Death to Candy Land

Steven Johnson over at BoingBoing makes a good point: the kid games of my generation s-u-uu-uuh-ked.

Battleship, for example:

...there is absolutely nothing about the initial exploratory sequence of Battleship that requires anything resembling a genuine decision. It is a roulette wheel. A random number generator could easily stay competitive for the first half. But even when some red pegs appear on the board, the decision tree is still a joke: “Now select a co-ordinate that’s next to the red peg.” That’s pretty much it. Yes, at the very end, you might adjust your picks based on your knowledge of which ships you’ve sunk. But for the most part, it’s about as mentally challenging as playing Bingo.

Whatever video games do to our kids, they certainly raise the bar of interaction.

Just as a thought experiment: Imagine what the manual for Super Mario would read like were it structured like Candy Land:

To explore Super Mario Galaxy, just hit the “action” button. At that point the game will randomly determine what action you have selected, and whether it was successful. When the action is over, hit the button again to see what’s next!

Extend this analogy:

Super Mario Galaxy using the mechanics of Chutes and Ladders:
Press the button, and move a random number of units closer to a fixed endpoint.

...using the mechanics of Trouble:
Press the button, and move a random number of spaces closer to a fixed endpoint. But there's a twist! You have four pieces to move, you have to choose which one moves - each turn!

Bleah.

(H/t to TED blog)

Must see TV

Hot damn. Frontline's doing an eppy on the financial crisis.



February 17, set your DVRs.

(H/t Calculated Risk)

ARMs: the second wave cometh

(Via Calculated risk and the WSJ)

Nearly $750 billion of option adjustable-rate mortgages, or option ARMs, were issued from 2004 to 2007, according to Inside Mortgage Finance ... Rising delinquencies are creating fresh challenges for companies such as Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. that acquired troubled option-ARM lenders.
...
As of December, 28% of option ARMs were delinquent or in foreclosure, according to LPS Applied Analytics

[snip]

Nearly 61% of option ARMs originated in 2007 will eventually default, according to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs

CR is pegging the Option ARM losses to lenders at $~200 billion or so, which is not collossal - compared to what subprime did - but this is just the .6 of the $1.6 trillion tsunami that Whitney Tilson told 60 Minutes about last year.

The other trillion was the Alt-A loans.

Here's Tilson back in December 2008:

...the sub-prime is, was approaching $1 trillion, the Alt-A is about $1 trillion. And then you have option ARMs on top of that. That's probably another $500 billion to $600 billion on top of that," Tilson says.

Asked how many of these option ARMs he imagines are going to fail, Tilson says, "Well north of 50 percent. My gut would be 70 percent of these option ARMs will default."

Tilson doesn't specify if his more than half prediction will apply to the Alt-A's as well, but it's a fair bet those people won't have it much better than the option ARM crowd.

It's one of the many factors that makes me suspect that there are a number of big banks who aren't fessing up to how screwed they are. We (by way of the government) are guaranteeing assets for CitiBank and BoA that are far more costly than the $40 billion (each) in cash they've received. If those assets turn out to suck hard, Uncle Sam is going to have to cough up many times that amount to pay for the next round of forclosures.

I don't pretend to know whether we should nationalize the banks, or do the "Bad Bank" approach - but I keep coming back to a Lincoln-esque separation of the national economy and the fortunes of individual banks.

If we can save the economy by saving the banks - we should do that.
If we can save the economy by killing the banks - we should do that

The idea that our economy is inextricably intertwined with the fortunes of these banks strikes me as limiting. Sure big banks go down and the ripple effect keeps on going, but we should be willing to discuss options where the bank's interest and the national interest part company.

Smile, your state is dark blue!

Wondering where all that stimulus cash is (supposedly) going? Take a look at the map.

(H/t 13th floor)

Monument to failure

dday nails one. Right on the head.

Everybody's doin' it

My, my, my...

JP Morgan invested in Bernie Madoff's fund - until they bailed out and didn't tell any of their similarly-invested clients.

Looks like Wall Street isn't the only employer shelling out big bonuses to losers...

(as ever, H/t to CJR)

Another million dollar idea

Write a program that approximates the mindset of an 8th grade boy, and is able to detect same.

A program like that could prevent things like this from happening.

I'd have less to talk about, but then - I'd be too rich to care.

Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer

I'm just going to pretend I haven't read the latest ballooning of the financial sector bailout and focus on something I got by email.  If you read this blog, odds are you got the same email, but it's worth a repeat.

MB sent it.

This week holds three anniversaries that should get more attention:

Forty two years ago, we lost Apollo 1
Twenty three years ago, we lost Challenger
Six years ago, we lost the Columbia.

Seventeen of the very best we could offer were destroyed pursing a shared dream of exploration.

Like all astronauts, they were exceptional. People who chose to challenge themselves, with advanced degrees, national service. The personification of what you reach for when you want to inspire your children. These people are heroes. They did what the rest of us feared to try.

- and they were all killed by the failings of others.

Thinking of these crews inspires equal measures of inspiration and fury. To work that hard, only to die on the dream's edge.

Our best deserve better.

MB sent the words to a song called Phoenix, by Julia Ecklar - that has just the right sentiment:

In a tower of flame in capsule 12
I was there
I know not where they laid my bones
It could be anywhere
But when fire and smoke had faded
The darkness left my sight
And I found my soul in a spaceship’s hull
Riding home on a trail of light

And my wings are made of tungsten
My flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceship’s heart
Does anybody hear?

Before each morning’s launch
They know that I am there
"To the soul that warms this vessel’s hull"
They say a silent prayer
I am father, ship and spirit
Of the dream for which they strive
For I am man at the hands of man
See us rocket for the sky

And my wings are made of tungsten
My flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceship’s heart
Does anybody hear?

My thunder rends the morning skies
Yes, I am here
Though lost to flame when I was man
I ride her without fear
For I am more than man now
And man built me with pride
I led the way and I lead the way
Of man's future in the sky

And my wings are made of tungsten
My flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceship’s heart
Does anybody hear?

--------

Apollo 1 - January 27, 1967

• Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom
• Edward H. White II
• Roger B. Chaffee
  
  

Challenger - January 28, 1986

• Francis "Dick" Scobee
• Michael J. Smith
• Judith Resnik
• Ellison Onizuka
• Ronald McNair
• Gregory Jarvis
• Sharon Christa McAuliffe
  
  

Columbia - February 1, 2003

• Rick D. Husband
• William C. McCool
• Michael P. Anderson
• Ilan Ramon
• Kalpana Chawla
• David M. Brown
• Laurel Clark

-----
Late edit: 
It seemed stupid to attribute something to a pseudonym I created. The email was from MB.

There's just way too much good stuff in the news today

Okay, not good news (i.e. happy), but news that is of high quality:

Witness:

Latest medical advance often proves to be a miracle that misfires
Joe Rojas-Burke
The Oregonian

[T]he largest independent study of computer-aided mammography found that it not only failed to increase cancer detection rates significantly, it also boosted the number of false-positive results and prompted a 20 percent increase in the rate of invasive biopsies.

The finding is just one example of a widespread problem in the health care system: the tendency to embrace new technology without waiting for proof that it's better than older, cheaper, time-tested solutions.
(H/t CJR and Trudy Lieberman)

and

Past Perfect?
Clint Hendler
Columbia Journalism Review

In his first year in office, President George W. Bush issued an executive order allowing presidents—and vice presidents—to claim privilege over their papers as long as they were still alive. It also gave past presidents’ families, or a series of designated representatives, the power to withhold documents. The order seemed to make it possible for a president to deny access in perpetuity, effectively reducing the National Archives to a taxpayer-funded private gatekeeper.

While no other attack on the Act drew as much ire from archivists, historians, and open government advocates as President Bush’s 2001 order, the PRA—which, by its very nature, seeks to limit presidential power—has never been an executive branch favorite. From Ronald Reagan, the first president subject to its reach, onwards, every administration has acted to curtail the PRA.

That streak was broken one week ago, when, on his first full day in office, President Barack Obama signed a new executive order that wholly repealed Bush’s executive order, essentially reverting to the standard established as Reagan left office.

And CJR's Ryan Chittum bags a bunch of great stimulus coverage with Reporting the Stimulus Plan

...which is an article I would just end up quoting in its entireity. Just read it.

Madoff's willing enablers

Here's hoping the authorities looking for the missing Madoff billions takes a look at the feeder funds who did his bidding.

(Via CJR and Bloomberg)

The feeder funds became Madoff’s ad hoc sales force. The payoff was the steady flow of fees. Every billion dollars invested in Madoff generated $150 million in paper profits a year for clients, based on a 15 percent return.
If a fund charged its clients 1 percent of the assets under management and 20 percent of the gains, as the largest one did, that translated into $41 million in annual fees.

Assuming Madoff didn’t do any investing on behalf of his clients, as investigators now suspect, the feeder funds were, in effect, being paid out of principal, which would have been depleted after 15 years.
In other words, much of the money invested in Madoff through feeder funds wound up in the pockets of fund managers.

Their defense is comical: We knew he was doing something illegal, but we never thought it was a Ponzi scheme!!!

You got salmonella in my peanut butter

Here's the reason civil litigation attorneys exist:

The Food and Drug Administration said that its inspection of the PCA plant in Blakely, Ga., found records of 12 instances in which plant officials identified salmonella in ingredients or finished products. The products should not have been shipped, the FDA says. PCA took no steps to address cleaning after finding the salmonella, says Michael Rogers, director of the FDA's division of field investigations.

In some instances, the company had the product tested again by a different laboratory and got a clean test result, FDA officials said in a telephone conference with reporters.

It's quite possible that a retest would miss the salmonella, says Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety. The product should have been destroyed after the first positive test result, he says.

(Via USA Today, emphasis mine)

This company sells only in bulk - to institutions (like schools and nursing homes).

Who is most susceptible to salmonella? Children and the elderly.

...

Gonna be a hard rain falling on these people.

...

Also, FYI:

• FDA list of recalled peanut butter products
• FDA investigation page
  

I C VP

Testimony to a new openness in America:

Google maps no longer blurs out the image for the Vice President's residence.

(Yes, the images come from the U.S. Geological Survey, so perhaps Cheney is no longer holding their director's prize poodle hostage)

(H/t Danger Room)

This just in: Pot stickers = crack

A Co-worker from Singapore brought in a huge bin of 'em for New Years.

Happy Year of the Ox.

I feel like a pig.

Ow.

All bets [should be] off

A first rate primer on CDS's and what should be done about them by the NYT's Gretchen Morgenson:

Time to Unravel the Knot of Credit-Default Swaps...[CDS's are] the elephant in the room, the $30 trillion market that people do not want to talk about.

Great explanation, and the first suggestion of a way out that makes sense to me, courtesy of math professor Sylvain R. Raynes:

[Raynes favors] unwinding all outstanding credit-default swaps through a process he calls inversion.

Under this plan, insurance premiums would be refunded to buyers of credit protection from the entity that wrote the initial contract. And the seller would no longer be under any obligation to pay if a default occurred.

The premium repayments would be made over the same period and at the same rate that they were paid out. If a contract was struck three years ago and charged quarterly premiums, the premiums would then be refunded quarterly over the next three years.

Mr. Raynes’s proposal would treat hedgers — buyers who bought C.D.S.’s to protect themselves because they actually hold the underlying debt — differently from speculators who bought C.D.S.’s simply to bet against a troubled company.

Those guys, the gamblers, would receive only the premiums they paid to an insurer.

Call it the all-bets-are-off rule: You get your bet back, but we're not honoring you're winning ticket.

Sure, the gamblers get screwed out of their payoff - but they were betting in an unregulated market. Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer chances. I don't see a reason to cripple our economy so we can cover $15 trillion dollars worth of side bets.

Screw that.

(H/t The Big Picture)

NYT to Kristol: it's not us - it's you

Bill Kristol's been let go.

Apparently, idiotic, neo-con conservative synchophants are the first against the wall when the layoffs come.

Happy dance.

Late edit: Kristol's last column ends with a line added by his editors:

This is William Kristol’s last column.

 Oh, would that that were so...

Pity Dick Fuld

Spiraling home prices have a lot of people down in the dumps, but nobody holds a candle to this guy.

Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Richard Fuld used to have a house valued at $13.3 million dollars. Last November he ended up selling it for $100.

A hundred bucks? That's - what? - 100% markdown? That poor guy....

What's that you say, Reuters? He sold it to his wife?

The 62-year old executive, who could face civil lawsuits after overseeing the storied investment bank's collapse into Chapter 11 proceedings last September, transferred ownership of the 3.3 acres seaside home to Kathleen Fuld on November 10, records show.

The couple had jointly bought the home for $13.75 million in March 2004, as first reported by Cityfile.com.

Gosh, you don't think the asset transfer was intended to lower his net worth in preparation for civil litigation, do you?

Or that he bought a spendy house in Florida because of their notorious Homestead Exemption which prevents creditors from forcing a debtor to sell their home?

That'd be just preposterous.... Hey, Dick - what's the real reason?

Tell us, do.

Gitmo's paper trail

It's asking a lot to believe that Gitmo is this screwed up:

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them. 

[snip]

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."

He said he once accidentally found "crucial physical evidence" that "had been tossed in a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten."

[emphasis mine]

I mean, c'mon. I get that compartmentalized control of souce intel makes a single file a ticking time bomb, but we did plan to prosecute these guys, right?

Somebody was going to put together a case - so presumably the information would have to have come together at some point. Right?

This "I told you closing Gitmo would be hard" BS that's slithering into the media is this icing on the cake. We screwed this up so bad, it's practically impossible to fix it. You should have listened to us...

I hope the administration doesn't flinch and just gets a bigger shovel. To do otherwise just rewards incompetence...or worse.

How long does it take to give something to charity?

Yes, it's piling on - but honestly, if somebody doesn't hold their feet to the fire - Paliln's infamous wardrobe will end up adorning some other GOP hopeful.

(Via HuffPo)

NewMajority has a report today that Sarah Palin's infamous wardrobe has not been given to charity as promised by the McCain campaign after the amazing bill was revealed in October.
McCain even told the press that "one-third of the clothing was "given back."

According to NewMajority, the clothes are sitting in trash bags in RNC's office in D.C.

So, that's sorta like being donated to charity.

In the sense that it's totally not..

(I honestly could care less about the integrity of Sen. McCain or Gov. Palin at this point. But I want the RNC to lose $180,000 on this deal. Somebody ought to pay for the Palin debacle.)

Letters from the field

Two observations on the current state of Afghanistan - both from guys who actually wear the "boots on the ground" we keep hearing about.

One from FRI:

The United States and her allies have spent billions in Afghanistan and have very little to show for it. Afghanistan is currently in a death spiral not because of a lack of aid funds but rather how those funds have been spent and allocated. Every indication we see on the ground is that more money will be thrown into the same failed programs currently being implemented; another demonstration that we have failed to learn any meaningful lessons.

The reason these programs won’t work is that they are off the shelf solutions designed to make the lives of bureaucrats and contracting officers easy rather than bringing assistance to the Afghans. The Department of State has spent 2.5 BILLION bringing in police trainers, jail guard trainers, and lawyers to train the judges. Now what the hell does anyone at DynCorp or PAE know about Afghan police or Afghan jurisprudence? Nothing of course but that is not why they win these large lucrative contracts it is because they already have large lucrative contracts and therefore know how to work with DS contracting officers to make their lives easier. What is the return on our investment? After the large scale jail break in Kandahar last summer investigators discovered there were over 100 illegal cell phones in the hands of inmates. When we capture important Taliban leaders and send them to the main Afghan jail at Pul-i-Charki they are often back home before the soldiers who delivered them. The Afghan police are unreliable and prone to preying on the population. The current Afghan government is more of a problem than a solution. It is being out-governed by the Taliban in the many districts under Taliban control. Who “built capacity” with these Taliban? How many billions of dollars were spent teaching the Taliban to administer justice and civil control so effectively?

That's one.

The other is from Vampire 06:

..let me...highlight a couple of things I think we could do to close the deal.

Roads, we need more of them. A lot more! This is the cornerstone to building Afghanistan and the government. The Romans were successful not because of military technology, it helped, but because they built an extensive road network. Many of which still exist today and are in better shape than roads in Afghanistan.

Without roads the Afghans don’t really need a centralized government. That’s a broad statement but I’ll qualify it here in a minute. The tribe pretty much provides what they need. The tribe protects them, settles disputes and enforces laws. They’re more than capable of doing this and have been for the last several centuries. They fulfill the basic governmental requirements common defense, law and order.

The tribes though can’t build and maintain roads. Now, you need a centralized government to construct, maintain and protect the roads. You get an influx of money as people work on the roads and they quit getting paid to blow us up and it stimulates a demand for goods and services.

[snip]

You probably won’t hear any of this from the higher ups. They’ll tell you we need more combat troops, but we can’t even support the ones we already have here. They should tell you to send engineers and logisticians, but that’s not too sexy.

Now, I'm thousands of miles from the scene - and ignorant to boot - but I'm getting the vibe that "just add troops" isn't going to get this particular problem solved.

I'm also thinking that the current F#&ked-up state of the economy is going to dictate that any massive road building projects aren't going to be overseas - I'm thinking our options are not looking good.

You figure we add troops to make the Taliban lay low long enough for us to declare victory and pull out? I mean, that kind of manuver will have a handy precedent in about, say 16 months...

Fear the Black SUV

It should come as no surprise that the President of the United States travels with some pretty serious security hardware. I picture those black SUVs filled with elite bodyguards sporting the latest assault rifles from HK.

The following bit of video shows I suffer from a lack of imagination.

As in: Minigun.



Freaky.

(I should add, the existence of the video doesn't establish that our current president rolls with this kind of hardware - or even that this particular SUV is in the garage. All the video demonstrates is that somebody built this thang. I'd imagine that some State Department dignitaries going cross country in bad places could expect to have one of these puppies in tow.)

(H/t Neatorama and WWTDD?)

Too rich

The WSJ is all over exec pay today.

Credit The Wall Street Journal for some good number-crunching and analysis today on a hidden facet of executive pay, which—guess what?—allows execs to take more of their shareholders’ money.

Mark Maremont, one of the Journal’s top investigative reporters (he’s also an editor), finds that some companies have been secretly “turbocharging their executives’ pensions” by using a formula that skews too much toward the benefit of the executives

(H/t to Ryan Chittum)

On presidential oaths

JB over at Balkinization has a right hissy fit about oaths of office, and how they should be said.

Article II, section 7 provides:

7. Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

[snip]

In this case, Obama added the words "Barack Hussein Obama" after the word "I" and "So help me God" at the end of the oath. Furthermore, he deleted the words "(or affirm)."

The mind boggles at this display of utter lawlessness.

Kinda fun, but probably more text than the ridiculous subject deserves.

Sheldon speaks out

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has clearly heard all he can stand about letting the Bush administration's actions go unchallenged, "so we can move forward."

Sen. Whitehouse unloads both barrels into this suggestion, and even reloads a few times.

A little bright, healthy sunshine and fresh air, so that an educated population knows what was done and how, can show where the tunnels were bored, when the truth was subordinated; what institutions were subverted; how our democracy was compromised; so this grim history is not condemned to repeat itself; so a knowing public in the clarity of day can say, "Never, never, never, again;" so we can keep that light - that light that is at once America's greatest gift and greatest strength - brightly shining. To do this, I submit, we must look back.

It's a good speech. Pity he won't get much airplay.

(H/t to Emptywheel)

Deaf to eavesdropping

CJR's Laura Rozen writes Hung Out to Dry, an excellent recap of how wiretapping and black sites have endured public exposure.

I particularly like this bit (emphasis mine):

“I have found that the stories which most anger and haunt journalists are not necessarily the ones with the most violence,” says Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. “They are the stories in which we felt our intervention to have accomplished nothing. What’s really striking with the Risen story [exposing NSA wiretapping] is precisely that sense of powerlessness: they committed this great act of journalism, and broke a story of a violation of federal law that raises fundamental questions about abuses of power in our society. And then the great institutions of society don’t respond, but instead turn around and say, ‘F-ck you.’ That is a huge invalidation of all the work, and further betrayal of our sense as journalists of what’s right.”

Read the whole thing.

Seen on a Tee-shirt

I'm CDO.
That's like OCD, only the letters are correctly alphabetized.

I work with people who need this shirt.

Russell Tice: [The NSA] monitored all communications

(Via Emptywheel)

First, Tice's description of the program confirms everything we have surmised about the program. The program:

* Established the means to collect all American communications
* Analyzed meta-data to select a smaller subset of communications to tap further
* Conducted human analysis of those messages

That is, the Bush administration used meta-data (things like length of phone call that have nothing to do with terrorism) to pick which communications to actually open and read, and then they opened and read them.

Watch the Olbermann interview - it'll get you by the vitals.

Anthony Bourdain and I have something in common

(From his interview in DCist)

Okay, I'll just say it. I think the [Spain - on the Road] show is f***ing awful. Mark Bittman comes off unsympathetic to say the least. Bringing someone who cannot or will not eat jamon [Gwyneth Paltrow] to Spain is a misjudgment. My crew grinds their teeth with rage looking at the crummy production values. Bad camera work, bad sound, bad direction. The whole thing sucks. It's unfortunate. It's mesmerizingly awful.

H/t to GOOD blog

Word of the day

(Via The Big Picture)

Clive Thompson gives us a word for our times:

Agnotology: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.

The winds of change

I'm sure most will focus on the more tangible aspects of the change in administration - like, say ordering the Guantanamo judges to halt pending cases or some such-

-but I'm loving this simple change to the White House website - the first day in office, the Obama administration has swapped the site's robot.txt file.

Under the Bush administration, the file spanned 2,400 lines of disallow listings (i.e. all you well behaved robots, don't scan these directories).

Under the new file added by the Obama web crew, the file is two lines long - (it tells robots to exclude the /includes/ directory).

Har! You wonder what gov geek has been jonesing to flip that file so bad.

(H/t to Kottke.org)

Best speech of the day

Rev. Joseph Lowery puts everyone to shame:


Amen.

(Transcript on WaPO)

Sen. Kennedy taken from inauguration in ambulance

This from TPM:

MSNBC showing video of Kennedy being loaded into an ambulance, with wife Vicki joining him. Sen. Hatch telling MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell that it appeared to be a seizure, but that Kennedy was later conscious and able to communicate.

MSNBC has more.

Neal Katyal as Deputy Solicitor General?

He of Hamdan? in the SG's office? Likin' that.

(H/t to Emptywheel)

Inauguration footnotes

...courtesy of The Onion:

January 20, 2008 - Bush Dies Peacefully In His Sleep

January 20, 2008 - Hillary Clinton Mouthing Along To Presidential Oath

Got this from Snopes:

"When I was in my routine training for the Israeli army as a teenager, they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe. Not just that, even though I was tiny and not even much of an athlete, I was incredibly accurate throwing hand grenades too. Even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded."

Guess who?


I'll give you one extra hint: she's a she.

That'd be Female, grew up in Israel, and short.

Ideas?
















Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Seriously.

Down goes Khyber

The Long War Journal is reporting Pakistan has closed the Khyber...again.

Thank makes five times since September - and Pakistan is moving units south to deal with India.

Want to bet our next round of negotiations with Pakistan will be a bit heated?

Scooter-watch

Mr. Marshall reminds me that there are about 24 hours until Pres. Bush loses the power to pardon.

The question is, will he - or won't he?

Late edit: CBS is reporting that Alaska's Murkowski wants the President to pardon Ted Stevens. As if.

Foreclosure USA: Now in handy mashup form

RealtyTrac.com has posted foreclosure data for 2008 in a searchable format.

You can do custom searches, too.

Here's a snap of the Chicago area:

Map a single result and zoom out to see the groupings.

(H/t to The Big Picture)

See how last year treated your hometown.

Data you can touch

I should spend more time watching stuff from TED.

Here's a great demonstration of how data can be used to convey complex information rapidly.

Hans Rosling showing the behavior of populations over time for a variety of data. Fascinating.



Inspiring, too - and not just the data, but how it is presented. Great stuff.

Nothing to see here folks, move along

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General has released their report on the military analyst program

• Examination of Allegations Involving DoD Public Affairs Outreach Program (PDF, 10MB) [This report was withdrawn in May of 2009 by the DoD]
  

Not surprisingly - they found nothing wrong (emphasis added):

We determined that those activities were conducted in accordance with DoD policies and regulations.

[snip]

...we found the evidence insufficient to conclude that [Retired Military Analyst] RMA outreach activities were improper. Further, we found insufficient basis to conclude that [Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs] OASD(PA) conceived of or undertook a disciplined effort to assemble a contingent of influential RMAs who could be depended on to comment favorably on DoD programs.

With regard to RMAs who had ties to military contractors, extensive searches found no instance where such RMAs used information or contacts obtained as a result of the OASD(PA) outreach program to achieve a competitive advantage for their company. Of the 70 RMAs that we examined, we found that 20 (29 percent) had some type of corporate association. We examined publicly available contracting information involving RMA-affiliated companies to identify any pattern of contract award or contract type that might indicate an irregularity. We did not isolate such a pattern and concluded that further investigative work into this matter was not warranted.

I'm eager to hear what David Barstow has to say in response (especially since 17 of the report's 85 pages are Barstow's article).

Late edit:  While the investigation may have been given limited scope, the report's Appendix J - Interviews with News Networks, gives you a sense of the rigor of their investigation:

We requested interviews with the official responsible for the news divisions at five networks: ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC. All declined our request for an interview. ABC, CNN, and FOX provided formal written responses to our inquiry. NBC forwarded copies of their responses to Congresswoman DeLauro and the New York Times. CBS provided “off the record” remarks.

 Here's the rest of Appendix J, in its entirety:

In general, the written responses stated that the networks relied on the RMAs for their expertise, knowledge and experience in military matters. The networks considered the RMAs as outside consultants, expecting them to be “ultimate insiders,” fully using contacts and access to ongoing events in DoD. Three networks discussed their requirement for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. There were no negative connotations concerning the role of the OASD(PA), and one network representative pointed out that “just because the Pentagon had a public relations effort that suggested military analysts be courted, does not mean that every analyst fell for the effort.”

We interviewed three media professionals that formerly held executive positions with the networks: a former president, an executive producer, and a bureau chief. The interviews provided several unique perspectives.

• The networks retained military experts to augment their correspondents.
• RMA and anchors/network correspondents conducted extensive preparation prior to appearing on-air.
• Different venues (morning shows, Sunday morning news shows, nightly news) provide different opportunities to broadcast a message.
• The networks performed no polling or research on RMA appearances.
• RMAs were not journalists and demonstrated a “home-town bias” towards the military.
• Over time, some RMAs provided opinions on policy, going beyond commenting on military operations.

RMAs represented a unique group. Many were “credentialed” media and paid by networks without having to satisfy journalist requirements. As retired military, they received retired pay from DoD but were perceived by the American public as free to speak their mind. They were provided access to senior DoD officials and were expected to remain apolitical in a situation where politics were part of the terrain.

Late Edit: (May 8, 2009) The report has been withdrawn by the DoD because:

[an] internal review concluded that the report did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product.

BoA WTF?

I know, I know, get a life, but Friday is when they dump the bad news...

The Baseline Scenario deconstructs the sweetheart deal that Bank of America just got.

Hooray, we've doubled down on BoA. Another 20 billion invested and another govt gurantee of BoA's Merrill assetts - to the tune of $108 billion.

Paulson's hipshooting again. What a freaking joke.

Why we know nothing

(via The Big Picture)

Alisa Miller of PRI shows us how distorted our TV news coverage is.

And she uses pretty pictures.

Et tu, Strib?

Dang. The Minneapolis Star Tribune files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

(H/t TPM)

President Bush is resting comfortably in Bethesda Naval Hospital

With Pres. Bush's increasingly desperate attempts to get the media's attention - I feel like somebody should tell him to relax: You're not being ignored, Mr. President. Oh, sure - you're a despised lame duck whose every utterance is grammatical genocide - but we're still interested in you as a person.

And okay, the mainstream media is all-Obama, all the time - but America can still follow G.W.B.'s post-election progress in its Finest News Source.

I give you - the "resting comfortably" series:

• November 12, 2008 - Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase
  
  
• November 19, 2008 - Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm
  
  
• November 28, 2008 - Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone
  
  
• December 4, 2008 - Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks
  
  
• December 8, 2008 - Bush's Eyelid Accidentally Nailed To Wall
  
  
• January 6, 2009 - Single-Engine Cessna Crashes Into Bush
  
  
• January 14, 2009 - Spider Eggs Hatch In Bush's Brain
  

Cheer up, Mr. Almost-no-longer-the-President, we haven't forgotten you.

Like the sound of that

Obama Adviser Presents Plan to Alter Global Financial System

A top economic adviser to the incoming Obama administration unveiled a plan today to radically rethink the global financial system, including a host of measures that would dramatically expand government control over banking and investment in the United States.

[snip]

A top economic adviser to the incoming Obama administration unveiled a plan today to radically rethink the global financial system, including a host of measures that would dramatically expand government control over banking and investment in the United States.

The proposal offers 18 major recommendations that would insert government regulators into the board rooms of financial institutions as never before. The plan recommends vastly increased oversight of major banks, going as far as to recommend the end of an era of mega banks whose size makes their failure potentially catastrophic to the global financial system. To limit their size and scope, banks, the document states, should be prohibited from managing hedge funds or private equity funds.

In addition, major mutual funds should be required to operate as commercial banks, subjecting them to stricter government oversight. Those that choose not to comply should be forced to sell only relatively safe financial instruments offering investors low risk, and, most probably, limited room for outsized profits.

The document suggests that rating agencies should also face a battery of government regulators.

Okay... I'm going to try thinking happy thoughts for awhile now.

(Don't screw this up for me.)

The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many

The sinking feeling I've had about this bailout is not something I have the chops to back up. The basic gist has been this suspicion that the stated goals of the TARP and Fed actions have been different from what they are actually after.

This has been the subtext of a lot of things written about how the TARP and the Fed’s bailout maneuvers have been playing out. Federal aid was being distributed to many to disguise the condition of a few. Everyone gets money so we can’t guess who needs it most.  AIG is shored up to help its ailing creditors – creditors who positions are not disclosed.

Well The Baseline Scenario is out there saying this, and doing it from a position of knowing something. Were I to know, instead of merely suspect – I would want to be saying something like this:

I think that TARP’s primary purpose is to protect the financial system against the collapse of any systemically critical financial institutions (I leave it to others to define what those are, but Bank of America definitely is one, GMAC I’m skeptical about), and it has suffered from three main problems: 

1. The initial round was too small, with banks only getting 3% of assets or $25 billion, whichever was smaller - which is why Citi and now B of A have had to come back.
2. The terms were too generous; I can make an exception for the first round, but I don’t understand why Citigroup 2 and GMAC were so favorable to shareholders.
3. Except for the very generous initial round, it’s just a pile of money to be used in ad hoc deals, not a comprehensive program with a coherent strategy, so no one is quite sure how or if it will be able to protect the financial system.

The people this crap was sold to are expecting this money to prop up an ailing financial system - not save a few well connected financial firms.

We come out the other end of this thing with bigger banks who are underwritten by the government, and I expect we'll just be queued up for the next time Wall Street decides to stick us with the bill.

Bad things come in threes

Intelligence Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal
The ruling is expected to validate the president’s power to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail without a court order.

U.S. foreclosure filings in 2008 rose 81% from 2007
U.S. foreclosure filings in 2008 rose 81% from 2007 and tripled from 2006, RealtyTrac reported on Wednesday.

Bank of America to Get Billions in U.S. Aid
Sides Finalizing Terms for Fresh Bailout Cash; Lender Told Treasury That Without Funds, It Couldn't Close Deal for Ailing Merrill

(On BOA -  I'm with Barry: Hey Lewis, you bought it, its yours, leave us out of your mess!)

Well, at least its sunny & warm outside...

Late edit: There is some other good news - the FISA ruling is actually quite limited in scope. It addresses only the question of whether or not the Protect America Act is at odds with the Fourth Amendment. It has no ruling on the legality of the NSA wiretapping itself. Mr. Greenwald justifiably takes the article to task for its mischaracterization of the ruling.

I'm about to cost you $20

How?

Easy, three steps.

1) Go to World of Goo's website

2) Download their free Demo (For Windows or Mac)

3) Play

You get to the end of the demo, I defy you to not shell out the measly $20 bucks for the whole shebang.

Seriously, World of Goo rocks. The best games have simple rules and complex strategy.

World of Goo is both, plus it's hilariously maddening.

I do Goo, do you?

Letter from a dead man

(via CJR)

There are few monuments to fallen journalists, but the last editorial of slain Sri Lankan reporter Lasantha Wickramatunga should be graven in stone and placed where the world can see it.

In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

[snip]

I - and my family - have now paid the price that I have long known I will one day have to pay. I am - and have always been - ready for that. I have done nothing to prevent this outcome: no security, no precautions. I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death.

Risking your life for your beliefs is one thing - to willfully choose death over betraying them is another thing entirely.

Too dangerous to release, impossible to prosecute

It's jarring to finally hear someone in a postion to do something express the appropriate level of outrage for what has been going on at Gitmo.

US agents at Guantanamo Bay tortured a Saudi man suspected of involvement in the 11 September attacks, the official overseeing trials at the camp has said.

Susan Crawford told the Washington Post newspaper that Mohammad al-Qahtani had been left in a "life-threatening condition" after being interrogated.

[snip]

Ms Crawford, who was appointed convening authority for military commissions in February 2007, said Mr Qahtani had been interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day almost continuously for eight weeks.

[snip]

Ms Crawford said she was shocked, upset and embarrassed by the treatment he had received.

She said: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques?

"How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

But the article ends with the exact conundrum that the incoming administration faces: a collection of prisoners who cannot be prosecuted if we follow our law, but are clearly dangerous men.

What the hell do you do with this hand-me-down catastrophe? Following our laws would tear huge holes in whatever cases we had against these men. If the prosecutions were to fail - would anyone have the stomach to release them?

I could see us returning them to a facility in Afghanistan "to face charges there," but as a practical matter - the US would have to provide the security or they'd break out.

I can't imagine there are countries lining up to take these guys on, either. Our gun to the head diplomacy days are over, so I'd imagine our allies will be less willing to do us a solid on this issue.

Obama's made the right noises about closing Gitmo, but I cannot fathom what path gets us out of there.

It's like Iraq in general. I just don't see anything but a very ragged ending.

Ben Bernanke: Let's buy crap

Brainiac Ben has an idea on how we should spend the other $350 billion.

He wants to buy the crap that the world managed to talk Sec. Paulson out of buying a few months ago.

One question, Ben - did you the banks leave a horsehead in your bed this morning.

Idiot.

If you live in fear of crime

...CrimeReports.com is the google maps mashup for you:

Crime reports for selected areas, plotted on a map.

Hey look, an assault near my house!

Truly, a golden age.

Flames from the Gov.

(Via CJR and the Anchorage Daily News)

Gov. Palin takes issue with the ADN's treatment of her. Sadly, she does not help herself. The ADN's editor has helpfully posted their email exchange.

Home town pride

SI's Mitch Albom writes about his town in The Courage of Detroit

We don't talk about whether Detroit will be fixed but when Detroit will be fixed.

And we are modest. In truth, we battle an inferiority complex. We gave the world the automobile. Now the world wants to scold us for it. We gave the world Motown music. Motown moved its offices to L.A. When I arrived 24 years ago, to be a sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, I discovered several letters waiting for me at the office. Mind you, I had not written a word. My hiring had been announced, that's all. But there were already letters. Handwritten. And they all said, in effect, "Welcome to Detroit. We know you won't stay long, because nobody good stays for long, but we hope you like it while you're here."

Nobody good stays for long.

We hope you like it while you're here.

How could you not stay in a city like that? 

Albom bites back about everything, the big three, the Lions... You name it, he wants you to know - he's and the rest of Detroit can take what you're dishing out.

(H/t emptywheel)

If a prank happens to a clueless sot, is it still funny?

Answer: Yes.

Okay, today my daughter was fiddling with the buttons on our land line phone and managed to play our outgoing message. To E's surprise it is in the voice of our friend R (married to my man C) saying

You've reached [murph's family], they've been incarcerated for insider trading. Please leave a message.

Needless to say, I'm a bit embarrassed. R stayed at our house over two months ago.

I knew nobody ever called our house, but now at least we know why - everyone thinks we're in prison.

Good one, R&C. You totally win.

(And god help you if you ever let us stay at your house.....)

*grin*

Calvinism

(via The Big Picture)

Too perfect.

The single best analogy of evolution that I've ever heard

...courtesy of (of all things) a reader comment on a Roger Ebert movie review:

Imagine flipping a coin over and over. For each toss, the odds are fifty-fifty that it will come up heads (a one-in-two chance). The odds of getting two heads in a row is a one-in-two-to-the-power-of-two chance, or one-in-four. Five heads in a row is 1:2^5, or one-in-thirty-two. A hundred heads? 1:2^100, or roughly one in 1.3 trillion trillion trillion (thank Gates for the little calculator program on my computer). A creationist would claim that all the lucky chances that evolution requires is like getting not one, not five, but millions upon millions of heads in a row.

"But the creationists are forgetting something. Evolution ISN'T random, as they often claim. It's selected...What if, after every toss, we had the option of not counting it? What if we were allowed to simply discard every toss that came up tails? Now, given the ability to select, how long would it take to rack up a hundred heads in a row? About two hundred throws.

"Once you understand the concept of selection, and how it applies to evolution, you realize that what was thought to be vanishingly unlikely actually becomes virtually inevitable."

What a great way of expressing such a complicated thing!

As long as I'm getting clarity from strange sources - I'd go on to say this analogy meshes nicely with a game I own called Evo. The scoring mechanic of Evo reward species that maintain a high population over time. The central game mechanic exterminates life that cannot survive its changing environment.

And there it is.

Mutation flips the coin - the environment tosses out the results it doesn't like.

Color vision is the equivalent to flipping heads a thousand times in a row? No problem.

The black & white vision predator lives well until prey until they've killed off all the high contrast prey. (Flip, tails: discard). Enter that one color vision predator who feasts on the prey that (in color) is easy to find. (Flip, heads: keep).

Over time - the black & white vision predator leaves less offspring behind (Flip, tails: discard)
-while the color vision predator produces more offspring - (Flip, heads: keep) (Flip, heads: keep) (Flip, heads: keep)

And so on. Pretty easy to get to a thousand that way.

We'll have what Warren's having, thank you

Dean Starkman spots a few good bits from the Post and Bloomberg.

Upshot is: Warren Buffet invested in banks and got good terms. The TARP bailout invested in those same banks and got considerably less bang for the buck. Half? No. Try a tenth of what WB got.

Here the home run bit of data:

The government has received warrants [rights to buy shares] valued at $13.8 billion in the 25 biggest capital injections from TARP, according to Bloomberg data. Under the terms Buffett negotiated for his $5 billion stake in Goldman Sachs, the TARP certificates would have been worth $130.8 billion.

This is what happens when Congress legislates with a (perceived) gun to their heads.

Late edit: The Big Picture has Bloomberg's graphics on this. Visuals help, I think.

Remote control

The Long War has posted transcripts of the Mumbai terrorists talking to their handlers. They came from The Hindu, which obtained the dossier India gave to Pakistan. The dossier details their argument that the attackers were aided by elements within Pakistan.

Reading the exchanges between the attackers and their controllers is plenty creepy - but the Long War is posting that American intelligence officials are (informally) saying the voice of one of the controllers is that of former Pakistan ISI head, Hamid Gul.

That...would not be good.

How your 15 minutes of fame can get you killed.

(via Editor & Publisher)

Joe the Plumber is "going to Israel as a war correspondent."

Seriously.

Pretending to be a plumber is one thing - but pretending to be a war correspondent could get you dead.

The next to worst option

Pietro Veronesi & Luigi Zingales of the U of Chicago release a paper called Paulson's Gift on the financial bailout.

The Big Picture has the abstract (emphasis added)

We calculate the costs and benefits of the largest ever U.S. Government intervention in the financial system. We estimate that the revised Paulson plan increased the value of banks’ financial claims by $109 billion at a taxpayers’ cost of $112 -135 billions, creating no value in the banking sector. We compare the cost of Paulson’s plan with the costs of alternative solutions that would have achieved the same objective in term of solvency of the banking system. We find that the revised Paulson plan is the most expensive for the taxpayers, second only to the original Paulson plan. The biggest beneficiaries of this massive redistribution were the debtholders of financial institutions, especially those of the three former investment banks and of Citigroup. The equity holders just broke even.

Nice to see Paulson looking out for his own - except, when you're the Treasury Secretary - "your own" means taxpayers as a whole, not just the ones you used to work with.

Kool-aid merchant

Elinore Longobardi takes New York magazine to task for its coverage of former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld.

Here's the bit I like - right about when NY is letting themselves view poor, poor Mr. Fuld as a victim in all of this (emphasis mine):

He’d held on to 10 million shares of Lehman stock until the end and lost almost $1 billion—‘He drank the Kool-Aid,’ said one executive. ...Fuld goes to his office ...he’s still nominally the CEO of Lehman—and talks on the phone to a few former colleagues... They often work one another to the edge of rage trying to decipher ‘the mystery,’ as Fuld still thinks of Lehman’s collapse. Why didn’t the government save Lehman the way it saved so many others...? Fuld and his allies can’t help but blame Paulson, whom he’d trusted and, until the end, viewed as an ally and even a friend. Yet Paulson, for reasons Fuld doesn’t yet understand, participated in making him the scapegoat. ‘He feels betrayed,’ said one friend.

Wait, Fuld feels betrayed? What kind of Alice-in-Wonderland world is this? Fuld didn’t just drink the subprime Kool-Aid, but mixed the stuff up and passed it around.

Mr. Fuld - the mystery isn't why your firm was allowed to fail - the mystery is why so many of your colleagues' firms weren't. You are a scapegoat, but there should be a whole lot more of your buddies up there on the wall of shame with you.

I've got another mystery for you - how come you still own a home? Why aren't you out there pouding the pavement trying to get some menial service job because the financial sector views you as something they wouldn't bother to step on.

You and your colleagues robbed everyone's future to roll in cash today. Seems to me you have a lot farther to fall before anyone feels sorry for you.

Judicial snark: Telco immunity version

(H/t to emptywheel)

In Re: NSA telecommunications records litigation

The judge's option cites the plaintiff's argument (and question):

Do defendants mean to assert their theory of unfettered presidential power over matters of national security - the very theory plaintiffs seek to challenge in this case - as a basis for disregarding this court’s FISA preemption ruling and defying the current access proceedings under section 1806(f)? So it seems.

To which Judge Walker adds:

So it seems to the court also.

Snark!

And he goes on:

It appears from defendants’ response to plaintiffs’ motion that defendants believe they can prevent the court from taking any action under 1806(f) by simply declining to act.

[snip]

For the reasons stated herein, defendants’ motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment (Doc #475/49), is DENIED.

Not nearly snarky enough, for my tastes - but snark nonetheless.

Choke point

With reports of the Taliban shutting off the Khyber pass (which has since re-opened) I was wondering what that means in a larger strategic sense.The military has gone on record as saying these attacks were insignificant, but Danger Room has some context that makes you wonder (emphasis added):

Here's the problem: the mission in Afghanistan are sustained by supplies trucked in overland from the Pakistani port city of Karachi. According to the Armed Forces Press Service, the Khyber Pass route provides three quarters of the supplies for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, creating a vulnerable choke point. Late last year, militants stepped up attacks in the Khyber Pass area; they also staged a dramatic attack on a NATO truck depot near the border city of Peshawar, destroying dozens of military trucks. 

The Taliban aren't stupid. They can count.

• Number of ports in Afghanistan: zero. 
• Number of countries bordering on Afghanistan with deep-water ports: two (which is effectively one, since one of those countries is Iran)
  

Driving up from Karachi, we go through Spin Boldak or Khyber. That's two roads for all the shipped in gear. We can fly stuff into the northern border countries, but no way we want to spend that kind of money over the long haul.

It's a helluva place to fight a war.

The MacBook Wheel

The Onion rips Apple a new one...


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

A deserved spanking

While I'm all about the poorly-informed rant - here's a very useful screed about the current financial mess. And it's from people who know a thing or two.

A sample:

IT’S not hard to see why the S.E.C. behaves as it does. If you work for the enforcement division of the S.E.C. you probably know in the back of your mind, and in the front too, that if you maintain good relations with Wall Street you might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.

The commission’s most recent director of enforcement is the general counsel at JPMorgan Chase; the enforcement chief before him became general counsel at Deutsche Bank; and one of his predecessors became a managing director for Credit Suisse before moving on to Morgan Stanley. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the whole point of landing the job as the S.E.C.’s director of enforcement is to position oneself for the better paying one on Wall Street.

G'wan, Read it.

(H/t CJR)

Late edit: there are two editorials, one from Jan. 3, and one from Jan 4 - but they are both solid gold. Here's just a sample nugget:

Rather than tackle the source of the problem, the people running the bailout desperately want to reinflate the credit bubble, prop up the stock market and head off a recession. Their efforts are clearly failing: 2008 was a historically bad year for the stock market, and we’ll be in recession for some time to come. Our leaders have framed the problem as a “crisis ofconfidence” but what they actually seem to mean is “please pay no attention to the problems we are failing to address.”

In its latest push to compel confidence, for instance, the authorities are placing enormous pressure on the Financial Accounting Standards Board to suspend “mark-to-market” accounting. Basically, this means that the banks will not have to account for the actual value of the assets on their books but can claim instead that they are worth whatever they paid for them.

This will have the double effect of reducing transparency and increasing self-delusion (gorge yourself for months, but refuse to step on a scale, and maybe no one will realize you gained weight). And it will fool no one. When you shout at people “be confident,” you shouldn’t expect them to be anything but terrified.