BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's electricity grid could collapse any day because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provincial officials who are unplugging local power stations from the national system, electricity officials said on Saturday.
I just don't get it. I really don't understand at all. First, Harry Reid and the most of the Dems cave on Bush's spying legislation and then this:The back-and-forth over the surveillance bill came as partisan tensions on the Hill reached new heights. With Democrats scrambling to pass legislation covering energy and defense spending, GOP lawmakers in the House staged a walk-out late on Thursday night, accusing the Democratic leadership of stealing a key vote. The LAT argues that the rancor risks casting a shadow over the Democrats' first year of majority rule; the NYT traces the tension to an entrenched ideological standoff that has blocked progress throughout the year. The Post reports that the House will launch a special committee with subpoena power to investigate the vote-stealing charge—an extraordinary measure usually reserved for issues like Watergate or the Iran-Contra scandal.
Ok, nevermind the utter hypocrisy of Republicans being in a uproar over heavy-handed voting in the House. You have to hand it to them for being dramatic, their pure gall, and using their limited power.
But look at how the leadership is responding. The Republicans walked out! And the intrepid House leadership gets all sorry and wants to appoint a special prosecutor?
So in the Senate, Harry caves like a cheap tent and in the House, the Republicans, who are the minority, stage a walkout that causes the House Dems to cave. I just don't know. The Dems still do not understand the nature of politics as an event, a stage, a narrative, in this era. When will they understand that the optics matter more than substance, and appearing like wimps makes them .... well .... wimps.
Bush now has the cover he needs to continue what has been up to now and illegal wire tapping program. And in the House, Republicans now will have an "investigation" of the Democratic leadership by a special prosecutor, which will likely garner just a few headlines (do you think ordinary voters will understand that what happened was child's play compared to what the Republicans did? The Republicans never had a "special prosecutor investigating anything!?). The spying program is legitimized and is now a precedent for when they revisit the issue (the only real concession Dems got) in six months. The only oversight will be by two Bush administration officials, one of whom is Abu Gonzales.
The whole thing stinks.
You find the funniest things when you're out and about.
Today I was waiting (forever it seemed) in the doctors office. To kill time, I picked up Newsweek and was surprised to see a story on anti-depressants .....
I've written on an earlier blog about the ridiculous "warnings" given to parents about using the family of SSRI's (Prozac et. al.) on teens. The anecdotal evidence of Prozac causing suicides was ridiculous on the face, and not supported by the evidence. But the lawyers and grieving parents, in my estimation, wrongly put enormous pressure on the FDA and it worked. Recommendations against the drug's use and labeling changes went forward.
Well, now it looks like the truth is starting to emerge:According to a new study in The Journal of American Psychiatry, the number of SSRI prescriptions for pediatric depression (ages 5 to 18) tumbled more than 50 percent between 2003 and 2005. In a troubling parallel development, the number of teen suicides jumped a record 18 percent between 2003 and 2004, the most recent year for which data exist.
So it took a few dead kids to change the law, and it's now taking a whole lot more dead kids to have rationality return to drug policy.
Are the two trends connected? Many experts say yes. "All the data point in one direction: antidepressants save lives and untreated depression kills people," says Dr. Kelly Posner, a Columbia University child psychiatrist. She and others cite an unwitting instigator: the Food and Drug Administration—which may have scared parents and doctors away from SSRIs in 2003 when it issued a health-advisory warning of a potential link between the popular drugs and teen suicide. The agency, assisted at the time by Posner, followed up in 2004 with a "black box" warning of an "increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior among children and adolescents." Now, amid fears that it's done more harm than good, there are calls for the FDA to modify and even repeal its black box. "I think the FDA has made a very serious mistake. It should lift its black-box warning because all it's doing is killing kids," says Dr. Robert Gibbons, of the University of Illinois's Center for Health Statistics. (Gibbons was a dissenting member of the FDA advisory committee that voted for the black box.) Others agree, including Dr. John Mann, a suicide expert at Columbia University, who fought the warning on the ground that it would have a chilling effect on treatment. "Short of rescinding, the FDA should shift its balance to reflect new wisdom about the beneficial effects of antidepressants," he says. Drugmakers continue to support the FDA but also suspect its actions have had a dangerous impact.
Do you remember any headline stories about the evidence showing SSRI's are probably better than not? It was in the July 16th issue of Newsweek and I don't remember a thing about it in any other publications .... anywhere. Compare that with the hysterical headlines when the momentum started to go against Prozac. It's like a headline proclaiming that you molested your kid and a next day a retraction appears on page C15.
Good job FDA. Good job media. Shame on parents and practioners for falling for the hype. And RIP to the kids who likely could have been saved.
This is just too funny. Bush is threatening to keep Congress in session unless they pass an "acceptable" new FISA bill. And he can do it.
But so what? Let him. Congress needs to take their time on this legislation, unlike the Patriot Act. It will equally inconvenience Republicans, Democrats and the President, so it's no biggie.
Frankly, I'd think Bush would want Congress in recess given their relationship, investigations, and the P.R. that comes out for Georgie when Congress is in session.
Unless your in California (and maybe not even then) you may not have heard that the minority Republicans in the Senate are holding the budget hostage to other concessions. Because a budget requires a two-thirds vote to pass, they're leveraging a bunch of other legislation with the threat of closing down the government.
We all know how well that worked for Newt.
You can read about the details here in a very nicely summarized post on the subject.
If you want to see a really really scary site, go here and look at pics of all the leftie DFH orange satan worshipping freakazoids of the Yearly Kos conference.
It's astounding how .... well .... normal these folks look. And young (which is a good thing). And diverse.
Yet another lousy jobs report.
Now it looks to be getting hard to get a job at Starbucks. Ninety six thousand new jobs is well under the 150,000 minimum needed to keep up with population growth.
Bush seemed so willing to comply with putting domestic spying back under FISA. Gee, I wonder why?
Because he was told to?A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president’s spying powers. […]
The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision.
Right on cue .....MINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.
But hey. Claire and all her ilk have their new designer handbags. That means everything is ok, right? I'll bet the families of the 34 dead and missing think it's awfully important we have plenty of spare change via tax cuts so we can keep consuming more and more!
"We thought we had done all we could," state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. "Obviously something went terribly wrong."
Ok, I can believe that someone made a mistake resulting in a market whiplash for one day.
But two?
Here's todays trading:
As David Fry notes in the chart, someone is messing with us. I don't know if it's one of the big money boys, the Treasury secret bailout group or what, but this kind of action, and on this kind of huge volume, just doesn't happen unless someone with a whole lotta pull is manipulating the market.
More on that nutso WaPo editorial by Pollack/O'Hanlon: George Packer blogs for the New Yorker: "I talked to Pollack yesterday. In answer to some of the questions I raised: he spoke with very few Iraqis and could independently confirm very little of what he heard from American officials. . . . The improvements in security, he said, are 'relative,' which is a heavy qualification, given the extreme violence of 2006 and early 2007. And it's far from clear that progress anywhere is sustainable. Everywhere he went, the line Pollack heard was that the central government in Baghdad is broken and the only solutions that can work are local ones. "It was a step back from the almost definitive tone of 'A War We Just Might Win' (a bad headline, and not the authors'). That tone was misplaced, and it is already being used by an Administration that has always thought tactically and will grasp any shred of support, regardless of the facts, to win the short-term argument."
Via Froomkin:
like the title says.
This is nothing new, but it does seem to be hitting new heights. Where's the latest Great Gatsby novel?NEW YORK - Before Claire Stern goes back to school as a high school senior this fall, she needs a new tote. But not just any bag will do.
As I said, nothing new here except the degree. And of course the inevitable question is, where are the parents? The answer is, flipping the credit card out of their wallets:
"I want a tote bag by Jaye Hersh that the celebrities are wearing, they're called Market Bags," said Stern, 17, who lives in Bronxville, New York. "It's more stylish than a backpack."
The bags retail for more than $100 if they're monogrammed and Stern has noticed actresses Reese Witherspoon and Jessica Alba wearing them.
Shopping for back-to-school apparel is a late summer ritual. But as tweens and teens become increasingly savvy about fashion, they're asking for luxury products, such as $200 designer handbags and $100-plus jeans.Where parents put their foot down depends on their income, said Klaris. And while a wardrobe of Prada might be too much for a parent to handle [I'll bet more will afford it than the writer knows], they might be more willing to spend on accessories, she said.
Fit in.
"They want their kids to fit in," she said. "They're still buying T-shirts at Target, but still having that (luxury) handbag."
Right.
It's also important to note that all of this is going on in the midst of a significant decrease in the participation rate of teens in the job market.
Great values we've got going on here.
... the royal screw job:
And you know how well the Federal government is helping these people: NEW ORLEANS - A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against Hurricane Katrina victims who argued their insurance policies should have covered flood damage caused by levee breaches that flooded 80 percent of New Orleans during the 2005 storm.
Well, it's not over yet. The case will certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court.
The case could affect thousands of rebuilding residents and business owners in Louisiana. An insurance expert had said a ruling against the industry could have cost insurers $1 billion.
Oh .... crap.
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, virtually admitted to being pregnant today:
Gates:"In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys [the Iraqi parliament] to come together on legislation," Gates said. "The kinds of legislation they're talking about will establish the framework of Iraq for the future so it's almost like our constitutional convention ... And the difficulty in coming to grips with those, we may all have underestimated six or eight months ago."
Surly Gates is talking about his unborn baby as the "we" in that statement because I would guess that a majority of the other "we's" in the freaking WORLD knew this was nearly impossible.
Walter Mondale on his tenure in the Carter Administration:Since the Carter administration left office, we have been criticized for many things. Yet I remain enormously proud of what we did in those four years, especially that we told the truth, obeyed the law and kept the peace.
No minor accomplishment that. Funny how we all took it so much for granted.
You surely have heard about the bridge collapse in Minnesota. We don't know why it fell yet, but it was built in 1967.
Digby sums it up for me:Governments all over the country have been robbing Peter to pay Paul, shifting money to immediate needs like health care and child welfare and hoping against hope that the roads and bridges and buildings built during the new deal era held up. "No New Taxes" has been the rallying cry for decades now, but nobody ever said how we were supposed to pay for the things we all take for granted. And, of course,when things like this happen, the wingers blame the government and everyone decries taxes even more.
Too true. Since my teenage years the mantra of lower taxes has been trumpeted by Republicans. And of course, voters have gone right along with the call while all the time enjoying the investments made by their tax paying parents.
In California we used to have some of the best schools in the nation. But with tax cutting and tax increase laws that require a two-thirds majority to pass (in my adult years, I've only seen one instance of a local bond/tax being passed), school funding has been hurt significantly. Yes, the state has made some investments in education, but what money that is funneled to school districts is often inadequate, has so many strings as to be virtually unusable, and often comes at the expense of infrastructure needs (Sacramento leevees anyone?). Local control of quality education via property taxes is a thing of the past, and California schools are now some of the worst. And of course, this was all predicted back in the 1970's by those who opposed the tax cuts.
Like many things baby-boomer, the sense of entitlement without sacrifice has been the underlying operative political theory of politics. We're now seeing a slow motion meltdown of our tax supported institutions and infrastructure. The amazing thing is that they've held up as well as they have as long as they have. The only question I have now is just how bad does the meltdown have to go before people start to see the need to invest in the common good? We've been warned about a nation-wide crisis in lousy bridge maintenance for years yet have seemingly done little to stop the deterioration. If this bridge fell due to neglect, it will be a tragic lesson in inattention. And meanwhile, we twitter away trillions in Iraq ........
Looks like the Iraq government is dissolving .... again .....
Juan Cole:The project of a national unity government was pushed in spring of 2006 by the US ambassador of that time, Zalmay Khalilzad, as a way of mollifying the Sunni Arabs, who had been left out in the cold during the government of Ibrahim Jaafari. Jaafari's Shiite United Iraqi Alliance had a simple majority in parliament in 2005. It only achieved about 46% in the December, 2005, elections, however, and Jaafari's successor, Nuri al-Maliki, at first needed at least 15 or so supporters from other lists to retain his majority. As time went on, al-Maliki lost the support of the Fadhila Party (a splinter of the Sadrist movement popular in Basra and loyal to Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yaqubi), which has 15 seats in parliament. Then the Sadrists or followers of Muqtada al-Sadr (32 seats) withdrew from his government, pulling their ministers. Now the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front has departed.
I'm glad someone keeps track of the players because I can't.
There is no longer a national unity government.
Al-Maliki has not only made no progress toward national reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs, he has now lost the few Sunni Arabs willing to cooperate closely with him.
The 'benchmarks' not only have not been met, but the situation is going backwards from where it was in January.
Government members have come and gone before. Who knows what this will mean in the short term or whether it's the end of al Maliki. What we can say is that anarchy continues in Iraq, and not just militarily. The government is in disarray and unable to function. For all practical purposes, there is no government but merely figureheads who depend on the U.S. military to maintain and office.
Those who do not follow the stock market much might not have noticed an unusual occurence yesterday. The market was down modestly most of the day. Then, all of the sudden and in the final minutes of trading, the stock markets popped up like a cork released under water. Why?
Here's a five minute chart of the market from yesterday. Note the pop at the end of the day:
Quite unusual.
Barry Ritholz thinks he now knows why. Turns out someone made an "error" in an earlier trade and needed to "unwind" that error by buying at the end of trading.
Oooops.
That set into motion a number of reactions by other traders, often using computer programs to determine when/what to buy/sell. The result? A market swing of 200 points in a matter of a few minutes.
Mooooooooo
Gives you some insight into how tricky and crazy the stock market is on any given day.
