Dicked
Today's WaPo installment on the real President.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
A Good Point
Ok, so Cheney is arguing that he's not part of the executive branch.
Right?
In front of the Supreme Court, he argued that he was part of the executive branch and was protected from disclosing the participants in the energy task force. Remember that?
Ok Dick. Just who was at that energy task force meeting?
Pierced
If the elite political class in Washington had shown any sign of breathing in the past seven years, I'd call the ongoing Washington Post series on the malignancy that is Dick Cheney breathtaking. Part One, in which the president was demonstrated to be a barely functional non-entity, and in which other members of his administration -- like Colin Powell, who can probably now take off the toga for good -- were demonstrated to such a vast collection of useless tools it's a surprise they weren't all found rusting in a barn in Nebraska, was bad enough. (How many times a day do they have to water Alberto Gonzales, by the way?) Today's installment, in which officials of what is said to be history's greatest experiment in enlightened self-government are shown parsing the difference between "cruelty" and "torture" is so much worse that Parts Three and Four fill me with encompassing dread. Is there anything worthwhile about this country and its ideals that these guys didn't use for a pen-wiper? Is there anything worthwhile about this country and its ideals that they remotely understand?Amen.
Growwwwwlllllll
I usually start my morning reading financial news. In the many years I've been doing this, I don't think I've ever read so much negativity in one day from the reports, articles and blogs on the state of the current world economy. The housing thing has really gotten everyone down. Let's all hope they're just being cranky.
Peak Oil
The Oil Drum has a very nicely done article on peak oil. It's done in a question/answer format and is for someone who is new to the discussion. It's a really great place to get some objective info on just what is peak oil, the possibilities are for the future, and many resources for further information.
Kudos To The Kids
Pretty gutsy, at least compared to the Washington couture class:
WASHINGTON -- President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.Right. I'm sure the kids walked away convinced by Bush that we don't torture. These kids are, indeed, scholars of the first order.
The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.
"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
Does the FBI Bug You?
Joe over at Hard-boiled Dreams of the World has an interesting post about cell phones. I didn't know I was carrying a bugging device. Someone might discover what a truly boring person I am.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Tribal ..... Millionaires!
Remember those Sunni tribal types that the U.S. was "encouraging" to join the fight against "al Qaeda"? It seems that some have taken the money and run:
This story from al-Malaf is currently the talk of the forums: Sitar Abu Risha, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, has allegedly fled Iraq with $75 million that the Americans had given him to fight al-Qaeda. The story links his flight to the near-collapse of the Anbar Salvation Council over infighting among its leadership [and] claims that he simply never distributed the American cash to the fighters, who are now threatening to go on strike if they don't get paid. Seeing as how the Anbar Salvation Council has for months now been portrayed as the great American hope in the battle against al-Qaeda, if this story turns out to be true - a big if, given the shaky sourcing to this point - then it would be a rather embarrassing fiasco.The story is still yet to be confirmed. But if true, it would indeed be embarrassing and a fiasco. And yet somehow, it's also business as usual.
Cut/Paste
Laura Rozen wrote an interesting post yesterday on the WaPo Cheney article. The short version is that the article was probably held until the "dead time" of summer and that it had an editorial hatchet taken to it as well.
If you go read it I think you'll see what she's talking about. There are parts of the story that seem to be seriously contradictory to the rest. The first time I read it (before see Rozen's piece), I had to reread a couple of paragraphs because they just didn't seem to make sense. Give it a read and see if you notice it.
Here's a sample of the disconnect:
Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore. Bush has set his own course, not always in directions Cheney preferred. The president seized the helm when his No. 2 steered toward trouble, as Bush did, in time, on military commissions. Their one-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever, with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.This graf is not only incomprehensible, it's completely contradicts the rest of the story. When I first read it, I remember scratching my head and then ignoring it (before having read Rozen's suspicions). Do you think there is a bit of a war going on between reporters and editors?
Big Magilla Morphs
The big magilla has turned into the little boy and the dyke, and I'm not feeling too good myself.
Juan Cole's piece today summarizes what is happening with the big offensive offensive in Diyala. Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarak today admitted that Iraqi troops are not capable of "holding" the area's "cleared" in Diyala:
BAQOUBA, Iraq - The U.S. commander of a new offensive north of Baghdad, reclaiming insurgent territory day by day, said yesterday his Iraqi partners may be too weak to hold onto the gains made.So what's been the point? Are they saying they didn't know this going in? Has this "offensive" been a political gambit for domestic U.S. consumption using American soldiers to make a point?
The Iraqi military does not even have enough ammunition, said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek: "They're not quite up to the job yet." His counterpart south of Baghdad seemed to agree, saying U.S. troops are too few to garrison the districts in the capital newly rid of insurgents. "It can't be coalition [U.S.] forces. We have what we have. There's got to be more Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.
The two commanders spoke after a deadly day for the U.S. military in Iraq. At least 12 soldiers were killed on Saturday from roadside bombings and other causes, raising the U.S. toll for the past week to at least 32.
As Juan points out, Diyala has 300,000 people with 60% of them Sunni, being ruled by Shiite's and Kurds, and attacked by U.S. forces. In short, they're fed up. Diyala is now the latest recruting station for insurgents.
Here's Juan's sum-up:
So after 6 days of hard fighting, in which US troops were killed and wounded, what do we have?No. It's not right. It's immoral.
A sullen, defiant Sunni Arab urban population.
A guerrilla leadership that slipped away.
An Iraqi army unable actually to hold the 'cleared' neighborhoods, which are likely to throw up more guerrilla leaders and campaigns.
A continued dominance of Sunni Arabs in Diyala by a Shiite government completely unacceptable to them.
A US commitment to upholding the Shiite ("Iraqi") government.
So I am angry because this looks to me like we sent our guys to fight and die for a piece of political quicksand in which the entire endeavor is likely to sink.
It is not right.
Reverse It
Some time ago, I wrote an post criticizing reverse mortgages. A reverse mortgage is where a homeowner essentially puts the equity in their home up as collateral for a loan that is repaid when they die or sell the house. It's sold as a way to "tap into the savings in your home". Since my last post, these loans have become even more popular.
Tim Iacono notices a piece in the LA Times and also notices something else:
As with all loans, reverse mortgages have fees and charge interest. For example, a 78-year-old borrower whose home is worth $200,000 might end up with a reverse mortgage of $123,000, based on his age, interest rate levels and other factors. In this case, the borrower might pay about $13,000 in upfront fees — including a $4,000 loan origination fee, $4,000 in mortgage insurance and a $4,000 "set-aside" to cover servicing costs for the life of the loan, according to Fannie Mae, the federally chartered lender.A reverse mortgage is not necessarily a bad idea on it's face. A senior can still live in their home while getting some cash, hopefully needed cash, for living expenses. But as the excerpt above shows, the rates and fees for these loans are astronmical. A reverse mortgage is a very secure loan, likely more secure than a mortgage. But lenders are raping older people as they provide this "service". The fees and interests rates are usury and should be stopped.
Based on recent interest rates, such a loan might come with an adjustable interest rate of about 6%, with interest charges compounding during the life of the mortgage.
If the time comes where I might need cash from my home, I'll sell it. That may represent a stress. But I'd rather deal with that stress than the feeling that someone like Countrywide Home Loans is bending me over.
Deux
Part two of the WaPo piece on Cheney is up. Give it a read and see how Cheney runs the country.
Librarian Terrorists
Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.
After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.
source
A threat to national security? It should be clear now that anyone...anyone... who defies and disagrees with this government will be labeled a "terrorist". The government eventually backed off (and in doing so withdrew the case from scrutiny) but as you read this keep in mind that the president has the authority to label any American a "terrorist" and treat them accordingly.
As an aside, please note that it is the ACLU defending these people... and you. I hear people bitch about the ACLU often but they don't seem to realize how much effort these people put into protecting all of us.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Still
It's stuff like this that makes me want to pull my hair out:
Newsweek poll: "Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in ten Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right -- and a full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq."Karl Rove, and Lee Atwater before him, recognized that the American public is ignorant. And I don't mean that as a demeaning term. I literally mean ignorant as in purposefully uninformed. Our media hasn't helped, but the buck really stops with the American people.
The constitution doesn't guarantee democracy. Our system of governance doesn't guarantee freedom. Our system guarantees that the people get the government they deserve. And by astutely observing the human landscape in America, Rove recognized that you could lie, cheat, steal, and create a dictatorship without real opposition by simply properly marketing your brand. Like any popular cereal, a box full of air with a very large ad campaign and pretty pictures on the front, Rove has been able to make his brand popular .... until now.
The only remaining question is will the American people "right" themselves in pursuit of what our founding fathers meant by creating America. That's an open question at this point. I suspect it's always been an open question.
Sunday Reading
Want to take some time and do some reading on the Bush crack-up?
Ok. How about Sidney Blumenthal's piece on how the administrations claims of executive power are being slowly, but systematically dismantled. Or how about Marcy Wheelers speculation on who Blumenthal is talking about when he discussed "high administration officials" who are admitting that they've likely acted illegally. Finally, there's this piece on how the above pieces fit together in the battle to keep Scooter Libby out of jail. Digby speculates that given the Scootsters role in all of this, he has a considerable amount of "leverage" if he should choose to use it.
Update: Wow. More Sunday reading for your enjoyment. Excerpt from the opening graf:
Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.and Digby's take on the article:
In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.
Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions."
"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.
This is exactly the kind of manipulation that is made possible by a weak and stupid president. Reagan was not particularly bright, but he gathered people around him who were not insane, had known him forever and shared his goals. Bush is a child whose agenda was whatever the last person he spoke with told him it was.Kudos to the WaPo for doing this series (this is the first).
I know that I sound like a character in an Oliver Stone movie, ("one pristine bullet? That dog don't hunt!" ) but I have never been sanguine about the fact that all the big money boyz and all the power brokers in the GOP traipsed down to Austin to meet that grinning moron and came away thinking he was the right choice to run the most powerful nation on earth. It makes far more sense to me that they wanted to install Cheney from the beginning (remember the energy task force?) and they needed an empty suit with a winning personality to actually run for the office. Maybe it really was a quiet coup, who knows?
Hard, Cold Data
Digby, Atrios and virtually the entire liberal blogosphere have been having some fun with one of Atrios's "wankers of the day". In this case, the issue is a column written by Melinda Henneberger lecturing Democrats on why their stance on abortion is killing the party. Others have written why what Henneberger has to say is B.S. and properly labeling her a "concern troll", so I'm not going there. Rather, this statement by Digby struck me:
Give me cold poll numbers any day --- and if somebody wants to follow up with interviews of a sample of that sample for an article in the paper, then fine. But the notion that DC pundits have some special way of talking to strangers that translates into something meaningful about the population at large is ridiculous.It is ridiculous.
I don't watch much of the teevee in the way of punditry anymore. But on Sundays, if the timing is right, I'll sometimes watch a bit of "This Week". Today I noticed that Tori Clarke said on more than one occasion "what I'm hearing is" and "people are getting tired of" and "voters will never" kind of language. And she wasn't alone in doing this. I was thinking, who said that? What people? Where?
Because Walter Cronkite (who is now ignored btw) was considered the most credible person in the country at one time, an entire industry has been developed in his wake. Punditry has been living off the legacy of credible reporters from the 50's and 60's for a long long time. But real data, real studies, real research, have shown over and over again (just go visit Media Matters for a wealth of data) that punditry ..... all punditry .... is mostly a bunch of ordinary people with supposed "connections" who are talking through their rear-ends. The is never more true than when pundits pretend to understand the American citizen, the "people", the "heartland" or "voters".
I don't want censorship. I just wish that enough viewers would complain and enough pressure brought to bear to force some sort of accountability for a stations punditry. Other industries do it, i.e. on financial channels who interview market "pundits", market observers are often tracked on performance of the stocks they've recommended. If a political pundit says "xyz", let there be a scorecard that shows whether xyz prediction/opinion came true, is backed by solid data, or is just BS. And obviously, if someone is usually wrong (which are most of the current crop), then they should not be rewarded with the admiration of viewers simply because they are likeable, have a familiar name and face, and we like what they are saying.
I'm not so naive as to think that anything will materially change in the near future. But maybe, just maybe, with the internets and bloggers (on both sides) doing fact checking and gaining readership, such accountability is evolving and will largely come to pass. Certainly ratings for many of these shows are suffering. Maybe the teevee execs will get a clue. I hope.
*sigh* Update:
Here we have a poster-child example of what I said above:
"Well, the Democrats have taken the position that they now will do with the nation's business. And if they're not doing that business, and clearly the immigration issue is very much on people's mind, I think they will suffer the same consequences that the Republicans suffered a year ago. People are fed up with seeing Washington bickering, fighting, infighting and never dealing with the issue."That's the "dean" of the Washington Press Corpse David Broder on Press the Meat today. How many ways is this statement ridiculous?
1) What evidence does Broder have that "immigration is on people's mind"? I haven't seen a single person mention it personally. Do the voters really care about this issue at this point as compared to, oh, say the Iraq war, or health care, the economy, or gasoline prices, or or or or or ..... ?
2) Why would the Democrats suffer? A full 85% of Senate Dems voted for the immigration compromise while 80% of Republicans voted against it. It's not Harry Reid holding things up, it's numbskulls like Jeff Sessions. To the degree that voters give a rip, they're likely paying close attention to the roadblocks. And they're likely Rush Limbaugh listeners in Alabama who are cheering Jeff Sessions and would never support Democrats no matter what they did.
3) Who says "people are fed up with seeing Washington bickering, fighting, infighting and never dealing with the issue". The polls show low approval ratings, and being "fed up", with everyone because the Iraq war continues and continues and ...... Again, please tell me ole' dean David, why is it continuing?
4) People want it "fixed". Oh yeah? Fixed how? Broder seems to be saying "do anything" and it's a "fix". Except of course that what Jeff Sessions wants for a fix is dramatically different than what I might want. But nevermind, let's just spew out a vapid (I love that term, h/t Josh Marshall) analysis of the immigration "situation. Sheesh.
Broder, a self-labeled moderate, seems to feel he has the pulse of Amurika. The evidence suggests he's waaaay off. Yet will he be held accountable, or continue to be paid mucho dinero and respect to spew out his garbage logic, prejudices and 1960's musings?
Short Vacation
Juan Cole is reporting that the Iraq parliament managed to dig up (maybe a poor use of terms) enough members to get a quorum, not an easy task, at which time they decided to stay in session for another month. The purpose of the extended session is to reach the necessary political comprises necessary to end the violence.
The Iraqi spokesman, who likely took lessons from Tony Snow, announced optimism that the parliament would be able to reach agreement on issues that they could not agree to over the past four years.
The fact is that the Iraq government is not even working. Key players are either not in the parliament having boycotted the elections, are not able to participate due to fear, or have withdrawn out of disagreement.
More Housing
Here's what we're up against in the housing slowdown (click to enlarge):
As you can easily see, unsold inventories are skyrocketing by historical standards. For comparison, note that that last housing "bust" was in 1990. It took three years to work off the excess inventory that time.
Housing starts are beginning to slow, but it's going to take some time to get rid of that excess housing. Given that interest rates are relatively higher and lending standards are (finally) getting more stringent, it may be awhile. Quite awhile.
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