-Karloff, In The Role Of-

a. The Federal Reserve b. The federal government c. CMO tranches d. Cerberus
e. All of the above

Paulson: Bandaids For Frankenstein

Picture a vast Baron Frankenstein's laboratory overrun by sociopathic gangsters obsessed with cobbling from their butchery as many monsters as fast as they can, using whatever resources they can beg, borrow, or steal, hacking, conning, and bribing anything that moves. Throw into this pandemonium a handful of blindfolded overseers who can't tell one model of monster from the next, or from the gangsters, or, often, from each other, since, variously, any of these creatures may appear in any other role, and justify it all with the faux science of several centuries' worth of corrupt academic models.

That's our economic "system" that Paulson thinks we can regulate, in large part by backing the biggest beast in the mix, the Fed, with a box of bandaids:

"The plan would merge some federal bank regulators, weaken the agency that regulates the stock market and broaden the shoulders of the Federal Reserve, which will become the chief regulator for the safety and soundness of financial markets.

"The Paulson plan...would allow insurance companies to opt out of state regulation in favor of a proposed federal insurance regulator. It would merge the regulation of the stock market and futures market. This is to better reflect how commodities like oil and soybeans have become a new investment vehicle that rivals stocks and bonds.

"And for the first time, hedge funds, which are private pools of capital for the ultra wealthy, would come under federal regulation, albeit with a light touch.

"...The collapse of confidence (resulting from the housing mortgage scam) recalls market behavior during the Great Depression, and is the reason the Federal Reserve stepped on (sic) March 16 in to prevent the failure of a giant investment bank - Bear Stearns -and made available short-term loans worth an unimaginable half a trillion dollars.

"...But Paulson leaves it to states to enforce federal regulations on independent mortgage brokers - the same states that failed to rein them in during the housing boom.

"...Paulson's report recommends that the SEC streamline self-regulatory provisions and make it possible for even more self regulation to increase 'product innovation and investor choice.'"

Yeah, that'll fix it, more monster innovation.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/32050.html

And meet the Board members of the Fed, all of whom were appointed by boy george, and half of whom worked for him:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/bernanke.htm

And for a more coherent approach to political economy, there's Herman Daly's "radical views on economic cosmology, which, in his vision, placed the economy squarely inside the global ecosystem, instead of the other way around...Daly's parting shot (was) not only at the World Bank, but at the entire edifice of neoclassical economics. First a believer, then a reformer, he is now content to remain outside the fold as a professor at the University of Maryland, working not in its economics department but in its school of public policy. "That's not accidental," he says:

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2003/04/10/bank/index.html

-Qom, Iran-

---site of the weekend's ceasefire negotiations and preeminent center for Shi'a studies.

Iran Brokered Cease Fire In Latest Maliki-Sadr Contest

It's a hell of a state of affairs, george bush, when the Axis of Evil has to save your stooge in Baghdad.

Call it what you will, surge, splurge, or purge: our idiot leaders in Washington have no idea what they're doing. Out Now:

"Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran's Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.

"'We asked Iranian officials to help us persuade him that we were not cracking down on the Sadr group,' said an Iraqi official, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.
He described the talks as successful but said hard-line Sadrists could goad the government into over-reacting and convince Sadr that the true aim of the Iraqi Security Forces is to destroy the Sadrists.

"...Sadr issued a nine-point statement Sunday saying he would renounce anyone who carried arms against the government and government forces. The statement also asked the government to halt all raids against the Mahdi army, end detentions of militia members who had not been charged and implement the general amnesty law.

"...The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/32055.html

Lookee, Lookee, Wright And Willy

---The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, bane of Obama's obligatory affiliation, at

guess whose 1998 prayer breakfast.

Best Atheist Diatribe Of The Day

"...bigotry of all sorts is freely available, and openly inculcated into children, by any otherwise unemployable dirtbag who can perform the easy feat of putting Reverend in front of his name."

--- Christopher Hitchens, writing this month in Slate:

"And this clerical vileness has now reached the point of disfiguring the campaigns of both leading candidates for our presidency. If you think Jeremiah Wright is gruesome, wait until you get a load of the next Chicago 'Reverend,' one James Meeks, another South Side horror show with a special sideline in the baiting of homosexuals. He, too, has been an Obama supporter, and his church has been an occasional recipient of Obama's patronage. And perhaps he, too, can hope to be called 'controversial' for his use of the term house nigger to describe those he doesn't like and for his view that it was 'the Hollywood Jews' who brought us Brokeback Mountain. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee adorns himself with two further reverends: one named John Hagee, who thinks that the pope is the Antichrist, and another named Rod Parsley, who has declared that the United States has a mission to obliterate Islam. Is it conceivable that such repellent dolts would be allowed into public life if they were not in tax-free clerical garb?"

(Obamafans, do not go here:)

http://www.slate.com/id/2187277/pagenum/all/#page_start

C.R., Poland Boycott Beijing Olympics; Germany Will Not Attend Opening

"The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.

"As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

"...Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/29/germany.olympicgames2008

A New Theory Of Poverty

A few decades ago one of the wiser members of the bureaucracy in which i worked put this question to us in a training session:

"Why would anyone believe that poor people choose to be poor? What people would choose to be miserable, or disabled?"

i no longer remember the context. It didn't matter, because that question served, for me, to dispel the cliche liberal and conservative attitudes about poverty that have continued prevalent in programs of social welfare (and their absence). It let me understand why some poor people i knew were functional in their poverty, while others were devastated by it.

It also reminded me that the street activists whom the Lindsay Administration had embraced were correct in some of their key assumptions about poverty, however misdirected their politics proved (in less than a year, the legislature in Albany responded to kill their efforts).

Now, it seems, someone has developed that core notion into a systematic presentation. But in addition, there seem to be two key ideas that are even bigger than the immediate subject:

1. We have to stop assuming functional opposites and dualities where they don't exist except semantically, and recognize how deeply and treacherously they operate in popular and academic belief systems.

2. The idea that the more problems we have, the less likely we are to deal with any of them, may be far more potent than we think.


"In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence.

"...To an economist, this is irrational behavior. It might make sense for a wealthy person to quit his job, or to eschew education or develop a costly drug habit. But a poor person, having little money, would seem to have the strongest incentive to subscribe to the Puritan work ethic, since each dollar earned would be worth more to him than to someone higher on the income scale. Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. Social liberals have countered by blaming racial prejudice and the crippling conditions of the ghetto for denying the poor any choice in their fate. Neoconservatives have argued that antipoverty programs themselves are to blame for essentially bribing people to stay poor.

"Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.

"Poverty and wealth, by this logic, don't just fall along a continuum the way hot and cold or short and tall do. They are instead fundamentally different experiences, each working on the human psyche in its own way. At some point between the two, people stop thinking in terms of goods and start thinking in terms of problems, and that shift has enormous consequences. Perhaps because economists, by and large, are well-off, he suggests, they've failed to see the shift at all..."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=1

-Elusive Higgs Boson-

---in a simulation.

Most Excellent Science Quote Of The Day

In case your portfolio of doomsday scenarios is running thin:

"There is some minuscule probability, the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

---Nima Arkani-Hamed, particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, regarding a law suit filed in Hawaii federal court, charging that CERN's Large Hadron Collider could create black holes to consume the planet.

"The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Fraud Stalking NFPs

"...four professors who specialize in nonprofit accounting, found that the typical theft from a charity was committed by a female employee with no criminal record who earned less than $50,000 a year and had worked for the nonprofit at least three years. The amount she stole was less than $40,000.

"The most costly cases, the study found, involved male executives earning $100,000 to $149,000 a year. The thieves in such cases had typically been with the organization the longest.

"But what is getting the attention of nonprofit leaders is the report’s estimate of the overall cost, which the authors put at $40 billion for 2006, or some 13 percent of the roughly $300 billion given to charity that year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29fraud.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

Big Dunno Of The Day Quote

"I'm not exactly sure what triggered the prime minister's response."

---George bush, of the Maliki government's "offensive" in Basra.

Could it be the upcoming provincial elections?

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-bush29mar29,0,7351215.story?page=1&track=ntothtml

Big Duh Of The Day Quote

"we are operating with a good dose of opaqueness."

---a senior official familiar with U.S. intelligence in southern Iraq, quoted in the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/28/AR2008032803622.html?wpisrc=newsletter

And for a correspondent's personal narrative of a night spent with insurgents in Sadr City:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/28/AR2008032803810.html?wpisrc=newsletter

-Worst Minimum Wage Job In Nation-

Surge And Purge: Renewed Violence In Iraq

Gareth Porter reports on the backlash to US/ISCI attempts to subdue Mahdi elements in the south.

Of course you'd never know what was going on from the media coverage that described the American casualties in the Green Zone this week as abstract consequences of "indirect fire" (rockets maybe lobbed accidentally by gifted kindergarteners on some moon in the Andromeda galaxy), the Pentagon's press release about how the campaign in the south is strictly an Iraqi initiative, or bush's slop-lipped little speech this morning; once again we are supposed to imagine irrational violence spawned by rogue bogeymen and terrorists, trained and funded by Iranian sources.

bush did betray the big bone lodged in his crop, however---Iraqi oil remains nationalized.

"WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shiite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr's self-imposed ceasefire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus's strategy for controlling Sadr's forces as a failure.

"Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday's rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran...Petraeus statement was clearly intended to divert attention from a development that threatens one of the two main pillars of the administration's claim of progress in Iraq -- the willingness of Sadr to restrain the Mahdi Army, even in the face of systematic raids on its leadership by the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

"...The rocket attacks appear to have been one of several actions by the Mahdi Army to warn the United States and the Iraqi government to halt their systematic raids aimed at driving the Sadrists out of key Shiite centres in the south. They were followed almost immediately by Mahdi Army clashes with rival Shiite militiamen in Basra, Sadr City and Kut and a call for a nationwide general strike to demand the release of Sadrist detainees.

"The signs that the Madhi Army will no longer remain passive mark a major defeat for the U.S. military command's strategy aimed at weakening the Mahdi Army."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41737

Merger Of Satellite Radio

On the day Hillary gave her largely empty Rx for the economy, we might remember the Clintons' hands in media deregulation; a couple hours later comes the announcement from CNN,

"The Justice Department has approved a merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and rival XM Satellite Radio."

Yeah, i was kind of worried otherwise about them starting star wars. Way to go, Justice. Thanks for looking out.

Bill Buckley's Bitchin' Obit

Gore Vidal gets the last word, setting the epitaph on his longterm antagonist's headstone, and it's no requiescat in pace.

Some of the better lines in this piece:

"Although Buckley was often drunk and out of control, he was always a spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude."

"Buckley was a world-class American liar on the far right who would tell any lie he thought he could get away with."

"Years of ass-kissing famous people in the press and elsewhere had given him, he felt, a sort of license to libelously slander those hated liberals who, from time to time, smoked him out as I did in Chicago, when I defended the young people in Grant Park by denying that they were Nazis and that the only 'pro- or crypto-Nazi' I could think of was himself."

"...his brain-dead son Christopher had a hand: 'Buckley bridled at bullies.' And who was the bully in context? Myself."

"There was no lie he would not tell to get back at those who defeated him in debate."

"...after the congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male... (Buckley's son) Chris weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, 'He was a knightly man': Who was—the cocksucker recipient of Buckley’s charity? Or his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?"

"RIP WFB—in hell."

i won't spoil his closing line:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080320_gore_vidal_speaks_seriously_ill_of_the_dead/

Petition Chinese Gov On Tibet/Beijing Olympics

http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/7002/petition?petition_KEY=48

-National Cemetery-

---Arlington, USA

-Monument To The Unknown Soldier-

---Baghdad.

Easter Greetings: 4000th Troop Killed

"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were blown up in Baghdad, pushing the U.S. military death toll in Iraq to 4,000 just days into the sixth year of a war that President George W. Bush says the United States is on track to win.

"The U.S. military said on Monday the soldiers were killed on Sunday when a roadside bomb, the biggest killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad. One soldier was wounded.

"On the same day dozens of Iraqis were killed in rocket and mortar attacks on the U.S.-protected 'Green Zone' government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad, and in other bombings in the capital and elsewhere..."

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2423186320080324

Germany Warns China On Olympics

"Germany's foreign minister has warned China that its response to the crisis in Tibet may jeopardize the Summer Olympics in Beijing, a newspaper reported on Friday."

So what are we waiting for? Suggest many letters and emails to our representatives and papers.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Tibet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Mafia Faces Of Bear Sterns

Courtesy Fortune, here's a look, with glossy photos, at the faces of the some of the big loser dealmakers linked to the Bear scare.

The rogues' gallery starts with current CEO Alan Schwartz---with estimated losses of over $115M---overseeing the "sale" to JPMorgan. But save your tears; this is likely far from the complete picture:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.bear_big_losers.fortune/index.html

-Made It To 2001-

Dec. 16, 1917-March 19, 2008

R.I.P.

Arthur C. Clarke Dead

"There is no one of his caliber or vision on the scene today ... Clarke's contribution was to motivate people to go after careers because they wanted to help shape a certain kind of future, to be at the beginning of something of millennial importance."

---Alan Stern, NASA

Spitzerspritz: Pt. II, Revenge Of The Subprimes?

Today Danny Schechter passes the Spitzer drama to Greg Palast, who connects the dots to the subprime scam and the Fed bailout:

"This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds.

"...Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

"...Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called 'securitization'...they took a bunch of junk mortgages...and re-packaged them into 'tranches' of bonds which were stamped 'AAA'... These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).

"...Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of 'federal pre-emption,' Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

"Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

"...Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers...Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

"...It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

“'Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.'

"Bush, Spitzer said right in the headline, was the 'Predator Lenders’ Partner in Crime.' The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.
Spitzer wrote, 'When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.'

"But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story – of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all – now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun."

Of course, Palast is going easy on the Dems; it was in November 1996 that the Clintons signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the 1933 protections separating commercial and investment banking.

http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/#more-1979

And read the full Spitzer editorial, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime," published in the Washington Post Feb 14:

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1428782501.html?dids=1428782501:1428782501&FMT=FT&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=baa0dafc0e36b71a72ac7db5d7911d29&date=Feb+14%2C+2008&author=Eliot+Spitzer&desc=Predatory+Lenders%27+Partner+in+Crime

-If You See Something, Say Something-

"If You See Something, Say Something!"

"If you see something, say something!"

Schechter points out that AMTRAK has adopted the security slogan promoted by the NYPD.

And oh yeah while you are saying something, open your brief case, open your purse, take off your shoes, and don't forget to give the cameras a full frontal. Oh hell show them your driver's license and organ donor card while you're at it.

Shades of snitching, a la 1984. Isn't that how the poor son of a bitch gets rope-de-doped, by his squeeze's nasty little spawn with the see and sniff mindset?

http://bl111w.blu111.mail.live.com/mail/ReadMessageLight.aspx?Aux=4%7c0%7c8CA53F64CC75C90%7c&FolderID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&InboxSortAscending=False&InboxSortBy=Date&ReadMessageId=f13f4af0-c0be-4d31-899c-65352d0de8fd&n=626825523

-Gatun Lake, Panama-

---through which the Canal runs.

House Meets In Rare Secret Session

"At 6 p.m. yesterday, the House of Representatives -- the People's House, as lawmakers like to call it -- turned itself into a private club, determined to shield its deliberations from the prying eyes of the American public.

'"I will bring information . . . to the secret session that some members are aware of but others are not,' promised a coy Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), declaring it his solemn 'obligation to bring information and communicate information that is confidential and that I believe ought to be kept secret.'"

So what was the big deal that warranted a rare secret session, secured by solemn oaths? (And why does the oge get the sense that Blunt and company were doing that other House's bidding here?) Let's look at the five precedents in the august history of our politics:

"December 27, 1825:
To receive a confidential message from the president regarding relations with Indian tribes.

"May 27, 1830:
To receive a confidential message from the president on a bill regulating trade between the U.S. and Great Britain.

"June 20, 1979:
On the Panama Canal Act of 1979; implementing legislation.

"February 25, 1980:
To discuss Cuban and other Communist-bloc countries' involvement in Nicaragua.

"And then July 19, 1983:
"To discuss U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua."

Heady and heavy stuff indeed: sticking it to Native Americans, sticking it to the Brits, sticking it to our swarthy brethren in Panama (or teasing it out this time), in Cuba, and Nicaragua.

So who were they concerned with sticking it to last night?

Per Dana Milbank, who found enough time away from his endless soundbite appearances on cable TV news to dash off a piece for the Washington Post, the frauds who compose the People's House were---

"...debating whether to grant immunity to telecom companies that cooperate in a clandestine government eavesdropping program. A vote on that program, a rewriting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will come today. Last night was the time for an hour-long secret debate about the spy bill -- preceded by a 90-minute public debate about whether to have the secret debate.

"It was the pinnacle of a day of pointlessness on both sides of the Capitol..."

Not quite pointlessness, Dana. Villainy and cowardice, maybe; this time they were concerned with sticking it to the American people, on behalf of the mischief of the government and telecoms. Let's see how the vote goes, maybe today.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/03/closed_house_secret_session_fi.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/13/AR2008031304435_2.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Shucks, Schechter's Selection's Hamsher's Dissection: Spitzerspritzen

(Pronounce that title rapidly five times...)

We would have liked to see Danny cut loose on this one, but apparently dumping chicken soup on his newly rehabed Mac was too much for him. So he turned it over to Jane Hamsher, who asks a lot of the right conspiracist questions.

No doubt someone, or a whole army of someones, was lubing the loco for this train wreck, but, like Murder on the Orient Express (which didn't crash), the farce suggests just too many suspects, from Wall Street to Albany to DC:

"ABC is reporting that Eliot Spitzer came under the attention of the Feds because his bank reported 'suspicious money transfers' to the IRS. The Justice Department brought it to the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad, who looked into it and found that payments were made to a company called QET, which did business as The Emperor’s Club.

"All kinds of questions arise here:

"1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor...why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3? (I am told that because of the Patriot Act, banks do not have to notify their customers.)

"2. What is a USA doing prosecuting a prostitution case? This isn’t normally what the feds spend their time with.

(Hey, Jane, just a minute here: remember what the FBI was doing in NOLA during 9/11?)

"3. Mike Garcia is a Chertoff crony...he sent a prosecution memo to DC two months ago asking for authority to indict a public figure (Spitzer). Which means they had their case made long before the wire tap of February 13. Why did they then include (Kristen's safe sex) conversation in the complaint?

"4. How did Spitzer’s name get leaked to the media, and who did it? Didn’t happen to Dave Vitter.

(That's an easy one: Vitter preaches abstinence and intelligent design and hasn't pissed off anyone except for the 5 liberals who know who he is. Besides, only the FBI thinks it's prostitution if it's in New Orleans.)

"5. Why did Mike Bloomberg suddenly start talking about running for governor recently? And why did he give $500,000 to Joe Bruno?"

And so on. And for those who buy this Spitzerspritzing-as-Greek-tragedy nonsense, check out Bill Maher's far simpler explanation at Huffington:

"I'm going to throw the remote through the TV if one more news twink says something on the order of 'When we come back, we'll look into what drives a successful man like Eliot Spitzer to risk it all...'

"Oh yes, let's convene a panel of experts for that. Let me help you: because he wants to get his nut off! Stop with all the analysis! ---please, he wanted to CUM WITH SOMEONE! Stop overthinking this: people need sex, and married people generally aren't getting it..."

And for those who haven't had a good peek at Spitzerkitten Kristen, AKA Ashley Dupre, here's the pix:

http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=4471

http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/spitzers-trysts-stop-ov_b_91141.html

Carlyle Capital Collapses

"A publicly traded affiliate of the Carlyle Group said yesterday that lenders were seizing its assets, sending the fund, Carlyle Capital, into insolvency.

"The collapse of Carlyle Capital is the first time a Carlyle Group fund has failed and is a stinging embarrassment for the District private-equity powerhouse, which has built an international reputation with a client list that reaches around the world.

"...By yesterday the fund had defaulted on $16.6 billion of debt and said it expected to default soon on its remaining debt. The fund's $21.7 billion in assets were exclusively in AAA mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traditionally considered secure and conservative investments, which it was using as collateral against its loans..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/13/AR2008031300061.html

Facts Of Financial Life

"The 400 highest-income Americans--people who on average make well over $100 million a year--were paying 30 cents on the dollar when (Bill) Clinton came to office, 22 cents when he left.

"Under (George W.) Bush, they're paying 17."

Got that? The Clintons reduced the taxes on the superrich by 8%.

Bush, by 5%.

But:

"...there are five million more poor people today than in 2005... 37 million Americans, a size roughly equivalent to the population of California, live below the official poverty line. Thus, in a nation of almost 297 million people, 12.6 percent are poor (for instance, a family of four that makes less than $19,971 is considered poor).

"And one out of every three Americans is considered low-income."

And finally:

"...half of the Senate's 100 members are also millionaires and their average net worth is $8.9 million."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/millionaires-who-rule-us_b_91029.html

Boss Of Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit Quits

"Admiral William Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East, whose views on Iran and other issues have seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon said Tuesday afternoon.

"The retirement of Fallon, 63, who only a year ago became the first navy man to be named the commander of the U.S. Central Command, was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that he had accepted the admiral's request to retire 'with reluctance and regret.'"

"...an article in Esquire magazine by Thomas P.M. Barnett...profiled Fallon under the headline, 'The Man Between War and Peace.' The article highlighted comments Fallon made to the Arab television station Al Jazeera last fall in which he said that a 'constant drumbeat of conflict' from Washington that was directed at Iran and Iraq was 'not helpful and not useful.'

'"I expect that there will be no war (with Iran),' he said, 'and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.'"

"In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress... Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

"Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be 'an ass-kissing little chickenshit' and added, 'I hate people like that', the sources say...Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources. The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress..."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/11/mideast/pent.php?page=1

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235

The Right Obit For Buckley

The oge allowed the passing of the old creep without remark, until a suitable obit suggested itself. Courtesy Justin Raimondo's column for today, it is found:

"For neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores… And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington – even with Truman at the reins of it all."

---William F. Buckley, Jr., 1952, quoted by Murray N. Rothbard, in The Betrayal of the American Right

Just substitute Hillary for the haberdasher, and you know why she is the chosen heir to the bush regime.

-Bell On His Prototype, c. 3 AM-

"The Red Phone In Black And White"

i don't know if i agree with this; maybe that's because i personally thought the ad was a ridiculously transparent piece of fearmongering, from its opening frames. But not so in the case of Harvard sociology prof Orlando Patterson:

"I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s 'Birth of a Nation,' the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat...

"...It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/opinion/11patterson.html?th&emc=th

Biofuel Spills Plague Industry

That's a euphemism for plaguing us---the people and the planet:

"...spills...at the Alabama Biodiesel Corporation plant...about 17 miles from Tuscaloosa, are similar to others that have come from biofuel plants in the Midwest. The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams.

"...Iowa leads the nation in biofuel production, with 42 ethanol and biodiesel refineries in production and 18 more plants under construction, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. In the summer of 2006, a Cargill biodiesel plant in Iowa Falls improperly disposed of 135,000 gallons of liquid oil and grease, which ran into a stream killing hundreds of fish.
According to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, but scientists say that position understates its potential environmental impact.

“...as with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill.”

"Other states have also felt the impact.

"Leanne Tippett Mosby, a deputy division director of environmental quality for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, said she was warned a year ago by colleagues in other states that biodiesel producers were dumping glycerin, the main byproduct of biodiesel production, contaminated with methanol, another waste product that is classified as hazardous.

"...In January, a grand jury indicted a Missouri businessman in the discharge, which killed at least 25,000 fish and wiped out the population of fat pocketbook mussels, an endangered species.

"Back in Alabama, Nelson Brooke of Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the Black Warrior River and its tributaries, received a report in September 2006 of a fish kill that stretched 20 miles downstream from Moundville...
In August, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, in a complaint filed in Federal District Court, documented at least 24 occasions when oil was spotted in the water near the plant..."

No tech will ever benefit the people and the planet as long as it is applied in service to the reigning god of profit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/us/11biofuel.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

The Toxi Byproduct Of Solar Voltaic

"In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth...stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Greg Palast On That Colombian Laptop

OK, so we have Colombia's desperate bush-backed Uribe's rightwing special forces charging across the border to shoot some FARCs in Ecuador in their sleep and discover a magic laptop that just happens to reveal Chavez' plans slipping the guerillas $300M for uranium to make dirty bombs...

Yeah, that same $300M that won't go away. Magically documented in a magically discovered laptop.

At least they could have embellished a little, maybe recovered the hard drive, brought it back for data retrieval in a CIA lab...

Give me a break. Or check out Palast sniffing the trail of the three goons running for the White House:

"We can trust (Equador's) Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

"The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

"But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton...issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s 'right to defend itself.' And she added, 'Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.' Huh?

"...It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, 'the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.'

"(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

"Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, 'Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,' presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

"...But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, 'I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.'”

Like Palast says, that's not quite English, but it's better than what the dueling duo said.

Answer the phone? Any of these frauds?

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/300-mllion-chavez-farc-fake

Larry David Does Hillary

"Here's an idea for an Obama ad: a montage of Clinton's Sybillish personalities that have surfaced during the campaign with a solemn voiceover at the end saying, 'Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?"'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/on-the-red-phone_b_90338.html

FAIR: Is Critical Journalism Incomprehensible To NPR?

On the same day that the oge and some colleagues received an FCC ruling in favor of renewing the license of a local PBS station that we claimed was not operating in the community's interest, FAIR asks:

"Is Critical Journalism Incomprehensible To NPR?

"A recent NPR news segment (Weekend Edition, 2/23/08) that dismissed an Iraqi journalist's question about the pressing issue of U.S. immunity from prosecution suggests that critical journalism may be a foreign language to the public radio broadcaster.

"The lead example NPR cited of such an 'incomprehensible' question was actually a perfectly sensible one--posed, through a translator, by a journalist for Radio Sawa, a U.S. government-funded radio station in Iraq.

"... If the network's justice correspondent cannot fathom questions about the state of the Iraqi legal system posed by Iraqi journalists, maybe it's not the peculiarity of Iraqi media that listeners should be most concerned about.

"ACTION: Ask the NPR Ombudsperson why NPR responded so dismissively and condescendingly to the questions Iraqi journalists posed to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

"CONTACT: NPR Ombud Alicia Shepard Email form on NPR's website:

http://www.npr.org/templates/contact/index.php?columnId=2781901

Or just stop listening to the croaking of a dinosaur up to its neck in the tar pits.

http://bl111w.blu111.mail.live.com/mail/ReadMessageLight.aspx?Aux=4%7c0%7c8CA4C5A699EFA10%7c&FolderID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&InboxSortAscending=False&InboxSortBy=Date&ReadMessageId=4ea9a27d-a082-4e2a-b0da-0444e833df83&n=298153121

Schechter: Hillary Camp To Hijack Caucus Vote?

"The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Clinton campaign training materials regarding Tuesday night's caucuses ominously advise supporters to take control of caucus sign-in sheets and vote tallies especially 'if our supporters are outnumbered.'

"[Clinton caucus training material] goes on to say, 'If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serves as the Secretary, in the interest of fairness.'
'"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions.'

"Comments Mark Crispin Miller: Now there can be only one purpose in trying to control the tally of votes under circumstances in which a campaign knows it's outnumbered, that it will lose an honest counting of the votes: to alter the true vote. To cheat. To steal. To suppress the votes of Texas caucus attendees and subvert the caucus process..."

Well, if Danny knows, and the Dallas News knows, and we know, Obama's people certainly know. Right?

http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2008/03/04/the-votes-of-texas-are-upon-us-why-o-ohio-whats-at-stake/

-Coffee Plantation, Quindio, Colombia-

---featuring one of the major crop exports. Not to forget the plantains.

Other News

While the media bombards us with the silly notion that there is any policy significance or relevance in the primary results for today, several other happenings are noteworthy.

(But a caveat: i know how much a female president means, symbolically, to so many women, just as i know how much the election of Obama means to so many blacks. Their hopes and frustrations are valid. But neither candidate is the right person on whom to drape these hopes, and either will, finally, disappoint. Whichever wins will spare the other's supporters the pain of disillusion, if not the remorse of what-might-have-been.)

In the meanwhile, our government's usual treacheries in Latin America have brought Venezuelan and Equadorian troops to the borders of Colombia, eco-terrorists (or x-environmentalists, depending on your point of view) torched five green luxury houses (is that an oxymoron?) in a Seattle wetland, Israel's campaign of genocide, funded by your favorite elected officials, has reduced Gaza to even lower depths of despair, and this:

"UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council on Monday imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, even though some members acknowledged that more penalties were unlikely to change Tehran's mind."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-irannukes4mar04,0,1278898.story?track=ntothtml

Rice In Cairo On The Crisis In Gaza

CAIRO, March 4:

"Call it what you will, we want the violence to stop. First and foremost, Hamas needs to stop firing rockets into Israeli cities. Israelis have to be very concerned about the innocent people in Gaza who were caught in this crossfire, and the Israelis need to be very concerned about the humanitarian situation. Those are discussions we're going to have."

Yeah, Condi, you go. Role-model some of that humanitarian concern.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030303293.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Peter Carlson: The Ballot Brawl of 1924

"This convention is almost as vain and idiotic as a golf tournament or a disarmament conference."

---H. L. Mencken, of the 1924 Democratic Convention, NYC, that took 103 ballots to nominate West Virginia's John W. Davis:

"The band played 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah' and the delegates limped home, weary and bleary, their self-loathing exceeded only by their loathing of the other Democrats.

"In the November election, Davis was creamed by Calvin 'Silent Cal' Coolidge, a laid-back dude who didn't let the duties of his office interfere with his afternoon nap."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030303277.html?wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2008030303404

The Bank Implode-O-Meter

http://bankimplode.com/

Global Crisis In Food Prices Pt 2

"...global food prices have now risen by more than 75 per cent since their lows of 2000, jumping more than 20 per cent in 2007 alone...

"China...has accounted for up to 40 per cent of the increase in global consumption of soyabeans and meat over the past decade.

"...Perhaps the most important drivers of price gains over the past year are developments in world energy markets. High oil prices have encouraged a policy focus on biofuels, including lashings of generous financial support... the US has used 20 per cent of its maize production for biofuels and the European Union 68 per cent of its vegetable oil production. This change in usage has boosted prices, reduced the supply of these crops available for food and encouraged the substitution of other agricultural land from food to biofuel production.

"... during the extended period in which supply continues to lag behind demand there are likely to be significant social and economic costs. Three in particular stand out.

"Most important, a period of protracted higher food prices will be bad news for many of the world’s poorest people and its poorest economies. While the share of food in the consumption basket of a rich country such as the US is relatively low, at about 10 per cent, it averages about 30 per cent in China and more than 60 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.

"...the big losers are likely to be the urban poor, typically a politically volatile group, while many of the rural poor will also suffer.

"Finally, higher food prices will call for tighter monetary policy..."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb66fbb0-e489-11dc-a495-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

1% Of American Adults Now Incarcerated

The highest rate in the world---and we haven't even resorted to debtors' prison (sort of):

"For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs.

"...The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

"Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.
"...The largest percentage increase — 12 percent — was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear ...noted that the state's crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state's inmate population has increased by 600 percent.

"...The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect a parallel increase in crime or in the nation's overall population. Instead, it said, more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as 'three-strikes' laws, that result in longer prison stays.

"...While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

"The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails — a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080228.wusprisons0228/BNStory/International/home