Can't we be friends?

Glenn Greenwald just posted (again) a pretty key data set when you're evaluating what kind of collaboration exists in the US Senate:

To support the new Bush-supported FISA law:
GOP - 48-0
Dems - 12-36

To compel redeployment of troops from Iraq:
GOP - 0-49
Dems - 24-21

To confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:
GOP - 46-0
Dems - 7-40

To confirm Leslie Southwick as Circuit Court Judge:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 8-38

Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran:
GOP - 46-2
Dems - 30-20

To condemn MoveOn.org:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 23-25

The Protect America Act:
GOP - 44-0
Dems - 20-28

Declaring English to be the Government's official language:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 16-33

The Military Commissions Act:
GOP - 53-0
Dems - 12-34

To renew the Patriot Act:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 34-10

Cloture Vote on Sam Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 18-25

Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 29-22

Once again, it is worth pointing out that in those key votes - a grand total of four GOP senators did not vote in lockstep with their party.
They'd be:

-on Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran:
Hagel (R-NE) Retiring in 2009
Lugar (R-IN)

-on Declaring English to be the Government's official language:
Domenici (R-NM) Retiring in 2009

-on the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq:
Chafee (R-RI) Lost 2006 election

Of those four, three are gone this year.

There's a lot of ink out there about GOP 'maverick' senators, a lot of press conferences about 'breaking with the administration' - but on these issues - it's abundantly clear that it's all a lot of talk.

Not really usable, but...

...you have to admire their sense of whimsy.

A dutch department store's website:


Let the page load and wait a few seconds.

Tipping point? Are you kidding me?

Sivacracy is a great blog. They bring me all manner of light, fun stuff - and then drop a big bag of awesome like this:

Ever since it came out, I have had big problems with Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" thesis. I had even bigger problems with Blink. But that's another issue.

I am thrilled that Clive Thompson has profiled the brilliant sociologist Duncan Watts and asks the question, Is the Tipping Point Toast?

Don't get Duncan Watts started on the Hush Puppies. "Oh, God," he groans when the subject comes up. "Not them." The Hush Puppies in question are the ones that kick off The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller about how trends work. As Gladwell tells it, the fuzzy footwear was a dying brand by late 1994--until a few New York hipsters brought it back from the brink. Other fashionistas followed suit, whereupon the cool kids copied them, the less-cool kids copied them, and so on, until, voilà! Within two years, sales of Hush Puppies had exploded by a stunning 5,000%, without a penny spent on advertising. All because, as Gladwell puts it, a tiny number of superinfluential types ("Twenty? Fifty? One hundred--at the most?") began wearing the shoes.

Duncan Watts's research tells advertising execs precisely what they don't want to hear: All their clever (and lucrative!) targeted viral campaigning may ultimately be less effective than good old mass marketing.

K? So you have Gladwell saying trends can occur due to the actions of a small few - Watts says he's full of it.

Jumping into the detail we have Gladwell:

To help illustrate the cultural sway of his hypernetworked protagonists, he tapped the renowned 1967 "Six Degrees of Separation" study by sociologist Stanley Milgram. In that experiment, Milgram had given letters to 160 people in Nebraska, with instructions to ferry them to a particular stockbroker in Boston by passing the letters along to a colleague socially closer to the target. It famously took roughly six links to deliver each letter. But in a finding that particularly excited Gladwell, it was the same three friends of the stockbroker who provided the final link for half the letters that arrived successfully. They were the Connectors, as Gladwell dubbed them, who govern the flow of social information. If you wanted to get to that stockbroker, you couldn't approach just anyone. You had to go through those three friends. Possessed of huge Rolodexes, these folks are the gatekeepers, Gladwell wrote, "and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few."

vs. Watts:

But Watts, for one, didn't think the gatekeeper model was true. It certainly didn't match what he'd found studying networks. So he decided to test it in the real world by remounting the Milgram experiment on a massive scale. In 2001, Watts used a Web site to recruit about 61,000 people, then asked them to ferry messages to 18 targets worldwide. Sure enough, he found that Milgram was right: The average length of the chain was roughly six links. But when he examined these pathways, he found that "hubs"--highly connected people--weren't crucial. Sure, they existed. But only 5% of the email messages passed through one of these superconnectors. The rest of the messages moved through society in much more democratic paths, zipping from one weakly connected individual to another, until they arrived at the target.

Why did Milgram get it wrong? Watts thinks it's simply because his sample was so small--only a few dozen letters reached their mark. The dominance of the three friends could have been a statistical accident. "And since Milgram's finding sort of made sense, nobody even bothered to redo the experiment," Watts shrugs.

No experiment is bulletproof, but based on this alone - I sure know which of these two I'd be asking to repeat their results.

Gladwell? Your retort?

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, thank you for saying so...

From CJR:

Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas...delivered this line early in her Democratic response to the presidents’s [State of the Union] address:

SEBELIUS:[R]ight now tonight as the political pundits discuss the president's speech, chances are they'll obsess over reactions of members of Congress, how many times was the president interrupted by applause, do Republicans stand, did the Democrats sit? And the rest of us will roll our eyes and think, what in the world does any of that have to do with me?

A-freaking-men. Live TV can't all be great, but can we at least be spared "insight" that consists of some intern making marks on their tablet while watching the feed.

I mean, what are they trying to do? Compare bursts of applause this time to his lifetime average? Postseason?

Really, Larry, his numbers have fallen off this year. I'm thinking the GOP is going to bench him.

Truth in Art

I heard this story on NPR's Wait, Wait...Don't Tell me!

What is this picture about?

Depends on who you ask.

According to the current President of the United States, it's called A Charge to Keep (via Harpers):

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or, perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

If you bother researching the actual origins of the painting, you get a different story (via Slate):

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

And there it is - the perfect metaphor for the Bush Presidency.

Belief, uncontaminated by fact.

Keeping up appearances

Suppose, one day, I actually got my sh!t together. Would I get a medal?
-MC 900 Ft. Jesus

Lately, the logistics of life are really starting to get to me.

Use to be, work was the pressure cooker. I'd go home to be the hero – help the boy, cook a meal, spring for pizza –whatever.

Then home life got the baton, and so going to work was the place where I'd exhale and shake it off.

Now they're both dialing up the pain – and well, I'm not likin' it.

The doomsday project at work has detonated to a colossal degree. I've had fellow team members asking "to review" my past work documents. They're nice and polite – but it's clearly a CYA audit.

"Mind if I review these?" (i.e. The boss has ordered me to review your work to determine if you've screwed up, where you've screwed up and how badly you've screwed us.)

It's not personal and everyone is polite – but it's hard not to feel like the accused in some legal proceeding. "Anything else I can get you?"

"No, this is fine." And besides, we have all the digital files; I'm just here for the hardcopy.

So there's that.

At home, the boy is an enthusiastic three – making simple things complicated and complicated things impossible. Baby E is mobile and doing all the things that make 'child-proofing' seem like such a laughable term.

E and I are just on the verge of a nap at most moments of the day. We have given into the dark side and let our children watch their shows just so we can get time to do chores, get downtime, or just lie on the couch in a drooling heap.

We are closing on our house soon – and this freight train of a fact has a number of equally large problems in tow.

Financing the deal is becoming far too interesting. The lending rate that all the advice sites assured me would rise – has plummeted. So we need to back out of our earlier rate lock and sign another batch of forms. I'd like this to be done – but there are still a few more variables in play that could have us squaring our financing mere days before we close.

Closing – we need to decide on how best to finance – given some of our down payment is in investments that are (even as I type) down about 10% from where they should be. Using these funds means we eat the loss. Not using them means we will have a larger mortgage payments that will need to be paid in part from investments. Making fixed monthly payments using an ever-fluctuating amount of money is not an idea I am fond of.

Then there's the remodel – originally we'd planned on overhauling the kitchen before we moved in – this will not happen. We will now move in in a heap – and attempt two minor projects in a hurry, and do the kitchen after we're there. This means we will be without a kitchen for a good chunk of time.

Snapping back to this past weekend.

I needed to get out of the house and goof off – so I did. The forces of the universe had arranged that this activity would occur after we drove down to the house to make some measurements for the kitchen, drop off some bank paperwork, and buy groceries for brunch tomorrow.

Oh yeah, brunch. See, the Boy was talking the other day about having his cousins over to "the impartment" and E decided to make it happen. This means that Jen and her husband will come over and they will see –

Well, the total sh!tpit that E and I usually inhabit. At the point that I connect the dots on this, both kids are asleep in the back of the minivan and E and I are considering picking up coffee. E, of course has done this particular math already – but given that I will be out all night with friends, she'll be home with two kids, and my sister's family will be ringing our doorbell in less than 24 hours-

I was having one of those smash-zoom TV storyboard sequences in my head:

• mounds of dirty dishes in both sinks (we have nothing to cook with)
• junk mail, old socks, and dried food stains covering our table (no place to eat)
• laundry everywhere (on couches, the kitchen floor)
• the doorbell ringing
• scrambling to open the gate while food burns on the stove
• Jen and family politely refusing to act horrified at the sights and smells they-

-You get the gist.

Now, my sister is not a white glove kind of person, but it's hard to fess up to family that your average day is spent in a sleep-deprived haze while everything falls apart around you. Add to this that Jen is the kind of person who just gets it done. Granted, she is a stay at home mom – but she has many other challenges.

Frankly, running a house with two children makes a day job look like vacation and somehow Jen always manages to have things under control. When we're over, it's pretty seamless: there are things for guests to do – food for them to eat, and Jen never looks like she's got a care in the world.

This is why I'm imagining a sort of culture shock awaiting her as she plunges into the unending chaos that has defined our life lately.

Despite this, I go out and goof off. Mental health and all. I'm back around midnight and E's still up. Our house is still a pit, but the kids are in bed and we have groceries. E and I crank for awhile and pass out.

Morning turns into one of those "denial of reality" moments.

I'm not here. There is no brunch. Perhaps if I refuse to move out of bed this madness will stop.

Reality is not impressed.

E (who walks on water by the way) allows me to sleep in until 9am. This is Nobel Prize material in our household. Jen's ETA is 11:30.

We start. E gets the kitchen set, I start hiding the bodies in the living room. E's making her family's scone recipe and a frittata. I lamely get the sausages started and perform a few other semi helpful activities. I don't remember most of them – I think I was asleep.

The Boy insists on pouring coffee for the guests, even though they won't be here for an hour. No amount of explaining will convince him otherwise. "Dad! I need to pour the coffeeeEE!

Then he starts serving E's fruit bowl with his hands, putting huge amounts of fruit on every plate.

It's starting to unravel. We had a chance for a second, and then -

Ding dong.

They're here.

At this point, I'm figuring we'll survive, but the kids will all have to kneel around the coffee table and I'm thinking they won't want to eat anything we have. Then they'll be bored because we don't have enough to do and we only have the crappy coffee, because the stuff I bought was whole bean and the grinder's in storage and-

---And it goes great. There was nothing to worry about. E's scones are awesome, the frittata is awesome. The kids have no issues because they have something to do: play with their cousins.

Kids occupied = time to relax and chat, so we do. It's indescribably cathartic. Baby E is having a good time, the Boy and his cousins are goofing off watching Supernanny (yeah, I know – but what the hell, eh?)

E totally rocks. I was so dreading this, and this was such a good time.

Now I'm wondering if we just don't have enough company, because for awhile there, we actually had our sh!t together.

They must have naked pictures...

What do the Telcos/GOP have on these guys?

I cannot otherwise explain how the Democrats are not only failing to stop Telco immunity, but are actively trying to get it passed - and using strong armed tactics to boot.

Glenn Greenwald kicks it off with a rundown of why Rockefeller is a complete tool

When Rockefeller smugly announces that he "thinks we will prevail," the "we" on whose behalf he is so proudly speaking is Bush and Cheney, lawbreaking telecoms, and all Republican Senators. The only parties whom Rockefeller is so happily "defeating" are civil liberties groups and members of his own party. That is what is making him feel pulsating sensations of excitement and "smugness."

There is some rumbling according to Open Left's Tim Tagaris that might stop this, but it's pretty much up in the air.

If we are able to ward off the cloture vote, there is almost no way in hell a bill gets passed before that deadline. None. Not with all the amendments, debate, and Dodd filibuster pending. Which makes it all the more likely that one of two more things will happen.

a.) There will be an extension of some kind. Maybe a month, maybe two weeks ... we shall see.

b.) We have a real showdown on our hands: No bill has been passed because Dems don't want to eavesdrop on terrorists vs. Republicans think its more important to give telecoms a free ride than to eavesdrop on terrorists.
Even more drama? Ok. Presidential style ...

Everyone is going to be in D.C. for the State of the Union Address, that is a given. Which means, Obama and Clinton will actually have to vote (that's novel!). What's more, they can show some real leadership by convincing their endorsers in the Senate (McCaskill, Nelson, Bayh) who voted to table Judiciary to stop the Republicans on Monday.

And if Republicans do manage to get sixty votes, a filibuster is certain to ensue in the subsequent 30 hours. Which of them will stick around into the next day to support that effort?

I'm not sure how the House's refusal to pass Telco immunity plays into all of this, but hopefully there isn't some (oft used, little mentioned) method to sidestep that with some conference committee shenanigans.
ARRRRgh!


I declare today "National Bitch-slap Your Democratic Senator day"

I'd love to see the Dem Presidential candidates grilled on their view of Telco Immunity. Pity it's too late for Carolina.

Praise as a defense mechanism

"That was the greatest performance I have ever seen in a goalkeeper. It was an honor to be on the field with him."
-Brazillian striker on US goalkeeper Kasey Keller, after Brazil's 1998 loss to the United States

I remember being impressed with this quote. "Romario thinks our keeper is the best. Wow!"

Seamus Malin took the wind out of my sails the day after. "Of course Romario thinks he's the greatest. He just lost to him, and he needs to save face."

I learned something that day.

So now, when I hear the French Central bank say that the trader who screwed Société Général out of seven billion dollars is "exceptional" and a computer "genius," I know they are just covering their ass.

The key quote in that NYT article comes from (of all sources for ethical guidance) Cantor Fitzgerald:

Howard Lutnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, said that if one trader had managed to undertake fraud on this scale it revealed bigger weakness in the risk management system of the bank.

“One person could engineer it, but how could one person finance it?” he asked. “The question for the risk management department is: How was this kind of fraud financed? Where did that money come from?”

No kidding. Guy costs his employers seven billion dollars, before anyone notices and (this part I love) the guy is still at large.

Of course they're going to get him – just like that dork who brought down Barings but I mean, cripes. You'd think after the first few billion they might have noticed and, um started ratcheting up the scrutiny maybe?

You have to hope that this guy left an "I'm sorry" note before he bolted, that would be too perfect.

Société Général says they are "serene," that's nice – never mind the SWAT team of accountants tearing through the building behind me.

The only thing missing would be "No one could have conceived of this happening," although I'm sure that was floated in their PR sessions.

Cry for the republic

...the Democrats are here.

Harry Reid on FISA, again

Give me the documents, or else I'll join with you in a spirit of bipartisan unity....

I think I just pulled all my eye-rolling muscles.

Maybe you don't want to reconcile

From CNN:

[Joshua Milton Blahyi], has returned to [the Liberia] his troops [formerly] terrorized to confess, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.

"I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment," the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. "But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life -- and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved."

Even the bloodiest of bleeding hearts would find it hard to be impressed with this kind of 11th hour change of heart.

However there is a side note to this story that is impressive in its own way:

Joshua Milton Blahyi… [is] known as Gen. Butt Naked…His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon's practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Okay, that's just over-the-top freaky. Dude's into human sacrifice, cannibalistic ritual and fighting naked.

And he had followers.

Followers who are willing to watch his [bare] back as he repeatedly charged into combat. Even accepting the [all but explicit] implication that drugs were involved – how many like minded-psychopaths did this freakwad manage to recruit?

Makes you question the notion of reconciliation – I mean, without the hope of amnesty, the truth may not be known – but once the truth is known, how do you forget stuff like:

Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil.

The sacrifice was typically "the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat," he told The Associated Press Saturday.

Look! In the caucuses, in the primaries, it's a bird-

-no it's a superdelegate.

If that word sounds like the protagonist in the least interesting comic book ever, you might want to check out CNN's site explaining "Why delegates matter"

It does a nice rundown of a process most people (myself included) are only dimly aware of.

With Clinton claiming a victory based on percentages of caucus goers - and Obama claiming victory based on numbers of delegates won, you can see why these terms will start to matter.

This thing goes to the wire, we all may get to see more than we care to about how this particular presidential sausage gets made.

The definition that kind of reaches out and grabs you is the Superdelegate:

Superdelegates comprise 796* out of the total 4,049* delegates. Superdelegates are usually Democratic members of Congress, governors, national committee members or party leaders (such as former presidents and vice presidents). They are not required to indicate a preference for a candidate, nor do they compete for the privilege like pledged delegates.

Essentially, these are the well connected people within the Democratic party (the asterisks on the totals are there because the number can drop if people cannot make it to the convention, are deleted by the winning candidate and a host of other bizarre reasons).

Pledged delegates are selected with the understanding that they will vote for a given candidate at the convention. Superdelegates are not elected and, in perhaps my favorite understatement on the site-(emphasis added)

There is no official process to win superdelegates because they can vote for whomever they choose. But a candidate can use whatever powers of persuasion they have at their disposal to win the support of a superdelegate.

I'm sure they can, and I'm sure they will.

Given that the magic number to win the nomination is 2,025 - it's rather jarring to think that almost 800 people in the delegate pool are independent from the will of the electorate.

If Obama takes South Carolina and Super Tuesday doesn't result in a crushing win for somebody - this could be a veeeEery interesting group of people to watch.

The political animals on cable are already rubbing their hands in the hope that there might actually be a national convention that chose a candidate instead of just another pep-rally.

Part of me would really love that to happen - but I have to say, it's really an ointment or suppository kind of choice:

A primary system that anoints a favorite based on a few states (disenfranchising the bulk of the party faithful), or a convention where the preferences of the electorate are traded as commodities - and where a small group of partisans can overrule popular will.

Not exactly the kind of process that inspires monuments and statues, eh?

Thank you, Ian!

Okay, how many things do we do simply out of habit?

I mean, I'm in the business of looking for easier ways to do things - and I'm no different. "This is the way I've always done this."

Apparently this Ian guy has come up with a better way to tie your shoes.

From my (admittedly limited) testing - the two top knots look really promising.

One's a faster way to tie your shoe in the same old knot.

The other's a quick version of a double knot.

The fact that I can learn them in seconds and have a reasonable shot at remembering them speaks volumes about the knots and the way Ian shows you how to tie them.

Neat!

Getting a handle on Plastic-Man

It should be obvious, but I would love to be the people at CJR.
Getting paid to dig into media coverage like a rabid dog.

Here's the Campaign Desk laying into the latest dust up with Romney:

The most interesting part of the video to watch, for my money, wasn’t Johnson, but candidate Romney—and, specifically, Romney’s reaction to the questions Johnson was asking. The candidate seemed flustered and angry that Johnson was questioning his assertions. And surprised about the follow-ups.

Let me repeat: a journalist questioning him made Romney angry and surprised. Which is telling—and I don’t mean about the candidate.

Bingo.

We've done almost two terms with a "how-dare-you-question-me" administration. I'm thinking we could do with a bit more humility from those in power - and a hell of a lot less in those questioning them.

Finding smoke, looking for fire...

Emptywheel has a nice post on the Vanishing White House Emails, and the ever changing description of what is and isn't missing.

Tony Fratto vs the press:

Q Tony, on the subject, could you address the missing White House emails and the law suit? It is a subject of reports this morning. Are there in fact the emails missing? What's the likelihood of their recovery versus the --

MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this, and you saw the court filing on this, and our declaration in response to the judge's questions -- I think to the best of what all the analysis we've been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there's no evidence of that. There's no -- we tried to reconstruct some of the work that went into a chart that was entered into court records and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart. And from everything that we can tell, our analysis of our backup systems, we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing.
...

Q So that would mean that if you were asked, you would be in a position to comply with a request to produce those documents?

MR. FRATTO: Yes, which documents? I mean, if someone has a specific request for documents and they would like us to search for particular emails, of course we could search for emails -- and we have. And we have been responsive to requests in the past.

Which begs the question -- "Does this even matter?"

Hell, yes.

You have (yet another) instance where an investigation cannot proceed because documents have (yet again) disappeared.

Read Rep. Waxman's response to Fratto. Priceless.

I F-ing H8 IVR

The creation of IVR has made contacting corporate America by phone even more annoying than it already is.

There's a great website out there, GetHuman.com that maps shortcuts through IVR and phone tree hell and posts them for all to see.

This is good, but LifeHacker found another shortcut that (while not work safe) can also lower your stress level:

2. Swear like a sailor to skip directly to a human operator.
When that Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system's making you navigate an endless menu of options, put your potty mouth to good use. Some IVR's are programmed to listen for naughty words and speed you along to human help when they hear them. Adam gave this trick a try and dropping the F bomb did indeed zap him right through to a human.

Love it.

Zing!

CJR with a spot on observation about dateline manipulation.

Maureen Dowd’s New Hampshire morning-after column was probably written in Jerusalem, despite trumpeting the words “DERRY, NH” right up top.
...
The New York Times has acknowledged that the people-on-the-scene quotes from Clinton’s victory party were collected by an assistant, as is common practice. And they’re defending the bylining as totally kosher, claiming she’d been in Derry, for some time, at some point.

Well, okay. But if the in-house rules allow—indeed, sanction—such easy manipulation, what good could they be?

Not like anyone's assessment of an article hinges on where the author claims to have been while they wrote it, but at this point - you might as well drop the location from the byline entirely.

This can be distinguished from the assumption that a TV reporter knows more about what happened at a location when they are standing in front of it. They can be just as ignorant back in the studio, but at least the camera will establish that they were, in fact, there.

Putting a fabricated byline in the article, would be like the TV reporter green-screening themselves to report "from the scene."

John King, arrogant ass

Much as I admire Glenn Greenwald, I cringe when he locks horns with some MSM personality over something that (to my mind) seems trivial.

Wrestling with a pig and all that.

This time around, however, GG has laid into CNN's John King - and King has obviously made a fool of himself with his reply.

At issue was GG's criticism of John King's interview of Sen. McCain.

GG made the observation that King's interview (as aired) lacked substance. Four questions and all of them are fluff.

Fair point, right? After all, the transcript bears this out.

King's response?

I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game.

But a friend who understands how my business works and knows a little something about my 20 plus years in it sent me the link to your ramblings.
...
Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.)
...
You clearly know very little about journalism.

Where to even begin with that?

He wants Glenn to know - UP FRONT - that he doesn't read his stuff, but A FRIEND told him about the article and he HAD TO RESPOND.

That's like "I was flipping channels yesterday and I saw this bit on The View..."

King has a fair point that not all of his interview was aired, so perhaps Glenn's broadside is better trained on the producers of The Situation Room, who pared it down to the meaningless four questions that got aired. But his point gets lost in his avalanche of aristocratic vitriol Surely, his subtext assures us, I am SO above this. Don't you realize who I am?

Mr. King, your reputation doesn't enter into this. You got transcripts of the unaired portion that shows what a hard hitting journalist you are? - let's see 'em.

The idea that your access, your critics, or your posturing have any bearing on whether or not your interview had substance is what calls your understanding of journalism into question.

Pounding a nail in the coffin of Hollywood extras....

Okay, I'm just going to pretend that this past week hasn't been a professional sh!tstorm and post something I found on YouTube.

Two comments:

1) Bang goes my dream of sneaking into movies as a extra in some big budget epic; and
2) I want these guys collection of toys. Seriously.

(Work safe, but they play Frankie Goes to Hollywood)

Couldn't happen to a nicer team...

...so long Dallas. Better luck next decade.

Ha!

Drinking can be hazardous to your health

(Reuters)

A drunken Australian man who took a nap between railway tracks has had a miraculous escape after he was run over by a freight train and received only minor injuries and a bump on the head.

...He apparently hit his head on the train while trying to sit up.

Moral of the story: If you wake up and feel like you've been run over by a freight train - don't get up.

Real ID gets delayed

(From CNet)

If the Bush administration gets its way, all Americans will be required to present Real ID-compliant identification documents--or risk facing "inconveniences" at airports and federal buildings--by 2017.
...
"What the Department of Homeland Security has done is to kick the can down the road to the next administration, and probably not just to the next administration, but conceivably two to three administrations from now," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU attorney, said on a conference call with reporters.

What started out as a fine idea, mutated into an unfunded mandate, and then became a bloated pile of regs looking to land on people - is now some other administration's problem.

Yeah, that's leadership.

Soundbite of the day

From the AP: (emphasis added - to highlight the bite)

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

...In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation ''was halted due to untimely payment,'' the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

...said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU's national security policy counsel. ''To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say the check is in the mail.''

Check the audio

(via Emptywheel and the NYT)

Okay, so while I very much doubt that the US Navy would fabricate the video and audio that it released to the world, but you gotta wonder about this little tidbit:

On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.

The audio includes a heavily accented voice warning in English that the Navy warships would explode. However, the recording carries no ambient noise — the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind — that would be expected if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small boats that sped around the three-ship American convoy.

Pentagon officials said they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from shore, or from another ship nearby, although it might have come from one of the five fast boats with a high-quality radio system.

So, you don't know, but you go public immediately?

Who do you think you are, the media?

The new surge

(via Reuters)

U.S. considers 3,000 more troops for Afghanistan

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will consider sending some 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan to thwart any spring offensive by Taliban militants, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

...

Violence has surged in Afghanistan over the past two years, with the hardline Islamist Taliban fighting a guerrilla war in the south and east and carrying out high-profile suicide and car bombings across the country.

For months, Gates has pressed NATO allies to provide more troops for Afghanistan. But if the Pentagon chief backs the proposal, it will show Washington has concluded it will have to provide a large share of any extra combat forces.

Afghanistan was and is the necessary war.

And we have been losing it.

It would be nice to think the administration has decided to actually do something, but this minor bump in troop levels is more likely to be just another placebo - intended to pacify domestic, rather than foreign opposition.

Witness to a beating

Before I forget, if you haven't seen Jon Stewart's interview of Giuliani adviser (and author) David Frum - you really should.

Oh what a beatdown. Stewart's wit was in rare form as he effortlessly pummeled Frum, Giuliani, and the current administration.

As Frum criticized Huckabee for being weird, Stewart cut him off

"Have you looked at your guy?"

Frum just had the deer in the headlights look. And that was just the warmup.

It isn't often you get to see a true partisan derailed in mid-talking point, but what a lovely sight it is.

Now, if only journalists could learn to swat aside the talking points. This could be a better world.

Cutting Through Merrill Lynch's "Hairball of risk"

Another one from CJR.

Anyone interested in understanding how and why the housing bubble is bursting would do well to read Ryan Chittum's write up on collateralized debt obligations or CDOs.

Read the WSJ piece, too - but Chittum's piece is a great warmup.

As has happened before, the banks have once again run amuck - and we are all being asked to save them from their foolishness.

The WS piece, Wall Street wizardry amplified credit crisis details the sad history of a particular CDO called Norma.

Chittum's piece is the better intro, but essentially, the CDO is pooling mortgages so they can be sold off to investors. If you're willing to take more risk, you can buy a "slice" that will be affected first by losses. More risk averse investors would choose a slice that losses would only affect after they'd burned through the riskier slices (i.e. you get a lower return in exchange for getting screwed last)

Norma sold some $525 million in CDO slices - largely the lower-rated ones with higher returns - to investors. Merrill declined to say whether it kept Norma's triple-A rated, $975 million super-senior tranche or sold it to another financial institution.

Many investment banks with CDO businesses - Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and UBS - frequently kept or bought these super-senior pieces, whose lower returns interested few investors. In doing so, they bet that the top CDO slices, which typically comprised as much as 60 percent of the whole CDO, were insulated from losses.

By September, Norma was in trouble. Amid a steep decline in house prices and rising defaults on mortgage loans, the value of subprime-backed securities went into a free fall. As increasingly worrisome delinquency data rolled in, analysts upped their estimates of total losses on subprime-backed securities issued in 2006 to 20 percent or more, a level that would wipe out most triple-B-rated securities.

Oops.

Y'know what's interesting about all of this?

Here's naked capitalism, doing what we expect - making money. In order to make money they are incurring risk.

What's messed up is that they are masking the level of risk to their investors with these CDOs, and then - then when things go south in a big way - they run to the government for help.

Collateralized debt obligations? More like collective debt obligations.

The cost of their risk is paid by everyone. Socialism - at least when it comes to losses.

When it comes to making money - then it's laissez faire, baby. Hands off, big bro - the market needs room to do its business.

Hah. This is going to get worse - the commercial real estate sector was up to the same kind of shenanigans. I wonder how long it will be before that batch of banks is running to the government looking for a handout.

Don't call it a comeback...

-she's been here for years.

CJR' Michael Meyer makes a great observation:

WaPo, Newsweek’s Stumper blog, Politico, and several others use headlines today rechristening former favorite Hillary Clinton as the new “underdog” of the race. Allow us to offer a clarification of terms. The underdog is the individual or team expected to lose going into a particular contest. Once the contest is actually taking place, the underdog can pull a surprise upset or perform as expected, but, even if he wins, he remains the underdog. Conversely, UCONN’s players do not become the underdogs because they are down fifteen points at half-time. They’re still the favorites, they’re just losing.

The media pendulum will now swing in her favor.

Where once her every move was seen as desperate and out of touch - now the press will fawn over her. Now she's "Scrappy" and "serious."

It must be a miracle, after all what else could explain how the press got this one wrong?

Well, start with the polls that obviously missed the mark:

-and add to that a mad rush to believe that what surprises the media must be unstoppable.

Off the cuff, I'd guess that New Hampshire voters are belligerent enough to see something sold as inevitable and say "Nah, I'm voting for the other one."

Those branded as anti-establishment took Iowa. New Hampshire voted for the establishment brands.

We'll see where it goes from here.

Oh, and Mitt loses again... how sad for him. Ha!

Retrograde motion

I'm hardly a fan of Jonathan Alter, but I couldn't agree more with this observation of his:

...hatred for the Clintons [is] the only thing the fractious GOP base can agree on this year. Sadly for her supporters, Hillary is indeed as much of a unifier as Obama—but of Republicans.

And that's it exactly. Her nomination would strengthen the right. Other Democratic nominees could encourage GOP voters to cross the aisle.

Especially this year.

The soul of the GOP appears to be in play - (evangelicals supporting Huckabee, libertarians supporting Ron Paul, and the corporate and establishment Republicans divided between Romney and McCain)

This is no time to unify these factions with Hillary.

Oh, sure - damning her for her effect on the opposition seems unfair, but there are plenty of substantive reasons to devalue her as a candidate.

-She's not drawing in the independents; the people the Dems MUST have if the evangelicals turn out for the GOP.
-She was just another wallflower when it came to Iraq.
-Every other word out of her mouth appears to have been crafted by her staff.

Even in her much maligned "emotional moment," she managed to close with her boilerplate dig against Obama's experience.

We all know these candidates have advisors and messages and talking points - but the mark of the quality candidate is that they can give you their platform and not sound like there is a hand up their ass making their mouth move.

That's the problem with Romney - not only is he devoid of any principle, he always sounds like he's getting his words from someone else. Like he's playing a part.

While I'm on Romney – this is what I think is so comically tragic about his campaign: He's fighting yesterday's war. Two or three years ago, somebody in his exploratory committee decided that a Regan-esque campaign would be a sure thing. Everybody liked Reagan, right? They counted on their sculpted candidate, their oceans of cash and the fact that Reagan would be a brand voters are comfortable with.

But Reagan was a long time ago – and Reagan nostalgia has no answers for the problems voters are looking at today. Reagan's persona of a charismatic cold warrior gives no comfort to people staring at quagmires at home and abroad.

The GOP has a huge black eye, thanks to the Bush administration – and there's a reason every candidate is parroting the word "change" any time they're in front of a microphone.

People want somebody to clean house. Romney's coming in and sounding just like the kind of Washingtonian we see on the news every night. Measured double-speak and pat phrases.

Hillary has the same problem. She started out (so it would seem) with the assumption that associating herself with her two-term husband would be a good thing – and it's not.

We want something new and she's brightening up an antique. "Look, look! A new coat of paint"

Unlike Romney, her coffers don't appear to be ready to go the distance. Huckabee and McCain will give Romney a bloody nose – but they will need money to keep going. Romney cashbox ensures he's going to be in the mix until February.

Hillary's making the same assurances, but you gotta wonder what kind of presence she will have on Super Tuesday if the polls are right about getting whomped in New Hampshire. It won't get better in South Carolina, so it's unclear where her firewall will be – where her cash goes to stop her slide.

All the usual criticisms of this process still apply: it's stupid that so few people are involved in thinning the herd of candidates; it's stupid that these early races are about attracting financing rather than voters; on and on - but this is the system that these candidates are playing in. I just don't see Hillary's backers lining up to write checks for somebody who consistently misses the top slot.

Romney can weather a lot, and it looks like he'll have to. McCain and Huckabee can tag team him all the way into Michigan. They'll have to fight for dollars though, and I don't think either of them can polish off Romney alone.

McCain's claim to being a maverick is a total sham, so it's a shame he's going to carry the torch of change for the GOP. As if. This man has sold his soul repeatedly in the past two years, with empty platitudes and sucking up -not only to the current administration, but to the religious right he'd formerly denounced.

In contrast to this sorry lot, the Democrats can field multiple candidates that at least offer the veneer of being a breath of fresh air - they shouldn't blow it on more of the same from Ms. Clinton.

Fer cryin' out loud...

This better not become a big story, because it has "Who gives a sh!t?" written all over it:

(from the NYT via CJR)

In perhaps her most public display of emotion of the presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s eyes welled with tears, and her voice cracked dramatically on Monday, as she...

-SNORE!

I'm no fan of Hillary, but is this really a story?

This is on par with the Time's (virtually fact-free) deconstruction of the Clinton's marriage, WaPo opining on her neckline and gasbags discussing her aging in office.

The fact that it happened on video, doesn't mean it has any news value.

Misery loves company

(Via CJR's Anna Bahney, scroll down to item 2, although the bit slamming Business Week's non-interview of Richard Perle is worth reading as well), there is another real estate bubble looking to burst - commercial real estate:

Lending standards fell, starkly… it used to be that banks made loans for no more than 80 percent of the value of a property to ensure a healthy cushion of protection, but by the early part of 2007, loans were sometimes made for 120 percent of a property’s value.

We didn’t know that. And, it seems, Wall Street firms have been playing the same game of pass-the-bag-of-doo-doo with commercial-mortgage securities as they did with residential ones. In this case, large pools of securities are backed by just a handful of buildings; a couple of defaults will reverberate far and wide.

Wonder what kind of deal the corporate lenders and mortgage holders will get?

Wanna lay odds that they will be markedly different from those offered to holders of sub-prime mortgages?

Skirmish = gunfire. No gunfire, no skirmish.

What the hell is with the NYT?

U.S. Military Reports Skirmish With Iran
By Mike Nizza

Iran and the United States have been playing chicken for some time now, but reports this morning say that the game turned unusually direct on Sunday.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats harassed three U.S. Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz Sunday, in what the U.S. military considers a “significant provocative act.”

Military officials told NBC News that two U.S. Navy destroyers and one frigate were heading into the Persian Gulf through the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz when five armed “fast boats” of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard approached a high speed, darting in and out of the formation.

Okay, I get that there's this zeitgeist where we should begin bombing Iran to stop them from global domination, but how hard is it for the Times to not get caught up in the hype?

Remember how Iran had a nuclear (sorry, NOO-cular) weapons program - then we found out it had been halted three years ago?

You figure the Times could at least learn million times bitten/ million-and-one shy.

Internet Explorer (8) on acid

(H/T to SitePoint's Tech Times)
Only because I used to sling HTML - this seemed like a funny postscript:

Better bundle up, it’s a cold one in hell today.

I doubt this will get rid of all the IE specific hacks out there, the overwhelming popularity of IE will at least mean that a standards compliant version will soon be the dominant way people see the web.

Death to browser-specific hacks!

Dewey Defeats Truman

Anybody else read the Bhutto interview in Sunday's Parade Magazine?

That was the oddest thing.

Bhutto is assassinated on December 27. Parade runs with an interview of her on January 6th asking "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against Al-Qaeda?"

Obviously, the interview was from awhile ago (November) and Parade got caught with its publishing pants down.

What's particularly odd was the fact that there was no disclaimer on the article. It appeared as if Bhutto was still alive, with no editor's note or introduction. Admittedly, there was a notice somewhere in the paper it came in, but the magazine itself had no mention that Bhutto had been dead for over a week.

Why no correction/revision? Parade's Publisher, Randy Siegal explains:

It would have cost several million dollars to do, but that's not the reason, the rationale for doing it. We believe that what Benazir Bhutto had to say should be heard and this story deserved to be told.
(via NPR)

Two observations:

First, When people say that something isn't about money – it's about money.

Second, had they posted a correction, her story would still have gotten out; it would simply have taken longer to do so.

It's not that I feel the publishing of the article was offensive or anything – it's more of a window into the publisher's lead time. This was an interview made in November, going to press in late December that was not stopped given ten days notice.

The news cycle is hardly up to the second, but it's interesting to see how far off the mark a publisher can be, given their distribution model.

TSA: Keeping you safe. Our data? Well, not so much…

As one of the agencies keeping evil from our shores, the Transportation Security Administration isn't exactly covering itself with glory when it comes to information security.

CSO has flagged them with two of the Top 10 Data Breaches of 2007.

7. TSA -- Doing DHS Proud!
Victims: 3,930
Class Action Outrage Scale: 7 out of 10 lawyers
D’oh! Factor: 3 out of 5 Homers

Two laptops with names, addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers and commercial driver’s license numbers of truckers who transport hazardous materials are missing and considered stolen from TSA. Don’t worry, though. How easy could it be to pose as commercial truck driver transporting hazardous materials with only that information?


3. TSA, Part II -- Still Doing DHS Proud!
Victims: 100,000
Class Action Outrage Scale: 3 out of 10 lawyers
D’oh! Factor: 4 out of 5 Homers

Thieves stole a computer hard drive with the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and bank account and routing information of current and former employees, including federal air marshals. Don’t worry, though. How easy could it be to pose as an air marshal with only that information?

While it is extremely unlikely that these robberies had anything to do with one another, isn't it nice to know that the TSA stores this information, unencrypted, on machines that are unsecured?

Lovely.

Ba-Rock on!

In the back of my mind, there will always be that little voice that tells me that this man will inevitably disappoint. That putting faith in a political candidate is among the worst of investments.

But listen to his victory speech in Iowa, read the transcript.



Memo to the GOP: Look at Barack Obama. Now look at the woeful collection of mouthpieces you claim as your candidates.

If Obama just set the bar, you gotta do a hell of a lot better just to be lousy.

Who in the heck likes corn?

Yes Iowa is happening. No – I really don't feel like saying much about it.

Legions of better informed observers are beating this topic to death. Of course it matters. It broke Dean and made Kerry (and therefore ensured another four years of the Bush administration), but I can't help but gripe about how stupid the whole thing is.

First off – when it comes to picking a good candidate, the horserace is just the least relevant thing possible. The manufacturing of momentum is what passes for debate, and we get wall to wall coverage of this mis-step or that "attack."

Huckabee is running an ad! OoOOoooo
Huckabee's not running his ad! AaaAaAAaaah
Huckabee's running his ad at a press conference announcing he's not running his ad.

-Media, are you frickin' kidding me?

How's about Iraq? Grilling candidates about the schism between GOP candidates who want to stay the course and those who want to bail out? Any story there??

No??

Add to that the Byzantine rules of the Iowa Caucus make this an exercise in gamesmanship rather than a representation of the will of the populace.

Oh, and Iowa – Iowa, gets to speak for the nation? – anoint she/he-who-should-be-funded?

When the hell did that seem like a good idea?

Stupid freaking system.

I want what I want

(Via TPM)

Now the president is trying to manipulate the pocket veto. He cannot do what he is doing, yet he does it anyway.

He's saying the Defense Authorization bill is dead - killed by a pocket veto. Congress is saying that the bill is not dead, but can be revived by a vote to override.

Congress has to put the screws to him, and thankfully – it appears that they just might.

Fighting the good fight

I forget where I first heard about New Orleans reporter, Chris Rose – but it must have been NPR. Rose was a columnist working the gossip/celebrity shift at the Times Picayune until Katrina hit.

Then he became the voice of the city, raging against what nature and incompetence had done to New Orleans.

Then he went nuts.

CJR has a great article about the man. Worth a look.

The Redemption of Chris Rose
By Barry Yeoman

Rose’s writing was as urgent as anyone’s. “I saw a dead guy on the front porch of a shotgun double on a working-class street and the only sound was wind chimes,” he wrote in his September 7 column, the first after his return. From then on, three times a week, he brought readers into a world where intimacy and darkness often commingled.

He wrote about the friends and strangers who gathered on his stoop every night, including a couple who returned home only to make a drunken suicide pact a few weeks later—they couldn’t stand living in “the smoking ruins of Pompeii.” The man killed himself; the woman didn’t. Rose wondered aloud, “Where are we now in our descent through Dante’s nine circles of hell?”

Bomb proof car

According to CNN, Benazir Bhutto was inside her car when the bomb went off.

They have a worthwhile sequence of events slideshow.

The Pakistani government's version of events is now a complete shambles, and so they are dutifully withdrawing it (H/T to TPM)

Look out kid, it's somthin' ya did...

(via TPM, emphasis added)

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

It's like somebody in the RIAA has got it in their mind to alienate everyone who has ever bought music.

Good luck prosecuting us all.

Calling you out

Wow.

The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission are going public (in the NY Times Op-Ed) with an obvious truth:

Those who knew about [the now-destroyed CIA interrogation] videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.

Can't get any clearer than that.

I can practically hear the beltway punditry opining how the American People (whom they've presumably never met) "are tired of these scandal investigations." How we should "move on" and "get to work on the important issues."

For my money, it's hard to get to an issue that is more important than an executive that is flouting the law and refusing all inquiries about their conduct.

Read the Op Ed.

Let the hearings commence.