The next time...

someone tells you 'they hate us for our freedoms' i hope you remember this video that wikileaks released today:



There are a lot of reasons to dislike america... but the fact that we're able to see something like this and realize how corrupt and evil our government can be is one of the reasons to love the place (even though it means we see truly awful crap like this).

Dont tell me 'it was war - shit like this happens in war'... what we had was a bunch of kids playing video games, lying about what they saw - saying what were clearly civilians were carrying weapons (a camera is not a gun... it's not an RPG) - claiming they were in a hostile situation - shooting them up - then spending years covering it up so they didnt have to admit it.

Oh sure - in the past massacres have been worse - i was, afterall, a history major... but for every video like this, how many hundreds if not thousands of others happened just like it? How many more atrocities were committed by US troops that DIDNT get a leaked video... i've heard anecdotes from some who've been over there, who've said it was much worse than we've been told, who've said they couldnt talk about it... is this aberrant? or is it, as i believe, systemic?

Asking a soldier to 'think' about what they're doing before they do it makes their jobs a lot harder... it's dangerous... if there's a camera watching, and they have to worry about repercussions, then they'll hesitate and that might cost them their lives. But if they DON'T hesitate, and consider what the fuck they're doing, then you're going to get THIS - over and over and over. It turns out that that our leaders are all very aware of this calculation - ie it IS systemic... and 'we the people' dont want to be reminded that our hands are bloody. Afterall - the lead story on CNN? Tiger Woods playing a practice round of golf...

Obama Ratings Boost

Well... he went from a very clear F on health care to getting a bill passed with some things in it that dont totally suck. It's a D- of a bill... right in the 65-66 range... and a lot of the good bits will be gutted and challenged and avoided through corporate legal maneuver... but it's still passing (which is a massive improvement). Is it worth celebrating? Hell no. But it's better than shit on a stick.

The education grant move is much better... call it a B. Anytime you can stick it to the banks on one like that you get points - and it helps shore up a huge problem in this country (at a time when the last thing we need is a bunch more people trying to enter the workforce).

Banking Reform? F. Hell... that's almost a 0.

The recent education grants for Race to the Top? Good stuff actually... Probably another B. Sure, the teachers unions hate it, and it has a lot of pro-charter school focus that will hurt us in the long run, but it's still a lot of money to try some innovative education stuff - and it's worth making efforts to improve there even if they might not all be in the best directions.

So on average - Obama's moved way up... From something approaching W as worst sack of shit president we've ever had to something leaping Hoover and approaching Calvin Coolidge. At this rate he might make it out of the bottom 10.
D'oh... maybe not.

A Question for John Yoo

So I'm reading this one and i wonder 'when do their children get raped in the other room'?

Me? I'd send em all to Bagram... declare them all unlawful enemy combatants... and seize the assets of their churches (well, what's left of their churches after the predator strikes were done).

Then i'd use the outrage to 'be forced' to get rid of all these absurd unconstitutional powers...

but for some reason i doubt our republican president will do much of anything

Jackbooted Thugs

One of my favorite sci-fi authors is Peter Watts... not for Blindsight (which was good) but for the starfish books - which were imaginative and thought provoking.

Well, Peter's a bit of a nice guy... when you read behemoth you might think he's a bit twisted... but he has a paypal link on his page that you can donate to to help him feed cats he rescues from the shelter... i mean - he's really a harmless nice geeky kinda guy.

And he came over into the states to help a friend move out of their apartment.

And on the way back - at the border crossing - some cocksucking asshole holier than thou authoritarian bully pricks who get off on pushing people around because they're worthless sacks of shit the rest of their lives nice young men decided to give him a rough time extend his invitation to visit the United States.

He was charged with something akin to assault - which isnt really assault... it's more 'not doing what you're told by a border patrol person fast enough'... he was out of his car for 20 seconds... 10 of those seconds were being kicked and maced examining the ground around his car... they accused him of choking someone - but it turns out they lied - big shock they might have misremembered... but still - he did get out of his car... apparently that's enough in this day and age and in this country to get you a 2 year prison term.

It's bad enough that we hire these dickheads... it's worse that we give them uniforms that say 'they speak for me'... and it's even worse that a federal prosecutor somewhere decided that THIS WAS WHERE AMERICA WOULD DRAW THE LINE AGAINST TERRISTS. Maybe this was a wrong.

This whole story - front to back - sucked. It never should have happened... it never should have been prosecuted... and the jury never should have convicted. I am embarrassed for my country.

taking it out on everyone else

One of my mother's closest friends is a very very very successful real estate agent in north dallas. In the last 2 months, she's sold 3 homes that had been repossessed by the bank. In each of these cases she warned the buyer 'understand - you're buying this home 'as is'... it might have foundation problems... it might have other issues that you have no idea are wrong with it'... but in each case the buyers, convinced they were getting a great deal, purchased the homes.

In each case, the former owners had done awful things to the homes. Golfballs down the toilet... cement down the sinks... wiring cut with scissors... dead animals in the attic... no joke.

There is some serious anger out there - people are upset that they've spent so long working and trying and felt they were 'owed' their nice little north dallas zero-lot-line mansions... and now that their subprime and ARM ponzi scheming has come to naught - they've decided to take it out on the next guy. The banks dont care - remember - they're offloading 10 billion dollars of these toxic assets to the feds every week. They dont have to balance their books - and they really dont care about the poor sap that gets stuck with the house someone has turned into a death trap.

More of this is coming... no one's factoring the 2nd mortgages and home equity loans into the equation so long as the banks are allowed to avoid mark to market...

anectdotal? yes... but imagine for a moment how a tea-party friendly north dallas will react when the impending commercial realestate bubble collapse breaks the backs of the rest of the underwater homeowners.

If I were smart - i'd be in north dallas starting a company that repairs these houses... but i dont think i could handle all the sobbing new homeowners i'd be taking tens of thousands of dollars from.

at some point

theoretically...
justice is served.

But as i read this... specifically when i got to this passage:

Camp Greyhound held a total of 1,200 detainees in the aftermath of the hurricane, most of whom were African-Americans and all of whom suffered the indignity of having their right to habeas corpus removed.

I want to know 'when does the person responsible for that go to prison' - and is prison really the right answer?
I think a whole lot of americans should be stripped of citizenship, everything they own, and airdropped into the hills of afghanistan... but hey - that's me.

broken systems

There should be little doubt that Goldman is busy abusing the system as much as it ever did - afterall they're pretty upfront about it.

First came the news that Greece had entered into derivatives transactions with Goldman Sachs and other banks to hide its public debt. Then came reports that some of those same banks and various hedge funds were using credit default swaps — the type of derivative that kneecapped the American International Group — to bet on the likelihood of a Greek default and using derivatives to wager on a drop in the euro.

What they've done here isn't much different from your doctor buying life insurance on you before he informs you of your malignant leukemia... it sucks for you, but he's gettin a Lexus. You'd think someone would say 'wow - that's really not right' and put a stop to it - but they've bought off all the people who might do so. When people rig the markets capitalism fails - and in this case catastrophically.

Of course - big financial institutions like this are made up of individuals who dont always take the big picture to heart. Take - AIG for example...

"To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."
And then he turned on politicians who had joined the anti-AIG posse. "They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution," he said, adding: "They really don't care, and I really don't care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine."

They're acting in their own concept of short term benefit... fully aware that they're destroying the system - but they deserve their 7 figure bonuses.

It's like there's a reality disconnect here - and these are supposed to be the best and brightest. You'd think they'd attended Detroit ISD (not an article about mutilate rogues - i promise).

heh

by voice vote
without debate
if you vote for democrats - this is what you get

edit: Not to be outdone... the house passed the senate extension. How? Well - it's referred to as "Roll Call 67, “On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments” for H.R. 3961"... buried in the fine print of the medicare physician payment reform act. Of course!!! Afterall - when you're going to have a driveby shooting of the constitution, you need to make sure the doctors get paid. The democrats in the house, of course, didnt want to be seen passing thing thing - afterall it's pretty much cherry on top of 8 years of a Bush Bullshit Sundae...

Oh I know... Lloyd voted the right way. He usually does. Which pisses me off beyond measure because the party is at fault here and i want to be able to hold them accountable... So thank you Lloyd. You're doing the right thing - even if it's in the service of a national failwhale.

Once

there really was a time when editorials like this couldn't have run...
Maybe the loons were always bad - maybe they just kept the crazy to themselves or into weird little cults that fled into the nether reaches of the desert... but with the advent of the intarwebs and the giant echochambers they've somehow managed to make it all larger than life. IOne crazy homeless guy parked in front of your house screaming about Alien abductions is one thing - but a dozen? a hundred? So many that you find you have to walk on eggshells around anyone around you at work or out with friends at a party lest you accidentally set off a crazy homeless guy alien abduction rant? It just didn't used to be that way.

I just wish there were some way to break them of this behavior - it would be better for them as well as us if they used their brains for something other than their disturbed fantasies - but it isnt going to happen. It's amazing to watch though.

i find it amusing

that we see what Greece has done and bitch
esp when it was wall st that helped em do it
and we complain that their deficit to gdp is too high... when the US isnt really much better.
Of course - you are SUPPOSED to push a deficit during a down market (as per our rapping buddy maynard) - and cutting spending now would tend to be somewhat problematic for a very anemic recovery...

yes - their cash economy is problematic - the same way paying cash at the salt lick is problematic... but it's not like other european entities arent guilty of electronic subterfuge to mask revenue - and though there is some - i'm not seeing nearly as much moral outrage when it comes to focusing on their own wealthy tax dodgers...

then again - who needs moral outrage when you can just pay to elect people who alter the tax laws you dont like

at least i've got chicken

heheheh

i cant be the only one that finds this amusing

Happy Wednesday

heh

they may not be able to agree on dealing with healthcare...
or curbing executive compensation at financial institutions where the government is the largest shareholder...
or with cap and trade...

but it's a good thing we have obama in there to give us an extension to the patriot act buried 500 pages into the back of the jobs bill...

SEC. 645. EXTENSION OF INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITY SUNSETS. (a) USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005.—Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005

(Public Law 109–177; 50 U.S.C. 1805 note, 50 U.S.C. 1861 note, and 50 U.S.C. 1862 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

(b) INTELLIGENCE REFORM AND TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT OF 2004.—Section 6001(b)(1) of the Intel ligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Public Law 108–458; 118 Stat. 3742; 50 U.S.C. 1801 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

i will be voting for republicans next election

sigh

so first they stopped serving food...
then they started charging for food...
then they started charging a fee to use your airmiles...
then they started charging for bags...
now they're charging for a blanket

will i have to pay extra to use the seat as a floatation device?

American Airlines - you suck

Restraint of Trade Rant

So State Farm goes to Florida and they sell homeowners insurance... and hurricanes show up and destroy the homes... and they go to the insurance board (that restricts the price State Farm is able to charge) and the board says 'you cant raise rates 50%' - so they say 'then we're not going to sell insurance to some people'... This seems reasonable. State Farm can't really make a profit selling insurance to people who insist on building villas on the beach... This is the market in action.

The rambling questions that derive from it are

1) is there a right to insurance for homes - no matter where they're built or what they're built of? Of course not. We have rules like 'fireproof shingles' and 'dont build in a floodplane' - and you would think these would be common sense but they are routinely ignored by developers (half the foundations in the town where i grew up cracked because they built the neighborhoods on soft non-compacted prairie land or fill poured into creeks people were unaware of - with developers taking the money, declaring bankruptcy to avoid liability, and starting new companies doing the same thing overnight). So the buyer has some responsibility to make sure they're not buying something crappy... the seller has some responsibility to insure that the product isn't crappy... and we generally have rules in place for things like 'appraisers' to examine things like properties to tell both sides exactly what's going on (and then we commonly find a way to abuse those safeguards - witness, the appraiser system was a huge accelerant for the housing bubble). The idea is that government regulation can act as an umpire in the process - make sure the developer isn't some chav taking a dive in the box in stoppage time.

2) if you have a law that says 'you must have insurance to build a home' - which we do... and people can no longer build villas on the beach... then is there a 'taking' when the insurance board rejects the interest rate rise? Some on our current cournt would say yes. Bob had a villa on the beach... Bob had insurance... the cost to insure Bob's villa had previously been borne by both Bob's premiums and the premiums paid by other people living in cement-block housing behind mountains far from the hurricanes. Because of the insurance board regulating rates - we dont have a pure market system - we've moved some of the fraud gaming up into an earlier stage of the process (instead of someone taking advantage of the system at the back at the expense of the insurers, they'd moved the fraud up into the front at the expense of other homeowners) - but that was part of the equation when Bob bought the land and built the villa...

this gets us to healthcare (which isnt the final stop)...

if a healthcare company can look at your well fed facebook friends and blog posts about food and tweets about how much you love cooking bacon, and through some simple heuristic analysis determine that you're likely to be overweight and suffer from cardiac disease... should they be allowed to say 'Bob is higher risk than Wendy - who's a member of a triathlon facebook group' and charge you a different rate? I know that many insurance plans offer either discounts if you are in a health club, or discounted memberships to health clubs on this basis - but that's the carrot, and this is a bit more invasive stick. In some ways - this means saying 'if someone insists on smoking cigarettes - should they bear the financial burden of that behavior, or should society attack the problem in a backdoor manner - ie we tax the cigarette makers and transfer the money to the entities that are going to have to cover the costs of treating the disease'. We use gas tax this way - the more gas you use, the more tax you pay because the more wear you put on the roads. Big Trucks are weighed at the border crossings to assess penalties if they are doing too much damage to the asphalt. If the answer to all this is no - then should they be allowed to say 'We dont want to insure Bob... people who like duck liver are a huge problem for us financially'... Bob has a right to eat whatever he wants - does he have a right to cheap insurance? or should Bob bear the brunt of the cost for Bob's lifestyle choices.

which we can take to banks...

if the govt, as umpire, make rules that say 'society isnt going to bear the brunt of your excess' that seems fair - but it's not a completely 'unfettered market'... does saying 'it's not our problem to sort out the fact that you've been trying to circumvent those rules' seem a reasonable response? There are some who would argue the only time we should have rules is when there's a demonstrable and dire impact to the system for everyone, not just the many who will be victims. This isn't a matter of a sports analogy like 'if the penalty for intentionally breaking Brett Favre's neck is 15 yards - but it wins you the game... wont you do it every time?' - because in that scenario there are two actors who can each break the necks of the opposing team's quarterback. This is more 'if greece refuses to sort out it's economic mess... then, well, does germany let it and the euro fail?