RBC vs. some numbers

Josh Marshall nails it (nailed it, actually. As in well before the RBC meeting):

The Clinton campaign argues that if the delegates from these non-sanctioned primaries are not seated hundreds of thousand of voters in Florida and Michigan will be disenfranchised.


[snip]

What doesn't get mentioned, however, is this: it was widely reported and understood in both Florida and Michigan that the results of these primaries would not be counted. And based on that knowledge, large numbers of voters in both states simply didn't participate.

If the DNC were now to turn around and decide to make these contests count after all, these non-participating voters would be disenfranchised no less than the people who did turn out would be if the DNC sticks to the rules and doesn't seat any of the delegates.

Exactly.

How does this get solved with the least amount of screwage? Because the primary was a total clusterf*ck, it cannot be viewed as representative. It cannot be done over. The RBC is making the best out of a bad situation.

This crowing about disenfranchisement is just the GOP/Clinton campaign talking point they want to stick in your head. The Clinton campaign was all for punishing these states when they believed they were inevitable. The GOP simply wants to fan the flames because disgruntled Democratic voters give them better odds than a matchup of Obama vs. the trainwreck that is McCain.

All this crap about how disgruntled Clinton supporters sitting on their hands (or voting McCain) is such obvious bravado. Sure, it makes a good soundbite - but there's no way they have any data.

Any Clinton supporters out there who are pissed off - I feel your pain, I do.

But I got two numbers for you:

75 and 88.

Write these numbers down.

When you're stewing in your car in November, thinking about how pissed off you are about Obama, misogyny or how your state's delegation got screwed - I want you to take out that piece of paper and say to yourself:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75 years old.
Justice John Paul Stevens is 88 years old.

And then I want you to go to the polls and pull the lever for the Democratic nominee for President.

Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts - and two more to be named in the next decade.

You don't screw around with that.

Your filthy, filthy keyboard...

You've probably read about how studies of computer keyboards have shown that they are piled high with bacteria and filth.

If you're like me, you thought: Oh.

-and then leaned over to pick up a day-old hunk of banana off the floor and eat it.

I mean - like I'm going to clean my keyboard with a Q-tip and alcohol.

Ha.

Then there's this guy:


Yeah, that's a dishwasher. And the thought of a clean keyboard is just about the right amount of provocation to try this.

Well, that and knowing that keyboards are stupid cheap.

(H/t to Coding Horror)

Why can't journalists counterpunch like this?

The video is a bit long, and not all on point - but hear it out.


First off - Home-fricking-run.

Second - Yeah, why not? I mean, sure no network anchor could openly mock a member of the administration to their face - but the foundation of this satire is factual. The administration that claims to support the troops seems to get all wobbly once they start writing checks for something that isn't a new weapon system or a no-bid contract.

Why is it left to satirists to expose the selective memory of those in power?

Don't say it ain't so

(H/t to digby and Glenn Greenwald)

Nukes & Spooks has the best rejoinder to McClellan and the lapdog media anyone-but-me festival of blame:

we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

[snip]

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

The McClatchy correspondents who wrote this are among the pitifully few journalists who have a leg under them when they say such things. Read it.

Access to data does not equal cash

CJR found this:

...credit bureau TransUnion Coproration has signed the largest class-action settlement in history. TransUnion had sold lists of consumers based on their credit files to others in violation of federal law.

You may recall that credit bureaus are required by law to provide the public with free access to their credit reports. If you go to their website, you can get credit reports from all three bureaus for nothing.

You can't get your credit score, however - because the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act didn't require that. This means that while you are getting your free report - you will be barraged with ads and trapdoors that will ask/persuade/trick you into paying to see your number. This is stupid, but legal.

Now, TransUnion is offering as part of its settlement to provide people's credit score for free - for a period of six months.

The LA Times crows that:

TransUnion normally sells the service for $59.75 or more, giving the settlement a value that could top $10 billion.

Okay, sure - doing the math that way it sounds like a lot of money. But TransUnion isn't cutting a check - they'll change their website for six months to show the credit score and send out email alerts. After six months - they turn off the tap - and go back to business as usual.

These guys have agreed to settle a suit over allegedly selling people's credit information (in violation of federal law) and are basically getting a slap on the wrist.

A missing piece of the LA Times story would have been how much TransUnion was alleged to have made from selling credit information. Their out of pocket on this deal looks to be $75 million (not $10 billion) and I'd bet selling information brings in more than that.

As of June 16, you'll be able to go to www.listclassaction.com (or call (866) 416-3470) and sign up for one of two services.

(also via the LA Times)

*A basic service would provide free credit monitoring for six months...Those who select this service can also apply for a cash payment.

* An enhanced service would provide nine months of free monitoring, plus use of a "mortgage simulator" that lets consumers see whether improving their credit score would affect their mortgage rates and how much they could save if it did...This option also includes access to one's insurance score...

The agreement also creates a $75-million fund that would be used to notify class members about their rights, to pay attorneys and pay any damages agreed to for people who opt out of the class and sue TransUnion on their own. If there is money left in the fund after two years, it would be paid to people who applied for the cash. Consumers who received the enhanced service don't have the right to apply for the money.

I'm glad consumers will get something, but talking this up as the "largest class-action settlement in history" sure looks like they're reading from TransUnion's press release.

Glomar Explorer Redux?

Via DangerRoom:

The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines," the Times of London and others report.

Ballard was on a secret mission? That poser...? Geez...

You were fools to believe the lies I told you...

(Via CJR's the Kicker)

Former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClelland on the Press:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

and the all to easy reply...? (via Time's James Poniewozik and CJR, again)

It would be nice to believe that the shame of being called too wimpy by the guy whose job it was to keep the media in line would give the press more backbone during the next war or after the next terrorist attack. I’m not betting on it, though. It’s easier for the press to get courage, and for press secretaries to get scruples, after the fact.

Yeah, Scott. Your moral clarity showed up about four years too late.

Memorial Day

So, Memorial Day came and went. Good time, good friends, even good weather.

I'd go into it, but most of you were there.

Then there's today. Just another day to drag my kids to the place where I pay others to look after them, so I can try to earn enough to keep paying for child care.

I do the same route, day in, day out. Aside from traffic patterns not much changes.

This morning - something was different.

Rounding a corner I see the same backdrop, with a different foreground. In the grass of a long park that flanks the road is a war memorial.

I've read about them, seen the pictures - first time I actually saw it in the real. Hundreds upon hundreds of small white monuments lined up in the morning sun.

They are arranged like a timeline, and at irregular intervals a larger sign announces Iraq 2003 Iraq 2004, Afghanistan 2003, Afghanistan 2004.

And it just keeps going on. Year after year after year.

I've been to the Wall, to Arlington, Punchbowl - but the feeling was different. Seeing that number the nightly news treats like a sports score turned into a tangible presence is very uncomfortable. These dead would fill a cemetery - and not a small one.

The monument is political - filled with hopeful statements about how 'You can stop this.' No doubt most of those memorialized in it believed fully in what they were doing - but the mistakes of their leaders makes monuments like this one feel like a barely muted accusation.

Somehow the dead of other wars seem validated, the Wall at least symbolizes a lesson we should have learned.

Obviously we haven't.

Late edit:

Media Bloodhound makes a finer, and better point.

Running in place

God, but I'm tired of seeing this message. Then the install meters... all thirty of them. Then the reboot.

First, the Update Manager wants my attention - even though all it deserves is a swift kick in its digital posterior.

Second, it would be nice if you could subscribe to security updates, set a schedule and not have to be bothered every fricking time some hacker manages to break something.

Rrrrgh!

In my capacity of spokesperson, I hereby...

Let's follow the progression of Rev. Hagee's foolishness - as a tool for understanding the ritual of modern political damage control.

Hagee is sought out by the McCain campaign for an endorsement, receives it, and announces he is proud to have gotten it.


At some point, word gets out that Hagee has said some incredibly stupid things about Hurricane Katrina and Catholicism.

The Catholic League denounces his remarks, repeatedly.

Rev. Hagee issues an expression of regret to the Catholic League's president who loudly declares an end to the Rev. Hagee controversy.

Wow, the most visible Catholic critic of Hagee says the matter is done. It must be so. After all, Bill Donohue is pretty much the mouthpiece of Rome.
--

Enter Hagee's latest blunder: his statements about Hitler being one of many hunters sent by God to drive the Jews into Israel.

Suddenly, the Washington Times is quoting Jews who are defending Rev. Hagee:

And who might be among his defenders - Why it's Dennis Prager! (Who fawned all over Hagee while he was saying his incredibly stupid statements about Katrina).

A Rabbi has come out to defend Hagee as well, so that pretty much makes it official.

But wait! They throw in a gentile - Bill Donohue of the Catholic League again! He sees nothing wrong with Hagee's remarks either.

Well, that tears it - no more controversy. These guys must speak for all Jews everywhere, so it's pretty much a moot issue.

---

So in the interests of closing the circle for the good reverend, I would like to take this opportunity (in my capacity as spokesperson for all those affected by Hurricane Katrina) to declare an Official End to the Controversy over Rev. Hagee Katrina remarks.

It's a done deal. You can take it from me. The Rev. Hagee and the McCain campaign would want it that way.

Never say never

(H/t LA Times blog Top of the Ticket)

I guess when Cindy McCain said she'd never release her tax records, she meant she would release them. The first two pages of them. On a Friday night. Before a three day weekend.

Here they are: Page 1 | Page 2

I like line 73 best:

296,119

Not surprisingly, that'd be dollars.

Here's the label for line 73 (emphasis in original):

If line 72 is more than line 63, subtract line 63 from line 72. This is the amount you overpaid.

Now, I don't begrudge the McCains their success. You do well, you do well. This is America. But the next time anyone in the McCain campaign uses the word "elitist," somebody ought to hold up a copy of that page with line 73 circled.

As in: "Senator, last year your wife's was entitled to a tax refund that was six times more than the median income of American households. Wouldn't you agree that puts you in a rather elite financial category?"

Calling a spade a spade...

So last week's Daily Show showed how reluctant the media was to saying race might have been a factor in Obama's poor showing in West Virginia:


And today I see on Sivacracy that finally, a media outlet dares to bring up race as a factor. Which network? ABC, Fox?

Please...

Too stupid for words...

...but words are all we have.

(H/t to Emptywheel)

Minneapolis' Joint Terrorist Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate vegan potlucks to look for potential--what?--tahini enthusiasts?--in advance of the RNC convention this fall.

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force

Don't forget to pack the Beano, sport.

Staircase envy

(Via Lifehacker)

Okay, so this isn't the most practical staircase in the world (certainly not for people with small kids) - but what a great use of space:

It's from a London apartment and was designed by an architect, so not like your average mortal is going to rush out and make one - but still - Neat!

Owch

(Via CJR again)

60 Minutes really dropped the ball this time: after airing PR-disguised-as-journalism about a poor, victimized corporation named Biovail Corp.-

Well, turns out they weren't poor, and they sure as hell aren't victims.

CJR has the goods:

Last week, Biovail, a Toronto drugmaker, disclosed that it has pleaded guilty—forget SEC civil charges—to federal criminal charges brought by the U.S. attorney in Boston. The company, as Fortune outlines, admitted that a Bridgewater, N.J., unit had paid doctors to prescribe the heart drug Cardizem. Biovail agreed to pay $24.6 million to settle the matter, including a $22 million criminal fine.

Oops.

Shield laws

(H/t CJR)

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Cameron McWhirter relates a personal run-in with prosecutors and Ohio's journalistic shield law.

I vaguely recall the Chiquita scandal, the Enquirer came out looking pretty bad on account of a rogue reporter.

The reporter's name was Mike Gallagher:

Gallagher had lied to [the Enquirer] about having a source within Chiquita who had provided him information. Instead, he had illegally accessed Chiquita’s voicemail system himself, hundreds of times, despite being warned repeatedly not to do so by editors and lawyers. ... Under intense pressure from Chiquita, Gannett fired Gallagher, paid $14 million to Chiquita, and published a disturbing front-page apology that implied that Gallagher’s misdeeds had negated the entire series. The Enquirer and the rest of the Cincinnati media abandoned the substantive truth of the series. I was ordered not to write about Chiquita. The ban lasted five years.

It got worse. County officials set up a special prosecutor to investigate the newspaper and individuals who worked on the project. Gallagher, facing criminal prosecution, abandoned his carefully constructed self-image as an intrepid reporter and quickly cut a deal. He waived Ohio’s shield law and agreed to reveal sources....

I found myself sitting in a shabby, windowless conference room in a low-rent section of Cincinnati’s modest downtown. My lawyer and I sat on one side of a scuffed table. The special prosecutor and his associates sat on the other side...

The special prosecutor wanted me to do something simple: sign a piece of paper agreeing to waive Ohio’s shield law. Doing so would require me to disclose confidential sources with whom I had spoken during the yearlong investigation. He made clear that the risks of not cooperating were great, and threatened to indict me on unspecified charges. I could lose my job; I could go to jail, he said. I must fully cooperate and waive the shield law or he would come after me. His threats, for a while delivered hourly in telephone calls to my lawyer, ranged wildly. He claimed he was going to prosecute me for being a co-conspirator of some kind.

Now, this is what happens when there IS a shield law. Imagine what kind of retribution the well-financed would have at their disposal if there weren't a shield law?

Read the full story.

Damn fine idea, if you ask me

Heard this on NPR this morning, sort of a smack your head kind of realization:

[Chairman of Recycled Energy Development, LLC Tom] Casten surveys a picture of the fictional nuclear power plant where Homer Simpson works in his cartoon hometown of Springfield. "What you see is two giant structures, they're cooling towers. … Giant amounts of steam coming out of the cooling towers basically reflecting that two out of three units of energy are basically being thrown into the air as waste heat."
For every three units of fuel — like coal, natural gas or oil — that are burned to make electricity, two are lost in the process, most of it as waste heat that just drifts away, says Casten, who is chairman of Recycled Energy Development, a company that works with industrial clients to capture waste heat to produce clean electricity.
[snip]

"There are many industrial processes that emit high-temperature exhaust," he explains. "You can use that high-temperature energy to boil water, make steam, and drive an electric generator."

The story goes on to illustrate how a steel mill used the tremendous heat from their smelting fires to cut their monthly energy bill in half.

Geez, what a great freaking idea. Why aren't we doing this more?

His judgment cometh, and that right soon

...on the other hand, Sen. McCain's judgment tends to take awhile.

Rev. Hagee's mouth continues to runneth over - and the McCain campaign has finally had enough:

McCain rejects Hagee endorsement

In the face of mounting controversy over headline-grabbing statements from the Rev. John Hagee, CNN has learned that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain decided Thursday to reject his endorsement.

McCain told CNN's Brian Todd that he rejected the endorsement after Todd brought to his attention Hagee's comments that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by hastening the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.

[snip]

Shortly after McCain's announcement Thursday afternoon, Hagee withdrew his endorsement, citing critics who had been "grossly misrepresenting" his positions.

"I am tired of these baseless attacks and fear that they have become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues. I have therefore decided to withdraw my endorsement of Sen. McCain for president effective today, and to remove myself from any active role in the 2008 campaign," he said in a statement.

"I hope that the Sen. McCain will accept this withdrawal so that he may focus on the issues that are most important to America and the world."

You can almost hear the resentful tone from Rev. Hagee - Shame on you for shaming me, he says, All I did was imply that Hitler was sent by God...

Took you long enough, Senator.

Seems he's more afraid of AIPAC than gays or Catholics.

Meh.

Who does he remind you of?

Who is in charge of Iranian foreign policy? I didn't know - but then again, neither did this guy:



So, the reporter asks why McCain has never mentioned Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - who actually is in charge of Iranian foreign policy.

McCain's answer is to change the subject:

Oh I thin-Again, I respectfully disagree. When he's the person that comes to the United Nations and declares his country's policy is the extermination of the state of Israel, quote, in his words, wipe them off of the map, then I know that he is speaking for the Iranian government and articulating their policy and he was elected and is running for reelection as the leader of that country. Yes sir, go ahead.

Got that?

Here would the distilled version of the exchange:

Q: You claim that Obama would talk to Ahmadinejad, who you denounce - while Khamenei is the real power in that country. Don't you think you should be talking about Khamenei?

A: Ahmadinejad said he wanted to destroy Israel. Average Americans think he's the leader. Well-versed people think he is. So there.

This guy is just a piece of work.

(H/t to Glenn Greenwald and HuffPost)

Would you give your medical records to a search engine?

Google thinks you will..

(LA Times)

Google Inc. opened a free website that manages patients' medical records online, part of a plan to make users more loyal by adding services.

Patients can upload medical records from other organizations, enter their own data and search for information on health conditions, said Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president.

Not sure how keen I'd be on that. I'm sure they have a privacy policy - but it likely contains language that says it can be changed at any time.

Updated: Having looked at their privacy policy, they have the right assurances in there:

(Google Privacy Center)
Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most such changes will be minor. Regardless, we will post any Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Policy changes).

(Google Health)

You are in control of your information

1. You control who can access your personal health information. By default, you are the only user who can view and edit your information. If you choose to, you can share your information with others.
2. Google will not sell, rent, or share your information (identified or de-identified) without your explicit consent, except in the limited situations described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when Google believes it is required to do so by law.
3. You can completely delete your information at any time. Such deletions will take immediate effect in your account, and backup copies of deleted information may persist for a short time. Since deleted data will not be restored, you may want to print information before deleting it.

Still - that's a bit of data I'd like to see encrypted up to the ying yang before I post it online.

Once again, the hype comes first...

...the facts show up after the guests have gone home.

(H/t to CJR) The LA Times pokes holes in the current "Homeowners are defaulting! Homeowners are defaulting!" myth:

But there's a major problem with all this talk about the phenomenon of solvent homeowners "walking away": There doesn't appear to be any hard evidence that it's actually happening.

When pressed for the number of borrowers who could afford their mortgage payments, major banks and lender groups could not produce numbers figures.

eh?

So what's all this crap we've been reading? You mean to tell me that major media affiliates are just going along with the flow and not checking their data?

Bankers... do you have an explanation for this? Uh, that'd be no.

Nor could the Mortgage Bankers Assn., the leading trade group for housing lenders. Spokesman John Mechem said he believed that walkaways by homeowners who could afford their payments were "becoming more prevalent." But he said that was based on "anecdotes we're hearing from our members and what we're reading in the newspapers."

Cripes, are there any reporters in our media outlets? or all you just a bunch of spoon fed parrots?

Emptywheel quote of the day

From her post referring to Rep. Tom Davis' (R-VA) frank assessment of damage to the GOP brand:

...transparency kills Republicans in the same way sunlight kills vampires.

Har!

Yes, I know there are perfectly reasonable conservatives out there, some of whom self identify as republicans - they just never seem to be holding the levers of power, now do they? No, I think some sunlight would do the republic good - even if all it did was drive the vampires into hiding.

Jump

Okay, so E and I were two weeks behind on BSG.

We finally caught up tonight.

All I got to say is

Damn.

Next eppy can't come fast enough.

Rev. Hagee: still faking it

A good amount of press attention went to Sen. McCain's unfortunate supporter, Rev. Hagee's recent expression of regre for calling Catholocism the "great whore."

A good amount of press attention went to Sen. McCain's unfortunate supporter, Rev. Hagee's recent apology for calling Catholocism the "great whore."

Televangelist John Hagee apologizes to Catholics
- Yahoo News

Catholic League accepts Hagee apology
- Boston.com

Hagee apology good enough for Catholics, not DNC
- The Hill

and on and on...

But it's the same damn thing as before. Another Fallwell. "Sorry if you took offense." Nowhere does the word apology appear in his statement. [Full text of Rev. Hagee's letter to William Donohue PDF (via Very Important Stuff)]

I don't have skin in the game, but Catholic America does, and Anthony Stevens-Arroyo thinks it's a load.

...Hagee’s two-page apology used the mealy-mouthed expression of regret for "any comments that Catholics have found hurtful,” rather than the complete recantation called for?

Stevens-Arroyo also takes issue with Wm. Donohue asserting the mantle of Catholocism and claiming that the Hagee remarks "case closed" -

The Catholic League is not the “All Catholic" League. It is not official Catholicism: still less does it speak for each and every one of the nation’s 60 million Catholics. As someone who once endeavored to work with the League, I was disappointed to learn that it is run out of a single office by a single ego. So, while I find newsworthy the recent exchanges between the League’s president, Bill Donahue and Evangelical pastor, John Hagee, they don’t amount to dogma.

So there. Hmmph.

Kevin, when you're in a hole - stop digging.

Wow, right wing radio nut gets absolutely pummeled by Chris Matthews.

(H/t to TPM)


Holy cow does James make a fool of himself. All he had was his talking points, and nothing else.

If Chris would do this more, he might almost become likeable.

You tell 'em, Russ

Sen. Feingold (D-WI), lays out the threat that Secret Laws pose to American Democracy:

...Perhaps the most notorious example is the recently released 2003 Justice Department memorandum on torture written by John Yoo. The memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003, the law that the administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And that law was essentially a declaration that the administration could ignore the laws passed by Congress.

The content of the memo was deeply troubling, but just as troubling was the fact that this legal opinion was classified and its content kept secret for years. As we now know, the memo should never have been classified because it contains no information that could compromise national security if released. In a Senate hearing that I chaired April 30, the top official in charge of classification policy from 2002 to 2007 testified that classification of this memo showed "either profound ignorance of or deep contempt for" the standards for classification.

I wonder where those strict constructionalists on the right are on this one? Probably too bitching about how state judges struck down an initiative statute that was in conflict with with their state constitution to notice.

To Sen. Feingold's concerns I would add the application of security to muzzle litigation, or (as I'm inclined to believe) hide back room indemnification of the Telecom industry.

Laissez faire? Not so much...

CJR's the Audit spotlights another great article over at the NYT:

Freddie Mac, one of the nation’s largest buyers of home loans, announced a fresh wave of bad news Wednesday, disclosing losses that were smaller than expected only because of accounting tactics that minimized the effects of bad loans.

“It’s clear we have not yet hit bottom in the housing market,” Richard Syron, Freddie Mac’s chief executive, told analysts.

Yet investors cheered the results anyway, and pushed the company’s shares up by more than 9 percent, to close at $27.25.

CJR picks out a home run quote:

“Both [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] are clearly going to be insolvent by the end of the year, but everyone knows that Congress will do anything to keep them afloat, because if Fannie and Freddie go under, the entire global financial system will melt down,” said Christopher Whalen, a founder of Institutional Risk Analytics, an independent research firm. “These companies’ earnings don’t matter. Their accounting hardly matters. People buy the stock because they believe the federal government will bail them both out if things get really bad.”

Why do you care?

What Does Freddy Mac Do? (via Slate)

The company is a key player in the secondary mortgage market, which means it purchases mortgages from banks. Freddie Mac then bundles together several thousand such mortgages into a tradable security and sells the package to an institutional investor.

Say you just obtained a $200,000 mortgage with a fixed rate of 5 percent. There's about a one in six chance that your bank will turn around and sell that mortgage to Freddie Mac, which in turn will package it with thousands of other mortgages with similar rates. That collection, which may be valued at $500 million or more, is converted into a bondlike security and sold to large investors who prefer relatively safe, steady assets.

[snip]

The idea is that banks will use the money they obtain from selling mortgages to fund additional mortgages; the system has increased the nation's home-ownership rate. Also, the hope is that banks will feel more comfortable offering mortgages for homes in low-income areas, since they know they can turn right around and sell the mortgage to Freddie Mac. (Freddie Mac does not purchase mortgages over $322,700 in value.)

What Does Fannie Mae Do? (via Motley Fool) Sorta like a chop shop. But legal.

It works this way. Let's say that you get a mortgage on your new home from Wells Fargo Bank (NYSE: WFC). Wells Fargo, like any bank, has limitations on how much money it can lend as a function of its asset base. If your loan sits on Wells Fargo's books, it constricts how much the bank can loan. But if Wells Fargo sells the rights to Fannie Mae, it turns that loan back into cash, which it can then go out and loan again. You keep making your loan payments to Wells Fargo, and it passes these funds on to Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae makes money because it can borrow funds at a lower interest rate than you can. So instead of a single loan tying up Wells Fargo's capital, it can turn around and make multiple loans all from the same original capital base. This, the theory goes, increases banks' willingness to loan in good times and in bad.

[snip]

Fannie Mae provides a guarantee to these investors that they will receive timely principal and interest payments, no matter what happens with the underlying mortgages. If there are large numbers of defaults, Fannie Mae will have to make the investors whole. If there is a massive crash and defaults overwhelm Fannie Mae, it has an ace in the whole: your tax dollars. Even though the company's debt offerings clearly state otherwise, the financial markets believe that Fannie Mae's status as a government-sponsored enterprise implies that the government will provide full faith and credit for Fannie's debt. It is for this reason that Fannie Mae maintains a AAA credit rating, even though at a 78:1 debt-to-equity ratio it is levered many times what is allowed international banks. (Debt is defined as mortgages on its books plus the value of its guarantees.)

Remember those (formerly AAA-rated) CDOs that were eating Merril Lynch alive? Those are the kind of products that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac sell.

While I'm confident that there are many flavors of these types of investments - any bundle of mortgages is going to have the same Achilles heel: a nationwide drop in real estate prices.

Bear Stearns was bailed out after getting hit hard by Mortgage Backed Securities. Looks like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are going the same route - and with Wall Street banking on the bailout, you have to believe the Fed has no choice.

I'm no fan of the economy going in the tank to preserve the purity of laissez faire - but once again: if the consequence of bad investing is getting billions of government dollars, what the hell is the incentive to invest wisely?

Yet another backdoor handout for Wall Street.

I'll have what he's having...

Also via CJR (discussing a recent Bill Moyers piece):

Journal correspondent Rick Karr asked viewers to consider a hypothetical cardiac patient—a sixty-seven-year old man in a high stress job with a history of serious heart problems. The man has had four major heart attacks and a quadruple bypass; he has atrial fibrillation and needs a defibrillator to keep his heart on track. That man, says intensive care nurse Geri Jenkins, might have a hard time getting new insurance if he needed it.

The man, it turns out, is not a hypothetical patient, but [Vice President] Cheney, who has Cadillac coverage that buys Cadillac care simply because he is an employee of the U.S. government. He cannot be denied health insurance no matter how serious his heart condition; he can pick the best hospitals and the best doctors, and, according to the nurses, Cheney is alive today because of that care while many other people with similar conditions are not. The nurses have launched a CheneyCare ad campaign in newspapers and on the Internet, designed to make the argument for a radical change in America’s health care system—a change that would allow everyone to get the kind of care that saved Cheney’s life. Their ads declare that if Cheney were just a regular American, he’d probably be dead by now.

[snip]

On the Moyers program, DeMoro argues that there should no double standard. “We as the public pay for Dick Cheney’s care—Why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?” she asks. And indeed, that is a key question neither the candidates nor the media have discussed during the campaign so far. Health care equity rarely comes up.

I feel sick...

CJR:

Higher deductibles and co-payments and skimpier benefits have become the new coin of the realm in the insurance world, and people are writing their own checks for medical care once covered by insurance.

NYT:

The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.

[snip]

It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.

Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.

“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”

USAToday:

Is a little coverage that much better than none at all?

Often called "limited medical benefit plans," the policies can cost far less than traditional insurance. But they cap what insurers will pay toward medical care, with the skimpiest plans covering as little as $1,000 a year. Some have daily caps, such as paying a few hundred dollars a day toward hospital coverage. Traditional insurance, by contrast, generally covers most medical expenses in a given year, after deductibles and co-payments.

Insurers say limited-benefit policies — once mainly sold to the self-employed or others who buy their own insurance — are gaining interest among employers with low-wage, part-time or contract workers. National companies such as McDonald's, the Hair Cuttery salons and Friendly's restaurants offer such coverage to their workers, as do many smaller businesses.

and CJR again (commenting on a weak interview by Fortune magazine of Aetna CEO Ron Williams:

Williams, for instance, compares uninsured Americans to bank robbers. No kidding:

Today we all pay for the uninsured. If an individual sticks up a bank and walks off with $25,000, there are consequences. If someone who really could have had an insurance policy consumes $25,000 worth of health care, everyone else pays for that.

[snip]

Forty-seven million Americans are uninsured. And Williams dismisses 30 to 33 million of them as easy to cover without any tax credits or subsidies: people who are eligible for
government coverage but haven’t signed up, college kids, non-citizens here legally, and
people with household incomes over $75,000.

How would these people get coverage? Williams doesn’t say, and, of course, Fortune doesn’t ask. But the implication that with the poor covered by the government every one else can afford to pay for themselves is flatly false.

Take a look at Aetna’s own price list. Aetna’s policy for individual family coverage in New York City costs more than—get this—$33,000 a year.

So a salary of $75,000—which, by the way, is well over the city’s median income —isn’t going to get it done, is it, Fortune?

....

A White Rose who lived

In Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, he describes the tragic nobility of a person named Sophie Scholl. Ms. Scholl was a student in Nazi Germany who agreed to help her brother and his friends distribute leaflets denouncing the regime of Adolf Hitler.

Nazi Germany being what it was, this was a capital offense. Sophie's inexperienced comrades called themselves the White Rose Resistance. Being young, they took terrible risks and were caught.

Clive James describes Ms. Scholl being offered survival by her Gestapo interrogator. He informs her that her brother and friend cannot be saved, but that she could be spared if she renounced the White Rose and their message. It's easy for anyone to imagine being brave in that circumstance - but put yourself in that room. Imagine this choice is your entire universe:

Sign this piece of paper, or go to the guillotine.

Sophie didn't hesitate. She chose the guillotine.

Her Gestapo interrogator was so affected by her bravery that he told this story to others- it's the only reason we know what happened.

I cannot help but be affected by stories like that, but tragic martyrs give you a hollow feeling. They were right, but being right did not save them. Recorded in history as a posthumous I told you so.

Point is, when it comes to tragic heroes, there's a fine line between being inspirational and being a cautionary tale.

---

Today, my sister in law passed along the obituary of someone who, like Sophie, was unflinchingly noble to the very end. The difference with Irena Sendler is that she lived to be 98.

She studied at Warsaw University and was a social worker in Warsaw when the German occupation of Poland began in 1939. In 1940, after the Nazis herded Jews into the ghetto and built a wall separating it from the rest of the city, disease, especially typhoid, ran rampant. Social workers were not allowed inside the ghetto, but Sendler, imagining "the horror of life behind the walls," obtained fake identification and passed herself off as a nurse, allowed to bring in food, clothes and medicine.

By 1942, when the deadly intentions of the Nazis had become clear, Sendler joined a Polish underground organization, Zegota. She recruited 10 close friends -- a group that would eventually grow to 25, all but one of them women -- and began rescuing Jewish children.

She saved over 2,500 people. Kids mostly. Yeah, yeah, Shindler's List II. Seen this movie.

No.

Not this movie:

Most of the children who left with Sendler's group were taken into Roman Catholic convents, orphanages and homes and given non-Jewish aliases. Sendler recorded their true names on thin rolls of paper in the hope that she could reunite them with their families later. She preserved the precious scraps in jars and buried them in a friend's garden.

In 1943, she was captured by the Nazis and tortured but refused to tell her captors who her co-conspirators were or where the bottles were buried.

Think of that. She's 33 years old, alone, and in the custody of the most monstrous human beings on the planet.

It is one thing to march to a swift end. It is quite another to stay silent through torture, when each day of silence is rewarded with another day of torture - for three months.

Yet she keeps silent. And she makes it out alive.

And when the war is over she digs up those bottles of names and goes looking for the children so she can keep her promise to their parents.

This language is bankrupt for a word to describe her.

Follow through

A commenter reminded me to look into whether or not Brown County was following up on their promise to pursue child enticement and drug charges against (former Brown County GOP chair) Donald J. Fleischman.

Apparently, they are. He's to be arraigned in June of this year.

Shame on me for doubting.

I dare you to make sense of these

via the Penguin:




Umbrella...? Mozzarella?

Give them an inch...

With the Supremes greenlighting stricter voter registration criteria in Indiana - it's nice to see that the GOP is wasting no time in trying to make it harder to vote:

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

[snip]

State Representative Stanley Cox, a Republican from Sedalia and the sponsor of the amendment, said that the Missouri Constitution already required voters to be citizens and that his amendment was simply meant to better enforce that requirement.

“The requirements we have right now are totally inadequate,” Mr. Cox said. “You can present a utility bill, and that doesn’t prove anything. I could sit here with my nice photocopier and create a thousand utility bills with different names on them.”

Rep. Cox is right, of course - but he's omitting the reason in person voter fraud is not a problem.: somebody has to show up with those utility bills and try to vote.

It's the difference between me owning a gun and using it to go rob a bank. Only in this case, the bank would be empty because there is no profit in individual voter fraud.

I mean ask yourself - what does the person who commits voter fraud get? Nothing. In exchange they risk jail time.

Now, it's certainly possible that some shadowy group could pay people to commit voter fraud - but in order to sway an election, you'd need a sizable group of people. Sizable groups of voters who don't exist will show up as an anomaly in voting records. Hey, we had 800 more voters this year from this polling place - that's odd...

Sizable groups are pure poison for secret plans. All it would take was a few people who said "this man paid me this much money to vote for candidate x" and the whole plan will start to fall in on itself. If the conspirators are supplying the bogus utility bills, they've created a paper trail that points back to them - it's just ridiculous.

It doesn't help that there's a definite hype factor to the coverage of this issue.

Look at this bit from the 2005 inquiry into voter fraud in Milwaukee:

Inquiry finds evidence of fraud in election
Cast ballots outnumber voters by 4,609

Investigators said Tuesday they found clear evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in Milwaukee, including more than 200 cases of felons voting illegally and more than 100 people who voted twice, used fake names or false addresses or voted in the name of a dead person.

My God! Clearly fraud is running rampant! Conservatives are furious - their guy only lost Wisconsin by 11,000 votes. We should crack down on voter registration, it's the only way.

Except - buried down in the later paragraphs of this same story, you get to the truth of the matter.

4,600 cases of fraud? No.

...city officials have been unable to account for a gap of about 4,600 votes, with more ballots counted than people listed as voting.

So this number could represent outright fraud, but it could also be sloppy record keeping or incompetence. Given the sorry state of Milwaukee public officials, I'd be inclined to believe they were incomptent. In any case - this is not an individual voter registration issue. People at polling stations were supposed to show up with their paperwork, and someone was supposed to keep those records.

Records were not kept. This is a problem with election officials, not voters.

If records were kept and those records indicated that voters had committed fraud, that would be another matter.

But wait - felons voted!

Reviewing information it had access to, including a computerized list of people recorded as voting, the newspaper identified at least 278 felons who illegally voted statewide, though the vast majority came from within the city.

Yes, they did - but in Wisconsin felons some felons can vote, and some can't. Felons who don't know which group they are might show up by mistake. That 278 number is statewide, and how many votes were cast statewide? Just under three million.

And there's this - the article goes on to say that having a drivers license requirement would not prevent felons from voting.

So the felon who shows up to vote in a new precinct and registers to vote needs to be checked against a database that determines if they are an eligible felon. Whether or not they have a drivers license is irrelevant.

But, there were 100 cases of fraud!

Once again: three million votes cast. Even if all of these cases were out and out fraud - and not just boneheads out at the polls, you're talking .003% of the vote.

I'm not sure a problem of that magnitude merits asking all voters for ID, or proof of citizenship.

Yet we have 19 states pushing for more aggressive voter registration laws. Missouri might get theirs passed in time for the November election. All will increase the burden for all voters in the name of decreasing a problem that doesn't exist (PDF).

You want to increase election audit rigor? Fine, but stay the hell out of my way when I go to the polls.

The artillery of thought will not be silenced

CJR pointed me to Ezra Klein's discussion/review of the Kindle and its effect on books and reading.

The take away for me - the screen is nice:

One look at the screen, though, and you forget that everything around it seems to have been an afterthought. The Kindle uses a technology known as E Ink, which deploys negatively charged black particles and positively charged white particles to create something that looks, and acts, startlingly like paper. There’s no reflection in the sun and no discernible flicker on the screen. Compared to traditional LCD screens, whose light and flicker force your eyes to constantly strain and refocus, this is a profound advance. It’s almost calming to look at.

-but the book ain't going away any time soon:

Moreover, there’s an added risk to using the Kindle: if you drop a book, it doesn’t break. If you drop your Kindle, your heart catches in your throat till you examine the damage. If you drop it in the bathtub, you’re out $400.

[snip]

At the end of the day, the true advances won’t come in the Kindle, but in the content. Just as the capabilities of the device will shape what authors decide to do with it, so too will the decisions of authors shape the evolution of the device.

Right there are the two most important aspects of all of this.

1) the delivery vehicle must be as durable or as cheap as the book (and preferably both), and;

2) that the success/failure of the Kindle device is only relevant as it stimulates the development of content that takes full advantage of the electronic format.

I'd imagine the breakthrough device would be something that would allow you to access your file wirelessly, search/read/annotate at will - for long periods of time - and is cheap enough to be replaced for less than the cost of a printed book. It would allow me to subscribe to revisions, later editions - annotations from the author or critics I requested. Books would link to their source material, and forums for discussion and questions.

Kindle is none of these things, but is likely to be the first casualty in the struggle to find one. It's a necessary step - and I'm glad that Amazon is taking it - but we're nowhere near the tipping point to move away from printed books.

That's not an insult, just my opinion that replacing something (even supplementing) what is essentially the DNA of civilization is going to take decades if not centuries.

Look at digital cameras. We sell a lot of digital, but we haven't quite managed the transition of how people store their pictures. Sure there's a lot of good software out there, but having pictures on a computer at home is not quite as useful as having them printed out so you can show your family or your office buddies.

These things are still possible, but there's inertia in transitioning between how we expect to see them, and how we can actually access them. Tech is trying to fill the void- and printers are madly trying to make it even simpler than last time - but we're not quite there yet.

I suspect the electronic book will be the same for a very long time. There are many upsides - but they will be the playground of the early adapter- while the bulk of human content sits on shelves - like it always did.

What's driving up the price of gas?

Damned if I know, but it's for sure you'll never find out if you listen to the networks. Reading the recent batch of their stories (and watching their broadcasts) you can almost hear their collective shoulders shrug:

Headlines simulated

ABC News: Gosh, prices are really high. So high, even NASCAR fans are affected.

CBS News: Gas prices went up, fast. Why? How should we know?

NBC News: Oil prices surge. It could be the weak dollar, or Turkey, or Nigeria. Iran maybe? Hell, your guess is as good as ours.

I'll give NBC News credit – they at least have a story debunking the gas tax holiday and their story provides some speculation (albeit without any context or supporting facts – "X happened, but how much of the market does X affect? Has X affected the market in a similar fashion in the past?")

Here's Nieman Watchdog on the same topic – they may not have all the answers, but at least they are asking the right questions:

10 tough questions on oil and gas prices

Twenty or thirty years ago, a rising oil price could be counted on to eventually bring more oil into the market. Not so today. The question is why,

[snip]

Gas prices are most politically relevant because they are a sharp pain that voters will be feeling this summer and fall, before they vote. All three candidates (and even President Bush) seem to "get" this. But the summer holiday for the 18.4-cent federal excise tax on gasoline proposed by Clinton and McCain will not, in the view of the experts and the media, do much more than slightly numb the voters before their wallets are amputated.

[snip]

While crude prices are a factor, most experts would agree that tightly limited U.S. refinery capacity is also a big factor in pushing domestic gasoline prices higher.
Less easy to answer: why is refinery capacity limited and what can be done about it?

Some numbers: In 1981, there were 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. As of 2007, there were 149, with a capacity of 17.4 bpd.

It is no secret that the industry deliberately shut refineries (PDF) to improve profits in recent decades. Industry says it is now building new capacity at existing plants – but despite rising prices and growing demand, refineries are again cutting back their capacity-building plans.

Okay, it's a little too easy to say "gosh, those multinational oil corporations are driving up prices" but how's about some news coverage that at least explores the question of why we have less than half the refineries we had a quarter century ago? – or why market collusion (like we saw in the California energy crisis) can be eliminated as a suspect? – or at the very least could someone identify the barriers to finding out this information?

Listen to Mother

Normally, I'm not a big fan of Mother Jones magazine, but their latest issue has some great stuff in it.
(H/t to CJR)

The Seven Myths of Energy Independence

Myth #1 Energy Independence Is Good

...What's not to like about energy independence?

In a word, everything. Despite its immense appeal, energy independence is a nonstarter—a populist charade masquerading as energy strategy that's no more likely to succeed (and could be even more damaging) than it was when Nixon declared war on foreign oil in the 1970s. Not only have we no realistic substitute for the oceans of oil we import, but many of the crash programs being touted as a way to quickly develop oil replacements—"clean coal," for example, or biofuels—come at a substantial environmental and political cost. And even if we had good alternatives ready to deploy—a fleet of superefficient cars, say, or refineries churning out gobs of cheap hydrogen for fuel cells—we'd need decades, and great volumes of energy, including oil, to replace all the cars, pipelines, refineries, and other bits of the old oil infrastructure—and thus decades in which we'd depend on oil from our friends in Riyadh, Moscow, and Caracas. Paradoxically, to build the energy economy that we want, we're going to lean heavily on the energy economy that we have...

And that's just #1.

MJ lines queues up a bunch of sacred cows and hurls them bodily into the meatgrinder.

Up next? Myth #2 Ethanol Will Set Us Free

Good stuff - dig in.

The most basic metric of a friendly nation...

...would be if they pursue criminal sanctions against residents who kill your citizens.

That is - the state controls the administration of violence within its borders. Someone in that country decides to kill visitors from other countries - the state will pursue the offenders and capture or kill them.

By this standard - Yemen is pretty worthless as a friend:

Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.
(via DangerRoom)

Read the whole mess on MSNBC, it really does get worse.

And this is an example of a battle against Al Qaeda that should be fought - and won. We don't need to bomb Yemen - we need to stand on their heads until they lock these guys up. I'd say extradite, but Gitmo and Iraq have made an already tough sell pretty much impossible.

Yemen is Pakistan on a smaller scale and without nukes. A history of hosting bad guys and a government with questionable motives. Getting results in Yemen is absolutely vital to our success against groups like Al Qaeda.

The lack of media coverage doesn't necessarily translate into a lack of action in the region, but clearly our sideshow in Iraq cannot help us with our necessary work in places like Yemen.

100 years, with an asterisk

Here's McCain's golden soundbite:

(via CJR)

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years…

McCain: Maybe 100. [crosstalk] We've been in South Korea – we've been in Japan for 60 years, we've been in South Korea for 50 years or so, that'd be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’d be fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

The attack ads will gobble up the easy pickings- "100 years" and fine, whatever. He said it, then said 1,000 or a million years would be okay, and then he's putting a big fat asterisk on the end of it.

It's not American presence; it's American casualties

100, 1,000, or 1,000,000 – this part of the quote is the one that illustrates how McCain is not dealing with this question.

digby asks exactly the right question:

Why aren't Dems just saying, "Why should Americans stay in Iraq for a hundred years under any circumstances? Let's assume McCain meant that we should stay there indefinitely once the violence has ceased. What right would we have to do that? Aren't they a sovereign nation? Why should Americans pay for that?"

To this I would add my own all-but-screamed question: In what fantasy world will we spend decades or centuries or millennia in Iraq without there being American casualties?

And a more substantive follow up: Given that none of the goals of our Iraq policy (WMD, denying a haven for terrorists, preventing the deaths of Americans, preventing nuclear proliferation) have played out - what policy decisions will McCain offer that will increase the value of our policy or lessen its cost?

Put simply: why is this war worth what we are paying for it?

McCain vs. Bush vs.... a carrot?

Okay, this one had me laughing pretty hard.



(H/t digby)

Take the Bush McCain challenge!

(Heads up: the site's gonna want your email address halfway through so they can keep pinging you with updates - so be warned.)

The carrot quiz comes after the email form - I think it's worth it.

Okay, that's embarrassing...

Pity the lead graphic designer over at Britain's Office of Government Commerce.

Why? They have produced this logo:




So... what's the problem?

Well, somebody turned it on its side:

So, Bill.. y'mind coming up to my office - and bringing all your things with you?