It’s also very, very savvy, it strokes the ego of her press corps. She
played flight attendant over the loud speaker, welcoming people aboard “Hil Force One”, and declaring, among other things, that, “FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) regulations prohibit the use of any cell phones, BlackBerrys, or wireless devices that may be used to transmit a negative story about me”.
Year: 2008
Bush to Hold Stimulus Package Hostage
Read the article about the Bush Administration strategies.
The stimulus is needed now, but veto anything that does not extend Bush’s disastrous tax cuts, which would otherwise end in 2011.
The fact is that sticking with appallingly bad tax policies in order to create a relatively modest stimulus package is a bad idea both in terms of the well being of the republic, and in terms of politics, and the Democrats should be willing to walk away from the table if this is a condition.
Of course, they will drop the soap instead.
Tapes destroyed over CIA’s objections my ass!
It appears that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)is trying to hang Jose Rodriguez out to dry.
I guess you gotta have a scapegoat, and true to form, just as in the military prosecutions regarding Abu Ghraib, the goal is to find the lowest possible level person possible to assign blame.
The pertinent quote is from an anonymous Senate staffer
“If you look at the documents, you get very close to a direct order (not to destroy the tapes) without it being, ‘Jose, you’re not going to do this,'” the official said.
Sounds to me like everyone knew what was going on. Higher ups wanted plausible deniability, so they gave “strong advice” without giving an “order”, so they could have it both ways.
Hoekstra said Rodriguez must testify to the committee to determine on whose authority the tapes were destroyed, and he said the panel will consult with the Justice Department on whether granting Rodriguez immunity would undermine its own investigation.
“If there appears to be any criminal activity taking place, the last thing we would want to do is get in the way of a successful prosecution,” Hoekstra said.
Translation: let’s bury this until after the election.
Al Qaeda Republicans
Oliver Willis writes about the recently indicted former Republican congressman, and I just love the title.
MBIA Ambac Default Risks Soar
The risks of default by MBIA and Ambac have gone through the roof, and Ambac is in danger of losing it’s AAA rating, which could hasten a collapse by making capital harder to raise.
As to the significance? Atrios nails it when he says:
Ambac and MBIA are the two Jenga pieces which will pull the whole sh#@pile down. They insure all of the sh#@pile, allowing everyone to pretend that all of the risky stuff they own isn’t risky at all. But that insurance is most likely a complete fantasy as it seems Ambac and MBIA don’t have the cash to pay out claims. I should’ve gotten into the bond insurance business. Lower their ratings, you destroy their businesses. More than that, you wipe out the insurance fantasy, forcing everyone who insured with them to admit they have all this risky stuff on the books. Recognizing, of course, that in this context “risky” is just a euphemism for “sh#@ty.”
Ex-MI5 Head: High Tech ID Cards Provide No Security
This really comes as no surprise. Dame Stella Rimington’s description of the idea of high tech ID cards as “useless”.
Old article, but still germane. I came across it when someone referred me to an article in Bruce Schneier’s blog post on the subject.
MacBook Air: No User Swappable Battery
MacBook Air doesn't have a user-replaceable battery – Engadget
MacBook Air battery replacements: $129, free install! – Engadget
$129 for a battery isn’t bad, but you have to send it in for a replacement.
In real life, people, at least the serious road warriors, have multiple batteries that they swap when one gets low.
Morons.
Democrats Pass Mine Safety Bill, Bush ThreDemocrats Pass Mine Safety Bill, Bush Threatens Veto, Pratens Veto, Profits More Importaht than Miners Lives
I am no not surprised at the veto threat.
Disgraceful.
Bush Administration Lied on Iraqi Reconstruction Spending
The GAOhas the details on Iraqi reconstruction spending, but the nickel tour is that Bush and His Evil Minions™ lied when they said that, “By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year”, as was stated in documents given by Crocker and Petraeus to Congress.
But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.
The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress.
So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries’ suggestions of projects they intended to carry out, and contracts that were still under negotiation, Mr. Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added.
“So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,” he said.
Meaning that there was no data, and that they did not look for ways to get that data, because they were under orders to sell Bush’s endless war™.
This was not bad data, this was Crocker and Petraeus telling the Iraqis the numbers they wanted, and then getting those numbers.
BTW, the 2007 number on Iraqi spending is LESS than the 2006 number. It’s getting worse, not better.
Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance
Economics Update
Philadelphia-area manufacturing activity lowest just after 911.
Lehman Brothers is downsizing its mortgage arm. I believe that there is an expression, involving the words, “barn”, “door”, and “cow” that would be appropriate here.
It looks like the real estate crash is finally starting to effect rents, with rents increacing by only ½% in 2007 in a sampling of 10 metro areas. (In previous years, it was in the 3% range)
Housing starts and permits plunge to multi-decade lows. Housing starts are the lowest in 27 years, permits the lowest in 33 years. The market is still on the way down.
This analysis predicts 5 years to recover. It’s probably wrong.
Local housing crashes have all taken at around 5 years to recover, and the markets were far less inflated. Additionally, the underlying economic situation is very grim, and the home buyers were less leveraged, meaning that foreclosures will be higher this time.
The Dollar has recovered somewhat against the Euro in response to an inflation hawk on the ECB saying that right now recession is the problem, not inflation
Getting IP Right, and Trying to Avoid the “Oh, Canada” Cliche
Harold Feld asks, “Someone tell me why Canadians seem to be so much smarter than we are, at least on the public policy fronts that I cover?”
The public policy fronts that he covers involve things like IP and network neutrality, and he is, in this case referring to the the Candian Radio-Television Commission‘s (CRTC) announcement that it is imposing new national ownership limits and cross ownership limits on its broadcast media, and the political backlash that has delayed a Canadian version of the DMCA.
The answer is actually far more depressing than the my friend Harold Feld, esq. would like to think: The Canadians believe in public policy, and the United States does not.
This is why someone like Michael Powell could make a statement that basically said that corporate profit was a public good, and not get tarred and feathered.
In Canada, his phone calls would not be returned.
Bill Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall
The Nation has a very interesting article, Citigroup: Too Big to Fail?, which goes a long way towards seeing how the deregulatory attitudes of the past 31 years (yes, it started with Carter) have led to our current mess.
Citibank is the poster child for this problem, though the bank has a very long history of being on the wrong side of collapses (they were deep in Mexico and Asia when both needed bailouts).
First, let’s look at the Glass-Steagall act of 1933. It was a New Deal law, which was enacted in response to abuses preceding the Great Depression, where bankers were pushing depositors to invest in dubious stocks that they were also being paid by the company to sell.
Basically, it made it illegal for a commercial bank to operate as an investment bank, and vise verse, because there are too many conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds“.
Bill Clinton delivered his “New Democrat” party, accompanied by lots of happy talk about magic words like “synergy” and how “modernization” would create a more stable (and profitable) financial system. It did the latter, for sure, but not the former.
Actually, the combination of insurance, investment banking and old-line commercial banks multiplied the conflicts of interest within banks, despite so-called “firewalls” supposed to keep these activities separate. Much like Enron, placing some deals in off-balance sheet entities did not insulate Citigroup from the losses in its swollen subprime housing lending. The bank has so far written off something like $15 billion and more to come.
The problem is, of course, that Citi is so large that the consequences of its failure would be disastrous to the markets. It would make the collapse of LTCM, which reaqired a Fed orchestrated (Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan) bailout look like the failure of the corner 7-11.
Over the past few years it has appeared that the every single rollback of Depression Era regulations has been a mistake.
New CIA Tape Coverup
The Washington Post has a farily good rundown on the CIA tape destruction.
I think that it’s increasingly evident that this was intended to avoid congressional and criminal scrutiny.
I think that it’s also very likely that some tapes were missed, and they will find their way into investigators hands, where there may be criminal issues.
I understand that the torturers were being “good Germans”, but that is no defense.
I further understand that there will be no small number of people who will demagogue this issue for political gain, making any prosecution near-impossible.
This is why I support the US signing onto the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.
Our politics, and judiciary, have been so poisoned that we are unable to pursue justice in such cases.
FWIW, prosecuting torture is not about our victims, though doubtless some were innocents tortured by mistake, but about who we are.
Ron Paul Might Do Very Well in Nevada
I came across this story, and this quote
No major GOP candidate has set foot in the state for two onths, and some Republicans are bracing for a possible surprise first-place showing by long-shot Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the only Republican to broadcast TV ads in Nevada.
My guess as to why no Republican has campaigned in Nevada? It requires too much outreach to non-Cuban Hispanics.
Castro’s Final Days?
Castro is now saying that he is too unhealthy to campaign in parliamentary elections.
My guess is that he’s not long to this world.
Hopefully, the US policy following his death will be a dropping of sanctions, and an agreement on policies to keep the Cuban émigré community out. They are more poisonous than Achmed Chalabi.
Machiavelli got it right when he said (Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 31):
“It ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country. For, as to their faith, it has to be borne in mind that anytime they can return to their country by other means than yours, they will leave you and look to the other, notwithstanding whatever promises they had made you. As to their vain hopes and promises, such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yourself….. A Prince, therefore, ought to go slowly in undertaking an enterprise upon the representations of an exile, for most of the times he will be left either with shame or very grave injury.
In a country of 300 million, the wacko wing Cuban émigré community has damaged US diplomacy and credibility significantly.
If they given ties to Cuba through property restoration, they will create an unstable despotic state that will be a US security risk.
To quote Tallyrand on the Bourbons, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing. “
Justice Deptartment Says State Department Offers of Immunity Make Prosecution Difficult
Gee, I wonder if those offers of immunity, which make complication prosecution because they, “might make it difficult to prove that evidence gathered by federal prosecutors did not stem from statements made by the guards after they were promised limited immunity,” have anything to do with the fact that this guy is a loyal Republican donor from a family of loyal Republican donors.
It certainly seems that Blackwater has been using State to run interference on drunken murder, fraudulent billing practices, and human sacrifice.
OK, the last one is pulled out of my ass, but I’m going BillO here.
Yeah, Right, “Recycled Tapes”, and the Dog Ate My Homework
Yes, all those emails from the time of the Valeria Plame outing, reused and overwritten in a “consistent with industry best practices”.
Remember yesterday’s post on the lies of our times, this one needs to be added.
Not only are these clearly government records which require retention, but these tapes have been used in investigations going back to Iran-Contra.
They knew that this could be used as evidence, and they knew that it had been used as evidence, and they deliberately decided to destroy this evidence.
Israel Coalition Government Falters
Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu’s has pulled out the government, and subtracting its 11 lawmakers from the government leaves a narrow majority of 67 in the 120-seat Knesset.
They objected to talks with the Palestinians.
This also means that the Ultra-Orthodox Shas party, with 12 members, is all that prevents a new round of elections, that Olmert would almost certainly lose, and Shas has said that it would leave the government if any compromise is made over Jerusalem.
You’ve gotta love Israeli politics.
BTW, this sort of crap is why proportional representation sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
Poland Worries About Being Left Holding the Bag on the “Missile Shield”
I think that the new government in Poland realizes that George W. Bush does not stand up for his allies, and his successor will be unlikely to stand up for George W. Bush’s allies, so they are special military treaty ahead of negotiations on a US missile shield in Europe, such as the ones with Turkey and Italy.
For Poland, “The worst scenario is a situation in which Poland would agree to the shield, will incur the political costs and then the base is not built, because of a change of government in the United States”.
They are afraid of being left holding the bag.
With a year left in the reign of the Avignon President, it’s a sensible concern.