hour’s notice the the debate prior to the vote was going to start.
According to Senate sources, as the Dem Senate leadership remained in closed-door negotiations with their GOP counterparts over whether to hold the vote, Senators were getting mixed signals throughout the day as to whether the vote would happen by the end of yesterday. The actual notification that there would be a vote didn’t come from leadership until at least 6:30 or 7 PM last night — catching aides on the staffs of the presidential campaigns and on the staffs of other senators off guard.
“I had my coat on and was walking out the door when I first heard about the vote,” one staffer said.
The senators were notified that there would be five hours of debate, and that a vote would be happening at midnight, or possibly before, sources said.
Aides to one of the senators running for President said they were surprised at how adamant the leadership was that a vote would be coming so quickly — with or without them present. One aide to this senator said that his staff told leadership that they couldn’t get back for a vote until later in the night.
This is seriously odd.
Why the proverbial bum’s rush. With the goal of a vote by midnight, and 5 hours of debate, a 6:30 notification is almost no notice. What was Reid trying to do, and why was he trying to do it?
Barack Obama Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass
He’s had a busy past day or so. Not only has he reinforced the Republican meme about killing social security by calling it a “crisis”, he is now in full pander with the mining interests when he says that he is opposing the repeal the 1872 Mining act.
We have had 200 years of bad laws, but the 1872 Mining act is among the worst. Under the 1872 law, a miner stakes a claim, and all they have to do is pay $5/acre, and it removes pretty much all environmental protections from land put to this applications.
Additionally, the law allows the land to be “patented” or transferred to private property for a small fee. This is a bad law. It has resulted in massive losses to the federal government, the pollution of 40% of the watersheds in the west, and continues to harm the delicate ecology of the west.
What’s more, with gold increasing in value, old mining sites will be doubtlessly be scavenged, doing more harm ecological harm.
For just how bad this law that Obama supports is, go here.
Consumer Sentiment Tanks
Down to 75.0 vs 80.9 in Ocober.
This is the lowest number since October, 2005.
With the shopping season coming up, this does not bode well.
Signs of the Apocalypse: Bush DoJ Enforcing Voting Rights Act
When one considers how blythly the Bush DoJ signed off on Georgia’s poll tax voter ID law, the news that the department of justice is enforcing the laws is a bit surprising.
My guess is that Waxman has scared the hell out of them.
Quote of the Day, Anita Esterday
Ms. Esterday is the waitress who was quoted in that whole “tipgate” story with Clinton.
Well, after being contacted by the gazillionth reporter today, she sais something very wise:
You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.
She is our wise woman of the day.
Merrill Lynch Under SEC investigation – U.S. Business – MSNBC.com
I think that this will be the first of many investigations.
Virtual Suicide Bombing
Clive Thompson plays Halo 3 online. Because he has a life, and does not spend 10-20 hours a day on line, his skills, and his power are limited.
However, he has found a way to even the scales:
.…
Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I’m only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I’m marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.
But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)
It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.
….
What is interesting here is that the dynamic is pretty much identical to those of an insurgency. While the stakes are clearly less, no one is actually dying, the power dynamics are the same, and so are the resulting tactics.
New Bankruptcy Law Hitting Banks in Mortgage Portfolio
You may recall that the banks got a law passed a few years making it harder for people to discharge credit card debts.
Well now, this is one of the factors behind the explosion in defaults and foreclosures.
Washington Mutual, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. spent $25 million in 2004 and 2005 lobbying for a legislative agenda that included changes in bankruptcy laws to protect credit card profits, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan Washington group that tracks political donations.
The banks are still paying for that decision. The surge in foreclosures has cut the value of securities backed by mortgages and led to more than $40 billion of writedowns for U.S. financial institutions. It also reached to the top echelons of the financial services industry.
Silly Laws, Or Why I Need to Look For a Pet Fish In Liverpool
here:
- It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27 per cent)
- It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down (7 per cent)
- In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6 per cent)
- Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day (5 per cent)
- In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter (4 per cent)
- In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet (4 per cent)
- The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen (3.5 per cent)
- It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3 per cent)
- It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour (3 per cent)
- In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2 per cent)
- In Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk (9 per cent)
- In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation (8 per cent)
- In Bahrain, a male doctor can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror (7 per cent)
- In Switzerland, a man may not relieve himself standing up after 10pm (6 per cent)
- In Alabama, it is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle (6 per cent)
- In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on a Sunday could be jailed (6 per cent)
- In Vermont, women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth (6 per cent)
- In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except at funerals or hospital visits (5 per cent)
- In Japan, there is no age of consent (5 per cent)
- In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon (4 per cent)
Consider this an open thread.
Mukasey Confirmed 53-40
Damn.
Every time that I think that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Can’t Do Any Worse…..
They exceed the limits of my cynicism.
This time, it’s a Consumer Products Safety Commission that is refusing a larger budget and staff, and its head taking what are morally, if not necessarily legally, bribes from manufacturers and they are so disinterested in protecting the consumer, it’s as if they were dosing the kids with date rape drugs themselves.
They consistently exceed the limits of my cynicism.
It has Been Reported that Kerik Has Been Indicted
But no official announcement yet.
How it effects the Guiliani campaign, I’m not sure, but I think that our so-called liberal media will be less aggressive about this than they were about the Clinton donor who had an ounstanding warrant.
After all, they basically ignored the dope dealer on Thompson’s staff.
Journamalism at NPR
I heard the story today about Hillary Clinton going to a restaurant in in Iowa, and having her picture taken with a waitress, but not leaving a tip on NPR.
The story was untrue, the campaign says that they paid $157, and left a $100 tip, and it was confirmed by the restaurant manager.
So much for Journalism, at least the journalism of David Greene, at NPR.
Update, NPR has a correction:
Editor’s Note: Since this story aired, Hillary Clinton’s campaign contacted NPR to say that the campaign paid Maid-Rite a bill for $157 the day of Clinton’s visit and left $100 in tip money. NPR contacted Maid-Rite manager Brad Crawford, who confirmed that a bill was paid and tip money was left. Crawford, who was not in the restaurant at the time, said that he believes a campaign staffer left the money with one of his employees, but “where Hillary was sitting, there was no tip left.”
How about a little fact checking in the future.
Investors agree: Anything but the dollar
Investors agree: Anything but the dollar – International Herald Tribune.
And it’s only going to get worse.
Coverup at the Reagan Presidential Library
If these had been stolen for profit, we’d be seeing them on eBay, and we are not. Someone scrubbed the documents so to remove embarrassing items, perhaps the deal with the Iranians in 1980, or evidence showing that Reagan knew of, and approved of, Iran-Contra.
The number of documents imply one of two things:
- There is a lot of skullduggery to be covered up.
- They took more things so that people would not get a good picture of what was stolen.
Or maybe a bit of both.